ROBBY GALLATY | How to Hear God's Voice (Ep. 975)

Let's be honest, most men drift. We wake up, we scroll, we work, and then we just rinse and repeat. And we know we're softer than we should be. That's why I built the 31-day resilience reset. This is not a devotional, it is a field manual for men ready to stop drifting and start fighting back. So, for 31 days, you'll train your spirit, mind, and body with scripture, prayer, and daily challenges that forge real resilience. Go to www.undaunted.life/31days to download this resource for free. That's undaunted.life/31days. Start your reset today. >> [music] >> This is Undaunted Life, a man's podcast. I'm your host, Kyle Thompson. Let's get into it. Robbie Gallaty, welcome to the podcast for the first time {slash} back again because we're recording this before you're on for the first time, which is in the future. So, I don't know if we're in the future in the past. Can you help me? >> Yeah, man. It feel It feels like the present, but I'm I'm here. I'm glad to be here, man. >> Okay, yeah, we are in the present. For those of you that don't know what in the world I just said, uh here in a couple of weeks, we're going to be together at Saturated. He's preaching the first night of Saturated, so y'all will have heard his uh podcast with me and Joby thereafter. But also, we were supposed to get this thing started early, but I think I I said all of my smart guy things before I started hitting record. So, does that like your normal thing? You you get the most out of somebody whenever the lights are the dimmest? Is that what we were doing? >> Yeah, you know, it's funny is why does it always work like that? We do that in our podcast, too. We're like, we got to save it for the podcast. No, it's good to be with you, bro. We we connected what? A month ago, less than a month ago, a couple weeks ago and hung out and spent some time together and hit it off right away and just an honor to be on the podcast, man. Thanks for having me. >> Yeah, it was really nice because uh you know, when I met you, I was like, "Hey, Robbie, it's nice to meet you." And uh for any of you that are not watching this on YouTube, Robbie is uh uh roughly the size of the Nephilim and I'm a normal person size. And so uh that was fun. But you like, you know, you we we really hit it off cuz we had a lot of common ground and uh it was it was really awesome getting to speak that night uh at the same event because I kicked us off, you finished, but then uh Al Robertson spoke in the middle. And actually want to kind of go back to that night. I wasn't intending to ask you about this, but I always want to know where I'm at in the order. Right? Because if you're So, think about I'm a baseball guy. If I'm the lead-off guy, I need to get on base, right? Like, I need the guys behind me. I need the the guy hitting two hole to move me over, get me to second or third, I need the guy hitting three hole to bring me home, right? And so I called you beforehand and it just kind of wanted to get an idea of where you were going. And I was like, "Okay, I don't need to do this big, you know, explicit gospel call at the beginning. I just really need to set these guys up, really talk about godly community, masculine, manly community, what that looks like." Al came in and gave part of his testimony. He showed some video from the movie that he did about uh him and Lisa's life and marriage. And then you you brought it home by, you know, not only sharing big pieces of your testimony testimony, but giving a very explicit gospel call. And so what was your view of a of a night like that because, I mean, when you preach all the time, it just can kind of seem like old hat. But when you go to a a big men's conference with a thousand dudes in there hanging on your every word, it's got to feel a little different. >> Yeah, I thought it was good I I thought it was honestly I'm honestly saying this cuz you're here, it was one of the best put together lineups because all of us had different stories, but we we uh we supported each other and we accentuated each other in the points. And I thought your intro just kind of set the tone like, "Man, this isn't your typical men's conference. We're not here to make you feel good. We're here to not not just call you out. We're calling you up to be men." And uh I thought that resonated. And then Al, obviously a different style, uh which is showing his life story. And Al could literally just preach that and people would resonate. And so at the end man, I felt like Al just served it up for me and when I gave the response time just had men in there responding and seeking the Lord. I just thought it was all around a great event. I really did. >> Yeah, and shout out to the Dry Bones conference guys because the thing that I hate the most Robbie and you and I were kind of talking about this off air because there are a lot of men's ministries quote-unquote whatever the heck that means that their entire goal is just getting people in a room. Maybe they set a number goal and they're like we got to get this many guys in a room or we got to get this many guys to to buy tickets or to sign up for this thing or that thing. But what almost none of these people do is worry about the follow-up. Okay, so you got me to walk into the room. You got me to participate by not leaving in the middle of the speakers speaking. But then what? You're like, well, we're just waiting until next year for the next conference and Dry Bones is not like that. Like they they made sure that guys were the guys that responded to the gospel call that they were immediately on their discipleship journey. We got Bibles into people's hands. We got people that are like, you know, going to be learning how to study the Bible. They're going to go through classes. And really I feel like that's what's honestly lacking in the men's ministry space and again I hate even calling it that because it's so charged. No one knows what it means. Typically people mean men's programming. But even you at your church and then we're going to go all the way back to the beginning and then we'll we'll sneak back up to where we are now. Y'all have a tremendous focus on men's ministry and I know that because you introduced me to the guy at your church who runs men's ministry and it's not his 14th title cuz I've ran into those guys where they are in charge of the parking lot ministry, the coffee ministry. They teach middle school Sunday school. Also, yeah, men's ministry which means they put on Beast Feast once a year. You know what I mean? >> Well, and that's the challenge with most churches. We I I literally was texting Will. He connected. He loved meeting with you and we're praying about partnering together for something obviously in the future because there's a void that today in the church. You know, it it seems like the statistics would drive us to realize that men are the linchpin to revival. And if you're listening and you're not ministering to men, you're already at a loss because I think the statistic, and I don't know it offhand, but I think if the mom takes the children to church and the mom's the spiritual leader absent of the father, I think it's somewhere like in the single digits, 7 8% of the time the kids go the whole family goes. If the dad is the spiritual leader and takes the family to church, it's something like 90% You probably know this better than me, but but you would think that alone is that act I mean that alone like we're going to put all our eggs in the basket. Now, full confession, we had uh we had a an average men's ministry my time here at Long Hollow. I had so many plates I was spinning and trying to figure out the church when I got here and just the the enormity of ministry in general, but uh I I just didn't give any attention to men's ministry. COVID happened and it kind of reset the church. For us COVID was the greatest thing that ever happened. We'll talk about the move of God that happened in a moment hopefully but uh COVID reset our church. And what we got to do is you see here's what COVID did. Let's let's just be honest if you're listening. COVID gave your church and your ministry, if you have a nonprofit, a national test on disciple making. Everybody took the test whether you knew it or not. And by and large, the American church flunked the test. And here's what I mean. We assumed prior to COVID that our people knew how to disciple their family. We assumed our people knew how to read the Bible with their children. We assumed that dads knew how to pray and mom knew how to fast. We knew we we assumed they knew how to walk out their faith daily. And and and it happened early on. Like remember the first week, we're sitting on the couch cuz I'm sitting on the couch watching me cuz it was total lockdown and I'm sitting there with my family and we're taking selfies watching the so that hey, come on kids, get in. We're taking selfies and then we put it online #pancakes and preaching, right? I mean, it was awesome. Everybody's like, "It was awesome." And it was novel, right? It was a novelty. Week two, you're still kind of there, tangentially connected. By week four, Kyle, you remember this, it's like threatening like get in here and watch the service now. Let's go. >> Yeah. >> Dad, we don't want to watch you. I don't want to watch me either, but you know what? We're right [laughter] here because it happened in my home. And then by end of one month and and into month two, nobody's watching the service and connected at all. And what we realized is people did not know, watch this, how to take responsibility and ownership of their faith, particularly men, but by and large most Christians. And so we were able to reset the ministry and put Will Moore as the leader of our men's ministry. Shout out to Will at Longhollow, who's done an amazing job. So we started and this is the Lord. I don't like to boast the numbers cuz I don't want people to think that's the only success goal, but numbers are important cuz it's people and lives. But watch this, and you know about this, but uh a month ago, we decided, less than a month ago, we decided to do a conference in Nashville just to see if we could gather a bunch of men in an arena praying and seeking and worshiping God, hearing challenging messages. We asked Joby Martin, our dear friend, your friend >> Who's that? >> [clears throat] >> No one knows him. He's ugly. >> He was He was okay. He was He's got a strong beard though. >> Yeah, yeah, it's not bad. >> Strong beard, yeah, yeah. But Joby shows up, Jonathan McReynolds shows up, JP, myself, uh Drew Parker, who uh left the secular music world, country music, and became a you know, so bro, we had 4,400 men in the arena at Belmont Arena downtown, and it was unbelievable. And it showed me, like we're talking offline, there's a void. Like men are dying. But here's the thing, as we said, it's not just getting a bunch of dudes in a room to sing songs and hear sermons. That's a mountaintop experience. Always I tell people, it's not what you Everybody gets excited when they get saved. Everybody jumps high when they're saved. My question is, how straight do you walk when you fall down? When you come back to earth. And that's what we've been passionate about. We have a ministry uh started years ago called Replicate, where we realized that baptism is not the finish line, it's the starting line of your Christian life. So, we were passionate uh or we were excited because after the conference, guys, this is crazy. We had 2,250 men through a QR code sign up and say, "I want to take the next step." >> That's right. Let's go. >> That's the win. It's not the 44, you put 10,000 put 100,000 people in an arena. But what do you do after you leave? So, anyway, as you can tell, I'm excited about it, passionate about it, excited to partner with you in the future about it. >> Well, a couple of quick things. The only reason Joby has that beard is because he's got a really terrible jawline, and so he's kind of got the jawline of a small child. So, like he has to kind of cover that up with something, poor guy. But but the one thing that I say that's important is so many men's ministries focus on the mountaintop, right? Some of them literally, because all of their logos, all of their decorations, it's the mountaintop thing. And part of the other thing that's annoying to me is everyone that writes a men's ministry book, for the most part, which by the way, here's my open call to the internet. If your publicist wants to pitch me your, you know, God did this to me and I'm a man and this is the man God wanted you to be. I don't want to read it because you're trying to be John Eldredge, you just suck at it. There's only one John Eldredge for a reason, but everyone's just trying to do the mountaintop thing, right? Or everyone's like, "Hey, let's bring a pull-up bar to the event thing." And I'm like, "I'm all for pull-ups and all the things, but it's like the event should be a celebration thing. Like, hey, look at what we've done the last year together. Look at the Look at the stuff we've gone through together with our foxhole. Look at the Look how far we are on our sanctification journey. It should be more of a celebration of what the Lord has done in your life as a man, as opposed to the reason you show up to begin with. And dude, it's great. If you see JP, if you see Joby, if you see you, if I'm a part of it, like whatever the event is, great. That's awesome. If you can get music from Drew Parker, that's spectacular. But at the end of the day, what are you doing the rest of the days of the year? That's the problem, and that's the difference between a goal and a standard, which you and I talked about offline, is like as a man, as the spiritual head of your household, as the spiritual thermostat of your household, not the spiritual thermometer, what are you doing to set the temperature? Because it the temperature is going to be what the temperature is, but you have a direct impact on it, but most men just don't really see it that way. And so, I'm I'm glad that y'all are going to be fighting in the space and kind of moving into that. I do want to yank the wheel to the left and go all the way back to the beginning, because I don't know what we're going to talk about when you're in Jacksonville, so some of this might be a repeat. But for you, to be honest, whenever I saw you speak in cuz I had I'd listened to your different sermons and you know, I'd heard seen clips of you before, I was not aware of your testimony. I I was just not aware of the the depths of depravity and darkness that you were involved in in your early life, because you [clears throat] say, you know, November November 12, 20 or 2002, that's when you got saved. The road to get there, though, was rather bumpy. And so, I want you to I just kind of give our audience, because again, when you talk to a pastor, it's just like, "Oh, you know, I grew up, you know, just reading the Bible in my off time, and you know, like skipping down the road and never did anything wrong." But this is kind of a raw audience that's used to some pretty dark things, so I just wanted to give you a little bit of space to talk about that before we move into when you became a professional Christian. >> Yeah. Well, it's a long story. I'll try to keep it short, cuz I know there's a lot we want to get together. It's always it seems like the last few times we're together, that's how it happens, which is awesome, but um I I was raised Roman Catholic, just give you the short version. I was raised Roman Catholic, which meant that I was very religious growing up. I didn't have a relationship with the Lord. Raised in New Orleans, half Italian, um and so, very Roman Catholic, uh to church on Sunday. We weren't like Christers, you know, Christmas Easter Catholics. We went every single week. And if we missed Sunday, went to confession on Saturday. And uh I knew who the Lord was. And so, I had this kind of this little bit of a base, but I had no relationship with him. God was like this overbearing, domineering dictator out to get me. And And what I've realized is, Kyle, that's not even just Catholics. That's like Southern Baptists and Presbyterians and Methodists. A A lot of people had that faulty view of God. That's what I thought God was. I'm out of line, he's going to chastise me. And so, he was this demanding father I could never appease. Uh I played basketball in college or in high school uh 6'6". Wasn't as big as I am now, but 6'6". I got a scholarship to play at UNC Greensboro. I was going to North Carolina. And I was dating a girl in high school. She was going to go to LSU. And um she said, "You're not going to go that far away." I literally opened the phone book. I know I'm dating myself for the listeners, but you know, numbers and names and schools. And And I found William Carey College in Hattiesburg, Mississippi. I'd never even heard of the college. NAIA school. And uh I called the coach up. I said, "Let me try out for the team." He hesitantly let me try out. And uh by God's grace, he gave me a full ride. I I left a D1 scholarship to play at NAIA. Little did I know what God was doing. I was down to nothing. I mean, I had no desire for the Lord. I always say, "But God was up to something." Because he sends this Roman Catholic lost alcoholic start drinking at 15 uh part of the culture of laissez-faire, Le Bon Temps Rouler in New Orleans uh to a Southern Baptist College. A Roman Catholic at a Southern Baptist College. And you know what that means. I'm the target of every evangelism class on campus. Everybody's trying to convert me. There was a game uh I didn't know about, convert the Catholic. I was the deer in the headlights. But uh my second year, a man named Jeremy Brown did something novel, I tell people, radical. >> [snorts] >> He became my friend. And he earned the right to share the gospel. We both love basketball, we both play guitar, we both love music, and he earned the right to share the gospel. Now, I would repeat a prayer back then as my in my second year of college, but I but I wasn't born again. And the reason I know I wasn't born again is because my life never changed. And some of you listening may say, "Man, I said a prayer years ago." And you may be clinging to that prayer for your eternal security. And I would say, "Here's how you question it." As you said, the thermostat Well, the thermometer of your life heart. Here's what Jesus said, "You can tell a tree by the fruit it bears." And basically, what that means is the way you live. And I lived like a Christian, so so to speak, for 2 weeks, but I went back to the old lifestyle. And so, I came up with this line that I use, and I think it's helpful to determine where you are. The fruit of your life, the way you live, reveals the the root of your heart. The fruit of our life reveals the root of our heart. So, if you want to determine if you're a Christian, I can't see you, but look at the way you live. And so, and works can be deceiving, but you get it. I I I knew I wasn't a believer. Got out of college, I was training Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu. I wanted to be a professional fighter. At that time, I got up to about 290, 295, 6'6. And this is not glamorous UFC. This is where you and I connect. I was doing Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu. My teacher was Hon learned from Hoist and Hoyler in Brazil, in New Orleans. And but back then it wasn't sexy. Nobody was making money. But I was at a club one night or or a restaurant bar, and a guy comes up to me. He's like, "Hey, man, would you want to be my bouncer, head bouncer downtown New Orleans in the middle of Mardi Gras?" And you know, I'm training Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu. I'm like, "Wait a minute, you're going to pay me to fight? I'm in." Like, this is the opportunity of a lifetime here, bro. You know, like, I'm in. And it was the wildest season of my life. I was down in New Orleans. Just a is I got to throw Eli Manning out the club. And here's the crazy thing, you know, we had the bro and and here's the crazy thing, Theo Vaughn just told me recently, he's like, "I remember you at the club." He said, "I remember the song that was playing from Lil Wayne." I mean, so crazy what God did. So, here I am, but I'm lost, dude. I am lost. And uh, I'm coming home from work and uh, um, 18-wheeler comes across two lanes of traffic, November 22nd, 1999. And it slams my car in the guardrail, 65 mph. My back torques, my neck locks up, and I herniate two discs in my neck, two discs in my back. This is 1999, I'll frame it on the front end of Purdue Pharma OxyContin. Back then, if you remember, they were like, "OxyContin's not addictive at all. You could take it, it's a wonder drug." So, I went to the doctor in pain, legitimately. Never done drugs before. I wasn't a drug alcoholic, not a drug addict. Uh, but I was in pain and the doctor sent me home. This is crazy. With 90 OxyContin 40s, 90 volume, 90 Soma, 90 Percocet. And okay, do you remember uh, during COVID, there was a show that came out on Netflix called The Pharmacist? You remember the show? Okay, if you if anybody watching uh, listening saw this, that doctor, Dr. Cleggett, was the doctor that destroyed my life. In fact, Kyle, I watched that show with bated breath wondering, as crazy as this is, if I was going to be in the video. I knew her so well, cuz my dad had a body shop, this is sidebar, we fixed her car. I've been to her house. I drove her BMW. I mean, I was that in with these people. Bonkers. But I almost died, because you know how drugs work. You start small with a prescription drugs and it's always like saying, "Takes you further than you want to go, keeps you longer than you want to stay, costs you more than you want to pay." So, I started with this, the prescription drugs, but I'd run through them. Long story short, I eventually moved to heroin and cocaine. I started bagging it, selling it, buying it in bulk. Guy in the projects named the pimp. I was the only white guy dealt with and I just kind of moved uh this through the city and I started an illegal empire uh illegal business. Not telling you this to impress you, but just to show you how far the Lord brought me from. Times were really good. I had tons of money. Uh I had a Porsche, I had a Mustang Cobra. I mean, I was rolling by the world's standards. If you were to looked at me, you would have said, "Man, you had it all." But even then, even when I had it all by the world's standards, I would go to bed at night, lay my head on the pillow like a lot of people listening and say, "There has to be more to life than this." I eventually robbed my own family for $15,000. I ran out of money. That always works. Two rehab treatments. I'm in my room November 12th, 2002. So, basically 24 years ago, almost. And I remembered the sown seeds planted in my hardened heart by Jeremy Brown 7 years before in college and I was desperate. And here's what I did. I didn't know a lot about the Lord. I never even read the Bible before in my life, but I took the little bit of faith I had, which wasn't a lot, and I put in as much of Jesus as I know knew, which was a little, but it was enough to be radically saved. And Carl, when I tell you the day I was saved, I knew God had a calling on my life. I didn't know what that meant. I knew I went to my dad the next day, just a funny story, and I said, "Dad." My dad was the typical middle-class, ran a body shop collision center, Budweiser every night back on the couch watching TV. And I went to my dad the next day and I said, "Dad, God's calling me to preach." My dad looks up from the couch and he's thinking, "What is he smoking?" I thought you just got back from rehab, so I you know. But but I didn't know what that meant. And here's what happened. I wandered for the next 8 months. I didn't know what to do. I didn't know how to read the Bible. I didn't know how to pray. Didn't know how to memorize scripture. I'm at Edgewater Baptist Church and a 15-year-old looking blond-haired, blue-eyed seminary student. He wasn't 15, but he looked 15, named David Platt. Comes across the church service and says, "Hey, would you want to meet once a week to study the Bible, memorize scripture, and pray?" I said, "I'd love to." He said, "Pray about it." I said, "I already have. When do we meet?" Count for the next 2 and 1/2 years, every week, twice a week, David Platt met with me. I was a whiteboard, and he literally just said, "This is what a Christian does. A Christian engages and reads the Bible. A Christian lives it out. Christian memorizes the word. They pray and they share their faith." And here's what's crazy, I believed him. And that was 24 years ago. And so, all that to say, the reason I'm so passionate about discipling men and people in general is because I'm the product of discipleship. David baptized me. He took me on my first mission trip. I became his assistant at the seminary chapel. I traveled the world with David. So, I tell people, he he he led before me what he then expected from me and it changed my whole life. 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So, I want to I want to go into something real quick cuz you just mentioned it as an aside, but I think this is very, very important for this 95% male audience, but shout out to the 5%ers, is your buddy that befriended you uh as an evangelistic tool back in your undergraduate time, he planted a seed, right? He maybe planted several. And so, I think what some people get into, and this is not a knock on people like Ray Comfort, so don't misunderstand me, anybody, but some people will see a Ray Comfort gospel evangelistic presentation where he takes someone on a boardwalk somewhere uh from I don't want to talk to you all the way to they're in tears and accepting Christ right there on the spot, and they think, "Well, gosh, I can't do that. Well gosh I can't answer the question about dinosaurs. Man I don't know how old earth is. Like they're they're getting into one of those places, but it's like that's maybe not your role. Your role is maybe to plant a seed, and you have no idea who's going to come along and water it. It might be you. It's very likely going to be somebody else, but it's the same thing when I tell people like when we're sitting down in a restaurant, and [clears throat] when the server brings you your food and asks is there anything else that I can get you? I always ask um we're about to bless our meal. How can we be praying for you? I've never had anyone punch me in the face. I've never had anybody throw my food across the floor, but I have had people break down in tears cuz they got something going on. And like we're not having these, you know, revival salvation things happening right there in front of us. We're just planting seeds, and we've seen so much fruit. You know, the guys on the podcast have heard this story before, but I think it bears repeating. I did that one time at this wing spot in Oklahoma City. It's not even open anymore, and I go hey my buddy and I were about to bless our meal. How can we be praying for you? Again, it's an assumptive close. It's not can I pray for you cuz that's yes no. It's how can I be praying for you assuming there is something, right? So it's it's different in the language. And this dude his shoulders dropped. He took a deep breath, and similar to kind of your situation he goes, "I've been clean for about 3 months. I've got this job and another job, but if I relapse, uh you know, I lose these jobs. Like I'm in a halfway house right now. Like if I relapse things get really really bad, and I'm just I'm I'm scared." And so me and my buddy Mike who's Catholic by the way, we just love we go back and forth when we you know, one time he'll do the Catholic prayer and then I'll do the Protestant prayer. We'll go back and forth, but then we just prayed for this guy. Well wouldn't you know it 3 months later he and I do lunch in the same spot. He's behind the bar, and all I do is I just go like this. I just point at him, and he pointed right back at me, and I go, "You good?" And he pointed at me he goes, "I'm good. I'm good." This is 3 months later, right? And I'm like, "Okay." So we kept that connection going. Maybe another year goes by, and we're there, And I see him again. He's serving us at our table. Bro, you good? You still good? He's like, man, he was so excited to tell me about the path that he was on. And, you know, he didn't see Jesus in his path at that moment. Obviously, we always prayed in the name of Jesus. We shared Jesus with him. We're just planting seeds and watering them. And so, guys, >> good. >> plant the seeds. You don't have to be a theologian. You don't have to be R.C. Sproul reincarnated. You don't have to be one of these people that can answer all the questions. You're not Greg Koukl. You're not that smooth or smart. But at the same time, you've got to be able to just be willing to plant the seeds. And so, I'm even curious for you, before we detour back into the narrative we were on, what would be your encouragement to guys listening to this to be like, hey, just just do the thing. You think you should say it, you feel the Holy Spirit moving in your heart, just open your mouth and do the thing. >> Yeah, I love that story by you, and I got one I'm going to share, which is very similar. You got me thinking. I hadn't thought about this in years. I was on a mission trip about 10 years ago. My dad actually went with me on this trip. We went to the Middle East, and we went to Cairo and Istanbul, and then we went we found our way down to Aswan. There is a Christian hospital in Aswan. That's south of on the Nile, south of Cairo. Just sidebar, it is the hottest place on planet Earth I've ever been to. We got off the airplane, the little plane, Kyle. They said when I came out in in the in the air hit me, it was 120°. That was real temp. And they said, "Good news is, you you missed last week where it was 130." >> Okay. Yeah. >> When you there's no air condition there. So, when we were driving I mean, you know, I'm you're probably like me, working out, I always sweat and I'm hot. So, man, I was like profusely dying like a like a stuffed pig. But anyway, so we get to this hospital. The hospital is a Christian hospital in a 98% Muslim community, where, you know, small portion jihad militant Muslim community, where they'll kill you. They'll they'll literally kill you for speaking against Allah or or proselytizing. So, we go to this Christian hospital, I think it's St. Luke's, and we talk to the Christians who work there, and I have a bunch of our leaders from our church there, and we debrief with them after getting a tour of the hospital. And so, and we were supporting this ministry. So, we're supporting the ministry there, and so we started asking questions to the missionary. And one of my deacons says, "Hey, I got a question for you. Y'all been here how long?" "We've been here 5 years." "Okay, good." He said, "How many Christians How many people have you seen convert to Christianity in 5 years?" And they looked around, and they said, "None." Now, think about American Western Christianity. They didn't have a category for that. They're thinking, "We're sending money. We're supporting. What are you talking about? We're here. What are you talking about?" And the guy followed up and said, "Well, you got to understand the the the the the the goal here." He said, "Our goal is not to convert. That's God's." They said, "Our goal," I love this, "is to help someone take one step toward Christ in a thousand-step journey." Mhm. I took that home, and I thought, "Wow, that is That's success." Success, if you're listening, is not in the saving. God does that. Success is in the sharing. And if someone accepts Christ in that moment, and you and I as pastors, we get to see that. What we get to see is the assembly line at the end of a long line of prayers and sharing up to that point. When people get baptized, and and they sit in the tank, and we'll talk about the book in a moment of how that God led these people to our church for baptism. But, here's the thing, I would tell them many times, I would say, "I want you to know how many prayers have been prayed to get you to this point." "How many people" >> Mhm. >> And they start weeping. And I said, "I want you to think" cuz they're surrounded by their families. We baptize at Long Hollow family, friends, support. So, they're all surrounding there, and I look at them, and I look at the family, and I said, "A lot of prayers have been prayed to get you to this point." And they just weep because that's the reality. And you're You're like that. I'm like that. We're the product of sharing and praying. So, I just want to encourage you before we move on. The goal is not to saving, God does that. The goal is the sharing and telling. And that's how God grades our obedience. >> And guys, what do almost all the people that prayed for that person have in common? They're not pastors. They don't have pastor on their business card or on their name placard outside their office. They're just folks. They're moms and dads, they're aunts and uncles, they're best friends and and acquaintances. It's It's your children sometimes. I mean, when I talk to people who their one more is a parent. Like I I get that because, you know, especially where where I live in Oklahoma, there are people that think they're Christians cuz they were born in Oklahoma. There are people that think they're Christians because they're patriotic or because they worked hard their entire life or because they ain't never killed nobody. And it's just like, you know stuff about Jesus, but you don't know Jesus, right? Like you can read the stuff on the back of the baseball card. It's similar I bring it up with Jordan Peterson. Jordan Peterson publicly has admitted that he believes that Jesus of Nazareth was put into a a tomb of Joseph of Arimathea and that three days later got up and walked out. He believes in the resurrection, but he is not yet publicly declared that he believes that counted for him, right? So, knowing that Jesus resurrected is one thing, that's part of it. And then Joey taught me this pistuo, the Greek word, if I'm transferring my faith for my salvation and my goodness into the work that Christ did at the cross, not all the moral things that I've done, not all the boxes I've checked and not all the rules I've kept. And so, for a lot of people, just remember, just because you're not a pastor, does not mean that you don't have a part to play in this. Yeah, if all intents and purposes, you have a larger part to play in all of this. And so, where I think all this leads, cuz you talk about, okay, you go to seminary, you get into ministry, you did a couple of different pastoral jobs, I believe, or you led a couple of churches, and then you finally end up at Long Hollow Baptist Church in Hendersonville Tennessee. But then I'm actually going to read a a quote from the dedication of your new book, which I don't have just one copy of the new book. I got two copies of the new book. Who wants to touch me? I Thank you to your publicist and thank you to your publisher. But the new book is called Wait Here >> No, I gave you one, bro. I brought you a personal copy. What are you talking about? Remember I brought you one at the conference. >> I give you no credit and how dare you interrupt me? What's wrong with you? Uh actually that's true. I FORGOT. ACTUALLY THAT'S TRUE. SO THANK YOU TO ROBBIE AND THANK YOU TO YOUR PUBLICIST. [laughter] Y'all are awesome. But hey, BOTH OF THESE ARE THE FLOPPY VERSIONS. Can Can a guy get a hard copy in here? Come on. All right, but but it's called Wait Here Recapturing the Lost Art of Hearing God's Voice. Now, from the dedication very short. The quote is After the revival you noted or you received a new pastor and I received a new church. Yet none of us had to leave. And so if that's not enough to entice you to turn the page to the introduction of chapter one, I don't really know what to do with you. But to kind of bring people up to speed, I'm sure you'll be able to put a little bit more detail on it. The first five years of your job, you weren't that good. You thought you were better than you were. You had expectations that weren't being met. You had standards that nobody was was doing. The church numbers were doing dwindling. No, it's not all about numbers, but also the fruit of the members of your church, the fruit of your staff and elder board it wasn't good. It wasn't good. Things were not going well for you. And so I always start here anytime I have someone on that has a new book out. Why this book? Why now? Why you? >> Yeah, well thank you for that. Yeah, I I feel like this I've had the privilege through the years to write a number of different books. I feel like this one and I know always the next book is the best book, but I feel like this is the most raw, real vulnerable practical book I've ever written because it was a book I didn't want to write. I don't feel qualified to write this book. Um but it was birthed out of a season of brokenness and burnout. And really a pastor, but really a Christian who was saying, "I'm not hearing from God. You know, I'm going through the motions. I'm checking all the the proverbial boxes of ministry, but nothing's working." And some somebody there is saying that as well. You know, like, "Man, I'm I'm doing everything. I'm showing up, but God feels distant. I don't have a lot of intimacy with the Lord." And so, uh I'll kind of I'll kind of give you a framework just to kind of give us a running start into the to the book. I came to a church at Long Hollow that was three times larger than my previous church in Chattanooga. Which God had blessed the ministry there. It was an amazing ministry. Uh loved every minute of it. But I followed a pastor who got sick with cancer at the height of the church ministry. Church had grown to about 6,800, 7,000, give you for context. And uh he gets cancer and dies 15 months later, preaching every week. Nobody thought he was going to die, including him. And he dies. And so, what what the reality is is they don't want a new pastor. Uh they don't want me, obviously. And they don't know how to process grief. And so, the way they process grief those first few years was criticism and judgment and anger. Anytime I would do anything different, and I wasn't used to coming into a church where from the time of of me getting here with five campuses, uh a lot of people, but at the time COVID hit, our church had bottomed out. We had gotten down to one campus, basically. And the church had bottomed out to about 3,400 worship. And I tell you that just for context. I'm really good, I tell the church, at grow at at at declining a church. I'm really good at losing people. I can show you how to do that. That's why we say Long Hollow, there's a pre-Porch Robbie and a post-Porch Robbie. By God's grace today, the church is larger than it's ever been. Uh and not just numerically, but financially and spiritually, and emotionally, relationally, and it's it's because uh uh I talk about in this book, I stopped doing it myself. I was really good at trying to make things happen. If it's meant to be, it's up to me. I mean, I went to school. I was discipled by David Platt. I got a PhD in preaching. I know I got a discipleship ministry in my mind. I know how to run a church and grow a church. And the Lord said, "No, big boy, you don't know. You don't know what you're doing. In fact, you're going to destroy this thing if you keep at it." And so, I came to Long Hollow. The church was declining. Um, it's 2020. Like many of you listening, I was totally unprepared for COVID. Totally unprepared for the challenges. And if you had a platform of any kind, if you're a pastor, or a podcaster, or you had a Twitter account, if you remember that that world, every time you said anything, mask, no mask, vaccine, no vaccine, meeting online, meeting in person, shot, no shot, you bifurcated half the congre- congregation. You made half your people mad. And you didn't know why. It was like crazy. Then, on top of that, if you remember, the political unrest of our country, the racial tension with George Floyd, the passing of George Floyd and others. I mean, anything you did back then, you just made someone mad. And so, I went into COVID just burning out, didn't know it. And I had a friend of mine in the church come to me and say, "Robbie, you need to slow down. Because if you keep running at this frenetic pace, you're going to burn out, and or you're going to do something you'll regret." And so, he said, "You need to slow down." Well, if you could tell, I'm not a slow down kind of guy. ADHD, high D, driven, you know, make it happen kind of guy, but I was desperate. And I I can't tell you the last time I really truly heard the voice of God. I mean, I had other voices in my life, but I I can't I couldn't tell you as a pastor, like I knew this was the Lord leading me. And so, uh I went to the porch. I have a porch in my in front of my house. And I started to delve into the Dark Ages. I'll just be honest. The the Protestant A lot of Protestant books today, uh there's one chapter on silence and solitude, and many of us, if we read Richard Foster or Dallas Willard, or um you know, um Donald Whitney's book on spiritual disciplines, we just go over. We're like, what does this ancient practice have anything to do with my present day life? And so, but I was desperate. And I had time. It was COVID. And so, I started to go back and look for guys who had encountered silence. People who had pressed into sitting in the presence of God, because I was present with God, but I but I didn't feel like I was in the presence of God, right? And so, um I started to sit 4 5 minutes. That's how I started. 5 minutes, then it went to 10 minutes, total silence. Then it got to 15, then it got to 20, and then eventually got to 2 hours every night with the Lord. Now, I'm not telling you this to sound sanctimonious, because it was a season. I don't do 2 hours a night today. I still do it at night, but I don't do that long. It was a season. But what happened was this, it became this insatiable desire, Kyle, to go every night to the porch. I would watch a show with my wife, I would put my two boys to bed, and about 8:30 9:00 every night, I'd go spend 2 hours on the porch in the presence of God with the Holy Spirit. And at first, I had to retrain myself of what silence and solitude was, because it's unlike any other spiritual discipline in the Christian life. Most spiritual disciplines that there is this built-in law of reciprocity. What I mean is this, if I read the Bible, I'm reading to get a word. If I pray, I'm praying to get an answer. If I go on a mission trip, even though I don't do this, I get something in return. I give, I don't do this, but I get back. Okay. Silence and solitude, you have to temper your expectation if you want to try it. You have to go in realizing that most of the time, you're going to get nothing tangible back. Nothing. I mean and I remember one night I was sitting with the Lord was on the porch. It was like 3 months in and I sat there about an hour and a half that night a little over that and nothing. I mean I look for it. I mean no like no no stars in the sky in the constellation of a Hebrew word none of that, you know, I look for it. No global megaphone like Robbie did none of that. And I was walking inside going in my house about 11:00 and I looked up to to the to the sky and I was like Lord really I was pretty candid with the Lord I'm like really what was that? I got I got nothing. What was that? I got nothing. And the Holy Spirit as he always does very gently just kind of taps me on the spiritual shoulder and says no you didn't get nothing. You got everything. Because you finally got me and I got you. And that's when I realized watch this that my Christian life up to that point was me trying to make deals with God. I was really good full disclosure. I try to tell God how to do his job better. God if you just bless this this this this and this everything will go great. If you just do this and let me speak here. Let me go here and and the Lord began to show me Robbie if you want to keep trying to force feed your agenda into heaven keep talking. But if you want to hear from heaven and allow heaven to come to earth through you then you need to do a whole lot more listening and I was really good at telling God how to do his job. I was really poor at listening to the Lord and here's what I've learned noise in our life is a silent killer. See we know a lot about God but we rarely hear from God. And so I'm sitting with the Lord 6 months in this is where my whole life changed and I talk about this in the book but my whole life changed on the porch this moment. I'm lamenting to the Lord. It was it was right after the summer August September and I'm lamenting to the Lord I'm like Lord you got to fix you got to fix the problems in my church. You got to fix the deacon body cuz that's a problem. My staff is siloed. Uh you've got to fix the community cuz I'm getting critiqued and criticized. Oh, by the way, fix the country while you're at it. Yeah, you're better before you sit down at this this yeah this this pity party with the Lord. And again, not an audible voice but the spirit of God spoke to my heart and and God began to say, "The problem in your life to revival coming to your life and church is not your staff. The problem is not the deacons. It's not the community. It's not even your church, not the country. The problem to revival coming to your church is you. You're the problem. In a sense, he told me, "Robbie, you're the blood clot to revival coming to your church." And if you're listening or watching, I just want to remind you, that could be you. You know how it could be you because it was me. I was the problem. Now, that's a hard thing to hear from the Lord. If people tell you that, it's one thing. But when the Lord reveals that to you. So, I push back right right away. I'm like, "What do you mean I'm the problem? I I don't I'm not an alcoholic anymore. I'm off of drugs and I don't I don't I don't take drugs anymore. I don't have a porn addiction by God's grace." But here's the thing, you got to be careful when you ask the Holy Spirit to put his finger on the pulse of the problem. He's really good at it. And he began to show me things, Carl, that really just broke me down. He showed me, "Robbie, you're a way too prideful. What What do you mean I'm prideful? Yeah, Robbie, you you you want to take credit all the time when you know it's me. You're arrogant uh many times. The one that got me is you you the line between the platform of Robbie and the cause of Christ is so blurred, you don't even know why you're doing it. You act like you're posting things online for me. You're putting a ti- It's really for you. But the one that really got me was this one. You are way too jealous. Now, I I I I said, "Lord, what what am I jealous of? I have a great church. I have a great family, amazing kids. I have a I have a great ministry. What are you talking about?" Here's what he showed me. "You're jealous, Robbie, if the church down the street baptizes more than you at Long Hollow. You wouldn't say this, but you would think it. You're jealous if a guy writes a book and he gets more traction than you. You're jealous if a guy puts a post out that gets more like and here's what he showed me. Robbie, if you can't pray for the church and ministry down the street to be blessed in spite of you, I'll never bless your church. Let me remind you this is not your ministry, it's mine. This is my kingdom, not yours. And that, Kyle, broke me on the porch and what it did was God had to break me to build me back up and that led to December 15th, 2020 where I heard as clear as day in my mind two words, clear as day, spontaneous baptism. Now, I was raised in church, you know that. I didn't have a dad that was a pastor, nobody in the ministry. I I I had heard about spontaneous baptism, but I'd heard of people who kind of primed the pump and manipulated the system, so I didn't know what that really meant. But, let me just frame where we are. We in Tennessee are leading the country in COVID cases. December 20th, that that Sunday after I heard this word from the Lord, is our last Sunday for 4 weeks because the doctors in our community and that went to church begged us in tears to shut down the church because they were using a word that was very scary. Every case of COVID we could trace back to Long Hollow and we think you may be a super spreader. First time I've ever said this publicly, but that'll scare you. And so we went online for 4 weeks and uh we were leading the the country in COVID cases and we told the church the week of if you're sick, stay home, if not, wear a mask. We made everybody mad. But, the Lord said show me, you need to offer spontaneous baptism December 20th, 2020. And uh by God's grace our staff ob- they listened. They're like, I don't know what this means. And the Lord put a number in my heart, 100 people. Now, let me just frame that for us. I I've been a lot of services in my life. I've never seen 100 people 100 people baptized in one Sunday is miraculous. 100 people baptized spontaneously and in COVID in a bacterial filled tank when you couldn't even get somebody to stand face-to-face with you, much less get in water is beyond mirac- I mean, this is a godsend. So, I told my staff, "We're believing, praying that we're going to see 100 people." I recorded a video on Friday, never knowing at the time it'd be prophetic today for Sunday. That Sunday we get up to preach, Kyle, there is nobody there. I mean, it's the lowest attended services since I'd ever been here still to this day at Long Hollow. Nobody's there cuz it's COVID and we're leaving the country. And I offer the invitation and I say, "Hey, listen, I know you're not prepared to be baptized today. We are. If you were sprinkled like me as a as a child but never followed through with the first step of baptism, Great Commission, make disciples, be baptized. If you haven't followed through with the first step of baptism through obedience, meet me at the tank or if you got wet as a child, walked an aisle, strayed but now came back to faith and realized I wasn't a Christian then and your baptism is on the wrong side of your salvation, I'm going to ask you to come forward today, right now, and be baptized." That's a hard ask, bro. You know, even asking somebody now, like, "Hey, >> Yeah. >> in your right now, you're coming in where you are and uh so, I stand over by the tank and I'm standing there and nobody moves. And I'm sitting there thinking, "Lord, did I miss this? Did I not hear you right? I mean, I thought I I thought I heard you right, you know?" And then all of a sudden, two then then all of a sudden, two people stand up and then another stands up and at the end of the first service, it's crazy, 25 people came forward spontaneously to be baptized. As soon as we finished, I went back cuz back then between services we'd kind of get to the back room and uh I think we're eating breakfast between the service with my team and all of a sudden, about 30 minutes in knock at the door. One of my staff members said, "Hey, pastor, do you mind I hate to bother you. There's a girl who just drove from Joelton, Tennessee, almost an hour away, watched the first service. She said the She said she felt compelled to come. Can you baptize her between services? She wants to be baptized right now." I jokingly say, "Can we do that?" Like I've never done that before. They're like, "You're the pastor. We do whatever you want." I was like, "Okay." I walk out to her. This is crazy. I walk out to her in the tank. She's in the tank. And I ask her two questions. These would be the same two questions that I would ask the next 1,600 people over the next 8 months to the summer in COVID through that time who would be baptized at Long Hollow flying in from 17 different states, bro. It's bonkers what God did through that time, but I didn't know it was coming. So, I asked her these two questions, and she would give me these two answers that would literally be the thread woven through all of them. And I got to baptize all of these people personally. All of them I got to baptize. And I asked them all these I asked them the same two questions. Question number one, [clears throat] where are you from? She said Joelton, Tennessee. But they would say Maine. They would say Las Vegas, Nevada. They would say Sacramento, and I would say, "Wait a minute. Portland, Oregon? Why did you come? There's a lot of churches between here and there." And And for the record, I've never said one time, "Fly in. Drive in." Never. Here's what she said. I said, "Number two, why did you come?" And this is the answer she gave me, and it's the answer everybody through that season would give me. "Pastor Robbie, the Holy Spirit of God compelled me to come. I had to come." And that's when I realized, Kyle, this was not from a sermon series. This was not people coming from a door hanger. This was not people coming from a yard sign or some crafty strategic plan. This was a God-generated, God-sent move of His Spirit where He was compelling people to come and it changed and wrecked my life from that point on. So, I tell people, I learned how to bend my ear. I'm not perfect, but I learned how to bend my ear to hear word from the Lord. And that's what this book's about. It's not Robbie has all these grandiose ideas. No, Robbie's trying to be a means, a conduit to get you, if you're listening, how to actually hear the voice of God. And I think you would agree, if we could just get American Christians, men, to start hearing from God, we'd see a nationwide revival. Nationwide. When God speaks, people act, and it's up to us to obey. >> I love every bit of that, the whole story. I mean, reading it in the book, I was like just enraptured by what was happening. But if we can just go back to the porch real quick, is there anything in particular you do while you're on the porch? Anything that I should maybe let the Southern Baptist Convention know about? Or are you you just basically sitting there in a in a chair? Or anything you want to No? >> Yeah, I know it makes people nervous. You know, you know what I mean? >> [laughter] >> You know, it's funny. >> We can I mean, we can move on. >> Yeah, no, no, no, no, no, I'm with you, bro. No, cuz here's the funny [laughter] thing. I was I was talking to actually I was talking to Ed Stetzer, you know, and and and I was we did a podcast and then offline he's like, he's like, are you quoting Ignatius of Loyola, who's a Catholic? He's like, do you know some of the things Ignatius Ignatius said? And I said, bro, I'm not saying carte blanche take everything a person. I'm taking a practice. I told him, I said, do you know Martin Luther baptized infants and wanted all Jews to be dragged out of their synagogues and killed? Did you know that? Did you know that John Calvin called for the death of Servetus? Did you I'm not saying we take everything everybody says. I'm taking practices that have been tried and true. And here's the thing, I feel like the contribution of this book is it's not an echo chamber of things everybody has said before. Because you could read a book about prayer. and I feel like the Lord has allowed me through research to pull out ancient practices that we have forgotten through the years, but have changed my own personal life. So, here's what I do. I walk you through quickly what I do. I do this every time I sit with the Lord, and um I do this before I preach. I do this before I prepare a sermon. It's changed my whole life, Carl, and I challenge you if you're listening, try it next time you sit with the Lord. When you do your time with God before you read, just try this. Try before you pray. Here's what I do. Silence and solitude, think of it this way. It's kind of like it's kind of like going if I had a clear glass right here, and it was clear, and I went down to a river, and I was going to scoop up river water with the glass, okay? If I shake that glass up and set it on a mantle, and we watched it, we wouldn't be able to see through the glass. Why? Debris, dirt, sand, you know, specs of thing. But, if we let it sit long enough, the the the the the dirt and sand settles, right? And when the sediment goes to the bottom, you're able to see clearly. I want you to think of your soul that way, okay? We have so many voices and influences and noise and all these things in our life telling us what to do, and that we cannot hear the voice of God. I tell people, God's always speaking. We just haven't been able to tune in or slow down long enough to hear or bend our accent bend our ear to the accent of his Holy Spirit. So, that's what I'm trying to do with this practice, and there's a lot of them, but this is one of them. So, think of uh think of this as just slowing down. Slowing down the RPMs of your soul, and you're basically being silent. One person said this, uh God this really got me. God's first language was silence. Well, how do we say that? Cuz out of everything he created, he spoke everything out of silence. It was in the silence, the still silent. Okay, when when when Elijah said God show me, you know, I want to I want to see you. I want to see your It wasn't in a fire, it wasn't in a the wind, the hail storm, it was in the still small voice. Now, that word in Hebrew, small voice, is actually whisper. It's a whisper. And here's what I want you to think about. If God is That's how he speaks. Yes, he yells at times in suffering, but most of the time he's slight. You know, we we can't hear it. Okay, so here's what here's what I do. I do this every time I sit with the Lord. So, I'll do it with you. Take a couple of deep breaths and you can sit, you got to get alone. I like to have a specific place. I tell people to create a sacred space. I have the porch and I changed it. I have a I have a shed I get in now and sit spend with the Lord. It doesn't matter. It could be your closet, it could be your front porch, it could be anywhere, it could be in your office, it could be your car, but to have a sacred space, you have to have a specific time and place. It has to be consistent. And you want to be there with the Lord. So, I go to the porch, I take a couple of deep breaths, and I want you to just feel this cuz this will show you how it works. And I quote Psalm 46:10 in reverse. Okay? I'm just taking the word of God here. So, so let me just frame one more time thing. This is not new age practitioner meditation lotus, you know, sitting position, closing the chakras of the thing. I'm not talking about any of that. The major difference between meditation biblically and meditation spiritually new age practices is this. Spiritual I have delved into this for a while. Spirit before I was Christian, but spiritual new age practitioners quiet the ripples of their soul so they can look within. You and I both know. Paul said they ain't noth- ain't nothing in here that's going to be helpful. >> Yeah. >> Spiritual biblical meditation is not looking within, it's looking up and out. It's looking to God. It's focusing on his word. So, new age practitioner meditation is mental passivity. Biblical meditation is mental activity, meaning I am focusing I got to be centered in the Lord, but I'm going to focus on God. I'm going to show you what to do. So, we're going to practice it. Psalm 46:10. I want you to feel if you're listening or watching what this feels like. I always do this in my head. So, I take a couple deep breaths and I do this. Be still and I just say to my head, be still and know I am God. Be still and know I am. Be still and know. Be still. Be. That is the tune you can almost feel you feel the RPMs go down. That is the spiritual tuning fork that prepares me for the other practices. And here's the thing about it. When you start to do this, you realize God created us, Kyle, as human beings to be, not human doings. We're good at doing. The God's in the being, right? God wants to be with us in the present. A lot of people try to be present with God, but they never experience his presence because they're not present enough, right? So, so that's what I do first. Now, watch this. Then, when I sit with the Lord, I would try this today, 5 minutes. Try 5 minutes. It's a lofty goal. Set your alarm. You have to set your alarm because if you don't set your alarm, you're going to think I remember the first time I did this. I set my alarm for 5 minutes. I sat with the Lord, did be still and know that I'm God, be still and know, be still, be. And after I thought was, you know, a lifetime, it was 1 minute and 42 seconds. I'm just telling you it is crazy how deafening silence is. And it's free still. I mean, it cost us anything. It's the most life-changing practice nobody does. So, I sit with the Lord and then after you do the be still and know, be, then here's what I do. Your mind's going to automatically want to wander. I've been doing this now 6 years. You would think I graduated. I'm still in the remedial class. I mean, just when I think I'm getting The goal is not constant, you know, Zen Buddhism where you're quiet for long periods of time. The goal is just being present in the presence of God. Okay, so think of it this way. So, after you sit for that long, you come up with a word or a phrase from the Bible. During the revival mine mine was Abba Father, Romans 8:16. Uh with the soul cries Abba Father. You could So, I would say that. Now I do be still. Cuz it's just easier for me and it's practical and it's targeted and I need to be reminded. So, here's how it works. When you sit, be still and know be still, be. Then you start sitting for 5 minutes just in total silence and you're just simmering your soul. Immediately, Carl, you're going to think What time is Jiu-Jitsu today? Uh what's the workout tomorrow? Did I lock the back door? You're going to think this thing. I do it too, still to this day. Okay? Don't judge yourself. Don't get mad. Be kind to yourself and just repeat your word. So, the word or the phrase biblically just brings you back in the presence of God. So, I'll just say be still. Here here's a an illustration that helps me. Think of when you do this, you're sitting on a seashore and there are ships on the ocean passing by and those ships will be the thoughts in your life. So, as the ship passes by, what you want to do is let the thought go. Now, you're going to get in boats cuz I do all the time. I like swimming in If you swim out to the boat and get in the boat in a sense think of the thought. You start thinking of the thought, you're going to go down on the boat. That's all you do is get back out of the boat onto the shore and let the boats go by. Now, after 5 minutes after you do this then I I have other practices in the book. Then you are you are centered in a sense in the presence of God. So, you could do the prayer of deference, praying for ideas. You could do the examine, which I talk about in the book, consolations and desolations, what draws me to the Lord, what leads me away. You could do your scripture reading. You can do listening extra I mean so there's a lot of things you can do, but what you're doing is you're bending your ear to hear the voice of the Lord. And so I'll just close by saying, once you do this practice over time, then what happens is you realize it gets easier over time and then it starts to draw you out and you want to be with the Lord more and more every day and it becomes um just a desire of your heart. It really is life-changing. >> Hey guys, real quick. I just want to remind you that we have an official Undaunted Life store. You can go to shop.undaunted.life or check it out in the show notes. Guys, we're always going to have hats and shirts and a bunch of other awesome stuff. Go there, support us, wear the mission. Again, it's shop.undaunted.life. Check out the link in the show notes. shop.undaunted.life. Well, I'm curious uh you know, just as a follow-up to that because I hear from people that say, "Hey, I want to hear from the Lord. I want him to speak to me. I want to do all these things." It's like, "Well, if I look at your life, apparently you want God to yell." Uh because you're so busy, you're so uh distracted. Uh every waking moment you fill with something, right? Like you can't sit in silence in a dentist's office in the waiting room for more than 2 milliseconds before you pull your phone out, your little pacifier, and start scrolling through it. And you know, I thought about I can't remember all the details, but there was there's like this this chamber. It's in Minnesota, I think. But this chamber is built and it absorbs 99.99999% of sound. And they will pay people, I think, hundreds of dollars per hour just to sit in there in silence and with the lights out. And I think the record is like 45 minutes. Like someone was able to sit because after you settle down, you're going to start hearing your heart beating in your chest. You're going to start hearing the functioning of like your your dietary system, your your your uh you know, all your organs and and different things inside your belly, you're going to like start to feel the blood going from your heart to your fingertips and toes and back and your heart to your fingertips and toes and back. And people can't stand it, right? Some people go in there for a few minutes and they're like, "Get me out." There's always the panic button to where, you know, get out of dodge. But it's like if and I look just look at it more simply. If you're a room full of 100 people, I'm in one corner and you're in the other and I just talk in my normal voice, can you hear me? Can you hear what I'm saying? And I'm a bad example of this because I can't yell, you know, post-two vocal cord surgeries. But let's say it's you, you know, where we you have seven extra vocal folds and here you are yelling across the room, I'll be able to hear you. But guys, do you really want God to yell? Think about the examples in scripture when God had to get loud. I don't think that's what you want. But I will say this. And I'll say this, you know, I've I've experienced it myself at different points in my life. I know other men in this audience have experienced this. When to when they get to that place of silence, the only thing rolling through their head is the worst thoughts imaginable. It's thoughts of violence or murder towards somebody that hurt them maybe when they were a child or someone that betrayed them like a business partner or a spouse or a brother or a good friend or something like that. It's it's violent. It's angry. Whatever their proclivity is, maybe they're drawn to the chemicals, so, you know, the amount of drugs they would do if they could just do any kind of drugs. You know, if it's more sexual, it's the amount of sexually, you know, interactions they would have with all these people in their life that they've thought about before as a masturbatory aid. And that's what's going on in their head or it's all the things their dad said they were when they were a child. You're nothing. You're worthless. You're lower than nothing. You'll never be anything. Or that bully that bullied them, the things that they heard. Or that pastor that basically ignored them, but like, you know, went the other direction. Chuck Swindoll, I just interviewed him recently, it comes out later. He was like overtly both Both parents favored his older brother and older sister to his detriment, right? They they literally said, "Yeah, you're not going to be anything, but your sister and your brother are obviously going to be successful. We just don't really have to worry about you as much." That's one of the reasons why men don't want to be silent. You know, we want to be alone. Want to be a We want to be alone on the back porch with a cigar in one hand and a scotch in the other, and we're going to smoke that cigar to the glory of God. Thank you, Charles Spurgeon, for that quote. We want to just tune out and watch the game, or we'll put the game on mute and we'll throw our headphones in and listen to a podcast, or we'll do something like that. We want to be alone, but we don't want to be in silence. Because once we're in silence, we have to reckon with the voices in our head, right? And so, I want you to speak to that, uh, not just as, you know, an author of this book, but as a pastor. Because there are a lot of guys in this audience right now that the moment you said silence, they went, "Uh." Right? That's why I I can't stand silence, right? When they When it's silent for more than 2 seconds, I got to be like, "All right, well, I got to fill I'm like Peter. I was like, "All right, well, I want to hear me talk now." And so, I just start like talking. But what would you say to these men that that's what they're dealing with? >> You You said one of the greatest quotes uh that I that I came across when I was researching this is It's by Blaise Pascal, which which is a mathematician, a Christian mathematician. He said this line, it's the greatest line for this topic. He said, "All of humanity's problems stem from man's inability to sit quietly in a room alone by himself." Say it again. All of humanity's You can fix any problem in all of the world if you can get men to sit in a room because here's two things happen when you sit quietly in a room by yourself. Number one is every man realizes and comes to grips uh face-to-face with their own mortality. See, we live in a way where we're going to live forever. And let me just give you a news flash, you're not going to live forever. And we just live like that. And so, the fact that your own mortality means you you're not God, God's God, and you're not, and you're not him. And so, one, there's a level of surrender and a level of humility. But, the second thing you do in silence is this. There's a difference, you you nailed it, between silence forced and this kind of silence where the Holy Spirit becomes the counselor and the consultor of your life. Now, remember this. Jesus promised his disciples, "When the helper comes, when the Holy Spirit comes." And then he gives him a name. You remember this, 14 and 16. Jesus says, "When the counselor comes." Remember this? When the counselor comes. We call him the counselor. If the Holy Spirit is the best counselor you and I have access to, th- this is the million-dollar question. When was the last time, if you're listening, you spent time with the Holy consulting the Holy Spirit and him alone? Not your friends, not your therapist, not your buddies, not your football fantasy for No, no. The Holy Spirit and him alone. And I And I have to be honest, I was raised, you know, Southern Baptist I was raised Catholic and then I went to a Southern Baptist Seminary. And so, I was raised in a group of people that, in a sense, are faulted because you push the you push the pendulum so far here where it's don't mess with those crazy charismatics cuz, man, so you then you become the chosen frozen where you're scared of the Holy Spirit, don't mention his name. But, then you have the other side, we see the abuses of both us. The other side are the people where everything's about the Holy Spirit and they're always hearing words from God and everything's this and that and then they can get out here. And what I realize is you have to have a center, right? The Bible is both and. And so, I had to reintroduce myself to the third person of the Trinity. And here's what I realized, I knew more Kyle about Jesus, who was here for 33 years, than the Holy Spirit, who was on earth for the past 2,000 living in inside of believers. I had to apologize because I realized I didn't know much about him. And so, had to reintroduce myself to him. I'll tell you a couple things if you're listening like whoa Robbie's getting you know out there you know spiritual charismatic let me remind you a couple things. Number one is this the Holy Spirit will never lead you to do something that is contrary to scripture period. >> Amen. >> He wrote every word in the book we read called the Bible. Number two is he's not weird. Okay, he's not weird. Number three is he's a way better pastor preacher teacher father than you and I ever will be and if we consult with him for answers and ideas he's happy. The Bible says ask for wisdom and God gives generously to all without finding fault. A lot of people miss the last part of that verse without finding fault because guys will say well you don't know what I just did. You don't know what I looked at last night. You don't know the sin of my life. God's like I know but if you ask for wisdom take it to the bank. I will give it to you without faulting you for it and here's the last one that got me. The Holy Spirit is um What was the last one? Totally forgot. But anyway, if you ask the Holy Spirit for counsel, he will give it to you. So I had to reintroduce myself to him and that's what I'm talking about. I'm not talking about silence to just let the mind wander. I'm talking about no God, I'm actively engaging in being in your presence to hear a word from you. Now here's the thing about about some of these issues you brought up which are real issues cuz I had to go through them. I still had hurt from when I was in seventh grade and bullied mercilessly sixth, seventh and eighth grade. I still had issues from trying to please people for years and want everybody to like me and be happy. Okay, here's the difference. The difference is this. When I coach pastors and leaders or or ministry leaders always start with this line I kind of mess them up but it but it's a good line for us here. Always start by saying this the greatest problem in your church or ministry right now is that you don't know what your greatest problem is and that's the greatest problem. >> Yeah. >> You know that business one on one. The greatest the greatest self-defeating issue man in your life right now is you don't know what that is and that's the greatest issue. Why? Because we're self-sabotaging. So, what happens is when you're sitting with the Lord and he becomes the counselor and through this process in the book I call the examine by Ignatius and the Holy Spirit brings these issues up, you're able to navigate them in a way to say no. And then here's what happens. You start recognizing the voice of Satan and differentiating between the voice of the spirit. Satan speaks with a dialect and a colloquialism uh to his voice, too. Here's what I mean. It's always judgment. It's always condemnation. It's always criticism. And I've been able to, by God's grace, recognize that voice now when it says, "Man, you're not enough." And I say, "Get behind me, Satan." But for years I just succumbed to it. And so what I'm saying is I'm just trying to teach you how to hear the voice of God to differentiate those voices so that you realize, "Man, I'm listening to the right voice and I'm not accepting all these wrong voices in my life which which hurt us over and over." >> So, [snorts] uh I want to Man, if you saw my notes for this episode, you would just laugh. We haven't gotten to like a tenth of the things that I wanted to talk about, but I'm thrilled No, I'm thrilled with where this went because we were able to go deep into subject matters that are going to be tremendously valuable to the men in my audience. Cuz part of the thing is if you if you cover too many topics, the the man can't figure out which one to apply first and so he applies none of them, right? It's kind of that same thing. You go to a lecture from somebody. Part of the reason why I speak the way that I do, part of the reason why I speak so fast, part of the reason why I make that joke at the beginning, "Hey, if you have uh if you have trouble keeping up, listen faster." is because I don't know what you're actually going to be tuned into. And I don't know when you're tuned in or tuned out mentally, so I'm trying to leave as many hooks in the water as possible cuz I have no idea what's going to grab you, right? But in a conversation like this, we're able to go quite a bit deeper into these subjects. Uh but since we're butting up against time and I don't want your staff mad at me, I I do want to kind of you know, bring all this to a close in this one question. Because you talk about, you know, when revival came. That's like a center point of weight here is when revival came to Long Hollow. This was about 5 years before we experienced what some people would call a revival after about a year ago when Charlie Kirk was murdered in front of the entire world. Sociological data would show us that that Sunday after the Wednesday he was murdered was the most attendance of churches across the board in the world ever. Ever, right? Especially in the West, especially even more so in America. There are friends of mine like Michael Ridlon who told us this story right here at my interview table. This is an atheist and a hardened atheist right? He He felt drawn to walk into a church on Sunday. He had no idea why he was there. Worship started. He didn't know any of the songs, but all he did know is that it brought him to tears and he couldn't understand that. This is a hardened Navy SEAL, right? He's killed people with dogs before, right? Like he's that dude, right? And he had no idea why he was there. I kind of feel like we can't define something as a revival when we're sitting in the middle of it. We can only look backwards, right? I just look at the Asbury quote-unquote revival that happened a few years ago. It felt like it was kind of an artificially long worship service. They tried to move the revival offsite because they were having logistical issues in the town that this was at and it's like if it's really a revival, we don't have to con people with chicken sandwiches to say, "Hey, come over here. We're going to give you a Chick-fil-A if you keep the revival going a couple miles down the road." That's not really what it what it is. But you experienced revival at your church. And that force of what you were doing matched with what we saw at the end of 2025 and into 2026. I know this is a long setup, but I think it's important. 2025 was also a really strange year of chess pieces being taken off the board within Christendom. Phil Robertson of Duck Dynasty fame, dies. Yeah, Dr. James Dobson, uh he dies. You have John MacArthur. >> McArthur. >> He dies. You have Voddie Baucham, right? Die. And you have Charlie Kirk. So, Phil was sick. James and John were were fairly old. Those weren't shocking. Voddie Baucham and especially Charlie, what whoa. Like, that was not expected. It seems like and I'm not making an eschatological, you know, prediction here. It seems like pieces are being taken off of the chessboard because we had grown dependent on those men, right? If you're If you're a country redneck from northern Louisiana, you just did whatever Phil said, right? If you're a highly reformed guy, you're going to get your mustache wax and your IPA and you're just going to do whatever Voddie and John MacArthur say, right? Like, if you're, you know, a conservative Christian, you put conservative before Christian, even though Charlie Kirk would tell you not to do that, you're just going to listen to Charlie Kirk debates and just do what he says to do, right? You have a problem in your family, you go to James Dobson, tell me what to do with my family, please. Those guys aren't here anymore. They can live forever on our phones because of, you know, YouTube clips and Instagram reels and TikTok videos and all that kind of thing. But it feels like we're circling the drain and it it's something's about to go down. There's wars and rumors of wars. If you look at Gog Magog, okay, what in the world's happening in Persia, Iran, and Turkey right now, which are two huge players in the end times. All I can say is there seems to be something there seems to be a split where it's like, okay, some people you're going to go to this side where the the Muslim fundamentalists are, where the LGBTQ+ activists are, where the socialist communists are, where the globalists are. And then there's this other side to where it's like, no more veneer of Christianity, no more Christian in name only, no more country music theology, I believe because, you know, I'm a Christian cuz I was born in Texas. And now it's like, this is what the Bible says, be about it or bye. And I just feel like we're all I feel like a crescendo's coming, and I'm not saying that for poetic or dramatic purposes. I fervently honestly believe it. I want to get your read on it as we close. >> Yeah, no, this is good. Um I think the reformat We're We're in a reformation. Okay, let me say it this way. Here's my take on this, and I I believe this could be a critique of the cultural moment we're in. The first reformation was a return to the Bible. Martin Luther, John Calvin, Zwingli, Knox, those guys, Coverdale, Tyndale, return to the Bible. Take the scriptures that were disconnected from the people on the high shelf in other languages and give them access to the word of God. The reformation we're now, which I believe is the second reformation of the church, is a return of the ministry to the believer. First was a return to the Bible. Now, it's a return to the believer, which literally is 2 Timothy 2:2, which you've heard from me in the presence of many witnesses, entrust to faithful men who are able to do so or whoever to give it to others also. And in Ephesians 4:11, uh the apostles, prophets, evangelists, shepherds, which is what it was supposed to be. Evangelists, shepherds, and teachers are to equip the saints for the work of ministry. And so, it's exciting to me because I feel like if uh today, like you said, it's not going to be the next revival may be led by a person we've never heard his name before. Probably is. >> Yep. >> It's going to be led [clears throat] by by a pastor we've never even heard of before, and maybe someone who's probably a teenager, right? Who knows? But But here's my point. That's why I'm so excited about getting people to hear from God. Don't I mean, you can listen to me. You can hear my sermons. You can listen to this podcast, which a lot of you do. You can read different book. And but Pastor I was like, "Listen to me. What I'm trying to say is get people to hear from God because if we Think about this. If we can get a generation today to start hearing the voice of God clearly, then we literally return to the good parts of the first-century church. A lot of people say, "I want to go back to the first century church." I always say, "Okay, do you want your head cut off? Do you want to get kicked in the teeth? Do you want to be living on I mean, yeah, so people want to go to the first century." But, this is something from the first century I think we're missing, and that is they had no Bible, they had no books, they had no theology records, they had the spirit of God, and they had the born-again power of God, the people of God preached the word of God to others for the glory of God, and left the results to God. And that's what will happen if we could get people back to hearing the voice of God through his word, through circumstances, through signs, through suffering. God speaks all the time. He's not speaking audibly from heaven, but he's speaking all the time. The problem is we just kind of blindly are walking through life and we're not looking. I'll close with this line, and this is the line the Lord showed me early on, and it has stuck with me through the whole revival. God showed me this, "You, Robbie, have as much of me in your life as you want." And here's the thing, there is so much more I'd say to you, Kyle, there is so much more from my own experience. I have touched the hem, just touched the hem of the garment, and it has ruined me for the rest of my ministry. And here's the thing about Western Christianity, we have settled for a surface-level, synthetic substitute of the glory of God, and brothers and sisters, there is so much more. I promise you, if you press into God, he promises he will come back and meet you there. >> Well, Robbie, I appreciate you coming on the show. Guys, if you check out the show notes, you can check out Robbie's sermons. You got a link to where you can buy your own copy of the new book, Wait Here. Check out Replicate Ministries, like all the different things. But, as for me and as for now, that's all I got. Anything else you want to get off your chest? >> No, thanks for having me, bro. Always good to hang. >> We'll talk soon. Thank you, everyone, for listening to this episode. Wherever you're listening to this, please subscribe, rate, and leave us a positive five-star review. If you want me to come speak live at your event or on your podcast, just shoot me an email to info@undated.life. Follow us on Instagram and like us on Facebook and check out our website for everything else including how to donate to keep more content like this coming. www.undaunted.life. The music on this podcast is the song Conqueror by the Christian metal band Void Aweaken. Be sure to stream their music on Spotify, Apple Music and wherever else you get your music. I'm your host Kyle Thompson. Remember, keep pushing back darkness, keep forging spiritual, mental and physical resilience, keep seeking the lion of Judah. >> Void Aweaken. >> [music]