Episode Transcript
[00:00:00] Speaker A: You stay in a pit or get out.
You can stay in a pit or you can get out of the pit. And that's a short, simple message that hits us at all different phases of life. You could be in a pit in a relationship, you could be in a pit in a career, in your walk with God. Whatever your circumstances are, we are going to dive into this today and motivate you and inspire you from just life stories of we can stay in the pit, this place of self pity, pettiness, sorrow, the ability to be depressed and embrace anxiety and darkness, because I think that's real for all of us. I think it's real for all of us as men, even in this hour, you could be in a successful career and still feel trapped or in a pit or maybe you're off a little bit. So we want to dive into this topic today, talk about it from some real life experience and kind of bring in some angles like spiritual warfare.
What does it mean to look like for a man to guard his own heart? How do you keep those guardrails up and how do we identify the energy it's going to take, the decisions that we're going to have to make to actually get out of these pits and places that we find ourselves pinned in. And it's a good topic for me. Know, I'm kind of in a place like that and I've been learning a lot about myself, so this is going to be a really good topic. And on this episode, I have Brandon from Montana. Brandon and I met about a month ago. Brandon's connected to one of our chapters out there with Derek Tally, and Derek actually has some of our. He actually has a course in our app, so you can check that out. Those guys are really getting fired up about the grace ups culture. It's been a huge blessing just to get to know Brandon in his story. And this is a 29 year old entrepreneur, just a guy that the Lord really has blessed and put his hand on. And so it's been really cool to get to know you, Brandon. And so welcome to the episode today. How are you doing, man?
[00:01:54] Speaker B: I'm doing great.
[00:01:55] Speaker A: Yeah, you're just a Montana boy. You got that Montana vibe. You got the beard, you got the know, life is cool. All the.
You try drive a big truck and just life's good every day.
[00:02:08] Speaker B: That's right.
[00:02:09] Speaker A: You wake up to those beautiful mountains out.
Breathtaking. Beautiful. Like my friend Lowell out there. Lowell's a great big part of the great self's culture, too. He actually helped bring the chapter and the introduction to Pastor Derek. But, yeah, I've been to Lowe's house a couple of times, and just from the inside of his house, looking out to the mountains, I describe it to people like it's like living inside a postcard.
[00:02:33] Speaker B: Yeah.
[00:02:35] Speaker A: It's just absolutely gorgeous, man. So not jealous? I'm not jealous at all of where you live.
[00:02:41] Speaker B: Absolutely.
[00:02:42] Speaker A: But, no, man, I haven't been getting to know you. We've had a couple of calls, two or three calls, and I just wanted to do a podcast episode with you. You have a really remarkable story, man. And so this concept of being in a pit and getting out of it, what did that look like in your life? Like you're 29. Walk us through a snapshot of your life, of what that pit looked like for you and how you got out of it.
[00:03:07] Speaker B: Yeah. So, for me, it really reverts back to my younger years, probably just the beginning things. I started out in kind of a lutheran church and a good family background, and so there was a point in my life where my family kind of decided, hey, we're going to basically allow addiction into our lives. And so I think it hit our family pretty young where family members had kind of turned from church and started that downhill spiral before I really knew what was going on. I think we were kind of head over heels before I could really even make some decisions in my life. And so I would revert back to my childhood as not necessarily being in the pit in the beginning, but a slow decline. You could definitely see there were points in my life where we were living, definitely a simple life when we left the church, and it was just a very fast spiral after that.
The pit, it consumes you.
Anything you try to do without Christ involved and God in the picture, it's tough.
Depression, anxiety, fear, homelessness, sickness.
[00:04:44] Speaker A: No, it's kind of like just to jump in here for a moment.
[00:04:48] Speaker B: Yeah.
[00:04:49] Speaker A: When you say what you just said, to do anything apart from Christ can lead us to these places of anxiety, fear, darkness.
On the one hand, that just sounds so churchy, and so that's just the right thing to say. And I think that's sometimes how guys hear that or people can hear that, like, oh, that's what those church people say.
But, I mean, I'm 30 years into this journey now, and, man, I just wanted to pause on the power of those words that you just said, because really, apart from Christ. I mean, Christ says that himself, right? Apart from me. You can do nothing.
And you're right on. I just want guys to kind of like, soak on know. Think about that, because literally, man, apart from Christ, that's where we get into these.
Yeah, like, you're going in through your, you know. I also wanted to introduce you as one of our brand ambassadors, which is pretty cool. So in the app, when you check the 212 goal, Brandon also checked a brand ambassador. So he's really taken the culture of grace ops and really adapting strategies, how to use the content and the culture in a really powerful way. So if you're interested in being a brand ambassador, sign up. Love to have you. Okay. So you're kind of downward spiraling in your life. It accelerated when you left the church culture.
[00:06:15] Speaker B: Yeah, I would say that was a very definitive point where we had people praying for us.
God was intervening in different ways, and we were kind of almost on the fence.
You have that decision where you're like, hey, I'm either living in sin or I'm trying with Christ and growing through grace and being trained. Right. And so when you completely get rid of that aspect of the church culture and community and just the goodness that God brings in all aspects of our life, we're really only left with sin. Drugs, the alcohol, it really just hopelessness. It just opens that pit completely where once you're into it, like I said, you have a point where you have to really draw a line and say, okay, enough is enough. I've taken enough on in the pit. It's time to find a way to come out and start living upright, and that's through Christ.
And so I basically left the church, started a point in my life where I ran away from home. I was just a young boy at the time, middle school, and I didn't look back. I was like, okay, I don't know where I'm going, but what I'm in right now, I'm searching for something. I'm walking through the wilderness out here, and every wall I walk into, it's just hitting me like a truck.
But pushing forward, I knew there was something out there that was calling me, and later on in my life that ended up becoming, giving my life to Christ and my community. And so I feel there's a lot of folks out there that, like you said, you might say the things that church would say or whatever, but living the experience in my own life has really impacted me to never go back.
The point in my life, I don't ever want to become depressed or have anxiety or fear, become homeless, be sick for all these different reasons. And so partnering with Christ, in a sense, is really the centerfold to that message.
[00:08:47] Speaker A: So you left the house around 15, right? Around that age, yes. And you're, like, on your own. So you actually walked part of your pit story for a good chunk of your life involved homelessness, right?
[00:09:00] Speaker B: Absolutely.
Yeah. There was a pretty long time, quite a few. My teen years. Basically, I went to work out in Alaska and basically just turned away from family friend, the life that I had built for quite a few years and dropped out of school.
Ended up basically just saying, hey, I'm going to start this life in a new direction. I don't know where I'm going, but I'm going through that becomes poverty and homelessness. Young kid, don't even have a driver's license.
[00:09:45] Speaker A: You're totally vulnerable out there 100%.
[00:09:49] Speaker B: And I hadn't given my life fully to Christ at that time. And so every door I knocked on was just a disaster. No matter what I did, it was a dead end road.
The only thing I knew how to do is work hard and be stubborn at that time. And it worked very well in some ways, but there's a lot more to life than that. And so when you make that decision to just keep pushing and pushing against a brick wall, you can only get so far.
It's a tough part of life, it really is.
But the key to that is to never give up. There's always a solution, and there's doors that are being opened for you. It's your choice which path you walk.
Until you make that decision, it's probably going to be a pretty hard road as a homeless person, picking up drugs or whatever you might be doing, rather than maybe paying rent or buying a car.
[00:10:59] Speaker A: So that's part of your life for, like, how many years did that go on?
[00:11:02] Speaker B: You know, that went on till I was 19 years old.
That's when I had enough.
Went through basically all of high school, kind of in and out of trying to go back to school and working.
Drug addiction hit me like a freight train. And that was kind of what I latched onto. Instead of working on my spiritual growth, I found an outlet, was the easy route I ended up becoming. You could consider it like a trash can for drugs, anything and everything. To just alter my state of mind was kind of the person that I had become.
And through that, you live a life full of sin.
It's very inevitable when you give your life to addiction.
It takes you at a very fast rate. And so when I was 19 years old, I decided, hey, enough is enough. I've walked through the wilderness for far too long and checked myself into rehab.
And that's kind of when things really started to turn for me was when I said, hey, there's options out there. It's time to ask for help.
[00:12:23] Speaker A: Yeah.
So we're looking at this whole analogy of staying in a pit, and when you are in that place, and it can be many different ways from different guys, different people listening. Right? Like, yours was as extreme as homelessness as some guys pits could be.
They're stuck in a creter, they're not cylinders, and they're stuck in some type of down cycle, downward place. So it doesn't always have to be these extremes. No, it can hit us at different points of life.
I feel like I'm coming out of this. I don't know if it's a season, but it's just been a time frame in my life, a short time, where I've just been really attacked by the enemy in just circumstances that have happened in life and things where you start to go, God, is this really what I want to do the rest of my life? I'm the kind of guy that when I gave my life to Christ, I was all in 100%, like, hardcore. I said yes forever. My yes was like forever. And my path hasn't been perfect since then or whatever, but my dedication has always stayed the same and my tenacity to follow Christ. But now, 30 years in to a life of just, I've led a life that's really different than most people's lives.
So it's been very spirit led. Like, go do this now, go do that. So it's kind of been directed by God as I've lived. But anyway, I'm in the season where it's like, it's a good thing that I didn't have a backup plan, right?
So it's like I burned the bridge to that option when I started this journey with Christ. And so that's part of what helps keep me in it. Sometimes when I get down or I'm questioning, or the enemy is attacking with lies, or you're just tired. You can get tired.
Endurance is enduring in crisis is hard work. It is. But, yeah, I've kind of been in that place where it's been like, man, what's the point? What's my purpose?
You just start questioning all this kind of thing.
That'd be like a pit. I've been kind of, in a way. And the temptation in that pit is like, quit everything, go pick up a career for me. Just go get a marketplace job and focus on being a millionaire in ten years, which is very tempting at times, because I know my skill sets and my drive and all that kind of stuff, but that's pretty cool.
You may or may not even know it, but just, like, your enthusiasm for the culture and kind of getting fired up about what we've put together, it helps me go. God uses that as a small way to speak a bigger word of, like, no, man, get back in the game.
Just talking to you and getting to know you, man. I think you have a remarkable story. So you're 15, you leave, you're in this pit, and at 19, you're wanting to get out. How did you relationship with Christ?
[00:15:36] Speaker B: What did that look like through this whole process?
[00:15:40] Speaker A: Maybe a better way to say it, come back to Christ.
[00:15:43] Speaker B: Yeah, through this whole process. I grew up in a church and a good church community, and so that sticks with you, but you always want to push it to the wayside. When God's speaking to you and he's saying, hey, you need to do the right thing, or maybe you need to change, or whatever the scenario is, I feel like he's always there and he's just waiting for you to say, hey, I love you, and I want to get to know you. And so that was kind of the point that I was at. I had basically exhausted every spiritual connection outside of God that I could, and it got me nowhere, almost to the point where I'd forgotten how to love and affection and all these things.
So I basically decided, hey, I'm going to go back to what I learned when I was a child, and that was to go to church and to learn and to grow. And through that process, God intervened right away. He was waiting there the day I said, hey, I want to go back to church.
Some people say that was a God moment, or whatever they want to call it. Well, it's every single day all around you. It's just, you're blind until you're not. And so when I really started to open my eyes and ears and my heart in a different way, that's when things started to change. And he started revealing his heart to me. And I was so drawn to it because I hated everything that the devil had brought into my life. Right?
[00:17:20] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:17:20] Speaker B: So I grabbed it the first day I went back to church. It was another lutheran church.
I'm just christian in general, and.
[00:17:33] Speaker A: It.
[00:17:34] Speaker B: Was very apparent from that moment forward, this is where I needed to be, and this is where I would heal and change my life. And so I was sparked up and set on fire right then, and I made that decision from that point when I was 19, going to rehab that I would never go back down this road. And to this day, I'm going on twelve years clean and just living a completely different life.
[00:18:06] Speaker A: How old are you?
[00:18:08] Speaker B: 29.
[00:18:09] Speaker A: Okay. Yeah. Okay.
So you had the wisdom when you were 19 to make part of your getting out of a pit and the solution that you need in your life.
You really lean strong on church culture?
[00:18:25] Speaker B: Yes, absolutely.
[00:18:29] Speaker A: That's why.
What does that mean to you? What does that mean to you now?
[00:18:37] Speaker B: Leaning on church culture? I saw all these folks that were around me, and the one thing that set them apart from me had they had given their lives to Christ, and they maybe have been in the church for all their life, or maybe just a couple of years. But I saw there was a definitive thing that stood out from the church culture, from the person that I had become living in sin. And it was very apparent they were happy, engaged, the community was involved.
We gave instead of trying to receive all the time. And it was very impactful in my life that the church community really just met me at my lowest point and accepted me for who I was.
There was a gal that we went to church with, and she was up talking, and the one thing that really stood out was that there was a community and a God out there that would accept me even for the person that I had become. I had hated myself, and I did not like the person that I was. But all these people kind of put that behind them, where I'd look in the mirror and almost critique myself in a negative way. I had folks go, hey, come to church. Come to a barbecue. You're welcome on my couch. And it was like, wow, this church culture is spectacular in its own way. It was kind of alarming at first, like, whoa, what's really going on? This is how some of the world actually is. And so the church culture became the biggest thing for me. I started to get plugged in, and that kind of fired me up to give back and start helping and kind of evolve in a sense, because I had become a person that just took, took, took.
And when you're now allowed to kind of do the complete opposite, I think it's something that. It's pretty cool.
[00:20:37] Speaker A: Yeah, that is pretty cool, man.
Well, I bring that up because we live in that day and age where there's just so much warfare on the church.
And there's some reasons for that.
Most people, I would say the majority, a lot of our culture and community, our country, you just run into this so many times. Well, I was hurting a church or the church is full of hypocrites. Or they're just money hungry, and people use those. And I'm not saying that their experiences weren't real or painful, but they can use that stuff. The enemy, I think, uses it in people's lives to keep them from discovering the power of community 100%. And, yeah, dude, there's churches out there that they can be abusive. I mean, all of the above, or the church is guilty of a lot of things. The church does have a black eye, but it's pretty cool that in your life, in your story, even just not too long ago, I mean, you're only talking about a decade ago, that you had this idea that church was a place where I was going to restore my life.
It's really cool. You don't really hear that story a whole lot. And I encourage guys in the gracehops culture, because I think for a lot of guys out there, I don't know, it's like we can become these easy critics. We get so critical of church culture or that pastor's message, or, I don't know, we're, like, trying to grade everything. And instead of, I don't know, seeing a little bit more of what you were seeing, how can I gain community from this? How can I gain learning to be a giver, not just a receiver?
I think one of my mentors use this analogy with me. He's like, when your kids were five, or he goes, any five year old you talk to, do you agree with them on everything you talk with them about? I'm, like, laughing. I'm like, no. And he's like, well, do you agree with your wife on everything? And I'm like, no. Maybe just today we didn't agree things like that.
But I don't get rid of the five year old out of my life. I don't get rid of my wife when we disagree.
And to have a greater maturity looking at community, looking at church culture, I think we need to have. I don't know, we can all disagree on some things and still be together because we have this whole thing of, like, well, you don't believe exactly the way I do or you don't see it the way I do, so I'm out of here.
And I just think the enemies run rampant. So I just love that part of your story where it's like, and I get it. I know there's probably a lot of guys out there that I don't think the church has been feminized in a lot of ways. And I don't know, I'm not saying all of it, but a lot of pastors can lead more in a feminine way where most of their congregations are made with women and stuff, so they can become softer or you've got the bigger, like the more megachurch style. And I'm not necessarily against all that, but sometimes you've got like guys wearing skinny jeans and their hair is done a certain way where a lot of men are like, yeah, that's just not my thing. I don't want to be around that.
So my challenge to guys is know, yeah, we want you to build community in the gracehops culture, but grace ops is not designed at all ever to replace church culture. So sometimes maybe you just got to do the hard work and into church or go to that church startup that God's wanting to plant, that some church planners or go to some smaller church that is a real authentic community. I don't know.
So from that place, what did you imply? So maybe we could talk a little bit about this. Proverbs 423, like the guardian that says above all else, guard your hearts, the wellspring of life. So what did you get out of the, how did you rebuild all that from 19 on to where you are today? What did you put in place in your life to help guard and protect?
[00:24:58] Speaker B: Yeah, I think the main thing that I really put in place was in Ephesians, right? I didn't know everything and I still don't. Right.
I learn every single day and I'll learn till the day I go. But one thing that really helped me was in the book of Ephesians, right? Like I still had the enemy trying to attack me every direction that I went.
But when I learned that there were things that God had in place, right, the helmet, the breastplate, the sword, different things that God has given to me through grace that were at my expense to kind of help me through that process, I basically implemented the book of Ephesians, goes through it in fine detail. And I had learned, okay, even though I don't know everything and I'm being trained through grace, God's got my back and he's going to use everything that I'm going through to become a better person.
The thing that stands out is the saying of living from victory, not fighting for know, remembering that Jesus died on the cross for our sins and he gave know basically a way to heavenly realms, to this spiritual warfare that's all around us at that point, then you're able to kind of tap into that and you realize that it's not just a war on, say, Brandon, or just some person in general, right?
It's between principalities, powers that come together in the dark time that we're in, but it's in a heavenly place. And so really learning what all that was about, just implementing it in my mind that we are victorious as Christians, I would say that alone has kind of carried me through the beginning and through that. He's taught me very important lessons that I can then pass down over time and just learn and grow as a person in general.
Ephesians 612 for we do not wrestle against flesh and blood, but against the rulers, against the authorities, against the cosmic powers over this present darkness, against the spiritual forces of evil in heavenly places. I think that's very important to learn.
And once I learned that, it was like, okay, this is something greater than Brandon just fighting his own.
[00:28:02] Speaker A: And in that, we need to be in the presence of community. Absolutely to be successful in that. So I think the guardian of the.
[00:28:13] Speaker B: Heart.
[00:28:16] Speaker A: Has everything to do in the very hesitate, such a key focus of our lives, of encountering God's presence, encountering his power in our lives, not just falling into the trap of dogma. Like, I got that box checked. I believe that. Check the box, move on. And then you have this sterile life of like, you believe the right thing, but you don't have this encounter.
We have to have the power of God. It'd be like marrying your wife and then never really engaging with your wife. Just like dogmatically we're married, but the relationship is sterile and dull.
For me, it's encountering God. That's why I do love the 212 goal of just asking guys, hey, commit to reading two chapters a day of the Bible and spend twelve minutes a day in prayer. Because somewhere in there the goal isn't to check it off your list. The goal is to encounter God. So if you're reading psalm one and you start encountering the presence of God and you don't read your second chapter, oh, guess what? That's okay.
It's not this legalistic thing that we're trying to drive guys to. It's a relational encounter with God. So the guardian of the heart starts in that place of encounter and power. When I came to Christ, I felt his power. I mean, when I came to Christ, I felt what the word you said. Did you say liberty?
Did you say liberty earlier?
[00:29:45] Speaker B: No.
[00:29:45] Speaker A: Walking in God's.
[00:29:47] Speaker B: Well, yeah, in a sense, walking in.
[00:29:49] Speaker A: His salvation or I can't remember the word you said.
But in our culture that's what we talk about with liberty or living from freedom is what you said. Living from freedom and not for freedom. We're not trying to earn freedom. It's already been given to us.
But when I gave my life to Christ, when I heard the preaching of the gospel, it was such a spiritual experience for me. It didn't fall on deaf ears. My whole being was alive.
[00:30:17] Speaker B: Absolutely.
[00:30:18] Speaker A: I was convicted of sin. I was, like, weeping in tears. I was like, man, God, I want your salvation. I want to be saved. I want to be yours.
And so I never thought I'd go down the path I would go down. I had different plans for my life.
So we have to be in this place of encountering God's presence.
So the guardian of the heart is all about encounter. And I also believe it's deeply connected to community building. That band of brothers in your life, just even one guy, one or two guys. Because the lie that the enemy will sell a man, and it's a lie that we believe in a lot of times that we build a life on, is the whole island unto yourself.
And I just challenge guys like, be courageous enough to build trust with a guy and then let the veil down a little bit. Let them see you vulnerable, let them see you weak.
I'm kind of a type, a visionary, artistic, maybe. Not that I do artwork, but just I'm a creative type person.
I remember there's this friend I used to call. This is a long time ago, but we wouldn't call the same time every month or whatever or the same schedule.
But normally when I would get a hold of them, I would call them when I'm on an upcycle. And I did that for, like, I don't know, four or five years. And one time I actually called him when I was in a down cycle, and I opened up to him about it, and he was like, oh, my gosh, this is so refreshing to hear that you actually have a down cycle. He's like, I didn't think you were built that way.
The power of vulnerability, the power of actually having. Because you know what? The bottom line is, we do live from freedom, but we're still catching up to what that means. And there's still gaps in our lives.
The spirit in us is willing, but our flesh is still weak at times, right? So we need to have each other.
And I think the whole concept of be accountable to each other, I feel like that kind of is a burned out concept.
[00:32:25] Speaker B: Absolutely.
[00:32:25] Speaker A: But we can't throw it out altogether. Right. I don't want to just be in someone's life. Be accountable. Be accountable. Because I did that for a long time. And it was like, you know what? All we ever did really was talk about where we screwed up all the time.
There was confession and there was good stuff in it. I don't want attraction, but you know what? I can't throw accountability at. But to me, it's more about vulnerability, being vulnerable, opening my heart up to a brother and allowing the Lord through that brother to cover me with grace. Absolutely. To hold me into the righteous life that I'm called to live.
That's a delicate relationship, man. That's a powerful thing.
Yeah. I think those are two powerful things about the guardian of the heart. We've got to be in God's presence, but we're not doing this alone. So we've got to build community.
Hey, man, talk about your.
[00:33:19] Speaker B: Know, I've, I've, I've got a.
We just, we have so much fun.
We're just living life day by day out here in Montana and just really connecting with the Lord and starting to really plug into our community wherever we're at. I think that's something that my family is really liking. The kids, they're engaged in church and different activities.
And so through that, we're all evolving and learning.
We're being taught basically through grace. And we smile, we're happy.
We go home day to day knowing that we're all going to kind of connect on the word of God when we get home and we're going to wake up, we're going to do the same thing.
And so my family, we're at a very spiritual, we're strong in our spirit right now. And so it's nice to see a life full of smiles instead of where maybe we have come to get to that point where it might have been a little bit tougher.
So I would say, all in all, two kids. Two kids and my immediate family were very strong. I kind of hold to a tight knit family. That's just something that I've probably latched onto as a kid. But now my family is growing. My brothers are coming over and hanging out, and they become family in their own way.
We're all in this together. And so I would say it's a circle that's growing. I never used to be able to kind of latch on to folks as I walk around and talk and seeing that circle get bigger and bigger every day.
It's a family that I love.
[00:35:25] Speaker A: Yeah. And then what about what you do with the work of your hands? You do some construction stuff, right?
[00:35:31] Speaker B: Yeah. So I work construction, basically, just build people's dreams, make their dreams come true sometimes.
[00:35:39] Speaker A: It sounds like you've sold a few things. Yeah, I'm here to build your dreams, omi.
[00:35:45] Speaker B: Yeah, absolutely.
[00:35:46] Speaker A: Let's go.
[00:35:48] Speaker B: I've got a passion for construction. I just worked a lot of years in restoration, and so I saw a lot of folks at a point of crisis in their life. And so being able to just put things together and build it, I revert to construction as, like, community. Right. We can build it, or we can break it down and demolish it. It's really up to us to implement the right things through that process.
[00:36:17] Speaker A: Yeah, that's awesome, man.
You and I probably had an hour to two and a half hours worth of conversation just getting to know each other stuff, and multiple times talking to you, I was like, this guy has a remarkable story.
And it's not just the story, like, where you came from to where you are. You have a remarkable sense of maturity for a 29 year old guy, and it's probably because you went to the depths of homelessness and you saw the maximum capacity of your responsibility. And really, not to insult you, but the patheticness of the life that you sank down to has now risen you up to a place when you got out of that whole pit, to a place of greater clarity, greater wisdom, the internal fortitude of, like, I know where it came from. I know the capacities that my heart can go to if I do go down these roads of hopelessness and fear and anxiety.
Just talking about that. Well, anyway, to finish the thought, I've just been very impressed with who you are and who God's made you to be at 29 years old, it's pretty awesome.
And I know you have a strong gift inside of you of leadership, and God's got you leadership in a company. He's got you leading your own kind of startup type stuff. And it's just going to be really cool to see what you do and how you help other people, because I think you're going to create wealth for people as you build your dream, and other people are going to come along and be on your team, and you're going to be able to be a great blessing to this nation. And I know we don't have time to talk about today, but I know some of the things you've shared, and I'm just like, man, I just look forward to seeing how God uses you.
[00:38:08] Speaker B: Absolutely.
[00:38:10] Speaker A: Coming out of those places and those pits, like, what would you say to a guy no matter what kind of pit he's in what does he need to hear?
What line do they need to cross to get out of it? What are some thoughts on that.
[00:38:31] Speaker B: One? I would say getting a distinction between what your flesh wants to do in life and what God's calling you to do in life.
If you can pray into that, even if you don't understand it in the beginning, he's going to intervene and he's going to reveal those things to you. And so really just digging into where you're at in life, this is the choice that you want to make. This is the place you want to go. Or knowing that there is maybe something out there that he's going to lead you into, there's a divine line and you have the option to go left or right.
I would say that sticks out the most and just really just pressing into the presence of God in those moments because he will reveal himself in a way that.
[00:39:36] Speaker A: What helped you? I like that answer. What helped you find that path, that purpose?
What do you think we're, what do you think helped you?
I run into guys in their fifty s and sixty s sometimes, and they're like, how do you know your purpose so well? Stuff like they were asking me that back when I was in my thing.
[00:40:03] Speaker B: That I've really done is I'm a stubborn guy.
Unless something hits me flat in the face, I don't believe it, or I won't go down that avenue. And so just really being honest and open in the heart with the father, whether it was an answer, a question that he may have liked or not liked, just asking him to really reveal those puzzle pieces that you're searching for, the power of prayer is so powerful.
You ask, and he will be there.
And so for me personally, it was just being open and honest, one with myself and then one with the father in that moment and saying, hey, please reveal to me what's my next step or what's my calling or something of that sort. And the puzzle pieces really just came together for me. It was just a very apparent point in my life when I had seen a miracle work through my own body. It was like, okay, this is it. And from that point forward, I know there's a definitive choice to go after that at full speed. And so I would just encourage everybody that's out there to press into that moment because he's going to be there. And it's a pretty special time.
[00:41:39] Speaker A: Yeah, I think just, I come back to this fear, hopelessness and anxiety because I think that drives a lot of our culture today. I think the enemy runs rampant with lies and propaganda and just his agendas seems like they're winning in some ways. And I think, biblically speaking, as the end of the age draws near, however close we are on that timeline or whatever, I'd like to language the end of the age, that's this time period that God will wrap up and we're going to see darkness rise, and we're also going to see righteousness and glory rise unprecedented, like never before. We're going to see epic things.
[00:42:20] Speaker B: Absolutely.
[00:42:22] Speaker A: So in the middle of even the days we live now, fear and anxiety and stress is a real thing, and it can trigger you, and you can have all kinds of different responses to it.
And I don't want to sound too churchy right now. Just go pray about it, or just go because there's some real processing that you can get into.
It's really asking the Lord why you're afraid, asking him why this anxiety is there, why it continues to be there. It's having a conversation with the Lord and yourself, allowing him to speak to you of his vision for the needs that you have in your life and learning how to slow down and be healed is, I think, strategic. But I don't know. I just bring that up because that's kind of like a metaphoric pit that people find themselves in.
[00:43:18] Speaker B: Absolutely.
[00:43:18] Speaker A: Get anxiety. Anxiety about inflation or about your job or the school district is acting this way, or life feels out of control or those types of things, and just pay attention to yourself, to not let that downward spiral you into a place of hopelessness and draw these battle lines, because it is a battle. We are warring against darkness. Like you're saying ephesians six, like, it is a battle, and we've got to be battle ready every single day.
Yeah, but I like your thought on just kind of like, finding your purpose. And honestly, I don't think it's super hard. It's not super hard, but I think what you said is key. You really have to pray. You got to ask God.
I think when you're looking for purpose, no matter what age you are, because you might be listening to this and being like, yeah, I don't know what my purpose is.
It's not rocket science. To find out, like, an example. In my life back in 2004, I was still doing some work in church culture, but I was really just climbing the ladder hardcore at Farmers insurance, and I was on my way to being a district manager for farmers insurance at 27 years old and just making good money, and I was just going to be making better money.
But about two years into that process, year and a half or so into that process, I remembered having this honest, I kind of was aching before the Lord, but it was this honest conversation. I was like, lord, I feel like what I'm doing with farmers insurance, I'm using my gifts for sure. I'm gifted to do this stuff. But I said, I don't feel like it's divine.
And I remember at that point just weeping and just telling the Lord, I don't know if this is my purpose. It's just an honest conversation. And the Lord spoke to my heart. I've never forgotten how he.
I didn't hear anything audibly, but just in my heart, this overwhelming answer came, and God was like, I created you to be an entrepreneur for the church culture, not the marketplace.
So right there, I was like, wow. So I had an answer. But what that meant was I had to quit that job.
I remember telling the Lord, like, okay, I'll go back into church culture, but you have to open those doors. And God did. So you don't underestimate the power of prayer. And I always try to challenge guys.
Don't be a man that just reads the verse of the day on your phone, just prays for that 60 seconds when you're driving your car.
I don't know. I'm not saying those prayers don't matter, but don't make that your prayer life.
[00:46:06] Speaker B: No, I think it's important. The 212 goal stands.
That alone can move mountains in somebody's life. And the growth that you can get out of just taking that step and doing the 212 goal, he's going to begin to reveal a lot of things through that. It seems in the beginning maybe like a lot more than like you're saying a 60 minutes prayer just a little bit here and there, but really just trying to give it that effort to do the 212 goal, you're going to reap a harvest out of it, and then it's going to become almost a norm for you, where there's going to be times throughout the day where you're searching and you're yearning for that time where maybe in the beginning it might be a 60 minutes prayer. So I think you hit it right on the head.
[00:47:06] Speaker A: So, hey, man, as we close out, what are some of the things that stand out to you about grace ops that you have liked or used to help advance the kingdom?
[00:47:16] Speaker B: Yeah. So grace Ops.
I can see where it's going.
Just the culture that we're in. Like you said, a lot of folks are going to have a hard time with different churches or whatever it might be, just really having a place where men can come together and just be themselves. We can talk about things, work together to advance the kingdom.
This is a strong move forward, just as a community in general.
Like you said earlier, maybe getting together with a band of guys, maybe one or two, and, you know, praying or whatever it may be. I think there's great power in that to where we know we can fall on grace ops at any point throughout the day or night, whatever's going on in our lives. We have men that are joined together as a band of brothers, right? And we're learning and we're growing together. It's not. It's not a race. Who knows the most before we go, but having fiery people and being engaged is just so impactful.
[00:48:33] Speaker A: Yeah. Well, it's cool, man. It's good to have you in the culture. It's been a great blessing to get to know you and look forward to building relationship with you, bro.
[00:48:40] Speaker B: Absolutely.
[00:48:42] Speaker A: All right, man. Well, hey, that's our episode.
