Live from Lowe Street Studios, downtown Des Moines. You are Live from the Path. You're listening to Live from the Path on Des Moines Amplified.com. My name is Ben Foose. Thank you so much for being with us here tonight. I'm excited to be here. It is cold outside. It is dangerous on the roads. You don't sound really excited to be here. Yeah. You sound kind of bummed. I didn't have any troubles getting here. Really? Were you sliding? Yeah. I got a text. Slippery up. Oh, so no one else had any problems getting in with me? I didn't have any problems. I almost fell when I got out of the car, but not when I was driving. Oh. Well. Maybe they just don't do a good job at my place. Hold on. Hold on. I'm going to do an impersonation. You tell me who it is. Ready? Okay. You do it on Life from the Path. I'm really excited to be here.

Thanks for being on the show. No, no, no. I am excited. That sounds like Ben. Yeah, that sounds like Ben. It sure does. Yeah. You know what, fellas? I was feeling pretty good at coming in tonight. And then there were two. That's a mistake. Your self-esteem has gotten too high. All right. Well, aside from that fact, we do have a great show lined up for you. Zach Swobit is in the studio with us. He's going to be playing some tunes for us, and we're going to learn some more about him. I'm pretty excited for that. Also, we've got some big news from a show front, and I will give that to you probably within the next, I don't know, half an hour or so. It's a teaser. And unlike the one time we promised. The news from earlier, yeah. This is real. Yeah. This is real. I actually got a lot of flack for that. People were like, dude. They were mad. They were angry. What did we promise? Something big.

That's what we said? There's something big? Yeah. And I thought, remember, I put it in the newsletter. There's going to be some special information. And then I thought I had three days to come up with something, and nothing showed up. And so what did we say? That we were going to change to broadcasting at 3 a.m. to catch the West Coast crowd. Oh, yeah, that's right. People didn't like that. No. Anyway, so we've got some big news coming from a show front. I'll give you that. Also, Mike, we're going to talk a little bit to Street Jesus. Street Jesus. I'm telling you, I love it. I'm going to tell you why I love it and why it's the way to go, at least for me. I think there's different aspects of witnessing and ministry, and you go where God puts you, and you kind of look at the gifts that you have or the talents the Lord's given you, and you use those to do whatever you've got to do for the Lord. And for some reason, this one hits me. Like, this one rocks on all cylinders for me, and I feel like this is definitely the way. You know, you see a lot of ways that people try to teach you how to witness, and people try to teach you how to, you know, get disciples for Christ out there. And you're looking at them going, I'm not doing that. You know, it's not like someone's going to bump into your chair at the restaurant and go,

hey, man, you look like you're a Christ follower. Tell me the deal. Yeah, yeah. You know, and so, like, every time they'll have, like, informational videos, and they'll be so cheesy and stuff, you know, that just does not happen. I started working on some stuff. I need to dig that up because I'm working on something. On how to witness? A more grassroots, organic, you know, realistic. Print up Frisbees? Something that a real live human being would do. Yeah. It has to do with blimps and Frisbees, yeah. Actually, it doesn't. It's something I'm working on. It's still in progress. There's really not much to it. Right now, it's just kind of an idea. It involves a .357 Magnum revolver. Ah, forget it. All right, Dan. Are you ready to meet your Lord? Jeez. All right. It's in the process. It's gone off the rails. It's six after, Dan. Six after. It's gone off the rails. They get squeamish when you talk about firearms. It's really weird.

I'm lost altogether. Yeah, it's not an issue. Well, let me tell you about Jesus. See how that works? It just works right into the conversation. They just come in and say, man, I'm lost. And you say, well… And that's when he carried you. Like a sheep? No, nothing like that. Oh, well, I guess then. But you're saying he pays my bills? No. No, you're listening to Live from the Path on Des Moines Amplified.com. Mr. Swoboda, welcome to Live from the Path. Thank you. It's good to have you in here. Zach is the worship director at Lighthouse Church, and that's on the south side of Des Moines, right? Yep, southeast side, right off the bypass, Highway 5 and 69. Cool. How's that going for you? It's going great. It's a great church, a great location. We've got a great body of believers and followers, and I work with a great staff there. Awesome. What color is the carpet at your place? In the church? Yeah. Stained concrete. Oh, that's cool. That's a good answer. That's what I was trying to do at the ministry center. Yeah. That didn't go…

Concrete is ultra hip. I like it. I'm glad we got that. If it doesn't turn out, you can make a planet sub out of it. That's true. See, that's the thing. Even if you screw it up, you just buy a rug or some carpet, you know? You pick the wrong carpet, you've got to live with that carpet. I know. Pricey. So how did you get into worship directing? Like something you've always wanted to do, something you happen into, or…? You know, it's something I've worship-led at numerous churches all throughout Iowa and the Midwest, and it's kind of a cool story. God is just awesome. I was down in Branson, Missouri in September, this past September. My wife and I were down there to be part of a Christian show, which ended up being a big, nasty ordeal. And I googled worship leader positions in Iowa, and Lighthouse Community Church was the first thing to pop up on Google. I clicked it and filled out a resume and got a call from Pastor Andy the same day and filled out some more paperwork. And we talked again on the phone and then had a meeting with the search committee. And less than two weeks from when I googled it, I was hired. And perfect fit. God really worked through it. I googled handsome radio co-host, and that's how I ended up with this gig. It turns out they're yours. Hey, so his story was pretty cool and God breathed and things of that nature. Your story was pretty jokey.

Okay, fine. I totally understand. Well, so that's cool. You have a lot of stuff going on personally as well, right? Yeah. What's the big news? It has nothing to do with that. I just have a cough. You have some? I'm not responsible for anything that comes out of my mouth tonight. Fair enough, Dan. Thank you. Well, I've got a… My wife and I are having our first child on July 1st. Awesome. So, hopefully July 1st. Give or take. Do you have names picked out and everything? We do. Are you allowed to say? No. Oh, okay. Because someone will steal it. You're going to keep that under the hat. You're just going to keep it under wraps. Okay. I love it. All right.

Very good. Very good. And you also have a… I guess if you want to learn more about Zach outside of the show, you can go to his website, and it's zackswobita.com, and that's S-V-O-B-O-D-A, right? Correct. Okay. So, you can check that out. There's also a link to his website on livefromthepath.org. You can go to performances, click on his name, and the link to his website is sitting right out there, and you can learn more about Zach. I guess let's go ahead and kick her off. You're going to play some songs for us tonight. Yeah. The first one I have is You Are My Hope. Can you tell me a little bit about it? I wrote this, Pastor Andy. I hope he doesn't get mad at me. I wrote it at church in my office one day. God just really moved me, and when the words come, I mean, you've got to follow what the Spirit's giving you, so it's called You Are My Hope.

Okay. This is Zach Zvolvita on Live From the Bat. There is a hope that comes alive inside of me. I'm still, while I'm waiting, for the world to see. You are, you are king. Precious blood. It's the price it costs. For your hand. That overwhelms my rest soul. I can't explain your stance. Make me. The price it, your precious blood. What was the price it costs for? Yeah. So is that on CD somewhere then? No. Not yet? Not yet. But it's a coming? It's a coming. But you can download it from your site. No. No.

Daniel. Way to prop it up. Hey. I have to use the restroom. You know where you can hear it? Live From the Bat. It'll be available on our YouTube channel. There you go. Most definitely. Yeah, cool. So do you have any CDs out currently? Any way for people to get your music? Currently the best way to do it is via download. I'll be going in the studio beginning of March to work on a new full-length album. Cool. Cool. So I'm just curious. Right before you started singing, you were saying, you know, you wrote this in like your office or something, and you were hoping Pastor Allen wouldn't be angry. Andy? Or Andy. See? I changed his name.

Now he is angry. It's Cody and Koster if I'm on tonight, so I could say anything. I'm just wondering why. That sounds like a pretty good song. Why would he be angry at you? Because you're supposed to be working hard at the studies. Right. Isn't that work? Are you the slash janitor? It is part of it. Are you supposed to be sweeping as well? I mean, you're doing kingdom work, whether it's, you know. That's true. I mean, I'm just saying. He's just saying. I don't think he figuratively meant that Andy was going to be upset at him. I have to know these things. I would not speak to me. I don't know how I could spell it out any clearer, Daniel. I would have to have a meeting with Andy and say, dude, come on. It's kingdom work. I'm pretty sure after what you've said, Andy will have nothing to do with you. I'm going to find him.

You look like a gossip monger. I'll see if I can friend him on Facebook. I'm going to find him on Facebook. Andy, who knows Zach Swoboda. Go. That was Zach Swoboda, and you are listening to Live from the Path on Des Moines Amplified.com. Remember, I posted his website address in the chat window there. If you are watching and you cannot see the chat window, I would invite you to join us. If you're looking on the front page of Des Moines Amplified, if you click the chat button that is on the front of your screen there, it will take you to a separate stream that will show you the chat along with the video of the show. Ridiculous. What? Dan makes friends with Zach like two minutes ago, and now he's like, who dares be angry at my friend Zach? Hey, we've been friends on Facebook for a while now. I think it's been about 13 hours. I can't remember. I just… So what's… What's his name? All right, Dan. Dan. No, really. We need to talk.

You're going to have to find him later. Was it Alan or Adam? Andy. Andy. What's his last name? Vieth. Is he the lead pastor man at the Lighthouse? He's the senior pastor. That's right. There you go. Should be pretty defined. Would he be willing to have a breakfast with me? I'm going to tell you something. Here's what I did. So I'm not going to name the church, but I wanted to go to church more often. Well, first, is Mary and Joseph his profile picture? Yes. Andy. That's got to be the guy. Andy. I'm going to friend you right now. We need to talk. Okay, now he's going to be mad.

Dude. So for some reason, I was scouring the net. I wanted to make friends with this church. I saw this church. I like what they were doing. I was like, I want to make buddies with them. I want to go over there and see what they're about. Because I think our church and their church, we can get some major stuff done. So I'm surfing the net. I'm checking out their page or whatever. It says Wednesday morning prayer breakfast. I'm like, I am not busy on Wednesday mornings. I'm going to this prayer breakfast. This sounds awesome. So it says, starts at 6.30. I go, fine. I can be there at 6.30. I roll in at 6.30. There's not a soul there. No one's there. 6.45, people start creeping in. And one of them makes coffee. And one of them starts telling me how he's on some kind of political action group.

And I said, okay. And then 7.15 rolls around. Still no breakfast. No donuts. No sausages. No pancakes of any kind. No prayer? The prayer's coming. This is the best part about the prayer breakfast. So 7.30 rolls around. I think I've got to figure it out. We're not having breakfast here. We're an hour late now, right? Yeah. We're an hour into this deal. And no breakfast has shown up. And I thought, okay. So there's two elements to this deal. Prayer and breakfast. I was here for both. I wanted to have both items. Breakfast is not coming. So I talked to the guy, whoever's in charge.

And he's like, blah, blah, blah. If I knew you were coming, I'd have brought donuts. And I thought, you should have changed your website, dude. I mean, I'm really disappointed. So here we get to the prayer. There's a page and a half written out of what they're going to pray about. And they take turns reading the paragraphs of what's written down. You know, so don't forget stuff. That's perfectly fine. And then they skipped me. They didn't even let me pray. Oh, my. Because it was only for their church. And they didn't let me pray at all. And I was like, well, I'm just going to go pray in a corner or something. I came here for prayer and breakfast. I got neither. I was totally bummed. That's a bummer. I thought I was going to make good church buddies. Like, I was really excited to get out of my comfortable church home and go out and meet some new Christians somewhere. You know, I'm like, all right, I'm going to do this thing. It's not my style at all.

This koinonia thing. Yeah, I'm going to do it. And then I show up at the Wednesday morning prayer breakfast, which turned out to be a paragraph reading and a coffee. Let me ask you this. So what would be your expectation of a prayer breakfast? Like, what level of breakfast would you expect to find if you have an advertised prayer breakfast? If it was on the website, I assumed at least two hot items. I'm thinking Perkins Tremendous 12. That is why our church cannot afford to do prayer breakfasts, Daniel. Two hot items? Really? It's a breakfast. So if they had… So donuts doesn't do it. It doesn't say continental. You think they should specify continental prayer breakfast? I think they should specify something. Maybe I set my expectations too high. I just… The thing is, I know this church, and I know they have quite a few people, and that, you know, they have large buildings and up-kept things. You know, they're not a grassroots organization. They're a big church.

And I thought, well, since I go to a relatively smaller church, medium-sized church, I thought big churches, when they said prayer breakfast, they broke out the guns. You know, it was biscuits and gravy and bagels at the least. Or at least prayer. Well, and at least, you know, go around the table prayer. You know, it's not like I was mad at them or anything, but like, I guess I set my bar too high. I was… What I expected at this prayer breakfast is totally not what happened. So do you feel pretty unwelcome, pretty unwanted? I actually did. I think churches will do that. People will do that. And they don't mean it. And they don't think it. But they just do that. And you've got to totally train people. Well, you probably understand that being in worship. You've got to train people all the time to, like, don't act like jerks. Because they're not jerks, I'm sure. I bet they're wonderful human beings. It's like, they totally didn't mean to. And I know I do this.

You know, like… You just get used to your own group. And it was like, here's a new guy. Right. You know, like… Trae for Margaret. Yeah. Yeah, you talk about stuff that only pertains to you and your church and your family and whatever. And the guy… And, you know, and the new person's over there, it's like, I don't even know what to do here. And, you know, I saw a prayer. I thought this might be a cool thing, you know. And then it's just like, you know, I pray just for Pathway Church and that the Lord can work with our church and this and this and this. You know, which are all good things to pray for. But it's fairly similar to Paul's street Jesus actions. And who is it that he shaved? Was it Timothy? Where one of them was going to go… I think it was Timothy. It was going to go out with Paul.

Oh. And he was going to go into Jewish territory. And Timothy was a Gentile. Yeah. A non-Jew. And he had him circumcised. And he had him circumcised and shaved his head. Well, maybe I'm mixing the shave. That's what you were throwing me off with the shave thing. Okay, sorry. So he had him circumcised. And the thing was is… I remember that part. So after Jesus showed up, the whole circumcised thing, not really necessary. Like, you know, still you can follow most of the Jews. Under grace. Yeah. You know, they still followed it. But like the Gentiles, the non-Jewish people, you know, they didn't… They didn't have to do it to accept the love and grace of Jesus. So anyway, so Timothy was a Gentile, but he did it anyway because of the situation that he was going into. He didn't want it to be a stumbling block.

He was bending over backwards to… Right, right. Like, he didn't tone down the message or say, you know, I'm Gentile and this is it. You're going to listen to me. You know, he at least made half an attempt, you know, which it didn't hurt. I mean, I'm sure it hurt him. It was kind of something. But like… Yeah, when you said he got shaved, I thought that's a weird way of putting it. No, no. No, it wasn't a metaphor for the thing. But anyway, I guess… Got a little trim. The point is, the point that it's getting across is that Timothy, you know, I don't know, it seems like he made, you know, he made a conscience effort to meet them where they were at, which is what Paul was consistently about. Mostly, you know, I mean, that's what made Paul such a good… We'll talk about this. Paul was almost king of the street, Jesus, you know, about meeting people where they were at. And he never backed his message down of what the Lord had done for him, what he'd done for everybody in the crowd, whether they knew it or not, you know. But it was still, you know, on a peer-to-peer level.

Not, I'm Paul, I know Jesus, you know. I think you're right. And I think something what Dad said is, I think that's where your real danger is, is the church sofa. Like, when people get comfortable sitting in their own spot and other people come in, you know, it's like you wait for the church to… The open doors of the church are going to get people to run in. Or the atmosphere of the church, like, well, they're obviously a sinner. That's why they're coming to the church. Somehow they will bend it to what we're doing here, because they should, because we're going to church and they're not. And the comfort in that, I think, is a real danger for our community to reach people for Christ, because you get too comfortable in the atmosphere. And if you notice, like, I was trying to think of any New Testament scenes of which are inside a building, and people doing the… Like, it's almost… People are out. They're heading out. They're talking to people. They're making some waves. There's not a lot of glimpses of what you would say are the same as. Our modern vision of what church consists of, of what worship consists of, of what reaching out to people consists of.

Like, we're relying on the building to draw people in. And there's not a biblical equivalent for that going on. Right. Well, and look at… I mean, look at the stuff that Paul went through. You know, if you're not totally familiar with Paul, you know, he basically was… He didn't follow Jesus. He persecuted him. He grew up a Pharisee, or son of a Pharisee, who are, you know, the religious leaders of the time. And they, you know, he didn't buy Jesus' claims at all. He's like, this is garbage. Not only did he persecute the people who were following Jesus in his hometown, but he asked for permission to travel about and get the other people in other lands who were following Jesus. And so, he heads out, and the Lord stops him, blinds him on his way to Damascus. Damascus. Damascus. Blinds him and says… That's Mike Damascus. Yeah, Mike Damascus. I always get that confused. I always think wrong.

It's a different guy. Anyway, blinds him, blinds Paul and says, listen, you're only hurting yourself here. What are you doing persecuting me? And he says, you know, is that you, Lord? And he's like, yeah. He says, yeah, I'm the Lord. This is the deal. Here's what you're going to do. Blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. He flips it out. And so, now Paul's on Jesus' side. He's walking around, you know, saying, look, I've been there. I know what you're talking about. This is the deal. I talked to the Lord. Here's how it's going down. And I've been reading through the book of Acts. This is why I'm all geeked up about this. So, you have to bear with me. But the part that I love most about Paul is that they keep turning him over to the authorities for crimes that he didn't commit against authorities. Like, it'd be like me cheating on my wife and you guys taking me to the police station. And the police go, that's not an enforceable law here, friend.

You know, if that's against your own religion, then that's your deal. But that is not an enforceable law with the police station. Yeah, work that out amongst yourselves. Right. And that's what kept happening. His own people kept trying to take him to the authorities to have him arrested on no account. And this was my favorite part. And this is why I bring it up. And this is how it turns into the street Jesus thing is, Paul had every opportunity to back down off his things to save his own skin. You know, and every time they'd bring him up in front of a ruler, he'd say, I'm glad I get to make my defense. Here we go. And then they'd free him. And then he'd go somewhere else and they'd find a ruler above him. And then they'd arrest him and they'd say, here's what he did, blah, blah, blah. And he'd say, I'm glad I get to make my own defense. Here we go. And that man defended himself against every leader of the land until they finally got him. You know, but I mean, he never backed down one time. It doesn't matter who they put him in front of. And the Lord would say, look, you're not going down this time. You're going to Rome.

So say whatever you got to say. You know, I'll get you out of this deal. We're moving on. You know, and he was smart and he was educated and he had the Lord's wisdom with him. If you ever read the book Acts, it'll geek you up. You got to watch. You got to get past all the he went to this town. He went to this town because it won't make any sense to you. You know, like he went to this town. You're like, I don't even know the name of this town. I've never been there. Yeah. You know, you'll get lost in it. But, I mean, catch the main point that for whatever reason that I tend to break down with my church Jesus. You know, my Jesus fits in this building. And if I can just get people to church, that's where Jesus is. Paul's the exact opposite of that. And the early church is the exact opposite of that. Because the early church didn't start until you got Jesus out of your own house and went after everybody else that's standing around. I don't know. It really geeks me up.

Yeah. Cool. I love it. I love Acts. I haven't read that for a while. Now's the time, Daniel. Now is the time. Act on it. Speaking ahead now, you are listening to Live from the Path on Des Moines Amplified.com. Next week in the studio, Syndrome of Fire will be back. And they've got some good news. Exciting news. So we'll hear from them next week. The following week, I don't know, we're pulling for D.Cuff might be in on the 31st. If not, we'll pull off another show without them. Maybe. I don't know how we keep doing it. But after that, so through the 31st will be our last show in our current studio. We are effective in starting in February. We'll be moving to a new studio. And so that was, I don't know if anybody who signed up for the newsletter, that's one of the things that I'm asking you to kind of keep us in mind when you're praying. And it's a pretty big move for us. Pretty exciting, though.

Yeah, it is. Man, last week, there was probably three nights I couldn't sleep. I was just roaming the house going, yeah, this could be good. This could be great. I was like, go to sleep. What can we use in this house? Can we use these pots and pans in the studio? We don't use this TV, do we? So we'll be moving to our, we're going to have our own studio, of which we will be broadcasting from. So we'll be able, we will continue doing Live from the Path at your normal time and span. So it'll still be 10 to midnight on Mondays. Starting in February, you will have to go to livefromthepath.org to watch. Same interface, though, right? Same chat and same. Yeah, it'll look just like this. It'll look just like it. Except it won't say Des Moines Amplified. Exactly. We won't be on Des Moines Amplified anymore. We'll be broadcasting straight from Live from the Path. So, yeah, and we, yes, yes, to the question on the chat, we will be having random people walk around to give the same atmosphere. We're going to hire people. Just like you see the rent-a-cops kind of behind us and stuff.

You know, we're going to get some folks to kind of walk around. And we are getting a large glass to put in. Yeah, we're getting some big glass. We're doing this real time. Yeah. It's going to be slick. There's going to be glass. Yeah. Be ready. We'll call it the crystal. We're looking for, we're going to have big, we can have full bands in there. Hopefully, it's what we're shooting for is that we can have, you know, a more expounded musical performance. And it may be a little bit more freedom to, you know, get some more stuff done on the network. So, we're pretty excited about it. But if you, yeah, if you could, you could keep it in your prayers and, you know, just, you know, have the Lord hit us where he wants us to do it and whatever. I'm excited. Yeah. Yeah. So, you know, start reorienting yourself in the month of February. And if you can, sign up for the newsletter because I'll keep you, you know, reminders about there on when the show starts and where to find it and that kind of thing. And if the studio is not ready, we are going to broadcast from the basement. Oh, we'll do it. I'm pretty pumped about it.

That basement is cooler than I thought it was. We could go in the fireplace room and get a little fire going and just look like we're. Like the Olympics. The Olympics. Like the Spirit Midwest Festival that we got coming up. Exactly. We'll put on the turtlenecks. Yeah. Zach, do you do any type of video production? Do you know videos? No, I do not. It's a real bummer. Would you like to be a co-host with us at the Spirit Midwest Music Festival this year? It'd be kind of fun. Yeah. It would be kind of fun. You could be one of the on-site guys that talks to the bands. It's a blast. What if you play there? Have you ever been to the Spirit Midwest Music Festival? We need to talk about getting you booked on that bill. I'm going to connect you with Julie. Yeah.

It's a two-day, you know, Christian festival down at the, what is it, the Jesus of Nazareth campsite? Well, the. It's on corner. It used to be. Yeah. Okay. Yeah. I think the downtown church has got it now. Yeah. They're doing something else down there. Okay. Yeah. So anyway, it's down at those campgrounds down on Fuller and Grand. Yeah. And it's a two-day Christian festival and it's booked to the hilt with great bands and I think you'd be awesome there. Cool. I think you'd be awesome anywhere, but there's definitely a good place. We'll talk about it later. Yeah. Anyway, you could be a co-enter. We have friends. We'll just, we'll go and we'll take you to Zach Svoboda.

Zach? And you'll say, hi, I'm with Zach. He just came off stage. How'd it go? It went great. Okay. See ya. I think it could be awesome. I'm game. I have to get our new video cameras and everything by then. I think I'd raise much money. We need more money. We certainly need more money. I'm going to try to sell my kidney, but so far it's not going well. It's on eBay. You know, you don't need the, what's that they always take out that you don't need? Appendix? Pancreas? Yeah. I can get rid of my appendix. I think you need the pancreas. There's got to be some kind of medical school that wants to take a peek at it. What is the spleen really?

Doesn't that have something to do with filtering blood and stuff? Kind of liver, spleen, stuff? Pance, you have a spleen? I do have a spleen. Do you need it? Probably not. You never hear of spleen and onions, though. Pance, I've been seeing what you've been doing with your spleen. I think you're wasting it. Allison says it fights infection. Well, I don't want to get rid of that. I need an infection fighter. That's what blood cells do. Okay, until further notice, everyone keep their spleens. Until we do a little more research on this. I'm going to steal. I'm going to put it on eBay. See what happens. The spleen do. All right. You've been listening live from the path on Des MoinesAmplified.com. A reminder, we will only be on Des MoinesAmplified.com for this week and another two. So starting in February, you will be able to find Live from the Path, broadcasting from

livefromthepath.org. We are in the studio with Zach Swoboda, who, by the way, wowed the crowd with the first one. Yeah. There were text clapping and things of that nature. So they were very happy. How did they do that? Oh, did they? They wrote clapping? Yeah. Oh, yeah. That's any exclamation point? Oh, yeah. Three of them. Hey, that's pretty good. Yeah. Yeah, I know. Great job. Things of that nature. So going back to that, okay, we talked about how, you know, the dude with the Mary and Joseph. Are you after Andy again? Andy.

See, I forgot his name. Because we're not friends yet. He could be mad at you. So what are you supposed to be doing when you're there? I mean, if you're like, aren't you like worship directors? Yeah, your usual duties. Go clean the choir bells or something. I mean, I don't really see it. We do have about 438 choir bells. We do have a massive. I am disappointed to hear that. I am just going to have to admit that out loud right now. Hey. I'm kidding. That's the coolest thing I've ever heard. I'd like to play two of them. With the gloves. No. You know, we've got music. We've got communion. We've got a team of around 25 to 30 people that I communicate on a weekly basis. And we put together the order service and the music and we rehearse. So things of that nature.

Writing a song doesn't fall into that anywhere. Daniel, I think he was just being facetious. No, no. I take it literally. I was being fish. I'm a black and white guy. I'm an analytical man. Apparently. He's killing me. He's killing me with this. I was past this. Bam. All right. Before Dan goes on another rant about it. Let's, why don't we never, it's something entertaining. Zach, if you want to do, the next song is By the Hand. Yes. And by the way, Zach wrote all these tunes that he's playing here tonight. What's, what's kind of the, the origination of this one? It's kind of cool. We have. It's a good setup. Yeah.

I like it. It's going to be cool on some heads. It's going to be great. It really stinks. I enjoy cool things. Let's do it. We have worship rehearsals on Thursday nights at 7 p.m. And sometimes I'll occasionally stay like really late until like midnight. It was about 11 o'clock and I put my guitar down. I was walking out of the sanctuary. It's just me. Everybody's gone. And as I'm walking out, I get this little, this little tune in my head. You take me by the hand and it really, God spoke to me as I was walking through, through the church kitchen and I had to turn around and I went and around midnight or so, I finished up this song called By the Hand. It sounds cool already. Well, we're going to take a listen to it. This is By the Hand by Zach Swoboda on Live from the Path. Things I believe never seem to have much doubt. Right from wrong, good to bad. As long as I'm happy more than sad. That all changed one day.

Just like that. You take me by the hand. Oh, I can. This new heart that you've given me. It's like a new set of eyes to hell, but you help me stand. You give me the strength to be a better man. Believe from here is only what I choose to see. Not who I am, but who I really want to be. It takes some time to do your part. If you got the patience, he can rent your heart. But only if you believe, if you believe, you take me by the hand. This new heart you've given me. But you help me stand. Give me the strength to be a better man. You make me never this new heart you've given me. But you help me stand. Yeah, give me the strength to be a better man. I like that. What are you doing? Stop making that noise. I put another whoop in there. One whoop isn't enough. It's a two whooper.

That's a two whooper. That was great. That's a good whooping. That was great. I'd be excited. Have you recorded that one yet? No. Boy. Do you record with a full band? Do you get studio musicians? Yes. Yeah? Yeah. Do you need a tambourine, dude, or a clicker? If that means you. No. Hey. Probably not. You're a wise man. You're not the first guy to turn down my skills. Trust me. I was trying to be a shadow dancer for certainty back in the day, and they weren't having it either.

Bummer. Ah, man. I gotta learn to play a legitimate instrument. I'm not gonna say anything about my castanet talents. Not after that reception. Well, that was great. The reason I asked you is like, what are you thinking for instrumentation on that when you got a full band? Because that's got a cool beat to it. Mm-hmm. It'd probably be just your basic kind of full band, guitar, acoustic, electric, bass, drums, maybe a little bit of djembe. You're gonna laugh at me. You're gonna laugh at me. But I'm not so certain that you couldn't use an accordion following the melody, just on the melody end. I want to tell you, you're gonna laugh at me. I'm telling you. He didn't laugh. He's laughing inside. I'm telling you, it adds a special… Think of When the Night is Fallen by John Cougar Mellencamp. I might slightly agree with that accordion thing you said.

You think on it. A reed instrument of any kind doesn't necessarily have to be an accordion. A harmonica pants suggests. All right, pants. Pants is in the studio with us, by the way. He's un-miked and hanging around creepily around in the corner. But that is pants just to the right of mic on your screen there. Hey, pants. Everybody say hello to pants. Pants, you want in on this thing? Hi, everybody. It's a microphone, pants. I told you. Hello. Hello. You don't want to hear from me. Well, hi. There you go, pants. Really? Thanks, pants. Maybe if we need an on-site reporter from, I don't know, a rock that doesn't move, we'll send you out. Why is he called pants?

His last name is Whetstone. And then when we were in school, that easily morphed into Wet Pants. And that had some good play for a while, and then it just got too long. So he's been pants ever since. Yeah. That's where old pants is from. I don't know. My grandma used to refuse to call him pants. It used to make her mad. Yeah, she did. I thought it was disrespectful to him. Yeah. We had that as his official name in the church. He's in the directory, his pants? Directory thing. Was that last year? I don't know. A couple years ago, something you got your, like your… My taxes. Your tax letters saying how much you… Pants Whetstone. I could just see the iris flipping already. Now, Mr. Whetstone.

A.K.A. Pants. You need to get arrested and see what your rap sheet says. That would be awesome if it said Nick, A.K.A. Pants Whetstone. Zach, your wife says hi. Oh. All right. Hi, honey. She's watching. Hello. My wife gave up watching a long time ago. Does she play accordion? She plays… She can fiddle around on the piano. She leaves worship with me occasionally. She'll be joining the worship team here coming in February. So she can definitely cover the accordion part. We have bluegrass Sunday at our church every once in a while. Every time we have five Sundays in a month, we do bluegrass. And I play the piano. And so I switch to the accordion for the day. But I don't know how to play the accordion.

I just know how to play the keyboard part of the accordion. And so I just do that. It works out perfectly. I don't know how to do all the buttons. I tried to look into it. I thought I could work it up real quick. I had a mistake. It was pretty difficult. I can play in the key of G in the accordion. That's it. Other than that, totally waste. You know what? Speaking of the accordion, Lighthouse, 10 years ago, when Lighthouse started, that was how they led worship. An accordion? Yeah. It was a church plant 10 years ago. Yeah. So now we've got our new building as of a year and a half ago. Does that mean you have any extra sound equipment or things sitting about that maybe you could like to… Never mind. You're real smooth, Mike.

Yeah. I'm not the smooth one of this operation. I think we all know that. Anyway, so that last song was By the Hand by Zach Swoboda. And again, you can check him out at zackswoboda.com. Anything coming up? Any gigs or anything coming up or booking for the summer? You know what? Not a whole lot is coming to mind right now. It's really going to be a matter of getting in the studio and getting 10 more songs cranked out. Probably a few of these. So that's kind of my main focus. Are you ready to go? I mean, do you have your full studio set ready to rumble or are you still right? Do you show up with nine and then wait for the 10th one to hit you while you're in there? I've probably got seven or eight good to go right now. I'm still working on a few. Cool. I think it's cool when someone can write. I mean, obviously, it's been music writers for generations. But I mean, it's just kind of cool when people do that. Like in the 80s, I wrote a song and never told anybody.

And we sang at a church. And we sang at a church. I was fired that week. In Dan's cover band, the third chapter of Acts. It was just one of those things. I didn't tell anybody I wrote the song because I thought it was pretty dorky. Because I'm not a musician, so I shouldn't be writing songs in the first week. So we sang it like a cappella. And no one said a thing about it. So I kind of thought, okay. It came and went. I struck no chord anywhere. This is the first time I've ever said it out loud that I wrote a song. I got a pretty idea. Can you hum a few bars out, Dan? Do you remember it all? It sounds like 80s elevator music, church music back in the day. I'm probably mixing up with other songs I've heard now. I'm afraid you're going to have to sing it. Yeah, you've left us. Honestly, I mean, it's buried somewhere. Mike, give me a rendition of what you think Dan's song might have sounded like. Okay, okay.

Down when the Jonah came into the well. He tried to go to Nineveh and the Lord said, wait. It was New Testament. No, oh. Oh, no. Okay, hold on. You're going to have to let me work that one up. I guess it could be technically a psalm thing. It was kind of a be glorified thing. No. That was in there somewhere. There's so many songs that have that. Right, and we talk about this often. At least you recognize it. That just because you put a praising the Lord song together does not mean it's gold. That's true. So at least it came at with. It takes actual talent and thought. It had its fair shot. The ability to put chords together and things. Yeah. I didn't do any of that. I just kind of made it up in my head.

We're going to try this. Of course, it was a smaller church. I was in college. One day we're going to work this up. It needs an accordion. I kind of like that. Allison agrees. She's adding verses. She has a la, la, la, la. It's got a long, long, long. Don't I went to Nineveh and preached the word. Yeah. It's like a vacation Bible school type tune. I can hear it already, Dan. You're in my vision. We're one. It probably would sound like a little. Be glorified in songs if you read the whole thing. Don't skip out at the end. That's the best part. Yeah. This is awesome. That sounds fantastic.

Yeah. Zach, what do you see Zach Swoboda and family and ministry doing in, say, 10 years from now? What does that look like for you? You know what? I'm not. Beard? Full beard? You know what? At this point, I'm having trouble. That's what the kids will bring. Hey, I'm going to tell you a trick that I use. I'll let the lady's hairbrush get full of hair for a while, and then I'll take all the hair out and wear it as a mustache around the house. It plays off like gold for the children. It is gold. It's nice and long to. I mean, it looks like a Fu Manchu, and the kids love it. You walk around going, how do you stick it on? Yeah. You got to do this. You hold it up gravity style? You got to hold it on with your lip, and then you walk around going, yes, very good.

Yes. The children are aghast. Muy, muy, macho. Hey, I did a muy, muy, macho. Oh, the girls love it. Just something to keep in mind for the little ones. The kids love it when you steal hair out of the hairbrush and wear it as a mustache. Just something to keep in mind. I don't remember that. Now, I've done that before where I've put it on a toy elephant that they use in the bath and left it, and got it rigged up on there and left it creepily in the bathroom. Scared the woman to death. Nice. She come out, she goes, who put the hair on the elephant? I tried to blame the daughter, three years old. She wouldn't have that. It didn't work. It was obviously me. Anyway, I'm sorry. Ten years from now, mustache wearing, go. Oh, your wife says don't take that advice. I'm sure, awkwardly, in a few years, I'll probably end up trying. Yeah.

You know what? At this point, it's just whoever God leads. I know he's definitely called me into ministry, into music. Like, writing is a passion and it's something he's instilled inside of me that he doesn't want me to tuck that away anywhere. He wants me to get that out there, and right now I'm doing that through worship at church and also right now on the side, you know, doing some solo gigs and stuff through writing. But I definitely see a combination of both of them, kind of like it is now, but on what levels are each one at that point, and ten years from now, only God knows. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. I guess for anybody that didn't catch it when you said it earlier, maybe just, again, tell us what church you're from and when you meet and stuff in case somebody wants to come out. Lighthouse Community Church, 7705 Indianola Avenue. It's southeast side, off the Highway 5 bypass. You get on southeast 14th Street, or 69. And the first stoplight you hit after that bypass there is Indianola Avenue, and the church, you'll see it, is on the corner there. The service is at 9 o'clock and 11 o'clock, so. Do you have breakfast? We've got, like, cookies. Watch yourself, swoboda.

And hatchback. Actually, you know what? We've got a staff meeting tomorrow, and I just bought a pound of hash browns. See? Some maple sausage. This is the kind of Christ gathering I'm talking about. A dozen eggs and sharp cheddar cheese. Uh-huh. Sharp cheddar. I like that combination. Sharp cheddar. None of this mild business. Yeah. That's right. Stay at home. Cooking for the Lord. That's how it's done. That's how you get a group of dudes together to get stuff done. That's right. Or ladies. Ladies like breakfast, too. They do? They do?

I've trained my girls to love breakfast. I wish I had a pound of hash browns. I really do like hash browns, but they're some work. They've got to be crispy. But, I mean, I always get them. So we get the frozen hash browns, right? Yeah. And then I never forget. I don't forget to defrost them or whatever. So then I got this brick of hash browns. And, you know, I don't know if it's the same thing when I tried to use a frozen thing of pound of beef the other night. I mean, it's a 25-minute process to, like, cook it, shove it off, cook it, chisel, cook it. I mean, the thing's already dead. I don't like to have to go after it like that again. It's a lot of work for just a meal. It is terrible. Yeah. I don't like that kind of work. I mean, if I'm going to do that, I might as well go to the, you know, go somewhere and pay them to get me some breakfast. I'm telling you, paid food is always better than food you had to cook yourself. I mean, flat out. Paying other people to make something for you is way better than me making it. It's never failed.

You've never made something and tasted it and said, this is really good and I feel great about having prepared it? No. No. I've never ordered it. We're talking about this at dinner tonight. I have never ordered anything off the menu at a restaurant that I haven't already eaten at home. Like, I don't go try new things. Like, I don't order soup at restaurants. You know, I always order the same thing. I pretty much order, if I go out to eat, I could have probably had it just at home, but I like it when other people make it for me. I don't like to make food. I think it takes forever. When I'm hungry, I'm hungry now. And then I'm full then, and then I can get up and leave. And they'll clean all the stuff up. Are you hungry now? I'm hungry right now. Pants, you want to go to Denny's? Is there a Denny's? No, there's no open. The closest Denny's in Ames. Does anybody have a Monday night prayer breakfast? No, of course not.

Christians go to bed early on Mondays. We're never going to do anything. Actually, get some decent food at this hour is kind of rough. It is pretty rough. That reminds me. There's a Jimmy John's down from our new studio, though. Is there? Yeah. Are they open late? We're really hoping people would bring in food for us. As a sponsor type. We could do some kind of promotional opportunity. But we weren't really making much progress. But maybe in Johnson we have a better shot. So you remember how last week we were talking about, well, we talk about this about every week, but so I ran into a homeless guy at the QT. Well, I don't know if he's homeless, but he's at the QT looking for cash. Is the same guy I met like three weeks ago? I don't know. What was his name? Oh, shoot. I was supposed to be praying for him. He probably remembers me.

He's praying for me, and I only remember him as the homeless guy. Such a jerk. Here's what happened. So I pull in there. I, you know, so we talked about my budget of 25 bucks a month that I have to my lapse of judgment Ramsey style money. Okay. So the guy's in there. I get like a hot dog and a soda, and then I'm starting to leave. And he's trying to cash a check with everybody that walks in. Can you cash a check? Like everyone's a mobile bank. And I thought, no, no, no, no, no. And then I start walking out, and I think about the homeless conversation, Ben giving money to people all the time, and the conversations we had, and I start to sit in my car and feel guilty that I'm letting this pass me by. So I take five bucks out of my lapse of judgment money, and I roll down the window, and I say, hey, man, you know, do you just need a little bit of money until you get a chance to get the check cashed? So I'm buying into his story, which obviously isn't true. No one cashed the check at the QT at 1.30 in the morning. But I say, you know, just need a little bit of money until you get the check. He's like, oh, yeah, man, that's what I really need.

I said, okay, well, five bucks will help out a little bit, huh? And he goes, well, I'd be better off with 10. And I thought, you've got to be kidding me. You're out. So now I'm upset because I guilted my own self into going against my own set of standards. I don't generally just give money away to homeless people like Ben. Like it's just not my deal. I'm suspicious of them. And for some reason, the Bible verse that always pops up to me is do not give your pearls to swine. You know what I'm saying? Like if you're supposed to even be careful on who you preach the gospel to because they're going to trample it, wouldn't I even, you know, apply that just to my cash? If someone's just going to waste it, then I wouldn't just give it away. You know, the Lord's grace and message and my money. You know, so anyway, I gave him five bucks. And I consider it the worst mistake I've ever made. I think I would have just said, dude, you just lost five bucks. Is five bucks going to help? I'm pretty sure I would have said that. Well, 10 would be better, he says. I'm like, you've got to be kidding me. Vance had the same.

He says he offered a guy five and he wanted seven. I mean, that's quibbles. I just, I, I, and so he's got it. I gave him one fifth of my spend without guilt money to a homeless guy who wanted more. I thought, what a mistake. What are you going to do with the other 20? I don't know. I got to space it out. That's a way to give until it hurts, Mike. Five bucks. It certainly did hurt. Cashing a check at the QT 11 o'clock at night. Does that story work on anybody? I'm trying to cash a check. All the bags are closed. I can't believe I'm caught here. Did he really have a check? Like, did he even try to hand her? He was waving a piece of paper around. I'm fairly certain it was an IOU that he had written to himself. I owe you money if I had a job. Now, the beautiful thing about this is, even though you're not too excited about what happened, you did give to the least of these.

I gave them the money. And you gave to Jesus. And then I gave some to a guy the next day, too. Yeah. He was a little bit more coy about it. And he only asked for a buck. He just elbowed me on the way out and said, you spare a dollar, man? I said, yep. He physically accosted you for a buck? Well, he didn't like hockey check me. He just said, hey, man, can you spare a dollar? He was real sly about it. And I said, you bet. And I gave him a buck. Okay. Six dollars out of my total spendthrift money. Five of it I consider wasted. One dollar. The guy was smooth about it and at least didn't try to up me for more. So that was okay. That's pretty hilarious. I mean, that takes, I guess it takes something anyway just to try to get money out of people for doing nothing.

But then try to, you know, talk into more. Yeah. You should have seen me on my car for five minutes. I was sitting there struggling with my own guilt. Yeah. And I prayed on it. I said, look, what do I need to do here? I don't want to give him the money, Lord. I don't want to give it to him. I flat out just don't want to do it. And then I bowed my head for a minute. I'm like, dah. And then he didn't know I gave with regret. He just knew I was giving it to him. Well, he didn't care. No, he doesn't. He wanted more money. Hey, by the way, can I have your hat? What are you doing with that car later? Can I borrow it? Can you give me a ride to Kansas City? You don't have any prayer breakfast going on? I'm getting kind of hungry.

It's a pound of hash browns over at the Lighthouse community. I can't believe it. I couldn't believe it. Sharp cheddar. Heck yeah. Sharp cheddar. Yes. I hate white cheddar. The woman buys, I mean, this brick of white cheddar. It's huge. White cheddar? Yeah. You could float it and pelicans could live on it for a homeland if they wanted to. The size of this white cheddar at the Walmart that she buys. And it's terrible. Like, I really don't like it. My girls get mild all the time. And I'm always like, well, you know, I just don't say anything. I'll eat anything, you know. But you harbor resentment. I do sometimes. Sometimes I'll sneak sharp in just to see if they notice. Do they?

You know, they never say anything to me, but they probably do. They also harbor resentment. Yeah, we're all just mad at each other walking around the house. It's a very unhealthy atmosphere at your house. Stupid cheese situation. Everyone is secretly mad no matter who makes the dish. It tastes like Sharp Dad probably made it. You know I hate Sharp Dad. Give me the keys to the car. My oldest daughter, who's four, is distrustful of Swiss cheese. Like, I think she's distrustful because there's holes in it. Like, she feels like it's a subpar cheese because there's, like, something's been happening to her. What a ripoff. She can pick it out, too. My wife's tried to sneak it into sandwiches before, and she'll pick it out. She's pretty sharp. That's funny. Get it? Sharp. It's coming around. And it fell down. All right. Bummer.

Zach, Fight For You? Fight For You. Fight For You. What's the business on Fight For You? It's kind of funny. It just dawned on me that all three of these songs were written in the church. This one, it was right after our first service, in between our first and second services. So, at about 10.15, 10.20, God really spoke to me through Andy's message and really moved me. And I went straight back to my office, and I wrote this song. Well, all right. This is Zach Swoboda on Live From The Path, and this is Fight For You. Fight For You. And I'll say this right now. Do you guys have a piano? Oh, yeah. This song, I wrote it on the piano, and this is actually the first time that I've done it on the guitar. Man. This is groundbreaking. This is groundbreaking. God, you are moving in a mighty way. God, you are speaking to my heart. These are words I pray. There's only one way, only one truth.

Prepare my heart for battle as I put on the full armor of you. With all that I am, I will fight for you. With all that I have, I will give to you. This life is a pain on the feet. I don't have life if I don't have you. God, you are calling your people to rise up. To break the chains and crush the walls that we build up. There's only one way, only one truth. Prepare my heart for battle as I put on the full armor of you. With all that I am, I will fight with all that I have. I will give to you. For this life, I don't have life if I don't have you. Strong and holy, just you are infinite. In power, strong and holy, just you are infinite. In power, strong and holy, just you are infinite. In power, strong and holy, just you are infinite. With all that I am, I will fight for you. With all that I have, I will give to you. This life is a battle and I am the field. I don't have life if I don't have you. Thank you again. Hold it right there. Do you still say grace before you eat breakfast, lunch, and dinner? If you answered yes, then I've got a product that's going to revolutionize the way you do food. Pre-blessed food. That's right, pre-blessed food. We pray for it so you don't have to. This is the 21st century, folks. We can sell anything.

Around the clock, we've got thousands of employees buying brand-name foods, praying over them, and then putting them back on the shelves of your local grocery store with our official sticker of approval. We've got breakfast cereal. Pre-blessed lunch meat. Pre-blessed TV dinners. Double pre-blessed. And if you don't want a white guy praying over your food, we've got that too. Please, Lord, bless these eggs, Father. Bless the chicken that had these eggs, Father. Just listen to how pre-blessed food changed these people's lives. Since I switched to pre-blessed food, ain't nothing changed. We've always prayed religiously before eating, but we've been so busy with work and watching TV. Pre-blessed food hasn't only saved us time, it's saved our souls. But that's not all. No, no, no, that's not all. Inside every package of pre-blessed food are two tickets to heaven. Share them with your friends and family to make sure they go upstairs when they fall downstairs. So visit your local grocery store today and look for our official sticker of approval. And the next time someone asks you to bless the food, you say, It's on Pin Blast. Double Pin Blast for you! You've been listening live from the path on Des Moines Amplified.com. I think that's funny. Thanks for joining us. Zach, great job. Thank you. These are all fantastic. Yeah.

Thank you. I can't believe you told that you wrote a tune when he's writing tunes like that. I wouldn't have said anything. That was mine. He stole it. Oh. Oh, that was the one? Zachary? I had it in a secret spot. It sounded a lot like that anyway. It was almost to the TV. Very, very similar. Fight for Jairus, that's what it was called. Clever Dan. Fight for Jairus. In between our services, no one goes and writes songs. They go eat donuts. You know why? They walk out, when the sermon starts, they walk out and go eat. They don't even hear the sermons. Really? We listen to, there's two services. I always catch, I catch one or the other.

I usually catch the first one. You're not supposed to double communion, are you? Because I just do the one. Yeah, I just do the one. I think two is kind of gluttonous. Yeah, really? There, I'm just here for the juice. Yeah. Then they'll say, look, we have the same amount of people, but double the juice gone. What's happening here? Actually, I've always had a couple, I've had a couple issues like communion conundrums. For example, if I'm chewing gum, I feel like I shouldn't be chewing gum while you're taking the communion. Yeah. But I also feel it's kind of cheesy to take it out, do the communion, and then put it right back. Yeah. That seems a little lame to me. Yeah, yeah. I've been known to chew up a cough drop to finish it. Then that's kind of nasty. I mean, you know when it's coming, so I try to make it happen so that taste is gone before the communion happens.

But still, it's kind of like… Yeah. Anytime you feel like you're kind of washing down the communion with something else, it seems inappropriate. Yeah, yeah. Which is why it's important to have quality juice. Yeah. So you don't feel like you have to, you know, wash it out and everything. Anyway, you listen live from the path on demoneamplified.com. I'm just saying. It's going to be good. Does anyone ever notice like when you change communion stuff? Like, have you ever changed like brand of juice and someone goes… Actually, I did that. Yeah, we've given a specific instruction to get a specific brand. And we have, there are different people who did it, do it, you know, and they pick up. Somebody probably thought, oh, look, we can save 30 cents. And they got like some really bad juice. And people noticed? Oh, I noticed. Everybody noticed. And Ben noticed. He's like, oh, I don't want to complain here, but I don't think Jesus really tasted like

this, you know. I didn't say that directly. You know, we just want it to not be a distraction. Right. Like, oh, what flavor is it this week? You know, so we just try to keep it consistent. Actually, it was different last week. Was it last week? Uh-huh. Yeah, also notice it. I noticed it. I honestly didn't have it last week. Because you were sick? Which is so rare. I had, because I had the cough drop. If I didn't have a cough drop at all times, I was hacking and it was pretty nasty. Yeah. Anyway, these are good stories, Dan. You're listening to Live from the Path on demoneamplified.com. Mike, Dan, and I are from Pathway Church. We meet at Wallace Elementary in Johnson, Iowa. If you're looking for a church, we'd love to see you out there. More importantly, if you're looking for a relationship with Jesus Christ, we'd love to see you out.

Just introduce yourselves or walk around awkwardly and we'll find you. And you can also check out more about Pathway Church at thepathonline.org. Also, as a reminder, in case you didn't catch it earlier in the show, beginning in February, Live from the Path will start broadcasting on its own channel, which is livefromthepath.org. We will no longer be on the Des Moines Amplified channel. So, you'll have to switch your watching habits to going to livefromthepath.org starting on Monday, the 6th of February, I think. 6th or 7th of February. Whatever that Monday is. That's the best possible day it could start, too. Yeah, yeah. It really is. It's right on. So, I would encourage you to go to livefromthepath.org right now or after the show, whichever floats your boat. It's the 7th. Okay, so yeah, February 7th. So, time slot will still be 10 to midnight on Mondays. Since it is our own channel, we will have the ability to do special broadcasts if we wish. We'll be doing a bunch of other stuff. Yeah. I mean, we're going to do a lot of stuff. Yeah. I'm pretty pumped. Yeah, I think it's going to be pretty fun. So, anyway, just make sure you check that out and adjust your schedule and address bar.

If you can sign up for the newsletter and if you go to livefromthepath.org, you can sign up there. I'll remind you in the newsletter as to the change. Can you sign up for the newsletter on the website? Sure. Is that how you do it? Yeah. Just click newsletter. I just get them. You can't just yell out, newsletter. No. Or if you want to put your email address in the chat, I'll write it down and sign you up on your own behalf. But then you've given it to everybody else that's on the chat. It seems dangerous. Why? What's dangerous about that? Just good Jesus following folks wanting to be friends. I don't know. Like going to a random prayer breakfast. That's how you make buddies. There you go. Thanks, Olsen.

Every night from 10 to midnight. Nixon, I like your style. I'm not sure we can make it. We need. I'll bet you we can get something every night from 10 to midnight. Yeah. It doesn't have to be live in the path. We'll expand. It'll be Pathway Church stuff. Yeah. But we'll do it. Or other church stuff. Man, there's stuff. Oh, no. I got you, Olsen. There's Pathway Church. Remember that exclusion thing we were talking about earlier? Exclusionary clause. Jesus only loves Pathway. And tonight, the lighthouse. It's in Ephesians. I'm sure it is somewhere. No, we're going to have some fun with it.

It's going to be some nice stuff. It is. Allison, thank you. I got you. Okay. So, anyway. Hey, you know, I got a question for you. This is Chad. You guys feel free to chime in. So, like, have you ever done something that you regretted doing? And this doesn't have to be, like, a biblical foulness, right? But just a situation that, like, nagged at you for a long time and you eventually tried to make amends for it, I don't know, five, ten years down the road. And the reason I ask is I had this happen to me. And this story is going to sound weird because it's, like, the one time it's ever happened to me. But somebody back, I want to say I was probably 16 or 17, they asked me to go to them. It was like the ladies ask dance. I'm pretty sure they couldn't find anybody else and were just asking me because I seemed like a nice guy and things would be fine. And you weren't otherwise currently involved. And I was not otherwise currently, yeah. So, she asked me and I said, no, I don't want to go. And that was the truth. I did not want to go. I don't like dances.

I went to my senior prom only and I went by myself intentionally with fudge rounds in my pockets that I handed out to people. And I went to Long John's for my prom dinner. It was pretty sweet. I was pretty happy about that. But anyway. I didn't go to prom. No. But it has nothing to do with your story, sorry. Okay, good. So, anyway. So, she asked me and I had said no. And then, like, a week later, some other girl asked me. And she put on quite the show about it. You know, the person that she was going to go with, her mom or something, would not let him go. And she really wanted to go. I think he was going to be there. He was like, oh, you know, put on something. And I kind of liked that girl anyway. And so, anyway, she asked me. And I begrudgingly and mistakenly agreed. That would be awkward. It was terrible. Like, I don't do that.

That was a terrible thing to have done to the first girl. Like, I gave her the honest answer. That's like the episode right out of the Brady Bunch or something. It is. It is. But, like, it was, like, it was much more light, I think, for most folks. It wasn't to me. Like, that has just burned at me for a long time. I mean, that was a mean thing to do. I told the girl that I said no to, that was honest. That was true. The other person I said yes that I shouldn't have was not really an honest answer. But I ended up agreeing to it. And, anyway, so I, it was really bad. I felt really bad. And I feel like I never adequately apologized for it. And so I found this, this girl, the first girl on Facebook this week. And I sent her an email. I was like, this is going to be, I'm otherwise not friends with her, like, on the Facebook or anything. So I said, look, this is going to be weird. But I'm not drunk or anything. Like, I'm writing to apologize. And for the thing with the dance.

And I'm sorry. It was, it was, it was a mistake. I shouldn't have done it. You know, anyway, I hope everything's all fine. And whatever. So she, I know it's creepy, right? I didn't mean to do it. That would just be really awkward. I would feel bad. I would have to do something. Would you say something? I would do something. After, how many years? It's, I don't know. Ten. Born ten. Yeah. Twelve. You know what? I mean, I did a similar thing. I mean, no. It had nothing to do with dancing. Yeah, yeah.

Generally, the tradition, if you're going to marry someone, is you'll talk to her father ahead of the time. Have I talked about this before? I don't remember. No. And I remember thinking to myself, well, why? She's going to marry me anyway. So I didn't talk to her dad, didn't talk to Cheryl's dad before we got married. And I just thought, well, you know, whatever, we're going to get married. Kind of stubborn. And, well, we've been married 25 years now. So he passed away about six years ago. So we were married about 20 years-ish. And he's getting down to the end. He had a pretty long battle with cancer. And I sat down with him. It might be the last time I saw him conscious. And I said, Dwayne, you know, I never asked. He just had this awkward conversation of, you know, I did this disrespected to you 20 years ago. And I never asked you if I could marry your daughter. Is it okay with you if I go ahead and marry your daughter? And he came and gave me this look like, you freak.

I mean, he was a pretty hilarious guy. But he took it pretty well. But I think it was probably pretty important to him. Now, as a dad with two daughters, I think it would be kind of creepy if some jerk kid just came and said, I'm taking your daughter. I can give her what you say, you know. And I thought, man, that kind of puts it in a different perspective than when you're 21 and you own the world. You're like, oh, yeah, what are you going to do? Are you going to say no? I mean, good. I can beat you up anyway. I'm dead in the manhood. That's right. That's right. And it always did kind of bother me. Well, obviously, because there he is, like, days or hours left in his life at that point. I thought, I better, you know. I better do this. And maybe I shouldn't have. Maybe that was selfish on my part. I should have let him just go ahead. I mean, it's not like he cares now.

Yeah, that's the thing. He's woohoo. Yeah. I actually had said that. I realized that it was, when I sent her the thing, it was selfish. It was me. I'm trying to alleviate guilt. It was weird. This thing was probably relatively minor. It popped up for me once every three months. I thought, man, that was just a jerky thing to do. But it was selfish. She wrote me back and said, I don't know what you're talking about. I'm like, big nerd. Who is this Ben Boost? Big nerdo right here. I don't have any idea. She doesn't remember at all. And I almost felt it was probably offensive, like, as if I thought it should mean something big to her. Like, that's pretty pompous. And I didn't think that at all. Boy, that really stinks.

The Ben. The Ben dissed you. Yeah. Like, I was afraid that's how it was going to come across. And that wasn't what I was thinking at all. But then I thought, boy, that's what she's going to think. Oh, I'm sure I really hurt you in this deal. And I wanted to make amends. And like, she doesn't recall it at all. Oh, man. Well, that's good. Yeah. I guess. Except for you look like a big dorkist. I know. It was, hey, probably well worth doing. Yeah. Probably worth doing. I feel better. I do feel better about it. But then that's part of the problem. I hope you don't run into it at the store or something. That's going to be weird.

Yeah. It's weird. So I tried to share this with my wife. And that was her same reaction. You're a dork. A dorky thing you do. You're creeping people out. Things of this nature. By the way, I still know where you live. Yeah. Wow. That's a rough spot, man. Especially like, because I'm sure you've got to struggle with it. Like, do I actually write? Do I want to do this thing? Do I want to hash this over again? What if it's a big deal to her? You know? Yeah. And then you're like, okay, let's do this. I'm not really sure what you're talking about. It was, dude. It was pretty bad.

Ah, that's a bummer. It was pretty bad. That is a bummer. Yeah. Yeah, anyway. You know how you fix that problem? Hair out of the brush. Mustache. Go over and talk to her. Here. You made the right decision. See what you missed out on? You could have had this your whole life. Oh, man. You think so? You think she knew? She just didn't want to say it? Allison, that's nice. I'm going to take that. That could have been her way of getting back at you. Well, but I'm not offended. I'm the guy that felt bad. Like, I was extremely, I have a naggy conscience.

And I mean, that's a long time to carry something, what is relatively minor around. That's probably standard high school type behavior. But I, it just, it was killing me. Yeah. You want to mentally them? Yeah. Yep. See you next week, Richard. Yeah. It probably was minor, but it wasn't me. Of course, I didn't date anybody. The only lady I've ever dated was my wife. So, I mean, in my terms, the only other potential was this particular one. Yeah. So, probably bigger than me. All right. Bummer. Yeah. Well, so, Zach has decided to hang out for a second hour. I'm glad he did. I'm excited. Uh, and he's gonna play some more tunes for us. What do you got, uh, what do you got coming up?

Uh, this is called, uh, Life is But a Vapor. Um, really just about, you know, how fragile and short this life really is in light of eternity. Uh-huh. You know, and we've got… I like it already. We've got this, the time is now. You know, so… We forget that. I mean, honestly, I really do. I love that whole idea. So… Life is but a vapor in the wind. What is it gonna take? Take to live our life To our fullest potential. Yeah, yeah. We can't do it alone. No. It can't be done. It's natural for us to run, run, run away from our problems. And fall over again. That's why I need your love to come and save me. Save your love.

Our time is limited. It goes by too fast. We never know when we're gonna go, go. Oh, which day will be our last day. Only God knows. I wanna be who you have called me to be. An instrument of your love for the world to see for. That's why I need your love to save me. Save your love. Your love. Thank you. You better… I like that part where you go, hee hee. That's solid. I can't do that. Thank you. As an evidence of my prior. Hee hee. That was close. I've tried to do that. I'm always amazed when people can sing regular, hee hee hee. And you don't sound goofy. Like a bunch of nine year old boys trying to sing a Christmas carol.

You know what I'm saying? I don't know how people do it. It's amazing to me. Zach, you're amazing to me. Thank you. I don't respond to that. Just know that I'm impressed with anyone that has more talent than me, which is a lot of people. So there's a big group there. Mike, you're being creepy. Sorry. The chat has come to agreement that you're being creepy. They're probably right. Sorry about that. But they had some similar. Give me chills. Sounds awesome. Clapping and things like that. Clapping. Awesome clapping. Cool. Any more exclamation points? Several.

Yeah. Boy, I tell you what, you're really smacking those exclamation points. He's raking in the punctuation today. There's a give it up Mike. What did I say? Give it up Mike and Creepy Mike kind of worked in too. Creeping him out, still clapping, loving it. All right, man. Yeah. Boy, Zach's getting rave reviews and I'm on my way out. Mike will have his own show starting in February. I'm going to have to get mine. Me and Cassidy are going to have to start our own. Mike's lonely corner. Recipes. Bummer. And this is how I cook pancakes. Thursdays with Creepy Mike. Here's the deal. Everybody out there, I'm in awe of you. You're fantastic. Everyone is great. So, you know what I've decided?

I've decided that I'm in love with Matthew 10, 16. I don't know if we touched on this before or not. But Matthew 10, 16 says, Therefore, be shrewd as snakes and innocent as doves. And here's what I love about it. I call it the street Jesus. My wife don't like it because I say this often. When I think someone has done a good Christian thing, I say street Jesus. He has been saying street Jesus for like three weeks. Probably too much. I kicked Ben twice during your sermon and said street Jesus. He did do that. Yeah. If I think something really brings the point home, instead of saying all right, I say street Jesus. And for some reason, what that means to me is real Jesus. You know what I'm saying? That phrase pertains, I don't know. It takes all the pomp and phoniness and, I don't know, just a lot of the fluff that comes with it. And when I think that I've heard something or I see something that I think is straight to God's heart, that's when I say street Jesus.

Because I think it's face-to-face value. Some people will just say, like, amen. No, street Jesus. That's what I say. It seems like a Jesus that means business. You know what I'm saying? Like, not what everyone else has made him out to be or your own personal Jesus, you know, what he is to you and what you can do with him, you know. But, like, this is a Jesus that hits the streets and he knows he's after it. Yeah, yeah. So, anyway. I see that you should be writing a song. Maybe taking notes on this whole thing. That'd be good. You better let it play out first. It might take a turn. You better just let it go. I could write it for you and send it to you. Go ahead. After your last review, I can't imagine why you wouldn't. I sent that one to Chris Tomlin. He hasn't responded yet.

Yeah, that's… You know, Chris is very hard to get a hold of via email. He's very busy. He's like, who is this loser? But, I tell you what I… Here's what I liked about it. Is the… When he says, therefore be shrewd as snakes and innocent as doves. These are two things that… I mean, they seem like they're way different. But, really, I think it's just a perfect way to witness to people. If you're… I mean, because some people are gifted with, you know, talk. Gabbing. You know, talking to people. Preaching. Talking to large crowds. Whatever. You know, boldness. Forwardness, you know. And, that's really not me. Now, it can be. You know, if the Lord wants me to be that way, you know.

And, I pray on it. And, that's what he wants. And, that's the way it's going to go down. But, like, right now. And, I've used this technique probably, like, over the last six months. And, I've used it successfully. And, here's what I love about it. Shrewd as snakes and innocent as doves means two things. Is, when you're being as shrewd as a snake for Jesus, you're doing it on purpose. It's not a, you know, a last minute decision and someone bumped into your chair and said, So, you look like a guy that knows Jesus. I can tell by your eyebrows. Yeah. Let's talk about it. You know, being as shrewd as, I mean, you're planning this out. You know, you just met a person. You're not sure where they stand with Christ. But, here's how you figure it out. And, the way I normally do it is I, you know, I just drop subtle hints throughout the conversation. You know, every week I run into this guy and I'll say, what'd you got going this weekend? And, he'll say, blah, blah, blah, blah. And, I'll say, well, I got some church stuff to do and whatever. And, then I'll just leave it at that.

Shrewd move number one. That's shrewd, man. I go to church. He didn't mention that he went to church. We'll just wait on it. And, then shrewd move number two comes around next week. It's an introduction to the whole idea. He planted a seed. Right. Blah, blah, blah. Someone will be totally out of like, whoa, where'd that come from? Exactly. And, so, next week it's, well, so what do you do Monday nights? Blah, blah, blah, this and this. And, I say, well, you know, we got a Jesus radio show that we like to do. You can stop by and check it out. Oh, you're on the radio. That's cool. Shrewd move number two. You're not, how's your relationship with Christ going? Do you go to church anywhere? What's your deal? You know, are you a sinner like me?

You know. Are you going to burn in hell eternally? Right. Just planting. Just planting the seed. And, the way I like to think about it is, and I was talking to you guys about this earlier, it's kind of like the movie Sixth Sense without the death. You know, like, you can watch the whole movie and then at the end, when they tell you what happened, you play back the entire movie in your head and realize, yeah, that makes perfect sense. Yeah. And, that's what the street Jesus thing is. The shrewd a snake, innocent as dove is, you're innocent as a dove. You're following the Lord's word and you're doing what you're supposed to in your everyday life. And then, when that conversation finally happens where you say, you know, I follow Jesus. How's your deal going? You know? They can look back at your entire behavior after that point and say, well, that's why he is the way he is. Because, you know, now that I think about it, he didn't really swear at all. That's kind of weird. He wouldn't look at that cell phone thing I decided to show him. Right. You know, a couple, three weeks ago when I had some kind of weird look, you know, weird picture on my phone, I was showing everybody, he was kind of just conveniently gone.

You know? And then it all kind of starts to fall in line, you know? I think that has a lot to do with exciting me to live a better example for Christ. Because you never know when that conversation is going to happen. It might not take ten. It might take one. Sure. Whatever the Lord's got going that day is what the Lord's got going that day, you know? But you can tell someone that is going to be, you know, is going to be taken as an affront. If you just walk up and hard-nosed Jesus right at them and they don't know him at all. Yeah. You know, you may have done more harm than good. You know? Which is why we were talking about Paul earlier about meeting them where they're at. And that's what I think he's getting at when he says shrewd as snakes. You know, meet them where they're at. And, you know, you've got to follow them. And you've got to look at the person that you're talking to and realize that Jesus belongs there too. But you can't just ram them in there if they're not ready. You know, if someone shows up, open hands, open arms, and said, I want to know more about my Lord and Savior, you say, okay, I've got the time. Let's do this, you know? But, you know, if they're fighting it, if they're still showing, you know, dirty pictures on their cell phone

and trying to get you to look at them, maybe your blatant Jesus talk is not going to do as much good as it could if, you know, you set the example and you got to know them. Which, I mean, gives me, you know, a lot more motivation to make sure that my life looks like how it's supposed to so when that sixth sense moment happens, they can look back at my behavior and go, yeah, you know what? Now that I think about it, that makes perfect sense of why he acts the way he does. Yeah. Well, I think being the shrewdest snakes too indicates being purposeful. You know, like putting that purpose of reaching out to folks as part of your life as opposed to, you know, sitting back and saying, you know, if the Lord has something for me to do, it'll show up. You know, realizing that you have the skills and you have the appropriate, you know, biblical motivation to be purposeful of how you reach out to folks. And the shrewdness is how you go about utilizing that purpose that you, you know, that you have as opposed to, you know, again, either waiting for it to happen or thinking like God will, you know, always send people to you as if there's not work to be done. And I think, I think that's, that's part of it too, is, is, is being shrewd is recognizing that you have that purpose. And, and if this is your purpose, you have to find ways to go about it, to succeed in that purpose. And I think that's a, I think that's a big part of it. I think that most people, um, it's, it's all or nothing in their minds. You know, they, they either have feel like they have to have a soapbox with a bullhorn out in the marketplace, screaming at people, telling them they need Jesus. And, and most people don't have that personality. So they just figure, well, then I should do nothing. So they just like, I'm not the preacher, you know.

Yeah. Yeah. I'll just lead my example. Someone's got to fill the seats. I'll just walk around and be nice. Yeah. And, and that's it. It doesn't have to be these huge, you don't have to give them a pamphlet. You don't have to just, just inserting here and there. It's, it's relationship based. And, um, that, that tends to make a, a more, um, long-term legitimate disciple as opposed to someone who just one day says, oh, you're right. You know? Right. Yeah. Well, and, and the, the kind of, the kind of reaction you get from a turn and burn tends to be a temporary reaction, uh, or. Right. I don't want to burn. Right. Doesn't build the relationship with Christ that ultimately that he's, that he's looking for. Now, those conversations sometimes will turn you into looking in a direction that you

weren't turned before. Uh, so, so are not always a bad thing, but you know, if you, sometimes people aren't getting the full picture of Christ. Um, if that's the type of discussion when, when counted on the other side of that, if, if by example, you're able to have honest discussions like those with people, um, you know, as, and to be able to relate their life to what, um, what ultimately what Christ is, is offering, I think you have a, people are able to come to God in a much more earnest fashion. And they will come to you when they're ready. If they don't feel like you've been shoving it down their throat, excuse me, or pushing it at them, you've just got to open the door saying, Hey, I'm, I'm a, I'm a follower, you know? And you just throw the things out here and there and who knows what you say, what kind of conversation that leads to, but, but when they are wanting legitimate answers, you're going to be the person they will go to, as opposed to the freaky guy who's, you know, right. Well, and it doesn't, it doesn't take much for them to remember you, you know, let's say you worked with a guy 10 years ago and you don't even see him anymore. You know, it doesn't, it doesn't take much. I know when, when I feel like my, my walk with Christ is, is not where it should be. Um, you know, I pray on it. And then I started thinking of the people that I know that I respect them for their walk with Christ.

And those are the people I think of. It's like, you know, what do I need to do to have that? That's, you know, I got to get back there. I got to get back to where I was. And it doesn't take much to think that it's out of the loop for the guy that you worked with 10 years ago and saw, you know, Christ shining through you, you know, that, that everything's, everything's okay. You know, you, you, you got a good life going cause you know that you're already saved from the bad stuff you're doing, you know, and it shows in your day to day life that 10 years from now when he's having a rough time and trying to figure out what he's going to do with himself that he thinks of the guy that thought, you know, I never saw that guy upset about nothing. You know, I never saw that guy. He always seemed to be okay. You know, he's always seemed to be fairly easy going and happy. And what was his deal anyway? You know, is that a stretch? You know, does that happen every day? Probably not, you know, but is it worth it for the chance that, that, you know, just by your example that you showed, you know, what Christ can do for your life without the, the judgments and the preachy, you know, just, just the example is almost enough. You know, it does, it's not everything, you know, you still have to witness to people, but you know, it's a start, it's a place to go, you know, and it's, and it's a door opener

whether you want it to be or not, which is great. Sometimes it'll force you into a witnessing situation. You weren't, you didn't think it was going to happen. You go to church or where, how did you decide to do that? You know, so I don't know, I just, the book of Acts is full of, you know, traveling missionary work and witnessing and stuff. And, and I don't know, it just gets me geeked up. And then that, that shoot a snake thing I love because it's coming from the guy that I most love to take advice from. And when something, you know, that Jesus said hits me with, with a certain amount of weight, you know, I, I start thinking the, you know, the Lord knows what's going to, what's going to motivate me. You know, he knows what's going to grab me. He knows who I am, what I think, how I, how I look at things. And the, the shoot a snake thing is almost, is almost fun as a believer. You know? Yeah. It's like, I got a guy. I'm going after him. You know? It may take a year. I may have to soft start the thing and, but I'm going to be persistent about it. I'm going to keep it on.

I'm going to keep secret tabs on him in my little head here. And I'm going to see what he's up to. You have a Jesus stalker. Yeah. I'm okay with that. So anyway, it's, I, I don't know. I was reading it this week and then I, I just kept referring to me. I came back to that verse and thought, I love this. I love this idea. You know? I mean, there's, there's obviously ministries where you walk out and start speaking and, and, uh, you know, you bring massive crowds of people and then there's ministries where you get them one at a time. And, uh, I'm excited for the one, one at a time. I really am. Yeah. Well, I think there's a, and we, we talked about this a little bit before, but you know, there's, there's, when we talk about, uh, going out for purpose and, and being, you know, shrewd as snakes, a lot of it has to do with, you have to realize how important your particular opportunity is. Um, I realized I work in an insurance building here downtown. It's a carded building. You don't get in without a card.

Uh, Pastor Dan right here can't go walking around the building. He, he cannot get into those hallways. I'm in the hallways. I'm the guy that gets to walk those, those, those hallways and, and to, to stand in those lines and a hit in that lunchroom. Uh, and Pastor Dan will never be there. So, I mean, if it can't. That's true. Joel Osteen's not going to stop by. It's not going to happen. Right. So, so where, so who's going to do that? You know, who's, who's, whose purpose is it to be there? You know, being a part of lives that are in that building. If it's not mine, you know, you can't wait for the guy. Well, I don't do the preaching or I didn't go through the seminary. So that's not my gig. That is your gig. I'm the only guy there. I'm the guy that's, that's doing that stuff. So, you know, I think we realize how much impact you have or potential you have even in your own situation. Um, you know, because again, expecting someone to just kind of show up to church, you know,

if I, if I'm in that situation daily and I don't do anything about it, the likelihood of them stopping by my desk and saying, Hey man, you know anything about Christ? Cause I'm interested. It's slim to none. You know, you gotta be purposeful. Um, so, so anyway, I think there's a lot of potential that recognize, um, you know, being purposeful and, uh, the potential that you have. I think that's, that's something to be mindful of and be confident about, um, when you're reaching out. Mm-hmm. So true. Definitely. Yeah. What's up? What do you mean? What are you looking at me like that? You looked at me. I'm telling a long, beautiful story. I don't know. We're getting very little out of Dan. I'll tell you that. Every time I talk, I cough. So I'm trying not to talk much.

It's disgusting. Zach, two, two sentences in on this deal. Anything? Street Jesus. Nothing. You know what? I'm with you. I mean, the example of just being real, being, being a true follower, not just a fan and being an enthusiastic admirer, but rather a follower and getting to a point spiritually where we can walk around and the people without even, without even necessarily saying anything to them, they can look at us and say, boy, there's, there's, there's just something different. There's something going on there. There's something different. You know, this kind of radiance light that, uh, God's given us. Street Jesus. Street Jesus. Yeah. Unless they go, there's something different about that guy. He's t-shirts. He's wearing a mustache made out of a hair, a hairbrush mustache. I'm fairly certain the Lord loves him for who he is, but boy, we got to do something. Well, I don't have to.

All right. You're listening to Live for the Path on Des MoinesAmplified.com. Thank you so much for being on with us so far tonight. Uh, by the way, you can visit the website at livefromthepath.org. You can sign up for the newsletter, access our YouTube channel. The YouTube channel has, uh, posts from our guests, uh, songs and performances and things like that. You can sign up for the newsletter and, uh, all kinds of cool stuff. You can also sign up for the podcast. I know it's, it's late and it's a long show. So if you want to sign up for the podcast, you can do so. And, uh, you can get the audio cast from us and also archived, uh, videos of the show. Zach. All right. Zach, uh, is, uh, is, is in the studio with us tonight. And, uh, what else? You got anything else for us tonight? Yeah. Uh, my favorite artist, Jimmy Needham. I love him. And I've been told on occasion that, hey, Zach, you, you do Needham better than the Needham. Ooh. That's pretty cool.

That's quite the compliment. And, uh, yeah. So I, I love the guy, admire the guy. He's, he's a genuine dude. He loves Christ. And, uh, yeah. It's a song called Fence Riders. Fence Riders. Do, do, do, do, do, do, do, do, do. Do, do, do, do, do, do, do, do, do, do, do, do, do, do, do, do, do. Whoa. Am I foolishness to you? Is it laughable, the things I do? Whoa, yeah. Can your callous mind see past yourself that is divine? Am I foolishness to you? I sing about my maker, have you not roll your eyes? Can I weep about my savior and the way he died? I know it don't make sense to those who ride the fence, but I'm sold out to cry, yeah. You call it loosening up, loosen up, loosen it up. I call it spiraling down. Oh, only one thing's the same.

Only one thing remains, Jesus, Jesus. Oh, can I sing about my maker? Can I weep about my savior and the way he died? I know it don't make sense to those who ride the fence, but I'm sold out to cry, yeah. You're all asleep, you're all asleep, yeah, yeah. You're all asleep, all children, and it's over needed. You don't see it, no. Can I sing about my maker? Have you not roll your eyes? Can I weep about my savior and the way he died? I know it don't make sense to those who ride the fence, but I'm sold out to cry, yeah. Do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do. Do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do. Jimmy Neera. That was Zach Swoboda. You are live from the path on wineemplified.com. I love it. I love it. They love it. The Chad loves it. The Chad's going to live.

I tell you what. The Chad is on the kilter. We're going to bring Zach in. He seems to get them all riled up. They get jazzed about jumping around causing a ruckus in there. Mike, what happened to you? What are you doing? Oh, I'm looking for… Do not throw your pearls to pigs. 6. Matthew 7, 6. Oh, yeah, that was up for discussion on the chat. Do not give dogs what is sacred. Do not throw your pearls to pigs. If you do, they may trample them under their feet and turn them to tear you to pieces. I knew it was in there. I had to find it. Do, do, do, do, do, do, do. Creepy Mike, return with the ridges. There's no filter here. It's just here and then out. I can't stop it. I can relate. If you missed the introduction, that is Zach Swoboda.

You can get more information about him and his music at zackswoboda.com. I would recommend taking a look. My wife liked the website. Cool. There's a lot of artsy type heavy photos of you there. Yeah. Like meaningful. Yeah. There are no pictures of me that exist where you think that there's something… dynamic or fantastic going on in my mind. But if you go to Zach's website, like, he's got a couple where you look at him and you're like, hey, there's something going on in there. Yeah. He's thinking of something. Yeah, they're black and white or he's looking soulfully at the guitar like, just tell me what you want, guitar. And the guitar does and then they make me… It speaks to me. It is. I don't have any… I don't have any pictures that do that. No, I… No.

My pictures… I'm assuming it's the guy. I'm assuming it's… I don't have a bum camera. You have the wrong guy in front of the lens. No, that's possible. You have no depth. That's the problem. I always blame it on the photographer. That's the easy… That's the easy route. You know, Dan, they are airbrushing people these days. Exactly. So maybe we just need to hire out like a third party to kind of touch up the photos. Maybe so. We're going to need them for the co-anchor spot at the Midwest Music Festival. That's true. That's true. So did you have anything else for the Pearls of Swine? No, that was it. They asked where it was and I was just providing it. I don't get to see the chat very often, so I'm a little late on my responses. Pearls of Swine.

Okay. Fair enough. Fair enough. I posted the website to the chat in case you want to check it out. So here's a quick… These were three verses from Leviticus. And I'm going to screw up these names, but here you go. It says, Now Nadab and Abihu, the sons of Aaron, each took his censer and put fire in it and laid incense on it and offered unauthorized fire before the Lord, which he had not commanded them. And fire came out from before the Lord and consumed them, and they died before the Lord. Then Moses said to Aaron, This is what the Lord has said. Among those who are near me, I will be sanctified, and before all the people, I will be glorified. And Aaron held his peace. So these two sons of Aaron, they went into the Holy of Holies, which is the most holy place. That's the thing that's only supposed to be done by Aaron. Their father. And God had rules and purification process for coming before him and offering sacrifices. Those two dudes, you kind of ignore that. They're unauthorized fire. Came before God, and it was punished for blood-eye death. So that's a bummer. Yeah.

So for us, we don't have to do that anymore. Jesus has taken the place of those actions. Those type of sacrifices have already been paid through Christ. And one of the things that I was thinking about this week is that I think we forget that. I think we, even as Christ followers, forget how easy it is for us, how easily passed grace is, how easily offered, how easily accepted it is, and easily given from God. And I think, to a certain extent, that almost makes us dangerous, because you start to treat grace passively. You start to treat it as if it's, you know, okay, here I screwed up. Lord, just take care of it. All right, we're on. And it's not that God can't or won't. But our attitude towards grace, as it backs away from reverence into, you know, casual acceptance, I think becomes a real danger, because we're missing the voice of God behind that grace as to where His expectations are at. And so it's not that, even, let's say the sacrificial thing was still there. You still had to do it, right? Still well worth the price. I mean, we're not talking about a change of worlds here. But even if you think what folks used to have to do, versus what we've been given through the sacrifice of Jesus Christ, it's the same grace both ways. But, I mean, we don't even have to go through the physical process except to ask for it and recognize that God gives it. But, you know, I think it's something to keep in mind. As you're going through your day-to-day, you know, it's awesome to recognize the grace. In fact, the grace is always, as far as I think God should go, plus one.

He's always going one more farther than any human could agree to. He was like, oh, I can't, there's no way I can let that go. And God can do it and He will do it. And His strength is in that grace. But I think passivity or irreverence for it or not recognizing, you know, what's been paid, what's been given, and what you're accepting when you're saying, Lord, can you take this away? I think that's a real danger. I think it's a real danger in attitude. Well, the Apostle Paul really addresses that in Romans 6 when he says, you know, what shall we say then? Shall we go on sinning so that grace may increase? And there's this attitude of, well, the more I sin, the better God looks because He keeps forgiving me. Right, right. And everybody wins, you know, or if this is cool for everybody. And Paul's like, no. You know, basically everything you just said. So it's not like we're the first ones to do that. Yeah, right. You know, that's part of the human condition, I guess. Well, I mean, it's pretty easy. You know, when you get a, I don't want to say grace buffet, but it's kind of the thought that, like, it was paid, right? And then, you know, it's available to you and come and get it. I'm offering it up to you for that price having been paid.

But then you start getting real flippant with the food that's available. You know, it's like, I'll take a little bit of that. Oh, I don't have to eat at all. I can always go back for more. You know, man, it's not a big deal. Why finish my plate? And so the grace buffet, that's a solid metaphor. Indeed. I like it. You know, and maybe it comes, it sticks with me. There's certain things that nag at me. You know, we know my nagging conscience from earlier. You know, slips of the tongue, random mind, you know, stuff pops into your head. I'm like, I thought we were done with this. You know, but I realize that there are times as I let those things nag, sometimes I also let them repeat. And I take my off a little bit because I know the grace is there. I'm not trying to take advantage of the grace. But I do realize that my, you know, I got to keep in check my attitude towards what it is that I'm agreeing to accept, who it's coming from, and what his expectations are for my life. You know, he's been pretty clear on how to live and what to do. And that grace is in return for that faith. And if I'm dismissing the power behind that grace, to a certain extent, you know,

you're dismissing the full extent of the God that you've, you know, said that you're going to serve. So, you know, I don't know. It's just something I've been thinking about this week. There was something that came out. I get the, I don't know, daily emails from Relevant Magazine. They toss out like a daily devotional thought. And that was one of them, that Leviticus thing and kind of the discussion of you just being mindful. And that's, I don't know, that one's kind of stuck with me this week. That stuff's pretty cool. Like, just sign yourself up for a couple of random devotionals and just, you know, just have them be in your email. If you don't dig on it, don't read it, you know. But, you know, it at least gives you some, you know, some other reading guides throughout the week and just some stuff to check out, you know. You ever go to, what did I, you ever go to that gotquestions.org? Mm-mm. That's a, that's a, that's a, that's a God website where they take like the major questions that most people who don't know the Lord would have, and they answer them. And for most of the part, they do, they do a really good job. And, and even the ones that, that, you know, I would normally bypass and think, well, no one, no one really even wants to know about that. People want to know about that. People are sticklers, you know.

They want to know what they're getting into. I'm about ready to hand my life over to an all-knowing, all-powerful God. I want to know what it's about. Yeah. You know, and so before I start, you know, looking for food, I want to know where the food's getting grown. I want to know what's up. And so, it's actually a pretty cool website if you ever have to point anybody that direction. They got any huge questions that you don't feel that you're, you're adequately, you know, reading on. I, I, I would dig on it. It's hip. What are you doing? I'm trying to get away with some non-verbal communication, and it would totally fail because you pointed it out. We want to, we had to verbalize them. Cameras and everything. Like, no one would have known except for, hey, what's, what's going on here? I thought there was a guy out there. I thought there was a dude, and we were friends with him. That's what I thought. I was going to be friends with him, too. Oh, hey. I was going to street Jesus him.

I was going to get him on Facebook. You didn't even try. This guy that's not out there now. Look, he got away. He might stay. You just can't see. He's probably at the bar. We should have street Jesus to him. Dan, Dan, I want you guys to sing happy birthday to her. I'm ready. All right. We're going to do a happy birthday. Four parts? Yeah, four parts. We'll build the chord. Now we have four people. Harmony or unison? No, we're, we're harmonizing it, buddy. Oh, man. We're going to four part it. Who wants to be the bass? We're going to, we're going to build the chord, and then we're going to sail away. I'm going to, okay.

I'm going to be the rock. You got the high. I'm going to be the wall of his bass. Okay. Okay. Just, just. No, no. No, you got to go. Quiet. We're going to go A flat. Happy. You're going to go happy. Happy. She wants the guitar, too. Happy. And then we're going to go happy. It's going to come in, okay? It's just a vocal major, so she's going to be really upset if this, you're setting this up. I will take this. This is going to go poorly. Let's just throw it out there. Be ready for it, Daniel.

Okay. Go. Happy. Happy. Happy. Hey. Hey, hold on. Soboda, you're taking that. He's mailing it in. This thing is firing on all cylinders here. Now, let's do it again with some gusto. All right. Ready? Happy. Happy. Happy. Happy. We're off there. Happy. Here we go. Happy birthday to you. Hudson. What?

Happy birthday to you. Happy birthday, dear Danielle. Oh, she's criticizing this. Happy birthday to you. You didn't tell me we were doing the Gaither ending. You. Well, she was complaining that we had my part going there, so. Hey, that's the best it's going to get, Danielle. Happy birthday. Well, Dan decided he was going to do the Wiley Fish vocal. Yeah. Why is everyone going to be some kind of parlor trick with you? Happy birthday. Sure, Cheryl was quite upset with, oh, what did she say? I think it was Ben last week ahead in the sermon, wait a minute, and she looked over and she said, Ben didn't even have, didn't even flinch. I said, well, Mike probably would have. I did notice it. I did notice you did it twice. Yeah. Wait a minute. So, in case you attend the services at Pathway, you would have noticed a wait a minute from Dan, which is circa the Caps for Sale Live from the Path video, which is posted on YouTube,

or you can go to livefromthepath.org and click Tales from the Path on the left-hand side, and all three, Dan the Dunce, what was the other one we did? Jack and the Beanstalk. Oh, Jack and the Beanstalk and Caps for Sale is all available on the website, so you can check it out. Solid. So, anyway. Sweetness. Yeah. I dig on it. All right. Well, we're getting close. We're five minutes till. I know everyone's willing to go another hour, but I'm afraid we're going to have to cut it off here. They turn off the heat at midnight. We'll cuddle next to Dan. Number six. Wait, are you rating the performance? Oh, six minutes to go. Oh, okay. Sorry. Oh.

I thought it was nine at least. I thought they were giving our happy birthday a six. That's pretty good. Out of ten? If it's out of a hundred, then that's probably more accurate. That's probably, yeah. No, I'm going to add a ten. Hey, man. We built the cord and everything. It should have went flawlessly. Take it. Swoboda's fault. It's Swoboda? Dang it. Yes, it was. Swoboda. I had it right the whole night. Now, wait a minute. I said all the sounds right. I just didn't say it fast enough. Six. Oh, six percent. Oh.

Oh. Well, okay. That's worse. That's worse than I had thought. Wow. Okay. All right. Well, before this goes completely off the rails, we better hear from Zach one more time. Agreed. Zach, what do you got for us to close out tonight? This is a song by Warren Barfield. It's called Love is Not a Fight. If any of you guys have watched the movie Fireproof, this was one of the main, main songs. Let's see if I remember. There we go. Sorry. Love is not a place to come and go as we please. It's a house we enter in and then commit to never leave. So lock the door behind you and throw away the key. We'll work it out together. Let it bring us to our knees. It's a shelter. Age in the storm.

Oh, oh, but we try to make God send it to the door. No love, but it's something worth five. Some love is a word that they could fall into. But when they're falling out, keeping their word is hard to do. It's a shelter. Age in the storm. In the midst of a world set. Love will come to save us if we're lonely called. He will ask nothing from us, but to man's we give our all. In a shelter. In a raging storm. There's a peace in the midst of a world set. May God send angels no love, but fire. That was Zach Swoboda. Zach, thanks so much for being here tonight. I really appreciate it. Thank you guys. It was awesome. For having me. It's been fun. Yeah, yeah. And you can find more about Zach at zackswoboda.com. Keep an eye out.

It sounds like there will be some CD coming out here maybe by the end of the year. Definitely by the end of the year. Definitely by the end of the year. Awesome. You can also catch him at the Lighthouse Church. And that's on the southeast side of Des Moines. Yep. Is there a website? Lhousechurch.com. There it is. You can hit Lhousechurch.com. And visit Zach. If you're looking for a church family and you're close to him, head his way. If the location puts you farther north, you can join us at Wallace Elementary on Sundays at 9 and 1030. At Pathway Church. The website for us is thepathonline.org. If you're looking for a church family, more importantly, and get this, kids. More importantly, if you're looking for a relationship with Jesus Christ, we'd love to hear from you. Next week, Syndrome of Fire will be back in studio. They've got some big news for us. We're pretty excited about that. I'm going to arm wrestle Tim. There's no doubt about it.

Be ready for it. I'm ready. He's going to go down hard. I doubt it. He's going to take something fierce. I've been working out, Tim. Be ready. All right. Have a wonderful week. Good night. Thank you.