from the path. And welcome. This is Live from the Path on Des Moines Amplified.com. My name is Ben Foost. Thank you for being here. This is a balmy 87 degrees here in the studio. That's why I'm working. That's because we're hot. No doubt. It is spicy in here, though. Anyway, coming up on the show tonight, um, I'm, hey man, something happened, right? Yeah, okay. Thought it was just me. Wait, there it did again. What a mistake. Coming up on the show tonight, I'm actually, what? Everything's all right. It's the heat wave. It's time to leave. We've got a problem. It's time to shut her down. Turn off the lights, head on home. I'm out. Before we screw it up. So actually, I'm pretty excited about the show tonight. Tonight, we're going to be talking about where do I start? If you are, you know, I think I like to call it Christ curious, you know, you've been interested in a relationship with God or you've never really tested it out fully or whatever, you know, you just don't know

where to start. So we're going to talk about that, maybe starting a relationship with God, what you can do and then pushing a little bit beyond that. Where do I start? If I wanted to start reading the Bible, where's a good place to start? How do I start my prayer life? You know, that kind of thing. There's a lot of aspects where I think it's just assumed, depending on how, you know, you were raised or, you know, how much involvement in the church that you've had that, you know, there's a way of going about something and I think sometimes we get lost in what are the perceived technicalities of following Christ. But you can always use a little bit of guidance, a little bit of assistance on where to start. We're going to be hitting that today and I'm pretty excited about that. I think that'll be a fun topic to walk through. For you guys that are in on the chat, I'll be real interested in a lot of your first experience in some of these things. You know, your experiences in trying to get a prayer life together, your experiences in coming to Christ.

If you have something, a story you want to share, that'd be really cool. So, you know, be prepared for that stuff if you feel like you want to dish out some information. We'd be glad to take it. You can reach us here in the studio at 327-1007 if you wish. If you're listening… The phone. Oh, yeah. I'll have to keep remember to check it. It doesn't ring out loud, you know. I gotta look at it. I'll make the noise. There's a red button on it and a red light and when it blinks… It slashes it. I'll go. Now, are we happy with… Can you see it from where you're at? Oh, I gotta glance at it. I gotta try not to make it obvious. It's not ringing currently. But if it does, do we want to go with a newfangled cell phone style ring or an old school… I want the old school. Ding-a-linger. I like a song. No. That wasn't… Options. Maybe a nice rap too. It's either gonna go… What's the old school one? Found! I'll take the old school one without the British lady. Yeah, me too. I like it.

That's what we want. She comes with it. It's a one-shot deal. Okay. It's either that or who let the dogs out. Your option. By the way, if you're watching the show on the front of Des MoinesAmplified.com, there's a button that's called chat right on the main picture that you're watching. Take a wild stab what that button does. It'll kick you in so that you can still watch the show and there's a chat screen there. You're free to participate in the chat if you wish. Otherwise, you can kind of see what everybody else is chatting about on there. It's a way to interact with the show without having to call in and hear the old school. I've done this before, actually. I was watching another show on the network on Saturday. The chat function is great. Did you make fun of them? Well, kind of. Like people do us? Yeah. The best part about it is you can sign in under an anonymous style name. I don't have to say Mike. I can say whatever, Billy Goat. Then I can just say whatever I want. Boy, that was terrible. Or, I got a joke for you. Or try to hijack the show with my own comedy. I had a really good time. Speaking of which,

so it was beggars night here just a few days back. Anybody hear any good jokes? Dan, did you hear any? You know, we looked out the window and I saw these people walking through the neighborhood and I'm like, oh, it's that night that we're totally not prepared for. So we quickly turned off all the lights and hid. We had nothing to give. Dan. They'd come to our house and give a joke and we'd say, that's awesome and slam the door in their face. That wouldn't go well. Give them a little handful of M&M's that are not prepackaged. That wouldn't go well either. Yeah, well, you distribute candy. You couldn't have got a box of tamales out of the garage. Your garage is full of candy. It's like a nine pound bag of M&M's. I don't think that's really appropriate for a five year old. Well, just give them a little, Dan. Well, I'll give them a spoonful of M&M's. Here you go, baby. Well, you don't have to do it like that. That's creepy. Just dump a little. When I was a kid and I got stuff that wasn't wrapped up and the first place I went was in the street. Yeah, my mom did that too. Like there was going to be a machete in the bag. Your mom threw it in the street? No, she went through all the candy

to make sure there wasn't like a… It was within the first few years after some kid got like a needle in his candy or whatever. Or rice and boy. There's always some story, yeah, like a razor blade in the apple or something. Or like a machete in there or something. He has apples anyway. You know, I tell you what… Oh, you should get them? Really? That was back in the day. Here's what I tell you what I don't like. And this is just me once again. But I don't like it when kids dress up like Justin Bieber. Like I don't like Justin Bieber anyway. Do people do that? Oh yeah. And it was 50-50 right down the line and tells you how acceptable this dude is. You could be either a boy or a girl could dress up as Justin Bieber. Yeah, yeah. And like I just… I can't… I don't want to see him. Like I don't… I hear it's not long enough. I didn't see any Justin Biebers around. Oh, they were there. Oh. I didn't see any. I wouldn't give him any candy. We hid so I didn't see anybody.

Yeah. Tricky. So no jokes, huh? My daughter told a solid one. Well, okay. Let's have it. Okay, ready Dan? I'm ready. Knock, knock. Who's there? Hatch. Hatch who? Bless you. Where's my candy? You get the candy. Yeah, I get the candy. I'm telling a joke. See? I always lose. Does anyone ever take you up on the trick offer? Like they say trick or treat? What's the source of that? Wait a minute. Are you saying trick or treat to the guy giving the candy? Like, I'm going to tell you a joke and you can either do a trick or give me a treat. I think it's I'm going to give you a, I'm going to tell you a joke and you have to either treat, if you don't treat me I will trick you. I will dump over your outhouse or soak your windows. So it's just the old days. So it's like trick or treat. Exactly. It's bribery.

You give me a treat or I'm going to do something serious. I think you bust your windows out, buddy. It's blackmail. It's not bribery. Oh yeah, sorry. You will treat me It's a larceny. No. That's how the LA riots started. It was people weren't treating so they started tricking. We stocked them up for 20 years. Now we're paying them off. Baseball bet! You better weigh down your Volvo because me and eight buddies are coming over. There'll be six Justin Bieber's and two Cinderella's moving your Volvo down the street. We used to call the pizza guy and take his car. I called the pizza delivery man. He'd get out of his car to deliver pizza. We'd have a dude come around the back get in his car and move it and just drive it a couple of houses down and leave it there. Freaked him out. I thought we'd do that. Actually, if I were a pizza delivery guy I'd be really suspect especially in the middle of winter. I mean not only

you've got a warm vehicle probably full of gas with food in it. If I were homeless I'd follow the pizza delivery guy around until he got out of his car and jump right in and drive away. Yeah. If I would otherwise You're saying yeah you would do that as well then? I could see that but I don't think I could keep up with it though. Yeah, what is he going to do? Hunt it down on foot? With a shopping cart? Hey Carl, there he goes. Surely he'll stop soon. Slow down so I can steal your vehicle. He never delivers within a block of the joint. You could just call on a fake pizza order. With what? Your cell phone? You're going to borrow one from your buddy Snaps? Let me ask you this. You think if you were a pizza restaurant would you take a collect call? Someone try to call collect for a delivery? That's probably a good sign they can't pay for their pizza. Is it worth 50 cents or whatever to sell a pizza to this guy? No.

It's suspect. Let me ask you this Dan. If randomly someone made a collect call to you would you accept it? I have had random ones and if I don't know the name I don't accept it. You turned it down? Someone could be reaching out to Pastor Dan Hudson for life solace and comfort and you turned it down because they don't have the money to make the call? Right. You're a real somebody, Dan. How do they know who I am? I mean it's… Maybe the Lord has put it with on their heart, Daniel. Would Jesus accept the charges? Maybe they're watching Live from the Path YouTube channel which is nearing 2,000 hits by the way. 50 more to go. So if you're not currently watching the YouTube… Wait while I'm watching the YouTube channel tomorrow. But do it. Tomorrow. Or even later tonight when we're done if you just can't stop. Yeah. You just keep it going all night long. Yeah. Yeah. Or if things get real sketchy tonight. It's stupid.

We're on the borderline now so if it tips over hit the YouTube channel. Where's the best of? We're going to have a big celebration for like our 100th show and all that stuff. Yeah. What show are we on? Like 25 or something? Are we supposed to count these? Yeah. I think we can look back pretty easy. That's going to take like two and a half years Dan. Well that'd be why we have a big celebration. Oh right. We've got to start planning now. We need a donkey. It's a definite. We're going to have to clear that out. Olsen, can we have a donkey in here? Are you the guy that makes the rules? Is Olsen on? Can you tell me whether we can have one? He's not on. I'll check with him later. I think we can definitely have one. What kind of go-to guy is Olsen. He's not even on a show. He's really let us down tonight. So speaking of the YouTube channel, if you're interested at all, the stuff from last week, see if I can remember. Does Pepsi pay us any type of endorsement?

Not yet. Oh. Why? Oh. I was just having a drink. How was that Diet Coke? I never drank my unnamed cola. So if you missed it last week, there's a clip out there about who needs the church anyway. Last week we were talking about whether it's necessary to even be a part of a church family or to go to church. You look around, you see, look at all these Christians. They're hypocrites, vagrants, swindlers, liars, cheats. None of them have a cell phone. Yeah. I'm going to follow God without them. Jesus is cool. I can hang with him. I don't really want to deal with any of these people. So last week our discussion was whether that's biblically sound. And you can check out that discussion on the YouTube channel under Who Needs the Church Anyway? I'm fairly certain we solved it once for all. I think we did. I think we did. There also was a summation of the discussion in our newsletter, which feel free to sign up for. You can get to that on

lifeinthepath.org. Yep. So Mike, what have you been up to this week? I was on the YouTube actually quite frequently this week watching old WrestleMania videos. Why? Why were you looking for a WrestleMania video? I don't know. I used to really like wrestling when I was a kid. You were there. Yeah, I've seen it. But WrestleMania 6 was the pinnacle. It was a Hulk Hogan Ultimate Warrior Battle Royale. And they had a replay match of the Bad News Brown versus Roddy Roddy Piper. And he hit him with a chair and he took the cushion off the turnbuckle when the ref wasn't looking so Bad News could get whapped in the head. It was riveting. I never could get into that. You never watched wrestling? Pro wrestling? I couldn't. I couldn't for more than five minutes. I just sit there and go, really? Yeah. And I just… What was it? Dusty? Who's Dusty? Dusty Rhodes. The American Dream.

Dusty Rhodes. He's just the common man. Working hard with his hands. The chat says Dan couldn't get into it because it's stupid. Are you saying that's out of Dan's character? I'm sorry. I'm sorry. That sounded like a backhanded compliment. Wait a minute. Yeah. Thank you. Thank you. That's two votes for stupid. Anybody else in the chat want to weigh in on the stupidity of WrestleMania? Well, I was going to have a party, I guess. I guess it's just going to be me and a bag of Cheetos. There goes the WrestleMania party. Going to order pizza? Hey, actually, that's a good point, Chad. They just saw Stacey Hartkopf on the news. They showed pictures of Steve getting to see Sophie, who was their daughter, for the first time. Steve and Stacey go to our church. Steve is in the army and he's been deployed. She had the baby while he was out and he's just gotten back to the scene. They're first born. Yeah. But anyway, we were

just talking about Stacey just before we came on the air because she had been to the YouTube channel and commented on the video about why bad things happen to people. So, hit the YouTube channel. What news station was that on? So, I guess, let me clarify. WrestleMania rocks when you're eight years old. Does that mean, okay, I'm just trying to relive some of the fire. You know, I didn't say like I've got tickets and I'm dressing up as downtown Steve Austin or whatever his name is. So, when you were eight years old, did you watch it and run around the house with your underpants on? I always wore underpants. Well, I mean, like the pants on top of the underpants were always an option, but underpants were always there. Right, right. I mean, you know, your underpants wrestling move stuff. No, I just really like to watch other dudes beat on fellas. Here's the thing. Like, I've tried to watch it recently, like within the last year. Yeah. And it's just terrible. It's too heavy. Yeah, it's deplorable, man.

Like, it's a soap opera. There's not as much rough and tough and as much as there is like words going back and forth. Like, I can see people argue on the street. Well, you get injured, you know, and then they can't perform and then they don't make money. So, they can talk more and make it sound good. Yeah, and there's people breaking the code of silence. It's like, he wasn't supposed to really drop me this way. That wasn't part of the act. It's like, dude, you're not supposed to say it's an act. Action, you mean, right? Action. Everyone else is, I mean, people are bleeding, you know, and they're breaking their arm and they struggle through it because they were true innovators of the sport. I'm sorry, are these Jake the Snake and Rufus R. Jones? Yeah. Who was Rufus R. Jones? He battled Jake the Snake. I don't know about that. In fact, I'm fairly certain that was WrestleMania 5. Really? I've never heard of that guy. Jake the Snake, I

remember. I remember that name. Yeah. He's been on 2020 a couple times for his drug habit. Well, they did a story I think called, I think it was Beyond the Mat about the back, the back, the seedy backstory on professional wrestling and Jake the Snake after he left WWF went in and did some kind of like semi-quasi-amager wrestling league and it's pretty rough. It's kind of like a cockfight is what it looks like. I mean, it's that type of a, there's not enough lights in the place, there's a bunch of crazy people with Before you get to the professional stage level, it's actual amateur fighting pretty much before you get there. Oh, yeah. It's pretty rough. That's not a, Danny Little Bear? Is that the name of a real guy? No, that doesn't sound right. Are you just making stuff up? The chat is submitting fake wrestler names to see if you can catch on to us. What kind of mean wrestler is Danny Little Bear? The Million Dollar Man, okay. He was a legitimate

guy. He's still around. Really? Yeah. In fact, he looks like Bob Seger. Ted DiBiase looks like Bob Seger. He just looks like Bob Seger. Yeah. Him and the Silver Bullet Band been out on tour. Did I ever tell you that YouTube video I saw of some guy, what was it? Bob Seger sings a tune called Get Out of Denver. And I wanted it, but I agreed to stop illegally downloading things. So I just went to YouTube figuring, well, I'll just listen to the video. At least I can see it. And I click on the first one, and it's some doofus has got a camera on himself playing the drum set to Bob Seger's Get Out of Denver. So the camera's here, and then he plays the tune over his own home stereo, and then he's playing drums to it, and he taped it. And that was the first return search option on YouTube for this tune. I was so mad at that guy. That's kind of a disappointment. Yeah. That's the number

one. Plus he didn't even play it up for the camera, you know, like, you don't look at the camera. Look at me, I'm on YouTube. You know, cruel sticks or anything, he just looked right at his, you know, like he was in the band, you know, that he didn't deserve any audience at all. Like he taped just himself, but then did no stage performance at all. Was it like keeping the beat with the actual song? Yeah, yeah, he was just playing along with it. So you could halfway pretend it was him? Yeah, kind of. You'd have to look away. Well, plus his drum playing's in there as well. So now there's two drummers trying to play to the same tune. It was a disaster. I was very upset that morning. I was looking for it. I can't find it. What? I was looking to see if I had the video of that guy doing Get Out of Denver. I remember seeing it. It is pretty bad. Yeah. It's a disaster. Anyway. All right.

All right. You've been listening to Life in the Path on Des Moines Amplified.com. So this week the question is, where do I start? I don't have a relationship with Christ. I don't have any type of knowledge about God. I'm not sure I believe in God, that there is such thing as a God. I'm just interested. So the question really is, where do I go from there? Where does one start? This was it? I'm waiting for the chat to respond. Nobody? He didn't submit it to the chat. Oh. No. No. Sorry. I forgot. I mean, really, I think it depends on where you are at, which makes sense. You know, where do you start? Where are you at? Are you someone who is completely down and out? Are you someone who has finally hit rock bottom and you've been running your whole life and it's like, wow, I need to, I finally for the first time realized I need God? Or are you someone who just one day just kind of

hits you? I suppose either way is the answer. Yeah. I think you start with a humble spirit before God that acknowledges you needed God. I mean, that's usually the very first step because usually the reason you haven't been acknowledging God in the first place is you've made yourself God. You know, you put yourself up there. I'm the one who makes the rules. I'm the one who calls the shots. I'm the one who decides what I do with my life and when I do it and how long I do it. I don't need anybody's two cents worth on what I got going here. Exactly. I don't need you telling me what I do with my life and with my whatever. Right. You know? So, I suppose if you start at that point and you say, well, you guys, try to pull it together. I didn't say no. I wrote a legitimate I was just seeing if I could make Mike break and I think I did. So, I guess if someone is saying, you know, I'm interested in finding out more about, I guess, how to pursue a relationship with God or I'm just interested in knowing more about it,

I'm not sure whether I believe or not. Like, where's a, is maybe the good, the first step is to, I guess, catch it at the source. Make sure you're getting a clean view of what God is. I think there's some barriers to people believing and I think one of the barriers is the examples that are around them. Like, you'll see a guy, you see people who say that they believe in God or that they're following Christ and you cannot rationalize that even without a strong concept of God, like never having read the Bible or anything, but you look at that person and you say, I can't imagine that's it. You know, and so I think that's a legitimate barrier that people have to even pursue that relationship or even finding out more is they say, look, all I know is I see that and I say, I don't want to be that. I don't want to look like that. I don't want to act like that. Yeah. I don't want people to think of me the way they think of that person. I think, well, I think that's probably two different subcategories though, right? Yeah.

Like, where you say, you know, I don't want to look like that. I don't want to act like that. That's, I would say, more likely an example of a guy that's maybe not living God to its fullest, you know, living his life. I mean, it could be, you know, maybe you have a bad perception, but, you know, but when you turn around and say, you know, I don't want other people to think of me like that, you know, then that's, I think that's on your part. Like, you don't want, you don't want the, you know, what comes with your new walk with Christ, you know, like your friends might just not want to hang out with you that much anymore, you know? You're going to catch some flack here and there, you know, for stuff that you say, look, I'm just not interested in that kind of jazz anymore, you know? And so, I mean, there's a little to walk over here. I mean, one is maybe a poor example of a Christian that you can look and say, look, if that's it, you know, that's not what I want because it seems phony to me. Or, you know, I don't want people to think of

me that way where maybe you're just still afraid, you know, you're afraid that everyone's just going to start rejecting you that, you know, nobody from your current life is going to want anything to do with you. True. Yeah. Solid. Well, so, I think you summed it up there. Well, so, the distinction then, I think, is if you look at someone and you say, you know, I don't want that, one of the things that I guess I would recommend for someone who's in the position of, if your barrier to belief is the example of people that are following God around you and you say, I don't want anything to do with that, the way they act, the way they are, I think the resolution to that is to get into your, is to get into your Bible. It's because that's the great equalizer. The thing is, you don't know, it's tough to take a fallen person's interpretation of how Christ wants them to live. Like, we're all going to fail in that respect. And so, going to a fallible source for information about an infallible God and his destruction, and his power is going to lead you in the wrong way because that person that

you look up to and you respect is always going to fail in some way or another. And so, I think a good place to start is in the Bible, get into God's Word, see what his direction actually is. Because I think, you know, one of the things that I find myself in discussions with the people is they will, they'll come up and they'll tell me what's in the Bible having never read it. Like, oh, here's what God says about Acts, and I'll say, where? He actually doesn't say that. Yeah, that doesn't happen at all, you know? And so, that's a good place to start is let's at least set the situation straight. Let's start with what the Bible actually says. And then if you want to qualm about that, you want to argue about what God has asked you to do in your life because you're not willing to do it or whatever, like, fine. You've at least gone to the place. Being honest. Yeah, but don't run away from God just because you saw a guy that was following God incorrectly. Like, that guy needs help just like you need help. So, you know, maybe you can even step out of the

judgment seat for a little bit. But let's get in God's word. Let's figure out what he says. And then you have a place where you can say, yeah, I can believe this. I see where there's value. Or you have to say, maybe you want to run from that. But at least you're brooching at its cleanest point. So, I think that's probably a good place to start. And we'll talk here in a little bit about where to get started in Bible reading because I know that's kind of elite as well. Well, I remember a friend of mine when I was growing up had, you know, his family didn't attend church a whole lot. But like the very, very times that they did, they'd go to church and like he'd wear his Metallica shirt or something, you know, in the preschool and they would just, or to the Sunday school, and they would just have a fit. They wouldn't let him in the door. Really? They'd just say, look, you can't wear that kind of shirt here, you know. And it's that kind of example right there where, you know, you take a kid where something like that happens to him. You know, maybe Metallica doesn't have the Metallica shirt probably is not the best thing to wear to

church. But, like, it should be a pretty obvious name tag that says, I need you to talk to me about Jesus. Yeah. You know, I mean, not that Metallica is inherently evil or anything, but, like, you know, I mean, the kid's basically screaming out to you, look, you know, let's have a conversation here, you know. And they shut the door and shove them out, you know. It says, you're kind. You're not good enough. Your kind's not coming in here, you know. When you learn how to dress, you can come and hang out with us. Exactly. And so, I mean, you want to look at people that go, you know, that stand on the outside and go, if that's what Christianity is, I don't want to follow Christ either. You know, I have to start excluding people now. You know, I have to start cutting shuffle and say, you're not part of our group. Yeah. You know, and so, you know, I think that's probably a huge barrier that people look at. Yeah. Yeah, and I suppose if we can maybe set the record straight, that's dumb. That's really, really, really dumb. Yeah. And not biblically consistent. But, I mean, how many

people look at people following Christ and they get that bad example and they stand away from it because of that and it's not biblically consistent. It's not accurate with the way that we were instructed to treat people, you know, and that's a legitimate barrier that people are running into. Right. In fact, I'd like to show, you know, anyone who's run into that problem, you know, if you want to dig into your Bible a little bit, you show me anywhere where it says anyone is disqualified from being talked to about the Lord or God's grace or the fact that he died on the cross for everybody's sins. You show me one passage that says, well, but you can disqualify them, you know, if they don't show up at church but two Sundays a month, you know, they're out. Yeah. Or, you know, if they, you know, don't even waste your time talking to them if they like rock music because that's just terrible. Yeah. We don't accept that around here. Yeah. That's goofy. So I think that's a barrier that people are into and I guess our instruction there, if you're running into what you've seen is a bad example of something that you don't, you don't know. Maybe you haven't read the

Bible. Maybe you don't know much about God, but you look at what God's people, and I'll put it in quotes, are up to and you say, I don't want anything to do with that. I would ask that you at least read some, read the Bible. Like, like at least start getting into God's word a little bit and see what's actually in there as opposed to making assumptions about what people are doing. People, again, will always fail you and they will give a bad example and that's not God's example. So, you know, let's at least level the playing field. Don't discount your potential in your faith just because someone else is screwing it up. Like, you're not teaching anybody a lesson. You're not, you're doing yourself a disservice by walking away at that point because somebody has failed you. I think along with that is the perception that you can have of the church if you haven't either haven't been to church and you've only heard what other people have said or what you've seen in movies or television. Or maybe you haven't been for 20 years and you went to this church that was, you know, 20 years ago, you know, 50 years behind then and you're thinking, you know, I don't know if I really want that.

You know, it's like I kind of live in a different era and sometimes people have their own perception. They don't check out church just to, and they let that limit them from God, I guess what I'm saying. Well, and you know, I guess the thing is ultimately we deal in truth here. Like you could very well read your Bible for a little bit and decide, you know what, yeah, I should go to church. And you go to a church and you have a terrible experience full of people that aren't following Christ and you don't know any different and you're like, I'm out. Don't, again, don't bail without knowing what's true or not consistently with the Bible. It's tough for you to judge whether you're in a good situation or not. I mean, you will run into people that aren't doing it correctly. You will run into churches that are doing extraneous things that maybe are distracting you from God. So I think, you know, that's the thing to be real mindful of is that, you know, bad experiences don't indicate a fallible God. They indicate generally a fallible people that aren't following a God correctly. And so, you know, again, don't let yourself be denied a relationship with Christ because somebody is hosing it up as an example for you. Yeah. And I mean, that goes for

churches too. The church should be the first, you know, group to admit that, you know, we're a fallible entity. You know, they should be pursuing truth. You know, there's, I know I've been to churches and I've seen something happen. I'm like, what, what is that? And you know what? It wasn't a distraction for me. It was a, it was extra, you know, it wasn't against God or anything, but it wasn't biblical. I could do it, could not do it. It doesn't really matter. It's no impact to me. It's a, it's a tradition thing. It's not a biblical thing. So like, it's not a huge deal. But I mean, if you look at that and say, well, that's stupid. They're, they follow God by, by doing X and say, I'm out because of that. You know, just let's feel out whether it's biblical or not. Feel out whether it's a God thing, whether it's a people thing, and then we can start making decisions about whether it's appropriate or not. Sure. Well, I mean, okay, so let's say that, like you say, I'm Christ curious, you know, where do I start? You know, is there, is there like, is there universal truths that I need to, you know, come

to grips with before I start my relationship with Christ? Well, when you go back to kind of like we said earlier, is you humble yourself before God. You acknowledge the fact that I really need God. I'm not doing it. Whatever I'm doing is not working. Whatever I'm believing in isn't going to get me to where I want to go ultimately, whether in my life here or if you're starting to think eternally, you know, it's like, that's a hard concept to grasp. You know, like, is there life after death? You start thinking that when you're at a funeral and a friend dies or a family member or something, and a lot of times that will get you to start the mind thinking. And at some point you go, okay, how do I get there? Wherever there is. Whatever, you know, it's asking honest questions. And at some point you'll reach this point where you realize, if there is an afterlife, I can't get myself there. You know, I mean, really? I mean, there's got to be something more. So, and if you find God and let's say you get to that point, that's where we're getting at. What's your first step? You realize it's God. I think it's that attitude

of humility before him. And maybe that's the greatest place to just start to say, and just ask God for help. You know, it's just, you can just say, allow God, help me. I'm trying to figure out, I don't know who you are. Yeah, and that's, you know, an amazing, amazing thing about a God that will, you know, help you grow your faith in him just by asking. Like, I mean, there's a, I mean, there's biblical examples left and right. You know, there's, what was it, the guy that had his son healed, I think, and the Lord said that we can heal your son, and the guy says, Lord, help me have faith. I do believe, but help me have faith. I mean, yeah, yeah. You know, help my faith to be where it needs to be, you know, and, you know, that's pretty amazing that says, look, I really want to believe in you. I'm having a hard time with it. Can you help me with that, you know? Most people, you know, that's like me walking in as president of the company and saying, go do this, and the employee says, well, I'd really like to do what you say, but I'm having a hard time accepting your authority as president. You know, me as president would say, you're fired.

Exactly. I'm the president. You know, and instead my God says, okay, you know, let's work on that, you know, let's see what I can do. Well, the thing is you have to know, like, all the answers to every question. Sometimes so many people have so many questions that that will block them, and so they're reaching out to God. They're kind of like, okay, I kind of get it. I need God. God help me. And we met with a couple, my wife and I did years ago, that they were kind of seeking God. They were kind of at that first step stage, and they're like, tell us about Jesus, tell about God. We don't know anything. We started going every single week. We'd go to their house, have this Bible study, and they were so distracted by all kinds of other things, you know, that they kind of missed God. You know, it's like, well, they had monkeys before we knew them. They had, like, they were like their kids, yeah, basically. And, I mean, they really were. They said, oh, we don't have any kids, but we had monkeys, you know, and, like, their monkeys died, and they were so

caught up. So we see our monkeys in heaven, you know, and it's like, you know, we kind of talk about that a little bit, and then you'd answer that, and it's like, well, what about starving people in Africa? And, well, you know, what about them? Well, what if they, what if a coconut falls, you know, and they're not in Africa and a coconut, but, you know, whatever. Yeah, yeah. They get trampled by a wild, raging lemur. Exactly. You know, all these different questions that distracted them from, it's like, how about if you focus, first of all, on who God is, and figure it out for you first, before you worry about whatever else is doing. You know, you've got to figure it out for yourself. Yeah. And that's part of humbling yourself before God, asking for help, reaching out to Him. And, you know, I always tell people, if you know someone around you who's a believer, you know, you can always go to them for some help, realizing they're not the ultimate answer. Go to the Bible, like you said. Yeah. Ultimate. But there's, you know, when I started learning guitar, I was in my 30s, and I had no clue, as you know.

I'm not a great musician. But, you know, I wanted to learn, and so I learned a few chords, and every once of a while, but there were some things I didn't know, so I had a friend who was a guitar player, so, well, how do you do this? And he'd show me, well, do this with your pinky. You know, I was like, well, I picked some things up that I didn't get out of a book. That's what I mean. You talk to a believer, sometimes they just know things that can help you on the path and answer our questions that are simple that you're really struggling with. They're like, oh, it's right here. Well, you know, and I think the distinction between going to the Bible for biblical truth and then finding someone that you respect who's following Christ is just making sure you're putting your focus in the right spot. Like, you're following Christ, and you're utilizing the experiences of Jeff to do so and to help you along that path. Not, I'm following Jeff because he follows Christ. Exactly. Like, so, I mean, there's definitely a benefit for, you know, a person that's a biblical example to kind of, you know, make sure to interact with, to talk with, to grow in your faith with. You know, the, the thing about, about that is just have to be careful because sometime or another, Jeff

will do something incorrectly. Because he's human. And it shouldn't rock your world. Yeah. Right? It should be, okay, I recognize that Jeff, as a human, is going to screw something up. It's, it, one of the, the worst things that happens is people start following other people, and that person makes a mistake as a following human, which they're prone to do, and now their faith is, is shake, or shooken, or whatever. Shaken? Yeah, shaken. Shaken. Right, their faith is shaken. Shaken, because, because this person was infallible, which we should have understood that, you know, right away. I know that he's, he's a fallible person. I know that he's going to make a mistake. It's still a wonderful, you know, relationship that I can have, and something to help, you know, me grow as a, as a, someone that's following Christ. But ultimately, I need to know where the truth lies, because I can't be a good, good partner for, for Jeff, if I don't know where the truth is. Right. Or know where I'm, if I'm being misled by his example. Well, even the Apostle Paul said, follow me as I

follow Christ. You know, don't do everything I do, because I'm human, and I'm going to fail. Plus, he didn't want a bunch of, a bunch of, you know, competition in the tent making business. That's right. He'd put, yeah, biblical humor. I got the big P brand, you can't mess with that. You know, it's, it's actually how, how simple that sounds and how much it's widely ignored. I mean, look at, look at, look how many huge churches have fallen. I mean, just, just, in your recent memory, because the head guy has taken a turn and done something, you know, not on the up and up, and like, the church just absolutely implodes. Like, it is just a huge disaster. Everyone is, oh, is taken aback, lost, you know, freaked out, trying to find, you know, where the direction was, and you know, and that, you know, that may just be a symptom of, of late, I don't know, a lazy relationship with Christ, I guess, but, I mean, if you were, if you're getting, you know, spiritually fed through a guy, you know, that is valuable, you know, and then when he falls off the, falls off the wagon, and then you're completely lost, you know, I don't know, maybe it's time to reevaluate your, your relationship with Christ and your, you know, how

often you get into the Lord's Word and see what, you know, what's really going on and not just taking it as someone says. I mean, we, we should have high expectations for, for leaders, spiritual leaders within a church. At the same time, I've never, ever, ever been shocked when someone falls who's a spiritual leader because we're all human, you know, and you want to help them and help them overcome that, and there's certain things that would maybe disqualify them for leadership in the future, which, which even in the big national, big churches, sometimes they'll have affairs or something and all of a sudden they're, you know, three years later doing church again. Right. I personally disagree with that. Really? Yeah. Moses killed people. Yeah, I mean, Scripture's pretty clear that a shepherd should manage his family well. How can he manage the church family if he can't even handle his own family? And if he's out there carousing, carousing, you know, that kind of tells you it's a character flaw. I mean, is he human? Yeah. Did he make a mistake? Yeah. Is he going to go to hell? No. Assuming he repents.

But, but you would say, well, there's a person who probably shouldn't be a shepherd. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, people would disagree with me on that. I don't know. Well, but I mean, a guy that follows Christ appropriately isn't necessarily in a position to be a leader, you know, like you still have to, you still have to lead, lead people. And that is dependent on their willingness to follow. And if the circumstances are to the extent that someone's not willing to follow you, or you're not an effective leader, even regardless of what you're doing now, because of something you've done in the past, you know, like ultimately people won't need to be led to Christ. And if you're not effective in doing that, or can't be because of a mistake you made, yeah, God can forgive you, but you're effective in a question. Yeah. A church, a church leaders, he's different than a regular leader. You know what I'm saying? Like, like usually when you find someone that, that is a leader of something, you believe in the guy, you know, like I believe the guy who runs a, you know, your company, you think I'm trusting this guy. I like his vision. I like the way he does things.

You know, he's the leader. He's the guy, you know, when, when, when I'm, I'm black and white, don't know what to do. I say, uh, you know, Billy, what do we do? And he goes, I got it. You know, like, but a church leader is different. Like when I look at a good church leader, I'm looking at a guy who I can trust to give me, you know, God's word infallibly, you know, like the guy is valuable, but, but that he presents, you know, God's word appropriately. That's what I'm looking for out of a church leader. So, you know, I'm not, you know, like, like there's a certain moral standard, of course. I mean, I think that you expect out of your church leaders, but I, you know, but, but like, it's not the same relationship as a, as, as most people would think of as a leader, you know, like it is a shepherd relationship. It is, you know, I, I'm not leading you to me. I'm leading you to this. I'm leading you here. Actually, I think your, your example is a good one when you talk about leaders. So if you think about, uh, like a head of a corporation, uh, you know, that, that it's that guy's vision, that guy's, you know, direction or whatever, and if

they want somebody, if they want a new vision or new direction, they get a new guy, right? And, and that's what's, that's the, that's the thing in a, in like a corporate leadership, uh, role is you want someone who brings their own thing to the table. Uh, on the other side, a godly leader, like that's the guy that should be consistent. Like he, that's not changing things. That's doing exactly what he's supposed to do, like paying off the things that God has asked him to, you know, given the church direction on. Uh, so he, he, the, the biblical leader is the, you know, almost the complete opposite of what a, uh, of a corporate leader or a modern worldly leader is. I mean, there's innovation, of course, in the, in the way that you can go about things in your ministry, but, you know, the consistency is the deal. Like you're almost, you're slapping the hands of the guy that can't keep things going straight. You know, it's the guy that's right on that gets to, you know, that can continue to lead folks because he's consistently demonstrating, uh, God's direction. Well, and that's, you know, that's very how we ended up with different

factions within the, the, the Christ following arena. Sure. You know, he comes up with a, with a new innovative way and decides, well, you know, we're going to get a box and you're going to talk to me in the box, you know, like this comes up, you know, and people think I don't mind the box talking. That's cool. You know, other people like, I ain't going in that box for nothing, you know, and, and then they split and they say, we're the box talkers. We're not the box talkers, you know? So, you know, I was, we were talking a little bit then about what are the, what the barriers are to belief. Um, and we, we talked a bit about, um, everything I know about God. I learned from seventh heaven law and order. Father Dowling mysteries, like whatever your, your vision of, or from the, the guy that knocks on your door, like make sure you're getting, um, you're getting an accurate picture of what God is asking of you, what he is offering to you, what he has done for you. Um, and you need to go to the Bible for that. And again, we'll, we'll hit that in just a little bit about where to start with the Bible. Um, one of the other things that we, that I think we

run into is seeing faith as a weakness. Um, and this is a perception issue, um, that I think we get from people around us. If you, you know, I've been thinking about, uh, you know, becoming religious or something like something goofy like that, you'll say, um, you know, and people will look at that as a, I haven't been thinking about becoming a religious. You'd be surprised on, on, on as if it's a step of, of life maturity, not religious aspiration, you know, like, oh, I'm old enough. I should start becoming religious. I should start attending church. I should find a faith that I can agree with so that I can be more of mature and like it's completely not the point. You should grow in maturity, uh, spiritual maturity as you, as you follow Christ. But really, you know, picking up a religion, uh, as, as a means of growing up is a, is a poor reason to pick up a religion. Um, but anyway, like the thought of, um, the thought of seeing faith as a weakness, I guess, you know, and you, you'll see this portrayed too. Like there was that thing, the, the political thing that went back, uh, I don't know, a year and a half ago. It was, it was part of the action where they, they

say, uh, people that cling to their guns and religion, like I'm weak. I can't do anything else. So I have to find a worldview of, you know, that I can subscribe to that can help guide me because I'm unable to stand on my own. And so I think, I guess that gets a play as a, as a weakness. But one of the things I guess I would submit to you is that not having Christ is a false strength. Um, it's similar to the, um, you know, there's a, they talk about the tax cuts, right? We need to tax the rich and give money to the middle class so that we'll have a strong middle class. But you realize if you have to take money from somebody else to give it to the middle class, to make them strong, they're not really strong. They're strong on the backs of someone else. It's a false strength. Um, and I, and I think this is a similar situation where you may appear strong. I don't need God because I'm strong. Like that's a false strength because ultimately the truth is, is that there is a God. He does exist and you're acting, right? And so like the strength is within God. So like, but before you accept that religion, uh, or that following Christ is a weakness, again, I, I would, I would get comfortable, um, with God's word, get comfortable, um, with the

things that he asked that you do in your life. It's, it's not easy to follow Christ the way that Christ asks you to do it. Um, that's one of the biggest, um, I don't know, falsities that is propagated out there is that, that following, following Christ is, is a life of ease. Right. It's, it's, it's, it's the life of a servant. People left in droves when Jesus spoke as he kept saying, here, here's what I expect out of you. And they're like, oh, that, that's a high price. Yeah. I mean, that's, that's not, that's not easy to really live it. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, it's, it's, it's weird how, how you'll see people, they took the easy way out and, and, and are going the God route because that's just, it's the simple way to look at the world. It's the easy way to look at the world. And I mean, if you're, if you're following what Christ has asked you to do, if you're, if you're reading the Bible and understanding what's required of you as a servant of Christ, that's not an easy life at all. I mean, who was the, the, the guy who had, uh, uh, who had come, came up to Jesus in the Bible and he's like, you know, what else do I need to do? And Christ is like, go sell all your stuff and follow me.

He's like, clean everything out. You're done. Follow me. Uh, let the, the guys who, uh, who was asking, you know, Christ what he should do. And, and Christ says, well, come follow me. And he goes, well, I need to go bury my dad. My dad died. I need to bury him. He says, no, let the dead bury the dead. Don't bury your dad. It's important. You follow me. I mean, that's not a life of ease. That's not a, those aren't examples of someone who's, who's taken the easy road. I mean, that's a difficult existence. I'd like to have been a fly on the wall when that happened. Yeah. Lord, what can I do? Go sell all your stuff. Next. Awkward pause. Uh, all of it. Yeah. Uh, oh. Can I buy it back? I'm fairly certain. I believe the next Bible verse is the man left. Disappointed. Because he was a very rich man. He didn't want to sell anything. He didn't want to sell anything. I don't know. It's just, I, that, that one kind of rubs me in the wrong direction because it's, it's again, people who haven't read the Bible, you know, they just propagate things like, oh, it's easy. That's the easy way out is to,

is to follow Christ. It's a weakness. I, you're being carried through with your religion. I mean, it's, uh, Christ's example is, is an example of action. He's asking you to do things for him. I tell you what, it's probably a sign of weakness. I mean, if you, if you're outside to God's realm, because you're not accountable for anything. You can do whatever you want, as long as you're not breaking any common laws. Well, that's, that's actually what, that, that was one of the other big barriers to belief is, uh, is the refusal. And we talked about this just, uh, I think it was the last week or the week before, is the refusal, um, to, refusing to acknowledge that there should be consequences. Like we just feel like there's a certain amount of, uh, I can get away with it karma in the world. Um, I've done some things, but it never came back to bite me as, as opposed to what is a more logical, uh, stance, which is there is a, there is a right and wrong. Uh, there is an ultimate judgment on what I do. Um, I, I, there is not me getting away with things. Um, and accepting that, that I can fail and that there's a consequence to that failure. Um, and how I, and how I treat people and how I live my life. That's a tough, that's a tough, tough barrier because that takes yourself down a

notch. It goes back to something that Dan said about, you know, we're God, we decide what we do with our lives. We decide what's morally good and what's not morally good. Um, and, and, and to accept that there's a higher standard than what I'm willing to upon myself is a very difficult thing because then I have to go back and I relook and I say, well, look at all those things. If I accept that, that the the moral, uh, distinction here isn't the moral bar, isn't as low as I said it. Now look at all the things I'm responsible for. Now the converse to that is the, is the depth of the grace, uh, that Jesus offers us and the forgiveness of that, um, which is the frankly way harder for me to understand the depth of that than it is to acknowledge that there's probably a moral equalizer in what's right and what's wrong. Um, so I think that's a, that's a pretty significant barrier, uh, to folks is, is making that distinction, being willing to say, yeah, I acknowledge, um, that there's an ultimate, you know, judge here, there's an ultimate, uh, consequence to my actions, whether I feel that it's that bad or not. Um, I think that's a significant barrier for us to agree to. Um, you know, and there's one other barrier that I was thinking of, um, of approaching Christ and it has to do from a, like a, uh, a scientific, a

rational standpoint is there's, um, you know, there's Old Testament stuff especially that we look at and we say, oh, I can't, uh, you know, oh, it's pretty much been proven these things aren't accurate, like that kind of thing. And I, and you don't want to be the dummy. You're afraid to be the guy who buys into the fairy tale. Um, I guess what I would, what I would recommend there is one, read the story, like get through the Bible first, like really understand what the story is, what it's saying. Um, and then secondly, don't be afraid to ask questions of God. He's, he's God, you know, you're not going to ask a question that he's going to be embarrassed by, turn his head and not answer. You know what I'm saying? It's, I, I, and this was something that I've actually had to work through over the last two years is I used to very well do that. I would read something in the, in the paper or I would be reading like some sort of magazine article somewhere. I'm like, Ooh, yeah, that does sound like, Ooh, they got us. That's going to be a problem. This is going to blow my whole, whole ship up. I don't know about this. God, we look phony. Help me out. Yeah.

Yeah. And so, you know, the, the thing is, is if I believe, if I believe in a God, which I, which I believe in God, um, I have to know that there's an answer for this. Um, and there's actually a ton of resources from a, from a biblical perspective that talk about some of the things that are in the Bible. Um, there's some language things that, that we get caught up on that we decide that something's like a heresy because of the way the word's written. And then if you, if you look at, you know, what it means in the, in the base language, it makes way more sense. You know, like there's, there's things like that. Um, you know, there's some scientific things that we, that they, um, people will go through. I, you know, a good place to start actually a guy that I think does a pretty good job is the guy at prove the Bible.net. Um, again, that's prove the Bible.net. Did you check that out, Daniel? I haven't. It's, it, I thought, you know, I've seen a lot of different places, um, you know, websites that handle that. I think the guy did a really good job with like the layout, how simple it is to get through a lot of the big questions that were saying, look, you

know, I don't know, you know, like what happens to the people in Africa, you know, what if people were really, you know, good, they were really good people, um, you know, was the earth created in six or seven, in seven days, like that kind of thing. Yeah. Um, you know, don't be afraid to ask like the don't ever be under the impression that there's a question that you can ask that's going to like call God out as being wrong. Yeah. I think, I think it's healthy to, to ask and to inquire and to, to really look into is, is if it's true, there's nothing to fear. Yeah. You know, there are some fates out there, I'll say it generically, that do not welcome questioning. Matter of fact, if you question, it's a sign of a lack of faith. Yeah. Islam, Mormonism. Go sit next to Metallica kid in the hallway until Sunday school is over. Exactly. Make sure your parents tithe. But I'm like, you know, I think God encourages questions. It's like, come on. I mean, what's, you know, he has nothing to hide. He's nothing to be scared of. And people come up with all kinds of what sound to be, um, sound like

sound arguments against the faith. Yeah. But they're, but you know, if they, hey, Bible stands on its own. God stands on his own, you know? Yeah. So ask, ask away. Yeah. And, you know, there's that, that website I gave you again is prove the Bible.net. It's, um, it does also a good job of walking through kind of the veracity of the Bible, which I, another thing that I've kind of learned more and more recently is it's, it's pretty easy for people to, you know, they want to, because we reference the Bible a lot and they say, well, the Bible is a joke. You know, it's a bunch of guys, uh, trying to propagate, uh, control over you. Again, if you're actually reading the contents, it's not, it's not all that controlling of which someone could benefit. You know what I'm saying? Like, it's not like give your money to, you know, uh, this is quite the conspiracy over a couple thousand years. Yeah. Exactly. Exactly. How do you keep that going? Yeah. So, I mean, you convince a guy that,

hey, listen, I got this conspiracy going. Moses says, I've been working on it for a while. Can you stick with me? Are you with me on this, David? Yeah. Are you ready to die for this? Can you find a guy that fits this rough description to kind of fulfill all these prophecies that we talked about in this previous book? So the whole shebang keeps going. And then can you find a group of dudes that are willing to die for this story because they love it so much? Yeah. No, I'd say, we need the kid in a manger. He's got to be in the manger. He's got to get him in there. Hotel. Does it say hotel in the other books? So anyway, you see Elijah bumping the innkeeper. No room here. Away with you. I guess in general, I think there are a lot of seemingly legitimate things to keep us from our faith, and I would like to just encourage you to push past those just a little bit. Don't let a world give you a legitimate reason to walk away from God.

And if you're, again, if you're kind of the Christ curious, you don't know where to start, one of the very best things to do is just open it up to him. You know, Lee Strobel, who wrote The Case for Christ, which I thought was a decent book, and has now written The Case for Everything, and frankly, it's getting out of hand. But he was an atheist and a journalist. The Case for Peanut Butter. He's like, what? The Case for My Briefcase. But anyway, he was an atheist and a journalist, I think, for the Chicago Sun-Times, and basically his wife had been going to church, and he'd been kind of fighting this, you know, I don't believe God, this isn't true, people are being suckered in. And he finally decided that he was willing to be open to something and said, look, I don't even know if you're real, but if you are, let's do this thing. And that was kind of like the start of his journey. And he is a fierce defender of the faith, and I mock his books just because I think he's propagated on the Case for Something marketing ploy. But otherwise, he does a pretty good job in

defense of some of that stuff. So, you know, a good place to start if you don't know where to begin, is what's it yours to lose to just stop what you're doing, you know, think for a second, and just ask God to say, look, if you're there, let's do this thing. I'm open for it. You know, I got a lot fighting against me saying that what you have to offer isn't real, that I'm weak if I follow what you're asking. I need you to help me, to show me that I can have a relationship with you and that you do exist. And you'll get it. If you go looking for God, you'll find him. There's no doubt about it. Okay, so, you know, if you want to know where to start, that's a good place to start. So, let's say this. So, let's say the funeral thing happened, okay? The funeral thing went down, and I'm like, man, I just don't, I'm not comfortable not knowing. Like, I'm not comfortable either way. I'm not really sure what goes on here. I know Grandpa's gone. I don't know where he went. I don't know what I'm

going to do. So, I started thinking about the Lord, and I think, okay, I'm willing to give this a shot. What do I do now? Like, do I just start showing up at church? Or, you know, what's my next step here? Like, I've gotten, okay, you know, I think I'm buying into the fact that there's a God above, and I'm kind of, you know, okay, you're in control, I'm not. Okay, so, what do I do now? You know, do I obviously have to just start glowing puffy hair and put on a suit, and now I'm in? You buy a Jesus t-shirt. You get a Jesus t-shirt. You put a cross. You get one to go for your neck, one to hang around the rearview mirror in the car. A fish on the back, right next to your family outline of the dad, the bomb, the three kids. No, I think really, it goes back to something we've kind of referred to, you know, you really can't do it alone. I mean, you can't just, you just not, it's not going to work. You know, find that one person. Hopefully, you can find a good Bible church. We'll talk about that. But find someone you can connect with that can help you and disciple you. The Jesus way always includes discipleship.

He calls people not to salvation. I think the church has kind of messed it up. You know, it's like, it's all about salvation. No, squeeze someone's hand, blah, blah, blah. I mean, he did come to save and seek and save the lost. But it's about discipleship. The whole process is someone has taught me, and my responsibility as a believer is to find someone else and bring them along the journey and disciple them and teach them. So if God has brought you to that point where you're like, wow, I really need to figure this out, the best possible thing is first to connect to God. Say, God, wow, I'm trying to figure this out. Help me. And maybe that would be part of your prayer, God. It doesn't have to be some special handwritten prayer. Just, God, I don't know who to talk to. Show me who to talk to. Maybe it's someone you've witnessed that you respect, that you're like, wow, that guy seems to have it together. And ask questions and get into a discipleship type situation where you can't ask questions and it's safe to ask questions. And it's okay to wear a Metallica shirt, you know, because you're trying to figure things out. And then they'll teach

you the way of God. But you've also got to personally be involved in reading the Bible yourself because, as we've said before as well, if you're just going by what someone is telling you, that's pretty risky to gamble your eternal life on what somebody else says, whether it's a preacher or someone with a fancy name tag that says, you know, whatever, elder or whatever. I mean, you're going to put your eternal life on the line. You better make sure it's coming from the source. Yeah. So you want both. And working together. Well, you know, here's the thing about the Bible. And, you know, this may come a little farther down with your walk with Christ, but it's his living word. You know, God will speak to you through his words. And God will speak to you through the Bible. And maybe God don't have a whole lot to say to Dan Hudson in 1 Corinthians this week. Right. But maybe he's got a truckload to say to Mike. You know what I'm saying? Yeah. And so, you know, there's a lot that you can get firsthand. And there's a, I got, I just started reading through the book of Revelations again. And I've read it once before and just kind of it's glossed over.

But for some reason this time, like, it really, it really said something to me. You know, like, it really just impacted, you know, the lovey-dovey, you know, died for my sins. Christ, you know, died. And then you read the book of Revelations and you realize who you're really dealing with here. He's an overcomer. He's a conqueror. He's, yeah. Yeah. Yeah. He's not the meek little Jesus they display or portray in the little Jesus movies, you know. No. No. He's not, you know, he's not something you want to trifle with. He's going to come back and open up a can of that stuff they used to wrestle with. Steroids? Oh. The turnbuckle. I can't say the word. The turn, George the animal steal. Oh, he's classic. Anyway, I guess what I'm saying is, you know, I think as you start to mature a little bit in your, I don't like the word journey. So I'm going to use the word. I know, I kind of said that. I thought, oh, I heard you say that. Journey. But it's just Mike Journey.

I'm not a real fan with saying your walk with Christ either. It is, I know that's what it is. Like, I don't know. I just, you hear it so often that you start to go, eh. It's just like the political ads, you know. You hear them so often you're like, I don't even care what you're saying anymore. Actually, when you say walk with Christ, it implies like a leisurely stroll through the garden. I mean, the Bible says to walk in the spirit, you know. I guess it's kind of a term you just kind of go, I mean, you are on this journey. What's a better word? You're on a… You're on the path. You're on the path. You're on the path. You're alive in the path. Is it terrible to attempt to brand it with the show? That's a great idea. The Lord loves this show. I don't know if he does or not. He might not. I'm pretty sure he's been watching the World Series this day. That's what I would be doing. Come on, you guys. Anyway. But it starts, you know, intimacy. Okay, here's the deal. I have this basic

philosophy of life. It really comes from Scripture. Intimacy with God changes people. If you look at the first chapter of Isaiah, and Isaiah is out there doing who knows what he's doing, and he meets God face to face, and he falls on his face before God, and he's like, whoa. Whoa, am I. I'm a man of unclean lips. Just coming in the presence of God, suddenly he comes to grips with, wow, I'm not all that. I thought I was. I'm really not. There's sin in my life. There's stuff that needs to change, and God does the changing. That's where it kind of really ticks me off when you have someone at a church saying, well, you can't come in with that shirt. Let God take care of that. God's big enough. He can handle people in the life change that needs to happen. I don't need to scream at people. I don't need to point at people and tell them everything they need to change. Maybe in a discipleship setting, you might help nudge someone a little bit, but really, that's God's job.

He takes care of that. So that's that first step thing. You're connecting with God, and the more you get to know Him personally, the more He takes care of it. He takes it from there. And maybe that's part of the faith thing is understanding He's big enough to do that. He really is. Yeah, and some of that I think people struggle as they want to approach God and they're willing to, they want to have a relationship with Him, but then they still hold on to a bunch of things. And that's actually just to your detriment, really. You're denying God the ability to help you and to take things from you. Like, there's nothing that I think is a harder existence than getting a relationship with God and then kind of refusing to let Him take over. I mean, you're fighting between two worlds. It's a conflicting existence. You know, like, that's really tough. And, like, I feel bad for the person that's struggling with that because you're really fighting stuff in your life. One of the things that I had talked about, like, a month or so back is I have trouble trying to say the things I've been thankful for because I acknowledge an all-powerful God and I think, oh, yeah, He's just taking care of it. But, like, one of the

things that I realized that I have is a tremendous amount of peace in my life. Like, I just, there's not much that can throw me off because what's the worst that can happen, you know? And, like, those are the things that I've let go. I'm more likely to hold on to things that are very petty than I am to hold on to something that is giant, you know? And so, having that peace and being able to acknowledge that and really enjoy it, part of that is letting a bunch of stuff go and saying, like, not just that I believe God's there, but I'm just going to let Him have it and understand that He's big enough, that He can take care of the things that I'm concerned about ultimately. He may not dry-clean my shirt for me that I forgot to so that I can wear it to a party. Right. Probably not going to happen. You know, but that also helps put things into perspective. You know, like, what am I expecting God to do? What am I focusing my time and effort on when I'm talking to God? I mean, a lot of times people will come into a faith and they'll have, like, this list of 26 things, well, I've got to change everything. Now, some people can just change everything. It's that the whole

repentance thing is the whole idea of your changing directions. You're no longer walking your walk, you're going toward God rather than toward yourself. You're on the path to God. You're on the path to God. You're on this journey, so to speak. You're live. It's live. But, you know, God can handle that stuff. If you try to look at all the 26 things I've got to change, it's overwhelming, it's depressing, it's like, I can't do it. And it's like, you're right. You can't. God can. Right. There's not a list of things you need to change before you meet God. Yeah. There's a list of things that will change after you meet God. You come to God and let God worry about it. And then it's not like, oh, crap, I've got to give that up too. It's like you get to the point where like, wow, I really want to, I want to not do that. It's time for that to go, Lord. Yeah. I'm ready. If you want to, like, you're really, you know, man, this is a bummer. Yeah. And if you're, you know, if you're not, then you're not ready. All right.

So maybe that's a, so that's a good next question is that when it comes to, so you've kind of opened yourself up, say, look, I want to have a relationship with God. Your first step was to just reach out to him and ask that, you know, he make himself known in your life. Second step then, you just touched on it, was maybe repentance, turning from, so maybe we'll ask a broader, more grandiose question. You know, where do I start in changing my life, in changing my life from what I was before I knew God to what I can be with him? Yeah. Yeah. It goes back to the connecting, getting to know God in a closer, personal way, not just as this vague entity out there, or a character in a book, but really getting to know him personally through prayer, through Bible study, through… Right. And through the Bible, you get to know Jesus as the example of how you're to live, and through the rest of the Bible, you get to understand God's character and how he operates. I mean, you just read what he says, and you're like, oh, that's what you want. It's not that hard. Yeah. You know, Jesus told the disciples, or the Pharisees once, I want you to produce fruit in keeping with repentance.

You know, what that means is, you know, fruit is the byproduct of your life. He wants your life to, in your life, just show that you've changed. Yeah. That's all he's saying. And he says, keep doing it. You know? Yeah. It's like a journey you're on. A journey. A path. It's like a path. A wonderful story with Jesus. A narrow path that you're on. And to have a little love with Jesus. So the steps, so what does repentance look like? I think it's the mental decision that you start with, I'm going to start living for God. I think it's really that simple. And, because you're going to fail, you're going to slip up. Maybe you're going to say, okay, I'm going to stop saying the F-bomb. Okay, that's where you're going to start. You know, okay, and then you say it three days next week, and you're like, oh, okay, that was a bummer. But you're consciously saying, I don't want to do that anymore. Well, it would be bad if you used the F-bomb in explanation of how disappointed you were that you had used it.

Well, but you know what? In the beginning, you might. You know, that's the point. God's up there shooting lightning bolts down at you. I told you to, you know. He understands the process. And that's just some big supernatural thing. God just, some people just stop stuff, you know, and don't discount the Holy Spirit of God who comes into you. But you just take one thing at a time and let God work on it, and you get that done. You go to the next one. Well, it's kind of funny, like, and it's something to maybe realize ahead of time that that first, you know, that first repentance where you say, okay, Lord, I'm ready. What do you want to do? That's going to be you for the rest of your life if you want it to be. Every day, you know, you can wake up and say, okay, I'm open. I'm available. What do we got going today? And if the Lord don't say, here's what we got going, then you go about your regular business, you know, and then the next day you wake up and you say, okay, I'm available today. You got anything for me today? And that can be your

every day. And actually, it's a pretty cool every day. It's pretty cool to wake up and say, because the only thing that disqualifies you from the Lord using you is you saying you're not available. Apart from that, the Lord can do whatever He wants with you. And whatever you allow Him to do, He'll use you for something if that's what you're really seeking. If you really want God to move in your life, you got to let Him do it. And the first step is saying, okay, I'm available. I'm ready for you to work through me if you want, if you got stuff going. And if not, go, you know, work as a shoe salesman if that's what you dig on. Whatever, you know, maybe the Lord doesn't have you going to India today. You know, but if He wants you to go to India and you say, Lord, I want to go to India, He's most certainly going to provide a way for you to get there. Yeah. So, I mean, it's just, it's actually kind of exciting. And, you know, it might sound kind of lame the way I'm putting it, but, like, I don't know, I get kind of excited about it. Like, you know, as long as I wake up every day, you know, the Lord doesn't care what job I have in particularly. Maybe He does, maybe He don't.

If He does that day, I'll change jobs. You know, if He doesn't, then whatever, I'll go to the job I got, you know. I mean, it just seems to me, you know, that as long as you say, Lord, I'm available, if He wants to use you, He might not use you until you're 85. He might, I mean, He's got something in line for you to do. He took Moses 80 years to develop. Yeah. He's got, I mean, He's got things planned for you if you're willing to say, okay, I'm ready. And if, you know, if today's not the day, don't get impatient about it. You know, just say, Lord, I got this stuff going on. Help me get through it and help me glorify you while I'm doing it. And if you've got anything specific, shove me around, you know. And it may not be until you're 75, your kids are gone, and some little boy comes knocking at the door and, you know, some bad stuff happened at his house, he wants to talk to you about it, whatever. You know, like, there's time, there'll be a time for you, but you can patiently bask in the Lord's love until it shows up, you know. Also, a great life while you're at it. Yeah. Yeah. A couple questions on the chat.

What must one do to be saved? And at what point is someone saved? Dan, you want to feel a little? Those are generally Christian questions. Yeah. I think it's that path thing that you're on. You start out with a, you're connecting with God, you're reaching out to Him. That right there shows there's a faith, okay? So you always start with faith. Faith is always baseline. Obviously, someone who doesn't believe in God, who doesn't believe in Jesus Christ as the Son of the Living God, who died physically and rose physically from the grave. You know, if you don't have that faith, well then you're not a follower of Christ, you're not a believer, you're not a saved person. Yeah. Okay? So faith is always the baseline. And the belief in God doesn't cut it. Like God by Himself. Demons believe and shudder. Right. Yeah, right. Like James says. So yeah, there's more to it. I think it's a farce to tell people you just squeeze someone's hand and now you're saved. Yeah.

Because we've left out masses of scripture. Save these words and you're saved. And you're saved. Because you don't see that. It's not written in the Bible, oh, say this little prayer and it's there. That might be a part of the process. That might be that beginning step of saying, okay, God, please forgive me. Wow, I messed up. But really, I mean, there's so much more in the scripture that it talks about. Repentance is a huge part of that. You can be a believer who said a prayer and never changed your life. What'd you do? You didn't really believe then, did you? You know, your actions. That fruit, how is that worded fruit and keeping with repentance, if it's not there, then it's not real faith and it's not real repentance. So that's huge in scripture, a change. And it's huge. You can get all kinds of scripture and debates with all this other stuff. Baptism's a huge part. In Matthew 28, it's impossible to be a disciple or follower without being a baptized believer. Jesus said, I want you to go and baptize believers, disciples. That's a beginning point.

You know, and to fight that would be someone who says, well, I don't want to do what Jesus says. Well, then are you a follower? You know, no. Right. The whole living a godly lifestyle, that keeping in the fruit of repentance thing, keep keeping that going. You know, so it's a tricky question to say, at what point? You know, that's a, that nobody asked that in the New Testament. Well, what about what point? Give me what point. That's like saying, what point is someone married? You know, was it, was it the vows or was it the rings, was it when they signed the license, was it the consummation of the marriage later? Personally, I look at it and say, well, actually, the consummation is the time, and they were probably married before they got to the altar in the first place in a lot of cases. That's another debate. Right. But, you know, it's, in society, we always ask these questions, and it's like, well, is it relevant? Well, you know, I wonder if, I wonder if we're looking at the wrong thing here. Like, I think, I think maybe we've, and maybe the church is, or Christ followers are somewhat

responsible for this, but like, we sell, we sell the, the, the light. Like, we sell the prize. The prize is, is, is salvation. Like, we, the anti-hell. Like, that's what we sell. We sell the anti-hell. Okay, here's how you not, you can keep from going to hell. As opposed to saying, like, Jesus didn't come to give us an example so that we would not go to hell, he gives us the impulse so that we will do what he's asked us to do. And the, the result of which is that we are saved. Like, I think sometimes we're, we're asking to, to be saved as if that's the end point, as opposed to the relationship with Christ, the following God, worshiping God is the process, which leads to the end point. It's like a journey. It's a, it's a, it's a, it's a live journey. You're doing it on a purpose. From the path. On a spiritual path to God. You're standing between me and a solid relationship because I'm angry at you. And this is why it's, it's kind of a difficult to answer a question like this. Okay. Let's say you're, you're Joe Blow and you're just king to Christ and you haven't yet.

You're like, okay, what do I do first? I'll say, man, let's, let's, let's, let's connect with Jesus. Okay. Let's try it. Hi, Dan. I'm Joe Blow. Hey Joe, how you doing? I've just, I've just come to understand the Lord, but I don't feel like I'm connected yet. Wow. Well, you know what? How about if we pray together and, you know, we'll go through some basics of who Jesus is and that type of thing. However, if you haven't died at that point, I'd say, wow, you know, there's probably some stuff in your life that you, you probably need to change, you know, like this whole repentance thing. And we talk about that and there'd be a process of repentance that you would go through. If you died the moment after you said, wow, I really want to change some stuff. I believe you'd be in heaven. Even if you actually suddenly slipped up a couple of times, you know, cause you're going to, cause you're human. Now we're still going down that road and I'm saying, okay, wow, you believe in Jesus and you repented. That's awesome. Have you been baptized? And you're like, no, wow. Well, look, Jesus says to get baptized. He says really to be a follower of him, you have

to be baptized. And, uh, if that point you say, wow, are you kidding? I'm not going to do that cause I go to this other church and they told me I don't have to, there'd be red flags going, really? You're going to do what that church says instead of what Jesus says. I mean, really, you're going to, you're going to give them higher credence than what Jesus said to do. I'm not, I'm not, who am I to judge? I'm not, but if you're going to violate scripture then, then I'd be kind of scared. So I'd really encourage you. Wow, we better get, let's go right now and get that done. Every time in scripture someone believes they just got baptized. So we get baptized. At that point, you're going to heaven. So, you know, at what point? Ah, we're splitting hairs that the Bible doesn't really get into a whole lot. I mean, it gives examples of all those things. Right. Like, like, like you kind of say, there's, there's always a next step for you in your path to Christ. And along that, along that path, like it's, I think that's the main point, right? It doesn't matter where you're at on that path as long as you're on it, you know?

And as long as you're honest about it, like you're not going to fake being on the path. You know what I'm saying? Like, people say, you know, people say, I believe in God and I believe in Jesus and I believe that he died for me and I'm ready to go, you know? And so there's the whole rest of the part of the, especially the New Testament that Jesus sets out an example on how things are going to be, you know? And you say, I do believe, but if I turn that around in the same worldly example and say, I point at nothing and I say, there's a chair. And they say, I believe there's a chair there. And then I say, sit in it, you know? And they won't sit in a chair. Then I don't think you believe the chair's there. You know what I'm saying? Like, like, I think you can almost boil your belief in Christ and your belief in your daily walk with Christ down to if you believe the chair is there or not. Because if you honestly believe that someone loved you enough to die for your sins, I mean, die horribly for your sins and had no business coming down to save your puny, sorry, sinful, sinful self. You know, if you honestly believe that and he's laid out some ways for you to

live and you're not even giving it a shot, I don't know that you honestly believe that. Because if you would, you'd sit in a chair. Right. And I think, I mean, sometimes now, I mean, there's some, there's some degradation there, you know? Maybe the chair looks a little wobbly to you and maybe you're not comfortable putting all your weight on it yet. I think that's different. I don't think that's the same, you know? But if you won't even come close to the chair, then I'm having a hard time believing you think the chair's there. Yeah. I'm going to get a t-shirt that says sit in the chair. That's good. And I like it. Hey. And I'll save everybody good stuff. You would sit in the chair. Today is the day. Doesn't, uh, Catholicism teach that justification? Well, maybe they do. I don't know. I don't either. I can't see the chat. Help me. What happened? The question is, um, doesn't Catholicism teach that justification is a process? I, I, I don't know. Can't answer that. I'm not sure what the matter. I think it seems kind of heavy and unnecessary. Yeah.

I don't know. Well, I mean, it, it could very well be a legitimate question. Yeah. For Catholicism. I just, I just don't know the answer to that. I don't know. My point was, was, you know, I mean, God knows when you're saved, but why do we debate over something, you know, like that? I guess that's my whole point. It's, as a Christian debate where we all get in a Christian, in a circle of Christians and debate, oh yeah, I think it's at this point. Well, I think it's at that point. We throw stones at each other. And in the meantime, there's a guy rocking out the hallway out there that doesn't know Jesus. He's not done any of it. Right. But we're, we're going to make sure we win the argument. Yeah, but man, that's why I usually don't engage in that. You're like, isn't your time better spent, I mean, sweating your stones off trying to run the race that you're supposed to run? I believe there's passages in Acts that say specifically, don't split hairs about this thing. You're wasting time. Timothy. Although, I tell you what I can do.

I can, I know the book of Acts. I believe you. I can answer the direction, though, in that I have a faith in a just God. Yeah. I, I do, I don't think God has a, has a, a chart there where he's like catching you on eccentricities and trying to screw your eternal existence. He loves you. Exactly. He wants you in heaven. So, I mean, frankly, if anybody's getting the benefit of the doubt from an all-loving God, it's you. And at the same time, there is, there is truth. Yeah. You know, so, so we got to be careful with that. Right, you're not going to take advantage. He's not a sucker. Yeah. You know. But guess who's accountable? It goes back to the pastor. Yeah. You know, the other ones getting, getting in trouble if they're leading people down the wrong path. Yeah. You know, so yeah. Yeah. That's why you got to get into the word yourself and don't trust what I say. Yeah. Or Joe Blow says. You better be telling me the truth, Daniel.

Well, as far as I know, I am. Oh, it's biblical. You better. Actually, I'll check anything he's got up on that screen. I better not be sitting on a wobbly chair. I'd check to see where there's biblical backing. Yes. You'll be listening to Life on the Path on TheMoinAmplified.com. We are talking tonight on Where Do You Start? I don't know God. Where do I start? I found God. I'm interested in God. I opened myself up to it. Now what do I do? So we've kind of got up to that point. Talked a little bit about repentance, turning away from your own life. There's book, I mean, mountains and mountains and mountains of manuscript about how to change your life. It's phooey. Turn it over to God. Oh, not that part. That part's not phooey. That's good phooey. I thought we were talking self-help. A lot of methods on how to carry yourself. The biggest bang for your buck is probably turning over to God, buy the single book, heck, take it for free out of the hotel. That should almost be perfect for people that don't want to. You know, like, I don't

know how to carry myself. Good. Let God do it. Obviously, if you knew how to do it, you've done it already. You can't make up your mind. Yeah. Okay. Lord, carry me around, will you? Actually, one of the obvious mistakes I made, there was something that I was kind of carrying around with me, and I woke up one morning. I'm like, you know what? I'm just, I'm done with this. I'm done doing this. We're moving on. Okay? This is not my life anymore. We're moving on with it. And that's why I kind of prayed, and I said, look, I'm just not going to do this anymore. God, let's rule. And, of course, it was still there because I said, I'm not going to do this anymore. Like, as if I had control of the situation. This was something that's kind of beaten me up forever. So the next day, I changed my, and, of course, it didn't have to be the next day, but this is when this occurs to me, is I say, can you handle this for me? I'm not handling it. Like, I'm obviously not

doing it correctly. I don't have the strength to do it. I gave it to him, and then it's been pretty much gone. I make mistakes still, but like, that outlook to say, I took the lazy man's way out. I said, you do it. I can't. And, boy, that was way more effective than me saying, you know what? I'm going to do it. I've had enough of this. I'm going to teach you a lesson, and I'm going to go out strong and fierce. And I read a book that says I rock. I read a book that says everything I ever need is within me. It's special. I can feel me within my right leg, and it says things are going to get done. So, okay, so one of the things we alluded to was finding truth, knowing truth by getting into the Bible. So the question is, if I'm unfamiliar with the Bible, it's a huge book, I don't know where to start. Where do I begin in my relationship with Christ if I'm looking at the Bible and trying to open pages? I can't believe you're my spiritual guide. You kicked me under the table. That was an accident. You kicked me. I was playing pussy.

That's not in the Bible. Oh. If it's not in the Bible, can we do it? Unless the Bible spiritually says no or is otherwise implied. That's the age-old question. Yeah. Does that give us freedom, or does it say we mean we can't? I like opening it anywhere as an answer, and I think there's a benefit to anything that's in the Bible. But I also think there's probably good places to start for someone that's unfamiliar. Yeah, I think it depends on where you are, what you're going through, as far as whether it's relevant or not. I mean, I've done that before, too. I say, okay, God, what you got for me today? And I open it up, and it's like, okay, that really, that was awesome. I mean, it's God's Word, so I'm not going to say that didn't apply, but you know. Oh, I've had it totally fail. Yeah. And I've had it work great. Yeah, exactly. Like, it's 50-50. Like, sometimes I think, Lord, what do you want me to read today? Wham! And I open it up, and it's like, ugh. It's the baguettes. It's kind of like going to the paint store and just

grabbing a random can of paint and saying, I guess this is what our house is going to be. It'd be good to have a plan, you know, to have an understanding behind it. So I always encourage people who, if this is their starting, you know, they have, they aren't familiar with the Bible to go to the New Testament. The Bible's broken in the two main areas, Old Testament before Jesus, New Testament after Jesus, and then it totally depends on what they're looking for. They want to get to know Jesus because they're trying to figure this out. The first four books of the New Testament are the Gospels, Matthew, Mark, Luke, or John. I'd grab one of those and start reading just, well, who is this Jesus guy? That's what he's going to tell you who Jesus is. If you're kind of curious about the whole church and how should church go on, it would be… Acts. Acts. Mike's favorite, new, new favorite book here. I know, Acts. If you want to know, okay, what has God really expected of me in my lifestyle, I'd go after Acts and just start reading all those letters to the churches that were written to Christian people who were believers. And, what, what, Mike?

What? Mike's disappointed. We're going to talk about that later. What? Most of them were written by John. No, Paul. Paul. No, John. You don't like the first, second, and third John was written by John. I don't like the Paul did like Ephesians, Philippians, Colossians, Romans, all this stuff. That's a lot of practical stuff. You know, James has some just practical stuff. James is solid. I love James. As opposed to the other one that's just not solid at all. I mean, it just really depends on what you're looking for. And, um, so I, but I think the point is, is like, I'm, there are, the Bible is, is complete in its words, uh, and it's helpful in, I guess, general, what? Mike has those feet on my side of the table. I fixed it. The problem is fixed. Okay? Stop doing that. Can you, too, get a hold of yourself? Sandals are out of style. I'm just going to tell you that right now. What are you doing after the show? Are you wearing sandals? No, I got a pin-in-ed tennis shoes.

Get out of there. Sorry. What are you looking at? Don't you know what you have on? I was going to put my head on. I don't have to. Like, like, there are portions of the Bible that are designed for certain purposes. Like, for example, uh, you know, when you're doing the begats, the so-and-so begat, so-and-so begat, so-and-so had had sons and lived this long. Like, it's a, like, that part is intended to, uh, set up a lineage, uh, to lend historical credence so that you can, you can follow it. Uh-huh. Uh, you know, like, that part serves a purpose. If I'm new, uh, and I say, look, I want to follow Christ, and I open it there and, you know, that is not probably as beneficial for me as if I had started, uh, with Matthew, for example. Well, actually, but Matthew's a bad example because the first two chapters of that are lineage. Well, true. Well, the first few, yeah. When you come back to the book of Acts is a perfect example. Like, so, my Bible reading was sketchy for the most of the last ten years, but when I did read it, I was read the Gospels. Okay. Over and over. Gospels, Gospels, Gospels. Well, at some point, you

got to go beyond it. Yeah, well, that's the thing. It's like, the book of Acts was like a huge eye-opener for me. The second step. Because I'd never gotten past it. Like, I'd always gotten to the Gospels and, like, Jesus always says the same thing. Jesus, Jesus, Jesus, Jesus. Why does he always talk in red? Yeah. He's always, he's mad. Is he mad? You know, he's like, it's like a baby, you know, and Paul refers to it this way because he's a great writer, right? It is, you know, babies drink milk because that's what they can handle. If you try to shove prime rib in their mouth, it's not going to go well. Right. Deuteronomy is prime rib. You get a little prime rib, you know, I love it because I have a little deeper context and I can kind of fit things together. And at some point, you add a little rice, you know, so you maybe get a little axe in there or something or, you know, you start at one place and then you go forward in it. But it's good to know where to start and that's where I think the Gospels is a great place to start. Yeah. Because you're getting to know Jesus who is your Savior. And then he says, don't do

that, then you don't do that. And if he says do that, you do it. Okay, I'm in. And then you go to Acts and go, oh, wow, it didn't take a moment to mess things up. Like, look what that guy did. Oh, sure, Lord, I sold the property, absolutely. Whoops. How much did you sell it for? All of it. You got all of it. Then you get into, you know, Corinthians, you're like, man, they were messed up. Yeah. That looks like me. Cool. I can relate. I can have sex with my mom. This is awesome. That's what he says. I know. That's what he says. He's like, stop it. Disaster. They were messed up. That's what I said. They were definitely messed up. And we're messed up. Okay, so Bible written, Bible written. Okay, okay. So let's say you start, and there's probably a benefit, and we'll talk about this. We'll do a, maybe we could do a springboard from this at some other point, and we'll talk about, you know, ways to make sure you're continuing to move forward as opposed to kind of jumping in, feeling like you're hitting the mark, and then

staying that way. Hitting the mark. That's a double entendre. So you start getting into the Bible, getting into God's word. Let's talk a little bit about prayer. You know, one of the things that we said that you should do if you're trying to get to, get in a relationship with God, is to, one, open up to him. Ask for his help in this whole operation. And so then the question, or the, I think the conversation then leads to prayer. What is, what is prayer? How am I supposed to do it? What should I be talking about? That kind of thing. Yeah. I think it's a double-edged sword. On one hand, you're talking to the living God of the universe who created everything with spoken word, let there be light, and there was, you know, and you're like talking to him. So there's like a certain amount of awe. But the second side of that is that really we need to relax a little bit. You know, we can get all worked up and all crazy about, you know, because you heard some eloquent prayers somebody said before, you know, you're like, I can't do that. Remember who you're talking to. You're talking to God. If you happen to be praying out loud, you're not talking to the people who you're with. You're talking to God. You know, you relax. Romans talks about God as our father. He kind of uses the word daddy, you know, that he's like, you talk to him like you were your

father, like your dad. You know, and maybe in the beginning, the first steps is going to be pretty relaxed. Like, hey, how you doing? It's Dan here. Glad, you know, glad to see you. Huh, who's Dan? Yeah, who's Dan? I'm here. And as you grow and as you understand prayer more, you might be reading, say, through the Gospels, maybe through Matthew, and then Jesus says, oh, here's how you should pray. And he gives what a lot of people call the Lord's Prayer, and it always drives me crazy because a lot of churches just repeat the Lord's Prayer, but he doesn't say, repeat this, and this is prayer. He says, this is how you should pray. Yeah. He gives us kind of a pattern, and so you've got to put that into your own words, into your own life, your own application. You know, it starts with a little bit of worship, and it has a little bit of praying for your daily needs. I don't pray for bread because I need more than bread, you know? Right. I give us this bread or daily bread, however that says. I can't. Provide me my daily mounds, Bob. Jimmy John's. Jimmy John's. Jimmy John's. But, you know, you pray for your daily needs, and you pray for some forgiveness, and you pray for God's will to be done, and I'm kind of mixing up the order here, but I don't think the order matters.

As I say, you've got to relax a little bit, and he gives you a great pattern. You include those things. You can pray for five hours or three minutes. Yeah. Using that, depending on how much you want to just worship him. Wow, God, look what you've done in my life. This is amazing. You're awesome. Here are my needs. You know, wow. Praying for protection. Yeah. You know, remember this is a spiritual thing going on. You accept, through faith, the grace of Jesus Christ, and there's someone who's lost out, you know, the Satan, an enemy, who's going to come after you, and he's going to make you doubt, and he's going to make you want to turn back, and he's going to, you know, it is a spiritual war going on. So you make that part of your prayer, too, a protection from the evil one, and that can keep you going a long time. Yeah. Yeah, you don't want to ignore that part. Yeah. I think that part's pretty important, actually, because I think the more you grow in your faith, like when your faith is fairly new, first of all, the devil's somebody to, you know, people are weary of him, you know, and the more comfortable you get in your faith, the more you kind of cast the devil off like he's just a nobody, you know, and you're right. I mean, the Lord wins. You know the Lord wins.

You know the Lord in Revelation. But, yeah. The Lord certainly wins. But, you know, the devil's still wholesome sway. The earth is the devil's playground, you know. The Lord runs everything else right now, but right now, the devil plays on earth, and you're there, buddy. You know, so, I mean, like, I had a, I cast him off as being nothing. Nobody, you know, not a consequence to me. And he can't, he can't win because Jesus runs my life, but he can certainly cause me trouble. And he can certainly try to break that relationship up so the more openings he has, the more openings he can, he can choose to wedge. Because that's not, it isn't his goal, not to get me to worship him. It's just going to get me to not worship God. Yeah. You know, like he could care less, you know, whether I think he's the greatest, he just wants me to make sure that I don't think Jesus is, you know. And so, and that's worse. So, I would heed that warning slightly. Like, it's all fun and games, ha ha, the devil's junk, whatever, blah, blah, blah. You know, but realize he is an actual being, you can't just ignore him. You know, he is in the Bible, the Lord has given him a fairly good description of who he is, what he's about, and what he's trying to do here. And so. Well, if there is a real God,

why wouldn't there be a real Satan? You know, there's a lot of churches who don't believe in Satan, and it's like, really? I mean, how do you not believe that? I mean, don't believe in Satan. Don't believe in hell. And I honestly don't get it. It's just in black and white. It's in the book. I don't find that biblically consistent. I mean, even if you choose to actually outright ignore what's written about Satan in the Bible, just completely ignore it, it's still not biblically consistent. Yeah. I don't know. I honestly don't know where they get it. And it's not really worth fighting about. Yeah. Whatever. We're going to do a thumb war on it. Satan, no Satan. I declare a thumb war. Find me a no Satan. I'll be a pro-Satan guy. Which is maybe I'm just. I don't want to be pro-Satan. What? Disaster. And maybe I'm kind of just wimpy or something. I don't know. But I tend to not argue with believers over minute differences of doctrinal things because I much more would rather talk to someone who doesn't believe and bring them to Jesus than. Because, boy, I've been in churches where that's all they do is, well, you know, that ex-church down the road, that's what they

think. I was like, well, really? Why do you care with their, I mean, what about your neighbor who doesn't know Jesus? What do they think about whatever topic, you know? Yeah, right. Yeah. And I just try to divert as much as I can back to that there's so many people out there who are going to not go to heaven that I just don't have the energy to try to, you know. Split biblical hairs? Exactly. Exactly. And get into crazy arguments. Let's err on the side of caution and make a run for it. I mean, is that the basic plot? Well, I don't think so. Here's the thing. I think when it comes down to especially that topic, are you doing what God set out for you? You know, like, I mean, have you prayed on it and said, Lord, give me direction. I'm available for you today. What do you want me to do? And the Lord says, I want you to argue biblical theology with your buddy. Don't go out and witness to people that don't know me. I want you to sit around in a room and argue biblical theology. Please. That's what I'd like. Well, but I mean, but if

we were to say that the Bible is the source of truth, is there not merit in verifying the explicitness of what that truth is? Well, it depends. For sure. I mean, it's a good thing to have a discussion. Yeah. Well, yeah, I'm not saying there's anything wrong with that. What I'm saying is when it's overtaking your effectiveness for God, you know what I'm saying? Like when your new God is the nuts and bolts of God instead of being God, God, you know what I'm saying? I think you run into a thin line. That's all I'm saying. Like I like to have, you know, biblical discussions, but I like, I don't, I can't take it so far because frankly, I start to get buried. I don't, I'm not slick. I don't make good sense. But like I do like to know answers to, you know, certain questions like, you know, broad sweeping topics, things that I'm not understanding, especially when it comes to character of God stuff. But like when it comes to a certain point when, you know, you're just, you're just, you know, kicking around, you know, kicking around questions all the time. All you have is, is, you

know, theocracy questions that really aren't gaining Jesus for you or anybody else. You know, what are you gaining? Right. What do you, I mean, you're just not, you're not gaining anything. Like there's, there is some merit in it, but I think it's something you have to watch out for. And we're told to correct false teachers. I mean, there's something that's just false going on. That's one thing. But if, but I've liked debating on, okay, at what point, you know, it's like, well, we teach in all those things or we're teaching all, so who cares? As long as you're doing all those things, who cares? You know, in, in like a salvation issue that we were talking about earlier. Yeah. There's other things like that. That's just the one that is fresh in my mind. Right. Well, I think that's a solid question. I think that, I think that's, that's a solid question from, especially from a, a new believer standpoint. You know what I'm saying? Because they don't understand the path concept.

You know what I'm saying? They don't get the, they don't get the, you know, here's the process. I mean, when someone's first washed in the face, they don't know how any of this works. Well, actually, and I think, and again, I think this is how the church has kind of approached the message. If I, if I'm new to the faith, my first question is, well, how do I get my feet out of hell? And then how do I work on like, I want to be heading in the right direction. That's fine and all, but just get me out of where I'm at first. I don't want to, I don't want to be two feet in the fire. Well, when we talk about process, that conversation would happen within that first night. I mean, there's been a lot of times that, that someone comes from, well, I'm ready to get baptized within, you know, an hour and a half. Yeah. You know, so it's not like, well, wait about five years and I'll tell you your next thing, you know. But my point is, if you happen to be a step, okay, I, I, I became a devout follower of Christ in fourth grade and I went home and I prayed a little prayer and I

accepted Christ and it was serious and it was real and I believe at that moment, God saved me and I'm going to heaven. It was years later I was baptized, okay, you know, because I was reading the Bible, I'm like, whoa, this is like, wow, I've never done that. Jesus so clearly says to do it. In Acts and in 2, it talks about there being a forgiveness and a gift of the Holy Spirit through this process. Like, wow, it's like, you know, now I got a then, see, and this is where it all goes back to, then people were debating, well, do you have the Holy Spirit, you're not, blah, blah, blah, and I thought, okay, I'm a Christ follower, you know, okay, do I or not, I don't know. Then you start getting semantics and trying to prove who's right and who's wrong. All I know is when I found out I should do that, I did it, you know. I'm not going to call someone who hasn't done it yet, well, you unbelieving scum. It's like, I was there, you know. And I know I wasn't an unbelieving scum. I was very much a follower. But also it's something

that God says to do, and it puts a hugely serious thing on. I mean, it's very important to the point where if you refuse to do it, I would question if you even went to heaven. Right. You know, and I'm doing your funeral, I'd be like, wow. If out of rebellion, it's like, I won't do it. It's like, wow. Well, and actually, where the Bible is explicit on the rejection of Christ, it's always in the circumstance where you know enough and then are saying, like, completely rejecting what he's provided as opposed to things you didn't know or things that you were in the process of learning or the process of following, like, and taking those steps. You know, it came up multiple times that we just had read through, like, the James and then John, especially John, loves it, where he talks about, you know, knowing something and then rejecting it over and over again. And that being, you know, one of the, you know, that's a serious, that's a serious, serious deal is to know better and still say no, as opposed to, you know, you're in the process, you're, you know, you're working through something, yeah. Okay, so you got, so you got yourself a relationship, you got yourself some

accountability, you've been reading the Bible a bit, doing some praying, now it's time to find yourself a home church. What are we looking for? Big building? Obviously lots of good people go here. Cool, charismatic dude at the front. Big hair. Flashy PowerPoint. Big teeth. Yeah. Here's what I, you know, that's a mistake a lot of people will make when they're first getting in, they find out whatever, what's the popular church. Now the popular church might be a good, solid Bible church, but it might not be. I mean, it depends on where you're at and what community you live in, you know. Are they giving out Kit Kats every day? Because I'd go to that one every other day by Sunday. You're buying those Kit Kats, you know. I never think that buys them Kit Kats. It's like tax money. I just think it comes out of nowhere. So I would say, you know, I've had people who have been very solid, portrayed themselves as very solid believers who have been in a church I've been at and then ended up leaving because another church had like cooler music. Okay. I'm like, that's not why you go to a church. For one thing, if you take a step back, everything goes in

cycles. Whatever church has the hot youth program right now won't in 10 years. Whichever one has the hot children's thing right now, you know, a few years later. Don't sound like words from a church that has a poor children's program and terrible music. No, I'm just saying it's always, and the crowds all move, whatever the hot, you know, I've been in Des Moines for 40 some years and the cool church in town has gravitated from one to another. I mean, I could draw lines for you and people who've been around could too. You've been around as what the cool church was at the time. Well, that's not really what you're looking for. It's the cool church. You've got to find one that specifically is going to connect with you. I look at it kind of like a marriage. If it's, you don't just, you know, walk down the street, well, there's a gal, go ahead and marry her. You know, she looks cool right now, seems to be pretty popular. You know, if that's it, you know, you hopefully want to know, do you connect well, do you communicate well. I mean, there's hopefully more to it than that. And a church is very similar. You are investing your family into this body of believers. And if you're just there for the show, that's what most people are, then you can go to

the cool church and everything's fine, but then you're not in the discipleship, you know, not really growing, potentially. It's harder to. So you've got to find a place where you're going to connect, where you feel you have something to offer, and they have something to offer you as well. It's kind of a mutual thing, just like you go into a marriage. It's the same thing. I have something to offer this person. They have something to offer me. Together, we're kind of making a pretty good team. I think it's very similar for that as a church. So whether or not they have, you know, the most awesome music in the world isn't, you know, probably not a good reason to find a church or that children's ministry or that the preacher's, that's this really cool dude. What does the average preacher say? Three years or something? I don't know what it is. Is that true? Yeah, yeah. I always go into a place assuming I'm going to stay there forever, you know, so that's why I've just not moved. I've had two churches in 26 years. So I'm different than the average. It's like it's about time for you to giddy up on out of here, Dan. Time for you to all move. And that's the beauty of our concept of doing

multiple sites is I can pretend like I went to a new church, but it's still the same one. I'm going to the East campus this week. They'll say special guest preacher Dan Hudson this Sunday. Oh, you've got to be kidding me. No! No, but I mean, it's got to be a marriage. That's how I look at it. It is a marriage. So a place you can go in and this is like home. This is like, okay, I feel good here. I feel safe here. Not good, but safe. You know, this is a place I don't want to keep using the same word, but you can really connect with people where it's okay to be you. You don't feel like you have to be someone else. You know, like, well, I've got to put on my Jesus face today because these people are different, that much different than me. Right. It's almost the exact same checklist that, you know, you go through before you come to Christ. You know, here's the things I need to fix before I know Christ. Obviously, none of them. Let the Lord fix them. You don't just come to know Christ. Your church should be the exact same way. These aren't the things you need to fix before you go to church. You know what I'm saying?

Your church should welcome you just as you are and realize that the path that you're on. And number one, though, I should say, above all of that, is it's got to be biblically sound, which is hard to know if you don't know the Bible that well yet. Right. True. But that's why you need to check what they're teaching. And if you go home and consistently you're like, wait a minute, that's not really what the Bible says. Then it's like, you know. I like the comic style. Hey, wait a minute. That's not right. I mean, I encourage people to challenge me and check me because I'm human, too. And even on the chat, they can disagree with me. That's okay. Because I'm not all perfect. I don't know all things. I kind of come up from my perspective, my understanding of it. But if it's the base is wrong, you've got to fly. I seem to remember something within the last couple of months. I said, Dan, I don't think you've used it correctly. You were wrong. I don't remember what you were talking about. I'm pretty sure I had him. I'm pretty sure he had a pair of pants on as a shirt, if I recall. That was the deal. You haven't used it correctly.

What are you doing? I kind of remember you saying something. What was that, though? It was something where I'm pretty sure he used something out of context. It wasn't out of context. He used the whole verse, but I felt it wasn't as harsh as he had implied it when it was being preached. I don't remember what it was, though. Okay, here's something. I'll be careful not to use names. Use my name in place of whoever you're talking about. I'll be the third party, if need be. So Ben has a very large, successful ministry. Huge. Best-selling book. A lot of churches across the globe said, I'm going to take that book, and I'm going to do what they did with that book. Thank you. God bless you. And we kind of thought, hey, everybody's doing it and we can't hurt. We'll try it, too. So we did 25 days of Ben. Smooth. And in that package, Ben sent sermons along, and it was really cool. So not only is it going to be cool, and it'll help the people. I get free sermons, and I don't have to work very hard. What I found was, as I went into these sermons, I couldn't use them because Ben, what he was doing was

he was finding different translations that had the word he was looking for to fit into what he was trying to say. But you'd go back to that actual meaning of the verse, and it was totally, it was completely out of context. It was completely wrong. It was like, that verse does not work here unless you twist it, you know? Right. Now, the concept was true, and it was solid teaching, except that it was not using the correct picture. Right. And it was like, so I couldn't use it because I couldn't in conscious go, well, you know, so we're just playing with the words. I see what you're getting at. Yeah. Yeah. I still like Ben, and I like Ben's church. I'm sure they do some good things, but I can't use Ben's stuff because it's not really, he's a twister. It's a twisted. Actually, you know, I had that experience this week. I signed up, so I signed up for this website called booksneeze.com. Booksneeze. Yeah, yeah. He does these kind of things. So they send you a book for free, and you review, as long as you provide a review on like a professional website, you

go to like Amazon or whatever, find the book and provide like a review of X number of words, and then also post it to your blog that you have, which I'll use our show blog. Then you get the books for free, and then you get to read them and then do the review, and then they'll send you another book. So they get people to read the books and provide reviews. It's basically a scam. It sounds that way, yeah. It didn't cost me any money. It's free. And they assume you're going to give a positive review because they gave you a free book. No, no. So, so, so, but, but. Hope from the Heartland? It was, um, it, well. Hope this book never arrives. Dan, are you on that program? I'll give you a book. How do I get involved in booksneeze.com? Take it. Got the top ten. So, like, they sent me this book, and it looked all right. It wasn't much for me. It was like a 40-day devotional. It happened to be a Christian book. It doesn't have to be, but this one happened to be. And it was like a 40-day devotional based upon sports. sports, like, in the

zone, sports devotional for men, as if I can't handle devotionals unless you frame it as if it's a touchdown. Yes! And actually, to their credit, this book is set up pretty well. Like, they do a good job. They'll introduce something to focus on. They'll provide relevant verses in the Bible. They'll give you a real life experience, like someone who's got a story about it, and then things that you can do. I found the things that they can do are a bit shallow. Like, I would like a little more hard-hitting action. Yeah. I have a hard time at devotion books. Yeah, and I hadn't done one before. In fact, I can't stop at a day. Like, I just, I want to read through. It's like, oh, why can't I? I should learn everything today. I should know everything all the time. Like, oh, tomorrow I'll learn how to treat my wife better. Well, maybe I should read that today. Why wait? I can only handle one thing at a time. Yeah, today I'm supposed to not steal. Okay, fine. Got that one.

Don't kill anybody. I can't handle not beating kids and being good to my wife at the same day. But anyway, like, they've been using some verses in there and their biblical support that, like, are true verses, but they don't really support what it is the topic of the thing is about. Like, you know, like, it'll say it's about how to, you know, how to treat your wife and ways to make your wife feel appreciated. And then the stories of, you know, the verse may be about leading the sheep. And, like, you could kind of wiggle that in. I'm like, I'm the head of my household. I should lead my sheep and my wife is a sheep and she's soft and fluffy and I love it. But, like, but really it didn't really speak all that directly to what it is that they were trying to get at. And I was a little bit disappointed because I thought, you know, you don't just don't need to shove stuff in here. It's useful stuff, but use it where it's appropriate. Someone had a story they thought was cool and they tried to shove a scripture in there to make a book out of it. Yeah. Not that I've done that. Yeah.

Yeah. Yeah. Love Dan. Hope from the Heartland. Book's knees. Anyway, I got to get through it. See, now I'm on day 12 or whatever. So now I got to finish it and I got to provide like it really it isn't a bad book and I'm sure there's some dudes. I have trouble with reviews like that because I read it and I say, yeah, you know, there's a there's some okay stuff in here, but it may not be for me. But some dude may actually get a lot out of it. So, like, I don't want to say it's terrible because what if there's a dude that you owe touchdowns. Oh, yeah. God's a touchdown. Absolutely. God's a touchdown. Sometimes you got to take the fuel goal. You know what I'm saying? Like making small roads and witnessing to others. You know, like, like, there's probably something they can sin is a holding penalty. Unnecessary. Delay of game. I walk my path on crisis taking a pause. I could delay a game. How long do you sit at the two minute warning? Have you ever taken a TV time? What has separated me from the touchdown? Moving the chain. Moving the chain.

Anyway, so I was a little bit disappointed because I thought they're kind of shoving irrelevant verses in there, which I was too bad. Otherwise, it's not bad. I'll finish it out and I'll give you the full skinny on it, but in the zone. Pick it up from books. I don't know if you can buy the books. You have to actually go to a legitimate website, like Amazon or something. Anyway, you're listening to Live from the Path on Des Moines Amplified.com. You can catch us during the week in case you get sad and lonely without us at livefromthepath.org. There are links on there to our, you can sign up for the newsletter. Please do. I spend very little time on that and I would like you to benefit from it. Also, go out and dig on the YouTube channel. We are at almost 2,000 video watches on the YouTube channel. If you don't get us up to 2,000 this week, I will do it before the next show. I'll just watch like a bunch of videos over and over and over again to get us boosted. I do that. Nice. So, but I actually, I do. 1,500 are within this room. I do. I do. I look pretty good. Boy, Dan really sounded dumb that time. I like to cut my good side that time.

Hey, wife, come here, sir. Here's how stupid Dan is. I know I was there. You know how I parted my hair that day? I told you to wear a hat. So anyway, you can check it out. You can get past clips from the show. There's also all the musical performances from all the cool bands that have been on the show if you go up to lifeonthepath.org. As a matter of fact, if you click on performances, there's been some shifty ones. Actually, there is one that I did not post that is not on the new website. But other than that, most people make it. There's not a hope in the heartland. They're coming back on the radio. Most people make it. So you can check out those. You didn't get my ukulele shot, I noticed. Ukulele shot? Yeah, the day I played ukulele. That didn't come up on YouTube. No, I didn't make it. Sorry, Dan. It's not for it. Anyway, you can check that out. Today, we have been talking about… Next week… Yeah, what are we talking about next week? We've got some stuff that will carry over from this week. What if they say they can't take one more bit of this discussion and they won't tune in because you told them it's going to carry

over? Well, actually, you know what? Next week, it's a heavy one. We're going to talk about, just because it's been kind of popping up lately, is suicide. It's been something that's been in the community from where we live. Southeast Polk is at the high school. They've just seen a ton of it lately. I know Dan's had some experiences with it lately. Well, not personally. Well, yeah. He made it. Congratulations, Dan. I might not be here. A light-hearted view of suicide. This ought to be fantastic. This ought to go over very well. But I thought we'd touch on it just a little bit to kind of, I don't know, maybe see if we can reconcile how you get to that point and maybe ways to recognize from a godly perspective what that looks like. So, I don't know. I don't think we're going to spend two hours on it. Oh, I hope not. That'll be a downer. But I think we will touch on it because I think it is something that does impact folks. I've talked to my kids about it throughout when they were young and older just because I knew they'd have friends probably do it. And it's just like, wow, really? I mean, can it really get that

low that there's not a tomorrow? You know, when God's in your life, I mean, if you're thinking straight. Yeah. Anyway, there's a lot of stuff involved with that. So, yeah, you got it right. There's something just, it's to the person or, I mean, the people around them, too. So, I think there's a, I mean, there's something to go around there. Also, next week, we hope to debut Fairy Tales from the Path. That'll be exciting. Oh, no. This is going to blow your mind. It will blow your mind. What Ben's come up with here. Mr. Bill. That's not a fairy tale. We're going to run with it. It's going to be sweet. Anyway, you were listening to Live from the Path. I love these caps. I love reading these caps. Want to borrow one of these caps? So, we've gotten through what we were talking about this week. Where do I start if I am, I'm looking to maybe be in a relationship with Christ. I'm interested. Maybe I'm not even sure, but I want to know where to start. And so, if we can kind of, to summarize this, the first thing to do if you want to start a relationship with God is start talking to Him. And even ask for God's

help in walking through it. So, I mean, if nothing else, wherever you're at, there's no reason to wait. Just stop and say, God, if you're there, I want to know it. And I want to be in relationship with you. And then keep yourself open to it. Because, I mean, if you say that and then you say, and, you know, shave off one of my eyebrows so that I know you're there, don't do that. That's not a good idea. First of all, you may do that and you'll be missing an eyebrow. But it's unlikely because it doesn't like being tested. How do you explain that to people, too? Well, I asked God to shave one of my eyebrows. Yeah, yeah. And he did. I don't know if they did it in earnest and they really had enough faith. I'm fairly certain the Lord would provide. Where's the verse? You may ask me for anything in my name and I will do it. A shaved eyebrow, I don't think it's a provision of the Lord. I'm sorry, God in a box. You ask me for anything in my name and I will do it. Exactly. Go ahead. God doesn't shave eyebrows. Whatever. God smack. Bummer.

Bummer. John, 14, 14. I'm sorry, didn't you live it? Weren't you railing on John earlier how you didn't approve? I don't like it. I don't like the way he writes, but obviously his gospel is sound. Except for the whole inspired thing. I just don't like it the way he writes. He's not for me. He's not blunt enough for me. He's not straight. I know. I thought he was pretty blunt. Oh, I think he's flowery. He's the one who's like, I'm the one who Jesus loved. Yeah. I mean, yeah, he's a little bit fluffy. Not fluffy, but I mean, he's more emotional. Yes, he's more emotional. I don't connect with him as well as I do with Paul. Yeah, Paul says, sit down and shut up. Paul says, you guys are terrible. Well, I was trying to find a Google, I mean, a YouTube thing real quick. Remember a few years ago, I'm hoping I run out of time, when a guy went into a church and shot the pastor and killed him? Yes. Yeah. And one of the bullets went in the Bible and the Bible flew up in the

pieces and stuff. And he had some thing, it was like ABC gospel something. I did ABC gospel on YouTube. And I looked at it at that time and it was just a very simple presentation of the gospel. And I thought, wow, as awful as that event was, there were tons of people, I think, that were probably jumping to that and looking at it. And he got to spread a very simple gospel message to a ton of people. Just by getting shot? Just, yeah. Did you know that I spoke with a gentleman who was a deacon at a church and it was a major discussion at their church since that incident happened that the deacons were going to start carrying weapons? Oh, right. Yeah, I remember that. I think a lot of churches, it's there now. You just don't know it. What do you mean? What do you mean? Well, it's not at ours. That's that I know of because the deacons… Who has a weapon at our church service, Daniel? It would be a federal offense at ours because I shouldn't say that out loud because not everybody's guns are going to come and shoot us. You know, whatever. Take me down while I'm

at the church service. I don't care. Coming home, Jesus! If I can quote Dan Hudson, I don't give a rip. Just think how many hits we'd have, though, on our web if all three of us got shot this week. Actually, you better come up with the best of in case we all die, according to Daniel. It's actually occurred to me multiple times that we're in a glass building talking about Christ between 10 and midnight. Like, it's not completely unlikely that some guy would come by here and just shoot up the studio, and I thought, boy, that would be kind of creepy. It would be. Because it would all be on camera. I think creepy would probably be the least of it. I mean, I'd crawl up to the mic and say, praise Jesus. I wish I could remember this guy's name. I would say, John 14, 14, live it. Live it. You know what the thing to do is to, just before you die, pump out a non-existent Bible verse and people will search for it

forever. Like, go one chapter over than Luke is, and then quote it. Luke 47, 15, live it. People will be stumped for the ages. Or they'd forget. Yeah. Or go, that guy's an idiot. Isn't that the guy? I never mind. No wonder the Lord took him. He's doing more damage than good. He's ridiculous. He's a fan of me. Hey, check that one out. Go to the YouTube channel and look at, uh, I think it's, what is it? Christ is a fan of me. I love it. I get, yeah, I watched that one. Did you post that? Yeah. I never saw that one. Yeah. It didn't get good reviews. Yeah, no, Psalm 56, God is for me. You know, it did 11 views. Come on, folks. Hey, I think you should repost it. That's my post, man. That's me. I love it. I was all jazzed up about that one. You know what got

instant results? Uh, the hobo fight between Ben and I. Really? We got instant views. Yeah. Shot up like a rising star. We're also getting hits on that atheist convention business. All right. Yeah. Lots of interesting stuff going on. Hey, chat, what would you like to hear more from Life from the Path? What can we do to better serve you? What should we, what should we do? Did you get a job, Mike? Huh? That's the question. Did you get a job? I can't talk about it. He's not allowed to say I can't talk about it. Yeah. It's top secret. It's with the government. Check out Luke 4715. Look at everything you need to know there. All right. You've been listening to Life from the Path on Des Moines Amplified.com. Again, to catch us during the week, you can visit livefromthepath.org. I would encourage you to sign up for the podcast. Tell your friends. Yeah. Yeah, tell your friends. Call the show.

Come on now. Does that motivate people when I say something like that? Come on now. Call the show. Come on. Anyway. Sign up for the podcast. Thanks, Dan. I'm trying to find this guy. Glad you got my back there. Come on. Come on, man. Just dying. Can you do it? Come on, please. There you go. Just dying. At Life from the Path on, are you excited for the podcast? Who took all my caps? We took a stomach. We're going to fight. I'm going to scratch you in the face. I had seven antacid before I got here just to see what would happen. Is that what gets you riled up, antacid? Sometimes I go, whoop. I'm going to keep that in mind. Give me my mics on the Maalox. All right. We will see you next week. You've been listening to Life from the Path on Des Moines, everfight.com. It took me home.