0:00
Are your ad campaigns lighting up the dashboard, but not the pipeline?
0:04
That's bullspend, and marketers are calling it out in dashboard confessions.
0:09
My boss asked for results, so I opened my dashboard for the only positive-sounding metric I had.
0:15
Impression.
0:17
Cut the bullspend.
0:18
See revenue, not just reach.
0:19
LinkedIn delivers the highest return on ad spend of major ad networks.
0:23
Advertise on LinkedIn.
0:24
Spend $250 on your first campaign and get a $250 credit.
0:27
Go to LinkedIn.com/campaign, turn sick edition supply.
0:30
Yay to Bruce, the streaming king.
0:33
With quantum fiber in the net, he's gonna binge.
0:36
He wants more, he's got to have more.
0:39
Perfect time to cry.
0:41
More podcasts in the shower.
0:42
Quantum fiber, right by as the power.
0:44
More, more, more fast internet speeds.
0:47
Got the geeks to go big, bring 'em the games.
0:49
Right now.
0:50
And his royal wing.
0:52
More sports, don't stop, his quantum fiber's on top.
0:54
And to go, switch today at quantumfiber.com, limited availability, service and speed and
0:59
select locations only.
1:20
This is Undaunted Life a Man's Podcast.
1:24
I'm your host Kyle Thompson, let's get into it.
1:27
Matt Chandler, I had an awkward introduction to the first time we did an interview because
1:32
I was in your house.
1:33
Yeah.
1:34
So I didn't exactly know what to say because normally it's like, "Hey, welcome to Undaunted
1:37
Life a Man's Podcast."
1:38
It's like, "Oh, yeah."
1:39
It's kind of like informal.
1:40
But now you're at my house.
1:41
That's right.
1:42
And so it's like nice.
1:43
I still don't know how to do my introduction because it's like, "Do I just say welcome to
1:48
my house?
1:49
Welcome to the forging table?"
1:50
Because we already kind of did that a little bit.
1:52
So yeah, spoiler alert for any of you guys listening to this because we have actually
1:55
recorded four forging tables over the last couple of days you've been staying with us
1:59
at the house.
2:00
So what do you think about Oklahoma?
2:01
What do you think about my crew?
2:02
What do you think about my house?
2:03
Like, come on.
2:04
Let's see.
2:05
Yeah.
2:06
So the crew, I think there are men that if you move towards them, they will lessen or
2:13
if you move towards them, you'll see, "Oh man, there's some legitimate consistency, integrity
2:19
in their lives, and you are who you say you are."
2:23
And so as I've moved--
2:24
For better or worse.
2:25
Yeah.
2:26
All of it.
2:27
Yeah.
2:28
All of it.
2:29
So yeah, your crew is solid.
2:30
They love you, but they're not impressed with you.
2:33
That's hugely important for a man.
2:36
I've had a great time eating, unlike I would normally eat, and it's been amazing.
2:41
Would you have a breakfast this morning?
2:43
Banana pudding.
2:44
Banana pudding.
2:45
Like, as you guys have probably heard me talk about, my favorite thing.
2:47
So my wife and I over now, and then we'll get into these Q&A type things, and we got
2:51
these sets of cards where it's like date night cards, and you kind of go through.
2:55
And she doesn't think about my cop things, like, "What's the last meal I would eat on
2:58
earth if I was about to be executed?"
3:00
She just doesn't have a category for that.
3:02
And I'm like, "Oh, I've already thought through this entirely."
3:04
But I'm like, "If I get one dish," so people think about last meal, and they're doing appetizers,
3:10
they're doing all kinds of desserts, and entrees, and all that.
3:12
I'm like, "Okay, if I get one dish, I'm dying today.
3:15
Is my wife's been inputting?"
3:16
Banana pudding.
3:17
Okay.
3:18
And so, that's the jam for her, and she's not really big in the kitchen, and she doesn't
3:22
really care about all that, but that's the one thing that she absolutely, absolutely nails.
3:25
But the cool thing about it, and we were talking about this a little bit, is me to a much lesser
3:31
degree than you.
3:32
You get offered to do some pretty cool stuff, and you can just do that stuff solo.
3:39
You can just go to the event, or do the thing, or meet the person, and all that.
3:43
But I've found that it's pretty awesome when you can bring some of your boys, or bring your
3:47
family, bring your wife into the fold a little bit, and be like, "Okay, Dad's got kind of
3:52
a unique job."
3:53
I have a four-year-old and two-year-old, so they barely know the difference between anything,
3:56
but it's like, "Okay, I've got kind of a unique job.
3:59
I get to do some cool opportunities, but as opposed to like, "Okay, Matt, you're coming
4:03
to the house to record, and do jujitsu and all that kind of stuff, and I'm just going
4:06
to keep you to myself."
4:07
Monday, I'm like, "We're just going to have a cookout.
4:09
I'm going to do Smash Burgers.
4:10
Let's make some Orcs Smash Burgers, so I'll be busy at the Blackstone."
4:15
Then my guy is that, "If I listen to you forever, you just get to chill and hang."
4:20
It's not this formal meeting line, "Here, sign my book.
4:23
Can I take a picture, please?"
4:24
This is just a cool chill experience.
4:26
It was awesome.
4:28
I guess for you, when you come and do stuff, do you do stuff like this very often where
4:33
you just, because you're in a unique spot right now because you're on sabbatical.
4:37
That's right.
4:38
What's the difference between Matt right now and sabbatical and Matt, like, just normal
4:42
everyday life trying to get through the week?
4:44
Well, June's a little bit different for me.
4:47
The sabbatical's the entire summer, but I think my guys know me well enough to know
4:52
he can't go a million miles an hour and then just stop.
4:55
And so I'm preaching through the book of Jonah this June at the village as a way of easing
5:02
into sabbatical.
5:04
And then I'm using the weeks to, I mean, honestly, I've got some, there's some things
5:11
I'm working on this summer just internally for my own self.
5:15
I tend to still trying to conquer in a way, and maybe that's the wrong word, my frenetic
5:21
energy that I'm always humming with.
5:24
I would like to grow in greater stillness internally if that's possible, at least find
5:32
where we can go with that.
5:35
And then I want to train Jiu Jitsu really hard this summer.
5:38
It's not.
5:39
I don't have space to train really hard when life is what it should be for me in this season
5:44
of my life with the places God's put me.
5:47
Okay, we'll get back to the training piece, but I want to go back to what you mentioned
5:50
about like the frenetic energy.
5:53
So you know, when people say your greatest strength is your greatest weakness, like,
5:58
you know, your greatest blessing is your greatest curse.
6:00
Like sometimes I feel that way about my frenetic energy and my competitiveness and my just
6:04
forthrightness and like, no, this has to be done now and it has to be done perfectly,
6:07
that type of thing.
6:09
But for me, I see that as a net benefit that I don't want to chill out.
6:13
For me, I guess it's like, I have to be selective who gets to see that because like the boys
6:19
don't need to see, you know, frenetic, competitive guy all the time, like they need to see, you
6:24
know, compassion and love and empathy, but also drive and all that same thing with like
6:28
wife and different things.
6:29
So like, are you saying that you've seen like some negativity come from your frenetic
6:34
energy?
6:35
All the mistakes I make are speed based accidents.
6:40
So I'm curious as if I could just slow down a hair, I don't listen, I even had my neurologist
6:47
tell me, you know, they won't ever put me on medicine.
6:52
He's just like, look, there's something about your wildness that the organizations you lead
6:56
need.
6:57
There's a way God built you and I don't ever want to damper that.
7:01
So I mean, I might throw five pills your way for when you're in a spreadsheet meeting
7:04
that's lasting nine hours, but I'm not putting you on meds because there's something about
7:09
this wildness that's good.
7:12
But I, the mistakes I make, the missteps, they're always speed related.
7:18
They're always, I'm moving too fast.
7:20
I'm not thinking too clearly.
7:22
I'm doing too many things at once and had I slowed down, if I had slowed down just a
7:28
little bit, probably could have seen, ah, I need to start making the left turn now, not
7:33
in the intersection and smash into something else.
7:36
And so that that's more what I'm talking about.
7:38
I'm not, I'm not trying to lessen my energy as much as I'm trying to internally catch up
7:48
to myself.
7:51
If that makes sense.
7:52
Let me actually, I want to actually do want to drill down to bedrock on this because this,
7:56
this is something that I, this is my every day as well.
7:59
Yeah.
8:00
But I don't have an organization, right?
8:01
I'm more of like a lone wolf and so I can be really nimble.
8:04
So are you saying a lot of the speed stuff, it comes on, is this an interpersonal thing
8:09
or a business thing?
8:10
Is this a, as I'm prepping a sermon, I'll listen to it back and be like, Oh my gosh, I left
8:15
out an entire chunk that would have made this better.
8:17
Like where?
8:18
It's everywhere flares in every area of my life, parenting, marriage, leadership, preaching.
8:25
I'm just moving so fast internally.
8:30
And that, that means I miss things externally and I'm curious if even I'm missing things
8:38
internally also because of how frenetic I have like I've learned and Lauren's been so
8:43
great for me in this, that I'm so future oriented that if I don't create space after
8:51
a loss to mourn that loss, then I'll, I'll, I'll hardly ever think about it again until
8:59
all of that piles up in my soul.
9:01
And next thing you know, I'm just [inaudible] at the world and don't know why do you celebrate
9:04
wins?
9:05
Oh, I've learned to celebrate wins.
9:07
So we do celebrate wins the morning and I don't do the celebration of wins because I'll
9:12
accomplish the thing and then I just got to move on to the next thing.
9:14
Well, this was a my crew.
9:17
So like my little king's table with me that we learned this several years ago that we're
9:21
just, we just run into the next fight.
9:23
We just run into the next fight.
9:24
We never pause and celebrate that all of our prayers and all of our works got, got, got
9:29
moved in that.
9:30
And so we've learned now we're going to, we're going to stop and celebrate when it's time
9:35
to stop and celebrate.
9:38
And really now much better at that, but I, I still won't, you know, I need to create
9:44
space to mourn and, um, or that stuff just piles up in me.
9:49
And then next thing I know it, I'm really [inaudible] at the world and I'm not quite sure
9:52
why I'm [inaudible] at the world.
9:53
Okay.
9:54
So, so when you're talking about mourning, you know, some people it's like, okay, someone
9:59
I love died morning and my dog, best friend dies morning.
10:03
Are you talking like just mourning in that category of, that's kind of like extreme
10:07
mourning or just even mourning, like this didn't go the way I wanted it to go.
10:11
Hey, I did, I missed the mark here like that.
10:13
I think to stop and feel that versus refuse to feel that, just move on to the next thing.
10:20
And so as human beings, I mean, even psychologically speaking, like you're, that's going somewhere.
10:26
You're doing something with that disappointment and you can theologize it if you want, which
10:32
I mean, a lot of people do, a lot of Christians do or you can sit in it for a second.
10:37
I'm not advocating, you know, sackcloth and ashes for, you know, six weeks because, you
10:43
know, the barista got your coffee wrong.
10:45
That's not what that's not what I'm talking about here.
10:47
But significant disappointments, um, significant betrayals because I mean, I've been betrayed
10:55
just like F that guy and then just kept going, but that was a friend who I trusted who betrayed
11:03
me.
11:04
And then a year later, I'm thought of him.
11:05
Yeah.
11:06
I haven't thought, but I'm, but I'm much more skeptical of people now.
11:09
Right.
11:10
Right.
11:11
I'm Dank sure not going to let anybody else in like that again, which is the wrong play,
11:14
you know, and, and so that, that's the stuff I want to kind of stop and bring to the Lord
11:20
and just acknowledge, Hey, that kind of sucks or even family dynamic stuff.
11:25
Okay.
11:26
So are you more optimistic or pessimistic by nature?
11:29
Uh, optimistic.
11:30
Okay.
11:31
So this, this will be a lot better since you are default that's on default pessimistic.
11:35
So like this guy, yeah, it's just shock like a no, no, like everyone's absolutely blown
11:39
away.
11:40
Everything I believe about you just shift.
11:41
Yeah.
11:42
I mean, sorry, you're welcome.
11:43
This is going to be a more accurate picture that you're going to be getting at me.
11:46
So obviously I'm, I'm default negative, I'm default aggressive, default abrasive, like
11:50
all these, like things, but also, and, and I've talked to a buddy's of mine that, you
11:55
know, our professional counselors and people that are just like smart wisdom filled individuals.
12:00
And, um, well, I'll, I'll say one.
12:02
So my buddy, Donnie, he's a licensed family therapist and he's, he's the leader of our
12:05
Sunday school and you got to meet him on Monday and just, it's just great dude.
12:08
And so we're, we're on the back porch, uh, his back porch having cigar, uh, months ago
12:12
and Ryan Horner was there, the horn, uh, and we're, we're chilling in, in Donnie's trying
12:16
to make a point.
12:17
And the example, he says, he's like, Kyle, when you walk into a jujitsu tournament, do
12:22
you just assume that you're going to lose every match and I go, yes.
12:25
And he's like, no, you don't.
12:27
I'm like, I absolutely do.
12:29
I'm like, I assume that not only am I going to get beaten, that I'm going to get passed
12:33
out unconscious and that he's going to carry my lifeless body and drop it in front of my
12:37
weeping wife.
12:38
That's what I assume is going to be happening.
12:40
And he's like, how, like, I'm like, because I fuel on negativity.
12:45
Okay.
12:46
Like I use it as fuel because in order to avoid that scenario, lifeless body in front of my
12:53
weeping wife, I'm going to train like a lunatic.
12:56
Yeah.
12:57
The problem is, is there's another side.
12:59
So I train well and then I compete well because I compete with this fear of like that happening.
13:05
The only problem is, is like, if I do lose, like it's fine.
13:08
It's like, I'll lose, but I will never not think about that loss.
13:12
Yeah.
13:13
Like I can, I can remember balls that I dropped an intramural football, right?
13:16
That should have been touched down.
13:17
That I just dropped and it's just like, oh, but it drives me when I'm practicing to like
13:21
focus on the basics, like don't get out of your head, like kind of do all that.
13:26
And a lot of people are like, Kyle, that's just, that's horrible.
13:28
You can't fuel negativity.
13:29
I'm like, interesting.
13:30
I've been doing it my entire life and it's working out pretty well.
13:32
And the thing is, is like, I don't think that this ends somewhere badly.
13:37
I just think that I, there's, there's things broken in my like wiring to where it's like
13:42
most people are, are carrot and I'm sick, but no one else has to provide the stick.
13:47
Yeah.
13:48
Like no one's ever going to be more critical of me than I am.
13:50
So you're angry email or you're angry, comment on Instagram, interesting.
13:53
It's not nearly as bad as my internal dialogue.
13:55
Yeah.
13:56
And so it's like, for somebody that's not wired like that, for somebody that's like way more
14:00
normal, like do you see issues there?
14:03
Because I'm a speed guy as well.
14:05
Yeah.
14:06
So the thing is like, when I make a mistake, I'm destroying myself for it so that I don't
14:10
make that mistake again.
14:11
Yeah.
14:12
And I know that's not like the greatest thing you can say it out loud.
14:14
I'd be curious, I'd be curious about where these dynamics intersect in your relationship
14:19
with the Lord.
14:20
I mean, where, how does this, if you're bent to the negative, is there a, and I'm not trying
14:27
to interview you here, but it is there a sense in which your relationship with the Lord
14:35
is built upon, not a holy fear, but, you know, you know, that same kind of, are you bringing
14:43
that same kind of negativity into your relationship with the Lord?
14:46
So you're going into a jiu-jitsu and you're just like, I'm going to get killed.
14:49
I'm going to get, I'm going to, is your relationship with the Lord like I'm going to get rejected
14:52
or he's going to change his mind about me or he's not going to be enough on the day of
14:57
trouble.
14:58
So let me build my life in such a way that if he doesn't come through, then my body doesn't
15:03
get thrown weeping in front of my wife.
15:05
Right.
15:06
So that's a, that's a good question.
15:07
So when I was, last time I was hanging out with John Cooper, lead singer skill, a great
15:11
dude, I asked him about this process of delayed sanctification.
15:15
And what I meant by that is, so I don't grow up in church.
15:18
I don't do a wana or Sunday school or, you know, VBS.
15:21
And then, you know, I become a Christian when I'm 15.
15:24
And then I basically start this process of just trying to figure it out on my own, didn't
15:28
have it, someone discipling me, didn't have a mentor, you know, didn't have anyone in
15:32
my own home that I could turn to, to ask questions.
15:35
And so it's like, well, I've been figuring things out my entire life.
15:37
I guess I'll just figure this out too.
15:39
But I feel like really, it wasn't until these last several years, the forging table being
15:43
one of those big things that I feel like I'm actually experiencing significant levels
15:47
of sanctification now, because everything's performance based for me.
15:51
Like as a kid, I would be grounded if I got bees, but it was because they knew I was capable
15:58
of A's.
15:59
But when I got to be in AP chemistry, didn't get grounded because it's like, that's the
16:03
best I could do.
16:04
I never got in trouble for going over three with three strikeouts and two errors in the
16:09
field.
16:10
I got in trouble if I didn't run out, you know, run to my position.
16:14
If I didn't hustle, if I didn't like, that's what I got in trouble for.
16:16
So I did kind of grow up in a performance based environment where what my worth was dependent
16:21
upon how I performed, but it was all kind of effort driven.
16:23
And so I think it's like, I may not beat you, but I'm going to out effort you.
16:28
And it's like same thing in Jiu Jitsu, it's like if we get into a scramble, you may end
16:31
up in a better position than me, but you're going to be more tired than I am.
16:35
But I will say in terms of like my relationship with the Lord, the one thing where my negativity
16:40
we're leaning into my negativity is a bad thing is when I'm in a bad mood or when I'm
16:44
angry or when something is not gone my way or when I'm, you know, going into in the middle
16:49
of or coming out of the valley of the shadow of death, I don't run to the book, right?
16:55
And I've heard Joby talk about that.
16:56
It's like, Hey, what happens when things are going wrong?
16:58
Do you run to the Lord?
16:59
Do you run away from them?
17:00
So I don't run to the book.
17:02
I listen to the most angry, like vile music ever that helps me kind of lean into my anger
17:08
just so I can like get to the end of it like, okay, let's exhaust this anger and so that
17:13
we can move on and kind of be semi normal.
17:16
And so I feel very comfortable in my understanding that, okay, I'm in the elect if you're a Calvinist
17:22
right.
17:23
So I made the team at before time.
17:24
That's great.
17:25
Or I just like, I'm very aware that look, I've, I've put my faith in Christ, not in my,
17:32
my personal ability to, to be righteous.
17:34
So I feel good about that, but it's more so the, that's where my negativity kind of
17:38
manifests in terms of where I'm, where I'm falling to the Lord.
17:41
If that makes sense.
17:42
Yeah.
17:43
Have you ever been, have you ever been so angry that you couldn't get to the other side
17:47
of it?
17:49
Um, no, uh, but it's interesting what you brought up earlier about when a guy has wronged
17:55
you or betrayed you or something like that, I'm a very, um, emotionless recategorizer.
18:03
What I mean by that is I had a guy, uh, one guy comes to mind that violated me and violated
18:12
the trust that we had gained violated our friendship and he did it for very selfish reasons.
18:18
And the thing, the thing about this guy is, um, he came to me almost immediately whenever
18:23
I, I found out he admitted, look, I misled you, I lied to you.
18:27
I betrayed you.
18:28
I'm sorry.
18:29
I hope you can forgive me.
18:30
And I go, okay.
18:31
Yeah.
18:32
I forgive you.
18:33
But you know, you're in a different category.
18:34
Now, right?
18:35
He goes, I know.
18:36
Yeah.
18:37
And so for me, like when I tell that, when stories like that with my wife, and I'm so
18:41
emotionless about it, she's like terrified.
18:43
Yeah.
18:44
She's like, is he going to be like that with me someday?
18:46
He's going to be like that with the sun someday.
18:47
But like I just, the way I explain it to her, same thing, like the best man in my wedding
18:51
and I was the best man in his, in his wedding, we haven't talked in a couple of years.
18:55
Oh, well, when the one time we did talk, it was not a fun conversation.
18:58
We've just kind of, we've kind of gone in different directions.
19:01
Like he's pursued things that I don't think are, are good.
19:04
And I pursued things that he doesn't think are worthwhile.
19:06
And so there wasn't like a big dramatic breakup.
19:08
We just kind of move in opposite directions.
19:10
And she's like, Oh my gosh, this is so sad.
19:11
I'm like, babe, there's eight billion people on the planet.
19:14
Like not all of them are going to be at our funerals.
19:15
You know what I mean?
19:16
Like you don't, like if the guys you're hanging out with right now are at your funeral or
19:20
you're at their funeral, like that is a tremendous blessing.
19:22
But you can't assume that that's going to happen.
19:24
So that's kind of where my mindset goes.
19:26
And it seems a little bit like a little bit macabre and a little bit aggressive to do that,
19:32
but that's just, that's just how my brain works.
19:34
Okay.
19:35
It just kind of works for me that.
19:36
All right.
19:37
Yeah.
19:38
Yeah.
19:39
Maybe you, you can live in and through that.
19:41
I'm curious if there won't be, it'll be a fun decade for me to watch.
19:46
You kind of continue to mature and grow in the Lord to see if those are spaces he wants
19:51
to work and chooses to work in you and how that process goes.
19:55
So.
19:56
So with that in mind, like what?
19:59
So if you were molding, if you were like my strowing, like a situation like that, because
20:04
I'm not so naive as to think that there's not some holes in my way of operating, like
20:09
I'm certainly not thinking that I've got it figured out, but it's like, you know, it's
20:13
easy to identify potential future pitfalls for other people.
20:16
Sure.
20:17
That's what I encourage dads with sons to do.
20:18
It's like call out the things in your son that are righteous that God put there, like
20:23
give a name to it so that they can see it and recognize it, but also call out the things
20:27
like looks on your pretty impetuous or looks on like, man, you're, you can be really aloof
20:32
and that really you're going to get taken advantage of that kind of thing.
20:34
So knowing what you know, like where do you see those pitfalls?
20:38
And that's where I'm hesitant because I don't know you all that well and I've just spent
20:43
my first few days with you that weren't hurried or rushed or it's the first time I've gotten
20:47
to see you with your crew and your kids and your wife and your, and then even then, you
20:53
know, I don't know how much of what I've seen is Camelot and how much I've seen as legit.
20:58
I don't show off a lot of Camelot up here a lot.
21:00
It just kind of is what it is.
21:01
So I do wonder like almost all the high capacity, super driven, going to kick the world in the
21:09
best guys I know have a lot of defense mechanisms that they learned early in life.
21:18
And you've already alluded to the major one, which is there anybody here I had to figure
21:22
it out.
21:23
Right.
21:24
And so like almost every high capacity, super accomplished, you know, whether they're optimistic
21:31
in their thinking or no future and they're thinking or past and they're thinking they're
21:34
well, no, I don't know too many high capacity leaders that are past oriented because they
21:38
get crushed by everything back there.
21:40
But yeah, most of them are future oriented.
21:43
Like most of us, we have your story.
21:46
We were thrown into the deep in the pool and we just survived.
21:49
And so we figured out how to make our own way and we figured out how to, but for me,
21:54
late thirties, that stopped working.
21:57
And then I was just resenting everyone for making me figure it out.
22:02
Even when no one was asking me to figure it out anymore.
22:06
And so I don't know how much of that's in you or not in you Kyle, but that will be something
22:09
the Lord shows up for in your late thirties.
22:12
If you can, even with his name, with a pure heart, be trying to control your world through
22:22
some of the things that we've already set out loud here, where he's going to want to soften
22:28
and heal those places without taking the edge from you necessarily.
22:32
Like I've been on this journey for almost a decade and I'm, I feel like I'm preaching
22:37
as aggressively as I ever have.
22:39
So it's not like it's not like that edge got taken from me.
22:43
It is like it got refined and, and then I've come into a more full version of myself and
22:49
he's still working.
22:50
I mean, he's certainly not done.
22:51
I'm here.
22:52
I'm still alive.
22:53
So he's still working, right?
22:54
He'll carry it on to completion at the day of Jesus Christ.
22:58
So until then works in progress.
23:01
So I don't, I don't know you well enough to, I don't know your backstory well enough.
23:04
I don't, I just have little, I've got little Polaroids of your life up until this point.
23:10
I, I don't experience you as unhealthy.
23:13
Um, yeah, I don't, I mean, violent.
23:16
I've experienced you as violent.
23:18
I've had your knee in my belly like 40 times.
23:21
None of that was fun.
23:22
I think you broke my toe yesterday, but the, um, it looks good.
23:25
Yeah.
23:26
It purples your favorite color.
23:27
Yeah.
23:28
It's a good one on black.
23:29
It's a color royalty.
23:30
Right.
23:31
So I gave you royalty.
23:32
Thank you.
23:33
I gave you your king show.
23:34
Thank you.
23:35
Well, okay.
23:36
So I definitely want to get back to a jujitsu, but so you, you mentioned the king stable.
23:39
You mentioned that a lot.
23:40
I think you mentioned that on a forging table episodes.
23:42
I always talk about in terms of like a foxhole, but it is an important thing to have dudes
23:47
that are not in awe of you.
23:48
No question.
23:49
And dudes that, that know you at your worst moments, but also guys that kind of understand
23:54
how you tick.
23:55
And so like I am under no illusions that I am an easy person to be around.
23:59
Right.
24:00
And so like I even tell, tell my friends.
24:02
So like my friends that don't train jujitsu, they're like, Kyle, I know you think it would
24:07
be a good idea if I trained you just and I'm like, well, let me tell you a new argument
24:11
I came up with.
24:12
And so like, and just I require a lot of things of the people that are around me, not for
24:17
my benefit, but for theirs.
24:18
Yeah.
24:19
You see what they could be.
24:20
Right.
24:21
And so like even so the forging table guys, and so I said, Hey, by the end of the year by
24:24
New Year's Eve, 2000 and 24, all of you need to be able to do 10 push or 10 pull ups.
24:30
Yeah.
24:31
And some of them were like, I don't know that I've ever done a pull up.
24:33
I was like, well, you have seven months like to figure that out.
24:36
Like you can do anything in seven months.
24:39
And so you can see some of the guys were like, yeah, that's weird.
24:42
I don't know if I want to do that.
24:43
And other guys are like, okay, well, I wonder how I could make that happen.
24:47
And so it's like, I'm trying to call them up into something because it's not about the
24:51
pull ups.
24:52
Yeah.
24:53
And so that's because of doing something that's so deeply uncomfortable, because if, if you
24:56
have too much weight on your body, it's going to be hard to pull your chin up and over a
24:58
bar.
24:59
And some people are like, well, why would I need to do a chin up?
25:01
It's like, well, if you need to get your body up and over a wall in order to save your life
25:05
for the lives of one of your family members or something like that, and you're incapable
25:08
of doing so.
25:09
That's a problem.
25:10
Would you rather be sitting at the bottom of the wall dead or would you rather be on the
25:12
other side being alive?
25:14
And so I know that I can be a lot and like you pray for my wife.
25:19
I mean, she has been with me for like, since 2009 or 2005, and like it can be a whole lot,
25:26
but it's like, I want so much for other people.
25:29
And I think part of that is because I'm 510, I'm 185 pounds now, I'm, you know, right around
25:35
190, whatever, I stopped growing at 510 in high school.
25:39
And so it's like, all right, I guess the major leagues aren't going to be, you know, in the,
25:43
in the, in my future or things like that.
25:45
But I would see guys that had the height, had the athletic ability, had the speed, they
25:51
just didn't care.
25:54
Everything came so easy to them.
25:55
So they didn't work hard.
25:56
So they didn't try.
25:57
And I just remember being like, God, if I had what you had with the drive that I have,
26:03
like, I would be something more special or something better, or it could be, you know,
26:07
the family like, gosh, if my family had money like that, then we could have these fun things
26:11
or it's always been that I want you to like squeeze out every last bit.
26:17
And I feel like everyone in the world is fine to settle, they're fine to just watch television
26:23
and watch porn and to just like kind of amoeba other way through life.
26:28
And I just, I can't have a bunch of those slugs around me.
26:31
Like it just, it's just, it's like a ways on me.
26:33
Well, what was the, I'm sure you've seen it.
26:36
There's some sort of research that came out in the last year that basically said, you're
26:42
going to be like your five closest friends.
26:44
Right.
26:45
The same colloquialism.
26:46
That's right.
26:47
Actually, it was true.
26:48
Yeah.
26:49
Like they've like, you're going to, you take somebody out of this unit, you put them into
26:51
this unit, they're going to become like this unit.
26:54
They're going to think like them.
26:55
They're going to dress like them.
26:56
They're going to live like them.
26:57
And so it's a true thing, which this is a funny conversation.
27:00
I don't know everybody's name because I met like 40 people, somebody like that.
27:03
Yeah.
27:04
Right.
27:05
I was talking about this pull up thing that you're making them do and they're just kind
27:08
of joking around and then one guy, I guess that he's just like, you know, you don't have
27:13
to do what he tells you.
27:15
He's not your dad.
27:16
Right.
27:17
I just thought he was such a great comment.
27:18
Yeah.
27:19
I was thinking it, but they're like, I don't know, man.
27:21
I mean, I'm, I'm like it too.
27:23
And I probably need to drop another 15, 20 pounds if I'm going to get much more than
27:27
that.
27:28
They're just like, when you don't, I don't know, I'm just trying to squeeze it in this
27:30
other guy was just like, Hey guys, I don't, like you know, you don't have to do what
27:35
he tells you to do.
27:36
Right.
27:37
And I would say.
27:38
You don't have to.
27:39
Yeah.
27:40
But they were talking like they were some sort of people eat it to that came down and
27:43
they were going to be good Catholics.
27:45
They had better do it.
27:46
What's funny is so Ryan Horns wife said that pretty early on, because like I would like
27:50
challenge him to do certain things here or there and she'd be like, you know, you don't
27:53
have to do these things.
27:54
And he's like, I know that, but I feel like I feel like I have to like I feel like I do,
27:58
because again, I'd try to call someone up into that, that bigger thing.
28:01
But here's the thing about those guys, like your foxhole guys, your king's table guys.
28:05
Those are the guys that you know are willing to put relational chips in the middle of the
28:09
table and risk hurting your, your feels, right?
28:12
Or and what I tell people all the time is like, you need guys around you that are willing
28:17
to take a punch from you in the face.
28:19
Cause that is the worst case scenario of when you call when your brother's out, Hey, you
28:23
need to stop doing that.
28:24
Hey, you need to start doing this.
28:25
Hey, you're not going to talk to your wife that way.
28:27
Hey, I saw how you handled your kids.
28:28
That was very heavy handed in a very light situation.
28:31
But so many guys have none of those people and some guys are either unaware of that or
28:37
they lament the fact, but aren't willing to do anything about it because they just want
28:41
to sit down and watch Netflix.
28:42
They just want to play video games.
28:43
They just want to do another fantasy football draft.
28:46
And then they lament that they don't have any guys that they can depend on, but it's like,
28:49
but that fantasy football draft, here's my, here's my, you know, 30 years of trying to
28:54
walk with men, that fantasy football draft probably because they, I'm not trying to psychological
29:00
lies.
29:01
That's not even a word.
29:02
That sounded good.
29:03
If I just would have kept going.
29:04
Yeah.
29:05
It's like when you're reading Old Testament names.
29:07
Yeah.
29:08
When you're reading Old Testament names, just don't even just blur right through it.
29:10
Yeah.
29:11
I think guys will look at the fantasy football draft is like, yeah, these are my guys, man.
29:17
But then it ain't going to work in the day of war.
29:19
I can tell you that when it really comes down around you, it's not your fantasy football
29:23
guys probably that are going to be the guys that the three AM friend as you, you know,
29:29
you went viral on, but so I think there's a development of the table, whether it's the
29:34
forging table, your guys or, or I call mine the king's table that, and then we got shield
29:39
to shield, which is some language we've co-opted from gates of fire, but like this is the stuff
29:46
we're talking about, wanting to finish well, wanting to manage our lives to the glory of
29:52
God.
29:53
We do so much of that stuff together now, like even like we, we, we were working on these,
30:02
we just call them briefcases for what, what would, if something were to happen to us,
30:08
would our wives be, would they be set up well?
30:11
Yeah.
30:12
And would they have, would they know where the passwords are?
30:15
Would they know, you know, where the money was?
30:18
Would they know?
30:19
And so one of the things we all did is we, we just worked it out together where we created
30:25
these little briefcases.
30:26
If anything, whatever happened to me, there would be something Andrea, who's my assistant,
30:31
hands to Lauren, and it's everything.
30:33
It's every password.
30:34
It's where every dollar is.
30:36
It's who she needs to call for this.
30:37
It's who will take care of this.
30:39
And it just is like just a thought and that, I mean, whether you do that exercise or not,
30:44
I don't, I don't care.
30:45
I'm saying this is the kind of stuff we're doing together.
30:48
On top of the cigar or bourbon or fire pit or there'll be these things we're working
30:53
on together.
30:54
It's not, it's not uncommon for me to get text from those guys every day with a screen
31:00
grab of their workout or, you know, their heart rate monitor or what they did that day.
31:06
So it's that kind of, there's a, we want to make each other the best version of ourselves
31:12
possible.
31:13
And, and we're all different in where those where you need to press or not press and there's
31:19
some guys, you wouldn't want to press there.
31:20
You want to press over here.
31:21
And then there's some guys that you don't, I mean, one guy, particularly he's just a,
31:26
like just a, he's going to charge whatever hill that's in front of him, regardless.
31:32
He hardly needs any motivation to do that at all.
31:34
He, you kind of remind me a little bit of him, but he's just older and so those are things
31:39
I'm trying to do with my guys.
31:41
And most guys, you're not going to fall into the kind of relationships we're talking about
31:48
here.
31:49
They're developed.
31:50
And, and so there has to be a, I'm looking for this.
31:55
Would you, are you looking for this?
31:58
Then let's do it.
31:59
And is there someone else we need to bring in on this?
32:01
Hey guys, real quick.
32:03
Here recently, one of my family members was telling me about how they partnered with another
32:07
family and they bought some beef from this local cattle producer.
32:10
And when they got the beef, it was unbelievably terrible.
32:13
And I can tell you this from experience because they made me some beef ribs from that animal
32:17
and they were terrible and they even gave me some stakes and some ground and it was basically
32:21
inedible.
32:22
I like, I couldn't believe how bad it was.
32:24
And they ended up finding out that the person killed an old bull or something like that.
32:28
And just the meat was old and tough and awful.
32:31
And that's just what happens when you don't have a quality cattle operation that you can
32:35
trust to give you a quality beef product on the back end.
32:38
And that's guys why I want to introduce you to the official beef delivery partner of Undaunted
32:42
Life, my friends at Primal Beef.
32:45
So Primal Beef is a cattle operation owned and operated by Sean Glass.
32:48
He's a retired Navy SEAL that has partnered with Jocko willing to launch Primal Beef.
32:52
So what makes Primal Beef different from some of these other cattle operations where you're
32:56
going to end up getting bad beef?
32:58
This operation is all American black Angus cattle.
33:01
The beef comes from one farm and that's in Virginia Shenandoah Valley.
33:05
The beef is all natural, no hormones ever, no mRNA ever, no vaccines ever.
33:10
And after slaughter, this is a big deal.
33:11
The beef is dry aged and then it's hand cut by artisan butchers and then flash frozen
33:15
to ensure that it maintains tenderness, marbling and flavor.
33:18
And here's another great thing about it.
33:19
For every box sold, Primal Beef donates meat directly to a member of America's Special
33:24
Operations Forces through the C4 Foundation.
33:26
So you can take pride knowing that your purchase will help to put literal food on the table
33:31
for America's finest warriors.
33:33
If you're not salivating yet, it's probably because you're a communist.
33:36
Don't be a communist.
33:37
Try Primal Beef out today by going to www.primalbeef.com.
33:41
That's primalbeef.com.
33:43
Use the promo code Kyle.
33:44
That's my first name to get 10% off of your order.
33:46
The great thing about that promo code is you can stack that on other deals as well and
33:50
get all this money off.
33:51
Again, that's primalbeef.com promo code Kyle.
33:53
That's KYLE to get 10% off your order.
33:57
So let's talk about the development process a little bit more because I'll get asked,
34:00
okay, calm with you.
34:01
So I need somebody.
34:03
Matt Chandler says, you know, King's table, Kyle, I want to create my King's table.
34:07
So immediately people want to get to the brass tacks of like, okay, well, what does that
34:11
person consist of?
34:12
And I've got this whole thing that I do in a speech that I go and give to men's groups
34:16
and all that about what types of guys to look for, what types of qualities.
34:19
But when you're thinking of a King's table guy, what types of qualities does that person
34:24
have?
34:25
But also now that they're in the club as it were at the table, what are the things that
34:29
you're doing to develop and deepen and further that relationship?
34:32
Yeah.
34:33
So a big deal for me is proximity.
34:36
Right.
34:37
Like if I see you once a month, it's not going to happen.
34:41
No, it's not.
34:42
I need eyes on, like eyes on me and eyes on me and my family and eyes on, you know, like
34:50
if I need to see you several times a week, just in the natural flow of my life, which
34:56
so now if you're, you know, you're a truck driver, long haul truck driver and you're
34:59
listening to this, you're like, well, well, crap.
35:01
So you would have to get creative on right on how to do this, but I'm looking for proximity.
35:07
I'm looking for men who are serious about God's call in their life.
35:12
I'm not looking for half-hearted guys.
35:15
I'm looking for guys who are not afraid to have either vulnerable conversations or hard
35:24
conversations.
35:25
So one of the things that should be, if you're listening to this, this takes time.
35:29
This is not like you just met a guy last week.
35:32
So you're like, Hey, bud, let me give you your secrets.
35:34
Let me give you the secrets of my soul.
35:37
This like my crew, like Josh 20, Trevor 15, Mason 15, Nick going on three, the bulk of
35:48
that crew has been built over a long period of time through some significant lows and
35:55
some significant highs.
35:57
And war does something to guys, you know, I don't know if they're trauma bonds or what
36:03
you want to call them, but we have been through stuff that has increased our trust in one
36:10
another to a point where it's just, it's not I wouldn't call it blind trust, but Josh Patterson
36:17
has taken a bullet for me and, and might be the guy that shoots me with one if I need
36:24
it.
36:25
Yeah.
36:26
And, and, and so I just have no doubts about those guys, but it happened over a slow period
36:31
of time where in the day of trouble, either theirs or mine, there was integrity kept and
36:39
there was a moving towards the deepened the relationship.
36:43
And so like the guys I'm talking about, these are guys that when I had cancer, were driving
36:49
me down to radiation some days of the week, I had to go every day 45 minutes away.
36:54
I couldn't drive that, you know, we had three small kids.
36:59
So Lauren's like, I, I don't know how I'm going to make this work.
37:02
And the crew was like, we'll, we'll make it work.
37:04
And so those guys were driving me down to radiation every day.
37:09
They were, Josh in particular was at the hospital for the birth of all three of my children.
37:15
I was at the hospital for the birth of all four of his.
37:18
They helped me navigate some really difficult seasons in our home.
37:23
We had about a three year, I think I referenced those in the last podcast, we had about three
37:27
or four year, just, yeah, terrible run and with some situations in our family, again,
37:33
not my testimony and, I mean, they were just always there for it.
37:38
And there have been high moments of celebration.
37:41
They brought an expensive bottle of bourbon over and just knocked on the door and, you
37:45
know, fire up the fire pit out back.
37:47
We're going to celebrate tonight.
37:49
And so it's just been those guys and then there've been guys that have confronted me
37:52
about things that are just like, Hey, this isn't consistent, this isn't consistent in
37:56
your life.
37:57
I want to help you get better at this.
37:59
And I've never enjoyed that, but enjoyed it.
38:01
And I've had to, I've had to reciprocate, yeah, like this is a, this is a weakness I
38:06
seen you, I'd love to see you grow into.
38:09
And so not, none of my guys, I need to do pull ups.
38:13
They're all pretty.
38:14
I mean, they probably should though, like, you know, I think they, that's what I think
38:17
they probably make them a lot better.
38:19
They're all maybe I'll tell them and because we know the rules, if I say it, you have to
38:22
do it, right?
38:23
Yeah.
38:24
Well, there's a guy out there telling people that I know the guy, it's fine.
38:27
It's because he's not going to pull ups, but like the, the thing that I find interesting
38:31
about that so proximity, that's the first thing I say to somebody, I got an email from, from
38:34
some of the other day that's just like, Hey, man, I've got two guys that are my foxhole.
38:38
I mean, I live in Tennessee and they live in Washington and Montana.
38:42
I'm like, all right, dude, they're just not on your foxhole.
38:44
Like because the thing is, is like you can have dudes that you love, like you, you were
38:49
on the football team with them in high school, or you're in the same frat during college,
38:53
or, you know, you, you went through police academy together, or you went through basic
38:57
training together and all that, but they're not consequential to your life.
39:02
If they can't just be here later today, right?
39:05
So if they've got to like take time off work, hop on a plane or hop in the truck or all
39:10
that, and they'll be there within the next couple of days or something like that, you
39:13
can love them.
39:14
They can love you.
39:15
You know, if they called you and said, Hey, I need you here, you would make the same,
39:19
you know, plans to go see them.
39:20
They're just not consequential to you.
39:22
Proximity matters.
39:23
But also there's a big key here.
39:25
And, you know, for me, this is sometimes I do this well, and sometimes I don't is when
39:30
that person risks relational capital with you, and you reject them or stiff arm them.
39:35
It's like, bro, you said you wanted accountability.
39:39
You said you wanted foxhole guys that you wanted guys at your table that you wanted this.
39:44
And then they push back and you go, Hey man, you don't know me.
39:47
You don't know what I'm about.
39:48
Hey, you don't know what you're talking about there.
39:50
And I've had moments where I just accepted rebuke for another time where I immediately
39:53
went to fault abrasive, default aggressive, default fight.
39:57
And you know, you still try to find the times where, okay, I've invited this upon myself.
40:02
And I'm rejecting it for a reason.
40:04
It's probably ego driven.
40:06
And I need to just kind of get over myself because you're right.
40:09
It's never fun in the moment.
40:11
When you're getting rebuked or nudged or moved and all that, because you've got to
40:15
figure it out.
40:16
You've got it going on and you're smart and they're not in like, but then you get away
40:20
from that a little bit.
40:21
And then it's like, Oh, okay.
40:23
This makes sense.
40:24
I've used this example for.
40:25
I know we get new listeners, you know, every week.
40:27
And so if you've heard the story before, just Grinn and Barrett, but there was a good buddy
40:30
of mine.
40:32
Great wrestler, great jujitsu guy, Christian family man, business owner, like that guy,
40:39
right?
40:40
Well, we have some other mutual friends that are like MMA fighters and not necessarily
40:44
Christians, pretty rough dudes.
40:47
And so they all go out one night and they're at a bar and my buddy and three of these guys
40:52
that are rough, non-Christians, all that, they flip off the camera.
40:56
And my buddy, you know, throws up a couple of birds, just like the rest of them.
40:59
And here they are all being, you know, we're bad and we're flipping off the camera.
41:02
And I see him post that on Facebook.
41:05
And I just call him and I go, Hey, bro, what, what's up with the picture that you just posted
41:10
with?
41:11
And I said the guy's name.
41:12
She's like, what do you mean?
41:13
I was like, flipping off the camera.
41:14
Yeah.
41:15
Is that your brand?
41:16
Like family man, Christian, Christian business owner, all that like, is that, is that what
41:20
we're doing now?
41:21
And he flips and on me.
41:24
Yeah.
41:25
And it's like, fair see, you know, call me, call me out.
41:27
Oh, you're going to call me out of the blue because I took a picture that you didn't like.
41:30
Like, what's your problem?
41:31
Like, what's take out the, you know, the log in your eye, like that type of thing.
41:35
I just go, okay, you got anything else kind of a thing.
41:39
And then we, that's where we left it.
41:41
And so he then calls his dad and says, man, my buddy just called me and blah, blah, can
41:46
you believe this?
41:47
And blah, blah.
41:48
And his dad just goes, what was your buddy right?
41:50
He was just like, yeah, I guess he is right.
41:55
So to his credit, he calls me, I think it was the same day or next day and says, Hey man,
42:01
I apologize for how I reacted to you.
42:04
Like, you know, I thought you were, I thought you were over the line for calling me out and
42:09
blah, blah, blah.
42:10
But you're right.
42:11
Like if some of my clients saw that picture, they probably wouldn't appreciate it.
42:14
I'd probably lose them, which would affect my bottom line, which affects my ability to
42:17
feed my family.
42:18
You know, if my wife saw that or if my kid, when they grow up, if they saw that picture
42:22
and they saw dad flipping off the camera with some inmate fighters, like, I don't think
42:25
they would appreciate that very much.
42:27
So I don't say a story like that to be like, gosh, I am so awesome.
42:30
And I'm so glad that I did that.
42:31
But that was an example of a guy that could clearly with me.
42:34
Like if you guys know who I'm talking about, this is a guy that could smash me to pieces
42:38
if you wanted to.
42:39
This is a guy that could beat me up.
42:40
This was a guy that I was, we had a business relationship at the time.
42:45
So he could have crushed me in a lot of different ways.
42:47
But I didn't think about that because in that moment, I was worried about him, and I was
42:52
a worried about how he was showing himself to the world.
42:54
And I was worried about his witness, and he had a blind spot and it was incumbent upon
42:59
me to point that out.
43:00
But I just feel like we don't have enough guys that are willing to do that.
43:02
Yeah.
43:03
Well, you don't have enough guys that understand relational dynamics to even understand the
43:06
necessity of it.
43:08
Like there, there's no path to maturity for a man that doesn't have a brotherhood willing
43:15
to make that call and then let you thrash around a little bit.
43:21
And then hopefully if the accusation's true, then then humbly submit to the rebuke, because
43:29
the rebuke ultimately, if it's true, is coming from the Lord, right?
43:32
It's coming from the Lord through a brother who obviously loves you.
43:37
Unless he's just, I mean, everybody knows a guy or two that just as they love conflicts
43:41
or they're always trying to, yeah, and so I'm not talking about that though.
43:45
And I do think for guys that are listening, it's important to understand that there's
43:51
a reason why they call them blind spots, right?
43:54
Like of course you don't think it's an issue.
43:55
Of course you don't see it.
43:57
Of course you're not.
43:58
Like my guess is you're a good dude.
43:59
If you saw it, you probably wouldn't be doing it.
44:02
If you knew how it was being perceived or experienced, you probably would change.
44:07
But you don't.
44:08
And that's why it's so shocking when somebody's like, hey, this thing here, what are you talking
44:13
about?
44:16
I've been doing that thing for 20 years.
44:17
Yeah.
44:18
And this thing needs to go because here's what the scriptures say.
44:19
And this is the kind of man God wants you to be.
44:21
Here's what it's doing to you.
44:22
That's right.
44:23
And so it, I want to be, we've talked about this in other settings.
44:30
Like I want to be a man marked by humility and curiosity, humility and curiosity.
44:37
And there, one of the kind of cognitive decisions I'm always making is if one of my crew, not
44:48
the world, I'm not, I'm not the guy from South Carolina that done like my podcast or done
44:53
like my sermons and wants to let me know all about it.
44:55
I don't, I don't, I honestly don't care at all about what that guy thinks.
45:02
Right.
45:03
Like it's not a hotel bro.
45:04
Just leave.
45:05
Just stop listening.
45:06
Joke at your house.
45:07
That's right.
45:08
And plug my sermons in.
45:09
You're just stop.
45:10
Right.
45:11
And you don't, it's like, you don't have to tell me you're leaving.
45:14
You'll never be frustrated.
45:15
I mean, you can't have to, you don't even have to do that at hotels anymore.
45:17
You could just leave.
45:18
Yeah.
45:19
Best elective.
45:20
Have to call down front.
45:21
But in my head, if my crew, my guys, Trevor, Josh, Mason, or Nick, they come to me with a,
45:29
hey, we want to talk to you about this.
45:31
I'm going to assume they're right before I assume that I'm right.
45:38
I'm going to, it's a cognitive decision.
45:42
These four guys, these four guys come to me and say that we've seen this a couple of
45:50
times now and we want to bring it up to you.
45:52
I want to start with, they're probably right because I know me enough to know how I'm going
45:58
to, my impulse is going to be to power up and defend myself, to, to power up and defend
46:03
myself.
46:04
I know that's my, that's what I do.
46:06
And so I'm, I'm trying to always think, no, we're, I'm not going to do that.
46:12
I'm going to listen and I'm going to try to understand when I assume there's a right,
46:17
they're seeing it right before I defend myself.
46:19
And even if they're wrong, there's a net positive outcome of that situation because your brother
46:27
proved to you that he saw something that, you know, was on his heart and is a concern.
46:32
Maybe the Holy Spirit gave him, gave him a word and then he came to you and he brought
46:36
that to you.
46:37
Go ahead.
46:38
Yeah.
46:39
Courage.
46:40
That's the kind of courage I want around me.
46:41
Right.
46:42
I mean, we live in a time where, you know, courage is apparently having a nose ring and blue
46:44
hair.
46:45
And it's like, oh, you're so courageous for being who you are.
46:47
And it's like, well, or, or you're courageous whenever you actually go to a friend and risk
46:51
something.
46:52
Yeah.
46:53
Part of my thing and, you know, people have heard me rail on different kinds of hobbies
46:56
and my people will be like, well, you're just rail on it because you don't like it.
46:59
But part of the thing, why, why I think men don't effectively have foxholes or King's
47:05
tables or whatever your ministry or your business wants to call it is because they're
47:10
not doing difficult things together.
47:12
Yeah.
47:13
They're not doing hard things together.
47:14
And so I talk about, you know, Fight Club, which you showed up to on Sunday night.
47:17
You were there on the back and when you got into town.
47:19
So we're all guys that were reading a book.
47:22
The books are typically challenging.
47:24
And we come together and discuss it and that's your tuition to get, you know, free workouts
47:28
in jujitsu.
47:29
You got to read the book and you have to just pay in discussion.
47:31
And then we do a workout and the workouts typically not the easiest thing in the world,
47:35
but it's not going to absolutely bury you.
47:37
And then we do jujitsu.
47:38
And there are guys in there that when you showed up, there were two guys in there, first
47:41
time they'd ever been on the mats and their entire life.
47:43
And then there are guys that have been training for close to a couple of decades.
47:46
And then everyone.
47:47
Those guys look different for the record.
47:48
They, those, the two body types that are happening.
47:51
Those are different body types.
47:52
Yeah.
47:53
There's certainly different body types.
47:54
It's for everybody types for everybody, right?
47:55
I saw around the other day between a, I think I guess you're supposed to call them a little
48:00
person and a guy that had no legs and they were getting after going after each other.
48:03
So jujitsu is for everybody in every body.
48:06
I will tell you that.
48:08
But we do hard things together.
48:10
We get to the end of practice and it's been a difficult thing mentally and physically to
48:15
get to that situation.
48:17
You have some guys that, you know, they'll rock together.
48:20
They'll do cross it together.
48:21
They'll work out together.
48:22
Doing hard stuff, but I feel like most men default to, all right, time to turn on, you
48:28
know, Fortnite or Call of Duty, and I'm going to put on my headphones and my friends that
48:32
are spread out throughout the country or the world.
48:34
And we're going to go on, we're going to be on the same team on this video game or the
48:38
fancy football thing or let's go golf and guys, yes, I don't want to golf.
48:42
Don't ever invite me.
48:43
I will tell you no, but if you want to go golf periodically, fine, I don't find that.
48:49
That's what you're into.
48:50
So you're not cultivating resilience by doing that.
48:53
Yes, I know hitting that little white ball that doesn't move is difficult, but it's not
48:57
a transferable skill to any other part of your life.
49:01
Only benefits that come from golf happen on a golf course, whereas if you do something
49:05
like jujitsu, the benefits go well beyond the mat, right?
49:10
Because something that you learned training with me the last few days, you could use to
49:14
protect yourself to protect Lauren, to protect one of your three children, to protect one
49:18
of your congregants, any number of things, it's transferable.
49:23
Chipping onto the green from a hundred yards away is not transferable to anything outside
49:28
of golf.
49:29
And so that's part of my problem and why I rail on some of these hobbies, some of which
49:33
I enjoy, some of which I think are stupid and vapid, but it's like you have to do hard
49:37
things with guys because when you get to the end of the hard thing and you realize you're
49:41
all still standing, you've learned something about somebody, like even some of my guys
49:46
that you've met, it's like there's a reason why I've pointed out their belt rank to you.
49:50
That guy's a blue belt, that guy's a purple belt, that guy's a brown belt, all that because
49:54
just by telling you that, it's a cheat code to where you know something about that.
49:58
So talk a little bit about that because I'm just, I can't stand it when guys just get
50:01
together and do these just nonsense hobbies.
50:04
Yeah, I don't know.
50:05
I only played golf once my whole life.
50:07
So whether it's transferable or not, I have no idea.
50:10
And your wife played her first round yesterday.
50:11
She did.
50:12
She was terrible.
50:13
That's what you told me.
50:14
That's no smoke.
50:15
Everyone's terrible.
50:16
Yeah.
50:17
Terrible.
50:18
So I don't know about the hobbies that don't do the same thing that like martial arts specifically
50:28
Jiu Jitsu creates.
50:30
But I do know that where we have had an annual rhythm, me and my crew of getting up into
50:37
the mountains and conquering a 14er over the last, gosh, three, four, five years.
50:46
And so that's been one of our favorite kind of things to do to gather is get up there
50:53
and carry, you know, you're carrying your 50, 60 pound pack, you're, we're, you know,
51:02
cleaning up camp afterwards, setting up tent, we're, and we're going to push it.
51:06
And it's always awful while we're doing it.
51:09
Right.
51:10
And always awesome when it's over.
51:11
Yep.
51:12
And so I do think in that, that even like you can, you're going to experience difficult
51:17
things in life because we live in a fallen world.
51:21
But there, there are ways you can choose to put yourself in difficult situations that
51:26
make that day of war feel and seem a lot more manageable than it would if you've lived
51:34
a real kind of cush comfortable life.
51:37
And then this thing that feels like it's crushing you now might not have felt like it's crushing
51:43
you.
51:44
Had you built up some resilience by doing things that your mind tells you you shouldn't do
51:48
because you could get hurt or you'll be sore or you would rather doom scroll or, you know,
51:54
maybe even throwing another hobby like video games or something.
51:57
Okay.
51:58
So let's dig in that just a little bit more as well because we've heard all the stats
52:03
and we've heard all the anecdotes and about, you know, men are lonely and, and, you know,
52:08
testosterone levels have never been lower and there's a lot of reasons for that.
52:11
And, you know, why are, why are young men not even interested in getting married, interested
52:15
in dating, interested in sex, even like, well, part of it's because they can literally have
52:20
sex with the most beautiful women in the world anytime they want to by just, you know, sitting
52:24
in front of their laptop and throwing their pants around their ankles and AI is going
52:27
to help that.
52:28
So.
52:29
Oh, yeah, certainly.
52:30
It's going to.
52:31
Yeah.
52:32
That's ridiculous.
52:33
So many men don't even have a category for this in their own lives and they just, they,
52:37
their entire life is about avoidance of pain and avoidance of discomfort.
52:41
And they're also surrounded by people that are the exact same way and guys that are wired
52:45
like me, they're like, no, we, we need to be better.
52:47
We need to be getting after it in a different way.
52:49
We're seen as, we're seen as toxic.
52:51
We're seen as damaging.
52:53
We're seen as extreme and certainly there are versions of that in this world as well.
52:58
You can certainly go too far.
52:59
Like no one needs to train like David Goggins.
53:01
Like, like, he's, again, he's got some cool things.
53:05
And if he's motivated you to get up today to run, but he can't go run for you, campaigns
53:09
can't go run for you.
53:10
Jaco Willing can't do pullups for you.
53:12
Like, you know, you have to create that own thing for yourself, but what is it about men?
53:17
What can guys like me do with a show?
53:18
What can people like you do with, with, you know, a microphone and, you know, your sermons
53:22
and your ministry and your books and things like that to help get men to a place where
53:28
they're, they're okay to embrace this discomfort and I'll use one example was before you answer.
53:34
So the guy that introduced me to you, Kyle Perkins, KP, the guy that I worked with, and
53:37
he introduced me to your sermons back in the day.
53:39
Well, the day he introduced me to you, he weighed about 320 pounds, right?
53:44
Still a really good athlete, but severely overweight.
53:48
Now he weighs less than I do.
53:49
Now that's, you know, I'm like, Hey, man, you need to eat some cheeseburgers like this
53:52
for your six three and you weigh, you weigh less than I do, but I wanted him to be healthy
53:58
when we were good friends in college, but I don't get a vote, right?
54:01
I'm sure his family members were concerned about how much he weighed, but we didn't get
54:06
a vote.
54:07
But one day he decided no more, like enough, like I'm tired of being this big.
54:12
I'm tired of the issues that I'm feeling of being this big in my twenties.
54:15
And now he's created a life for himself and he's showing an example to his wife and to
54:20
his boys of a dad that's healthy, the dad that is held conscious and all these different
54:24
things.
54:25
But he decided to embrace the suck and lost well over a hundred pounds and it's kept it
54:30
off and we'll keep it all either.
54:32
He will never be that big ever again, 0% chance, but so many guys just don't even have that
54:37
wiring.
54:38
They just don't want to go that way.
54:39
And they're like, Oh, well, you're an athlete and you're wired to be disciplined.
54:42
I'm just different than you.
54:43
It's like, no, I just made a choice and I make the choice every single day.
54:45
So what any given person can do, whether they're somebody like me with a mic or somebody like
54:51
you with a mic or maybe they don't have a mic is embody and invite.
54:57
And I think that's the rhythm.
54:58
I want to embody living a certain way.
55:01
And so like my congregation, my crew, my friends, they even know one of the main reasons
55:06
I came up here is just get my butt kicked for three days.
55:09
And they're like, how's that going to go for you?
55:10
I was like, no, I'm going to get my butt kicked for that.
55:12
Like I know, and they're like, wait, you're, you know, you know, and you, you have a already
55:18
a super competitive gym here, but you're going up there and I'm like, yeah, but it's what
55:22
I will get there is different than what I'm getting here.
55:26
And where I feel like I'm lacking in my game, I need this.
55:31
And so I'm going to go do this.
55:33
And so they've each, I mean, I've been texted the whole time I'm here by my crew going,
55:37
how's it going?
55:38
Are you sore?
55:39
I'm like, Oh my gosh, bro, yes.
55:41
Is it what you thought?
55:42
I was like, it's been fricking awesome.
55:44
But they, so I'm embodying that to them.
55:47
And then I want to constantly invite guys in some of, some of the ways you do it, like
55:53
trying to get a couple of my guys to come and try Jiu Jitsu, they're nervous about it.
55:57
They're like, I was there, like I'm going to get hurt.
55:58
I'm going to, I'm too old.
56:00
I mean, I'm already, man, I wish I would if I was, if I wish I would have started it early
56:03
on or I've got two guys right now, they're just like, man, I love the idea.
56:08
And I'm like, well, you know what's right on the other side of this threshold?
56:12
The actual thing.
56:14
It's there.
56:15
And I try to coach them like I was coached.
56:17
You just have to commit to getting your butt whipped for a couple of years.
56:21
And it's okay.
56:22
It's okay.
56:23
It will be the most humbling, frustrating, beautiful ride of your life because you'll
56:29
start to hit stuff and you'll be like, I guess it's what golfers, I guess when they hit that
56:34
one shot and a crummy round, they're like, it brings you back, but I tell you, you hit
56:39
a sweep on a higher belt and I was like, that's fuel for months for me.
56:45
And so embody and invite, embody and invite.
56:47
So I want to be the kind of man in diet and in decision making.
56:54
And then I want to invite others into that with me, come with me and see what this is
57:00
all about.
57:01
And let's, again, the language that you're speaking right now, the language of my table.
57:08
So it's not, I'd have to go back in time to go, how did we do this?
57:13
Because we'd just do this now.
57:16
We even kick around ideas of what would suck, but be awesome for us to try to do.
57:22
So for me, those guys who are closest to me, this is a normal conversation.
57:28
How can we put ourselves in a dis uncomfortable position that on the backside of it's going
57:32
to be freaking awesome?
57:34
So even like, even when I started elk hunting, the whole thing for me was like, I've heard
57:40
this sucks.
57:41
Yeah.
57:42
I've heard this sucks.
57:44
And it's awesome, but it sucks.
57:47
So I don't want to blind hunt, I don't want to, I want to hike up into the mountains, knock
57:52
down a six, 700 pound monster, and then figure out how to pack him out a couple of times
57:58
at altitude.
57:59
That's what I wanted.
58:00
I did not want, I didn't want an easy kill.
58:02
I didn't want, I want, and now I'm looking to get in a bow so I can make it even harder
58:07
and make it suck even more and make it even more awesome.
58:11
So the way we're talking here is like, this is the way we talk and Mason King actually
58:16
is one of the biggest drivers will he'll see something online and be like, this would
58:21
be awful.
58:22
Let's do it.
58:23
That's it.
58:24
That's the way we're trying to attack life together, embody and invite.
58:28
But now my table in particular, the fringe guys, not so much, but the guys on that table
58:33
that are just like, let's, this would be terrible.
58:36
We should do this.
58:37
We should look at going here or taking a few days and trying this and it's always stuff
58:43
that while you're doing it, you'll be like, I hate everybody.
58:46
I can't believe I said yes to this.
58:48
I knew I would hate this and then on the back end go, that might have been one of my favorite
58:52
days I've ever had in my life.
58:54
When you should be surrounded by dudes that are sending you that stuff, you can't be the
58:57
center point.
58:58
So I remember I saw somebody sent this to me on Instagram, but it was a one mile workout.
59:03
Okay.
59:04
So you're out of track.
59:05
The first mile are burpee broad jumps.
59:08
So basically you do a burpee broad jump.
59:11
You do that for a quarter mile and then you do a quarter mile of walking lunges, then a
59:15
quarter mile of air crawls, and then you run and I then take that and I send it to one
59:20
of my buddies and I'm like, we're doing this.
59:23
It wasn't, Hey, what do you think?
59:24
Hey, it's your schedule.
59:25
Do you think you're prepared for this?
59:27
It's like, this is something that we're going to do in the very, very near future.
59:30
You need to get your mind wrapped around it.
59:31
And at the moment, like I was injured, you know, torn out muscle, cartilage all busted
59:35
up.
59:36
And so it's like, okay, I wouldn't have been able to do that without re-entering myself,
59:38
but it's like, yeah, we're just going to do that at some point, but you need guys to
59:41
be able to send that to you.
59:42
But by the magic of modern technology, we're going to be able to cut out this little break,
59:46
but this Jocko go has gone completely through my system.
59:48
So I got to go.
59:49
You got to go.
59:50
I could go tinkle.
59:51
So I'll be right back and just like that, we're back, you know, maybe, maybe our editor
59:56
can do some sort of like really cool transition, but let's talk a little bit more jujitsu.
1:00:00
So we've been kind of circling the wagons on it.
1:00:02
So the first time you and I met was at Jesus and jujitsu down at double five down in the
1:00:08
Dallas area, that's your home gym, that's where we meet, you know, you spoke to the
1:00:12
group, we got to roll a little bit.
1:00:14
And then you were like, Hey, I'm on sabbatical this summer.
1:00:16
I want to come up and train with you.
1:00:18
Yeah.
1:00:19
And what it felt like when you said that was like, when you tell someone, Hey, you know
1:00:22
what?
1:00:23
We should grab lunch sometime.
1:00:24
And you're both.
1:00:25
Yeah.
1:00:26
And as soon as you leave, it's like, if you meant it, you would have pulled out your smart
1:00:29
phones.
1:00:30
And you know, you found a time on the calendar to actually do that.
1:00:32
So that's what I thought it was.
1:00:33
Then I see you at the act 29 conference and one of the first things you said to me is
1:00:37
like, Hey, I got my dates for sabbatical, like ready to go like I'm still ready to come
1:00:40
up there.
1:00:41
Like, let's find the dates.
1:00:42
And I was like, is he serious?
1:00:43
And then you just kept bringing it up.
1:00:44
I'm like, I guess he's serious.
1:00:46
So we figured it out.
1:00:47
Got on the calendar.
1:00:48
And so you've gotten some jujitsu training in these last few days.
1:00:51
So let's talk a little bit about that because, you know, you just got your blue belt.
1:00:54
So you still kind of feel like, you know, a five strike white belt.
1:00:57
That's the word everyone's going to know, but you're, you know, going to a different
1:01:02
gym is always weird.
1:01:03
Cause you don't know.
1:01:04
Are we going to have a bunch of wrestlers there?
1:01:05
Are these, is this the leg lock?
1:01:07
Oklahoma.
1:01:08
So we're going to have a lot of wrestlers.
1:01:09
Yeah.
1:01:10
So down in Texas, y'all don't have as much wrestling and, you know, I've popped in places
1:01:13
like in Utah, Louisiana, places without a lot of wrestling and it's just kind of laughable.
1:01:17
The amount of guard pulling that's happening.
1:01:18
And so, so let's just talk a little bit about your experience at the forge in Edmond, Oklahoma
1:01:23
and kind of what you've seen and we'll, you know, we'll kick off the jujitsu part of the
1:01:26
combo.
1:01:27
Yeah, man.
1:01:28
Just incredible guys.
1:01:29
Like, like everybody I met.
1:01:31
And this is where, you know, we were having that conversation the other night about the
1:01:34
kind of movements we're seeing among men.
1:01:38
And I'm trying to discern is, are we in the middle of, or at the beginning of kind of
1:01:44
a renewal movement among men, or am I just in these environments now where there, there's
1:01:51
a kind of masculinity that is, I think biblical and beautiful, is it because it like two and
1:01:58
a half years ago, I'm, I just read the books and the data and I'm like, Oh, men are soft
1:02:02
and weak and cowardly.
1:02:04
And then I get into jujitsu and I'm just surrounded by the guys who deeply love Jesus
1:02:09
and could murder you and won't, but they, they could.
1:02:17
And then, you know, as I've traveled and competed and got to know other guys, I'm like, man,
1:02:21
there's this whole massive culture of men who deeply love Jesus and are very capable
1:02:30
of violence.
1:02:33
And they're meek and they know the word of God and they, and you know, like JP Dental
1:02:38
or, you know, big Isaac at my gym or Ryan Kramer, these guys that have had these awakenings
1:02:43
with the Lord and it's just been really beautiful.
1:02:46
So, you know, coming up to the forge, I don't know what to expect, but here it is again,
1:02:52
just guys who love the Lord and are capable of violence or learning to be more capable
1:02:57
of violence. And it's a different, yeah, almost everybody pulls guard at double five.
1:03:04
That's because for me, is the wizard of butterfly, right? And he's gonna, he's gonna pull guard.
1:03:10
And so there's probably a handful of wrestlers at double five, but, but not like up here.
1:03:17
And so this is a bit of a different experience. And then, and then, you know, the kind of
1:03:23
training we're doing is always frustrating for me because I'm trying to find the physical
1:03:29
mechanism that makes the move make sense to my brain.
1:03:34
And I mean, you saw that ad nauseum yesterday where I'm growing in frustration because this
1:03:38
is just a really simple move. And I can't get my body to do it, right? I mean, just over
1:03:43
and I guess that's why they say drillers or killers, right? I just have to drill that
1:03:47
out of my system. But man, I think I'm going home beat up and happy. And that's why I came
1:03:55
up here.
1:03:56
That was the goal game. I came to do this as much of this. There as little as this as
1:04:01
you wanted to do. And then to, to train until I didn't want to train anymore. And that's
1:04:05
what happened in the middle of our role yesterday. I was like, I'm done, Kyle. I'm done. But
1:04:10
there were still a couple of minutes left on the clock. There was. And so what did I
1:04:13
make you do? Just keep making your luck. Okay, just work. Just try to work. And I was like,
1:04:18
no, I'm out of gas. I haven't had anything to eat today. We've been training for a couple
1:04:22
of hours. I am so I think my foot is broke. And you're like, great. Don't use that foot.
1:04:28
You don't need that stupid foot. You don't need a hook on that side. Right. Just keep
1:04:32
working your game. So it's awesome. What's funny about that? So we drilled for about
1:04:37
an hour and 15 minutes before class started. Right. And so for a lot of people, like that's
1:04:41
a long time to be doing Jiu Jitsu, because when we're doing drills, like and by we, he
1:04:45
means I was drilling with him as my partner. Right. Right. So it's like, but I'm not working
1:04:51
terribly hard because you're the one having to do the move. And again, people, people
1:04:55
just completely forget about this, even high level belts. When you're learning something
1:04:59
new and you're like, man, I'm in good shape. Why am I exhausted? It's because your brain
1:05:03
burns more calories than any other part of your body. Well, that's what was happening.
1:05:06
And you when you can't figure out the next move and when things are just going way too
1:05:10
fast. But that was one of my things when you and I were drilling is I was like, at slow
1:05:13
down, like slow down, because you would do it wrong, do it wrong. And then you would
1:05:18
just keep like going fast. I'm like, stop, think this, then this, then this. And then
1:05:22
if you did it wrong, just the fact that you slow down a little bit, you identified before
1:05:26
you were even done. I could feel that's off. Yeah. Foot's not in the right place, didn't
1:05:31
pull right. I jumped my head wasn't in the right position, those types of things. But
1:05:35
when we got to our round, so we do an hour and 15 minutes of drilling, then we do our
1:05:39
warm up for class. And then we do the lesson for class. Yeah. And then we do like, you
1:05:44
know, kind of more positional sparring. So it's like to go against Andy three or four
1:05:49
times. So that was fun. Oh, one. And then you got Austin, our black belt. Yeah, awesome.
1:05:54
Yeah. So awesome. Awesome. Awesome. More of our black belt. He's in his like early 20s.
1:05:58
He's in multiple Nephilim. Yeah. He's in just tremendous physical shape. But mentally, he's
1:06:04
got it because there are guys that are in tremendous physical shape that are blue belts
1:06:07
or purple belts. I just, I mean, they're okay, but it's the physical attributes that make
1:06:10
them good. Austin's biggest attribute isn't his height or his strength. It's his like
1:06:15
razor sharp technique, but he's also got that dog in them. And no one got to see the dog
1:06:19
yesterday, right? Like he was just, he was in pretty chill mode yesterday when he was
1:06:23
doing that. But in the middle of our round, because we do six minute rounds for the most
1:06:28
part at the forge. And we're probably three and a half, four minutes in. And you just,
1:06:33
I think I'm in mountain. You see, I'm finished, I'm finished. And so I had a few options there.
1:06:38
Yeah. I could just get off you and say, you know what, you're right. Let's just, let's
1:06:41
just be weak. And let's just like stay here and let's just do nothing. Wow. But instead,
1:06:46
but instead I was like, okay, there's still some benefit that can be gained from this
1:06:50
round. And so what I did is I took my effort from 80% down to 20%. Did you, that's a total
1:06:58
flex on me? That's not what that was not a flex. He was like, you were exhausted, destroyed.
1:07:03
No, it was just like a 32%. It was the first time I had rolled in two months because of
1:07:08
the exploded rib. And so I was like, I'm not, I'm not lighting it up today. We're not getting
1:07:12
80 CC rounds. And so it's like, Hey, I'm going to do 75, 80%, just move around a little bit.
1:07:17
But I downshift to first gear 20, 25%. Now I'm coaching because typically if people start
1:07:23
asking me questions in the middle rounds, I'll just be like, ask me after the round. Like,
1:07:27
I'm working. Yeah, this is this is training time. Like we had drilling time. Question time
1:07:32
is after, right? But at this moment, I downshift and it's like, Hey, where's where am I heavy?
1:07:39
Where am I heavy? Okay, where do you need to have this foot? Hey, do you have any underhooks?
1:07:43
Hey, or? And so we finished the round. You finished the last two minutes of the round.
1:07:47
I love that. And you still got to work your brain, even though your body was telling you
1:07:52
like this isn't happening anymore. And then, you know, and then you still get to have a
1:07:56
good day of training. You leave, you know, with some, some bumps and bruises, but non-injured.
1:08:01
Yeah. And you got pushed and expanded a little bit. Absolutely. And I mean, this, this does
1:08:06
have a corollary to all the stuff that we've been talking about. It's where it's like,
1:08:10
where are the guys that are pushing you a little bit beyond where you need to be? You
1:08:14
know, maybe you're just comfortable reading self help books that are, that are not challenging
1:08:18
at all that you can read in afternoon. And then a guy drops, you know, the 48 Laws of
1:08:23
Power by Robert Green in front of you and says, that's what we're digging into next.
1:08:26
Yeah. Or Gates of Fire, which is not the easiest book to get through by press field. And you
1:08:30
know, just having those guys, that's again, why I see like jujitsu as a default mechanism
1:08:35
and a, a divider for a lot of people because you get filtered out pretty quickly in that
1:08:41
you got guys that come and train, they get one stripe on their white belt and they're
1:08:43
just like, man, I can just, I can't see the end of this rainbow or the guys get their
1:08:48
blue belt. And then they think, Oh, I'm good. I'll never get beat up in a fight. And then
1:08:51
they get blue, blue belt blues. And then they never show back up. But I will say it's,
1:08:55
it's just so impressive for you to at this later stage of your athletic life, like you're
1:09:02
not 17, right? You're about to turn 50 here in a couple of weeks. And you're like, let's
1:09:07
do murder yoga. Like, I know we talked about that when we were at your house, but I'm still
1:09:12
blown away by it because you're constantly getting your ego checked and you're constantly
1:09:18
just having to deal with this just horrible thing. Every time you train. Yeah, every time,
1:09:22
like, like not there hasn't been, and then for me, because I'm 65 to 15, um, for me will
1:09:29
never feed me a white belt. Or should he ever? He like, it's always just like, Matt Isaac,
1:09:34
Matt Blake, Matt, he just puts me with giant killers. Yeah. And then, but the, you know,
1:09:40
here's what, if somebody's hearing me say that and go, Oh, that's why I wouldn't want
1:09:43
to train the, the thing that I love most about the Jiu Jitsu community is 99% of the higher
1:09:51
belts are going to let a guy like me work. Right. If it's a six minute round, they're
1:09:55
going to let me work for four minutes and they're going to take that last two minutes and remind
1:09:58
me, Hey, I was letting you work and they're not going to try to hurt you. No, ever. In
1:10:02
fact, you're far more in danger with a white belt. When I am a higher belt, maybe some
1:10:08
blues could be dangerous, but, um, yeah, the, I, I've rolled now with enough white belts
1:10:14
to know what panic feels like under my grips and then, and then even to be going, Oh man,
1:10:22
is this guy shifted? Is he do I just need to play on this guy? Cause he is like, I can
1:10:27
feel him getting angry. Right. And I never, I never got angry because I got coached so
1:10:32
well going in. Like you're going to get smashed. It's not personal. It's, you know, and then
1:10:38
the higher belts, they, they do such a good job of letting me work or just going, you
1:10:42
have no pressure. Watch, bam. And just throwing me off. Keep, keep, keep pressure. Yeah. So
1:10:48
the other cool thing about it is Jiu Jitsu is one of the, I can't remember the guy's name.
1:10:53
I need to submit it to memory, but there was a guy that was talking about Jiu Jitsu. I didn't
1:10:57
recognize him. So I don't, I don't really know his deal, but he was talking like he
1:11:00
was an upper bill. And he goes, Jiu Jitsu is one of those things that you can't just
1:11:03
athlete out of. And what he meant by that was, is everybody knows a guy that no matter what
1:11:08
they tried, they were good at first time they pick up a ping pong paddle. All of a sudden
1:11:12
they're beating you first time they pick up a disc, you know, they're, they're beating
1:11:15
you in disc golf or every time that you, you know, they pick up a skateboard and all his
1:11:19
example was like, and then 30 minutes later, they're kick flipping. And it's like you can't,
1:11:23
you can't roll down the sidewalk. And this guy's just never picked it up and he's kick
1:11:26
flipping. Everybody knows that can't do that with your Jitsu. I've never seen anybody do
1:11:30
it. You do not walk into a gym and then accidentally triangle somebody. You don't accidentally hit
1:11:35
a blast up. Well, I guess blast double, you can just kind of be a goon and do that, but
1:11:38
you don't accidentally hit an armbar. You don't accidentally hit a komura or an Americana or
1:11:42
anything. None of those things happen by accident. Yeah. You have to come back to the mat. So
1:11:47
there are times when I've been injured, which is right now where I'm still going to class,
1:11:50
I'm still dressing out, but I'm not doing anything. So I'm trying to work out my brain, but just
1:11:55
working out your brain doesn't translate directly to the mat until you do it. Same thing that
1:12:01
if you're watching these videos, there's great videos like, you know, for grapplers and things
1:12:05
like that. And you can watch, watch these things from guys like Gordon Ryan or John Donahur or
1:12:09
Andre Galvow or whatever. But you can't just watch videos and get better at Jitsu either.
1:12:15
You have to take what you're learning in your brain to the mat because the difference between
1:12:21
me and Austin Morris in terms of our physicality, in terms of our the amount we can deadlift
1:12:27
or amount we can squat or the number of pullups we can do, we're in the same-ish category.
1:12:32
He can outpace me and all those, but we're close enough physically to where there's not
1:12:37
just this huge disparity there. The disparity is in time on the mat and technique. And so
1:12:44
that's the thing with Jitsu is you can't get better without getting on the mat. And
1:12:48
if you get on the mat, you're just going to get beat because I'm seven years into Jitsu.
1:12:53
I've got four stripes of my purple belt, which means I'm, you know, I'm legitimately capable
1:12:58
of protecting protecting myself. And I'm working my way up to Brown. And then eventually as
1:13:03
long as the body still works, we'll work my way on to black. But the thing is, is there
1:13:08
are classes and there are weeks that I'll go by where just so happens to be the people
1:13:13
that I'm rolling with. You know, I've got a good game against their game or I'm just
1:13:17
more experienced. And then I run into the class where I look around. It's only hammers.
1:13:23
And then by the end of class, I'm like, did I score today? I don't know that I scored
1:13:27
and I'm a takedown guy. So I can at least score to before, you know, you sub me, but
1:13:32
you're always going to run into those classes. And that's why guys, if you travel, take your
1:13:37
no-gee stuff and take your gear with you, pop in somewhere and your game that works in
1:13:42
your little gym in Wherever'sville, Ohio, you go to somewhere else and it's like, oh, no.
1:13:47
And then but that's good for you because it helps kind of take you back to the gym, take
1:13:51
you back to your technique and just kind of reels you back in.
1:13:54
Yeah, I think traveling with the ghee has become one of my favorite things to do. One,
1:14:02
it prepares me to fight strangers, which is really good for competition. Yeah, right.
1:14:08
So like I'm not going to know anything about this guy's game when we lock up. So that kind
1:14:13
of mimics it. And then I will get the points of emphasis in that gym. So whatever they
1:14:20
emphasize in that gym, usually tied to whoever the black belt is that owns the gym, is going
1:14:26
to be prevalent in their game. So they're going to want to get, they've got a certain
1:14:32
progression inside control or they've got and you'll begin to feel that if you get enough
1:14:36
rounds in, but the so I, I took my, I took my ghee to Brazil with yeah, original double
1:14:43
five original double five is in, it's in Rio. And so brought my ghee had through four mega
1:14:51
reached out to tattoo, let him know I was coming. And then yeah, my son came with me. So read
1:14:58
and I brought our geese and Felipe, who was our interpreter started training about a year
1:15:03
ago. He's a white belt. This did his first competition, came in second. So he's like,
1:15:07
I'm coming. I was like, thank God. Cause I know tattoo knows a little English, but I
1:15:12
know we're going to, I'm going to need some help. And so the three of us went and dropped
1:15:16
in and it was gosh, it was so Brazilian. I mean, it started about it just started whenever
1:15:22
we decided to start and it didn't end until no one wanted to roll. So you know, class is
1:15:28
here's like, okay, it's, you know, it's time seven 30 35 were over. You know, let's, let's
1:15:34
buy. Get out. Yeah. We've got another class at home or we need that's right. But there
1:15:40
they just kept tattoo chest kept going. Everybody good. Anybody, anybody, anybody want to go?
1:15:44
Anyone will go? Of course they all wanted the big white dumb American. He would say
1:15:49
something we were super available tattoo was like, would you, do you want to do you have
1:15:52
another role in you? And I was like, they were, they were all much smaller than me. Yeah.
1:15:58
And so much better than me. I mean, everything was so tight. I mean, I just remember rolling
1:16:05
with this guy named Anderson, he's a black belt competitor. He loves deeply loves Jesus.
1:16:12
And I'm never rolled with anyone who stuff was so tight. I mean, there was no space for
1:16:17
anything. Now it helped him that he's like five, four. Yeah, that's a lot easier to kind
1:16:23
of, you know, stay calm. You are like, I'm not, I'm not near hopeless trying to get space
1:16:29
out with these long arms and legs, but loved it. And then I've loved being up here. And
1:16:35
then I'm in, you know, the beach next week with my family already found two spots and
1:16:39
have a ghee. I know I'm going to whitefish later this summer already found the spot already
1:16:44
reached out, wanted to know when they trained in the ghee. And yeah, what's funny to me
1:16:50
is the difference, like how many places are more no ghee now than ghee? Because I'm from
1:16:57
a gym that the ghee is where everybody is. And the no gees were some some guys play around.
1:17:03
Right. You're from a gym where the no gee is huge. Right. And it's kind of split down
1:17:07
the middle. Yeah. There are guys because just because how my schedule has worked out, I've
1:17:10
been basically doing ghee training almost exclusively for the last couple of years. And
1:17:15
it's like, gosh, I got to work a no ghee class into my schedule. Because you're right, you
1:17:20
know, for Amiga loves guard loves butterfly. We don't really do a lot of butterfly. We don't
1:17:25
have a lot of guys hitting butterfly sweeps. But then you go into a competition. And all
1:17:29
of a sudden you've got a guy with two butterfly hooks and you're like, Oh, crap, I don't know
1:17:32
that I've seen this position. But same thing. I've rolled enough with the guys at my school.
1:17:37
They know which takedowns I like in from which positions. Absolutely. And so I love to shoot
1:17:42
an outside single because it if I don't hit it, then I'm not in guillotine trouble. So
1:17:47
I'm swinging to the outside. But I only do it to one side. Yeah. That's the side I'm
1:17:51
most comfortable and most athletic and fastest doing. So they have to be heavy on their left
1:17:56
leg. Their left leg has to be their lead leg and they have to be heavy on it. So a lot
1:18:00
of these guys will not they will not put their left leg in front of you. But they do also
1:18:03
know that when they're right leg lead, I love to shoot my double leg. Yeah. And so then
1:18:07
they're they're moving around a lot to where like, okay, now he's thinking double. Now
1:18:10
he's thinking that. But in competition, nobody has that no freaking clue. And so my outside
1:18:16
single I've hit in every single match that I've shot it because they're just heavy on
1:18:21
their left leg and it's like, all right, well, that's my left leg now. Guess what? But you
1:18:25
do go to other schools that this is a leg lock school. Yeah. And you're like, well, I
1:18:29
don't really do leg locks. But so you did a private with my main instructor, which is
1:18:33
Steve Jones. And you know, he's his style. You would think he weighs 250 pounds. Yeah.
1:18:40
Because he's very slow and methodical. And there's nothing you need to do to stop him.
1:18:44
He's like lava that is slowly moving over your body. I call him creeping death. He likes
1:18:47
Metallica. We both like Metallica. So I call him creeping death. And so but that's what
1:18:51
it's like rolling with him. And then you roll with other people that are super high flyer
1:18:54
athletic, they're doing crap that they saw on Instagram and all that. And then you have
1:18:57
other people that just kind of have a lazy style or whatever. So you're learning different
1:19:00
styles. But here's the thing about Steve is he had been in black belt for a couple years
1:19:04
and then he just goes, man, I just don't feel like I know anything because when he was
1:19:08
coming up, leg locks weren't really a thing. Yeah. The Donna heard desk wad hadn't, you
1:19:12
know, had their revolution in jujitsu. And we didn't have our Gordon Ryan's and Craig
1:19:15
Jones's and all those types of guys. And so I saw me the other day that perfectly encapsulated
1:19:20
what Steve was going through and gave me a good reminder. So it had a white belt, a blue
1:19:25
belt, a purple belt, a brown belt and a black belt, the actual belts. And then it had words
1:19:29
on top of it. White belt was like, I literally know nothing. Blue belt is like, I kind of
1:19:34
know some stuff. Purple belt is I'm getting there. I'm on the path. Brown belt was I'm
1:19:39
almost there. I'm almost to where I can understand this. And then black, well, black belt said,
1:19:44
I literally know nothing. And it's like, wait, that doesn't make any sense until you. So
1:19:51
shout out to John Millen with origin. So I guess you can't work at origin unless you're
1:19:55
a black belt in jujitsu. That's kind of thing. Well, John just got his black belt here recently.
1:19:59
Okay. He sent me a picture when I was down to double five in Texas of him with four
1:20:04
me at origin camp. Well, no, this was this was way before this is before I think origin
1:20:10
was even a thing because John was a white belt. Oh, wow. And he had trained with four
1:20:14
me for me is a black belt. But I'm like, wait a minute, this picture was taken like, I don't
1:20:19
know, 12, 13 years ago. And so four me has been a black belt for longer than my man has
1:20:25
been training. Oh, no question. But they're both black belts. Yeah. And so here you are
1:20:29
white belts are all kind of right belts that are your size, your age are all kind of generally
1:20:34
in the same degree, black and blue, purple, brown, but then you get to black balance,
1:20:38
like, Oh, no, there are dudes that have been black belts longer than I've been training.
1:20:43
That's why Gordon Ryan disrupted the jujitsu world so much because he had been training
1:20:46
for like seven years and he was beating black belts that had been black belts for 20 years.
1:20:50
And so that that's the other thing about jujitsu, Matt, to where it's you never arrive. And
1:20:56
how many places in your life can you get to where you never arrive? The Bible sitting
1:21:01
right there by you, you never arrive at a full level of understanding. Regardless of how
1:21:06
much he pretends like it, John MacArthur has not figured out all the questions there are
1:21:09
to know about what's happening here in scripture. Be careful there. Oh, whoops, whoops. Yeah,
1:21:13
I know he's got some commentaries, but let's just pretend as if he doesn't like have everything
1:21:17
figured out the same thing. Like if you if you get into reading literature or if you get
1:21:23
into something like jujitsu, it is endless. Like you don't ever want to find the bottom
1:21:27
of it. And that's a great thing as you felt as well. I think so. That's my one of my favorite
1:21:31
things about it is the mental challenge of it. And then how many different ways a scenario
1:21:38
can go that I need to be prepared for multiple directions. So the complexity in this is going
1:21:44
to sound maybe it'll make sense to people. The complexity clears my mind because it's
1:21:50
the only place. And I think I said this the last time we were having this conversation,
1:21:53
but it's the only place I go where the only thing I'm thinking about is the thing that's
1:22:01
all you can concentrate on there. There's no and then that that like scrubs the brain
1:22:05
or something. It's like the number of times, you know, I've been working through a text
1:22:11
and I'm trying to get it, you know, put it together in a way that I think is gonna like
1:22:16
land well with the people of the village church or maybe I'm preaching at some event
1:22:22
and I just feel stuck. It's not clicking. It's not. I mean, I got the exegesis, but putting
1:22:27
the thing together is like I'm struggling with it and then go, you know, let me set
1:22:32
it down. Let me go train and then go and train and then come back home and then in the shower
1:22:39
making sure I don't get staff and vision. It just downloads. And it was, it's happened
1:22:49
enough now in that order that either as I'm driving home in the truck or once I'm showering
1:22:55
when I get home, these complex things that I'm working on, whether it be a leadership
1:22:59
challenge or exegetical application, just kind of clicks in my head afterwards, like,
1:23:06
you know, what I needed is to let my brain kind of turn off by turning on in a different
1:23:13
direction. Right. And so that, that for me, I guess it's, I've got friends who love to
1:23:18
run. I hate to run. I'm never gonna run. Part of why I'm doing jujitsu is I can turn
1:23:21
a fan. I don't want to run. I'm not. You want to go run after this? You want to go
1:23:23
for a run? You can't. You already broke my toe. So that's okay. The, so I think it does
1:23:30
for me. What running does for like Nick Crawford, who's going to go bust out five miles a day,
1:23:37
every day, just so he can, you know, think and be a piece with the world. I just need
1:23:42
to put on some murder pajamas. That's right. Fold people up in the clothes are wearing
1:23:46
or even be folded up in the clothes that I'm wearing. That's, I mean,
1:23:50
it's a rebel get used to it. But so here's the other thing about that, Matt, is you're
1:23:55
absolutely right. If you're, but also if you're stressed out, if you're going through the
1:23:59
valley of shadow of death, if you've got problems with your kids, if you go there and like maybe
1:24:04
if you're really high level black belt wrong with a white belt, you can, you can literally
1:24:07
think about what you're having for dinner. You can think about what you missed out on
1:24:10
work, you know, whatever. But for the most part, it's like you're thinking about your
1:24:14
game plan and their reactions and all that kind of stuff. But also I've had this happen
1:24:20
after class quite a bit. So you're exhausted. And there are days where I'll lift in the morning
1:24:26
and then do jujitsu in the evening. And so like, I mean, the number of calories burned
1:24:29
in a day and then in between that is doing an interview or prepping a podcast and all
1:24:33
that. So I'm just like, basically, it's a blur of burning calories all day long. I'll
1:24:38
get into the truck. I'll take a deep breath and I'll just be like, man, I'm so thankful
1:24:43
for my wife. Yeah, like, godly, like she has to deal with this. And I look like this. And
1:24:49
this is just who I am. And you know, she's here. Or I'll be like, man, it's so cool seeing
1:24:56
my voice grow up. Or gosh, man, I'm glad my dad is like my biggest fan. No matter what
1:25:00
I do, he's my biggest fan. And it's like our frenetic energy that we were talking about
1:25:05
that pace. Like, we typically don't have a category. Oh, I won't speak for you. I'll
1:25:09
speak for me. I don't have a category for thankfulness, really. Yeah. So Joby has helped
1:25:13
me with that. He has like a, a thankfulness list. And so every year, yeah, gratitude, gratitude
1:25:19
list on his, on his phone. And he has to have one thing for every year. He's been alive.
1:25:24
And so I started to do that. And so sometimes when I kind of forget to be grateful, I'll
1:25:27
go back to my list and be like, Oh, yeah, like I am super thankful for these things.
1:25:31
They're not all created equal because I have like my sons. And then I also have UFC nights,
1:25:36
like I'm, I'm very grateful for both things, but just to a different degree. But Matt,
1:25:39
that's been super helpful for me just. And I've said this before, I feel like with guys,
1:25:46
let me go back even one more step. So I've restarted three times here. Originally,
1:25:50
undaunted life was going to be an excursion ministry. Okay. Meaning, and I did this with
1:25:54
a crew of guys, a bunch of which who you met over the last several days. And I took them
1:25:59
into the woods and I basically beat them up for three days. And I was like, the concept,
1:26:04
and I still believe the concept is a lot of guys, you can't get into their mental state
1:26:10
or their psyche until you break them down a little bit and exhaust physically. Same is
1:26:14
true. Am I boring you with with my thing? Like we've been lining it up the last few days.
1:26:20
Same thing on the mental side. You can't get to their spiritual psyche until they're a
1:26:24
little bit exhausted mentally. And so that was what the weekend was, is this is about
1:26:28
spiritual mental and physical resilience. We're going to make it the hardest weekend possible.
1:26:31
And we got more rain in that two day period that we did for the rest of the year. So that
1:26:35
made it even. Yeah. So there was like standing water and all of our tents and things like
1:26:38
that. And so I truly do feel that way about men's ministry and the approach, but for a
1:26:44
lot of guys and for me individually, I can't get to those places of thankfulness sometimes
1:26:50
until I'm so exhausted that there's no other emotion to be felt. Or it's that pause between
1:26:55
turning the truck on and the podcast hasn't started yet. We're have that little bit of
1:27:00
stasis and quiet. And I mean, we just don't look for that quiet nearly as often a maternity
1:27:05
either. Yeah, no, you're absolutely right. And that was, you know, going all the way back
1:27:09
to the beginning, I think one of the themes of my sabbatical is how can I tap into that
1:27:16
stasis a bit more often while while keeping those parts of how God built me for my joy
1:27:25
in his glory. Because I love, I love going hard. I mean, I don't. Yeah. So trying to find
1:27:32
that moment and cultivate it and what benefit that might bring to every aspect of my life,
1:27:40
including Judo. I mean, you were talking about, you know, that it was happening while we were
1:27:44
drilling. I was just like, frenetically inside. Let's get it right. Let's get it right. Let's
1:27:47
get it right. And you're just like, Hey, breathe, bro. Just breathe for a second.
1:27:51
Who saw? And so that's where I'm when I'm that what you're describing is what I'm trying
1:27:57
to develop, which is going to be hard for me. It will be a challenge for me because it's
1:28:03
not my natural bent or man, I will have to remind myself. I will have to create rhythms.
1:28:09
I will have to all to just breathe for a second. So, okay, so all cards on the table. One of
1:28:19
my biggest struggles and really ultimately what I get from a lot of guys is prayer life.
1:28:24
They don't really they don't really get it. They don't really know how to do it. It's
1:28:28
not really talked about really, like when you listen to certain pastors, like, you know,
1:28:32
they talk about like, Hey, this is something you should do, but there's not really like
1:28:35
a almost like a step by step program. And so a lot of guys, Matt actually will not even
1:28:41
mention it to anybody because they think that there's something broken in them because they
1:28:44
don't really pray. But for me, because of my frenetic drive, because I want to accomplish
1:28:50
because I want to do things, I walk around with my AirPods in my pocket, because if I'm
1:28:56
getting my old change and I'm going to be sitting for 30 minutes, while I listen to
1:28:58
everything at two times speed. So that's an hour's worth of content that I can get in.
1:29:02
I listen to podcasts while I'm working out. I listen to podcasts while I'm walking the
1:29:05
dog while I'm doing the dishes while I'm doing the kids dinner while they are watching cartoons
1:29:09
or whatever those those things are. And so I have crowded out basically all the time to
1:29:15
pray, the time to pray, the time to just sit and listen, the time to just exist. I'll be
1:29:21
sitting in a blind during whitetail season. And I got podcasts going and I've got books
1:29:25
going and all that. And so it's not until I go out to encounter with with Joby out with
1:29:30
the guys out with church 1122 to where it's like, no, like here's your devotional material
1:29:34
for this morning while you're waiting for something to come out. That's, you know, good
1:29:37
enough to shoot. And that is a lot of guys like they're not listening to podcasts or audiobooks
1:29:43
because they're trying to prepare an interview or prepare to sound smart on a show. They're
1:29:47
just doing it because it's interesting to them. Or they're listening to music because
1:29:50
it's interesting or they've got Netflix on because it's interesting or the ballgame
1:29:53
or whatever. And it's one of the worst things about me because I'll say there was one guy
1:29:58
who specifically said something that I thought was very interesting. He trains out with the
1:30:03
field craft guys out in Utah. And he was like, man, for forever, I felt like God talked to
1:30:08
me all the time. And for the last six months, I feel like I haven't heard him at all. I said,
1:30:15
tell me about the last six months. Tell me about what you've been doing. What he went
1:30:19
on to describe is got a different job at work, required him to work a little bit more. It's
1:30:23
more difficult mentally, had some struggles at home was having some some parenting issues
1:30:27
and we're just doing all these different things. And then so he's describing the big kind of
1:30:31
core things. But I'm like, what do you do in your, you know, in your off time? So he does
1:30:35
jujitsu. And so, you know, hard to pray when you're in the middle of a round as a white
1:30:39
belt. And then he's just describing all these things. And I, and then I just asked him a
1:30:43
question. I was like, is it possible God is still talking to you? But you've created so
1:30:48
much noise that you can't hear him. Yeah. Maybe he's talking in the same level of voice.
1:30:53
And it just hasn't landed with you yet. And he just goes, Oh my gosh, I think you're right.
1:30:59
And I had known this guy for two minutes. Yeah. And I just asked him a question that I didn't
1:31:04
know the answer to. I was like, is this a possibility? And he immediately was like, Oh my gosh,
1:31:08
I know exactly what I need to do. But you know, for us, and I know it's got to be frustrating
1:31:12
for you as a pastor to see so clearly what people are doing wrong and just to also equally see
1:31:17
their unwillingness to make any changes whatsoever. Yeah. I mean, I think that's the call. I mean,
1:31:23
that's I think what you just described is ministry that you're shepherding people towards the truth
1:31:29
and the application of truth. Because Jesus in the Great Commission basically says, hey,
1:31:37
teach them to observe all that I commanded. Yeah, it doesn't say teach them all that I commanded.
1:31:43
He said, teach them to observe it. So what does it look like to obey Jesus is always the question,
1:31:49
not not what does Jesus teach? But what does it look like to obey the teachings of Jesus? That's the
1:31:56
and that's progressive sanctification. So you've got, like in my case, thousands of people sitting out
1:32:02
there who are in various stages of maturity, all like moving in this direction of observing the
1:32:09
commands of Jesus in their lives and all the complexities of those backstories and present
1:32:15
realities and whether there's addiction and abuse in the background or whether they grew up in church,
1:32:22
you know, all the days of their life and don't cuss and don't drink and don't do any of the bad
1:32:29
things that you're not supposed to do. And they're going to each have various challenges
1:32:36
in their sanctification. And so how do you, this is what I love about the Holy Spirit.
1:32:41
I can say, I mean, there's a lot of love about the Holy Spirit, but like I can say one thing,
1:32:49
that's what I'm doing in a sermon. I mean, I've got a, this is what I want them to leave with,
1:32:54
right? Right. It's just a basic, that's where I start. What's this text saying? This text is saying
1:33:00
this. I want the men and women who hear me this weekend to leave with this applied. And that's
1:33:09
just kind of how my brain works on I'm writing this sermon. So there's a single thing I'm trying
1:33:13
to get across, not three things. There's a thing. But the Holy Spirit will take that and say 4,000
1:33:19
things. I mean, he'll, he'll speak to the addict. He'll speak to the cold marriage. He'll speak to
1:33:28
the guy in financial distress. He will. And so the spirit's always doing the heavy lifting
1:33:35
in, in pastoring and preaching about like the word does the work. I believe that the word,
1:33:41
I need to be faithful to the word. The spirit's got to do what the spirit says he does or none
1:33:47
of this is going to work. And so that, that's had to be my approach because I don't know how you,
1:33:52
like even as I think about Paul's command in Thessalonians where he says, warn those who are idle,
1:34:01
encourage the timid, something with the weak and be patient with all men. I'm like, how,
1:34:09
how am I supposed to do that in a single sermon? Well, I can't. All those boxes, right? I can't.
1:34:15
And so, but the spirit can. And so I've got to trust one that he who began the good work will be
1:34:23
faithful, completed at the coming of the Lord Jesus. So we've got lifelong work happening here.
1:34:30
Nobody's going to get there. And then I know that in different seasons, different people are
1:34:36
going to be enduring different things. There's very, the valley and the desert are very real
1:34:42
places. And, and sometimes people put themselves there and sometimes the Lord led people there,
1:34:48
but it's a real thing. And then the mountaintops, a very real thing. There are seasons of my life.
1:34:53
I was just like, man, I hope this, I know this season will end. I wish it wouldn't.
1:34:57
Yeah. And I'm trying to build tents up there to hang out. That's right. And I'm in one right now.
1:35:01
I mean, I'm in a sweet season right now, two years ago, rough year, you know, the five years before
1:35:06
that brutal. And so I'm like in this little season of peace right now. And I'm just like,
1:35:12
what's going to happen? Thank you for this. And we had asked, you know, Lauren and I had
1:35:16
specifically asked, we were just so weary. We need a season of peace, Lord, you know, what we can
1:35:22
handle, what we can't, we feel like we can't handle much more than where you've got us.
1:35:28
And he's been faithful to just been with the kids, with our marriage, with the church,
1:35:33
with other things. It's just been a good season of peace. I'm so grateful for it.
1:35:37
Well, when we were talking in your office, you know, we talked about how I kind of
1:35:41
noticed a couple of years ago, and you were mailing it in a little bit or three years ago,
1:35:44
four years ago, and how that had all changed. So guys, you can go back and listen to our previous
1:35:48
discussion about that. But the thing I'm curious about for you is everyone has to fight stagnation
1:35:54
and becoming stale, and, you know, just kind of doing the same thing. But it's funny when I've
1:35:59
mentioned, because people are like, why is why is Chandler up here? I was like, well, his for the
1:36:04
20 year anniversary of him being at the village church, they gave him, you know, a couple months
1:36:09
off, you know, to do whatever the heck he wanted to do. And he wanted to train jujitsu as much as
1:36:13
possible, right? Yeah. And it immediately, like, it was interesting because I never really thought
1:36:18
about it, but I had multiple guys be like, so do churches like kind of do that? Is that like an
1:36:22
annual thing that they give people sabbatical? I'm like, interestingly enough, I happen to know,
1:36:26
because I've, you know, talking with Tom Rayner and some of the things that he knows about burnout,
1:36:30
a lot of churches don't do sabbaticals ever at all. Yeah. And so you might get a long weekend,
1:36:36
you might get a weekend or two off a year where you don't have to prepare a sermon and preach,
1:36:40
and you kind of let's, you know, you let the youth guy do the sermon this week. Memorial day.
1:36:44
Yeah, you kind of do all this. Yeah, January, the other one's January something like the last
1:36:50
Sunday in January is always or the first Sunday in January. It's that one that falls around
1:36:55
New Year's after Christmas. There's like, that's you in between one national preaching day.
1:36:59
Yeah, we're no one really cares what's being said from the pulpit. And so the, I say that
1:37:03
tongue and cheek, obviously, for those of you that aren't used to my humor by now, but for you,
1:37:07
obviously you've gone through several seasons. You've had tremendous highs and lows as parts of
1:37:12
your ministry. You know, some of those have been elucidated in the news headlines and things like
1:37:16
that. But for you, how do you continue to, I'll say you collectively as like TBC,
1:37:24
how do you continue to support yourself? How does TBC continue to support you? For those that are
1:37:30
in ministry listening to this, of which I know there are a lot, how can the elders support the
1:37:35
pastor? How can the pastor, you know, support the sheep in a way to where it leads to this long-term
1:37:39
success? Because honestly, you don't really see these super long, tenured pastors anymore. There's
1:37:45
just like an absolute deluge of guys that used to be in ministry. They're now selling insurance
1:37:50
or driving for UPS and nothing wrong with those. Those are good livings that you can make,
1:37:54
but they just, they ran right into the teeth of burnout and they just got chewed up and spit out.
1:37:59
Yeah. So I think each place is going to be unique. We offer sabbatical
1:38:04
to our guys and gals every five years. Once you've been at the church for a period of time,
1:38:14
every five years you get, so like we have a group that this is their fifth year. So I'm not the
1:38:20
only one on sabbatical this summer. There are two other people that will head into sabbatical.
1:38:24
There's isn't as long as mine. The thing that made the 20-year special was the length of the sabbatical.
1:38:31
I mean, I was due a sabbatical anyway, but they basically added a month and a half to it
1:38:38
as part of my 20-year. And so I think things like sabbatical are important. I think maybe what's
1:38:45
most important, and it's not always the church who's at fault for this. Sometimes it's the guy
1:38:52
that's at fault for this. I am exceptionally gifted at three things. I am exceptionally,
1:39:01
I am better than most without trying. And then man, I'm just average to below average at almost
1:39:10
everything else. It's just the truth. If Lauren were here, she'd be like, "That's not true." But
1:39:15
then if we just turned to her and started asking follow-up questions, okay, tell me about this.
1:39:20
Well, I mean, if he was doing steak or salmon on the grill, he's amazing.
1:39:29
Not his ribs are-- Yeah, you're not making chicken marsala.
1:39:32
That's right. Yeah, that's right. Or I mean, you could just ask her, "Ah, yeah."
1:39:35
I mean, but she would be quick about, "No, baby, you're not--"
1:39:39
Yeah, you're this bad. It's not just three. It's not just three, babe. And so where I've had one,
1:39:46
the slow patient courage to act was to find high-capacity leaders and take the power that was given to
1:39:58
me when I was hired and break it up and hand it to other guys who could-- what I can do with
1:40:07
preaching and spiritual leadership and things like that, they can do with organization. They can just
1:40:13
do it without. It's just so easy to them. They just see it. It's not like I could do some of the
1:40:22
stuff they do and work my butt off, and it's going to be a B minus. Sure. They won't hardly try,
1:40:27
and it's an A plus. But then they do trust, so it's exceptional. And so I knew I need to find guys
1:40:36
who can let me grow in my gifts and use my gifts, leverage them for the kingdom in kind of a maximum
1:40:46
way, which means I'm going to have to find guys I trust who are going to be with me on this journey
1:40:53
and have all the authority they need to do what I need them to do. And so Josh Patterson was the
1:40:59
first one of those where I approached him and I said, "I think you should be the lead pastor of
1:41:04
this church, and I should be the teaching pastor of this church." And Josh said, "No way. No way I'm
1:41:11
doing that." And he said, "Without your voice in certain rooms, nothing would ever get done. Plus,
1:41:19
I think you've got a pronounced leadership gift. So I know you're just happiest when you're preaching,
1:41:24
but I think if you pulled out of directional spiritual leadership here, you would wake up
1:41:31
and you'd hate the church. You'd wake up and you'd be really [inaudible] at all of us when we were just
1:41:39
kind of doing what you told us to do, but you weren't involved anymore in how those decisions were made
1:41:43
and how they were being executed." And so I think it's a terrible idea. It's like, "Okay, well, there we
1:41:49
go." And then... What was his role at the time when you had this conversation? Exact pastor.
1:41:53
Okay. Gotcha. He was the exact pastor. And he had been the college singles pastor before that when
1:41:58
90% of the church was college and singles. So he had a pretty... He basically was running discipleship
1:42:03
for a long time. And then close to the time, I got diagnosed with cancer. We were reorging
1:42:13
and I was pressing again to not be king. And so we were curious at whether or not we could have
1:42:25
two lead pastors. So not make me teaching pastor and Josh lead pastor, but could we both be lead
1:42:32
pastors with different emphasis with intentional overlap and then really it would be Jesus is the
1:42:42
head, the elders, the lead pastors, and then the exact team. Is that something we could do? And
1:42:49
as we started wrestling through that, we figured, "You know what would be awesome is if we brought
1:42:54
Brian Miller on who was just a... He was chairman of the elder board at the time. He's buying and
1:42:58
selling hospitals, but a brilliant organizational mind who I'd been walking with for 10 years,
1:43:03
so had a lot of trust in. And we thought, "Why don't we just make it three lead pastors and give
1:43:10
Brian operations and just let him run it." And so we were in that conversation when I had a seizure
1:43:19
on Thanksgiving morning in 2009. So nothing was set, nothing had been brought to the elders,
1:43:23
nothing was... And I think me going down and nobody knowing when I was coming back at the time
1:43:30
was really utilized by the Lord to kind of move us into this model.
1:43:37
Because if ever you get a living, breathing, "Oh no, what happens if he's gone?" We were in it.
1:43:43
And so... It's not theoretical anymore. No, it's not theoretically. And so Brian became,
1:43:51
you know, here's who Brian was, Brian became my right hand in that season.
1:43:56
So he and Lauren were the only two people on earth who knew what my prognosis was,
1:44:04
but before I did, like the doc told Lauren, and then Lauren told Brian, brought Brian in,
1:44:13
and then didn't tell anyone else because she didn't think it was be fair to me.
1:44:17
So they were carrying the weight of knowing, "Oh man, he's probably got two to three years
1:44:22
to live before I have any idea of what they found in my head or what next steps were or what."
1:44:31
And so Brian's that guy for us. You know, he was the one that helped, like more so than my family,
1:44:37
more so than Lauren's family, he was making sure things were okay for us. And I mean,
1:44:43
I'll love him forever for that. How he supported my wife in that season, how he made sure my kids
1:44:47
were okay in that season. And he just, "I'll love him forever for that. Oh him forever for that."
1:44:54
And so we, you know, I start getting good news, not bad news, and we revisit this plan,
1:45:04
and it makes more sense to all of us that we should move into this. And so the three LP model
1:45:08
was born at the Village Church. Okay, so a couple of things immediately come to mind. One is the
1:45:13
office episode where they were made co-managers. So yeah, Michael Scott is a co-manager with
1:45:21
Ham and Jim. So Jim was co-manager at the time. And how that was kind of ridiculous and wasn't
1:45:26
going to work. And you know, I guess the pitch was is, okay, Jim's going to handle the day-to-day,
1:45:31
and Michael Scott somehow is going to handle like the higher level, like, you know,
1:45:34
a strategic of everything. So that comes to mind. The other thing that comes to mind is, well,
1:45:39
TBC is a pretty sizable church. You know, you don't exactly have budgetary issues or concerns.
1:45:45
And so the thing that I think about is, okay, what about the ministries that aren't very big?
1:45:51
What about the congregations that are a couple hundred people as opposed to a couple thousand
1:45:54
people? And you're the lead pastor, but there is no nowhere in the budget to hire an executive
1:46:01
pastor or a pastor to handle this or someone who's the organizer person or someone who loves
1:46:07
counseling. Because like some people are just like, yeah, I'm a great speaker, but you don't
1:46:11
want me in marriage counseling kind of a situation. So what do the churches do to where it's like,
1:46:15
okay, the roles aren't differentiated enough to where we're not going to be stepping on each
1:46:20
other's toes or look, we just don't have the capacity to add anybody.
1:46:24
Yeah. So the way churches historically have handled the resource question is usually through
1:46:29
committees. And so like, even when I came on at the village, which was Highland Village for
1:46:36
Spice Church at the time, I came through a personnel committee. I didn't come through an elderboard
1:46:41
or a deacon boy. There was a personnel committee made up of subject matter experts from the church
1:46:47
who had experience and personnel issues that are, that are who I come through. And the search team
1:46:54
or the search committee was who found me and brought me to the personnel committee when they
1:46:58
wanted to offer me the job. And then there was, there was the finance committee and there was the,
1:47:04
so the way churches. They said a lot of volunteers. Normally, how they dare lay people with subject
1:47:08
matter expertise who are looking to serve their church with their subject matter expertise.
1:47:13
And so that, I think that's a way, that's the historic way churches have, have, have solved
1:47:20
this issue when they're below the 300 mark or at the 300 mark. Because usually by the time you
1:47:25
have three to 500, you've got a, it's kind of a sweet spot. You're going to make a couple hires
1:47:30
at that moment and you should be hiring to your weakness. I would argue, I would say always hire
1:47:36
to your weakness. So if you're a bad organizational leader, you need to hire a good organizational
1:47:40
leader. And if you're, like your, your weaknesses, maybe in some other way, I'm hiring my weaknesses.
1:47:47
That's, that's what I was doing constantly in the early days. I wanted guys who could teach
1:47:51
and guys who were flanking my weaknesses as I understood them at the time. And, and it's worked.
1:48:01
I mean, it's worked. So that, that's the way most guys do it. Another way would be to create,
1:48:07
if you're a pastor, this would be similar, but it was what I tried to do when I first got theirs.
1:48:13
I created what I just called the lions den. And it were, it was a group of men that I handpicked
1:48:19
to meet with me Wednesday night after prayer meeting. And they didn't have any real authority
1:48:24
or any, but they were all super gifted. And I just wanted to bounce things off of them
1:48:30
and recruit their help. So what I was asking them for is their, their skills brought to bear on this
1:48:36
very fast growing congregation. When I was offering them is the inner circle. What I can give you,
1:48:45
I don't have money, but you've got my ear. I can't offer you money, but I'm going to tell
1:48:50
you where I'm trying to go and, and, and recruit your help to get there. So, so that was, that was
1:48:57
a method I chose early on when we were broke broke. And, but those are the two ways I think
1:49:03
churches historically that are smaller have utilized the committee approach and leveraged
1:49:08
committees to get those things done that maybe, maybe the pastor, it's a little too much to do it
1:49:14
all for that guy. I think part of it as well is as a pastor at a certain point,
1:49:19
you've got to kind of let go of some of the things because I know in my personality, like,
1:49:25
my better is better than you're better. And so if I let you try and do this, it's just not going
1:49:29
to be as good as I'm going to do it. So I'm just going to do it. Right. So that's, that's wrong.
1:49:33
Yeah, because then you'll start resenting that guy. Right. But you're like, you should be doing
1:49:37
that mean, like, well, I'm not letting him. Right. And so like, you kind of have to open your hands
1:49:42
at some point, but let the main things be the main things and do the things that only you are
1:49:47
going to have to do because, you know, in Hebrews talks about how basically pastors are going to
1:49:51
have to give an account someday for how they shepherded their flock. That's a terrifying thought.
1:49:55
Yeah. If you're working in pastoral ministry, because guess what? I'm not going to have to give
1:49:58
an account for how I've, you know, shepherded podcast listeners. Yeah. Right. And so because
1:50:02
it's not the same thing. I haven't been given that role. Like you may see me as, you know, pastor,
1:50:06
but I'm at best pastor light. You know what I mean? Like that's, that's essentially what I'm
1:50:10
doing. It's like I'm going more for the profit side for speaking, you know, actual truth to power
1:50:15
for being able to equipment and to be able to push back darkness. So as we wind up close here,
1:50:19
because I can hear both of our tummies rumbling, I think it's about time for chicken wings.
1:50:23
By the time this comes out, the overcomers will have been out for a couple of months,
1:50:28
a few months, something like that. And so obviously everybody is writing books about revelation for
1:50:33
large Christian publishers. Like that's a super common thing that happens. But when we talk the
1:50:37
first time, it wasn't out yet. Yeah. And so you have all this anticipation. You, you write the book,
1:50:43
you spend time, you're editing, you're kind of keeping it all together. You're also doing the
1:50:47
ministry and you wrote every jot and tittle of that book that there's not some, you know, guy,
1:50:51
you know, typing away in some, some corner that's, you know, this nameless faceless person. We can
1:50:55
still try to find that person for you. But you, you give so much effort to this thing. And then
1:51:01
it's out there. Yeah. And so it's out there now. You've had a couple of months of people that have
1:51:05
read it, reviewed it, loved it, hated it somewhere in between. And so how have you felt like the
1:51:12
overcomers has landed with the marketplace? Are you pleased with where it is right now? Like,
1:51:17
how do you feel about that whole time? We were talking about this in the truck.
1:51:20
I don't, because this is my first book with like a major publisher, right? That, you know, I've done
1:51:25
like life way, cross way. I've done David C. Cook, good book company. Those are all great
1:51:30
publishing houses, but they're really small compared to our engine of Harper columns. So like,
1:51:36
I've never done pre sales for a book before, but we pre sales this one. And I just don't know how
1:51:43
to measure anything right now with them. I know it's already in its first month sold more than my
1:51:51
last book. Yeah. And it's been out for six years. So there's, I've been super pleased with how it's
1:51:58
landing. I know the book frustrates the dispensationalist. And so they're starting to show up more and
1:52:03
more and more with some outrage and character assassination of me. But it's fine. That's awesome.
1:52:08
Yeah, you know, I'm not, not happy if somebody's not frustrated with me. But, but man, I've,
1:52:14
I've loved it. I love the process. I've already started outlining another book and
1:52:18
it's the writing that makes me tired, not the dreaming of it. You just had a moment where the
1:52:24
writing of it, just thinking about the writing of it was making you tired. But I always like doing
1:52:28
this to people that have released either like a lot of books or a lot of albums or something like
1:52:32
that. And you know, your buddies in chain and chain, I put them to this. I was like, all right,
1:52:35
you get to leave one album for humanity, right? So of all the albums you've written, what is the
1:52:39
one album that you leave for humanity? That humanity gets to, and everything else is deleted in your
1:52:43
catalog. So for you, you're, this is book nine, right? Eight or nine? Okay. At this moment right
1:52:49
now, explicit gospel. Okay, why? That's the one that I would put, right? It's all the hundred
1:52:54
books list. I think, and that was your first book. It's my first book. I think the thing that beats
1:53:00
in my soul is the message of the explicit gospel. Like if you ask me to come preach for you and you
1:53:07
don't give me a topic, you're getting an explicit gospel. Okay. If you get me in a conversation,
1:53:13
and I've still got air and ground and air as categories I use, the only what I wish I didn't put
1:53:22
in the book that maybe I'll go back to cross my god, I'd love to update that and put it back out.
1:53:28
Is man, I left out the resurrection, man. And how do I leave out the resurrection talking about
1:53:32
the gospel? Yeah. Like it's not the gospel if he isn't raised and all the implications of
1:53:37
resurrection and ascension. So I'd love to maybe go back and look at it and tweak it and make it
1:53:41
a little bit stronger in some areas that looking back 15 years now, I would do a little bit different.
1:53:47
But man, I loved that writing that book was so fun. Okay. So the interesting thing about that
1:53:52
is I forget whatever it said, but chamber Nard, you know, I asked him like if you could leave
1:53:57
one song and ever goes, I already know what Shane's going to say. And it's like, it's whatever the
1:54:01
latest one he wrote is, right? That's the that's the song that's most important to him and all those
1:54:05
types of things. So it's interesting that you it's the one you come out of the gate with. Because
1:54:09
that's always the concern is your first album is the banger. And then you just release a bunch of
1:54:15
albums that do okay. But when you're at a concert, no one wants to hear the new stuff. They want to
1:54:20
hear stuff off the first album. And so have you been chasing the explicit gospel this
1:54:26
entire time? New books, but it's just been it's here's what's interesting. I don't want to write
1:54:30
unless I have something to say. I'm not writing books to write books. I'm writing books when the
1:54:34
Lord put something in me that I'm like, I want to get this out to live a long time. And I want it
1:54:39
to go as far as it can go. But so I would say explicit gospel, but I'm probably more proud of
1:54:46
the overcomers than the explicit gospel. In what way? Well, I wrote explicit gospel with Jared Wilson.
1:54:52
So that was me working with someone to write a book, where the overcomers, that was just me.
1:54:59
Yeah. I mean, it's just me and the Lord and the scriptures and the commentaries and the Russell
1:55:03
and the word process and the word. Yeah, that's right. And word that because you have to write,
1:55:09
at least with the publisher, I'm like, you write more not Google Docs. Okay. So which I do everything
1:55:14
in Google Docs. I mean, every I had to put word on my computer to write this, but I was like,
1:55:20
Andrea, can you put word on my computer? Is it words still a thing? Can we put that on this
1:55:25
computer, please? Can't get through our security system to put a right. Yeah. So will you put word
1:55:31
on my computer, please? So, so yeah, I think I'm super proud of the overcomers because it was all
1:55:38
me. There wasn't any and I wrote it differently. I put like, I put a little card on my monitor that
1:55:44
just said, like you're having a cup of coffee, because I didn't want to shift back into my preaching
1:55:50
voice. I wanted, I wanted it to be like you and we're sitting around, we're talking about these
1:55:56
things and I'm leaning in on, and I said early in the book, I wish we could do that because I might
1:56:01
be softer in some areas or harder than others. But since we're not having a cup of coffee,
1:56:07
it's a book, I'm just going to say it to you. And so I think the book reads that way.
1:56:12
It does. That we're hanging out and I'm trying to help you have some frickin' courage
1:56:17
for this moment that we're in. So is that the voice that you're going to be carrying into
1:56:22
all books or was it just the overcomers? That's a great question, Kyle. I don't know if I've
1:56:26
thought about it that way. I think what I'm curious about is the readability of the book
1:56:35
across broad evangelical, the broad evangelical spectrum, because some of the critiques of explicit
1:56:44
gospel is that it was really hard for a lot of normal evangelicals to understand what the
1:56:50
world I was talking about, which for a guy like me, I'm just like, wait, what? How? Yeah.
1:56:55
Wait, what? But I forget, I've been preaching a kind of way to a church for 23 years. So there's
1:57:03
a whole vernacular that I have and then the network that I help lead is a theologically
1:57:10
aligned, driven network. So theological terms and ideas are just part of what I know and do.
1:57:20
I didn't realize that more broadly, evangelical speaking, they don't understand those terms.
1:57:28
And I am taking for granted that they know things that they… And so I liken it to… I was reading
1:57:34
a sociological book and I found myself getting frustrated with it because it would use a term
1:57:41
that had a whole school of thought behind it, but I didn't understand the term.
1:57:45
And so I could make two choices. One, I'm going to read this book for the next decade,
1:57:51
or I just need to read and hope that the context… Try to get the high points, yeah.
1:57:55
Over time that I pick up on the context and then don't think you're smart about this word
1:58:00
because it's probably much more that you don't get around it. And so I'm trying to write where
1:58:06
I'm not doing that to evangelicals, but I'm not coming all the way down to where there's crayons
1:58:14
involved. And so I don't know how I'm going to judge whether or not we hit that sweet spot,
1:58:20
but I'm trying to figure it out. Who's buying the book? All that stuff's being tracked and
1:58:25
we'll learn from there. Well, and part of the thing is, is when you read a book by Carl Truman,
1:58:30
you don't want to hear him in his casual voice. No, I don't. I will say when I'm
1:58:36
about a quarter of the way into a Carl Truman book, it's like, I wish he explained this using crayons.
1:58:40
I wish we could just sit down. Yeah, it's so true. And because I even said it last time and
1:58:43
people were kind of giving me crap, but when I was talking to Carl Truman about his latest book
1:58:46
about creeds and confessions, I was like, every time I read your book, it's like every page is
1:58:50
thicker than a Snickers. And it's just like, because it's it's a 200 page book, that's going to take me
1:58:54
a month and a half to read, just because it's like, okay, you have to go. So like, you can't read
1:58:59
Shakespeare fast, you can't read, you know, a lot of these things fast. And so for me,
1:59:03
I find books that are more casual are easier to skim, which depending upon where I'm at in life,
1:59:09
it's like, okay, I can kind of get a sense. So there are books like so Gary Thomas writes a lot
1:59:13
of relationship books. Well, I don't care about anecdotes at all. I care about when I'm reading
1:59:18
a nonfiction book, I don't care about I care about the narrative arc of the thesis of what
1:59:24
you're trying to get across to the audience. You are very much an outlier in that reality.
1:59:28
Right. Whereas everyone else is focused on the anecdote. They'll put the book down if they're
1:59:31
not there. Right. And so for me, like, and the thing is, you always get better. I had someone
1:59:36
mentioned to me the other day, and they meant it as a compliment by the time I was like kind of
1:59:39
embarrassed by it. But they were like, Oh, yeah, when I listened to your old podcast, you're way
1:59:43
better now. And I was like, I thought I was good than to kill it. And so but he's like, no, no,
1:59:48
like, because I think he can kind of since I was like, I don't know how to take that. But he was
1:59:51
like, no, no, no, you're just your questions are crisper and you're you get to the point like where
1:59:56
you want to go better. And it seems like you're you're kind of bringing people along the interview
2:00:00
even more effectively than you did. But part of it is my prep has gotten better too. Because I
2:00:05
prepare the same amount of time wise early on for early episodes as I do today, same amount of effort,
2:00:11
you know, with a large audience versus basically an unexistent audience. But whenever I'm looking
2:00:15
at a book, and it's like, okay, the interviews in two weeks, I've got to have my questions ready
2:00:20
to go. It's like, I can't go on to every rabbit trail and dig down into everything in the know,
2:00:26
check it with the cross references in the back and the bibliocra. I can't do that. I've got to get
2:00:30
the point of the book, because my duty is to God first and then to my audience. And so it's like,
2:00:35
okay, if you're not going to read the book by Carl Truman, you still need to get a nugget out
2:00:40
of this interview that you can take and apply to your life and to your family and your business or
2:00:43
something like that. And so when you have a book with a lot of anecdotes in it, I can get the point
2:00:48
without the anecdote. But there are chapters where I'm like, I have no idea what the author's
2:00:53
trying to communicate to me here. Hopefully these anecdotes help me. And then so so I kind of approach
2:00:58
at different places. But part of it is, you know what you're going to, if you go to see us Lewis
2:01:02
and you're like, I'm going to do a casual read, you can't casually read screw tape letters. No,
2:01:05
it just doesn't happen. So can you give us any hints what the next book is going to be about or
2:01:10
is that going to violate your contract? No, no, no, just me and you talking, no one else is listening.
2:01:14
What I hope it's about, I want to write a grimy book on sanctification. All right.
2:01:19
That sanctification isn't up and to the right. It's more circular and repetitive,
2:01:26
which means we have to, for whatever reason, we have to learn the same lessons over and over and
2:01:33
over again in different seasons and different times. And that it's not like the spiritual life,
2:01:40
the long journey home. That's what I hope to call it is their epic peaks and painful valleys.
2:01:49
And that means you're on the path. You know, and I find this the more modern idea of just like
2:01:59
always happy. Everything going your way. You know, the blessed life.
2:02:06
Your best life now as a I left that part. I was. You're welcome. You're welcome. I threw
2:02:12
it up for you. Sounds good. Yeah. I want to write honestly about
2:02:20
how hard it can be to follow Jesus sometimes and that that hard to follow Jesus in this season
2:02:30
is more normal than people think it is and that Jesus is
2:02:36
more present in those moments than you could imagine. And so my ideas be to just kind of
2:02:44
walk through the beatitudes because the beatitudes Jesus didn't come to find these people. He came
2:02:50
to make them. So the whole blessed are used. Nobody's that. Nobody's that. Right. But Christ
2:02:58
is coming in and going, this is what I'm going to make you. And it's going to take our whole life.
2:03:03
And it's going to take some significant spiritual surgery. And some of that surgery is going to be
2:03:08
really painful. And some of that surgery, you won't even know I did. But I'm going to get you there.
2:03:15
I swore by my own name that I would keep you. That's Hebrews. I began the good work. You didn't
2:03:20
begin the good work. I mean, I know you think, you know, for the Calvinist listening, we know
2:03:24
that he began the good work. That's right. God check that box. Not some of you. You didn't do anything.
2:03:29
That's right. And he'll be faithful to complete it unto the day of the Lord. So when's it completed?
2:03:34
At the return of Christ or your death, which means that when you're 70, you're still being
2:03:41
sanctified. When you're 98, you're still being sanctified until you're dead or Christ returns.
2:03:50
We are people in process. And I think to see ourselves that way and God help us see other people
2:03:56
that way can create some really beautiful things. And so that I'm kind of got that itch right now.
2:04:01
That's what I'm kind of chomping at the bit to dive into. And so timeline for a second release
2:04:07
with Harper Collins. Well, it's, I don't think we've got a hard date on it yet. I have to get this
2:04:12
approved. And then I'll start writing. And then the, you know, it's a year-long process to write,
2:04:17
edit and roll out a book. So probably two years from now, a year and a half from now.
2:04:21
Well, and the good thing about just recently on the fortune table, we went through Psalm 23,
2:04:26
probably the most popular of all the Psalms. And isn't it so interesting that you can read Psalm
2:04:31
23, a hundred times, you can, you know, see the artwork on the church wall with, you know,
2:04:38
a deer that doesn't look exhausted, which is not the point of Psalm 23. And you don't understand
2:04:45
how beautiful a Psalm is until you yourself are walking through the valley of shadow of death,
2:04:49
or until someone you love is walking through the valley of shadow of death. And you miss parts of
2:04:54
that Psalm, like the part where God doesn't leave you there. And also God's going to allow you to go
2:04:59
through that God's job is not to protect you from anything with you will be with you. That's right,
2:05:04
where not in, you know, the land of rainbows and unicorns and pixie dust, but when you're in the
2:05:11
muck, when you're in the valley of shadow of death. So inherent is that in that is the guarantee that
2:05:16
if you live long enough, you will be in the valley. And it probably won't be one time and it probably
2:05:21
won't be a short time. But he's there with you. That's the promise. And so it's like, when if you
2:05:26
sing better as one day in your courts and a thousand elsewhere with that one day in the court,
2:05:30
you might be in the valley of shadow of death. But guess what? It is better that he is there
2:05:33
with you. So now I'm so glad that you were able to come up and spend some time over the last few
2:05:38
days. But I'm pretty certain it is chicken wing o'clock at this point. So should we cut this off?
2:05:42
Let's do it.
2:05:42
All right, brother, until next time.
2:05:43
Yeah.
2:05:44
Thank you for listening to this podcast. Wherever you're listening to this, please subscribe,
2:05:48
rate and leave us a positive five star review. If you want me to come speak live at your event
2:05:52
or on your podcast, you shoot me an email to info@undonton.life. That's i-n-f-o @undonton.life.
2:05:58
Follow us on Instagram and like us on Facebook and check out our website for
2:06:01
everything else, including how to donate to keep more content like this coming your way.
2:06:04
Just go to www.undonton.life. And as always, we want to thank the band Holy Name for allowing
2:06:09
us to use their music for our content. The music on this podcast is our song Perpetua,
2:06:13
which is off their self-titled debut album on Face Down Records. The links are in the description.
2:06:18
I'm your host, Kyle Thompson. Remember, keep pushing back darkness, keep forging spiritual,
2:06:24
mental and physical resilience. Keep seeking the lion of Judah.
2:06:48
you