Forget the Perfect Pastor | Here's What Actually Grows Communities

Control-Alt-Redeem is for anyone called to ministry in the digital frontier. Gamers, streamers, and everyday believers navigating life online. Each episode equips you to live on mission and the real stories of lives being changed. Reset your expectations, reframe your mission, and redeem the space you're already in. This is where digital ministry gets practical, creative, grounded, and hopeful.

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welcome in welcome in everybody to control alt redeem we are working to reset the culture and redeem the space and i've got that's life hanging out with me slice hope you are doing well today i want you just for those people that do not know give a quick intro of yourself oh god is there such thing as a quick intro you know

i am that's life uh everybody calls me sleif because that's actually my my name yeah i have Should I say what I'm a part of? I guess I have a community called the Wawa Hut that I started during COVID. I've done things so backwards, dude. I did a Discord server before I began streaming. So I started a Discord server during 2020 and it got to like 500 people after the first year just by word of mouth. And just encouraging people. And so that is what I do for the most part. I used to oversee small groups. Or helped with Boz. Oversee small groups. At XP. Previously God Squad. And then... Yeah, I'm at Lux now. So I do a lot of music stuff. I have a studio here in San Diego. This is my home studio.

Those that are just listening, you need to go watch the VOD. I mean, this is a nice setup. I like looking at it and going, man, would I have some fun with that?

It took a lot of time to put this together. I just recently put this Standing Nest together over the last couple weeks. And then, actually, we've made a music community. This is more of a professional thing, not the whole entire Twitch thing. But... I've made a music community with a friend of mine called Make Our Music, where we made a software program called Fan Flowy that helps people increase their fan base. And Warner Brothers is testing it on a couple of their artists right now, actually. I do not know if they're doing that for the purpose of just stealing the software eventually and making their own. But whatever. At least they're testing it on some people. So it seems to be gaining traction. There's over 100 bands using it already.

Oh, wow. 100. That's a small test. 100 bands. But... It will find and break the system if it's not fully running and everything, if you start to grow. So it'll help you either way, maybe, in that regard. I love the fact that you do things backwards on some level. Because one of the things that I think a lot of people think is there's only one way to make things. And you've got to have the recipe written down. And then we're going to go follow it. letter for letter, piece by piece, and we'll get the right outcome. And being in the church world, this is what I've watched the church do so often. That church over there is successful. They wrote a book. They're telling us step by step how to do it. If we copy step by step, we will end up where they are. And the truth is, that's not how things work in ministry. That's not how things work in life. And so by saying, and pursuing things from the heart that God has given you, the outcome is going to be more and better, I think, than just having a, here's the straight way to go and do it. And like, there's things that if we were to, you know, come over to my house and cook, I'm not going to cook things in the order and the procedure that my wife would. My wife is going to get the recipe out right away. read through the entire thing, and then start going step by step to make sure it's done. And I'm going to go, here's some things I think should go in there. And then I'm going to add some more things. And then like over time, I'll start to develop my own system. So like if you wanted to talk about making some chili. i start by sauteing my onions and green peppers a day before i make my chili okay so i've got a i got a whole process chili here yeah yeah so it's like nobody ain't got time for that and i don't either so if i'm gonna make chili though i'm gonna take my own sweet time and make sure it is a labor of love in what i do and if you taste it you're gonna know that so Hey, soaring Eagle. Welcome in. Um, and by the way, we didn't talk about this ahead of time. So Slyfe, if, uh, you want to engage a chat as much as you want to, you're free to do that. If we get into conversation and chat flies by, we don't have to go back and do it. So just as you feel appropriate to do that. And if there's events that happen in our streams, like, uh, a raid or a hype train, we're going to honor those, uh, regardless, because that's part of what streaming on Twitch is all about. So.

Indeed.

Did you know about Twitch and were you on Twitch when you decided to start your Discord server? Or was that a thought that came later that where could I go and connect people?

I found Pastor Susie way back in like 2000, I want to say like 17. Okay. And I didn't even know what Twitch was at that time. I had no idea. So where did you find him then? I don't even know. I can't even remember how I heard about it. Somebody told me about Twitch. I was like, what the heck is this? And then I literally just searched. I was like, I wonder if any Christians do this. So I searched for pastor or whatever, and he was live. And I was like, who is this guy playing video games on the internet, talking about things? It was weird to me. What is going on right now? And then... Yeah, it was an interesting way things developed in all seriousness because I met with him. It was so funny because I was like, I want to help. I want to be helpful in whatever way I can. And so I meet with him and his response was like, well, really what we need right now is just people to keep the stream open and lurk. And I was like, well, that's not exactly what I was looking for. But then what happened was him and Amanda actually came out to the West Coast to. I want to say it was like a blizzcon or something like that. and this was 2018 and i had a friend who i had a disney pass at that point in time so i would go to disneyland all the time and i also had a friend that worked there so i was able to get amanda and susie into the to disneyland for free and so because of that that's where i started doing a small group probably somewhere around 2019 and in the context of doing that i I don't know, I've always been more of like, I want to share things in a way that is not overly refined as to allow people to be able to feel like they're not going to be smitten if they're around or reprimanded for being themselves in the current state of which they're in in life. So I gravitate towards that more like evangelism and whatnot, just sharing love and encouragement. And so at that point in time, the God Squad situation.

I got a raid coming in. I got North Hill Live coming in. So we'll put a pin right there. Welcome everybody in with the raid. Welcome in, Raiders. Hello. I did not do this. I'm just going to make a note to myself. I need to have a raid thing. I probably got enough now to put some stuff on there. But welcome in, North Hill Live. Welcome in, Mr. Hanahito. Good to see you. Blessings, family. Sorry for the interruption. I know, I know. You raid in the middle of a podcast. How rude! But you're bringing the love in your community over here in North Hill, so love it. Sis Pineapple, good to see you. Soaring Eagle, you're extremely happy you found a Christian streamer. You've gotten tired of the nasty mouth, drug promoting, drinking streamers. Oh, yeah.

Yeah, there's plenty.

They are out there. They are out there. So if there are more people coming in with a raid, I appreciate you. Glad to have you here. I am a flat cap dapper pastor. I have my own stream, my own channel. I have a fish channel as well. And I am the... host of control alt redeem and so we are doing a podcast interview talking with that's life talking about what it's like being in twitch culture and being intentional christian in the space just go bear wins Slyfe was just talking about an interaction, a connection with Pastor Susie and Amanda and getting started in the gaming sphere. So welcome in and Slyfe, if you have anything to add about intro yourself, otherwise pick it up where you left off.

Okay, yeah, that's fine. I'll just pick it up where I left off. Welcome. Yeah, so I started leading a small group there, but at that point in time, the Discord server for XP was much more of a refined space where there wasn't really a... it wasn't like a safe space for people to come around who were not christians right so there was no cussing and stuff on the server there was nothing like that so i wanted to make a place that where people felt like they could be themselves in the context of growing so it just worked out for me to create my own server i had a small group that eventually got to way too many people because the server i did things backwards and i think that in all seriousness i think that everybody should do things like this because it's more of a biblically rooted scenario um and i can talk about it more in a second but i literally just made the situation and i pursued people and because of that word of mouth spread and then all of a sudden i had you know 23 people in a small group that you shouldn't really exceed 12 because there was a lot of people who were giving their life to god and accepting jesus and changing there was a lot of people who were mormon in my server that walked away from mormonism oh fascinating dudes you know are no longer ascribed to that or no longer subscribed to that so there's a lot just a lot of things that happened essentially That's it. You probably know a lot of them, like Dragonstar or Aetherios and Astrophel, Piglet, York, all those guys, Shaun of the Dead. All those people were in my small group way back in the day, in like 2019, 2000 times. And they're all at Lux now. Yeah, I mean, I guess I could talk about what I think that I think the way I think there needs to be a shift in the way people do online stuff. We can talk about that.

However, yeah, yeah. Well, I think you're you're not wrong. But one of the things I think is I think there's a thousand different ways to do things. There is not a here's the one formula to do it. You use your gifting to move in that in a direction. I'm going to use my gifting and move in a direction. We're not going to look the same of what we're doing.

so i mean yeah absolutely there's definitely biblically rooted stuff as far as like just generalized situations as opposed to like i mean there's like if there's a thousand ways it's gonna get right but yeah there's a more of a more of a macro thing that i think would be more effective for people to use uh in the biblical that we can touch on at some point

Well, you are creating a space in Discord. And I love your attitude to that. Because as a pastor, this is one of the things that just annoys me at times when I run into people. Because I would run into people in person. They would not know I'm a pastor. I'm wearing a hat. I'm not in a church. I don't have a collar on. I don't have anything that signifies I'm a pastor. I don't like wearing jewelry, so I got no crosses or anything else. And I'll, you know, I'll do a pickup game of golf and we'll get around the ninth hole. And then people finally say, so what do you do for a living? And I go, I'm a pastor. And then they go, oh, I'm sorry about when I got in the sand trap on hole two and I was cussing like a sailor. And I'm sorry about on hole three when I was making sexual innuendos. And it's like, so then the next three holes would be all these apologies. And I'm like, if I had an issue. i would have spoken up so i this whole mentality of especially as a pastor i run into it of people have to be fully clean and polished to present themselves in my presence and i'm like really like no i'm not down with that so the whole you made a space that that does have uh bring people where they are cussing is going to be a part of it you're growing in your faith you're you're you're who you are you can't get cleaned up and then come to jesus you have to come up come to jesus where you are and you have to know the people that are there also are just a few steps ahead of you so if they're polished uh really they're probably not polished they've just cleaned off the the dirt that was on them and so they look polished compared to you i love that space of being in there yeah it's the

I mean, this could unpack a whole conversation about our culture's idea of what leadership even looks like and just religion and Western culture in general and how a lot of it has... become a little bit of an interesting situation because we've gotten very used to in our culture putting on the facade of everything is compartmentalized we show our instagram self all the time right so it's like as pastors like oftentimes people are like they come across across overly refined and then the people of the world they just don't feel like they can connect at all they have nothing in common so it's like incredible it's like you know it's like you've heard you've heard those conversations where people like yeah man i walked into a church and i felt like god was going to smite me yeah you know and yeah they just feel uncomfortable i hate that um

ideology that is out there and i don't blame the people that have it i blame the church for allowing people to have it because we haven't done anything to change the ideology that oh if i worked and walked into a church i'd be smited or the building would catch on fire like whatever way you're phrasing it is is like i'm not welcome there and it's like no man Like God didn't make us all get cleaned up and then we could come to heaven and be in his presence. He sent his son because he wanted to be among us while we were unclean. Like that's a totally different viewpoint.

Yeah, it's hard because our culture oftentimes gets – like we're very – humans have the tendency to gravitate towards law over a relationship because it's just it makes more sense it's easier to see you can compartmentalize it it's a list you know of things rules and regulations and stuff and that's just not how it's supposed to be so our culture oftentimes goes from like It's like salvation by grace and then works afterwards to maintain your salvation, which isn't the way that it should be. You should constantly abide, be abiding in him. And then the overflow of that should be obviously faithful that works is dead. But if you see the works that are coming from it, it's out of an overflow of abiding in him rather than striving to create stuff. Because when you strive to do it, you're going to bear very little fruit and you're going to bear. fruit that doesn't necessarily look like god's fruit oftentimes like we love to reproduce man-made things and try to do things like the world but the bible says that god's ways are foolishness to man in his he's not like us and he doesn't lead the way that we do which is why he came and served right it's like wild to even think that the god of all creation would come and wash the feet of the disciples and even wash the feet of the disciple who betrayed him So we don't typically do things like that. We like to glorify ourselves. We have insecurities and pride and arrogance and different things like that. And because of that, we like to be able to see things compartmentalized. So we oftentimes have the tendency to lose our way. And instead of abiding in God, we kind of try to force things by just like working the system. And God's system is sloppier than ours because he's not afraid to have relationship and allow people to screw up and walk with them through it.

Yeah, and I mean, we're not going to necessarily overnight change any of the issues or the problems, but I think it's good for us to be recognizing them so that in the ministries where we do have influence and impact, we can challenge things that we see as maybe we have gone off track. We are in the wrong direction. We have decided that, and this is a phrase that kind of goes along with it that really always grated on me is, pray like it depends on God, and work like it depends on us. And I would just kind of go, wait a minute, why are you going to work like it depends on you? You're not trusting your prayers? Why are you teaching this idea that we have to make it happen if it's, like, this is outside of the church, but it would be Christians, I would often hear this, if it's to be, it's up to me. Like, I'm the only one going to make this happen, and it's like, that's still worldly wisdom. You know, it's not pursuing what God might be leading us to or the avenue that we should go about it. Like, I love spending time in the book of Acts because I just keep pointing out to people that, hey, here's what the church was doing, and then the people were doing, and they had to keep asking, is it okay if they do that? So they appoint seven deacons because there's a problem. The next three chapters are about the deacons not doing what they were appointed to do. They were appointed to pass out bread. There is no story of them passing out bread. There's not one. It's not like they started passing out bread. And then we have some really cool stories about how Philip broke up a fight between two guys who were stealing the last piece of bread, and he made sure the widows were— No, there's not a single story about passing out bread. It's immediately they go and do things that are not passing out bread. And it's like— Yeah, because the Spirit moved them and they didn't go ask for permission. The Spirit moved them and they just went and did what God was leading them to do. And it's like we need to, well, I think we're in the middle of that right now in digital spaces because the church is not embracing and endorsing digital spaces. So the only people that are are the people moved by the Spirit. And I love looking back to Pastor Susie and him stepping out because he felt called and he was obedient to it. Others have along the way also, and whether we agree or disagree with anybody that's doing it, if they're obedient where God's led them, then that's all they need to be.

Yeah, man, I've been subscribed to Susie's channel for, what, 95 months now. I've known him for a while. I was a big part of God Squad for a long time. And I don't agree with everything they have to say. But at the end of the day, if it's not for Susie, dude, very few. I mean, he kind of pioneered this whole space a little bit. Like, he was doing this long before other people were doing this. On his Xbox, you know, in his bedroom.

Yeah.

know and it's and and it's morphed over time i remember having a conversation with mark from lux and i don't i don't know how much i should even say about what he told me but when he first saw when he first saw pastor susie he was wondering whether it was heresy like oh yeah heretical

Marcus shared that, not just about Susie, but the whole, like when he was preparing to be called to plant Lux, he really had to wrestle with, is it okay to do some of these things? And I think that's a good thing for us to wrestle through. But on the other side of it, this is what I also like to point out in those moments, the Ethiopian eunuch, the one who is receiving ministry, is also the one asking the question, what's to prevent me from being baptized now?

so we often need to have the people being ministered to to push us to do what is needed in the moment for them uh regardless of whether we've got all of our theology fully figured out well i mean we never will right even and even if we do we do we don't actually because none of us can it's not true right true because yeah i think it's interesting because if you really start to think about the fact that god's ways are not our own all of a sudden things start to look a lot different than they than they really do. And you're, you start, God starts showing you, we really, there's a shift that is happening intentionally that he's trying to do.

Yes.

Where people are getting back to actually rooted, like living the gospel instead of trying to compartmentalize things or trying to create a sales pitch of some sort. And it's like, I mean, it says it's his kindness that leads us to repentance and he's the change agent, not us. And so. he's stirring that in people and you know it's it's been interesting to see there's so much stuff that's going on i'm actually going to start doing theological stuff i haven't done theological it's not going to be on my personal channel because this is going to be for like music and stuff right but he's put a lot of things on my heart specifically how we do ministry in this culture and how it's incredibly broken like um like what you know what commuter christian is like we have a i can guess i would not heard that term but i'm pretty sure i would i would know yeah we have a culture of commuter christianity where you drive 30 minutes to go to your church and you you completely disregard your next door neighbors you know and they did a study with tons and tons of people the average christian cannot i think they i think it was 10 of christians that were interviewed could name the eight people that lived around them that's pretty tragic in all seriousness right because it's like you know we i think we might have talked about this when we were on the phone before or on a call the other day but the whole situation in the gospel where um jesus says where two or three are gathered i am there in their midst Most people don't even realize that that was literally a Roman idiom that he was using. The disciples would have understood that in a way that we just didn't because actually that was a Roman... idea so basically what rome would do is they would go in and where wherever they were they would say where two or three romans are there is rome and they would infiltrate societies by living as romans do they live under the law of roman empire and they infiltrate society by influencing them for for rome and there was a military strategy where they would be able to take over that area in a significantly easier manner by just infiltrating in into that society and living as romans live so when jesus said where two or three are gathered i am there in our midst he was literally paving out like a business model or like a military strategy on how to advance the kingdom of god and this is why the kingdom this is why the the church grew so much the first 300 years where it developed to a scenario where the roman empire was actually you know it's like 10 million people out of the 60 million people were christians so they they took that as their religion for their nation But it's literally like it's it's a way different thing than we understand in our current culture. And the way that he did things was your neighbor. Like, that's the best way to do it. Influence the people that you're living with around. If you're not influencing your next door neighbor, you're you're there's no condemnation in Christ, but you're not living the gospel. And there's there's a heart that God is stirring up within his people to learn better how to just steward the very the things that are right in front of them. as opposed to having to go to thailand to do a missions trip let's not say that you shouldn't go to thailand because absolutely do it but if you're neglecting your next door neighbor and you're going to thailand there's a problem and there and that's kind of what's taught in our culture like commuter christianity yeah it is as opposed to christianity oh yeah well but we didn't

We do a lot more than just our faith that way. We do our work that way. And we live in places that we either deem are better or nicer and or they're cheaper. So we live farther away from where we work. We don't even work, most of us, in the community. that we live in we live in a different community than we work we go to worship in a different community than we live so there's a whole bunch of differences that are that are going on there just culturally outside of christianity And I think part of it has become that we are a transient people, at least in the US. I'm not I can't speak for the rest of the globe, but we're pretty transient. And my family is is one of the most transient families that's out there. I've never lived in the same town with anyone else with my last name in the phone book. And I know younger people won't know what a phone book is, but it was this thing that would tell you the phone numbers of everybody in town. My name would be in there. You would know it was me. I'm the only one in there. There was nobody else with my name. It's just never the case. It's still not the case. So by that amount, it's like... So how do I establish long-term relationships with people in my community? And if I have problems, isn't it just easy to go and start over again? And the answer is yes. The other thing that we've done, and the Catholics warned the Protestant church that this would happen, as soon as you start allowing everybody to decide what the bible says for themselves they will just continue to splinter and fracture and that's one of the things we do is we say we've got to find the right church that teaches the right things that i agree with already instead of going to the church that is right next to us and infiltrating the community there and influencing the community there

that's a whole different situation as well because like what what that hits on is the self-help model of christianity that we have in western culture where it's like what am i getting out of church how am i being blessed how can i develop and how can i grow the bible says that true religion is a life that's lived for the orphan and the widow so that's a life of servanthood the people who are in need and when you focus outwardly god actually blesses you inwardly But if you focus inwardly, you're going to start coming up with some really weird theology in all seriousness because God doesn't work that way. It's not to say that you can't be introspective ever, but it's just a different way of doing things. like he's trying to change the way our culture thinks. And it's interesting because when you start to like dissect the Bible, you realize that Jesus grew up in an honor shame culture. It is wildly different than the culture that we live in. That is very individualistic and guilt and innocence culture. It's like the difference between Japan and us. And there's even a saying where like, if, if America, if an American is going to do something, a Japanese person would do the opposite. Right. Like we're so wildly different. They don't lock their bikes up because they just don't have theft the way that we have it because they're honor shame culture. The net that it creates is like accountability on an on a grand scale. Now, does it mean that it's perfect? No, there's never going to be a government that's perfect. But the point is that. it's way different and we we oftentimes read like because of our individual nature and i think we might have talked about this the other day we read scripture the wrong way we look at the word you and we think it's me like the bible says that uh don't you know that you yourself are the temple of the most high god that's a plural you there that is not an individual you and what we do is we take it as an individual you and then all of a sudden it becomes a self-help thing like how i need to be a good steward of my body i need to eat healthy i need to exercise because i'm the temple of the most high god now that not to say that you shouldn't do that you should be a good steward of your body, but you yourself by yourself are not the temple of the most high God. The body of Christ is literally the body of God. It's his temple as a collective community of believers. We are the body of Christ. And if we can't see that, we look at it a completely different way. and what we should be doing is going to a place where how can i help how can i be a blessing to other people how can i serve instead of me me me me me this is my thing how and now this is going to be a hot take and some people might even get offended by this but it's like what's my mental health like how is my life going and this it's like the church is supposed to be a shrink now mental health is important and obviously it's something that we need to be more aware of and and and but mental health really does come from abiding in jesus I mean, if you want to be anxious for nothing, you sit in the presence of the God who's in his presence is fullness of joy. Right. And he will work out your heart and give you peace that surpasses understanding. And I'm not trying to discount the fact that we need to grow and develop, but we're doing it the wrong way. And Jesus says that his ways are not our own. And if we do it, that if we try to fix things. doesn't work okay i'm gonna i'm gonna preach so okay so the way our brains work neurologic this is scientifically proven you're 98 of who you're going to be for the rest of your life by the time you hit 30. because what happens is these pathways are created and then the the more you use them it's almost like there's a uh like a rubber around the pathway so it's really solidified so the more you think about it the more it solidifies it One of the biggest problems that we have in our culture is focusing too much on our mental health where we literally are just reinforcing the problems that we're struggling with as opposed to becoming free from it. The Bible doesn't say to fight sin. The Bible says to be transformed by the renewing of your mind. The Bible says to look up at God, to literally take every thought captive to the obedience of Christ. Set your mind on things above. Be anxious for nothing, but by prayer and petition, grant your request before God and the God whose peace surpasses understanding will be with you. Literally all these things. It's like, look at me. Jesus literally said he only ever did what he saw looking at the father. What saw the father do, right? And so if we can't see that there's a problem, but this, like I said, coincides with Jesus' ways are not our own. So the way that we fix our problems is not by trying to fix them. If I'm sitting here and I'm giving you a sermon and you're inspired and you're motivated and what happens is this list of things that you need to change, you're already starting on the wrong foot. Because that's you. The Bible says, seek first the kingdom of God and his righteousness and everything else will be added unto you. If you are listening to a sermon, you're like, you know what? I need to change this. I need to change this. I need to change this. No, you need to run to the feet of Jesus because he is the alpha, the omega, the beginning, the end, the firstborn from the dead, the ruler over the kings of the earth. He is the only one who brings change to somebody's heart that is actually tangibly. different change not where you're masking something you know it's like where alcoholic will quit will quit drinking but then they'll start smoking weed and smoking it's like that's still addiction it's just a different type of addiction but if you're actually abiding in god you're changing you're you're actually shifting and you look at him and the one who already beats in and conquered sin and death will shift your heart and transform you by the renewing of your mind so that you can focus on things above and walk righteously and then your mental health he will work that out

I was just going to say we have several examples of encounters with Jesus that absolutely change people's lives. Zacchaeus is one of those. He says, I'm going to your house. We don't have Zacchaeus saying, well, I'm going to agree with everything you have. No, he goes to his house. Okay, he invites his friends. Who are his friends? The sinners and tax collectors. Then at the end of the meal... Zakiya says, I'm changing my ways. I've spent time with you. You have impacted me. I am totally radically changing my life and my behavior. We've got more examples of that, too. Yeah, it's the overflow of that experience. Overflow. Yeah. So to go back to what we were you were mentioning earlier. The works that we do are an overflow of the relationship we have. In my tradition, we talk about things, you know, we'll use the Heidelberg Catechism, other things, but we talk about having guilt, having grace, and having gratitude. Everything I do in living is going to come from an overflow of gratitude because I've fully understood my need for the grace of God. So everything I'm trying to do is not to repay. It's because this is the God that loved me, and I want to demonstrate everything I can to flow out of that. So rather than having the mentality, and we're talking about people with their addicts, I've heard a lot of people push back on this recently, and it really makes sense to me. One of the things that a lot of addict recovery places have, and I don't fault them for this, is they start out their meetings with, hi, my name is so-and-so, and I'm an addict of this thing. They are identifying themselves with a thing they've overcome instead of saying, I'm a person that is free from this problem. They want to... in some ways recognize something that they should be free from and in christ we should be free so i don't want to absolutely i don't want to focus on uh and i know some christians do this i'm a sinner saved by grace no i want to focus on i have the grace of christ and i'm going to extend that grace to other people i want to focus on what i've received yeah and what i'm giving not what i was before

Absolutely. That's the full gospel. It's interesting that you're talking about addiction because I just had this conversation with a pastor, actually, and he wildly disagreed with me. I agree with you completely because that's basically what Paul said. He's like, he's no longer a sinner. He's not identifying as a sinner. Does that mean that he doesn't struggle with sin? No. Romans 7 and 8 is him talking about the struggle of sin. And what was the conclusion he came to? He came to the conclusion that as long as he hates what he's doing, it's no longer him sinning. It's sin manifesting itself. So there will be a struggle. but you have to the fullness of the gospel is not woe is me i am a sinner i i have fallen short of the glory of god we all fall short of the glory of god it's that's the first half the second half is i am a co-heir with christ i am more than a conqueror i am perfect while being made perfect get i mean this is and this even offends some people sometimes because of the blood of jesus i deserve heaven what now i right now i deserve to go to heaven what why because the blood of jesus is that powerful has nothing to do with me but if i act and and understand who i am in him i will act much differently i've talked about this before with some people. Essentially, if you wake up in the morning, if you have two days where you have nothing to do, and you wake up one of the days and you just stay in your PJs all day, and then the other day you're going to dress up and wear a suit, you will naturally get more done when you're wearing a suit. Period. The end. So it's who do you see yourself as? Because if you see yourself as a sinner who sucks at life and fails all the time, you're going to reproduce that. If you see yourself as co-heirs with Christ and you're literally a child of God walking with his authority everywhere you go, you will carry yourself in a different manner. And it's seeing who we are. And we have to rise up on wings like eagles. Like we have to actually trust that he's – what he says is true in john 17 he literally prayed he gave us his glory like what like jesus is like the glory that you gave me i now give to them it's wild yeah i am clothed with the glory of jesus what does that mean that means i deserve heaven and go and be careful because you don't want to be arrogant and say and start puffing yourself up because it's not because of you but you have to get to that place of understanding that you do because of the blood of jesus it's that powerful

Yeah, sometimes we get caught in those things, and sometimes we don't want to let people say, I've already arrived. But there's a whole lot of difference. Like, I'll just take a different relationship I have. There's not a point at which any one of my three children is ever going to worry about whether they're my children. There's not something that they can do that is going to make me love them less. I've told them since they were little, there's nothing you can do to make me love you less. That is just, I am your father. I love you. No matter if I agree, disagree with what you do. Sure, I'll be disappointed. Sure, I think you made wrong choices. Sure, I'll be angry with you. but I will never love you less because I can't. You are my child. You will always be my child. I'll never take that name from you. You can't get rid of it. You could disown me. You could walk away. You could break relationship with me, but I am not going to do that. Now, I'm not saying I'm speaking for everybody, but I'm taking my own relationship, and it's that mentality that we should have with God. that God is always there on our side. We are his child created in his image, and it's whether we're acknowledging it and accepting it or we're not.

Yeah, well, once you start going down that path, all of a sudden everything starts looking completely different. Because even in the context of that, as we're sitting here and we're kind of dissecting the way that God does things and seeing the fullness of things, because his ways are not our own. How can you be perfect while being made perfect? How can you be a saint while still being a sinner? It's like an upside-down thing. It doesn't make sense to us. How can Paul identify as more than a conqueror when he's sitting there getting frustrated with himself for not being able to conquer sin? How? And it's just a, it's a mindset understanding of like, our victory is not through our own self. Our victory is through the victory that Jesus walked in this earth and conquered sin and death. Like that's it. We can't, if we try to be victorious, we'll screw up. This is why there's so much burnout in the church because so often we try to fix, we try to fight sin. I think we talked about this as well. The idea that you can beat sin is just ridiculous.

Well, just to sum up, there's so much that seems to be we are creating a sin management system within the church.

It's exactly it, and that's the problem because you can't manage your own sin. You look at Jesus, and he will manage it for you. Because he will make you more like him. Like the fruit of the spirit is love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, and self-control. You will have self-control if you're abiding in his presence. But if you're trying to do it on your own strength, I got to stop doing this. I got to stop doing this. You're doing what I was talking about before. You're thinking about that thought and then you're reinforcing it. It's like an alcoholic thinking, I have to stop drinking. Well, good luck. Because now you're just thinking about alcohol. You shouldn't think about you need to stop drinking. You should stop thinking about alcohol completely and start thinking about Jesus and just set your mind on things above and it'll rewire your brain to think about things that you should be thinking about. that and when you start going down the path all of a sudden everything looks different because then you start seeing the way jesus does things and it's incredibly different than the way do we do things in church and even our streamers and this is what kind of what i was talking about before as far as like how i think that streamers need to change the way they do things we love to invite people to our space of comfort Like Christianity and Western culture is incredibly comfort based, which is not biblical. We're not going to get into that right there. But the Bible literally says in this life, you will have many struggles. The Bible also says that they will hate you for my namesake. So are we being hated for his namesake? Probably not, because we might not be brave enough to actually get to that space. But the the. The situation that Jesus does, the way he does things, he pursues people. But as Christians in Western culture, like come to church. Wait a minute. You're going to invite somebody to church. And when you do that. they have the entire risk factor on them.

Yeah.

They don't know who these people are. They feel uncomfortable. We just talked about feeling smitten when you walk into the four walls of the church. They're walking into an incredibly uncomfortable situation where Christianese is being used. You know, people are, you know, who knows what they're going to say, but they're going to be saying things that they have no idea what they're even talking about. A sermon is going to be given. They're really like, what is happening here? and and we want them to come to to us because why because it's easier because then we actually the the responsibility of the advancement of the kingdom of god is then placed on the system i can just trust the system here's a track and then you walk away it's like no that's not how it works like relationship is actually what's important pursuing people is what's important and if we stop trying to get people to come to us and instead go to them It'll change everything. That's why the Wawa Hut, which stands for we are who we are, which is my Discord server, blew up in the first place. And if streamers started doing this as believers, it would change everything and your streams would grow radically. If somebody comes into your chat, that is a person you should lock onto them. Not in a weird way, but it's like, hey, I should reach out to this person after I'm done with this stream. If people are giving you sheep... Because you're a streamer, you're putting yourself out there as a leader, you're essentially technically pastoring, right? So you don't have to be a pastor per se, but you're shepherding people, right? You're becoming a person that people look at for influence and what you're saying matters. So when God gives you somebody in your stream, if you are intentional with pursuing them and going after them... in relationship and friendship, not only are they going to be encouraged, they're going to share with their friends. That's why there was 500 people in the wild. I never streamed. I never did content creation. I never did. We didn't advertise things. People just started coming, like literally just sending invites, word of mouth. How do you get to 500 people in Discord server without doing anything? Like all I did was pursue people. And if we as reach conf content creators shifted the come to me. into i'm coming to you i'm going to meet you where you're most comfortable i'm going to come out of my comfort zone to meet you where you're comfortable to show you the kindness of god so that you can feel comfortable in the space of being around other believers that's it'll change everything

Absolutely. And if you watch when, you know, go through the whole book of Acts, they're constantly going out. They are constantly going out. They are meeting together in the temple courts daily with those who already believe, but they are constantly going out to those who are far away. There is no in the New Testament, if you build it, they will come. They had never heard of Iowa. They didn't know what corn was. So it's just not biblical. i like to say that i lived in iowa so i wasn't too far away from that but you know it's unfortunately on some level when you just take in what you've received you not everyone questions what they've received and so you don't know anything different than what you've seen And so when you can have people who aren't being reached and you can have compassion for them, you're going to figure out you need to do something different to reach those people that what has been going on has not reached them. So if you do have a concern, a compassion for the gamers, if you do have a concern and a compassion for name whatever group in your local community. that you're driving past, that maybe you need to figure out a way to reach them and a location where they're going to be welcome. I haven't talked about it on this stream, but I am a brew pastor, and brew pastors is a ministry out of Cleveland, and there's others that are similar to those. So they go into a brewery or a coffee house, because that's also brewing. You go into those places, and you bring the presence of Christ there. You don't ask people to leave that space. You go into the place where they're comfortable. You go into the space where they are going to be already at ease, and you don't ask them to change. You just come and you bring your presence and the presence of the body of Christ into that space, and then you're trying to not only bless that space, you're blessing the people that are there, you're blessing the staff, you're

that's a mentality that we should have is how can i bring the presence of christ wherever i'm going and i think that we do that on stream too we do that yeah absolutely that wherever we are i love that idea we should do that yeah absolutely it's interesting because yeah it's it's a whole different way of of seeing things and and when you look at it that way all of a sudden you you realize that god's ways really aren't our own and it's it's by serving that you gain it's by giving that you gain it's giving like jesus gave up his life and guess what guess what he got well he's sitting at the right hand of the father interceding for the nations and he's the name above all names and so i mean if we uh man If we can just shift this just a little bit, it literally will change everything. If we can just be intentional about pursuing people. And it's hard because our culture has a lot of the fear of man. And we have a lot of social anxiety in this culture because a lot of social situations are... We're so individualistic that social interaction is not nearly as often as it used to be. And it's in places that are... like this like a social interaction over over a phone call is way different than a social interaction when you're next to a person and having conversation with them and so it can be very difficult and very daunting the idea of having a conversation with your neighbor but i think we do complicate things you don't need to sit there and talk to your neighbor about the gospel like you should just say hello to them and be like hey my name is matt Like, how are you? It's nice to be your neighbor. What do you do? And just literally developing a relationship. Like, Jesus didn't walk around to people and be like, hey, bro, I'm the son of God. Are you going to give your life to me? No, he literally had a conversation with the woman at the well, and he's like, what are you doing? And she's like, well, you know, and in fact, that was incredibly offensive to culture, right? He's talking to a woman, a Samaritan woman, nonetheless. The disciples were probably sitting off to the side and being like, what in the world is he doing right now?

Yeah, like he's having a conversation. He's our rabbi, but I'm glad nobody's here to see what he's doing, you know?

Right, and then he operates with compassion towards her, tells her that there's going to be a time when people worship in spirit and in truth and don't have to go anywhere. And then he tells her to go get her husband, knowing full well what the answer to that question was. But he never was like, he didn't front, he wasn't trying to, even with like, there were so many times where he didn't even say who he was. and he would tell people like don't go tell people what i did here and it was like he just did things differently and really it was just love pointing people towards the father pointing people towards mercy and love Because God is the change agent. You can't save somebody. And if you convince them to accept Jesus, they're not accepting Jesus on the right terms. You shouldn't accept Jesus strictly just because somebody convinced you to do so. The Bible doesn't say it's your theological understanding that leads people to repentance.

you know sorry i hadn't heard it had her put that way your theological understanding is going to bring people into the kingdom so you better have it right oh wow um but i was i was i was thinking of uh a phrase and i can't remember who said it uh but a man convinced against his will is of the same opinion still So if I can persuasively get an environment in which you can say what you're supposed to say, whether that's for good or ill, you go away and leave. You didn't actually change. You just said the thing that I expected or wanted you to or led you to be able to say. So you didn't change anything.

um yeah dude i'll show you okay i'll share a small testimony i used to um during uh when i okay so i used to work at the cheesecake factory as a server and in 2015 i moved back down to san diego i was in la and honestly i hated la it was too much traffic and it wasn't my vibe so i came back home and i didn't want to work at the cheesecake factory anymore so i quit and i was that's when i kind of started teaching music production but i needed to do something else and god literally told me to deliver pizza So I delivered pizzas. Ironically, I made as much money doing that as I did as a server at the Cheesecake Factory. But in the context of it, I met this person who was a manager. I picked up a shift, or I had to work at a different store, and I met this manager. And... I don't think she'll care if I use her name. So her name is Emily. And I knew her for a few years. I don't front Christianity. I'm not going to be like, hey, I'm a Christian. I'm just going to, like, whatever God opens the door to, you know, I'm just going to be relational with people. And when he opens the door, he opens the door. So a few years after I met this person, we had had many conversations about life, about spirituality, about things. And I never felt like it was time for me to share anything. I was just being encouraging. She messages me. So I live in San Diego. I'm down the street from everything you could ever think of. I like talk about community. Like all of us know each other. There's restaurants, there's places to go and we all go to the same things. So she's down the street from me and she's at a bar and she's like, Hey, I'm getting a drink at this, at this bar. Do you want to come? and say hi and i literally was like i don't want to drink i'm i'm good and the moment i said no i got convicted and god literally like irks my heart to go out and i was like what now you're telling me to go out to bars okay so i go out and we hang out for a little bit and then we get we come back to my house and we're sitting in my garage outside and she's smoking a cigarette So at this point in time, I'm thinking, well, I'm here for a reason. God convicted me to come out. So I guess I'm just going to start talking to her about God. So we start having conversation about like spirituality and religion. And she tells me that she's a student of religion. She loves studying different things and they're all the same. It's, you know, the new age situation. It's all the same. It's a hero's journey and, and where it's all going after one God. And I start trying to be a bit like pull in like biblical truths and stuff like that. And. And it's just this debate, right? And so there's a moment in the conversation where I'm just like, all right. And I tell her this. I'm like, look, we could debate all night long, and at the end of that debate, I'm going to be more solidified in my viewpoint, and you're going to be more solidified in yours. Or I could just show you that God is real right now. And she's like, what? I was like, do you want to meet God? And she's like, yes. So I put my hand on her head, and I pray for her. And I'm literally just like, Holy Spirit, will you show Emily that you're real? And will you show her how much you love her? dude she'll tell you the testimony it's absolutely insane she starts she starts encountering the presence of god in an a miraculously healing way where all the pain all the hurt all the anger all the depression all the the struggles that she's gone through is just washing away and she starts ugly crying like snot falling down her face and for 10 minutes straight all she can say is i don't deserve this i don't deserve this i don't deserve this i don't deserve this and instantly instantaneously after all that debate has an encounter with God and gives her life to Jesus. Just like that. What did that have to do with me? Literally nothing. I was just a conduit to point towards him. But if I were to sit there and try and convince that person, not only is it ineffective, it can actually be counterintuitive. It can be... counter effective and it can actually harm more than it can do good because we can't understand god with our carnal minds we can't wrap our head around an uncreated god that's not something we can do and when somebody has a fallen mind or a carnal mind and they haven't yet connected with god trying to explain it to them is not going to be an effective way to do things right But showing them the kindness of God and the goodness of God and his presence that is peaceful and healing will change everything. You can argue all day long, but you cannot argue an encounter with God. And that is the most effective way to do things. And if we go after people, it changes everything. if we pursue people it changes everything and we just bring god to our scenarios and think a little bit differently you know i read a book about uh it's called the likability factor when i was a kid because i was a bit of a loser and i needed to learn how to socialize better and so what the the number one quote that i remember from that book is you will gain more friends in two months trying to develop a sincere interest in two people than you will in two years trying to get two people interested in you And so when I first read that, I was like, that seems a little weird. I'm going to gain more friends by not trying to gain friends, but trying to just love on people. And I was like, I'm going to test this. And I did. And it changed my life because I picked two people that semester in school to just focus on these two guys. I'm just going to be an encouragement to them. I'm not going to try and force myself to be their friends. I'm just going to be there for them. And I'm going to develop an interest in them. And by the end of that semester, I had more friends than I ever had. And I'm like, this is a biblical principle. Like you give to other people. How can I bless you? And then the end result of that is massive blessing in your life. And we have to shift the way that we do things because we're starving in our culture of Western culture Christianity. We're really not full. We're starving for the works and the overflow of the fruit of God, but we're trying to muster it up on our own strength and we don't even realize it. And then we wonder why there isn't fruit coming from it because we're doing it backwards because his ways are not our own.

Wow. That's just some good stuff there, man. And I love that story. And one of the interesting things is you had that that kind of an encounter with a person right there next to them. But you had to be obedient to get to that point. You didn't just happen. You had to take little steps along the way. And I think there's times where we can have some similar things, whether we've known somebody for a short time or a long time. And the door gets opened up when we are listening and we are obedient. And that's pretty amazing thing, man. I love that story.

He does the work, man. And it's way more peaceful that way anyways. Like, you know, Paul said to the Thessalonians, he's like, live a simple life. Do as I instructed you. Live a simple life. Work with your hands and keep to yourself. I mean, keep yourself literally just means don't get wrapped up in gossip and nonsense.

Right, right, right. Don't be a busybody. Don't be involved in everybody's business. Don't know everything. Yeah. That's it? Yeah.

That's too simple. Seems like a good plan to me. Yeah. And because of our individualistic culture, we get so wrapped up in ourselves, we get so wrapped up in our calling. But it's like, what is your calling? Well, we all have the same exact calling. The fruit of which comes out of it will be different because that is Jesus' job. It's not our job to bear fruit. It's our job to abide in him, and we will bear fruit in his timing. But he's the one who does it all. And if you just sit in his – if you abide in him, everything will change. Like, we don't understand it. It's like – perfect story would be – I don't remember who this was who told me this story, but there was an evangelism that, or there's an evangelist that spent his entire life going out on the street every day and giving people tracks and just talking to people about Jesus. And he did it for 20 plus years. And finally he was just burned out and he was praying. He was like, God, why isn't anybody giving their life? Like what? It feels like I'm not doing anything. And Jesus literally asked him, he's like, did I tell you to do this? He's like, I don't know if he did. He's like, well, you should probably see what I even want you to do. And so the guy, so he has a conversation with God and God is like, stop doing this. Get into my presence. Take three months off from evangelism. Just be with me. So he does it, and he just spends time with Jesus. It's like a month and a half in, and he's so overwhelmed. He's just like, I have to share. Because he's in the presence of God, and it's starting to bubble up within him. He's like, I have to share this news with other people. So a month and a half in, he walks downstairs and talks to the first person he sees, and they instantaneously give their life to Jesus. And he's like, what? I've been waiting for this for 20 years. And that, and Jesus was like, this is what it looks like when you abide in me. Now get back in there. You have another month and a half because if we, it's, we don't like slowing down and being still and knowing that he is God. We don't like him to be the worker. We, because it feels like it's too slow for us. It's like, I want it to be this way. I want it to be moving. What are we doing here? Why are we sitting still? You know? And it's like, no man, God doesn't need your help. He wants your heart. That's it. And he will partner with you because he loves working with his children. And he made you for that purpose. But your calling is to abide in the presence of God, not to be an influencer on Twitch. Does that mean that you shouldn't be an influencer on Twitch and you won't be? No, he will make influencers on Twitch, but that's not your calling. Your calling is to abide in him. And whatever he does through you in the context of that is great. Because trust me when I say he knows you better than you know yourself. So whatever it is that's going to come out of abiding in him is going to be good and you're going to like it.

Absolutely. And, you know, there's different levels. The question was asked, what are we talking about with calling? There's different levels at which people use it. Not everyone uses it the same way. But in essence, I feel led to move in this direction. So like you were talking about, I need to abide in him. I need to just refrain from all of the action that I was doing because I thought that's what I was supposed to do. I am involved in Twitch space, not because I'm trying to be anything amazing or fantastic, but because it was like, everybody just kept saying and pointing, when are you going to do this? When are you going to do this? And as I spent time in prayer, it was like, okay. This is part of what I'm supposed to do. I actually like to arrogantly say at times, like, what do you want me to do? I'm not going to game. I play single-player games. I'm not multiplayer. I don't like first-person shooter. I don't like all these other things. I'm really niche over in this one place, and nobody's going to want to watch me stream. So what do you want me to do? I'm a pastor. Fine, I'll read the Bible. That'll tell you that I shouldn't be a streamer. Let me just prove. I'm going to do sermon prep on Fridays, okay? So we're going live with sermon prep. I'm going to show you I shouldn't be streaming. And then it was just like, my goodness, this is amazing. Can you do more? what like okay god clearly this isn't what i want to do this is it this isn't what i thought i would be doing in fact you know like i for the podcast there were a lot of people suggested i do a podcast like what am i supposed to add to the conversation i don't have anything to add i'm not i'm not supposed to do a podcast And then last year, it became out of conversations and guidance that was like, you got friends. You can bring in your friends. You can have them talk about what they're doing so that they can have encouragement and so the church at large can hear about what God's up to. oh yeah, I could do that. So I'm just the host. Like I'm not, I'm not, I'm here to make you look good. You know, like not that anybody who's my, you know, my guest needs it, but I'm just saying that's my role. My role isn't for me to be the one everybody's coming to. My role is to bless your community, lift up your community and highlight what God is already at work in you. so that the larger Christian community knows that, they understand it, and there is somebody, I'm just convinced of this, and I don't know who it is, there's somebody who's going to listen to this VOD and every single one, and they're going to go, God, I didn't know I could go do that. God, I didn't realize you were calling me to that. God, I needed that story so that I could be right with you or so that I could pursue what you're telling me to do. That's the only reason I'm pursuing this is because that's what God said I get to do and be a part of.

Yeah, it's so crazy because oftentimes what we do is we run after God with our whole heart to find out what our calling is, and then we want to run after our calling with our whole heart instead. But can you imagine what David would have looked like if he tried to become king on his own strength? I mean, it just wouldn't have happened.

Yeah.

Yeah, he's like, okay, I'm supposed to be king. And in fact, you see that with Joseph because Joseph got – he's like, all right, I'm going to rule over my brothers, so I'm just going to make this happen now. I'm going to go tell them, guys, I'm going to rule over you. Whoops. And then know what, you know, 13 years later, like he's in prison for two years and then or he's in prison and then he interprets a dream, thinks that he's going to get out and then he's prison for two more years. Like he just got wrecked by God. Why? Because it's not his responsibility to bear fruit. And if God is going to choose for you to do something, you better believe that if he's going to do it in his timing, he's going to put you through stuff before you do it.

absolutely absolutely yeah we we often and there's so many stories of this uh when we were talking earlier but biblically there's so many stories of we run ahead of god we are impatient absolutely the story of abraham and sarah is a story of impatience um but i don't i don't blame them i mean god promises them something that they're already too old to fulfill and then he makes them wait 25 years before he does it Like, I understand why you were impatient. I get it. And that's in an agricultural setting where you understand that things take time. I live in a microwave setting where, like, if it didn't happen already, like, I'm sorry, but I ordered my food. Like, okay, this is just an example of how my brain works. I can't stand drive-through. And I order my food ahead of time. I don't want to get in line at the drive-thru to wait in line for my food. No, I want to walk in the door and my food is ready. So I have figured this out on every app that I use to order food from. I tell it that I'm at the store already five minutes before I get there so I don't have to wait when I show up. okay i lie to you i tell you i'm at the store you make my food i walk through the door and i watch you hand it to me and call my name immediately um so like i'm not waiting like i don't want to wait on anything so it's so hard at times when god says yeah i got you bro

it's so hard because our culture is definitely very much so go go go go go go go and god forbid somebody actually be still and know that he's dude we have so much anxiety a lot of that comes from the space of the lack of space that we give our brain to process the things that we're going through in life and then over years and years and years of not allowing that to happen whenever you slow down you get anxious now it's like it's incredibly difficult for people to slow down in our culture because they've been bombarding their brains with over stimulation over and over and over and over and over again that when they slow down they're like oh my gosh i remember the first time i did long-term prayer stuff i was at the international house of prayer in kansas city That's where I fell in love with Jesus. I didn't agree with a lot of things they said. It was really weird the way that God used that ministry to literally just hedge me in to fall in love with him. But I was there, and I remember we had to be in the prayer room like 30-something hours a week when I first started. So I was supposed to be there four hours a day. I remember the first day. I mean, I was I was on the spectrum before the spectrum existed. Right. Like like, you know, you got you got ADHD or something. Here's some drugs. You know, it's like you can't sit down. OK, here's, you know, Ritalin or Dremel or all these different things. And so I wasn't taking I was done with that after high school. Like, yeah, I'm good. I don't want to do drugs anymore. So so I'm sitting there in the prayer room 30 minutes and I'm like, oh, my gosh. have to do this for three and a half more hours and then i have to do this for four hours tomorrow and the next day and the next day and the next day for the next three months and i started freaking out i'm like oh i went i walked over to the coffee shop i grabbed some coffee which definitely probably isn't the best thing to do when you're anxious just start pacing back and forth and i'm like i don't know how to do this i can't do this

This is freaking me out, man.

And by the end of the three months, I loved sitting in the prayer room for four hours. It was incredibly peaceful. But it took time to basically murder my flesh, to develop self-control, to be able to be still. And then I found a peace that I never even knew existed. And I went from being anxious and depressed to being incredibly peaceful and just walking in the presence of God. And I can share testimonies. It's too much for today. I am going to start doing these testimonies and sharing these things and putting them on Instagram and the things. It's not going to be my personal page. It's the build is what it's called. The build.org is the website, although I don't even think it's up right now. But whatever. We don't have to talk about that.

But the point is that maybe somebody will find it in a VOD in a year from now when they need it. So it'll be good.

Nice. So, yeah, there's I mean, there's there's a lot that God has been giving me, man. There's a lot that he's been showing me. There's a lot that. Because I've gone through it. I feel like he actually wants me to start doing more sharing. Not I feel. He does. He wants me to share the things that he's taught me. I've gone through the whole Joseph turmoil refining situation. And it really comes down to it. It's like my fault. Everything that I ever experienced that was negative was really just my fault. Me being stupid. know falling on my face over and over again trying to i was in the presence of god like nobody's business in kansas city and i loved walking with him and then i came out to san diego and i couldn't find the same community and then also i'm falling on my face because the only community i have is the cheesecake factory and then i'm drinking and then i'm drinking excessively and then i'm drinking regularly And all of a sudden I'm just like, God, I miss you. I don't know why I'm an idiot. When did I become an idiot? And he was really just exposing my need for a savior because I grew up in the church and I had no idea how broken I actually was and how much I actually needed him and how much I had the propensity to be a sinful. If I'm by myself and I don't have community, a one cord strand is very much so easily broken. And so years and years and years of that will humble you and make you realize that you're nothing without God. And it'll give you the amount of times that he showed me his mercy in the context of my stupidity. I remember one night I was so mad at myself. I was sick and tired of struggling with alcohol and I was drunk. And the presence of God hit me so hard that I started bawling my head off while I'm drunk. and i'm like god why are you doing this right now why are you like loving on me in the context of my sin and i couldn't even wrap my head around a god that was that good that just doesn't he's not offended by my shortcomings he knows my heart and my desires and he knows the struggle within me and i'm like you just you really are just good you're the best god anybody could think of this isn't like a condemning god who's up in heaven smiting people and accusing people he's like hey i i know your struggle in fact ironically i've been through it i put myself in the city and i bore the full weight of sin not just your sin all sin So he understands what we've gone through and he understands what we're going through and he understands that we're weak and he's okay with it. If he wasn't okay with it, then he wouldn't have died in the first place to resurrect and conquer the death and the struggle that's inside of us. So, amen.

Amen, indeed. Okay, so we've gone all over the place, and I am totally good with the free flow of everything, because when you get talking on something, it's amazing what God can do and what God can use in different ways. But let's just back up a minute, because we were talking about you did it differently. You started with your Wawa server. So you developed that, you were working in that. Before we jump into you doing any streaming, were there any moments that were just obstacles you had to overcome as you were doing that? Because you're talking about it and a lot of people might be thinking, I don't know how to pursue people. I don't know what I'm going to get a response from people. So as you were doing those things and developing it and growing it, what were some obstacles you had to overcome?

i mean what we were talking about is definitely one of them as far as like god bearing fruit in his time because when i started the group like i had my small group but when i started my server i was like i don't really know what i'm doing i think i'm just gonna hang out in voice chat and so i just did and i was at that point in my life i was not waking up at the time that i wake up now to these days i'll wake up at like 6 45 in the morning but i was going to bed at like 6 45 in the morning those days So I would stay up and I'd play video games with people and it took a while. Like it gained momentum, but the first portion of it was literally just me. It was just a couple people. It was just being – what does the Bible say? It says if you're faithful with little, you'll be faithful with much. Like he who has will be given more. He who does not have even what he does have will be taken from him, right? So it's like, okay, God, I got two people here. So I'm going to be a good steward of these two people. And then two became three. And then three became four. And it was like just simple. We are not meant to – micromanage things and we're not meant to wear the burden of an of a vision because oftentimes what happens is we have these grandiose visions of what we think god wants to do in our lives and then the pressure of that becomes a little bit overwhelming and it's just not we shouldn't think like that really what you need to do is like what's the next step you need to take like that's it i don't need to map out i mean the bible even says it right Man plans out his steps, but it's God that orchestrates them, right? So really what you do matters very little because if you're following him, he's probably going to lead you a little bit of a different path than you thought you were going to go down. So just simple stewardship. And it was hard because I was like, what am I doing? But all of a sudden, I mean, there's so many testimonies, man. I remember when I had 13 moderators in my server and we all had a meeting. And these are non-Christians mostly. There's a few – I think like three of them were Christians. Three or four of them were Christians. And so we had a meeting because I'm big on team development. That's a different story for a different day. But there's something that I'm good at developing relationships amongst people. So – What we did is we sat there for, nobody even wanted to do the meeting, but I told them, I was like, trust me, it's going to be good. So one of the things that I do that can incredibly deepen, and you should do this with every single leadership group you have, you should do this. I took a moment, it took like, we were in chat for five hours. And everybody got on the hot seat and every single person told them why they love them, encouraged them, just like showered them with encouragement. And the first one is always a little weird where it's like, what are we doing here? And it's like surface level. And then it gets a little bit deeper. And then all of a sudden the tears start coming. And then it's like, everybody's crying and everybody's like, oh my gosh, you've changed my life and blah, blah, blah. And God, blah, blah, blah, blah. you know and at the end of it they all encouraged me and they were all crying they were like that my life has been changed because of this server now this is a god situation because all i did was show up and then all i did was like just be intentional i mean it's incredibly simple i i said hello to you right how did how did we get to a place of doing this stream yeah i said hello you said hello exactly then wherever it goes we don't have to figure out the entire thing and it's so much more peaceful if we actually trust god to just be the good shepherd that he says that he is like you just have to put one foot in front of the next and whatever happens he's gonna bless it as you are going through life make disciples of all nations not go and make no it's as you are going right

Yeah, we don't need to go down that whole rabbit trail. You and I can both pick apart the original and the implied part and the things that are left out and all of that. But it's not, yeah, it's like as you are going, like while you're living your life. Like that would be the direction that I would go with the translation there. While you're living your life, wherever you are, do these things. That doesn't work real well when you're just trying to translate one word from Greek into English, though. So they don't do it that way very often.

Oh, yes. Also, I did just randomly see Verbal Prophet said he looked at my profile. They didn't realize that I'm a Christian. That's on purpose, actually. So I am not afraid to have conversations about God, but the situation that we have in this culture is Christianity has an omen over it, and I am not a Christian by the proverbial sense of the term. I am a follower of Christ. A lot of Christianity has a bad omen of a lot of judgment, pointing fingers, throwing stones, calling things out, and trying to get other people to be what I think it should be. And not only is it not good, but what oftentimes will happen is if you front and say, I'm a Christian because of the omen that Christianity has in Western culture, a defense mechanism is put up and they don't listen to anything you have to say. But if you if they're just talking to a perfect example would be what you just said with your whole golf situation.

Right.

Right. Like they didn't know you were a pastor. But the moment they did, all of a sudden they're acting differently and acting weird. If I front that I'm a Christian, I'm not going to get people's genuine self. And and I want to be able to just have a conversation with you in the same way that, you know, I don't need somebody to wear. I'm a plumber on their shirt as they're walking down the street because that's what they do. You know, I and I'm intentionally now I will have areas that I am intentionally separated things. It's purposeful for for evangelism. because my server isn't a christian server and it doesn't say anything about there's definitely posts on it because we're not afraid to share god so there's people who post like christian stuff but it's a it's a space for people to be able to have conversations about jesus and and i intentionally do that but i do believe that god is definitely calling me to a place of being able to share more things so the build is what is going to be specifically for teaching and talking about scripture and talking about life and whatnot but i don't even in fact i was hesitant to stream um on my channel this because i want to intentionally be incognito because i don't want to have a conversation with a bunch of people i don't want to sit there and preach at people that's not effective individual conversations are the most effective and i've been doing this for years like i have testimonies for days the first person that was in the wawa hut that i hung out with he was mormon his name is piglet on the internet you've probably met him He goes to Lux and he, he, when I met him, he wanted to die. He literally was suicidal. He didn't want to live. He was depressed. He hated everything about his life. He wasn't a believer. He actually walked, he was Mormon and he hated the Mormon church because it felt so, he felt so heavy all the time. He felt like he wasn't, you know, worthy of things. And I just was, I just loved on him for a few weeks. And after a few weeks, it was very clear. Like God was like, preach. show him my love and i literally just unloaded and i was like this is who god is he is not a mormon god joseph smith is was seen visited by a demon not an angel sorry for you if you're a mormon um and uh and he's i was like god is love like he is in him he is light in him there is no darkness he loves us unconditionally and he's like he's like excited about he's like i believe it i believe it and he accepted jesus instantaneously why because i waited on it like jesus only ever did what he saw the father doing right know the guy who got healed outside the gates of beautiful peter yeah how many times like they would put people outside regularly to beg so how many times did jesus walk past that person and not heal him why do why was it peter that healed him then Now, I'm not going to sit here and pretend like I have a direct line to God and I always hear his voice. You know, that's not the way that it goes. But I do, like Paul said, he was all things to all people so that one might be saved. If I'm going down the street and I'm blaring the trumpets, hey, I'm a Christian, everybody. That's not being all things to all people. And I'm not saying that you, there isn't a time and a space for that because there is a time and a place for everything. And there's definitely a time to speak out truth and dependent upon the scenario, culturally, even politically, the things that might go on. Like there is a time to be authoritative and loud with your voice, but personally. I am definitely an evangelist, and I'm very effective at doing it because I don't do it. I point people towards God. Just a little bit.

Just a little. I could just sense it a little bit. No, you totally come across it. And I think God's gifting for us, and where we're called to, we need to take into account what we're doing. So you have taken into account what you publish because if you put a barrier between somebody and the gospel, you're not able to give the gospel to them. I, on the other hand, have taken a totally different approach because if people find out I'm a pastor, I don't want them to feel like I bait and switched them. Well, you didn't tell me that up front. Why were you lying? Why were you hiding that? So it's because of that, and then I'm trying to make it so people can figure out I'm not really taking myself that seriously. So that's why I'm flat-capped, dapper pastor. I'm not holier than thou. I'm a pastor in a hat. OK, I cannot tell you the number of people that really don't think you can be a pastor in a hat. I know those people and I just tell them Jesus can handle it. OK, it's not a problem. Plus, there's a passage and it's I'm blanking on it right now where it says put a clean turban on his head. So there isn't a problem with. Plus, the priests were supposed to wear turbans. So, you know, like, I think pastors should be wearing turbans, you know, because that's what the Bible says in the Old Testament there. You know, so, like, we could have all these kinds of weird arguments, but your decision is so that God can use you for the people he's putting in your path. And the decision I've taken is not the same one because God's going to put different people in my path.

absolutely and that's exactly the point because like when he was asking is like i i don't see that there's a christian on your profile that's on purpose but that doesn't mean that the people who have christian on their profile shouldn't like i'm just i'm doing things i'm the way that god has called me to do things like i literally am i do evangelism like that the girl that i prayed for she would tell you the only reason she was even willing to allow me to pray for her or even talk about that is because i had already developed trust with her outside of christianity she was literally like she was shocked that i believe this she's like you're one of the i'm this is not me trying to puff myself up she literally just said she's like you're one of the smartest people i've ever met i've ever met you believe in jesus i'm like no i know he's real yeah i don't just believe he's real he is i am not there's no doubt i have had incredibly powerful encounters with god i have seen jesus is real he is alive he's he is ascended to the throne at the right hand of the father interceding for the nations So because of her, because of my not fronting, there's no way we would have probably even been friends if I would have been like, hey, I'm a Christian. It's like, well, what is, I mean, the Bible even says, what does light have to do with darkness? Christians don't, I mean, non-Christians don't feel good about being around somebody who's overly refined.

Christians, like, they don't feel like, what do you have in common with them? I love your march. That is so, you know, put together, like that march. Yeah.

And I'm not trying to be rude towards people who do things a little bit of a different way. This is just what God does through me. And it's effective and it works. And if you judge a tree by its fruit, God has birthed some serious amount of fruit in my life. And it's not because of anything that I do specifically. It's just I point towards him. But I do it in a way that is like not – I'm not trying to –

give you a 12-step program to unlock the you know the the christ within you you know like program you already said it's abide in him yes yeah that's that's it's a one-step program it's a one-step program abide in him that's that's it are you abiding in him and if you aren't people can tell and if you are people can tell i mean i'm just convinced of that The people that are abiding in Christ, I can tell because I always feel like my burden has been lifted whenever I leave having a conversation or leave the presence where they were at. I feel like my burdens are lifted because of their presence, because they're abiding in Christ. And those that aren't, I've usually taken their burdens with me.

you know yeah and it's interesting how god does things when you handle when for me like i i have a crew that i um was a okay so i music production and stuff like that djing stuff i have a friend who owns like 180 acres and of land in north san diego so we've had raves but they're with non-christian people so i've done dj stuff and i've done raves with these people and i've i've i developed a friendship with them over time It took them a year before they even knew that I was a Christian. But I'm not afraid to talk about Jesus. It's just I'm going to wait for the opportunity that he gives to me to do it. So one of the people in the community started saying some things where I'm just like, all right, I'm going to address like we'll talk about this. And we started talking about spiritual stuff. And I'm like, all right, here we go. And so then I I start talking to her about Jesus. And then I'm talking to her. We're unpacking life because she used to be a Christian and she walked away from God. And now she actually calls herself a believer again after a couple years of having conversations with her. But because of that conversation, all of a sudden it starts to bleed throughout the community. Oh, Matt's a Christian. But then it's a different situation because they all know me. So now instead of being like, I guarantee you if I was labeled a Christian before, I wouldn't even have been accepted into the community at all. But because of that, they find out that I'm a Christian later, but they already trust me at that point in time. So instead of running, then they're asking me questions. Then they're coming to me. I remember the second time. Oh, so crazy. I actually feel the presence of God just thinking of it. They wouldn't care if I gave names. I'm not going to give last names. But the first person's name, her name is Chelsea. And we had conversation over time. And one of her best friends' name is Leah. And it was so crazy because we were sitting. I had talked with Chelsea a lot about Jesus. And I was sitting at Leah and David. That's their together, their husband and wife. I was sitting outside their porch. And Leah walks out of nowhere. We had never talked about Jesus at all at this point in time. I'm sitting out on their porch and there's a chair that's empty next to me. She comes over, sits down, and she looks at me. She's like, Matt, I want to know God more. And I'm like, what? and so now we i've had conversations with jesus with literally all of them i've prayed over them like they're all being stirred up and it wasn't if it wasn't for me taking that year of just developing their friendship before they even knew that i was a christian they wouldn't be listening to any of this stuff and they're all being pointed towards jesus now and actually being discipled basically and encouraged

Well, we because, yeah, you're talking about being an evangelist, but we sometimes have one image of an evangelist in our mind. And that's the evangelist that stands up, tells everybody about Jesus and gives an altar call. And there is this is the moment of decision and it has to happen now. And if not, I got no time for you and I go away. And I'm not disparaging anybody who's done any of those. kinds of, you know, tent revivals and those kinds of things. I'm just saying that mentality that has that expectation. And we were talking about how things are slow and we don't want to build relationship with people. Like you build the relationship with people over time. You wait for the opportunity for God to give you to share in those people's lives. that's how you do it in a way that impacts people. And then it's also, well, if you said, no, I don't have any time for you and I move on, I got to find the next one. No, you're already in relationship with them. They know you're not going away. So they are willing to stay in relationship with you because you've already committed to the relationship before they were pursuing God. And I love what you said earlier about it's helping people take one step closer. And I love the idea of... People might be 10 steps away from neutral, or they might be 10 steps on this side of neutral towards Jesus. But it doesn't matter where you are. It might have taken a year to get them to a point of being neutral or just being a negative 3 instead of a negative 10. And you can't always see all of those things. And, well, they're not following Jesus yet, so it wasn't worth it. Oh, it was all worth it all the way along.

Yeah, and I mean it's also like – I guess it goes back to what I was talking about with Jesus. Like Jesus wasn't – Sounding the trumpets when he came in. Hey guys, I'm the Messiah. I'm a Christian because I believe in me. You know what I mean? So like I said, I'm not trying to down on anybody.

No, absolutely. I know you're not. The people that don't know, yeah, you're not. We're talking around the fruit and the results that we have. And if we have no fruit, if we're not having results, then are we doing the things that we're supposed to be doing? And also, like, I'm not called to do the same things you are. I got no musical talents. I mean, like, if people are waiting for me to put music out so that you can, you know, worship God, like, you're going to be waiting a long time. It's just not going to be. Now, if you want me to change words to songs, I can handle that part. I can change the words. Once you've written the song, I can either make it funny or I can ruin it. But that's probably all I can do for you.

Right.

Nice. That's funny.

River. That's good. That's good. Always be preaching.

Yeah. Absolutely.

Yeah. I'm actually excited about what God is doing. There's definitely a shift that's happening. I feel like a lot of people are starting to become privy to this type of gospel where where it's biblical, like there's a reason Paul said he was all things to all people. Like instead of, I mean, being, just being, being with people, living amongst people, not being of the world, but being, being in the world. So this is, this is an interesting even thought because the Bible says be in the world, but not of it. But we always talk about the be not of the world portion of it, but it's a command, right?

Yes.

Not of the world, but the beginning portion says be in the world. We don't focus on that part. Be in the world. Just don't be of it. But you've got to be there. If you're the light of the world, the city on the hill cannot be hidden. It's ironic because this whole entire four walls of the church that we were talking about at the beginning, that's putting your light under a basket. Like we just run to the safe place that's comfortable, but you are the light of the world. So when I go out, if I actually believe that the Bible is truth, when I go out, I carry authority with me whether or not I speak or not. Dude, literally Peter's shadow hailed people. jesus got touched his robe and healed people when you walk out you bring authority with you so if you are the light of the world you don't have to scream hey guys i'm the light of the world here i'm coming through i'm the light no you just are one and then you walk through and when you do that if you're abiding in christ you will literally change atmospheres and that's where god says Wherever you put your foot, I will give that to you. I have given you authority to trample on all scorpions, all snakes, all power of the enemy, literally because of just being the light of the world. And so I want to be the light of the world, but I want to do it for the sake of the gospel, not for myself. And I don't want to convince – dude, convincing people is exhausting. I'm pretty good with words. I'm pretty good at debating. I got really good at it and to the place of wanting to never do it again because there were so many times in my life where I'm debating with somebody and I'm like, I can't understand how they don't get this. Like I literally just proved this to them. I gave them the facts and they're like, no. They're reading it verbatim and they're like, no. I'm just like, this is worthless. Why am I debating? I'm tired. And I just stopped. He's like, you know what, God? I can't do this. You have to be the one that changes people.

then it's just more fun and it's more you see more fruit it's more peaceful and you just get to partner with god instead of having to do it all yourself there's no expectations whatsoever i i love so you're talking about partnering with god i love i'm trying to remember where it is where it talks about he gave us the ministry of reconciliation and it's like that we get to partner with god It's not that God needed us in that work at all. He allows us to be in the partnership of his reconciling the world to himself. It's just a fun thing to be able to say, God doesn't need me to do a podcast. God could just declare everything he needs to. He could just help the church do what it needs. He doesn't need me. But God lets me get like, it's just fun to get to be part of it. Like in the same way, this is how I equate things. Like my wife was never good at having our kids participate in stuff. It's like, no, it's just faster for me to just do the dishes and to have the kids help with the dishes. And it's like. I don't need the kids to do the dishes. I want to spend time with the kids. So I'm going to have the kids help me do the dishes so they can learn how to do the dishes, but I don't care if they ever learn how to do the dishes. I'll do it and make sure it's done, but they get to be with me in that. And I did that all the time with my kids. I would ask, what's funny is sometimes they say, hey, you want to help me do this? And my kids got to the point where they're like, no, Dad, I don't want to. That's all right. You can just watch then. And I was like, you know, you are going to be spending time with me. I'm inviting you into spending time with me. I don't actually need you to do anything. i'm inviting you to spend time so would you want to help me do this okay fine i'll help you do this uh we also had a saying in my house too my kids well like they loved when they got older because they knew the answer when someone say do we have to and i would always say no you get to

Yeah, that's it's so good. And it's that's the way that we have to see things because our brains aren't very good at doing things that we have to do, because then you start feeling that weight of expectation and then you're anxious and then it's just rough. But if you think of like, I don't have to I don't have to advance the kingdom of God. I get to get to get to partner with God and it's fun. And if we actually knew him. would know that he's better than he's better than anything he's better than video games he's like in his presence really is fullness of joy and it and i hope that we can experience a time in our culture where people are more connected to god to be able to say that i experience joy in his presence instead of i often one of the things that irks me and i feel like god is shifting things in culture to help this change as I can't tell you how many people I've talked to that are Christians or have been Christians for years and years and years. And they're, they're like, I've never felt the presence of God. It's like, that's tragic to me because he is alive and well, and he is the peace that surpasses understanding. And he wants to give us peace. He wants to give us hope and joy and peace in his presence. And And that's what it's about. It's so crazy to think this. What does C.S. Lewis say? He says, human history is the terrible story of mankind trying to do everything in its power to be happy outside of God. It doesn't exist. But even when we seek after God, it's like the works is not the fruit that we get to participate in. No, we're the bride of Christ. We're invited into union with God in a way that is far beyond any other thing that's created. The angels are going to look on and be like, what? How is this a thing? We're invited into a place that other things that have been created just aren't. Man, if we shift just the way that we're thinking about that stuff, like he wants us to experience his presence. He wants us to be still, to be able to be still, to be filled with joy and hope and excitement. He wants us to be inspired to go after things that he has for us. And out of a place of I get to rather than I am supposed to or I have to. It's the difference between legalism and relationship. It's like you were saying with your kid, I want to spend time with you. I want to work with you and partner with you. God loves partnering with his children because he loves the excitement that we get out of being able to partner with our father.

Yeah.

And that's a good God. Absolutely. He's showing himself in that way more and more and more, especially in the digital space like right now. People are – It's time, dude. It's time for God to pour out his spirit and like people to genuinely be freed from the mindsets that they're in of negativity to be delivered to a place of being able to focus on things above and walk in peace and hope and joy and understanding who they are and having their identity being rooted in him.

Yeah. And it's also it's just like God to be way ahead of the movement of the church. Like, you know, like the church is always the spirit of God is always way ahead. And the church is usually playing catch up and decided, can we do this? Can we not do this? Is that OK? I see the spirit blowing. I could tell you stories. And I have people on the podcast telling me stories of where and how have you seen God show up in digital spaces in your stream and what you're doing? I mean, the whole fact on some level that I'm even in this space is the presence of God showing up. Because I haven't talked about him in a while on the podcast, so if people don't know who this is, he's no longer around in Twitch spaces and VR. I had a pastor across town that I was in a physical pastor group with. We met every other week. We got together, encouraging, supporting John 17, 23 groups on the I in you and you in me so that the world will know. So it's a whole system based on unity. If pastors can get together, our churches can get together, our communities can change. So that whole idea of change in our community. he would talk about all the time yeah sunday night i put my vr headset on and i went into chat rooms and i'm sharing the gospel and evangelizing and i'm doing all these things and he would talk about it all the time like going on twitch going on on vr space and i didn't have a vr space so i couldn't go in there um but during covid i was sitting home and i decided to watch him and then he found out it was me and they started telling everybody go watch him He's not around anymore. Like, he has left. But if he didn't pour into me, if he didn't invite me in, I'm not here. I can't make the impact on the other people. Like, so I know that we do things sometimes for a season, and I wish he was back. I would love to bring him in. Like, I'd make him co-host. Like, I love the guy so dearly. I would love to have him in here hanging out in the space and doing that. But, man. Presence of God was already in this space before I showed up. I didn't bring the presence of God here, and the presence of God brought me into the space. And if I leave tomorrow because of, who knows, something happens to me and I'm not able to be here, it's not dependent on me for the presence of God to be in digital space. It's already at work. And though most of the world doesn't see it, doesn't know it, those of us who are hearing stories and, man, God has already showed up in a lot of great ways.

Absolutely. It's going to be interesting to see what happens over the next really couple of years. Cause I, yeah, there's, there's a big shift that is coming for people to shift into a place of operating out of a place of rest in his presence.

We could go down the route. It's so funny. You mentioned things, and it's like, oh, I'm so into that piece of things. And I've refrained myself from several of those, and we don't need to go there. But you were talking about the three- and four-hour prayer, and I was like, oh, I wanted to jump on that and talk about that more. Now you're talking about starting from a place where it's like, oh, I could jump in. Those are all separate podcasts. We could just talk about some of those aspects of stuff. I want to focus back and get us back on track of just thinking. You start streaming on Twitch, whether you're consistent, not consistent. What were some of the blessings that being a streamer you were able to witness and see in the space for yourself or for the people that you were connecting with and reaching?

OK, so it looks different for me because it's going to be everything that I'm going to share is going to be significantly more discord focused because that's what I was really doing as opposed to streaming. There was streams that happened, but it was mostly just. I stream way more inside of Discord on my server than I do on Twitch. Although I will be streaming on Twitch, and I have started streaming. We'll see what that looks like.

As you stream, what are some blessings that you have either experienced or you've witnessed as a streamer?

Some that I've experienced is it's always nice to see fruit happening in people's lives. that people's lives are being changed radically. There's an interesting situation. When I first started my server, I actually, so many people were coming in and so many people were, you know, a lot of people were giving their lives to Jesus and people were just getting blessed. And then what happened was it was like, everybody kept saying, oh my, this life changed my life. This life, this life, that life, this life, that. And I'm like, okay, whoa.

Like this has the roots of a, of a.

Let's back off here. And so I told him, I was like, you guys need to understand that this is not me. I'm just pointing you towards Jesus and you're encountering him. And that's it. So I stepped back and kind of allowed people to be more. I basically gave my server away. So instead of it just being mine, there's four of us admin that work together. It's Dragon or Ethereos. caleb or um astro and then piglet in me so and then space who also is incredibly helpful but that it's it's cool to be able to see fruit but the blessings that i've seen dude they're like the wawa hut has turned it's not just we've seen each other like all a lot of us have been in person together like there's people who moved in together there's been eight people who have lived together throughout The time they're like Dragon and Piglet and Astro actually live together in Utah. So interestingly, as I was mentoring them, Piglet was in Utah with his family. Dragon was in Indiana. And I'm sitting there talking with Dragon and he wasn't sure what he was going to do the next step of his life. He was living with his parents, didn't really have much life experience at all. And I was like, well, why don't you just, I mean, have you ever thought about moving? Why don't you, you and Pig live together. You guys have developed a really good friendship and you're both Christians and you're both going after Jesus. It could be really cool to have community. He's like, yeah, that's cool. Maybe, yeah, maybe like next year sometime. And I'm like, well, what about next month? And and he's like, what? I was like, if it works, it works. If it doesn't, it doesn't. Like, we love to push things off because we hate change. Right. It's like, why don't you just try and see, like, take steps, see if there's anything out there, see what happens. Six weeks later, he lives in Utah. And then Kyler, who walked away from Mormonism as well, devout Mormonism. In fact, his family thought he went crazy because he walked away from it. And instantaneously, he realized how much attack he's been under his whole life. He had to get out of his house. because he's like this is not good mormonism is not good it's deceived and so he moved in and then astro comes in he does a dts with ywm and then he moves in so shauna the dead moved in with them for a little bit as well so there's just been a lot of coming and going and we've seen each other in person and people have been blessed and connected and and so it's it's definitely dude it's changed some people's lives like radically i remember this is actually crazy because when i first met the guys i didn't know what to do because i was new to the online space and i had i had grown and i had a dad that taught me specific things you know like shake your hand when you're shaking a person's hand look them in the eye you know give them a firm handshake different things like that that i just kind of took for granted that i didn't really know that very few people actually get intentional parenting like that So. 2020 TwitchCon that got canceled. Dragon and Piglet and Tidal, who is not... He's still part of the community, but not part of the story really. Come out to... They were going to go to TwitchCon, but it got canceled. So they came out to San Diego anyways. So I meet Dragon. And Dragon and Pig are like five foot... Five. Six if you want to stretch it. And they both come up to me. Dragon comes up. He's hunched over. I'm 6'2". So I'm like... already kind of towering over them and he's hunched over and then he shakes my hand like he's a gremlin and i'm like what is going on right now and i'm like i don't know what to do with this and he's he would he's he's okay he would be okay with me sharing this stuff and so then we go out to eat and we're sitting there eating and dragon is holding a fork like this and eating like like nobody taught him how to hold a fork And he's eating food in a way that I was like, what is going on? There's so much that I've already seen in the first hour of being with these guys that I need to address that I'm not even going to address the fork thing now. We have to talk about this later. I'm not even going to say anything. he's eating like a caveman and he you know he's got pants that are four sizes too big which is the same thing that happened with me because like when i was younger we weren't well off so you would buy bigger clothes so you could grow into them but eventually you stop growing and you don't need clown shoes that are four sizes too big you can you can buy shoes that fit you right he didn't even know that so it's like i literally have been i've helped mentor them in a way that is not just like growing and developing it's like how do you hold a fork do you wear clothes that fit you like you don't have to go crazy with it but maybe get some clothes that fit you you know and and so dragon comes to we do this over time i taught him how to hold a fork i taught him how to eat and then the next year he comes to twitchcon i'm like all right then the next step is you need to start learning how to dress yourself it's like it's really simple we're gonna we're gonna go to ross for 15 minutes we're gonna come out you're gonna look 10 times better He gets some shoes and some pants and some clothes that fits him. He literally starts walking down Twitch. He's excited. He has confidence. He literally tells me about it. He's like, I feel more confident than I've ever felt in my life. i'm like this is great and now when you see him you wouldn't even know you know he had a mop on his head that was never you know but now he actually is able to it's little things that just make him feel more confident and so this has happened with all of them like i worked with brody piglet he came out and did storm chasing with a friend of mine and he grew a lot because he worked with them for eight months and it changed his entire life so little things like that that it's not like i'm preaching the gospel per se but it technically is right it's just life lessons like i'm not just i'm not just pointing people towards jesus it's like how can we grow to a place of being more effective versions of ourself and honor god with our stewardship of our lives And so that's been an incredible blessing to look back on it and see how far they've come. Cause it's been five years now. And these dudes are adults now. Like when I met them, I was like, how in the world are we going to deal with these guys? These, they don't have social skills. They don't know how to walk without slouching. I mean, he's like, they don't want to stand up straight. They don't want to shake people's hands. They can't look people in the eye. They have social anxiety. Gosh, dude, when I met Dragon, he literally when he would have conversations, he could never land the plane. He would talk about one thing and then add four more other things to the conversation and never get to the end of any of them. I'm like, wait, what are we just talking about? And now he's like way more articulate and he can he can bring forth ideas and stuff. And he they all lead their own small group now. I mean, they became they all became small group leaders for God Squad. Seven of them were small group leaders for God Squad. Actually, it was during the situation that the unfortunate scenario happened. there where they were able to come in and keep god squad afloat because they lost all their small group leaders so we had seven of them come in and help to maintain things in it and it was an incredible blessing to see their growth and then their ability to sustain a ministry that probably would have fallen apart because there was there was two people left basically for small groups and we're like whoa crap what are we gonna do and so then the guys from the wawa hut they were already leading their small group they just moved them to god squad yeah and so then we had nine instead of two So, you know, just blessing to see that you were saying it kind of is the gospel.

Yeah, it absolutely is, because you did exactly what Jesus did again and again. He saw the people were without a shepherd. He had compassion on them and he met their need. Now, a lot of the needs that he was meeting was physical healing, other other, you know, you know, getting rid of demon possession. But whatever it was that Jesus saw was their need. That's what he gave to them. And you saw they had social needs. they had self-care needs and you stepped in because you were moved with compassion and just like jesus did you stepped in so you were absolutely bringing the gospel there because a lot of people would have just looked past them and said these people are not worth the time they don't have these things going for them they're not worthy of love they're not worthy of compassion they're not worthy of time i'll quick share the gospel with them and move on But that's all I've got time for. And that just goes back to your whole, I'm going to pursue these people. And that goes to them as a full person.

Absolutely. And the Bible even talks about like, what is the verse where it's like, if you walk past somebody and they need food and you're like... Cool, dude, I'll pray for you.

That's James. You know, you see a brother or sister and need to say, be warm and be filled, you know? Yeah.

Yeah, it's like, no, it's like there's needs and that discipleship. In fact, the church should. I mean, this is a whole nother different conversation, but the church needs to be able to have conversations about things that we don't talk about. Like the church, like we only ever talk about. you have a pastor give a sermon, but like, what about practical life things? Like how should be, if the Bible says that God's ways are not our own, then why are we not? Why is the church not training people to be human, to be alive, to, to, to live their lives like with character and, and you know what I mean? And rootedness. And, and that looks like. Teaching practical things like what are you, how are you waking up in the morning? Like, how are you handling yourself? How are your, how is your thought life? How, how is your hygiene? You know, I mean, are you, are you, how is your doom scrolling life? Are you, are you, you know, like little things like that, like things that we don't typically talk about. Like there should be sermons on diet and exercise. Like what? It's taboo. Don't talk about diet and exercise. Or politics. Look, I'm not going to talk about politics right now, but we live in a scenario in which we separate the church and the state. But that's a bad thing to do because what you're doing is you're compartmentalizing God out of something, and then you're being trained by the world in a very important area of life. And then it's taboo to have a conversation about politics. Why? Jesus is the king of kings. That's pretty political. And his government will be on his shoulder. What were you going to say?

I was going to say, well, some of the reason is, is because we believe if we're in one party that Jesus is in our party and the other party must not be Christian. So you can't have Christians in the other party. One of the things I was I was. talking with some people older than me about is the fact that you used to be able to in society so this is this would have happened in the church before uh long ago you would have conversations with people you would be vehemently disagreeing with them and then you'd go out and have dinner with them You'd go out and you'd do something together. We have lost that. We have now siloed ourselves and say, if you do not believe my politics the way I do, you can't be in my church the way I am because we want to have it, everyone being in 100% agreement with us, which is a huge problem because I don't need 100 people that believe exactly the same way I do. In fact, I couldn't find 100 people that believe exactly the same way I do. It's just not going to be out there. So I would be isolating myself alone. I'm not good when I'm isolated. I'm going to I'm going to spiral in some direction that's not healthy for myself. I need to be thinking about other people and not myself. So like we do that. And so you know what? You're talking about doom scrolling. Doom scrolling leads to more of that. Doom scrolling is only going to give you what the algorithm has already seen you. Right.

So I love this example because it's a big problem.

Because it moves away from, you know, what a lot of us think we would do. But there was an NBA player a couple of years ago that got into scrolling about flat earth. And after, you know, several weeks and months of watching flat earth, when somebody said something to him about the earth not being flat, he couldn't believe how dumb that person was. um and it blew up into this whole big fight on the team irving was that who it was i couldn't remember exactly if it was him or not but it's like you get caught in that and we're doing that with our politics and we're doing that in our churches and we're doing that in our faith And I think that I need people that do not see things the way I see Christ, because you know what? That's what Jesus did. He brought in the Pharisee group, which if you live in the Galilee region and you're around that area, there was a lot of Pharisees. So all of the four fishermen in the Galilee region were probably influenced by Pharisees. And usually when Peter opens his mouth, it's because he sounded like a Pharisee. you you also have the herodians and the herodians are those that are collaborators with rome and so you got um matthew levi who's a tax collector who's like yeah it helps me out so i'm cool with that they're there oh and then you got the zealots who are like let's overthrow the government at any cost um i always like to point out like simon like this is me if i'm jesus and i want to find out i'm 100 correct when this is like my first question to jesus is like So when you first had a meal with Simon and Matthew, you put them next to each other, didn't you? You put them right next to each other, didn't you? And how awkward was that conversation? Like, it's just like, I want to know. And then you have some of the disciples who were absolutely disciples of John, because it tells us that. John says, hey, go follow him. And some of his disciples left and followed Jesus. And so he was, in essence... very similar to the essenes possibly his dad could have been because his dad was a priest and the essenes were priests who were let's go out into the desert away from everybody which is exactly how john does his ministry you have four of the five political parties represented there in judea um in the disciples the only group i can't find a way to associate anyone with is the sadducees they were the political party who was in power and they weren't going along with jesus now maybe you could see nicodemus or joseph of arimathea mighta but they weren't in the inner circle of the twelve and i think they were probably pharisees anyway so Like if Jesus brought those four people, four groups of people vehemently opposed, can't get more opposed than you can with Matthew and Simon and then throw in the Pharisee influence and then throw in the let's be outside of it. They're not going to agree on anything except we're following Jesus. And we're going to put aside all of our politics for the kingdom of God because the kingdom of God is more powerful than the kingdom of man. Sorry. You went to go preach it earlier. I had to for a minute.

That's good. I agree with all that. At the end of the day, I guarantee you they had conversations. They were living amongst each other. They're not afraid. I guarantee you. Simon was like, well, you guys need to be more zealous. If Peter was willing to rebuke Jesus, they definitely rebuked each other.

Yeah, I'm sure of that.

So, yeah, but it's okay because that's what allows iron to sharpen iron. And newsflash to anybody out there who's listening to this, Jesus is not a Democrat or a Republican. Surprise. He's Jesus. Like he is the epitome of the ultimate government, and government will always be corrupt to a degree until him because guess what? There's sin within man. And just because there's sin in every individual, that means that whatever we put together is also going to be sinful, especially if they're not people who are going after Jesus. And then what we do is because we are taught by the world about politics rather than by the church, then what we do is we glorify these politicians to a status of – that is not real and not attainable. And it's like, oh, we think that they're bigger and larger than life. And it's like, no, dude, you have to understand that Jesus is the only thing that's larger than life, man. You have to realize that Trump is not your savior. Obama is not your savior. They're not going to change the world for you. Jesus is the way, the truth, and the life. And nobody gets to the Father except through him. And he will position his government and that will be the ultimate government and it's not until he comes back but we do need to be able to have the difficult conversations in church i do think that that's happening it's starting to happen a lot of people are are willing to do that but politics is a taboo situation by by far but everything everything it's like we live in a culture like the church has become this such this facade based thing that it's not it's you can't have conversations about your struggles and then what it actually causes it causes secret sin Because there's no safety whatsoever to be like, hey, I'm struggling here.

I ran up against that very often as a pastor because I would talk about struggling. I might talk about and give an example of a past struggle so that, you know, and I would usually, this is my approach to things. I would usually give myself as the example of the struggle and I would find somebody else to give the example of the overcome. I would not try to use myself as the one who overcame. And there were people that were just like, no, you're supposed to have it all together. You're the pastor. How are people supposed to know they can get it all together if you don't? And I'm like, because I don't. Like, I don't have it all together. So what you want is me to put on a facade. Yeah. If I asked them that straight, they would have just said, yes, we don't want to know you struggle. We don't want to think you struggle. We want you to tell us that we are worthless because we struggle and we need to be like you because you don't struggle. And I'm like, yeah, I can't do that.

So, dude, this reminds me of a conversation. I'm not going to out any individual, but there was a there and I'm never going to say which. church it was. There was a time when I was at this church where there was a person who was really struggling. He was actually sick. And so he was about to go on a camera and be seen by everybody. And he made the comment, because I was behind the scenes and I saw things, he made the comment, you guys are about to see the best acting you've ever seen. And so he goes on with a smile on his face like, hey, everybody, how you doing? Welcome to church, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. And then after it, it's exhausted. And then everybody's laughing about how cool that was. And I'm just like, this is actually gross that you think this is cool because you don't have any idea what you're doing is you're teaching people the fake life. Yep. And so when your pastor isn't willing to share things, what you do is you elevate that person. Like I was just saying about the politicians, it's the same thing. You elevate that person to a place that they're larger than life. And then you're shocked when you find out they've been struggling forever. We have these famous pastors. that all of a sudden they get exposed for things. Why? Because they had no accountability because literally they were trained to put on a facade and not share their struggles and their growth experience as we're going through things together. Because even pastors who shepherd other people are still sheeps and need to be shepherded by God. And they need accountability. In all seriousness, the way we do church in this culture isn't even biblical. The whole pastor situation of they wear 17,000 hats, no pun intended. And they have way too much responsibility across the board. Oftentimes, they're not even really taking the time to pastor the people that are in their church because they have to wear so many hats. And we're not going to get into that conversation because that's a conversation for another day. There is something that needs to shift and we need to start being able to have some conversations about things that are difficult and let the church be the place where you sharpen iron. Cause if you can't have difficult in the conversations in the church, where can you have them? And then the people are getting trained by the world and that's a dangerous place to be. And that's why you have the predicament that we are currently in, in our culture.

Yeah. Yeah, absolutely.

I was praying about this yesterday. Go ahead.

Go ahead.

I was praying about this yesterday about the authority that we have and how the church needs to take back. Careful with what I say here. We have to take back the authority of living in culture. And I guess this might be a little bit of a grandiose terminology, but infiltrate. Like the whole entire two or three more gathered. Like going in and being the light of the world. And we have to be willing to. to be bold enough to infiltrate all the places of influence. That's political. That's the entertainment industry. That's video games. That's switch everything and not, and be bold to go and be the light of the world because this haphazard hands, haphazard hands off. I'm going to be seeker sensitive. I don't want to offend anybody thing has ruined our culture. We have to be – and I'm not trying to be rude. I know that was a little bit sarcastic there. But we have created a culture of soft people. What is that quote? Hard times produce hard men. Hard men produce soft times. Soft men produce – hard times right i don't talk about it so yeah yeah i haven't heard that in a long time i think that's like a really old saying i probably heard as a kid but not right so often anymore we live in a culture of hard times because we have we have created a culture of soft people and this isn't meant to be offensive to people but we don't have like the bible is pretty clear about being strong and being rooted in god and not having being affected by what other people say and having your identity rooted in him and we live in a in a world where it's like if you say you can't even use the wrong pronoun without offending somebody you know it's like whoa we live in a hypersensitive culture how how can we as christians change that and i we shouldn't even probably go down this path but i think that christianity is one of the biggest reasons why we have the problems that we have today because we're because the authority that we're meant to have to speak on these subject matters we've cast aside and been afraid to speak on them don't know if we should even talk about that yeah because that's that is definitely a whole whole whole another podcast we could go yeah yeah it is a whole other thing it's a whole other thing i think god is raising up people to be brave enough to have conversations in the context of compassion because you have to be okay with disagreeing with people and not be offended when somebody doesn't agree with you and love them in the context of it yeah and not be rude and be like you're stupid you know it's like no we we need to sharpen each other

Even just go to Twitch culture. There's a level at which Twitch culture does at some point celebrates the people that come in to a stream and cause chaos and move on. It's all filled with trolls. Now, whether they themselves and their friends are perpetuating that and high-fiving one another and doing those things, there's a piece of that that's not built on relationship. And we go back to what we were talking about earlier. The only way that we are going to change things is when we move past, I see someone once a week for one hour on Sunday and I have no idea what's going on in their lives. Like, that's the only way we're going to move past it. When I care enough about you, like you were talking about earlier, about you had the book of, oh, if you invest in two people, you're going to have more friends. What if we were to take that mentality of knowing more of what's happening in people's lives? pursuing people and knowing about them that's really what's going to be the thing that is is going to make a change in the world not i know the right things i say the right things and i don't care about people well if people i don't know if you've heard this one i heard this one all the time people don't care um or people don't know how much wait sorry how's it going i'm getting it all mixed up in my head here people don't care about what you have to say until they know that you care about them that's not exactly how it said but um anyway it's like i can say all the right things but i don't believe you if i don't know that you care about me so why would i trust you why would i do what you have to say if i don't know that you actually care about me

Yeah. So Sam has said, aren't we supposed to be disciples of Jesus? They're not supposed to. No, that's not technically. I mean, I see where you're coming from. Yes, we're all supposed to be disciples of Jesus. But the Bible does say to disciple other people. Discipling just means to teach people. We do disciple in a very different way than Jesus did, though, because like Jesus brought him under. He pursued. We talked about this before. He pursued other people like he went after people. And then he's like, come with me and I will make you fishers of men. He didn't say like. Come with me so I can tell you how to be fishers of men. He said, come with me and I will make you as, and he walked with them. He's like, he showed them what they were doing. And that's what true discipleship is supposed to be. We're supposed to be looking at God. And then if there's somebody who comes along with us, bringing them along with together as we're growing and developing, as opposed to what we proverbially do, which is just bark at them and tell them to do things. You do this. Because I said do this.

Yeah. And it goes back to what I was saying earlier, the living alongside of the walking alongside of the being in life. That's how Jesus did discipleship. He didn't do a class on Sundays. And maybe Wednesday night, too, because, you know, you got to go to the synagogue twice a week. And no, like he's constantly living life alongside. Now, I know not everyone has that opportunity to live every moment side by side. However. We have this really cool thing called digital now where I can, if I was in Wawa community, I could hang out in Wawa every day and I could be discipled in there every day. I could be connected with someone every day. I could be learning and living side by side with the people that are in there. I love the people that I hang out with in my stream Monday through Friday. Luce is in here. Luce is one of my mods. She's, you know, friendly and welcoming everybody and waving. So all of a sudden she showed up and now that's happening because that's who she is. And so, like, I get to know her as we're doing life side by side with each other as I'm streaming. And I don't get, like, I've said this to people too. I have developed more deep friendships with people as a streamer than I did pastoring people because I get to spend hours with them a week. I didn't get to spend hours with people a week as a pastor.

right and it's really it's really cool how god networks everything together because even this like because i meet pastor susie and then i'm a small group leader at god squad and that's how i met romans so i've known romans was a small group leader back then for god squad so then what happens is he moves away from god squad but we stay in touch and then even more so all of the sudden we start traveling the world together so i've been all over the world with romans amsterdam japan hawaii all over the country and that's why like reach even came from the conversations that i mean romans is it's so crazy because originally what he was trying to do is he was trying to find another susie right so he was helping susie out decided that it was time to shift gears and so he was trying to find another big streamer and he went oh for five on the people that he thought were going to be the ones. And we even had conversations with traveling and it's, I'm not the only person who said that. So I was like, why don't you make something yourself, man? Like you have a huge network of people. You just always, he's very, I love traveling with Romans. Cause we actually like we feed off of each other. We're both goofy. And we, by the end of it all, everybody's laughing. Romans can make everybody laugh by himself, but when we worked, but like, I'm, I'm very similar. We're different in our approach towards it, but we feed off of each other. So then everybody's just laughing and it's just great. And it's fun to see, but he's an incredible networker, dude. And as you obviously can tell, he reaches a thing because he's an incredible networker. and it's just so cool that he's done what he's done now to finally instead of just trying to empower one person he's created this community that is empowering multiple people because this is a byproduct of many conversations that he's had with many people and now here we are doing this stream because of it right because i we we probably don't meet each other if i if reach didn't exist. Maybe in passing, but we probably wouldn't have had a dream.

We had several different circles where we were adjacent, but we weren't fully embraced or connected with one another. All of those interconnected pieces are just fun and interesting. And the thing is, I don't have time, and you don't either, to pursue everybody. You know, I don't. And I have connections that I've made. What's really funny is, as you're mentioning traveling the world with Romans, I am thinking that Romans is probably actually the person I have spent the most time with and connecting to. So he and I connected the first time. Like, he messaged me the week before I was going to Orlando for Exponential Conference like four years ago. I think it was four years ago. I could be wrong on when that was. And he messaged me and said, hey, yeah, I'd like to connect. I hear your name. I see you around. I'd like to get to know you. And I said, oh, I'm going to be in Orlando next week. So that doesn't work. He goes, what? Yeah, I want to be in Orlando. Well, I'm in Orlando. OK, we'll get together. So I end up at his house. um you know hanging out there uh lux digital church actually streamed from his house i had i had at the time i actually was employed and so i had some income and so i knew lux digital church and i knew god squad church and i knew jay live and i knew love thy nerd and i said you guys are all going do you got a place to stay no i'll i'll i'll pay it up for the money i'll pay for an airbnb everybody can stay with me And so I had Love Thy Nerd. I actually had the Church Digital as well hang out there. I was like, I had all these people under one roof and Jate Live. And I was like, I don't know any of these people. And we're hanging out there. And I was like, cool. This is where God has led me. I just thought I was going to be a helper. I didn't think I was going to do anything. I was going to fade into the background. This is what I did. And then I start getting connected more and more in the space. So I've seen Romans probably every year in March in Orlando. He's been at my house. He came here last year for the conference. We went out to the Digital Game Creators Conference. uh when i've been in orlando he's actually he can't do it now because his dad's living there he had an extra house that uh he didn't have renters during cove but i got to stay at his house like just hang out at his second house and and be there and so it's like yeah romans and i have been together multiple multiple times and yes he he for a while was like coaching us within the church digital and helping us before reach kicked off and went in that direction I owe a lot to him. I love the guy. I love being connected, and I love what God is creating with his help because I think it's not Roman's vision, and it's going well beyond what Romans can envision it to be. It's not Roman's vision. Right. Right.

But I'm just saying, I'm just saying, you know, yeah, you're right. You're right. It's a collective thing, but he's being a good steward of things. And he's been around like it's it's conversations with me and Romans and Aki Romans and you and Romans. He's just taken all the conversations that he's had. And now he's just trying to do the best that he can to empower people to.

Absolutely.

Which is good, because like when you're when you're when you have the authority to do that kind of stuff and and and the network and the connections. I mean, dude, I went to, do you know what Club 33 is in Disneyland?

I think so.

So it's like this incredibly exclusive club that has like a 10-year waiting list that you have to beat.

That part I didn't know. I knew it was exclusive.

It's like, okay, so I had a friend who worked there for 10 years, and her goal was to get into Club 33, and she never did it, even though she worked there for 10 years. It's like just – they have super rules. Like you can't have ripped clothing. Like you can't take pictures. If you take a picture of a famous person, you're kicked out, and the person who you went with, they lose their – for the rest of their life. They can't go. We went to club 33 because of Drummond's network. And there's been so many times when we've gone to places because of things that he's connected with. And then I've connected with people because of, you know, connecting with him. And it's just cool. It's cool the way that God does things, but he's been a, he's just been a good steward of. what he's doing and he's just trying he's just trying to do the thing he's not trying to do anything special or crazy he's just like why don't like can we how can we empower people to do the stuff and like actually advance the kingdom of god in a digital space and uh yeah and it's and it's fun and he's also like a giant nerd and i know that he sometimes comes across as like I'm the cool guy. I'm the social funny dude. But he loves video games.

I say this out loud. I think that's just his awkward nerdiness that he puts forward to try to make himself feel better about himself being a nerd. So you've got to come across with that. You create a part of... It's just like I was an awkward kid. So I like to make jokes and crack jokes because it made me feel more comfortable when people were laughing at what I said than laughing at me. So like I can crack jokes. I poke fun of myself. I get like. If you're watching me do my stream, I do voices all the time. I will just suddenly do a voice for whatever reason, either because I'm reading the Bible, trying to bring out voices. So we're reading Job earlier today, by the way. And whenever his friends are reading, it's full up straight snarkiness. Like, whiny, whiny voice. You know?

You're doing the Word of Promise acting Bible?

Yeah, full on, full on. But the problem is when you switch back and forth between voices, I can't keep them all straight. Which voice was I doing two chapters ago for this person? I don't remember. So you end up with five different voices for the same person. It's like I do that because that's what I've developed as coping mechanisms to cover up what I feel are shortcomings, and it also makes me feel more comfortable around myself too. So I get it. He does some of those same things, and I love the guy, man.

Yeah, Romans is – he's a homie for sure.

Tony Stark.

Starky, who are you – Yeah, he says in question after he literally just said, Slife and Romans are funny. Dude, you literally sat there. Actually, Mother Goose was there too. We were laughing our butts off at – where were we in orlando was it it wasn't ihop what what breakfast joint was that that we all went to every every night no it wasn't a waffle house it was a different crew oh it was different crew wasn't the first okay i didn't know the first night it was i hopped okay i'm not even going to say some of the stuff that we were laughing about it was funny taking it out of context would be confusing

Oh, yes. There's so many things that would be very confusing taken out of context. Okay, just to kind of come back around full circle here and wrap some things up. One of the things that is, and we've hit on it, but we haven't really put it on, is God has been moving in various different ways in multiple different things, and we can't even put our finger on everything God's up to. And so a lot of our conversations have been shotgun throwing stuff that we have seen and we've interacted with and we've connected with. A bunch of people in the chat here are also connected in those places, whether it is with Reach Conference or whether it is people talking about Nerd Culture Ministry Summit, which is coming up in April. For anybody who's interested in that, you can go check that out. There are so many different places that God is at work. but the word isn't out yet everywhere and not everybody knows it not everybody sees it uh are there any other things that god placed on you to share in this stream that we haven't talked about yet i mean i mean god's put a lot of things on my heart recently i've been doing a lot of uh

a lot of research and a lot of like confirming things. And, and because of that, I'm going to start making lots of theological content. In fact, dude, just, I think it was two nights ago. I was sitting here and I was standing actually because of my standing desk. So I'm standing in front of my, my fancy new standing desk and I'm making music and I literally felt convicted and I'm like, what's going on? And I was very confused by it. And so I stop. and the presence of god hits me incredibly heavily and i'm like it was like a fear of god type of thing it's like it was like him basically saying it's like you need to remember and understand that music is not your calling like it's like i've given you stuff to share i like i want you to disciple people i want you to encourage people and point people towards me music is is an asterisk i knew that already but it was more of like a it was like a fear of god thing i was like oh yeah it was like i had to stop making i pushed pause i was like oh my gosh what is going on and it was this very intentional like it's time for you to do this you've a while back before i even started the small group god actually told me something because i i had gone through a lot of things in life i had spent a lot of time in his presence i had spent a lot of time digesting the word of god and learning hebraic mindset over western culture mindset and just really unlearning religion as i knew it and relearning religion as god intended it for me in the context in the community of community and everything he he was sitting there this is when i needed i had to start doing small groups he's like matt you're bloated on revelation you're hoarding your gifts I'm like, what? He's like, they're not for you. He's like, you're not supposed to just get revelation from me and then just keep it to yourself. That's not how this works. This isn't for you. And I'm like, oh my gosh. And that's when I started doing this small group. And it was one of those types of things a couple of days ago where it's like, it's time. It's time. And I'm going to have those difficult conversations. And I'm not afraid to... have talks about how how the gospel is even supposed to look like i mean dude we need better community with what i was saying about ministering to your neighbor we really need a a serious movement of people being intentional about those who are next door to them if every single christian stopped this idea of i need to go to church i need to find my community And just took on the mantle of like the community that I'm meant to be influencing the most is the community that is literally right next door to me. If we took on the mantle of those who are around us and actually just instead of using love your neighbor as yourself as a metaphor, but actually loved our neighbor as ourself, everything would change in our culture. And I'm not talking about preaching the gospel to these people. I'm talking about being the servant that Jesus was to these people. He came for the sick, not the well. he was out serving people in need if you're serving your neighbor and they're seeing your life and they know you're a believer and you're blessing them unconditionally in love they're going to warm up to the idea of jesus and then all it takes is praying for them and then they experience the presence of god and they see what true christianity looks like Because right now our culture is pretty skewed with thinking Christianity is something that it's not. Nonbelievers look at Christianity and they don't see true Christianity. What they see is really what the Pharisees were doing. A list of rules and regulations in a life that sounds pretty dull and boring. know and and it even looks like that like i i was just talking with somebody the other day and this is actually a hot take like the whole entire youth group situation of like fog lights or fog machines and and lights and parties and stuff it's like okay i'm not opposed to that i love it like i told you i did raves with my friends we put lighting up i worked at guitar center in pro audio and i sold lighting stuff and i i love that kind of stuff but if you're giving youth group If you're getting people to come because of that, you're literally conditioning them to walk away from Christianity later. And you're actually warming them up to the club industry. Because if they have that, first of all, you're not doing it as good as a club is. The church, they're 10 years behind. So whatever you're doing on your youth group night to make things fancy, the club is going to do 60,000 times better. And if they haven't met God yet, they're leaving. And not only are they leaving, you've conditioned them now to live a life that's even worse.

I hadn't thought about that part. That's an interesting take.

we have to show jesus to people because he's actually alive it's not some metaphor he's actually alive right now it's crazy to think there's a throne room in heaven the seraphim are on the throne their cat like the elders are casting their crown at his feet holy holy holy is the lord god almighty who was and is and is to come consistently over and over and over and the seraphim are like oh my gosh and then they close their eyes and glory and iron power to belong to you because you created all things and by your will they exist it's happening literally right now as we speak we're sitting here having a twitch stream and there's seraphim up in heaven yeah and it's like i bet they've been applauding at least two or three times today at least two or three times they were applauding And he is alive and well, and we need to introduce people to him. And if we don't introduce people to him, they're not like the Pharisees didn't have God, but they were masters of scripture. But because they didn't know God, they were basically the depart from me. I never knew you people. If all you ever do is read the Bible and you never actually be still and listen to what God is saying to you, you're never going to interpret the Bible. Well, our carnal minds can't even understand it. The Bible literally says man's heart is evil.

One of the things that they did that I think we've made the same mistake in some ways, we have taken the word to know and we've made it an intellectual assent. Absolutely. Instead of knowledge and knowing, if we go back to the first time it's used in Scripture, it is the man knew his wife. It is a metaphor for relationship. You know through relationships. Absolutely. They knew God's word, but they did not know God. They could quote it. They had intellect, but they did not have the same relationship that we can have. Yeah, Mel is saying intimacy. Yeah, they didn't have intimacy with God. They didn't have that ongoing relationship. It's the same way I like using the example of my wife. I could give you a book about my wife, and you could read all about her, and you could have a whole lot of knowledge, but you still wouldn't know my wife. Well, you know what?

It's interesting that you say that. I say a story that's similar to that as a metaphor that I've been using for a while. Essentially, like, look, as you know, I have – gone into the bible a lot i quote verses all the time i spend a lot of time digesting scripture but not just in the context of western culture like learning how to read it through the eyes of the hebraic mindset well actually if you guys haven't read it you should read the book um misreading scripture through western eyes your wife writes a book and you're like this book is freaking crazy this is amazing it's changed my life i have to share this book with everybody so you go and you share the book with everybody and changing your friend's life and you're they're like oh my gosh your wife is awesome let's let's get a book group together and we can all read it together and then you get together and you start talking about her book and it's positively affecting everybody's life and it's like wow this is really really cool your wife is really awesome now let's go tell it to more people and the whole time you're doing this your wife is sitting at home wondering wondering when you're going to spend time with her we do that so much where it's like dude i i love the bible it is truth it is the inspired word of god it is absolutely necessary if you're not getting into it you will struggle with sin in ways that you wouldn't if you would it's the sword it's meant to sharpen us it's incredibly valuable but if you have it without god you'll be a pharisee 100 without relationship and intimacy you cannot see I mean, look at the non-Christians who read the Bible and they're confused by it. And they say, well, how can this God be a good God? This is a vengeful God. Like, they can't see it clearly. You have to have God to be able to see his word. And you know how it goes, man. You read the same verse every day and you'll get something different out of it every single day you read it. You know, it's like an onion. You're constantly getting more out of it. You're like, what in the world? I've read this thing a thousand times and this just popped out? What?

Yeah, you're talking about the different Hebraic mindset about things. I can't ever keep the order of the pashat level and the sod and all of those, but there is a surface level at which you will see things. There is a deeper level at which you will be able to, with God's help, be able to see things. And then there is the hiddenness underneath that are the gems that only through discipline and time, and when the time is right, God will open up for you to be able to see those things. And it's like that is absolutely what happens. I get all excited on my stream whenever when there's something new that somebody brings in or I suddenly make a connection and realize things. It's like. The rabbis talk about in the day and I do jazz hands because I'm not going to get up and dance in the day that you do, you learn what has been hidden from you will be a day for dancing. So in the day that you realize that something is hidden, you dance in that day in anticipation of the day when God unveils to you the thing that is hidden. i i just love that concept so i get all excited and i do jazz hands uh on my on my stream and channel whatever those moments of i don't understand this at all jazz hand time oh my goodness i i realized something new jazz hands times it's just like ways to point to to god and just say like man this is a relationship that's ongoing and growing amen

But with that said, I think that I mean, I'm going to be saying a lot of things, but I think that we've touched on a lot of pretty good things. And obviously, the conversation will keep going, you know, as we as we all grow and develop as a community, because it's we're all one body. Right. And, you know, even with reach, we've been talking about it. while i've been talking about it for years i'm so glad it's happening but like the collaboration stuff and working together like a three-chord strand is not easily broken like the body of christ being way more united dude i wrote a the the thing that i was starting with my dad a while back about called the build i wrote a an expose on what it was back in like 2015 and it was about uniting the body of Christ to work together better. And so the fact that this is happening and reaches starting, I love seeing the collaborations that people are doing, you know, whether it be mother goose collaborating with all her lady friends or, you know, even Tony and Samus recently that have done some streams together and then, you know, TTC warrior and his group of people and just, seeing people stream together it's just aki and the people it's like it's so cool to see the community developing and really like sharpening one another and sharing the body of christ with one another because it's like it's it seems backwards this is another way of the situation of like god's ways are not our own you want your community to grow give your community away right yes yes absolutely not being like the orphan mindset of like this is mine i don't want to share it with anybody it's like you share your things you actually get more in return and that's what's happening right now in the reach scenario people are like working together and loving one another and sharing communities with one another and it's stirring something up where the foundation of things is much stronger and we're we're doing something that's gaining more traction than it really ever has before before this really came together and content creators have started you know working together and being intentional about developing a relationship with one another so yeah i'm excited what god is doing for sure absolutely i i i tell my my wife all the time i've not been as decided excited about ministry since i was in seminary

and when i was in seminary i was learning so much and anxious to go do stuff and and now it's like i'm watching all kinds of people that god is leading do stuff and it's i get to celebrate a whole bunch of moments all throughout the week that i watch others do and and when you get together with communities that are collabing together whether whether they're new ones forming whether they're ones that are been ongoing for a while uh it's just fun to be in them and i i like to be a cross pollinator i like i've never been the like i'm in my group and i only stay here like man i can't stay put i i i am in every group that i can be a part of and i i don't know if i will ever fully fit one place or if i'll ever fully stay but yeah reach is amazing i'm over in in nerd culture ministry summit i hang out with taco i'm over in digital creators for christ i mean like there's more and more and it's like i want to know all of them I want to be connected with them. I want to see the body move and expand. And there's probably another dozen I don't know of yet that God is already putting together and moving in those spaces. So it's pretty awesome.

Yeah. And I liked it because like the most important part is like, it's even a mindset situation. Cause if you're going into communities to fruit with the idea of like, I need to do this so that I can grow, then there's a problem there. What's happening with, with the reach community, like people are just going. just to be a part of community and just to honor God by being, by doing things together. And because of that, there's a, the heart behind it opens up the door for positive things to happen in a way that it wouldn't if it was like selfish ambitions. It's really crazy the way the world works, because if you go, I mean, God even talks about it. The intent of our heart is incredibly important. And so that's why it's like, it's like, okay, if I'm That's why that quote that I shared with you, you'll gain more friends in two months trying to develop a sincere interest in two people. That's why it says developing a sincere interest. You can't fake. You don't just go it. You get it.

It's not a mission. It's not a checklist. Okay, I need to know what their mother's name is. I need to know their siblings. I need to know their date of birth. What is your favorite color? It could be so robotic and not relational because you're not interested. You're just filling out the questionnaire. You want it to be relational. It needs to happen in the flow of things, really getting to know people and know who they are. So, yeah, totally. Totally, absolutely get that. Yeah, these collabs, if it's just for the sake of I need to collab, we need to do this, it won't build relationships. And I love those relationships. I also, you know, at some point feel a bunch of FOMO when I watch people posting about all the different collabs they're doing. And then I go, but you don't play that game. you you don't play that that's not a collab for you great it's not for me but i do feel like i'm missing out because i can't be like i can always okay just what okay i'm gonna share this my wife's not listening um so she won't listen to this podcast i'm just saying um So when you were talking about the moving together of everybody put together in one place from all over, my wife has always said she gets to die first, so I'm not saying anything against her. But when that happens, I got a whole house I could just start moving streamers in. I could set this up into a fantastic streamer abode, and we'll just have rooms. I have a five-bedroom house with a massive basement down here. I could divide up my living room down here and my bar into five more. We're going to have the streamer house. When that happens in 40 years, I'm ready to go. I'm ready to go in 40 years.

Come over. If it wasn't 70 degrees today, I'd move over there right now.

I tell my wife is not here. I don't think I have permission. Yeah, the streamer incubator. I love that idea. That would be super fun.

Absolutely. And I genuinely think that as we grow and develop as a community, if the body of Christ is willing to just be humble enough to share with one another, it will do something incredibly... amazing and it seems it seems counterintuitive i guess the best example in my life of this would be the cheesecake factory when i worked at the cheesecake factory in kansas city I was blown away by that job. That place worked. That place ran impeccably. And one of the things that they would teach you is, like, we're all helping each other. If there's an empty drink and you see it and you have time to fill it up and it's not your table, do it. So it was a culture of team. And the job was incredibly easy because we were always helping one another. And there's, you know, like 30 servers on at any given night on a Saturday night. And there's... a completely packed restaurants and cheesecake factory. Like you got lines out the door and everything, everybody, everything is fast paced. It's like the cooks are going crazy and it all worked incredibly seamlessly. And I remember days when I first started there, I'd just step back and I'd look around. I'd be like, this is crazy. This is like a fine tuned machine. And then I transferred to San Diego. and the oh the one that's close to chula vista and it couldn't be further from the opposite it was just very much so that it's really the culture in california comparative to their very individualistic these are my tables and i'm only going to focus on them i don't care what if you know if your person asked for a drink i'm going to be slightly offended and then i'm going to tell you go get your go get your people a drink but what that did is you think that you're doing less work because you're only focusing on your table but it actually made the entire restaurant significantly more exhausting and it made the job harder yeah because god's ways are not our own he's putting things into place that we don't even understand if you're helping and serving other people as i said before things will if this is a biblical truth it doesn't matter if you're doing it in the church or not it works at the cheesecake factory you're humble enough to help your neighbor out and working together a three-chord strand is not easily broken at the cheesecake factory also in the church you know and and it works and if you if we as we're doing this and god is creating this netting that is incredibly deep it's just going to be really awesome to see people be blessed and us become this giant family of influencers who are doing the influencing together and not worried about hoarding our, our people. I don't go over there.

Not only, not only that, like if you're, if you go back to the cheesecake cake factory, if I have all of my section taken care of, but they're watching the people over there have a bad experience, they still have a bad experience. They don't get isolated from it because I took care of them. They also, if you come in and you're in the other person's section and you had a bad experience, you're not coming back. You won't be in my section next time because you won't be here. You want to talk about the short-sightedness of this. You are driving the restaurant to its lowest common denominator, and pretty soon nobody will come because there's no line because nobody wants to be there because that's how it happens. It's so easy for us to do that. I'll protect mine, but I'll protect mine never leads to camaraderie and blessing. And I did want to mention this because you mentioned bless. I don't know. Are you familiar with the book Bless Practices by Dave Ferguson and John Ferguson?

I don't know that I am.

Okay, so I'm going to do it real quick, but also if you go to the Church Digital, if you're in one of our Equipping Digital Missionaries courses, you'll get a copy of the Sharing Jesus Online, which is taking blessed practices and putting that into a digital space. So it's begin with prayer. So when you're thinking about your neighbor next door, you begin praying for your neighbor next door. If it's an empty house, you pray for the empty house. You notice the things that are in their yard. You notice they have a place that you pray for your neighbor. You have conversations with them. You pray for them. So it's begin with prayer. Listen. Oh, my neighbor mentioned I just moved in and I don't have a lawnmower. Oh, okay. That's a good thing to know. So you're listening to your neighbor. You're sharing. So you're sorry. You begin with prayer. You listen. You eat with them. um so there's some stories i know of people who were intentionally missionaries in their neighborhood and they would just set up a grill in their front yard when people would get home from work and as they're walking now this is you know this is inner city so you're walking past you're not driving in the back of the park you know garage and never seeing your neighbor And they're like, hey, you want a burger? Yeah. They just serve burgers and stand on their front lawn and do that. So you eat with other people. The first S is serve. So how do I serve? I heard my neighbor doesn't have a lawnmower. I offer to go mow his lawn. And then finally, the last one is share. So I share. Why am I doing this? Because I love Jesus, and he loves people, and I want to love you. So it's real simple. And then we just change it for online. You still begin with prayer. You still listen. You enjoy shared experiences together because we're not usually eating. So that could be playing video games. And then you look for opportunities to serve, and you look for opportunities to share. So if anyone is interested in that, go check that out. It's fantastic. We talk about all of those stuff in the Equipping Digital Missionaries course. I'll be starting one in a couple of weeks. So DM me if you want more info. If you're listening to the podcast later, you can always just go to the church.digital slash EDM. Yep. Electric dance music. I mean, equipping digital missionaries.

Oh, makes so much more sense now.

Yeah. when i saw edm at the beginning i was because for me it does mean electronic i know it does and we like we like that it does we we don't have any problem with it it means that also we know it means that we're not shying away from it it just it works both ways um and since you were talking a little bit too i i i wasn't going to plug this at all i hate plugging myself i really am bad at plugging myself but it feels like it hits the conversation we were having about collaboration and about something that hey god had said this isn't for you this is for you to give away i i went to seminary and i thought i was going to be in creative writing i took creative writing as my minor and at some point i knew i was only going to write for myself so god made me put it away and i didn't write and through when i got at reach i had several conversations at reach and it was like god was saying okay now you get to write but it's not creative writing you're going to write because people are asking for knowledge that you have and you need to share it with them so um romans one of romans pastors i think it was pastor ron one of the older guys that was there uh asked me directly what do we do after this so i was explaining oh what we do streamers are going to do what we as a community goes no no no no i mean my church we just hosted this what do we need to do how do we help you so i wrote this for pastor ron and it just got released today so here's here's the if we see if i put it in the chat so it is how your church can support digital missionaries so if you go over to the church.digital slash blog you can find it uh there's articles in there so it's out there it's not for me Like, I won't get anything from this. I am just sharing ideas because I'm convinced that the church needs to support the digital missionaries, the streamers that they have. And so I put together what I think, I don't know if it's eight or 10 different ways that churches can start today and help somebody. I'm only sharing it. I would not have otherwise shared it, but I felt like our conversation led in that direction. And I want to be obedient when the spirit prompts me to share something. And so I wanted to share the blessed practices and I wanted to share that post because that post won't bless me from the standpoint of great. I'll have pats on the back and people say that was amazing. No. it'll bless the kingdom. That's all the blessing will happen. If one church puts this into practice, that's what it was for. If 20 churches do, it'll make a kingdom impact. If 100 churches do, we won't be able to stop what God's doing.

Absolutely. And this coincide, this is, I'm really glad that you're talking about this because this is definitely something that God is stirring up within a lot of people. And I was just talking to my dad about this. In fact, my dad lives in the Tampa area area. I think it's parish Florida, which is like 40 minutes South of Tampa. And he lives, he actually lives next door to an assistant pastor of a church because of that, they've kind of networked together and he's now doing some teaching at their, at their church. My dad has his doctorate. So he's written a couple of books. Oh, I remember giving you that book. That just reminds me of that. But he was talking with the pastor next door, and he had a conversation that was completely disconnected from us, from me and him. And then the next day after he had that conversation, I came to him with the idea of what it looks like to go after your neighbor and how important it is and how we really need to change that. And he was having the same conversation. So essentially what I told him, I was like, what would it look like? If you had a barbecue once a month for your neighbors, what would that even look like? Where you actually just sit around and you have conversations and you just get to know people and develop friendships with the people that are next door to you. And just start with that alone. Just having a barbecue once a month. Because I guarantee what will happen if you're living with Jesus, there will be fruit that starts to develop from it solely by pursuing relationship and loving as God commanded us to do. And then they're going to develop more trust towards you. And then there becomes doors that open up for you to share things and be encouraging. and dismantle their understanding of what christianity is so that you can show them what the real christianity is where it's just love unconditionally but also you know but it's truth right jesus is the way the truth in life and it's not like this hyper grace thing but there's love unconditionally and i mean i i'm so excited to see that god is stirring this up because the bible says that we will know they should know that we're disciples of jesus by our love for one another But we haven't necessarily done that very well in Western culture Christianity, like I said, because it's turned into more of a self-help model of Christianity than anything, as opposed to a how can I help you situation. And I really do believe that people are starting to see, like the blessed practices that you were talking about, that it really is how can I help you.

yeah because it's not anything that's sacred it's just a way to frame it and actually i think this is just a way to treat people this to me is just a way to love your neighbor as yourself in any circumstance in any situation you can do it online you can do it in person um you know and that's why i just felt like it just covered it shared yeah if you want to share that book with your dad i'll send you a link on that too um if you think he would be benefited from it and uh If anybody is interested.

It's called Last Five Everyday Ways to Love Your Neighbor and Change the World. Is that what it's called?

Yeah, that sounds right. Yep. Yeah. And it does give specific examples in every chapter of people that were doing things. And there also is, I believe, some reflective questions to help you think through, well, what do I actually go do and how do I do it? And then if you want the one that is for digital, it's sharing Jesus online. So Dr. John, I'm trying to think if it's Harris, and Jeff Reed from the Church Digital wrote that version. So it's taking it and applying it to being in digital spaces.

What's it called? Wait, what's the digital version called?

Sharing Jesus Online. Is that in, like, Amazon? I would have to check on that. I can send you the free digital PDF of it if you want.

Helping Everyday Believers Become Digital and Metaverse Missionaries?

I've got it sitting behind me. Dr. John Harris? Yep, Dr. John Harris, yeah.

Jeff Reed.

Yep, that's right. I didn't know if it was there because it was published at one point with Exponential and then it was not there. So I didn't know if it was still online available. So it looks like it is. Cool. Sweet. I found it. Awesome. So anybody interested in those, whenever this podcast comes out, if I was a very skilled person, I will have all of those in the chat messages afterwards. I might have to learn that by the time this one comes out because I haven't been doing that. I haven't been sharing people's links and all of that. I'm just like. new and still working and trying to grow. And so that's a learning edge for me to start sharing all those assets and resources. So if you DM me the info on the build community, I will link that when this comes out as well. Or at least I will say at some point I will link it. Maybe it won't be when it first comes out, but I will try to have all of that stuff linked. So if it's not up and ready, just message me later. I can always add it.

Okay. And also in the context of what we just talked about, I do want to bring one more thing back in because it's like, as we're talking about different ways to live as Christians and being more biblically rooted in the concept of community with your neighbors and whatnot, we definitely have to make sure that we're not wearing the weight of the expectation that we were talking about before. It's like, you don't have to talk to your neighbor. You get to talk to your neighbor. It's a situation where it's like you shouldn't be stressed or worried about things and be like, oh, I have to do this, I have to do this, I have to do this. It's just like trust me when I say you want it because it's so crazy in our culture. It's like there's so many people who are lonely, but they're too afraid to actually pursue relationships. So they're like, please notice me, but then they keep everybody at a safe distance, and so then they just stay lonely. So I just want to encourage people to be – it's okay to be worried and stressed about the idea of having conversations with people but it's it's something that it's it's beautiful it's actually enjoyable to have relationships we're literally made for it right and and i was getting the vibe when you were talking about that people aren't projects so this is not a project you do

This is a way of living that you can pursue, of I'm going to love on people, and I'm going to give them opportunities to come to my house. I think they give the example in the book. If it's not in the book, then it's from a friend of mine who was a church planter missionary. He would make a casserole. and then go knock on the neighbor's door and say, I just made this, but I realized my wife isn't going to be home, and so I'm going to be eating this all by myself. Did you make dinner? Would you like to come over, or could I come over and we could have it? And he's standing there at the door with a casserole. like so you can think about it like just one-on-one with your neighbors too so if it's overwhelming for you to have a dinner party then just start building relationships one-on-one um i did this when i when i lived in texas which was unintentional but it was i had kids at home And I couldn't just load up three kids in the car and drive to the grocery store if all of a sudden I'm making dinner and I realize I'm missing something that I need for dinner. I just started going over to my next-door neighbor and saying, hey, do you have a couple eggs I could borrow? Do you have a couple sugar I could borrow? And I started being the person in need in the neighborhood. And they thought I was weird. And they're like, we don't know what's up with this guy. He's knocking on our door asking for help.

Yeah.

And then, and then they all of a sudden started repaying me. Like they realized they didn't have to have everything together and run to the store. They could come over when they needed something and ask if I had it and I could help them out. And we started building relationships through borrowings, food from one another. Wow. So you can build real relationships by just going and knocking on somebody's door and saying, I'm in need. You could do it that way too.

Absolutely. man this has been i mean it all starts with just being brit like you it's just one step at a time like we were saying before we don't you don't have to have everything figured out and in all you have to actually as christians we should really start to become more comfortable just taking one step and not having to have all the other steps navigated and outlined before we take the step Because oftentimes God doesn't give us the outline of things until we take the first step. And then what happens is we get afraid to take the first step, and then nothing ever happens. Because God's like, well, I'm not going to give you the rest of the story until you take the step out of boldness. And so if you can't be faithful with little, I'm not going to give you much. And it's like, okay, so just one step is all it takes. And see what God does. Waving to your neighbor that you've never waved to. Just a simple introduction. Hey, I'm your neighbor. Have a good night. And then the next day, you know, if you're living there and you see them regularly, you don't have to marry them the day you meet them. You can actually just slowly crock pot the crap out of this and just let it simmer.

And some are going to take a lot longer than others. Yeah. Just say it. All right. Let's kind of land the plane here. I do like asking the guest if you have somebody that we could raid, and then we could do a double raid out to go bless somebody else. Unless you were going to stay live. I wasn't assuming you were.

No, I'm not staying live. It's 3 o'clock. I got to get out of here and start doing some things. Yeah, it's almost 6 for me.

I got to go make dinner.

Yeah, the perks of living on the West Coast, everybody's later than me, usually.

So, do you see somebody live that we can both go and raid?

Let's find out, I suppose.

Live.

All the way down here. I mean, there's two people that either will or Charles.

Okay. Why don't we go with Will?

He's got more viewers.

Yeah, he's got more viewers. So what a blessing to bring to Will. And Will will also be on the podcast in a couple of weeks. It'll be playing shortly. I don't remember if he's next.

What a great testimony, dude, with him winning that PC.

Oh, I know. I know. That's going to be a great story when he gets on the podcast.

Yeah, let's...

it's amazing all right so so let's go and we'll raid will so if you get yours all set up and ready to go and we have to double raid we can't we can't right we have to double raid so you have to do it as well as i do so if you get it ready to pull up to start okay Okay. So you're ready.

I'm not going to lie. Have not ever. Hold on. Let me get to the stream manager. I don't even know what button it is. Raid, raid channel. All right. Raid channel. Search filter.

Will. Pog.

Yep. Will Pog. If you click the button under it, it says, you know, streams that you follow, it'll filter it out real quick too. So. uh sweet wait do you normally pray out or pray i during i i don't have a set pattern i i do as led so if you're feeling we need to pray then we need to pray pray you want to pray us out yeah absolutely God, this was such a spirit-filled presence as we had conversations. At times, our minds were racing, and we wanted to fill so much of this space, but we are trusting, and we know that you led us to the conversation we were supposed to have, that the people who were here to hear it were here in the moment that needed to, and anyone who has yet to need it, you're preparing them so that when this goes live, for people to be able to listen, you're going to have it. And it's going to be content that's going to be out there for people again and again and again. And more than that, I just thank you for my friend's life and for what you are calling him to do, how you are leading him. The fact that he reached out and said, hey, you and I need to chat. And we did. And I can't wait to see what you're going to do in the next year in our relationship with one another and in just our relationships and reach and everything else you're doing. God, you are doing such amazing things. And I am just so blessed to be a part of it. So I thank you for that, and I just pray blessing upon him and everything you're calling him to. May it be glorifying to you, and may it be in the timing, though we're impatient, the timing that is your perfect timing. I pray this in Jesus' name. Amen.

Amen.

All right. Sweet. You ready to start the raid?

Yes.

Start raid. Start raid in three, two, one. There we're at least close to the same time. All right, Les, Amy, good to see you in here. Thank you for the amens there. Everybody who's been here, if this has not been blessed, if you've been here the whole time hanging out, thank you, thank you, thank you. If you listen to this podcast, you listen to the whole thing. You guys are amazing. Love you. And can't wait to see you again soon. Last words?

These videos live just followed.

Nothing. God bless and Godspeed. You're all amazing.