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(upbeat music)
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- This is Undaunted Life of Man's Podcast.
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I'm your host Kyle Thompson.
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Let's get into it.
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Our guys today, we got a special guest on the podcast.
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His name is Frank Viola.
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He is a best-selling author, blogger, and speaker.
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And his ministry is known as The Deeper Journey.
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Viola's mission is to help serious followers of Jesus
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know their Lord more deeply
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so they can experience real transformation
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and make a lasting impact.
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He's also the host of The Christ is All
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and The Deeper Journey podcast.
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He's written at this point.
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I mean, it's close to a few dozen books.
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Many of them have been best-sellers.
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Best-sellers include Hang On, Let Go, Insurgence,
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Reclaiming the Gospel of the Kingdom,
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Jesus Manifesto, pagan Christianity,
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and His latest book that we spend most of our time
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talking about today, which is the 48 Laws of Spiritual Power.
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And so in this interview, we spend the overwhelming majority
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of the time going through this book.
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So this book was written almost as an answer
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to Robert Greene's The 48 Laws of Power,
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which again is on our website.
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The 100 Books Every Modern Christian Man
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should read this as a top 10 book for me.
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And so he wasn't really aware of that book.
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He became aware of it.
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And then he thought, you know,
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what if we wrote The 48 Laws of Spiritual Power?
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But in the different laws,
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some of the laws that we're gonna go over in this podcast
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is Never Hurt God's People.
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detest, celebrityism, refuse to take offense,
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receive correction, distinguish between critics,
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resist bitterness, defy the conventional wisdom,
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stay in school, and there's others.
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And we kind of had a few tendrils that we came off in
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and talked about this and kind of weave back to that.
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But I really enjoyed my time with them today.
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I think it's gonna be well with your time.
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So guys, without further ado, let's get into it.
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Frank Viola, welcome to Undaunted Life of Man's Podcast.
1:50
Glad to be on.
1:51
All right, so we're gonna start
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as generically as possible here.
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So I guess we'll go two part first question.
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Okay, so we like to just kind of ease into it
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before we get into all the other crazy stuff.
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How did you become a follower of Christ?
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'Cause obviously that's a very much of a center point
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of everything that you do.
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And then I guess specifically what led you
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to become a writer and speaker in the Christian space.
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'Cause you can do one without the other, obviously.
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- Right.
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Well, I came to the Lord in a dramatic way when I was 16.
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I had a head-on collision with Jesus Christ that wrecked me.
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And it basically left me hungry and thirsty to know him
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and to know everything about him.
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And that led me on an odyssey of many different churches
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and so forth.
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Fair church organizations, groups, movements, et cetera.
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I've been all over the Christian map.
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And then I just started to write,
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this is before the internet.
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It's when we had the bulletin board
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and people communicated online that way.
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And I just started to write what I was discovering,
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discovering about church, discovering from the scriptures,
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discovering about the Lord.
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And it was resonating with a lot of people.
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And so that turned into these short articles I would write.
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When we finally did have the internet,
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I started to blog, frankviola.org.
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People can check it out.
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And a publisher found me, wanted to start publishing me.
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So it was really an accident.
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I didn't set out to become an author or anything like that.
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I was just paying it forward,
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the things I was learning and discovering
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that were absolutely altering my life
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I began to write about.
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And I guess the core thing here,
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so if people are not familiar with my work,
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there was a burning question in my heart
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from very early on when I came to Christ.
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And that was, there has to be more than this.
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What is it?
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And I'm talking about the churches I attended,
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the movements I was a part of,
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Bible studies I was going to,
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people I was listening to in leadership,
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there has to be more than this.
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What is it?
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And so that is the heartbeat behind every book I've written,
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every blog post I've written,
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all of my podcast episodes, there's gotta be more than this.
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And so my ministry is called The Deeper Journey
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because there is something deeper and higher and richer
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than what most of us Christians have been exposed to.
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- Okay, well, I appreciate you getting into all that detail
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and all those aspects and guys that will all be
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in the show notes so you can check out everything there.
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But we're just been basically the majority of our time today
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talking about one of your recent books
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and maybe actually your latest book.
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And it's The 48 Laws of Spiritual Power
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and the subtitle is Uncommon Wisdom
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for Greater Ministry Impact.
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And so obviously this is an ode
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or in the vein of Robert Greene's seminal work,
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The 48 Laws of Power, that is on our 100 books,
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every modern Christian man should read list on our website.
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That is a top 10 book for me even as a Christian man.
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I've had people ask me about that for like,
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hey, that's a book essentially talking about manipulation
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but it's like, hey, this is how a lot of people
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in the world think and so it doesn't do us any favors
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to ignore how people think and it's also just a great summary
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of different parts of history and different parts of philosophy.
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So an absolutely tremendous book.
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So I guess why write The 48 Laws of Spiritual Power?
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- Right, mine's called The 48 Laws of Spiritual Power.
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Well, I actually came across a Greene's book,
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never heard of the author, never heard of the book
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about a decade ago, somebody put it on audio for me
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and it was the first time I was listening to audio books.
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I only got through about four or five chapters.
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And the reason is because from my perspective,
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it's a dissertation in the flesh.
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It shows you how a carnal, fleshly person lives
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and acts to try to gain earthly power
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which is really, if you're in the world
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and you don't know Christ, 90% plus human beings,
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that's their goal.
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They wanna gain power in relationships.
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They wanna gain power at their job.
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They wanna gain power with money, career, all of that.
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That's the name of the game, you know?
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And so I basically was listening to this
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and I thought, what if we had a book
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on The Laws of God's Power
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which are absolutely opposite
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of what Greene was writing about?
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The Laws of God's Power are counter-cultural,
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they're counter-intuitive, they're counter-natural.
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And not only that, but they actually transform people.
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They transform the individual who's operating by that power
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and they transform the people who are serving others
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with that power.
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So it basically inspired the idea and that's about it.
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So from there, I just began to excavate my life
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of 40 plus years of ministering to people,
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being in ministry, serving others
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and all different capacities to distill them down
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to 48 laws, which I did.
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Now there's some extra chapters at the end of the book
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that drilled down more deeply, but that was the inspiration.
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And yeah, I'm glad I did it because the response so far
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has been amazing, especially from pastors
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and ministry leaders and Christians
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who are quote unquote lay people, I hate that word,
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but who are doing some kind of ministry
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whether teaching Sunday school class
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or they're evangelizing or they're helping other people
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who are in need, it really has had an overwhelming response.
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Hey, if I can sell, if this book can sell
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even a fraction of Greene's book,
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I think we'd see a revolution.
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And you did you know this?
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I bet you didn't know this, Kyle.
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You know who the major audience for the 48 Laws book,
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Greene's book is, it's prisoners and that's right,
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prisoners and celebrities.
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- Yeah, and that's another thing to kind of go back
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to my overall thought is like there's a lot of books
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that are on my book list that don't come from
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a Judeo-Christian ethic or worldview.
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And it's one of those things where I forget,
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I think it was Mark Driscoll or whoever said it first,
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but there are things from culture,
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from the world that we can accept, reject and redeem.
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And there are certainly things in that book
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that you can do all three with.
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You can just accept the wisdom.
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You can reject it outright as, you know,
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heredical or whatever.
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And then there's other things that you can redeem
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that you can use for our time here today.
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I think it would be, again, there's 48 Laws.
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We obviously can't talk about all of them.
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Guys, if you want to check out the book,
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it is in the show notes,
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but I just want to pick out some different Laws
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and then read some quotes and then discuss them
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a little bit further.
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So let's just start with Law 1.
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Law 1 from your book is never hurt God's people.
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Let me read this quote to you here.
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Here in lies a critical principle.
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When we lose, lay ourselves, or lay our lives down
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and absorb mistreatment for Jesus' sake,
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then God gives his power to us.
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And so whenever I first read that,
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the first thought in my head is like,
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well, does Frank want us to be doormats?
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And like, I know that's not what you would say
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and certainly not how you would frame it.
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But that's kind of the thing that I see a lot of Christians,
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especially when you get farther into kind of
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the pacifist side of theology.
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It's like, hey, just let people say whatever they want to say,
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let people do whatever they want to do with you.
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Let them even do things to you physically
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and just kind of take it.
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But just give me a little bit more as to, you know,
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never hurt God's people.
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- Well, in the context of that chapter,
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that's clearly not what I'm talking about,
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but I'm talking about what Jesus preached
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and proclaimed in unvarnished terms.
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But if somebody strikes you on the cheek,
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you don't hit 'em back, you turn the other cheek.
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Now that's totally counter-cultural,
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totally counter-intuitive.
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I'll just speak to the men here who are married.
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If you try to win your arguments with your wife,
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you ultimately are gonna end up losing, okay?
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But if you lay your life down for her and you lose,
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and basically the principle of the cross,
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when Jesus said, if you're gonna follow me,
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take up your cross,
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it is the most courageous and powerful thing
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a human being can do.
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And a real man knows how to lay his life down,
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a real man knows how to lose,
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a real man knows how to turn the other cheek.
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And when you do that, Jesus Christ is winning.
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And not only that, when he wins, you win.
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All right, and so never hurt God's people.
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This is about the fact that many people in ministry,
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and I'm talking about pastors and ministry leaders,
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they tend to be individuals who use God's people
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for their own agendas, many of them, not all of them, right?
10:39
But many of them, and will actually not refuse the cross
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in their own life, refuse to lose,
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and instead try to win, and by doing that,
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trample over the Lord's people.
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There are a countless number of Christians
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who are hemorrhaging and bloody and beat up,
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and some of them bleeding out
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because they have been hurt by leaders.
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And the reason is because many of these leaders
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have never known the cross in their own life.
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They have defended themselves,
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they have gone on counter-attack,
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and so never hurt God's people is a message
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that is for such people, it's for all of us, really,
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because the way to win in the kingdom of God is to lose,
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all right, and it's to lay your life down.
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And this is all over the gospels.
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And basically, Paul talked a lot about it
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in 2 Corinthians, chapter four.
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You know, he said it is through death,
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ourselves laying our lives down for others,
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that we find the life of God and we minister the life of God.
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And I think this is one of the reasons
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why there's so little spiritual power
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and so many ministries today because there is no understanding
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of what the cross is in our practical lives
12:00
among many, many leaders today.
12:02
So it's a chapter all about that.
12:05
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12:08
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12:10
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12:13
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12:15
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12:17
and trends in your industry.
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It cannot stop your boss from trying to start
12:21
a new office trend.
12:22
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12:25
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12:28
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12:30
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12:33
LinkedIn is the network that works for you.
12:36
- All right, I certainly appreciate that additional context.
12:38
Excuse me, I wanna go ahead and move to law five.
12:41
And so this is detest-celebratism.
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So that's not a word that most people use,
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but obviously it's just celebrity as an ism.
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And then so these quotes here are from this chapter.
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These are some of my favorite quotes from the entire book.
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So they're kind of spread out throughout the chapter,
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but I'm just gonna read them back to back
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'cause they all kind of coalesce together.
12:58
Perhaps the greatest way to shipwreck your faith
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is to embrace the celebrity culture
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that dominates the contemporary Christian world.
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This culture, which is a spiritual plague,
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encourages God's people to treat Christian leaders
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like royalty.
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The celebrity pastor is both the salesman and the product.
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Then one day the spiritual shallowness,
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beating in his breast floats to the surface for all to see.
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His soaring career suddenly deflates
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as all the helium escapes and he implodes.
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The two outstanding marks of a celebrity
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are so superficiality and inaccessibility,
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but God has no place for celebrity-ism in his kingdom.
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So obviously this is a bugaboo for a lot of people.
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Again, people like to normally just attack the mega church
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and trying to be more careful because there are very,
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very healthy churches that are enormous,
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that take discipleship seriously.
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Obviously, you know examples of those.
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I know examples of those.
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So I want to be very, very clear in my language.
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But there are a lot of people out there breaking news, Frank,
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that they got into this whole Christian scene
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to be famous, right?
13:56
They want to be an influencer on Instagram.
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They want to have the huge YouTube channel
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that pays them a lot of money.
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They want to do all these things.
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Then you add discipleship and you ask Fred in the gospel
14:04
and all that, that seemingly secondary.
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You have a lot of pastors
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that are not seemingly taking the dictate from scripture
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that they are going to have to give an account
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for how they shepherded their flock someday to God.
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And they seem to be worrying way more
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about how many followers they have on TikTok,
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how many books they sell,
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what conferences they get invited to speak at.
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And man, people just buy into it
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because you want your pastor to be cool.
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You want to bring friends to your church
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and like the pastor's a cool guy.
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And like, look, he's got, he's got muscles.
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And look, oh, he's got, you know, these great,
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the shoes that he wears.
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Look at how cool his clothes are.
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Oh, man, isn't everything so awesome.
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Gosh, we just buy a hook line in sinker, don't we, Frank?
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- Well, it's a problem for sure, especially for Americans,
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right?
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It's an unusually an American problem.
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But here's the thing about it.
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It's not just, you know, the leader who gets into ministry
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because he has a motivation that he wants to be famous
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and he wants people to worship him
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or adore him or what have you.
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Oftentimes, leaders who are gifted will get into ministry
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with the purest motives, but they begin to subtly
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as their church grows and as their influence spreads,
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they begin to subtly, I'll call it the race to the bottom.
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Without them realizing it, there is growing up
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within the human heart, the tendency to want to feel
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entitled and that's really the slippery slope
15:38
for many of these guys.
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I know some of them personally, right?
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I've had conversations face to face
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with some mega church pastors that crashed and burned.
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Nobody saw it coming, not even them.
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And the people on the inside, because it's so slow,
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it's a subtle move in the human heart
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that it's too late when it's identified.
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And basically, what I would say is this,
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and I'm gonna just be straightforward here.
16:07
No human being is designed to have that much power.
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Now, when I say that much power,
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I'm talking about the kind of power
16:21
and the kind of influence and the kind of prestige
16:23
that comes in some church structures, okay?
16:26
No human being can handle that.
16:28
I don't care who you are.
16:29
I don't care how full of the Holy Spirit you are.
16:32
There's a corrupting element.
16:34
And in some of these structures, Kyle,
16:37
basically the structure itself,
16:39
the way it's built is designed
16:41
to destroy the person at the top.
16:43
And there have only been a small number of people
16:47
who could survive that.
16:48
I mean, right now, the people that we could point to
16:52
and say, well, they seem to be doing well
16:53
in this particular structure.
16:55
Well, maybe today or maybe according to what we can see, right?
17:00
There's a lot of this stuff subterranean.
17:03
We don't know about it until later.
17:05
But here's the thing.
17:06
I give a prescription on how the celebrity culture
17:10
begins to take root in a Christian's heart.
17:14
And I talk about ways to get around it.
17:16
Whatever structure you're in,
17:17
I mean, you don't have to be part of a big church
17:20
to have that kind of heart that wants the prestige
17:23
and the power and all that kind of stuff.
17:25
And that's just part of the flesh, you know?
17:27
Now we're sort of intermingling Robert Greene's book,
17:32
you know, into this very issue because, I mean,
17:35
the grab for power, I mean,
17:37
that's just part of unregenerate flesh.
17:40
I mean, it's just there.
17:42
And what Greene was doing in his book,
17:43
he's basically highlighting it and saying,
17:45
"Look, this is how it works and this is what it looks like."
17:47
But the Christian is susceptible to that,
17:50
no matter who you are.
17:52
And so that's why I wrote that chapter.
17:53
'Cause I work with a lot of young leaders.
17:56
I have masterminds for young gifted leaders
17:59
who are in ministry, most of them are men.
18:02
And so what I tried to teach them is look,
18:06
there's some paths here that you can go down
18:09
without even realizing and it's a path to suicide.
18:13
So spiritual suicide and shipwreck.
18:16
So there's some things you need to be knowledgeable about.
18:19
And so that particular law, law number five,
18:24
detest celebrity culture or celebrityism is huge.
18:29
And it does relate to God's power for sure.
18:34
So yeah, I appreciate you reading those quotes too
18:36
because Babylon, you know,
18:39
there's a principle of Babylon
18:40
and it comes from the Old Testament.
18:41
It starts, where did Babylon start?
18:44
It started out with the tower of Babel
18:47
and what was the tower of Babel?
18:49
It was man, right?
18:52
Human beings trying to build a structure
18:56
to touch the heavens at all to have a name for themselves.
19:01
And they were using bricks to do it.
19:04
Man makes bricks, God makes stone.
19:08
And so it's human effort, human energy, human zeal
19:12
to try to reach the heavens all to make a name for oneself.
19:17
And so many pastors today unfortunately have Babylon
19:21
dripping from their garments.
19:23
And so this chapter is really both an antidote
19:27
and also it's a magnifying glass
19:29
to kind of highlight the problem.
19:30
And let me just say again, we're all susceptible, all of us.
19:33
- Yes, of course.
19:34
- I self-included, you know, even with you
19:36
since you have the best podcasts in the world.
19:38
I mean, come on.
19:39
So you have to be careful, right?
19:41
- Well, so to that point, Frank,
19:43
I think it's very, very important.
19:44
So I do something, I do two things
19:46
that I think are very, very important,
19:48
that if you guys want to take,
19:49
you can take this advice or leave it.
19:50
So when I get invited to come and speak somewhere,
19:53
I know that I'm the guy with the podcast,
19:55
like I'm the guy with, you know,
19:56
the beard and the look and all that stuff.
19:59
And I'm wearing all black when I go and talk
20:00
because it's just easier.
20:01
And like, I know that.
20:02
And I know like I'm the focus of the attention
20:04
because I'm being paid to go there
20:06
and speak words out of my face hole, right?
20:08
I know that.
20:08
So two things that I try to do.
20:09
Number one, I make sure that I go there
20:13
well before my speech starts.
20:15
And I interact with everybody, right?
20:17
Everybody that's around, whether they're on staff,
20:20
whether they're not on staff,
20:21
whether they're a part of the event,
20:22
whether they're just passing through.
20:23
I talk to everybody because I want them to get used to me
20:27
'cause I'm kind of a, you know, fun loving, you know,
20:29
funny guy, like sarcastic, those types of things.
20:31
And that translates better whenever I get on stage,
20:33
whenever I can still kind of have that attitude,
20:35
it kind of loosens everybody up.
20:37
So that's one thing I do.
20:37
Just kind of, hey, I'm not special.
20:39
I'm just, I have a microphone attached to my face.
20:41
But then the second thing I do is when I do talk to somebody,
20:43
I try to ask them six questions about them
20:46
before I will answer any questions about me, right?
20:49
Because the whole night's already focused on me, right?
20:51
I'm the guy with the microphone.
20:52
But I ask them like, hey, do you go to this church?
20:54
Well, hey, where are you from?
20:55
So I guess what brought you to this event
20:57
because this is not on a normal Sunday.
20:59
And then I just kind of keep going down
21:00
and I just want to get to know them a little bit.
21:02
And what that kind of helps me do is to remember
21:04
that I'm not the point that my job is to reflect people
21:08
back onto the father, that when they look at me,
21:10
when they want to give me accolades,
21:12
when they want to give me the attaboys,
21:13
which really feed my personality
21:16
and wanting to make sure I do a good job,
21:18
that kind of helps put me back in my place.
21:20
So just kind of wanted to say that,
21:22
that guys, there are a lot of different things
21:23
that you can do, but if you ever get to the place
21:26
where you feel like you're the point,
21:27
you're missing the point, okay?
21:29
So now I want to get into another law.
21:30
Law number 10, we'll skip to number 10.
21:32
It's called refuse to take offense.
21:34
Let me read a short quote here.
21:36
"As a servant of a God, you can't afford
21:38
the luxury of being offended.
21:40
I feel so strongly that this, about this,
21:43
that I'll put it in one sentence.
21:45
The servant of God must be unoffendable."
21:49
Now, I've got some more breaking news for you, Frank.
21:51
We live in a culture in 2022,
21:53
or whenever you guys are listening to you,
21:55
that offense is currency.
21:58
That if you are offendable, you are also laudable.
22:03
And you're a beneficiary of that.
22:05
If somebody harms you, especially verbally,
22:09
we will elevate you to a level
22:11
where all of a sudden your level of outrage
22:13
will equal the level of importance of your opinion.
22:16
So this seems rather counter-cultural at this point, man.
22:19
- Exactly, and the whole book is like that.
22:22
And I appreciate the fact that you gave
22:26
some practical instruction on some of the ways
22:30
a person can curb or dilute celebrity culture.
22:37
And as you know, from reading the book,
22:40
I'd give practical prescriptions
22:43
throughout the entire work.
22:44
Because to me, you can give a person a good idea.
22:48
That's great, and you can even exhort them
22:50
to do something or not do something.
22:52
All right, that's fine.
22:54
But unless you give them a practical handle, right,
22:57
then it's just ideas, and it's not going to be fleshed out.
23:02
So I appreciate you doing it.
23:03
I'm gonna add a third one too
23:04
for your listening audience.
23:06
The excellent two that you had.
23:08
And that is this, that if you're invited to speak
23:12
and there are other speakers,
23:15
pray that they will do better than you.
23:18
And that comes from Dallas Willard.
23:22
Now again, that's counter-intuitive,
23:24
but that's so much like the Lord, all right?
23:28
And see, here's a thing too.
23:31
Also be prepared to fail,
23:33
because and this is again, it just sounds so lopsided.
23:38
But I have a statement in the book,
23:43
if you are always winning, Jesus Christ is losing, all right?
23:48
And this gets back to this thing about loss
23:52
and being willing to fail.
23:53
The person who fails the most usually ends up winning.
23:57
Because if you're not failing, right,
24:00
you're not creating, you're not doing, you're basically
24:04
motionless because you're stagnated due to fear.
24:07
You don't wanna be criticized,
24:09
you don't wanna be ostracized,
24:13
you don't want people to think poor of you,
24:15
so many people are passive and they won't do anything.
24:19
They won't put work out into the world,
24:21
they won't try things for the Lord,
24:23
for the kingdom of God, because of fear.
24:25
But as Thomas Edison about failure,
24:29
1,000 times, right?
24:32
And his response to that was,
24:34
well, I didn't really fail 1,000 times,
24:37
what happened is I took 1,000 little steps
24:40
to get to the light bulb.
24:42
But when I go somewhere, I'm prepared to fail,
24:44
because it's not about me, it's about the Lord.
24:47
And that puts all the weight on him, right?
24:49
If he doesn't show up, I mean, I'll prepare,
24:52
but I don't trust my preparation,
24:55
I trust the Lord, so that's another little tip.
24:57
But onto your question about taking offense,
25:02
you're right, we live in a culture of outrage,
25:05
but outrage is not a fruit of the spirit.
25:07
And there are two things here, there's a passage,
25:11
and I quote the passages in the book from the scriptures,
25:16
which I believe is fully inspired, reliable, and authoritative.
25:22
It is to the glory of kings to overlook an offense.
25:26
Now, there's profound wisdom in that statement.
25:29
The other thing is what Jesus said about John the Baptist,
25:32
now here John the Baptist served God
25:36
more radically and profoundly than most of us
25:39
who have ever breathed oxygen ever enough.
25:42
And here, what does he get for all his service?
25:45
What does he get for watching his numbers begin to vanish
25:50
because they're following Jesus, no longer following him?
25:54
What does he get for all of his sacrifice?
25:57
The guy didn't even have a decent meal, right?
26:01
Look in his closet, what is he wearing?
26:03
He's wearing stuff that would make you look like a kook today,
26:08
and even in that day was strange.
26:10
I mean, he was a bizarre sight to behold.
26:15
He lived in the wilderness since he was 14 years old,
26:17
all because God called him out there,
26:19
and now he's in prison, right?
26:22
And Jesus, his cousin, the one for whom he was doing
26:26
all of these things, the sacrificing his life,
26:30
laying his life down, giving his life for the father.
26:33
John's in prison, it's the darkest time in his life.
26:36
Jesus doesn't even visit him.
26:39
Think about that, right?
26:41
He sends messengers, and here's what they say
26:45
because John wants to know, are you the one?
26:47
I mean, did I miss it here?
26:50
I'm about to die here, probably.
26:53
Are you the one, the promised one?
26:56
And they say, well, you know, John,
26:58
this is coming from straight from Jesus.
27:00
You know, the blind sea, the deaf here,
27:04
the leper's walk, et cetera.
27:06
In other words, yes, I'm the one.
27:08
And then he says this, these are chilling words,
27:10
but powerful words.
27:12
Blessed is he who is not offended in me.
27:19
And here's the point, to be a Christian
27:23
who is going to be wielding God's power,
27:27
to be a Christian who is in ministry, in any capacity,
27:31
and is going to be effective,
27:33
you and I have to be unoffendable.
27:36
Now, that doesn't mean we approve of what happens, right?
27:39
That doesn't mean that, you know,
27:42
vile actions don't repulse us.
27:45
But to take personal offense,
27:48
and when people take personal offense,
27:51
it always is a reflection on God themselves,
27:54
because at the bottom of that, they're blaming God.
27:56
Why did you let this happen, Lord?
27:58
Or why did you allow this to happen?
28:00
Or why did you cause this to happen?
28:03
And so to be unoffendable,
28:05
that is, there is such power in that, Kyle, all right?
28:09
There is tremendous power.
28:11
And you talk about being a man, you know,
28:15
it takes God to be a man.
28:18
And God designed human beings, both men and women,
28:22
to live by His divine life.
28:25
And the divine life of Christ,
28:27
that's indwell, indwells, every true believer,
28:29
every true disciple of Christ,
28:32
that isn't a life that's unoffendable.
28:35
And we can say, Lord, I don't understand,
28:37
and these people did this, I don't agree with it,
28:39
but I refuse to take offense,
28:41
I'm not going to let this trip me up,
28:42
I'm going to walk forward.
28:44
And God is an expert at drawing straight with crooked lines.
28:48
He is going to turn this to good in some way.
28:51
And he always does and he promised he would do that.
28:54
Romans eight, still in the Bible.
28:55
- When I think it's important for us all realize as well,
28:58
that if you seek out offense,
28:59
if you look for a chance to be offended,
29:01
it is amazing, you will find it.
29:03
Like you will find an opportunity to be offended.
29:06
Like I've talked to so many people in situations
29:07
where they gave the person the benefit of the doubt
29:10
when they said something that sounded off color
29:12
or something that sounded like it
29:13
is maybe being spirited or rude.
29:15
And for the most part, they just being patient
29:18
with the person or asking a follow up question like,
29:20
"Hey, you said this, did you mean that?"
29:22
Or is this kind of what you meant?
29:24
It usually leads to a better outcome
29:25
'cause typically people aren't incredibly, you know,
29:28
raucous and terrible to your face.
29:29
All right, I want to skip to law number 14.
29:31
And this is received correction.
29:33
So I'll read this quote here.
29:35
"If you want God to use you in his work,
29:37
he will deal ruthlessly with those areas of your life
29:39
to which you're blind.
29:40
Other members of the body who know you, however,
29:42
can see them clearly.
29:44
If you are in the flesh, you will react when corrected.
29:47
If you are in the spirit, you will act like a sponge
29:50
asking questions to understand what part of your life
29:52
needs to be penetrating light,
29:53
needs the penetrating light of God to expose and transform.
29:56
How a person responds when corrected reveals volumes
29:59
about the individual's character."
30:00
So, Joe B. Martin, who is a pastor
30:02
that I know listens to the shows,
30:04
good friend of the show has been on a couple of times.
30:06
The last time he came on,
30:07
we talked about on that particular episode,
30:09
how he and I kind of had a Galatians 2, Peter and Paul
30:11
moment where he called me out for some of the things
30:13
I was saying on my show that I didn't think I was communicating,
30:18
but that people were perceiving me saying and I was like,
30:20
oh crap, like I was being very imprecise with my language,
30:24
specifically how it pertained to certain churches
30:27
of a certain size that do certain things
30:28
and blah, blah, blah and all those different things.
30:30
And for whatever reason that day, like I was in the spirit
30:33
and I wasn't in the flesh and I'm normally the guy
30:35
that reacts from the flesh and gets real angry and defensive
30:37
and does all those different things.
30:39
But it was such an interesting moment for me
30:40
because it was like immediately I knew he was right
30:43
and what he was saying and I knew it was just gonna be,
30:46
basically chasing my tail,
30:47
trying to find a way to weasel out of this correction.
30:50
And it was such a beautiful thing that this was a guy
30:53
he and I were really even friends at that point.
30:55
We just had each other's numbers and he just kind of said,
30:57
all right, I'm gonna throw some chips
30:58
in the middle of the table and if you get mad and don't like it,
31:01
no skin off my back.
31:02
I did what I knew God would want me to do.
31:05
I modeled after what Paul did to Peter
31:08
when they were in Antioch and the Judaizers were screwing around
31:10
and all that stuff, right?
31:11
But man, just like we love being offended,
31:15
we hate being corrected.
31:16
And so it's like, how can we be so stupid
31:18
on things that literally we know would be better
31:20
if we were on the opposite ends of the spectrum?
31:24
- Yeah, well, you're right.
31:25
I mean, any kind of correction is hard on the flesh, okay?
31:30
But in another chapter,
31:31
I talk about the different kinds of critics.
31:34
- Oh, that's Law 15, distinguished between critics.
31:37
And that was a note that I wrote in the margin,
31:38
which was don't take critique
31:40
from someone you wouldn't take advice from, but yeah, go ahead.
31:43
- Yeah, because it's important where the correction comes from
31:47
and how we respond to it.
31:49
So for example, there are supporters
31:52
that like your friend who corrected you, he's a supporter.
31:55
He loves you, he cares about you, he's in your corner,
31:58
he wants to see you succeed.
32:00
That kind of correction, brother, is priceless.
32:03
- Right, I agree.
32:04
- The kind of correction is it's beyond value.
32:09
I mean, it will create transformation
32:13
in a human being, a believer beyond so many other things.
32:17
So always, always receive correction from supporters,
32:21
even if it hurts, because you have to realize
32:24
it's going to make you a better person and a better Christian.
32:28
The other kind of critic is the objector.
32:33
And these are people, they may not know you.
32:37
They're definitely not your supporter,
32:39
but maybe they came across a book,
32:41
maybe they read a book that you wrote
32:43
that someone recommended, and they don't like this.
32:45
And they don't like how you pronounce this word here
32:48
or spell this word, or they disagree with one comment
32:52
that you made.
32:53
Well, it's fine to listen to somebody like that,
32:56
but don't ingest that, because no substance to it.
33:01
Let it go, but the mistake though many people make
33:04
is they get defensive on the one hand.
33:07
And I have a whole chapter on that.
33:10
Don't defend yourself.
33:11
And the reasons why, and Jesus talked about this in detail,
33:15
but the other thing is people get discouraged, right?
33:19
And they say, well, I don't want to put anything
33:21
in the world because of this person.
33:23
And here's the thing you have to focus on
33:25
if you're in ministry.
33:27
Discouragement is part and parcel of it.
33:30
And you're gonna get criticized.
33:32
You're gonna get shot at, you're gonna get mistreated.
33:35
You're going to basically have injustices happen to you,
33:40
but you're gonna have to learn to dance with all of that
33:44
and take the high road at all times
33:46
because that's where God's power resides.
33:49
And the third critic is the troll,
33:52
and the trolls ought to be ignored.
33:56
Don't even pay attention to them.
33:59
But I'll close with this point on this section,
34:01
and that is, Kyle, you may have put out a podcast episode.
34:06
Maybe it's this one.
34:08
And you're gonna get lots of encouraging comments.
34:13
I loved it, loved the show, loved what you did,
34:17
loved the questions you asked,
34:18
and then you might have that one person who just rips you.
34:22
- Right.
34:23
- Who wants, 'cause they didn't like the way you said this.
34:26
And they didn't like the way you did that.
34:29
And why didn't you ask this?
34:30
And why didn't you say this?
34:32
And what happens is very often,
34:35
because people pleasing is another law I deal with,
34:40
and it's a endemic in the ministry.
34:43
But what happens is it's easy to focus on that
34:46
and have that ruin your day, that comment.
34:50
And some people, they draw back because they say,
34:53
"Look, I just got ripped.
34:55
I just got criticized.
34:56
I'm not, I'm gonna, I think I'm gonna do it differently,
34:59
or I'm gonna stop doing it."
35:01
Well, here's the thing.
35:03
You're not focusing on that person that wrote you and said,
35:06
"Oh, wow, that podcast episode just brought me
35:10
to a new level in the Lord."
35:12
Or what you said on that particular episode changed my life.
35:16
That's what you have to look at.
35:17
And that's who you're serving.
35:19
The person that wrote you that nasty comment
35:23
and that ripped you a new one, your podcast is not
35:26
for that person, not for them.
35:29
It's not for them.
35:31
Well, that's what I say to all ministers.
35:33
Hey, just if you learn these words, it wasn't for them.
35:36
This will help you a great deal to overcome discouragement
35:39
and to be able to sift through criticism.
35:42
Well, and the funny thing about that,
35:43
I agree with just about all that.
35:45
The thing that I tell people is like,
35:47
"Look, I've invited a lot of people
35:50
to stop listening to my podcast.
35:52
From the beginning, I mean, in the single digit episodes,
35:54
we're close to episode 400 or whatever,
35:57
like in the single digit episodes,
35:58
I would get these long emails from people
35:59
that disagreed with what I said.
36:00
And how I said it, just like how you were describing
36:02
a second ago.
36:03
And what I told you those people is like,
36:04
if you didn't like what I said on this episode,
36:06
you're gonna hate what I say on the next one.
36:08
And there's definitely gonna be some time in the future
36:10
where I'm gonna say something else
36:11
that really, you know, offends your sensibilities.
36:14
Like there's two and a half million podcasts
36:16
out there, brother.
36:16
Mine's just not for you.
36:18
Like I get it because I would love to be corrected
36:21
if I'm wrong, if I'm factually inaccurate
36:24
about something and you set the record straight.
36:26
Like I'm gonna have to set the record straight
36:27
on a future episode here coming up soon
36:30
because I read a news story incorrectly.
36:33
And then I was corrected by one of our listeners.
36:34
I was like, "Oh, Dad, Gumman, I should have spent
36:36
five more minutes researching this."
36:38
And I would have been able to describe it correctly.
36:40
I'm okay with that correction.
36:41
But if it's like, yeah, I would have really said that.
36:43
I would have said this.
36:44
It's like, why do you think, as a stranger in my email inbox,
36:48
that I'm gonna change, go back and edit a show
36:50
that I did two years ago
36:52
because it's something that just didn't hit your ears correctly.
36:55
Like it's a level of arrogance
36:57
that I don't really understand for people.
36:59
And like, I'm exactly like what you say.
37:00
Like I see all the reviews that come in
37:04
and I get a lot, you know,
37:05
almost all the reviews are five-star.
37:07
But when I get a one or two or three-star review,
37:09
I'm like, "Dad, Gumman, I wish I could talk to that person,
37:12
but you can't respond to the reviews."
37:14
And I'm that guy, like, I don't care.
37:16
Like I remember arguing with a professor in college, Frank,
37:18
I got a 98 on a test and I felt like I should have got a hundred.
37:22
So I went and argued with the professor
37:23
and he's looking at me like,
37:25
you got the best grade in the class?
37:26
What are you complaining for?
37:27
But I'm like, no, no, no, just this needs to be served.
37:29
And I answered this correctly.
37:31
You just didn't like how I worded it.
37:32
But man, that causes more consternation
37:34
than probably what it's worth.
37:36
So I appreciate those two laws especially.
37:38
Now we get into law 23 and this is resist bitterness.
37:41
So I'm gonna read a quote from this
37:43
because the quote kind of caught me funny.
37:46
And so I wanna talk about it a little bit.
37:47
It's a short quote, it's this.
37:49
Pain is inevitable.
37:50
It will happen usually at the hands of other Christians.
37:55
Okay, so obviously bitterness, however, is a choice, right?
37:58
So that's how you end that.
37:59
Usually at the hands of other Christians,
38:01
bitterness, however, is a choice.
38:03
What caught me weird was when you say pain is inevitable
38:06
and it's usually at the hands of other Christians.
38:09
What I feel like that almost does
38:11
is that opens up this category for people to opt into,
38:15
which is the church hurt category, right?
38:18
So the church hurt me.
38:19
And typically when you ask them follow up questions
38:21
about what exactly the hurt was,
38:24
the church was not going to allow them
38:25
to keep sinning in a particular way.
38:27
And so that hurt their feels and then they changed that.
38:30
Now, obviously the church hurt categories
38:33
for people who were abused by clergy or by pastors,
38:37
whether physically, emotionally or spiritually,
38:39
people that were taken advantage of,
38:40
people that were stolen from,
38:42
like people that were excommunicated unjustly,
38:45
that's church hurt.
38:46
The church saying, no, you can't live with your boyfriend
38:48
before you get married.
38:49
No, you can't have this same sex relationship.
38:52
No, we won't allow you to get married in our church.
38:54
That's not church hurt.
38:55
That's just the church keeping you from sinning.
38:57
But I was curious why you couched it that way,
39:01
that pain is inevitable.
39:02
And it's usually as in way more of an inevitability
39:06
than anything else at the hands of other Christians.
39:08
Help me understand that.
39:10
- Well, I don't know how long you've been a Christian brother,
39:13
but throw out the church hurt 'cause I wasn't,
39:16
that wasn't even on my radar.
39:17
And nor was people correcting you
39:22
because of some boneheaded thing you did.
39:24
That was not on my radar.
39:26
I was talking about the fact that if you're gonna live
39:29
the Christian life and you're around believers, all right?
39:33
Now, by around believers,
39:35
I don't mean you sit in a pew on Sunday morning,
39:37
you shake hands when the pastor says,
39:39
let's have two minutes of fellowship.
39:42
And then you never see them again until next Sunday.
39:46
I'm talking about you're someone
39:48
where you have relationships with other believers.
39:51
You have close relationship with other believers.
39:54
The fact is, let's just look at Jesus.
39:57
I was wounded in the house of my friends.
40:01
Who were the people who inflicted the most pain?
40:05
It was in his context, God's people, all right?
40:10
That's who it was.
40:11
It was, I mean, the Romans, yeah,
40:13
they put the nails in his hands, but who ordered it, right?
40:17
It was God's people.
40:19
Who said, you know, crucify him?
40:21
It was God's people, all right?
40:23
And then you switch over to Paul Tarsus.
40:25
And here he is, you know, in ex Pharisee,
40:28
he is raising up the house of God
40:30
all over the Roman Empire.
40:32
And who were his greatest enemies?
40:36
And the people he talked about in his letters,
40:38
read the first Thessalonians, for example.
40:41
Who does he single out?
40:43
He singles out the Christians who were the Hebrew Christians.
40:48
They, you know, they were kind of his blood can,
40:52
but they were zealous of the law and they heated Paul
40:56
and they trashed him, the whole letter of Galatians.
40:59
He's responding the first two chapters
41:01
to what they were saying about them.
41:03
These were the Christian Hebrew believers in Jerusalem
41:08
and some of them followed him wherever he went
41:11
and basically stirred up the crowds to persecute him.
41:15
I actually believe that's what the thorn in the flesh was.
41:18
When he writes about the thorn in the flesh
41:20
and you read exactly the context of that statement,
41:25
he's talking about all the persecution he received
41:28
everywhere he went, right?
41:31
And it was coming basically there was one man
41:34
who was leading it and he came out of the church
41:37
in Jerusalem and he had a band of people
41:40
and Paul basically says, the one who is troubling you.
41:45
He says this in the book of Galatians.
41:47
He's singling out the ring leader
41:49
and lots of scholars agree with this.
41:50
There was a one ring leader from the Jerusalem church,
41:53
but he was a fellow believer.
41:55
That's my point.
41:56
Now Paul of course calls them false brethren,
42:00
but here's the thing, you know,
42:01
Christians are imperfect people, all of us are, right?
42:05
And if you're going to be around God's people,
42:08
you're going to be hurt by them.
42:11
I was wounded in the house of my friends
42:14
and it's very easy for a believer to become embittered
42:19
especially if the pain is coming from another Christian, right?
42:23
Hey, they're supposed to be a Christian.
42:24
They're not supposed to be treating me this way.
42:26
But every Christian I know who has been in ministry
42:29
and I speak for myself, the pain,
42:31
most of the pain has not come from the unbelieving world.
42:33
It's come from fellow Christians.
42:36
And but the thing is God can use that in tremendous ways
42:41
to break us rather than to embit her us.
42:44
And by breaking, I'm talking about the kind of breaking
42:47
that the New Testament talks about
42:48
where there's less of us and more of Christ.
42:52
Yeah, so that whole chapter is about bitterness
42:56
and I give a practical prescription, I had to overcome it
42:58
because if a Christian becomes embittered,
43:02
they're out of the race, all right?
43:04
You're done.
43:05
If you become bitter at other people and God ultimately,
43:09
it's always a God because God allowed it,
43:12
whether you're in touch with that or not.
43:14
And basically that's how Christians get shipwrecked
43:18
is because they allow bitterness
43:20
to take root in their hearts.
43:22
And that's where the writer of Hebrews,
43:24
he makes that profound statement,
43:26
do not allow a root of bitterness to grow up in your heart
43:31
because it will not only take you out,
43:33
it will defile other people.
43:35
And bitter people just spew venom everywhere
43:38
against the people who hurt them.
43:41
And then this gets into the church hurt.
43:43
You're talking about all Christians, I tried that.
43:46
I'm not going to church anymore, whatever.
43:48
So yeah, I do talk about that quite a bit,
43:50
but unfortunately this is part of being a believer
43:54
is the friction and the conflict
43:57
and often the hurt does come at the hands of other believers.
44:02
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44:31
- And I think you use the exact right word, which is venom.
44:33
Like these people that are bitter
44:35
and gosh, we've all been around those people
44:36
and I've got some people that are really close to me
44:38
that it's just, man, if you were to describe them
44:40
in three words, bitterness would be one of the top three words
44:43
and it's just, man, I've never been around a bitter person
44:46
that gave me life, you know, when they were being bitter.
44:48
These are people that just absolutely drag you down.
44:51
So I'm going to go to law 25 now, Frank.
44:52
And that's defy the conventional wisdom.
44:54
So let me read this quote here.
44:56
The church of Jesus Christ is dying
44:58
from a lack of imagination and creativity.
45:00
The average minister today has grown up in a system
45:02
that never dares to do things differently.
45:04
I'm talking about its practices, not its doctrines.
45:07
Countless pastors cannot seem to think
45:09
beyond the 500 year old Protestant worship service
45:11
given to us by John Calvin.
45:13
And yet it's losing people by the droves.
45:15
The Lord is looking for servants willing to defy
45:17
the conventional wisdom in every arena,
45:19
whether ministry, evangelism, church, fellowship,
45:22
prayer, discipleship, Bible reading,
45:23
leadership, books, blogs, podcasts, advertising or whatever.
45:27
Okay, so I know what you're going for here, Frank.
45:30
What I feel like though, is that people
45:34
that were trying to defy the conventional wisdom,
45:37
what they did is they ignored that quote
45:38
right there in the middle, which is I'm not talking about,
45:41
or I'm talking about its practices, not its doctrines.
45:44
And what it's done is it's caused a lot of churches
45:47
to water down the gospel, to water down the doctrines,
45:52
to water down some of those icky parts of the Bible,
45:55
to create this seeker sensitive model,
45:58
where we never talk about your sin,
45:59
we never talk about your depravity,
46:01
we just give you a lot of life advice,
46:03
we give you TED Talks and we sprinkle a few Bible verses
46:06
on top of it so that we can keep our taxes in status.
46:08
And there's a lot of flash, and there's a lot of smoke,
46:11
and there's a lot of style, but there's absolutely no substance.
46:14
Do you feel like that's a fair statement?
46:16
- Yeah, the only thing I would add to it is those people
46:21
you're describing are not defying the conventional wisdom,
46:25
they're not trying to defy the conventional wisdom,
46:27
what they're trying to do is swell their numbers, okay,
46:32
by succumbing and accommodating to the culture.
46:36
That's what that is, what you're describing.
46:39
What I'm talking about is the fact that Jesus Christ
46:43
is the most creative person in the universe, okay?
46:49
He exudes creativity, and when a Christian taps into
46:54
the creativity of Christ, it is remarkable.
46:59
- Right.
47:00
- And the word remarkable simply means
47:02
it's worth making a remark about.
47:04
In other words, it's so compelling and it's so different,
47:07
so unique that you can't help but talk about it
47:09
and share it with your friends.
47:11
Hey, did you see what so-and-so did or said?
47:14
And so my point there is not to defy the conventional
47:18
wisdom, the establishment, okay,
47:22
that's another word for it.
47:24
In other words, this pension to do things
47:27
the way we've always done them.
47:29
And again, I'm talking about practices,
47:31
not orthodox, not beliefs.
47:33
The pension is just to go along with it,
47:36
because to be someone who is holding traditions,
47:41
and I'm talking about non-scriptural traditions,
47:48
there are traditions that are Biblical
47:49
and Paul talked about that.
47:51
But to hold non-Biblical traditions
47:54
is somehow Sankros Saint is one of the reasons why
47:59
Christians very often don't have much imagination.
48:04
I mean, if you look at the average movie
48:06
that's been made by a Christian,
48:08
you tell me if it even comes close
48:13
to some of the secular worldly directors
48:16
and cinematographers and the movies they put out,
48:20
you know what I mean?
48:21
I mean, I don't know about you,
48:22
but every Christian movie I have seen most cases,
48:26
there's some exceptions, are pretty poor
48:28
and pretty uncreative, not just one small example,
48:32
but that chapter really goes into the fact
48:34
that there is a whole universe of creativity
48:38
that God's people can tap into,
48:41
but it takes thinking outside the box
48:45
and saying, you know what, it's okay
48:47
to say no to the conventional establishment wisdom
48:51
that's telling me this is the way we've always done it,
48:53
let's keep doing it.
48:55
And so, yeah, that's one of the chapters in the book
48:57
and I give examples coming out of the secular world.
49:02
You know, you've read the chapter,
49:05
but I talk about the band Led Zeppelin,
49:07
which many people consider
49:09
to be the greatest rock band in history.
49:11
Now I'm not endorsing Led Zeppelin
49:14
as role models or anything like that,
49:17
but I'm saying they defied the conventional wisdom.
49:22
They said, we're not gonna put out singles.
49:24
They said, we're gonna put out an album
49:26
and we're not gonna have our name on it at all.
49:29
I mean, they did some remarkable things
49:32
and what ended up happening was
49:34
the sales of their albums went through the roof.
49:39
So there is something to be said
49:41
about the creativity of Christ
49:43
and that's what I'm trying to challenge God's people with.
49:47
Yeah.
49:49
- No, I appreciate that sentiment
49:50
because you know, you hear these Christian filmmakers
49:52
because there's great ones out there, Harold Crunk,
49:54
you know, Dallas Jenkins that does the chosen,
49:56
like they do super high quality stuff.
49:58
But then you got these other people
49:59
that make these terrible movies
50:01
and then they say, well, that's when, you know,
50:03
when they get pounded for it being awful,
50:05
they're like, well people just hate it
50:07
because I'm a Christian.
50:08
They hate it because the Amazon message
50:10
is like, well they hate it 'cause it sucks.
50:12
Like that's a difference.
50:12
Like this is being brought to bear.
50:14
This isn't, you know, the world coming after you.
50:17
This isn't any of those things.
50:18
This isn't the thorn in Paul's side.
50:20
This is just the fact that you suck at this
50:21
and the thing about it is,
50:22
is if you understand the beauty and grandeur of the gospel,
50:25
your music, your paintings, your dance, your movies,
50:30
your web design, your podcasts,
50:32
all of that should be of a quality that is astonishing
50:35
because you kind of have the keys to the kingdom.
50:37
You have the secrets, right?
50:39
Like the beauty that God was able to give us
50:42
not just through creation
50:43
but through the fulfillment of the gospel message.
50:46
I'm gonna go to episode law number 32 now
50:49
and that's stay in school.
50:50
So there's a bugaboo one for me, but let's get after.
50:53
Consequently, when I say stay in school,
50:55
I mean, keep doing your homework.
50:57
Learn all you can about church history.
50:59
Read the biographies of men and women of God
51:01
who upon whose shoulders you stand.
51:03
Keep reading, keep studying, keep learning
51:06
from both the living and those who have gone before us.
51:09
My big bugaboo here, Frank, is men don't read.
51:13
When I talk to these publishing houses, right?
51:15
And you know some of them because you publish
51:16
with several different publishing houses.
51:18
You know, it doesn't matter which one it is.
51:20
Is it HarperCollins or Zondervan or Tyndale or Thomas Nelson?
51:24
It doesn't matter.
51:25
They say, yeah, men don't read, especially Christian men.
51:28
The majority of Christian men's books
51:30
are bought by women for men.
51:32
We hear that all the time and I yell and I scream
51:35
and I shame the men that listen to this podcast
51:38
that don't read, that literally turn their brains off
51:41
when they graduated from high school or from college.
51:43
They haven't read a book since it was assigned to them.
51:46
They're doing nothing to develop their brains
51:48
aside from reading Twitter
51:49
and getting ready for their next fantasy football draft.
51:52
It drives me absolutely insane as a guy
51:55
that didn't grow up reading a lot of books.
51:57
I didn't come from a family of readers
51:59
and learned people reading our leather-bound books
52:02
in our smoking jackets.
52:03
That wasn't my life.
52:04
That's something I've developed as an adult
52:05
because it's like, wait a minute.
52:07
I can get a lot of good stuff from podcasts.
52:10
I get a lot of good stuff from YouTube videos
52:12
and from documentaries on Amazon Prime.
52:14
I can get all these different things.
52:16
But reading is another way that I can take in content
52:18
that will help me be a better person,
52:20
be a better father, be a better husband,
52:22
be a better Christian podcast host,
52:23
all these different things.
52:24
But guys just ignore that and I get it.
52:26
It's not as fun as binge watching a show on Netflix.
52:29
But my goodness, why don't men read?
52:33
- Well, I have a few things to say about that
52:35
in a way of encouragement.
52:36
All right, first of all, I have authored over 30 books
52:41
and eight of them have been bestsellers.
52:45
And so I'm someone who writes, but I also read,
52:49
but here's the thing, I don't like reading.
52:52
I do it, I do it a lot.
52:53
I mean, you should see my studio here.
52:57
I have books everywhere.
52:59
I have hundreds of books, thousands of books probably.
53:02
And thousands of books pass through my hands
53:04
because I do research.
53:05
And so I get a lot of them through the inner library alone,
53:08
but I don't like the act of reading.
53:10
And the longer the book, the more I despise it.
53:13
But here's the thing I would say,
53:15
I read 'cause of the benefit, that's why I do it.
53:18
But here's the thing I would say to all the guys
53:20
who really don't care for reading.
53:21
Number one, you're not abnormal.
53:23
Number two, there's something called an audio book.
53:26
I would encourage you strongly
53:29
to start listening to audio books.
53:31
Now, if I could go ahead and mention one of my books
53:35
that has touched a lot of men,
53:37
I have gotten more emails and letters from men
53:42
who said they wept, which was a shocker to me
53:46
because I had no idea this would have the effect.
53:47
But I wrote a book some years ago
53:50
called God's Favorite Place on Earth.
53:53
And what it is, it's the story of Lazarus
53:57
who Jesus loved him.
54:00
The scripture makes that clear, it says it.
54:01
He loved Lazarus.
54:02
These guys were close and Lazarus is an old man
54:06
and he's getting ready to die.
54:08
And he's now telling the story of the time
54:11
when he met Jesus in his little village called Bethany.
54:14
And one of the eye openers that has been true
54:17
for many leaders and pastors and even theologians,
54:21
they've said to me, they never saw before
54:24
that the little village of Bethany
54:26
was God's favorite place on earth.
54:28
Jesus had no place to lay his head.
54:31
He was rejected in every quarter from birth.
54:35
Bethlehem, he's rejected there.
54:36
Samaria, Nazareth, and Jerusalem,
54:39
which basically put him to death.
54:41
There was only one place on the planet
54:43
where he could lay his head and call home.
54:45
And it was this little village called Bethany.
54:48
And the whole book is about the significance of Bethany
54:50
and what it represents for us today.
54:52
But Lazarus as an old man is telling the story.
54:55
And for some reason, Kyle, lots of men said they wept through it.
54:59
So I would encourage people, guys and gals to go ahead
55:04
and listen to that book on audio.
55:09
And the other thing too is 48 Laws of Spiritual Power
55:12
is also on audio.
55:15
And if you dare to listen to, I'm talking to the audience now,
55:20
if you dare listen to Kyle's recommendation
55:22
of the 48 Laws book that is very popular
55:25
with celebrities and prisoners,
55:26
you'll wanna read 48 Laws of Spiritual Power
55:29
to see the exact opposite message.
55:31
And it's easier to read, the chapters are much shorter.
55:35
And if you don't really dig reading,
55:37
you'll get through this book pretty quick.
55:39
- Yeah, I gotta be honest, the audio book thing
55:42
is such a blessing.
55:43
We just had a guy on here recently
55:45
that he helps produce 900 audio books a year.
55:48
His name is Gabe Wicks.
55:50
And it's like a lot of that is going back to backlog.
55:53
So it's books that were never put on audio
55:55
because making these CDs and selling them for 75 bucks
55:59
so that somebody could go through a book,
56:01
that was just too cumbersome.
56:02
But now we literally just click an app on our phone
56:04
and then we got it from there.
56:06
So I wanna go ahead and just wrap up the book there
56:09
because I had a couple of other questions
56:10
that I wanted to get to before we get you out of here.
56:12
So one random question that I have for you
56:15
is obviously, I think you just mentioned
56:16
like close to three dozen books that you've written.
56:19
But I wanna know, Frank,
56:22
if you had to delete your entire catalog of books,
56:26
but you can only leave one book that you've written to date
56:30
for all of humanity, for all of time, from here on out.
56:32
Which one would it be and why?
56:34
- Well, Kyle, the part of the interview
56:37
for difficult questions is over.
56:39
So I'm only answering simple questions.
56:41
- No, and here's the thing.
56:42
I'm not gonna let you give me two or three.
56:44
I'm not gonna let you do any of that nonsense.
56:46
It's kind of off you scales as well.
56:47
You get one and you gotta do it.
56:49
- Actually, that was intended to provoke a laugh,
56:54
but that's an easy one for me to answer.
56:57
And I've actually said it in so many terms.
57:01
My book that came out a few years ago,
57:04
it's called "Insurgents Reclaiming the Gospel of the Kingdom."
57:09
Insurgents Reclaiming the Gospel of the Kingdom.
57:12
And that is a big book, but it has very short chapters in it.
57:16
So it's very easy to read.
57:18
But it's all about reclaiming the Gospel of the Kingdom.
57:22
I believe that the powerful, titanic, earthshaking,
57:26
mind-blowing Gospel of the Kingdom that Jesus preached,
57:29
that Paul preached has been lost to us.
57:33
And so what I do in that book is I seek to reclaim it
57:36
and unfold it and expand it.
57:39
There's six parts to the book.
57:40
They all do something different.
57:42
I've had more responses to that book
57:44
than anything I've written.
57:45
I call it my signature work.
57:47
But you have to get through, you don't want to quit.
57:51
So if you read part one and it doesn't grab,
57:54
you just go on to part two.
57:55
'Cause all the parts, the six parts do something
57:58
very different and they speak to readers in a different way.
58:01
They all go together, but don't quit
58:04
if you just start with part one and you can't get into it.
58:08
Just go on to the next one and go on to the next one.
58:10
Do the same.
58:11
But that's the signature book.
58:12
That's the answer to your question, sir.
58:14
- Okay, well, I appreciate 'cause sometimes
58:16
I'll get people that'll be like,
58:17
"Well, I don't know.
58:18
"I kind of have to do this one for this."
58:19
No, no.
58:20
- I gotta choose between my children.
58:23
- Yeah, I don't care.
58:24
Here's the reality.
58:25
Everyone's got a favorite kid.
58:26
You're lying.
58:27
If you say you love them equally, you don't.
58:29
You're a liar.
58:29
- You're a liar.
58:30
You're a liar.
58:32
- That's exactly what it is.
58:33
Well, the next question that I have,
58:35
well, obviously this one's going to be a lot easier
58:36
than the last one, but obviously you got a lot of things
58:38
that are, you got a lot of irons in the fire.
58:40
There's a lot of ideas that you have kicking around
58:42
in your head.
58:42
So talk to me about some future books.
58:44
I'm sure you're writing one right now, but I want some like,
58:47
you know, something good for the guys
58:48
that listen to the end of this interview.
58:50
Give us some spoilers.
58:51
Give us some stuff that you haven't told anybody about,
58:53
like some stuff that you're really thinking about
58:55
digging into and writing books about.
58:58
- Well, I'm working on one now that's just a bear cat.
59:00
It's really difficult.
59:02
I've spent a gosh, a pound of flesh and a pint of blood
59:07
on it already, but it is a book that's going to tell
59:11
the story of the first century church
59:13
from Pentecost to Patmos.
59:15
It's going to put the book of Acts.
59:17
It's going to tell that story and blend together
59:20
all the epistles.
59:21
So basically, before you get to read Galatians,
59:24
you're going to find out who the Galatians were.
59:26
What were they like?
59:27
What was going on there in Galatia?
59:29
Where in the story of Acts did Paul write Galatians?
59:32
How does it all fit together?
59:34
See, because right now our New Testament
59:36
is grossly out of order, okay?
59:39
Romans is the first letter.
59:41
Well, Paul didn't write Romans first, okay?
59:44
Then you have what?
59:45
First Corinthians, we're Paul didn't write
59:47
first Corinthians second.
59:48
And so the whole New Testament is in a mess.
59:53
It's in a chaotic order.
59:56
And the reason is because those letters were,
59:58
when they were compiled the letters of the New Testament,
1:00:01
they were compiled according to length.
1:00:04
Romans is the longest letter.
1:00:06
Philemon is the shortest in Paul's work.
1:00:10
So that's why Romans is first.
1:00:12
First Corinthians is, that's the second longest book.
1:00:14
And so basically to try to understand what happened
1:00:18
in the New Testament and try to understand those letters,
1:00:20
'cause they're written in a context, Kyle,
1:00:22
it's kind of like getting an audio book
1:00:27
and all the chapters are out of order.
1:00:30
And now you're listening first to chapter seven
1:00:33
and then you go to chapter 23
1:00:34
and after that is chapter three.
1:00:36
And after that is chapter 19.
1:00:38
It's all out of order.
1:00:39
And that's how the New Testament is.
1:00:41
So what I'm doing with this book
1:00:42
and I have scholars who are helping me with it
1:00:44
is putting it all into a gripping narrative.
1:00:48
You find out all of what was going on
1:00:51
in the first century in the New Testament.
1:00:53
And then when you open up Galatians,
1:00:54
you open up first Thessalonians,
1:00:55
you open up first Corinthians, you know those people.
1:00:59
You know what Paul was feeling when he wrote it.
1:01:01
You know what was going on.
1:01:03
And it just opens up the Bible like you couldn't believe.
1:01:07
So that's coming out God willing in the next two years.
1:01:10
I did a very early version of this Kyle back in 2005.
1:01:14
I wrote it in a hurry.
1:01:16
I didn't have half the resources,
1:01:18
not even a fraction of the resources I have now.
1:01:20
I didn't have scholars review it.
1:01:22
So, you know, if you come across something
1:01:24
that sounds like that before 2024, 2025,
1:01:29
don't buy it because it's really bad.
1:01:33
This new book is going to be,
1:01:35
I think it's going to be revolutionary to the Christian faith.
1:01:38
And that's my hope.
1:01:40
- Well, obviously keep me and our audience in mind
1:01:42
whenever that gets going
1:01:43
because that sounds incredibly interesting.
1:01:44
But Frank, we've gone everywhere in this conversation.
1:01:46
I really appreciate you letting us dig down.
1:01:48
And guys, again, what did we cover?
1:01:49
I mean, seven or eight of the laws.
1:01:51
There's 48 in this book.
1:01:52
Again, it'll be in the show notes so you can check it out.
1:01:54
But that's all for me.
1:01:55
Is there anything else you want to get off your chest?
1:01:57
- No, the only thing I would say is
1:01:59
if listeners were intrigued with any of this,
1:02:01
they can go to 48laws.com, 48laws.com
1:02:05
and they can test drive the book for free
1:02:07
and listen to some other interviews
1:02:09
where we, you know, get into the content.
1:02:11
But yeah, that's all I would say, Kyle.
1:02:13
I appreciate it.
1:02:14
I enjoyed this.
1:02:15
Now I know, and now I know why you,
1:02:17
you are the number one podcaster in the world.
1:02:21
Now I know.
1:02:22
- Number one, number one in the world, guys.
1:02:23
- I'm good about baby.
1:02:24
- And it's not going to your head either.
1:02:26
I love it.
1:02:27
- You didn't know, you do know now.
1:02:29
Frank Viola, thank you for coming on
1:02:31
Undaunted Life of Man's podcast.
1:02:33
- All right.
1:02:34
- There you go, guys.
1:02:35
I hope you enjoyed my time with Frank Viola.
1:02:36
But before we let you go,
1:02:37
we are going to do a quick resilience boost.
1:02:39
Add Undaunted Life, our mission is equipping
1:02:40
men to push back darkness with content
1:02:42
that forges spiritual, mental and physical resilience.
1:02:44
So the link that I've got for you today,
1:02:45
I've got a link to the 48laws.com,
1:02:47
which you mentioned in the interview,
1:02:48
a link to his website, a link to all of his books,
1:02:50
but then also an Amazon link to where you can go
1:02:52
and buy the 48 laws of spiritual power.
1:02:54
All right, guys.
1:02:55
Thanks so much for listening to the show.
1:02:56
We do appreciate it.
1:02:57
Wherever you're listening to this,
1:02:57
great, leave us a positive five-star review.
1:02:59
If you want to come speak live at your event
1:03:01
or on your podcast,
1:03:02
just shoot me an email to info@undaunted.life.
1:03:04
That's i-n-f-o@undaunted.life.
1:03:06
Follow us on Instagram and like us on Facebook
1:03:08
and check out our website for everything else,
1:03:09
including how to donate to keep more content
1:03:11
like this coming your way.
1:03:12
Just go to www.undaunted.life.
1:03:14
And as always,
1:03:15
we want to thank the band August Burns Red
1:03:16
for allowing us to use their music for our content.
1:03:18
The musical and this podcast is our song "Cutting the Tides,"
1:03:21
which is off their 10th anniversary
1:03:22
re-recording of their album, "Leveler."
1:03:23
The links are in the description.
1:03:25
I'm your host, Kyle Thompson.
1:03:27
Remember, keep pushing back darkness,
1:03:29
keep forging spiritual, mental, and physical resilience.
1:03:33
Keep seeking the lion of Judah.
1:03:35
(upbeat music)
1:03:57
(upbeat music)