big move of God that's ever been recorded there. So it's pretty amazing. You know, house
churches work everywhere in China, India, Indonesia, US, anywhere there's houses and
people. So it's fun. Yeah, so growing up over in Indonesia, I had a really fun childhood
surfing, playing soccer, flying kites. I was the only white boy in my whole neighborhood
where I was with Indian or Indonesian. Really great fun life until about junior high, when
my mom started getting sick. And so we went to some doctors in Singapore, we said you
should go to America. We went to some doctors in North Carolina for seven months. Then they
said you should go to San Jose, go to San Jose for seven months. And my parents sat me
and my sisters down on the couch. It was a really sad day for me, because my mom was
just amazing lady, loves the Lord. And they just said, Hey, you know, the doctor says
she has a type of Parkinson's disease, she may only live another five or 10 years. I'm
about 12 years old at the time. And just devastated. My parents said we're not going to go back
to Indonesia, we're going to stay in the US. And I really felt like an astronaut who just
went to the moon and the spaceship just broke and I'm stuck. I don't want to live in this
country. I want to go back to Indonesia. It's kind of just a family, friends surfing. I
was like, my whole world just fell apart in one day. Thankfully, I was already saved.
August 14 1996, I asked to three of my sons be my king. And my parents had already taught
me how to read the Bible and pray. So when I was 12, and I was just I was devastated,
I was sad. I actually felt so much sadness, I felt like a physical pain in my stomach.
And but thankfully, my parents have taught me how to pray with the Bible. So I just go
into my room for hours and hours on end, and just read songs, read Proverbs, pray, and
then the pain actually go away from my stomach. And I feel like a piece of God, and I just
go back to zero. And I was like, I'm gonna do this all the time. So. So yeah, God really
got a hold of my heart from a young age, junior high, high school, I was already pretty radical.
By the time I got to high school, I would bring my Bible with me. It was a big black
Bible, but I bring it with me under my arm everywhere I went to school. I was a big pop
of school, near Pismo Beach, Colorado Grande High School, probably like 3000 students.
I was the only one that would bring my Bible outside of my backpack and walk around with
it. And I put on my desk, you know, boom, every day, public statement of faith, this
is what I am, this is what I do, I read the Bible, I'm a believer in Jesus, try to share
with anybody at school, listen to me. I was a, I remember I was a sophomore. And my friend
Aaron Lunsford was a senior, he saved me from this, this fight in the locker room one day
when I was getting pinned up against the locker by this big football player, he saved me and
he's like my best friend. So then I went to go save him. He saved me physically, so I
saved him spiritually. So I just shared the gospel with him. Jesus died for our sins,
so we could go to heaven and not pay for our sins. And I asked him if he wanted to pray,
pray that prayer and accept Jesus. And he said, let me think about it. He went home
that night, we had lunch the next day at school, and he says, hey man, I went and prayed that
prayer asking Jesus to forgive my sins, to be my king. So he got saved, and I was a sophomore,
he was a senior, he was awesome. And yeah, since that, really since a young age, I was
very driven, I was very on fire for God. And it's not even something I could have planned
for myself because with my mom passing, I just knew, oh my gosh, life and death is real.
I don't know if I'm going to live to be 30, 40, 50. My mom passed when she was about
50, 60, and I was 21. And so life and death became so real to me where it's like, I want
to live for God every day, whether it's sports, academics, my work, I want to go all out in
everything I do. And so I was already doing that in high school. So one example of this
is like, I got cut from my soccer team sophomore year, and I'm a pretty good soccer player,
grew up my whole lifetime in Indonesia. And I was like, there must be something wrong,
probably because I had, I was poor, I grew up in a poor family, I don't mind. Most of
that your weaknesses, right? Yep. Grew up in a poor family, had shoes that were too
small blisters on my feet, I wasn't playing the best soccer because of that. And I got
cut and I was so sad, devastated. I thought, you know, I'm not a quitter, I'm gonna go
back to your year and get on the team. So I joined cross country just to get a straight
for soccer. Had old knockoff shoes, they weren't even Reeboks, they were like knockoff and
Reebok. Old shoes full of holes. And I started winning first place in these JD races. My
first year racing against 70 other boys and all these other high schools, first place,
I'll win next race, first place, next place, first place. And my coach would ask me, why
do you run so hard? Because I would push for the toss, I would push ourselves all the way
to almost you faint. And then you just cross the finish line, right before you faint pretty
much. And they're like, why do you run so hard? And I said, well, I believe in Jesus
and just doing my best, everything I do. And you're like, looked at me like, what? Yeah.
You know, but I said, okay, just keep doing it. So they brought me up to varsity my first
year. We go to competitions in San Diego and Mount Sack and all these different places.
And I was on the varsity team. We made it to the Pac seven championship and we beat
every other school in the region my first year ever. And I was on that varsity team
that won the race. And the reason I share that story, one, as a believer, I think we
get to bring other people into victory with us. Two, when you really follow God and you
believe life and death is real, there is a heaven, there's a hell. I was living all out
for God since high school and anybody can do that. And that's why I'm sharing this with
you. It says the testimony in Revelation, it says the testimony of Jesus is the spirit
of prophecy. So it's saying God do it again. I pray that more people will live fully for
you since junior high, fully for high school. So I just invite you guys, it's never too
young to start living for the Lord. Let, you know, go for him in junior high, high school
and lead other people to him as well.
Wow. So you have always been one of the most positive people that I know since I met you,
one of the most joyful people that I know since I met you. There is something about
joy that's rooted in grief, you know, and I've talked with you enough to know that life's
not been easy. You lost your mom really young and you were very, very close. And that really
can go a few different ways in life, you know, depending on how you react to that. What I
saw from you and what I heard from your story is you took the faith your mom had, you know,
and you doubled down. You were like, no, I'm going to draw closer to God. We all have our
questions about life, myself included, you know, the whys, we all have our whys. Why did
this happen? Well, the reality is you don't get answers most of the time. You can find
comfort in the promises though that you get from God based on the whys that pop up in
your life. Well, why did this happen? Why didn't this go my way? Why did life not calculate
and happen the way that I had planned it to? And in those moments we can get these promises,
you know, from God that instead of driving us farther away from him can actually drive
us more to him. And I've seen you do that. Can you talk a little bit about that? Because
I think that's a hard thing for people to understand. You know, can you chat and talk
a little bit about that? Yeah. So the way I look at it is pain and suffering is actually
an invitation to go deep with God. I don't chase after it. You know, we don't try to
walk into terrible situations. But when we are in a trial, because it says, you know,
trials just come, you know, I look at it, it's like an invitation. Hey, do you want
to go deep with God today? Because here's a shortcut. Here's something that's going
to take you really deep. And so whenever I'm feeling that pain or that sadness or even,
I mean, even over the, you know, pandemic when everything shut down, I lost all my jobs,
all the churches were shut. Honestly, I made quite a few mistakes over that period of my
life. It was that I was sad, I was lonely, all the churches were closed. I actually got
an argument with pastors about, hey, you should open the church, we're all struggling here.
And then I started hosting house church in my apartment in downtown LA. 14 people packed
in there and my actors weeping and crying and saying, if you weren't hosting church
right now, when everybody I could get fined, I could have gotten fined from the government,
I could have gotten shut down. And God just told me just host church. And my friends would
be weeping saying like, if you weren't hosting church, and if I didn't have this encouragement,
I might have taken my life over COVID. So you know, it's like, that's why it says in
Hebrews chapter 10, verse 24, 25, don't stop meeting together. Don't stop meeting together
is the habit of some and meet together all the more as you see the day approaching. So
anyway, through the pandemic, a lot of hard things happened. I lost, you know, all my
acting jobs, everything was just shut. You know, sometimes you have to go through the
door of humility to go forward. And I started driving for I think it was like postman, such
a name, you know, going from making decent amount having like lobster for lunch, and
steak and chicken to making very small wage, and sweating, and working hard, and just thinking
what is what am I doing with my life? You know, this is horrible. And even then it was
an opportunity, it was an indication to go deep. So I would drive around LA, and I'll
listen to a podcast, I'd listen to a sermon. And that and I'm still frustrated by afternoon.
So what I do, I turn another podcast, another sermon on boom, boom, boom, driving around,
I'm still not feeling I'm still kind of frustrated by my work situation. It's the evening time,
okay, to the third sermon on boom. So now listen to three sermons a day driving around,
you know, and that's how I look at it, your pain, your suffering, whatever you're going
through is an invitation to go connect with God, whether it's through listening to a sermon
or podcasts, reading the Bible, playing worship, you know, God, God wants to connect with us
on real levels. And emotions are not a bad thing. It's just learning how to use that
emotion to connect with God. Like even I was just on the East Coast, actually doing a little
house church and other stuff in North Carolina. And I had one day where I was feeling kind
of lonely, I was feeling kind of sad, because I was like, kind of radical, and just wanting
more people to be radical about their faith, I was just feeling kind of sad. And I couldn't
just let it out on my family, I couldn't let it out on somebody. But I just zip my mouth
shut, went outside, grabbed my guitar, I wrote a whole new song on the guitar about, you
know, I'd rather be an outcast than comfortable in my sin. I'd rather join the Baptist than
and purity deep within. And I wrote this whole song. And my sadness was actually an invitation
to pull me in deeper to God through writing a song through playing worship on guitar.
So whatever you're going through, you know, let that be an invitation, whether you go
read Lamentations and Proverbs or Psalms, David writes a lot of sad Psalms, you know,
God wants to connect with us where we're at. So that's my encouragement to you. Let your
pain be an invitation to connect with God deeper.
Okay, you touched on another thing about the pandemic, there are a lot of reactions to,
you know, how are we going to gather together as believers at that time? I didn't feel that
too much because at that point in my life, we had already been meeting, we it was me
and Adam Watson, Bobby Ramsey, I mean, there were three of us, we started a church in a
jujitsu studio here in San Clemente. So we were I was already fine with three people
in the church. But you know, if if you didn't have three people in your church, you're pretty
bummed, you know, because people had expectations about things. But I was already used to there
being a few people and I had already gotten accustomed to just really looking forward
to it. I've seen a lot of beautiful things happen in smaller settings in the last the
last big season of my life. It's been beautiful. And I heard from friends of mine that are
in different religious contexts where the environments are bigger, they've had a very
hard time with that. For obvious reasons, it didn't fit their model. You know, well,
you know, you don't have to follow God very long to find out that God is outside of models,
you know, and he's always doing something new. The last part of my life, I've seen God
do amazing things, putting people telling telling people who don't even know that they're
a leader to open up their home and have people over for food and to worship and Bible study
and people come into the Lord. People leading things and starting things that don't fit
in conventional boxes. This is it's been very, very exciting. Right. And yeah, you have any
thoughts on that just about how God uses people who don't feel like they're they should be
a leading thing? Yeah, exactly. For the American audience, I think the house church is such
a new model. Because for hundreds of years in America, we've had church building, everybody
goes there. There's nothing really wrong with that, you know, as long as you're preaching
the Bible. But there's this quote, you know, it says, you know, in times of change, learners
inherit the earth while the learned find themselves beautifully prepared for a world that no longer
exists. Bingo. And it's just going to keep learning, you know, obviously, stay true to
the book, stay true to the Bible, but you can change your style of meaning for worship
and understanding how it is. I was recently in the church service and it was a big building
and there's about 20 people in this huge building. And I'm like, wow, there's probably seats for
like 300 people. There's probably 15 to 20 people in this building. And just thinking
about it, nothing wrong with it. I'm just thinking this is interesting. No. And and
then I did a I did a house church meeting literally just on the beach, no resources,
no money, no life. Just in May, I texted everyone two days before 25 people came from, you know,
San Luis Obispo, Santa Barbara, Malibu, Orange County, LA, San Clemente, Oceanside. And I
had more people there than in this huge church building. So I just want to challenge anyone
in America who might not be aware or familiar with the house church model. You know, sometimes
it's more effective and we bless every big church. We bless what they're doing. We love
what they're doing. But it's it's just good to realize that, you know, in a lot of countries
like Thailand, you know, India, China, Indonesia, some of the largest, those are the three largest
countries by population with America as well in the mix of the top four. Three out of this top
four, Indonesia, China and India, their main way of meeting for church is house churches.
Hundreds of thousands of people spread across in different house churches. So it's just it's good
to, you know, I just encourage you open up your mind, open up your heart, even just pray, ask
out like what what could I do for my community or how could I bless people? You know, we're not
fighting against anyone. We love every church that needs and preaches the Bible, whether they're
big or small. But it's really cool to see what God is doing in the house churches right now. And
like, for example, when the whole shutdown happened in 2020, it was just a really effective way to
reach people. Like I said, all the churches in L.A. shut down, you know, every single one. I was
trying to go to church and fellowship with anybody because I was lonely and depressed. And I was like,
and God said, well, why don't you know, okay, he would say like you could get paid for snitching
on someone. You could get fined for hosting a meeting. And I just said, you know what, I just
got to risk it. I lived in the very middle of downtown L.A. in a small little apartment
for one person. Packed it out there. You know, we're having this this one worship and prayer
night, this little house church, 14 of my friends, and then black, white, Latino, Asian, all types of
people. All my friends packed it like shoulder to shoulder as close as you can get in this house
where you're supposed to be playing six feet apart, whatever. We're shoulder to shoulder in this little
room, stacks of pizza stacking up on the table. I'm about to play guitar, start leading worship.
And my friend thinks my public manager is one of my friends because I have friends of all ages.
He's like, hey, why don't you come in? And I'm like, oh no. Our meeting's gonna get shut down.
I'm gonna get fined. He's gonna get paid. This is terrible. He's not a believer. You know, 50 year
old guy who walks around in black clothes and a long white beard. I'm just like, oh man,
this meeting's gonna get shut down before he was targeted. But you know, I'm a little tricky.
I might be related to Jacob in the Bible. Who knows? You know, I'm thinking, what can I do right now?
OK, I remember my guy, he likes food. So I'm gonna, you know what? I'm gonna offer him some pizza,
see if I can distract him. So I'm like, hey man, you want some pizza? And he's like, sure, I would
love some pizza. He loves to eat. So I was just chopping the pizza, chopping a second piece probably
by this time. I'm trying to get him out the door because we're trying to start the meeting. Hey man,
you want to go make your nightly rounds? He's the night manager. Or do you want to stick around and
hang out? Or do you want to go make your nightly rounds? I'm trying to politely say like, do you
want to leave now? You know, we're trying to start this meeting. And he said, oh yeah, I love guitar
music. I would love to stay. And I was like, oh no. Inside and just like, oh, let's see what happens.
No, you know, I have no idea what's going to happen. But I outside and just completely poker face.
OK, sure, great. Dope, you know. So I just started to do worship and we all just started worshiping
God. The whole room of us just started singing and worshiping and praising and he just stays there
standing. We have no room. Everyone's sitting on my bed, on benches, on chairs. The whole room is
packed. There's no place for him to sit. So he's standing up there eating a slice of pizza and he
just keeps standing and eating pizza. And I'm listening to him. He loves guitar and Led Zeppelin,
all these artists. And he just is listening to guitar and he's loving it. We go through the whole
worship, the whole little church service in my house. He stays for the whole time. He's the last
one a week. He's talking to everybody. He's getting blessed. We're praying for him. We just have this
amazing time. He doesn't shut us down. He doesn't find us. He's just so stoked to hang out with
people who are loving him and feeding him and being a friend. You know, so. Yeah, sometimes I mean,
that whole shutdown, the house which is really a great model to reach people. Like I said before,
people came up to me, my acting friends would come up to me and say, you know, if you weren't
hosting meetings, I might have been so depressed. I would have taken my life. So weeping and just
saying thank you so much for hosting these meetings. Yeah, and I really feel like God is using
it, but maybe not for the reasons that people might think. I live in San Clemente. You live in
Malibu. When you invite people, when you invite 20 to 30 friends to the beach or 20 to 30 friends
to the coffee shop or to a bar or to a park, and we've pretty much seen these little small churches
pop up pretty much everywhere at this point. And I've always wondered, you know, why are they so
effective? And I think one of the things is where we live in California, nobody really trusts
each other, you know, and there's a there and because there's an authenticity problem. And the
average man in America doesn't trust one other man. And we live in a culture where the average
man doesn't trust even one other man. For the most part, people don't trust each other. And
authenticity really is at the center of that. You know, people are just people are starving for a
friend, a real friend, someone that they trust. And in these smaller environments, when you're just
doing stuff that you love, you know, a lot of a lot of times people try to have an
an attractional ministry. I'm not in that camp. I try to have an attractional life,
you know, and putting all of my effort into just being the Bible talks about being salt
and being light. And you're you have an interesting gift mix. You if you do a Venn diagram,
you can draw circles. And then you and then where the circles overlap, there are areas of commonality,
you have a bunch, you've got like surfing, which you're really good at, you've got music,
you've got acting, you've traveled a bunch. And you love Jesus in the center of it. And so
what I've seen in your life, you had you had it on your heart to be in Malibu, God really put that
on your heart to be there. You live there now. You live there now you have work there now.
God's you are doing house church there, doing ministry all over the place out of
Malibu. And it's been incredible to watch to see how you've
really held on to that dream that God gave you about where you were going to be,
where you were supposed to live. And that's been awesome to watch. But can you just share for
what do you think about this idea of trust, you know, and how people don't trust each other.
But when you invite friends to just stuff that you're doing, like hanging out at the beach,
that's almost like way more effective than anything you could ever do to just show God's love to people.
Totally, I think, you know, trust, authenticity, good relationships, you know, at the end of the
day, everybody wants to be loved. Everybody wants to be understood for who they are,
and to be loved for who they are. And it's hard when you're like wearing a mask, or you're not
authentic, or you don't have these relationships, when you don't have trust. And where I work,
you know, in LA and Hollywood, there's the least trust ever. Everybody's trying to
shoulder up off of you, or get your money, get your connections, get whatever they can from you.
And what does trust look like in that environment? And I've had to learn, you know,
I have a lot of friends, you know, who are, you know, successful singers, or producers, actors,
or people. And sometimes I get shocked when they offer me something really big, like, hey,
I could put you on this TV show right now, and get you on this big world tour, like I'm doing with
my daughter. Do you want me to do that for you? And I say, well, maybe if God is on it, but if
God's not on it, I don't really want it. But yeah, maybe if God is on it. But in my heart,
he said, please God. And I think LA and Hollywood is longing for people
to love them as a real friend, or anywhere in California. But I mean,
this is like almost the hardest place. Hollywood, you know, I think, you know,
Hollywood. Yeah. And I think, I guess for me, I just talking about my life, like, I'm so grateful
for friends like Ryan, brothers, Ryan, dumb, or Chad, Edmund,
Dana McGregor, awesome guys, you know, honestly, I can just be myself with we talked about our
trials, we hang out over coffee. It's interesting how there's actually a correlation between
confessing and being healed. Even says in the Bible confess your sins to one another,
pray for one another, and you'll be healed. It's not just talking about physical healing,
but spiritual healing, mental healing, emotional healing. It's really good to have people
that you can trust. And maybe it's like, I don't have any friends, I don't have anyone I can trust.
Well, why doesn't it start? How about we start with you? Are you trustworthy? Are you being a
good friend to somebody else? Like, I won't say their name, but this very famous singer from Europe,
who I made friends with on the set, I gave him a prophetic word, just an encouraging word from God.
And then we became friends, you know, very, very famous person, knowing the followers. And I just
want to be a friend to them. I just want to be your friend. So I gave him free surf lessons at the
beach. We just hang out, free surf lessons. Just go hang out and be friends, you know. You're black,
I'm white, teaching you how to surf, we're having a blast, you're having a blast. I'm just here to
be your friend. And people can tell when you're just being authentic, genuine friend to them. And
now we've been friends for years. He called me up the other day to thank me for whatever I'm praying
for or doing something for a friend. Like, inviting her, I invite her to the house church,
and things that we do in Malibu, she gets blessed, you know. And it's like,
I mean, first, we have to get right with God, you know, just go read the Bible, pray, get yourself
right with God, get in community, get in church, get in house church. And if you see people who
have good friendships, try to start hanging out with them, learning from them, learn from Ryan,
what does he do? You know, it says, even Paul says, imitate me as I imitate Christ. Hang out
with people like Ryan or other people that you see who have great friendships, who have tried,
who have trust, ask them, pick their mind, pick their brain, hang out with them, look at how to
interact with their friends. Because right now I can say I have incredible, loyal, solid friends
in my life. I try to focus on a key few. I have a lot of text messages on my phone. But I focus on
the key few who I build with Pastor Ryan, Chad Deadman, Dana McGregor. You know, I could name
a few others. Good guys. You know, good guys. We build together, we love each other. And I'm so
grateful for these amazing loyal friends. I always say, even just talk to Ryan more about that,
you know, if you need to learn more about that, it's the best thing in life. There's the best
thing in life. God keeps telling you more and more life. What is the treasure of life? The treasure
of life is people. People. 100%. Friends. It's a treasure of life. Yeah, I have always just tried
to be that, be a loyal friend, try to look out for my friends, try to take care of my friends.
Doesn't mean I have agreed with all other decisions. But I still try to be loyal to
my friends and my family. And it's interesting too. I've been to your house church many, many times.
One time I rode 100 miles on my bicycle. And then I told you I was coming. And then I showed up
and I was there and you saw me in my gear. And you're like, dude, you rode your bike from San
Clemente to come to my house church? I was like, yeah, bro. And you're like, there is no excuse
for anyone in LA to not come to church. You rode 100 miles to come to my church. And, you know,
we laughed about that. But yeah, just trying to support the people that are close to you in your
life. And not just trying to do things for people because it's the right thing to do. I've been to
your church and I laughed because I was like, yeah, there's 20 or 30 people here or whatever.
And then this has got to be the most influential small church that I've ever seen, ever, that I've
ever been to. And I laugh because that's your, I really think you're calling, you know, I think
there are not everyone can handle that. I know a lot of people, there's a difference between what
you want and then what you can handle. And I mean, I've lived here my entire life. So I've seen some
things. I haven't seen everything, but I've seen some things and most people can't handle that.
You do really well because you have a lot of humility. And I don't know where that comes from
all the time. I think there's some people that just, they have, I think people do well when they
have more humility than they do influence. And you have that quality. I want to encourage you with
that. And I think that's why God's put you in Malibu and why you've been so fruitful there.
And I want to admonish you in that you've set a great example for so many people in that.
That's a very unique gift mix, you know, and I always pray for you that you'll just keep,
you're a good dude, just keep having more favor and keep doing what you're doing. You're making,
Jesus said, he said, all authority in heaven and on earth has been given to me.
Jesus has the authority, he says, so go and make disciples.
You baptize them, the name of the father and the son, teach them to obey everything I've commanded
you and surely I'm with you always to the very end of the age. So when we make a disciple,
we're simply trying to teach somebody else the things that we have learned about God.
And what are your thoughts on, you know, just like disciple making and how much you, I know you've
led a lot of people to the Lord up there and touched a lot of lives, dude. What are some of
your, your thoughts? You're very honoring. You always tell me, oh yeah, I learned from,
well, I learned a lot from you. So just talk to me about, about that.
Man, disciple making. I guess you know a lot of different stories. It's, it's, uh,
it's, uh, it's fun when God just puts somebody in your life, you know? Um,
I'm thinking of a couple of different stories, one from college, one from
valid, but I guess we'll talk about valid, since we're there. Yeah, talk about that. But, uh, so
my friend, he's already like posted publicly about this. So it's awesome. It's already out there
publicly. But, um, my friend Israel Dufres, um, he's a, he's a great guy, loves God, loves people,
professional boxer. He beat every other boxer in South America. He's from Panama. He's not in the
U.S. and he still boxes internationally and professionally. Um, and, um, I met him, we were
both soccer players on this one TV show and I met him and we've just been friends for years. We made
a song together in Spanish and English, um, 2020 Vision, check it out on Spotify. But anyway, um,
we've been friends for years and after the whole shutdown and reopen, um,
I was, I was just thinking, I need to reach out to Israel and invite him to one of my house
retreatings and all of it, I think. I think he would want to come and say, hey, Israel, do you
believe in God? He said, do you like surfing? So, okay, okay. I get it. You want to come,
you want to come worship and pray. We're just going to do a little music, a little prayer,
have a little food. Yeah. And I mean, let me just tell you this as a side note, when you have God's
agenda and I have God's agenda in Malibu, I'm not there for really anything else. Ryan knows how
hard it was to communicate. Yep. That's a whole nother story. But I'm just trying to, my joy and
delight is seeing other people taste how good God is, taste and see how good God is. It says,
taste and see that God is good. And so I just doing these house churches that people would get
as on fire about God is me because that, that brings me joy. So I'm like, Hey man, you want to
come worship and pray with us. He comes, he brings his French girlfriend, Audrey, who's amazing.
He worships and prays with us with a favor. You know, I'm just seeking God's will. And now
I'm living in this huge mansion in Malibu for free, bigger than some church buildings I've seen
for free. That to me, that to me, that to me has always been the funny part. Cause the,
you couldn't, I mean, you literally couldn't come up with enough money to try to,
you know, show that community of 13,000 people that live there. Plus the students at Pepperdine.
I know that's the attendance is the city has more than that when the, when the students are there,
but you couldn't come up with a big enough amount of money to, to impress. And it turns out God
hasn't needed any money. Just people who love him and are willing to step out and, and
change people's lives and see their lives changed. So it's wild. So we're meeting this beautiful
man on this hill and Israel comes up to me afterwards. He's like, Hey man, I needed that,
that worship and that prayer, man. It really touched my heart. I needed that. I need this in my life.
So he starts coming every week, I think for like maybe five weeks.
And he's like, man, God's calling me, man. I gotta go all in for the Lord. I feel God's
steering my heart. Like I gotta just follow him all the way. So like, okay, sweet man. Like have you,
have you ever been baptized before? You know, because that's our proclamation of your inward
faith. And you said, Oh, well, not really as a baby, you know, Catholic when you're just a baby.
And I said, well, this is your like adult baptism. You're adult now. You can think for yourself,
like, this is you saying to the world, I'm gonna go to the church and I'm gonna go to the church
and to the world, I'm gonna follow Jesus. So it's like, yeah, yeah, I think they should do that.
And so we set up this time. We go down to the pier in Malibu first point, you know,
there's hundreds of people on the beach, non-believers, obviously, believers, non-believers,
hundreds of people on the beach. There's like 20 of our friends who are believers, you know,
black, white, Latino, all types of people, because that's our friend group, you know,
we're all in one big family. And we go down the beach. And people are looking at us like,
what is this white guy doing? Like, what's happening? Yeah, I was there. It was a trip.
Yeah, it was a seaweed going in the water is like, Israel is like brushing the seaweed off.
And you know, whenever you back to someone you want to make sure you want to make sure that
they're really safe, they understand the gospel. And so I said, you know, it's right to ask you
to forgive your sins. He's like, yes, I want to follow God the rest of my life. Okay, well,
if baptize you, you obviously are saved. You ask God for forgiveness of your sins. You're in heaven.
So let's just make it outward proclamation of your faith. So I get there, baptizing in Father, Son,
Holy Spirit, boom, smash them on the water, bringing them back up. Everybody's clapping,
cheering, Ryan's there. I think Ryan's there. You want them to take your photos.
You're taking photos. Yeah, because you had asked me, hey, do you want to baptize Israel? And I said,
no, you do that. You've earned a friend in his life and I'll take the pictures. But the picture
that I took, I said to him, and it ended up in the... Right. So this is what happens, right?
So Ryan's taking photos. We pray over him after you baptize someone. It's great to just pray over
them, fill them up with the Holy Spirit, pray and encourage them. They're just letting go and die
into all the old ways, coming back in a new life. So just fill them up, lay your hands on them,
pray for them to feel the Holy Spirit, pray for them to just encourage them, give them prophetic
words from God. And Ryan's taking photos. We send it to Israel. Israel is a public figure,
has 100,000 followers on Instagram. People follow this guy. People love this guy. He's a national
hero of Panama. He posted on his Instagram about the baptism. I didn't know about this, Ryan,
didn't know about this. We're just doing what we do. Israel is the one who wanted to make every
super public. So I'm like, okay, you know, I don't even post that much to be honest. Yeah.
Israel wanted to post it. I'm like, very sweet. He posts it on his Instagram, you know, thousands
of people are loving it and hundreds of people are commenting like, hey, I'm a Christian too. This is
encouraging my faith. And now Israel is discipling his people. Israel is discipling his 100,000
followers, you know, and it's just amazing. He texted me the next day, sends me this article
on this news website. He says, Hey man, it looks like you're famous now in Panama. I said, what do
you mean, man? Like I look at the article, I read Spanish and I read this whole article in Spanish
about, Hey, Israel Dufres, our hero box where, you know, just got baptized by this guy named Nico
and Malibu. So this news website pretty much got a hold of this photo that Ryan took and published
it in international news. And it's one of the biggest news websites in Latin America, all across
Panama and other places. So it's just amazing. Like Ryan was talking about earlier, if you're faithful
with the little things, God just blows it up. And you know, it's amazing watching Israel. And now we
just baptized Audrey the other day. I don't know how I heard about that. We baptized Audrey at another church in Malibu.
Amazing. You know, it's about teamwork and unity. And now they both got baptized. And it's like,
I love these guys. These are my friends. And these are amazing people that are, you know,
Audrey works for Netflix. Israel is an actor and a model and a boxer. These are influential people
in LA that we love. And God has put them in our lives to disciple. You know, people disciple me,
you know, Ryan disciples me, Chad disciples me, you know. We all need people to learn from. And this is
like some of my great friends who I've had the privilege of helping, you know, pray with and
baptize and just, discipleship is a long journey. It could be years and years and years, but it's a
beautiful journey of friendship. And when you're discipling somebody, you don't even have to say
that you're discipling them when you're hanging out with them. You know, you could know in your head,
I'm discipling this person. I'm the spiritual father of this person. But you don't have to
rub it into them. You could just say, hey, we're hanging out. We're getting coffee. We're reading
the Bible together. We're hanging out. You know, you didn't have to mention that. I don't think I've
ever said in my life that I was discipling someone. Does it? That feels weird to me. I don't. I, it's,
it's Jesus's command. Right. So we want to, that's what we're all about. What Jesus says and teaches.
But just my way that I relate, I just, I think of it as trying to be someone's friend and influencing
them into like God's mission for their life. Cause there's like what we want to do with our life,
which is unfruitful. It's just unfruitful. It's the right word. It's unfruitful. What we want to do
with our life is you can justify it, but it's unfruitful. When you, when you get into God's
mission for your life, the fruit happens and we want to, we want to have fruit that shows Christ.
Yes. Yes. I think of it as just trying to influence somebody, try to use a friendship,
be a good friend to someone and influence them to God's mission for their life. I,
I'm a teacher, public school system. I teach special education. There was a guy six weeks ago
who is one of the campus counselors on at school. And I went up to him and I said,
Hey man, you're, you're, you're a good dude. And he goes, he goes, no one ever tells me that.
And I said, well, why, but you are man. And he goes, cause I can see how he interacts with the,
with the kids and stuff. He goes, I don't feel that way. I'm just, I have to go back to school.
I'm 39 and I have to get this, this, this, I have to go back and I have to work on my degree. And
all my other friends are, are doing this stuff. And, and I, and I said, and I said to him,
Hey dude, what we do doesn't define us. You know, and it's like he needed to
to hear that. And then he told me, he goes, can you come by every day and tell me something good?
This is this guy that I work with. Hey, and you know, my personality, I've viewed that as,
okay, you know, like, I'm, yeah, I'm going to come by and just try to say something good,
you know, and influence him. And, and I invited him to our, to our guys church. He didn't come,
but I invited him and just trying to be his friend, just trying to be encouraging to people.
People are starving for someone to say something encouraging to them anywhere. The grocery store,
people don't even look in California. People don't even look each other in the eye at the store
everywhere you go. People are dying to have someone say something nice to them,
something encouraging to them. Let's talk for a second about this idea of prophecy and like,
what that means. You know, I, uh, one way that I look at it, I'll share one way. I'd like you
to share one way, but one way that I view prophecy is calling out in someone what you think God sees
them as. And sometimes, like if someone doesn't know what that is, they'll view it and experience
that experience it as this incredibly encouraging thing. When someone looks at you and like affirms
who, who you are and why you're here. Yeah. What do you, what do you, what do you, what's
somebody that you're not? I totally agree with that. Um, I totally agree with that. I think
prophecy is actually really simple. If you just think about it as hearing God's voice for another
person, because Ryan and I both are people of prayer. We love to pray. Um, and we believe when
we pray, we can actually, it's not just, it's a two way street. We, we talk to God, but then God
also talks to us. So if God can talk to me about myself, it's kind of silly to think that God can't
talk to me about Ryan and encouraging. Yeah. You know, so like just the other day I was at this
worship night in Anaheim and I was praying for this, uh, the daughter of this guy who, she was like a
six grade girl. I said, I just, I just feel like I see this vision of you dancing and I feel we're
praying for you to heal. And I just said, I feel like you're going to get fully healed and be able
to fully dance. And, um, this is actually a crazy story, but, uh, she said, you know what? Everything
sounds a little girl. I wanted to be a dancer. And you know, that's, it's a prophecy. It's, I'm just
saying here in God's heart over her life. And she's encouraged by that because only God could, I
couldn't have known that only God could have known that about her. So it's encouraging to her. It's
just another type of prayer, you know, just sharing with other people. And, um, that girl, actually
it was, it was wild because she had it like Achilles tendon that was too short on her left side.
She had two surgeries, wasn't able to, um, run since she was four years old. She's now sixth grade.
So we pray for her. I, I, I think you're going to be a dancer. She can't even run. She said, I always
wanted to be a dancer. So I started praying for her and, um, just put my hand on her ankle praying
for her. And, you know, it's just, it's amazing. Like God is God and I'm just a human, but God can
do anything. He says nothing is impossible to God. It's easy. It's easy for God, you know, and Jesus
healed people in the New Testament and it says, God is the same yesterday, today and forever.
So why wouldn't he heal people right now? So I prayed for her ankle. She starts walking around.
He says, I don't have any more pain when they walk. That's weird. Yeah, you used to have to walk on
my tiptoes. Now I don't have any more pain. So now I'm getting excited because God is presence is
touching and healing it. It's not me, it's God. So I put my, she said, now my knee is feeling where
God, I can tell God's healing her whole leg. So pray for her knee, her knee gets healed. And then I grab her
ankle and pray for her again, that she'd be able to fully run. I feel the Holy Spirit telling me,
ask her to run, test it out. So I say, Hey, um, now they prayed a second time for your ankle.
Do you want to go run and test it out? She's getting overwhelmed now. She's like, Oh my gosh,
God is doing so much. Like give me five minutes. She sits for five minutes. She gets up and she
starts running around this pool. And we took a video of it and her dad, her dad says the
chiropractor starts weeping and crying because he's tried two surgeries on his daughter and
nothing worked. And now he sees his daughter running around this pool. She hasn't been able
to run since four years old. And now she's running around. The dad's knee gets healed. We pray for
the dad's knee, he gets healed. And so then the dad and the daughter go for a hike together the
next day. And so just honestly, I look at it as like anything you see in the Bible, like the New
Testament, whether someone's sharing the gospel, discipling someone, praying for someone to get
healed. Jesus told us to do all those things. He said, go make disciples. He said, go cast out
demons. He said, go raise people from the dead, go heal people. And that's what we see all the
apostles do. And if God is saying yes, for day, today and forever, then he's still doing it. And
honestly, I've seen all of that happen. You know, it's like amazing. And one thing that Altari says
is Indonesian missionary is the more you just focus on sharing the simple gospel and just
learn about all the mission sharing the gospel, the more you'll see crazy things that God does,
the activist things that God does. But it's all about bringing God's gospel everywhere we go.
Yeah. So anyway, fun times. Yeah, it's, it's so when you think about,
uh, like the future and, and things that you pray about, I have, I'm a very, you know me really well.
I mean, I like my, my routine. I go to bed early. I get up early. I like to pray and read my Bible.
I like to get my waves. I go teach. When I'm at school, there's a couple of opportunities where
I can like return texts and emails and I'm on it. And then I come home and I hang with my family.
And I like to volunteer for ocean water stuff. So in the afternoons, I'm always like, Hey, Lord,
who do you want me to call today? Just try to talk with them, you know, and I'll call different
people. I had this little bench over here where I go sit and just ask God, who do you want me to
reach out to today? And I get on the phone and reach out to people. And, but this life, and I
think about the future and I think about, man, God, what, what can you do? And I have things that I
pray about that I don't share. Um, I just pray about them because I, cause I want them to be
personal and I want them to between, I want them to be between, you know, me and the Lord,
but I do pray for them all the time. And, um, I've seen God do a lot of that. And I think,
I want to talk about a little bit with you is like, do you do that too? Like, do you have
things that you, like, there are, there are people that I pray for. Um, and I've prayed for them for
years. One was, um, uh, a recent family member that I asked to, uh, just this person can't read.
So I got them on a one year Bible plan and they just play it like an audio Bible. And they just
play it like an audio Bible and they've been playing it at work for two years. And then just
last week, this family member of mine came up to me and said, I found, I found Jesus
and gave me the biggest hug and said, thank you for, um, putting these seeds in my life.
And so I have a lot of people that I pray for and a lot of circumstances and a lot of things that I
want the Lord to see, like in the world. Do you have a lot of that too? Oh, it does me. Um,
so, you know, I got my Bible, I got my journal. Um, and I love one thing I love about Ryan,
he's super consistent. He's super faithful. He's on it. He does really get up at what? 430?
Yeah, 345. Yeah. It's wild. And, um, I think one of the beautiful things about God is understanding
God as a person. Sometimes people are very disciplined and it's a gift. Sometimes people
are very spontaneous and it's a gift. Yeah. And it's a, it's a, it's a beauty to understand how
I do both. Yep. Now, sometimes I'm on a mission trip and I'm running around doing church services
and praying to people and all this stuff. Sometimes I'm at home and I have a routine of,
you know, I have, I literally have this list of all these different things. Um, I do.
There's spiritual growth right here. Boom. It's our list. So, and this is, it's spirituality,
reading your Bible, connecting with God. It's not about just doing the right thing, going to heaven.
We're saved by the grace of God, but reading your Bible and doing all these things strengthens your
faith. So why would you not do that? You know, it's like you're saved through the door by grace
and you're saved by grace, of course, always, but it's like, I want to think about how much can I
get of God? I want to get as much as I can. I want to read as much of the Bible and any other
great author I can. And so, you know, I have on my list, if I have time in the day, maybe,
maybe I'll have three hours. I don't share this very often, but I'm sharing this as a teaching
moment. Please. You know, sometimes I'll spend three or four hours just doing this, reading the
Bible and going through this list. I don't do this really every day. If I'm at home and I have time
and I'm doing this, it's just great. It refreshes my soul. I get back from a missions trip, I journal,
I read my Bible. So this is my list. I go read the Old Testament. I read the New Testament. I'm kind
of strange. So I read the Bible in Greek, in Spanish, in Indonesian. Um, I do listening prayer.
I listen to God. Prayer of intercession, praying for others. Prayer resolution, getting myself right
with God. Guitar worship, praying Matthew 7, asking God for things that I need. Tongues,
evangelism, discipleship, those things I have to do outdoors. Reading spiritual books by any other
good author. Podcast sermons, thankfulness prayer, taking communion, getting right with God.
So that's just a list. I can do that for three hours and I just get so refreshed. I get so
blessed. It's not about the list. It's not about doing the right thing or earning God's favor. I'm
already saved. But I just want to see how much can I get of God. And I share that list with you
because maybe, maybe you want to connect with God like Ryan every morning. And I just encourage you,
you know, just start by reading one chapter of the Bible a day. If you want to do more,
you can do more things on that list. And it's just refreshes your soul, fuels you up. I journal,
I pray. And I mean, that's how Ryan and I live our lives. If you want to really know us, like,
we pray about what we do. We pray, we get with the Lord, we make a plan, we journal, we write
down prayers. And it starts with prayer and then goes to action, right? Ryan does both really well.
He prays, he takes a lot of action. I pray a lot. I think I need to take some more action sometimes.
Thanks for that. I mean, I have very much, like, I like to, I definitely, I like to pray and read
my Bible in the morning for an hour. It's been like a routine for as long as I can remember.
And I have a list and I have like a note. I write down people's names and people say things to me.
And I got a lot of people, but I want to make sure that when I see them, that the next time I see them,
I can say, hey, you know, I've been praying for you. If I feel the need to say that, you know.
And I also, I like to listen to, and I have a one-year Bible plan, but also
always on the way to the beach, I listen to some worship from Charlie and Ryan and Michael.
I love those guys. I tell them that every time I see them. I appreciate them so much.
But they have some stuff on SoundCloud that I really like. I'll listen to, just all the way
there, like 30 minutes, from the time that I leave my house to when I get on the walk,
it's about 25 minutes. So I get like 25 minutes. And then on the way to school, I'll put some more
on and then on the way home from school. So I'm either like throughout the day, I'm either like,
I'm just filling my mind with, you know, some really good worship. I also have a lot of podcasts
that I like to listen to. I'm also in the academic world. So there's some like science stuff that I
like and other just different big books and I like to read, but definitely no downtime. I like to,
I like to fill my mind with as much either scripture or worship or I want to learn.
You know, I love to learn. So I just find like in my downtime, that's usually how it's
fleshing itself out. And it's awesome. You can actually go through the day and feel
close to the Lord and feel full of his spirit, you know, like in all circumstances. And it's good for
us to, for people to know that. Yeah. And I look at it as like your whole day is worship to God.
You know, I get, I get with my Bible and my journal and God will often convict me of things
I need to go do. I'll be like, Oh, remember to pay your phone bill or whatever. And I'll be like,
remember to pay your phone bill or, you know, finish that music, finish that song they're
working on, whatever. So I pray, I get with the Lord. Maybe I write a list of three or four or
five things to do. And then the rest of my day is worship. I go and do what God just told me to go
do, whether it's work, making money. Oh man. I only make money when God tells me to make money. I
want to build the kingdom of God, but if he tells me to go make some money, I go make money. You
know, like it's just about one, but once before the other, yeah. And it's money. Money is great.
But I know plenty of people who have it and they're not on the inside. They're falling apart
and they're broke. It's like where we live, it's like coming across one way on the outside, but
feeling broke on the inside. And Jesus wants us to feel like a million bucks on the inside.
Yes. And we do that every day. Every day that we invite them in, things are not perfect.
Life's not perfect, but every day we invite them in, we get peace, we get joy, we get grace,
we get kindness. The treasure of the kingdom is the peace and the strength and the joy that God
gives you every day, but you only get it if you seek it and you ask for it. And our natural tendency
is to do that when it's the only option and then life gets really good when you seek God
every day as the only option. Right. Yes. It's amazing, honestly, like, and it's,
obviously money isn't bad. Jesus talked about money in the Bible, but it's like where is your
heart, where is your priorities? You know, the rich young ruler had everything and he missed out on
the greatest treasure, which is Jesus, because Jesus said, go sell everything and follow me.
And the guy went away sad because he's like, I think my worldly wealth is more important than Jesus.
And then on the flip side, people like Ryan, they have their job, they're being responsible to
paying their bills, but his priority is I'm going to go to a Southrop on the church. I'm going to
go here to God's will. And it's, you know, I have one friend who, you know, they're into all this
business and all this real estate and all this stuff. Their church is dwindling and it's becoming
almost nothing, but their finances are booming. And it's just where is your focus? Where is your
focus? And God loves us so much that he wants us to focus on him first because he really is the
greatest treasure. We think, yeah, we think that if we have riches that we're rich and we're not,
in fact, it's the person that doesn't need the money. It's the rich one. My heart is Lord,
give me my riches to help the poor so that I'm not poor. Because if we have riches and we're not
helping the poor, we're poor. We're poor. We're the poor ones because you have and you didn't,
you know, that's why as we get into like, you know, how do you help people? You know, I mean,
so for me, because my background's in water, I spent a lot of my time in the last 10 years
trying to figure out how to help people with that. But there's plenty of ways. I mean, I have a friend
the other day, our friend Curtis, he bought a fifth wheel and spent his own money. I think him and his
wife spent, they bought the fifth wheel, they put more money into it. They had like a bunch of money
into this thing and they drove it out here to spend some time in California, to spend some time
with my friend Ralph in San Diego and spent some time here just learning about missions and ministry,
wanted to just have an experience with his family. This guy's really, really sharp and has some really
good business skills. So he goes back to Texas and he met this single mom with four kids who didn't
have a job and he gave his fifth wheel. I want to say he had like 50 grand in this thing and I told
him, I said, bro, if you take what you have and you help someone else have housing, the Lord will
always make sure you have a ministry. It's amazing. It's just one, and I know a week ago story back
and forth, I have my friend Shane the other day, him and his family, they found this lady who was
really hurting and they went and they got her a thousand dollars worth of groceries. And I guess
the point is, when you're trying to take what you have to bless other people, that's the heart of
God. And then what I have found in my life is when really your heart is to help other people,
God's always taking care of you. Every single time. Isn't that cool? It's amazing. You can't
out give God. I know it sounds so cliche, but it's true. Yeah, and just like one,
one example of that is like, you know, seek first the kingdom of God, his righteousness,
all these other things will be given to us. Of course, God cares about your finances. Of
course, he cares about your health and everything else, but it's what are you seeking first? Like
one day I was in Malibu and God told me to go serve for the Okreya.