We're so excited to be with you today.
It is episode number...
68.
You guys...
I had to think about it a minute.
Good morning.
Bright and early this morning.
It is early.
We never do that.
We've got our morning voices on.
I know.
I'm about an octave low, I think.
I'm on my second cup of coffee.
I was hoping to get it done before we started our show,
but that's okay, because I'm still asleep.
So if there's dead air or a gap,
it's because you're taking a sip of coffee.
I've got the same thing.
I got me a fresh cup of black raffle coffee.
I know, it's good.
But you know what?
We love Patriot Brew too.
We do love Patriot Brew.
And we just got some in the mail today from Rick Green.
I am super stoked for the mug that he sent.
The Tavern Mug.
It was for me.
It was addressed to me.
I know, but it's because you sent the donation.
Okay, but let me just say this.
I sent a donation,
because we're doing a monthly to Rick Green
and the Patriot Academy.
Yeah.
But we sent...
We're doing a lot from our church.
We didn't get it for our church.
So you need to say,
hey, I need that mug for our church donations
that we're giving.
Because I got it from my little donation from us,
but not from the big donation.
Well, speaking of Rick Green and the Patriot Academy,
we hosted them last week at our church at the bridge.
He's phenomenal.
And they were amazing.
I say they,
because the evening was a thing called comedy
and constitution.
Who would have ever thought putting comedy together
with history?
And Brad Stein is a genius.
He is, he is.
I've never heard anybody that could do
what he did with that.
I mean, it was amazing.
I didn't know what to expect,
because I've never been to one.
And now I'm like, oh, well, we have to do this every year.
And it is their fundraiser to raise money
for Patriot Academy,
which is a great cause.
Great organization.
People that are Patriots should get on board with them.
But man, the laughter.
I loved, this is what I loved about it.
Being in church and laughing our heads off.
Oh my gosh.
And there was one or two that were offended,
which I was kind of like, what?
We shouldn't laugh like this in church.
Well, that's a problem.
Really?
That's a problem.
We should be laughing.
No offense.
You may not be in the right place.
I know, exactly.
I loved it.
And most of the feedback,
99.9% of the feedback was amazing.
Good.
It was so good.
So Rick Green and Brad Stein,
they do this thing called Comedy and Constitution.
And then Reagan Green and Cameron Green,
Cameron being the younger sister,
Reagan being the middle brother.
They're amazing songwriters and singers.
They are uber talented.
I said they already auditioned for our worship team.
So they made it.
So they need to start showing up on Thursday night.
They are amazing.
So it was a fantastic event.
If you've never heard of it, check out Patriot Academy.
You can go patriotacademy.com, I believe.
And that's looking it up on our computer to confirm.
But check these guys out.
Rick has a fantastic podcast called The Tavern.
He's bringing guys like Eric Metaxas.
And Jimmy Pruitt.
Oh, and the guy named Jimmy Pruitt.
Pastor Jimmy.
You got to be on it last week.
I was on it last week.
So I'll put the link on our newsletter
that I'm gonna send out today.
Before this will go out.
So yeah, check it out.
We love supporting people that are godly,
that have a love for their country.
And they're standing up for righteousness
and standing up for truth.
So we're always gonna support.
For biblical truth.
That's just what I love about them.
Is they talk about the founding fathers
and how everything that they instigated
that they wrote in the Bill of Rights,
the constitution, all was biblical.
It came from biblical knowledge that they had of the Bible.
And oh my gosh, it is powerful.
I'm having to relearn this.
Because you learn things as a child.
These days they don't even learn this at all.
It's called revisionist history.
But when I was a child, I remember a lot of this.
But then our nation has dumbed us down so much
that we forget all of this, right?
And so to be able to hear this all again
and it just builds your faith
to believe that America is great
and we need to make it great again.
I think there's somebody that's running for president
that says that.
I've heard that somewhere.
Yeah, I have too.
And we definitely need it to be great again.
We do.
But I think what Rick Green and Tim and David Barton
with wall builders are doing and Eric Metaxas.
These guys are, they're putting their life on the line.
They really are.
And we get to walk with them.
And I love that Rick and Kara and his kids
are in our church.
And we're learning so much just being
in their sphere of influence.
And it's mind blowing to me.
A large part of this piece that we're talking about,
I'm just gonna reframe the words you used.
It's having a biblical worldview.
In other words, you see the world
through the lens of scripture, the lens of the Bible.
And what that does, it changes the way you see the world.
It changes your perspective.
It's like getting a different angle,
a different vantage point and seeing something
that you didn't see before.
And so when you see through the eyes
and the lens of scripture, suddenly everything comes alive
and you see purpose in it and you see meaning in it.
Instead of living a meaningless, purposeless life
which so many people are not even living.
They're just surviving.
They're just hanging on until whatever's next.
And man, when you have Jesus, when you have the word of God
and when you are so grounded in the Bible
and so grounded in scripture,
it affects and impacts everything.
You're walking away.
You left me.
Just kidding.
Oh, okay, I don't blame you.
So anyway, that whole idea of being able to,
it's not going to, I wear glasses.
You wear contacts.
You've got glasses, but you like your contacts.
But it's, see, when you put those lenses on,
it changes your view.
Everything comes into focus, they're supposed to, right?
Everything comes into greater focus.
And that's what having a biblical worldview has.
And so when you get around guys like Rick Green, Brad Stein,
the whole Green family, Paul Blair,
who's a pastor in Oklahoma, who's a patriot.
I mean, the list goes on.
Barrett Metaxas, Pastor Alan Jackson, Pastor Jack Hibbs.
You get around these kind of people,
Kaylee McEnany and others,
they have a biblical worldview.
So the way they see the world is shaded by
and impacted by the word of God.
And that's how we should live our lives.
We're seeing it through the lens of the Bible.
It's so amazing that,
I don't even know how all this came about
that we got to be involved in all.
It's kind of a fluke almost.
You just...
Well, remember what I say,
you don't generate a wave, you catch the wave.
And these waves are coming by and we just jumped on them.
And all of a sudden we find ourselves
in these amazing events like going to Turning Point USA.
We went to that young women's conference
and we went as guests of some donors in our church
of Turning Point and we got to sit with Riley Gaines,
we talked with her.
We got to hear Charlie Kirk, Candace Owen,
Laura Trump, Megan Kelly.
It was phenomenal.
Alex Clark.
It was wild.
I mean, and they were all phenomenal speakers
and presenters talking about where our country has gone
and how we've gone off the rails
and how do we bring this thing back?
How do we bring it back to the word of God?
Because we know, we know historically
and with documentation, we always say we have the receipts.
We know this nation was founded
on godly principles on the scripture.
It was the most influential document and source
and document source that was used
to actually build out the Declaration of Independence,
which then became the constitution, the Bill of Rights.
Of course, Mayflower Compact was before any of those.
So all of those were founded and grounded
on the word of God and they were framed
and informed by pastors and churches.
But somehow we've lost our way.
I don't know that we've lost our way.
I think we ran away.
Oh, there you go.
Because it's not like you're just wandering around
and suddenly you look up and you're lost.
When you're in rebellion, you're intentionally running away.
Did you ever run away as a kid?
I did.
You have a story on that.
You have a real-
I don't know if I wanna share.
I was 14.
14 and you ran away to Mexico.
I did.
Wow, with your boyfriend.
Did he even have a license to drive?
He did.
Wow.
He was what, 16?
He was 16.
And you were 14 and you were gonna run away.
I was just shy of my 15th birthday.
Wow, was there any thought given
to how are you gonna take care of yourselves?
No, literally.
When you're young, you're dumb
and we just thought we could run away.
I mean, he was literally helped a lot.
Okay, let me say this.
I thought he was helping me get away
from a bad situation at home.
And that he was gonna be my, he was my non-shining armor.
But you know, you're in school.
Hello, I was in junior high.
He's in high school.
I mean, I don't even know what we were thinking.
I think we were, well, at that time we were thinking
we were gonna run away, we were gonna go get married
and then come back and live happily ever after.
You know what I was thinking about at 14?
What? Lunch.
Yes.
I mean, literally.
Macaroni and cheese and chicken fingers or something.
Campbell's soup or a Tony's pizza.
Yeah, but you didn't have the life I did.
That's true, I did not.
You didn't live in constant fear and horror.
No, that's true.
He was trying to save me.
Yeah.
But it backfired.
Wow. It backfired.
So how long were y'all gone?
Five days.
And didn't you like end up in the mountains somewhere
or freezing?
I mean, y'all got stuck.
We got stuck in...
Wow, that could have ended really bad.
Yeah, Cloudcroft area.
Oh, y'all were in New Mexico.
New Mexico.
I thought you went to Old Mexico.
Well, we did.
We ended up going to El Paso and then going into Juarez,
which is scary.
That is really scary.
It's like going to Columbia.
Couple of teenagers in a car.
But we got stuck in the snow
and really could have died.
We didn't have food or water.
And our car got stuck.
We were, I don't even know.
There was no cars, nothing around us.
It was a snowstorm that happened.
Well, not to mention nefarious characters,
bad actors that could have been there.
It could have been bad.
He ended up having to get out of the car
and put on as much clothing as he could
and walk to where he could find,
where he could get help to get a tow.
Wow.
To get us out.
And he was gone a long hours and hours and hours.
He said he had to walk about 20 miles.
I don't know.
Oh my gosh.
It was awful.
I mean, I don't know really if it-
Were you praying at that point?
Were you like calling out to God?
I was hungered down in the front of the car
because I was so cold.
It was freezing.
The car was kind of like a station wagon type car.
Yeah, old school.
I'll never forget it
because I got so sick.
Wow.
By the time we ended up in El Paso
and stayed at a hotel,
I was so sick that we literally found a Gideon Bible.
I know, here's two rebellious teenagers.
Running away.
And there was a Gideon Bible and we got it out
and was like, God, please, we need help.
And finally he said, call your parents.
And I did.
And my mom had the sheriff out.
There was an APB out on me.
I mean, this was in the seventies.
I mean, I've had a crazy life.
And luckily, my mom said, please just come home.
Come home.
Came home, but I was sick for weeks.
It was really bad.
Ear infections, all kinds of sinus infections,
just because we were stuck for so long.
Did you feel like God was punishing you?
I don't even know what I thought.
I don't know what people think that way.
They think, oh, I messed up,
so I must be getting judged and punished.
I probably did at the time.
I just know my parents, my dad specifically was,
I mean, he was already an angry man.
And then boy, what I did,
it's a miracle he didn't get the belt
and beat me to death.
But he didn't.
He, they were pretty gracious.
They just said we couldn't see each other for a while.
That made it really hard.
I ended up pregnant, getting pregnant.
And-
Is that when you got pregnant?
I was, well, within, right when we got back,
actually when they let us see each other again.
Because I was so fearful of my dad.
And-
I know that was your escape.
I was like, okay, this didn't work.
This will work.
You know, you've told the story, not this part of it.
You've told the part about getting pregnant at 15,
getting pregnant at 15,
to get away from an abusive home and get out of-
I got pregnant on my 15th birthday.
And get out of a very abusive situation.
And it wasn't because you had these fantasies
about a perfect marriage or any,
you just wanted out of that house.
And that was-
I did.
But I literally-
That was what you saw.
I thought I would have that with him
because he ran away with me.
He stayed with me.
But within a couple of months of my pregnancy,
he ran away for good.
What's remarkable, Annette, is how many women,
when you've shared this story,
whether it's online or whether you've shared it
at a conference or a women's gathering or whatever,
you've shared this many times,
there is always inevitably more than one usually
that comes up and says, that's my story too.
That was my story.
And it just tells you how just the brokenness.
I don't like to use the word depravity
because it's not always malicious.
Sometimes it's just pure brokenness.
Hurt, wounding, trauma, injury
that leads us down these paths.
You know, we started off talking about,
you know, our country running away,
but it led into this.
I think this is what the Lord wants somebody to hear.
Wow, because we weren't planning on even talking about this.
We didn't even talk about what we were gonna talk about.
But I was thinking about, as you were sharing,
I thought the reason we're going down this path
is because we're trying to listen to the Holy Spirit
guide us in a conversation
because our heart is to help people live up in a down world
that no matter what you've been through,
no matter what the pain, the trauma you carry
or have carried, hopefully being healed
and in the process of being healed,
that you don't have to live in that, the big R word.
You don't have to live with regret the rest of your life
and remorse, you can actually rise out of that.
Well, and for me, you know,
one bad decision led to another bad decision,
but I wouldn't give up my children that I've had
for anything.
Because I wouldn't have the three children I have
if I didn't have that one.
And isn't it beautiful how God can redeem things?
How can turn things?
Well, and this is what happened.
This is what was so cool.
You know, two to three months into my pregnancy,
my boyfriend really got scared
and he literally ran away from home
and didn't come back for a while.
And his parents were very, they blamed me for it.
His mother called me all kinds of names, his stepmom.
And it was very hard on me,
but I didn't have anybody but my mother.
My mother was a Christian at that time,
had just become a Christian within a couple of years.
My dad totally abandoned me.
He rejected me.
He didn't want anything to do with me.
He was in the house, wouldn't talk to me.
And I was kind of glad honestly, because he was so-
You got a semblance of peace.
I kind of got a semblance of peace
and he didn't touch me or anything, which was great.
But the thing is, is because I went to school,
I finished school, junior high,
and then the whole time I'm pregnant,
I finished three years in my nine months.
Because I was homeschooled.
I was determined to get through school.
School was so important to me
because I wanted to be a school teacher,
which I was later on.
But I devoted my life to the Lord.
That's when I really-
That's when the turn came.
The turn, I had already, you know,
had become a Christian at the age of 10,
but then rebellion and things changed.
But when I was pregnant with Alicia,
other than school, I read my Bible every day.
I did devotions.
I went to church.
I went to women's meetings.
I was a young woman, 15, 16,
but I was going to these because I didn't have anything.
I lost, I literally had nothing
because I'd lost my boyfriend.
I didn't have a father.
I didn't have anybody but Father God.
And that was a huge turning point in my life.
And I will never forget that.
And I don't regret it, what I did,
even though what I did was wrong and God forgave me,
but he redeemed me.
It's beautiful.
And it's like us,
we started watching The Chosen again last week.
Oh my gosh, we're nerdy now.
We've been watching season four right now,
but we went back to season one.
And when we watched him,
Jesus saying to Mary,
I've called you by name.
You are mine.
All of that that happened to me as a child,
because I was a child at 15, 16,
and at 10 when I first was introduced to Jesus,
that man, it was like everybody who's ever accepted Christ
needs to watch that episode
and put themselves in that place.
Because even though I wasn't Mary,
I didn't have seven demons in me and I didn't have,
well, I probably did.
Five or six.
I may have had five or six.
But everybody who's been there who have been lost,
but then was found.
Oh my gosh, we have all been called by name
and are redeemed.
What's funny, because it's a female, right?
It's Mary Magdala, but I'm a dude, I'm a guy,
and I'm watching it and I'm like guffawing.
You know what I mean?
Yes.
That's a weird name for a heaving cross.
It's a cry.
I mean, you're just like hard to contain.
Never heard you say that before.
It's because I have a very cultured literary background.
Being from West Texas.
Oh, yeah, right.
So anyway, it was this just deep cry, guttural cry,
but then I'm hearing you on the other side of the room,
because I was sitting across and you are like losing it.
I don't know that I've ever in 31 years of marriage,
I've ever heard you cry like that.
And I did.
It landed hard.
I did print several of their episodes.
Right, right.
The third one on the fourth season,
and then when we went back and watched the first one,
I did it again.
This was another level though.
It is.
I watched you and you kept saying,
I don't know what's happening to me.
And I'm like, you're like the Grinch growing your
three sizes.
That's what it felt like.
And then all of a sudden you can't contain it.
I thought it was cleansing and it was beautiful to watch.
I'm not gonna lie.
I was like, wow.
Seriously, I mean, it was beautiful
because I was watching the Lord do a deep work in you.
That's the thing.
If we as Christians could remember where we were
and where we were when God cleansed us,
when he redeemed us,
I think we would all have that heaving cry again.
I needed that.
I needed to be reminded because I know
I am not the same person.
Of course I'm a lot older, but I mean inside,
I am not the same person.
God is truly, he is number one in my life.
He is everything.
You're number two or you're a close number one.
I mean, really, you are,
but he's right above because that's where
he's supposed to be.
I wanna be number two.
But the thing is,
I can't imagine with the way I grew up,
where I would have been if Christ hadn't intervened.
And he was there all along.
It was all up to me to open up and say,
I need you.
I can't do this without you.
And sometimes it takes us getting to the very bottom,
the very bottom of our life before we can see
we've gotta go to the top to get healed.
You know, pain points, God uses pain points.
Right now we have a nation.
Revival is literally breaking out
all over the world right now.
It's like all these brush fires
starting all over the world.
60,000 in Amsterdam, in Holland,
25,000 in Paris.
I mean, Italy, Hungary, filling up stadiums,
worshiping and hearing the gospel.
School campuses, I mean college campuses
all this last year, all over the United States.
12,500 people being baptized in Southern California.
I mean, it is happening everywhere, but why?
It's because the world's in pain right now.
It's like, you know, where sin abounds,
the Bible says that grace abounds all the more.
And what's happening is people are in pain right now.
Whether it's inflation, whether they can't pay their bills,
whether they can't even afford
to fill their cars up anymore.
It's impacting their lives in a deep way.
And it's causing us, this is what's so hard sometimes
to take and understand is that we grow the most
in the seasons of the most adversity.
And there are people listening right now going,
well, then I should be huge.
I should be a giant right now
because I've had a lot of adversity.
But only though, but only if we rightly relate to it,
if we rightly respond to adversity.
Because you have two choices, right?
You've heard me say this, B and B.
You can get better or you can get bitter.
And I've known a lot of bitter people through the years,
even Christians who are bitter
and disappointed and disillusioned.
But also I've known people that are better.
I was thinking about Dr. Kiltz.
I was listening to him do his 5 a.m. podcast.
I was not up at five, actually I was, but I was in bed.
But I listened to the replay this morning.
He's just high on life.
69 years old, on fire, loves God.
He's a carnivore, of course.
So I love listening to talk about, and he's a doctor.
And he is like all about faith, all about positivity,
all about living up in a down world.
He is living up in a down world.
So I listened to him this morning while you were getting ready.
I had a few minutes, I was putting him on.
I just laughed the whole time, but why?
Because I'm watching somebody who has taken adversity.
And they've allowed God to take it.
Oh, everybody has.
He's 68, 69 years of age, of course he has.
If you have a heartbeat and a pulse,
you've had adversity of some kind.
But I love what you're saying.
I thought about the scripture.
It's actually a song, but it's a scripture.
You've turned my morning into gladness, into dancing.
Yeah, I know what song you're talking about.
Yeah, and I love that because that's exactly what God does.
It's like beauty for ashes.
We present these ashes and God just creates beauty out of it.
I love that.
In fact, in September here at the bridge,
I'm going to be sharing my testimony
with our church women and anybody else who's here.
I haven't done that here in eight years.
Eight years?
And we have a lot of new people.
But I should name it Beauty for Ashes
because that's really my story.
Beauty for Ashes or Ashes for Beauty?
No, Beauty for Ashes.
I'm looking at you right now just smitten, totally smitten.
Because the testimony, because we think,
okay, well, one thing happened to us,
so it's all going to be good from there.
No, I've had multiple things, but my anchor was God.
And so that anchor, when you have an anchor of hope,
you can get through anything.
And I mean anything.
And that, you have to have a strong foundation.
I remember us talking about when you first plant a tree,
and we're talking a really small tree
that's just going to take years to grow.
And a wind comes and it's just going to blow it down.
But as that tree, the foundation of that tree,
the root gets deeper and deeper into the ground
and it begins to grow, when the winds come,
it's not going to falter.
I mean, it is going to, it may be swayed back and forth,
but that is our life.
The deeper our roots go down into the foundation,
the stronger we are to get through the adversity of life.
And so I've had to endure many, many, many wind storms
in my life, but because I've had a solid foundation,
I've been able to get through that.
And that is what we need our listener.
That's why it's so important to get in a Bible believing
church, to listen to Bible believing pastors,
to be around Bible believing and living people around you,
so that you can handle the adversities of life.
You have to have people that will hold your arms up,
like Erin and her held Moses's arms up,
because he could not do it on his own.
And you have to have people like that into your life,
in your life, so that you can handle the adversities
that are going to come, because they're going to come.
He said, tribulation will come, period.
Those who desire to live godly in Christ Jesus
will be persecuted.
That means there's going to be difficult times.
The rain falls, the scripture says the rain falls
on the just and the unjust.
It hits everybody equally.
In other words, the rain comes, the storms come,
everything comes in life, and it comes to us all equally.
The difference is in how we respond.
Exactly.
And when you're a follower of Jesus,
you've got to hope that supersedes.
It goes beyond this stuff down here.
We're doing a series right now in church called
Beyond the Red and Blue,
because people are getting so caught up
in this election year.
There's so much more beyond the red and blue.
There's so much more beyond the chaos that's happening
and that we're living in.
And so, I love what you said there.
That's so critical.
You even reminded me of there's some high profile pastors
right now that are getting called out
for things that happened years ago.
And that's not an excuse for misbehavior,
but from what I understand in the two that we know about,
they had already repented of all,
they've already walked through things on that
and now it's getting dredged back up to attack them
because they're high profile.
And you know what, these are guys,
I actually have more confidence listening to somebody
who's been through some stuff.
And has made poor choices.
Made bad choices, they made the mistakes
and given the same scenarios, we probably would have too,
but they have been redeemed.
And now they're preaching, teaching and leading
out of that place of brokenness.
We call them broken healers.
Oftentimes the best healers are those who've been sick
with something.
The real legislatures, I'm not talking about
some of the bad ones, are the ones who are there
because of a crisis that happened in their life
and they wanna change the laws around those things.
So sometimes it's your scars that actually qualify you
to speak into the pain of life.
But it's wild what's going on right now.
So we've been praying for their families
and holding them up.
And their churches, their elders.
And not judging them.
No, because-
Again, decades, just three decades ago this stuff happened.
And yet even then they addressed it.
But all of a sudden it's getting dredged back up
by the media and people are jumping on board
and everybody wants to gang up on somebody
who appears to be successful and doing well.
Everybody wants to bring them down
to the old crab and the bucket syndrome.
And if we don't believe people can be redeemed,
then why are we even Christians?
There's no hope.
Then there's no hope for anybody.
Any of us.
No hope, because I made mistakes when I was young.
No way.
I knew God and yet I ran away to Mexico.
So am I disqualified?
Exactly, I get it.
I got pregnant, am I misqualified?
All of us have made mistakes.
We, I was actually in the middle of the night.
I was up at three o'clock this morning
because we attended a great,
wonderful Moms for Liberty event last night
where I got to speak.
And there was two other guys that spoke.
And it was a wonderful time
and just great connection with people
who have a heart for what's going on in our schools
and whatnot.
And I was just thinking about, you know,
it's our brokenness and our vulnerability
that we minister out of.
Now we minister from the place of healing and growth,
but I'm listening to people who've been there, done that,
who've got some, I always say, treadwear on their tires.
I mean, they've been hurt, they've been damaged,
but they've come out of it.
And now they've learned how to live up in a down world.
Well, we have to go back to the Bible.
David horribly messed up with Bathsheba,
had her, had her husband, and had her husband killed.
Yeah, that's just the beginning.
But we're like, oh, but that's okay.
Yeah, but someone who had indiscretion,
no matter what it was years ago,
and they can't, they shouldn't be preaching right now.
Why?
If they've gone through the restoration process,
there is a process.
You should be able to preach again.
If you've not had any other indiscretion since then.
Yeah, yeah.
I mean, other than-
It's called redemption.
Yeah, exactly.
And God is in the business of redeeming our brokenness.
And we have to, that,
and I know we have a heart for the,
for people that have been-
Oh, oh, no doubt.
No doubt for the people that have been hurt.
Hurt by people that have done this.
Of course.
But why is it coming up all these years later?
Yeah, three decades later.
These guys were in their early 20s.
I mean, they were kids.
And I'm telling you, I didn't know anything
till I was at least 38 and 40 years old.
It started, life started to come together and go,
oh, oh, okay, now I'm starting to see things.
I mean, and I'm not downing anybody's in their 20s and 30s.
I'm just saying, I can see how those things can happen.
And I'd hate to be that your legacy is known
by the worst mistake you ever made.
Can we put that on anybody?
Or are we gonna have hope for people?
And look at Paul.
And for the best of them.
Let's look at Paul.
That was Old Testament.
Let's go to New Testament.
Paul was ordering Christians to be killed.
And then God qualified him to preach the gospel.
He even said, I'm the chief of sinners.
I'm the worst.
But then you got Peter, your foot and mouth Peter,
I mean, who continued to open his mouth
at all the wrong times,
abandoned Jesus in his darkest hour,
in his crucifixion,
and then had to be restored by Jesus.
And then he became one of the greatest apostles.
I mean, you have to see that sometimes what is dark
and our lowest points when we rightly respond.
And what I'm saying is we're responding
to the mercy of God.
We're responding to the grace that's found in him.
It doesn't excuse the behavior.
No, we have natural and logical consequences.
We have to bear the burden of what we've done and regret,
but we hand it over to Jesus and we say, you know what?
I made mistakes.
I made the bad choices and I'm gonna own that.
And that's another piece that's so critical
is to own what you've done.
And that is one of the things I think that
I see such a big difference in people.
Have you ever been around people
who never apologize for anything?
They never own it.
Because they won't own it.
You know what I do with them.
And they blame everybody else.
And you know what I do with people like that?
I put them in the can't trust category.
Which means I'll never bear my soul to them.
They may be friends or acquaintances,
but from a distance.
And it's the people that own their life.
They own both the good things.
Cause you need to own the good things too.
This is what God's done.
Let me tell you about it.
But you gotta own your mistakes as well.
And when I'm around people who own things,
first of all, they're the most joyful people.
They're the most free people
because they know they've been set free.
People who won't apologize,
people who won't own their mistakes,
never get the freedom.
They never walk in joy.
They're always under it because they won't let it go.
They won't give it over.
And I found that when I confess my faults,
the scripture says,
confess your faults one to another that you may be healed.
When you live that way, there's freedom.
There's freedom in that.
And that's our heart, isn't it, for people?
It is, it is.
Wow, thank you for sharing that.
Well, that's why I have been able to share
my many stories that I've had over my lifetime
because I have owned it,
but also I've given it over to the Lord
and I have not allowed bitterness to take root
to where I can't function as a Christian.
I'm a Christian who's an overcomer,
but only because of the blood of Jesus Christ.
That's right.
You're not just a survivor, you're a thriver.
And that's what we wanna see.
That's what living up in a down world's all about,
is thriving in the midst of our brokenness
or in the midst of our past and saying,
I'm not gonna be labeled or defined by my worst mistakes
because that's not, I love the fact you said earlier,
that's not who I am anymore.
It's not me anymore.
It's not.
I don't even know that person.
And for those that are joining us, I'd say the same thing.
You are not who you were five, 10, 15 years ago.
You're not that person anymore.
You've grown, you've learned.
But maybe now just by you sharing your story today,
maybe it'll help others just own it and say,
I really do need to own it,
but also need to realize God is good.
And he's pulling me up out of that pit.
I don't have to live there.
I don't live back there.
I learned from back there, I don't live back there.
Does that make sense?
Absolutely.
Awesome.
We've got some people to thank by the way.
And we've had so much going on.
We did the Moms for Liberty event last night,
which the Moms for Liberty group here in Fredericksburg,
where we live, they're strong.
I mean, these ladies are.
They're mama bears.
This is a very, very tough town to get through.
This is a difficult time.
People think, oh, you live in small town America,
but you gotta realize we live in a very wealthy county.
And there's a lot of progressive thinkers here
that in the progresses can be very dangerous.
I mean, there's some darkness.
We have school books, we have library books
in both our, not all three of our elementary,
middle school and high school filled with porn.
I mean, up to, and we can't seem to get them off the shelf,
but I think there's a movement growing right now.
I think that's gonna happen, but it's a fight.
I mean, it is frontline stuff.
And these Moms for Liberty are carrying the mantle on that.
And so I was honored to get to pray last night
for our school board, for our schools,
but also get to share my heart and a little bit of my story
of how I had my awakening.
And then we had some, Pastor Mike Bell,
another pastor here in town who I just love
and adore him and his wife.
He shared a little bit about his own journey.
And then of course, Pastor Vega from Houston.
And he brought it hard.
I mean, he was the main speaker
and he's been going to school boards all over Texas,
school board meetings.
And reading and like reading passages
and these school boards try to shut him down.
He goes, so you won't listen to this,
but you want your kids to read it?
You know, what kind of hypocrite are you?
I mean, he's strong.
I mean, he is one of those challenging kind of guys,
but he's very inspiring and encouraging.
So we did that.
Of course, we had a big weekend last week
with Patriots and all that.
That was amazing.
So a lot of good things happening.
And by the way, we got a little travel coming up.
Yes.
And our good friends, now Adam and Tina.
Adam is actually in Holland right now.
I know, he's in Amsterdam.
Yeah, no, he's not Amsterdam.
I thought he was in Amsterdam.
I thought he was, well, he went into Amsterdam.
I think they did their meetup there,
but he's actually in, where Christina lives.
Starts with an R.
Oh.
Rotterdam.
Rotterdam, that's what it is.
Yeah, so he's in Rotterdam with her, seeing his daughter,
but he also did a meetup for No Agenda,
encouraging the keeper there while he's there
and been in touch with him every day.
And he's staying in the book, he's on fire.
He's getting to meet a lot of cool people.
And then Tina is here taking care of Phoebe,
her large toddler.
Her large.
She's a very large baby.
Yeah, her monster dog, but she's here doing that.
She was at the event last night too,
so it was good to see her.
But she did say she's lonely, she misses her husband.
I told her, I said, because y'all just got remarried.
Yeah, yeah.
The renewal.
I said, y'all are still on your honeymoon.
The foul renewal, yeah.
It's funny, but yeah.
So anyway, just, hey, give Kareem the keeper a listen.
These guys are fantastic podcasters and just great people,
great human beings, and they are great brothers
and sisters in Christ.
So give them a listen.
And then also, Adam's man, I love No Agenda
because it's just media deconstruction and saying,
hey, here's what's behind all of that.
And I love that he and John DeVorek take all that apart.
So be sure and give them a listen.
Listen, we got some thanks to give out.
I'm gonna pull it up right quick.
And I just wanna start with Mr. Adam Curry
with a big striper boost.
And he wrote this, he said, KYBO culture shapers.
Thank you, Adam, I appreciate that.
We are that.
Thank you for putting out another episode
during what was a busy week.
I'll be listening on my way to Amsterdam with that,
which that already happened.
And Father Dorff, I love the Dorffle family.
These are amazing folks.
He says this, my wife Cheryl and I love
what you guys are doing.
TJ the raffle is our oldest of 10 children, one girl,
10 children and they have one girl, poor thing.
It could be a good thing or a bad thing.
But I think it's a good thing.
It's a great family.
Jesus is always meeting M-E-E-T-I-N-G.
We need to have a little carnivore corner in a minute.
Meet underscores our real purpose to meet.
So M-E-A-T underscores our real purpose to M-E-E-T.
Why not something like meet, pray, love?
They're funny.
So we had made a comment that we may change this
living up and down.
We're not gonna do that and go that direction,
but we're gonna have a carnivore corner every time
because we gotta talk about carnivore.
It's who we are.
Let me finish the thanks and we'll do that for a minute.
Is that okay?
So he gave us sats as well.
And then cheese burglar, I love it.
Remember the cheese burglar?
Says I found living up thanks to Kareem the keeper
plus no agenda.
Started with episode one late January.
There always seems to be some part of your message
that was relevant in my life.
Always a positive effect.
My late mother used to say,
pray for the strength to get you through all that is life
and the rest will take care of itself.
Now understand, thanks for everything.
Many blessings to you both.
Calvin, Calvin, cheese burglar.
I love it.
Thank you.
Thanks for the sats and just for the note.
We really appreciate you reaching out
and letting us know you're listening.
And we wanna encourage you on your journey
as you continue on.
And then we have my thrill, the learned.
Love the handle here.
It's been a while and it's wonderful
but you two have seen big opportunities
from our Lord Jesus Christ.
Love that you visited my town of Murfreesboro.
So he's from Tennessee.
I however go to Franklin Road Baptist Church
an independent Baptist ministry with huge missionary outreach
with a traditional warm Andy Griffith like
West Virginia small town feel.
Yeah, that would be Murfreesboro.
Maybe all would one day have a connection with us.
Lord willing.
By the way, are you familiar with Ray Comfort?
Yeah, we remember who Ray Comfort is.
Hey, my thrill to learn.
It's so good to hear from you brother blessings to you.
And we have one more from Sir Brian with an I
is from a couple of weeks ago.
Before streaming bridge on Sunday,
I went to an in-person 830 service at a local church.
Way to go, Sir Brian.
The sermon was about sharing your stories
and connecting with others.
After the service, I met the pastor and said,
my friend, Pastor Jimmy always says connection is protection.
He goes, I love that.
And I'm stealing it starting next week.
Hey brother, you can have it.
We pastors share our material.
So yeah, it's public domain.
Take it please and run with it.
And he says, so I wanted to let you know
that you're trending.
Hope to see you all again soon.
KYBO, hey, appreciate you my brother.
Appreciate who you are and appreciate what God
is doing in your life.
Let's do a carnivore corner real quick.
All right, real quick.
I'm wearing a shirt.
What does it say?
Healing humanity, the power of a proper human die.
I'm gonna put a picture of this shirt on the newsletter.
Okay, there you go.
Yeah, so what is that all about?
It's about the movie that we were just filmed in.
But it's about carnivore and about healing our bodies
through nutrition and carnivore, keto-vore, keto,
those three things, which is a huge part of our life,
which we can't do this podcast without bringing up health
because our health has changed drastically in the last year
because we started the carnivore diet a year ago.
Me, I'm a little bit more keto-vore.
I'll add some things, but it's literally changed our life.
People are coming up to us at church.
And last night at the mom's event.
And at the mom's event, who've heard that we were on it
through various platforms and it's changed their life.
We talked to someone recently who had Crohn's disease.
No, the great houses.
Oh, the great house.
Had Crohn's disease, someone in the family
and been on it a year, totally healed.
And so I love that.
She said she's on the road to healing.
On the road to healing.
And I love that.
She's never had any breakthroughs with that disease
until carnivore.
And so anyway, if you're interested in carnivore diet,
man, somebody you should listen to is Dr. Robert Kiltz.
You can just look him up on YouTube.
It's K-I-L-T-Z.
Or you can listen to Dr. Ken Berry, another great one.
Dr. Anthony Chafee, a new friend of ours, Carrie Mann.
We love Carrie Mann.
And Adam Lacey is another.
These guys aren't doctors, but they are on the journey.
They've had so many of their own, from depression
to brain fog to physical ailments, cured, healed.
And they're continuing on that road
and that journey of recovery.
And by the way, we're on day 349 today.
That is 11.6 months.
So our carniversaries coming up.
It sure is.
Our one year carniversary.
What I love about it is, you know, we feel so good.
And our heart is for people that are listening
to get their health in check.
That's right.
There are foods that are bad for us
that are causing all kinds of illnesses in our bodies.
Inflammation. Inflammation.
We lack energy.
We lack muscle tone.
We lack the ability to get through life.
And our immune system is so depleted.
Because of bad nutrition.
And so we made a choice
and we're not saying everybody has to do this,
but everybody should look at what's good for them.
And the research we've done over the last year
has caused us to go towards this.
And I believe everybody should start.
I mean, we need the energy to get through this world today.
Absolutely.
And because it can cause major depression.
This is what I love about the carnivore for us
and for others that we've been around,
that have been huge influences in our life,
is that the depression has gone away from those people.
I haven't had severe depression,
but nutrition can have a huge impact on your life
to where you can literally walk
in total peace and joy and not live in that depression.
Because of, and not have to take meds.
That's the whole point is we don't wanna have to take meds.
So we've changed nutrition to give us,
to embody our life with peace and joy.
You mix God and good nutrition
and you've got a really good life.
That's a one-two punch, isn't it?
Yes, and you can get through the adversities of life
when you're eating healthy.
When you're studying health and that's what we're doing.
I wanna have a question for you.
How has doing carnivore changing your way of eating,
how has that impacted your confidence?
Just your overall well-being and confidence.
That was kind of what I was leading up to
because when you feel good
and people tell you you look better
because you're brighter, you might be thinner.
Not everybody gets super thin on it,
but most people do.
Well, you told me I look amazing today.
So I just gotta say that out loud.
I'm just like, thank you, baby girl.
We need to get a hotel room right now, just kidding.
I'm just saying.
Wow, no editing here.
But the thing is, it does give you the confidence
when you feel good.
When you don't feel good,
you have no confidence in anything, not even God,
because you're just like,
you're so down and depleted from confidence.
And when you begin to feel good,
even if you, what's crazy is some people don't know
how bad they feel till they feel good.
That's it, yeah.
And that was kind of where you were at before.
And when you started to feel good,
you're like, wow, I didn't even,
it's kind of like the sabbatical.
We didn't know how tired we were till we took the sabbatical
and we're like, ah.
It's changed our life for that reason.
And so the confidence comes in.
I'm sorry I interrupted.
No, it's okay.
Something that's happened to me is that
when I go to grocery stores,
especially in the grocery store,
our basket looks weird.
It's got a bunch of eggs.
It's got a little bit of cheese.
It's got heavy cream and lots of meat and bacon.
Lots of bacon.
That's our jet fuel.
And so that's basically it,
other than household products you're cleaning with
or whatever, but it's mostly that when we go to the store.
And I look around and I'm not judging.
This isn't a judging thing.
It's an observation thing.
Cause I never noticed this before,
but I notice now what people are putting in their baskets.
And of course, knowing what we know now about food
and about the, what's called the sad,
this standard American diet and the pyramid,
the food pyramid is horrible.
It is like, it is a death trap.
And people are, I mean, it's taking people out.
More cancer is on the rise.
I mean, everything is on the rise right now,
all due to damaged mitochondria.
And that's what inflammation does.
And it leads to cancer.
And so you don't have to be overweight to have cancer.
It's just damaged mitochondria.
So anyway, all that's happening.
So what I notice is how when people are heavily inflamed
and they lean over their baskets
and they literally are leaning on their shopping cart
as they're going to the store,
grabbing Rice Krispie treats off the shelves
and Captain Crunch and just all this terrible food.
And we're beating our children.
I feel bad for what I've done to my children in the past.
I know we've had this conversation.
If I had children again, which God forbid,
because I'm older.
But I would do things so differently.
I would probably not put them in public school for one.
That'd be one, yeah, big one.
But I would definitely watch what I'm giving them.
We wouldn't give them a phone screen either.
We just didn't know what we know now.
And the more we've studied, the more we've learned.
And the more we've, you know, we just,
now do we have a treat every now and then?
Absolutely.
But we're probably 99% carnivore or Ketovor.
Typically my treat is more Ketovor.
It's more like I'm gonna have some fruit or something.
Or sometimes I'll have some mashed potatoes,
a little bit of mashed potatoes just to give me that.
I put so much butter and heavy cream.
There's more of that than there is potato.
But that's on occasion.
But I just, I can tell my body when I can do that
and when I can't.
And most of the time, because things are,
I mean, a lot of people don't realize
if they would get on it for 30 days,
then they could see what they could add back to
that it's gonna be okay for them.
And some people do that.
I'm not real tolerant towards gluten and things like that.
You can't.
It makes you sick.
I don't play with it.
So I'm more carnivore.
Where I can play with it a little bit.
But I also recognize,
for the long run, I have to stay carnivore.
I can play with it every now and then.
You really don't have the luxury of that.
I don't even do that.
You can't.
Because I feel so good.
Why would I wanna put something in my body
that's gonna make me sick?
And you have IBS or had, excuse me, IBS.
And so when you do something, you're sick.
It'll flare up.
With me, I don't have to.
So you have to do what your body tells you to do.
And so we're encouraging you, get your health in check.
Do a 90 day experiment.
Experiment.
What's 90 days of your life if it changes your life?
This is one of the things that,
I'm gonna say this before we,
and let's end with this.
But a few years ago, there was someone in our church
and she told me about the Whole30 program.
And she said that she was gonna start it.
And it's basically an elimination diet.
You don't have sugar.
You don't have any carbs.
You just eat certain things for 30 days.
And you kinda reset your body.
And I remember watching her get more confidence.
She lost weight.
She felt better.
But the problem with that kinda diet
is then when you start,
and you're really trying to see what it is
that's causing the inflammation.
But then most people end up adding everything back in
and they're worse off than they were before.
I think Whole30 is good if you can sustain it forever.
And maybe add back just one or two things that you,
but what happens is people get to see it as a diet.
Where the carnivore's not a diet,
it's a way of eating.
That's the difference.
That's what I was about to say.
So I appreciate you saying that.
If you don't fix what's causing you to eat bad,
if it's comfort food or it's become an addiction,
like sugar especially and starches and carbs,
if you don't fix that, you won't stay on it.
You will stay on any diet.
And so when we jumped in carnivore,
we'd already been doing keto off and on for five years.
We understood what it took.
We understood the value,
but we wanted to take it up another notch.
And I think our first conversation was,
we'll do it for what, 30 days?
Yeah, during our sabbatical or 60 days?
And I was kind of objecting to it
because I'm thinking-
You were having a harder time with it.
I can't just eat meat and eggs and butter.
There is no way.
But when I did it-
What do I snack on now?
You catch me all the time.
This is what I, you catch me in the kitchen all the time.
Butter.
You eat butter like it's one out of style.
I'll take a knife and just take a big old chunk of butter.
But I also have to say,
and let's, you know, we've had our labs,
I've had my labs run.
And my doctor says, I am perfectly fine.
My labs are really good.
And I do, I have my labs run every four to six months,
just to make sure-
Marcy, your doctor's saying,
whatever you're doing, keep doing it.
And she knows you're doing carnivore,
she knows I'm doing it, she's for it,
which I love, not every doctor is.
And that's the sad thing is they don't know nutrition.
Right.
But anyway, I think it's something that we need to,
we need to look at our health
and we need to think about how can we do,
live this life and live for God in the long run.
There you go.
And that's, you gotta get your health in check.
So speaking of keeping your health in check,
we're about to do a sabbatical reboot.
Yes.
So last year during our sabbatical,
in consultation with our Sabbath coach,
our sabbatical coach, he said,
next year from now on,
you should take a month off every summer and do a reboot
and revisit this, so you stay fresh.
And what I found, so we're about to do that in July.
And what I've found is that when I know respite is coming,
when I know a rest is in sight, I can run hard.
So I found that we are running hard right up to July.
And then it's like, okay, time to rest.
Time to rest.
I think that sabbatical last year
is the best thing we ever did.
So we got some travel, we're coming up,
we're gonna go to Colorado,
looking forward to being in the mountains
because coffee always tastes better
even in the summer in the mountains.
So I'm excited about that because I do love my coffee.
And then we're gonna go out to Naples, Florida.
Yes.
And just get some beach time.
So we get the mountains and the beach.
Mountains and beach, so yeah.
I don't know which I'm more excited about.
I'm excited about just-
But we're going to two places we've never been.
So I'm excited about getting away with you.
I told you this morning.
You did.
I like, I like, I love travel.
That's all.
I love everything about it.
Even going through TSA, especially now we're TSA pre.
I don't mind it anymore.
But just being with you and driving out of town,
going to the airport.
Which we're together every day at work.
But there's something about getting away.
Yeah, something about driving off the field.
This is what I love about,
I love because I get you all to myself.
When we're at church or we're at home,
we're, you're divided.
Attention is divided.
We're public figures.
I mean, that's what we do as pastors.
And so I get you all to myself.
That works both ways, babe.
And that makes me very happy.
That makes me happy too.
31 years of wow.
I love you, 31 years of wow.
Well, let's land the plane on this show.
It's so good to talk to everybody.
And thank you for joining us today.
We want to encourage you.
You can indeed live up in a damn world.
What's the final word, baby?
Yes.
Get your health and check.
We need it to survive in this world.
Amen.
God bless you.
We're out.
We love you.
varios