"Why Do Bad Things Happen to Good People?"

0:01 We're rolling. Would you please pray us in, brother? I would love to do that. And then I'll just, we'll do a roll in with this. Excellent. Excellent. Welcome today, brother. It's good to see you. It's good to see you. Long time no see. 24 hours, less than 24 hours. Pray us in. I'll tell you what's on my mind. Okay. Father, what a privilege it is to be before you and with my brother, Adam, that we get to sit together and talk about you, God, the world and other things, Lord, whatever it is you have. us to bring that would help someone. That's our heart here. Our heart is to honor you, to glorify you, to continue to advance the kingdom in our time, but also it's just to enjoy a conversation about life and about what you're doing and what we see you doing all around us.

0:46 And Father, we put this in your hands. We give it to you. And for those who will listen to this and those that are listening even now, I ask for your grace to be poured out upon them, your life. hope, joy, all the fruit of the Spirit to be poured out upon them, even as they sit back and receive. And Father, you say what needs to be said in Jesus' name. And God's people said, that's what I always say as a pastor. Amen. Amen.

1:37 This is Jimmy and not Annette because I've got a special guest star today. Oh my gosh, it's been so long since I've done a podcast. We were gone and I want to welcome Adam Curry. Adam, welcome to the show, brother. It's good to be here. It's good to be here. It's just fun to do life together, whether we're sitting on a mic or we're driving down the street or we're just whatever we're doing, cooking steaks, whatever it is, just doing life together. I reached out to you for three reasons. All right. Wow. Thought this through. One, there hasn't been an episode of living up in a down world during your vacation. So I miss seeing that update in the Godcaster. Two, I just wanted to talk with you because even though we see each other all the time, there's always other people around. We love our wives, but it's different when we're just sitting down, just yapping. We don't want to be rude. You know, we also want to keep an ear on what they're talking about. And, you know, it'd be four of us talking.

2:34 So that was, I'm like, I just really need to talk to my brother, Pastor Jimmy, about a couple things. And two, God told me. Wow. And I heard it loudly. Wow. And this was, did I text you on Monday or Sunday? I think it was Monday. Yeah. And I just heard, like, do a podcast with Jimmy. Do a podcast with Jimmy. Oh, that's right. And we weren't even sure if we could get together this week because you had things going. I've got things going. And then, and I was like, okay, well, maybe we'll do it next week. And then. God moved in very interesting ways. I'll share it because I thought about it this morning. It's sad. So I had a hair appointment today in Austin.

3:15 And boy, do I need it because, you know, I'm looking. I got a mullet going on here because of my vacation. I don't get my hair cut on vacation. I'm now six feet seven tall with my hair piled up on top of my head. And usually I have to set these things far in advance because a very good friend of mine, Johanna, she does my hair. I've been going to her for almost 16 years. It's more than just my hair. She's a friend. We talk. She's in. Very liberal Austin. Her clients are very liberal. She is right down the middle. She's not a believer yet, working on her, but she appreciates prayer, and she always thanks me when I pray for her, for family. And she gives me real insight into what's happening in other cultures, other parts of our culture. Her puppy, her dog, 14 years old, passed away. Oh, no, that's heartbreaking.

4:03 Yes. Now, and she called me, and, you know, she called me because we're friends, you know, and so I... I tried to minister to her, and I think I comforted her. But at the same time, that was the reason why we can sit here together. So this puppy was old, you know, had some heart issues. But it took place and opened up this opportunity for us. So I don't know if, you know, it's like one of those hard things. Yeah. We love our fur babies, my goodness. And does God do these things? You know, this dog could have passed away in a week from now, but does God do these things? You know, I don't know. I don't know. He does all things for good, ultimately. There we go. And she was there when he passed, you know, and so that worked out perfectly. I just had to get off my heart because I kept hearing it like, well, this is how this opened up. And I was surprised.

4:51 I'm like, wait a minute. I have a whole day open now. Because, you know, you go to Austin, it's a whole day trip. And so here I am. Wow. Well, we should cheers. Yes, we are. At what time in the morning? Cheersing with our Black Rifle coffee. I know. Exactly. I was going to ask what you have in your tumbler. I've got a White Rose Resistance tumbler, which we got at our event. I have my Joe Rogan tumbler. Nice. Yes. Which I carry everywhere. And so, yeah, I've got Black Rifle, just black. So, man, I'm in a good place right now. So we were in Florida. And a lot of things happened to me there. Maybe you should just explain what this was. You want to just run down why we were there? Yeah, I'll give the brief version of what it is. There's an organization. Actually, it's a group of organizations. But Remnant Alliance is a group of pastors and a group of organizations like the Patriot Academy, Citizens Defending Freedom. It's a whole group of seminary, college, university. Not Waverly. We're not good at memory, are we? Oh, my gosh. I keep saying Waverly. It's Wagner, isn't it? I think it's Wagner. Wagner University. So a bunch of groups that get together and do things here and there finally said, wait, maybe we should get together and actually form an association or a network so that we can get together often. help each other and encourage each other. And so anyway, this was the first, I would call it the embryonic meeting, just the first. And the meeting was about 35 to 40 people.

6:20 And they asked us to invite either a business couple or a leader couple from the church. And Annette and I were like, oh, Adam and Tina need to be here. Little did we know that would morph into the Godcaster. We'll talk more about that in a minute. So you're in this meeting. Tina's in the meeting. We're together. And Jack Hillegoss, he's a pastor at High Point Church in Lake Wales, Florida, who also ran for mayor several years ago, like a term and a half ago, and won. And because he had a wake -up call during COVID and said, I got to do something, the Lord told him through various people, you should run for mayor. He did, and he won. And now he's running again. They're starting their campaign. So he called a group of about five or six pastors. and said, would you bring some people from your church that you think would be interested in this? And let's just have a meeting to see if it's God's heart for us to form, become a formal association or a formal network based on values, not so much on theology. A lot of networks are based on theology, and those are called denominations. So we're not trying to create a denomination system. Which is probably unique amongst churches. I think so, because we're saying this isn't all about your theology. We've got some criteria that are important, and we need to agree on the basics, right, the main things. But we're trying to create a broader affiliation here, a broader association, where we come together based on these three things and what's called the seven mountain strategy, which is a fancy word for here's what culture

7:52 looks like, and we're identifying these seven areas. But really, you can boil it down to three, and it's faith, family, and freedom. And it's not political. It's about cultural engagement. And so politics is only one of many spokes. So we all came together, met for basically two days, two half days, one full day. And we heard from different organizations. We heard people sharing different ideas. You and I got to do a presentation about the Godcaster and really that mountain of media, arts, entertainment. And we came away from that. Jack was asking the question, do you think we should take another step? Do we feel like God's in this? And it was obvious. God was all over it. The whole thing was such a God movement because it started with Steve Maxwell. It was very unorganized. In my mind, Steve Maxwell's like, hey, can you guys come? And then all of a sudden, Pastor Jack Hillegoss is sending out agendas. And there was, you know, and bless Day Minette, because she had already just said, I'm just going to get hotel rooms and we're all set.

8:53 And so we were kind of even autonomous in that regard. And it just like, it was like a Woodstock, a mini Woodstock. Just we all came in from wherever we didn't really know, like, yeah, it's going to be something cool, man. Something good is happening. Just don't eat the brown acid. It's going to be great. And it was, I mean, there were heavy hitters there besides yourself, Dr. Rick Scarborough, who is, I mean. He actually formulated the Remnant Alliance in the first place, which has reached thousands of pastors across the United States about cultural engagement. And then Pastor Paul Blair. who by himself is an enigma and an incredible story, having been a Chicago Bears lineman, I think. Yeah, football player in the NFL. And then called into ministry and just a fascinating guy. You look at him like, I just want to hang out with this guy. He looks fun to talk to. He's a mountain of a man. He is. He is. And he is Liberty Pastors because this also fits into this. He's a pastor. Yeah.

9:56 Two campuses, Orlando, Edmond, Oklahoma. But he started Liberty Pastors to try to begin to rally pastors around this idea of how do we intelligently engage our culture and become a voice in the public square. And you and Pastor Brian and Naomi and Annette, you all went to one of those. Is it like a course? Is it like a three -day thing? It's like a three -day, yeah. Similar layout to what we just did. You go a half day, then a full day, then another half day. And it's drinking from a fire hose from guys like Rick Green from the Patriot Academy and others. I mean, just David Barton was there. I mean, it's just. And it's very similar along the same lines of culture. And I think. Yes. So for me, all of this came together within there. I'm like, oh, now I see why we're here. We have Remnant Alliance, all these organizations who have something to offer, something to help with all of these mountains and these seven mountains and culture and politics and just everything, life. And then you have the churches, the embassy churches, as they'll be called, that are affiliated with it. And so there's already a list of like 10 or 12 or maybe even more, I'm not sure. And it all came together for me during this meeting. I'm like, oh, okay, something happened in 2020, and that was COVID.

11:12 And when we all started to come out of that, where the world itself is living in complete trauma. complete trauma from COVID. People may not admit it, but that's why they're all getting spun up over all kinds of things. You look at the news, you're on fire. They're mad. They don't know why they're mad, but it's because, well, they're mad at their government. They're mad at what was done to them. There's all kinds of things that were forced on people. And this, of course, is a worldwide phenomenon. And it feels like this group of pastors and affiliated organizations Without us even knowing it, I think we're saying now is the time. We got our wits together. We figured out, wait a minute, something really bad happened here. We got snookered. I'll just use a friendly word. We got snookered. And not only is it time to change that, but this is a tremendous opportunity to spread the gospel, show people what's good and evil. help them understand why they're feeling the way they're feeling, and to change all these mountains, to recapture mountains, or at least to influence them, to move them as possible. And that hit me so hard because I'm up there. You know, I was asked to come in and talk about the Godcaster. And honestly, up until now, the Godcaster is, well, this is for radio stations to move to digital and to bring in, you know, your local content. That was basically the pitch. Um, and the other side

12:43 was for, for churches and ministries, you know, now you can broadcast outside of the walls of the sanctuary, but it didn't go much further than that. And so, and when, when I'm sitting here, I'm like, oh, I see what's happening here. And you and I, by the way, I think I said it on stage. Have you ever had that where you, well, I'm sure you have because of your professional speaker, where you're, you're speaking or you're preaching and things are coming out of your mouth that you hadn't thought about, you hadn't prepared, but you're actually Your mind and your opinion is being formed as you speak. Yes. I had this. And, you know, because all I know how to do is just tell my story or tell a story. I can tell stories all day long. And so I kind of knew what would get this group engaged. I knew how I could get them, you know, just to pay attention and laugh. And boy, God bless Pastor Paul. Every single time I said something, he was cracking up and laughing. There's always one. Well, there was two, and Pastor Jack was on the left. So I would lock eyes with them. You know how you're always looking at one person? And there's Pastor Paul. He's like, ah, this is great. And Pastor Jack's like, yeah. So it just felt so good. I think I said that you and I, I think it was about us, that when we met, it was like a Reese's peanut butter cup. Yes. You know, it's chocolate and peanut butter came together, and we just felt like, wow, this is. There's something really good here, which is another reason why I just wanted to sit down and chat with you, because we don't get the opportunity to do this from my perspective, from your perspective about what's really going on. Right. True. And so things started

14:17 to come together in my mind, whereas I'm seeing, hey, this group of guys, they figured out how. Easy it is actually without money to change the political landscape in your local community. That's how Pastor Jack became mayor. That was the main one that stuck with me. There's a number of different categories and different mountains. And as I'm talking, I'm like, wow, this is something much bigger. They all understand that in order to... affect your local culture. All politics is local. Your local culture, you need to be broadcasting into it. And you can't just do that, you know, on Sunday and two, or in Pastor Jack's case, four, you know, four sermons. You have to push it out. And at the same time, out of my mouth are coming the words how no agenda runs where, you know, we really... Value for value is not just people donating money to us, but they're contributing their expertise. And I'm like, and it hit me like, ah, every church has that person who goes to the sports games. Every church has that person who goes to every single city council meeting, every single school board meeting. The person who is in the Chamber of Commerce and can tell us what's going on there.

15:39 Good, bad, indifferent. And then after that, I'm sitting down with Pastor Jack's team. He had assembled a team to create their version of how the Godcaster would be used. And I think it's very simple. It's just a digital station. It broadcasts on -demand and live content. We know that churches during COVID became content factories. Everybody's got that. I mean, I love walking in here. By the way, I love being in the church. I love our church. It feels like home. It feels like our clubhouse also. I mean, house of God, but also our clubhouse. Yeah. You know, I walk in and there's faith and I had a nice chat with the dudes installing the new gear and we're upgrading our gears. He's a rock star in that world, by the way. Crazy stuff. He did Elevation Church. Oh, really? That guy's amazing.

16:26 Yeah, I had a nice chat with him. Great guy. Yeah, we talked about old radio gear. Nice. We still had knobs instead of faders. Robert's amazing. And then... It all came together. The whole loop came together, that it's a two -way street. It's not just, you know, as I was saying, Mayor Pastor Jack, your station can't be Mayor Pastor Jack with, Mayor Pastor Jack with. That's not it. You need to have incoming, and every single person in your congregation, in our city as well, has a high -quality recording device in their pocket. I mean, mainstream media uses these all the time to do interviews, press. You see them all the way holding their phone up because it works.

17:08 So all you need is one person to manage the incoming and every single one of those becomes a podcast. It's irrelevant. This is another thing that happened. Do you mind if I just keep rambling? No, no. Keep going. So Dr. Rick Scarborough, he asked a question. He said how and he's kind of a funny guy. You know, he's like. He almost looks like your Bible teacher in school, you know, kind of a little hunched over. Bible professor. How long should a podcast be? And I flippantly said, until it's boring. And I felt bad about that because, you know, he actually got up and walked out. And I'm like, did I offend him by saying that? And I cornered him. Well, actually, he cornered me. And he said, I'm going to show you what I'm doing here. And he has this one minute, my take. And every week he does a one minute, my take, it airs on the bot radio networks. I mean, it's on hundreds of radio stations. I would love to have that on our Godcaster. And I said, this is a podcast. He said, is it? I said, yes, because it's perfect. And, and, but instead of uploading them to the web, you know, for every month at the end of the month, do them every single week and actually turn that into an automatic podcast feed forum. It's just, it's so good.

18:17 And it's just this one minute take. But it's super, super good, and that is a podcast. A podcast is really the delivery mechanism. It's just a technology piece that is all over the Internet. No one really sees it. You don't see it, but it's how the Internet connects together in so many ways that software engineers use that all the time. So the Godcaster is based on this technology. So as you rightly point out, now that that's a podcast, we can add that to the Bridge Church Godcaster. It'll update every week whenever he updates it. It'll run during Hello Fred in the regular lineup in between the music. But because it's in the Godcaster ecosystem, any other Godcaster can add this just by typing in Dr. Rick Scarborough, my take, pops up, they add it in. Now we have a syndicated network. Beautiful. And it may be fun. Just to, you know, there may be other stuff that they're doing that would be relevant here.

19:17 And so it all started to come together. I got so excited about this. I think I even said it. Tina said to me, Adam, we've been together for over 10 years. I've never seen you this excited and joyous about anything. And I'm a pretty happy guy. You are. I'm always pretty up and happy. You're living up in a down world, brother. Exactly. And so I just see all this opportunity. I'm like, man, we got to. Get on the stick in our own church. There's so much we need to do. You know, God has just been, you know, I think I had a scripture yesterday that popped up for me. Yeah, and then after that, tell about meeting with Jonah yesterday, Jonah Mandel. That's another part of this. That's exactly what I wanted to say. But yesterday I saw Galatians 6, 9, and let us not grow weary of doing good, for in due season we will reap if we do not give up. Yeah. I'm like, okay, God, yeah, you got me working hard. I get it. But I can run a calendar. I've done it before. You know, I've had a pretty easy 15, 16 years doing no agenda. And, you know, I was like, oh, boy, you know, oh, I got to get up at 7. So this is really not too much of an issue. And as if, no, not as if, in his perfect timing, he, I ask.

20:36 Jonah Mandel, Pastor Brian's eldest son. He's 14, just going into high school. I asked him a couple of weeks ago, I said, would you be interested in doing a podcast? He said, yeah, I would. I'm like, okay. And I met with him yesterday and oh man, he's got ideas. He's not afraid. And he's like, yeah, but I want to do a podcast and came up with a name, Young and Faithful. Love it. Which I think is a great name because it has... For older people, it kind of harkens back to Young and the Restless. So it has like a familiarity to it without it being that at all. So young and faithful. And, you know, he has all those topics and I'm going to set them up and, you know, co -produce with him. But the idea is to teach him how to do it himself. And that's the thing we need more and more of. When I was with Glenn Beck a couple weeks back. And I'm telling him about, you know, the problem is we're all here in our 50s and 60s. And where's the young people? They're on TikTok. They're on Instagram.

21:36 They're doing reels. They're doing nonsense. They're throwing it away to Silicon Valley. And it's just, they create it and it's gone. And all they're getting is some light dopamine hits. And it's not, or heavy, it's not really effective. It's not doing anything for the kingdom. And, you know, we need this younger generation. to come in and start doing what we do. And it turns out Glenn Beck is starting his own program called The Torch, as in passing the torch. Nice. I'm not quite sure. You know, he wants to talk to me about it. He said, you know, we got to, you know, Glenn Beck, a very busy guy, but, you know, we'll connect at some point. He already has a CEO, Ford and everything. So he's got quite the operation. Yeah. So it just all started to come together. And I'm like, and then as a part of that, Pastor Jimmy, I'm always going to say Pastor Jimmy on the air because I need to put that respect on your name. Thank you, brother. We need to be doing something, you and I. Yeah, I agree.

22:37 And somehow I felt this would be the start of something. This is what God's moving me to do because that Reese's peanut butter cup, you know, that's the thing that I feel we can help people with. And when I say people, I'm talking about our people right here in Bridge Church. And it's not something I can do on my own with my own program, no agenda, which is a whole different area. But it's also not something you can do from the pulpit. You know, it's like a coming together. And so if you don't mind me just switching into a topic here, the floods that we witnessed here is very polarizing to people. How can God do this? Why did God let this happen? And what immediately, this is my world, what I see is people going into their timeline and, oh, it was, you know, this company was over cloud seeding.

23:37 Not true. It was 5G towers manipulating the weather. Not true. And by the way, I say not true because I've been down these rabbit holes for the past two decades and I know it is and isn't true. And yeah, there's stuff happening, but this is not it. And so even for myself, it's like, how can we help people through this time of understanding that? I don't think it's even possible for you or I individually to talk about this in our own sections, in our own places, and get the message across. And so I'm asking you really as a new believer. Why does God let that happen? I mean, that may not be the right question, but I think that's the question people are asking. That is a question people are asking. The thing about it is we tend to, when things are going good, we give God the glory. And then when they're going bad, we immediately throw him under the bus and back over him a couple of times. You know, it's like, you know, it's always one way or the other. But what people tend to not think about, and this is like getting up to the 30 ,000 foot level and looking back down. God set this world into motion. He created it, right?

24:50 The Holy Spirit hovered over the waters. Genesis 1, He created man, Adam. Then He created Eve, woman, from Adam and all that. So we know that. But then a... It was kind of like, Adam, you had one job. Don't eat that. Name these animals, and we're going to fellowship in Eden. We're going to create an amazing world here. One job, one thing. And when that one thing went away through the sin, the rebellion, and them enacting their own will over God's will, what happened was the world went into a fallen state. And the thing about it, the world will not be redeemed until the end of time. And so now we— That's a hard concept to grasp. It is a hard concept.

25:35 That's hard to grasp, man. But they were the only ones. They were the first ones. They had one job, and that was to walk in fellowship with God and with one another. And when they failed in that one job—now, God made a way to redeem all of that, but it was plan B, not plan A. And so we live in a fallen world. People run stop signs. People drive drunk. guns don't kill, people kill, they pull triggers. I mean, the list goes, it's ad infinitum at that point. But for whatever reason, young in my faith, I was able to reconcile that quickly. Part of it came when my mother passed away while I was in college. She was only 45 years old. And I was a student in school, a ministerial student. I was training for the ministry, theology. And my own family was coming to me. I'm still a young Christian saying, how could God let this happen? Right, exactly, exactly.

26:34 And you know what I had to say to one of my uncles? It was hard to say it, but my mother had been a smoker her entire life since she was 12 years old. That was that generation, right? And she also drank tea nonstop all day long, never worked out a day in her life. She was sedentary. She wasn't overweight. She was unhealthy. And her body crashed. Because not taking care of it, not stewarding it well, is that a character issue? It's not a character issue. It's probably an ignorance issue, not knowing what we know now about the human body. And I had to look at my uncles and say, in a sense, she did this to herself. She did not take care of herself. I grew up with her, and I know how unhealthy she was. And how many times I racked my brain of ways to try to get her to quit smoking. You know, when we first finally got, you know, windows that rolled down in her first big Lincoln Continental. Electric windows. I would roll her windows down, you know, like, you're making me breathe your smoke. But anyway, all that, it's a funny way to say it.

27:37 But at the end of the day, I understood very quickly, God didn't do this. God gave her every. For love, he gave her choice, the power of choice. So then when we go back to the floods, force majeure, there's even a technical legal term for it, act of God. There you go. That's a confusing thing in this world. We say act of God, and it's a legal term. Here's the thing. The world is groaning, according to Romans 8. It says that the world is literally groaning. You look at the... The floods, you look at tornadoes that have been happening. Earthquakes. Yeah. Wars and rumors of wars. All of that's happening.

28:17 Matthew 26. As we continue to move towards the last of the last days. Whatever that is, it could be another thousand years. It could be ten. It could be tomorrow. It could be tomorrow. But we know the earth. It feels like the earth is groaning. That's not an act of God. That's just the Lord said, this is how things are going to go. He didn't create. He doesn't create calamity. He doesn't create chaos. If anything, he creates order out of chaos. And so it's so easy to just blame God. Why? And we all want, that's the golden question. Three -letter word with a question mark. Why? Why? Why? And I came early on in my faith after my mom passed and all my family's coming to me going, how could God do that to her? And she was the best one out of us all.

29:02 And I'm like, God did not do that to her. She did that to her. She made choices. The reason why somebody runs a stop sign, other than it being a health event, which, by the way, in Naples, we saw a man have a health event and run off the road and do offense. Oh, really? We didn't tell you all that. No, you didn't. We're standing at a stoplight, and we see this guy rolling slow in an old pickup, and he's looking out the window. His face is contorted, and he's having a seizure. Oh, no. And we saw, I mean, and I'm sitting there. I said, Annette, that man's having a seizure. He's having a health event. And fortunately, there was a police officer who saw him and he pulled in behind. So we didn't have to stop, but we just immediately prayed for this poor man. But things happen. So other than that, we make choices. And sadly, our choices ripple effect into other people's lives, good and bad. We make good choices. It's a blessing to everybody else.

29:56 We make bad choices. It's a ripple effect into other people's lives. God didn't do that. He gave us because of love. He gave us the power of will, free will, choice. Which is the, this is what I've learned. You cannot, of all the things that we have similar to animals and the world around us, the one thing that is different is the ability to love. And you cannot, you know, Nazis in the prison camp couldn't force the prisoners to love them. Even though they could force them to do horrible things, you cannot force someone to love you. And the way I see it, the way I'm interpreting in my early walk here is that's actually the hack that God put in. It's like, you got to love me of your own free will. The way I've made you, no one can force you to love me, love someone else. So that's up to you. It's the one uncontrollable variable in another person's life. I cannot override that. We can overpower things and get a behavior, get people to do something, but it's not out of love. It's just out of fear, obligation, whatever. And so it goes right back to, you know, you have to look at a scenario like this. You know, why was there an 8 .7 earthquake in Russia of all places? Why is New York? having rumblings and seismic activity. There's a lot of things. I do need to add one little thing

31:28 about earthquakes because about 12 years ago, for I think marketing reasons, they changed the number scale from Richter scale to something called the momentum scale. So an 8 .7, which just gets great headlines, really is more like a two and a half on the old Richter scale. So this is... It's actually evil that this was done. And nobody ever defines that. It's not definable. It's just like, Daymonette and I are always laughing about that. She says, it's 106. I said, Daymonette, is that the temperature or feels like? No, it's the feels like temperature. Okay. This is a marketing thing, and it's done for different reasons. I think maybe for climate change agendas. It's a marketing for news, you know, like, hey, 8 .7, this is insane, this is crazy. Of course, even a three on a Richter scale is a big deal.

32:29 Right. So it was up there, but, you know, you can't equate it to what happened in San Francisco in 1991. We were still on the Richter scale. We were still on the Richter scale then. I'm sorry for the interruption. No, no, that's spot on. But back to where we were going, but that is a good point. The earth feels like it's groaning, right? Things are happening. Events happen. Sometimes things just happen. And when people say things like, you know, well, you know, that was meant to happen or that was meant. I'm going, I don't think so always. I don't think something's meant to happen just because it happens. I think people make choices when it comes in the purview of our control. We make choices. People make choices where they build homes. People make choices.

33:15 Oh, yeah. I don't want to. Victim blame, but these are choices. But it is true. I mean, if I grew up in Lubbock, Texas, which was Tornado Alley back in the 60s and 70s, it's kind of moved more towards Oklahoma up north a little bit and west towards Dallas -Fort Worth area. I mean, it's moved. But I grew up there, and I had a choice. I could stay there and live now. When I was a kid, I didn't because we saw the May 11, 1970 tornado to kill 27 people in Lubbock. F5 came through Lubbock. And so I made a judgment pretty early on. I don't like tornadoes and I don't really want to live where there are a bunch of tornadoes, you know? I mean, so as a young adult, I went to tech one semester, then I moved to central Texas, you know? Yeah. Well, what does central Texans have that they've got? Well, we are the flood, the floodplain of the United States. Yes. We have, we have, we have a severe drought and heat wave and yeah, there's. I choose to live here. Yeah. I also choose to live aware.

34:15 I choose to assess my area, live aware, and then you have decisions to make regarding that. I live by a creek. That creek's never flooded over the original bank that our house is built on, ever. I found that out before we moved there. So it's not technically a flood zone. Right. But when those rains were coming and all that was happening, I was down there checking the bank, never even. hardly rose at all so but that's us we live three miles from the guadalupe that's right comfort where it comes through comfort i didn't i wasn't worried about that so again back to choices back to free will and does god cause chaos does god's god cause and then use people say well he allows it well i guess technically you could say that but it's not like he's green lighting everything that happens Things are just happening. He also gave us the stewardship over the earth. Absolutely. And so that's up to us whether we're doing it well or not and where we build, where things erode, et cetera. So in my mind, it's like this thing's going to groan and crack and creak for the rest of times until end of times. And lives will be lost and it will feel terribly unjust because children will pass.

35:35 Yeah. Good people will die because of the earth. volatility. I mean, we're just a spinning ball in space. I mean, it's like, are we sure it's a ball, Jimmy? I mean, or a Frisbee, I don't care, whatever. I mean, it's, it may be a Royal Frisbee, but a Mattel Frisbee, but at the end of the day, you know, he threw me with that one. Sorry about that. Totally threw me off my track. Yeah, about the Earth that would just spin and ball. Well, it's like you say about the Internet. It's amazing. Any of this stuff works. It's true. It's amazing that this thing can stay as stable as it has in space. No kidding. That stuff blows my mind. That's a good way to look at it, man.

36:16 Just say, it's amazing. All of this works regardless of what you think. It's amazing our weather patterns aren't worse than they are, if you think about it. We're a ball in space orbiting with a bunch of other balls and stars and comets. And it's amazing a comet hasn't taken us out already. I mean, so I have to look. I just assess those things and look at them. And then I say. It's a miracle we're alive at all. We're the most vulnerable thing on planet Earth. We are so vulnerable. And the weakest out of the whole animal kingdom for the most part. Yeah, no kidding. Except for our fur babies, maybe. They're a little more spoiled than we are. But literally, you have to take these steps back and look at things and try to be objective to say, okay. Am I going to blame what Scripture reveals to be a completely loving and gracious God who desires to bless His people? Am I going to blame Him because the river rose? Am I going to blame Him because a tornado went through a trailer park in Post, Texas? Am I going to blame Him because somebody ran a red light? So this is just a lack of wisdom, a lack of knowledge, a lack of... The scriptures, this is, this is what I'm learning. It's like, I go like, so, well, it was written. This has all been told through thousands of years and, and, you know, okay. I mean, you can, and if you don't believe it, this is the, this is the, as a new believer, this is just the, the hardest

37:47 thing. And thank you, by the way, for that. That was a great explanation. I'm going to, I'm going to use that. And I wouldn't even say for just new believers, there's people who've. loved God for years, but have never reconciled pain and suffering and accidents and these things that happen in the world. I had to early on because I was faced with it with my mother passing away. And she was the best out of our whole big family. I come from a large family and she really was the most righteous, truthful, loving. sacrificial person in the whole group that's why my uncles who were wild honky -tonk hero kind of guys you know yeah who were saying how could god let this she was the best one why not me you know that yeah it's that immaturity and that inability to be objective and say well we all got stuff right we all abused our bodies or we've not taken care of ourselves and it's a crapshoot on who that's going to land on next, right? For example, we know that Steve Maxwell, our friend from Florida, he had a health event back in October, November, and he died for 15 minutes in an ambulance. was brought back, revived, resuscitated, resurrected, whatever. Coma for two weeks? Coma for eight days. Eight days. Walked out of the, and now seeing him now, he looks like he could play a professional football at this point. It's a miracle.

39:09 Dude is shredded. He's working out. What happened? Well, that event provoked him. I got to take care of myself. And man, is he ever doing it. I mean, he's probably in the best shape of his life. Yeah. I mean, he looked fantastic. I was like. Dude, you look like Adonis. It was funny because we were at their house. They had a dinner for all the attendees, and it started raining, and then Steve is moving these big parasols on the terrace, and they're heavily weighted. And these things, they've got to be 40, 50 pounds. I'm like, Steve, can I help you? And he gives me a look. I'm sorry, man. I'm sorry. My bad. I was looking at you at the old heart attack crippled guy. Walking out of the hospital after eight days in a coma. He's like, no. Just moves it right over. It was fantastic. But this all feeds into what we're talking about is that God has given us this privilege to steward this life.

40:04 And there will be things we have no control over. something falling off of the building. Every day. Every day. Every day it's a miracle we're alive. I mean, this stuff works at all, right? Yeah. And so we have to think that way and be okay with that and reconcile. Everybody has to reconcile suffering, pain, injustice. We all have to reconcile those things to think it's a privilege that we have a single breath in our lungs. You know, we can get mad at God over all these things that happen. Or we can say, thank you for letting me live this life. Thank you for letting me be born for such a time as this. Thank you that I'm here and I'm who I am. Whether it works good or not or I'm in the best scenario or not, I'm here now. This is what we have now.

40:52 And then I always use this W -I -N -N, what is needed now. So what is needed now in this time? And to me, it's to help people reconcile pain. But also they've got to reconcile blessing because we don't do real well with that either. No kidding. When things are going great, we tend to get soft and weak. And when good times make weak men, you know, we tend to not do well when things are good. This is why I instituted the praise break. Did you start that? I just came up with it one day when I wrote a daily grind. I'm like, yeah, exactly. And so I do it all the time now. When something goes my way or something good happens, I go, praise break. Just throw my hands up. Praise break, just for a second, because it just resets your mind for a second. Like, where's this coming from? This is great. I want to be happy about this moment. By the way, every morning I start off with, you know, well, good morning, Holy Spirit. And I go, good morning, Lord Jesus. Good morning, Abba. Thank you for the roof over my head. Thank you for the food on my table. Yes. That's it. Yes. That's it.

41:55 And then I'll go on and, you know, get ready for my Bible study, whatever. Those two things, like. We don't even realize sometimes we're so privileged. Like, thank you for the roof over my head and the food on our table. The two most basic elements. And you've got to do that stuff. And you're right, it resets our mind. And we have to do that often. We've got to recalibrate the scale. Every day, several times a day. Remember the old scales that had the rusty... Oh, the knob that you twirl? The knob that was rusty. You had to reset it every time. They were never accurate, right? No, of course. They were like four or five pounds off. They still use those at the airport. There you go. So you've got to recalibrate that thing often. We have to do that with ourselves, especially in the face of calamity and tragedy. and injustice, all those things.

42:40 And for whatever reason, the Lord gave me the grace to do that early on so that I've not had to wrestle with my faith or the fairness or unfairness of the world. That stuff just doesn't move me because I'm like, I can't say that's unfair. It's amazing. I even get a breath in my... Like, we got some bad news about our cabinet's drama that's been going on the last night. It's not over yet, brothers. Not over yet. They think it is. They say, we're not going down there. Forget it. You owe us X amount of money. I mean, it was a really unjust thing. Yeah. I could get real torqued about that, or I could just go, hey, so we may end up paying twice the amount for these cabinets than we should have. In a fair world, in a righteous world, but sometimes things aren't fair. Sometimes, and I'm not going to get torqued about it. Yeah, my mom, as long as I can remember, Adam, life is not fair. She just always said that. I think every parent, that's parenting 101. But I don't know if parents today are still saying these things, brother.

43:46 I don't know if they are. I don't know either. I mean, I was watching a news story yesterday about... Parents who are using AI chat bots to make up stories for their kids. You know how you make up a story or you read a book, obviously, but you'll make up a story, a fun little story for your kid. And so saying, okay, chat GPT, make up a kid's story. The moral being brush your teeth and make this the, you know, these the characters and then off it goes. I'm like. No, no, no, no. And so when I was sitting here with young Jonah yesterday, I'm like, you know, I'll get some jingles going and I'll email it to you. He says, Mr. Adam, I don't have an email.

44:36 And I knew he didn't have a phone. He has a watch and his watch, he can text and call. And the only apps are controlled by his dad's phone. And I'm just sitting here going like, that's so. awesome that is so awesome wow this is a kid who reads books of scripture he's really you know there's a there's a hopefully a a pastor in the making right no doubt this kid's got it all over no doubt young man um he plays golf you know he's he's he's doing stuff he plays music he writes devotionals for the for the for his class and for his buddies and like yeah and is he missing out Didn't seem like a disconnected young man to me. Not at all. Yeah, he seems very in tune with everything that's going on and seems really mature. And I'm like, we are, we collectively, we're really, and this kind of brings me to the things that I, see, I got my, thank you very much for your daily grind today. You had Ephesians 6 .11. Well, you mentioned you read Ephesians, so that got me thinking about Ephesians. That's why I did it this morning. I was like, oh, I read through that again. Pastor Jimmy does this daily grind every single day, sends out, I think you send it to a lot of people on text message, and you always send one to our little besties group, the four of us with Tina and Annette, but you always send me separately, and we have our own little conversation going there. But I always, if we've spoken or if I've had any

46:06 kind of... verbal or audible contact with you, I see where these daily grinds come from. Oh, we were talking about that the other day. And so, and I said, I think the other day I said, you know, God moved me to reread Ephesians, you know, to get my, my, my spiritual warfare armor on and get ready for all the things that are coming. And so then when I see that show up today, I'm like, wow, that's so awesome. Thank you. I appreciate that. Through conversations and friendships and relationships. You'll say something, Tina, Annette, whoever. So maybe Brian here or whatever, Pastor Brian. And then that gets my mind leaning. And there are these constant, we call them God taps, God wings, right? Where you get these reminders throughout a day. And so that was a reminder of, because I was thinking about Victor Marks too. I'd read some of his stuff. Because he's on warfare a lot. Obviously he's got a war mindset. But I was thinking about that and I was thinking. you know what, there is some attack going on. I need to get back into Ephesians 6 especially. I just went right back through that. Some attack? Yeah, I mean, right?

47:13 Some attack? Yeah. You know, I try to explain to nonbelievers and say, you know in all the movies they got the little devil on one shoulder, the angel on the other. This is real. This is real, except they are. Eight feet tall. You can't see them. The angels, they're not as cute as you think they are. They're not running around like cherubs with little bows and arrows. No, no. They can knock you down with one fell swoop. And then there's the enemy, and the enemy is very ugly and very, very grotesque looking. And, you know, there's so much. As I become more aware, I know that there's physical manifestation. These things are. popping up around us you know sometimes they move into our dimension if you will so where we can see them or really feel them right and i just really want people to Think about that and just be aware that all the time this—and it's in Scripture. Very clear in Scripture. It's all throughout Scripture, but Ephesians, especially with the principalities and—come on, Pastor Jimmy, you're better at this than I am. Well, Ephesians 1, when Paul's praying, he talks about Christ's overall principality, power, might, and dominion.

48:26 And all of those are spiritual in nature. And then in Ephesians 6— He goes into principalities and powers. I even read commentaries on that even recently because I like to go back and just brush up on things, what really smart people are saying, see if I'm in alignment. And not always, but that's not always a bad thing because they're just people too. But the scholars generally agree that all of those are literally spiritual entities. It's not talking about government. It's not talking about... Physical rulers. It's talking about spiritual rulers in heavenly places, Ephesians 6 talks about, and Ephesians 1. So these are real. These entities are real. The devil is real. It's not an old Flip Wilson thing, you know, the devil made me do it. Remember that?

49:12 It's not that. It's literally there's an interactive life that we live with realms that we can't necessarily see. On an ongoing basis. I think this is a big key to getting into young people's hearts and minds. Because if you say, hey, there's this stuff going on that you can't see with your naked eye, they are much more inclined to believe that. I agree. Because, you know, there's a lot of, of course, we always go through cycles of new age and spirituality and UFOs and all this stuff. But I even see it with Joe Rogan, who... I text him maybe once a month, you know, if I see a good show or something happened. And I literally saw good and evil pop up in one week. And the first one was this Tallarico state rep who, and I want to be real careful here because, you know, his seminary school and his church, his denomination, wherever he's coming from. does not align with mine, doesn't mean that he may not believe in the same things, but he has a very, and this is what I call the sparkle clergy, has a very distorted view when you, instead of saying Jesus is real, he's like, well, Jesus is a pattern.

50:34 You know, like, no, okay. And so he was justifying a lot of evil doings in our world. based upon his interpretation of scripture. And I could see, first of all, I know Joe well enough that He was like, okay, I don't think he was really buying all of it, or he was very guarded. But then within the same week, this guy Chad Wright pops up, and he's just ministering to Joe. And he says, Joe, your analytical mind, this is exactly what we need. You're going to be a great preacher. I can't wait to see what God's going to do with you. And he was just going like a step beyond what I ever said to Joe. But I texted him, and I said, 100%. Chad Wright is praying for you.

51:21 I am praying for you every day, and Joe, thousands of people are praying for you. That was it. I didn't say, and by the way, great episode. I've sent him stuff like that before he answered this time, which told me he moved a little bit. But what I was seeing is here's a guy who believed in UFOs, believed in the multidimensional layers of the universe. If you look at his journey, you know, it just keeps coming back to, well, where did it start? And I think he's ready. He even said in that interview, so in order to get to where you are, Chad, right, you have to believe in this. You have to have faith that that is true. Bingo. There it is. There it is, faith.

52:07 And I think that clicked with him. I'm sure it's super scary. I know how. anxious you can be about this and making that big step. But I want people to really think about that, the spiritual beings that are all around us, because it's much easier for this generation to accept that because there's so much we don't see that people easily believe in. Exactly. And, oh, by the way, this has been written about for thousands of years. So just read this book. You know, check this out. You'll be astounded. And that's been so helpful for me because I've done all kinds of breath work and, you know, you name it. You know, I've done it. My mom was part of a group called the Mind Control Group, which is pretty funny considering what kind of job they had. And she would go into, I can go into alpha and then to beta state and then all of this stuff. And, you know, so I was kind of grown, I grew up with that idea. Like, yeah, you can probably do that, hypnotism, all these mystical things. But when you just say, hey, look at this, look at this story, look at this truth that is written here, read that and you'll get it. And then you can, and, you know, and Hollywood has... knows that these stories work, the good, the bad, the evil, the villain, because it's true, because that is the life that we're living in, and it feels natural to us.

53:38 So I'm so hopeful that we can propagate this and have people look at it. Ephesians is just such a great thing because... It involves warfare, which you don't really expect from, oh, the godly Christian people. Sweet, nice people. Hey, man, I got a helmet on. I got a breastplate on. I got a belt on. I got my special shoes. Exactly. I got a shield. I got a sword. I got all this stuff. And I'm going to battle every single day. And, you know, that's really something I hope that we can. we can pass on to these new generations. And I'm excited to see where Jonah will go. I want to see more of our youth. I'm going to dedicate myself to trying to get more of them to do stuff.

54:21 And we know that this Gen Z definitely is considered to be more conservative by nature. Many are looking at faith. So part of the warfare that we as, I'm going to say it, elders, have to help them with is people like tolerico this is a danger we have to we have because it's so it's so believable like oh okay so i can be a godly guy and all these other things and you know an abortion would be okay too so i don't have to have a confrontation about that with with other people right right and yet we were born into a world at war it was at war before we were born into it And now that we are born again, born the second time, the spiritual birth, we're drafted. We signed our draft card and we said yes to Jesus. That's why I'm in the prayer unit, right? Yeah, I love your hoodie, man. You're rocking one of your great hoodies, one of your 30 hoodies. Pretty much.

55:25 But it's true. And we have to help the next generation understand. I think you're right. I think they're more open to it. I know when I was a youth pastor out in Southern California, we had a massive move of God. But we also had massive spiritual warfare. I mean, literally where we were in the high desert, that's where all the rave parties started, where the cult was so heavy. We were out walking around our church, and it was right up next to a desert draw, like an old river that only runs during the flood season, right? So it was like almost a canyon. And down in the bottom of it, we found a site where animals were being sacrificed against our church. I mean, it was like coming against us because our church stood. I mean, we were a strong church and we even had a whole ministry dedicated to what's called SRA, Satanic Ritual Abuse. We had counselors that were... that were wired and trained to deal with that because it was so prevalent in that culture. It's not even a bad idea for here because it's everywhere. Here's the thing I found out, and this is just kind of a side note, but it's important to say, when we lived in Southern California in the high desert, Victorville, Apple Valley, Hesperia area, which is known to be a very spiritually dark place, I actually was more alert, more in tune with God, closer to God in the sense that evil was obvious. Nobody hid it there. I will say that about California is nothing hidden.

56:50 It was out in the open. You knew what you were dealing with here in the South and in Texas, Texas is like the South on steroids. It's a whole nother level of independence, a whole nother level of we're on the Republic of Texas kind of thing is that people here are known for their niceness. We're known for the decorum. They're known for their sweetness, give you the shirt off my back, which is a beautiful part of our culture. The only problem is it can also mask what's really going on and cover. So people can, I love you, brother, and give you a hug, and you don't know they're stabbing you in the back in the next conversation. So at least there, the enemy was visible. And boy, was he ever.

57:32 I mean, I learned a lot. I got put on a crash course. of what spiritual warfare is about and the real stuff. I'm talking way beyond things that go bump in the night. So how do you make yourself aware of this every day? I mean, do you? I do. Are you thinking about it every day? On the days I don't make myself aware, the things that happen make me aware. I'm reminded. Right, if you don't watch your six. Because you don't think 24 -7 on a single thing. We're not singular by nature. We're thinking about a million things. We're busy. We're doing tasks. We've got things, boxes to check, podcasts to do, sermons to write. So we've got stuff going on. So you don't think about it all the time. But there is an awareness that you can live with. I call it living with your eyes wide open. You know, you just, you live. I think Victor Marks calls it the four A's. You assess. You're aware. You there's a third one. I don't know. And then the last one's act. So there's there's four to it. I can't remember the fourth one. But anyway, it's this attitude of living aware, living with assessment, living with situational awareness. Well, we have to do that spiritually, just like we do. For example, when you and I walk into a restaurant, we always joke about. Who's going to sit with their back to the wall facing the exits? Who's going to keep their eyes open? And I'll say, do you have my six? Right? Right. So we live in a world where we need to be situationally aware. And men should

59:05 always know to walk into an environment. My dad was a first responder, so I got this. Where are the exits? Where are the exits? Or the entrances. You notice they always light the exits. Make sure you know where those are. I am that guy in the airplane who actually will look when they say the closest one could be behind you. I always look back. Okay, I see it. I know where it is. And I'm looking for the marshal. I'm trying to figure out who's the marshal. Who's the marshal? Is it he or she this time? Is it like Liam Neeson or is he just a regular dude? That is so good because the devil's playground is the phones. I'm just going to say it. I agree. It's the devil's playground. I agree as one who admits I'm addicted to this thing. Because so much of my life as a pastor is communication. Of course. So naturally, I'm communicating with people from my congregation, other pastors. Yeah, well, the communication part is okay, but it's everything else. But that's not what all this is. This has a lot more than a phone. Yes. Right? It's a gateway drug to a lot of dark things. When we travel, I get in the habit of I'm tall, so if I'm standing behind somebody, I can see what they're doing. And I'm always amazed at the speed of the fingers flicking and moving and zooming and commenting and this and that and back and forth. And it's unbelievable if you step back and watch. have the most broken, inaccessible phone possible. Not always possible because those phones usually break by themselves, but I try to purposely make it difficult or unattractive

1:00:38 to use. And we were in New York for Tina's birthday and 85 % of the people on the street were walking with their phone in their hand, walking and on their phone doing all that quick fingered stuff that I'm talking about. The other 15%, we're holding their hand and guiding them. Keep them from running into the stop sign or whatever. So that situational awareness that we have or actually don't possess anymore because we're just doing this, we're doing it in the car, at the stoplight, we're watching TV. And I think the text messaging also has, there's a whole bunch of issues with that, but anything else, it is sucking you into the devil's play. I know I sound like a... Like a crazy Southern Baptist guy. It's sucking you into the devil's playground.

1:01:29 He's a curmudgeon. But it is true. It is absolutely true. And the whole phone ecosystem is geared towards knowing what you're doing on other apps. I mean, we could go real deep into that, but it is geared towards keeping you engaged because engagement is money. That's just the bottom line. But the more engaged you are with what's in your hand, the less aware you are of your surroundings. No, zero awareness. Which means we're all basically sitting ducks. You go into airports are where I see it the most. Oh, goodness. Everybody's on their phone because nobody wants to engage another human being. You could run through the terminal naked. Half the people wouldn't even know it. Wouldn't even notice. Wouldn't even know it. No. So being spiritually aware is something that is already suppressed below our actual physical awareness. And getting people to be cognizant of what they're doing, what they're thinking of, you know. Tina and I did Bill Loveless' Christ -centered marriage course here through the church.

1:02:29 It was on Zoom, actually. And that—now, we've only been together for a little over a decade, so we're pretty good and fresh and new no matter. We haven't had enough years for real irritation to build up. But it changed our perspective of each other to such an enormous degree, so beautiful, because— I now can recognize, and you know, I've been divorced twice. I've had a colored life. But there are things that still to this day, the way my wife might say something or ask me something, typically or in the morning before I've had coffee or my eighth cup. And I'm like, wow, old Adam would have been irked by that.

1:03:15 Right. And my spiritual awareness is telling me, The enemy is knocking on your brain, brother. That's the enemy right there. And he's trying to make you feel bad about something which 99 .9 % of the time had no malice intent at all. We all tend to say something that's like, oh, there's a little undertone of something there. But because of the spiritual awareness of, and not everything you do is the devil or the enemy. I think people have other issues, but a lot of the time it is just something is said and the enemy is like, oh, I have an opportunity. Oh, I can make him feel bad about this or angry or whatever. Man, how can we teach young people these skills? How can we teach our peers these skills? Yeah, there's certain martial arts that it's not about how strong you are. It's about how well you can leverage the strength of your opponent. Yeah, your opponent. And that's how the enemy works. It's not that he's strength.

1:04:22 He's a deceiver by nature, a liar by nature. And so all he does is leverage our missteps, our mishaps, our mistakes, our moments. And he leverages our own energy. That's right. That's what jiu -jitsu is. It's exactly the same. And so he's the ultimate opportunist. How can we teach the next generation that? How can we make them more aware? There's also another caveat to this that you can become so hyper aware that you see a devil or a demon behind everything. We become very legalistic. Or just hyper spiritual to where you can't even have a normal conversation with another human being without it being something weird. So there is that tension and that slash balance, which are the same thing. Balance and tension are the same thing, the same way that we have to find to where. I'm situationally aware in the natural. I'm situationally aware in the spiritual, but I'm not weird about it. I don't sit in a restaurant or an airport on a plane and stare at everyone that makes me nervous.

1:05:31 I also just want to enjoy my steak. Exactly. So there's four levels of colors that the Patriot Academy, they're taking that class, where they talk about the first level is white. And that means you're completely unaware. You're walking through the airport with your phone in your hand, bumping into people and stumbling over things. That's the white color? That's white. The next one, there's four of them. The next one is yellow. Yellow is where you want to live, where you're situationally aware, but you're not hypervigilant at that point. You're not walking into a restaurant with your hand on your holster or having your hand on your gun because you're assuming something's going to happen. That's where you want to live.

1:06:17 That's the peaceful state where you can enjoy your dinner, but yet you're still cognizant. Mellow yellow. Yeah, mellow yellow is what I call it. The next one is the level orange. Orange means there's a potential threat. That's where you've assessed the situation. And you see something. Somebody, you're at a gas station with your wife on a trip. Stop it at a Love's or one of those, you know, what's the big one? Buc -ee's. Buc -ee's. Thank you. That one. You're there. And there's a lot of people. And there's some sketchy people that pull up next to your gas pump. And they're looking over at your wife. Now you've moved into potential threat mode. You're in orange.

1:07:00 And that's a vigilant place. But the last one is really the scary one. That's the red. So you've got white, yellow, orange, red. Red means there's imminent threat. So once potential threat, now this is imminent threat. In other words, they're coming at you. They've made a move. And that's where you have to act. And so make the analogy to the spiritual from that. It's exactly the same. Yeah. It's exactly the same. When they taught us that principle, we took our staff. through the constitutional defense course where we got to shoot 300 rounds. That was a blast, you know, with, with our, our ladies and our staff are shooting in there, man, they're amazing.

1:07:41 So, but, but when I learned that I made the, the, I just made that jump within a nanosecond of this is exactly what spiritual, the spiritual life is the same. You can live very unaware of your surroundings. Sadly, most Christians live at the white level. They're unaware. I'm not talking about holding a phone. I'm just talking about they're not in the Word. They're not in the Scriptures. They're not getting their buckets, as we use that a lot. They're not getting their buckets filled up. So they have nothing to draw from when things do go to yellow on into. So it's the same way spiritually. I've got to be aware. that there are nefarious things happening around me in the spiritual realm. There's a very real enemy. Scripture says he's a schemer, a strategist, a liar, a deceiver, a manipulator.

1:08:32 All of those are accurate descriptions of the work of the enemy. Whether you're talking about Satan himself, that would be the ultimate E, enemy, or the enemy in terms of minions and the demonic forces and wicked hosts that are there that the Bible talks about. So the yellow, that would be the place you want to live, where you're aware of your situation. You do connect the dots and go, eh, that's not normal, or that's beyond the scope of just happened. There's something behind that. The Bible calls it the spiritual gift of discerning of spirits. And that's where you actually, the Holy Spirit helps you see behind it. Can everybody develop that? Absolutely. That spiritual gift? Because it's a gift of the spirit, not a gift of the person. Right, right. So I don't possess that gift. I get to use that gift because the gift is the person of the Holy Spirit who lives in me. Right. So he has these nine manifestation gifts that are available to me whenever he wants to manifest them if I'm open to them. See what I'm saying? I've got to will submit myself to him, be led by the spirits, what it means. That means in a given situation, I'll know what's going on. So, for example, In that yellow zone, you're aware. You can see things that are happening, but you're not spiritually seeing a devil behind everything. Wait, my light flickered over there. Oh, man, I saw that in the movies. That's got to be demonic. No, power surge because we live in a small town, and that happens in small towns. Power surges everywhere.

1:10:02 Or the toilet broke in the men's bathroom. That's not demonic in nature. It just broke. That's plumbing. You know what I'm saying? It's plumbing. It happens. Those things go away. They break. So all that to say, on into the orange and the red. It's the same of, is this a potential threat? Is there really potentially something dark going on here? We should be practicing this. Oh, absolutely. We need to practice this daily because you should be able to go from never white, always yellow. To orange, red, quick, back. Okay. Red, I'm back down. Okay, back to yellow. That may be a conversation we need to have on a broader scale with our church family and students and young people. Using that, I love that color scale because that's just a good template. It's not a Bible term or you won't find the four color scale in scripture. but you'll find those degrees of awareness in Scripture in various things. So anyway, I think that would be really something to talk about. So that's just one of the nine spiritual gifts? Yeah, the gift of discerning of spirits. So we have eight more times we've got to talk. Yeah, absolutely.

1:11:09 How long have we been talking? An hour and 11 minutes. Yeah, we've been going on for a bit. I would love to do this again with you, brother, because there are a couple other things that... are really on my heart that I see out in culture. And a big one we could talk for a whole episode about Israel. Absolutely. And Epstein and Mossad and AIPAC and, quote, the Jews. This is a huge thing that is just wrecking culture right now. It's wrecking people's minds. And there's so many different ways to look at this. I would love to talk to you about that. Definitely. I also would love to come back and talk about the things that our president is doing that people don't even see or understand because it's so superficial. The way I say it is he's playing 4D chess. Everybody else is playing go fish.

1:12:04 Yes, that's true. The problem is we're the fish. We're just sitting and going, give me a nugget on my news feed. But when you see... What he is actually doing – Glenn Beck knows the president, and the president always isn't a big fan of Glenn Beck. And he said, you know, I talked to the president, you know, it was a couple months ago. I heard him say that. And he said he has changed. He said – Yeah. Because I said, you know, is he a believer? Does he really believe God saved his life? And I don't think Glenn said that. but he said he has changed, and he says, I don't care anymore. I'm going to do what I set out to do, which is good for our country. And just at a high level, lowering our debt, that is underway in multiple ways, increasing what's in your pocket in middle America, not the elites on the coast, which is completely upward wage pressure. So maintaining the dollar as this flows into it with this, I love to talk about stablecoin one day and what all of that means, how the tariffs really work. It is to a point, he's already said it, that there may come a day, and I would say probably right around the midterms, when President Trump will send everybody a check for $1 ,000.

1:13:37 We made this money. It's not borrowed. It came from the new policies we put in place. I'm sure that above a certain income amount, you won't get it. But here's your check, everybody. And again, that will be used for political reasons, but that's life. That's part of it. And it'll have his signature on it and his picture, probably. Probably right. Like one of those picture discs. Um, but, but the truth is it, it really, he really is doing these things. And, and finally, um, there's a video going around now, kind of a viral video. Please don't go looking for it. Stay off your phone. Uh, and it's a whole, I lived in London for five years and it's a whole bunch of people from the UK. Now, of course it's, it's edited, you know, could have been man on the street stuff is always deceptive because you can make it look like everyone's happy. Everybody's sad, but all these Brits. came to America on vacation this summer, and they stayed for anything from a week to a couple of weeks, and they're all saying, you know, it's unbelievable. You know, in Britain, all we hear is America's horrible, America's racist, it's a dangerous place, it's falling apart, it's no good. And every single one of them is saying, this country is so great.

1:14:58 And what they all say is everybody... Wants to chat. Wants to say hi. How you doing? What do you do for a living? Everyone's grinding away, as they'll say. You know, they're trying to get something done. They seem to have purpose. And I just wanted to pass that on because you can get the feeling that we suck. And that's intentional. That message is intentional. And there's your enemy. There it is. I've lived in a lot of countries, and we are, to my experience, the best country. to be in, the best country to live in. And they'd even have, like, look at the pride these Americans have. pride these Americans have with their flag on every porch hanging out. You know, they're proud to be American. They're proud of where they are. Yeah, we are very aware of our shortcomings and our issues, which is, of course, what the enemy uses to continuously stomp us down, stomp us down, stomp us down. So I just want to pass on to the people who are listening to Living Up in a Down World that we... We live in a great place, and we can make it even better. There it is. Even better. I'm with you. And it can rub off. It can rub off on other countries. And we absolutely can do this through the Word of God, through Jesus, through following Jesus, living like Jesus. And I've been doing this two and a half years now, I think. It's fun, Brother Jimmy. It is fun to live this way. We get to

1:16:29 do this. Yes. I've heard that before somewhere. You have some of the best slogans in the world, man. You've got a lot of them. I'm a simple guy, so I need those simple little reminders. We get to do this. This is exactly right. I would love to do this with you again. The sooner the better. Tina and I were talking last night. We're going to do a hiatus for Curry and the Keeper for the summer. Oh, a little break. And so, you know, maybe you and I will have some time to, you know, to do these on a more regular basis. I'm in. Because. What we just did was basically have a lunch meeting. Yes. This is what we do at lunch. Yes. We talk like this. When we have one of those rare lunch meetings. Rare by ourselves. Those are rare. That's true. And it's not that we don't.

1:17:11 In fact, we adore our wives. Absolutely. And our friends. We hang out with a lot of people. We love hanging out. But this is what I crave. I don't just miss it. I crave it. I need to do these with you. Iron sharpens iron. Amen to that, brother. That's what it is. Amen. Well, listen, as we land the plane here, I feel like we just started the conversation. Yes. So, so let's just see where this goes. Okay. Let's, let's have a little dream time. Yes. And maybe even some of our listeners might have a good suggestion about what we do with this. Where do we go from here? Yes. Because I want to continue to do living up in a down world and that's been sick. We got, she got sick that last and she, this is her first day back to the office cause she's been so sick. So I knew she wouldn't have the voice or energy to do this, but we'll continue that and you'll continue to carry in the keeper at some point.

1:17:55 But I'm, I am wide open to whatever God wants. Well, he's pushing me. I got a thumb in my back on this one. Yeah, exactly. And that's why when I got all this, I'm like, I got to reach out to Jimmy. We have to do something. If only just for ourselves and for me, what we just did here. It's for our church. This is for Fredericksburg. It's great if we reach other people. Right, right. But we have, what do we have, 1 ,100, 1 ,200 people in the congregation? Yeah, easily. I want them also to hear this side of you, brother, because I do, because it just seems like it's not enough time. Yeah, it's never, and it's always different when you're standing up on a platform.

1:18:37 Of course. As opposed to sitting at a table talking and riffing off of one another. By the way, I super really hyper enjoyed. You and I being on the platform together. That was fun. Each with a microphone and riffing off of one another about our heart. You from a more technical standpoint and visionary standpoint of Godcaster. Me from the practical application. And to my visionary from the spiritual standpoint of how the potential impact of this, of getting the gospel out over the airways. And just crushing the prince of the power of the air as the scripture calls the enemy. Exactly. And just taking back the airways, taking it all back. I think that was a part of why I came here this morning is because that felt good. It did. You know, we look pretty good on stage together. We take this thing on the road, man. I'm seeing tour buses. Somebody even said, a couple people said that to us. You need to take that on the road. Well, we'll start small.

1:19:33 Sounds good, brother. Well, we will do it. We're on it. And with that, we are out of here. And, man, we cooked on for an hour and 19 minutes. I feel like we could do a three -and -a -half hour easily. Love you, brother. Love you, too, brother. Thank you so much. Glad we get to do this. Glad we get to do it together. Amen. All right, everybody, have an amazing week on purpose.