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terms at mintmobile.com. with

1:02

your girlfriend. After you're married, the devil tries to do everything

1:04

for you not to have s***s with your wife. It's like

1:06

a movie scene. I get up. That's not my effing gun.

1:08

Run the fingerprints. By the time I'm 10, I

1:10

am an atheist. I'm telling people God doesn't

1:12

exist. And if he does, he definitely doesn't

1:14

like me. It's men like you that inspire me

1:17

to keep pushing when I'm having my little pity

1:19

party. I had struggles, brother, but it was never

1:21

struggles like that. You guys are being used

1:23

in ways that I don't know if you

1:25

fully grasp the magnitude of how God is

1:27

using you. And I just want to commend you

1:29

guys on your vulnerability and your humility, even in this

1:31

conversation. I didn't know how this was going to go.

1:33

I was praying all morning for you guys. God, I

1:36

really hope they receive this well. What if he kicks

1:38

me out? I'm

1:40

so excited for what the Lord is doing with me. It's

1:47

not often I sit down with somebody and they say something that

1:49

makes me think. Bro, this was great. I love you, man. You

1:53

gave me something to think about. I

1:56

had a lot of fun on this interview. Yo,

1:58

I have been waiting for this. episode for

2:00

quite some time my friend. Wow. Quite

2:02

some time. Well, hold on,

2:05

hold on. Welcome back to the George J. Go

2:07

show. I'm with Shauna Dela Rica, my co-host. Hi,

2:09

guys. And Ruslan is our guest today. Dude,

2:12

welcome to the show. We've been chatting behind

2:14

the scenes. And dude,

2:16

I love everything you got going on. I

2:19

like watching. I like, I like, I like,

2:22

it's very hard to review

2:24

somebody without judgment. And

2:27

I think you do a great job at

2:29

being a righteous type of

2:32

judge, where it's not corny. It

2:36

doesn't look like you're trying to rip somebody down. And

2:38

you're really, I like watching you trying to

2:40

see the best in everybody. And

2:43

that's really Christ-like, because it's, you

2:45

get a lot of Christians that all they want

2:47

to do show how great they are and how

2:49

bad you are. And you do a great job

2:51

doing that. So welcome back to today's episode. Today's

2:53

going to be really, really cool, man. I

2:56

think this is going to be kind of like

2:58

the Girls Gone Bible or like a cliff episode

3:00

with his son, Stewart, where I think we're going

3:02

to just be iron sharpens iron. And

3:05

I'm excited. Bro, I just found out, by the

3:07

way, you're a dad. I'm

3:09

a dad. And can we talk

3:11

about your age? Yes. Do you know what my mom said?

3:13

And this is so funny, because I actually might have to

3:15

cut this, because she's like, don't say that. She

3:18

gave me the sweetest compliment when you called the other day.

3:21

She goes, she goes, are you going to interview the handsome

3:23

one, right? And I was like, I was like, what? She

3:27

goes, the one who makes the reviews on there and showed

3:29

you a picture. I was like, wow, mom, you think he's

3:31

handsome? She goes, yeah, he's a very bottom up guy. He's

3:33

a very handsome guy, like what he stands for and everything.

3:35

And I was like, oh, OK, so you're a very handsome

3:38

guy. Thank you. And to us, you're very handsome. Thank you.

3:40

Thank you. Thank you. I brought you guys some gifts. Can

3:42

I show you guys what I brought you? I would love that. You're

3:45

so sweet. That is the sweetest thing. There's

3:47

levels to this. OK, we're going to start with the most top

3:51

level, which is this is just this is our prayer

3:53

journal. This one's for Belle, which she said I was

3:56

allowed to call her. And this is the leadership journal

3:58

for you. OK, so. That is

4:00

the way I've been able to stay consistently

4:02

praying. And I just play praying, but recalling

4:04

my prayers is by designing that. So the

4:07

leadership just came out. Dude, I really, really

4:09

wanted to drop my journal. You

4:11

should totally drop the journal. Only reason I did it

4:13

is because you did it. Oh my gosh. And the

4:15

reason why I won't is because it was very, very

4:17

cool how you did it and the way you did

4:19

this, I actually already reviewed this. Oh wow. It

4:22

is phenomenal and it was so much better

4:24

than how I was gonna do it. Oh

4:26

my gosh. So if you guys don't journal

4:28

your prayers, this is something

4:30

that you guys should get involved in. But what's the leader

4:32

of the- So the leadership journal is- Yeah, sorry, I'm just

4:34

holding it off. It has the- Can I open it up?

4:36

Yeah, you totally can. It has the prayer journal inside of

4:38

it. And then it has

4:41

goal setting, calendar, and

4:43

a section for leadership meetings. So if

4:45

you guys are having a meeting and you're like, we have this

4:47

issue, it just gives you a framework.

4:49

Cause I hate meetings. Like I hate meetings. Really?

4:52

I hate meetings. Why? Because I'm

4:54

like, let's get to the solution. Like let's fix it. And

4:56

that has a prompt that we use to

4:58

get people to the solution. So if you open

5:00

it, it has like a structure for goals, which

5:02

I'm sure you'll like. It starts with dreaming. Then

5:04

it goes into action-based goals. Then it goes into

5:07

daily non-negotiables. And then it goes into-

5:09

They say all of them. And then it goes into-

5:12

Look at this thing. It looks like the Old Testament,

5:14

dude. You know, actually Moses used

5:16

this to get the Israelites out. And they still

5:18

didn't figure it out. These are beautiful. Thank you

5:20

so much. And you know what? This really comes

5:22

at a perfect time because something

5:25

that I'm trying to be better about is keeping

5:27

myself accountable. When I tell myself, okay, like I'm

5:29

going to do Bible study. I'm going to spend some time in prayer.

5:31

I'm going to spend some time in worship. And

5:33

you know, as we do things get in the way, oh,

5:35

but I want to do this or I don't have enough

5:37

time. And so this really comes at a perfect time. Not

5:40

if you have a monthly non-negotiable. Yep. So

5:42

that's a regular calendar. You can use that to just do

5:44

a calendar. You can use that to write down prayer for

5:46

people. The next section is what's in hers is

5:49

just a regular prayer journal. So it's almost the

5:51

same thing, except her notes are next to there.

5:53

And your notes are at the very end. Pray

5:55

for other people. How

5:57

many people do you know? It follows the Lord's

5:59

Prayer. right, which is you start with praise and

6:01

gratitude, then you pray for other people, then you

6:04

pray for yourself, then you reflect on what you

6:06

read, daily memory or

6:08

weekly memory verse, and then daily non-negotiable.

6:10

And then at the very end, there's

6:12

the brain dump, brain leadership meeting,

6:17

and then notes. So yeah,

6:19

we just try to be as efficient as possible.

6:22

And the cool thing about writing out your prayers

6:24

is you remember them. You remember

6:26

them because you go in a different part of

6:28

your brain and everything is digital now. And so

6:30

we wanted to do that. Okay, next gift. This

6:32

is amazing. Next, if this is for me and

6:34

my wife. Okay, these are the two books that

6:37

when we were engaged in 2007, we got married in

6:39

2008. So we'll be 16 years. That's

6:44

what I was talking about. He's a vampire. He

6:46

doesn't look like I thought you were like 20.

6:48

I swear I thought you were like anywhere from like 23 to 26. This

6:50

is the cut. This is the compliment you paid

6:52

me. That was this is what I mean. Like, but kind

6:55

of honestly, like, am I am I tripping? No, not at

6:57

all. I see. I didn't even know you were like this much older

6:59

than what you say. I don't even know your age before

7:01

the New Year's Eve. Damn, bro. So thank

7:03

you. So when me and

7:06

my wife, we both came from pretty, pretty rough families,

7:08

both a lot of divorce, a lot of issues. We

7:10

can kind of talk about that. But these are the

7:12

two books, I'd say the two books that changed and

7:14

set us up for marriage. The first one we heard

7:17

this couple speak saving your marriage before it begins. It's

7:19

kind of a deep cut. And the second one is

7:22

the five love languages. That's a classic. I'm sure

7:24

you guys have heard the terminology of terminology of

7:26

love languages. We read the five love languages on

7:28

a drive from San Diego to Big Bear. You

7:30

can read it just in one drive. And

7:32

it is amazing. It'll save a lot of. Can

7:35

I ask you something? I

7:37

really appreciate this gift. But do

7:39

you feel like reading these people's

7:41

perspective of God could be harmful

7:44

if you just don't go directly to the

7:46

Bible and learn from your like, sometimes it

7:48

can sometimes it can. How do you choose

7:51

which one's like a good message? Yeah, prayerfully,

7:53

carefully doing research. A lot of these folks

7:55

are experts in their field and they're Christians,

7:58

so they're not just like somebody just. spatting

8:00

out whatever they think. And so it's anchored

8:02

on scripture but it gives you a more

8:04

of a praxology for how to practice your

8:07

marriage and building a relationship on God's principles if

8:09

you will. So were you guys having like a

8:12

rocky start to your guys's engagement? We had

8:14

a rocky start to our life man. No,

8:16

no, I'm saying between you guys. No, no,

8:19

thankfully because we were so into like let's

8:21

read every book, go to every conference, take

8:23

as much premarital counseling, do everything because we

8:25

cannot repeat the mistakes of our parents. We

8:27

can't repeat the cycle. So are you close

8:30

to your parents? Yeah, no I am. Yeah,

8:32

a lot of restoration and

8:34

reconciliation with both of my parents. I'd

8:36

love to get into that. Yeah, okay

8:38

now this is the one. This is

8:40

so thoughtful. Thank you so much. This

8:42

is the one. You are from? I'm

8:44

a Syrian. You're Syrian. Yes. This is

8:47

from the oldest tattoo shop in

8:49

the world where I got my last tattoo. That's irrelevant

8:51

to this. And this is

8:53

the last one. Okay, this is

8:55

a handwritten version

8:57

of the four Gospels. Handwritten.

9:00

An Aramaic? An Aramaic. No

9:02

way bro. An Aramaic. These

9:05

are my people bro. This is

9:07

the oldest tattoo shop in the world is in

9:09

Jerusalem. It's ran by a Palestinian Christian family and

9:13

they are they put this together so it's in

9:15

a Syrian. So if you open it up that

9:17

and it's messed up like that because I had

9:19

to get it over here from Israel and it's

9:21

the last one like these things are sold out.

9:23

Oh my goodness. They only made like a hundred

9:25

of these or so. That

9:29

is so precious. I

9:32

don't know how it goes because I can't read a

9:34

Syrian. But it's

9:36

uh I saw it when I was in Israel a

9:38

couple years ago and then I knew

9:40

that at some point we were gonna meet like I didn't know when

9:42

we were gonna meet but I knew we were gonna meet and so

9:44

I actually got this like months ago for you and

9:47

I was like well me and George meet I'm

9:49

gonna I'm gonna give him this and he's gonna

9:51

he's gonna like it. Dude this is like you're

9:53

such an angel. This is insane. Pretty cool right?

9:55

This is insane. Now check out check out the

9:57

handwritten part like crack it open to the actual

9:59

Gospels. That's oh, wow

10:03

Bro, this is insane Pretty

10:05

cool. First of all, thank you so much for

10:07

even bearing gifts, bro Like that you don't even

10:10

need to do that. But the fact that you

10:12

you went as far as this this is incredible,

10:14

bro Thank you so much You're

10:16

so thoughtful and all things to only bring more

10:18

fruit to our life, which is so beautiful. Thank

10:20

you, dude I'm like kind of mesmerized by this.

10:22

I can't even put it I can't wait I

10:24

want to jump into this with you afterwards and

10:26

hopefully we get somebody to read it I was

10:28

gonna say I don't know if you could if

10:30

you could read it out But I just thought

10:33

that the Syrian thing the syric Aramaic language No,

10:35

bro But I know a lot of relatives that

10:37

could read this like easy and honestly I kind

10:39

of want to get into learning how to read

10:41

and write Aramaic. Could you put this somewhere high?

10:43

I don't want to put this By feet. Yeah,

10:47

so anyway, I thought of that dude. Thank you

10:49

so much. That is okay. You're my favorite guest

10:54

Dude, okay, so let me just

10:56

get into this real quick. So you're you're you're Married

10:59

with two kids two kids and

11:01

now I kind of want to peel back the layer when you

11:03

said that you came from like a rough background where you By

11:08

any chance like You

11:10

had your faith in that broken home and then it

11:12

helps you get out or did you when you got

11:14

out to build your own? Home had to find faith

11:17

Both okay, so

11:19

I'm ethnically Armenian. Oh,

11:22

no way. Yeah Okay, so grandmother's Armenian. Oh,

11:24

wow. Yeah, okay. So you would whatever that

11:26

make you Not a quarter Yeah,

11:31

I always joke around I go I'm a Syrian but

11:33

I get my looks from Armenia So

11:37

my father is a hundred percent Armenian

11:40

my mother is I

11:42

was adopted by an Armenian family, but she

11:44

I think is like Russian

11:46

or Ukrainian that's what the 23 and me DNA

11:48

test and so we grew up in

11:51

Azar Bajan Baku, which is just north of Iran East

11:55

of Armenia and that's a

11:57

predominantly Muslim country

12:00

And it was under Soviet Union. So there's like

12:02

layers to this, right? And because of the Soviet

12:04

Union, we didn't grow up going to church. I

12:06

didn't even know anything about faith or anything because

12:09

it was like Soviet Union. You're not

12:11

allowed to. You're not allowed to. Yeah. Right?

12:14

And so my dad, because he's Armenian, we were

12:16

more fair skinned because my mom is Russian. The

12:19

pogroms of Baku broke out. This is in

12:21

the late 80s. This is where the RZs

12:23

had issues with the Armenians in Baku. So

12:26

my dad was going back and forth,

12:28

traveling to Moscow, working. And

12:32

my mom, we stayed back. And long story

12:34

short, we came out as refugees because the

12:36

pogroms of Baku broke out, meaning that the

12:38

RZs wanted all the Armenians out of

12:41

the land. And so in 91, we applied

12:43

to a bunch of different places and we

12:45

came to San Diego as refugees. And then

12:47

when we finally came here, then I discovered

12:49

like, oh, Armenia, oldest

12:52

Christian nation, deep

12:54

history. And I started going to Armenian Apostolic Church,

12:57

a part of the Oriental Orthodox arm of the

12:59

church. So I was like an altar boy and

13:01

the whole pulpit, like all the way in. How

13:03

old were you? Yeah, how old were you when

13:05

you left Baku? So six. I was six when

13:07

I left. And my

13:09

mom and my dad, I didn't know that they were

13:11

already on the rocks. Like their relationship was already heavy

13:13

because my dad's working in Moscow. My mom is back

13:15

in Baku. There's a lot of

13:17

issues in their relationship. And what happened

13:20

was I end

13:22

up discovering these letters with

13:25

like lipstick, kissy marks. And

13:27

I'm like, oh, this is sweet. My mom's writing letters

13:29

to my dad. And so I take them to my

13:31

dad. Well, what I didn't know is

13:33

that they were to her boyfriend back in Baku. And

13:36

so that was the straw that broke the camel's back for

13:38

my dad. And he ends up. You

13:41

said the last straw? Did he

13:43

know she was? Yeah, he knew. But it was that your

13:45

son brought it to him. Yeah, he knew she

13:48

had a boyfriend. He had a

13:50

girlfriend in Moscow. This was

13:52

their fresh start. We're coming to America, new life,

13:54

fresh start. And she's still writing

13:56

her boyfriend. And I suppressed all

13:59

these memories. as a child, I didn't know

14:01

this. So she ends up being

14:03

sad. He's like, I'm done walks out

14:05

leaves, makes an effort to be in

14:08

my life, but she made it difficult. She she just my mom's

14:10

always had a pretty terrible taste

14:12

in men besides my dad.

14:14

And so she's like downward spiral of alcoholism.

14:17

Her dad ended up, you know, dying back

14:19

in in Baku. And my dad moves on

14:21

brings his girlfriend out gets remarried. At the

14:24

same time, I'm an altar boy. And there's

14:26

these older altar boys in the in the

14:28

church. They're like

14:30

maybe 1314. I'm like seven

14:33

ish eight ish. And long story

14:35

short, they they ended up molesting

14:38

me these these older kids end up molesting

14:40

me. And it was very graphic.

14:43

And I don't remember how long it lasted. But

14:45

it all came out all culminated and all came

14:47

out. And and there was a misplacement

14:49

of responsibility. And basically, they made it seem like

14:51

I was like the victim in the situation. The

14:53

kid was the one that aggressively did it all

14:56

like I was the one that initiated this stuff.

14:58

And it was really, it was

15:00

really dark time. So like my dad's gone, my

15:02

mom's an alcoholic, I guess, actually

15:04

assaulted by these older teenage altar boys. And

15:07

the church ends up just

15:10

kind of like shrugging and not really doing

15:12

anything about it. And they remarried

15:14

my dad, which she was technically I guess

15:16

my mom according to my mom not divorced.

15:18

So all of this by the time I'm

15:20

1011, I am

15:22

an atheist, like I'm like telling people I'm an

15:24

atheist, God doesn't exist. And

15:26

if he does, he definitely doesn't like me.

15:28

I stopped going to Armenian church. I

15:32

ended up getting arrested for breaking into houses

15:34

at 11. I was on probation my whole

15:36

sixth and seventh grade year. Gangs,

15:39

drugs, smoking weed, alcohol,

15:43

like, like you name it, I was the

15:45

crazy disgruntled kid, because I had a father

15:47

wound, like my dad left and my

15:50

dad wasn't there to protect me from this stuff.

15:52

And the church hurt me. And

15:54

it was just yeah, it was just a mess, man, like

15:56

a mess of a childhood that

15:59

thankfully God and his sovereignty

16:01

and in his providence just came after me

16:03

in a really kind of kind of a

16:05

miraculous way That

16:08

is so I mean it's so heavy and it's so

16:10

much for a child to process and certainly if you

16:12

don't have Figures around you that are able to help

16:14

you, you know process it and understand it and get

16:16

through it I mean, that's just

16:18

incredibly difficult. And so at the time when

16:21

you're 11 12 were you living

16:23

with your mom at this time? Yeah, living with my

16:25

mom. My dad's not coming around every time you'd come

16:27

around. There'd be a fistfight there would be a drunk

16:30

dude to greet him and just

16:32

just Insane stuff. My mom would jump

16:34

in when my dad is trying to fight off this

16:36

guy It's like crazy stuff So my dad is like

16:39

dude like because I ended up confronting him about all this

16:41

stuff like what were you like what happened dude? And so

16:43

he's like, you don't remember this you don't remember this you

16:45

don't remember this and I was like, I Think

16:48

you should have been there but okay, I get it

16:50

like you moved on and you tried but it just

16:52

it was it was Hard it was really hard for

16:54

him. So he allowed me to humanize him at

16:56

the same time My mom slowly

16:59

turns it around we were on welfare for

17:01

five years like government cheese Like

17:03

that you name it like we have we had the programs and

17:06

she slowly turns around she got a job at

17:09

a casino and she starts kind of

17:11

improving our situation little by little and

17:15

As them getting arrested she sees that I'm in normal height,

17:17

San Diego Which I'm not sure how familiar you guys are

17:19

with San Diego San Diego was very different in the in

17:21

the early 90s like this is early mid

17:23

90s and very different San Diego And so because I got

17:25

arrested I kept getting in trouble My

17:29

Seventh-grade year. I had like a 1.0 GPA They

17:31

almost like revoked my little probation because I was

17:33

just I didn't do the community service hours Like

17:35

I was just a mess and so

17:38

a couple things happened the manager

17:40

of our apartment and in Missouri She's

17:42

a sweetheart. We're still friends to this

17:45

day She ends up getting caught for

17:47

for moving weight through an airplane Like

17:49

she's she's moving weight for street dudes

17:52

And she was really in that world to the

17:54

point where me and her son would do sleepovers

17:56

and one night we did a sleepover at

17:58

my house and like the alleyway where their house

18:01

was got shot up. Like we were all

18:03

in the same apartment complex. So

18:06

she ends up getting saved,

18:08

like radically saved, comes out and is

18:11

just sharing the gospel with everybody. And

18:13

everybody is getting saved in

18:15

our apartment complex. It's like maybe like one of

18:17

those like eight unit ones except the two Armenian

18:19

families. Like Armenians were like, no, we're like stubborn.

18:21

We're not doing it. And so she

18:24

and other people around me started prophesying. You're gonna

18:27

do great things for the Lord someday. God's gonna

18:29

use you to speak to millions of people. And

18:31

I'm like, there's no God. And

18:33

it's a God, he doesn't like me very

18:35

much, like stop it. And sure enough, like

18:37

God used those people to plant seeds. And

18:40

the end of my seventh grade year, this

18:42

kid, the Samoan kid ends

18:45

up bringing a gun to school and he shows

18:47

it to me. And then I

18:51

get called into the principal's office and

18:53

there's detectives there and they're like, hey,

18:55

so-and-so said that it was your gun.

18:58

And I'm like, what?

19:01

Like, what are you guys talking about? And they're like, well,

19:03

we know your own probation. We know this and this, you

19:05

messed this up, blah, blah, blah. They already know my reputation.

19:08

And so I'm like, no, like this is not my

19:10

gun. You guys are crazy. I'm literally, it's like a

19:12

movie scene. I get up and I cuss

19:14

at the Dagon detectives. Like, that's not my effing

19:16

gun. Run the fingerprints and you'll see it's not

19:18

my gun. They're like, we are gonna run the

19:21

fingerprints and we're gonna prove your gun. You're gonna

19:23

go with, like it was like, first of all,

19:25

why are you talking to a minor without legal

19:27

counsel or a parent guardian? This is crazy. They

19:29

like to do that so you can confess things.

19:32

Dude, it was nuts. The

19:35

same day or the next day, I'm going home

19:37

from school. This is like the last few

19:39

days of my seventh grade year at Wilson Middle School.

19:41

The Samoan kid is walking up the street and

19:44

I'm like, hey man, what's up with that

19:46

whole gun thing? Like, what happened? And all

19:48

I see is a blade in his right hand.

19:50

And I look and I see a blade in

19:52

his hand and I'm like, oh,

19:55

and he's like, why did you snitch on me? And

19:57

I'm like, snitch on you. And at

20:00

that point, point I just booked it down El Cajon

20:02

Avenue as quickly as I could. Thankfully,

20:04

he was a big Samoan kid and there was no way

20:06

he was going to catch me. What

20:08

was the update on that? What happened to

20:10

him? I have no idea. Oh, you ran

20:12

that fast. I ran that fast and we

20:14

moved into Vista, California, which is where I

20:16

live now. That same weekend we

20:18

moved and I went from being a 1.0

20:21

GPA student, finished my eighth grade year with almost

20:23

a 4.0, just a change of

20:25

environment, different environment, basketball. My

20:28

plan was I'm done. I'm

20:30

done. I'm not smoking weed. I'm not doing anything else.

20:32

At this point I had lost my virginity. I had

20:35

done everything there is to do. I'm done.

20:37

This is my fresh start. I

20:41

ended up deciding, okay, I'm going to be a

20:43

professional basketball player. That's going to

20:45

be the path. Unfortunately, my

20:47

mom's DNA didn't really hit me much

20:50

and my boyfriend had to

20:52

sit down and have a conversation with me about

20:54

Armenian genetics and explain to me

20:56

that there's never been an Armenian that's made it

20:58

to the NBA. I

21:01

was going to make a joke, but I

21:03

was like, yo, if you made it to

21:05

the NBA, then you know God's real. This

21:07

video is sponsored by Life Cycle. In the

21:09

beginning of this podcast, you could probably see

21:11

me dripping this into my orange juice because

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I just came back from travel and I

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know I'm about to have an amazing conversation

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the shrooms to get you guys in the

21:43

room. I'll see you guys later. My

21:46

buddy Rufat, who's from the same town, he always

21:48

cracks a joke. He goes, if

21:50

you count the Kardashians, we've taken

21:52

more careers than we've added

21:54

to the NBA. I,

22:00

at the same time, start dating a girl, and

22:02

she is the end of my freshman year, and the only way

22:04

I could see her is if I can go to church with

22:06

her and her family on Sundays. And so I'm like, Oh, no.

22:10

Yeah, man, so this is like two years. I

22:12

start going to church, and it's just like a

22:14

regular evangelical, kind of secret-friendly church, but I'm here

22:16

in the gospel, and I'm the kid that

22:19

I break up with her, we get back together,

22:21

we break up. I'm the kid that's putting up

22:23

my hand every week saying the prayer. For two

22:25

years straight, I then dated Jehovah's Witness girl. I

22:27

didn't have Mormon friends. I have Muslim friends. I

22:30

was around 9-11, so this is like when it was really,

22:32

really crazy. And I end

22:34

up wrestling with God for two

22:36

years, like hardcore, and my manager

22:39

and our lead driver at my first job, I

22:41

worked at Pizza Hut, we're

22:44

both Christian. And I'm like, I think Jesus is the

22:46

son of God, but is he God in the flesh?

22:48

I'm confused. And he gave me a book called, The

22:51

New Evidence That Demands a Verdict, and it was by

22:53

Josh McDowell, and it was like a thick old apologetics

22:55

book, and I just smashed it,

22:57

a whole book. I had never read that

23:00

much, and I end up surrendering my life to

23:02

Jesus at the end of my junior year, and

23:04

fully gave it all over to God. I'm

23:06

like, I'm doing it your way. I'm not

23:08

gonna do this one foot in, one foot out.

23:10

I'm not gonna do the girls, and

23:13

try to, the status. And

23:16

I meet my wife in high school around that same

23:18

time. And so a year

23:21

after graduating, me

23:23

and my wife started dating, she was a year behind me. Four

23:26

years later to the date, we got married

23:28

on our four year dating anniversary, July 5th,

23:31

and I was able to pursue

23:33

music full time, because I was like, if I can't

23:35

be a basketball player, I'm gonna be a rapper, right?

23:37

Because what else is there if you're from the hood?

23:40

I ended up quitting

23:42

my job in 2015, and from 2015 to 2020,

23:45

I did rapping as a full time thing, traveling

23:49

around the country, playing colleges, playing churches, playing

23:51

anything I could do. And

23:54

did some cool stuff in the music industry. One

23:56

of my artists ended up doing a deal with

23:58

Interscope, and that kind of hurt our friendship. and

24:00

a bunch of stuff happened. And so at the

24:02

same time I started dabbling in YouTube, vlogging 2015

24:05

Casey Neistat era, failing miserably. I started

24:07

vlogging, my day's a full-time rapper, like

24:09

June 1st, 2015, my day's a

24:11

full-time rapper. And thankfully I did the

24:13

music and I built a YouTube on the side. And

24:16

so 2019 was my first year, every

24:18

single day upload of podcasts, just like this. I

24:20

would go green room, sit down with somebody, that

24:22

was a homie, we do podcasts, and every day

24:24

I dropped a clip. 2020

24:26

pandemic shuts, shut down, I can't tour, I can't

24:28

do shows, no one's paying

24:30

for features. I started

24:33

going live on YouTube, 15,000 subscribers at

24:36

the beginning of 2020, like 80,000 subscribers by

24:39

the end of 2020. And that's when

24:41

everything kind of, I was doing well

24:43

with music, we were doing like six figures a year as an

24:45

independent musician. When it really

24:47

popped off was when the YouTube hit and then

24:49

the YouTube just kind of exponentially blew up. Yeah.

24:52

I have so many questions. Okay. One,

24:56

who's playing you in the movie? That's what I just wanna

24:58

know. Could you get the AC?

25:00

My eyes are just drying out from him. Okay, thank you, I'm

25:02

cool. He was just

25:04

talking. I'm gonna put on this jacket. Yeah, see. Sorry,

25:08

I know that was a whole lot. I just tried to give you guys

25:10

the elevator. No, it's nice to see a timeline. I like it, I like

25:12

it. I just, there's

25:14

so much to unpack here, man. At

25:18

the beginning of the podcast, I said that

25:20

you have this natural talent of seeing the

25:22

best out of people. And you're

25:24

a righteous judge. And

25:27

that could be a very

25:29

hard skill to manage, but after hearing

25:31

your story about the altar

25:34

boys, about your father, about your mother, about

25:37

you in school,

25:39

about you chasing these type

25:42

of worldly desires

25:44

and just God reeling you back.

25:48

All I know is this, like I'm

25:50

blessed to have conversations with really cool

25:52

people. And it's

25:55

no shock that the people that have been

25:59

dealt the heavy. hand usually have the biggest

26:01

heart when it comes to God and it

26:03

comes to their neighbors and I just

26:07

before I even get into my questions man I just want to

26:11

applaud you and just give you your flowers on

26:14

you could have easily been bitter you

26:17

could have easily kept trapping you

26:19

could have easily gone

26:21

that direction and play victim and

26:23

and be angry with God but

26:26

it's men like you that inspire me to

26:29

keep really pushing when I'm having my little

26:31

pity party because I I

26:34

had struggles brother but it was never

26:36

struggles like that and so when

26:39

you sat here and reflected your life and

26:41

I got to see glimpses of Jesus just

26:43

shining through you in those moments it's

26:46

an honor to hear that story and I

26:48

really really pray that your healing is is

26:50

like a hundred percent and that you don't

26:52

have to deal with that trauma and I

26:55

pray that you know his his love

26:57

and pieces is above our understanding and I

26:59

just pray that you're walking at a level

27:02

that I won't be able to comprehend but

27:04

you're in that peace and joy and I pray

27:06

that your children and your bloodline never ever have

27:08

to suffer what you and your

27:10

and your and your bloodline had to suffer thank you

27:13

man yeah a lot lots of therapy okay let's I

27:15

would love to talk about that

27:17

because I didn't really know how if

27:20

if therapies Christ like so

27:23

to me it was against Christ because

27:26

it's reflecting on a bad thought over

27:28

and over with somebody but I'd love

27:30

to get your perspective on therapy as

27:32

a Christian man dealing with trauma getting

27:34

out of it and being a wholesome

27:36

leader yeah so what

27:38

happened was when the music got murky I

27:41

started finding a pattern of like relationship fallout

27:43

relationship fall out not not me and my

27:45

wife were good but even that

27:47

there would be rocky seasons of porn

27:49

addiction and just like struggling that like

27:51

I have to deal with that but

27:54

then I saw this pattern like falling out with people and so

27:56

I finally was like okay I'm gonna do this thing at my

27:58

church called men skills it's like this like part

28:00

group therapy, part Bible study class that they

28:02

walk you through. It's from a church called

28:04

North Coast Calvary down in

28:07

Encinitas, California. And

28:09

so I did that first and I was like, okay, cool. This

28:11

gives me the trigger, the

28:14

cue trigger, brain

28:16

gets hijacked cycle that we

28:18

go through. That we don't even know. Could you

28:20

break that down for me? Yeah, so it's like

28:22

we have different triggers and those triggers, if you've

28:25

gone through traumatic things in your childhood, can

28:27

put your body in a state of fight or

28:29

flight and you don't even know what's going on,

28:31

your brain gets hijacked. So a trigger for me

28:34

is my dad would say he was gonna come

28:36

pick me up and then

28:38

I would be out in the street waiting for him to

28:40

pick me up and then he would not pick me up.

28:42

Something would come up and he wouldn't pick me up. And

28:44

this is before the days of cell phones or whatever. And

28:46

so a trigger for me is anytime anyone said they were

28:49

gonna do something and not do it, like I would see

28:51

red and I would just like, I would shut down and

28:53

I would dismiss the person. Say like, you're in San Diego

28:55

and you're visiting and I'm like, hey, George, like you wanna

28:57

go hit the gym. And you're like,

28:59

yeah, dude, what time? And I'm like, 7.30 and you're like, I'm in. And

29:02

then like, something comes up and you're like, it's 7.25, you hit

29:04

me, hey, bro, I can't make it. Like I would be like,

29:07

this guy doesn't care about me. He doesn't care

29:09

about me. And it would like rehash this father

29:11

wound of like someone flaking on me. I

29:15

like to talk about this because I've

29:18

had some people in my life that

29:21

are, I would see them as

29:23

too emotional. Like, bro, like I'm busy. Like if

29:25

I can't make it there, like you need to

29:27

get over yourself. And I took

29:29

this as like, who do you think you are? That

29:31

like, I can't go to work or I can't do

29:34

something and you're gonna be this upset with me for,

29:37

cause to me, my brain is how I

29:39

see my father and it's like, where comes

29:41

first, family comes first. So he would drop

29:43

things all the time, but people knew his

29:45

heart. It's so great that you're sharing this

29:47

thing with me because I never knew that

29:49

their reaction could stem from trauma, that I'm

29:52

pushing them in a realm of things

29:55

that they don't want to remember. And

29:57

so I have to have grace and like, I

29:59

think I'm coming. I'm getting to that age

30:01

where things are not bothering me as much

30:03

because I'm realizing that it's a lot bigger than

30:05

myself. And I didn't know how much of

30:07

a narcissist and how ego like I am. Like I don't have,

30:10

I had so much ego and I thought I was like,

30:12

I didn't have any ego. And so

30:15

I'm falling in line to realize that

30:17

I'm a really big hypocrite. So this

30:20

is such a good conversation to have, bro, because

30:22

you're so buttoned up and you're so put together

30:24

that I wouldn't expect like this type of trauma

30:26

to come to you. So I would push you

30:28

a lot harder than I think that I would

30:31

if I knew somebody that did have trauma. And

30:33

I think that's basically putting me back into

30:35

the realm of like people have their issues

30:37

that they have to deal with. How

30:40

would you go about dealing with this now?

30:42

And if there's somebody listening and they deal

30:44

with that issue of like, they, maybe they

30:46

just realized that they do it just because

30:48

you spoke that. Um, and maybe

30:50

somebody does realize that what was the

30:52

fundamentals that you practice to get yourself

30:54

to, to behave in that

30:56

circumstance that the devil wanted you to get rageful.

30:58

Well, I think awareness, right? Just foundation. Like I

31:01

didn't know that about myself. Like I didn't, and

31:03

there's other ones I could point to, but I

31:05

didn't know like, Oh, this trigger, this triggers, like

31:07

it's not like a cliche, like trigger warning. Like,

31:09

no, no, this, there's an actual thing here that

31:11

goes back to something in my childhood. And I

31:13

didn't know that. And so I think one, the

31:15

self-awareness of going through like a group class was

31:17

really helpful and because they did a

31:19

survey recently and they found out that like 85% of people

31:23

think they're self-aware. And then

31:25

when you actually get them to take a survey

31:27

and then they, how other people perceive them, they

31:29

found out that like only 5% of

31:31

people are really self-aware. Meaning most of us don't

31:34

accurately see ourselves how other people

31:36

see us. Right. And

31:38

so I think foundationally realizing that, wait,

31:40

something happened to me that wasn't normal,

31:45

right? Whatever normal is, but it wasn't supposed to

31:47

happen. That did something to my

31:49

brain that I, a seven, eight year

31:51

old shouldn't have gone through. And then

31:54

I ended up leaning into like an real therapist

31:56

and then he was the one that gave me

31:58

language like, Oh, you have onset. PTSD from your

32:01

childhood. That's what that is. Right. So when you're

32:03

in a conflict situation and you're just like, you're

32:05

this way, you're that way, that's what that is.

32:07

And so giving, getting language to it was helpful.

32:09

And I'm not saying like everyone has a mental

32:12

illness and everyone needs to figure out what's wrong,

32:14

but I'm saying for me, if you've gone through

32:16

something gnarly as a child, there's probably something there

32:18

that you should unpack and heal from. And

32:21

then the healing came in. I got

32:23

a great, great Christian therapist. And so

32:25

I, I'm with you. I'm skeptical of

32:27

therapy in general. What my therapy, my

32:29

Christian therapist, his name is Dr. Rudy. He

32:32

has never asked me, how does that make you

32:34

feel? He's never asked me. He's never

32:36

said, let's relive the time you got molested. Like these

32:38

are not Christians. He's ever asked me. I don't even

32:40

know if I'm allowed to laugh. I just want to

32:42

say, whoa. No, but it's true.

32:44

Cause it's like, yeah. Resoaking into that. It's like,

32:46

once you revisit something, it's so vivid for yourself.

32:48

So then you're, you're stuck in that for the

32:50

whole day. Yes. And

32:53

so a lot of what we work

32:55

on is very practical. Like, Hey, what's

32:58

the eternal scorecard? Like, cause

33:00

your tendency is to overwork because you're, you're,

33:03

you're, you're a driver. You like to work. That's,

33:05

that's fine. God made you that way. But what's

33:07

the eternal scorecard? Like it's those sorts of conversations,

33:10

very macro, Hey, you know, uh, think

33:12

of Jesus being with you in the middle

33:15

of all this and think of like the priorities and the

33:17

kingdom principles that you're supposed to live by. So it's a

33:19

lot of pointing me back to that. And then I'll ask

33:21

very like technical questions about like, Hey, I'm

33:23

dealing with now other aspects of my family, my

33:25

extended family that have trauma. How do I navigate

33:27

this? And how do I make sure that my

33:30

things aren't being projected on them? And how

33:32

do I, uh, walk through healthy

33:34

habit formation without overdoing it, right? And

33:37

without being self-righteous or having

33:39

that legalistic at heart to things.

33:41

And those are the kinds of conversations we have. So I

33:44

think for me, one awareness is huge.

33:46

Cause I think most of us just don't

33:48

know what we don't know, especially about ourselves

33:50

to, if you've gone through things, finding, uh,

33:52

someone you can confess sin to, I think

33:54

like we would do a bad job of

33:56

confession of sin. Like we just, you

33:59

know, I, I would love to

34:01

actually tap into this. That is where

34:03

I found the biggest growth. When

34:06

I confess, I run

34:08

to confessions now. I don't have this thing where I

34:10

have to go to a priest and confess, but I'll

34:12

confess to my partner, I'll

34:15

confess to Reed. I'm always reevaluating

34:17

and confessing because I feel

34:20

in my spiritual realm, I

34:23

don't think anything that I have is off of my

34:25

works. I think it's off of his grace. Not

34:29

just me being saved, but I'm

34:31

gonna give you an example of my career,

34:33

version of me doing everything I can, nothing

34:35

happens. But then submitting myself to the Lord,

34:38

everything blossomed. So I

34:40

think I can't learn the lesson or

34:42

grow from it until I confess out

34:44

loud saying, Lord, I messed up here

34:46

and I need the wisdom to correct

34:49

myself. And it's hard at first,

34:51

but once you get into that rhythm, it's

34:53

addicting. When you know you did something

34:55

wrong and you could just get out of it, my

34:57

mom would tell me a

35:00

mistake that you learn from is not a mistake. It

35:05

was a lesson or like, it's good.

35:07

It was a, it's

35:09

not something we should look at bad. But

35:13

you going to therapy and

35:15

going through these fundamentals to

35:18

heal, did you accomplish

35:21

full healing or is it a

35:23

wound that you have to keep making sure

35:25

is healed and you're properly taking care of

35:27

it? So it doesn't spill out

35:29

onto your loved ones or is it like, no, we're

35:31

done, we've moved on. It's like a scar, like

35:34

it's like a scar. So it's healed, I had

35:37

to work through the healing, I have to be careful

35:40

in terms of how I navigate certain things in terms

35:42

of what's on my explorer page

35:44

on Instagram. Sometimes I go through seasons of

35:46

deleting Instagram, right? Because when you have the

35:49

exposure to sexual

35:51

trauma that then connected to pornography, like you

35:53

just have to be more diligent in terms

35:55

of your own mental fortitude and consecration. So

35:57

I got to be very careful. I gotta

35:59

be very careful with what I'm putting before

36:01

my eyes. I gotta be very careful

36:04

with the things that I'm allowing to think about. I

36:06

gotta be very careful. My therapist

36:08

said this to me, this is interesting, and I'm sure I'll

36:10

get a lot of crap for this. I've never shared this

36:12

with anybody, but he said something to me. He

36:14

said, you need

36:17

to start viewing yourself not as

36:19

a heterosexual male. So you

36:21

need to start viewing yourself as a, my wife's

36:23

name is Monet, as a Monetsexual. That

36:26

is your person. That is the

36:28

only person you get to be sexual with, think

36:30

about in sexual ways. And then when

36:33

you start thinking about, there is no one

36:35

else. I am a Monetsexual. My

36:37

wife is the apple of my eye when

36:39

it comes to that. So like little aspects

36:41

like that is helpful. And then the

36:43

other part that I don't think we talk about enough is

36:45

the law of replacement. Jordan Peterson

36:47

said that you can't just

36:49

remove things and think it's gonna get better.

36:51

You can call out the sin, you can

36:54

remove the sin, but

36:56

you reveal the sin, but you have to

36:58

practice the law of replacement. You have to

37:00

practice healthier boundaries. You have to do something

37:03

with the time you were doing the thing

37:05

that was hurting you, harmful, self-destructive, and you

37:07

gotta replace it with something better. And so

37:09

2018, 2019, as I'm getting this onset PTSD

37:12

diagnosis, as I'm going to therapy for the

37:14

first time, I ended up like really getting

37:16

serious about strength training. And

37:18

that was like an amazing outlet because

37:21

it did something with all the testosterone,

37:23

right? It gave me an outlet for

37:25

the rage that I had. And it

37:28

also like gave me, if

37:30

you can sculpt your body, you

37:32

see what else is possible with just like

37:34

diligence, consistency, and like tweaking

37:37

little things. It becomes a great metaphor, right?

37:39

There's a passage of 1 Corinthians

37:41

9. Paul says, I beat

37:43

my body into submission because

37:46

I might preach to others so that I don't

37:48

preach to others and disqualify myself. That

37:51

there's an aspect that we have to submit

37:53

our flesh to the spirit and

37:55

exercise just becomes like a beautiful motif

37:57

for that. Where- Good

37:59

discipline. the endorphins. And so like, I found that

38:01

as like a solace to like replace it. And

38:03

then you get into like the nutritional stuff and

38:05

all that stuff. You get real nerdy about that

38:08

stuff, right? But yeah, so that, like the law

38:10

of replacement, you know, like the law of replacement

38:12

has been huge in my life of like, I

38:14

can't just be like, I'm fixed.

38:16

I'm healed. I'm delivered. Right. In

38:18

the spiritual realm, I believe that, but my flesh

38:20

is still my flesh, right? So I have to

38:22

be careful, set boundaries. Um,

38:25

me and my wife have to be, you

38:28

know, intentional where, uh, we have

38:30

a calendar, you know, in terms

38:32

of, you know, intimacy to make

38:34

sure that we have parameters to,

38:36

you know, it's interesting, man. I, I didn't understand

38:38

this until after I get married, people kept saying,

38:40

he said, before you're married, the devil tries to

38:43

do everything he can to get you to have

38:45

sex with your girlfriend. After you're

38:47

married, the devil tries to do everything to not for you

38:49

not to have sex with your wife. Something

38:51

weird happens. And so like a lot

38:53

of folks are in sexless marriages. And

38:56

so like that is a, like, that is something

38:58

we have to be diligent about. We have to,

39:00

you know, not deprive ourselves spiritually, uh, sexually in

39:03

that regard. It's, it's crazy that you say this

39:05

cause a lot of Christians don't say that, but

39:07

sex is such an important thing of the relationship.

39:09

If you're not satisfied sexually,

39:12

it could interfere with everything

39:14

else that you're doing. So a lot

39:17

of people are like, Oh, I'll just, I'll have sex, but

39:19

I'll be a good husband and a good father and a

39:21

good kid. But it's like, no, I know it sounds uncomfortable

39:23

for Christians, but you do got to satisfy your wife and

39:26

you, you wives need to satisfy your husbands. Like

39:28

if you're, if you're not, then he's going to

39:30

have that wandering eye. She's gonna feel like she

39:32

needs love from another man. And that's where the

39:34

devil could get in. He's, if it's a house

39:36

is divided, it cannot stand. So when she goes

39:38

to the office and that dude that really has

39:40

never seen her naked and was this here naked

39:42

is giving her all that attention that you used to.

39:44

And then just pulled out, she's

39:46

going to feel unloved and she's going to make

39:48

mistakes. Or if he's out and about and

39:51

he's around naked women and he's like, Oh, this is just

39:53

my work. It's not a big deal. It's probably like, no,

39:55

no, no, listen, if you hang around an oily floor, you're

39:57

going to slip at one point. So you got to take

39:59

yourself out. of that atmosphere and you got to

40:01

put yourself in a good one and I think this

40:03

is what we're talking about. A replacement, that's it. That's

40:05

awesome. And now you and your wife, you're... One's

40:09

the calendar, one's the next time... Actually,

40:11

I put it down in your guys' site.

40:13

You're right, I'm impressed with you. Actually, in

40:15

two hours, so we're going to wrap this

40:17

up. Well, dude,

40:19

thank you so much for opening up

40:22

your heart to us and expressing everything you

40:24

went through. It's

40:29

cool, man. It's really cool because I'm watching you do it.

40:32

I was just on Charlie Kirk's episode and

40:35

I explained to him that my favorite thing

40:37

is getting to meet people because I always

40:39

go like, why did God create you? I

40:41

get so excited about that. If I'm in an elevator,

40:44

he reads my guy and he'll be a witness. He'll be like, why didn't

40:46

he talk to everybody? I just get

40:48

so excited meeting this person and

40:50

seeing which universe this man's in

40:52

because every single person's in their own

40:54

world. And sometimes you could

40:57

catch somebody that just blows

40:59

away your expectations. And I think you did that for

41:01

me, man. To be honest, from the

41:03

perspective that I got, I thought you were just a kid that loved

41:05

Jesus. I just wanted some attention on YouTube, so

41:07

he's like, yo, I'm just going to do it with God so

41:09

I don't do it alone. I

41:12

thought that we were catching each other on this

41:14

wave, but now I'm starting to learn that you

41:16

went through some stuff and God's

41:18

going to use your example to lead

41:20

other homes out of this. Man, I

41:22

really pray that a lot of husbands

41:25

and wives listen to you. I

41:27

got to watch a clip of you on stage

41:29

and you were preaching. What's this about? What's

41:32

this realm of your life? So I've been

41:34

communicating for a long time. When I finally

41:36

gave my life to Jesus. And when was

41:38

this, by the way? So it was like

41:40

the full deciding factor. The

41:44

girl that got me going to church. The one

41:46

that before the Mormon.

41:49

Around the same time as the Jehovah's Witness. I

41:51

broke up with the Jehovah's Witness. She broke up.

41:53

I got back with the Christian girl that got me going to

41:55

church. She stopped.

42:00

going to church. She really kind

42:02

of started wilding out and

42:04

I wanted to honor her and remain

42:06

faithful and like hold out hope and

42:08

this whole thing and long

42:10

story short, she and

42:13

I was going to church but we were still doing

42:15

stuff we shouldn't have been doing and it was not

42:17

a good situation. And so one

42:19

day she is,

42:23

my buddies are telling me, hey, like she cheated on you,

42:25

like she cheated on you with this other dude. He

42:28

goes to this high school. I kind of had heard

42:30

about this guy and I'm like, no. And then my

42:32

buddies like, look, she didn't on you. I'm

42:35

going to go with you to confront her because I know for

42:37

a fact. So she, uh,

42:40

and we're friendly now and she's, she's came to church now. She's in

42:42

a much better place. What's her first or last name? I'll tell you

42:44

off the record. She, uh, she was

42:50

real, she was feisty. She was a little girl,

42:52

real feisty. So she ends up getting into a

42:54

fight with this girl, gets beat up. And around

42:57

the same time, my buddies like, let's go over

42:59

there and confront her the same day. So I

43:01

go over there and she's like, he had a

43:03

wildlife bro. This, this girl, she's like, face is

43:05

swollen, lip is swollen, like beat up. And

43:08

so I'm like, all

43:10

right, fine. We'll go over there. So we, we after school,

43:13

me and him pull up and the dude

43:15

she was cheating on me with was there. Yeah.

43:19

What happened? What'd you do? So we come out

43:23

and I pull her to the side

43:25

and my buddy, his name is Quinn. Harris,

43:28

Quinn, such a good handsome, Quinn Rose. He

43:30

grabs him. He's like, let me go holler at you for

43:32

a minute. So he pulls him to the side. I grab

43:35

her and I'm like, what does this do doing here? Like

43:37

what's going on? You know, can I ask you a question?

43:39

Yeah. Did she really get in a fight or did you

43:41

beat her ass? Oh no, no, no, no. She got to

43:43

the fight. She got to the cover

43:45

up right when I got there. Her face is busted

43:47

up. What's she asking the USC and

43:53

girls don't look like that, bro. No, she

43:55

ended up popping off to a younger freshman

43:58

girl. She was a junior. this time and

44:00

the girl like put hands on her. It

44:02

was bad. It was bad. And she initiated

44:04

like she instigated it. She initiated it and

44:06

it's a little fresh. Sure, sure. So

44:09

my buddy pulls him to the side. I'm talking

44:11

to her and then my buddy's like, hey

44:13

man Antonio

44:15

has something he wants to say to you. Shout

44:18

out to Antonio if he's watching this. You saved my life.

44:20

And Antonio goes, bro,

44:23

I have an F in your girl. I'm

44:26

so sorry. I didn't know it was your girl. Oh

44:29

that's saved your life. I dodged

44:31

a bullet. Oh you were committed to

44:33

her like that. I was committed to her and I and

44:35

so I was like, you

44:38

know, what the, you know, so I cuss her out,

44:41

right? And again at this point I'm kind of going to church. I got

44:43

like one foot in one foot out. So I like cuss her out. I'm

44:46

like, thank you. You know, you're like you told

44:49

me the truth. Finally it's verified because there's like

44:51

been rumors. I get in the car. I dropped

44:53

my buddy Quinn off. I go to the house

44:55

and like that was the moment of like full-on

44:57

surrender. Like I'm done playing games and

45:00

I had like a I'm giving my

45:02

life completely over to Jesus. I'm doing it your

45:04

way. I'm not gonna be in relationships I shouldn't

45:06

be in. I'm not gonna, you know, I'm just

45:08

doing it your way. And how much longer did

45:10

you meet your your wife? Almost a year to

45:12

the date I met my wife. I haven't met,

45:14

I know my wife around school. So all I

45:16

heard was God had to work on you for

45:18

a little bit and then deliver you the real

45:20

woman. Yeah. But I want to circle back to

45:22

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45:25

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46:27

the number one thing. If

46:31

I could pinpoint to one thing, there's

46:33

a lot of things. I would say unhealthy

46:36

expectations. Unhealthy

46:38

expectations. Unhealthy expectations.

46:41

Could you give me an example on a man who

46:43

would have an unhealthy expectation? When

46:45

I got married, we didn't

46:49

have intercourse before. And

46:52

because of the porn, I

46:54

thought I was marrying a Christian porn star. I

46:56

thought she was gonna do everything I wanted in

46:58

the bedroom and it was just gonna be on. And

47:01

she was a virgin. And

47:05

without getting too graphic, it was hard initially

47:07

for her. Physically painful for

47:09

a while. And so

47:11

I had very unhealthy expectations. I thought

47:13

that instead of dealing with the

47:16

remnants of the issues from my childhood, I

47:19

thought I would just get a magic bullet and like,

47:21

boom, now we get to have sex and everything is

47:23

great. And it's like, nah, you still

47:25

have to work towards making that a healthy

47:27

rhythm in your life. And

47:30

that was an unhealthy expectation on my

47:32

part. Unhealthy

47:34

expectations for women

47:37

in terms of, hey, like, am

47:40

I supposed to work a job after I

47:42

push out a baby indefinitely? Are you gonna

47:45

provide? Are you gonna step up? Or like,

47:47

what is our life gonna look like? Unhealthy

47:49

expectation in terms of who takes care of

47:51

the yard? Who takes care of the cars?

47:53

Who makes sure there's oil changes? So I

47:55

think a lot of times that we don't

47:58

have balanced expectations, because we don't really. There's

48:00

a flip side to confession that I want to come

48:02

back to, which is the positive aspect of confession. Like

48:05

we confess our sins and our shortcomings, right? James

48:07

says that confession, the prayer of a righteous person

48:09

does much. But I also think there's the inverse

48:12

of confession, which is like, what are, what is

48:14

our values? What is our mission? What is our

48:16

vision as a couple? What is our vision as

48:18

a family? What are those ethos

48:20

around these things? So for example, me

48:23

and my wife have always had the value of health

48:25

and fitness. Before I got into strength training, we always

48:27

were like, we're going to take care of each other

48:29

for each other. Right? So some

48:31

people don't have that value or they have that

48:33

value, but they never communicate it. And

48:36

if someone gains weight, if a woman has

48:38

a baby and she's dealing with the

48:41

aspects of what it feels like to push

48:43

out a human and everything that changes, and then

48:46

the dude is like, well, what's up, baby? Like

48:48

you're getting a little, you know, and it's

48:50

like unhealthy expectations. Like we don't communicate this.

48:52

And so frustration is unmet

48:54

expectations. Resentment is a,

48:56

is a, is a deficit of I wanted

48:58

this, but I didn't get this. Now I'm

49:00

frustrated. Frustration that can turn into

49:03

resentment. Resentment can do really bad things to any

49:05

relationship. Would you say that that's the job of

49:07

the man? I feel like the way that people

49:10

describe leadership is like, I'm going to go here

49:12

and you're going to follow me. But I think

49:14

that has to do like more in the mental

49:16

realm. Like I have

49:19

what I feel I need to get done. But

49:21

before I get married or have a partner, I

49:24

would express to her, Hey, these are what I'm

49:26

trying to accomplish on earth. Does this excite you?

49:28

Is this a path that you want to take?

49:30

Also like you got to know, I will

49:33

never love you more than the Lord. And

49:35

I think that people have this, this

49:38

idea in their head. They're like, Oh, we'll

49:40

grow together. But it's, it's hard to do

49:42

that. If your roots from your foundations of

49:45

life were completely different. When

49:47

people say, what is her father? Like what is her mother

49:49

like people? What are you going to judge her mother and

49:51

father? No, but I would like to know where her garden

49:53

is and where her fruit came from. What

49:55

if she does her family have addiction? Mine does. Are

49:58

they diabetic? to put out

50:00

a roadmap, be like, all right, well, we don't want

50:02

our kids to be diabetic and I don't want to

50:05

die from that. And also like, I got to make

50:07

sure I don't get fat. I also make sure that

50:09

I'm still attracted to you. There's a lot of hard

50:11

conversations that men don't want to have, but like you

50:14

got to have these hard conversations because the female in

50:16

the relationship is not going to want to start that

50:18

conversation. So you got to sit her down. I made

50:20

a joke last week. I go, Hey man, what the

50:22

heck? I got fat. Why don't you tell me? And

50:25

she starts laughing. She's like, well, you want me to tell

50:27

you? I was like, bro, I'm now I'm on keto or

50:30

I'm hitting a training sessions and like, I'm trying to get

50:32

my body back and I, and I make a joke. I'm

50:34

like, yo, I got to be attractive to you. Like you

50:37

can't look at me one day and think of

50:39

my old body. You got to be attracted to

50:41

who I am now because if I came home,

50:43

yeah, I could provide a roof, but if I'm

50:45

not providing a partner or somebody

50:47

who she could confine to or like talk

50:50

to or breathe with, like another

50:52

man could replace me there. And a lot of people

50:54

will know that would never happen. No, no, it happens

50:56

all the time. You want to keep your wife, fight

50:59

for your wife. Don't get lazy with your wife. You

51:01

got to make sure that you're still like, she always

51:03

says we have to, we get busy, but we got

51:05

to make sure we take each other to dinners. We

51:09

see each other every day. I could have easily been like, bro, we're

51:11

with each other every minute. We don't got to go to dinners, but

51:13

like, no, no, no, I don't got to

51:15

take my work out on her. And

51:17

I think what happens is a man

51:19

or a woman will take their own earthly

51:21

desires or their realms and get

51:23

in the way of each other as

51:25

partners. But when men and women get

51:27

married, they become one. So if it's

51:29

my money, it's our money. If it's

51:31

our problem, it's our problem. So

51:34

we have to get to the solution. So good

51:36

together. We can't fight each other. We have to

51:38

fight the world. And if the house is divided,

51:40

we cannot stand. So the three pillars

51:42

that we have most importantly is God is always

51:44

above us. I

51:46

lead the home and we always,

51:48

always, always pray together. That's good. Always.

51:51

Those are, those are the ones that

51:53

we're beginning with. I'm obviously going to

51:55

fail you as a leader and I hope you know

51:58

that. I'm going to fail you at times. No,

52:00

that's not allowed. We discussed that. See

52:02

that we brought that up. I said as a wife, you can't

52:04

fail me. Not even once if you do, then I get to

52:06

go data other women. This is a thing we have it in

52:08

a contract. One of the things

52:10

that this is might be controversial, but it might

52:13

might be liberating for certain people. Uh,

52:16

I, one of the ways I initiated

52:18

that in a very practical sense. And again, this might be very

52:20

controversial was that I,

52:23

when I started dating my wife, I

52:26

knew some of her

52:28

guy acquaintances and guy friends. So

52:31

one of the expectations I had was like,

52:33

nah, we're not doing opposite

52:35

friends. That's it. That's

52:38

done. I don't have any female friends. I don't

52:40

text with any girls. I don't go to coffee

52:42

with any girls and all these dudes that are

52:44

my friends that are your friend, they all want

52:46

to smash. Like I know these guys, I know

52:48

how they think, I know how they're wired. And

52:50

so that was like a, no, no, no opposite

52:52

gender friends in that. Now we have, was she

52:54

upset with that? She was like,

52:57

okay. It's a common sense thing. We have, we

52:59

have friends that like, I'll have like acquaintances from

53:01

you, from, you know, music stuff from YouTube stuff.

53:03

Lila Rose is a friend of mine. She runs

53:05

live action.org. Lila Rose will come over and she'll

53:07

be around my wife. We'll be hanging out and

53:09

then we'll do a podcast. Me, her, there's guys

53:12

in the room, but like me and Lila Rose

53:14

aren't like going to get coffee, you know, like,

53:16

yeah, I think that's what you're getting at. Listen,

53:18

here's the thing that I grew up as an

53:20

Assyrian man, right? Just because you're not doing anything

53:23

doesn't mean that other people can't think you're not doing

53:25

anything and you got to show respect to your loved

53:27

ones. Like my mom would say, Hey, don't hang

53:29

out with those people because you're gonna make us look bad if you're

53:31

going on and doing stupid things. And I'm like, all right, so I

53:33

won't do stupid things. I want to represent my family, right? So

53:36

if I'm with my fiance and we are publicly

53:38

have a podcast, how many times have you heard

53:40

stories if I'm at the club or if I'm

53:42

hanging out with girls and the girls grab my

53:44

shoulder, I'll tell them, don't touch me. Because

53:47

if somebody takes a picture of us and

53:49

you now you just made my woman look beneath

53:51

me like I could do whatever I want and

53:53

she's going to be okay with it. That's not

53:55

okay. You're going to show my woman respect

53:57

if she's in the room or if she's out the room.

53:59

So keep people distance from me, don't put your hands on

54:01

me, don't laugh and grab me like that. That's the type

54:03

of behavior I did when I was single. So

54:06

I'm not gonna have that when I have a woman

54:08

at home. So there is ways to respect your woman.

54:12

I think people have this, oh,

54:15

okay, okay, I got one, I got one. I'm still learning,

54:17

right? So there's one that I'm openly about to talk about.

54:19

There's one that I used to think that it's so okay

54:22

that if you're with your boys and a hot girl walks

54:24

by, if you have no intentions, if

54:27

you look at, oh, look how hot that girl is. I

54:29

used to stand up for that, but bro, I didn't

54:31

just start dating Belle and become gay. So if I

54:33

see a girl, I'm like this. I used to be

54:35

like, nah, bro, if you have, if

54:38

you see if you're with your boy, I used to

54:40

defend this until recently. I'm

54:42

with Charlie Kirk and we're talking

54:45

about coveting. And I

54:47

didn't know the layers of coveting. And then

54:49

I realized, I go, wait a second. I'm

54:52

on a podcast saying that it's totally fine that if you

54:54

see a girl walk by. But

54:57

then I realized, I'm like, wait, why would I

54:59

do that? It's because she's attractive. So I'm looking

55:01

at her because she's attractive. Just because I know

55:03

if this woman comes up to me and even

55:05

tries anything, I wouldn't do anything. But why am

55:08

I letting my eyes even go there? And

55:10

I think this is the level of respect that I'm

55:12

having. Just because my girl knows I would never do

55:14

anything because I've been put in situations where like, if

55:16

I was gonna do it, I would never get caught.

55:18

I'm gonna do this. And I would never, it's not

55:20

how I am, too afraid of God. I'm too in

55:22

love with my woman. There's no woman

55:25

on earth that could ever do this,

55:27

ever. But why would I

55:29

give another woman even a slit, small,

55:32

small, small idea, just because

55:34

she caught me looking at her, that I would want

55:36

her? And that puts it

55:38

in her heart that like, oh, her man,

55:41

if I wanted him, I could take him.

55:43

And I would be so broken if another man

55:46

looked at my girl and was like, oh, if

55:48

I wanted her, I could take her. And it's

55:50

all because of an eye glimpse of like, oh,

55:52

I'm checking her out. And so like, I, on

55:55

a podcast is fighting for that. So on a

55:57

podcast, I wanna say, I'm so sorry. I'm so

55:59

sorry. Like that was. That was I'm so lucky

56:03

Yeah But it's a bit

56:05

so to be in a way if I'm ever wrong

56:07

and you feel in your heart You should like rebuke

56:09

my actions if you really feel like nah, I get

56:12

your understanding Well, I always disagreed with you on that

56:14

But I think we just had different understandings And I

56:16

think I when you would explain that point of view

56:18

I could find myself putting myself in your shoes and

56:20

be like Okay, I understand because I see other guys

56:23

you have so many guy friends I'm around guys all

56:25

the time because you have so many friends and I'm

56:27

always with everybody and so I see how other men

56:30

You know look around and so it's like

56:32

I'm like, okay So I could understand your

56:34

positioning and I also always knew you were

56:36

never disrespectful about that You never like didn't

56:38

next nap. You would just like see a

56:40

girl like okay, whatever. It wasn't anything. That's

56:42

a girl You

56:46

know, you're just like oh somebody walks in and

56:48

you're like, oh, who is it? Okay, you know

56:50

to me so it was never anything bad, but

56:52

I will say it's no. No, it's okay It's

56:54

the point of it's true girls think differently like

56:56

when a girl sees a guy look at her.

56:58

She goes Oh, he wants me and then in

57:00

that moment in makes a shadow

57:03

on who you are and it puts a shadow

57:05

on then the person That you're with and so

57:07

it's just such a valid point, you know I

57:09

shouldn't put my eyes to anything that I don't

57:11

want my feet and heart to move towards one

57:14

So if I do catch myself doing that instead

57:16

of preaching well, you're not gay, bro You're a

57:18

lot to look I should preach. Hey, man,

57:21

you should have more discipline with your heart and eyes And

57:23

so I really apologize to anybody who heard that

57:26

and took that advice And also I'd

57:28

like to apologize to anybody who heard that and kind of was

57:30

broken and be like wait a second that's not of Christ

57:32

and that's not of us and It

57:35

sucks being on a podcast trying to learn in front of people

57:37

but like confessing I got to

57:39

I got I and you know It's

57:41

even worse, bro. I embarrassed you when I said that.

57:43

Oh my gosh I really am sorry like I didn't

57:45

mean it anyway I was trying to stand up for

57:48

what was right and I totally took the wrong fence

57:50

on that and so thank you

57:52

Yeah, you're so cute. I'm really sorry

57:55

We got a calendar for later we

57:57

did you did not embarrass me whatsoever and I

57:59

think that that's something that I love

58:02

about this podcast and I love

58:04

about you being able to share

58:06

so boldly. You are not afraid

58:08

to share anything that's on your chest because people

58:10

then get to learn as you learn.

58:12

And I think that it's important for people to know that you're

58:15

not perfect, I'm not perfect, you're not perfect.

58:17

We don't know. We don't make mistakes and

58:19

we're just learning as we go. And if

58:21

somebody can look at you and be like,

58:23

oh, you're just like me, you thought the

58:25

same thing. I'm not crazy. And

58:27

that puts such a weight off of you because

58:29

sometimes when something feels so unattainable, you think I'm

58:32

never gonna understand it and I'm never gonna feel that

58:34

way. And so what's the point? You know? So.

58:37

Yeah. And there's a verse, I think Job

58:39

31 says, I've made a covenant with my

58:42

eyes to not look at a woman lustfully.

58:44

Yeah. Right? The New Testament

58:46

says that we are to regard other women as

58:48

daughters and sisters. I wanted to

58:50

come back, you asked about the

58:52

speaking, the speaking

58:54

on the Instagram. So what happened is I broke up

58:57

with that girlfriend, that girl, I like

58:59

surrendered to Jesus. I go to

59:01

a miles ahead crusade. You guys ever

59:03

been to one of those like evangelistic crusades where

59:05

you go and preach the gospel? So I hear

59:07

the gospel, Miles McPherson, who used

59:09

to play for the Chargers does this thing.

59:12

I make a public proclamation of faith that

59:14

come forward. And within a

59:16

couple of weeks after that, we

59:18

end up starting this thing that is gonna

59:20

sound cringy in hindsight, but we end up

59:22

starting this Bible study called the

59:24

vessel of hip hop. And the vessel

59:26

of hip hop was an open mic. I worked at

59:28

Pizza Hut so I would just get whatever pizzas they'd

59:30

give me. And we would have

59:33

an open mic, free pizza, and a Bible

59:35

study. And usually there would be a Bible

59:37

study around whatever was happening in culture, in

59:39

society, 9-11, fill in the blank of whatever

59:41

was happening, Jay-Z and Nas are beefing. Like

59:43

we would just kind of tie in to

59:45

whatever people were concerned about. And we tie

59:48

it in and try to bring it back

59:50

to scripture somehow. And that evolved and turned

59:52

into this open mic and we threw concerts.

59:54

And then I started doing

59:56

a men's group and teaching in that. And then

59:58

wherever my church needed me. I just

1:00:01

served everything from cleaning toilets to,

1:00:04

this time last year I was holding babies

1:00:06

in our nursery. And I was fired, holding

1:00:09

babies while parents went. And so I just

1:00:11

like, I love babies. So wherever I was

1:00:13

needed in the local church, that's where I

1:00:15

was. And it ended up being a lot

1:00:17

of like children's ministry, junior high, high school,

1:00:20

young adults, men's groups. And so what I

1:00:22

found out when I got on YouTube was

1:00:25

that the thing I had actually

1:00:27

done more than music was actually

1:00:29

trying to conceptualize God's word into

1:00:32

a framework that's relevant to people today. I

1:00:34

had done that long as anything else. Yeah,

1:00:37

translated like, hey, we're concerned

1:00:39

about this event, current event that's

1:00:41

happening. Hey, check out the

1:00:44

scriptural tie-in or yesterday's video was Breaking Bad

1:00:46

and its secret biblical parallels. And so we

1:00:48

like walked through the series of Breaking Bad,

1:00:50

which is one of my favorite like TV

1:00:52

shows. And we tie in all the scripture

1:00:54

to it, right? And so like I had

1:00:56

done that longer than anything else. So I

1:00:58

think one of the reasons why the YouTube

1:01:00

works for me is because I'm actually doing

1:01:02

the thing that I've been doing privately for

1:01:04

20 years, but I'm just doing it

1:01:06

as scale in front of, you know, a

1:01:08

couple million people every month that we reach. And that's kind

1:01:11

of the unique part. So then the speaking has

1:01:13

came full circle where now I'm not just doing

1:01:15

it behind the camera. I just spoke at V1

1:01:17

Church, which is one of the fastest growing churches

1:01:19

in America, in New York for Father's Day. I

1:01:21

spoke at Lila Rose's event. I spoke at Ryan

1:01:24

Panita's event. And so I'm able to kind of

1:01:26

practice that muscle as well, of like public speaking

1:01:28

and kind of taking conversations like this and

1:01:31

then trying to like, how can we compress

1:01:33

the value in a 30 minute talk, conceptualize

1:01:35

the gospel and give people like practical steps

1:01:37

of how they can implement it. Have you

1:01:39

ever ran into this wall where you're like

1:01:41

trying to get God to work with your

1:01:43

will and what your talents are? And

1:01:45

then one day you're like, okay, I'll just

1:01:48

work with God's will. And then all of

1:01:50

a sudden your talents are super heightened. All

1:01:52

of your opportunity explodes. When in

1:01:54

your life did you find that parallel? So

1:01:57

remember I told you I was doing music 2015. I

1:02:00

quit my job, I was running a little

1:02:02

boutique label, and it was doing

1:02:04

well. One of my artists got signed to

1:02:06

Interscope, so we like, my biggest song on Spotify

1:02:08

is a song called I Got the Juice.

1:02:10

We recorded that in the same room where Kendrick

1:02:13

did to Pimp a Butterfly, like the same

1:02:15

studio, no excuse of studio, it's been shut

1:02:17

down since. So in that moment, like, I

1:02:19

was the business guy,

1:02:21

and I was the rapper, and I was

1:02:23

like the manager, and the booking agent, I

1:02:25

was doing everything, and it all just,

1:02:28

it just collapsed. And I came to this

1:02:31

conclusion that like, I kept trying to tell

1:02:33

God about my dreams. Like,

1:02:35

God, this is my dream, can you get in on this

1:02:37

dream instead of saying like, God, what is your dream for

1:02:39

my life? Like, what do you actually want me to do?

1:02:42

And I sat down with my pastor, and

1:02:44

I talked about music, and I talked about YouTube, and

1:02:46

talked about working with artists and helping artists, and

1:02:49

he was like, man, what would be best for your family? And

1:02:52

I was like, oh, no one's ever asked me what would be best for

1:02:54

my family. Probably not dealing with artists, you know

1:02:56

how creatives are, right? Highly emotional.

1:02:58

Especially the music ones. Music is

1:03:01

like, it's the worst industry, it's

1:03:03

the most toxic industry ever.

1:03:06

I've never seen anything like it. And

1:03:08

we got that taste of success, like we got that,

1:03:10

like, we were on the Carson Daly show. You know

1:03:12

what it reminds me of? I

1:03:14

don't know if I could symbolically, like, compare

1:03:18

this, but it seems that that was your

1:03:21

tower of babble. Low key, yeah. Where you're

1:03:23

trying to literally replace God, because

1:03:26

you're like, no, no, no, work with me, work

1:03:28

with me, I wanna build my kingdom, build my

1:03:30

kingdom. But at the end of that building, you're

1:03:32

gonna realize that, like, once you take over all

1:03:34

of this, you're gonna wanna take over the kingdom

1:03:36

of God. And I think that's what people, like,

1:03:38

don't really understand. When you're telling God to do

1:03:40

what you're wanting to do, that will lead you

1:03:42

to want to replace God, because you're just using

1:03:44

him as like a tool, as a vessel. But

1:03:47

when you start working for God, and serving

1:03:49

God, one, you become so

1:03:52

wise, because now he's feeding you blessings.

1:03:55

And through that perspective, everything

1:03:57

heightens. That's why I always joke around. And I

1:03:59

go, Everything that I ever wanted before is thrown at

1:04:01

my feet, and now I don't want it. That's right.

1:04:04

So this whole time I kept searching my

1:04:06

own treasures, my own treasures, and everything would

1:04:08

keep crumbling down because he loved us. That's

1:04:10

right. Because he wouldn't want it to get

1:04:12

to that level. Good God will keep bad things from you

1:04:15

that you don't know you're able to handle. Sometimes

1:04:17

a bigger blessing is no than yes. A lot

1:04:19

of people don't understand that until they have a

1:04:21

daughter or a son. Yeah, yeah, my

1:04:24

nine year old's going through a screen detox right now.

1:04:26

We just went to New York, he got to watch

1:04:28

the Dude Perfect app, he was like chilling, right? And

1:04:31

we came back and we're like screen detox, like

1:04:33

no screens. And he's like, why? And I'm like,

1:04:35

because it's not good for you. And as a

1:04:37

good father, like you can't be on screens, even

1:04:39

though it feels good, and you think this is

1:04:41

what you want, this isn't what you really want.

1:04:43

So there's a lot of times where as parents,

1:04:45

I got to keep things from my kids, maybe

1:04:47

things that aren't even that bad in

1:04:49

moderation, watching Dude Perfect app isn't bad,

1:04:52

right? Like, but you can't veg out

1:04:54

for four hours, dude. No, but good

1:04:56

for you because there's a big issue,

1:04:59

and I've seen so many videos on it now, where like

1:05:01

toddlers that are attached to their iPads, you know, call them

1:05:03

iPad kids, but it's

1:05:05

seriously, it's so harming to them,

1:05:07

and they're emotional, like. They're

1:05:09

dysregulated. It's so bad, like these poor kids

1:05:11

are throwing tantrums, they don't even understand what's

1:05:14

going on with them because their endorphins

1:05:16

are so like all over the place from things

1:05:18

that they watch on this tablet, and it is

1:05:20

such an issue. Yeah, so we have a very

1:05:23

limited amount of time. He won't have any devices,

1:05:26

he's not gonna have a phone, we have

1:05:28

a family iPad, super limited, and it goes

1:05:30

back to what you just shared, like God,

1:05:32

a good father's heart is sometimes to keep

1:05:34

things from you that you think you're capable

1:05:36

of handling, which you're not ready for. If

1:05:39

you're three, if you're nine, if you're 15, keeping

1:05:42

things from you is not bad. And

1:05:44

so to answer your question, yeah, I think when

1:05:46

I discovered that there's a difference between what I think

1:05:49

my purpose is versus God's purpose, right, and God's purpose

1:05:51

for all of us on a capital P purpose is

1:05:53

to know him, make him known, and become the version

1:05:55

that he wants us to be on this side of

1:05:57

eternity, right, to be the hands and feet of Jesus.

1:06:00

Once I got a hold of my purpose is

1:06:04

minuscule in the context of who God wants me

1:06:06

to be. I

1:06:08

was like, I'm just going to do what you want. I

1:06:10

never in 100 years, bro, I never would have thought that

1:06:12

I'd be doing Christian YouTube. My vision was

1:06:14

like, I'm going to be a rapper in the industry

1:06:17

and do these things. Then I got in those circles

1:06:19

and I was like, ugh. This

1:06:22

is not what you think it is. This

1:06:24

is not healthy. But

1:06:26

here's the thing, this is the best way. There

1:06:29

is something in your heart that you call to, maybe there's a certain

1:06:31

talent and you're like, no, I feel like God would want me

1:06:33

to do this. I'm

1:06:35

telling you from somebody that chased it himself and

1:06:37

then gave it to God, if you seek first

1:06:39

the kingdom, the rest shall come is because it's

1:06:42

the rest of what you need. You'll never be

1:06:44

in need. And this is the best way that I

1:06:46

could put working with

1:06:48

God. Could you hold this? Sure. Yeah.

1:06:51

Could you hold this stuff? Okay. Hold

1:06:54

it in your hand. Yeah. And hold

1:06:56

this. Okay. I can't hold that. Okay.

1:07:00

So here's the reason we keep asking God for

1:07:02

things that we can't hold. Oh, that's good. We

1:07:04

can't hold it. Yeah. So, but

1:07:06

if I, if I would have prepped myself and held it properly

1:07:09

and learned how to hold all

1:07:11

these things, I'm able to manage

1:07:13

things. So you're praying for

1:07:16

things and you're going through things and

1:07:18

you get mad at God when he's

1:07:20

only giving you what you prayed for.

1:07:23

When you ask God for something and you can't

1:07:25

hold it, he doesn't want his son to crumble

1:07:27

down. So he'll put you through a

1:07:29

life where you're able to hold it with ease to the

1:07:31

point where you might not have to be stronger, but you

1:07:33

could be wiser where I'm like, Oh, if I stack this,

1:07:35

I could put this here. So

1:07:37

I always tell people your God doesn't want to

1:07:39

short you, but your shortcomings come

1:07:42

from you not wanting to work and

1:07:44

humble yourself. If God says no right

1:07:46

now, you shouldn't try to fight your way into it

1:07:48

because dude, trust me, if the universe can't fight against

1:07:50

God, you're not going to be able to fight against

1:07:52

God. But if you just go

1:07:55

with him and you say, take my feet where you

1:07:57

want, you might realize by the time you get there,

1:07:59

you don't even want to hold him. that you were

1:08:01

begging to hold, because what he's about to give you

1:08:03

is so much greater that you just wanna take two

1:08:06

hands and squeeze it tight. Wow, exactly.

1:08:08

He's preaching, man. That is well put. Cooking, bro. That

1:08:10

is well put. I love it, I love it. All

1:08:12

right, but back to you, bro. I love this back

1:08:14

and forth. I knew this podcast was gonna be something

1:08:16

special. I really did. Okay,

1:08:19

so you teach couples

1:08:21

how to lead with God and stay

1:08:23

together. You have a podcast that you

1:08:25

review all these things. What is the

1:08:27

things that you are troubled with now

1:08:31

that are on your heart

1:08:33

that weighs on you and that you feel like

1:08:35

this is, this is my,

1:08:38

I'm at a different level and this is the

1:08:40

different devil that I'm dealing with. So I've

1:08:43

been really wrestling in

1:08:45

terms of the cultural, the Christian cultural

1:08:48

zeitgeist, if you will, of

1:08:50

there being an incongruence, a

1:08:52

breakdown, a double-mindedness,

1:08:54

a syncretism of the

1:08:58

things we claim to believe and then

1:09:00

like people really living out the things

1:09:02

we claim to believe. And so I'm

1:09:04

packaging that right now. I'm finishing my

1:09:06

first book and it's basically about this

1:09:08

concept of godly ambition and how it's

1:09:10

different from worldly ambition or selfish ambition,

1:09:12

right? So the scriptures talk about, make

1:09:15

it your ambition to lead a quiet

1:09:17

life, working with your own hands so

1:09:20

that your daily life may win the respect of outsiders

1:09:22

and you may not be dependent on anyone. It's 1

1:09:24

Thessalonians 4.11, right? Well, that's strong.

1:09:27

Strong, right? Making your ambition to lead

1:09:29

a quiet life. Ah, so you're chasing

1:09:31

the fact that you're scared that the

1:09:33

voices and the comments and the concerns

1:09:35

are gonna dictate where you're gonna go?

1:09:37

Yeah, because if you just live for

1:09:39

the pleasure of man and the

1:09:41

expectations of man, like that can derail you.

1:09:45

Well, this is real because you wanna do God's

1:09:47

job and not his job, but you wanna do

1:09:49

what he wants you to do. And

1:09:51

sometimes you feel like you gotta try so hard,

1:09:53

but you slip in and out of listening to

1:09:55

what they're, with good intentions, right? Because you wanna

1:09:57

provide a product for them. Yeah, you wanna listen

1:09:59

to it. your audience. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah,

1:10:02

yeah. Okay. So how are you dealing with that?

1:10:04

Well, I'm dealing with it by programming

1:10:07

and trying to walk people through programming. And

1:10:09

this is, this is what I mean very

1:10:11

practically what we believe

1:10:14

will determine how we behave. Right.

1:10:16

And so this is

1:10:20

unanimous across area. Like if we believe, if I

1:10:22

believe I'm an athlete, I'm

1:10:24

going to create systems in my life,

1:10:27

like ordering meal preps that come to my house

1:10:29

to make sure I hit my macros, like building

1:10:31

a gym in my backyard to make sure I

1:10:33

could always hit the gym, like being

1:10:35

doing the things that an athlete does through the

1:10:38

processes, right? I believe I'm an athlete because I've

1:10:40

played sports my whole life. Therefore I've created the

1:10:42

processes in the systems. Therefore, eventually

1:10:44

I will get the outcomes that I, that

1:10:46

an athlete gets. Right. This is a lot

1:10:48

of this is from the book atomic habits,

1:10:50

but I think he misses the faith component

1:10:52

and all this, right? He misses the belief

1:10:54

component and all this. And so for me,

1:10:56

so many people say they're a child of

1:10:58

God. They say they're born again. They say

1:11:00

they're a follower of Jesus. They say they're

1:11:02

a Christian, but when it comes to the

1:11:04

nitty gritty of like, how do you care

1:11:06

for your body? How do you manage your

1:11:08

finances? Are you generous? Like are you, how

1:11:10

is your marriage? Who are you and no

1:11:12

one is around? There's a massive disconnect for

1:11:14

people. And so I'm trying to create a

1:11:16

framework for people through my own

1:11:19

shortcomings and my own mistakes of

1:11:21

like, Hey, stop chasing the outcomes.

1:11:23

Like stop chasing the number on the, on the, on

1:11:25

the scale. If you want to get fit, stop chasing

1:11:28

the body fat percentage. If you want to get

1:11:30

fit, chase falling in love with the process of

1:11:32

fitness because you actually believe that you are

1:11:35

an athlete. And the same thing with being

1:11:37

a child of God. Like if I'm actually

1:11:39

declared the righteousness of God, right? Second Corinthians

1:11:42

five 12, it says, um, I

1:11:44

think it's five 12. It says God made him

1:11:46

who knew no sin so that

1:11:48

in him we might be struggling to

1:11:50

lose weight. You've probably heard about weight

1:11:52

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1:12:50

Come the righteousness of God, right? So

1:12:53

meaning that if you're in Christ, God sees you

1:12:55

and you are now proclaimed to be the

1:12:57

righteousness of God, that we're all called to be

1:12:59

a part of a royal priesthood, that we're

1:13:01

no longer sinners, we're saints. So

1:13:03

if we really believe these things about

1:13:05

ourselves and we really believe like the

1:13:07

full counsel of God, that means

1:13:10

that we will incorporate this and you will know them

1:13:12

by the food. All our lives will look changed. Not

1:13:14

in the sense of salvation. I'm not talking about like,

1:13:16

Hey, if you misstep yours going to hell. That's not

1:13:18

what I'm talking about. I'm talking about in the sense

1:13:20

of being the hands and feet of Jesus

1:13:23

here and now. There's never been a time like

1:13:25

this, George, where we can do so much good.

1:13:27

We can help so many people. We can

1:13:30

get the word out, but we could also

1:13:32

be the tangible hands and feet of Jesus

1:13:34

as right now is this time that we're

1:13:36

in. And so I'm just really like, I'm

1:13:38

concerned that Christians either don't get it or

1:13:41

they're chasing selfish ambition, worldly ambition, or they're,

1:13:43

or they're engulfed in the poverty gospel and

1:13:45

they, and there's a, there's a, there's an

1:13:47

incompatibility from the things we say we believe

1:13:49

and a willingness to create the systems to

1:13:52

behave that way. I I've pondered this thought

1:13:54

and what I've came to like

1:13:56

my conclusion is, and I could be completely

1:13:58

wrong. There's two men. I

1:14:00

only see there's one who is

1:14:04

Broken and there's one that's

1:14:06

so broken that he calls out to God. Come on.

1:14:08

I Had

1:14:10

this Really hard time I would

1:14:12

judge a lot of people because I would have

1:14:14

been like I would learn from something and then

1:14:17

I'll be Like well, why don't you get and

1:14:19

so what happens with people that have? God

1:14:22

in their life and they're obviously seeing him

1:14:24

work is that they become Spoiled

1:14:27

to his wisdom and to his grace and

1:14:29

to his faith that they feel that why

1:14:31

are you guys not? with the truth is

1:14:36

When a man is broken and he gives

1:14:38

it all to God it's God himself that

1:14:40

starts making Heaven on earth and

1:14:42

then you see his fruits. That's why they

1:14:44

say you'll know him by his fruits because

1:14:47

God's fruits is undeniable, right? I I

1:14:50

have to realize that life and death

1:14:53

begins on a tongue so if I

1:14:55

want to convert this man into Literally

1:14:58

walking in the direction that I want to walk

1:15:01

it's Coming to the

1:15:03

realization to myself that it's not me who

1:15:05

changes these people Mm-hmm, and I think that

1:15:07

was a really hard pill to swallow because

1:15:09

I thought oh, I'm doing this for God

1:15:11

I'm doing this for God, but the truth

1:15:13

is it's the Holy Spirit And

1:15:16

if if they're not like submitting

1:15:18

to the Holy Spirit we could never

1:15:20

get them to even experience the Holy

1:15:22

Spirit Now I

1:15:24

see people that are in church that have no Holy

1:15:26

Spirit and then I see people that know I have

1:15:29

no idea What the church is but have the Holy

1:15:31

Spirit because they're I could tell the by their fruits

1:15:33

so What I do now

1:15:35

is I'm trying to get out of my own

1:15:37

way because I feel like I

1:15:39

have to get the job done and I

1:15:41

think that's what you're kind of on the

1:15:43

way of and This will tear

1:15:45

you up from the inside out because if

1:15:47

it was going to be done it would have been done

1:15:50

Mm-hmm, but we have to literally

1:15:52

humble ourselves and this is what I've been

1:15:54

in my head I keep telling myself preach

1:15:56

all the time every day always

1:15:58

about my Lord and savor Jesus

1:16:01

Christ. And when it's

1:16:03

very necessary, use words. Yeah,

1:16:05

that's good. And I think you articulated so

1:16:07

well, I think there's a

1:16:10

difference between salvation and

1:16:12

justification, like we're being saved, which is

1:16:14

anchoring on the good news. You

1:16:17

know, Jesus came, lived the life we couldn't live, died to

1:16:19

death we should have died on the cross in our place

1:16:21

for our sins, and then created a pathway. You're

1:16:24

spot on about that. And then there's

1:16:26

the second aspect of that,

1:16:28

which is we would call sanctification. And

1:16:30

sanctification is like that cooperation with the Holy Spirit,

1:16:32

right? You know the things you should be doing,

1:16:34

but you're not doing them. And so I think

1:16:37

what I'm getting at, I think is like there's

1:16:39

people that say they want to cooperate with the

1:16:42

Spirit, but they're either ignorant of the ways of

1:16:44

God. And so then they're wondering why they don't

1:16:46

feel like they're in the will of God. It's

1:16:49

like- Would you find it to be ignorance or fear?

1:16:51

I think it's both. I think it's probably, I think

1:16:53

that's a great question. Okay, great. So you think that

1:16:55

their ignorance led them to fear? I think, or

1:16:58

their fear keeps them from wanting to learn more about

1:17:00

the ways. Okay, let's break this down because it says

1:17:02

that wisdom is, in the beginning of wisdom is the

1:17:04

fear of the Lord. So they're

1:17:06

fearing worldly things, making them

1:17:09

technically dumb, and caught in their cycle

1:17:11

of life. But then when you fear

1:17:13

the Lord, then you become

1:17:16

wise and you could delegate those problems

1:17:18

with faith instead of fear. That's right.

1:17:21

All right, okay. So then what do we do?

1:17:23

Do we more install faith? Or do we- I

1:17:25

think it starts with faith, right? I

1:17:28

think it has to start with faith, right? When

1:17:30

I was struggling, I came

1:17:32

off a tour in 2018. I was

1:17:34

like 20 pounds heavier, not

1:17:36

good, addicted to sugar, just

1:17:38

wildin'. I had to believe

1:17:40

that my buddies who had abs, and when they

1:17:43

tell me, you gotta eat chicken and broccoli and

1:17:45

go do compound lifts, I had

1:17:47

to believe them, right? And what is belief?

1:17:49

Belief is trust and confidence, that what they're

1:17:51

saying is true, right? So I

1:17:53

had a little bit of faith that like, all

1:17:56

right, I'm gonna go do these deadlift squats, bench

1:17:58

press and pull-ups. I'm gonna go- this and I'm

1:18:00

gonna eat my ideal body weight and chicken and

1:18:02

the broccoli to keep me stay shaded. And I

1:18:04

did it and I did it for a couple

1:18:07

months and all of a sudden I was like, oh snap, like I

1:18:10

got muscles all of a sudden I got

1:18:12

abs. Like this is crazy. But I first

1:18:14

have to believe it before I actually implemented,

1:18:16

you know, and I think there's a lot

1:18:18

of folks that either don't know or don't

1:18:20

want to know or afraid. And then there's,

1:18:22

they're staying stuck in that cycle. And again,

1:18:24

they're wondering like, why do I feel like

1:18:26

I'm not in the will of God? And

1:18:28

it's like, well, the will of God isn't

1:18:30

a destination. The will of God isn't this

1:18:32

thing you land at. Like the will of

1:18:34

God is in the ways of God. If

1:18:36

I'm living God's ways, I will always be

1:18:38

in God's will, right? And God's ways are

1:18:40

in God's word. And ultimately Jesus is the

1:18:42

word of God. Jesus is the logo. He

1:18:44

became flesh, John one. Yeah. But there's the

1:18:46

Proverbs and there's Ecclesiastes and there's the parables

1:18:48

and there's the epistles and there's the

1:18:51

Old Testament. There's, there's so much wisdom in there.

1:18:53

And we're like, wow, why am I, why do

1:18:55

I feel like I'm in the will of God?

1:18:57

It's like, well, cause you're not really after the

1:18:59

ways of God and you're not really cooperating with

1:19:01

the works of the spirit. And so then you'll

1:19:03

wonder why there's this cognitive dissonance, why there's this

1:19:05

tension in your life. And not all tension is

1:19:07

bad to go in. Tension is great. That's how

1:19:09

you build that body. Tension

1:19:11

is good, especially in strength training and

1:19:14

tension is necessary, but the tension of

1:19:16

I want to be in

1:19:19

this area of breakthrough, but I'm disconnected.

1:19:21

I don't know why I'm disconnected. And

1:19:23

I think getting people back to

1:19:25

like a practical wisdom, like we could talk about

1:19:27

the supernatural, which I'm all for, but

1:19:29

my friend Pastor Mike Signarelli says, but we have

1:19:32

to bring people into a super practical, right?

1:19:34

From the supernatural, there's a super practical God

1:19:36

has an opinion and that's just an opinion.

1:19:38

God has commands for a lot of the

1:19:40

areas of our lives that we're just kind

1:19:43

of checked out. Yeah. Yeah. And the discipline,

1:19:45

the discipline is a byproduct like the dis

1:19:47

like it's not about white knuckling it. It's

1:19:49

about creating a process in a system that

1:19:51

then over time, the discipline just becomes who

1:19:53

you are. You know, like I get up

1:19:55

and I do things not out

1:19:57

of this. I don't brush my teeth out of discipline. You

1:20:00

know, He just brushed my teeth, I don't even think about

1:20:02

it. You don't have it. Yeah. And

1:20:04

I think too, with a lot of people, it's

1:20:06

hard to want to change and to

1:20:08

know that you're going to have to

1:20:10

change. And I think that sometimes when

1:20:12

you're collecting all this new information, you

1:20:14

know you're about to read information on

1:20:17

the ways that you're doing wrong and

1:20:19

you know you're about to

1:20:22

have to change things and change things about yourself and that's a

1:20:24

hard thing to do. And

1:20:28

actually I saw you, there was a clip

1:20:30

of you and you were speaking on Kate

1:20:32

Von D when she got baptized and she

1:20:34

was speaking about how her comment section was

1:20:36

so negative and it

1:20:38

was so holier than thou by Christians. And

1:20:42

I really agree with what you said in

1:20:44

the ways that us as Christians, we shouldn't

1:20:46

be in the comment section judging

1:20:48

and if you feel like the person might not be

1:20:51

on the right track, I don't

1:20:53

know why and I see this so much in the

1:20:55

comments where Christians are like talking

1:20:57

down to other Christians being like, well you're not doing

1:20:59

this or you're not a real Christian or you're not,

1:21:01

you know what I mean? I don't think that your

1:21:04

actions don't seem like you're this or that or whatever.

1:21:06

And it's like we should be giving each other so

1:21:08

much grace because you don't know where that person is

1:21:10

in their walk and you have to remember that this

1:21:12

person is brand new to the relationship with Jesus so

1:21:14

they're not going to have everything figured out. They're not

1:21:16

going to know exactly how to go about it. But

1:21:18

if we're encouraging and if we give with love and

1:21:21

with grace, then we're only encouraging the person to step

1:21:23

further into it versus like being so harsh on them

1:21:25

and then they're like, okay, well I don't even want

1:21:27

to read it. I don't even want to start because

1:21:29

I know I have so much work to do. And

1:21:32

I think that sometimes that can be so discouraging to

1:21:34

want to work on yourself. Yeah, I mean, I think

1:21:37

social media Christians are some

1:21:39

of the harshest, toughest people

1:21:41

to appease. And so it's

1:21:43

like you almost just got to have boundaries in

1:21:46

the army of God. We do a terrible job

1:21:48

of sometimes shooting our own and not getting a

1:21:50

healthy gauge of like, where's someone on this journey?

1:21:54

And am I judging superficially? Right? Like

1:21:56

what? She's awesome. Like how

1:21:58

Von D is awesome. But people were

1:22:00

judging because she wears black. She wears black

1:22:02

and she like... She's in the transition in

1:22:04

her life. She came from one area and

1:22:06

now she's coming to a completely different area

1:22:09

in her life. That's going to take some

1:22:11

time. Yeah. Yeah. And she's a sweetheart.

1:22:13

I love what her and her husband are doing. A

1:22:15

lot of people are so

1:22:17

concerned with what other people think. And

1:22:20

I think if you just

1:22:22

really focus on how Jesus sees you, you really

1:22:24

don't care what other people say about you.

1:22:28

And I think

1:22:31

the cool kid in school was always the kid that didn't

1:22:33

care what you thought. And

1:22:35

I think people will have to like kind of

1:22:37

grow into this mentality. And don't forget, just because

1:22:39

somebody says that they're Christian doesn't mean they're Christian.

1:22:41

They could be a wolf disguised as a sheep

1:22:44

trying to tear our own people down, right? So

1:22:46

I don't even want to shine too much light

1:22:48

on those people because, one, if they are Christian,

1:22:50

they're definitely broken. We should pray for them. And

1:22:53

then two, I'd rather focus on the positive.

1:22:55

There was obviously so many good comments. I

1:22:57

could go through my feed and look at

1:23:00

bad comments, but I love looking at the

1:23:02

good ones and seeing what I'm doing. I

1:23:04

think you just need to fix your focus.

1:23:06

That's good. This new

1:23:09

direction I'm taking, I wanted to just

1:23:11

talk to you about it because it's very new, but

1:23:14

I've been seeing like great success. It's

1:23:16

been the past like maybe three years,

1:23:19

maybe a year and a half. How

1:23:23

I go into a problem now is,

1:23:27

for example, if I'm talking about my

1:23:29

temper or my behavior or my

1:23:31

lust or my anything like this,

1:23:34

I used to search for the

1:23:37

answers and then ask God to come

1:23:39

with me. And through

1:23:41

that, I was either falling

1:23:43

into like, oh, this is a sign or like, oh,

1:23:45

blah, blah, blah, I read this and I'm bending his

1:23:47

word to fit my need. And like, I

1:23:50

realized that waiting on the

1:23:52

Lord is so much more pleasant. So

1:23:54

what I've been doing, and this seems like it's

1:23:57

lazy, but it's truly not because I know how

1:23:59

to. So it kind of comes hand in

1:24:01

hand. It's a little hard for me to explain because I never

1:24:03

really said this but if I have a

1:24:05

problem like even example Me

1:24:10

and my mother were having these moments where we're

1:24:12

bumping heads because she sees more Catholicism I

1:24:14

see more Christian stuff And so we were just

1:24:16

we were getting into it it became the person

1:24:19

that I love talking to we would get into

1:24:21

headbunts with And like it was so bad.

1:24:23

I can't even have conversations with my mom anymore

1:24:27

And I was always trying to fix it and for some reason the

1:24:29

way I was trying to fix it I

1:24:31

would accidentally throw more gasoline on the

1:24:33

fire and I just

1:24:35

spit in my mind I'm like no God sees the way I'm

1:24:37

trying to handle this like I'm trying to try and I'm trying

1:24:39

to try but I keep Failing keep failing and

1:24:41

this is the one of them I could use as an example.

1:24:45

I had a problem I didn't know how to

1:24:47

fix it. I went to the Lord. I said I

1:24:49

give this to you. I'm putting this at your feet

1:24:51

I need you to change this man and Make

1:24:54

me the man that you're pleased with take my

1:24:56

feet where you want them to be not where

1:24:58

I want them to be and

1:25:00

I just waited and now waiting is

1:25:02

the toughest part because this is where all the

1:25:05

demons come at you and they tell you their

1:25:07

opinions and What they think you should do and

1:25:09

what you should do and all this stuff But

1:25:11

I sat there and I was patient and

1:25:14

I think a lot of people want to just jab at

1:25:16

God and they just want to Talk talk talk talk talk

1:25:18

But when you're quiet and you have faith and you said

1:25:20

no, no, I'm waiting here on the Lord I know

1:25:23

he's gonna come and take me from the

1:25:25

situation So I'll sit here and

1:25:27

one time I waited for so long that I called

1:25:29

Cliff and I go cliff I'm waiting a little bit.

1:25:31

What do you think I should do? He says brothers

1:25:33

sing So I would just sit

1:25:36

there and I know it's not stupid about freestyle and

1:25:38

my freestyle would just be Giving

1:25:40

glory to God God you're handling the

1:25:42

situation. I already know it. You know

1:25:44

what? Thank you because right now I

1:25:46

don't fully believe but you're still gonna

1:25:48

do it because you are the God

1:25:50

that Fulfills his word and I'm sitting

1:25:52

here and I would just the first

1:25:54

day was tough The second day was

1:25:56

a lot easier. The third day was

1:25:58

so much easier all the sudden I'm

1:26:00

waiting, he's the superhero. I'm

1:26:03

not the superhero. And all of a sudden,

1:26:05

I'm reading the word. And

1:26:07

then now the word is speaking to me, like it's speaking to me

1:26:09

the way that you're speaking to me. And

1:26:11

I'm realizing, oh my goodness, it

1:26:14

had nothing to do with my mother. It had

1:26:16

to do with my behavior. Wow. I

1:26:19

can't fix something that I didn't even know I had

1:26:21

to issue with, but when you sit patiently and you

1:26:23

wait for the Lord to show up, you're

1:26:25

not gonna be able to do anything. When you sit

1:26:28

patiently and you wait for the Lord to show

1:26:30

up and be your God, and you

1:26:32

give him full submission to your life, he

1:26:35

could work your heart and your hands

1:26:37

and your feet. So then when I

1:26:39

approached my mom and in my imagination,

1:26:41

my mom was coming to me being

1:26:43

like, son, you're so right. I

1:26:45

found this, I found that. The truth is I

1:26:47

came and humbled myself and said, mom, I had

1:26:49

no right speaking to you this way. The

1:26:52

reason I wanna speak to you, because I was

1:26:55

scared about this, this and this. And when I

1:26:57

spoke to her this way, she

1:27:00

heard me. Your mom is an

1:27:02

immigrant. Like she was born over what country?

1:27:05

Iraq. Iraq, okay. And I think

1:27:08

what you're getting at is there's a deeper

1:27:10

principle here in terms of like honoring

1:27:13

your mother and father, speaking to

1:27:15

them in ways that are like respectable and

1:27:17

hospitable that I think is often

1:27:19

lost, especially if someone's smart

1:27:22

and they're having their own encounter with Jesus, right?

1:27:24

So my mom

1:27:26

grew up, she's the kind of

1:27:29

similar like Orthodox streams

1:27:31

and stuff. And, but

1:27:33

she was an alcoholic, she fell out

1:27:35

when our relationship. Then

1:27:38

right before my YouTube popped off, dude, we had

1:27:40

this crazy reconciliation that the Lord did. In

1:27:43

that, it's the same thing of like honoring her,

1:27:46

unlocked something and like the supernatural that didn't

1:27:49

make sense. And what happened was my

1:27:51

mom and my dad, my mom and I were a

1:27:53

strength because I asked my dad what happened and he

1:27:55

told me. And so then I went from being resentful

1:27:58

towards my dad to now I'm like kind of resentful.

1:28:00

You don't mind me asking what age did you pivot?

1:28:03

So I had that like confrontational

1:28:05

conversation. Like I confronted my dad when I

1:28:07

was like late 20s. Like I

1:28:09

was already, I think I was already married or

1:28:11

about to get married at that point. And I

1:28:13

was like, what happened? And he tells me the

1:28:15

whole story and your mom made it very difficult.

1:28:18

And it wasn't like he like apologized or repented,

1:28:20

but it just allowed me to humanize him and

1:28:22

our relationship got better. Understanding. Yeah. And then, and

1:28:24

then my, my, my, my relationship with my mom

1:28:26

got worse. She got worse in terms of the

1:28:28

alcoholism. She has really bad. She

1:28:30

had really bad hips. Like both hips needed to be

1:28:32

replaced and she didn't want to do it. And what

1:28:34

happened was the two

1:28:37

weeks before the pandemic, when everything shut down,

1:28:39

she came home, she has these little chihuahua

1:28:41

dogs and one of the dogs, um,

1:28:43

ran up under her and she fell and busted

1:28:46

and broke her shoulder really bad. I'm talking like,

1:28:48

if I showed you guys these X-rays, they're awful.

1:28:51

And she had no one to call. She's literally on

1:28:53

her back, had no one to call. And at this

1:28:55

point we weren't really talking like she, she, she couldn't

1:28:57

come over because she would be drunk or she had

1:28:59

sketchy dudes. And I was like, I can't bring around

1:29:01

my family. So she falls and the only

1:29:03

person she has to call is me. And so she's like, I need

1:29:05

you to take me to the emergency room. So I come

1:29:08

take her to emergency. Her house is just horrid, like

1:29:10

didn't take care of her house. Didn't take care of

1:29:12

her house. Just completely let herself go. And

1:29:15

bro, within that the coming months,

1:29:17

we got her health insurance. We got

1:29:20

her the surgery for the shoulder. They,

1:29:23

they, um, they got, uh,

1:29:25

they discharged her because it was COVID. So they,

1:29:27

it was like a really gnarly reconstructive surgery. So

1:29:29

they discharged her the day of the surgery with

1:29:31

which they weren't supposed to do. So she comes

1:29:33

and lives with me and she's forced the detox

1:29:35

off of alcohol. She quit smoking cigarettes. And so

1:29:37

I remember finding myself in like a really like,

1:29:39

oh my gosh, this is so, this is a

1:29:41

hard place to be, but through like, I'm going

1:29:43

to love my mom and I'm going to be

1:29:45

present and I'm going to do everything I can.

1:29:47

Like I literally stopped everything and it was COVID.

1:29:49

So there was nothing I could even do. I

1:29:51

couldn't travel. And I spent months just kind of

1:29:54

being her caretaker, if you will, taking her

1:29:56

on walks and bro, within that year, we ended

1:29:58

up getting both of our hips. She's

1:30:01

been clean and sober for four

1:30:03

years now. She

1:30:06

went to church with me on Easter and

1:30:09

now my mom was never active. She's sending me

1:30:11

pictures of her at the gym. Wow.

1:30:14

Doing her, doing a little thing. And subsequently, and

1:30:16

I'm not saying this is like a one for

1:30:19

one, like if you do this, God will bless

1:30:21

you. I'm not saying like that, but I think

1:30:23

the principle is true. Right around

1:30:25

the same time, my YouTube explodes. It

1:30:28

was almost like a direct correlation. Like if I

1:30:30

honor my mother and I love my mother, despite

1:30:33

the fact that she's done things to hurt

1:30:35

me, but I love her, God just unlocked

1:30:37

something in my heart for her. And

1:30:39

now like, dude, our relationship is better than

1:30:41

it's ever been. Me and my dad are

1:30:43

reconciled, better than we've ever been. And again,

1:30:45

it's not like we ride off into the

1:30:48

sunset and everybody's loving Jesus and everything's perfect,

1:30:50

but like it is so much better than

1:30:52

it was five years ago, dude.

1:30:54

And can I just say it's so interesting

1:30:56

this part of, this

1:30:58

happens with your mom, right? She gets into accident, she has to

1:31:00

go surgery. You don't have a good

1:31:02

relationship with her. You're forced to spend every day with

1:31:04

her and you could look at it two ways. You

1:31:06

could either focus on the negative and you'd be like,

1:31:08

this sucks. My life is being interrupted. I don't get

1:31:11

along with this person. Oh, this is hard, hard, hard,

1:31:13

hard, hard. And all that would do, the

1:31:15

situation would continue to be hard, but because you took it and

1:31:17

you made the best out of it and you said, you know

1:31:19

what? Obviously this is my mom, my lover. I

1:31:21

want to take care of her. And you took

1:31:23

the time to be patient with her, understand her,

1:31:26

and within that bad obstacle that was presented

1:31:28

in your life, God was able to take

1:31:30

a bad obstacle and turn it good because

1:31:32

you were positive in it and you didn't

1:31:34

let the darkness overtake everything. And so within

1:31:36

that, something that was really bad ended up

1:31:39

being the best thing for your life because

1:31:41

you had all this time to understand your

1:31:43

mom, talk to your mom and heal that,

1:31:45

which is so beautiful. And this is on

1:31:47

the other side of praying for her to

1:31:49

get clean for a decade. On

1:31:51

the other side of begging her to stop drinking,

1:31:53

begging her to stop smoking, begging her. And then

1:31:55

it was literally like within a year the Lord

1:31:57

just like, I mean, she had no choice. hospital.

1:32:00

She had three surgeries in one year to get

1:32:02

everything fixed and she had another shoulder surgery

1:32:04

and it was it's wild

1:32:07

when God will just do something

1:32:09

that you've been praying for, you know, and now

1:32:11

I'm like dude like and I'm like I think

1:32:13

she loves Jesus now like because she like is

1:32:15

down and come to church and she's clean and

1:32:17

she has friends in her life. Her landlords

1:32:20

are Christians so they're always talking to her about

1:32:22

God and it's just it's just cool and like

1:32:24

had you told me this five years ago I

1:32:26

would have been like dude you're insane like there's

1:32:28

no my mom's so far gone there's no way

1:32:30

it's gonna happen you know and it happened. And

1:32:32

the solution never comes how you think it's gonna

1:32:34

come it doesn't look the way you think it's

1:32:36

gonna look and so that's why it's so important

1:32:38

to treat your obstacles as if okay this is

1:32:40

something that can shape and change my life and

1:32:42

I can learn from this. Yeah and it came

1:32:44

through adversity it came through suffering like like I

1:32:46

mean there's there were some really

1:32:48

dark moments of my mom being in my

1:32:50

living room and not being able

1:32:53

to go to the bathroom and having to have one

1:32:55

of those portable toilets there there are times of like

1:32:58

having to clip her toenails like having

1:33:00

to clean up her disgusting house because

1:33:02

the dogs left poop everywhere my eyes

1:33:04

are watering like because of the smells

1:33:06

and the few like there was some

1:33:08

really dark times and now it's

1:33:10

like dude like if I showed you her

1:33:12

house the before and after just of her home like

1:33:14

it's like a whole nother home like her home is

1:33:17

like clean and the the grace of

1:33:19

God is like this now this is like a different

1:33:21

layer and I'm not trying to like make

1:33:24

myself the hero of the story but like the grace of

1:33:26

God to be in a financial situation to 100% hold down

1:33:28

all of her bills like

1:33:31

I'm in a spot where like she doesn't worry for

1:33:33

anything financially she has her own debit card to one

1:33:35

of our accounts and she just goes and pays her

1:33:37

rent and gets her food and whatever she needs like

1:33:39

it's just taken care of and that's like a cool

1:33:42

thing to like have a mom that was a single

1:33:44

mom struggling suffering and then to

1:33:46

come full circle and be like you're good

1:33:48

like you don't need to worry about if

1:33:50

you're gonna get SSI or disability like you're

1:33:52

good like you're set you're good you know

1:33:54

so yeah hey

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thanks a lot to Eddie for this article. Sorry.

1:35:01

Dang, bro, sorry. I'm trying

1:35:03

not to get emotional on a podcast. When

1:35:10

you said that they prophesied over

1:35:12

you and you were going

1:35:16

to preach to millions, unfortunately

1:35:20

the ones who usually go on and

1:35:22

do the most for God had to go through the most

1:35:24

for God. And

1:35:26

just picturing the sexual

1:35:29

assaults, the parents that were abusive,

1:35:31

that life where it feels unsafe.

1:35:37

You guys both described it in darkness.

1:35:41

I just see a little glimpse of

1:35:43

a mustard seed of light that you

1:35:45

held onto. The

1:35:48

darkness couldn't survive in it. The

1:35:53

more and more it kept growing in your

1:35:55

home now when people are

1:35:57

on their iPhones and they get to go through that

1:35:59

and they don't. Dude, you didn't get

1:36:01

that. You know what I mean? You didn't get to

1:36:03

look at a phone and listen to somebody like you

1:36:05

in that home that you had. And

1:36:07

I think you're gonna make a

1:36:10

lot of people that live that life feel

1:36:14

a lot more safe and you're

1:36:17

gonna give them that light that they could

1:36:19

hold on to that then themselves could go

1:36:22

and light up their own families

1:36:24

and light up their own homes and their own communities.

1:36:28

These are the stories that

1:36:31

I love to hear and I love to

1:36:33

talk about because all we want to

1:36:35

do is talk about war

1:36:37

or conflict. But these

1:36:40

stories, these are the stories

1:36:42

that I would love to go around

1:36:44

the fire and talk about because I'm

1:36:46

just so proud of you, man. It

1:36:49

really is something admirable to see.

1:36:53

That's a tough pill to swallow. And I'm so

1:36:56

happy that you have that medium where you get

1:36:58

to go talk because people want to cop out

1:37:00

and say, no, you don't understand, but you understand

1:37:02

and you made it out of it. So,

1:37:05

man, well, I thank you for that. And

1:37:07

I do feel like there's something in the

1:37:09

air on a cultural level. Like there's some, there

1:37:11

seems to be a shift happening. Oh, I've

1:37:13

been saying this with like macro, you know,

1:37:15

like there's like the kids are like hungry

1:37:17

for Jesus. Something, man. I've been

1:37:20

saying this. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Something. It's

1:37:22

something I. I'm just, I'm watching and

1:37:24

I'm watching the type of folks that

1:37:26

are getting saved behind the

1:37:28

scenes that are like about to come out. I'll kind

1:37:30

of tell you some of those folks are that I'm

1:37:32

connected with that are like him, like,

1:37:34

yeah, him, you know, and then you're

1:37:36

seeing, um, I was just, I

1:37:38

just heard Jordan Peterson speak in South Carolina.

1:37:41

And by the way, which I loved your conversation