We Get To Do This - Calm in the Chaos

0:00 Father, we honor you this morning. What a privilege to come to you on this day to declare, thank God it's Monday, T -G -I -M. We get to do this. Father, we pray for our friends, our listeners, this community, the we get to nation, the doers of the we get to nation. And Father, also lift up the Christ curious among us, Lord. Bless them and encourage them. I pray that today we will operate with the mind of Christ. and that we will bring life and hope and encouragement to all who hear. We honor you in it all, in Jesus' name, amen. We get to do this, brother. It's going to get longer and longer this opening.

1:12 I know, that is very true. First of all, this is our first Monday podcast. We're doing it twice a week now. We've moved from Wednesday, so on Monday and Thursday. Adjust your life accordingly because you will have to. That's how it works with podcasting. So many great things to talk about today, including, I'll just tease it for later on, a full breakdown of Cali means on Joe Rogan because the clips are out. Everyone's getting different messages. Why watch two and a half hours of a podcast when you can just have us tell you what was on it? The Reader Digest version. Speaking of Reader, I just want to read a couple emails that came in from the past responses to our number 57. Drew Sample says, I tuned into the beginning of the show to hear your thoughts on the election. First thing I hear you and Pastor Jimmy talk about was reading the Bible. I immediately stopped and went to our daily readings, and he read, rejoice evermore, pray without ceasing, and everything gives thanks, 1 Thessalonians 5, 16 to 18. Tom Emerson, we get to do this post -election. Adam, thanks for the post -election talk. Perfect. Pastor Jimmy spoke about the daily grind. I often see it on X first thing in the early morning. It helps me set the tone of the day for myself. Coincidence most days, I guess their algo noticed. Very nice. Let's see, then we had, what is this? Arthur, Arthur 500. Too

2:46 busy to read the news, but I can see headlines last night as I prepared cinnamon rolled dough for this morning, which is the way you want to be listening to WGTDT. It was so enjoyable to listen to. Enjoy the work I was doing. Think about tomorrow, today, and listen to others who felt the same way. I've been reading the King James alongside the Hebrew Bible. Who knew it was 30 days of Bible readings? The perfect perfect timing. Very cool. So this is what we love hearing. These comments and emails, you know, when people are, you know, literally ready to get all, oh, what do we do about this election? And they just calmed down. I'm so thankful that we can do that.

3:29 We can provide that for people. Igbok. Yes, it's going to be okay. It's going to be okay. You know, I've written that so many times that my robot is like, as you always say, Igbok. No, no, no. That's Pastor Jimmy. Our robots, man. They catch on quick, don't they? They do. They do. They're quicker than an algo. What do you want to do? First of all, I want to welcome people to our inaugural Monday broadcast. We've been talking for a while about going to two, you know, and it's just a timing thing. And really, I mean, we just wait for a green light from God. I mean, that's it. It's green light, go. And so here we are. I got excited this morning when I got up. I take my Sabbath on Monday. But to me, this is so enjoyable. This isn't work today. I love doing this. And so it's a privilege to be with our friends now two times a week. You know, we're on number 58. It doesn't start racking up pretty quick. It's going to go fast. Yeah, it's going to go fast. It was nice. You know, I had this wonderful, I had something called a weekend.

4:30 Yeah. I haven't had that in a long time. Nineteen years. A long time. And, you know, Tina and I hung out, we fudged around, you know, like Sunday was weird because we were going to go out to lunch with you guys after second service. And so not only were we not going to the early service, there was no show for me. And so, you know, it's like, it's like 930. I'm like, this feels wrong. Tina's like, yeah, this feels off. This is so, something is very wrong about this. But first of all, let's just talk about, you know what, why don't you do the message, the briefing from yesterday, and then we'll talk about what happened here at the church over the weekend. Let's let them know what a cultural briefing is. So, for the last three plus years, I've been doing a lot of things on Sunday mornings that not every pastor does, but I've been speaking into culture.

5:20 A lot of that has to do with our friendship, our growth, our conversations. It's basically we get to do this on Sunday morning. Where I'm just bringing an update on what's happening in the world and what our response should be, hopefully it's practical. A while back, I don't remember how long it was, I asked you, About writing a briefing, you know because I didn't want to take the whole service to do this I wanted to give something quick that's written so I don't go off script like Trump and take 35 minutes Yeah 45 minutes so you started producing these Briefings tell us a little bit about your impetus and why you do them the way you do Maybe a little bit of how well part of it. I'm not really a writer.

6:05 So it challenges me to really focus and you know, the old adage of, if I had more time, I would have written you a shorter letter, you know, sort of really trying to make things. And we've, you know, I've gone off script a couple of these like, yeah, that's great, Adam. Thanks. I'm not going to use this one, which is okay, by the way. You gave me permission from the beginning. Of course. It's always hit or miss. And I think the last couple ones, I kind of hit a stride and all I'm trying to do is with my amateur theology, trying to find truth in whatever is happening in the world. And my actual skill for the past two decades is finding exactly what is spinning people up. It's not necessarily something that's going to be on the news always, but it's like shooting fish in a barrel with the election.

6:55 And now we have this beautiful advantage of doing this podcast. And so I often will think, okay, what do we talk about as it relates to what's going on today? And how can we give that to the people in our church? Because generally, we just want to make people feel happy and comfortable and calm and not spun up about stuff and give some maybe some counter narrative to what they're reading online. We have so many people who are still on Telegram groups and Reddit. I'm like, wow, they're the ones I need to help the most.

7:38 So this one actually, and also trying to inject a little bit of humor because you and I both agree, I think that when you make somebody laugh, the information that you're giving them at the same time gets in really deep and it bores into their brain and it sits there, which I think a lot of comedians know, advertisers know this. I mean, this is not like some super trick that I'm coming up with. And it's really interesting because I love seeing you in this case, you know, to deliver my writing is like, wow, I wrote that. People are laughing. You know, I kind of find to understand like writers of sitcoms and like, okay, it's working. They're getting the message.

8:22 Yeah, this is good. So that's where it comes from. Well, it's been great. And I've noticed you're, you're, you're finding your legs with it because we started, we were all over and then A few weeks ago, I said, write me a brief, brief, a really brief brief. Make it short, Curry. And you did. And you came back and you really nailed it down. So I want to share this today. This is the weekly cultural briefing from yesterday. And this is what I shared with our church before the message, before we do a big prayer for Israel and America and revival. So here it is. Last Sunday, we talked about the blackout, 90 days without power, chaos in the streets by the blackout special. Wednesday morning, I checked. My lights were still on. No riots. Just a lot of people rattling their keyboards. Somewhere in Gillespie County, a windup radio is very disappointed.

9:12 The election did not go the way many of us hoped. Texas has a Democrat governor for the first time since Ann Richards. And by breakfast, the internet had announced the end of the world as we know it. It is not. Congress doesn't run the country. We still have three branches of government. The president, still has the border and he still has the veto pen. Nobody has to fly a new flag off the back of their F -250. Here at home, Gillespie County did its part. About three out of four voted red and two out of three registered voters showed up. If every county did its job in its own corner, we would see very different outcomes. Daniel 221 says, he removes kings and sets up other kings. Seasons change. God doesn't. So what now? 1 Timothy 2 says to pray for kings and all who are in authority, not just red, not just blue, all of them. Yes, the new governor too, especially the new governor. Last week, we fixed a heart. We fixed our hearts. This week, a fixed mind. Isaiah 26 3, you will keep in perfect peace all who trust in you, all whose thoughts are fixed on you. The depth of your trust determines the depth of your peace. So pray for Texas, pray for our country, step away from the reply button, and bring out the book. That's this week's Weekly Brief. Amen. Brother, you crushed it. I love the little sigh of relief when you read the line

10:43 about the, you don't have to fly a new flag off your F -250. I literally heard guys go, oh yeah. You could feel the room. I love that. This is so helpful. You know, I want to continue to speak into culture on Sunday mornings, but I don't want to take the whole sermon and do it or take too much time. And I feel like we've found something that works for our people. I constantly get responses from this and people come in and say, man, I love those weekly briefings. Thank you. Those are helpful. So, man, brother, well done. It's a partnership, right? Yes, it is. And it's a pleasure and a privilege. You know, just on that for a second, this really only popped up just before I left the house because we're in Bridge Church, Fredericksburg Studios, which is just the nicest studios I've ever been in, especially that nice air conditioning that kind of wafts down. Yeah, I love it. James Tallarico wasn't the only Christian on the ballot or Democrat who won. There were a number of other ones. And it's just because I found this clip as I was going through prep. And there's a couple others that also won. And I have a couple of questions because I think a lot of people do. And it's both. Well, let me play this clip and then we'll talk about it. Among the Democrats who won House and Senate seats, a surprising number of clergy and clergy in training. In some cases, they flipped seats from red to blue, as NPR's Jason DeRose reports. In recent decades, Republicans have often seemed more comfortable talking about religion,

12:13 but this midterm election year was different. Heading to the U .S. Senate, Adam Hamilton is a pastor of a large United Methodist congregation in Kansas and Texas State Representative James Tallarico, who's also a Presbyterian seminarian. Heading to the U .S. House, there's Frederick Haynes, pastor of a 13 ,000 -member Baptist church in the Dallas area. Saratrone Garriott is a state senator from the Des Moines area in Iowa and a Lutheran pastor. Also in Iowa, Congresswoman -elect Lindsey James is a Presbyterian chaplain from Dubuque and a state house representative. So that's a lot more than I knew about. That's pretty interesting. And so these are Democrats. So the first thing is... Not all of them. Which one is it? The one from the Baptist Church, I believe. Yeah, I think you're right. I think you're right. I may be wrong on that, but there's a 13 ,000 member Baptist Church in Dallas, but he may be Democrat. Well, I looked all of them up. Not a lot of Baptist Democrats, I'm just saying. That's why it would be a little unusual.

13:10 The first thing is, it can totally happen that we have a pastor or someone of clergy who is a Democrat who runs and who wins, who may be completely theologically and biblically aligned with us. I just wanted to throw that out there because It's not red or blue. The Bible is the Bible. And I'm kind of waiting to see what these people's positions are. But it is entirely... You know that Archie Bunker was actually supposed to portray a Democrat. Really? Yes. In fact, it was that actual series that kind of transformed that kind of blue collar, working guy. to be positioned as a Republican, but he was always meant to be written as a Democrat. Wow. Yeah, I can imagine because of the writers. Well, and the Democrats used to be for the working man, you know, and that changed. So then the next question is, like James Tallerica, I don't think you and I have any... argument, the guy clearly is speaking with forked tongue over the Gospels and the truth of the Bible, although he's taking some of them back, but yeah, okay. We see what he's doing from the pulpit. So then you get Adam Hamilton, United Methodist Church of Resurrection in Kansas. He's been elected to US Senate. He

14:41 has written a book making sense of the Bible and He says his views on same -sex marriage changed slowly as he came to know gay members of the church. And now this is how it's written, right? So there's all kinds of nuances. The church now has an LGBTQ inclusive ministry. I'm not quite sure what that means, but maybe we should just make clear that I'm sure there's gay people in our church, whether we know it or not. But it's not like they're not welcome. So the question is inclusivity. At what point is it a bigger sin than other sins? And this is a tough question, I realize. And I don't think you can condone any of the sins. Well, you're an adulterer, it's okay. So I get that. But I think we have to be careful with sometimes how the media pigeonholes these pastors and ministers. And I'm just saying, I think we need to evaluate everybody on a case -by -case basis and not necessarily what someone else says of them. I think that's a good way to say that. I think that's good to say a case -by -case basis and see what their politics, how that rolls out. That'll be public record, we'll see. But also even what's public record is their theological stance. And typically, I'm just going to say typically, people who come from a more progressive background, like, you

16:14 know, United Methodist Church has really gone that way. In fact, they've had a major split in the denomination, and now they've got the global Methodist, you know, which is a whole more conservative, and they take a more conservative, traditional approach to Scripture. So, Talarico, very extreme, very, very progressive. Straight up, no, he's Presbyterian. He's going to seminary right now. Wow. Now, he's going to Washington. Isn't that going to be true? Yeah, seminary's out for a while for him. Each of these will rise and stand on their own merits. At the end of the day, we will all stand before the throne of God. We will all be giving an account for how we handled the Word of God, how we handled the Scriptures. For example, a dear friend of mine, Rick McClure, will be preaching in our church next Sunday. He is a board member. Does he need a briefing? I might give a briefing.

17:16 He just got reelected for the State House of Representatives in Arkansas, and he won again for, I think, second or third time. So he's in the pocket there. He's very involved with conservatives, Republican, very involved with conservative men and women of God who love the Lord that are serving. And I see this, even though I may not agree with a lot of the things from the progressive, well, nothing from the progressive, whether it's theological or political, I am glad that we live in a country where ministers can serve their country in whatever lane they tend to run in. But that's a right, that's a freedom that we have, and it really harkens back to the founding fathers. Many of them were deacons, many of them were elders, several of them were pastors who founded our nation, who even led the American Revolution.

18:14 Those sermons that were preached actually fueled the flames of both the First Great Awakening and the American Revolution. and so ministers have always been involved in the political arena. It depends on who you're listening to and who's barking the loudest. Separation of church and state, which is not in the Constitution or the Declaration of Independence. No one has the separation clause. Oh my gosh. For some reason. That was a handwritten letter from Jefferson to a handful of people, and it was opposite in its meaning. So we know that. So it's going to be interesting. I can't make a judgment on these guys other than what I know. And the only one I know because it's been so public is Tallarico. And it's not even from documents, it's from video of him literally saying these things. Now look at it from the opposite direction. Everyone's all very concerned about Muslims. There's also a possible danger that extreme progressivism is now seeping into church and people are getting some odd theology preach to them. No doubt. And these, some of these churches are not small. True. You know, so I think we have to be wary of that as well.

19:29 Not that, you know, I don't think you and I can do anything about it, but that could, you know, just like the separation of church and state, you know, it's so prevalent that people believe that amongst clergy as well. And the Scripture says that there's a great delusion right now and that right is wrong, wrong is right. They've given over to their passions. I mean, that's in the church and that's in the world. So, none of this is surprising as we move towards what I like to call the last of the last days, however long that is. I won't make a judgment on that. I just know we're closer than we were last week. But we are seeing things ramp up. we're seeing things heat up, spin up in terms of the theological timetable, the eschatological timeline. It feels like, it seems like, and Scripture makes clear that there will be many who fall away. There will be many who fall away. And then Jesus comes in and says, Hey, Narrow is the road. He says broad is the way that leads to destruction. Narrow is the road that leads to life, and few are those who find it. So just because there are churches and theologians and pastors doing things in the world, it doesn't mean they're necessarily on track with Scripture as we know it. And that's what's scary about some of this. I'm not surprised.

20:57 None of this surprises me. None of this should take us off guard. If we read our scriptures, we know these things are coming. And now it's kind of, to be honest, I'm not worried about it. I'm excited about it. It's funny, because I think I posted, is that Thessalonians about the great delusion? Yes, it is. Second Thessalonians. Yeah, and I posted that on X. Did you? Just as a separate scripture, no context. Oh, wow. A lot of people are like, yeah, right, I see it. But a lot of people went, well, yeah, that's Trump. I'm like, yeah, I guess you could look at it that way. I mean, who knows? Right, exactly. We don't know. A great delusion, yeah. And actually, that's not in, maybe in Romans. I'm excited about Rick McClure coming to speak though. He's been a pastor for many, many years. And then about six or seven years ago, he stepped in. And I jokingly called him because he's like a mayor.

21:54 He always acts like a mayor. He's always been that way. I've known him for 30 years. And I wrote him one day and said, hey, are you the mayor of Malvern, Arkansas? Yeah, that's where he lives in Malvern. And he said, no, but I'm running for Congress. I'm like, what? Yeah, I'm running for state representative in my district. I said, man, that's awesome. And sure enough, he did and he won. He's serving and he's doing a phenomenal job. 2 Thessalonians 2 .11, therefore God sends them a strong delusion so that they may believe what is false in order that all may be condemned who did not believe the truth but had pleasure and unrighteousness. The freaky thing about that verse is it says, God sends them a strong delusion. Right. God sends it to them. But what it was, he's giving them what they asked for, which was judgment because of their rebellion. And this was actually in Well, that's exactly... Stop right there. Everybody wants judgment. Wow. Okay. Well, we may not say it with our mouth, but we demonstrate it with our behavior. You know, I love... Psalm 24 talks about, who may ascend the hill of the Lord? Those who have clean hands and a pure heart, and they don't lift their soul to false idols. And I've been swimming in this water for a while. The Lord's kind of led me down that track of what does it mean to have clean hands and a pure heart?

23:21 Because I'm praying for revival. I'm praying for spiritual awakening. And by the way, I mean, revival doesn't come. A great awakening doesn't come without a rude awakening. I'm praying that all this stuff that's going on in the world, I'm excited. I'm not depressed. I'm not nervous. I'm not scared. I have no fear whatsoever. That'll never get to the top of the iTunes podcast charts. No, it will not. We've got to put more fear and scariness in there. I know. I need to go more AI on my cover art. Oh, yeah. Oh, no. This dystopian future that we're heading towards. I just refuse to believe that. I believe there is a great awakening.

24:02 being birthed right now in America and across the globe. And the worse it gets, man, the scripture says it, we're sin abounds, grace abounds, all the more. That is so prevalent in our church right here in Fredericksburg. Just talk about what happened this weekend. Well, okay, so this weekend we had our quarterly men's breakfast, and this thing's been gaining momentum. We're seeing We're seeing men who drive F -250 trucks, four -wheel drives. I mean, these are men's men. The best thing about this weekend, and everyone was talking about it. Hey, man. Excuse me. Hey, man. Thanks for coming. I know it's opening weekend.

24:45 I'm like... Is the football season starting? I'm trying to figure out what opening weekend is. I didn't figure out until much later. This is the Texas Hill Country. It's the hunting season. Deer season open on Saturday morning. No, baseball's done. There was concern that we may have a small group. It was like 134 people showed up, filled the place up, and this is why we're building a bigger building back here. We had Mickey Echols who wrote a great book on manhood. downloaded it this morning. It's called Not Your Average Guy. It's about how to be a godly man, how to live a life led by the Spirit, how to lead your home led by the Spirit. He gave a great word.

25:32 It was fantastic. We had worshiped to see 134 men worshiping together and see all men leading them in worship. It was so amazing. The Spirit in that Kit Patterson did a phenomenal job presenting communion. I tell him, I said, this is one of my favorite communion messages I've ever heard. I just really built them up yesterday. And then he had a word for me, of course, that's Kit. But that happened. And then that was that we ended about 1030. And then at 11, we had a celebration of life service, a memorial service for John Bennett. his wife, Kathy, here. He's such an amazing guy. He was a celebrated sculptor artist.

26:17 I'll put some links in the show. Oh, he's the real deal. They got stuff in Washington, in the White House, and he's just an auto -didact, self -taught sculptor. I mean, literally. gift from God, this guy's talent. Amazing guy. At 74 years of age, he was riding his Indian scout motorcycle and a guy hit him from behind. He was stopped to turn and the dude was on his phone and hit him and took him out. It's terrible. 74 years old, and he was headed to get his airplane out of the hangar. He's taking flying lessons. And what kind of plane is that? I think it was a 172, but a tail -drager. Tail -drager. Explain that to me, because that's apparently a little difficult. Yeah, tail -dragers. So a tail -drager has... two landing gear in the front and a very tiny little wheel in the back, which is great for, you know, turning around really quickly on the ground. But it's also very squirrely when you're taking off or landing, which is why these days we have, you know, the three point with the nose and the main landing gear. So a tail dragger is usually seen as, you know, you're pretty good at flying. That's what he wanted to learn to fly. Yeah. So he and his brother together, both in their seventies, bought one.

27:32 and we're taking lessons together and flying. So he ran through the tape, finished strong. Well, the church was packed. Oh, it was P300 plus. All over our community, people from our church. Four of their family got up and told stories. We laughed, we cried. It was beautiful. Tommy Hayes brought a great encouragement to kick the thing off. And then I brought a word and it really wasn't a message. It was more just my heart. sharing about this amazing man. And then I shared a gospel presentation because I know he would haunt me if I didn't. So he loved the Lord and I knew he wanted me to bring the gospel. That was a celebration. I mean, a celebration of life, a life well lived, one whose faith is now sight. So that was, I mean, we had church already that morning. I walked out like, this was amazing. Then that night we had a volunteer appreciation dinner out in our garden area with a beautiful garden area. It was professionally done by people in our church and it's just stunning.

28:38 They did a candlelight meal out there, catered meal, and celebrated. 60 people showed up to that. That's great. We had hundreds of people on this campus on Saturday. Then on Sunday, we all come back, blurry -eyed, tired, bags under our eyes, and so thankful that we get to do this, two services again. Man, God lit the place up. We're sensing. When I lived in Southern California, I never was a surfer, but I loved boogie boarding and body surfing. I got pretty good at reading the sets as they came in. You watch the rollers and you can see the big one coming. and they come in patterns typically. I'm seeing that right now in what God is doing around here. The rollers have been coming, but the big one is coming.

29:30 There's a big wave coming, and we're going to catch it. We're due for one. Every 50 years, there is a revival in America. There's an awakening of some kind, and that's now, and it's happening. With the so the last one being the Jesus revolution would you say okay? Yeah, you played a clip which we actually brought for today's podcast of John Piper Mm -hmm. You got to set that up because yeah now I've seen Versions this is what I liked about it because you actually played the video in the to the video quality was Poor, but the audio was extremely good, and I have only seen shorter versions of this with not the great audio that you had. So even if you've heard this before, just listening to it in context, the full five minutes, whatever it is, is so, and this is like not even that long ago. I know, 2000. Yeah. So what happened was Louis Giglio was a youth pastor, youth evangelist. Hey, isn't he from the neighborhood?

30:34 Louis Giglio. I know Louis Giglio. Totally sounds like that. Great guys, wife Shelly. They've been just in ministry together for years. He just had such a heart for the next generation. And so he was on an airplane flying. He had just lost his position and he was like, what are we going to do now? They're trying to figure out what's next. He's on an airplane coming from a conference. I think he'd spoke at, and he just had this glimpse, like a vision just in his mind, sanctified imagination. And he saw thousands and thousands of students and young people on the side of a hill, a grassy hill and a sort of a rudimentary stage at one end. And they were worshiping God. They were seeking God. And he was just moved by this. And he said it so blew him away. He didn't even tell Shelley for two weeks. So he was like, I don't know what to do with this. I mean, right now is the worst time for me to even try to do something like this.

31:31 I got to find a job. I mean, I don't know what I'm going to do. And it would not go away. He shared it with his wife and she's like, then why are you telling me about it? We need to do this, whatever it means. And he said, I believe we're supposed to read the whole Bible first before we do anything. And they kind of figured out how long that would take. And it's about three days if you go 24 hours. So they actually set up, they found this grassy hill just outside of Memphis, Tennessee. They got the word out and they intentionally didn't announce who was leading worship. It's just come to this event. It's called One Day, but we're going to be there three days ahead of time. We barely had the internet at this point. Oh, barely, yeah. We're still using Mosaic browsers and Netscape. Yeah, very, very basic. And he was very connected because he's a pretty well -known guy. So he was reaching out to all of his friends who were youth pastors and pastors saying, I just feel like we're supposed to gather young people on this grassy hill and go after God and read the Bible in Ezra fashion.

32:38 So Ezra was in the book of Nehemiah, and Ezra was a priest. In Nehemiah, they found the scrolls. They found the Bible when they went back to rebuild the walls of Jerusalem. This is the bring out the book part? It is the bring out the book part. That story so inspired Louis and he said, we need to just do that. We need to read the book, get out the scrolls, bring out the book. So they did that. They commissioned young people and different people to read for three days straight, 24 hours. Had no idea how many would come. Nobody bought tickets. They didn't know who would show up. They rented gear. They secured worship leaders, you know, little people like Chris Tomlin, Christine Auckels, Crowder. This was all 2000, so they were kind of unknown. They were all just getting going. And so he puts all this together. He commissions speakers. Well, one of the guys he felt like he needed to reach out to was a guy named John Piper, who at that time was not very well known.

33:36 Wasn't a big church. He'd written a couple of books. He pretty heady, pretty sharp, you know, smart. pretty nerdy, didn't really fit like a college kind of gathering. And Louie just felt like I got to call him. I got to reach out. So he did. And John turned him down through his secretary, turned him down and said, man, every year this is on, and they did it leading up to New Year's Eve, New Year's Day. And he said, that's why it's called one day, day one, one day. He turns him down and says, I can't come. We do a thing on New Year's Day every year. This is a tradition with my church. And a few hours later, he calls him back and he said, I will be there. I've got it. I'm supposed to be there.

34:24 God spoke to me. I'm supposed to be there. He shows up. They've got speakers going. They read the scripture for three days. Kids start showing up, young people with tents and sleeping bags. It turns into a Woodstock moment where they're just coming and they're camping out on the grounds and they're just worshiping and they're listening to the reading of the Word and they're praying and all these students are coming together. First about a hundred show up and then a thousand show up. and then thousands show up, somewhere around 30 ,000. They're all sitting on the grass. They're taking notes. They're listening intently. You saw the video. They're just sitting cross -legged on the ground, rotting in their journals and reading their Bibles. They read the scripture.

35:08 This thing grows. It gets legs. They built a little tower for that, and then they had a stage, not even a big stage, had a little LED screen behind them. they just fire up the worship and God shows up. Supernatural. He shows up because He showed up, not because anybody did anything. And they didn't announce the speakers, didn't make a big thing out of it. They just worshiped. And then when it was John Piper's turn to come up and speak, it was like... Who's this guy? He's in khaki pants and a button -down shirt and got the big 90s glasses on. Almost as out of place as Jimi Hendrix was initially at Woodstock.

35:50 No one knew what this guy was doing until he set his guitar on fire. Exactly. They're like, what just happened? Exactly. Texas Jam that I was in. They were like, Van Halen? They just released their first album. And he had to use borrowed gear because there's got something delayed or lost or stolen or something. So they were playing borrowed gear. It was incredible that I was there. So anyway, he starts speaking. He starts speaking this message and the spirit of God falls on this place. And this is what you're about to hear in the middle of this message as he's addressing 30 ,000 young people. There are hundreds of you in this crowd who do not want your life to make a difference. All you want is to be liked. Maybe finish school, get a good job, find a husband or a wife, a nice house, a nice car, long weekends, good vacations, grow old healthy. Have a fun retirement, die easy, no hell, and that's all you want. You don't give

37:24 a rip whether your life counts on this earth for eternity. That's a tragedy in the making. That is a tragedy in the making. About three weeks ago, we got news at our church that Ruby Eliason and Laura Edwards were killed in Cameroon. Ruby Eliason, over 80, single, all her life, a nurse, poured her life out for one thing, to make Jesus Christ known among the sick and the poor in the hardest and most unreached places.

38:23 Laura Edwards, a medical doctor in the Twin Cities and then in retirement, partnering up with Ruby. also pushing 80 and going from village to village in Cameroon and the brakes give way over a cliff they go and they're dead instantly and I asked my people is this a tragedy two women in their 80s almost a whole life devoted to one idea Jesus Christ magnified among the poor and the sick in the hardest places and 20 years after most of their American counterparts had begun to throw their lives away on trivialities in Florida and New Mexico fly into eternity with a death in a moment. Is this a tragedy? I asked. It is not a tragedy. I'll read you what a tragedy is. I've got a little article here from Reader's Digest.

39:52 You don't read Reader's Digest, I know that. But there is a generation who does. This is a tragedy. Title of the article, Start Now, Retire Early, February 1998. Bob and Penny took early retirement from their jobs in the Northeast five years ago when he was 59 and she was 51. Now they live in Punta Gorda, Florida, where they cruise on their 30 -foot trawler, play softball, and collect shells. That's a tragedy. That's a tragedy. And there are people in this country that are spending billions of dollars to get you to buy it. And I get 40 minutes to plead with you Don't buy it. With all my heart, I plead with you, don't buy that dream, the American dream, a nice house, a nice car, a nice job,

41:22 a nice family, a nice retirement, collecting shells. As the last chapter, before you stand before the creator of the universe, to give an account with what you did. Here it is, Lord, my shell collection. Look, Lord, my shell collection. And I've got a good swing. And look at my boat. God, look at my boat, God. Well, not for Ruby and not for Laura. Don't waste your life. Don't waste it in this day and age where everybody wants a quick Instagram reel a little dopamine hit from Facebook or X or whatever I hope people took the moment just to let that sink in and this is this is what motivates me. It's like I'm 62 three years older than than the dude who's retiring to collect shells. And like, yeah, what really matters? What really matters? And what a delusion we've been sold. No kidding. And I see you, Adam. This is what I love about you.

42:50 It's one of the reasons why we click is that we both have, we don't, our word is not in our vocabulary. This retirement thing, this idea of retiring, and I'm okay with people retiring from it. a job or a career. Actually, Steve Harvey said this. He said, your job and your career is what you get paid for. Your calling is what you were made for. There it is. I love the fact that you are driven by calling. You're driven by purpose. It is the purpose -driven life. I told a story about Miss Charlene Gish, 89 years old, shook her bony finger in my face in 2016, the day I stepped into this church for the first time. And she said, I'm going home to see Papa.

43:40 She had one foot in the grave. She was ready to go. She was ready to die at 89 years of age. And just in a weird moment, I said, can I see your arm? Just meeting the lady. She's the church mama. She's like, what is this guy? she handed me her arm, I put my fingers on her pulse there. And I said, I said, Miss Charlene, you still have a pulse. And I said, where there's a pulse, there's a promise. And where there's a pulse, there's still a purpose. I said, God's not done with you. And I mean, I walked away from that going, well, that was wild. I mean, it just all came in a moment. And that 89 -year -old precious lady who was ready to go home and see Papa, to go home. She came alive. She caught fire. She lived for several more years. Yeah, she died at 97. He was 94. She just took off to the races, in her walker. She's the lady who pulled a gun out in church, was wagging it around, and I said, Ms. Charlene, put your piece away. One of our security guys are going to tackle you, break you in half. A guy was going to take it to an auction for her, and she was just taking it out.

44:55 She said, I'm just showing him my gun. He goes, ma 'am, please, Ms. Charlene. That's how she was a character. She got lit on fire, and she literally started a ministry. to a state -funded nursing home, which are not pleasant places. They got the smell when you walk in. It just smells like death. She started dragging people from our church to go every week and minister to those people, going up and down the halls in her walker. What I noted was most of the people were younger than her in there, and some of them were in better shape than she was, but she was now driven with a purpose. she now had a mission.

45:36 So instead of retiring, she got refired. And man, I'm telling you, and when COVID hit, she was so committed to those people that she was ministering to that she would go up to the bushes with her walker and part the bushes and will go up to the windows and talk to the people through the windows and minister to them and pray for them. And I'm telling you, that's somebody, that's a Caleb spirit. Caleb was 85 years old when he said, I am just as strong as I was when I was 40. He said, give me my mountain. God, I was promised a mountain. I'm going to take my mountain now. That Caleb spirit can come alive. America, and I don't know how it is in other countries, has destroyed our older generation. by convincing them that their goal is to work to 65, now 67, and then quit. Oh, it's worse than that, brother?

46:31 It's horrible. It's like in European countries, like, I'm a burden. Just kill me now. No. Yes. Put me in the chamber. The collective wisdom of people who've lived a whole life is worth its weight in gold. the missing link for the next generation. Instead, we just call them boomer and ignore them. There's a lot of that. Put them out to pasture. They're irrelevant now. Well, let me tell you something. When you get a cancer diagnosis at 28, they're not irrelevant anymore. That's right. There it is. When you lose a spouse at 34, they're not irrelevant anymore. You need someone who's been down the road, someone who's been through some things, someone who walks with a limp. And so one of my passions and goals here at our church is to reignite that older generation, rekindle the fire, help them re -dream again.

47:25 go back, re -dig the old wells and discover those dreams. And there's so much that you can do, especially men, men with younger men. I mean, that's what's needed. Absolutely. And another thing we can to use this word is commission them and deploy them to do is become intercessors for the kingdom of God. They've got this time on their hands. They can be praying. They can be like storming the gates of heaven and charging the gates of hell in prayer because they've got the time to do it. But they can be doing mission trips like these two ladies that got killed in Cameroon. One was over 80, one was 79. And they got killed serving the poor, serving the broken.

48:08 And they went out, they ran through the tape and finished strong. Well, I'm looking forward to... saving people in America. Come on, brother. That seems to be my home base. Come on, bro. But we have a lot of foreign listeners as well. Yeah, which I'm excited about. And as we look at, you know, what is truth, actually, Tony Evans just had a whole, these are all from the archives, about truth and, you know, how these people, these day people say like, well, I got my truth, you know, no, no. And then accountants have their truth and psychologists have their truth, whatever you feel is your truth. But of course, we know what the truth is. the Word of God, Jesus is truth. So something happened on Friday, and I actually got in touch with Joe Rogan. I'm a name drop here. I'm looking forward to this. Got a little name drop from my buddy Joe. We have each other's numbers. I don't text Joe often, but when I do, there's a reason for it, and he always answers very graciously. I figured his phone blows. He actually switches numbers from time to time. And I'm always waiting for that one time when I won't get the new number. Like, oh, I still got it. I'm still on the list. So he did a podcast episode with Callie Means. And Callie and his sister Casey went in to the Make America Healthy movement with Robert Kennedy Jr. In fact, I think Callie introduced RFK Jr.

49:34 to President Trump and got that whole thing going. And the reason I reached out to Joe is I said, brother, this is no coincidence. Without me saying it, I'm saying it feels like this was a setup because something really big has to happen here. And what Callie did is he exposed with names and really like documented proof. the amount of corruption that is taking place across our government. In fact, right under President Trump's nose. And the reason why it's important that I want to play a couple of clips from this is because it's already been clipped. It's already everywhere. Now it's like, Trump, here it is.

50:15 Trump is corrupt. Everything's corrupt. Well, the whole point of what Kylie Means was saying is the system to its core is corrupt. And there's no difference between the White House The Senate, the House of Representatives, the EPA, the FDA, the CDC, the FAA, the LMNOP, it's all one big corrupt thing. And there's a tremendous opportunity to now expose this. And I would say this is what President Trump was always calling about drain the swamp. So this came out on Friday and an hour after this podcast came out, which is, you know, to me, it's like, okay. This is not a coincidence.

50:58 This happened. PBS News has learned Suzy Wiles had planned to remain in her role until the new Congress is sworn in early next year. But after those staggering midterm losses, President Trump decided Wiles had to go much sooner. Tonight, the first chip to fall following the midterm elections, White House Chief of Staff Suzy Wiles is out. I wanted to make a change. I think Susie's done a very good job. Just three weeks ago Trump insisted he was not even considering replacing Wiles. But CBS News has learned Wiles submitted her resignation Thursday night and it was tied to the flood of GOP defeats. Now Stephen Miller, one of the most controversial figures in the administration, will serve as chief of staff.

51:54 Okay, Stephen Miller. The reason why he was chosen is he for two reasons. One, clearly Trump really trusts him. He is also a hatchet man and I believe he's going to clean house. So Callie comes in and by the way, I looked up scripture about corruption. Whoa. Yeah. Whoa. This is everywhere. Exodus, so right out there in the beginning, 23A, take no bribes for a bribe makes you ignore something that you clearly see a bribe makes even a righteous person twist the truth. And so, the connection here is that Susie Wiles was a lobbyist. And lobbyists, this is kind of come out of our constitution, you have the right to redress your government, which means you should be able to petition your government, say, Hey, I disagree with this. And this has turned into an incredible industry, which typically you see. work the other way around where someone is inside government. They're working at, I'll just take an easy example, the Department of Defense, and then they help shepherd things through for Boeing or Raytheon. And then when they leave, they're sitting on the board or they're making a million dollars. And so that's kind of the revolving door everybody has seen. And sadly, we've gotten used to. This works the other way, where a lot of lobbyists came in and were They already had set agendas and Susie Wiles, if you ever watch the West Wing, you'll see the

53:25 Chief of Staff is kind of the gatekeeper in general, but she was gatekeeping to make sure policy didn't ruin the business of her previous clients and her daughter's clients because her daughter kind of picked up the lobbying from her. And then the other important person you'll hear about is a political consultant who does polling, and he would do polling and tell the president, no, people aren't interested in this issue. And that was a blatant lie. So we'll just start off from the beginning. These are the most powerful people in the country. And let me just go through dispassionately, just factually who these people are. Susie Wiles, the chief of staff, before she joined the Trump administration, was one of the top lobbyists in the country. She spent her career by taking money from Benjamin Netanyahu, who she was a top control. I think, by the way, that she took a lot of money from a lot of countries. I think Cali is throwing, because he does this a lot, he throws in foreign countries, foreign countries, Israel. I think he's doing that purposely to ignite something because it's a left and a right issue for people. But don't get hung up on that because that's not really, that's not the egregious part. the pharmaceutical industry, the pesticide industry. So just passionately, just as a statement of economic fact, Susie Wiles, her career has been taking money from the industries and foreign governments who would pay her the most money.

54:52 That's what she did. Nobody disputes that. James Blair, who was the head of political operations, is her friend from Florida and a long -term political consultant. a lot of money from industries like the sugar industry. But that's been his career, running some campaigns, taking money from special interests. She brought him along and really propped him up with Trump. Tony Fabrizio is one of the most powerful people in the country. He's Trump's chief pollster, very good friends with Suzy. He is on the outside the whole time. And every single policy issue goes through him because he tells the team whether it's politically appropriate to do or not based on his polling. As he's been working in the Trump administration in this extremely powerful role, where every single cabinet secretary is trying to get on his good side, he is, and this is actually on his website, he takes money from Pepsi. He takes money from pharmaceutical companies. He takes money from almost every single industry we're fighting against right now to this day. So he's taking money at the same time.

55:54 I don't even know if President Trump fully knows that. But as we were fighting things like school lunch reform and getting an ultra processed food definition, 90 % of the country wants this. We're going to define ultra processed food. 70 % of a child's diet is ultra processed food. We need to define it. We need to figure out what to do there. It's a widely popular promise from the administration. He is getting paid by Pepsi and giving political analysis that the juice isn't worth the squeeze on doing policies like that, as simple as school lunch reform. So you follow what's going on here? Yes. And I remember this like, oh yeah, school lunches, no processed food. And I thought it was going to happen. I thought it already happened. Exactly. It got blocked. It got blocked because of processed food industry, you know, sugar industry. And the pollster would go to the president and say, no, look at the numbers. No one cares about this. The juice isn't worth the squeeze. We'll go to Micah 7 .3, both their hands are equally skilled at doing evil.

56:48 Officials and judges alike demand bribes. The people with influence get what they want and together they scheme to twist justice. Wow. This is the NLT that I'm reading. So this, now we bring in glyphosate. And glyphosate we probably know here as Roundup, Roundup Ready. This was another big one that was supposed to get that out of our food system. I think most people in Texas know that we use Roundup. I'll just call it Roundup to make it because I keep mispronouncing glyphosate. Our corn our soy and some of our wheat is genetically modified So when you spray that stuff on it, it doesn't kill the corn the soy and the wheat It kills all the weeds makes yields much much more productive. It's probably 90 % of all of our crops have it The downside is it kind of kills people poisons. It gives you cancer You know, Iowa has the highest rate of cancer in the world concentrated amount of cancer in the world and Here was the gambit Because of the this is Bayer now that bought Monsanto who makes it and Bayer, you know, they're huge huge pharmaceutical pesticide herbicide What they did is they lobbied so hard that they got National Security Council advisors to tell the president and they pre -wrote an executive order to tell the president that we could not get rid of Roundup glyphosate because the phosphor that

58:22 is used in it and the supply chain that brings it into our country is necessary for national security. So that's one thing. We can't ban it. We can't even start to reduce it because the supply chain is important for our munitions or whatever. But the trick that they did, and this is what you hear in this clip, is they took This executive order that the president signed like, okay. Yeah, we need the supply chain Took it to the Supreme Court in a case that made the Supreme Court decide based upon the law which says the EPA makes the determination and the executive order that it would receive the same protection as Vaccines meaning you can't sue a vaccine company if your vaccine injured you can't sue Glycephate manufacturer if you've been injured by glyceph and they've settled billions of dollars worth of lawsuits that you never hear about So this is how that worked in practice because it's obviously bad politics if the administration looks like they're putting their thumb on the scale to Provide a product that has been proven to give kids cancer legal immunity. Obviously, that's a massive political loser so I chatted with Suzy's team I chatted with the USDA leadership.

59:43 I'm like, we agree, the administration at the very least should not be weighing in on this. We should not be putting – that's a political disaster. Time goes on, and I was called into a room, and Suzy's person, Walker Barrett is there, and he puts an executive order down on the desk. And he says, please review. And it was the glyphosate EO that says it's a national security issue. We need to have glyphosate and alluded to liability protection using national defense reasons. National security to make sure that we have glyphosate use. And I will tell you, the Secretary of War, the major generals, they don't see our lack of glyphosate on U .S.

1:00:37 farms as a national security issue. And the EO was all about farming, all about glyphosate. and military leadership sees this as a national security issue. So Walker put that on the table. I read it. I said, this is a political disaster. We need to talk about this. And he said, this is final. It's national security. It's coming out tomorrow. I know the people in the room. And he said, please inform Bobby. And this is not up for discussion. And Bobby should not be calling the president or calling anyone. This is not up for discussion. Suzy then called Bobby's office and said, we're not discussing this. I went and informed Bobby and it was announced the next day. So they totally did that behind the president's back and they only have a couple more clips here and I'll wrap it up. But it's important because I'm already seeing how the message is being convoluted, converted. People are watching clips. There's commentary around it. This is the true meaning of this corruption.

1:01:40 It's here. It has nothing to do with Republicans, Democrats. It is the system. Have you spoken to Trump about this? No, I think he did. Personally, I think this was a grand setup and I think Joe's in on it. Like, let's get this out and let's see what we can do. To scatter this to the wind like they're doing right now, that has to be intentional. I believe it is. You don't go on Rogan with 13 million listeners. And people are like, oh, we got to get Cali protection. No, nothing will happen to him. That would be the dumbest thing. Yeah, Tina was like, is he going to be OK? Of course. Of course. And they're not going to do anything to him. And he's out there saying, Make sure if you're going to sue me that you bring all your receipts for discovery because, and he has a whole list, it's all been pre -written.

1:02:24 I believe this to be a fabulous opportunity for this president to do some great things for our country in these remaining two years. Well, this is what's really interesting. I, seeing this work out, had a strong suspicion that this was happening under his nose. And we had a meeting with him and Bobby. and some other folks. And a farmer who was there, a regenerative farmer, brought it up. And President Trump reacted to the Supreme Court decision saying it's a terrible idea. How the hell did this happen? Had no idea the Department of Justice. Jesus Christ. Amen, Joe. I think it's emblematic. And I will say, certainly what I saw when President Trump heard about an issue, his inclination was right. And the people around him, I think, treat him horribly.

1:03:22 They treat him like they talk about him like a baby. And they say it's because we're, you know, the political experts. But, you know, Trump wanted to go hard on investigating vaccines. Tony Fabrizio got paid by pharma and did a poll saying that it's not a popular issue. And Susie and Tony Fabrizio in that world put a full halt for a year on any vaccine inquiry. The president busted that up just like he did with the psychedelic thing. The president did not know about the Department of Justice memo. He didn't know about the Supreme Court ruling on Glyphosate. And he didn't know that the administration supported it, and his initial, his reaction was that that's a terrible decision. Did he investigate and find out who was responsible for that? I can't speak to that, but I can, listen, the president, I'm not making, he has a lot going on. This of course is the issue. Of course he's got a lot going on, a lot of things going on. So now we get into what I think is where this is headed and I pray it is and I want us to pray for everybody, including the new Congress, House of Representatives, Senators, because they're walking into, they have no idea that 90 % of their time is going to be filled up with fundraising. And they'll really have very little to do with their actual job. And the only way this will change is if the citizens are aware of it, if we have this information and we start holding people accountable. And I think President Trump could drive it. He's got to work on his communication skills. So, you know, people will have to help him. So let me take you back to the cabinet. What would be

1:04:55 like I want you to imagine that Trump hears this podcast and says this all this was I'm thinking like mm -hmm Yeah, okay. Oh, he might have just heard it. He knows I want to talk to you. Tell me what we should do What do you tell him? I would recommend I would recommend that he clears house and I think he's getting there and do What makes you remember this is just an hour before Susie Wiles tenders her resignation fully my intuition. I hope he's getting there. I would say Mr. President, you have suffered. You've been shot to drive significant change. You've been dealing with a lot of things. A lot of great things have happened. We have had crime go to an all time low. We have secured the border.

1:05:45 We have combated the woke. Mind virus which is very important straight up like there's a lot of cultural accomplishments that we've made But he still has an opportunity to do what he wants to do, which is go down as a great president by Really combating special interests combating the swamp combating the real institutions of DC that he knows is broken He should not be trying to make friends with John Thune anymore Who's a demon like the majority leader that of the Cali both I should mention he's a believer he's a very devout Christian he he in this whole interview talks a lot about how it's evil, it's demonic. These people are demons specifically. And I, well, of course, we're not fighting against flesh and blood here. So we know where all of this comes from. Trying to make friends with John Thune anymore, who's a demon, like the majority leader of the Republicans. He knows these people are broken. He needs to go to war with Congress, go to war with the Senate. take some of the new lefties at their word that they are not taking corporate money and really want to drive this reform. Meet with them. I think the best chance the president has to get things done is meeting with Barney, meeting with Al Sayed. They ran on a Trump message. Like, if you close your eyes and listen to what the socialists are saying, they're, oh, no, we don't want to do social stuff.

1:07:05 We don't want to do DEI stuff. We want to help the middle class. We want to combat the swamp. Like, they are running as Trump. So there's an opportunity for the president to get back to basics. I went back and listened and it's true. Interesting. It's true. And what is the first thing the president said? No, I'll be working with him. I'd like to work with him, see what I can figure out. I do not take him as a dumb guy. I'm not the first one to go four, five, six D chess, but these events that occurred over the past three, four days is no coincidence. Final clip here. You know, you have to go into the motivations of people, right? And I don't want to assume what people are thinking. I can just, you know, look at what they've done in their lives. Look at what they're probably going to work after. Assume that they are motivated by getting money for their family and, you know, look at where their children are working. Well, clearly, and also if that's the narrative is the whole thing is just about money. And that's the most important aspect of it. Yeah, that's that's it's like. You can't imagine how accepted that belief is. You know the 90 % of Senator time being fundraising. It's just like this isn't right like like can we step back and just ask do we think senators should be spending 90 % of their time fundraising from corporate donors?

1:08:31 Like is that a good thing? Like like like we kind of just have like honestly like I feel like there's gaslighting about like preventing Americans from just having common sense discussions that on things 90 % of people care about. If I was driving a strategy, it'd be like, we're actually going to take a hold on policy for a year if we have a new administration. We are going to take on Congress, take on the Senate, take on DC, and demand structural reform. So we actually have more of a terrain where we can actually get some things done. Unless we fix that, we're not getting anything done. This place is demonic.

1:09:15 It's demonic. And I'm not here to just beat up on Susie or James. These are case studies. They're totally bipartisan. The Dems are doing the exact same thing right now. The Dems have done it before. I'm trying to share specific stories from where I was leading. to kind of color this. I think this is the important thing is that we need to understand that something structural has to change. I was looking up the, you know, senators initially were appointed by the legislature of the states. They weren't elected by the electorate. And this is where I think things went awry. And our founding fathers, biblical men, they knew the pure nature of man. They knew. And man, I just… Scripture is filled with bribes and corruptions and this is nothing new. But the mistake that people make is, it's Suzy Wiles. It's this guy. It's that person. It's not. It's not. This is… It's a broken system. It's systemic. Which has been captured by the enemy. It's in humankind to be this broken way. And it would be very interesting to see the president working with what we would consider

1:10:47 to be crazy people who want, they say, well, we're going to change the constitution. Well, what if they want to change the constitution, but we actually change a few things so that this corruption is much harder to have within our government. Wouldn't that be nice? It would be. This is why I'm not afraid. No, not at all. I feel like every season, every turn of the page presents massive challenges, but also massive opportunities. And I think people are so wired into distrust and so wired into the negative. They give up often. They just throw their hands up. There we go. Here we go again. When I saw it and woke up on Wednesday morning, Thursday, yeah, Wednesday morning, I had a little bit of that going on and like, why do I even try? You know, I mean, literally that thought just crossed, why do I even, why am I giving so much energy to this? And then I settled down and then I got up and down my screen, picked up my Bible and I found equilibrium again. I went, no, no, no, there's opportunity here. Change is hard. but it presents new open doors that would have never been there without that change, even if it's a hard change, even if we don't like it. So, the enemy is an opportunist who leverages the heart of man. Scripture says that the heart of man is desperately wicked. The enemy knows this.

1:12:12 He leverages it. But there's another side to this coin. There's new opportunities as well. Why can't we leverage what is happening to say, okay, It's like a chess game. That person's great move may become your opportunity. I think if we'll keep our wits about us and keep our heads about us and stay strategic. The scripture tells me that I have the mind of Christ. That doesn't mean I use it all the time, but I have it. I have access to it. Even driving in today, before we sat down to do this podcast, I was saying, Lord, give Adam and I, let us tap into the mind of Christ. Let us see things strategically. Let us think differently. Let us think outside the box. And so I feel like I'm hearing this and some people hear doom and gloom. I'm hearing it and going, okay, we need to know this, but that also means there's gaping holes in that system. So let's keep our ears open. Let's listen to what people are saying and not be cynical and skeptical. Well, it's good to have skepticism and be on guard. It's a necessary part of it.

1:13:22 Yeah, but keep your ears open what people are saying, because there will be people who say, hey, we can change something. Here's an opportunity. And I don't really care what color vest they're wearing. If they want to change it, I'm interested. I'm interested. I'm with you there. This is interesting. It's a very lovely moment, as we're going to thank some people who have supported us. Before we do that, I have something for you. For me? Yes. What is this? It's not like you need another Bible in your arsenal, but I wanted to get you this Bible. Awesome. It's called the NIV Larger Print Compact. Yes. It's not like giant print. I wanted you to have one to carry around because I'm doing the same thing and I saw you go goo goo over mine. Yeah, I was actually... And I thought I'm going to get you one of these. Thank you, brother. Happy birthday. Thank you. It's a belated birthday present. Oh, I love that.

1:14:13 And I was looking for one. I was looking it up on Amazon. I'm like, I don't know if this is the right size because it's hard to tell. Thank you, brother. You're welcome. Happy birthday. Late birthday. Thank you very much. And it's perfect. I'm just going to carry this everywhere now. I'm doing the same thing. I've got it carried around. It stays with me. I love it. Cool. We're going to thank some people who supported us. We are value for value. You just heard some... Some podcasters the other day get all their advertisers are walking away for things they said or things they laughed at. And it's bad on two sides. One, they lose their income. Bad people like, ha ha ha, they lost their income. No one benefits in this scenario. And so we don't do that. We only want to be supported by the people who enjoy us. If you get value from the podcast, send it back. You can go to WGTDT .com, which is our substack, which I'm loving the substack platform because for some reason, there's just positive things there. I don't get a lot of negativity and people are thoughtful. It's hard to explain why it's X different from Instagram, different from Facebook. It's just how things work sometimes.

1:15:28 And of course, we have WGTDTdonations .com. If you send a donation, it's on the page there. It says send your note to note at WGTDT .com. And we had said that when people reach a level, they always want to celebrate that. We already have three people who have reached $1 ,000 in aggregate for their support of We Get To Do This. That means that we've already ordered the first set of challenge coins. We're doing the whole armor of God, starting with the belt of truth. And we can't even start to congratulate them and thank them without a jingle. I like the riff, man. Jimmy's going to like that one. He's really going to like that one because of the guitar.

1:16:28 Listen for the riff. So we're doing this in order. The belt of truth is first. And so we had, and of course you get a title, Lieutenant Colonel, get to nation, part of God's army. And our first three are Mike Holbrooke, Jill Holbrooke, and coming in hot today is Michael Anastasio, the OG Salmonier of Curry and the Keeper. He's in Raritan, New Jersey. And I've skipped over our first donor just to... because I want to do this first. I want to make sure we get the Lieutenant Colonel's awarded right off the bat. He says, I couldn't miss being in the inaugural class of officers. Brothers, please continue to share the word. The funny thing is, is the robot, as I was putting today's show together, the robot said, Michael Anastasio is actually three cents short. Do you still want him to have it? Robot, robot, robot. So go to WGTDTdonations .com. You can let us know where, now for these people we happen to know, but moving forward, you can put your, it's called Claim Your Challenge Coin.

1:17:38 Give us your address. You keep your own accounting, by the way. It's on the honor system. We don't have a huge staff. We have even if the robot calls you out for three cents. It's okay. We'll be okay. So just about the belt of truth, because the whole armor of God, What's always struck me is the belt comes first. And of course I'm asking you, I'm just giving you my, you know, it's one of my big, you know, Ephesians is one of my big ones. Right. You can't keep everything in place without your belt. There it is. So fill us in on how important the belt of truth is. Well, I was hanging out with some of our security guys yesterday, man. I love our security guys.

1:18:22 Awesome. They look the business, too. They do, man. They are big, burly men. They are men's men. And they look just alike. They look like, I call them twins. Hey, brother. Yeah, it's Garrett. Yeah, yeah. I love these guys. So I was talking to him, but I was also noticing, man, these belts they wear. These belts have everything. Clips and pockets. And I mean, it holds everything together. Of course, women will tell you, hey, the belt holds everything together. From the style side of it, Annette will tell you that, pulls everything together. But I'm thinking more in terms of a warrior who's got to have access to tools and access to weaponry, knives, different pieces of what it takes to do war. And so the belt, it's interesting that it's called the belt of truth because And as the belt holds it all together and creates a platform for everything else, so does the word of truth, the word of God. Truth holds everything together. And so the belt of truth, it just makes sense to have that first. I'm so happy. I'm pumped about getting these, man. So Tina designed them and they look fantastic. They look super cool. I pulled out all my coins the other day as we were talking about this because I found one in a drawer and I was like, oh man, how'd that get out of there?

1:19:43 So I've got them all in one spot, but I'm looking forward to getting this. I think Erededarian is going to see if he can make the stands for us. Yeah, yeah, the wood rack to hold it. With your first coin, you get the rack so you can, you know... You display it from day one. I'm excited about having them too. I'm a nerd now though with this big time. I think it's awesome. And we got to go one by one because of the cost. Of course. You don't want to only 10, but you order a lot. There's a cost in production. We'll wait until the people move out. But you know what? It's worth it. It's so worth it. It's so good. Because our people are worth it. And we get to do this together. Absolutely. DJ Hoogstraaten, and when this came in, I'm like, DJ Hoogstraaten, he's from Austin, Texas, send us $500. And I looked at this, I'm like, wait a minute, this isn't a DJ disc jockey, this is Dieterich. This is the... Our friends, Dede Rick and his wife Kelly, she's the CEO of Wonder Project. He did the screenplay for Young Washington. Oh man, what a cool guy and what a man, what a talent.

1:20:56 And so I texted him, I said, Hey, Is this you DJ host? I said, oh yeah, Kelly and I decided a long time ago, we're giving up on mainstream media. We're only supporting independent productions that we value. So he understands the value for value system. Man, I appreciate that. I was really touched by that. That is so cool. Super talented family right there. Thank you. Thank you, brother. You want to pick it up with John Whidden, I think? Yeah, John Whidden from Kodiak. Is that? Yeah, it is Alaska. Wow. Almost said Arkansas. That would have been a terrible one. No bad. A .K .A. Alaska, John Whidden. At $200, thank you, John. We look forward to your podcast each week.

1:21:38 We listen to several Christian podcasts, but yours adds a welcome combination of spirituality and current events. Blessings, John and Laurie Kodiak in Alaska. Blessings right back to you. And look who comes in at number four with one, two, three, four, five. This is none other than Nathan Cochran from Tennessee. He is, of course, a bass player for Mercy Me. Come on, Nathan. Love it, man. Dude can rip a bass. He's got great hair. And he's got a great backup voice, man. He's back there on the harmonies killing it. I almost like his harm. I mean, no knock on his bass playing, but man, those harmonies he brings in to Mercy Me are amazing. They're epic. We just love all those guys. I do too, man. They're great guys. Thank you so much, Nathan. That is so appreciated. Very cool. All right. And from Groveland, Florida, $100, Brandon McDaniel. He says, hi Adam and Pastor Jimmy. I first heard Adam on Joe Rogan, who hasn't. A lot of those came in. followed him over to No Agenda, RIP JCD, and now I'm with you guys on We Get to Do This. Adam, I'm genuinely happy to hear about this new season of your life. So am I. You guys are my favorite podcast. As a seasoned Christian who has served in full -time ministry for 20 years, I want you both to know that you minister to me with every episode. I also appreciate the optimistic and level -headed approach on the robots. Go robots! Amen. Keep up the great, yo -ho, keep up the great work. I'm looking forward

1:23:08 to hearing you twice a week. God bless you both. Brandon Mizumaki, McDaniel. Thank you. Hey, thanks, brother. Thank you, Brandon. Brady Heinz sends in $77 .41. He's in Cape Coral, Florida. He sends a really long note, but... He did say, I'll just pick a couple of important pieces. Adam, Pastor Jimmy, thank you for your weekly dose of clarity. It's so easy to get sidetracked and psy -opped into thinking the sky is falling. Exactly. We get to do this, helps bridge the gap between Christ and the ever -changing world around us. And while the world may seem to be moving unpredictably, there's one constant and that's God's presence and love for us. Thank you so much. I love hearing that. We get to do this has been a welcome relief.

1:23:57 I can proudly say I was there from the beginning. I look forward to witnessing what's to come. He sent us some scripture here, Colossians 1 verse 10, so that you may live. a life worthy of the Lord and please him in every way, bearing fruit in every good work, growing in the knowledge of God, I have a favor to get to nation," he says. My beautiful, amazing wife, Rachel, has found some time between soccer, homeschooling, and raising two small children, two and six years old, to embark on designing and selling Christian and sometimes silly t -shirts on Etsy. So her Etsy shop is Small Things and Sacred. at smallthingsandsacred .etsy .com. So go take a look at what she's doing.

1:24:41 And Ned already went. She's already picked out a shirt. Oh, she has? She said, you're going to love this. So when I get home, I'm going to check it out. Love it. So thanks, Brady. Oh, also, I think it was Brady. Yes, it was Brady who, and I almost forgot this, who suggested that instead of saying, hit him in the mouth, which we did for No Agenda, if you want to tell someone about the show and get them to listen, We hit them in the heart. I love that. And I am all in. We go out, we hit them in the heart. That is it for Get2Nation. Thank you, Brady. That's a great contribution. I will catch these next three and then you can take Linda. So we've got James Gonzalez at $51 .99. No note, but James, thank you. Feel free to write us a note. We'd love to hear from you. And then also Bagundi.

1:25:29 Bagundi Luther, named guest from email. That's my robot saying, this is what I guessed. So anyway, thank you. $50. Appreciate that. No, no, no location. And then we have Tonya Seaman from Buffalo, Texas. I wonder where Buffalo is. I've lived in Texas my whole life. I know a lot of towns. It's a big state, but I'm not sure where Buffalo is. I'll have to check it out. $50. Thank you, Tonya. We appreciate you. And there's Linda Lu Patkin from Casa Rock, Colorado. And she sends $50. This is interesting. Linda Lupatkin, she's always supported No Agenda. She's talked about her business. She helps people write resumes. And all of a sudden now her copy has changed. Now she says, there's a proverb. I mean, Linda, hello. Are we Christ curious? Are you decloaking? Wait a minute. Here we go. I like it a lot. There's a proverb about diligent people standing before kings. But in today's job market, Even the most accomplished professionals can struggle to get in front of decision -makers. This is where Linda Liu, Duchess of Jobs, comes in. She helps professionals and executives turn what makes them different and valuable into a resume that gets results.

1:26:48 Then she helps, and she has helped a lot of people. She's good. The way she's segued into that. That's fantastic. She has helped people get jobs when everyone's using ChatGPT and everything. Go to imagemakersinc .com, Image Makers Inc. with a K, and Linda Liu, she's the Duchess of Jobs and writer of winning resumes. And thank you very much, Linda. Thanks for following me over from No Agenda and being here with me and Pastor Jimmy. It's so highly appreciated. Cool. I got the next four. Then you can read the notes. You got it. So Jeffrey Morrill, no note. No location, $34 .83. I think these are $33 .33 plus the fees from Paypal. Thank you. Thank you so much. Nancy Martin Johnson, same, $34 .83. Eric Marklin at $34 .83 and Peter Eich at $34 .83. We appreciate you. Yeah, and a lot of these people are sending these on automatic payments, which recurring donations make a huge difference. Thank you so much. Uh, Laurel and Lumen from Fredericksburg.

1:27:51 Yeah, hometown. Uh, Laurie Lumen. Wait, Laurie, we must know Laurie Lumen. Laurie Lumen. I'm putting you on the spot. Okay. Dear Pastor Jimmy and Adam, I've been listening to your podcast since it was first mentioned in church. Your weekly podcast has become the highlight of my day. Thank you for all you do. Laurie Lumen. I know that Tina is sitting at home right now going, yes, you know, Laurie. I know, me too. Here's the thing though. We have About 1 ,500 who come to our church. So I've probably met her dozens of times. Thank you, Laurie. Thank you so much. Come up to me on Sunday. I love that. Fredericksburg. Yay. All right. We have, this is from Tomball, Texas, another Texas town, Count Sir economic hit man. You may know this one. And at 2222 memo from Count Sir. economic hitman. That's all it is. F -Y -C would be, I get to do this for your courage, I think. I'm not sure. I got it working through. But thank you, Colleen and Edward. Yeah, I'd love to hear what that is. And we have Justin Nguyen at 1688, says, very thankful for the seven years I got to listen to No Agenda and for John introducing me to the word Calipigus. Calipigus. Calipigus.

1:29:16 Calabages. Calipigus. Calipigus. On the last episode of No Agenda by Aussie. Dollar redo's AP level donation was snubbed. So in true no agenda fashion, I bequeath a $25 dollar dollar redo donation for perhaps the last no agenda make good ever. I now look forward to the years I get to now listen to WGTDT. Which seems very timely as my curiosity in Christ is growing. In regards, Justin Wynn. Thanks, Justin. You're in the right spot, brother. You are in the right place. So we sent us $25 Australian dollars, which is $16 .88 US. Those guys are in trouble. Yeah. Appreciate it, though. Bruce Hargis, Bakersfield, California. Hello, California. $16 .30. Bryce.

1:30:03 Oh, Bryce. Thank you. I put off donating until I could think of something witty. I gave up on that. Here's the Bible verse. That's witty. Commit your actions to the Lord and your plans will succeed. Proverbs 16 .3, that's why he donated $16 .30. Thank you. Very cool. Thanks, Bryce. And then we have Sean Rooney from Hollister, California. He and I went back and forth, helped him get the note on Substack. $11 .40 from Sean Rooney. verse, Psalm 11 -4. I don't have it sitting in front of me. You want to look that up while I read this? Yeah, I will. Longtime No Agenda fan following his adventures in WGTDT, and you too inspired me to work on my own faith art YouTube channel. Hey, way to go Waypoint Witness. This donation note is from Sean in Hollister. Oh, there's the Bible verse. I got it now. Go ahead and read it. You got it. It's still being...

1:31:03 The robot's slow. I haven't opened up my Bible yet. Oh, that'll take you an hour. So here it is. The Lord is in His holy temple. The Lord's throne is in heaven. His eyes behold His eyelids. Try the children of men. A reminder that whatever turmoil we face here on the Blue Rock, God's got our back because... There it is. It's going to be okay. Love that, Sean. Thanks, bro. Here's another note. I think, yeah, here it is. I've been a long time, no agenda fan listening since the tail end of year one. I want to check out the WGTD. Teapod. I know your favorite word. Shortly before John passed, and I'm glad to follow Adam's kingdom work with Pastor Jimmy, reminding us all to live up in a mighty, crazy world. You too have inspired me to return to kingdom work on my YouTube channel, Waypoint Witness, where I combine watercolor art with Bible readings, devotionals, and prayer. Thank you, Adam and Pastor Jimmy, and God bless, and thank you, Shawn.

1:32:00 Great to meet you, brother. I'll close these out, brother. I got Tristan Murray with $10 .80. We have our weekly, I think, $7 .77 from Kyle Perelka, Morgan Medlock, and Randall Black. Randall Black, thank you very much. Brian Moore, $5 .69, and I think he sends that for scripture. He says, sorry for the multiple emails. Oh, people love sending emails. I meant to share another good prayer app I would recommend while you're waiting on the one mentioned on show is the Echo Prayer app. Okay, I'll check it out. I've been using that one for about a year and I like it for a stock app store app. Okay. Pastor Jim and I, I'm establishing a weekly 1 Peter 5, 6 to 9 donation, 5 69, to get in on the ground floor to support the WGTDT podcast. I'm so thankful for the show.

1:32:54 It's the perfect successor to No Agenda for me as a brother in Christ. Thank you for the continued get -to -media assassination, and more importantly, the spiritual insight through God's holy word, keep proclaiming King Jesus. Love you guys, mean it. 1 Peter 5, 6 to 9, so humble yourselves under the mighty power of God, and at the right time, He will lift you up in honor. Give all your worries and cares to God, for He cares about you. Stay alert! watch out for your great enemy the devil he prowls around like a roaring lion looking for someone to devour stand firm against him and be strong in your faith remember that your family of believers all over the world is going through the same kind of struggle you are And he kind of added something to the scripture there.

1:33:39 So good, man. That's solid. And Randy Black, again, with $5 .65. Thank you, Randy. And Isaiah Seeker, $5 .65. And Kyle Perelka, again, I guess people are donating now for two shows. Thank you. From Piscataway, New Jersey. Dan Godfrey with $4. And Dwayne Spellman Jr., as always, with $1 .53. And from the P .O. Box, thank you, Sir Skunkbeard. Night of the Third Coast for the t -shirts. I gave Pastor Jimmy his, and he sent a beautiful card with love and prayers in the glory. The card says, May God be very close to you and in His loving way restore your spirit, give your strength, and bless you day by day.

1:34:20 Very cool. Thank you all so much for supporting us. That is, I mean, I'm blown away. I am too, brother. Just this amount of outpouring and support is a big deal to us. We so appreciate it. W -G -T -D -T -O -Nations .com. Wait, let me close. I got to close out the whole Armour of God first. Oh, yeah. All right. Man, I'm loving the riffs. I worked all night on them, Pastor Jimmy. Really, prompt, prompt, prompt, prompt. Brother, why don't you close us out with your daily grind so we can… All right. Glad to do it. Hey, you know what I love about this? I love the feedback loop. Yeah, that's big. When this is what kills what you say seven episodes, typically they fade.

1:35:17 This one did pod fade. Yeah. Yeah. So man, just getting the feedback, it puts wind in our sails. It sure does. Makes us want to keep rolling. It sure does. All right. Here it is. All right. This is today's daily grind and the title is More Than All We Ask or Imagine. Today's scripture is Ephesians chapter three, verses 20 and 21. Now to him who is able to do immeasurably more than all we ask or imagine according to His power that is at work within us. To Him be glory in the church and in Christ Jesus throughout all generations forever and ever. Amen." You know, you can't read Paul's prayer without catching the spirit and energy with which he's declaring how amazing God is. This declaration captures the character and essence of who God is. He is able. This can be your declaration too. Say it out loud. God is able to do immeasurably more than all I ask or imagine according to His power.

1:36:16 Notice it's His power, not ours. It's on Him, not us. Enjoy this truth today. So your instructions for today, stop what you're doing and make Paul's declaration your declaration. In our prayer for the day, Father, thank you for the truth of this amazing confession of faith by Paul. I, too, will stand on the truth of this Word today. In Jesus' name, amen. All right, everybody. We'll be back on Thursday. You don't have to wait that long. As you know, we all get to do this. See you then.