2 Pastors Get Honest About Anxiety, Depression & Ministry (ft. Louie Giglio) | Live Free with Josh Howerton

I don't think I really had an anxiety attack or a panic attack. I think it was way more significant than that. I cracked. I didn't think I was ever going to be normal again. When people tell the story of how God moved in my generation, it will be impossible to tell without talking about Louie and Shelly Giglio. And when talking to the Lord, I said, you didn't heal me yesterday and you didn't heal me today. And I don't know if you're going to heal me tomorrow, but I do know you're a healer. So I'm going to praise you not because you healed me. I want to praise you because you're a healer. Well, hey, Lift Free Nation. Before we jump into the episode, this podcast is recorded right here at Lake Point Church in Dallas, Texas. But the Lift Free Nation is spread all over the country and all around the world. So if you've been watching and thinking, man, I wish I could be part of something like this. We want to invite you to take a simple next step, and that is join us for Church Online. Every weekend, we stream our services live on YouTube, Facebook, and our Church Online platform. And it's more than just watching a service. There are live hosts in the chat, prayer teams ready to stand with you, and people all around the world. Worshipping together in real time. And so whether you're exploring the faith, coming back to church or just looking for a place to start, Church Online is a great way to jump in and experience what God is doing here at Lake Point. We would love to see you in the chat this weekend. And now enjoy the podcast. I've been waiting for this for a long time. Thank you for coming. I'm so glad to be here. Dude, we were talking a little bit before we were rudely kicked off by Carlos Erazo's false alarm here. You are never going to know how much. Dude, if people listen to Live Free, there's two things make my eyes sweat. When I started talking about Jesus, I started talking about Jana. You have probably influenced my life in ministry, even though we've never met before today, more than maybe anybody besides my dad, grandfather, and one other man. Wow. And for people who don't know everything that you've been a part of, here's a sentence that I wrote, and then I'm just going to dive right in. You know that's true, right? It's true. It's true. So let me just kind of set this up. And for people who maybe are not aware, because there's a bunch of Live Free listeners that they're kind of newer to Team Jesus, and they don't know this stuff. So if you've ever heard of the Passion Conferences, I'm going to tell you about that. I'm going to tell you about that. Passion Worship, Passion City Church, and then some other things I'm going to talk about in a second. And then people who don't even know. Man, I'm really, my heart is very full talking to you. People who don't even know that their lives have been shaped by you. They've been in churches singing songs that they had no idea you were a part of. I'm just going to list some. How Great is Our God, 10,000 Reasons, God of the City, Glorious Day, a really good cover of In Christ Alone by Christian Stanfill. All the things. So I want to talk about a whole bunch of that stuff. But first, your dad created the Chick-fil-A logo. Is that for real? Is that for real a thing? You know, my sister told me that all along. And my dad was a graphic designer. So he did packaging for his job, like Coca-Cola carton or something like that. But then he would freelance and do all these logos around Atlanta. I mean, landmark things when I was a kid. And my sister always said, and yeah, dad did the Chick-fil-A logo. And I'm like, we have all this artwork of my dad's, but no sign of Chick-fil-A anywhere. And sure enough, a few years later, Josh, the head of Chick-fil-A faxes me. So this is back in the day, the receipt from the logo design. And it was by a guy that my dad worked for. And then it said down here, logo, $75. That's how much they paid my dad in 1964 to design the Chick-fil-A logo. And it was a kind of a little bit. It was a little bit wonky one for a couple of years before that. And then it officially became that. And my sister was like, yeah, I sat there watching him do it. And then he said, how do you like the chicken head? And she goes, oh, I like it, daddy. Turns out she was right. And still there since 1964, $75 worth. Way to go, dad. I feel like a royal tea check is due. Something. There is. Okay, we won't get into that. Chick-fil-A people are listening and they're my friends. No, come on, man. Well, there is a card I found out. There is some kind of thing. What? I don't know all the details, but I know there is one. Come on, man. Let's go on record. And I know Josh doesn't have one. I know I don't have one. And so I don't know what it takes to get one. It's a mystery. That's amazing. Come back to that later, though. And if we get to talking about passion at some point and ask me about the Chick-fil-A logo, because it is a crazy story in our passion history, my dad's logo. Okay. Well, I definitely want to come back to that. Well, that's a long way for me to say thank you for what you've done in my life and coming on the Live Free pod. Thank you. It means a lot. And I. I told you this just recently. A, I don't know how we had met before now, but I've been watching what God's doing with this podcast particularly. And it is one of the most astounding things happening on earth right now. And you are so gifted. You and the team here. I know it's a whole team, but you are so gifted for this moment. And I just want to say that out loud. I'm watching going, my goodness, you've got not only gifting, but you've got anointing for it. And God is using you in. In such an incredible way. And just to be sitting here with you today is a really big deal for Shelly and me. Thank you for having me on. This feels like a, for me, this is like a John the Baptist moment. Like you should be baptizing me. So let me just, let me just kind of dive right in because there's, so for people who are listening, let me just kind of pull back the curtain on something I've realized. What I'm trying to do right now a little bit is all the things that like shape me and that God used to, to disciple me, I'm kind of trying to, to all of our people just go, well, let me give you those things too. And, uh, it really is. Let me just say a few things about your personal impact on my life for people who don't know. Obviously, Passion Conferences, Passion Worship, Passion City Church, that's all kind of shaped things. I just literally last week at my church, the intro to last week's sermon, title of last week's sermon was Don't Waste Your Life. That's a good title. It's pretty good. You've heard that before. Don't Waste Your Life. The intro to the sermon was me. Telling the story of my college roommate, Lewis Kurt in 2001, handed me a burn CD. They just said John Piper Passion one day, dude, it is impossible for me to talk about this without my sweating. And, uh, I'm just going to repeat to you what I told them. I had no joke. I listened to it in my dorm room. It's the only sermon I've ever listened to. And then immediately hit play again. I grabbed all my roommates and I was like, y'all got to listen to this. And then I had a discipleship group. We called ourselves a war room and we got a little boom box CD player. You remember that? And then, uh, we listened to, to don't waste your life. And then it was in my 96 grand dam for the next four years. And every time I listen, I just listen to that. There's no way, Louie, there's no way that I'm doing what I'm doing today without that. And you, God used to catalyze that. And so it's like, for real, I'm not probably in ministry today if God had not used you and Shelly. So, uh, thank you. Yeah. Wow. Thank you. That means a lot. And, um, I, you know, the fact that we have that story in common, um, I didn't know that until recently and it's just so awesome that we're in that together, you and me and Shelly. I mean, we're all in that and it's amazing looking back that moment in time, Josh passion one day, 2000, it's on a field in Memphis, Texas. Yes. I want to hear about, yeah, go ahead. And, um, it was what the vision of passion was, uh, passion. By the way, you know, didn't start as this, Hey, let's go do this 30 year run of stadium events and a record label and all this stuff. We were Shelly and I were campus ministers, pastors, uh, at a campus here in Texas, just on the crossroads with students every day, right here with 18 to 25 year olds every single day. My dad was disabled in Atlanta and he had been for seven years and we've been asking God every year, can we please go help mom take care of dad? Uh, dad's doing great. Mom is a good caregiver, but we're losing mom. And, um, and what year is this? This is 19, uh, uh, 95 when we moved to Atlanta. So seven years before that, uh, 88 is when my dad got disabled. Uh, I got my math maybe wrong. Yeah. 88 overnight. My dad has a brain virus and he never goes back to work, never plays golf, never drives a car, never dresses himself. And the night that I got to Atlanta. Uh, they thought he was going to die that night. His brain was swelling up and the neurosurgeon came into a little room with me and my mom and he said, I need you to sign this piece of paper. Uh, we're going to do brain surgery on your dad tonight. We need to take out a bunch of your dad's brain or else he's, it's going to swell up and he's going to die. So I signed this piece of paper. They operated on my dad that night. He lives, but he has a stroke imminently and that just complicates everything, Josh. And come to find out later that the part of my dad, he's going to die. The part of my dad's brain they took out was part where your artistic abilities reside. Great. Okay. So dad is disabled. We're in Waco. We're trying to get to Atlanta. It's always stay where you are. I'll take care of mom and dad. Stay where you are. I'll take care of mom and dad until 1994. I spending some time alone with God and he says, you can go, you free to go. I could not believe it. I ran to the phone to call Shelly and I said, we can go to Atlanta. Well, I thought humanly speaking, long story short. We'll go at the end of the school year. year we'll go in may um so we did we made plans we transitioned our leadership we were going to atlanta may 1st the last monday night bible study baylor and then we're we're in atlanta we we're on the way the friday before on the 28th of april speaking to college uh leaders and youth leaders in boston and the church phone rang and a lady came and said your sister's on the phone and when i got to the church office she said um dad died just now of a heart attack my goodness unrelated to his disability it's gone it's crushed me so here we are you know in no man's land we're in atlanta we got no job i got no dad got no banner to fly we got no ministry we have nothing except frustration that's all we got not with god i was frustrated with me oh when you said november go to atlanta you meant go to atlanta and i just missed the last five months of my dad's life because i was thinking you know like human things i was so frustrated so cloudy got on a plane at that summer a few months later to fly to dallas texas to speak at reunion arena that's awesome that's awesome to a big youth event and on the plane sitting by the window i reading a magazine and then josh i go away somewhere i do not know where i just went but i went somewhere and i saw something and it was like i've never seen this many college students before i don't know where this is but it was a generation on their faces praying for spiritual awakening in their generation and just like that i was back in my seat looking at that magazine and i went wow and i just sensed in my heart god saying that is what you're gonna do and i was like what is it where is it when is it how is it i didn't even mention it to shelly for two weeks i was so overwhelmed by it and eventually we talked about it eventually god led us to do it and eventually that picture josh was the field in memphis tennessee with 40 000 college students literally on their faces on the ground praying for spiritual awakening in this generation that was what i saw on the plane and when we got to memphis it was not a conference it was in a concert we never even mentioned that year who was speaking we never mentioned one band we never mentioned a worship leader we just said if you want god come to this field i love that people came and they camped out in tents in these other campsites and no one could even walk on the one day field for three days except for the wooden tower standing on it where people were reading the scripture 24 hours a day over this field in preparation for this moment were you doing like nehemiah eight we were all about ezra all about nehemiah wow i've never heard that before yes for 24 hours 24 hours a day for several days people are reading the word of god that's all that's going into this soil and when the day came for the students to come on the field it was holy i mean there were no frisbees there was no running around it was just quiet ascension into god's presence on this field and so we're praying side stage and it's uh john piper and some other speakers real quick real quick because i want you to keep telling the story i i had never heard of john piper before then i don't know that anybody none of my buddies had ever heard of him before then i'm actually kind of how did you even how did you find john because like honestly i don't mean like honestly i mean this respectfully he's very like unpassioned in a lot of ways you know he doesn't look cool and you know how did you find him a friend of mine who helped us start passion uh one of the early guys in the vision of passion was a big missions guy and he gave me a book called let the nation's be glad oh dude great book and i opened the book and the forward of the book says the reason that missions exists is because worship doesn't and i said i don't know what the rest of the book is like but i didn't i never even read the rest of the book i knew right there oh that's what this book is about and it blew my mind i never thought of it that way before but i had never thought of the glory of god before either yeah and when i first uh got around uh john piper um i mean it was kind of going over my head a little bit honestly and desiring god was uh it was work man i know you got the original where'd you get that so dude uh for people who are listening so i'm gonna show the i'm gonna show the seashells clip here in a second again uh so after that moment this is i'm pretty sure this is the first edition of don't waste your life yeah i haven't seen that cover in a minute well i bought that in college so i'm pretty sure about that in college what year are we talking i don't know i was in college oh one to oh five okay so somewhere around there whenever this came out about a season came out but then also because of that moment i was so gripped and i we'll talk about this in a second by just like honestly i had never been exposed to like this theology of like the massiveness of the glory and sovereignty of god like never in my whole life so i'm gripped he's his famous book desiring god and i was kind of a nerd and so i went on abebooks.com and found the first edition this is the first edition jump hyperdesign god i didn't understand a dang word that i read it yeah i didn't so anyway you know what at the first passion so before one day passion 97 first moment he's speaking and that is a great story uh in itself about how he came to speak there it's a miracle but one of my friends who's still a really good friend pastor in houston he was uh started breakaway at a and m oh uh greg mott oh dude greg mott's an old lake point friend and he's a great friend and he's a great friend and he's a great friend yeah so greg mott has a big group at passion 97 and he comes to me because it's four day deal he comes to me halfway through and he goes hey man this john piper guy is like going just right over our kids heads i mean just like and then he speaks the second time and he's like yeah this is just like going over everybody's head i this is no joke i go to a and m three months later to speak and this is back in the day when you could walk in a dorm and this kid says come up to our dorm we got you know these quad things and come hang out in our dorm room walk up there four bedrooms with a living room in the middle and i'm just kind of nosy so i'm kind of looking in this one kid's room john piper book by the bed really this is true story i look in this other room john piper book by the bed third kid no uh fourth kid john piper book by the bed and i went back to my friend and i said it is going over their heads but they're reaching up for it that's it dude and it went over my head yes but i reached up for it because there was something in it and i said it's going over their heads and i said it's going over their heads and i said it's going over their heads and i said it's going over their heads but there was something in it that spoke to a part of me josh you just said that you didn't know about this did not i grew up in one of the greatest bible teaching churches period charles stanley right well that man named charles stanley every sunday i still listen i listened to him yesterday i still listen to charles stanley people in every country listen to him today in every country on earth people listening today i grew up out of that but i didn't know about the glory of god until piper helped me see that and then you know you have one of these revelation moments and i'm like oh it's on every page of the bible every page it's in every story of the bible this is about the glory of god and i was like and maybe there's people listening today and they're kind of thinking the same as we did without putting words around it's like church is for me that's right it's like no church is for god correct uh the bible's for me these are god's promises for me no this is the story of god heaven oh that's for me jesus up there build me a house right now no heaven is for god come on man the cross is for god the cross is for god the cross is for us is about the glory of god all of it is about his glory and yes we're the beneficiaries and massive measure but it's not about us it's all about him and there's no more freeing message for a human being to absorb than that message it's not about you that's right but you are in the story that it is all about that's right and that is the biggest blessing of any of our lives and john piper's helped a generation see that he did and he helped me see that and i mean the collision of that and passion just it was mentos and coke man it was mentos and coke yes i went started preaching that message and i didn't i wasn't john piper but everywhere i went i'm just preaching the glory of god and i'm in arkansas uh shout out to tim smith at a collegiate conference in little rock and i'm up there doing my best to preach the glory of god i get preaching i go sit down the guy who's the head of the state convention good friend he's sitting next to me and the worship hasn't really percolated yet because we're sitting i don't know why we're sitting but he has this huge bible and he opens it up and he puts it on my lap and he points to something and i'm so annoyed by that because i do not have a division between worship and preaching and so i don't like people talking before you know during the worship i don't like people talking after the talk during the worship it's all a thing and so i'm like i don't want to look at bible right now and he's like no you're looking at my bible right now and i look down and he has his finger on isaiah 26 8 dude okay so wait so louis can explain this here in a second so because of passion when i'm playing intramurals in college i still i think i still have the ball cap no joke because of passion yes i was just gonna confess some sin like i uh i can be overly competitive and i would get in games and lose my temper and say unpastoral words and so literally in 26 8 you know uh yes lord walking the way of your law uh we wait for you you're naming your renown of the desire my heart because of passion john piper and your ministry all that stuff so that was what's keeping you from saying the really bad things correct That was the intent. That was your repentance. That was the intent. It's like, this will remind me. Oh, my word. Well, that verse, that guy, you know, that wasn't me. I didn't come up with Isaiah 26.8. A guy put his finger on that. But when he did, it all congealed right there. It just went. That's it. And that's what we're breathing right now. That's what passion is still breathing 30 years later for your name and your renown are the desire of our souls. And, man, you talk about flying in the face of humanity, which is all about my name and my renown, short-lived as they are. Man, what a freeing message. I love that. You want to live free? Yeah. Get a hold of that truth. I'll preach. Dude, it's funny because we're both preachers. When you're talking about Piper, I got to. It's a little thing that, like, when I'm teaching guys to preach, my little axiom is, hey, man, you'd rather teach big truths they have to grow into than small truths they'll grow out of. Wow. And that's, like, you just—that's what John Piper did. They didn't have to understand everything. Yeah. But people have to have a sense, there's something way bigger for me to press further up and further into. You give them that, and they're going to keep coming. Yeah. People want to take—if anybody's listening right now, and they're like, man, I don't know what they're talking about exactly, but I want some more of that. Or if somebody's on the journey with God. Like you. You and I were. We were way down the road with God when this glory of God thing happened. The pleasures of God from Piper is an unbelievable place to start. It's a lot to get your head around, but my goodness, it's worth it. So we're going to talk about a whole bunch of stuff. I want to ask you about, like, what you see happen in this generation. You know, people right now, they're kind of like, hey, man, maybe there's some seeds of revival happening. You know, all the things. And you can say whatever you want to say. I don't know what you're going to say. I'm just curious to hear from you. But I do. I do, because in my lifetime, there's been like one or two moments that that one moment shifted the course of my life and generation. And that moment was one of them. So I want you to keep going real quick here. So like you were saying, there was like a, you got up to the spot where Piper's getting ready to talk. Oh, yeah. So this is such a, this is, I'm trying to help you see where that talk came out of. Yeah. We're talking about three days worth of people speaking the word of God over this. Dirt. Yeah. Where that man's standing. This is not, I have not been in a moment like this five times in my life. And we're praying over here. The thing I remember about it was we had a guy blowing a shofar to start this gathering off. And he was a Messianic Jew. And it's just grass. You know, there's no green room. It's a tent cover and, you know, the speakers and worship leaders. Tomlin's there. Crowder's there. Matt Redman. The Knuckles. Myself. Some of our Passion Worship team and speakers. And we're all praying on our knees on the ground. And we all got our Bibles and we're putting them on the ground. Bless his heart, Messianic Jews. Come around picking up everybody's Bibles. And he's over there holding them because, you know, you can't put the Bible, the word of God on the ground. And we're like, oh, sorry. Didn't know. There's nowhere else to put it right now. It was just such a moment. But we got done in all seriousness. We got finished praying and it was time to start. And we looked at the first person and we were like, you know. And they were like, no, I don't want to go up there. And we were like, and this is real. I'm not, this is no hyperbole. And so we're like, you go. No, I don't want to go. Nobody. We stood there. I bet we stood there 15 minutes. Was it just like fear of God and awe? Yes. It was total awe. Total fear of God. No one wanted to set foot on that stage. Or fear that they might somehow crash this momentum of holiness that we were all feeling behind us. And I mean, you around preachers and speakers and you're at big events. I mean, you've ever seen a speaker that was like, oh, I don't want to go up there and speak. They're like, oh, I'm ready to go. This is going to be great. 40,000 people. Come on. Nobody wanted to set foot on that stage. And it was like that all day long. It did not relent. And that's the ecosystem. It was the ecosystem that that talk came out of. And that helps you know now, okay, this thing had like a tsunami of spirit power behind it. And that's why it went the way it did. So for people who are listening, there's your backstory. I know this is kind of cheating, but I would be an idiot and it would be podcast malpractice not to show it again. So all of that leads up to what you're about to see is the three minutes of preaching that did not. Just change my life. It changed the course of my entire generation. So all that leads up to this. And then I want to ask you something about this. One of the really sad things about this moment right now is that there are hundreds of you in this crowd who do not want your life to make a difference. All you want is to be liked, maybe finish school, get a good job. Find a husband or a wife, nice house, a nice car, long weekends, good vacations, grow old, healthy, have a fun retirement, die easy, no hell. That's all you want. You don't give a rip. I love looking at their faces. That's what I look like the first time I listen to that sermon. That's a tragedy in the making. About three weeks ago. We got news in our church that Ruby Eliason and Laura Edwards killed in Cameroon. And I asked my people, is this a tragedy? Two women in their 80s, a whole life devoted to one idea. Jesus Christ magnified among the poor and the sick. It still hits like a bomb. In many places, it is not a tragedy. I'll read you what a tragedy is. This is a tragedy. The Reader's Digest. Title of the article, Start Now, Retire Early. Bob and Penny. Bob and Penny. Took early retirement from their jobs in the Northeast five years ago when he was 59 and she was 51. Now they live in Punta Gorda, Florida, where they cruise on their 30-foot trawler. They live in Punta Gorda, Florida, where they cruise on their 30-foot trawler. Play softball and collect shells. That's a tragedy. And there are people in this country that are spending billions of dollars to get you to buy it. And I get 40 minutes to plead with you. Don't buy it. With all my heart, I plead with you. Don't buy that dream. The American dream. Nice house. Nice house. A nice car. Keep going, keep going, keep going. A nice job, a nice family, a nice retirement. Collecting shells as the last chapter before you stand before the creator of the universe to give an account with what you did. Here it is, Lord. Oh, man. My shell collection. And my boat. And look at my boat. My boat. My boat. Look at my boat, God. Look at my boat. That's what wrecked me. Don't waste it. That wrecked me forever. Hey, hey, thank you for making that moment happen. Wow. Thank you. Praise God. Did you, I'm curious, man. Did you have any, like, that happens. Did you have any idea what just happened? I don't, not to the degree that I do now. I mean, I don't think anybody was seeing through that lens of that moment going, oh, I'm going to be sitting down with Josh Howerton in 2026, 26 plus years later, and we're going to be talking about the gravity of that moment. But I did know, and we knew, Josh, that what happened on that field was explosive. We knew that we were in a catalytic moment. And we didn't, you know, you couldn't see where all the arrows were landing, but you could hear, you could hear them coming off the strings. And it was just like, and of course, we didn't know where they were going. And for the most part, we don't know where they went. Well, I know where one of them, one of them landed in Jackson, Tennessee, when I was in college as a freshman. Yeah. So I'm curious, man, like, why do you think that sermon in particular just went off like a bomb? A couple of reasons. I think one, it came out of John Piper. And I went to meet with him before the first Passion Conference. I did not know him. And I had written him and asked him to come to Passion. And he said, I'm sorry, I can't. We do a prayer thing on the first week of the year every year. It's the most important thing we do at our church. I'm never not there. And this is through his assistant. And she says, but you know what? I'm listening to your heart right now, and I think you should write him. So I wrote him and explained him what Passion was going to be. And he wrote me back and he said, Louis, I never miss. It's the first week of the year at our church. But something is stirring inside of me about what's going to happen in Austin, Texas. And I believe these are the things that are going to happen. are his words. I still have the letter. I believe the waterfall of God's blessing is going to be in Austin, Texas on January 1st, and I'm going to be there. And I'd gone up to meet him after that and sat in his house. And this, you know, this is not really that important in the grand scheme of things, but I've never been around a more modest man ever. Yeah. Cash savers. I'm talking, and I just walked out of there going, wow, what am I doing? You know, don't have a car, has a very small wardrobe, very modest home. It does not, I don't know if the guy has 10 grand. Mm-hmm. And I could see in him, hey, I'm living what you're hearing me preach. Like, I'm stocking all my chips in eternity. I'm pushing all along. I'm pushing all of my pile into eternity, and I am making one big bet. And here's my big bet, that when we get to heaven, we're not going to be sorry about the fact that we did not waste our opportunity on this earth, and we didn't get caught up in the fame, riches, and the stuff of this world. And I was just like, I don't know if I've ever seen anybody stack a bigger bet before. You know, we used to watch the poker stuff on ESPN. There was a season where it was on. World Poker. World Poker Championship. Every night. And you would see these guys finally just do the big shove. And I was like, this guy did the big shove. And so this message comes out of that. This isn't clever preaching. This is a passion of a guy who's thrown caution to the wind and sold out, who is not wasting his life. And I think that's part of it. And I think what we were talking about earlier is the other part of it. It just flies in the face of. Everything else you hear. I mean, everything he just listed. Get the job, get the internship so you can get the right job, so you can find the right person, move to the right city, get in the right neighborhood, put your kids in the right school, get the right, you know, retirement thing going, have the right vacation, the right beach house, the right this, the right that, the right the other. And hopefully, as he says, you know, die peacefully. No hell. That's what we're getting sold every single day. And to have somebody step in the face of that, and kind of recall back to the C.T. Studs of the world, you know, who. I've got that quote on my wall in my office. You know, who genuinely chose the path of serving God over the path of fame and fortune. So for, hang on, so for people who don't know, because this is a really cool story, C.T. Stud was a, it was cricket, a cricket player. Big time cricket player. Yeah, it's like essentially like the British LeBron James of the 1800s, for real. Like, from what I understand, one of the most. It was early 20s. Yeah. And then like at the peak of his career in Great Britain, famous everywhere, he, it would be like LeBron James retiring at 27. And him just going, I'm going to the mission field in Africa. And famously, I quoted it last week, famously, somebody asked him, why would you do this? And he wrote a poem. And one line in that poem, dude, I can't, it's why I'm on my wall. I write every sermon looking at this. Only one life. Only one life will soon be passed. Only what's done for Christ will last. Yes, ma'am. And here we are 26 years later. So I'm curious, does that hit different? Like when you were there, you're in your thirties, does that hit different in your sixties? Oh man, it hits. I will say that, you know, there's something about it that's still hitting right now. And I, I don't know. I just think every day we have the opportunity to either buy in to the kingdom or to opt out of the kingdom. And that's all he was really imploring people to do that day. He wasn't really preaching. Against the world necessarily. He was preaching against falling in love with the world and there's two, you know, and, and I just think that today you and I, both of us just bringing it back down to this table, we have the opportunity today to buy into one kingdom or another. And he's, he's imploring today. He's, he's pleading. I love that. And I love the passion of it. And that day, I just can't, I keep going back to the day, Josh, because not too long after that, we, we brought this giant cross out, a huge, heavy, like railroad tie, heavy cross. These guys carried it out, put it in a hole in the ground, right in front of where he was preaching. And we started singing when I survey the wondrous cross and something happened that I've never seen happen before or since this is this kind of day. This was these students started running, running, sprinting, and then diving at the foot of this cross. And then eventually on their own, they pick it up out of the thing and start passing it over the crowd. And so over this 40,000 people on this hillside is this cross is just moving from side to side, front to back. And everybody's just, and it's not like, you know, like it's some kind of, you know, sacrament, but everybody just wants contact, you know? And one of my close friends was there and he had was sold out to Jesus, but he had a track record. And he had to go to church before that. And he'd had a hard time coming to terms with grace. And that day he said, I just kept praying, Lord, let it come closer to me. Let it come closer to me. And it would come and then it would go and it would come and finally it came and he could get his hand on that cross. And he said, something happened in that moment. It was transformational for me. That's where the freedom finally fell. And that whole day was like that. The whole thing was like that clip the whole day. And so now seeing that clip, it's like, oh yeah, that's powerful. And I'm like, no, it, the whole day was like that. It was, yeah, it was special. I don't think I figured this out till literally this moment. So every year at, because a lot of our staff has been influenced by Passion, Passion Conference, Passion Worship. Every year at high school camp at Lake Point on the last night of camp, they pick a group of graduating seniors and they have them carry out a massive, I think it's like 20 feet, it's a railroad tie. Wow. And they do, they do, they said it right there. I guarantee we got that from you. That's where it came from. It's amazing. I tell you the thing I was thinking about it, Shelly and I were talking about it. If you come to Passion, there's going to be a cross. Yeah. There's going to be the glory of God. Most only in the cross. And there's going to be a cross. Because that's where, that's where the glory of God truly is seen the most is in that moment where Christ gave it all. So I'm, you know, I'm going to take this a different direction than I originally planned. So, like, people use different language. People, you know, sometimes people, they'll refer to, man, what's a revival? Or they'll use awakening. Or there's different words. I don't care what you call it. Something happened. You might call it a, I don't know what you even call it. Something happened that became a wave, like in my generation. And I don't know, if somebody tried to go, hey, how long did you feel like it lasted? Maybe 15, 16 years. And then the Lord still continues. But there was something, a really special grace on the thing. Were you, all this is leading to a more important question. Were you saved in the, around the Jesus movement era? I was. I mean, I was a kid. But I got saved on a Sunday at church and got baptized that night. I don't know if you remember those days or not, but that's how I used to work. And that was in, you know, the 70s. 76 is what I thought I read. Is that when you got saved? No, I graduated from high school in 76. So I would have gotten saved in around 70, 1970. And the Jesus movement was definitely in full swing still. I mean, the hippie movement was going on. You know, I went to church downtown Atlanta. And that time it was kind of a flip-flop. The city was a little bit upside down. And near our church, a lot of buildings boarded up. And that's where all the hippies were. And on the way home every Sunday, I'd ask my mom to go a certain way so we could go by the hippies and see all the peace and love. But all that percolated. And all that percolated from that. The Amy Grants of the world that kind of started percolating up. I remember her coming to our church when she was like a teenager. Wow. And then there was just kind of a groundswell. You know, Expo 72 happened here in Cotton Bowl. That was a game changer. I didn't know about it necessarily right then. For people who don't know what that is, I'm just giving a little commentary. That's the largest gathering of Christian young adults I think that's ever happened from what I understand. Maybe so, yeah. Around 100,000. And if you. If you want to see some pictures that'll run a chill up your spine, Google. It was 72? Yeah. Google Expo 72 Cotton Bowl. I think Billy Graham preached. I think it was something to cover a Life magazine maybe. Correct. At the time. I mean, it was a moment. And that whole Jesus movement revolution, that was. You're talking about waves. That was a wave for sure. Chuck Smith with one finger in the air. Yeah. So here's the question I want to ask. This is really interesting to me because I'm a bit of a church history nerd. There have essentially been either four or five what people would call like awakening revival in our nation's history. You got First Great Awakening. I got them right here. First Great Awakening dates generally 1730, 1740. By the way, a lot of people don't think about this. When people hear revival, a lot of times they think like, oh, man, big explosive event. Dude, a lot of these revivals were eras in history that lasted 40, 50 years. So the next one. Second Great Awakening. That's Haystack Revival, Charles Finney. Generally day 1730. 1790 to 1850, was historically called the Third Great Awakening, D.L. Moody, Azusa Street, birth of the charismatic movement. That's around 1900, 1910. Then you fast forward, Jesus Movement, Billy Graham Crusades, all that's going on. That's generally dated 1960 to about 1976. So I want to ask, I ask people who have been around a little longer than me this question. So this is interesting to me. If you date them, all of them are 50 years apart. So First Great Awakening ends in 1740. Second Great Awakening starts in 1790. Second Great Awakening ends 1850. Third Great Awakening generally dates to starting in 1910, or 1900. Third Great Awakening ends in 1910. Jesus Movement, Billy Graham Crusades starts in 1960. So dude, that generally, you go, man. We're on the doorstep. Man, honestly, man, that's like, you know, it's, you know, again, there's just a few things that want to talk about and my eyes are going to sweat. And just, you know, seeing an individual who's been around for a long time, who's been around for a long time, seeing an individual who's been around for a long time, who's been around for a long time, in breaking of the Spirit of God in my generation that changes, you know, my kids' lives and the world my grandkids grow up and, you know, Christ exalted. I'd give anything. So like, you know, you've, you were alive for that and I wasn't. And then you've been around some of that and you've, I'm going to show one of them here in a second. There have been moments at Passion, I think, multiple times that it's like, that wasn't normal. Let me just ask you, like, whenever a moment like that comes again, what do you think we'll see? How will we know, like, dude, that's the, that's it, that's the real thing? Or what, just what thoughts you got? I'm curious. Well, I think that we, it's going to be different than we, anything we've seen before. So we're, I think that we're seeing stirrings for sure. Asbury, a couple of years ago, I went myself because I wanted to see with my own eyes. And so I went and spent a night there. Well, wait a second. I want to pause on that. What'd you think? Never seen anything like it. And I, you know, you can, people can say, well, it's this or it's that. Well, I was there and man, it was a lot of tears, a lot of repentance. Repentance. Is what was happening there. The altar was full of people repenting, confessing their sin. It wasn't a, just a sing-along, although it was almost continuous worship, but it was contemplation. There's somebody over here just on the ground on their face. There's somebody over here just sitting with their Bible open. There's a hundred people at the altar and there's a line of people out the door. We, I went with a friend of mine and we got there and figured out we went in the wrong door. We went in the back door and we were in, and we didn't even know there was a mile long line going out the front door. Did you pull the Louis Giglio card? No, no, we went in low as we could. That didn't last very long. So we got up in the balcony, got up in the corner, got out where we got, where we were not. I didn't go anywhere in view practically because I didn't go there to make a scene out of anything. I went there to see what is God doing and I want to see for myself. I don't want to hear about it because the commentary coming down immediately on anything right now, Josh, is 50-50. You got your naysayers. Correct. And you got your yay-sayers. And we got two weeks worth of people showing up in the middle of nowhere, overwhelming this little town. They eventually have to shut this thing down because the town can't contain it. Yeah, so for people who don't know, and I want you to keep going, for people who don't know, how many years, was that three years ago, four years ago? Yeah, I think it was three. I was trying to think about that yesterday. I think three, two, minimum three maximum. So it's at Asbury College in Kentucky as my home state. And it's just a chapel service, normal college chapel service. Service ends, people go back to class, except a little handful of students, 15 stay, that time the next day, campus is shut down, chapel's packed, and God's moving. Students never left. They just kept worshiping, and then it steamrolled into mass repentance of sin. Everyone from all over the country, honestly, I was. From the world. From the world. I was going to go, and then that was the day they announced, you can't come. You know, it's so crazy, and this is probably not that helpful, but social media and revival is going to be an interesting crossroads. Because none of the things you just talked about happened in an instant era. None of them. And so now we have an all-night worship night at the church, and it's revival, and it's on social media, and revival's happening. Look, people are still here all night long. And, you know, Asbury was all over the world, and I have some close friends who were actually shepherding it, because there were elders shepherding the process. It wasn't just kind of willy-nilly. And one of them is a close friend of mine. I got there, and he was like, yeah, the Asians are here today. And I was like, what? He goes, yeah, the Asians have been here since Wednesday. And I was like, okay. And he said, yeah, a few days before that, the Europeans were here. And a few days before that, the South Americans were here. And there's just these waves. I mean, people are coming from around the world to be in this space. So there's a stirring, and I think there are stirrings. But you asked me the question, what are we going to see? And I don't know that we know what we're going to see. Because when all these movements that you're talking about left the church building and went into the marketplace, and that's what we haven't seen yet. We haven't seen, in some of the instances that you talked about, I was reading about one recently where all these coal miners got saved. Yeah, Eastern Kentucky, right? Was it? Potentially, yeah. I don't remember where. I just remember they were saying that the animals, the donkeys in the coal mine, were so used to them cursing at them that when they all got saved, that the animals didn't know what they were saying anymore because all the men in the coal mine stopped cursing. And the animals were like, wait a minute, we're not used to this. That's revival. Revival is the crime rate went to zero. The bars are empty. The families are being reconciled. That's revival. And it shuts down things. And I have a friend of mine who's in a major city in the world, and he's praying more for revival than anybody I know on earth. John? Is it John? Yeah. He's a dear friend of mine, John Tyson. And he has the look on his face, you know it, when he starts talking about. The phrase he was using recently, he says, I am jealous for Jesus to get the attention of New York City. That's right. And he said, and Louis, when it does, people are going to. Hit the streets when the glory of God comes. And that is what we're all waiting for. That's what we're looking for. That's the ultimate when Jesus comes back. It's not going to be all night prayer. It's going to be all on their faces. That's right. And that's what the fruit of revival is, is that it spills outside of church and the altar is full, but eventually the whole town is changed. Dude, what's so. I was just thinking about this. What's so interesting when you see those moments in history, so like. I'm talking about biblical history. So you got Nehemiah 7 and 8. You got another one when Josiah takes the throne and discovers the book of the law. Obviously, you have something in Acts 2. For listeners, I just want to be a pastor for a second and highlight something Pastor Louis just said. Did you notice what he said there at Asbury is people started repenting of sin. Nehemiah 8, that's the first thing that happens. It says that people just start. Dude, it's hard to talk about. They just start crying out and confessing the sins. It says not just their sins, but the sins of their fathers. Then obviously, you go to Josiah, exact same thing, national repentance. You go to Acts 2. And man, obviously, there's joy unspeakable and full of glory, but it says, "They were cut to the heart and they start crying out, 'What must I do to be saved?'" And so it's like, man, what I don't think people think about very often is that me and you, you know, it's like we want to create. I call it spiritual stewardship or emotional stewardship. I am trying to steward somebody's emotions vertically. I'm trying to stir, in the words of Jonathan Edwards, your affections. Yes, I'm trying to do that in a worship service. But the sign of a move of the Spirit of God is not emotion. You can get emotion from anything. The sign of the move of the Spirit of God is rearranged priorities. Wow. Yeah. And that's when you know the Spirit of God just moved in this place. Yeah. You know, I said it the other day, and I'm not going to go into too much detail, but I had a message, you know, we want the goosebumps, but He wants a people. And that's two different things. You know, to be set apart is what He wants, is a set apart people who He can say, these are my people. And there's all kinds of people out there. You can pick and choose, but these are my, if you want to see what my people look like, this is what my people look like. This is how they act. This is how they, you know, conduct their lives and how they view people and how they treat people. And that's the thing. That's the money. You know, it's when you get right down to it, if there isn't a change of heart, then there is nothing at the end of the day. And the Holy Spirit is about changing a heart. And I love that you mentioned, you know, not only being broken over my sin, but the sins of my family or my city. When Isaiah saw the Lord in chapter six, he said, I am a man of unclean lips. And let me add to that, I live among a people of unclean lips. I'm, I feel it for the rest of my life. And I feel it for the rest of my life. And I feel it for the rest WE'RE ALL ABLE TO DO THAT. of us right now yeah so let me i'll ask one more question then i want to talk about like um something that you and me have both uh walked through a little bit with some of the anxieties that so i want to get there because that's very interesting to me but there's there's like there's a few literally all i did for this conversation is i sat down and i didn't even really think about uh live free nation i love y'all but i was just going what do i want to ask you so there was another moment that i want to ask you about and if you don't got anything to say just say i don't know if it's just real cool but i just want to ask you about it so whenever i get to a spot where i'm like dude i need to be reminded of like the majesty of god yeah there's a moment from a nut it's a more recent passion conference it's a it's like a 16 minute youtube video uh and i'll watch i'll watch it working out a lot uh we pull this up and it's this is gonna look familiar to you it's the it's the agnus day oh wow moment yeah so go ahead and start playing it so so for example this was a moment what what year was that 2024 georgia uh mercedes-benz stadium yeah all right so keep watching this if if you're on youtube or whatever so this was like just a normal i just want to show you right now those are not our lights hey will you go back to that go back to the go back to those sunbeams no just go back like yeah dude that is that is right oh so is that christian christian stanfield so you just planned pause it real quick journey so this was just planned to be why we're singing agnus day which is one about 20 minute worship set christine kane's going to speak and it's just that's what's planned that's what's planned but then if you watch this video what was hoped for that's what was planned why do you say it like that because going into it we hoped that god would come and break into what was planned with something that wasn't planned and he did and he did so if you go watch this video and we'll put this in the link to this youtube video in the caption if you watch this for like the first five six minutes it's a great god glorifying worship song the song ends and then it's a moment where this it feels to me like the stadium won't let them move on and then they finish the song and how many people are there uh in the stadium yeah uh 50 000. all right so then they just they take over they were just essentially they went to the all the worship leaders and went we'll be taking over now and they just start singing this agnus day yeah and then what you're seeing for the next 10 minutes is something that cannot be manufactured you cannot plan a moment like that now go back about before he starts reading just click back maybe 20 seconds here and then uh so this is the room takes over and then this moment happens he keeps on training and i turned around to see the voice that was speaking he's reading revelation and when i turned around i saw seven golden lamp stands and among the lamp stands was someone like a son of man dressed in a robe reaching down to his feet with a golden sash around his chest and the hair on his head he didn't plan to read that did he as white as snow and his eyes were like blazing fire did he plan to read that they've been reading that for a month they've been on their knees in rehearsals around that text for a month and coming out of his mouth but he didn't have to go look for it when he was ready and his face was like the sun shining in all its brilliance look at that just the sun i fell at his feet as though dead and he placed his right hand on me and he said do not be afraid i am the first and the last i am the living one i can't i literally can't watch it without uh breaking down i can't do it and neither can he i am alive forever and ever and i hold the keys of death and hades jesus you are holy jesus you can take a trinity uh so let me just ask you like first of all if you got anything to say about that i'll hear about it but like in a moment like that like what's happening spiritually in those moments and what makes it like different than what we just planned for well i mean it's interesting and i i i know what you're saying about like the crowd kind of took over but it's it's slightly different than that god took over i mean he took over he just took over and it it's hard to put words around it uh i would encourage people to watch it and then make what they can out of it because i i can't explain it um i was up in eye level from where you could see across christian 100 yards away from christian and i was in the middle of the road and i was in cross christian 100 yards from the stage not anywhere near like oh i'm gonna do something i'm i there's no way i'm doing anything i'm over there i don't want to do anything shelley and i are way up here and then we realize at some point it's not just the crowd keeps singing like heaven is descending and how many times have you been there not very many like that and it was like oh god is here and just in an instant i i don't know how to put words around it exactly but um god is here and he's everywhere he's omnipresent but it's like okay he's here and there's just a release like for shelly and me it was like you know didn't even have a thought of what's next or how long is this going to last or it's a speaker ever going to get up and do something like that and it's like oh god is here and he's up there i mean this is the last session this is the last session of the deal but right before lunchtime on the last day so this isn't like the night session or we got tons of runway here and it just goes and um i come to find out later josh um last year before passion we were doing an event at this family's house in houston trying to help bridge the gap that there always is with passion and several i don't know 20 couples were there and the daughter of the family's house was there and the father of the family whose house we were at brad on our team when my pastors knew her story and had her share with this den of people living room of people long story short she'd been through it man she had some trauma from high school and um she got healed yeah in that 16 minute moment she was there with her parents not really even of her own accord she just went with them and she said i'd heard about it didn't went really for it wasn't against it yeah and then in that 16 minutes all of what had happened to her yeah got touched yeah and then we met another friend's daughter who had been through it yeah and in that 16 minutes she got healed geez things put back together yeah trauma undone yeah and that's what happens in a window like that it's not just oh that's a cool moment that was a cool worship moment it's like no that was a god moment that's right and all kind of things happened in that moment most of which we will never know what they are that's right but wow very very very few moments in life like that we had another one uh recently at passion it wasn't quite the same but that's what we're praying for yes that's what we're praying for we had all our worship leaders and speakers on a prayer call a few weeks ago we'll do another one before passion we do them every year this is not a hey let's get the best speakers we can find and see if we can get people in a building we're trying to make a way for god and i said to them again this year i said i just need to ask one more time and these are my friends our friends so just need to ask one more time are you willing to not play are you willing to not speak because i need to know even though you've prepared and even though you're ready that if god comes yes right and it's like hey man i'm sorry but you're not gonna get to talk today or you're not gonna get to play your worship set today will you be okay and to watch these guys on this zoom call just do this like this is this is why because we're trying to say to god we're gonna plan but we want you to do something that we can't plan you were talking about this the two people you know of who like just something you heard that martin lloyd jones quote in his book on revival where he says uh he says uh god can do more in a minute than man with his organizing in 50 years it's like yes what you just yeah it's that you know what i say is like that in um god does what he wants to do in the time he has allotted to do it that's a great sentence and if he has a subway ride it's four stops long he can change somebody's life wow he has five days at youth camp he can change somebody's life he can change somebody's life he can change somebody's life he does what he wants when he wants with whatever time he's allotted with whomever he chooses to do it and it is so beautiful to watch he can do it just like that you know the crazy thing josh i think the worship set lasted about as long as it was supposed to really and the speaker spoke and the session ended when it was supposed to end and i was like we got transported somewhere and it still all worked because it doesn't have to be totally weird for it to be totally supernatural so one of the things it's like uh that like i've really appreciate about you is because we have we have like a little valley of the shadow of death that that both of us have kind of kind of walked you're talking about god healing things inside of people is um you did first of all will you make sure this is this link is in the youtube video too you got that you got a sermon that like just went everywhere don't give the enemy a seat at your table so please put that yeah it'd be awesome in the in the description link and then uh and then you just you're right it's this guy fear not because by the way that guy right there uh as a guy who has wrestled with that uh that's a that's a winner uh is in 2019 uh i had eight months of pretty significant only time my life well until this year i had a little two months or a little pop back up early this year eight months of really debilitating uh anxiety attacks like right before and then during happened during preaching a couple times it's really not awesome and uh before that i'll just i'm gonna confess something before that you know when everybody somebody would talk to me and i'd be like oh my god i'm gonna be like oh my god you're talking about anxiety attacks i'd always be like oh that's like a gen z way to say you had a bad day you know and then it happens to you and you're like oh well then i've never experienced a hell like that uh and the lord was faithful and he he carried me but you've you've had a little bit of that do you mind like like why'd you write that and then because you've got a story there yeah well i mean i was like you you know i didn't when people talked about they suffered anxiety i i would sympathetic i think yeah but definitely not compassionate and understanding until i thought i was gonna die one night and the next night i thought worse i was dying i was having these uh physical symptoms that were crazy you might be asking what uh well yeah well a heart blowing up then face totally numb arm totally numb yeah that happened to me legs convulsed like i have electrodes plugged into my legs and they're just doing these convulsions and um it's like midnight on the second night and i say to shelly well shelly's looking at me and she goes you need to stop doing that that's good that's good counsel i was like i would like to too babe i'm not doing that i don't have control over that right now and she said we're going to the hospital so we went to the emergency room and it started a domino effect you know they put something in my iv at the er which was wonderful i mean like in 20 seconds i was calm as you know can be and they sent me home with some of that uh but and i thought oh okay this is this is going to be this we're going to be okay and um man we were not okay and um yeah short version of it is i think if we were in another era and using a pejorative term which we can't probably use anymore i think i had a nervous breakdown um so i don't think i really had an anxiety attack or a panic attack i think it was way more significant than that i cracked and i ended up in a heap in the corner for about four months of life i was out of commission i mean i didn't go to work i didn't go to meetings i didn't i didn't preach i i didn't think i was ever going to be normal again and i thought i was losing my mind if you're listening right now and you're like oh my gosh you just leaned in because you heard two guys that you didn't expect to talk about and you didn't expect to talk about them about what you're walking through uh the big two things are i thought i was great going crazy i mean i literally i'm not making this up i thought i'm going crazy and i thought i'm never going to be back again i'll never be normal again that's what i thought and um i i think it's good to say to uh your listeners um you're not going crazy that's right they're 100 is probably crazy in it yeah but you're not crazy and you know by the grace of god um i found my way out he led me out worship led me out worship was a big part of me coming out uh and on the other side of that and it took me probably six months to get back to quasi normal um i was taking some medicine that was helping me level out and i said to the doctor how long am i going to have to take this medicine and he goes till you forget about taking it was he right he was right a few months later i'm speaking at a university and i'm at a youth camp and i realized about thursday oh i haven't taken any medicine this week just don't need it not leaning on that anymore things are normalizing guy was telling me your brain's stuck in 35th gear and we got to get it back down to like first gear second gear and it's and it took a minute and i write about it in the book this book's about fears and um this guy was coaching me through this josh he wasn't my doctor he was actually shelly's doctor her back had gone out right before all this happened and but he had experience in all manner of stuff he was an er doctor and he's just a really smart guy and i don't know why but he became my coach and every other day i thought i think i have a brain tumor i think i have a brain tumor and he'd go okay i'll set you up with my friend a neurologist and we'll go do an mri and lo and behold i don't have a brain tumor and i was like i think i have a tumor in my back okay well i'll set you up with my guy and he'll do a thing cat scan and oh i don't have that i think i have cancer i thought i was dying for real for about three months and he just kept sending me to doctor after doctor after doctor and once we got done and i didn't have all those things he said louis you have something called the fear of death syndrome it's a real fear it actually has a name i talk about it in the book i went and googled it it's the name for it i never heard of that and he said you have the fear of death syndrome and i couldn't tell you you have the fear of death syndrome it's a thing you're not dying i can't tell you that the only way you can get through it is to go to every one of those doctors and not die and so that was my thing josh when it you know because you know it kind of wants to come back yeah and you can feel it you know like 40 miles over there you can feel it coming and mine especially those early years after that this was 2009 uh when it would start coming back i would be like oh my gosh i'm gonna die and then i'm gonna wait wait a minute i'm not gonna die and i would just turn around and say that i'm not gonna die yeah i'm not going to die i know that sounds like a simple phrase but it's important when you thought you were and you know the enemies told me a lot of times that i wasn't gonna make it but guess what it's all fake news that's right every time that's right every single time he told me i wasn't gonna make it it was fake news i'm not distracted i'm gonna pull up something uh because i didn't plan to do this so in a second i'm gonna ask you like main stuff for me uh oh please let me find this uh valley i have an iphone note because it is you feel like you're going crazy and it's like it's the weirdest i don't know if it was like this for you where half my brain knew every single thing that you're afraid is gonna happen there's no way it's gonna happen like half my brain knew that the other half my brain is like oh my god i'm gonna die i'm gonna die i'm gonna die it's like there's no way it's not gonna happen wow and it's the i don't know if you had that but it was the weirdest more like about 80 20 80 okay well right on the day uh-huh uh dang i can't find it right now but what all i could do is is honestly shout out to this guy there's a sentence i first heard from levi lusko oh wow where levi healed levi and i've met one time and he doesn't even know this in a sermon he preached probably 15 years ago he had this little sentence he said forgetfulness is the greatest enemy of faith because when you forget what god did you stop believing what it'll do wow and so when i started going through these that little thing and i knew like hey man my big thing i want to ask you about it my big thing was um this is only sports people will know what i'm talking about that i was going to become the chuck knobloch of preaching that out like chuck knobloch was a second baseman who had yips and he lost the ability to throw to first yeah and it literally ended his career and i literally my brain was like you're gonna be the chuck knobloch of preaching you're never gonna be able to preach again and you're gonna have to go be aaron brockett's executive pastor like literally i'm gonna call eric geiger and be his executive pastor if he'll let me and you'll have to walk away and i remember that levi lusko quote wow forgetfulness is the greatest and i just started writing down every time i would think of a true thing i would write it down that iphone note and like you would turn around and say you're not dying i would pull up the iphone note and read all the promises of god and what was true yeah it's like if for somebody that's like when they're in it because i know this is like this is why if you're walking through it you need you need you need that but for somebody that's in it like what's what's the core message that it's like you're trying to get to somebody like hey man if you're there here's what you need to do yeah well i think you know josh it sounds simple and we already said it but i think the first thing if you're in it right now is that you have to speak truth to yourself and it's kind of a weird thing but you know you you had people speaking all kind of truth into you you're i mean your family was speaking truth to you your pastor friends you you had all this input coming, but it didn't matter. What mattered was what you were speaking to you, and that's what the psalmist teaches us. Why be downcast, O my soul? Put your hope in God. So I'm great at preaching to other people going through their troubles. I wish I was as good preaching to me going through my troubles as I am sitting across from somebody else at coffee going, hey, man, let me help you with this. And then once we get in it, we start preaching all the negativity and amplifying that. And I'm not saying, again, to people, I'm not belittling whatever you're going through. You just have to take the mic. You have to take the mic and say, God is with me, and I am not crazy. God did not make me crazy. God is with me. God is with me. That is the bedrock. That is the anchor point for living and being saved. God is with me. God is with me. God is with me. It doesn't look like it. The last night that broke me, 2 a.m., I would get this wake-up elephant on my chest every night. I dreaded it. I could go to sleep, but I couldn't stay asleep. Two o'clock, suffocating elephant, and this is months in. This is after I know I'm not dying. Months in, and I say to God, Josh, I say, God, I can't do this one. More day. And I wasn't going to make some desperate decision. I just was broken. And I said, but then I preached to myself, and I don't know how. I said, and I'm talking to the Lord. I said, you didn't heal me yesterday, and you didn't heal me today. I do know that you're a healer. So I'm going to praise you, not because you healed me. I want to praise you, because you're a healer. Come on, man. And I said, if you give me a song to sing, Job said, he gives songs in the night. I said, if you'll give me a song to sing, I'll sing it to you. And I could have picked a Matt Redmond song. I could have picked a Chris Tomlin song. My wife leads a record label that's raised up a lot of great worship artists. I'd say so. And I could have picked any one of these songs, but this little spontaneous song dropped into my heart, and I started singing it. And it was like a little pinhole, Josh. In the canopy of the darkness, and a tiny ray of light came in that night. Tiny little ray of light. But a tiny ray of light is powerful. And worship, you know, it's a weapon. And that night, it was a weapon. And I didn't wake up the next day, take a shower, put on a suit, and go to dinner with friends. But I had a song the next night at two o'clock. And eventually, the song overtook the cloud. And then the beauty of it all, you talked about songs. The beauty of it all is with two other amazing writers. That little, you know, bit of a song became a Grammy-nominated worship song. Which one? I Lift My Hands. No way. That came out of that? That came from that night. I had no idea. Yeah. And lost to another Chris Tomlin song in the same category. Chris Tomlin's like Newman. Chris Tomlin! Chris Tomlin! Tomlin! But, you know, isn't that. I know every story doesn't get a bow. We know that. We've been down the road with a lot of stories that we don't know till heaven what that story was about. But man, to think that God could bring me through that valley. And then I went on tour with Chris not long after that. And we were doing like basketball arenas. And every night I would stand up and tell that story. Every single night. And I'm telling you, Josh, people did not expect a Christian speaker at the time. at the concert to talk about falling in a hole with depression. And I was just seeing this wave of freedom go across people. And like you did, you know, people were like, how are you doing with your situation? I'd be like, I'm doing a lot better. Well, what do you contribute that to? Well, God, the Bible, truth, and I'm taking this medicine right now that's really helping me. Oh, what is that? And I would say, it's such and such. And they go, oh, that stuff's amazing. My wife takes that. Oh, that's incredible. My son takes that. Oh, that's phenomenal. My business partner tells me that really helps him. And I'm like, I had no idea. I had no idea that a third of America is taking something to help them manage, call it what you will, depression, anxiety. So, you know, to write a book called Fear Not, somebody asked me, why'd you write this book? And I'm like, why not? Yeah, that's right. That's right. Yes. Well, I'm honestly, probably because of part of my story, I'm really excited about it. Will you guys make sure the link to that is in the. That'd be awesome. I'm really excited. Let me click on something you just said, like, because your life and ministry are so interesting. There's a few guys, honestly, my buddy Jonathan McClute is like this too. There's a few guys who, for whatever reason, there's like an anointing on them. And it doesn't matter how old they are. It's like, they are the spiritual fathers of young adults. It's a weird, I don't got it. Honestly, I don't got it. There's something, I don't know what it is. How do you know you don't have it? I don't know, man. I don't know. I just feel like I generally connect with dudes and husbands and fathers the most. I don't know, maybe not. But you have that thing. And you've been around, you know, many, 30 years of generations of, you know, young adults, I think. With as much honesty as you are willing to have, I like to hear two things. What scares you about the rising generation? What scares you about the rising generation of Christians? What encourages you about them? And if I can make a request, and you don't have to obey my request because you're Louis Giglio and I'm just Josh Everton. But what a lot of times people will do is they don't want to say what scares them about the rising generation because they don't want to be discouraging. But honestly, like, we need to have the humility to go, I'm glad he said that. So whichever one you want to do first, what scares you about the rising generation of Christians? What encourages you? Okay, well, let me do my disclaimer, which I always do. I am not an expert on any generation. And I know that you're going to be like, okay, we don't need that. Just can that and get to the point. But we do. Because there are experts. I'm just not one of them. I read them. And I like what they say, because it helps me know who I'm serving. But I'm not an expert. I'm a servant. I am a servant to this generation. And if you say, hey, give me the eight characteristics of Gen Alpha, I'd be like, who are you talking about? You talking about Josh? Or are you talking about Julie? Because they're completely two different Gen Alphas. So let's don't lump them all in a big pile and act like Louie's the expert, because he and Shelly have been doing ministry to 18 to 25 year olds for 40 years now. So I don't know. But let's just talk about humans for a minute. And I think that's an easier way to answer it. I am incredibly concerned. I am incredibly concerned about the fact that people don't realize that every great thing requires a great cost. And this is basic. Basic. Ask a mom who's had a child, if it was costly to have the child, and then to have the child. Incredibly worth it. But incredibly costly. Ask anybody who's been a part of anything great. And they will tell you the behind the scenes story. You know, passion, the thing that has annoyed me the most is people say, oh, passion, you just put your name on it and the arena fills up. And I'm like, oh, man, you have no idea. You have no idea. I'm going to a dinner after this podcast today to implore kind people to help us make passion happen this year. By the way, Lake Point Church is going to be one of those people. I just want you to know that we're going to contribute to that. Thank you. You have. And thank you again. But we are hustling. That's right. We are knocking on doors. We are believing God. Somebody said, what does it feel like doing two stadiums this year? I said, it feels like going up Everest and Kilimanjaro with flip-flops on. That's what it feels like. It's the hardest thing we've ever done. Why are we doing this 30 years later? Why? Why are we still doing this? Because there's a calling on our life, but it is costly, Josh. Amen. Everything great requires a cost. And what this generation has the tendency to do is say, if it's hard, it's not God. If it's difficult or there's opposition or there's a roadblock, oh, that must mean it's not God. And I'm like, I'm sorry, but have you read the Bible? Yes, right. Tell me a story in the Bible that didn't have a steep, a climb. That's right. So I think that's one of the things I'm concerned about. And how do you get that across to people? You and I just grew up working hard. And we weren't watching social media to see what somebody else was doing in their lane. We were just over here trusting God in our lane. For me, it was same as you. It was, I set the chairs up for the youth meeting. Every week. Break the chairs down and put them in the storage closet when it's over. Drive back to Atlanta, because the youth thing I'm leading is 55 minutes away on a Tuesday night when I'm in college. Nobody's applauding that that's right nobody's celebrating that it's not on any social media because there is no social media it's just following god and it's it's knowing there's a calling and saying i'm willing to give it all so that's the thing that i'm most concerned about before you get to what encourages you well i just want like uh and um it's not what he said it's how i think people misused what he said so dude if you're listening do not take this as a criticism of what this guy said but you probably know him but there's i spoke at a conference with john mark comer and dude had a great experience with john marr it was amazing and he wrote that ruthless elimination of hurry book and john mark would be the first person to be like yeah man some people they'll misinterpret what i said what some people did is they took his book they misinterpreted what he said and and it felt like the ruthless elimination of hurry became the ruthless elimination of any hard work and it's like hey man like i just finished preaching verse by verse through second timothy and the verse honestly dude the verse that like landed on me probably the most is where the apostle paul gets the end of his life and he says i love this language he says i am being poured out as a drink offering on the altar of your faith and it's like man if you know i have i'm in a season like this right now where it is a little extra and it is a little faster and the weights are a little heavier and you go to bed a little more tired and sometimes people can get to that spot like man if work or an endeavor is really tiring something must be wrong no no no no no what's happening is you're being poured out as a drink offering wow that's what we're supposed to do you're supposed to find something that's worth giving everything you got with the i'm going to quote jim harbaugh with an aggression previously unknown to mankind wow and then get to the end of the day and be like dude i am tired did i do something wrong nope i was being poured out as a drink offering on the altar of somebody where was paul when he wrote those words man routine prison yep getting ready to have his head chopped off yeah last days of his life in the subterranean dungeon of a roman prison chained to the wall yeah writing to a guy to encourage him hey hang in there don't give up i know there's a lot of friction around you right now timothy didn't have an easy road that's right and he's trying to help him encourage him breathe life into him he's he's right there at the end proving the point that's right and i think you know that just you know i i think about moses all the time when god found him in midian and told him what he was going to do you know i i've heard i'm going to come down i'm going to rescue i'm going to liver i'm doing it all yeah now you go yeah and all moses heard was go he didn't hear i'm doing it all you know yeah and he said who am i you know who am i to do this and god i think if it had been today he would have said oh buddy come here come here come here buddy moses my man i got you yeah uh you can do this i believe in you all he said to him was i'm going with you there you go there you go and i just think we've we've heard it a lot of the call yeah and it's you know man we just got to keep everybody pumped up right now instead of encouraging everybody just to keep being poured out amen and there is obviously boundaries and parameters yeah you know i mean there's all that you know shelly and i are looking for balance and we try to go hard and rest hard and we do we we're good at going super hard we both go to work yeah i'm 68 i don't have to go to work yeah but we we go to our calling and we go to work and and we know how to find rest and find that balance as well i just think in today's generation it's a lot more man i just want to i just want to go to italy yeah yeah 24 and my friends have already been twice and i think i'm you know time for me to go i was like okay well you know and i'm not knocking anybody with that we go to italy i love italy i'm not knocking that at all i just think that um the potential this is what i'm most excited about is the potential because i feel like in this again i'm not an expert but i feel like alpha and beta are the most clued in generation to the fact that the world's not it amen come on man they're way more clued into that than my generation who's you know got more clued into it than gen x millennials they they they've figured out that ain't it that's just not where it's at and it's it's causing problems in certain industries in america yeah because they're like yeah no that's not it that might have been it for my mom my dad but that ain't it for me and so they're i think they're poised to you know have you ever seen kids with bigger bibles yeah in your life it's fact it's fact i i roll in with this guy and i'm like sorry but you know my daughter i carry it around everywhere oh it's a cinder block yeah and it's got nine highlighters and you know it's just like we want the meal that's it yes give it to us yes and you know a few years back there was a phrase with ya they would be like you know come at us you know come at me bro come at me come at us and you were like man i don't ever no one no one above 35 ever said that in a church let me ask you one last question and then i want to rapid fire some some questions from listeners great sounds exciting this is one i just always again these are all just things i'm like if i'm ever with louie giggly i'm asking this question you've been all over the world you've stood at the center of moves of god tell me a couple stories of when you've seen the spirit's power at work with greatest intensity wow okay um i think we've talked about a couple of them i bet i bet i bet two of the ones that are way up at the top of my list um would be one day um one day oh three another another moment for us you know different field texas this time horrendous storm uh people are already in those camp grounds we talked about but not on the field yet the night before massive storm i mean terrible you you live here uh purple dot you know just right over us all night ripped up stages um shut shut everything down kids got struck by lightning went to the hospital i mean we're talking about terrible and shelly and i are in our rv on the floor crying out to god tears weeping and just seeing a whole year's worth of sacrifice get washed away and a few hours of torrential rain and just begging for a miracle and the next day as only would happen in the metroplex the rain stopped sun came out the wind from canada blew down and in about eight hours the ground was dry wow and we had um as beth moore said we asked god to come and meet with us we just didn't know that when he showed up we'd be terrified and it was a powerful powerful picture of what we've been talking about of the glory of god and um you know the crazy thing about it was this is before internet before cell phones and so we would guess 10 000 kids probably turned around and went home we had several thousand have to go to a high school gym spend the night that night but we went on 20 000 22 four or five thousand people but a whole lot less than we expected crazy story we get to the end of the four days and um we're a hundred grand down and we have nothing and um we go to a wedding in houston the next saturday and a friend comes around during the reception and said how'd that turn out and i was like not great we're a hundred grand down and he goes oh man he goes let me see what i can do he makes a lap around the reception this only happened in houston you know comes back and uh he said you'll have your hundred thousand dollars tomorrow he prayer walked it he just said you'll have your hundred thousand dollars he just walked over and asked that person right over there if their ministry would be able to give a gift and they said yes and he came back and told us yes so we had it the next day paid all our bills but we forgot josh um payroll was like three days later and our rent on our office and our overhead and we had nothing and literally the day i realized that we just got home on the monday from this wedding my phone rings and it's this guy in chicago and he says hey i feel terrible but our foundation gave a gift to one day and i was supposed to get it to you and it's been on my desk i just moved some stuff and it's been in a pile on my desk i i think he said like for two and a half months he said i feel terrible um it's a check for 75 000 and i'm overnighting it to you tomorrow unbelievable so you know it's moments like that there have been a lot of them where god's spirit just turns stories around and turns people around golly amazing Okay. Let me rapid fire some of these. Let me finish like this. These are from Live Free listeners. Pastor Lou Giglio, if you had one last sermon to preach ever, what would it be on? Wow. One last sermon to preach ever. Well, my message, my heart message is know God, is about knowing God. So I would probably preach that we are created by God and for God, and everything in life makes sense when our lives are lived for the glory of God. And I would preach live for the glory of God. Come on, man. I'm going to cheat and not just rapid fire you one, because there's a question I have to ask. Okay. Okay. So this is a side note. I love your smile all the way during this podcast. I'm having so much fun. People don't know where are we coming from right now, because you just got. Okay. Okay. Wait a minute. Wait a minute. I got one. I do. I do. I got one. I got one. Okay. So this is another classic. So you gave this, you preached a sermon, and I think I was at the Passion Year you did this, called How Great Is Our God, where you looked at the laminin thing, and it seared itself into my brain. Okay. So for the Live Free audience who never saw it, would you do the thing? Can you do it? The laminin thing? Yeah, do the laminin thing. Just break it down? Yeah, break it down. Where did it come from? Yeah, break it down for us. Okay. All right. If they never saw the sermon. Okay. Tyler, Texas, Chris Tomlin concert, a lot of my life, Chris Tomlin concerts. We get through the night. There's nowhere to be, no backstage. And the Oil Palace, if anybody listened from the Tyler area, not the greatest venue in the world. No backstage. I'm just standing around because Chris's family's all there. He's from East Texas. Guy walks up, conversation. Hey, I see y'all are finishing in Austin tomorrow. What's next for you? So I'm gonna go home and preach for my pastor next Sunday. What are you preaching on? Glory of God in the human body. He goes, oh man, kind of taking it from the astronomy thing, indescribable. Glory of God in space. Now we're going glory of God in the human body. He goes, well, what do you got? I said, I've got the vessels and the arms. I've got when the eyelid forms in the womb. I've got the vessels and the arms. I've got the in the womb. I've got this and I've got that. And he goes, yeah, but you're Louie Giglio. This guy's, I've met this guy. He's, you're Louie Giglio. What's the left hook going to be? And I'm like, I don't have a left hook. He goes, oh, I got your left hook. And I'm like, what is going on right now? And he says, yeah, I'm a molecular biologist at the university down the street. And I'm like, well, you could have told me that when I told you the glory of God in the human body. He, this is a true story, Josh. He pulls out his business card out of his wallet and writes on the back of it, laminin, L-A-M-I-N-I-N. He goes, you know anything about cell adhesion molecules, base molecules? I'm like, no. He goes, okay, go look this up. And I'm like, okay. I go to the tour bus. I Google laminin. Only two things come up. If you Google it right now on your computer in a nanosecond, 30 million things will come up. But there were only two. One of them was a photograph of a laminin molecule. And it is a molecule that's going to come up. And it's going to come up. And it's a molecule in the perfect shape of a cross. And it is a cell adhesion molecule, Josh, that holds our skin together and holds our organs together, holds our tissue. It is a membrane that literally, literally holds our body together. It is in the, not, oh, I think I see a cross. It is in the perfect structure of a cross. And I just was like, Colossians 1. In him, he created, he was before all things, talking about Jesus. And in him, all things hold together. And I went, there are a billion little crosses holding my body together right now. And one massive cross of Christ is holding me to my heavenly father right now. And man, when I got to the end of that talk and through that left hook, I mean, it's still hitting. I'm bringing it up right now. 2026. I will see someone at the airport tomorrow and they will go, you're the laminin guy. And I'll go, no, Kevin, Professor Kevin is the laminin guy. I just did a Zoom call with him. I connect with him about every five years. And I just did a call with him to update me. He wanted me to know about this doctor in Brazil who's healing people with laminin protein molecules. Unbelievable. Yeah. Crazy. Kevin Langford, shout out. Thanks for the greatest hits. Here's the last one. The most. Frequently asked question from Live Free listeners they submitted is this. It was some version of this. You have spent the last 30 years of your life birthing one of the great moves of God in our nation's recent history. What's in your heart for the next 20 years of Shelly and Louis Giglio's life? That's a top question. That was number one. Number one question. Why are people. Oh, okay. They really like you, man. No one has ever asked me that question before. Welcome to Live Free. How long do I have to think about it? As long as you want. Ten seconds. You're Louis Giglio. Okay, here's what we're going to do. Okay, here's my answer. Okay, all right. Okay, go ahead. To give you five seconds to think, I was going to finish with this. Actually, I'm going to ask you to pray for me to finish because I just want Louis Giglio to pray for me. We have a mutual buddy, Luke LaZahn. Yeah. So Luke's in one of my cohorts. He's a friend. And he texted me this when he heard you were coming. He said, bro, I'm going to tell you this. I don't even know if there's a theological framework or this or not, but any crowns that I end up casting at the feet of Jesus are going to be because there were elements that the Lord gave me for my life. But Louis Giglio helped refine them into something that was actually worthy of being cast at the feet of Jesus. The man is a hero of the faith to me, and I'm really, really grateful that you're going to get an interview on for Live Free. Can't wait to listen to it. Love you too, man, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera. I just want you to know, multiple generations of pastors down, because it's really weird. I'm 43 now. I'm not the young pastor. I'm not the young pastor anymore. It's kind of weird for me. That's not my vibe anymore. But Luke is still one of those guys. Y'all are two generations deep. Two generations deep, inspiring the next generations of pastors. We're very grateful. Yeah. You know, it's crazy, the grace of God. Fifteen years ago, somebody would come up to us and say, man, this is my son. He's seven. This is my daughter. She's 11. Can't wait till they are old. Can't wait till they are old enough to go to Passion, have their lives changed. And I'm just looking at them, and I would just smile, and I wouldn't say what I thought, which was, oh, there's not going to be any Passion when these kids are old enough to go to Passion. Passion was supposed to end, I think, after one day, maybe, is what we thought. We took a year off. That's why they called it one day for a reason. It's going to be one day. I saw the vision. It happened. And then, lo and behold, their kids came and went to Passion, the seven-year-old and the 11-year-old. And then now we're still doing Passion, which is crazy to Shelly and me. We're still on this corner 30 years later. But what I'm going to be doing in the next 20 years is I'm going to be waking up by the grace of God, because that is a gift. Amen. I'm my favorite guy at my lunch spot in Atlanta. When I see him, he always, how you doing? I woke up. That's awesome. That's awesome. So for the next 20 years, if that is in God's plan, I want to wake up. And I want to know God more. Amen. Paul prayed for me and you. And he said, I pray that you will have the spirit of wisdom and revelation so that you may know him more. Amen. So there's more. Amen. There's more revelation of who this beautiful, wonderful God is. And I want to wake up into that every day. For the next 20 years. And I want to be able to say, this is my plan. So I'm kind of letting the cat out of the bag. I want to be able to say, here am I. There you go. Send me. Amen. Amen. Thank you, Louie Giglio, for your faithfulness over many, many years. Would you pray for me before we're done? I will. I want you to do that. Yeah. Thank you. Lord, we just come to you right now in absolute. Awe and amazement that we know you, that you know us. What a thought that the God of all creation calls us by name. And you don't just call Josh Howerton, Josh Howerton, you call him son. And I thank you for his life, the impact. I thank you for the way that you are using him right now to bring attention to Jesus, to introduce a lot of these people listening right now. And I thank you for introducing them to the most important person in history and in the world, to Jesus Christ. I thank you for the way you're using him. But God, I thank you that when he woke up today, you didn't see a worker. You saw a son. And he has in his heart, he knows what that is to love a son. And I thank you that that's the way you loved him today. Lord, I pray in the name of Jesus and in the mighty. Power that is Jesus. That you would put a ring of fire around his family and around his life and around this team. I pray God that the oil of. anointing will flow onto him, because we know that all this is absolutely nothing without the power of Almighty God. So I pray the wind of the Holy Spirit, the oil of anointing, and the oil of gladness. Lord, I know that whenever you're on a rocket for the kingdom of God, you have got every manner of discouragement coming your way. And so I pray against the spirit of discouragement today. It is so powerful and real, and one little bit of discouragement can somehow outweigh an entire forest of encouragement. And so I pray against the spirit of discouragement in Jesus' name, and I pray today for the oil of gladness, the joy that comes from knowing he is your man, he is in your place at your time to do your will. And I thank you that nothing can stop you from doing in and through his life everything you have purposed and planned. For the glory of God, in Jesus' name, amen. Amen, amen. Louie, Leo, thank you for your life and ministry. Man, blessings. Thank you. Well, hey, thanks so much for listening. 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