Don't get down when you're seeing the worst,
because the last will be the first.
What a day, I'm telling you,
all things will be new.
Living up in a down world.
Yeah, we're living, yeah, we're living,
living up in a down world.
Oh!
This is Jimmy Internet.
We are coming to you now from our news studio,
and this is episode number 47.
News studio, wow.
I like the way that sounds.
I know, I like the way it smells.
I know, okay, so, our son-in-law came in here to help us.
We're still unboxing things.
Thank you, Brandon.
And he and I were putting together the lamps,
and he said, is this freshly painted,
because it smells like it?
I said, well, it is, although it's been a few weeks,
but it's the carpet that smells.
Yes, and the carpet is gorgeous.
I think I did a good job with all the furniture.
It makes me want to take my shoes off, though.
You know.
It's pretty.
I love furniture.
I love solid, good furniture.
We love leather.
Yes.
So, we bought new leather furniture for our house last year.
This year, new leather furniture.
Is that leather?
Is that real-deal leather?
Oh, yeah.
Is that real-deal?
No, no, no.
It's not Naga-hide.
I don't do that.
It looks fantastic.
I actually unboxed that and put it together today.
I'm shocked.
Well, I was seeing it out in the hall, and I'm like,
that's bugging me.
It needs to be...
Well, there's two mirrors that need to be unboxed,
and there's a monitor that...
Right.
We'll do that tomorrow, because we'll have some time tomorrow
to do that.
So, it's looking great.
It is.
Super excited.
We shot our first video in here, or my first video,
which was for the church.
For the church.
So, we've got new lighting.
We've got a new table and chairs.
We've got new mic stands.
Couch is coming in the morning.
Couch is coming tomorrow.
Oh, it's in the morning?
You got the notice?
Between 8, 30 to 12, 30.
Oh, yay.
That's great.
We'll be here.
And so, that'll...
Well, not quite, but almost complete.
The biggest thing...
The only thing we'll lack is the acoustic wall that we're having built,
and that's going to be, I'm hoping, next week.
It comes in Monday or Tuesday.
It comes in Monday.
Monday.
So, just...
We want to give you guys a heads up.
If you hear a little bit of an echo in here,
we're still not done.
We're doing the sound panel,
and the sound panel is an entire wall,
and we'll be up against that wall.
It's also the backdrop for our set.
So, for videos...
Are we going to be doing YouTube...
Now, we do YouTube channel.
We will be doing that.
Right.
Called...
Meet Pray Love.
And someone said, is it Meet M-E-E-T?
I said, no.
Meet M-E-E-T.
Me, carnivore.
Because we're carnivore.
But are we going to be doing video podcasts in the future?
Is that in our future?
It's absolutely possible.
I mean, we could do that sitting here, talking back and forth.
We've got this great table.
And then it can be on here too.
I mean, it's interesting.
Yeah, yeah.
It's all kind of...
We can do anything in here.
That's what the beauty of having a dedicated studio space.
Studio.
Interesting.
And, of course, we'll have a big cup of coffee on each of our sides.
We have a new addiction, don't we?
Oh, my gosh.
And this is the Curry's fault.
It is.
They introduced us to Black Rifle Coffee.
Oh, my gosh.
And then Rick Green from the Patriot Academy said that they have a new coffee that they
developed.
And I'm open to trying it.
I'm open because I like Rick.
I will try it.
I'm open to trying Rick's coffee.
But I went off coffee for two stinking months and thought, I'm done.
I'm done.
I'm no longer addicted.
And then it starts to get a little chilly.
And here I am.
Yeah, it's hard not to.
I'm more addicted now than I was.
Oh, my gosh.
That is the best coffee I've ever tasted.
It is.
It's so smooth.
It's strong and bold, but it is smooth.
It has no bitter, no bitterness.
Tina says it does, but I don't taste the bitterness.
I don't either, at least not in the cups, the K cups we're doing.
Yeah.
We did the K cups.
This is so quick and easy for us.
I bet his is so strong because he uses ground coffee and they put a lot in the carafe or
whatever.
That's probably why.
Yeah, it could be.
I can't do that.
He does a French press.
Right.
So yeah, you can make that stronger if you want.
But anyway, that's our new addiction, our new love.
Oh, my gosh.
So back to the studio.
We'll have that done next week.
So there may be a little bit of an echo in here because we still don't have all of our
furniture, which will break up the sound.
So it's a big, big, nice box.
I mean, we're in this box, but...
But we have carpet, which helps.
Yeah.
We didn't have carpet at our house.
So speak into your mic.
Just make sure.
That'll help.
Okay.
I'm getting as close.
We even bought new mics.
You're doing good.
We bought new equipment.
No, not new mic stands.
Stands.
We did buy a camera.
That's going to be a full frame camera for really high def and like 4K and all that stuff.
Yes.
And one of the reasons why we did that, I have to let our audience know, when Pastor
Jimmy did a YouTube channel, when you were being interviewed, one gentleman wrote in
and said, I couldn't listen.
I couldn't watch because the quality was so bad.
And we were like, okay, we got to do something.
But we didn't.
It was our first time.
Not just because some dork did that.
That wasn't it at all.
I know.
But still, we want to be excellent in everything we do.
But we were, I was doing this favor for Adam Lacey on his Carnivore Today channel.
So I had to just grab the thing I had.
It was, you made do.
Yeah, I made do.
But, oh, it's going to be nice.
It's going to be super nice.
Got lighting too, studio lighting and everything.
So we got that set up today and shot our first video.
So it'll be interesting.
It's fun.
This is fun stuff.
It's really enjoyable.
You know, when you talk about the things you love, you want to talk a lot about them.
Exactly.
So steak, meat.
I mean, I love meat.
You girl have turned into a lioness.
I know.
I mean, like I'm a meat snob.
You are.
Yeah.
Because you have to have filet mignon while I'm over there eating a chuck eye.
Poor man's rib eye.
I've always had a champagne taste.
Always.
I grew up that way.
That is the truth.
I'm glad that I had the money to have.
I just had that.
Exactly.
It came from my mother, I believe, because she wanted the best of everything.
And yeah, it's pretty crazy.
Oh, well, hey, you're worth it.
You're worth it.
It's so tasty.
You are worth it.
And you look stunning today.
Oh, thank you.
I like the shirt.
I like the jacket.
What do you call it?
It's not a jacket, is it?
It's a cardigan sweater.
Oh, thank you.
Yes.
Thank you.
Technical stuff.
Oh my gosh.
You're funny.
I like the vibe in here.
I do, too.
We need to bring those lights on down.
Oh, we have a dimmer.
Do you want me to trot over there and do that?
Trot over there.
Okay.
Let's go see.
You keep going.
You keep talking.
Well, okay.
You're so funny.
I'll be right back.
It's going to be nice.
Can you hear it?
Yes.
One of the reasons why we felt like it's...
That's good.
One of the reasons why we felt like it was good to move our studio here is because we
want to...
We'll be spending more time at the office.
We're getting busier and busier.
We're going to three services in January.
But we felt like after we have some meetings on a Tuesday morning, we can come right in
here and record, rather than go home and then go, oh, do we even have anything in us?
And I always want to...
Sometimes we're tired.
Yeah, sometimes we're tired because we've been meeting with people all day.
And I want to...
We may even do it first thing in the morning before we have a staff meeting or something.
We can kind of plan it however we want.
But we want to be excellent in that and we want to have good energy and not be so tired.
And lately...
Oh my goodness.
Well, life got crazy after we got off of sabbatical.
Okay.
What did we do?
Oh my gosh.
We have like increased...
I know.
I think...
Well, part of it is...
Okay.
I mean, this is just the reality of it.
We focused on mind, body, spirit.
So that trifecta, taking care of our mental health, our spiritual health, our physical
health, it energized us.
It did.
So we came back strong.
I mean, like when we talked about going to three services, I looked at our staff, whom
I love and adore, and I could see the terror in their eyes.
Mainly in Leslie's case because she has to deal with volunteers, more volunteers.
Because their mind just goes into overdrive of how are we going to staff it?
How are we going to do it?
Do we have a worship team to do it?
There's a lot of moving parts to it.
But I'm the one who carries the ball on preaching three services when I play guitar.
I'll play guitar and preach three services.
But I didn't bat an eye.
I mean, I literally...
If you would have said this last year, we brought it up some last year and I was resistant
because I was like, I can barely make two right now, but I feel so amazing.
And it's not just carnivore.
It's not just the diet.
It's actually my heart and my spirit and my mentality.
You got rejuvenated.
I did.
You got so rested that you're able to put on more on your plate, put more on your plate.
And so that's what we're going to do.
But we're going to space it out.
We've decided that we're going to do podcasts every two weeks.
Yeah, big announcement right there.
Because we...
For now.
Right.
It may be a season.
It could change.
It may not, but for now...
But we don't know what it's...
Right now, we're going into the holidays.
Yeah.
Then we start our three services.
We're going to be with energy everywhere that we need to.
Yeah, exactly.
And so I feel like we'll have more content.
We'll be refreshed.
I think so too.
I mean, because we have a whole lot going on.
We've had things every other night.
We've had dinner dates and all...
It's all good.
It's all people we love.
It's church families who want to spend time with.
So these are things, but they do tend to pile up sometimes.
I mean, we had a big staff Christmas party with what?
40 people there.
40 people.
And older staff and their wives and husbands and spouses.
So yeah, so I mean, we've been going and blowing, but we still feel fantastic.
And today, the weather kind of turned and it feels more like Christmas.
It really does.
I mean, I walked out.
I didn't even wear...
I didn't bring a coat.
I've got a sweater on, but it's a light...
Well, I have a sweater on.
No, this is a super light sweater.
And I walked out and man, the wind was blowing.
It was raining like that misty drizzle.
And I was like, whoa, it is actually cold out here.
It switched on us.
Wow, okay.
That caught me off guard.
But I was just going straight to the car.
So I hung out with a bunch of pastors today who have become friends.
Pastor Lance from Brady, Texas, small town America, Pastor Tim and Pastor David, they're
two pastors from Mason, Texas.
So those are smaller communities in our area.
And then we're a small community here in Fredericksburg, even though God's given us a massive footprint.
It's a small town.
So it's really neat getting to know guys that are in similar situations in terms of being
in a small town and supporting each other.
Like-mindedness.
Yeah, like-minded support, encouragement, prayed for each other.
They gathered around me and prayed over me because we met at my church.
And then when we meet at somebody else's, we'll gather around them and pray over them.
It's just a way to encourage and build each other up.
Super cool.
Super encouraged by that.
I love that.
Yeah, it was neat.
So even though it's a bit premature that we're in our studio, it's either that or we wouldn't
have been able to do a show today.
And we don't have-
Chevy.
That's my only sad moment right now.
We can bring him.
We were very busy today.
Yeah, we can on Tuesdays.
We didn't today because we knew we had a lot of outside things going.
But Chevy's been really sick and we had to take him to the hospital bed yesterday.
To the puppy doctor yesterday.
Almost $400 later after all the x-rays, everything.
Did we really need that?
I was like, what?
That sounds like us.
It's more than what happens when we go.
I know, exactly.
Yeah, it was.
But he's okay.
He has allergies, really bad ear infection.
But he scared me.
Now, okay, Chevy's a dog.
Hello.
But he's keeping us up with his coughing.
It sounds like that's something a toddler would do.
And he's keeping us up at night because of his coughing.
And then yesterday he woke up, he was coughing, but then he seemed to be gasping for air.
And that scared me.
That's why we ended up having to take him in because we didn't want there to be...
We were afraid there could be an obstruction.
Right, right.
Or he had swallowed something maybe that we didn't know about.
So yeah, so I took him in yesterday.
I stayed home from the office while you guys had staff meeting.
I was zoomed in or I just did a conference in.
So I was still with you, but I was taking care of him.
But you know what was so cool?
I took him to this great place called Lindner over in Comfort, Texas, right off the I-10.
And three girls in the office there, I walk in, we start chatting.
They're just in a good mood.
I mean, I was like, you know, they're happy.
I could tell it was a good atmosphere.
I said, hey, I got a question for y'all.
Can you imagine what I just asked?
Oh, so you did your question.
I said, I got a question.
I'll start with you.
And I pointed to the one girl and I said, first thing comes off top of your head, what
are you thankful for?
And she went, oh, oh, my family.
Everybody says family.
I said, you know what?
That's the number one answer by far.
And I said, how about you?
And she said, my dog.
Oh, of course.
She works at a...
She better say that.
She works at a veterinarian office, her dog.
And then the other one was family as well.
And they just, they started laughing.
We got us laughing and talking.
I said, I've been surveying dozens of people.
And in fact, I did our waiter today, Steve at Hill and Vine.
You're doing it everywhere.
And he and I had a great visit, great chat.
And he said, I'm just happy to be here to serve you.
I said, oh, your tip just went up, bro.
Oh, wow.
You're working it.
I remember, I remember we had a friend and every time we would go to a restaurant, they
would say, your tip is going to depend on...
They would start off the meal.
You take care of us, you're going to get a big tip.
He did that everywhere we went.
Now, I can't remember who it was, but I remember that distinctly, that that person said, your
tip will depend.
If you take care of us, you keep us with sweet tea or whatever.
You will get a great tip, but it worked because I don't know if it would work these days.
This was more like 15 years ago.
God, it's a little different.
But it was different.
I had never heard anything like that.
My approach is kindness.
I treat them with dignity and respect.
But he didn't say it in a mean way.
He was just saying...
Yeah, but still laying the law down a little bit.
It's like, yeah, don't cross over this line or else kind of thing.
It feels like a threat.
It can work, bro.
Of course, the waiter could go, you know what, I'll find someone else.
I always look for a contact point.
If it's a dude, I don't do females, but always looking for a contact point.
He was wearing a watch similar to mine.
Oops, sorry.
Oh, so there's your conversation.
So I said, hey, how do you like your Apple Ultra?
And he's like, oh man, I love this thing and blah, blah, blah.
I used to have a Garmin.
And then we started talking about triathlons and working out.
And then he hung out for a while with all four of his pastors.
He had no idea standing over the table full of pastors.
Wow.
It's cool.
That's good.
I like Steve.
He's a neat guy.
So yeah.
Hey, so one of the things we were talking about is the power of what we say and do.
It's interesting to me how things come back to you.
Yes.
Like, you know, you can say, for me, even on this podcast, we could say something and
it may be something we've said in other arenas, but for whatever reason, God takes that one
thing, that one little ism, that little truth, and he zeros it in on somebody on the other
side of the world.
That's the beauty of podcasting is that you can literally impact somebody in another country,
in another nation.
And speaking of that, we got a beautiful note from Iris.
Remember Iris from Holland?
And she gave us a boost, 35,000 sats.
She says, Hi, Jimmy and Annette, I loved your past episodes.
Thank you for the reminder to be grateful.
Trust in God to help us on our path and to please God before people.
I am always very inspired after listening to you and more confident in my faith.
Lots of love, Iris.
Isn't that beautiful?
That's beautiful.
And I just thought about how the power of this, we had a conversation and we talked
about gratitude, which I talk a lot about because I talk about a lot about the things
I love.
And we were talking about that.
And we were also talking about, you know, we need to, God's who we need to please,
not everybody else.
And sometimes we sacrifice pleasing God for pleasing others.
And so she just cued in on that.
And so to think that right here in Fredericksburg, Texas, that message got over to Iris across
the world and she was encouraged and blessed by it.
That's beautiful.
Isn't that amazing?
Technology is amazing to me.
If you leverage it for good, it's fantastic.
I remember there was a day when you were so excited when it was when technology was just
coming very apparent and I wasn't very happy about it because I was thinking about all
the negative aspects of it.
But as we've matured and we've grown and technology has grown, I mean, obviously there's
a lot of negative, but there's a lot of positive.
We wouldn't be able to do what we're doing if we didn't have technology.
And so, you know, and doing this podcast, this isn't just I mean, it's not just little
old Fredericksburg people that are hearing us.
We have the opportunity to affect people in Japan, of which we're going hopefully next
year.
We we affect people in all different parts of the world.
And what we say matters.
And it's I love the fact that we can.
I mean, this is to me part of the gospel of Matthew 28 and go into all the world and preach
the gospel.
That's beautiful.
And this is what we're doing.
And we're able to get it to places that we normally could never get it to because we're
you know, we're not going to be able to travel to every place in the world that needs a gospel.
But you can through the airwaves.
And I love that we have this opportunity and have the opportunity through video as well.
You know, we video our services.
I love that churches are now becoming able to be able to video their services.
People that probably thought they would never have the opportunity to do that.
Maybe a small church doesn't have a lot of money, but it doesn't take much.
Do you remember when we used an iPad?
And we was an old iPad, four years old, out of date.
Yes.
And I gaff taped it to a pole.
And that's how we recorded our services.
This was just four years ago.
All we had four years ago.
Yeah, four.
And now look at it.
Yeah, that was when we were a campus of another church.
And so we didn't have a lot of resources and they wouldn't really help us with any resources
to do technology.
So we're like, we'll figure it out.
You get resourceful when you have to.
But we felt so impressed that we needed to get the message out.
I love the word good news.
When we use the word gospel, the gospel of Jesus Christ, and there may be listeners who
don't know what that means.
It literally means good news.
It's the good news of Jesus Christ, not the bad news.
Sometimes people think Christianity is bad news.
No, this is good news.
Or a bunch of rules of do's and don'ts.
Right, right.
Yeah, that's, I don't know.
I remember I got over that real quick as a new Christian and realized, no, this is, there's
a lot of do's.
Like, man, we got a lot to do.
This is amazing.
And I found out that living for Jesus was like being on an adventure.
Like you're in a, you know, C.S. Lewis Chronicles of Narnia movie or something.
It was life-giving and good.
And so, you know, you were talking about the power of podcasting, the power of getting
our voice out.
We called this podcast, Living Up in a Down World, because that's our goal.
We want to be positive.
We want, there's too many negative voices out there in the world.
You know, I love what Adam Curry and John Dvorak are doing with, you know, media deconstruction.
They're saying, look, this is not true, or this is actually a lie.
This is false information.
And they're deconstructing that because we don't need to give energy to bad news or fake
news.
And when you've got good news, you want to tell people about it.
And I feel led to challenge our listeners right now.
Maybe you thought, well, maybe I should do a podcast.
I got things to talk about.
I would encourage you to do it.
You know, we took the plunge and we didn't have anything.
We didn't have a microphone.
We didn't have a mic stand.
We didn't have anything.
And it was actually Adam and Tina challenged us to do a podcast.
And we were like, we don't know where to start.
We don't know what to do.
And then here we're 47 episodes in.
And then we were challenged to do a YouTube channel, you know, in particular for our health,
you know, journey.
And I thought, OK, we can wait until we get all the right equipment.
We can wait until we've got a studio.
We can wait until it.
And instead, I just did it.
I pulled the trigger.
Because I've realized that you can sit around with good intentions and never do anything.
It's true.
But there's something that's exciting about jumping into the unknown and in knowing it
could fail, knowing it may not work, knowing that it may be a miss, a swing and a miss.
But there's also something exciting when you do it and someone writes you a note back and
says, this really helped me.
This changed my life.
I'm now walking with Jesus and I walked away.
I'm now going back to a church because I walked away because I was hurt.
Those are the things I want to hear.
And we are hearing those constantly.
And that's what keeps me going.
If one person says what you're saying is making sense to me, it's I feel like it's time for
me to make a change in my life.
It's worth it.
And just know we're not fishing for compliments.
This is actually we're asking for testimonies.
If what we're doing matters and if what we're doing is helping you, I've learned I gave
up my right to withhold encouragement.
So when I'm in a given situation, for example, Steve, our waiter today, I mean, or the girls
at the veterinary clinic, you know, these are kids.
I just have given up the right to withhold encouragement.
And so any environment I'm in right now, it's like my antenna is up, my eyes are open, my
radar is on, and I'm looking for an opportunity.
I don't force anything because that's weird.
I guess weird.
But it's amazing how natural these things come up if you're aware and if you're kind
of looking for that opportunity to encourage.
The word encourage simply means to inspire courage.
It's to build another person up.
And the reason I do it is because I know how I feel when people build me up.
And it is interesting how when you throw things out there, they come back.
You do need a lot of encouragement.
You have course always number one love language.
Words of affirmation.
Yep.
And so that's why you love doing that.
Not because you want them to do it back, but because it's something that you desire so
much.
So you just give it to others.
So I give it to others.
You just give it to others.
I love that.
Give what I want.
And sometimes it does come back.
Sometimes it doesn't.
That's okay too.
But there's something powerful when we build other people up.
So the whole idea of living up in a down world, the whole idea of doing a podcast, the whole
idea of doing a meet, pray, love, health journey YouTube channel is to build people up because
there's so much bad news in this world.
We want to live up in a down world, not live down in a down world.
The holidays can be very tough for some people.
Oh, thank you for bringing that up.
Very tough.
Wow, talk about that for a second.
And so to me, people need encouragement right now because they may be going into situations
and you know, into a family situation that's uncomfortable, that brings on anxiety, depression.
And we want you to be able to go in to those situations and have the strength that God
wants to give you to get through that.
And to go in with eyes and a heart that's softened, that's different because you're
different and not go into those situations as you always have in the past.
And I know for me, it was hard.
Every Christmas was hard because my dad was so mean.
And so he hated the name of Jesus.
And every time we brought it up, you know, it was, there was carnage, honestly.
And every Christmas, my mother would do this.
She would buy him a Bible every Christmas for years.
And my sister and I were married, you know, we're bringing our family and we know what's
going to happen.
And she continued to do that.
It was so hard.
And so we had a lot of anxiety going in to Christmas knowing what my mom was going to
do until finally we got her to, mom, this is not the way you win him to Christ.
You win him by loving him, by treating him the way you want to be treated.
You win him by showing how you love one another and how, you know, showing the love of Christ
but not throwing it down his throat, so to speak.
And it was just, the great thing is, is he ended up coming to know the Lord right before
his death.
That was so powerful.
But the anxiety we felt just going every Christmas was very difficult on us.
And so I know there are people out there that have family members that maybe mistreated
them when they were younger and they have to see them again.
And those are hard things.
But, you know, God wants to redeem and restore.
And that's who he is.
He is a God that restores.
He restores us back to the way, he restores us better than we were.
And I know that because I know what I've gone through in my past and how I needed to be
redeemed and restored.
And so to me, that's, you know, that's the message.
The gospel is when he can come in and he can restore you and you don't feel those things
anymore.
You go in with a different heart.
You see through a different lens.
And to me, it can make Christmas so much more delightful.
When you put the emphasis on Christ-mas, not Christmas as in commercial holiday.
And so this Christmas, I pray that as we've, if you've listened to us and hopefully gotten
into the word that you're going to go in and have a different type of Christmas than you've
ever had.
I know like for instance, Adam and Tina, they last Christmas, it was their, I don't know,
it was their really first Christmas last year when they were getting to know God.
Okay.
Let's just say getting to know him.
This Christmas, they have matured so much that, and they're having family come in.
And I guarantee you this Christmas is going to be so different because they are so different.
They're approaching this Christmas season as a child of God, not as just someone who's
just been informed of who God is.
Do you know what I'm saying?
And I know that it's going to be special for them.
And I pray that for everybody that's listening that let's not go in with commercial eyes
of the best presents.
I got to have the best food.
It's all about retail.
Let's go into it with what is the true reason?
Why is it that we even have Christmas?
Why do we even celebrate Christmas?
We didn't even do many decorations this year.
We chose, well, sorry, we chose to kind of go a little bit more minimalistic this year
and not put so much emphasis on our, on that in our home at this point, just because we
were busy.
But it was, it's, I mean, it's kind of creeping up on us.
It's in less than two weeks.
It's here.
And you know, I love what you're saying because there are people even listening that have
been traumatized by family.
That's what I said.
Yes.
Just lived in real trauma and real terror like you did.
And then the thought of going back into those environments can be really harsh and very
triggering.
Yes.
And I agree with you.
And I think the prayer for those who listen to our show and really for everybody is that
they will realize how much they've changed, how much they've grown.
They're not that kid anymore.
They're not that sad, lonely, broken teenager anymore.
They're a child of God.
They're a son of God, a daughter of God.
And they carry that identity now back into those environments.
And I have to say, you know, I remember when I got in my twenties, especially in here,
I was married now, I was going to college, I was working full time and going to college
and being, it was crazy, crazy life.
And I remember when I would go back home, because we moved away from to another community,
would go back home over the holidays and I would almost revert to a 12 year old in my
mind.
Now I was blessed.
I didn't have abuse and all those things.
But still there's dysfunctional family dynamics that you deal with, even if there's not trauma
or abuse, there's still dysfunction because we're all humans, right?
Being human.
So I would go back and I would catch myself relating to my grandmother like I was 12 again.
And it wasn't until I got like through my twenties and starting to get in my thirties
where I began to really embrace my identity as a child of God that I'm not that 12 year
old kid anymore.
And so it may not even be that you had abuse, but it may just be there was a dysfunctional
family dynamic.
And I don't blame my family.
I had a great family, but hey, we were weird like everybody else.
It's no blame or anything on anybody, but we just had odd dynamics sometimes.
And so you may be going back into a hard situation or a hard dynamic where your mom or your grandmother
still knows how to push every button you have and that turns you back into a teenager in
a nanosecond.
And so we want to encourage you in that, that as you go back, first of all, you should take
a moment and literally out loud say to yourself, I am not who I used to be in the name of Jesus.
And because of Jesus, I am now a child of the King.
I'm a child of the ancient of days.
I'm a child of God and I'm not that person.
And I can walk upright knowing that God is who I look to, not anybody else, not man,
but God.
The word righteous, for example, when the Bible says that we are the righteousness of
God in Christ Jesus, it literally means we are able to stand upright.
In other words, we're not cowering.
We're not in fear.
We're not cowering out of a loss of esteem or identity.
We're actually bold.
We're actually strong.
And we are because Christ makes us that way, not because we can just rev it up or make
it happen, but it is.
And so to encourage you as you go back into odd family dynamics, maybe not abusive now,
but maybe still triggering, walk in like you're different because you are.
Remind yourself when you're out in the car before you walk in and carry all your goodies
and stuff in there.
I am not who I used to be.
This will not be the same.
And we've encouraged people to do that for years as pastors and kind of right before
Christmas we'll always talk about family dynamics from the pulpit and say, hey, you're about
to step back into some could be awkward situations.
You're not who you used to be.
You're not even who you were a year ago when you were there last year.
And so I just want to encourage our listeners to really embrace the truth that you are God's
child, you're God's son, God's daughter.
You're not that insecure teenager anymore.
You're not that insecure adult anymore.
You're secure in Jesus.
And let the truth of God's Word bring out the book and let the truth of God's Word change
your mind about things.
Love that.
You know, I was just now looking at the calendar.
Our next podcast, Christmas will be over.
Oh, wow.
Wow.
That's why I wanted to bring that up.
Merry Christmas, everybody.
Because literally Christmas is in a week and a half.
And I thought...
It's hard to believe it's here.
I know.
And I thought that was important that we share that because we definitely want you to have...
We want this to be the best Christmas you've ever had.
And especially if you're embracing Christ, maybe for the first time or coming back, we
want this to be a time where you're so different.
People go, I want what you have.
What's changed about you?
What did you do different?
Yeah, you're different.
Yeah.
Something's different.
Yeah.
And we're not going to have that opportunity.
We're going to have our daughter and son-in-law are coming.
We are going to Tina and Adam's on Christmas Day.
So we're not going to be around people this time.
Our typical family.
Well, but it'll give us a good time to rest.
Oh, it'll be really needed.
Many times.
But we're around people all the time, almost daily.
It is true.
So it'll be a nice rest.
But I still really encourage you to draw near to Jesus.
He says, when you draw near to me, I'll draw near to you.
And draw near to Him in this time.
Don't forget who He is and what He's done in your life.
So what are our plans for the holidays?
What are we going to do with all this downtime?
Nothing.
We talked about this already.
I cannot wait.
We're going to carnivore like to the end of the world, and then we're going to go to the
gym almost every day.
And rest.
I'm looking forward to it.
It's funny because people don't think going to the gym is restful, but it is for us.
It's therapeutic.
It is.
And we always listen to preaching, teaching, or some good music.
It's spiritually therapeutic for us, honestly.
Because that's the time that we really spend more time in His Word.
Not that we don't every day, but we really increase our time when we get to rest.
So who do we have to thank today?
Well, not a lot today because we didn't do our show last week, and so it gets really
quiet.
But I do have to say that one Mr. Adam, the Podfather Curry at 77,777 sats.
That's a striper boost.
And he says, my word for 2024, because we've been talking about my one word.
What is your one word?
He says, my word will be encourage.
I just said that.
And he says, another excellent episode.
Adam is already like an over the top.
He's one of the most encouraging people I know.
One of the most positive people I've ever met.
For real.
Yes.
And so that'll be a great word for him.
This may be the first year he's ever done that.
So for those of you listening, Annette and I, years ago, we used to do, I used to try
to do resolutions.
Remember that?
And I'd go, here's top 10.
You never did that?
I did.
I brought them down.
Oh yeah.
No, I did.
But then I'd forget them the day after.
I would lose them.
I forgot where I stuck them.
I stuck them in a Bible somewhere or a book and I can't find them.
Never looked at them again.
I know.
I was like, ah, I can't remember.
I can't remember again, but I don't remember.
So then we stumbled on, it's been years ago, this thing called My One Word.
And I thought, oh, what a great idea.
Instead of having 10 resolutions that I'll forget in two weeks or less, or I'll misplace,
pick one word that is a theme.
It's thematic for the year.
And so I've had several.
I'm revisiting, I'm revisiting a word right now.
And the word is engage.
Which we've had in the past.
Back when we were in Tennessee.
But it's a good word.
Back when we lived in Nashville.
Yes, it's a good word.
It was actually the word that I gave for the year that we came here.
It was a, I'm ready to engage.
Was that really?
I'm ready.
That year.
I was stepping into a new place.
I love that.
So that was 2016.
So we're revisiting that one.
And usually we embrace the same word just because it's easy for us to encourage each
other.
Well, I used to have a separate one and then it got confusing.
And we decided, which you came up with engage.
So I'm just going along with it.
Are you cool with that?
You like it?
Yep.
I figure it fits where we're at right now is we're praying for revival.
We're believing for it.
We're being more engaging with people by asking them what they're thankful for every day,
everywhere I go.
So do what?
He has youth in a minute.
So we need to get, I'm looking at the time.
Oh, 425.
That's why I'm like, yeah, we need to wrap it up a minute.
Okay.
Yeah.
I've got student ministry about to fire up on the other side of the wall.
We don't want them to interrupt our podcast.
What's time to land the plane?
Listen, we love you guys.
And we want to say thank you for being patient with us as we get the studio built.
It's getting there.
I'll take some pictures in two weeks when we come back.
It should be done.
It'll be done.
Oh, totally.
Actually.
Yeah.
Before then, but we wanted to have a small one just right before we get going.
So, Hey, we love you guys.
And Hey, Merry Christmas.
Can you believe it's here?
Go watch some Hallmark movies or something.
You guys have a great week.
Merry Christmas.
We'll talk to you the next time.
Bye bye.