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0:48
This is Undaunted Life of Man's Podcast.
0:50
I'm your host Kyle Thompson.
0:52
Let's get into it.
0:53
All right, guys, for those of you wondering, Kyle, why are you releasing an episode out
0:55
of turn?
0:56
You're part two of the Taya Kyle interview, guys.
0:59
I promise you, we will get back to our normal posting schedule and you will get part two
1:03
of my interview with Taya Kyle next Thursday, but this interview cannot wait.
1:07
Okay.
1:08
So if we go back to episode 181 of this podcast, I was Q and A volume 14, I talked about Pastor
1:12
James Coates of Grace Life Church in Edmonton, of Edmonton, rather in Alberta, Canada.
1:18
And so essentially he had violated and the church had violated Canada's Public Health
1:22
Act.
1:23
And essentially where it went from there is they were saying, hey, you have to enforce
1:27
social distancing and masking and you can't have more than 15% capacity at your church.
1:31
Grace Life Church and Pastor James Coates basically said, you ain't telling us what to
1:34
do.
1:35
And a lot of his sermon content was basically very forceful towards the government authorities
1:39
telling them, Hey, this is where this is where you can tell us what to do.
1:42
And this is where you can't tell us what to do.
1:45
And then he was arrested.
1:46
There was a warrant to basically the equivalent of a warrant put out for his arrest.
1:50
He was arrested and he is still in jail as of right now.
1:53
And so shout out to Sam Hayes Winkle, by the way, that's one of my foxhole guys for putting
1:57
this on my radar.
1:58
Because to be honest, I had just read about it on Twitter, but when I say read about it,
2:01
I mean, I saw the headlines, right as you're scrolling through Twitter and you're like,
2:04
Oh, I bet there's more to that story and you just kind of move on.
2:07
But Sam Hayes Winkle really, really put that in my ear to where it's like, Hey, you really
2:10
need to look into this a little bit further.
2:11
It might be worth talking about.
2:13
And then another shout out to a longtime undaunted life supporter, Owen Tiernan.
2:17
So Owen is actually a member of Grace Life, Church of Edmonton and Alberta, Canada.
2:21
And so he kind of reached out to me on Instagram is like, Hey, did you know about this?
2:24
He sent me a video that he kind of made of some of the sermon content that I shared with
2:28
you on that episode 181.
2:30
And he was another guy that I talked to because I was like, bro, if you're lying to me about
2:34
all this or if I'm not getting the right story and I end up talking about on this podcast,
2:37
I'm going to be furious.
2:38
And so he and I hopped on a zoom call before I even talked about it on episode 181, just
2:42
to make sure I had my facts straight.
2:44
He kind of gave me, you know, peek behind the curtain and all that.
2:46
And then he said he could kind of get us in touch with some of the other pastors and
2:49
all that.
2:50
And so that leads us to today's, you know, special drop interview.
2:53
And that is with Jacob Spence.
2:54
And so Jacob is the associate pastor at Grace Life Church.
2:57
And so essentially he took over for pastor James whenever he was arrested.
3:01
He's been preaching from the pulpit thereafter and guys, even as of today, I'm recording
3:05
this on March the 5th, Friday, March the 5th.
3:08
As of this morning, there are updates to this case and they're just astonishing to think
3:13
through what the Canadian government is doing.
3:14
It is absolutely astonishing.
3:16
So you're not going to want to miss that.
3:17
So guys, without further ado, let's get into it.
3:21
Jacob Spence, welcome to Undaunted Life of Man's podcast.
3:24
Oh, thanks for having me on.
3:26
Thanks for the invitation.
3:27
It's a pleasure to be here.
3:30
Absolutely.
3:31
I wish you could be here under some better circumstances than the circumstances that
3:34
you're in right now.
3:35
And we will certainly get into all that.
3:37
And so if you will forgive me, we are polite down here in America, I promise you, but we
3:41
will skip the pleasantries and the normal introductions and we'll kind of get right to
3:45
what you're dealing with, what you and your congregation are dealing with.
3:48
So just to kind of get everybody up to speed and then I'll tee you up, Dr. Dina Hinshaw,
3:53
who is the chief medical officer of health in Alberta, she ordered Grace Life Church,
3:58
which is the church that you are an associate pastor at, to be closed in January.
4:03
And the reasons given were because of violations of the Public Health Act, which is basically
4:07
Canada's COVID-19 restrictions.
4:10
So essentially your church decided that it would not mandate mask wearing or social
4:15
distancing and kind of refused to limit the capacity to the government mandated 15% occupancy.
4:21
And so that's where everything stood in January.
4:24
And then, you know, the calendar basically went on into February and a lot of things
4:27
happened from there.
4:28
So if you would take it from there and let our audience know exactly what happened next
4:33
because we're reading a lot of different reports, we're getting a lot of different opinions
4:37
as to what's going on, but what happened after Dr. Hinshaw basically said, "Hey, y'all need
4:42
to shut it down in January."
4:44
Yeah.
4:45
So it ended up in court in a lower court court of Queens bench where we lost and shortly
4:52
thereafter that court proceeding, there was an issue to comply with a public closure of
5:00
the building.
5:01
So we decided to, as long as the locks remained such that we could still access the building,
5:09
we would continue to meet faithfully in that of obedience and faithfulness to our Lord
5:15
Jesus Christ.
5:17
And so I guess James preached the February 14th sermon where he called out government,
5:25
where he said it was the church's responsibility to really correct government out of Romans
5:32
chapter 13 and point out their heir to point out the different spheres of authority yet
5:38
again.
5:39
It had been done a number of times already from the pulpit.
5:45
So I guess that same Sunday, he was invited into the church office after the church office
5:53
after the sermon and where the police then issued an undertaking and undertaking, my understanding
6:02
moves it out of the civil matters into the criminal matters.
6:06
And he refused to sign the document, speak out of conscience, out of obedience to Christ
6:12
as he sees it and our commitment to continue to gather for worship.
6:17
He refused to sign it, but it did essentially, whether he signed it or not, move it into
6:23
a different sphere, I guess, in terms of the justice process.
6:30
And from my understanding, he was to appear in court that same week because of that undertaking
6:37
that was issued.
6:38
However, there was no appearance, and then the following Sunday on the 21st when we met
6:43
again, then he was found to be in breach of that undertaking.
6:49
So without having the first appearance, it automatically jumped to the next step.
6:56
And he was asked then to report to the RCMP, which is the federal police here in Canada,
7:04
to the RCMP headquarters and where he was again arrested, then brought before a judge.
7:13
And it was at that point that the Crown attorney convinced the judge that he was essentially
7:20
a threat to the public and a threat to the province of Alberta, the safety, I guess, of
7:27
health under that guise.
7:29
And so he was detained and has continued to be in jail, incarcerated in the remand center
7:36
here, just outside of Edmonton, from what I understand.
7:39
Well, Jacob, I appreciate you kind of bringing us all up to speed on that.
7:43
And just as an aside, because I know you've been going through a lot of details and maybe
7:47
not talking through what you've personally been going through.
7:49
But what was it like for you personally and for your family when you knew that Pastor James
7:54
was going to be arrested and subsequently when he was?
7:57
Yeah, I mean, it all becomes very real at that point, you know, we've lived in a society
8:04
where we haven't experienced in my 50 years, we haven't experienced persecution as I have
8:11
now seen it, you know.
8:12
So to come into a worship setting to enter into the church Sunday after Sunday and have
8:20
the federal police there to have health authorities videotaping us, it's been disconcerting.
8:27
And then certainly to see the level at which it's been ramped up with James' incarceration
8:33
and knowing that as I go into the pulpit Sunday after Sunday or even as our people continue
8:39
to come faithfully to desire to worship, just not to be able to anticipate what the next
8:44
step will be.
8:45
Will others be arrested?
8:47
You know, would I be arrested?
8:48
Would I be jailed?
8:49
Would other elders in our church be jailed?
8:53
Would even people from our church be ticketed?
8:56
Would there be mass ticketing taking place?
8:59
We're just not sure.
9:00
And it's all very disconcerting because we first and foremost desire on Sunday mornings
9:05
to gather for worship and that requires a heart preparation that is very much disrupted
9:12
by the government's actions and certainly the actions of unelected health authorities
9:19
and/or health officials, I should call them, and in law enforcement as well.
9:25
So it's been troubling and you kind of feel like you don't really have just a stable understanding
9:34
of what will come next.
9:37
But I mean, our trust is in the Lord.
9:38
We look to him.
9:39
We know that nothing that's happening is outside of his will, outside of his full knowledge.
9:44
And so although he does look at these days, certainly as evil and he is not in any way,
9:52
you know, in favor of the evil doers and their evil doings, he is at the same time taking
10:01
us down this road which he has prepared us for.
10:05
And so we're resolved to continue down that road in faithfulness to Christ.
10:10
Right.
10:11
That's great.
10:12
It's basically the only mindset that you can have.
10:15
And because if you've looked at any history of the church, I always encourage our listeners
10:18
to go back to the first century church.
10:20
And it's like when someone leaves a mean comment on your Facebook, that's not persecution.
10:24
There's real persecution happening out there.
10:26
And this isn't exactly, you know, being set on fire, you know, to light up a Roman party,
10:31
but it's certainly not comfortable for those that are experiencing this inside your congregation.
10:35
But as of just this morning, you know, I'm going to be releasing this episode today that,
10:39
you know, kind of not a normal release schedule, but as of this morning, there is an update
10:43
on this case and in terms of how this is going to be operating going forward.
10:47
So what is the latest on what's happening with Pastor James?
10:50
Yeah.
10:51
So there was an appeal on the bail hearing, I guess.
10:56
And what ended up happening was the judge dismissed the appeal upholding essentially
11:05
the previous judge's announcement or a decision, I should say.
11:12
And so that decision was largely based on James not being able to agree to comply to
11:18
not stepping foot on the property and not agreeing to gather together with the people.
11:28
Of course, he would play a vital role in that, not that the people are coming because he
11:35
is leading them, they're coming out of an obedience to Christ, obviously, and a desire
11:39
to worship as we ought to, but he could not agree to basically stepping aside from his
11:47
pastoral responsibilities that have been given to him by God.
11:53
It's not the government that determines, you know, there's not an on and off switch
11:57
on where the government just decides when one can be a pastor and when one cannot be
12:02
a pastor.
12:03
So the compliance, I guess, that was issued in the injunction was that he wouldn't step
12:11
foot on the property, that he wouldn't lead a worship service and he feels very much that
12:16
that's exactly what the Lord has called him to in this world is to lead and to shepherd
12:24
and for somebody to say that he can't do that, he just couldn't comply with that.
12:30
So it ends up, the way it kind of sounded this morning was that the judge said that he's
12:36
really determining his own fate at this point, if he can't comply then he's really determining
12:42
that he would remain in jail, he's doing that on his own rather than, you know, the crown
12:48
or the judge or anybody else, the government certainly taking in responsibility for the
12:53
things that are occurring now.
12:55
Yeah, it's an interesting obfuscation of your actual role when you say, Hey, this is kind
13:00
of on you, because, you know, when when the mandate is authoritarian or tyrannical to
13:06
begin with, it's kind of easy to point at the other guy.
13:09
But I suppose that's maybe a larger philosophical topic that maybe we can delve into a little
13:13
bit later.
13:14
But, you know, from an outside perspective, Jacob, the way that I've seen it and the way
13:18
that I've been paying attention to it is it seems like they were trying to make an example.
13:23
The Canadian authorities, or as you call them, probably rightly the Canadian officials that
13:28
they're trying to make an example out of Pastor James, because he wasn't just preaching on
13:33
Sundays.
13:34
He was preaching forcefully, and he was speaking out forcefully against the government's overreach
13:38
and kind of telling them what their rightful place in the world is.
13:41
And so if he was going kind of the mega church pass around, which is basically like, Hey,
13:45
here's your your life lesson, here's your self help book with a few scriptures sprinkled
13:49
in, perhaps they don't really go after him, but he was really given them the business.
13:53
Do you think that that's true?
13:54
Do you think that the Canadian government saw this as an opportunity to squelch someone
13:58
that they felt like was out of step?
14:01
Yeah, I think that they kind of misjudged this situation, maybe misjudged the position
14:09
of the church.
14:11
Certainly again, as I said, we don't gather because James Coates is standing in the pulpit
14:16
and preaching, but we do gather because we are, it's our conviction that we gather to
14:22
come around the Word of God Sunday after Sunday, that it would be opened and exposited faithfully.
14:28
The Word would be handled accurately.
14:30
And that's what is bringing people Sunday after Sunday.
14:35
Certainly James has been faithful in expositing the Word.
14:39
And when the Word is exposited, it has obviously it goes out.
14:44
It's profitable for teaching, for approval, for correction, training and righteousness.
14:49
And it's living in an active and is able to cut right to the heart.
14:53
And so even as he's preaching and preaching these tough texts that are tough to hear,
15:00
especially I would imagine for government officials who are listening in and hearing
15:05
that they're actually out of their sphere of authority, that they have overstepped or
15:10
over reached the authority that God has given them and all authority is sourced in God.
15:17
I would imagine that that's hard to hear for unbelieving ears.
15:21
And certainly then they looked to James, I think, as somebody that if they just simply
15:27
removed him that the problem here in Alberta might be lessened or go away altogether.
15:34
But just simply removing a shepherd doesn't change anything really because the church,
15:43
the body of believers is still under the conviction that we will meet to worship God Sunday after
15:50
Sunday.
15:51
So, and that has continued and will continue.
15:54
Yeah.
15:55
And I think the other part of it is is I think the government thinks that they can make this
15:59
go away quietly.
16:00
I remember when I was speaking with a member of your church who actually reached out to
16:04
me directly to inform me about some of the things that were going on behind the scenes
16:08
is that they were wanting to kind of rush this thing along as if we get this done quickly
16:12
enough, there won't be enough groundswell of support or people kind of going out there
16:17
and saying how displeased they are with this.
16:21
And so it looks like it's being drugged out a little bit, but we'll kind of see that's
16:24
partially why we wanted to have you on, was to increase the voice and support of James
16:28
in the situation that he's going through.
16:30
But are there any other Canadian churches that are basically joining the fight because
16:34
I heard rumblings and rumors that there were going to be some churches last Sunday in all
16:38
the surrounding areas that were going to open up to full capacity almost to be like a, you
16:42
know, pulsating middle finger to the Canadian government, which is basically like, hey,
16:46
you're either going to take down all of us or you're not like almost like testing them.
16:51
Is anything like that going on in Canada?
16:53
Yeah.
16:54
There's certainly faithful churches that are opening to pre-COVID standards if we can,
17:00
you know, use that as a term, recognizing that, you know, it says, James said, early
17:08
on, you know, out of ignorance, we followed the government restrictions.
17:13
And then it at some point became abundantly clear that the narrative that was being given
17:18
to us by our premiers, which I guess would be the equivalent of your governor and the
17:24
chief medical officers, the narrative just wasn't being backed by the science that we
17:30
were hoping to see.
17:32
I mean, we are intellectual people.
17:35
It's not that we can just have the, you know, the woeful over our eyes.
17:40
So when we realized that, you know, out of ignorance, we had been complying and there
17:44
was not really a need to comply because there wasn't really a threat to our people.
17:49
And I mean, we've continued to meet now for 32 Sundays, unhindered there, there hasn't
17:54
been sickness, the case cases in Alberta are going down certainly.
18:00
And so, I mean, I guess we should actually be studied by science, you know, because I
18:08
think there's a case for exactly that, then we should be a case study to show.
18:14
And so really James remains in jail then under a theory, right, the theory that he may pose
18:20
a threat or the church may pose a threat to society, but it's only a theory and it's,
18:25
it really has no basis.
18:27
Yeah.
18:28
For the, for the follow the science crowd, they're kind of taking it in the teeth right
18:31
now because it's like, well, we can read to and whenever I read these things, it seems
18:37
to me that this isn't vastly different from a seasonal flu.
18:41
It is different.
18:42
It is certainly more transmissible.
18:43
It is certainly more deadly than the normal flu, but to have these, these global mandates
18:48
that everything shut down until we've gotten a handle on it, whatever that means.
18:52
And here in the United States, you have a dead person.
18:55
That's the president now, Joe Biden, who is basically just saying what comes up on the
18:58
screen in front of him.
18:59
And it's, it's hard because there are people that want to believe the things that he's
19:03
saying, but he's not backing anything up with any type of data.
19:07
He's just saying follow the science.
19:09
It's scientism.
19:10
It's, it's worshiping at the altar of science.
19:11
I mean, the science actually points in the other direction, but here I am, I feel like
19:15
I'm preaching now, but I didn't want to ask you about a quote from a recent Edmonton Journal
19:19
article.
19:20
And it was, I'll just read the quote here, last Thursday, Hinshaw, who's the chief medical
19:23
officer addressed the situation at Grace Live calling it quote, a rare incident, unquote,
19:29
and thanked the quote, vast majority of faith leaders and faith communities who have worked
19:33
hard to protect each other and their broader communities by following the measures and
19:38
are in that are in place, unquote.
19:41
When I read that, it was like chilling to me because it is, it is Orwellian if you're
19:47
paying attention because she's basically saying, yeah, these people that were basically reading
19:51
the Bible literally and telling us, you know, what our place was and everything, they weren't
19:56
doing it right.
19:57
But all these other pansies over here that basically don't want to rock the boat that
20:02
they're over here just kind of being quiet and they're listening to us because we're
20:05
the ones in power.
20:06
We're the ones in authority.
20:07
As the point you made earlier, it's like you're an official, you're not in authority.
20:11
That quote absolutely blew my mind is, is that the sentiment that a lot of people are
20:15
having that are really on the inner workings of this conflict that, hey, this is the government
20:19
basically telling the church what to do on a macro level, not just in this one instance.
20:26
Yeah, absolutely.
20:27
This is this is an encroachment into into the church.
20:32
And sadly, we've seen the majority of churches here in Canada, I think acquiesce to to what
20:39
the government has put on the church in terms of restrictions.
20:44
And in the government in turn has been using that as as as fuel to add to the argument against
20:52
a church like Grace Life against several other churches that are meeting currently there
20:58
at 10, I believe that are are willing to put their their name out here in Alberta.
21:04
But there are also across Canada several that several more that have put their names on
21:08
on lists and and and some just continue to fly under the radar, desiring not to draw any
21:15
attention to themselves, but said they can remain faithful and not come under the threat
21:20
of law enforcement and the government.
21:23
So certainly there's that the government, I think we're seeing sadly, this is I guess
21:29
the way this is my thought on it.
21:32
Sadly, I think what we're seeing here is we're seeing the government adopt the pragmatic
21:36
approach that we've seen prevalent in evangelicalism for for a while now.
21:42
So the the pragmatism of the church in saying, you know, it's the numbers that were our churches
21:49
are growing.
21:50
What we what we're doing must be true, right?
21:53
So there's a pragmatism.
21:54
We're seeing that the government's now adopting that because they're approaching us and approaching
21:59
other churches that are that remain, you know, in non compliance and they're pointing to
22:06
those those churches that have complied and they're saying, see, they're doing it.
22:10
So what we're doing must be right and they're kind of using that as ammunition against us.
22:14
What they don't realize is that Grace Life is not a pragmatic church.
22:17
We're not driven by by numbers.
22:21
We're not about rights and freedoms.
22:23
We are about the gospel.
22:24
We want the gospel to go forth.
22:27
We want people's hearts to be to be regenerated under the gospel call.
22:32
We want Christ to to effectually call sinners unto salvation.
22:38
And and so there's nothing pragmatic about it about us.
22:43
It's a to hard message, you know, and and so we can't we can't be in compliance just
22:50
simply because the majority of other churches are in compliance.
22:53
I mean, we need to remain distinct and and we will.
22:59
Well, you talked about remaining faithful a second ago and basically in this situation
23:04
for these churches that are complying, remaining faithful actually means speaking up and actually
23:09
means saying something.
23:10
So I saw here recently were John MacArthur who kind of came under fire in the state of
23:15
California for some defying some of those initial COVID-19 orders.
23:19
He, you know, said a prayer for you and your congregation and for pastor James, I think
23:23
was last Sunday or the Sunday before that, you know, took two minutes out of the his normal
23:27
sermon to basically talk about that situation.
23:29
And he had an article that he recently posted in the Daily Wire called the end of frivolous
23:33
religion question mark.
23:35
And so it was kind of talking about that.
23:36
It's all these churches that are growing and I have some enormous ones here in my backyard
23:40
because I'm in Oklahoma, which is the belt buckle, the Bible belt in United States.
23:45
And you have these churches that are growing and if these numbers look good and everybody
23:48
seems happy, but there maybe isn't a whole lot of gospel being preached.
23:52
There maybe isn't a whole lot of theological, theological truths.
23:56
These people come, they get their ears tickled, they get entertained by the band or something
24:00
like that.
24:01
And then they just kind of move on about their day.
24:02
Here I am preaching again.
24:03
I promise I'll stop.
24:04
I got a few more questions for you and I'll let you go because I know you got a lot of
24:07
things going on.
24:08
Jacob, just a few more questions.
24:09
So one thing that I've seen in a lot of neutral observers have watched is it seemed like Western
24:14
culture was slowly creeping towards secularism and kind of towards authoritarianism and towards
24:22
tyranny and people are like, oh, socialism doesn't sound that bad or communism doesn't
24:26
sound that bad because people haven't read a book that was published like after 1950.
24:31
And so it seems at least to me that things have been thrown into warp speed here recently.
24:37
It's not a creep towards any of those things now.
24:40
We're running headlong into it.
24:42
And much of it is due to the government overreach and control that happened during COVID-19.
24:47
A lot of us are pointing out like, hey, guys, typically when government grabs control of
24:50
something, they don't just let it go.
24:52
They're not like Cincinnati's from Rome where it basically takes over everything, gets everything
24:56
squared away, and then just gives it back to the people.
24:59
Am I crazy for thinking that we are just running as fast as we possibly can towards secularism,
25:05
tyranny, authoritarianism, you know, et cetera?
25:08
That is certainly the direction that this world is heading.
25:10
And I mean, I would say that scripture would testify to that.
25:13
We see a, you know, the leftist agenda is it has taken over.
25:19
I mean, even this week removing Dr.
25:22
Seuss from being available, you know, these are children's books.
25:27
So I can only imagine even in the very near future, what is this world?
25:33
How is this world going to approach our scriptures?
25:36
Like there are going to be even, you know, verses that are going to obviously cause great
25:43
offense to people.
25:45
And if they're canceling children's books, it's just a matter of time before they're
25:49
going to come after Christians, they already are.
25:53
But I mean, in a much more defined and vigorous way.
26:00
So yeah, I certainly agree with what you've said.
26:05
It's only ramping up and my fear is for those, you know, again, for those majority of churches
26:09
that are in compliance now and kind of just lying down for the government and saying,
26:16
"Yep, we will bow."
26:17
I can't imagine how they'll stand in the face of what's coming and what's just around the
26:22
corner.
26:23
It frightens me actually and it's disheartening.
26:28
Right.
26:29
So something I kind of have to ask because I'm sure you've heard it and it was something
26:32
that I thought of.
26:33
A lot of people will read about this story or hear about it and they'll say something
26:37
like, you know, this is dumb.
26:39
They should have just complied.
26:40
This isn't that big a deal, you know, live to fight another day.
26:43
This isn't the hill to die on, you know, something along those lines.
26:47
But to you and to Pastor James, why is this a big deal?
26:51
Yeah, it's a big deal because we're going to stand before the Lord Jesus Christ one day.
26:55
And that's a big deal.
26:58
I want and I know James certainly wants to hear well done, good and faithful servant.
27:04
And so really everything that we're doing in this life is preparing us for that day
27:08
when we'll stand before him and we just simply want to want to be found faithful.
27:15
And so that's what we work towards.
27:18
And that's a daily pursuit.
27:21
It involves standing on biblical principles and certainly the personal convictions that
27:27
arise out of the study of Scripture, out of a life of prayer, out of the pursuit of godly
27:34
living.
27:35
And that's our desire.
27:38
Our desire is to gain in the next world and, you know, we want to serve Christ faithfully
27:45
here, but knowing that there is more to come.
27:48
And so we're looking towards that, you know, the counting all things lost, you know, we've
27:54
counted the costs, we're counting all things lost now for the surpassing value of knowing
27:59
Christ Jesus.
28:01
And that's what feels us.
28:03
That's what drives us.
28:05
The judges that, you know, James has stood before do not intimidate him in any way.
28:11
You know, there is a, the ultimate judge that he will stand before and it's him that he
28:16
is trying to please.
28:18
And you can't, you can't please two masters.
28:20
So we are very cognizant of that.
28:23
And we are enslaved to Christ.
28:26
We will continue to be enslaved to Christ and we just desire to hear him say, well done.
28:32
That is a fantastic reminder for all of us and maybe to put a bow on this for now.
28:38
What are the tangible ways that the listeners of undaunted life, a man's podcast or anyone
28:42
that might get their hands on this type of material?
28:45
How can we help?
28:46
Hmm.
28:47
Yeah, that's a, that's a great question.
28:49
Well, certainly bring us before the Lord, we know that our prayers move heaven essentially.
28:58
And so the Lord does hear our prayers.
29:01
He does respond to our prayers may not be exactly as we, we anticipate all the time,
29:06
but you know, we need, we need to be strengthened.
29:10
We know that the Lord used that to strengthen us certainly through this time to help us
29:16
to keep our resolve.
29:18
And so yeah, be praying for Grace life, be praying for James and Aaron and their, their
29:23
young family, be praying even for, for James and Aaron's mothers, wonderful ladies who are
29:32
very much a part of the, of the family and a part of the struggle that they see their
29:36
own children and grandchildren in.
29:39
So pray for our, for our people.
29:42
We've had a few congregants that have faced job loss and actually have experienced job
29:47
loss as a result of being tied to grace life.
29:52
And so we see, you know, this certainly is, is jumping over even into the human rights
29:56
realm.
29:58
And I can't fathom that, that somebody who lose their job just simply because of the
30:04
congregation that they're a part of, but certainly that's a reality, it seems.
30:09
There are other things that are coming up against us.
30:12
And certainly this is a, continues to be a developing story.
30:16
So James is, is one player in this certainly and he is currently in jail, but the government
30:23
and law enforcement continues to, to press so prayer is big.
30:30
There are ways of financially supporting as well.
30:33
I know the GC, JCCF, which stands for the justice center for constitutional freedoms
30:39
here in Canada, they are, they're doing our case pro bono and have been serving us wonderfully
30:47
in that regard.
30:49
So they do certainly accept donations towards the fight here for constitutional freedoms
30:56
in Canada.
30:58
And we know that that's very much a part of, of what we're, we're, we're finding ourselves
31:03
and although again, that's not primarily our goal is not to get rights and freedoms established,
31:09
but our goal is, is the gospel, but there is a connection there.
31:14
So financial support, yeah, I guess that, that, that'd be a start.
31:22
Well, we will certainly make sure that all those links are available to our listeners
31:25
here in the show notes, but for now, you know, we want to keep updated on this and perhaps
31:29
we'll have you on to maybe give some better news later on and maybe we'll get James on
31:33
as well after he's out and exonerated that's, that's the hope and that's the prayer.
31:37
But for now, that's all for me.
31:39
Is there anything else you want to get off your chest?
31:41
No, you know, I, I'm just appreciative of you, Kyle and your, your podcast for having
31:47
me on and being able to talk about what our church is going through here.
31:51
It's certainly a body of believers.
31:53
It's not individuals, any one individual, but it's a, it's a body of Christ that's in
31:59
that finds itself waging war and the, there's wickedness all around us.
32:05
And so, you know, just being able to talk about that is very much appreciative of your
32:12
efforts, Kyle.
32:14
Absolutely my pleasure.
32:15
Jacob Spence.
32:16
Thanks for coming on Daunted Life of Man's podcast.
32:18
All right.
32:19
Thank you, Kyle.
32:20
All right, guys, so there is your update and I promise you we talked off air a little bit
32:27
with Jacob as well.
32:28
And we're going to try to get him back on.
32:29
We're going to try to get some other people from the church guys.
32:32
We want to keep you updated on this.
32:33
So make sure you keep coming back here for those updates.
32:35
All right, guys, before we let you go, we are going to do a quick resilience boost at
32:38
Undaunted Life.
32:39
Our mission is cultivating mainly resilience and specifically we do that by providing
32:42
content that helps you forge spiritual, mental and physical toughness.
32:45
So the links I have for you today are the Grace Life Church website.
32:48
So there's going to be some updates posted there.
32:50
And then also he talked about the Justice Center for Constitutional Freedoms, the JCCF.
32:55
I got their website here as well.
32:56
So if you'd like to support them financially, they are taking on this case pro bono.
32:59
So they're going to be fighting for Jacob Coats or for Jacob Spence and for James Coats
33:03
and for really the entire church to make sure that everything's all squared away and that
33:07
they can get him home to his family.
33:08
All right, guys.
33:09
Thanks so much for listening to the podcast.
33:10
I really do appreciate it.
33:11
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33:23
I'm currently booking speaking engagements for the remainder of 2021.
33:26
So if you want me to come speak on your podcast or your men's event at your church, whatever
33:30
hit me up info at undaunted.life.
33:32
That's I N F O at undaunted.life.
33:35
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33:37
You can also follow us on Instagram and Twitter at undaunted life or Facebook.com backslash
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on daunted life, check out our free devotionals on the U version Bible app to search undaunted
33:46
life under plans.
33:47
And as always, we want to thank the band August Burns read for allowing us to use their entire
33:50
music library for our content.
33:52
The insular outro track on this podcast is our song defender, which is off their latest
33:55
record entitled guardians.
33:57
The links are in the description.
33:59
I'm your host Kyle Thompson.
34:01
Remember, keep cultivating manly resilience, keep forging spiritual mental and physical
34:06
toughness, keep seeking the lion of Judah.
34:36
Thank you.