EP: 460 What REALLY Happened On The Mountaintop with Robby Gallaty

What the 16 year old boy would do is he would go in the community and find a rabbi, a well-known rabbi, and you would go to the rabbi, if Luke was the rabbi, and I'd say rabbi, Luke, could I study? He looks like a rabbi, can I study under you? Now the rabbi would ask himself a lot of questions about you. Does rabbi have what it takes? Is he passionate enough? Does he have the discipline? Is he teachable? Is he a learner? And if you thought I was able to enter, you would give me an oral exam that was unbelievable. If you thought I had what it took, you would say the greatest three words in English you could ever hear. Come follow me. Let me frame this for you. After John was put into prison, Jesus was walking by the sea of Galilee and looked out and saw two brothers, Peter and Andrew fishing. Why are they fishing? Because their dad's fished. Yeah, and they didn't make it, they washed out. They didn't make the cut. Now you have on the seashore this Galilee and rabbi. He walks by the seashore, he sees two brothers in the sea, casting their nets for their fishermen. And Jesus says to them, "Come follow me and I'll make you fishers of men." This would be like Jesus saying, "Peter, Andrew, James John, I see something and you're nobody else's. The world may overlook you but not me." The history of our earth is so different from what we can imagine. The Smithsonian, and if they found out about large skeletons somewhere, was to go get it. I'm going to assume at least one person is right because if one person's right, it buss the paradigm. It all goes back to the fallen chair. And the problem with the modern day church, they had a very truncated view of the supernatural. This backdrop is just pregnant with all kinds of meaning associated with this Mount Herman event. And this guy defecs from the kingdom. That's a big deal. I'm excited. Let's just keep this energy going. Coming off a fresh sermon yesterday, an awesome sermon. My pastor, Robbie, in the house, in the blurry basement. And I remember asking Dr. Heiser about the transfiguration. So I'm sitting in church going, "I hope because Moses comes back in the transfiguration." One of my favorite parts of the New Testament and the Bible itself is just such a weird thing. But welcome to blurry creatures. Thanks for coming in. For years, I've been sitting in church going, "That needs to be an episode." And we made it happen. Well, thanks for having me. And not all your pastor, but your friend. That's right. And I've been looking for disc golf partners for a long time. Not since college. But you played. Yeah. Let me tell you a funny disc golf story about Nate. This is funny. So I've been playing disc golf 2020. I started playing when I gave up regular golf because every time I played regular golf, I'd come home mad and back would hurt. You're tall, too. So my wife would say, "On your day off, you're paying to be mad." That makes I was like, that didn't make any sense. So my buddy played disc golf. He was a youth pastor. And I said, "Man, disc golf's for guys who can't play real golf." It was disc golf. Well, then I went out and played. Okay. So I've been playing for like five, six years. So Nate joins our discipleship group. We have a discipleship group. We meet in with a bunch of guys once a week. And one of the entrances into the D group is you have to play disc golf, right? So the guys are here with us, they'll tell you. And so Nate, so I'm like, "Hey, you play disc golf." He's like, "Ah, I played a little bit back in the day in California." Luke, this dude comes out first throw. He throws further like 60, 70 feet past anybody. I'm like, "This is a ringer day." This guy's a professional here at disc golf. And then you find out that he went to college for recreation. That's right. I realize he spent four years refining that disc golf. Yeah, I was a rec major at Cal Poly. That was the requirement to graduate. You had to throw a Frisbee. Yeah, you had to throw a Frisbee. Over the mountain. That's right. Well, we're gonna ask you about the big guy today. And for the first time, we have a guest in this year that's bigger than Luke. So I feel proud. That's the tall order. Finally. I feel like it's about time, dude. That's right. Usually, like, we take fellow photos in here and it's me and Nate on one side and someone stands in the middle and says, "Oh, you guys are giant." Are you six five Luke? No, six four. Yeah. But if you ran into Sasquatch in the woods, I think you'd just shake hands and be like, "Not and keep going." People have actually called me Bigfoot. I have a 16-size shoe. My shoe's 16. Let's go. I've actually been called Bigfoot. So what are your thoughts? You even said this in church, which I died of embarrassment. He even talked about Bigfoot in church. Oh, man. Robbie shouted us out. Give me a shout out, Luke. Yeah. Oh, I hate Senate to me. I've seen it. Thank you, Robbie. This is funny, though. I priest a whole sermon, 40 minutes. The only thing people talked about the next week was the glory creatures by grace. I'm making a big impact. Let's go. No, it was funny about Bigfoot. I grew up in a home. My dad was always into conspiracy theories and UFOs. So I did a summer as a new believer. I went to glory at a New Mexico. I was a camp pastor for a summer. My parents were going to make one trip to see me for the summer. My dad had one goal in mind and that was to get an SUV and drive to Roswell. Now, I was still like, I don't know what I believe about aliens. If you've ever been in the Roswell alien museum, the whole town is bizarre. I have no aliens in agreement everywhere. And so I was raised with an eye for skepticism and questioning things. So I'll be honest, I've always believed Bigfoot's out there growing up. And then later I thought, well, I don't know. And then I started listening to the podcast and you guys have reinvigorated my interest in Bigfoot. Here's I say about Bigfoot. We'll talk about this hopefully later, but there's a difference between Western American, the way we look at things compared to the Eastern, Middle Eastern culture of Jesus of his day. And I think when people understand the distinctives, it changes everything, right? But think about this. And if you go to the Eastern culture today, they live in a world that is bent toward the supernatural invisible realm, right? Even in history, you know, this historically, people would worship gods and you had parthenons and pantheons of gods, right? So the spiritual world was primary. The visual world was secondary. You come to America. We're always about the visible natural realm. And if we can't see it, we don't believe it. So we already have this propensity toward that. And so I would say, for people to say, well, Bigfoot can't be real. My response is this. We read a Bible. I've given my life to preach this Bible that is full of giants and Nephilim and unexplainable things that we can't unexplain fully. And I think, Nate, we talked about this. That's the problem with Christianity today. We've lost the joy of mystery. Don't you guys think? Yeah. Like we don't like mystery. We want facts and figures and outlines and treatises. But the world of Jesus was mysterious. They lived with the sense of awe. And so I would say, have we shrunk God down to a world where if we can't put it under a microscope, Bigfoot, then we don't believe it. Of course, now we'll tell you this. I did a little research, Simon. Just a little. A little research. And I went and watched as a video online. I can't remember. I watched it. And in the titles called AI, I don't know if you have seen this. AI finally analyzes the 1967 Patterson Gimlin film, the actual footage of the Bigfoot. It was a very hot topic as of the last few months. Yeah. I know. I know. Did you say something? No, I haven't seen this. What you're going to notice. This is what the findings are. You ready for this? So they put the image in AI. And AI tried to determine factors. How does it walk? Is this a man in a suit? Is this a human being? Is this an animal? Basically. And what they found out was, they found out was the way the skin on his arms and legs looked, it could not be a man in a costume. Because it would bunch up. They had the AI say this. But another thing I thought was interesting was the gate of the walk was not human. And AI couldn't definitively say, because obviously, I don't know why, but it couldn't definitively say it was real or not, but they say it was inconclusive, but you can't prove it either way. So I don't know what that does, but that's where our land could be, couldn't be. Well, this is a footprint from that day. And from the Patterson Gimlin video. Stop. This is a replica of the footprints they took. It broke in the mail. Yeah, it broke in the mail, but it's still there. But you can see the size and the toes. I mean, that's, I like to say, foot out and push. We can do it. Let's do it. My foot out right there. Look at this. Just don't break that plaster. Oh, whoa. We're a 16 maybe. Whoa. I got 14. It's a little bigger than I've got. But this is a bluff Creek, 19 October, 1963. Wow. Okay. Yeah. Okay. So it's right in the same area that they they cast that are shot. The famous patty video. Don't you think we, I'd always tell people just wait long enough and we'll figure it out because with trail cams and videos, eventually, we'll find out something. Yeah. Bigfoot can't hide forever. It's, it is, I think, I think your points. Interesting. I think the reason that we have the show in a lot of ways is that, you know, folks like Dr. Michael Heiser would say, we need to re-enchant our worldview or our understanding of the Bible. It's this idea of re-enchanting. Yeah. I got used to love to read. Bob Gough is always, he's always talked about how we've lost our whimsy when it comes to, this is the pattern we love to say, we've lost our whimsy when it comes to our interaction with God and the Bible. I think that's why the show is what it is. It's to sort of reinvigorate, re-enchant, re-insert the supernatural back into the worldview of the Bible. And I know it's kind of where we're going to go today. Yeah. So excited to do that with you. I mean, you're a pro. You already transitioned from here to there with, you know, with this, you do research on Bigfoot and. Which I'm proud of you for doing that. Well, thank you. Where do you want to go today? You want to start? Listen, let me just say before we move, I have a discipleship group. It's a hot You know, I've given my life to discipleship. I'll talk about my story. I was a cypal by a guy named David Platt. If you're familiar with David Platt, he wrote a book called Radical. He's a pastor now, but he was a seminary student and he disciples me so for the last 23 years of being a believer, I'm a disciple guy. So I will say on record, this is the blurriest discipleship group I've ever had. And they bring so much to the table. I got another guy in our group named Nate Solas got a YouTube channel with half a million subscribers. I got a chiropractor. I got a guy who's in the group who used to be on staff at Hillsong up in the East Coast. We've got an IT guy. I mean, we've got it all in there. And Nate always keeps this blurri. So when we're studying the tech soccer, Nate's always asked, and then I don't hunt for a living, but I like chasing rabbits, so we will go two hours later. We're like, what do we just talk about here? But anyway, that's fine. Sounds a lot like something we do here sometimes. Oh, I love it. (upbeat music) Something lurks. You may not see it. You may not hear it. 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And it helps you cancel them very easily. You know, I found that a couple of things I was paying too much for my cell phone and also for my internet. Talked about this before. Rocket money has actually saved me more than $1,000 this year on helping me renegotiate my bills for those. And also by finding things I didn't know I was paying for and definitely not using. That's right. And it pulls it all together. Savings, loans, investments into one dashboard. So you can see your full financial picture in one place. And let me tell you, that picture ain't blurry. Rocket money is a personal finance app that helps you find and cancel unwanted subscriptions. Monitor as you're spending and helps lower your bills so you can grow your savings. Let Rocket money help you reach your financial goals. Faster, join rocket money.com/blurry. That's rocket money.com/blurry. Rocket money.com/blurry. (upbeat music) - One thing in some ways, I have a job that the church isn't blurry, you know? 'Cause it's like, we sort of have this little niche that we've carved out because a lot of these things don't get talked about. But today we're going, we're going back. And I appreciate you as a pastor willing to talk about these things. 'Cause I know it's hard to walk that line sometimes because people, in general, I mean, I'm there. I've been in that camp for six years. And then before that was doing all the documentaries and researching all these things. But you have to, you know, we don't have a, like the whole committee of people that can cancel us or get mad at us and then split off. And church deals with so many more politics than a podcast can't does. And so it's, sometimes it's really brave to talk about these things. But when you did the shout out in church, I thought you were just gonna play. If you wanna learn about more about giants and Nephilim, listen to this podcast, but you were like giants of 'em and Bigfoot. - Oh, yeah. - No, wait, wait, wait, wait. - He would write it. I was like, "I need an answer for this show, yeah." - Which, you know, long haul is a big church. So it's, I was like, man. - I lost people over. - That's why. - Let me say before we move on. - Yeah, let me go back to something you said, which I've been thinking about this a while. You triggered something in my mind. I started to do a study in the Bible on the difference. You don't hear this a lot, but the difference between amazement in the ministry of Jesus and awe or wonder. And I think about this. So my backstory is, I'm a magician. Well, let me rephrase it for the church crowd. I'm a card illusionist, illusionist. Don't email me. You say magicians. - It's an illusion, Michael. - Exactly. - I do encourage. I learned waiting for the Baucus Parade in junior year my high school. I was wasting time, went to the Jacksbury, which was on Berbyshire from New Orleans. So I was waiting for the parade and saw this guy doing magic at the magic masters. He was about 25 years old. I was 16 and hotheaded and knew it all. And I'm looking at this huge crowd gathering around this guy doing tricks and I'm thinking, who does tricks for a living? Like that kids do tricks, you know? Well, he sees me in the back, obviously I can't hide. He's like, "Hey, once you come to the front." I was like, "Okay." He said, "Hey, big man, come up here." He said, "I'll make a deal with you." If you could figure this trick out, you don't have to buy it. But if you can't, you have to buy the trick. I was like, "Pff, I'll figure it out." He takes a silk cloth, Nate puts it in his hand, makes it disappear. Leans across the table, pulls it out of the top pocket of my shirt. I was like, "This guy tells me, I just moved here from Vegas. I'm a magician from Vegas. I have no car. If you drive me around, I'll teach you everything I know." Well, that started a journey. I mean, I've seen David Copperfield twice, Sigfried and Roy. I mean, you name it. Pinn and tell, I mean, I was all into it. But one of the things about magic is, when I would do tricks, I went to college, I went to college with a briefcase. I would go into the fray of ties with the briefcase and click it open and do tricks for the night. Oh yeah, I mean, this is, I got to know people. But anyway, so one of the things about magic tricks, and you've been. It's amazing you're married. I think you've pulled my more wife out. Where does it start? Nate knows a more wife can't be. No, but here's the thing. When I would do a trick for someone, like if I do a trick now, at the end of the trick, you're what? All are amazed. You're amazed. You know what I'm saying? That's amazing. That's amazing. And what you say is, do another one. Okay. When Jesus would perform miracles, and here's the connection I found, every time the word amazement is found in the life of Jesus, it's always connected to the crowd. So the crowd would be a. He performed miracle, the feeding of 5,000. The crowd was amazed, but guess what they wanted? Do another trick. Perform for us, Jesus. Put on a show. When you see the word awe or wonder, it's different. The two main ways it's found, and the thing about amazement or more thing, is you're affected, but you're not changed. Aw, wonder changes you. When you're in awe, mystery changes you. Watch this. There are two times we see this word awe or wonder or amazement or awe and wonder. It's found in the life of Mary. The first time is when the shepherds come to Mary and say, "We just saw a bunch of angels," and they told us, "This is the man," wrapped in swelling cloths, and it says, "The shepherds in the crowd was amazed." Mary treasured these things in her heart. She was an awe. The second time we see it, same chapter, Luke 2, later on, when Jesus is lost, I don't know how you lose Jesus in the temple. I mean, you lose God. You lose every parent's name. Oh my God. Yeah, they're home alone at home. So they come back, and Jesus, it says, he responds, he says, "What are you looking for?" And by the way, the cool thing about that passage is, just a sidebar. That's the first spoken words of Jesus in the Bible. He's 12 years old, about to be 13, when every boy is going to participate, to be a man, bar mitzvah, bar son of mitzvah commandment, you're gonna take on as a son of the commandment, you're gonna be a man. And most people at 12 or 13 declared what their profession was for the rest of their life. And what is Jesus' first words? Why are you looking for me? Because I must be doing the business of my what? Father. Father. He's saying, "I'm working for him." Yeah, I have a heavenly father. I mean, earthly father, but I'm working for him. And the text says next, "And Mary treasured these things in her heart." The idea is, when was the last time you sat long enough? And I'll speak to those listening. And you were an awe of the wonder of God, an amazement over God, looking at the stars, sitting under a sunset, or so. And I think we've lost that today. We want bullet points, and we want answers to things, as well as this podcast too. Very hebraic, I don't know if you know this name, but very hebraic. An American Bible study, you go in with questions, and your goal is to leave with what? - Answers. - Answers, and if you don't, or a sermon, you go with a sermon, you leave with answers. If you don't leave with answers, you feel what? - Let down. - Oh man, I didn't get my answers. That is very Western American. It's not bad, it's just what it is. Greco-Roman and Hellenistic. A Jewish Bible study, a hebraic Bible study, you go in with a few questions, and you leave with more questions. - More questions. - Here's why, it's so insightful. Because when I give you an answer, let's say you say, "What do you think about Bigfoot?" And someone says, "Bigfoot is this, this, and this." You put a period at the end of the conversation, and it's done. But if I leave with questions, then I'm marinating, meditating. I'm in awe and wondered, wonder for the rest of the day or week, and that's very hebraic. So it's just your minds on the things of God. So anyway, I just wanted to say that that's very rare. - Well, then I would make you think about when Jesus marvels. Remember, he, any marvel that they're at their faith. So he is, Jesus also has these moments. - That's good, I never thought about this. - Of awe. - Or someone impresses him. - Yeah, it was the. - It's a faith, they're centurion. - Yes. - And it was a faith like this. - I mean, marveled, and it was like. - And he was closer to other people, that kind of were marveling with him, and kind of had that whimsy of themselves. Like obviously, Enoc and Elijah, these guys are closer. And I always thought that was interesting growing up. Like, how do all humans, some of us have a better relationship with God than others? And what does that look like? And what are the requisites of how we can get closer to God? Here on Earth, it's interesting. - Evelyn Underhill did some study for a book I'm working on. She was, she studied the mystics, Evelyn Underhill. She was actually a big mentor of Dallas Willard, if you could bring your dollar. Evelyn Underhill wrote about this. She was studying the mystics. These are people who had this connection. with God at a supernatural level, you know they say the mystics were able to find on earth the thin places I love that idea where the present reality and the supernatural were thin, right? And so we read about these mystics and she said it's not that I love this line It's not that God cared for and cared for and attended to them more than others It's that they cared for and attended to God more than the rest Hmm, and I tell people you have as much of God in your life as you want and I'm here to tell you From my own experience, there's so much more to have and many Christians Western Christians settle for surface level Substitute synthetic versions of Christianity, and you guys know there's so much more out there Yeah, what I like about your story too is you didn't start in the church You didn't grow up in the church you obviously have a blurry story yourself And you can probably tell us a little bit more background of how you got into preaching and you tried a lot of different things Obviously and got into addiction as well And I think that for a lot of people who listen to our show they come out of the new age Or they come out of they didn't grow up in church or if they did look at church church Yeah, burn by the church at some point though we get these emails like I for the first time I'm understanding some of these things that I didn't understand before so maybe tell us a little bit about our listeners Like your story and how you got to where you are today and yeah, well, thank you. Yeah, I haven't always been a pastor obviously my my past is Is a roller coaster, but I was raised in New Orleans. I had really good religious parents my mom and dad We were Catholic half Italian and we weren't like CEO Catholics like Christmas Easter only Catholics We went every week and if we miss church on Sunday Nate we went to confession the following Saturday and you know you'd go in for God the Father forgive me for I have sin It's been excellent and then you're trying to share just the minimum amount of sins So you do the less amount of our fathers very soon And so that's how I grew up and I knew the Lord was so I really appreciate that base that I had of knowing I went to Christian I went to Catholic schools prokial schools in the seventh grade I got kicked out of school because I had undiagnosed ADHD and back then it was either Ritalin or the fine gold diet Which is a crazy you go back to the 80s the fine gold diet for those listeners may remember this I tell people I didn't eat chewing. I didn't chew a piece of gum till I was 12 years old my parents had a restrictive diet Where I couldn't eat no artificial flavors no colors no preservatives nothing now what what happened was my parents would pack me a lunch for school and I learned very early how to work my salesmanship at the lunch table when I would trade and barter My sandwich and my treats for other people's lunch and my parents couldn't understand how the first half of the day Robbie was good second half today the wheels So in the seventh grade they said mr. Mrs. Galady this boy needs to go they kicked me out of the school a long story But my parents said we're gonna fix him they put me in an all boys Catholic high school called Holy Cross in New Orleans Run by the brothers with paddles for wiggly little boys Hmm, and that'll straighten you up Nate. I mean you go there Luke And you start messing around and they take it at one time paddle. It's over. So hey I got spanked at my Christian school, so I know yeah, they did that elementary school Yeah, I remember them spanking kids in my head about when in kindergarten. I never got it. I did there's a couple kids I remember that I wonder where they are today. You talk to you like that it was right 30 for 30 the two kids The guy spanked. Well, that's gonna be a thing in the future like where are the grandpa used to get spanked at school? But that was normal. Yeah, that was my dad went to Catholic school ground up and I was like Stores about the nuns just smashing him with rulers. I hit you rings And now you and you're both reboundsers. So I know we're getting to that star. I have got there Yeah, I have to behave in this episode around it. Yeah, it's a workout. That was different then No, you remember that viral meme which one around no or deep down in the South they thought they saw a leprechaun of a tree Did they say yeah when they saw the leprechaun? I ever once said yeah. 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We talked about gold a lot in ancient history and what they were digging up and it seems like the human beings have a Fascination with gold across centuries since the beginning So if you're interested in finding out more about gold and silver goldco has an a plus rating with a better business bureau And they've helped hard work in Americans place over three billion dollars in gold and silver Including you and I and right now they're offering our community the blurry community a free gold and silver kit to show how you can help safeguard your savings against world chaos Plus on qualified accounts You can give up to 10% back and free silver just for getting started That's only what supplies last so don't wait go to blurry gold dot com right now to request your free kit Don't go looking for a tree in a leprechaun go to blurry gold dot com That's where the gold's at Yeah, so you were they they spanked you at school Well one one time is all it's okay, man. That was a wrap. Well, I learned I learned quick I learned one paddle and Yeah, so I played basketball in high school and had a scholarship to UNC Greensboro which is a college in North Carolina and I'm dating a girl at the time and she's like You're not gonna go that far away to college. Are you you need to stay close to home? I'm going to LSU and I was like you right you know I thought I was in love back then I was like of course, so I hope I open the phone book I'm gonna date myself here for those who've never heard of it It's a book with lines and addresses Yeah, yeah, you remember that so I open the phone book and I found William Kerry College and Hattiesburg, Mississippi. Have you heard of the college before Luke? No, I haven't I've been to Hattiesburg. Yeah, me neither I never heard of it. It was small school Southern missus. Southern missus there. No, Southern missus right there, but this is in AI small school I call the coach and I say Nate can I come trial for the team the coach says You're crazy. It's a few weeks before school. What are you talking about and I said coach? I had a D1 offer can I at least try out My mom went with me and I had the best I mean it was like the stars aligned everything was in place I was throwing it off the backbone board dunk in the bombing and everything worked and My mom told me years later after they gave me a full ride She said son. I have to be honest. She said I've never seen you play that good before that day And frankly you haven't played that good But all that day what a time to shine. Yeah, that's what I was saying mom. Yeah My mom was honest. Yeah, but here's the thing. I go to that school full ride the girl I'm dating breaks up with me two weeks into the semester I can't make this up and I am stuck now unbeknownst to me at a Southern Baptist college as a Roman Catholic And what that means is on the target of every evangelism class on campus everybody knows Who do we share with Christ the lost guy Robbie the head game unbeknownst to me convert the Catholic I was the deer in the headlights Second year I heard the gospel by a guy named Jeremy Brown. He did something mind-blowing and and Nate knows Jeremy He's our head of security now in our church, but he was a student. He did something mind-blowing He just became my friend While everyone else was trying to convert me we got to Robbie, but you go you don't want to go to hell you Jeremy just became my friend and earned the right to share the gospel Well, I wouldn't accept Christ then I would tuck that away until seven years later Got out of college. I got into a network marketing company kind of like amway you remember in the 80s everybody excel Was it Jews? Are you selling Jews or are you doing well? It was amway and then it was Excel AC and I mean I was a I'm a lamb, bro. Oh once you get in Dude, you're in. I never got in you never friends. I did. I made fun of all of them. That's right. We'll like you know. I still laughing Me I almost I think I signed it for Quickstar once That was it for like two weeks and I'm like no, I'm doing this. I'm gonna bother my friends Yeah, I got I got roped into a couple of those meetings and I was sitting there like Man, it's so uncomfortable But I remember there was like kids at the Christian school and their parents did amway and they were always like They were always decked out Brand new cars in the in the parking lot and that's like what do your parents do? Amway. Oh, okay And I remember one of the girls in elementary school She brought in those amway mouth sprays. Oh, yeah, the mouth fresheners and she just had bags of them So we were all run around the elementary school playgrounds just with cinnamon fresh breath. Oh, yeah, thanks amway That's how they get you. I said they get you. Yeah, I sort of remember the line if the money was right and fit into your time schedule Would you be interested in looking at a serious business? Well the business grew my dad had the money and the contacts and I had the Wherewithal and the energy By God's grace by then I'd even know the Lord the the business blew up and we had at the height of it over 2,000 people in our Downline we broke every record in New Orleans. I moved back to college. I didn't want to do anything in the business where I was going to be in net Remarketing Tony Robbins. I'd seen twice met. I mean zig-ziggler less brown. That was the world. I was living in And the business I was in was run by Teddy Turner Ted Turner signers called local net We had left ACN went to local net. We were some of the first in this business Year and a half in I'll never forget the phone call. I was 21 years old. No, I just made 22 I got a call from the main office. They said the business just got investigated by the f The s s the s c f c c federal commission. We're shut down. It's a pyramid scam You need to call your downline and tell them they won't get a check again and neither will you At 22 I was not ready for that. I went through a a season of depression and I got out of the business. I said I want nothing to do with working with business. And so I had this bright idea. I was just finished college and I thought, you know what I do, I'll train MMA fighting. 'Cause I'm always box, you know, big guys will be boxed. But when guys I get in fights with, you know this, they always wanted to take me to the ground and I knew nothing of what to do on the ground. - The ground game, yeah. - The ground got head no ground game. Now this is 19, how do you know about fighting on the ground? - He's a boxer. - Yeah, well, I've got two brothers. So that's true. - That's true. - You learn the hard way. - Yeah, well, they learn the hard way, yeah. - Oh, here we go, here we go. - My brother was six years older, so there was no ground fighting. If I was on the ground, I was done. - You were dead, yeah. - You never wanted to. - I had to figure out how not to get on the ground. - Yeah, I mean, you've always, I mean, we'll get into this part, but like, if you saw dudes that had cauliflower here and you know there's rustler guys, you just didn't wanna. - Yeah. - Didn't matter how big you are. - Didn't want to mess with those guys. Didn't want to get, didn't want to end up on the ground. - That's just, you want to stay up, you got your big guy, you've got Reach, you just want to stay up. - Yeah. - This is 98, too, so 97, 98. - And now we got huge training. - Now we got the, you know, the Jets flying over the White House over the UFC fights last night. - Yeah. - Who would have thought UFC now was on the rounds of the. - It's crazy. - White House. - So 98, nobody's making money. This is not, UFC just started in '94, and so nobody's making money, it's not prestigious. The guys I'm training with at the Dojo, none of us have health insurance. So you go to a fight, you'd win the fight, the prize money is less than the hospital bill. I mean, it was just insane. And so, but I'm 66, 285 pounds back then, I'm about, you know, 30 pounds bigger than I am now. And the guy sees me on the right track. - The DS. - Like a just prototypical defensive. - I should have played, man. - I could have played football, but I didn't, but my, but I'm at a restaurant, guy walks up to me. He's like, "Hey, would you want to be the head bouncer of my club, downtown New Orleans, the middle of Mardi Gras?" I looked over and I said, "Let me get this straight. You're going to pay me to fight." I'm in. I mean, this was like a job of a lifetime, you know. And I did that for a season and we found that Luke used to be a bouncer. When I say it's the wildest, three, I was there for about a year, but the three, four months I was a bouncer, it was the wildest season of my life, if you can imagine. And I was talking to you earlier, but here's what I found. The craziest, hardest people to deal with, or the most unruly people with all due respect, were drunk women, believe it or not. Because the man, you could kind of talk him out of it, but the women, I had a guy who was walking her boyfriend out. She walked this girl walked up and hit one of the other bouncer's with a beer bottle and shattered it over. So I was like, "What is going on?" Am I right? Yeah. You got to walk through it. I mean, I'm crazy. I did it longer than that. I mean, I bounced for a couple years while I was finishing my masters. I mean, did my MBA at San Diego State? And I was at a couple bars. We were told some stories, pre-roll. But, you know, I was big. I was in really good shape then. And I was probably about 260 pounds and like, "Let's go." And big and not the 260 pounds I could be now, right? But I-- You used it back then. Yeah. But it-- Everyone's wondering how many women you guys have thrown around? Yeah. They throw me really good. Yeah, you're right, though. It's the hard part. Because you can't-- And you can't do anything. You really can't do anything. And it's-- that's a wild job, in general, because you're dealing with it. I believe it. I believe it. I believe it. The first story, could you give us one at the bar? Yeah, so I worked this place. I'll shout it out, too. The place called the shack. And it's in Wyndon Sea. It's in San Diego. Yeah. And I worked Thursday nights. I worked the door there some other nights. But if Thursday nights were kind of crazy, this bar was like a powder keg because it was the hell's angels would roll in there, along with all the frat fraternity brothers and boys from the University of San Diego, or UC San Diego, and University San Diego, which that was always interesting. And there was a surf gang-- this doesn't even sound real. It sounds like Roadhouse. Yeah. That was a surf gang called the Wyndon Sea Surf Rats. And this was all their place. And so without fail every Thursday night, there would be just massive brawls. It would be like frat boys talking to hell's angels, or the Wyndon Sea guys talking to. And if there was a few steps up to the bar, so next to 7-Eleven, I don't know if it's even still there. It's been so long. There was a cop from La Jolla that was always on patrol, his name was Mark. And he'd pull up in right there in 7-Eleven. And literally at some point in the night, I'd be in it being throwing people down the stairs and out the bar, and right onto the hood of his cop car. It's nice to be fighting, and I'd push them out, and they'd have to come up and take-- Fightin' right on-- a couple nights, they'd fight right on his-- and end up on his hood, and he'd be like, all right, thank you. Yeah. We just had this laugh. We're still friends this day. He's a retired police officer. He lives in Texas now. I mean, we had wild nights, and then I worked at another bar up in incinitas. I just don't think he's there anymore. It's called Beachside. And we had a couple nights there where like, it just was a wild time. We're going to school all day, like in my MBA, and then we're just, I'm like, end up having to take guys out of the bar, full Nelson, you know, breaking up-- Yeah. Breaking up-- See the way it's-- See the way it's. It's as he knows. Our job is just to get him out of the bar. Yes. Once they get in the street, you're in property, but you've got to get him out of the public. And it's a-- the liability is inside. Well, I believe that so that you get him out. You've heard the legend of heaven, chef, haven't you, Luke? No, fill me in. There's walking through the wilderness, and bread just fell out of the sky. It's not that easy. Well, that's the food of angels. We need home, chef. A lot of us don't cook like angels, if you will. You don't have any creative ideas, you don't have the ingredients, and you've decided last minute what it is. And if you want the easy button, and you don't want to worry about all the ingredients you might have missing, home chef is here to help you. They've got an amazing menu, or it doesn't matter what you eat, how you eat, what your restrictions might be, or what your dietary guidelines are. They've got it all covered. Home Chef makes cooking simple, fresh food delivered, easy recipes to follow, and meals that actually taste great. Recently, I added a few unbelievable things, Nate. A chimichurri beef wrap with homemade tziziki, pub-style crunchy chicken. These were easy to prepare. The ingredients were all pre-measured, pre-proportioned, you throw them together, and the whole family loves it. Yeah, they walk you through step-by-step. It's good food, clear instructions, and that's just one less mystery you have to know. Listen, they give over 30 meal options each week with choices for different tastes and dietary needs, including calorie consciousness, and even GLP-1 friendly meals. Home Chef is rated number one by users of other meal kits for quality, convenience, value taste, and recipe ease, and they say they spend less time shopping and prepping meals. Plus, it's affordable. Home Chef customers save an average of $86 a month on groceries. They're coming. For a limited time, Home Chef is offering our listeners 50% off and free shipping for your first box plus free dessert for life. Go to homechef.com/blurry. That's homechef.com/blurry. For 50% off, your first box and free dessert for life, homechef.com/blurry must be an active subscriber to receive free dessert. See you guys. The only time I was ever really fought in college was a girl. We used to get in a gorilla suit and hide in the ivy and the sororities. I was in it that night. I was in this girl suit. I pop out midnight when I am and scare the girls. Well, I think this girl had a full ride for softball. She booked right at me and I go running up the hill and I look back and she's gaining on me. I'm in this full monkey costume, very iconic for blurry creatures. She tackles me on the lawn right in front of some cops and she's like, "Don't move." And I'm like, "What?" She's like, "We're both drunk." And I'm like, "I'm not drunk." She's like, "Well, I'm going to leave." So she like, Belly crawls out and then goes back down and that was that. And then I get up and I start walking towards where I was going to get picked up by the guys and cop shines a light on me and goes, "Hey." And I'm like, he goes, "It's a jungle out there." That's it. But the only other issue. Yeah. But it was this girl. The name got beat up by a girl in college. That's it. That's it. It's over 6 for the proctor. So what I'm saying is I believe you guys, the women run really, the softball girls, they come in and start beating people up. Yeah. And they go, "Shade on women here." That's the tell of the show. So Rob, so you see, you work at the bouncing here, like the network marketing goes away. I get back to your story. And then what happens in this season in your life with. So I'm coming home from work. I moved from bouncing to bartending. Guy pulls a gun on me in the parking lot and I thought, "Okay, I need a career change. I need a ladder move." Bouncing to bartending. That was the right thing. I didn't say that actually. Yeah. Yeah. Even bartending, I'm still bouncing. You know how that works. Yeah. I'm coming home from work. November 22nd, 1999. And I have a Mustang at the time for Mustang and 18 Wheeler. The lanes come together where the high rise is of New Orleans. If you're from me, where Metery meets the city. And an 18 Wheeler doesn't see me. I'm in his blind spot. He comes across two lanes of traffic 65 miles an hour, slams my car into the guard rail. And my seat broke off the hinges and the seat belt locked so it torqued my back. I went to the doctor. This is 1999. So I went to the doctor. I'm 22 years old. The doctor sends me home. This is the front end of Purdue Pharma oxy cotton crisis. This is when they were saying oxy cotton is fine to take. It's not addictive. And they send me home and I'm making this up with 90 oxys, 90 volume, 90 soma, 90 per cassette. Oh my gosh. Now, I'm an athlete, never done drugs before. But I'm in pain. You know. And so I started taking the drugs four to six hours as recommended. And you know the story within two to three months, I'm a full blown addict. They say now seven days of oxy cotton. You can be addicted full blown. I'm a full blown addict now on drugs. And now I'm going through the 30 day script in two weeks. I have to find this insatiable to fill this insatiable desire. I have to get high. And so a guy comes to him and he says, Hey, why are you buying pharmaceutical drugs? Why are you going to doctors? I was doctor shopping as well. He said when you can buy heroin and cocaine, you can buy it bulk from the hospital. dealer, bag it and sell it, make money. I said, great. I took the business knowledge from I already knew network marketing. So that was a gift and a curse at the same time. And I worked my way up. I started an illegal import business at that time. And you know, by the world standards, if you would have looked at me, man, I had it all. I mean, I was selling ecstasy, GHB, special K, which is not a serial, you know, marijuana. And I'm not telling you this to impress anybody. I'm just trying to impress upon you how far the Lord brought me from back then. Times were great in the beginning. I mean, we had tons of money. We would walk in the clubs. Everybody knew us, selling, I mean, we did a deal one time for almost 4,000 ecstasy pills. So we were like really into it. But like every cent, this is what I learned. I didn't know now. I didn't know them, but I know now every cent addiction and life, always those three things takes you further than you want to go, cost you more than you want to pay. And it keeps you there longer than you ever want to stay. And we know this. It's like porn or addiction or alcohol, whatever. It's manageable until it becomes unmanageable. And I thought I can manage it. Well, the wheels fell off. I was running out of money. And I did the unthinkable good Italian family. We ate dinner together every Friday. I went to the movies every Saturday. Ever since I was a kid, close family. But I didn't know what to do. I took my dance credit card number. He owned a body shop collision center. And so he charged like 15, $20,000 worth of parts. I figured I could slowly siphon money off memorized his credit card number. And over the course of two to three months, I stole over $15,000. This is 20, this 30 years ago, 25 years ago. So almost bankrupted my dad's 30 year business. My mom found out about it. She was doing the books. And she said, I never forget the call was February of 2001. She said, Robbie, we found out about what you did. Your father's furious. And I'm disappointed. You're not welcome. Don't ever come to this house again. And and I was prideful and arrogant. I was lost. And I say, you know what, mom, I don't need you. I never did need you. I don't need you guys now. I hung the phone up. Took the little bit of money I had. And I blew it on the rest of the drugs I was using. And for the next three and a half, four months, it was hell on earth literally. I live, they first turned off the gas. It was winter still. We live with no hot water, no hot air. We mastered the order of the cold shower. It's crazy. I was on cold baths before they were cold. I don't recommend it back then. But I would go in, lather up, freezing cold, get back in. We did that for three and a half months. Then they turned the electricity off. They turned the water off. They turned the phone off until the bill collectors couldn't call. And they kicked us out. And I remember going back to my parents by God's grace. They took me back in. I told them I'm I lost everything. Put me in rehab of all places. Tijuana, Mexico. That's another story. Wow. Yeah, wait a minute. Tijuana came back. I was better. I mean, it was a 10-day treatment in a day. They pumped through my body, changed my life. Long story short, moved to Mobile, Alabama. I got a gym, a job at Powerhouse Gym. I'm training and selling memberships. And I decide after hurting my back, squatting a bunch of weight, I decide I'm just going to go back. This is what I thought to the same doctor in New Orleans. This time, I'm not going to use all the drugs. I'm going to keep them just to have and I'll sell the rest is what I'm thinking. And you know how it works when you relapse on drugs and alcohol. You don't start over. You pick up where you left off. And I picked right back up where I left off $200 plus a day heroin and cocaine addiction. Let me let me back up because I know people listening here would say, man, I have a family member. I have a friend. I have a mom, a dad or a spouse who's addicted to drugs. A lot of people have a story like mine showed, you know, this athletic world, shoulder injury, back injury. Yeah. Too thick. And then they get on drugs and alcohol. A lot of people do that. Here's what saved my life because I thought about this would save my life. I've lost since the beginning 19 friends during that time eight went to eight died six went to jail during the period, but I've lost 19 since then close friends. Not acquaintances from drugs and alcohol, the epidemic of addiction. But I thought about why did I live and why do my friends die? I mean, obviously God, but my mom exercised something on me called tough love. And when my mom called and said, you're done here. It was the hardest thing she ever did, but she had a father who was an alcoholic and a brother who was an addict. So she knew. And so the line I've come up with, and I'll share this if you're listening, every drug addiction that's perpetuated in a person's life, and I've counseled hundreds, if not a thousand people since I came to Christ, you can always go back to an enabler, somebody who enables them for the addiction. And it's normally a mom or a dad with good intentions, like you think you're helping them, but you're actually going to kill them. And so what I tell people is this, if you're the enabler, I say this with a lot of love, but if you keep being their savior, Jesus never can be. Because think about it. Why would I turn to Christ when I could turn to dad? Why am I going to run the God when I can turn to mom? And so my mom created essentially a bottom for me to get so low where when I came back after second relapse, I'm in my room, back living with my parents, I had back surgery, my life is in an all-time low, I'm still addicted to drugs, and I literally go to rehab for the second time. And I come back home the second day, and this is what I tell the Lord. I just say, "Lord, I know who you are from college, obviously. I didn't have much faith, Luke, but I had enough to be radically saved." And I just say, "God, what do I have to lose? I might as well give you a chance." And I took the little bit of faith I had, which was a little, but it was enough to be radically saved. Because I put it in as much of Jesus as I knew a whole life changed. And we talked about this at breakfast. I'm not going to share it, but look at me. He's got a twinkle in his eye. Well, yesterday you were talking about Moses, how he hits the rock instead of speaks to the rock, and their consequences for his actions. And I think that we read about that all the time in the Old Testament, and you were saying, we wrestle with these things. Whenever God gives us consequences, but I think what you're making that point, but they're necessary. You have to have some tough love somewhere in there in order for you to write the ship and go the right direction. I think sometimes we are in this culture where it's like, oh, well, yeah, there's consequences, but they're not that bad, you know? Well, it's also God's story with his people. I mean, he's like, oh, we're going to be apostate. Well, off to exile for you, you know? I mean, this is the consequence of your action. We're going to bring other false gods of the temple. Yeah. Yeah. I'm going to hand you over the Philistines. But we don't really know, you know, a lot when the bottom is there. And obviously your mom allowed you to figure, okay, I'm at the bottom. You know, I'm, I'm here. And good for her, you know, because that's, that's difficult. Save my life. Yeah. Especially from a mom. I mean, usually it's the dad. It's like, son, you know, and, and getting a little fight and match yourself with dad, but mom to put down put the brakes on. That's pretty. That's pretty cool, I think. Yeah. Mom saved my life. I mean, dad was kind of the enabler. He was my best friend. He eventually obviously was the best man in my wedding. So God allowed us to be reconciled back to the Lord. So you give your life to Christ in this moment. And you say everything changes. What do that mean? Practically, what does that look like as you're, I mean, you're laid up with back surgery out of a second standard rehab. And you are, this is rock bottom. I guess this is the bottom of the bottom at this point. Yeah. So here's what happens. And this is not a unique story. I hear this all the time with many born again believers. So I'm, I'm a brand new creation in Christ. I'm a Christian now, radically saved. And eight night, maybe one day I'll tell my blurry story, but I spent 24 hours with the Lord Jesus 24 hours. I didn't know what happened to me at the time. And people always say, why, why that happened to you? It didn't happen to me. And I think, Luke, it was, I was so far gone. Like people would come to share Christ when I was bouncing a bartender and knocking the door and say, get the F, what do you, I'll get off my property. I don't want to hear Jesus. So I think, you know, Jesus says, it's better for those who haven't seen and believed than those who have seen and believed. I think I just had so little faith. I needed that. Now, I would need that for the rest of my life, you know, spiritual warfare and stuff that I would go through. But I had this 24 hour encounter with the Lord. I liken it to like a middle, now in America, it's odd. But like I said earlier, in the Middle East, and I went on a mission trip with my dad to Africa, the Middle East, Istanbul. And I remember hearing testimonies from underground church pastors and my dad was with me. Very few people know my 24 hour experience. I told Nate a snippet and I already shared on the air. Yeah, maybe one day, maybe one day. I think the only reason that it's a long story. But anyway, my dad and I were hearing these testimonies and people would say, I had a vision of Jesus. So I had a dream about Esa or my dad leans over after like the fourth or fifth testimony. He said, son, your testimony in America is abnormal. But over here, it's normal. Wow. Wow. So America and the thing is almost my mentor, David Platt, I asked him, should I, I was going to write a book about my 24 hour experience and call my buddy, David. And he said, what do you have to lose? You have everything to gain at this point because I'm not downing stories. But, you know, heaven's real. The little kid, he told the story of going and then it came out. They fed him the story and then, you know, all these guys. So, and then you have people preach regularly saying, I went to heaven to see Jesus. Again, when the time's right, I think I may share it. But anyway, so after I get radically saved and I'm right, I'm not the same person. I go to my dad the next day. My dad, who is nine to five hard work and, you know, eight to five guy hard working body shop, drink a Budweiser every night on the way home kind of guy. And I and Catholic, you know, far from Lord, as a dad, God's call me to preach. My dad looks up from the lazy boys in and he says, he's thinking, what are you smoking? I thought you just went to rehab. He didn't even have a category for that. He's like, what does that even mean? So, I wander for the next eight months. I don't know how to read the Bible. I don't know how to memorize scripture. I don't know how to pray. I don't know how to shoot, right? I do all these things. And so, I'm at church one Sunday, Edgewater Baptist Church, Paris Avenue, downtown Louisiana, and a 15-year-old looking blonde-haired blue eyed seminary student named David Platt. He's a seminary student, comes over and says, "Hey, would you want to meet once a week, study the Bible, memorize scripture and pray?" I said, "I'd love to." He said, "Pray about it." I said, "I already have. When do we meet?" And so Nate for the next two and a half years every week I met with David early on once a week, then it was twice a week for about a year and a half. He encouraged me to go to seminary. Went to seminary to get my masters. He encouraged me to stay over and get my PhD. I became his assistant. I was a travel with him. I worked in the office with him. And he baptized me, stood in my wedding. And so the reason I'm so passionate about disciple making is because I'm the product of disciple making. Now, I just assume Nate, everybody makes disciples in the church world. Not so much. Come to realize, we're interested in converts, in Christians, and decisions. We're not passionate in a sense about making disciples. Yeah. What do you think of this? Is it because it requires investment and it requires time? Yeah, I got a couple. Yeah, yeah. What do you think? You're now in a group with me, so. Have you ever been disciple before this group intentionally like this? Yeah, I did have a pastor when I was in seventh grade. I was kind of throwing stuff out. And the pastor actually pulled me aside and said, "I want to disciple you personally." So he would take me out to, you know, we'd go to dinner once a week and he would, we'd go through this thing. I think it was called encountering God. I can't remember you. And there was another book that he did. So at a young age, I think, because I was in Christian school a lot, I would always ask the different questions on Sunday, because I've been thinking about it all week. And when we got to church, so I did have a couple of people pouring to me in an early age and thank God for them, because it kind of kept me coming back even just when I was thinking, I don't know, what I think about all this kept coming back to those moments where some guys poured into my life at a young age, because my dad was working two jobs. He was a firefighter and then, you know, he was doing countertops on the, and I was the youngest of four kids and we were all in Christian school, so I barely saw my dad growing up. I was disciple of the young age and that stuck with me, but it's been a while and, you know, obviously life gets busy and you get out there and then you're moving around. You don't really have, you just have kids of your own and you're trying to, to be that for them and then you're like, what about me, you know? Totally. So I think the church, yeah, it's difficult because I think it, like most things, it can become a business and you do the right formulas and we don't have enough time and we got to keep going through the cycle and the motions and that, that can kind of lead to a loss of relationships, real relationships where people are learning, I don't know, but. Luke, what about you? Yeah, there's been a couple, I mean, there's some stories I'm not sure. There's a, there was a couple of discipleship things in high school, one of the guys, and I survived all this with a couple of the guys, I know that we're in the substitute, did not, but there was a guy that was disciplining high school, high school kids who ended up being a predator. Oh gosh. And it ruined a bunch of the, of the kids that, I knew. Yeah, not me though. I always joke that I was, I was bigger than the dude. Like, I'm like, he didn't ever try anything with, with me or my brother. I think he would end up on the wrong end of, yeah, but that was weird. But also, I mean, I had some really amazing mentors in college. I went to, did YWAM discipleship training school. So I learned how to disciple, how to evangelize and disciple people back, you know, and we did, we went into, in evangelized foreign countries, this one I was, when I was 23 with YWAM amazing time my life saw and I've told stories on podcasts about the healings and the things that I saw God do supernaturally. I mean, I've been in the same Bible study now for six years with a bunch of guys that I would say we're in a discipleship group of all through COVID, a bunch of, a bunch of boys in church of the city. It's been a pretty amazing thing. But yeah, and I, but I also think I know that's not, I know this is exceptionally rare for what, for the norm for a lot of Western Christianity. A lot of people are aged or walking around or younger, don't have a lot of mentors that are strategically and specifically point themselves into the younger generation's life in order to bring them up, which is a very, you know, we talked at the top. Like one of the things we're going to get into is, is this Eastern, verse Western, you know, paradigm, point of view, understanding culture, and, you know, Jesus was lit grew up in a, a culture where you chose a rabbi and you followed that rabbi, and you that rabbi poured into you and you became a teacher in the same way that that person was, and you brought questions and the rabbi gave you questions as you talked about the top. And that was culturally the way the things worked. And we just live in a different, the materialism of the West is very different. The church in the West is very different by and large. We'll discipleship groups are authentic, right? You get to this authentic city where you have to be real and be open, and I think that for a lot of people, that's not how they're wired. I mean, with ADHD and I know that you just, you want authenticity, like you crave it. So you go into these situations and you want it, but most people aren't really wired that way. If I follow somebody, if somebody knows about everything about me, they're going to call me out on stuff, and then there's a cost to that. And I think that is a big, I think, deterrent for people wanting to get involved. - It's a good point too. - Yeah, I mean. - Yeah, I would say, I mean, I think you're all over it. I think there's a couple factors I think. Number one is, discipleship is hard to measure. Conversions are easy. - Sure. - Thank you for your answer. - Attendance is, and here's my take on that. Sadly, we have allowed business metrics to gauge biblical maturity in the church. And again, think of a normal church, a typical church in USA America. You have a church of two to three hundred. It's run by a board. The board looks at the pastor and his job is to grow. You better be growing the church. The finances need to be up into the right. And if that's not happening, something's wrong. Well, the problem with discipleship, it's kind of like the growth of a tree in the winter. If you study agriculture, the tree grows the most in the winter, below the surface where you can't see anything. There's no fruit yet. But in order to produce fruit down the road, you need the deep, solidified, fortified growth below the surface. So that's the first problem. But I have another suspicion. And again, I have to preface what I'm going to say because I don't want to get emails and I don't want you to get emails. But I love, let me go on record. I love the original King James version of the Bible. Okay. So let's just establish. I love it. I've done a lot of study on it. Nate, in my office, I have an actual page of a 1611 She version, which is the actual wrong version on my wall. Nate seen it. I love the King James version. 46 different scholars. They worked in six different teams. Westminster Cambridge and Oxford three year process. It was painstaking. They translated from the textus receptus. It took them nine months to go to press. A lot of people don't know this. Nine months to go to press, typesetting every single letter on sheet. I love the King James version of the Bible. It was the Bible. Think about this. There was no rival for 300 years. No rival. Okay. So I love the King James version of the Bible. However, when the translators were translating, they had to make choices. When you understand how translation works, if you know how Greek and Hebrew works, you know, Greek Hebrews, a whole other animal, sticks and dots, right to left. Even Greek, Greek doesn't have punctuation. There are no bold actiles. We know that. Okay. So the translators have to make a choice. They have to supply the punctuation. The quintessential, if you will, the apex passage of discipleship is Ephesians 4 11 through 13. You'll know this passage when I quote it, and he gave God gave the is Paul talking to the church and and God gave the apostles' prophets evangelists, shepherds and teachers. So you can say the mentors, apostles, apostles, prophets, shepherds, evangelist teachers to equip the saints for the work of ministry. You know this passage. Now in the original King James, look it up online, 1611. This is how it translated that passage. Apostles, prophets, evangelists, shepherds and teachers to equip the saints, comma, to do the work of ministry, comma, to build up the body of Christ. So if you're reading that from a face value back then for three, four hundred years, you think the role of the leadership, the mentors in your church is threefold. This is crazy. People, you see that, I preach a sermon on this. I know this is going as good. Bro, watch this. I preach the sermon, the comma that kept the church in a discipleship, comma, for four hundred years. And here's the comma, one comma. So think about it. If the job of the pastors is to do the work of ministry and it's threefold to equip the saints to do the ministry, to build up the body, then what does the church do? They sit idly by and watch you, the paid professionals perform the ministry. But that's not how the text is corrected in every modern translation. N-I-V-E-S-V-N-A-S-B-C-S-B-L-S-B-U name it. Even the new King James corrects it, but the original didn't. They take out the comma because we know it reads, the apostles, prophets, evangelists, shepherds, and teachers, equip the saints for the work of ministry, for the building up of the body of Christ. So it's not a comma there, it's one phrase. And so here's what I tell people. Normally in churches, what'll happen is pastors feel like, okay, so you come with your family. Hey, Luke, so glad you're all here. This is your family. Yeah. Well, I want to serve at Long Hollow. I say, great, great. Have you been a seminary? No, I haven't. Okay. Wow. Well, have you taken courses? No, I haven't done that yet. Have you been in any conference? Okay. Well, let's start here. And what we say is maturity is the first thing that leads to ministry. So you need to have maturity to do ministry. But if you read the passage in context, Paul's saying the leaders equip the saints to do the work of ministry. And so when I tell people is ministry is the pathway to maturity, not the other way around, meaning when I get you, now I'm not saying you put some up on a stage preaching next week as a new believer. But the reality is, when people grow in their faith, they do that through hands-on, discipling relationships. I mean, for example, one of the things I try to do, you miss this because you're out of town, but one of the things I try to do is take my discipleship group to the prisons. We have seven campuses at Long Hollow around the state that watch live every week. We have people bring the sermons and it's crazy. We do live worship in prisons and jails in the city. And so I brought two weeks ago, I brought some of the guys in this room, went with me and they get to pray, Luke, with the people and get to encourage the guys. Well, they learn more about prayer in that one, two-hour session than they can ever learn from Wayne Grewdom and Millard Eriksen. Why? Because they're doing it. So the point, I think, is that kept us in a coma. The Catholic Church, with the chasm between the church, the people and the and the laity and the pews and the priest just makes the chasm wider. And I think people don't know that God, no, God's called you to ministry. Another thing, one more thing too, is I think it's this fascination also with going to heaven and conversion. Because if the goal of Christianity, and I preach on this a lot, but if the goal of Christianity is secure, secure a spot in heaven so that when the spiritual scanner in heaven comes God, you want to make sure you have the right barcode on you so that when he scans you, you get in. If you believe that is Christianity, someone sold you a bag of goods, that's not biblical. Christianity is not just going to heaven. Christianity is bringing heaven to earth today as we impact the kingdom. Dallas will, it used to say, the earthly life is training today for raining tomorrow. Training for raining. And so that's why I love discipleship. It's not just making sure you have a spot tomorrow when the role is called up beyond to your be there. Training today is so you can be the best godly man, the best godly father, the best godly human being, to bring the kingdom wherever you go where you live, work and play. It's interesting. Cal Polys, where I graduate, Alma Mater, it's learned by doing. Is there, is there things? So they have all these these classes where you're like, it's big and ag. So people are out there like working with the animals and they've got, you know, full orchard on campus. And it was unlike any college experience, I was like, man, everyone's doing these, taking these crazy classes. And I remember thinking, like, education should be more like this where they throw you in the fire and say, or throw you in the deep end. Let's swim, you know. And I think Jesus obviously does that's why the word discipleship comes from how kind of his, he took these guys. He didn't take too many, but not too few. And they lived life and they kind of went from place to place to place. None of them are ready. The Bible is about all these people that God calls them not ready. Moses is like, I can't speak, I can't speak at all. You only speak to Pharaoh. Dave was like, I'm just a shepherd. What am I supposed to do with this giant? And it's almost like that's how God designed it. He's like, it's not, like you said, you just didn't go and grab a bunch of Pharisees and say, you guys have got the degrees now. You guys have got the position come with me. He's like, you're a bunch of fishermen. They were in it. Yeah. But all the, all the, he wanted was them to say yes. And he's like, let me walk you through to the mission. They weren't indoctrinated. You know, they were ready to learn. And they also weren't, I mean, even it's what's great about disciples. They were never really ready. They still need to feel ready. No, I'm like, where are you going, Jesus? Yeah. Well, think about this too. This is, let me give you some biblical precedents for this. When I first learned this to change everything, guess how many times the word Christian is used in the New Testament? Take a while, guess the word Christian. Three times. That's it. Three times. Price is right. I was close. You close. Two of those times. I was going to say one. Well, you didn't. Well, three would be what it should have could have. Three is the biblical number. So I missed it. Yeah. So it's, it's a little likes to win. Yeah. Sure. Well, it's twice an act. Yeah, I could. So it's twice an acts once in first Peter. Okay. And the thing is in the first term, the first time they use the word Christians, it's a derogatory term according to Harper's dictionary. They're putting them down. They're saying, you're falling a dead man who died on a cross. What do you talk about? You're a Christian really. So the first two times or the first for sure is a negative term. In contrast, guess how many times the word disciple, Matheteus is used in the New Testament and in the Gospels? This is my blood. 238 times in the Gospels alone, 269 times in the New Testament. So it begs the question, what, what is Jesus want you to be? A Christian, which is a static term, it's descriptive, or disciple, which is that dynamic term, which implies action, doing, you're going to replicate your life. So go there for it. Make disciples. Make the site. Does it make Christians convert to the decisions? He says make disciples. And so again, the Bible is pretty clear on how that is. But that is a relationship, right? Like that is sort of this path this road we're on with God is all relational. It's developed. It's not, yeah, I'm born into this country. And therefore, I'm just, you know, an American citizen. Like, no, you have to walk the road to learn what it means to be an American. And I think that takes time in that. That means you have to develop a relationship with somebody, some teacher or some, and I think you see that all throughout scripture where God is developing a relationship with one of his prophets or somebody he's using, right? And that's, there's no real like book on how to be close to somebody. It's just something you have to figure out how to do, right? Right. Well, and think about this. Again, you got me thinking about how the culture thinks differently. We read the Bible today. Most Christians read the Bible today for information. So we open our Bible. We want to learn a truth. We write it down. We want to teach it. That's fine. The hybride culture of Jesus's day and even, even today, they learn not for information. They learned for intimacy. They read for intimacy with a person. Yeah. See the difference. So now it's not just gathering it for, I want to get to know somebody. There's another difference to and how we learn. I call it the bloated Christian syndrome, okay? The bloated Christian syndrome. This is the idea that Christians just are so bloated with information because we want to learn more and more and I'll prove it to you. Think about the church you grew up in, okay? Back 30 years ago, 20, 30 years ago. You went to church on Sunday morning and you heard a sermon by a pastor about a particular topic and he's he's been studying for 15, 10 hours a week to preach the word of God to the people of God, okay? One sermon, one topic. You're trying to apply that truth. Then when you leave the sermon, where did you go? Normally. Lunch. Well, before lunch. Sunday school. If you were good Christian. Good Christian. You went to Sunday school. Yeah. Yeah. You didn't go to lunch. But you normally go to Sunday school, okay? And you still, what they call it, life group, connect groups, come whatever you want today. Then you walk in, you're going to hear another lesson by another teacher who studied probably not as much, but some on another topic on another text and now you just leave that session and now you just divided the impact of the morning sermon and half because now you're trying to apply two topics, okay? Then you come back a good Christian on Sunday night. This was 30 years ago for Sunday night service, not to mention the five o'clock training union. Y'all remember that. We're not going to go there, but that's a whole nother animal. But then you come back on Sunday night. The pastor himself gets up and he's going to preach another sermon normally through a book of the Bible, another topic with another text to apply. And he just unknowingly cut the impact of his morning sermon by a third. Then you come back on Wednesday night. Now you got Wednesday night church. You're gathering with your friend. Actually, it's a fourth. So it's a half and then a fourth. I'll be at a devotional 15, 20 minute message. Another text, another topic, another sermon by the pastor. You just cut it now by an eighth. And if you're super spiritual back then you went to the Tuesday or Thursday morning Bible study, another text, another book. And you cut the impact of what you learned by a sixteenth. And here's the reality. Feel the way to this. We wonder why that generation is undecispled disciples. We have bought into this fallacy that we think we grow through transfer of information. That's a very Western American Greco. I'm not against that. That's where we go to college. You go to school. You learn information. You regurgitate and we can't remember anything from reclame. You can't remember anything. Nothing from biology. Except for me. I knew I remember that. It's not a real degree. It's true. It's not over that. But think about it. It's regurgitation of information. Do you think this is why God asks his people to do bizarre things often like dip in the like seven times or you know there's always he's like why why does it go that way you know. He's pushing them out of the comfort zone. Jesus is spitting on mud. That's weird. You know you can just snap his fingers do it from here. It's an turn. I can do it from here. But he does these intentionality things that are sometimes I don't I don't even know why they miss it. Well, I got an answer for that. He's calling back to Genesis. But I'll call but I'll get that and say, but let me just finish this. Why should I say so? Okay, so that's how we were raised. Let me give you a very hebraic this what we do at Long Hollow. And I think this is more hebraic Jesus-like. So I found a quote in the Mishna which was which is a commentary on the Old Testament. So it's kind of like a commentary have where the rabbis would give their opinion to the Old Testament. In the Mishna, it said this line and it wrecked me years ago. The line was this he who studies his lesson 100 times is not as effective as he who studies his lesson 101. Now, why does that affect us? Because we don't want the iPhone 6. We want the iPhone 20. We want the next latest greatest newest thing. We don't want the old computer. We want the new computer. We want the old car. We want the new car. So we have this this addiction, this this pre-occupation with new better more. But the culture of Jesus said, no, before you move on to the next topic, let's make sure you know this topic. John Wesley who started the Methodist denomination was he was the great John Wesley who was respected and one who's teaching a class one day and one arrogant student, one of the testing said, Mr. Wesley, got a question for you. of the whole class. He said, he's in London. He said, Mr. Wesley, what do you think about this? Maybe ask him a blurry question. Who don't know? Never. And Wesley Ross said, I thought about it for a second. He said, man, I don't, I don't think I have an answer for that. As soon as he said, wow, John Wesley, no answer. I got another question for it. And then he spoke up again for another whole class. Hey, Mr. Wesley, do you know the answer on giants in the Bible? I don't know. And Wesley thought for a second. He said, man, I don't, I don't have a good answer for that one. And the student said, how is it that the great John Wesley doesn't have answers to questions in the Bible. He doesn't know all things in the Bible. And John Wesley wrote, uh, spoke back to him and said, son, it's not the things in the Bible that I don't know that I have a problem with. It's the things in the Bible that I do know that caused me to pause. Don't lie, don't steal, don't you? If I can, what he's basically saying is, focus on the things you do know, live in the light that God's revealed and start there. And then God will reveal more light. And so always say, if God can trust you in the little things, then he will be able to entrust you with greater things down the road because he can trust you. And so that's a very hip-brek way. So at Long Hollow, what, what, so think about this on Sunday morning. So our church is reading through a plan called the F260, our D groups doing it. Uh, my wife, Candy and I have put together three Bible reading plans, not your typical plans. If you're interested to call the F260, you can download them for free. One's old and New Testament, one's New Testament, one's all Old Testament. Here's what I learned, Luke, after reading the Bible for years with groups, five to six chapters a day off on the five to six hours a day, no days off. Uh, you're trying to read all these chapters. You're doing great in Genesis with, uh, January, you're cruising through Exodus and February. You know where I'm going. You get to Leviticus and what? Crash and burn the wheels for a man. This is rough. Yeah. And then you're just box checking, right? Leviticus 16 check. How much? You feel like you're in the wilderness 16. And when I would lead groups, they get to the summer, like a lot of us, and poor Ezekiel, he's thrown out because you don't have time. You're on vacation. Yeah. And you can't catch up. And at the end of each year, they would say, I tried, but I didn't succeed. And I felt like the goal was not to read all the Bible. If you're just trying to check boxes, the goal was to have the Bible in a sense, read you or the Bible to impact you by reading slower to digest more. So the plans we created are one to two, normally one chapter a day, five days a week off on the weekends. Now you want to read every passage of the Bible, but you'll get the meta narrative of the scripture. So we have these plans. And for the past few years, our church is encouraged to read daily. So every Monday, let's say we start in Genesis one, the entire congregation of Long Hollow, most of the reading, what's this? Every age is on this, every age and stage is on the same page. If you're a pastor preacher in a ministry, this is, this is crazy to think about, but think of the impact of this. Every age and stage on the same page. So when he goes and ministers to his boys, he can say, what did you learn today, church? Because that's what I learned from our pastor. So they're reading individually. So that's one impact. When Nate comes in Sunday, as he read through the week, I'm preaching on a passage that we've read through the week. So it's not like you walk into a church, no offense, but the pastor gets up and says, turn in your Bibles to Obadaya. And you say, Obah, who? Yeah. Okay, my prophet, major impact. So he read, yeah, yeah, yeah. He read Deuteronomy three this week along with the church. And that's what I preach. Deuteronomy three. Now, what did I just do? I just multiplied the impact of his reading by two. Then when you leave there, either on campus or off campus, all of our life groups are sermon based. So it's not a new subject, new topic, new lesson. It's reinforcing what we just learned about trusting God. Even my sermon Sunday was, it ain't over till God says it's over. Most of the thought he died in the wilderness. God says, no, no, I'm bringing you back on the transfiguration. You got one more job to do. And the point I was making is you may think it's over now, but until God says it's over, it ain't over. Well, what do you learn in your life group? You learn how to live in light of that. So now you just multiplied the impact by three. Then Nate comes with six other guys on Wednesday night, every Wednesday night. And we meet in my office. Guess what we're talking about Luke? The reading from the week. We just multiplied the impact by four. And then if you're, or actually, I'm not bad, but you know, another impact. And then, and then when you minister to your children, most guys particularly tell me the reason they don't disciple their kids is twofold. Number one is they don't know what to do. And number two is they won't have an answer for the questions they ask. This eliminates that. Because because you're not ministering out of the sky, you're taking the reading that they're reading and you're reading. And out of the overflow of your heart, you're ministering to them again, John Wesley and I'll be done, but John Wesley is my favorite quote. He says, I don't study the Bible to preach. He said I preach because I've studied the Bible. It's out of the overflow of our life. So now you just multiplied the impact by eight or whatever the number is. So you see the difference. You always say, what kind of ministry do you want? A divisive ministry, division or multiplication. And that's very hebraic. That's what Jesus did. He taught the same patterns over and over and over. Do you apply that to the entire church? And it's like, even if you show up, you're still kind of being discipled in some way, shape or form. That's hard to do. I mean, on a macro scale, you know, and you guys do a good job at that. And I keep wanting to come back. I mean, because I was like, you know, for, for me growing up, and I think, you know, in the music world, it's like, there seems to be this sort of, I don't know, like hipster mentality of if it's big, it's bad. Or if it's like, if it's underground, it's cool, you know, and you guys, yeah, exactly. And you guys did a really good job at that. And I kept wanting to come back. I mean, obviously I moved to Hendersonville in 2019 and then quickly went through a divorce and found myself just almost, it was, it was cool for me because I was at church. And I felt like I could kind of be with people, but sort of be alone to sit with God for a second ago. I don't know what to do with my life now. But I didn't really want a bunch of people bugging me and coming up to me and being like, well, you're here. There's only 10 people here. It was a nice place to start over. And I just appreciate what you guys do. And it's inviting for even someone who's kind of a jaded kid, church kid, who I had all that story. But then I was in Christian school all day. So I was there Wednesday. I was there Sunday. I was there Sunday night, but I was, and then I was Monday morning at Christian school. And it was like, I didn't, I think Saturday was the only day we didn't do anything. And that was the day to get into trouble. So. But for me, yeah, it's, it's, I just appreciate that. I just want to shout out what you guys do because I think I was pretty anti church, anti big church. I didn't know where I was. And so, I can feel that in everything that's, that's done there. Well, in the, in the underlying mindset of Long Hunt, when you have a discipleship first mindset, you're always saying, what can I see? Because when you disciple a person, like when you succeed, like with the podcast, not only do I get excited, but our discipleship groups celebrates men celebrating other men. And it's not this zero sum game we live in today and the world where if Luke wins, I lose. And for me to win, Luke, that, that's not biblical. And that's not Jewish. That's not the Bible. So in a discipleship group of trusted friends, I have another one we talked about on Wednesday, which for these guys in the music industry, they have nothing like this. They can't trust anybody. Right. So they come to the safe place where you know, man, I'm cheering you on. And it's a safe place and a confidential place. So we're trying to build a church around that. It's taken a while. I've been there 11 years, it's taken a little while. But we want people to leave and say, the church is not trying to get. So you've got some churches like, what can you do for me? Right. Or we say, hey, you need to serve the church. You need to serve the Lord. But I need you to do it here. Watch kids greeted the door in the parking lot. We always say, how can we invest in you so that your greatest ministry is not one to two hours a week. Let's say a hundred, one hour of the 168 hours a week. It's what you do outside where you live, work and play. And it's flipping it on its head to help you minister where you live. Yeah. So which is the design of the church in the first place, right? Yeah. Yeah. Oh, I think, yeah, just being thrown in the fire, I think that's that's a biblical thing. Just get in, do it. Yeah. Here we go. And I think that do you think it's because of the way Western does education, like you have to go through all these classes and you sit there and you don't learn a dang thing. You come out, remember, there were some people come out of college. I don't know how to start a business. They don't even know how to file any of the paperwork. They've never done anything. No, he's going to play the game. Yeah. This is really fantastic. Yeah. So you said, you just learn and you regurgitate and you're like, I had, it was a way of inorganic, a year of organic chemistry being premed. And I couldn't tell you anything about covalent bond. He really is going to college. You know, Ricky's, I mean, he's going to, he's going to be a senior this year and we're thinking about college. And I'll be honest with you, Charlie Kirk talked a lot about this too about the money pit of college. And I'm not downing education because my son wants to go to school. He's in music and acting. But I'm really asking, is that the most effective way or the best way to spend a quarter of a million dollars? Is that your school cost? I mean, it's crazy. It's crazy. It's crazy. It's bunkers. Yeah. I thought school was still like two to three thousand a semester when I was been, I don't know, that's not school. But the question is, is that setting my son up for the best return when he gets out when he has that kind of debt? So let's go back. I'll give you a break way to look at it. So Jesus, the schooling of Jesus is there. It was very different than the Hellenistic world that they lived in. And the Hellenistic world, Alexander the Great comes on the scene. This is pretty crazy to think about. If you know anything about Alexander the Great, he is a, he, he's not like every leader before him, like the Persons or the Assyrians that use brute force. Have you studied Alexander raised fascinating by. Oh, yeah, he was a, had the mastoneance and they, they, they, they. - Genius. - And they essentially, this small little country, city-state country, and took over the entire world. - The whole world, come to the whole world. He got bored at the end. He was like 32, come to the whole world. He said, "What else do I have to come?" I mean, it was crazy. But here's how he did it. Okay, so I did a deep dive on this, and then I'm gonna compare it to the day of Jesus. 'Cause this-- - I heard it in a nice library, you know. - It a pretty good library. (laughs) - I heard about that. - Many of other bound books. - A lot of books, yeah, it's good. So he decides not to use brute force. So the Romans would come in after him and say, "You worship Caesar or you die, your choice, pick it." - Yeah. - Yeah, here's a sword, here's incense, burn it to Caesar and die. And that works for a season. Alexander the Great comes in, and what he decides to do is he sets up a system called Hellenism, where he basically says, I'm not gonna force you, I'm gonna give you options. I'm gonna give you options. He took over the world, it's fascinating, but he took over the world with four areas that I like to say, Hellenism is what it was called, is connected to Hollywood today. You'll see the parallels. You know the four things he took over. Media, sports, entertainment, education. So the first one's a media. The Jewish culture in the Old Testament, they didn't care about world news. They could care less who was conquering who, who was invading who. They were a community that was worried about themselves. They supported each other. In fact, in the Jewish culture, we'll see this with the athletics. There's always Joe can say, there's no Guinness book of Jewish word records. Did you know that? You won't find one in the Old Testament. You won't find it. I was listening to Rabbi last night. He said, you won't even find non-fiction books written by Jews in the past, because in a sense, they didn't live in that world. Why would I compete against you in sports? That's competition. God created us for cooperation. You're my brother. I was forced to join my disagree, because he was the fastest of all the disciples. And he let us know that. Also, yeah, and also a lie to tucked in his robe and he ran fast from the chair. I think so. I mean, there was a little bit of him. I think the fishermen were out there, like, look at this son, yeah. Yeah, it's a big fish, you know. But by large, but by large, Jews, no records, hospital. Yeah, okay. So media, so what does Alexander the great do? He brings in this secular world. And right next to Jesus's hometown, when I go to Israel, I used to go to Israel, take people there. Right next to Nazareth is a town called Baycheon, which is an intact Roman Hellenistic city. Greek city, still there. They have an amphitheater you can go to. They have a theater, I mean, it's bunker. They have the bath halls, the massage area. You still see it all, it's still there today. And one of the things about media, and then they had this long flea market walkway, where he would bring in rugs and spices and item. Now, it doesn't seem like it's a bad deal on the surface. It seems kind of binary and significant. But think about what it does. It's the pull of the world from being faithful to God. These Jews people were faithful to the Torah and God, and they were insular. And now you have this subtle pull, media. Number two, you have athletics. Again, I love sports, I was an athlete, but think about this. You didn't compete against your brother 'cause you were on the same team. And so what does Alexander the great do? He brings in the Olympic games. He brings in competition. And now I've got to win, but you have to lose. And so now you have this infighting competition, and it's a draw from the Lord. Because on Shabbat, when they're getting ready, when the city of Nazareth is slowing down, the city of Baycheon is ramping up with sports and entertainment and races, okay? So it's media education, entertainment, athletics, sorry. So entertainment, okay. Prior to the Greeks bringing entertainment in, the Jewish people were not into plays and shows. But here's the thing, it seems subtle, but they were able to indoctrinate that culture with entertainment. So they created the plays. And Jesus borrows a word. We know this 'cause Jesus borrows a word from the Greek theater in order to teach the disciples in Matthew chapter six. He says it repeatedly. Beware of practicing your righteousness to be seen by others before men. Because if you do, you'll have no reward from your father in heaven. Don't be like the, remember this word? Hippocrates, who love to stand on street corners and be seen for their many words of prayer and they dirty their faces when they're fasting. Don't be like the Hippocrates. That word Hupa Cretos is a Greek word barred from the theater. Those theatrical plays, they would have all of these people playing parts, but they wouldn't have a lot of actors. They would use the same actor for different parts. On the corner of the stage, there was a box of masks on sticks. The actor would come, grab one of the masks, put the mask on, play a part and then come back and change parts. He could change mask. That's the word Hippocrate. You're playing a part. So the theater, so what they would do is they would always have the same storyline. It was a couple just like them with a family just like theirs, struggling financially just like their home. And then all of a sudden they pray to the false god Zeus or Aphrodite or Dionysus for fertility. They have a child, the god wins in the end and it's always the same storyline. It seems subtle, but think about Hollywood today. Think about the movie industry today. It's so subtle you don't even know you're being indoctrinated. The final one is the one I want to save is education. So education in that world, the Jewish culture studied one book. That's all they studied. - Yeah. - Do you know what it was? - The Torah. - The Torah. - The Hebrew Bible. - Yeah. - The Torah. - So school was going to temple. It was going in, that was school. - That's it, yeah. - You didn't study geography. - Early too. - Early. Oh, I'm gonna show you five years old. So you didn't study astronomy. You didn't study biology. You didn't study mathematics. You studied the Torah. So at five years old, boys and girls collectively would go to school. Now girls would break off around 10 or 11, but at five years old, every boring girl went to school. For the next five years, guess what they studied? The Torah. Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus, numbers, Deuteronomy. - By the end of the song of Solomon, tell your 12, right? - Yeah. - Well, that made me lose a little bit of spicy. - Yeah. - That's what I get to tell you about. I get to tell them about it, but you studied the Torah. - Yeah. - They might never get it now, but no, they studied the Torah. And here's what's fascinating. And people push back and say, I don't know if I agree with that. They actually, and there's records to prove this, they were some students who really excelled, who knew the entire Torah by memory. Now you have to remember, they don't have a Bible. The Bible's codified to the 14, 15 century. So they don't have, or the 15 century, they don't have a Bible. They don't have a written copy. There's one Torah scroll in the whole town, and it's very expensive, a year's wage to own it anyway. So there's one in the synagogue, and so what happens? They have to memorize, they have to hide the word in their heart. David says, which heart in the Old Testament's mind, hide the word in your mind so you won't sin against God. So if you want to remember God's word, you have to take the time and effort to hide it. So they hide, it's crazy to think this, but they could quote, not Genesis 1 in the beginning, God, Genesis 1, all of it, Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers, Deuteronomy. Now, I found, I went, I wrote about this in a book years ago, and I found there's something called Pin, Prick, Rabbis, in New York, New Jersey, New York, that they call them Pin, Prick, Rabbis, because these rabbis, the Babylonian Talmud is like three times larger than the Bible. It's just enormous if you're watching on the ABC. It's just an enormous book. Pin, Prick, Rabbis, you could search this online. They could take a pin, Luke, put it inside the Babylonian Talmud, open the page, and the Rabbi from memory can quote the section. This is documented. I found it's like a New York Times article. Okay, so it can be done if you, why would it not be done? You gotta understand, they loved the Bible. This is not random words on a page. This is the breath of God. God, our savior, our creator, did not leave us alone. And if you go into synagogues, even back then, if you were to walk in, people regularly get excited to hear the word of God. It was not uncommon for ladies to be clapping and people to be dancing and shouting, people to be crying, why? Because they realize God hasn't left them on their own that they actually can hear from God. How times have changed? America, the world. We have more access to the Bible today than ever before. We have more ability to read back then. They were a literary culture. 20% of the world back then could read, that's it. But today, a lot of people in America, Westernized cultures can read. Here's the problem. We are more literate today in the world, but we are a literate to the Bible. You walk into church, what do people do? They take their Bible and they throw it across. They say, "That's see for me, bro, I got to." And I'm not saying the Bible is an idol, but we flippantly use the Bible. People say, "Bible, God doesn't speak to me today." And I always push back and say, you can't say that with a closed Bible by the bed. - Let me ask this now, the Jesus spoke on this too, like for the most literate people with the Bible, the new the world that way. How do they miss him? Because there's the disconnect, right? I think in the fullness of our faith, there's this disconnect between knowing the whole thing verbatim and then missing the Messiah as he stands in front of you. - I mean, you say their culture doesn't have sports, but in a way, memorizing the Bible was their math elite. They were the math elites of, you know. - That's good. - That became their sports, right? And then this competition is, 'cause you're getting to get better. - Yeah, it's who knows the Bible. Who can memorize it faster? - It's good, I never thought about that. In a sense that was their sport. They gave their life to God. - Yeah. - So your answer, so where's the disconnect? - Okay, so here's the disconnect. - And then they can't see Jesus when He's there. - Yes. - So they know their Bible, but they're blind. - Okay, here's the disconnect, I think. The word no, okay, so let me give you a comparison. We think of knowledge as the English word, Die! data, D-A-T-A, data, information, downloaded to the hard drive of our heart. More data, everyone. More data. Okay, data, data. Okay, let's do data. Let me tell you of data because I want to play on words, but data, okay, in the Hebrew, there's another word called dot, so data, dot, D-A, apostrophe, A-T, in Hebrew. The word dot in Hebrew is the word for no knowledge. In the New Testament, it's noces knowledge, but in the Old Testament, it's dot, okay? There's a difference between data, Western culture, and dot, Hebrew culture. What's the difference? The first time we see this word, dot, dot, is Genesis chapter four. Adam knew dot, dot, eave, and they conceived, and what? Bore son. Okay. He knew her biblically. That's the one I wanted to say. He was waiting for that. So family shows are going to keep you clean by 100%. The reality is that knowledge is different than intellectual ascent. That is, it's like the discipleship relationship. I've known Nate because I watched, I listened to the podcast before we on a D-group and before we even met. I thought I knew it. And people listening to your podcast, people do this at Long Hollow, though, they'll say, "Man, I feel like I know you. I've watched your sermons. I've listened to your YouTube," whatever. And I feel like I know you. Well, they don't know me, but they know a lot about me. Right. And they'll meet you at Luke on the street. They grow and you're like, "I don't really know you, but I don't really know you." Okay? How do you get to know somebody? You hang out with a guy. You spend time together. You play disc golf together. You hear stories. You hear tests. That's how you know a guy. Okay. So, knowledge for the Jewish culture. And that's what the Pharisees had a problem with. They could check every proverbial box on a test. They knew how to pass and fill in all the letters and questions on a scantron. But Jesus said, "Your hearts are far." Your head is right, but your heart's so far from it, meaning you know about me, but you don't know me. Okay? Here's a difference. And Jesus says, this is a very confusing passage. When Jesus says, "Many will call to me on that day and say, "Lord, Lord." This is a controversy. I got a hot take on it. "Lord, Lord, didn't I cast out demons in a prophesy in your name? Did I heal the sick?" Jesus said, "I will look to you and say, 'Depart from me, I never what?' New you." New you. Yeah. I never knew you. Okay. How is that even possible? How can a man, you know, prostitute the name or use the name of Christ or propagate the name of Christ or do miracles in his name and not even know him? Okay. Here's how. I think the difference is not, do you know Jesus? We live in middle Tennessee. Everybody knows Jesus here. I mean, most everybody. The question is not do you know Jesus? Everybody would say they know Jesus. The question I ask, if you're listening to is, does Jesus know you? Yeah. Does Jesus know you? We went, I'm preaching to our students, our students, our camp, I was just putting a message together this morning. I'm a shoe guy, I'm in a Jordan, I love Jordan's, collect Jordan's. When you got a 16 shoe, Luke, you know, it's hard to find you. I got a 14. Yeah. We said Joe, people don't realize this, but like pre-internet, the only way to do it was like East Bay. When East Bay came along and you had a catalog, you could actually, you had to order. No, back in the day, bro. I'm old school. You had to call the store. Oh, for those days. You were calling foot like, "I'm sorry, no 15, no 60." I'm sorry, okay, you have it. Yeah. Yeah. Then you got East Bay and it was revelatory. I'll do it. And somehow they missed the boat because they were there first and then they didn't transition to the online world. Another one of the conversation podcast, shoe guy. So I'm a shoe guy. Well, I love shoes. Okay. So one of the guys I follow, my son and I love shoes, is a guy named Rami, the icon. You ever heard of this guy? No. He's out in the West Coast. So his deal is he works at a shoe store or AMI, if you're interested. He works at a shoe store and Rami takes shoes that people bring in and he gives a value on it because people always trade and mind she's trying to keep him clean. But his claim to fame is he can detect a fake. Like this guy could take the shoe, he said it's got to sound like a coconut, not a coconut but a water. I mean, I don't know how he does it. But he could say, and people try to regularly slip in fake and say, oh, this is worth like $1,000, Rami's like, man, that's a fake from China. So he's able to do this. Okay. So we watched this guy all the time. It's fun seeing him call out these fakes. So every senior, I mean, every time my son's, I got two boys, I made a deal. Every time they went to high school, I'm going to take them on a trip. They asked me, you know, that and son and then when he go to college, I do the same. Just kind of a right passage. So my oldest son, he is in high school and I say, where you want to go? You could pick anywhere in America. We can go just for two or three days. Guess where he picks sneaker con and Florida. I think we would have to tell how to, for Florida, I think it was for Florida, sneaker con. So if you don't know what sneaker con is, it's Jordans and sneakers on steroids. I mean, they're sneakers and collectors and sellers. And so we're there at sneaker con. We had a great time. I went and they see, it was awesome. We're standing in line. This is crazy. And all of a sudden, guess who walks up, Romney the icon. We had just watched him the night before, Romney the icon from the west coast. You know, so now I've watched this for like two years. I feel like I know the guy. So I walk up to, and it's crazy as this is, you can believe this. I'm showing this clip to our students. He's got his whole film crew filming him of all things we found out after we make the video. You know what I'm saying, right? It's not a lot of these give his life. But this guy, he said, so I'm in the video and I said, Rick, that's Romney. We go crazy. So you see me in the video. I'm like, hey, bro, you might have to take a picture of what. So here I am. I'm taking a picture of him as he's filming me. But the point is he didn't know I am, but I know everything about him. Yeah. Okay. That's how a lot of people know Jesus. And the problem is when you stand before the Lord on judgment day, you want to be sure that when God says, how, why would I let you in heaven? I don't know if he's going to say this, but let's imagine why would I let you in my perfect heaven? If your answer is anything other than perfection, because that's the only way to get in heaven. That's why the Adam and Eve got disconnected from the garden. If your answer is anything but perfection, then God's going to say, if you say, hey, I'm here because of me. I did good. I worked hard. God's going to say, well, you're a sinner. And if you come with your sin, you pay the price for your sin, which means you die in your sin and the wages of sin is death. From that day, you're going to want Jesus said in the court and that courtroom. It's the son who determines who gets in John and John six of these. Jesus says the son will be the judge. And watch this. It's like going to Jesus and say, hey, Jesus, you remember me? Mike, I went to life Sunday school. You remember me? Here's the reality. I know. It's sobering. Jesus may look back and say, do I know you? Hmm. Hey. Have we? Have we met before? Jesus, you don't remember Susan. I was teaching life. I went to that camp. I walked the aisle. Went in the walk. Do we? Excuse me. Do we know each other? Yeah. It's even the demons. Jesus, I know. Paul, I know. Who are you? Even the demons, bro. So, and I'm not trying to scare you. I'm not trying to get you doubt your salvation. That's just like to scare one of the scariest verses in the Bible, though. Bro. But this is-- You can do all these things. But Jesus, I don't know. But everything is-- No, you're out of here. Everything is wrapped up in this. And I think we-- I mean, what we're seeing now is kind of like-- they were like the human AI version of the Bible back then, you know what I'm saying? We remember that. Like, they knew they could-- you could put the pin in and find exactly. You can ask AI what verses this and give you the exact answer. But the thing about AI that's so, you know, as Christians have been saying, it's not alive. It's not real. There's no soul. There's no point behind it. I think, you know, we can-- as the data, we can read the Bible from a data mindset and hyzer said, if it's weird, it's important. So we skip the weird because it's-- you can't put that in a file. So we go over the weird and we-- we've done that forever. And we take the relational part of the scripture out of the stories because they're wrapped in the weird parts. And that is where I think we-- That's where the gold is found. Yeah. And that's where we get over those. Well, we'll say this, too. Think about this. That's the human propensity is to just put it in a file. Put it in a file. Put it in a file. Like, not sit with it. Not go round and round and round and round. Like you said. I don't know. Well, like people, they have a very big issue with hell and heaven and you know, I would go, take away fire, burning, pain. So pick all that away from hell, okay? Think about this for a moment. Hell is a place where, in a sense, the absence of God's love is there. The absence of the Spirit is there. Now, God's everywhere. He's omniscient. But there are times, like, the palpable presence, manifest presence of God. You can sense God. God's always here. But there are times. Hell is a place where, in its heart to imagine, there is none of that. For that's connected. Now watch this. The worst thing for a, so people say, why would a loving God send people to hell? And my response is, think of it just the opposite. The worst thing a loving God can do is to force somebody into heaven who doesn't want to be there. People that go to hell, Luke, think about this. Their whole life, what they say to God is, leave me alone. God, I don't want you. I don't need you. I don't want anything to do with you. I'm not going to worship you. So when you stand before the Lord, the worst thing God could do is say, go to heaven. What God does is, on that day is, he answers and gives you your request. Your entire life, you said, leave me alone. And God says, you have your answer. Go to hell because you didn't want me anyway. So if you think of it that way, it's not, well, God's pointed in, no, people in heaven, it's all about Jesus. I tell some people, I church all the time. If you don't love Jesus, you're going to hate heaven. After all, he's everywhere. You're going to bump into him all the time, right? You're going to, you don't love him now. You're definitely going to hate it there. So, I heard someone else put it very similarly to your point, said that if you don't want to spend your, this short period, this vapor of your life with Jesus, why would you want to spend all of your turn? That's good. That's good. Right. It's just different for you forever. Like, an answer that is, you know, what is it in tombstone, said, deserving, I'm not going to do with it, right? It's like, I don't think we have, I think there's some idea that we deserve that regardless of that's how we want to live, and we want both things. We want to live the way we want, but we also want heaven. But the reality is ours, if you don't want to spend time with Jesus or live for him with him now. Why would you want that? Well, if I live with my wife, Candy, but then I had Susie on the side that I was visiting during the week. Would that fly with her? No. If you know my wife. They ain't no way they fly. So why would we think that would fly in a relationship with God if we're prostaging and cheating? Yeah, but that's how we are. We think it's fine. I live with the world in Christ. I'll have him both. Telling us to kind of view of what intelligence is. It seems like the Hebrew culture had humility built into the system. So you became humble as you were a part of it. And I think what we don't value in Western culture is emotional intelligence. You read the Old Testament, you're like, God was angry, God was sad. You have all these emotional descriptions of him and like, how could God be sad? How could God have emotions like a human has emotions? And our emotions are, most of the time, you know, we feel something. And the next day we're like, oh, crap, I was, I was off on that, like, but we're a mode of creatures. That's good. And everything in politics is trying to sway you emotionally and we're divided because of that. And humans have always been emotionally unintelligent. And when you read it, I think Jesus shows up and there's this whole, he has, he has not only seen most intelligent, but he's also, he knows exactly how everyone's feeling. Yes. He knows the feelings of the Pharisees and the feelings of the people. They don't say a word. He already knows what they feel and he calls them out on you're already in your hearts are already dark. I can just, I know it. And I think that is something that the church doesn't teach people how to have that emotional intelligence when you read the Bible. It's not just the actions. See, Jesus is, the Pharisees acted perfectly. They want a Oscar. Exactly. But Jesus is judging the motives, like you said, the desires behind the design, the action, the mindset behind the action. So as you, as you, we're almost done here, I just want to finish this. I think this one. I think this was, how much time we got here in this podcast? I think we're gone. We're going. I don't know if the audience is still with us, but I'm going to finish this up here. We're here. But let me tell you that because this will, this will tie it all together. I think because you're right. They were ingrained in this culture of the Bible. God is word, the culture. That was the Olympics. I never thought that that's a great insight. That was their athletics. They gave them and it was. It's hard work. We memorized scripture in our group. You know that. You know, I'm pretty good by the way. I can do a lot better. He doesn't have a surprise. He does get his good. I remember Dr. Jay. He's full. He's got to wear his, uh, his special beanie. So his brain works. Yeah. That's right. There's a lot of stuff that goes in our brains on a week. No, I know. I know. Okay. We're all sure. But I'm trying to get back. It was to be a jeopardy guy. And I can't do it anymore. I can't remember anything. We're getting older. It's kids, too. Kids will do that. Getting older is not for them. No, I didn't. No, I didn't. Okay. Now he's in a ravage. Kevin Trails are making a song. Robby continuing the track. I'm sorry. I'm trying to get the wheels back up. Okay. So the age of 10, there was a split, 10 or 11. Most of the girls would go work. And by the way, the girls in school would learn some of the Torah, but they focused mostly on the Psalms, believe it or not, historically. But at this age, there was a split. At the age of 10 or 11, most of the boys went to work and they chose a profession, 11-12, the family business. So they declared, I'm going to work with the father and the family business. But the dad was a vineyard owner, guess what the son did. Worked in the vineyard. Right. If dad made sandals, you're a sandal maker. If your father was a fisherman and owned a fisherman fishing enterprise like Zebedee Incorporated Fishing, you work for the family. Okay. So that made sense. But the elite, those who excelled, those who really had what it took, they got to go to the next level of study. The first level is called the Bate Sephora, just for context, house, Bate's house, like the Bate Adonai, the house of the Lord, Bate's house, Bates Sephora House of the Book. The second level of study was called the Bate Talmud, or the House of Learning. Lamor intense. At this time, at 11-12 year olds, the boys would go to school. From this level of study, they would move from the Torah and they would focus on the rest of the Old Testament. All, back then, it wasn't 39 books, I think it was like 22 books, same books, different order condensed. But they would learn the rest of the Old Testament. They would also learn the oral law, because the Jewish culture believes, and you've probably heard this for, Moses comes down from the mountain with 613 commandments written, but he also comes down with the oral law, which becomes the Talmud later. Okay. So they learn the oral law. They learn interpretation. They learn Hebrew. At the end of this level of study, at the age of 15, maybe 16, at the top is the big shift. 99% of the students, the boys, would go work for the family. But the top elite, like the PhDs of the day, the scholars, those who are-- If I am the Torah, not us, you know, well, I didn't have that, but these are people who, they called it having Hutzpah in Hebrew, Hutzpah, Passion, Abraham and Hutzpah. Randy Savage, that's your moment. He had a lot of that. Yeah, great. Yeah. Green the crop, yeah. What do they go? What do they go? They go to the last level of study, and again, it's just a small percentage, but there was an entrance exam to get in. So they would go to the last level of study called the Bate Midrash or the House of Study, which is just overwhelming to think about. When I got my PhD, there's a big entrance exam. You have to pass the entrance exam to get in, and it's like a big deal, and you've got to translate, you know, some-- some disciplines Hebrew and Greek from fly, then you have to translate German. I mean, it's a big deal. So, I know the pressure of this. This is 10x. Here's why. What the 16, 15, 16-year-old boy would do is he would go in the community and find a rabbi, a well-known rabbi, rabbi, Gamleel, for Paul, or Gamleel, for Paul, or rabbi, Kiva, rabbi, Shamai, rabbi, hello, these were rabbi's. And you would go to the rabbi, if Luke was the rabbi, and I'd say rabbi, Luke, could I study you? He looks like a rabbi. Sensei. Yeah. rabbi, Luke. Can I study under you? I want to devote my life. Now, what I was saying is this, for the next 15 years of my life, I'm going to follow you to the age of 30 when most rabbis began their ministry. You'll see the connections here. No accident. Jesus, at 30, starts his ministry when the culture said it would. Okay? So, you go to this rabbi. Now, the rabbi would ask himself a lot of questions about you before he even gave you an exam. He would say, does Luke, or you say, does rabbi have what it takes? Is he teachable? Is he a learner? You would ask me questions about the Torah, questions about interpretations, questions about the oral law, questions about Hebrew, questions about commentary. And if you thought I was good enough, if you thought I was smart enough, if you thought I had what it took, you would say the greatest three words in English you could ever hear. Come follow me. Now, let me frame this for you. Jesus and Mark 1, Mark begins the gospel this way, after John was put into prison, Jesus was walking by the sea of Galilee and looked out and saw two brothers, Peter and Andrew fishing, by the way, sidebar here. They weren't the val of Victorian. Right. They weren't good enough. They were second. In a sense. They weren't smart enough, they weren't sharp enough, they didn't have what it took. They were overlooked and looked over. If they wanted to know what they were going to do, the rest of their life, they only had to look to their friends and their father a few of James and John. They got the Harvard rejection letter. They got the rejection letter. Okay, I'm not downing fishermen because it was an upstanding profession, but here's where they are. Jesus walks by the seashore and he calls out to them. Now, let me just tell you a back story, because when I was studying this passage, it brought me back to the sixth and seventh grade. When I was at the school, I was 6/5/7th grade and I was acting up and I was causing problems. Is this your magician face? No. I was way before the magician face. I didn't do a trick one. Did you ever get out of that face? Are you still doing magic? I still do. I do one right now. I can't trick. I can't trick bro. I can't trick bro. I can't trick bro. I can't trick bro. I can't trick bro. Mercilessly as a young boy. I was tall. I think I was done growing. I was 6/6 at 16/15. I was done growing at 16/66, but I was tall, uncoordinated, size 15/60. My feet grew with me 12. I was in a 12/13. I was in a 13/16. I was in a 16. I was very uncoordinated, very awkward, and I got made fun of a lot. I still remember 6/7th grade coming home to my dad crying regularly because it always played this game where you remember the game. They'd line you up on the fence, and the two guys picking the team to play football. It was always the one guy who had failed twice, his name was Philip, and everybody knew that guy. So he was the bully. He failed twice. He was held back. And then his partner and prime Kerry, who was scared of Philip, so they bullied everybody else. Yeah. And it would always be the same. They would always pick on us and they rub clovers in my face and put grass in my mind. I mean, it was always there. But the thing that bothered me more than that was this. I still remember it like yesterday. We stand on the fence and they'd say, "We're going to pick teams." Luke probably got picked. I never got picked. They'd say, "We want Nate." We want Justin. We want Robbie. I mean, we want Randy. We want Jeff. And then to get down the enemy, me and like two or three other guys, and we'd look around. And the only thing you didn't want was what? We picked lasts. To get picked last. Yeah. Or even worse. I could pick it all. I could pick it all. Yeah. [BLANK_AUDIO] Every time I'm not making every time that say they look around and say I think we got it off maybe next time Geez bro, I'm telling I mean I get emotional now thinking about but back then it affected me a lot I would go home regularly and cry to my dad And I would say dad. I just want to be picked. Mm-hmm. I just want people. I just want somebody to like me I just want somebody to accept me. I just want listen. I just wanted somebody to see something me Just to affirm me. Okay, so let what does that have to do with Jesus. I don't know for sure But I imagine that's what those four disciples felt like They're going through the motions mundane routine seasons of life But this day is different because now you have on the seashore this Galilee and rabbi Broke it in her rabbi, but he yells something out remember what Jesus says he walks by the seashore He sees two brothers in the sea Casting their nets for their fishermen and Jesus says to them come Follow me and I'll make you fishers of men. Do you know what he's saying to us today? This would be like Jesus saying Peter Andrew James John I see something in here nobody else's The world may overlook you, but not me And if I told you guys what I'm gonna do with you the rest of your life You wouldn't believe me, but all I need from you now is a step of obedience and if you trust me I'm gonna change the world through you. That's what makes the call of Jesus so profound now Here's why I tell you that if you don't know the context and culture you miss it And that's why I've given my life to I've written books on this I've got a podcast got a YouTube channel to tell people if you don't understand the Hebrew culture It's like reading the Bible in black and white like the TV behind you We grew up with that box and that square and it was fine But the moment we go back and look at that and compare it to 4K high-def OLED TV It's night and they different same show same show Different experience that's incredible because it's like they got they got the acceptance letter and they didn't do the interview He knew who they were and they did it in reverse. You're in right. I didn't even apply right I didn't have to go through the job interview. I didn't get through the oral exam and all the other things I had to do What do you what are you saying? You know, that's good and here's another thing I forgot to mention Jesus is the first rabbi in human history. You can document this Who goes after his disciples? Feel the way it is. Yeah every other system set up in Judaism or the culture back then The student went to the rabbi and said can I follow you yeah Jesus flips the script and if you're listening Aren't you glad today that Jesus still does that he still comes after his disciples and he called me and he called you And he called you and he said come follow me and I could have said like my past What do I have to offer I've got nothing good and Jesus and no, I know you're not good But I am and I'm gonna do something with you and if you trust me I'll change the world and you get a front row seat to it and that's the greatest thing about Christianity I tell people it's called the great co-mission not the great mission. He could do it without us the great co-mission He lets us have a seat at the table and what a journey what an adventure to be a believer today That was awesome. No, I love it. It's like it's It's very much in the vein and akin to what we talk about in sort of the Old Testament work of Dr. Michael Heiser has been a big impetus for the show was he was Famously was just say this his book was Bible was written for you, but not to you Unless you understand the cultural context and the and the ancient inter-break people's and and the things that that sort of were Surrounding the context of this writing you're gonna miss a ton of it Because a lot of things don't make sense when you try to look at what you're you know, what you've talked to stay about Ravi and Understanding the allows into the great and and the Hellenistic impact on on the culture The Jesus would have grown up and and served as ministerian and then also understanding that the way that it worked for rabbis I mean, it's easy to read and you guess what? It's it's good enough the way that it is you will you will hear the gospel and respond to it but it is like and Bottomless well or like an onion you can continue to peel back when you start to understand the cultural layers on this The context the hidden gems and meanings. Yeah within this It just makes it that much more alive and deep and Impactful, especially as we look today. I mean and let's go to over thinking about today the reason a reason I said that The question is how are we being influenced by Hellenism today? Mm-hmm. Oh think about it media Right if somebody disagrees with you pull I mean truck that's not for the faint of heart Trying to talk to somebody who doesn't agree with you politically or with the media or the media you listen to or the entertainment or a sports team Yeah, I mean just go or it's led. I mean entertainment. I mean So the question always ask myself and I try to audit my own spiritual life What are the biggest influences in my life right now? And normally it's not the word and and and and believers in the It's normally the culture and the context so you need to take as Paul said every thought captive and discern every spirit test to discern what you're Allowing in your mind and heart. It's it's funny because it's like I think now when we A lot of times in and church service him just I've I've always sort of been prone to this as a kid is like How does this make sense relationally? Isn't a question we ask a lot. It's how does this make sense as a business decision in the church and I think often Luke and I when we're talking off Like how do we do this? How do we make this move inside blurry creatures? Well, this makes sense relationally Because when you claim to be a Christian and when you claim to understand the story of Jesus The relationship drives everything you do and and I think a lot of churches flip that cart and they go well This makes sense for the for the business of the church But if we fire this person how can we do that relationally if we move on from this saying or if we Look at this story in the Bible like you would have probably read over that Jesus calls these disciples But if you look at it what makes sense relationally is these guys were heartbroken and he calls them and I think It's it most people aren't really wired that way or we're wired to think well Got to protect myself and I and if I'm vulnerable I can't you know and I just think that When I read the Bible now, it's like oh, that's why God doesn't that because that down down the stream That's how much of a relational God he is to his people and in these all makes sense Why we go through struggles why we go through a lot of people? Like why you went to the bottom and why you had to get there and how God reclaims all of that and it comes back And you have a deeper stronger relationship and nothing's wasted, you know and It's just incredible to kind of read it now as an adult a little bit of that that knowledge and go okay Now I get this story a lot of us interpret a lot of these biblical stories at a young age We're just getting into college I mean walk away from our faith because we don't understand that relational Depth that's going through that story, so it's great to always go back there. So I love this podcast too I mean you haven't said this explicitly, but I would say One of the things I try to and y'all do this here But one of the things I try to do with my own boys. I'm discipling the problem with people walking away from the faith in my opinion is We've taught them what to believe we haven't taught them why they believe they believe yeah, you know There's a difference between saying you got to believe this this isn't this or allow it like my boys We have we they question everything in our home. Where is a shield and and Hades where you know The only we talk about this all the time and I allow them and and I don't have all the answers and that's okay Mm-hmm, and the thing I love is what you said relationally We always talk about relationally with people, but I would tell like when people come in and ask for marriage counsel Which I don't do but I used to they would say before I asked them anything about each other I say hey tell me about your relationship with God I'd ask the husband and the wife because if the vertical is jacked Then the then the horizontal will be hijacked as well, and so you said earlier the relationship I would say focus on your relationship with the Lord and the more you press into God and the more you seek the Lord It's amazing how relational things start to fall in place. We have to do another part two They're about angels, but we're not today. Yeah, I know man I had all this stuff on angels at the garden and angel there are three times angels are in the Torah. It's a good to teaser Ah, let's go. Yeah, and my last single say is that I think getting into these topics when you hear the fear of Someone's voice if they saw the bigfoot creature or something that to me was the most important part of their story Not well, I got the tracks and I got the data. I got the hair. I got the DNA I can prove to you statistically with the data that this thing exists It's like I could hear the fear in their voice. That's just how I'm how I've always been and go this thing Appeared to this guy. This guy saw this thing. I don't look at it from maybe the scientific viewpoint that Greek mindset It's like this guy's will not hunt anymore because of what he saw and he knows he knows the difference, right? And that that was the impetus of of wanting to start this podcast because like This is more than just Fairy tales. This is more than just imaginative people are imagining things so Throughout your obviously you can go to Long Hollow and see Robbie Preach every Sunday and you do an amazing job at that and You have a way of making the a big church feel small and intimate and which is just incredibly difficult task and Just it's cool to see what you guys are doing. It's cool to be a part of it Thank you for inviting me to the discipleship group and just seeing me in the midst of a crowd and and For whatever help I can bring to the group. It's it's it's it's always funny, but I think that Starting blurry creatures. It just I never thought that like it would get into some of these Conversations I never thought bigfoot and talk about the disciples would ever be in one conversation But God has a sense humor and and that's what the show feels like to me and we're just like in the backseat like like on the right of our life having these conversations, but you have a podcast, you have books out, and just anything you wanna pitch, you have a YouTube channel now. Thank you so much for having me. - You helped me with the YouTube. You and Nate, I watched you guys, and I've realized on YouTube and podcasts, that's a whole different audience than I'm reaching on Sunday. Back in the day, people would turn on TBN or radio and listen to sermons, not many of our children, and if you're listening grandchildren, I'm not doing that anymore, they're on YouTube. 26% of the markets on YouTube. So, started YouTube channel, it's my name, Robbie Gallanty, he concerns that. I have a podcast called The Forgotten Jesus. I do it with my wife, and we do all this stuff, old New Testament connections. - You got merch? - I got some merch. - Yeah, I got some. - Let's get it on. - I got this one sure. - Yeah, yeah. - It's a little something somewhere here. - But here's a million out of question before we go. Thank you for that, but the million out of question is Luke, what do you think of Nate's new haircut? - He shows back up. I didn't even know who this dude was. I mean, he cut the long hair off, and he shaved the beard down. - I know. - Are you liking it? - No, I like it. - I don't like it in the sense that I can't give him grief about it every week. I was just getting, he was back in his bandface for a minute. I love to give him some, so a little bit of, - He likes to talk about hair on it. - I do love a good head of hair, so. - He's got a good, dude, I mean. - It's not beautiful blonde. - Just keeping the lettuce changing is always a, - Apparently the angels had blonde, beautiful blonde hair, so we'll talk about that next episode. - The next episode, the hair of angels. - Thanks Robbie. - Thanks Robbie. - Yeah, appreciate it. (upbeat music) (upbeat music) (upbeat music) (upbeat music)