Rev. Billy Cerveny: Satan’s Attacks, Transgenderism, Seeing the Supernatural &Hearing God’s Voice

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Yeah, who this reference point and I think the you know We all of our lives, especially as little kids you grew up looking your dad's as these superheroes and these guys that were kind of a red cape And then there's this moment that you catch up with them and then you realize them and you and then you see your parents Humility, or humanity. Yes, and you look at your dad and you see that oh, you're you know, you're you're this paradox of of greatness and brokenness And I think the real where the coin dropped for me was when my dad began to be able to share like these were the struggles in my life This is where it was hard and this is where God met me and this is where He just owned his humanity in open ways and and Directly to you. Yeah, that's pretty wonderful. It is wonderful And I think that all that's a really freeing experience for a son. It's a rare experience very rare experience Oh Yeah, it's good. I think that you know, it's thought. You know as you have children as well and Especially when you have a son You know looking at your son. It's like staring in a mirror And then there's moments where they look at you and you realize oh, they're looking at me asking me what it means to be a man And you have those moments these sort of moments of existential horror where you're like, I'm not sure. I know myself. Yes, right? And so most of us do our best imitation of what we think manhood looks like and then we come to this place where You know, I believe that you know to be a true blessing is is you know, we're not our job as parents is not to Create this picture where our children have to draw this perfect representation or duplicate what your version of manhood is But the best thing that we can show them is hey, this is what I this is this is what I This this is my version of manhood and this is where I've screwed it up And this is where I've erased it and this is a picture of God's grace. My job as a dad is not to show my son What it means to be a perfect man? It is to be to show him what it means to be an imperfect man in relationship with a God of grace And to walk in ways that are that are I think hopefully Nobly and honorably and that reflect the goodness of God But also the reflect the humility of someone that knows what it means to need a savior and to say look we're not perfect And let me show you like this is where God is stepped in and moved to my life This is where I've blown it and this is where I've done okay But at the end of the day, you know We all fall on the on the mercy of God and I think that is a gift that we can like I said with my own son That's a gift that we can give our own children, you know, and somewhere my dad gave to me towards the end of his life So the phrase dad bod is obviously a grave slur it's a kind of gender racism But it is kind of real because staying in shape grows harder as you get older you work out you eat But you just don't get the same results and that's where Mars men comes in Mars men is a natural supplement crafted to support healthy testosterone levels Testosterone the chemical of life your man is designed to support weight management exercise performance and overall vitality That stimulants synthetic hormones or anything creepy or bad Just carefully selected natural ingredients made in the United States with a focus on quality relentless focus on quality So if you're looking to stay sharper more energetic retain your focus keep the drive Necessary to keep you in the game. 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Oh I don't think anything comes close, you know We always talk about or I always talk about how difficult it is for men and women to understand each other because they they think so differently And they express themselves so differently and it's the great Joy and frustration of marriage trying to figure out what the other person is saying yeah, but I don't think it compares to the father and son relationship and that is Hard and poignant the communication there. I think it's, you know as men we all have we have these Sort of core longings that God hardwired into our hearts, you know one of them is you know be part of something that's a story that's bigger than me or To be in relationship with other men or to you know feel known or seen in love, but one of them is I think Foundationally is this idea that we were created to receive the blessing of a father. Yep Period you read the story of Jacob like Jacob and he saw where Jacob steals steal the blessing. Yes, brother And the whole picture of his life is him going on this journey trying to to Satisfy a heart that has been denied this blessing of his father that was you know Who showed preference to his older brother and he had stolen the blessing which you know that was meant for his brother And it ended up poisoning his life and he goes and he masses wealth and he gets wives and he comes back And there's that famous scene in the book of Genesis where he he's sitting in the woods and The angel of the Lord comes out and he begins to wrestle the angel of the Lord and they go and you know Jacob pins him and the angel reaches out and dislocates his hip with just the touch of the thigh and that moment he realizes that I'm not I'm not wrestling a person here and But he's also realized that this is this is a picture of unrestrained power and rather than him giving up He says I'm not gonna let you go until you bless me. I would rather paraphrase I would rather be torn limb from limb than to go from this moment without the blessing of a father and he you know That's where he changes his name to Israel But I think it's a picture of our hearts that like we have we We need that in a way that is foundational totally agree, no and the problem is the rub is the problem for my children and yours and all of our children is that You know, I'm an imperfect man. I can't I can't provide that blessing in the full way You know, I can't provide the fullness of it, but like I was saying earlier That's part of the part of the way we do bless them is it we let that we encounter them as adults and as they get older We begin to show them the realities of our humanity and we point them towards Jesus and we do that together and that becomes a profound gift to our kids Is the encounter the blessing of God the Father? I know that approval is just part of a blessing, but it's it's the part that people understand immediately the approval of your dad like good job son Oh, yeah, that's like everything It's true Well done good and faithful servant amen. Amen. Yeah, so Speaking of wrestling, there's a phrase that you hear a lot you never used to hear Until about maybe six or seven years ago and now it's on the lips of every podcaster and that's the spiritual war You know the famous Ephesians quote we fight against not you know pleasure blood but against principalities and you know the preacher You know the quote yeah What is that and what are its manifestations the spiritual war? Yeah That's a small question. I like to start narrow. Yeah, thanks. Yeah You know we live You know on this side of a curtain You know we live in this temporal world you and me and you know the rooms were in but you know we all think of ourselves is Spiritual beings that's a real common thing that people say, but you know we were fashioned by God as Spiritual beings to be in relationship with him and there really is this this curtain that behind which there is an entire unseen realm That is God and the host of angels and all that and the Much like here. It's it's it's a world that is in rebellion as well and You know the irony is that the world we experienced now was was never meant to be separated from that when God created all things He created heaven and earth to overlap. He wanted to walk with Adam during the cool of the day He wanted to make man and you know as his his Image bearers were to be in relationship with God in a very tangible way But because of the way again because of sin and the brokenness of the world. There's this this separation that occurred But I think now there really is a spiritual battle as you quote that you said you said behind the veil behind the curtain The things we can't see the unseen realm is God and angels But it's not a civil war. I mean there there's turmoil there. It's war, right? It is and that's what the way scripture describes It and so who is the war between I think it's between God and you know the father son of the Holy Spirit and you have to create up God I think it's just in the way that God spoke all things into this world and to being he also created you know Heavenly hosts and you read that story in the book of Genesis with a serpent in the garden, right? You know Genesis was where heaven and earth overlaps and Man walked with God as we said just a second ago But you see this you see the beginning of a divine rebellion there you see this This sort of mysterious serpent figure which is you know we later learned is this the Satan figure and he rebels against God because he is, he's pridefully want to be equal with God and if he's going to attack God, if he wants to unravel God, what's the first thing he's going to do? He's going to attack his plan, but he's going to attack his image bears. Right. And that plan that you, yeah, people, and that plan that you see that he hatched in Genesis 3 is still the plan that's happening now. There's a, you know, our war is not against flesh and blood, but it's going to these principalities and these powers and these things that come and they weigh heavy on us, you know, as he's a deceiver and Satan, Satan and his, and his henchmen, his demons and the demonic forces. And it's, it's very real. 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No judgment, but it's just make any sense to borrow money at that rate. If you want out, call 800-685-5696-800-685-5696 or visit Americanfinancing.net/tucker. So we're the same age-ish. Of course, we're in the same college class. I didn't grow up in a world where that was considered real at all. And most people, I mean, you probably did because you were son of a bishop, but I'm not a son of a bishop and I just never even imagined any of that was real. But God was real, but I didn't think there were actually evil forces floating around unseen, impaling people toward self-destruction. I just didn't believe that. Now it's like the most obvious thing ever. It's obvious to you. I think it's obvious to like everyone I talk to, but self-selected group, of course, but sure. I mean, what is the old quote? The greatest trick the devil played is to convince humanity that he doesn't exist. Yes. And I think that's part of, especially in America, we live in such a binary culture where we don't think in terms of that, generally speaking. We do more recently. But materialists. Yeah, materialists culture, well said. But how does that play out? What are the manifestations of it? I mean, you can see them on a large scale. You see it in the destruction of marriages. You see it in the pornography. You see it in addictions. You see the things like that. I find that I see those kind of attacks happen in the areas most egregiously in those areas that God values most. So you want to know what God loves the most, watch what Satan attacks the most aggressively. And what does God love the most? You look at the creation story and all those things that God said in motion in the beginning marriage and ideas of masculinity and gender and you know, the role of humanity in the world, us being, you know, God's image bearers to create a kingdom that reflected his glory. Wait, I'm going to ask you to pause. So let's just go, let's just go kind of through the list forensically. So you said marriage number one. I mean, not in these arenas certain order, but I'm just kind of riffing about marriage. Yeah, but the ones that come to mind. Yeah, marriage. And then that's explained as part of God's creation in Genesis. Oh, yeah. It's part of his creation mandate, you know, be fruitful and multiply. He created, you know, when you when you read the story of God, creating man, he creates a lot of the earth. And you know, it's and he, you know, he empowers him and he brings all the animals in front of him. And you know, after each creation day, you hear God say he says, what? He says, it is good. It is good. It is good. And the only thing that you read about in the creation story that God says wasn't good was man's aloneness. He says, it's not good that man be, be alone. And so what is he? So what does he do? You know, he brings all these animals and there's there was not a helper that was suitable for him. No. So he, the dogs came close, I think. I don't know maybe a close second. Right. Yes. Then he puts him to sleep and he pulls the rib and he makes, and he makes, woman, he makes Eve. And there's the, you know, you hear this is the first song ever, ever written in creation. Anytime you read the Old Testament and you see, you read the text and all this and you see everything's indented. It's either poetry or a song. Yes. And the first words out of Adam's mouth were bone of my bone, flesh of my flesh. I mean, he, he was smitten. But this was God's, you know, marriage was not a human invention. We saw, I say that at every, every is part of our liturgy is the first thing I say. And as I'm explaining marriage at a ceremony in our liturgy, it wasn't a human invention. It was God's idea. And it's something that, you know, it was honored cross culture, Christian or not. People, you know, it's something that's played out. But it's, it's, it's the, it's the seed from which, you know, so much goodness flows children and family and, you know, a missional relationship into the world where you love others and all that kind of stuff. So yeah, it was God's idea. He loves the idea. And he loves it so much that, that, you know, the marriage image is used throughout scripture, even the second, you know, when the new heavens and the earth come together and we, we finally, with the, you know, the God rolls up the script and, you know, the end is consummated. He describes it as a wedding banquet, you know, and it's, it's a beautiful picture. He talks about marriage as this picture of that he gives us to be a picture of, of Christ's relationship with the church and the way that husbands would love their wives, the way that Jesus loved the church and the wives to respect their husbands. But it's this, it's this beautiful image. So to say God, that's something God values would be one of the vast understatements of the decade. And that is why I think Satan attacks it so viciously. So you see it constantly because you're obviously a priest who gives sermons, do the Eucharist, but you also are a pastor to your congregants, people in your church. Yeah. And you talk to them a lot. So in general terms, how is marriage under assault? I think marriage is, marriage is, well, to begin with, marriage is hard because you have two fallen people that come together and, you know, make all kinds of demands on each other. But I think it's under assault and the idea that, just the idea of marriage is under assault. Yeah, yeah, it's right. I mean, just the notion to, if you look at Europe, or I don't even know what the percentages are, but people aren't even getting married over there. Yeah. The divorce rates are off the chain. You know, and then just the idea of what marriage is, I don't think people see it in the light and light of the larger story that we were just discussing, but that's sort of on a macro level. But when you talk to people, you talk to people you desperately want their marriages to work to be happy to continue, but they're struggling with it. What are the things that you hear? Where are the moments where you feel like this is a, a spiritual attack on husband and wife? Yeah. I think a spiritual attack, it takes, you know, I would say this is, you know, Satan attacks us in all sorts of ways. But the most nefarious ways is when he, he, he seeks to deceive us, right? But the most defarious ways that he whispers in our ear is most of the time he whispers in our own voice, right? And he whispers to us and we, we, it's this self-talk that we engage in. And, you know, again, I don't understand the mystery of how this functionally works. But it, and it, it stokes the, the, the embers of selfishness of our pride, you know, is, you know, to still, quote, this Tim Keller is so famously said that, you know, if you want to know what the, your biggest problem in your marriage is selfishness, and it's always going to be that. And it's this journey of two self-oriented people. That's right. Learning what it means to die to self and what spiritual attack looks like in that. It's, it's through selfishness and it's through our own pride. And that can bubble up in a lot of ways. It can bubble up through adultery or it can bubble up through people having, you know, secret lives or pornography addictions or just people losing side of each other, you know? And it's so easy. I mean, you know, you have kids, you've lived a life, you know, how, how difficult it is and marriage to stay connected and how people can, you can stop talking or people, and that's part of the, just part of the discipline and part of how people do it. I mean, people with kids at home, once, once kids leave, you're like, I don't know how we managed to stay married. No matter how much you love the person, you don't have time to talk. Yeah. Yeah. And it's, it's, it's a, it's a challenge, man. It is a discipline. One of the more common things when people come in, I do a lot of marriage counseling. People will come in and they'll, and you know, inevitably one of the things they'll say is, you know, we just have a hard marriage. And I'll sit and I'll listen and I'll see. Did you just got a marriage marriage is hard again. It's two fallen people learning me to come together and Find out, you know, what does it mean to love you and to pursue you and to lay down my life for you and love love you More than I love myself as it said in Ephesians five, you know, what does it mean? You know husbands love your wives like Christ loved the church. Well, how did Christ love the church? It wasn't You make you know clinging to his You know his authority and you know hammering hammering his points home Though, you know, there were moments, right, but it was really laying its life down And it's a great picture that we think of like what is love and marriage? Well, it's a lot of things But one thing it's not it's not fair All right, if you want fairness go get a business partner But if you want to love someone and marriage the question is hey, how do I? When I feel wrong or I feel hurt or I feel in a place where I feel unseen like what the world would tell me is I have every right To not love you anymore until I get what's mine? But what the Christian called a marriage, especially for husbands is no Yeah, you know, you play hurt and you continue to love and you still move forward and you and you still you know wash feet and you still love your wife and And that's that's the call and it's a it's a call It's a you know again to lay your life down and it's it's ironic talking about Marriage and speaking about it in any authoritative way because it's topics like marriage or topics like prayer They're topics that you riff on but you never really feel like you have a handle on it right? Like sure, let me tell you that my wisdom a marriage, but it's it's because I'm like, I you know You're always daily because and that's how you I think you keep a humble posture, but I've never had any problem with humility having three daughters, but It's just kind of as baked in, you know, you know, it's true But you know, but you never feel like you have you can wrap your arms around it fully and because it is a mystery and And it constantly requires a humility which you know You've known me a lot a lot of years and that's not something I come by naturally and most people don't but But it's also God's I would say The profound gift of marriage is it is the crucible with which you God Transforms your lives if you let it, you know, and ironically it is those those moments of of brokenness and Restoration where those transformations come from Happened to happen the most of course. It's the crappy things you're grateful for and it's those places too that you know, I've seen marriages I've seen marriages shattered by adultery That have because of the willingness and humility of the two people to invite God in the middle of it and to listen and to walk I have seen those people Emerge with marriages that they'd only dream they could have actually no 100% 100% like full-blown cheating. Yeah no question And they would both sincerely say under polygraph. I'm happier my marriage than I've ever been no question really. Yeah God works all things together for the good of those who love and if you let them If you're willing to do it. I'm Don't don't Don't let me sugarcoat it. It's it's a brutal and I would never suggest that as a journey. No one wants to go there No one wants to go there But for those that that I've seen marriages heal in ways that you couldn't imagine For such such egregious pains and so many degrees of and I've seen marriages disintegrate for far less because people aren't willing to walk in and With humility and and look at themselves and they're just too busy pointing at the other person. Yeah Everybody knows that bleach is powerful and you know that by the smell and the warnings and the gloves and it makes sense if something can Clean a surface It may not want to be in the room while it's being cleaned. It's got to be a better way and there is Curative of Bay's curaclean home disinfectant. It's a powerful EPA registered disinfectant But here's the interesting part. It's what powers it hypoclorous acid HOCl and that's not some weird mystery chemical. You're gonna find in your potato chips It is the most organic of all. 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It's like it's always someone else's fault That's like the default setting and most in certainly in me Yeah, like I'm just you know all that you know, I can't believe they did that It's just the idolatry of our hearts and then part of that idolatry is my own self image and the thing about idols is this you can never see your idols until they're smashed And there's no better place to smash the idolatry of self than in a marriage Because you know where you're like well, I think and you know, no, I mean your your wife knows your your wife is the most dangerous person in your world That's for sure because she knows you and you're the most dangerous person in her world because you know her you know You know her her wounded places. You know where she's strong. You know where she's weak. You know we're in securities You know her sense of humor. You know all the things that you can either You know a few words from you if you came to me and said you know, insulted me in some way You know it might hurt my feelings and I mean we're really close friends. So might you know it would kind of I think it wouldn't you pretty you but but if my wife said the same thing dude, I'm with you I would be I wouldn't you know, you know, you would get out of bed. Yeah get out of bed, right? You're you know you coming in way. You know so Um, but it just shows the power you have over. No, she's got a loaded gun But you also such a tremendous power to bless one another and to raise one other way I say that you you see The glory self and the other like what does it mean to see who God is trying to call forward and to draw them forth And that's hard man. That's especially hard and conflict where you're sitting there and you're you're at odds and you you know You're angry or something like that and of course when you're angry you feel justified or otherwise you wouldn't feel angry, right? That's that's kind of the the foundation of anger is our self-justification But the discipline in the mid spiritual maturity in that is how do I still reach in there And and see they get glory self with that person and and and draw them forward and to see them as a child of God Is someone that I actually love as someone who's precious and it's very hard to remember I have a picture of my wife I have a picture of my wife of Hershey five three years old. It's cute kid Beautiful and it's stuck in my Bible and Psalm 139 Which is the song about you know you're fearfully and wonderfully made when I will knit you together in your in your mother's womb and And she just talks about the glory of creation and I do that on purpose because that's what I need to remember and I'm married. It's the thing that that At any moment because I love her deeply and I want to love her and I want to and it's really important that in order to do that well you need to Consistently see the value and the glory of this person That you're inextricably tied to at this point. Yeah, I agree. You mentioned pornography as a threat marriage. It's like one of those things I think we're just like maybe 10 years too old to really under or speaking for myself to really understand the magnitude of it. How often does pornography arise in marriage counseling as a huge problem? Oh man. I think it's hard to overstate how pervasive it is now. If I meet with a man like take marriage counseling out of it, just men in general, I assume that's in the mix until proven otherwise. Actually, yeah, and that's not an indictment ever, but it's so pervasive, I'm safer to assume that's the case that that's somehow part of the narrative than it's not because we walk around with these little apple porn boxes that people have in their hands. Can you imagine being a teenager now? A teenage boy growing up where the greatest temptation in your life is literally free button clicks away at any moment. What that's doing to the hearts and minds of young men and what is doing to their concept of marriage and what that's doing to their concept of sexuality, you know, we're genetics, you know, we're something like you and I came along and you want to do something you had to work for it, you know, this not like that. It is literally force fed to these young men. But you're only telling one half the story. The other half is Tim Cook's a billionaire. So there has been a big upside to this. Yeah, if you're Tim Cook. No, it's crazy. I had a revolution. I pray it's coming, but I don't think that will ever happen apart from revival. I think that's right because it's got to and it's it's it's a it's again, not to belabor the point, but I think what that does, I think we go back to what is spiritual warfare, you know, what is how does it play out on practical levels? I think that's a profound evil is trying to, hey, you know, anything's, you know, the earlier you can damage someone's sexually, just think about what that does. So real. It's so real. Totally. Just the way that plays out. You get stuck in patterns that are men do. Anyway, I don't know. In human sexuality, it's malleable. All right. It's what it's yeah, it's not assigned to birth. Yeah. Yeah. Well, it is. And it isn't. And the sense that it is is that that what I mean is our sex, you know, our sexuality as we live it out. You know, our sex is a flounder bird or gender's assignment. That's obviously a God breathed, you know, holy call. And you know, when we talk about things like pornography and the abuses of pornography and things like that, it's really easy to get to start get your wills caught in the just sort of dark melancholy aspect of it. But you know, you got to flip it over and first see like, you know, the glory of what God designed when he designed human sexuality when he when he called people and created man and woman to be sexual beings together, right? It's a glorious the beautiful thing. It's a it's this. In fact, you know, people often criticize Christians and saying, oh, you have such a low view of sexuality. I'm like, you've got to be kidding. We have a we have a such a higher view of sexuality than the world. I go, this isn't it. This is it's it's a fire. But it just needs to be kept into the fireplace. It's not a consumer product. That's not a consumer product. It's not a it's not an adult playground that we just go and make Tim cook rich. But it has profound spiritual impacts for us. If we cut against the grain of how God designed us for that. So when we talk about what you said, you know, that what we you're asking about, like how does that spiritual warfare play out in those those these contour in our world and our life from practical boots on the ground level. Like that's a that's a perfect example. You know, the it's it's it's the assault on what God values, you know, the marriage and the and human sexuality because it knows that A, if you can twist that, it will it will turn us fully inward. It turns us we become full-blown consumers. We become a slave to appetites and we become and I think the word again going back to the the beautiful thing that you see is that when the Lord heals in that place, you see so much you see just the power of redemption and and watching men and women be restored and feel like they're washed clean that they're not shameful or objects of shame and it's a beautiful thing that God blessed me to be a part of as I walked through. So what is it? So pornography was sold internet pornography and I kind of remember this. I was married by the time the internet arrived, but I remember world a year old, but I I feel fairly young. Yeah. Spray thanks to my consumption of Alp nicotine products product blood. No, we are old and but there is some advantage in that and that you sort of remember how things were sold when they first arrived in market and I remember people saying, well, this is going to be the end of rape and sexual assault because there's a healthy outlet for sexuality in the in the form of pornography. People said that. I mean, I remember when they said that. That's the dumbest thing. I don't remember that, but I just but that is well, the internet would make us free and inform us when actually people like don't even read anymore and like we're surveilled constantly. Let's we're going to put this fire out by pouring gasoline. No, I totally agree. For the last 50 years or so, oil has been priced pretty much exclusively in US dollars. It's called the petro dollar and the point was to give the dollar our currency built in demand around the world and it's worked pretty well, but it's changing fast. 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Like in practical terms, how does that divide you from your wife and family? We spend the next three hours talking about this. But I mean, simple terms. Simple terms. It twists your view of sexuality and it twists your view of your spouse. And what I mean by that is people say, "Oh, it's the abjectification." When when people say that, but it truly does do that. And women, you might not know this. Women's sexuality is very different than a man's. What? Yeah, that's right. And you know, they just get drunk and horny and hook up with random people. They're not big dumb animals, right? It doesn't mean it's less important for them. I agree. And God fashioned it. That's another cliche that people say. Sex just means more for man than it does for women. Actually, that's not true. It's not more important for a man than it is for women. Men just go about it differently. And for a man to understand the value of it for a woman or requires us to slow down and to have that conversation and understand it and to listen in a way that we aren't naturally wired to do or we don't feel like we can do. And I agree with that. So I agree with that more than almost anything I've ever heard. It requires us to slow down. That's the number one. Absolutely. And my father always said that. Slow down. Who died was a wise man. But on that topic, he was wise. Yep. But yeah, so the first thing that it does is it twists that, right? You begin. It presents these women as these caricatures of male sexuality. And I think that's not fair. And I think it does a tremendous amount of damage. That's one, two. And again, this is not the exhaustive list. It pushes men into isolation and porn, pornography, addictions or hidden sexuality. These are things that men, they don't do out in the open. They do it in secret and they do it in private and they don't tell anybody about it. The number one tool that Satan will do, use, is isolation. He will push men into the shadows because what happens there, that's where shame can grow unfettered. That's where people feel broken, more perverse and where they become more broken and become more perverse, which makes you feel more, and it's this vicious feedback loop that begins to occur, so men, they think they're, it's interesting that always starts with, I can handle this and it becomes this sort of, all smoke was cigarette a day, but the pornographic version of it. But before they know it, it becomes a consuming thing in their lives, and so it drives them into the shadows, which creates isolation, which creates shame, which creates a false sense of self as you walk into marriage, and what is marriage? Marriage is, as it was designed, you read Genesis chapter 2, what does it say? He made right after the passage of bone to my bone, flesh to my flesh, it says they were naked and unashamed. They stood before each other, that's about sex, but that's also about a spiritual heart posture that men and women have in front of each other that is, all that I am, all that I, you know, seen and unseen, I am here before you, and pornography goes to war with that and pushes men into the shadows. And women too, by the way, this is not, I mean, it is certainly more dominated by men, but what we've seen over the years is that this is something that women contend with as well, easier for me to talk about because I'm a man and, you know, probably holds more credence, but it's, but it's very real. So, you know, creates caricatures of what sexuality is, creates caricatures of women, it screws up your sex life, doesn't it? Yes, so the other thing is what we said again, you know, are human sexuality, our, you know, our sex drives, they're malleable, right? And you feed that into those sort of, those, you know, perversions or those, you marinate in that kind of stuff, it will take you places you don't want to go. My father, when I was little, said to, this is so over the top, but I was going to say it. It was my favorite line ever. I never say it because it's so over the top, but I've never tried reading the car with him and he was telling me we were like eight and ten or something, and somebody got pornography came up and goes, yeah, it's a really bad idea. It makes you perverse. And he said your sexuality is like a grain of wood. So if you take your fingernail and run it along a kitchen, a wooden table, it gets deeper with every pass. And he said, if you get into that, my father's very pro-sex, like very pro-sex, but he goes, it's a dark road and you keep getting, it gets weirder and weirder and weirder. And the next thing you know, you can't get it up unless you're wearing a chicken costume. That's what he said. I have no idea what that means. But it stayed with me for 45 years, like a chicken costume. Your dad had a chicken costume? I don't know. No, he did not have a chicken costume. He was very proud of not having a chicken costume, but he had a chicken costume. That's hilarious. I think he may have phrased it that way. It was just so evocative that it, like, never, I wish my brother was here. He would confirm this, like I never stopped thinking about it. I knew your dad. I believe that 100%. I know your dad was awesome. Your dad was awesome. You can't get it up unless you're a chicken costume. Anyway. But that's the kind of what you're talking about. I do. I think it takes you, again, it takes you places. It's the law of diminishing returns. Mm-hmm. Right? So, you know what? It's like, okay, you need a, this amount of hair I'm going to begin with and before you know. Yes. That's right. Quadruple to dose. And it's all about the dopamine hit. You know, you, it's the same, there are sexualities, no different, that it, when it's taken out of context, when it's taken into those places, when it's used in a way that God did not intend it. Like God, God's design for it is not to be prudish and to keep you from having a good time. Like, of course. Right? I mean, it's the idea of like, how can this flourish and become something that doesn't, that is life producing and literally, but also that breathes intimacy between a man and a woman that breathes a connection between a man and a woman that breathes a sense of just wonder and awe and just beauty, right? And that was his design for it. And when you step out of that boat, man, like it does, everything I just described, it does the opposite of that. You know, if there's one thing I can tell young people, it's, it's protect that with all that you are because the world is lying to you. It's lying to you about about, you know, the frivolous, oh, it's no big deal. No, it is a big deal. And it's profound spiritual implications for you. It has, it has, it can take you places that one day you wake up and you say, I don't want to be here and I don't know how to get back. All right? There is, the good news. I'll say this if you have, they have been there and I've seen this over and over again. You know, oh, you know, it's, I'm damaged goods now. No, you're not. Like, this is, God uses the broken things of this world. That's right. And he is, I mean, I, the places I've been, the places you've been, the things that we've done in our lives. Where the God, God is all about the prodigals and there's no, there's no one that is beyond redemption and healing and God loves to restore that because God loves that. All right? It ain't fun. All right? It's not a place you want to go, but if that's where you are and that's what you've done, it's okay. There's a God who graced it and that the reason, you know, Jesus doesn't see that and that's why Jesus steps back from the table. Actually, that's the reason Jesus came because we misuse sexuality because we, you know, we're, we're bad than our own shame because we make bad decisions because we're so committed to our own self-destructure. That's why he calls himself destructions. That's why he calls himself a savior and not a, you know, a self-help guru because I need to save you. I need someone to reach out and pull me up and save me from me. Yeah. Right? It's not just, yes, there's on a theological level. He saves me from sin and he washes me clean and my, you know, my standing before God and all of those things, which is deep and profound and eternal and, you know, worthy of reflection for, you know, thousands of years. But when you boil it down, he really came to save me from me, you know, from my own devices and where I would go. I mean, you think of the number of things that God has saved you from that you're not aware of. Right? The way the whole list of things I am aware of. Right. But so think about how dramatic the thing, how dramatic the list is that he saved you from that you didn't even get to see. Right? And, and, you know, even the way he's restrained your own appetites in those places that you didn't even know, you know? And so, yeah, going back to your question, I do think pornography is evil and it's done so much damage. And you know, as you said, I think there's going to be a, I don't know what the word you use, like a revolution against it. But I don't think that's ever going to happen until we have an actual revival again, which man, do we need that? But we have to, we've lost the plot. And you lose the plot and sexualities, you're talking about that. You lose the plot of the gospel story, the creation story view. And your story just kind of becomes about your narrative of my sex life. Then, you know, it, it becomes a very dangerous thing. When you read it in light of like what we're talking about, you, you took, you know, we've just kind of touched on it, but you read the Genesis story and God's creative intention for that stuff. All of a sudden, you become invited into, into this larger epic tale that becomes about something so much more and what you're, again, your soul is so much more of men's value than you ever imagined it was and it's, to be, to be a part of something that's so much more incredible than anything that you could ever cobble together on your own. Why wouldn't you want that, right? You're the person who put the gender stuff in context for me when this first happened. People questioning whether gender is real, you know, sex distinctions are real. Yeah. Con for 70 years, of course, it's the core premise of, of a second wave feminism that really there's no difference between the sexist. So I obviously rejected that, but then it became much more radical 10, maybe 10 years ago. Then it strike you, but even in every context that, you know, be it secular or in church context, when people argue, you know, there are no gender distinctions, you know, you can make theological arguments, you know, biblical arguments, whatever, but just simply saying that like, hey, before 70 years ago, literally no one agreed with this. Like you can't really find a place because they were in all human history. In all human history. I'm not going to even argue I'm right or wrong, but doesn't that make you want to pump the brakes a little bit? No, because we have atomic weapons now. And I'm this, let me just indulge my theory, which I can't control myself from talking about. Ron, baby. You've heard it before, but I just think I think nuclear weapons. Which I don't think were created by people. Sorry. I don't care how many movies they make about. I don't believe that. You can see Oppenheimer. Yeah, okay. Wouldn't watch that crap. Wouldn't let that into my head for one second. Anyway, because it's all lies. But anyway, sorry, now I'm getting really crazy, but it's all true. What I'm saying is true. I think once man possessed the power or believed he possessed the power to destroy everything that's alive, I think that he rejected God like that is kind of like reject that's rejection of God and like everything changed after that. People became convinced they were gods and That's when the true craziness started. It's not the 60s the 60s or the you know Obama years or whatever you want era It's like post nuclear weapons. That's what I believe so Anyway, but the gender thing kind of exploded maybe ten years ago with this like really we're gonna assign the child a gender Let him choose the gender whatever and I was like confused. But I thought it was so crazy that I didn't take it seriously at all And you're the one who made me take it seriously and you said I'll never forget it You said this is a direct attack on God's design As described in Genesis, so can you flesh it out a little bit? This is not like an accident like this was always going to happen is basically what you said Yeah, well When you read the Genesis narrative, right? You know again God God you know in the beginning God creates the heaven the earth and you have this picture of this sort of chaos that happens in the And it's God's spirit hovers over the water. You know the Hebrew it's it's it's the it's the hovering is almost like a mother birds wings hovering over The chaos and he begins to speak things into order and you know You got day one and he creates light. He's to you know as it grows He separates the land from the from the waters and he throws the stars in the sky He shoots this fish in the sea and the animals come and then each time you see Each created order or each creative day. What you're watching is it grows in glory It grows in complexity big glow it grows in glory and each time God is it's good. It's good And then you get to day six where God creates humanity and it's this sort of crowning explosion of creation the the the largest expression of his glory actually the crown jewel of creation was the last thing Which was created and that was those were women that is the final most glorious creation and certainly how I feel Yeah, and that's the way the story needs to be read right so if people just sod notice, you know women always it's And I have sent I have sympathy for it for there's much the church needs to apologize for for the ways that they've hurt women over In the past, but I can tell you from from as a as a Bible nerd I can tell you that that is a fault of man and not of God because the the biblical story elevates women in a way that that the world never would They would anyway. It's a back to our point So in this crown jewel of creation with humanity he could have expressed it in any way And he and he created man as he created man and he created woman You know, they are they are they he created masculinity and he created femininity. This is not a human construct It is not a social construct of course. There are things that that you know cultures and you know You know cultural moments can shape the way those are expressed, but generally speaking masculinity as we understand it's it's it's not Just oh, you're a dude. It's a holy calling It's a holy calling and as God says you are his image bearer in this world and women are His image bearers that come together to create this fuller image of what God is to be expressed and rolled out into the world as their image Or we it would be who bust understand what is this thing called masculinity that I've been saddled with Or I've been I have been called to what is femininity that I have been called to and his men I think Well, to your point, I think that's a that that you cannot there's many people that make theological arguments against what I just said And you can make many theological arguments that you just can't make a biblical argument against what I just said You just can't read the the scripture in any Just intellectually honest way and just not see that that's just the way it is and also experientially Well, I know it's true experientially because God also doles out punishments for eating the fruit And he says to Adam you're going to live by the sweat of your brow It's going to be hard for you to make a living. Gotta work going to thistles futility. Yeah, and he says to Eve two things One child worth is going to be hard for you and two your desires going to be for your husband And he's going to rule over you and those are the things that men and women resent I've noticed, you know men need to work. They derive satisfaction and self respect from work But they also hate to work because it's hard Women of course most women love children, but they they fear childbirth and that is suffering and There is a sense in which women resent Men hate work and women might resent that stuff and we can we can do that but when we lose the plot But when we step back into the story Right when we through you know when we encounter God in a real way through the through the through the gate of Jesus We go through and begin to see the redemptive story But when we see the creation story and the creation purpose like we just describe and you realize wait This is a holy calling I'm actually what what was got when it God called Adam it work was Work didn't happen after the fall God's purpose was work for Adam. He said I want you again When we said it again, God created Eden Eden, which was this holy place this but the rest of the world wasn't like Eden And even he says to Adam. I want you to exercise dominion What are you saying? It's not just I'm putting you in charge what he was saying is I'm giving you a job And I want you to take what is in Eden and I want you to take it all around the rest of the world I want you to turn the world into into this. I want you to drag the realities of this out and create Go be ruthless ruthlessly human in relationship with God go create cities in art and cuisine and all these things like Become you know become build out the kingdom of God Right and when you see that when Jesus came talking about the kingdom of God. It wasn't plan B He's grabbing plan A and just saying did we're we're reinstitu. It's all about that And so when you see in Revelation chapter 21, which is the end of the story where it says behold I see, you know the new heavens in the earth are coming down and behold I'm making all things new and and and it's this glorious picture Of the consummation of all things that holy city that's coming down that was the city that Adam was supposed to have built And all of a sudden we're Adam failed Jesus is the second I'm he succeeded and he came and it made this happen Why does that matter? How does that's going to to our This question about man being working and you know and all this the sense of futility Not only is masculinity a holy calling but the work that we're we're we're to put our hands to when we have now a gospel lens When Jesus says the the kingdom of God is at hand we get to be participants Now and in the original mandate The how do we bring and build the kingdom of God here and now and all of a sudden animates? I don't care if you're a plumber or you're a lawyer or a you know baker or candlestick maker did all of a sudden We're now participants in something that God is doing that we get to bring the realities to bear in our world and that That sense of futility I think when we we can maintain that perspective. I don't think our sense of futility can stand It goes to war with our sense of futility. Does that make sense? It does make sense Can I add one liner note please? Eden was what physically it was a land of rivers and trees Great question. I'm a I'm a Genesis nerd. So I'm going to go here rivers and trees. They'll correct rivers and trees Okay, so Eden was also I believe it says in Ezekiel describes it as on a mountain, which we this kind of a lost fact So rivers trees and mountains and a place where God at the divine and the human and and the human overlap and and well together So maybe there's a reason that when people are in Office buildings they feel differently from the way they feel when they're next to rivers hanging out Yeah, yeah, and maybe anyone who destroys rivers and trees is on the wrong side. The Lorax might have a point I really believe that and I believe that I believe that trees are really important. They're all over the Bible I think cedar has a special place, but you look at it. It's plan. It's true But you but you when you read again going back to the creation story Each creation's day after God made the trees and what do you say he says? It's good It was good of itself because he found pleasure in men not just for its utility not to but it's also And we're not just for its utility. That's exactly right. It's for and so we're when Adam was to exercise dominion It wasn't like what are you going to kill and cut down? It was how are you going to nurture exile? Are you going to take with this and bring it everywhere? Well, that's why when people get in that kind of relationship with nature They feel a deep satisfaction and a piece. Oh, man. It's clearly from God hundred percent So when you deny people that that is when you deny them beauty when you destroy beauty gods Created beauty that is not good. I just preach on the sea of the night, but is it the idea of? redemption and the idea of recreation. When you're Genesis, I think it's 317 where it says, talking about, you know, thorns and thistles and we'll push back. One of the lines is it says, "Cursed is the ground because of you." God's speaking. And what he's saying there is because of your sin, you, Adam, who I've put in charge of the created order is my vice-regent. Because of your sin now, it is paid for it and it has corrupted the creation. So the earthquakes and the fallenness of this world is a product of the fallenness of man. So when you read in Romans 8, it talks about the creation groans and the way the creation groans, because, you know, Scripture tends to personify, you know, the birds and the mountains and all that. And it says the creation to groans, right? Yeah, of course. It's on my team, you know, all the creation sings of God's glory, but the creation groans. But in the same way, it is the redemption of creation is going to be tied to the redemption of man and the redemption of humanity. So as we have been recreated and are living out that recreation, one day we'll stand in the full realities of our recreation so will the world. It is tied to, when Jesus came to redeem all things, He wasn't just talking about people, all things. The cedars as you just said, the trees and the rivers and the, and I can't wait for that day. I agree with that. But on the way to that day, I think, I know, because I experience this this morning, so watch your sun come up, you can get flashes of it. That's right. All around us. And it's our, it's, it's, and we can, we can participate in that. That's, you know, behold, the kingdom of God is his hand. What is, what is Jesus doing in those moments when, in the New Testament when he, we talked about this last night when Jesus is, every time you see Jesus doing a miracle, like, what is Jesus doing in that moment? Is he just doing a trick to, is he trying to sort of flex his, like, God muscle and show him, like, this is what I'm capable of. Is this a proof? I mean, there's some of that where he's like pulling back the curtain and revealing his divinity and, and who he is and where people sit back and he stills the wind and the waves and people aren't, aren't just quit asking, like, who are you? They're now asking, like, what are you? Yeah. Right. But when Jesus, one of the things that he's doing in those moments, where he is, you know, he heals the, he heals the, you know, the hemorrhaging woman or he raises gyrosis daughter from the dead or he calls Lazarus out of the tomb. What he's doing is he's reaching forward and he's grabbing the realities of the new heavens and the new earth that we will one day live in the full experience and he's planting them in the moment and he's giving people a foretaste of like, this is what the kingdom of God is. This is what they can. So, you know, the, the journey of redemption and recreation for is not about how do we get man out of earth into heaven, the journey and the ultimate consumations, how do we get heaven and earth back together? And that's, and those miracles that we begin to see as the miracles we were just talking about are, is Jesus doing that very thing and to your point where we say, I stand up there and I see pops of this, we now get to participate in that. So, we get to bring the realities of the new heavens and the new earth. How does that look? Well, here's the new one. When we bring, when we bring comfort to someone who is lost in grief, when I sit with a couple who is shattered by adultery or their marriages and or someone is on their deathbed and they are scared and they feel alone and you sit and you pray with them and you're bringing those realities to bear when you feed the hungry, when you love the, the very difficult to love. You know, that's our call when you plan a garden, right? I know these are kind of, oh, come on. No, really. When you plan a garden, like, what are you doing? That's, it's an ancient call. I mean, that's what Adam did. You know, that's what Noah did. You know, he was a vent, he was a, you know, he was a farmer. He grew grapes. You know, this is, but we are participating in the, in the, in the, and anyone who doubts that, anyone who would mock the idea of garden planting as a profound act, it's just not, hasn't lived long enough. Yeah. I'm, I'm not very good at that. I'm, I'm, I'm, I'm, I'm I'm sure I'm a garden the other night she had to go and she's like, we water my garden. Took me like 40 minutes, by the way, but by the end, I was like, man, that was like amazing. That was amazing. All I did was water the garden. I'm exercising my dominion with a hose. I'm with you, man. Yeah. So the gender, the question of whether God created male and female, this is not some minor question. No. And liberating people from the constraints of gender is probably not actually liberation. Is that what you're saying? No, it's, I think it's, it's a, it's a confusion. It's sad. You know, in fairness, let me, let me take it from a non-political kind of lens of it because it's like, I know, that's a cultural movement, just take it down to a, you know, there are people that, and I have a deep heart for that. People that have profound confusion in that place. For sure. And, and broken this in that place, that feel very lost in that place and feel very, and the way Christians talk about it in a sort of argumentative way. Right. You know, like, oh, you're right. We're wrong. I'm like, dude, that's, that, you know, we can fight a sort of air war, a theological war and have these kind of debates. But at the end of the day, you got to remember, like, we're talking about people here. Right. Right. And they're legit people that are hurting and asking real questions in this place that have, and a lot of them. Yeah. Not a small number. That's right. And, and I think one of the disservices in the church that we can do is because we get so consumed in the theological debate that, you know, we, we lose the trees and, and see the forest. You're right. And when you look at the trees, there's a people. And they come up their feet. What would you say to someone who was in your care? Just another human being, your neighbor, as defined by the New Testament, who was questioning his or her gender? What would you say to that person? Presumably, you don't want that person to have, to question, and you don't want the person to, you know, take the next steps, but you love that person's opponent screaming at the person. So what do you say? Well, I'd tell you the first thing I would say is, um, with first thing I would, I would walk with a profound humility. Because I know that I'm stepping into a story that has, uh, that involves a tremendous amount of shame and a sense of isolation. Because this is something this person undoubtedly had been continuing with far, longer at a far younger age than in solitude, in solitude, which is heartbreaking to think of a child asking theological questions for which they shouldn't be after content with, like, am I going to hell? Am I this? That's, that's like, I, I could, I weep thinking about that. Yeah. So my heart posture in that is one of deep and profound compassion. Because they didn't, they didn't ask for that. Yeah. And it is, and for those that sit on an opposite side of a theological fence to just come at this with hammer and tongs, like, you might win an argument, but pro you are shattering people and you're winning no hearts in that place. That's right. It is the, it is the God's, it is God's kindness that leads to repentance. And we would, excuse me, we would be wise to remember his kindness to us before we ever step into a conversation like that. So what would I say? And by his kindness to us, you mean, they're no better than, than me. And I'm no better than them. Hey, what, what lottery. Do I know what you're saying? We were talking last night. Why do we single this issue off, dude? And it's like, like, okay, but I will like somehow wink at greed or somebody's right, or my own, you know, or bloodlust or bloodlust or whatever it is. And we can wink at all these things, but like, you know, all those things keep me out of it. Like, I deserve, I deserve hell for all those things. Right. No, I get it. But for the grace of God, period, and we talked about the things that God saved us from that we don't like, like, and the maliability, like, why aren't you dealing with that? Why am I not to? Like, I don't know, but I'm not, and I'm thankful I'm not, but it's, so how do you walk into it? What do you say? You don't say anything first. You listen, man. But and you earn the right to be heard. You earn the right to be heard. You, you so seeds, dude, and you listen. And the way you so seeds is you non-judgmentally listen and you invite forward. Who are you? And because that doesn't define you. And you, and you, and you become a safe place and a trustworthy place, not within a genus. So you can eventually pull this judo move to show them how they're wrong. Because this is not your job. Right. It's God's job to move someone's heart. it's God's job. It's like when Jesus ate with sinners, what did he do? Do you think he sat around and you get because he just sat around and he ate with the tax collectors and the drunkards and the prostitutes that he sit there and the conversation was him going around the room telling him where they were wrong and it was right. Like no, that would be a very short hang, right? That's not a good party. But no, it's because they liked him. Yeah. And why did they like him? Because he probably listened really well. And he probably sat with him and he earned the right to be heard. And as a prophet, that is a wonderful philosophy of ministry as you step in, the places like this with the broken and the bruised and the bruised reads and the smoldering wicks as scripture says. And you listen and hopefully they come out of the shadows and begin to talk about the struggle. And you honor it and you love them and you let you know, you let the Lord steer it like I would be doing a disservice to what do you say? Like, I don't know. Depends how who I'm talking to and whatever. But I know what I know what I wouldn't say and I know what I wouldn't do and I wouldn't lead off with a moral lecture on what because they know they've contended with those arguments. They could probably shape those arguments better than I ever could because they've dealt with them far longer and in far more personal ways. So, yeah, I'd love them well. And then, you know, I think again, what does it mean to do the work of God in places like that? It's the same thing in anywhere else. Much years ago, someone asked me this question. I was working with a, doing some chaplaincy work with the soccer team. And he was joking about, what does it like to do the Lord's work? And I kind of like, I thought it was a kind of a weird question and I thought to myself for a minute, I was like, you know what, man? I'm not doing the Lord's work. The Lord is doing the Lord's work. My job as a priest, as a pastor, as a Christian, as a man, is to cultivate a heart that knows what it means to listen to the Holy Spirit and to see where the Holy Spirit is moving. And just agree with it. And just agree with it, right? How do we learn that? How do we cultivate that? We learn it through reading the Word. We learn it through prayer. We learn it through worship. We learn it through doing these conversations. We learn it through our relationships with other men, learn women, and our marriages. But we tune our hearts as the, as the hymn says, we Lord, tune my heart to your grace. So, I know I can see it when you're doing it. And I can just agree with it. And the doors you open cannot be shut. The doors you closed can't be open. It just helped me not beat my head against those doors that weren't open. And when I'm dealing with a human heart, it's the same question. How do I, what, what doors you opening there? And how do I talk to them in a way that they need to hear this? Not the way that I can be right. Yeah, people have an overwhelming need to be right or desire to be right. I do. It's hard, man. I don't, but I know you don't. I look at you with any in concern. Yeah, I understand. You imagine you need to be right. You need to prove your point. Well, that was a beautiful description. I've had to actually love somebody rather than just, I mean, because I know where you're coming from, which is you want to see people genuinely liberated and not led into their destruction by any, any of these things, you know. But you're, we're all fighting against our desire to be right and really this is what it comes down to. Oh, yeah, it's, yeah, 100%. Can I say one thing though that I can't resist? So Jesus, there's this moment where he says, you know, woe to anyone who leads the, the children astray. And you do feel like when you're looking at people who are beset by any of these agonies with, I mean, if you're, you know, you look at them with compassion. But then you think like someone lied to them and got them here in the first place. And I feel less compassion for that person. I'm just going to say that. There's a lot of voices, man. And I would, there's a lot of people that will seemingly disagree with me. And that's okay. But I would just say that as people ask those questions about their own life and they're going through it, you can easily find someone to affirm the path that you're going down to. Oh, yeah. All right. I mean, there's so many different flavors and denominations and expressions of that. Like you want someone to prop up your lifestyle and give you theological and biblical justification, like, you don't have to scratch, scratch very deep to find someone to do that. But that's why I think it's so important that we, that's why I'm, like I said, I'm a Bible nerd. And I think it's so important that that it's scripture alone, man. We have to, we have to go, you know, we have to go to scripture and test it everything against measure everything against what we're hearing in the world. What you're hearing from me, well, you hear from, you know, the church and leaderships, like I'm not, I'm not scripture. Right. I'm not like what's right? What's wrong? Like who gets to answer that question? Who gets to be the one to answer that question? Do I get to answer that question? No, does God gets to answer that question? Okay. So that's, we can all agree. Most people will stack hands, God's the one to get to answer that question. Okay. How does God answer that question? Does the answer it through me? He answers it through his word, right? He answers it through that, that's his, how God has taken a knee and he has written this redemptive historical sort of incredibly rich dynamic gift to us that's called the Bible. And if we're people that want to understand what it means to, to ask these questions to move in these directions and to do it with any, any truth and integrity, we have to measure what we're hearing against those, you know, it's, it's, you know, be transformed by the renewing of your mind through the scriptures. It says in Romans. And so we can test and God's good and perfect will. We can test it. Is this God speaking to me or is this some, you know, new, fangled cultural moment that's just trying to like, you know, vie for air dominance right now or whatever, you know, you know what I'm saying? Of course, yeah. So addiction has been a feature of, he was describing the Bible. So it's, you know, it's been around since people have been around, I think, but it does seem like a bigger factor in the lives of Americans than 40 years ago. I mean, I know that it is because there's just a lot more ways to get addicted and there's less cultural resistance to addiction than there's ever been. And so like entire generations are getting destroyed by it. More things that are more obvious things to be addicted to that aren't just substances. Exactly. Yeah. So how big a presence is addiction in your experience of counseling? I mean, it's, it's just part of it, you know, and it's a, you know, doing what I do, obviously, you encounter, you know, when people come into my office and they knock on my door, very rarely it is like, hey, I have a question. Why in the book of numbers did so and so, you know, why did Moses hold up a golden, you know, it's serpent or whatever, it's rarely questions like that. It's more like, are you psyched when it is though? Yeah, actually, that's a lot easier, right? It's a lot easier because, but it's people that are coming in with it, you know, they can't keep their cheese on their cracker, man. And they're saying, hey, I'm addicted to this or my marriage is coming apart. And so addiction is, it's a, it's a, you know, again, you've got substance abuse, you've got alcoholics, you've got people that, you know, opioids now, which is insane. You've got these things, you know, the list is endless gambling, pornography, gambling, pornography gambling is huge. That is, God, that scares me because of just the online. Do you see that? I don't, I have seen it. It's not something that I have faced, but I know a lot about it. I know a lot of people that have gone that journey and that is one of the most nefarious and hard to beat addictions to this gambling. And, but I'll let to say, but to those that that contend with addiction, you know, the one thing that I can say, and then I can say this unequivocally is there is so much hope for people. It's not a path that you ever want to walk down, but my, my favorite people that I deal with are my friends in AA or my friends in, you know, they're in NA or that have gone through recovery that have had, you know, all their self-righteous pretenses stripped down that have been brought down to the studs who have, you know, blown up their lives. So they don't have anything that they don't have anything to prove. And they've been on this redemptive journey. I always talk to you. I was like, would you please come and join my church? Would you please come? So do we be a part? I'm like, we need this. Like, the church needs to be a hospital, not a showcase. I've never been to a church as Christian in some AA meetings I've been to. I agree with you. And it's, you know, church needs to be a place where we can get blood on the walls. And you know what I mean by that? We can, we can tell the truth. You know, church is not designed to be an AA meeting and AA meetings are not designed to be church, but there are aspects of it where the humility and the honesty, the honesty, the where people can come in and walk through the doors of a church and say, this has, this is populated by people that I could sit in a room full of men or room full of women, room full of couples. And I could have a human yard sale of what I've done and who I've been in my life. And I would be met with love and grace and people looking at me and saying, I want to hear more of that. That when I show you the most wretched parts of me, it doesn't push you away, but it draws you closer because you're able to look me in the eye and say, yeah, I get it, man, me too. Yeah. And that's, that is, you know, that's because what that does, it does a lot of, you know, our biggest, most, you know, with addiction, especially, and, you know, be it pornography, gambling, alcohol, whatever it is, you know, sweets, whatever you're addicted to, you know, I don't think it's fair to put sweets, that's, it might, that might be a little too much, but it is, it is, it breeds so much shame. Yeah. Right. It breeds so much shame. And that's what sin does. It breeds shame. You read the story in the garden when Adam eats of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. He runs. What's the first thing Adam does? Is he run and he hides in the bushes? Yes. He hides. And the God comes in and he asks the question, he says, Adam, where are you? What do you, why are you hiding? A little pro tip, anytime God asks the question in scripture, he already knows the answer. He does. But he, what he needed, Adam to see, is he need Adam to see the answer. And Adam comes out and he says, what did, he says to him, he says, why were you hiding? And the right, Adam's in the garden, there's one rule in the garden, don't need to this tree of the knowledge of good and evil. And Adam's broken that rule, sin enters and he hides. And when God asks him, why are you hiding the logical answers, I just broke the one rule. That's not what he says though. He says, I was naked and I was ashamed. And a paraphrase that, he was saying, I wasn't hiding because I have done something wrong. I'm hiding because I am something wrong. And I could not bear for you to see me. And if you saw me, you would reject me and I would be alone. And that is the most foundational cry of the human heart, which it was the cry of Jesus from the cross when he became sin, when he truly became like us and he absorbed the sin of humanity and he quotes the Psalms and he says, my God, my God, the cry of dereliction, why have you forsaken? He could have said anything in that moment. But it was this cry of our deepest longing, don't leave me like this shameful thing that I am. So going back to the AA, the biggest poison that leads to addiction and it is this shame engine that drives us. And I don't want to feel it. So I drink it. I feel more shame and I drink more and it just becomes a cycle. But when you get into these rooms and you're able to have, like I just said, like you have a yard sale and you're able to say, this is one of them, I am Billy, I'm an alcoholic or I'm Tucker and I'm a this or whatever it is. And you can lay that out in front of a group of people and they sit there and they don't run away and they don't give you the rejection that you think that you deserve that pushed Adam into the bushes. It just sweeps the knee of your shame. And all of a sudden the thing that Satan meant for evil, God means for good and the place of your greatest destruction, your greatest fears, your greatest self-sabotage becomes the place where life grows, like tell me there's not a living God. Tell me there's not a God that is that is using the tools of the enemy against him, right? That makes us more than conquerors, right, that's a beautiful and so do I encounter addiction? Yeah, and when I find guys that have been through recovery high level, me too, I want more of them. I feel exactly the same way. Yeah, yeah, I couldn't agree more. So you made, I think the most profound thing you said was the core human fears don't leave us alone and that the first thing that God saw that was wrong with creation was Adam's solitude, it's not good for men to be alone. It does feel like people are more alone. No. We're isolated, especially as men, why as men? Because we are scared to be found out, you know, men we live in the same way. You know, that description, I just said of Adam, he's like, you know, there's something that's, that's, you know, I'm not something right. It said Adam on this course that I have to become, it's on me. I've got to become this ruthless quest for validation and that's the sort of spiritual genetic heritage that we've all received and I think it's all men we are born with this idea of that I'm incomplete and it's on me to be enough. And I'm terrified isn't that, you know, I one is, but, you know, as a man, I spent much of my life, too much of my early life, terrified that people would see that I don't have it all together. We all have two things to comment. One none of us have it all together. And the second is we all want everyone around us to think we do. Of course. Right. And the idea and the fear of that is if I let you see that, the same fear that Adam had, that you would, you would see something that you found undesirable and you would abandon me and I would be left alone. So as men, we have become so artfully skilled at working side by side and doing acts of, you know, you know, working side by side and, you know, playing golf together and doing all these things, but just, no, nothing about each other's lives. I think that's right. But if I could just be the liberal for a moment and blame society also, I think the structures have completely changed in the world around us. And I think it is more and more difficult for men to find the chance to be with other men. Yeah. Just men. I mean, that is total. By the way, it's measurable. Well, it's an, it's an ancient problem. I think one of the great unspoken miracles in Scripture is that Jesus is a man and is mid-30s had 12 best friends. Right? Like, how many men in their thirds, like the last most men, I spent a lot of time ministering with men. I love it. It's one of my favorite things is that one of the, one of the last times that men remember having real relationships was back in college. I know. There's last time and then they step into the workforce, they get married, which is wonderful. They have children, which is wonderful. But they lose sight of the importance of male relationship. They lose sight of, they lose sight of the value of why you need men around you. And this is something that, I mean, Jesus demonstrably demonstrated that in his 12 disciples, that was, you know, he illustrated a lot of things with that. But on the most basic level, it was just, hey, we need that. You read Mark chapter 2, what is the story where Jesus isn't compartment, he's there and he's teaching in the house and it's packed and there's people like hanging in the windows and no one can get in or out and there's, there's a man who's been paralyzed. And they can't, they want Jesus to heal them and they can't get to him. So his friends, his four friends, or however many friends it was, they pick up the mat and they grab the corners of the mat and they carry their friend and they go to the roof of where Jesus is teaching in this house and they begin digging and they tear the roof off. You can imagine Jesus just feeling the chunks coming down and he's like, what's going on? And they're like, our friend is hurt. My friend needs you and they lower this man down. If I were to go down the street, how many men do you think, and I've pulled randomly, how many men do you think would have mat carriers? I do. I do too. Thank you for being one of those mat carriers. Well we saw this coming 40 years ago. You saw it coming. No, I just knew that men in there because I saw it among men I knew and respected and loved, they would get, you know, to middle age and then old age and they had no real male friends. So we decided, five of us in college, we're not going to let that happen. We set up a pretty complex structure to maintain that friendship and we did. We shared it and for, you know, over 40 years now and so that really went on profound things in my life. But I just know, I really feel like I'm one of very few 57-year-old men I know who has like four best friends for real though, not at, not kind of academically my best friends, but like people I see regularly who are the godfathers of my children who we, you know, travel somewhere in the world every single year. I talk to all the time who I've relied on consistently for 40 years for advice or if I needed it money or whatever I need. And I will say, not to brag, but it's not bragging, it's just the nature of it. Of those four men, but five men, all five are still happily married. That's true. All five have children who respect them all five are just basically happy. And I think it's the, in part, the results of those friendships. Oh, that's been one of the the single most profound gifts of my life. You've been one of the most profound gifts of my life. Partly. And it was funny about that group of our group of five guys is you couldn't find five more different people. Yeah. Right. And the beauty of it was the commitment and the covenant where we pushed it. Exactly. I mean, we were 20 years old. We didn't know what we were saying. And we pushed in and we said, all right, we will not break this covenant, this vow with one another until we die, until we die. No, we have not. And we will not. But the thing about it is you think about all the seasons of life where we've been through where all the incarnations of birth and births and deaths and, you know, all the transitions and, you know, all the tears that have been cried and all those things that, you know, we've won and we've lost and then how the world has tried to conspire to pull our relationships apart just by proximity, but we've really held to that. And for me, I know, personally, I'd just say knowing in those dark places that I could always just reach out, no, yeah. And just knowing that you're there and knowing that the other guys are there is, it's been such a gospel expression. The number of times I talked about earlier, you remember saying about how, you know, Jesus comes, he saves us from our sins, he saves us from, you know, breaks the back as sin and death, but, you know, foundation, he's saving me from myself. And the reason, one of the reasons I love our friendship is the number of times you guys have stepped in and kind of saved me from my own decisions. It's been there, right? Yeah, yeah. Just being able to speak like, hey, I wouldn't do that or, you know, just loving each other through hard times and, I mean, you know, losing, I remember my dad died. No, I will never forget it. It was the last January and walking into that church was packed and turning around and seeing you guys all sitting on the row and just shattered my heart, man, and I knew it was beautiful way. It was a huge gift to me, man. Yeah. It used to be. Yeah. No, it's been absolutely incredible. Yep. I could go on and write a book about it and never well, never talked to anyone in public before. But the only reason I'm saying that is not to brag, but just to say because it's not anything up, you know, I've just been the beneficiary of it. But I think it's worth saying it out loud that like in some sense, it's different, obviously totally different from marriage, but it's the same in the sense that it's the product of a covenant of a promise to other people that you're just going to abide by. And like when you have like a six month old, and your buddies are like, you know, this year we're meeting in Barbados or wherever we're meeting, Hartford, Connecticut. And your wife is like, what? Yeah. You know, come on now. You've got three kids in a class fee to cost you something to be there big time. Yeah. And you have you save them something for a lot. A lot. They think they've paid up many times. All five of them support it because they see it's fruits, but to save your wife, I'm sorry, this is a moment that I made. And she's like, and you never make your wife man, especially when she just bore your child and you do it. And like that, so it does take some sacrifice, not small sacrifice, tremendous. And it's so essential, but the dividends are so exponentially more. I mean, going back to what we're saying, like the importance of male relationship in that is the problem is, you know, in the same way we talked about pornography or addiction. One of the things is it pushes you in isolation, like isolation is a bad thing. Yes. And for us as men as masculine beings, you lose perspective on your own masculinity and your own sense of self and your own role as a husband and your own role as a father. And it's essential that you have good, healthy men that can serve as mirrors and reflect and just kind of play catch with you a little bit on these ideas and exactly, or you get in your own one man echo chamber and you start feeling crazy, then you start feeling the shame. I'm not doing this right or I don't know. And then you start living out of caricature of what you think you should be versus what you kind of really are. And the next thing you know, you want to talk about like how the marriage problems start, like men, you know, there's a great spot, a great place. And for I think having those healthy relationships for men certainly for me has done a tremendous amount of giving helping me have a healthy marriage because it's helped me regulate my sense of self and like, and also just like my sense of my vein sense of self, you know, I got famous in my 20s. I didn't expect to be famous. I got famous. It's been, I would not have handled that well. Well, I don't think, I don't think I did, but if it hadn't been for you guys, I think I would have been totally off the deep end, completely off the deep end. And, um, and our wives, for sure, we're married good women, yeah, for sure. But, you know, I know a lot of married men who your buddies are a little different from your wife because your wife is, thankfully, no, man, I think it's harder for your wife to be like, oh, stop it. But you go see your buddies and you're like, uh, who's the cable television show and they're like, cable. I don't care at all. This is true. It's so good. Yeah. It's so important. It's so important. No, and I think what I, you know, I think this, this was kind of baked into the cake with us because, I mean, we met when we were 17 or whatever, right? And we met, you know, we were very unimpressive at the time. Not that we're very impressive now, but, but what happens is, is, is that, and I think one of the values of this friendship and I think it's values of any male, if I could just elevate this one aspect of this, is that we love each other and we respect each other, but we're not overly impressed with each other. Right? Like, this might be hard for people to understand, but like, when we get together, we will rag on, you know, we will bust each other's chops in a way that only people that have that kind of relationship. That's dude, right? Yeah. You, we, you know, lovingly humiliate one another and it continuously, continuously. Yes. And so, but I think there's, there's a huge value to that. And so, and so for male relationship, we're, I'm talking about, I might, it doesn't have to be some giant therapy session. It just has to be men that see you that are, they're, they have the ability and willingness to speak that truth into you and say, you know, no, dude, you're not all that. Or, dude, about 10 years ago, I was, you know, I decide one of my children's like, you've got to get off nicotine. And I was like, I knew that was, it was obviously it's wrong to get off nicotine, but I nicotine. So, I get bullied by this. You love nicotine more than I do. I really do. I always have. But anyway, this one child's like, it's bad for you, okay. Which it's not. But anyway, I get off nicotine and immediately go crazy and get fat. And I kind of knew that I was crazy, but I didn't quite realize how fat I was good, because no one of my world said one word to me about it. And I was like, man, I think my pants shrunk, whatever. We go skiing. And I'll never forget it. We're on the, we get off the tram in Jackson, Wyoming, and you know, the five of us, whatever we're skiing, one of us lives out there. And so anyway, I get off and I'm with him. One of them turns me, he goes, dude, you're fat. And I was like, I don't think I'm fat. What? He goes, look at you, you're fat. It's disgusting. And I was like, I'm not fat. You got your own weather system, man. Fuck. I'm on TV every day. I don't think if someone tell me if I was fat, he goes, dude, you're fat. Someone is telling you. And I remember this. I went and bought a tin of co-opening at that night and immediately, you know, lost some of the way. But the point is, it was the only person who would tell me that. And such is so gently too. I think everybody else noticed. I mean, obviously everybody else noticed, but now one person said, one word. Isn't that interesting? But you know, do you know why he did that? Can we go back to the use of that phrase? So great for him. He had earned the right. Oh, yes. Because you knew, he knew he loves you. Right? And he knew, you knew he cared. And he knew you. Godfather to my son? Yes. No, I know. I know you're talking about. Right. Yeah, you've met him. Yeah. He's not fat, dude. I agree. Anyway, yeah. What an incredible blessing. And I hope that this conversation doesn't make other people feel, well, I don't know. It's just true. And so I'm glad we did. It is true. I say that. I think I hope other people hear it. They hear this as an invitation. Right. Whether you're young or especially young people, like lock in, man, find your, find your, find your, you know, your, your mat carriers. Yes. Find your mat carriers, man. And because you're going to need them, because you're going to, because one day you're going to be carrying that, the mat for that guy, but I promise you, your day's coming where you're going to be on the bat and you're not going to be able to get up. And they're going to need to carry you to where you need to be, and it is true. It is true. It is true. It is true as sure as I'm sitting here. And for people that are older, I don't care how old that there are men that are in, if you don't go to a church or you don't have a place where people can, can do that, that didn't, you don't have a community, then either look deeper in your church or find another one, because it is so essential and it's so available. Yes. It just is. And it just, it, it just takes the risk of, of being able to step in and a willingness to just tell the truth and also to be a willingness to be the kind of person that can step in and hear someone else's, as they tell you, the truth about their life and you love them anyway. Whether it's said graciously or they, you know, are telling you you're fat in a very unceremonious way. But it's done with love. And I just think it's, it's, I see, I hear it. I just, I, I say that as an invitation, man. I think it's good. Well, I, I hope it is because it's one of the most important things I've ever. I've ever done after my marriage, the most important thing. So last question, and I think there's something I think about a lot, but your answer when I asked you, what would you say to someone, to anyone who was thinking, well, maybe I'm trans, I thought your answer was, was wonderful because you approached the person with love. So I want to ask a related question about something that's a kind of trend now among people who are really hurting some of whom I think are wonderful people, veterans, and is the use of very, very heavy-duty hallucinogens, famously ayahuasca, but there are a bunch of eye-baking, there are a bunch of them to heal them. And the reason that I've never really talked about it is because I want to approach it with that same spirit, because these are some of the best people I know, and also some of the most hurting people, and they've done what they were asked to do, in some cases it meant killing other people, and they've been deeply damaged by it, that's my read. We spend a lot of time talking about how bad it is to be killed. I think we spend almost no time talking about how bad it is for someone to kill, but it is bad. And I know a lot of people who've done it, and it's hurt every one of them. So in that pain, or out of that pain, many of them go to hallucinogens, very heavy-duty hallucinogens. And I should be totally honest, I've used hallucinogens as a child, and I was totally convinced that's not for me, that's bad. I was afraid of it. I did it a lot, and I was really afraid of it, and I'm very opposed to it. But I want to be open-minded and loving, because I know that they are suffering so much. So that's the preamble. And my question is, what's your view of that? Looking at that in pieces, I would say, first of all, medically speaking, I don't know. I know I've got people that I know that had medication-resistant depression that had done experimental, but medically-directed use of certain things that really helped them with their depressions and things like that, but I don't know enough to speak about that. I would say to someone who's suffering from a PTSD to that level of what you're talking about, first of all, in the same way. What would I say? I wouldn't say much in the beginning, because I think there's just so, the trauma of that is something they never asked for, and if I could just still have done, the care's the great tragedy of it, is I would say, it's not your fault. It's not your fault, in the sense that you may have done things, but to have those experiences and be thrust into a context where it's unwinnable, where you're in war or whatever the context may be, and I know they're nuanced and varied, but it's not your fault that you bear the intellectual or the psychiatric wounds, and those are real. Those are narrow pathways that are legitimately carved, so I don't wink at that. That's a real thing. PTSD is a real medical reality. It's not your fault. Coma, but sadly, and this is the tearing of it, it's not your responsibility. So now what are you going to do? How do you choose to step in these directions? And insofar as there's a range of treatments, I'm not an expert on that, so I'm not going to speak to that, but as far as like hallucinogens, and you say, high wasca or DMT or all of a sudden you're meeting figures in a spiritual realm, but that's what I'm specifically talking about. This is where I have strong opinions, and my strong opinion is that much like I talked about earlier, we live on a side of a curtain. There are thin places, as we talk about when I minister to someone by their bedside, it's a thin place. And I almost feel that they're crossing over and that's what the Celtics would call a thin place. It's like heaven and earth or the divine or the supernatural, the unseen realm and the scene realm are beginning to touch, right? And that's real. Yeah. And what Jesus says in John 10, He says that, you know, there is that and there is that, but I'm the gate. And if you want to go into this, that you want to go through the unseen realm where it produces this life and there's a way to do this. And it's through me. I'm the gate. And if you try to climb over the walls and you try to get in any other way, you're doing that. Guess what? You're a robber and you're a thief. And you're trying to gain the things of God without God. And you're trying to gain access to the divine and the unseen and all the, you want the cookies and the cookie jar, but you don't, but you're not going through the gate. And what I would say is you read stories about DMT and you read people and I, you know, I've never done that. I don't, but I know people that have dabbled in that quite a bit. And I know that when you hear encounters that I've crossed over and I've had this encounter with all these beings and there was this, a purple woman that I talked to and I developed this ratio. It's like I was there for years, but I was almost there for 10 minutes. And then somebody else goes and has the same trip and goes in. And he comes back and says, Hey, I met a purple woman who knew your name and was asking about you. What's that? That's document. I know people, that many people, right, that is what I'm telling you is there. This isn't just some psychiatric mind-bending exercise. You're actually crossing, you're a croc, you're not going through the gate, you're crawling over the fence. But into a real, into a real, into a real place is demonic and those are, you are, you are encountering, I think it's a demonic experience. And I think it's a dangerous one because what's so dangerous about it? And this is true. Not your imagination. That's what you're saying. It's not your imagination. So when Jesus, so you read in, you know, the book of Deuteronomy or another place, it was says, you don't practice necromancy, don't do magic, don't get involved in, you know, tarot cards or all that kind of stuff. What he's not saying is there's no power there. What he's saying is actually the reason it's a warning is there's a lot of, there's a lot going on over there. And it's, but it's really dangerous and it's not of God. It's not of Jesus and it's dangerous and it will, and what's so dangerous about it is that it, the people that encounter this generally speaking and people, this isn't, you know, for as many people there are different experiences. But when people step into those places and they have these encounters, they have these, these profound sense of enlightenment, they feel special, they feel seen, they feel good, they feel aww. And it's just like, it's like a taste they get. It's like the crack deal or given the taste on the playground and then the kid just gets deeper and deeper and they, what they think is giving them life is really hollowing them out from the inside. And I think what's happening in those experiences is the deeper you go and you, you will one day wake up and discover that you have been dabbling in a demonic realm that, that promised you life would is act and inside and progression and enlightenment, but it has really been hollowing you out from the inside, taking you away from the source of light, taking you away from the source of forgiveness of redemption that is only in Jesus and, you know, distorting the image in which you were created. And I think it's a dangerous place and I would, I, that scares me for people to do that. Now, for people, especially those, like I have a lot of compassion for people like Ibergain or people that are in PTSD and again, if there's a medical shallow end of that pool that has some that's not, you know, running through the, you know, the unseen realm and so I mean, I don't know. There's, but people that do that revelation to go on, they're on the some spiritual safari to go into that place. I'm like, man, I would, I would, I would caution you against that. They're, they're, that's one place you don't need to go to know you don't want to be there. Amen. The Reverend Billy Servingy, a phrase I never get tired of using, the one that still feels ironic to me. God bless you. God bless you, man, love you, good to see you.