Death to Life podcast
A podcast that tells the stories of people that used to be one way, and now are completely different, and the thing that happened in between was Jesus.
Death to Life podcast
#143 Finding Freedom in Faith: Arnold's Inspiring Story
In this episode, discover Arnold's inspiring journey from religious struggle to freedom through the gospel of Christ. Raised in a diverse religious household in the Philippines, Arnold faced challenges reconciling beliefs. Moving to Southern California exposed him to liberal Adventism, prompting self-discovery. His transformative story includes overcoming high standards, questioning parenting methods, and navigating a troubled marriage. Arnold's experiences provide insight into the challenges of faith practice, emphasizing the power of self-awareness and communication in relationships. Explore his shift towards faith, transformed relationships, and the significance of unconditional love in parenting. Join us for an enlightening conversation on Arnold's paradigm shift and the freedom found in accepting God's unconditional love.
view more resources on our website:
0:00 - Transformation in Faith
14:27 - Beliefs About Reconciliation and God's Approval
24:36 - Realizations and Challenges of Parenting
30:05 - Struggling With High Standards and Parenting
40:02 - Identifying Relationship Issues and Seeking Solutions
47:37 - Counseling, Resentment, and Despair
55:03 - Reflections on Living a Double-Minded Life
1:01:51 - Faith and Burdens in Christianity
1:10:45 - Questioning the Concept of the Flesh
1:21:29 - Transformation Through Accepting the Gospel
1:28:00 - Paradigm Shift
1:40:05 - Freedom and Transformation in Marriage
1:44:15 - Discovering God's Unconditional Love
1:52:23 - Transforming Head Knowledge Into Heart Knowledge
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Death to Life is brought to you by Love, Reality, a good gospel ministry. Our mission is to tell everyone willing to listen that in Christ, by faith, they are free from sin. Everything that we make is made possible because of the generosity of people like you. Thank you.
Speaker 2:The world doesn't think that the gospel can change your life, but we know that it can and that's why we want you to hear these stories, stories of transformation, stories of freedom, people getting free from sin and healed from sin because of Jesus. This is Death to Life.
Speaker 3:I've always believed that God loved me. I just never believed that he liked me because I knew that what I was doing growing up wasn't what he wanted. And then, when things turned around and I wanted to do the commandments right, obey the commandments, I knew that I couldn't keep them all. So at least what I thought God's standard of Him liking me was that I'm going to do everything that he says. And if I didn't, then yeah, he'll forgive me. I guess maybe begrudgingly because he loves me, but he doesn't like me that much because I'm not measuring up.
Speaker 2:Yo, welcome to the Death to Life podcast. My name is Richard Young and today's episode is with my brother, arnold, and if you've heard his wife Sharon's episode, I think it was like four or five weeks ago this is Sharon's husband, arnold, and Arnold gets into a lot of head knowledge Like he's known so much, yet it wasn't manifesting in his life and he tried to tell me that we weren't going to really go into his story, we were just going to do theology. But we dive deep into his story and, man, I love this brother, it is so good to hear his story. I think you're going to be very blessed to hear Arnold. And so, yeah, buckle up, strap in Love. You all, appreciate you all. This is Arnold. All right, my man, arnold, I've known you so many months or two, oh yes.
Speaker 3:Yes, yes. So it's been many, many days.
Speaker 2:But if we're being real man, I feel like I've talked to you more than I've talked to most of my friends recently.
Speaker 3:I have a lot of questions.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I always have a lot of questions. It's been super fun, but let's have this mug start. Where does your story start? Where were you born? Where are you from?
Speaker 3:I was born in the Philippines, manila, yes, in Manila, close enough. I can tell you the name of that little village that we came from, but you wouldn't have any idea. So Manila is close enough.
Speaker 2:So you were born in Manila and born to a Christian family, or what kind of family were born into?
Speaker 3:Yeah, so my mom was a 70-day Adventist and my dad was a non-practicing Catholic, so that tells you right away that my mom was also not a very good practicing Adventist and so that's where I was born into. But my mom always took us to church. So growing up I was always in the church and, yeah, that was pretty much it, and my dad focused on work and his business and stuff like that.
Speaker 2:So your mom is an Adventist, but your dad being a Catholic, what kind of? We don't usually see that combination, especially in Adventism. What does that combination look like?
Speaker 3:Yeah, of all the what's to get right, Because my dad was a non-practicing Catholic and in the Philippines this is common. There's a lot of Catholics there but not everybody is very devout, and my dad was one of those. He was devout to making money and that's how that was, and so he didn't really get into religion or spiritual training or anything like that. And my grandmother, who was like the evangelist of the church, was not very happy, Very happy about the situation. For decades she worked on my dad to fix him and eventually he got baptized in 1982 with me and my brother. We all got baptized together.
Speaker 2:How old were you when you got?
Speaker 3:baptized About 13, I think. But yeah, it was. You know that time when kids get baptized, right All your friends get baptized. It was about that time we did meet my brother he's just a year younger than me, and my dad did too at that time and she became a Zebedeh Adventist. So yeah, during that time we were just growing up in church, church was like a normal thing for us.
Speaker 2:So let me ask you this we act like culture, religion, christianity, all these things that they don't intertwine or we'd like to believe that sometimes that they don't intertwine but so much of what we believe, even in what we believe about specifically Christianity, or if you're an Adventist, seventh-day Adventism so much of it is culturally infused, your culture. You will go to South America, you go to Argentina. You're going to be hard pressed to find an Adventist who's a vegetarian, right right.
Speaker 4:In.
Speaker 2:Argentina. It's the beef capital of the world. Same in Brazil. You're going to be hard pressed to find a vegetarian there that's even an Adventist. How did culture interweave its way into your Christianity or your Adventism?
Speaker 3:So we left the Philippines when I was 10 years old. So the Philippine Adventist culture was minimal, at least its impact on me, because I was just a kid, and then we moved to Pasadena, california, so then I was introduced or we were raised in the Southern California Adventism, which that's a loaded term.
Speaker 2:I think this is one of the things.
Speaker 3:I wouldn't know any better because I've grown up in Southern California. This is what I know, both from what I'm told by other people from other places. It's liberal compared to everybody else, or progressive, what they call these days. So that was the environment that I grew up in during my teen years. Is this liberal idea that it's actually cool to sin because Jesus will forgive you, jesus forgives everybody. So, yeah, sin is not that big a deal. Well, that's what your teen years were. Yes, I can't say that's what the pastor was teaching, but that was definitely what I was getting. So this idea is a very antinomian environment where, yeah, jesus loves you and no matter what, just go for it and he'll forgive you.
Speaker 2:So for our non-theologically worded people, I don't even say that describe antinomianism.
Speaker 3:It's basically against the law, against God's law or not necessarily against it, but it just doesn't matter. So this attitude that, yeah, god gave those 10 commandments, but it's not for me and it's not necessary and I can just go along my merry way, did you believe that growing up in that culture? I'm not sure how much I believed it intellectually, but I know in practical terms in my life, yes, I believed it. I did myself. Of course, god, my Father in heaven, you will forgive me, but my Father on earth, I got to hide stuff from him because if he found out then trouble would ensue. So that was the thing. I don't know what kind of weird thing that is, but the Father in heaven, he's very forgiving and, no matter what, he will love you and he will forgive you. My earthly Father not so much. He is watching, and if things go wrong then he will be on your case.
Speaker 2:So maybe I'm way off about this. I would say I'm a 90s kid I was born in 83, but I don't remember too much of the 80s. Okay, and it seems to me in our faith background in the 80s it seemed like that's when the academies were huge, like people were, like church was a big deal but and it seemed like there was quite a bit of amount of legalistic thinking in the church. Now, looking back, am I off about this? From your experience growing up, there was.
Speaker 3:I guess my experience is weird in that there was this strong mix of. There was a legalistic flavor going on. There's also that other side, the antinomian flavor, going on, and it was just all happening at the same time. I don't know if you don't remember, because you were just a baby, but there was Desmond Ford in his teachings. I've read a lot about it. I came up. I've read about it too, because I was not paying attention to him at that time. All I knew was the people around me the pastors, preachers, high school teachers, et cetera. They were saying whatever it was that they were saying, and I was just taking it all in. So it basically depended on who was in front of me, who was talking. That's what I would go with during those days. What kid actually searches the scriptures to see if these things are? We don't. We just take it and we believe that whatever the grownup said is correct. It wasn't until later that I started piecing things together and it wasn't making sense. There were different puzzle pieces coming from different people and they didn't all fit. So then I had to decide which way I wanted to land on this thing.
Speaker 2:So, as you're a teenager, who is God to you, then Is he really the God is love? And you're just like, yeah, he's forgiven me.
Speaker 3:Not that he has forgiven me. He's gonna forgive me when I ask for it. Later on, when I feel like it's time to ask for forgiveness and is this soul, your wild oats thing, and do what you will Enjoy yourself and later on, before you die, just before you die, you can ask for forgiveness and he will forgive you. And I did that by being raised in the 70th Avenue Church. Culturally there were certain norms, that things that you do and don't do. But as I got into high school, some of those restrictions I guess they didn't necessarily come off in general, I just figured out ways to get around them Right. So Saturday morning I'd be there in Sabbath school. But what you don't know is Friday night I was out at a party, stuff like that, and the people at church, they were a totally separate world from my regular life. So I did what I did at church. Those were my friends and I knew how to play that game. But outside of church I had my own thing going on. And that went through until college, like a couple of years in, when basically once I got a car and I was driving and I had more independence, then I independently did these things that I knew I wasn't supposed to be doing. And it wasn't until a couple of years into college I went through a very bad breakup with my girlfriend my ex-girlfriend then and I was in a bad spot and I looked at my life and I realized that, yeah, everything was terrible and me making my own choices, just like doing whatever I felt like doing, had led me to a very bad place and I didn't want that anymore. And so that basically turned my thinking around and decided let me try out God, because growing up all the time there's that kid in Sabbath school that knows all the memory verses, knows all the answers, getting all the points. That was me. I knew the stuff. Intellectually I knew the stuff. So I can recite to you the thank commandments Still to this day, I can recite to you the Beatitudes, all of those things. I knew it, but I didn't follow it. I didn't live according to those truths that I had stepped in my brain. It wasn't until my early 20s that I decided why don't I follow all these things that I know? Why don't I try God out? Because obviously, arnold doing his thing doesn't lead anywhere. Good.
Speaker 2:So you tasted and saw that the world, like the water, was bitter. You didn't like it.
Speaker 3:It was terrible.
Speaker 2:Yes, when your parents or immigrants? Were they aware of what was going on in your life and were like just don't get died, son. Or how invested were they in the spiritual life.
Speaker 3:None spiritual matters. It was do your homework, get good grades, get a good job that kind of standard Asian stuff. That was all in there. But the spiritual stuff that was up to the church to make that happen. I mean, in church is just a place. What you get out of it depends a lot on what you put into it and how much you pay attention Basically how much you pay attention to God. So basically they trusted my spiritual development to somebody else. They didn't really have their own to share with me. That's not surprising at all. So when I didn't have my turnaround quote unquote then I started really getting deep into church and to studying the Bible on my own. When we went to the beach, me and my friends, I would bring my Bible and I'd be reading at the beach and my dad said I'm like more religious than them, and that was probably true. They did things that I did not approve of. I did not like it and I told them like you can imagine how well that went over with Asian parents- so this was like a complete 180 then. Oh, yes, I was that troublemaker kid growing up, like in Sabbath school. I would be the guy to argue for evolution when they're teaching creation and I would bring up all my scientific information just probably to give them a hard time. But you're a contrarian. No, I'm not a contrarian, but perhaps right. Somebody says something. Yeah, I find it a little bit fun to just see just poke the beehive and see what comes out.
Speaker 2:Someone was like I'm the devil's advocate and other people are like the devil, don't need no advocate bro.
Speaker 3:So that's how it was Growing up. They would always ask me to lead out in certain things to church. But I would do stuff, but not really, because I knew I wasn't really into that. I knew the information but it wasn't really part of my life. And then when things started turning around, then people could tell the difference, that this is a different guy Now, the guy who used to sneak out and do the stuff he was supposed to do, now he's telling everybody else what they're supposed to do. Nice. Yeah, it was wonderful. So basically there's two ditches and I ended up in both ditches in short order.
Speaker 2:So what did you believe about reconciliation, Like, how was one to make themselves right with God in your mind at this? Well, how old are you? 23, 24, 22?
Speaker 3:Yeah, something like that. Yes, yes, and really the reconciliation wasn't something that I thought of much. It's just I knew what God wanted me to do and I'm going to do it. And what did he want you to do? He wanted me to obey. There's 10 commandments. There's 10 rules. There's very short rules. Just go ahead and do those. We'll start off with that and just do it all the time. And it wasn't like I was thinking that this is how I would earn my way into heaven, because I knew that I've read Ephesians 2, so I knew that wasn't the way into heaven, although I Did. You, though, Felt me, who knows maybe, but I felt that this is how I was going to get in good with God. I think I mentioned to you recently that this came to me, that I've always believed that God loved me. Yeah. I just never believed that he liked me because I knew that what I was doing growing up wasn't what he wanted. And then, when things turned around and I wanted to do the commandments right, obey the commandments, I knew that I couldn't keep them. All I try as I might. I knew I was falling short and I know that verse very well All lives in the fall short of the glory of God. I say, yes, that's me that fall short. Looked in the Greek, that is present tense. Yes, continually fall short of the glory of God. So my standard at least what I thought his God standard of him liking me was that I'm going to do everything that he says, although the Lord has said I will obey and do, and if I didn't then yeah, he'll forgive me. I guess maybe begrudgingly because he loves me, but he doesn't like me that much because I'm not measuring up.
Speaker 2:So in your mind, god was cool with you because he loves you, but he didn't like you that much. And when you messed up, he's like all right, you did ask and I promised, so you're forgiven. Yeah, it was like here we go again.
Speaker 3:You haven't learned your lesson. Are you going to figure it out? All right.
Speaker 2:Try harder, Okay. What kind of person did that make you? Oh?
Speaker 3:because that was my picture of God. That was what I became, and even though I knew that's how my parents were growing up. This is a standard Asian family right, you do what you're supposed to do. If you don't do what you're supposed to do, we got problems and I knew I did not like that. I didn't really think too much about why I don't like that, what's wrong with it, what should be the right way? All I knew was I didn't like that and I wanted to do a different way with my own kids when they came. And when they came, I did exactly that. I did exactly the thing that I hated, which was I love you, no matter what you do. I love you, but I don't really like you unless you do everything. I say we never articulated that, but that may have been the ambience that we have set up Right, and this is just a feeling that you get coming up from me. It says, yeah, I love you, but Is that how you felt growing up?
Speaker 2:I love you, but they're looking at you sideways hoping that you figure it out. I had my own parents.
Speaker 3:Yeah, this was. We have this cousin. He's like a really goody, two shoes straight, a student, and did everything that he was supposed to do, and I felt like my parents liked him more than he liked me and my brother, because we were goof-offs, at least according to their standard, and so that was always that thing that we have to achieve. You have to perform certain things in order to achieve that level of acceptance before then, or if you don't do that, then you're tolerated. That's pretty much it. That's as much as you could hold for probably.
Speaker 2:Wendy, you run into the sweet lady sharing.
Speaker 3:Oh, okay. So that came in after my turn around, right? Because I've told her many times, if she had met me before that point, she would not have spent a minute with me because she would not have liked me, because Sharon she's good at shooting Sharon, me I was not, and so she would not have wanted to go to clubs with me or watch movies or do any of that kind of stuff. And in fact, the first time that I asked her to accompany me somewhere, me and my friends at church, we were going to go to Six Flags Magic Mountain on a music park for those of you who don't know down here in Southern California, and so I asked her to go with me, with a group, and then she said she'll think about it. And then she came back and said no, she's not going to go because Magic Mountain is too worldly. I said it's true, oh. I said oh, I like this, right, because by this time I had changed. I don't want those worldly girls anymore. I said OK, all right, so how about this? We'll just go to a real mountain and we'll go on a hike. So that's what we did. I didn't tell her, though, that it was just me and her. Now Everybody else is going to go to the Six Flags. So when we got there to our mountain hikes I said where's everybody? I said they're at Six Flags, it's us.
Speaker 2:Enjoying sin for a season at Six Flags, that's right.
Speaker 3:But we were in nature. We were beholding God in nature. So, as you can imagine, she's good at two shoes and you've heard some of her story. She has this thing about keeping the rules, and here I was now I was really trying hard to keep the rules, so we got along great. I was thinking like, oh, this is awesome, this is the best thing ever.
Speaker 2:Man, there's a lot of like-mindedness in how you guys are going to live your life, and that's where we're like yeah, we're perfect for each other.
Speaker 3:Oh yeah, it was like are we going to keep all the commandments? Yes, we are. And are we going to go country living, which we did? We lived in the jungles there for a little bit. The jungles in Pasadena. Where'd you live? Oh no, we moved to the Philippines. Oh, literally, the jungle, where there was no running water. If you wanted running water, you take your bucket, you pump the water from the well and you run back home. That was our running water. No electricity, no, nothing. We had a hut on top of a hill in the jungles of the Philippines, which I liked it. I liked that environment.
Speaker 2:How long did you?
Speaker 3:live there. The actual jungle was six months but we spent like a year and a half trying to find the correct jungle, just the right spot, and all that. And then we have to move back back here to Southern California and we've been stuck here for the last how long 20-something years. But yeah, we did go country living, extreme country living.
Speaker 2:That's because of a spiritual or religious call to do that in the jungle.
Speaker 3:Yes, now this was during the time of Y2K. I don't know how much of that you remember.
Speaker 2:I was in high school. You were like the computers are going to kill us.
Speaker 3:Exactly right. So the computers are all going to fall apart and me being a computer guy, her dad being a computer guy, we said, yeah, this makes sense because of the underlying code. But even before that, we had already decided that we wanted to go live it do country living. We followed the councils to live in the country, and so that's what we were going to do, and this just seemed to be the opportune time to do it. So we decided to go ahead and move out to the country at this time. But here's the thing we took all of our stuff with us. We had this big giant container van we took up to the mountain because this is how we grew up, so check this. I brought our vacuum cleaner, our Kenmore vacuum cleaner, to the jungle, where I have no electricity, because I was going to vacuum up the dust in my jungle hut. But if it's just how crazy we were and this is the thing in James it says friendship with the world is enmity against God. It's not presence in the world, but it's enmity against God, it's friendship with the world. So we took ourselves out of the world, but we still had this great affinity toward these worldly kind of things. I'm not saying vacuum cleaners are worldly, but what I'm saying is that our mindset. We changed our location, but not really our mindset. So we were still the same people just now living in the jungle, and that did not turn out good at all.
Speaker 2:How, why didn't it turn?
Speaker 3:out well, because we were there to get closer to God and take away all the distractions that are in the city. But when you are self-reliant, it doesn't matter where you are. You are going to get in the way of your connection with God, and that's what we were. We were self-reliant that's why we brought all that stuff, because we were going to live in the jungle, to get away from the city life and the city influences, but we were going to set up our own solar power there and have all the amenities of the city and the city life and also the city mindset. We're basically here. We are in a difficult situation in the jungle and I'm going to do what I can do to fix this situation, and so we did. I'm a fairly competent guy with resources, so we use that competence and the resources to figure out how am I going to solve this problem, and it turns out it's way bigger than anything. I can solve it was not great. Yeah, we didn't end up being closer to God. Instead, we just relied on ourselves more.
Speaker 2:Mercy.
Speaker 3:Which makes things worse.
Speaker 2:So when you got back, what was your mindset on getting back and how you were going to live your lives? Getting back to the Philippines, to the jungle? No, back to the country, back to California?
Speaker 3:Yeah, when we went back to California. We came back because Sharon had a medical emergency that they couldn't handle over there. So I decided okay, why am I messing around with these Filipino hospitals? I'm going to go back to Glendale. I went back to Glendale Adventist and they took care of it there and our plan was, as soon as that was done and basically it was related to her pregnancy as soon as the baby came on, everything was all set. We were going to move back to the jungle. But, like I said, we've been stuck here for over 20 years. We haven't moved back to the jungle, because moving back here and having that separation from the jungle life that we had set up for ourselves, we actually had time to just contemplate and just say it's not actually doing what we expected it to be doing. So we started thinking maybe that's not where God wants us to go or that's not how God wants us to go about things. So I'm sure that if I really wanted to do it, we could have packed up and gone back again, but that little break gave us some space to figure out that no, we did it all wrong. We moved to the country, but it didn't affect the changes that we were expecting to affect.
Speaker 2:So then you're having kids, you're now in the United States, you're living life and you're heavily involved in the church, always, yes, and you said you didn't want to be this certain kind of parent, but then you ended up this certain kind of parent. Talk to me about that.
Speaker 3:Like I was saying earlier, that I knew that God was this kind loving father in heaven, but he just expected me to do certain things so that he'll be happy with me. Right, the things that he knows that he wants, that actually, these things are good for me. That's what I wanted to do for my own kids. I love you unconditionally, but there are certain things that are best for you as a kid. These are things that are best for you. Trust me, this is how you should do things, and you know that works out pretty good when they're babies and toddlers, because they can't do anything for themselves, and so they are fully dependent on me let's say on me and Sharon to provide everything that they needed and to protect them from the dangers out there, and so that's what we did. Unfortunately, we were too good at that, and that went on for 18 years. And here's the problem it doesn't work very well once they get out of their toddler years. You'd have to adjust your parenting style and how you relate to your kids as they mature, and you have to give them more let's say, more allowance to spread their wings and sometimes make mistakes, sometimes make bad decisions, and you help them learn from that and work through it and you support them as they go through. That, as opposed to, I will protect you from everything bad out there. I don't want you to think about it. You just trust what I say, because I've done this and I've told my kids this many times that, hey, I've done all sorts of bad stuff in my childhood, when I was your age, and I have determined that they were no good. That's why I choose to live like this and therefore you should do it like this too. I hadn't yet realized that they have to make the decisions themselves, because I wanted to protect them from harm, but what it turns out was I was just protecting them from mature and exercising their decision making skills, their own spiritual connection with God, because I was expecting them to function based on my own decision making skills and connection with God, which doesn't work. What did you want them to see about?
Speaker 2:God.
Speaker 3:I wanted them to see that he was a loving God that will accept them exactly how they are, but loves them so much that he will not leave them the way they are. He's going to work on them and they will be changed into His likeness.
Speaker 2:So if that's true, was it happening quickly enough for what you wanted? Was your theory about that true.
Speaker 3:I'm still convinced that he loves us and wants us to become more like Him, right to be changed into His likeness. It's just how I was going about. It is obviously not the way he goes about it. And in fact, when, before our first baby came, sharon and I had a meeting with our parents her parents and my parents and the six of us were there and we were just telling them about how we were going to raise our son or daughter, whatever came out, and I said something along these lines that I said remember Jesus said that no one born of woman was better than John. I said I want my kid to be along in that category. This kid's going to be a good kid. And God's going to look down at this kid and say, wow, this kid is all right because we were going to teach our kid the right way to do things.
Speaker 2:So lofty goals and you said it didn't work out. How was it going? Seems like what you're believing about God is all good in theory. It's all good in theory, but how was it going for your life, your marriage? Is it going the way you wanted it to go?
Speaker 3:Well, in short, no, it wasn't going the way that I wanted it to go. Because one, I was always falling short. I knew, by my own standards and just looking at my own performance, I wasn't meeting my own standards All that other stuff that's in the back there that I have my standards. But surely God has higher standards than me and he knows stuff that I don't even know about, I haven't even thought of yet. I'll get to that when I get to that. Right now I'm just trying to meet my own standards and I was not. So it was just a matter of trying harder, and whenever I failed, it was this is the thing that I'm good at. I'm good at getting stuff done, and I can't get this thing done. So then my self-worth, self-esteem just went down the toilet, because I was never good enough, not even by my own standards. And so what happened then? I would do stuff, act in certain ways that would make other people think that I was good enough, at least for them by their lower standards, because I knew my standards were higher than theirs. But at least they're happy with me, and that made me feel better. But ultimately, that wasn't fulfilling at all.
Speaker 2:So you had never reached your standards. But you thought, because I have such high standards, at least I'll be better than some folks. Am I getting it right?
Speaker 3:Yeah, there was that I was better than most people. Yes, absolutely, I was better at keeping the rules, better at keeping the rules, at least from how other people can see them Now, in the privacy of my own home. Forget that, right. We don't want to talk about that, we don't want to look at that. Just when I go to church, when I'm outside, yeah, I can get stuff done. I am very competent at the very least, right Competent at getting stuff done. But when it came time to just thoughts and feelings and having that spiritual life, no, not really. And all of my doing, no matter how good it was, it wasn't making that happen.
Speaker 2:So what happened? How did it go? Terrible right.
Speaker 3:Not great? No, not great at all. Our kids grew up in this environment and we look back on it now and we think there's so many things we could have done better. We should have done better because the Bible is right here, the information is right here. We should have known, except we weren't paying attention to what God was telling us and so we weren't reflecting Him at all, because our picture of Him was wrong. It was different. You guys are super sincere. Yeah, we sincerely were all right, so sincere. Yes, we tried our best, but our best wasn't good enough Not by a long shot, because our best was still, you know, filthy rags. It was our self-sufficiency, our self-dependence and that human effort which we can do a lot of. We're pretty good at that. And here's the thing though you look at us from the outside, look like everything's going great because we can get stuff done and our kids growing up they were probably the most well-behaved kids around because, yeah, we're good at that we will implement these plans and make rules to make sure that everything is happening correctly. But now this looks can be deceiving, as they say.
Speaker 2:So it wasn't going well. We don't oftentimes sit down and think how is it going? We're living our life, and so your kids grew up in that atmosphere. And, yeah, when did you start to feel like this really isn't, like this isn't the way to?
Speaker 3:go yeah, was there a point? Or oh, yes, there was a point. It was while my kids were still in the house in their teen years, although the battles were hot and heavy and frequent during that time, as the kids were trying to do whatever it is that they wanted to do and we were fighting back it's a quote-unquote and there was just a lot of stress all over the place. We could tell that, well, something is wrong. Something is obviously wrong, because what we're looking at here are not two John the Baptist. These are not John the Baptist, obviously. What did we do wrong? So we were looking at how could we mess it up so bad? So we knew something was wrong. We didn't really know exactly what was wrong or, in Definitely not, how to fix it. So we were always looking at how to be better parents and we went through all sorts of seminars, read all sorts of books, because we were just trying to figure out how are we supposed to do this? And yeah, we were just trying to figure that out, and most of it was some form of behavior modification, where it usually ended up.
Speaker 2:You don't have to tell me anything crazy, but give me an example of something where you looked at it like that way, like that strategy. That just was not it as you see it now.
Speaker 3:Like in raising up our kids. Sure, what we touched on earlier was this thing of making them walk the path that I knew was right, how to avoid the pitfalls that I got myself into, the pain and sorrow and suffering that I got myself into. I knew at least I thought I knew how to avoid those things, and so I would make them walk along that path. But, of course, I can only manage their behavior. What was going on inside their minds and their hearts was completely outside of my power to change or to enforce anything there. So what I should have done was just demonstrate to them like, hey, this is how I live my life because of my past experience, and I know that's not any good, and I have decided to walk this way. I'm following God, and just demonstrate to them that this is how I live my life, and not impose on them my beliefs or my convictions, because that just generated a lot of pushback. When the law came, sin rises in you and you just want to push back against it. Yeah, it rose a lot. They pushed back a lot because, as one of them said, that's your religion, that's not mine.
Speaker 2:When one of them said that, how did that hit you?
Speaker 3:I thought that's not a good thing.
Speaker 2:Why are you saying that out loud? That's not good.
Speaker 3:But by this point the fog in my brain was starting to clear away and I didn't freak out saying, no, this is our religion. I've never been like that. That's how I grew up, and at least I was successful in avoiding setting up that kind of you do everything exactly like this, or you can be a spank or something like that. So, I was able to accept that, but I thought my religion must be so terrible or unappetizing, unappealing, unattractive, that they grew up in it and they are rejecting it. So they have seen my religion up close and personal and they don't want it. So there's something wrong. Right, and after how many decades since my turn around time when I decided I was going to follow God? It's been decades since then. And, yeah, whatever the product of that, those efforts were, it wasn't something that my kids wanted. So, yeah, that was a wake up call. And there was many years in there where things like this were happening, that they were pushing back against the stuff that we were teaching them. They were not accepting it and I was just scrambling, trying to figure out how do I fix this? What am I supposed to do to turn this thing around? And if you're a driver, you're driving a car and you're no good and you drive yourself into a ditch, it's probably a sign that you're not good enough to get yourself out of the ditch either, right, but I was trying really hard to get myself out of this ditch that I got myself into.
Speaker 2:It's like when you drive into mud and then you put it in reverse and it's not moving, but you go harder on the gas and then just mud is spraying everywhere and you're like or for me, that's in the snow, and I used to live in Minnesota we get stuck in the snow and unless there's something else, you were literally spinning your tires. You could rev that engine as high up as you want and you're not going anywhere. Something's got to change right.
Speaker 3:It actually happened to us when we were in the jungle. So when we were there, I bought a four-wheel drive with big, giant mud tires and I was always very confident I can go wherever I need to go because I have my four-wheel drive with these giant tires. Until I found the mud hole to end all mud holes and I went in. I didn't get out and I kept spinning my tires. I was just getting deeper and deeper and, in the spiritual sense, that's exactly what I was doing. I got myself into a problem and I just revved it up even more and got myself even deeper into the hole, not realizing that, yeah, I just need to suck it up and get help from an external source that knows what they're doing.
Speaker 2:So then, yeah, keep going. What happened after that?
Speaker 3:So we can fast forward through all the child training years, because that was just one big, long bad story, right? Just us doing all sorts of things, that we shouldn't have been doing things the wrong way, and eventually our kids have moved out by now. So we're home alone and it's just us, and we are still dealing with repercussions of what we have done in our own internal mindset on things and how to relate to God, how to relate to each other. And I have mentioned before oh, actually, in my sermon at church several weeks ago, I thought I didn't care what other people thought. I thought I didn't care if people like me or they don't like me that I do what I do because that's what must be done, that's the right thing to do and that's why I do it. That's what I told myself. But I also knew that there were some things that I liked, certain events, certain activities I like and other things that I don't like. I didn't know why I liked them and sometimes I didn't even necessarily identify that, oh, this thing I like and I want to do more, and this other thing I don't like, I want to do that less. It's just. I naturally gravitated toward one and avoided the other one without even thinking about it. I've told people it's like my shark brain. It's not smart enough to figure out why. All I know is this is good, I want more of it. That's bad, I want less of that. And that's how I went about things. And it was doing bad things to my marriage, to my relationship with my own wife, who was like there with me all the time, because it turns out she was one of the avoid things, because these were not pleasant interactions with her, because I was never doing things up to her standard and I never sat down to think why am I?
Speaker 2:not doing things that she likes. You're probably smarter than I was. I remember this time when I was a dean and Natalie had just had our second child, jonathan, and he's a little baby, and life was not good at home and I was coaching basketball all the time. So I poured everything into coaching basketball and when I came home and she's like it seems like you don't want to be here, I would say yeah, I don't. This is not pleasant. I would like to be somewhere else right now. And I thought that was going to be the trick that would change her attitude towards me, because he really doesn't like to be around right now. Hindsight's 2020,. That did not help at all. Maybe you were smarter than me and you just tried to hide out, but didn't say I don't want to be around right now.
Speaker 3:You are smarter than me, because I didn't even know that's what was happening. It was just happening without me even identifying. That's what it was. But yeah, I didn't want to hang out with her. I wanted to hang out with other people because other people were more fun. I enjoyed that and I never really sat down to figure out that was even happening, much less why that was happening. It wasn't until finally she had gotten fed up with it because I was hanging out with this girl again too much. Another one, right, this was a recurring conversation with us. Every now and then She'll say, she'll pull me aside and say, hey, you're getting too close to that girl, I don't like you hanging out with her too much. I'll say, okay, fine, and then so I'll cut down my interactions with them. Of course, most of these interactions were at church. I only did three things I went to work, I went to church and then I went home to sleep. Those are the only three things that I do, and work at home were never any fun. So it was church. That's where the fun stuff happened, so my friends were there and that's where we did these things that I like. And every now and then she would tell me I don't like you being too close to her.
Speaker 2:You know what You're getting dangerous on there In your mind, nothing was ever going to happen, right? No, god said thou shall not commit adultery. Why would I ever do that? But in the meantime, this is how all adultery stories start Apparently, man. I've heard a few of them. I've heard a few of them.
Speaker 3:I know why are we so dull, right, but she's smarter than me, she can identify these things. So she would tell me to stay away and I would say, okay, fine, because I'd rather do that than get into fights with her all the time. It wasn't worth it to me, so I would give up friendships and relationships and stuff like that. She needed my help with something. I was able to help her. She said thank you, woo, hey, thank you. I never get nervous Sharers. She never thinks me for anything. When I do something good, she'll just look at it and keep on going, because that's what was expected of me, right? Of course, if I did something wrong, she'll make sure to let me know about it, because I messed up something again. So, as you can see, it's the cheese. Why not go to the cheese when that's so fun? And the other stuff is not anywhere near as fun. But anyway, eventually she picked out one of our close friends, one of our long-time friends. She said oh, I don't want you hanging out with her too much anymore because you get into there again. We talked about this before and then I thought about it for a second and I said no. And she said why you like her more than me. I said, well, because she likes me and you don't like me. And then again and I had never realized before it was literally that moment that I realized that's why I like hanging out with other people, because I felt like they like me and I never felt like Sharer like me. So I told her that and, yeah, it like just went off. I said this is why I like doing that. And then everything made sense. That's why I like going with these other people doing all these other things, because that gave me some kind of affirmation, or they like me. And I knew all this time growing up God didn't like me. My parents never liked me because I was not good enough for them. Nobody ever liked me, even my wife, the one that I thought. Well, all right, we're a perfect match. It was great for a while until real life started happening and it turns out she didn't like me that much either. It's only those people who only saw me occasionally, like once a week, and I did stuff for them. They like me. But once people get to know me at home, when they see me all the time, they don't like me. So why would I want to hang out with them. Why would I want to go home? Right. Why don't I just stay out here? I go hiking with you. They like me, right? I'll go out with my friends and we'll do stuff. We'll even have Bible studies and stuff like that. And they like me, right? I cracked my Bible jokes and they would laugh at it. Whether they mean it or not doesn't really matter to me. It feels good, it's close enough. It's close enough and that's all it was, and really it's pretty shallow.
Speaker 2:But you didn't know that and that's part of deception is that you don't know, that we don't know.
Speaker 3:I had no idea that's what was happening. That's what I was doing. My shark brain was just doing its thing. It was an autopilot. But when Sharon just confronted, it confronted me and it came to me and I had to actually say it out loud, right, mm-hmm. So I finally followed it in your footsteps and I just said it out loud. I said you don't like me.
Speaker 2:Yeah, well, it doesn't work out right away after that, though it did not happen to me.
Speaker 3:It wasn't like we hugged it out. Finally, you said it.
Speaker 2:You don't want to be with me because I'm critical. Let's hug.
Speaker 3:No, but we noticed that, yeah, this is a real problem. We were wise enough to figure that out. Sure, yes, this is a problem. This is not how it should be. And then it changed our outlook on what we need to do with our life and our situation. Then we started talking to people to try to figure out our relationship stuff why don't we like each other, why don't we like doing stuff with each other, et cetera and so that started us down this journey of figuring out exactly what's wrong and how to fix it.
Speaker 2:How did that go?
Speaker 3:Well, it was better, but it didn't solve the problem really. I mentioned we went to counseling. Yes, we spent a lot of money on counselors, marriage counselors and stuff like that and they would give us advice, what to do, how to talk to each other If she's crying. I remember this one time we were there with a counselor. I had said something, or maybe Sharon said something, I don't know. Somebody said something, but she was crying again and I was just sitting there and then the counselor said why don't you like put your hand on her to make her feel better? And I did, but it felt really weird because I was thinking to myself why would I do this when I was the one who caused this problem? Everything that she ever cries about is my fault. How can I ever be the one that can solve that in any way, shape or form? How can I make her feel better when I'm the one who made her feel bad in the first place? Is there any resentfulness from my side?
Speaker 2:Did you really? But like so she's crying. She's crying because of something you did. Did you feel like she shouldn't be crying over this thing? And why is she crying over this thing? Or did you think I am the bad person and she should be crying? I legit did that thing. I can say there's some of both.
Speaker 3:Right that, some things she was just whining about for no reason. I think what's wrong with this thing? I'm just hanging out with my friend, right? Why can't I stay all Saturday afternoon and have Bible studies with my friends and we'll just chat about theology? Why do I have to go home so that you can take a nap? It's like this stretch of time where it felt like she would do stuff just so I could not do the things that I wanted to do. So there was some of that, but there were also some things that I could say, yeah, I guess that's a bad thing If I'm not paying attention to her. If I'm more concerned about other people's welfare than her welfare, then yeah, that's a bad thing and she probably should feel sad about that, but I'm the one who did that. Am I going to fix that by just telling you that, yeah, I care about you now, but I didn't really feel like it, so we heard in her story that there's this moment where she is so low that she is considering hurting herself.
Speaker 2:She actually makes a plan. Did you know that this was going on? And when you found out about it, was that like the wake-up call before the counseling, or were even after. You're like man, what are we doing?
Speaker 3:Oh, this was like during the counseling, if I remember correctly because this thing has come up, she's brought this up several times over the years that she would do that or she would say I'm just going to kill myself or whatever. And I just always thought that's dumb. Why would you do that? I'm so sensitive, yeah, you're such a sensitive and sweet heart of a husband, yeah. But basically we'd talk about it and we'd kiss and make up and all that, and it would just be laid aside for a while. But the last one yeah, she had made plans, it was right here, I was there, I was present for that and, yes, she went through all that and I don't know what I was thinking, although I was getting tired of this, I'm going to say, I'm going to say I'm sorry and everything's going to be okay. I did something different and I can't say that I planned this out. It's just that's what came up to me. I just thought it was like that's stupid, why would you do that? And I just came down hard on her. It's just that you make up your mind. But this is, that's so dumb. What kind of what's going to happen after you go through this? Blah, blah, blah. Not very sensitive in hindsight and I don't even know at this point exactly what I said. But I didn't coddle her, I didn't say oh please change your mind.
Speaker 2:I just if some and I don't know what. If somebody's listening to this and I remember when you're in a situation like this a bad marriage and you feel like it's just an onion, like if you peel back one layer, there's going to be more of the same, and if you peel back another layer, there's going to be more of the same. So you're like we're years into this thing. It's not just going to be a kiss and make up. There is so much damage been done, there's so much trauma that it just feels like a big ball of confusion. And you're like even and maybe I'm just putting my story into your story If we go to a counselor, where do we even start with this cat? We don't even know the layer upon layer. Are you resonating with that? Does that resonate with?
Speaker 3:when we went to counseling. I hardly said anything in counseling. She had all the stuff to share, right. All the bad things that I've done that past week. And then me, I've climbed up for the old spot because, one, I didn't really identify what was going on. I didn't understand what was going on with myself. And two, the things that I did think I understood, I wasn't really in the mood to share with anybody, Not even with Sharon. So that was just me. As my personality I don't like to share. And this onion thing, yeah, I can see that Maybe that was probably what was going on with me. I was saying this looks exactly like before and if we dig into this we're going to get more of the same. And who knows, Maybe I was just getting tired of it. I have no idea. It's confusion. Why is it? That is what I said and I just told her stop it. That's so stupid. Why would you do that? I was yelling at her which, if anybody's listening to this, I probably should not recommend this way of doing things. Do not trust anything I did.
Speaker 2:We're still in the death portion of the Death to Life podcast, so this is not an advertisement for being insensitive and yelling at your spouse when they're in despair, but somehow we got through it, obviously right, she's still around.
Speaker 3:And I even took my turns into this kind of despair kind of thing because as we were working through our issues, it was just a giant roller coaster that Six Flags has never even heard of and they're the most worldly place. Yeah, it's like you know, we're doing well because we did something better, and then there's a trigger, and then we're doing terrible again, and at some there were several times in there when I looked at my life and I decided that this can continue or this can stop. I don't really care. If I die, then I die. So what? And I would tend to drive faster in my car in those moments because at least I'll have fun as my last thing that I did. That's dumb. It is dumb. I mentioned to you before one of my ideas was to become a. Seriously, I was told Sharon about the same thing, about I'm going to buy a gun. What's wrong? Why are you going to buy a gun? Because I'm going to go out at night and fight crime. It's just stupid.
Speaker 2:But I was going to become Filipino Batman because your life was so bad at this point.
Speaker 3:Yes, I was going to be overweight and slow, so my name was going to be Fat man or something like that, and I figured if I help somebody good, then at least I did something good, and if I get killed, that's all right too. I can go with that. That's just how bad it was. I was serious about it.
Speaker 2:You're legit. You were serious about this.
Speaker 3:I was thinking about it. I was thinking, okay, I liked that one time I went shooting with some friends I said I like shooting guns. I'm not very accurate with it, but that's okay. So anyway, I just thought about it. But again, I was too lazy to actually pull the trigger, literally and figuratively, to do that. But I did think about it.
Speaker 2:Let me ask you this that's just how bad it was. So it seems, at this point you've done pretty well with compartmentalizing life at home and like your zeal and excitement for God and your teaching at church and this was like your lifeblood was this time at church what did you think about God and did you even consider like these two? I don't know if you even considered the double-minded life that you're living. One thing at home that nobody knows about, no one will ever know about, and then this experience at church where you're leading on Sabbath school and you're helping sweet people and doing really well there Now.
Speaker 3:So here's the thing I knew that whatever life I was living was not whatever life God had in mind for me. I knew that this cannot be God's plan, because if this is God's plan, this is a bad plan. So I'm not living what I'm supposed to be living. This is not God's path. However, I'm pretty good at studying. I know my stuff. I can help other people understand what's in the Bible, even though I haven't understood it to the point of actually living it out myself. We can read and study the Bible together and I can help them figure it out. And if they can implement it properly and live it out and actually make this thing work, then maybe they can help me do that at some point. So the communists say that this is the best plan. It's just, every single time we've done it, we implemented it wrong. Nobody's ever implemented it the right way. That's how I saw it of God's plan.
Speaker 2:That's. The problem with communism is that no one has ever implemented it correctly. They just end up murdering like half of their own people.
Speaker 3:That's what they say. They say, yeah, if we only did it right it would be great. And that's how I thought of God's plan is yes, if I ever did this right, it would be great. If anybody did this right, it would be great. It's just, nobody I know has ever done this right. We always mess it up at some point so that I could do. And if anybody ever asked me, oh so how do you do it, how does this look like in real life? And I would always back off because I knew I can't share with them any personal experience, because what do I know? I only know intellectually some stuff. I think that I read from the Bible, but my personal life do not copy. My personal life is not any good.
Speaker 2:If I would have always made that line a sermon series, an Arnold sermon series and I don't know how long ago this was maybe seven, six years ago I don't know if I would have gone to an Arnold sermon series. What am I walking away with? What would be the main point that you'd be driving home?
Speaker 3:Oh, that in Christ, you will always walk in the Spirit. You cannot walk in the flesh. There is victory in Christ. Jesus came to save us from our sins and if we would accept Him, he will separate us from our sin. First John 3.9, that if you're born of God, his seed remains in you and you cannot sin. This has been my message for over 30 years, since that very first sermon on Roman 6, when I decided that yeah, I'm gonna your first sermon was on Roman 6?. My first sermon was on Roman 6. I was in my early twenties, after my turnaround, when, finally, when the youth leaders because all those years before then they were asking me hey, why don't you give a sermon when we have our youth Sabbath? And I would always say no, because I knew that, even though I knew memory verses, my life wasn't anywhere like this and I was not following God. So I knew that for a fact. And then when that changed and I became the obey God all the time guy, that was my first sermon, roman 6. Which, in Rome, I said here God does not like sin. Stop it. That was basically it. So I told them that we're dead to sin. We're alive to God. We're no longer slaves of sin. You should not use your members as instruments of unrighteousness. You should be slaves of God instead. Spent an hour on that and ever since then it's the same kind of thing. I always believed the message of victory over sin. I always knew that. It's in the Bible, so easy to prove. However, I never lived it out in my own life. It just never came up. So if I did a sermon, I have done sermon series and they're always the same thing. That was like my thing. My favorite topic is stop singing and maybe a pastor say that I'm preaching to myself. Right, that was very true for me. I was trying to convince myself that this is true because, even though your life is not showing this, is not reflecting this, the Bible says that it's true. It's gotta be true. So that's what I would have preached on.
Speaker 2:So Calvin Coolidge was one of our most soft spoken presidents ever. He was a man of not many words, and I don't know if I've shared this story on the podcast before, but one day he goes to church. He comes back, his wife says what was the sermon about? And he says sin. And his wife says what did the pastor have to say? And he said he's against it. And so that's the Arnold Sermon.
Speaker 3:That's pretty much. It Just a lot of different ways to slice that tomato. I'm against sin Against, it's said, is bad, stop it. And different things. Over the years, different theologies and concepts have come up and I incorporate them into the message, but bottom line is that that was it.
Speaker 2:As I'm thinking about it, that's probably a lot of pastor sermons through the decades. Sin is bad, you shouldn't do it, and they are completely correct. But if that's it, if that's it, that's not the gospel.
Speaker 3:No, some people have pointed out to me say oh yeah, yes, we agree with that, but how do you do it? Because they would tell me in my life I know this truth, but it doesn't work in my life. And then I would admit to myself. I wouldn't admit it with my mouth, but to myself yeah, I know that it's true, but in my life it's not happening, and it must be because we lack faith, because if we had faith, like a mustard seed, this would work. And so that's where it always comes. Since you are correct, yes, it turns out. It turns out it was all just something there, a little bit it's just. I can say this for a fact faith in your ability to put in sufficient effort to affect the change is not the right place to put your faith. It's no good If you're just trying harder and you're inventing all sorts of rules to get yourself to behave properly and to walk this path. That's not it. Faith in that is ropes of sand. You're not gonna get anywhere good. Yeah, because that's where I realized you know some people.
Speaker 2:if you really look at the say by our faith in Christ, some people would say that we're saved by the faith of Christ and if you're putting all of that heaviness on you, it doesn't seem like that's a mustard-sized amount of faith. It seems like we really believe we have to have the mountain-sized amount of faith to move a mustard seed. That's what we really believe. But if we would put conviction on the very simple thing it's what the Centurion had conviction on that Jesus has authority and if he says it it is Not.
Speaker 3:It could be that it actually is, and that I guess that's where I was for much of my ministry. My preaching career is I was always telling people of what could be If they just push the right buttons and do everything right, set everything up right, then this is what could be for you that you can walk in righteousness, you can walk in the spirit and not fulfill the lust of the flesh.
Speaker 2:And at best that's the okay news and at worst it's the most discouraging thing ever. Yes, for those who have tried it, and failed.
Speaker 3:They're just as disfers as if this is garbage, and sometimes they'll just give up on the whole thing altogether. But I was on the okay side. Oh yeah, it didn't do. It didn't work. I gotta do better, I gotta try harder, I gotta try something new. So I hadn't given up yet. Maybe I'm stubborn, maybe I'm dumb, I don't know.
Speaker 2:Oh, I think I'm like you. I was religious, I was never gonna give up. I was never gonna give up, even if I fell into all sorts of sin, and I was always gonna believe that God is good and I'm just trash. That was gonna be the thing. I was just like God's good, I'm trash.
Speaker 3:Right, this is my fault. Somehow I did something wrong. I just gotta do that better next time. And that's where I was for a long time and that's where I was until I don't know. Maybe last year things started to change. Yeah, tell us what happened first. There was this one thing that popped up last year during the Sabbath school lesson, we came across first John 5-3, and my buddy, john right. So he and I, yeah, so he and I spent lots of time talking to each other, disagreeing with each other we're on the opposite ends of the spectrum, at least back then. But one thing that popped out at us was for John 5-3, that his commandments, that we're supposed to keep his commandments and his commandments are not burdensome. Right or not? Grievous, why don't I pull this up out here instead of this Arnold paraphrase For this is the love of God, that we keep his commandments, and his commandments are not burdensome.
Speaker 2:There's some tension there.
Speaker 3:I never had a problem with this before. This is our standard interpretation of this. Is that, see, you can keep God's commandments and you're gonna. It's easy, and the old King James is not grievous, you can do it. But something new clicked in my mind. I said that's not exactly what it's saying. It seems it's not just saying it's possible or that it's easy, it says it's not a burden. And then this linked into my understanding of Romans, chapter seven, the last part of Romans chapter seven. Fort Paul says I do the things that I, yeah, the things I don't wanna do, that so I do the things that I right. And that to me was the Christian life. Because you are struggling against self, you are battling against the flesh, the flesh always less against the spirit. You want to follow the spirit, but the flesh is always pulling you back. There Is this thing inside you that's always pulling you to the dark side and you gotta fight that thing. And this was, as far as I knew, was the Christian life. And until we are changed in the twinkling of an eye and corruption is turning to incorruption. This is how it was gonna be. And in this verse the first John pops out at me, says something a little bit new, right? Countless times I've quoted this verse, but something new said it's not burdensome. But my life is absolutely burdensome, doing the thing, forcing myself to do the thing that I know I was supposed to do, but I don't really want it. There's something in me that wants something else. Yeah, this is a burden.
Speaker 2:Cannot be what John's talking about John Wesley said in regards to that interpretation of Romans 7,. He said with freedom like that, who needs slavery?
Speaker 3:It is slavery. I guess it's some form of slavery. It's terrible. Unfortunately, this is how we have often presented the Christian life that for the rest of your life you're gonna be battling against yourself and you cannot do the things that you wish to do, because you're always gonna fight yourself, because you have to do what God wants you to do.
Speaker 2:We say it to people right after they get baptized.
Speaker 3:We do. You're warned oh, satan's gonna come at you. Now it's gonna happen. You're gonna feel the flesh. So you watch it, be careful. They're like why are people?
Speaker 2:signing up. They just is it hell or something? I don't know.
Speaker 3:Okay, there's various reasons, but then, finally, I didn't care about whatever reasons, I didn't care who agreed with me or disagreed with me. I just looked at this verse and I said what I have is not this. And then I pulled John in and told him about it and he agreed with me and I thought, okay, this is weird because he agreed with me. If we're on the same page, this is new. Why would that weird if he would agree with you? Oh, because we used to disagree all the time. Because I would say that, yeah, we always have to obey all the time. And he would say are you saying that if I sin like this one time let's say somebody coming off on the freeway and I lost my temper that I would be not in Christ anymore? And I said in Christ you will walk in the spirit, not in the flesh. And how can you tell me that you're in Christ? And you found sin inside Christ? In him is no sin, First John. Why, yeah, I like first John, that kind of thing. For me, there's always. God promises a separation for us and if we are in him, sin's not gonna be there. We're not gonna find sin in God, or with God, or in Christ, with Christ. So that was the thing. But then it wasn't just a matter of separating us from sin. It was separating us from sin and we are keeping his commandments and they're not burdensome. That, to me, was a new thing. I said, wait a minute, not burdensome, I'm gonna look into this. And so for the next few months he and I were going at it. Every single opportunity came up at church, whether it's Sabbath school, saturday afternoon, study, whatever. I would bring this up, bring this up to people, because I don't know if you noticed, but I like to disagree with people. I like to find people who disagree with me because I wanna know why they disagree with me. I wanna see if they can poke holes in my arguments and if they have something better, then I'm gonna go for it. But if they cannot show me anything better, then I'm gonna stick with what I have. But what I was thinking about, what I was seriously considering, was very different from what I have been teaching for 30 years, what I've heard all the time. So it was weird. But it looked like, hey, there is a way out, there is a way to walk with God and enjoy it. Who would've thought? I said that's weird, and so I would bring it up to people and let them argue against it, and I was gonna see what it was, but nobody could argue against it. They would always end up with something like well, that's just a Christian life, the flesh is there and it's going to. It's going to just be against you all the time and you gotta fight it all, and then it's a war. Right, these are the flesh you lost at war against the soul. So that's where that was for several months, you just rambling around. And then this guy came to my church preaching some crazy stuff and he said your flesh is dead, d-e-t dead. I don't know if you remember that, but that was you which actually coming into that series where you came in. So we were told you were coming in and going to do a whole week. Did you think much of it, did you?
Speaker 2:think this is a big deal, or you're like, oh cool, another week of prayer.
Speaker 3:Yes, maybe it was another youth week of prayer, until I found out you were with Love Reality. Love Reality, and because I had looked into that ministry before, because I have a friend. We were just talking and, for whatever reason, justin's name came up, justin Koo and he said have you heard Justin Koo's like preaching crazy stuff. I said, like what? That we don't. We're not supposed to ask for forgiveness. I said that is stupid, that's crazy. Why would he say that? And then something clicked in my mind. It linked in there because Byron right, he had mentioned to me about Love Reality previously and he said hey, there's these guys that are saying some stuff. It's interesting. I'm not gonna I'm not buying everything that they're selling yet, but it's interesting, check it out. So I did check it out a little bit, very little bit. It was very little and it wasn't that big a deal to me. I didn't need another new thing to think about at that time, so I checked it out. I watched that video on the beach where he got Jonathan on the beach, yes that. And I thought, yes, that's very interesting, I think I like that. And then I walked away.
Speaker 2:So did you look into what Justin Koo was saying at all? Did you ever like?
Speaker 3:That's what I did when my friend that I grew up with he was telling me this. I said that's crazy and I asked does it have anything to do with Jonathan Leonardo? So yeah, he's his disciple. I said, okay, this sounds weird, but okay, I'm gonna check this out. So I checked it out at that point and I looked for it. I said I'm not gonna listen to Justin, I'm gonna go straight to Jonathan and see what he has to say. And he explained it and I said, well, that makes sense. I said this is interesting. And then I watched the whole wave one. Oh, wow, pvc. Like, hold the sermons, yeah, the sermons. Yeah, I don't want any seven minute stuff. Come on, I'm serious, right. I'm not like those guys who just come to church and then they leave after the sermon's done. I am, or I'm, the serious guy. I watched the whole thing. What did? You think about it. I thought, well, that's very interesting, and I wish Sharon had stayed awake while we were watching, because we would watch it like in bed or while we were driving and we'd listen to it in the car. But she just wasn't all that into it. I don't know, maybe I shouldn't be sharing this with everybody, but yeah, she just wasn't all that into it. But I was thinking this is interesting stuff, this has there's something in this. And then we heard that you were coming. And then I heard that you were with Love Reality and I said, oh, I'm going to check this guy out on YouTube Because I never heard your name.
Speaker 2:Oh, there's not a lot of stuff. There might be some more stuff on me on YouTube. There's not a ton right.
Speaker 3:We watched this one sermon. It looked like you were doing a Vespers thing at a church somewhere on Friday night and you were telling the story. And Sharon said after watching that thing. She said do we really have to go to the week of prayer Because this guy's boring.
Speaker 2:Heck. No, Now I got to watch that sermon. I've never been called boring. I've been called all sorts of things.
Speaker 3:I've never been called boring, hey just remember this is after years of we're going through our stuff. So, whatever stuff you're going through, oh, man, I need to. I need to spice up my sermons, man, I need to spice it up. I need to turn with the heat to get us to pay attention. But anyway, I said, yeah, we're going to go because he's with Love, reality, remember that stuff that we watched in the car, that wave one stuff. I have a question. So before you set foot in church and set a single word, I already had a bunch of questions for you. I don't know if you realize that that I have questions.
Speaker 2:Oh, I was excited for any kind of question. Any time someone has a question, I'm like let's go.
Speaker 3:Oh, I know. So that was good. I was gearing up for that because there were some things that the Jonathan had said that didn't make a whole lot of sense to me and I am not about to start typing in the YouTube comment section, right? And when I get into something it's a lot. So I was just waiting for you to show up and I told her I don't get how boring he is. I'm just waiting for the time when he stops talking and that we can have a conversation.
Speaker 2:We're not supposed to live by offense, right? I'm offended, sharon. I need to find out what sermon this is. I got to go. I need to take it off YouTube if I'm boring. That's the old Richard. Yeah, he's dead now he doesn't have it. Yeah, new Richard. New Richard's not offended by my boring concerns.
Speaker 3:He's just happy that he was able to reach out to somebody in spite of himself. Yeah, praise the Lord. No, but I had my questions and then you started speaking and the questions just jumped out at me more, because you were saying the same stuff that I was questioning.
Speaker 2:The first sermon was just the way we kick it off as Roman 6. I do it differently than Jonathan, obviously, because I tell my story. What questions came to your mind as I'm preaching? This is your first sermon, my first sermon at Pasadena. What was coming to your mind?
Speaker 3:The big thing was I don't remember if it was in the first sermon or eventually was the flesh is?
Speaker 2:dead. Did I talk about the flesh? I certainly didn't on the first two nights.
Speaker 3:I know for sure At some point it went in. But I know that's the thing where everything my big question coming in was about this forgiveness, asking for forgiveness, because that was still there bothering me. But once you said the flesh is dead like not just dying but actually dead then all the other stuff me straysly damn. No, this is the thing. This is the important thing. Why was that so important? Because I have been preaching for so many years that the flesh has been crucified, but it's there and it's yelling at you and screaming at you, trying to get back with him and so you guys can start hanging out again. So basically, he was dead, but not really dead. He's there and I die daily, right, Because he's not quite dead, he's just mostly dead.
Speaker 2:That's what we've got to do. We have to have that out. The flesh can't be dead and we have to die daily because our lives aren't matching up with the truth that the Bible says, and so we have to have it out somewhere because my life doesn't look like what he's telling me to live by. And so here's an out that the flesh isn't actually dead and it's not dead because I didn't wake up this morning and die daily to it. Tomorrow, if I die daily, then I'll have a good day.
Speaker 3:Right, I didn't pray right away. I checked my email first, I checked my texts first and I forgot to pray and that's why my whole day is going back Stuff like that. And I have been teaching this and I believe this for basically my whole life, that I'm the poster boy for we can overcome sin, but we're just not doing it at the moment.
Speaker 2:We just haven't implemented it correctly.
Speaker 3:Yes, we will be sanctification as a work of a lifetime, and my lifetime is not yet over, I'm still in the process. So that was my thought. And then when you said that I don't know if you remember, but I have costed you after the meeting, costed me.
Speaker 2:You were gonna say Okay. I just want to say this to the people listening Arnold has his version of the story. My version of the story is this that you've already heard what I said about Sharon, but that Arnold was a really nice guy and he was playing the guitar before the meetings. And then, after one of the meetings, he says hey, man, what about this? So it is not. There's two sides to every story. Mine is that Arnold is a sweetheart of a man and he was just curious about a question that I had.
Speaker 3:I have a reputation to uphold here, so anyway. So I asked you about that because that was the thing. That, as far as I was concerned, my life revolved around this thing. It revolved around fighting the flesh, and you just said that I'm fighting somebody who's dead. That makes no sense, because how can he be dead when I hear him every day calling me to go hang out with him and do that?
Speaker 2:Is that your exact question? I forget. You said I have a question Is the flesh actually dead? Is that what you asked?
Speaker 3:Yeah, I probably said it's a flesh dead or and what did I say? I don't remember, or mostly dead. And you said dead. And then I said how come I'm hearing this call from the flesh all the time to walk in the flesh? And then you said and this was a thing that just lit about you said I don't believe you. So when I told him that you don't believe me, I experienced it. And then you asked me do you do your Richard thing that everybody knows, that you do the story that? Do you believe that Jesus died for you?
Speaker 2:Yeah, we gotta get on some foundation. We gotta have a foundation, of course.
Speaker 3:Yeah, I said yeah, he said then your flesh is dead, d-e dead, d-e-d dead. And I said that fact just sounds so dumb and so I had to think about that if you remember me, no, no, no, no, this is you're messing the story up.
Speaker 2:You asked of me if the flesh is dead and I said yes, it's dead. And then you're like then why do I have these feelings? And I'm like that's not the flesh. You're being tempted, yes. And then you're like you're trying to make this story like that you actually wanna do these things. And that's when I said I don't believe you because Arnold and I think I did my head turn a little bit I'm like do you actually want to sin? Yes, yes, you did that. You said that and you knew in that moment you actually don't wanna sin Nothing.
Speaker 3:I've been trying to avoid sin for most of my life. That's your main story.
Speaker 2:I don't wanna do it. You've been bad. Don't wanna do it, yes, and so that's why I said I don't believe you that you actually want to sin, and apparently that woke something up in you.
Speaker 3:Oh, absolutely, because this was a whole new way of thinking about my daily experience of effort and failure. Wait a minute. Why am I saying that's me If the flesh is dead? Richard says that's the devil. It can't be me. If the flesh has been crucified, what's that got to do with me? Why do I ever have to listen to it? If this is Satan, submit to God, resist the devil and he will flee from you. And that was a turning point for me, because if it was my flesh, if it was me? One thing that I have realized is all of my problems. The common factor is me. I'm always there. So if this pull towards sin is me, then I have real problems. It's always gonna be this, this is gonna be Roman seven all the time, because it's me and I'm fighting against myself.
Speaker 2:And that's why Paul says that our battle is not against flesh and blood, it's against yourself. Oh no, he doesn't say that.
Speaker 3:Wait, that's nowhere.
Speaker 2:chapter three, verse two but no, he says it's against the. What spiritual powers?
Speaker 3:Yes, principality is a power. It's not us, it's not against flesh and blood. So that made me think about it some more and it linked back to this thing that I've been letting simmer for months about first John, five, three, that we can walk in his commandments, keep his commandments and they're not burdened some. I say wait a minute. This might be the key that unlocks this whole thing and make it all make sense. And so, yeah, that was the biggest thing out of that whole week. That made me think for a long time actually.
Speaker 2:So then, what did I say about forgiveness? Did that tie, did that make sense? Or at that point, because I remember we hung out after one of the nights and we hung out in the parking lot for about like four minutes or an hour Like real human beings and not like some scary person from love reality that's here to poison your thinking and make you think something that the Bible doesn't say. I wanna be like. I'm a real guy and if you have a question about this, what's up.
Speaker 3:Right and we appreciated that a lot because we have questions and so that was good. And about the forgiveness, I actually that kind of just faded away. I didn't care so much about that anymore. I needed to settle this thing with a flesh first before I got back to that forgiveness issue, which eventually I did come back, but you were long gone by the time I dug into that some more.
Speaker 2:So let me ask you this Friday night, sharon has this beautiful experience where she's like seeing the truth. She's seeing that she hasn't seen the truth before or hasn't even grabbed ahold of the truth, that she's been believing all of this stuff. I didn't talk to you that night, or maybe I did when passing and it was just theological always. And then the next day or I think that night, you're like hey, man, after church we're going to do this thing where we're just going to. We like to keep it going, we keep the party going after church and I'm like oh, people have questions. Oh, okay, in my mind it was just going to be me in the youth room with two or three people and we're just going to, hey, if there's further questions. But I get there and it's just there's some pitchforks and there's some. It was the Filipino inquisitions, what it was. But in that afternoon session, sharon gets up and she testifies of something that's changed in her life. I want to know, as you're seeing Sharon Friday night and as you're seeing Sharon on Sabbath, like, what's going on in your heart and what you're considering about what the Bible says about you.
Speaker 3:So her experience with it. She shared what she shared. I had no idea she was going to talk about that, but I knew that she was falling for this message right, and she was liking it, and she was accepting it faster than I was, because I had a bunch of theological checklists that they have to check out, make sure everything is all good, so I was holding off on that. But she doesn't have such restrictions, so she just looked at it and saw that it made sense to her and she went for it. She just accepted it and it was making a change in her life. She testified right that afternoon that it had made a change in her life and she was saying stuff that I had never heard before. Right, so something is different here, and actually her experience helps solidify this in my mind that this was real, because I knew very well what she was before and so every now and then stuff would come up in our lives as they do. That I knew will cause a reaction of some sort in her, and so I wouldn't do anything to prevent it from happening, which is what I used to do, because if these things happen and she got triggered, then we're going to have some long argument, four hours, eight hours, whatever it was. And I knew it was going to be bad news, but I wanted to see what would happen, so I didn't prevent it. I would let it happen and see how she would react, to see if she would get triggered and blow up and all that stuff. And she wasn't because she claimed the old Sharon is dead. That flesh is dead.
Speaker 2:Right after that weekend she's old Sharon dead. You're still holding out some hope for old Arnold. You're like maybe he's not dead, my good old friend Arnold. Hey, we've been through fake and fear.
Speaker 3:It always been a help to me. The flesh it was just my own experience did not match. That, did not match the theory, the theory that I knew very well and basically my only question was is this the way to make the theory happen? Because I knew I believe the theory. I just never have been able to implement it properly and my thought was can this be the thing that. I missed. What is this? This is accepting that when the Bible says that if you are crucified with him, if you die in the likeness of death, you are raised with him in the likeness of his resurrection, you walk in newness of life and so you are dead to sin, the old man is crucified. And that thing about crucified, that he's actually not just on the way to dying and you know that you can still entertain him. He's crucified in the sense in the Bible crucifixion that he's gone. He's got nothing to do with you. That should you have told people this? Should you even hear something like that? I don't care if it's from the flesh or if it's Satan or whatever. It doesn't have anything to do with you. If you are in Christ, if you have accepted his death, if you have died with him, you have died to that. There was this change. It wasn't like accept his death as your own. No, you're not just taking his death as your death, you are actually, you're dying with him. That's what the Bible says. You die with him and if you have died to that, you're dead to that. And now you bring up the first part of Romans 7. You're dead to that law that you have to follow your husband, because that husband's been crucified.
Speaker 2:In order so that you would be married to another to bear fruit.
Speaker 3:So then, yeah, now you're married to Jesus and that law of the husband. Now you bear fruit to Jesus, you don't bear fruit to the old guy because he's gone. And just accepting that as a fact not as something that I need to work toward, but it's a done deal, I just need to accept it I actually made a big change on a practical level.
Speaker 2:Okay, we're going to take a quick break in this episode because I'm going to bring on my sister from Australia. This is Karen. Karen, what's up? Hey, Rich?
Speaker 4:How are you? How are you going, pretty good mate, how are you going?
Speaker 2:I'm going so well, hey, quick question how long have you been rocking with good gospel?
Speaker 4:It is a year and one month.
Speaker 2:A year and one month. Wow, that's wild. Has it had any kind of an effect on your life?
Speaker 4:the gospel how has it had, mate, to go from feeling unlovable, a piece of nothing, from a marriage that was on the brink of being walked away from fear to a place where I know I'm loved, I know I'm valuable. My whole marriage has changed. My whole life has changed. Being able to talk about the good news because it is actually finally good news for me- Wow, that is so beautiful.
Speaker 2:So you would say it's made a difference.
Speaker 4:It's made a massive difference, I think, understanding the truth about God, understanding the truth about myself. I had this beautiful moment just yesterday. I sat on the beach because a year ago I read a thing on Instagram that was about sitting next to Jesus and feeling peace, and I felt sad because I didn't have peace with Jesus. And yesterday I sat and that Instagram post came back to me and I realized I have peace with Jesus now and I just sat there feeling like I needed nothing or no one, because I have everything in Jesus.
Speaker 2:Mercy, this is like another episode with you, or a whole other episode. If we want to hear your whole story, where can we go?
Speaker 4:I have episode 97 on the Death to Life podcast. Listen out, sorry.
Speaker 2:Episode 97. Okay, you've decided to donate some of your hard-earned cash to keep this movement, this ministry, going. Why have you decided to do that?
Speaker 4:Richard, I was brought up in the church. I've heard about God my whole life, but it wasn't until this podcast that I saw what the love of God can do, and what it could do for me as well, and so, of course, I want everyone to hear it. I'm going to give everything for that.
Speaker 2:Man, that's praise God. If you're listening and you want to partner with us, you can go to loverealityorg slash give and that's loverealityorg slash give, and we can keep this thing going. Karen, you can be like all emotional. Thank you so much. Thank you, richard. Thank you. One of my favorite authors says it like this way the Bible does not instruct us to die with Christ. The Bible instructs us that we have died with Christ. It is a historical fact. It's like 2000 years ago, outside of Jerusalem, christ was killed and that is now your spiritual experience. So it's taking this thing that could be and this was my whole life and sounds like your whole life. And the paradigm shift is it is not because of something I have done, but because Jesus actually was a, he was God and he became my sin on Calvary and I have died with him. I've been crucified with him and is no longer I who live, but Christ that lives in me, in the life I now live in the flesh. I live by faith in the Son of God, who laid his life down for me, or who love me and laid his life down for me. So that's fact. It's not a could be.
Speaker 3:And it's a fact that was, for the longest time, just a fact in its own compartment over here, as opposed to the fact that I live in all the time. So it's one of those, just yeah, the piece of information that you can take into account in your life, or maybe you can ignore it.
Speaker 2:Since that weekend and we hung out Saturday night and I think we even talked on the phone or texted a bunch. I don't think we really stopped texting since then. What has been changing? Grab your paradigm shift and then describe what that has actually meant for day to day.
Speaker 3:Well, just the shift that that flesh is something, that there is, a thing of the past that it's has no bearing on what's happening today or tomorrow and going forward. That's the new thing. It's not like before. I'm worried, though. The flesh is going to come up, is going to jump out of that, and that thing that Jonathan said in that video that you're just sin waiting to happen I totally resonated with that. I said, yes, exactly, that's it. I'm sin waiting to happen. It happens quite a bit and so I know. So that, just putting it aside that no, you're not sin waiting to happen, because that guy's gone, that guy's been crucified and just now not just thinking about that as a potential future event that, if I'm faithful and else that's going to happen for me later, but that has already happened, jesus already affected that. I just need to receive it from him and just believe it and live in that reality. That changed how I deal with temptations, because temptations do still come. So it's not like everything, everything's just all fine and dandy. The temptation still pop into my mind, but now I just remind myself that you're a son of God. That's beneath you, that's got nothing to do with you. Wherever that's coming from has nothing to do with you, and I just walk away from it and it goes away. Back in the old days those things would pop in and I would know I would claim the promises that we don't walk in the flesh, we walk in the spirit. Shouldn't do that. But then it would be in my brain for hours, thinking about it, fighting against it, but wrestling. I'm trying to push it aside and sometimes I would lay awake at night. I couldn't sleep. It's 2 am, 3 am and I can't sleep because these things are in my mind. So what I have to do is I have to get up and open my Bible or turn on my computer and I would get into some kind of theological controversy somewhere and engage my brain in that direction to just push aside this bad stuff that I don't want to be there. So I had to basically distract myself by something else so that it would go away and then eventually I would be physically unable to stay awake and then I would fall asleep. That's how it was for years because I knew I shouldn't be thinking these things. It's like inappropriate thoughts and stuff like that and it would be a struggle. But ever since I just accepted that the old man has been crucified, that Paul say if you're in Christ, the flesh has been crucified with its passions and desires. Then I say no, that has nothing to do with me now. And it actually goes away. And I didn't expect this to happen. I actually didn't realize that was happening until later on. I was talking to some people who were not agreeing with this message and they were bringing us oh, that sounds like holy flesh. You mean, just because we accept Jesus, that all of a sudden you don't sin anymore. I say the Bible says this. So we've been preaching this a long time. First John 3, 9, you cannot sin. First John 3, 6,. First John 2, like the whole thing. Just read the whole book of First John. I said, but this is actually working now for me. I said this is what it was. And I said so what? You don't get tempted anymore or you can't be tempted anymore? I said, yeah, I still get tempted, but this is how I do it. And that's when I realized that. I can't use was tempted. And this is that for those out there all familiar with our old Adventist theology, that holy flesh movement from back in the day, that we all know today that it was wrong, but people still bring it up because they're afraid that somehow. Well, they say that they're afraid that now you're claiming not to be tempted anymore, that's one problem. Or that you're claiming that you can be righteous apart from Jesus. That's another silly claim that they say, which I mean, nobody ever says that. But what they're really afraid of is that it is possible to walk with God all the time and not have to walk in the flesh at all.
Speaker 2:Why are they afraid of that? Because it's not their experience.
Speaker 3:For some, yeah, it's like they look in their life and they will argue all day long, all night long and Sharon can testify to this. All night long they were still arguing. They're trying to convince me that I sin every day. I'm just not admitting it. I said, no, I don't think so. I was there all day and no, I didn't.
Speaker 2:It should be strange. It should before. The mindset was it would be strange if we went two minutes without sinning. Now, because I'm in Christ, it should be strange if I sin and I would know it if I sinned I'm a slave to righteousness. I'm no longer a slave to sin.
Speaker 3:The walking in the flesh, that falling into sin that's the special occasion. Now there's no way you wouldn't what happened there and you get very sensitive to it because it's no longer the normal thing. The normal thing is like you're walking with God and the good things there, as opposed to walking in sin. But there are people that get very nervous when you start saying, when you go from, we can walk with the spirit all the time and not in the flesh, and you move over into we do walk in the spirit all the time and not in the flesh. Now all of a sudden they don't like what you're saying. I still haven't really identified what's the big deal, because now I'm just saying that-.
Speaker 2:Oh, the big deal is life lived man To have an out. We have to have an out.
Speaker 3:They look at their life and see that it doesn't match the theory. And I did that same thing for so long. I looked at my life and it did not match the theory. So what's rule number three? See what's the rule. Chair is the expert on the rule number three is trust the word of God, the word over your life. Yes, and that was one thing which, when the first time I heard Jonathan say that, I thought obviously you trust God's word over your own life, and that was the thing that I thought I was doing before. But it turns out I wasn't. I knew what God said and I looked at my life and it didn't match, so I interpreted that to mean that I hadn't yet received God's promise. I haven't done everything I was supposed to do to unlock that treasure house. However you want to say it that this was yet future for me, but what one of the big changes. Watching Wave 1 on YouTube, listening to you and just wrestling with you for a little bit. The Bible actually says that he did it. It's a done deal, it's already packaged, we just have to receive it. Why am I not receiving it? I didn't have a good answer for not receiving it, so I thought, well, maybe I should receive it. Just take it. He's giving it to you for free, and so that's what that was. A new thing for me is just, basically, if God said it, then believe that, even if your life doesn't look like it to you, and that there's a verse that says that we are wholly blameless, above reproach in his sight.
Speaker 2:Colossians 1, 21, yeah.
Speaker 3:If, through being with Jesus and his death, accepting his death, dying with him, we are wholly blameless, above reproach in his sight, if my sight, if in my sight that's not true, who cares about my sight? Why should my sight overwrite God's sight? If he says that's how it is, then I should just accept that's how it is, regardless of what I think about it, regardless of how I feel about it. Sounds like faith, man. Yes, because sometimes, many times, you look at your own life and, yeah, you fall short. Oh, I could have done that better. And I still do that to this day. I look back and say I could have done that better. But one is I just remember that if God says I'm wholly blameless in his sight, then I'll just take that and face value Okay, if that's what you say, I'll believe that, even if it doesn't look like that's what I'm, if it doesn't look accurate to me that I don't think I'm wholly and blameless and above reproach. If you say so, I will go with God's word over my word. That's one I can't remember the last time that I chose to do something I knew I wasn't supposed to do. I used to do that all the time. Nothing big. I haven't murdered anyone or embezzled money or anything like that, but just these little constant things all the time that your mind goes there. Right, if Jesus says, your life in your mind is just as real as the life in your body. So yeah, I used to do that all the time and I would choose to go there. This is in my mind because I would get in trouble if I did it in real life that I can't remember the last time that happened, because how could you who died to sin, live any longer in it? Yeah. No can't.
Speaker 2:Yeah, that question that Paul asks isn't like a how could you? It's like a, literally like how is this possible? You died to sin. Yeah, he's not shocked, chisk, it's more like bro, don't you know what happened? You actually died to sin, so should you sin now that grace abounds? No, by no means.
Speaker 3:I was thinking about that because we usually think about it. I'm living to say I used to think about it as Paul was guilt-tripping. The people See what I mean you died to sin. How could you do that? I can't believe you. How could you do that again, which is not really how I think many people think about it. But now it looks like Paul is saying that's not even possible. What are you talking about? And I thought about this. Like amputees, I'm told right, they have this phantom pain, like they feel their limb is still there but it's gone. It's something like that where what are you talking about? You can feel your leg it's gone. You're imagining that. That's not real and that seems to be what Paul is saying. What are you talking about? Walking sin? You don't walk in sin, not if you're in Christ. If we died to sin, right, Since we have died to sin, you can't walk in sin anymore.
Speaker 2:That's why he tells us halfway through the chapter consecrate your body to righteousness, your true master. Let me ask you this I got two more questions. That's the paradigm shift. How is that and you're talking about how it's walked out in believing something about yourself, but how have you been able to walk it out? Number one, seeing Sharon's transformation, and what has that done for your marriage?
Speaker 3:The marriage is better. Every now and then they should say, hey, isn't it nice we're not yelling at each other every day anymore? I say yeah, it's nice. It's cool, we can get used to this. It is so much better. So here's the thing she was always the one that would get upset at stuff. For me, if something happened that I didn't like, I wouldn't even invest the energy to get upset about it. Really, I would just avoid that situation. That's how I dealt with things. So if there were people that would annoy me, I would avoid the people. And that became really bad when it was Sharon who was annoying me because I would avoid her. She's my wife. She sticks right next to me every day, so that became a problem. But now one is she doesn't get annoyed at the stuff that you trigger her all the time. And yeah, sometimes I do let things happen, still just to see what would happen with her, how she would take it, and just looking at that, it's a testimony to me every day. Yeah, that flesh is gone, it's dead. I can't revive it.
Speaker 2:I keep trying to revive it, but it's not coming back. No, stop, don't revive it If you're like oh man, my marriage was terrible, let's see if it can still be terrible. You texted me that the other day. I'm like bro chill.
Speaker 3:No, I just these things come up. But and here's the thing on my side because she was the one that's usually getting triggered and things she would blow up and I would just be accompanying that explosion. I was just there for the experience, right. And then I used to walk on eggshells all the time. Actually, one time during at some point in our counseling and it's this there was a moment of clarity and honesty. I told her say yes, I'm always afraid that you're going to blow up, that I'm going to do something or something is going to happen and you're going to get upset. And then we're going to have a big old fight of work. You're going to have a big fight about it with me. And they said that's why you're upset all the time, that's why you're nervous all the time, that's why you don't like hanging around me. Because who would like that if you're walking on eggshells all the time? And I thought, yeah, that sounds about right. That's why I don't like it, because I'm always so careful. But now, does Jesus love me, regardless of what I have done and how I fall short today? Yes, because Sharon accepts that for herself. She can also reflect that to me. So sometimes, yeah, I look back and say, oh, I could have done that better, but I can rely on her just loving me anyway, in spite of myself, because I earned it, because the love that she's getting from God is leaking out in my direction and for me. That's what I just tried to live in. Also that every now and then I'm going to be honest. She does something that annoys me too, and I still don't say anything about it. But now it's just a little blip, and then I move on and say, whatever, old Sharon is dead, she's learning. What about old Arnold being?
Speaker 2:dead, the one who was so triggered and the one so we think that being triggered, yeah, that's one thing, but hiding and living a life of lack because you're protecting yourself, that's old Arnold, yes.
Speaker 3:And that's the fact that I can just let that thing be a blip and not dwell on it. I used to dwell on stuff for hours, for days. I wouldn't say anything because it was a point of saying anything, but it would annoy me and Sharon could tell, because I gripped my steering wheel extra hard, I typed extra hard on my phone.
Speaker 2:You're looking up gun shops to buy a Smith and Wesson, to go be a vigilante.
Speaker 3:But it doesn't happen anymore. It is literally just a blip and then it's back to normal. So that's one is those little attempts to revive the old man. It's not coming back. So there's that. Now, you mentioned this living in lack of some sort. I just realized this the other day because Sharon likes to attend Wheeze class and she tells me about it. Sometimes I'm awake for it, so I'll join too. And he talks about this lack of something. And I realized, yes, that's why I do a lot of things that I do because I'm operating from this place of lack, or at least I'm expecting to lack at some point, and I'm getting ready for that and I'm going to do what I can to avoid that, to mitigate that, to do something about it. Even I don't know if you remember my sermon, but my illustration at the beginning of the sermon was my old jar of mixed nuts that I kept empty container. I keep a lot of empty containers. That's just one picture that I shared with the world, but I keep a lot of it because I'm always thinking at some point in the future I'm going to need this. I have no idea what I'm going to need it for, but I'm getting ready and there's always that thing like oh, at some point I'm going to need resources, I'm going to need some level of prosperity, so I better get ready now. And this is part of my upbringing, this is a thing that was pounded on us. Oh, you better save up, you better get a good job, make a lot of money, because at some point you're going to need it. That's how I function, and it's not just with money or with empty nut containers, it's also with Sharon pointing this out with eating Like. When we eat like, I tend to eat more than I need. She said that's probably because you think you're going to be hungry in the future and so you got food right now you can eat. I said, yeah, that's probably why and I don't really know why, because all my life I've never gone hungry, there's always been plenty of food available but it is just that attitude of lack, or expecting lack, that God is not going to provide for me, so I better provide for myself, I better do something to get ready for this thing, so that I can solve my problem when it comes. And it manifests itself all over the place, even places that it has no business being in. It's just there because it's the same root lack of faith. So apparently all of these years I have never kept the Sabbath correctly one time, because I'm always depending on myself, I haven't rested in God's finished work, still working on that.
Speaker 2:Give that one a try.
Speaker 3:Yeah, it's something. How many times have I preached on that? I preached many things that I did not pay attention to the message myself, but it's just a constant growth that, as I go through these things, just new things are popping up and I'm identifying these different things and saying, oh, that's why that is.
Speaker 2:You're just getting light bulb moments all the time. I have a privilege to get these texts from you and you're just saying, oh, wow. It's like the understanding of how safe we are is the beginning of Christian maturity. It's like now I get to actually grow into Christ because I know how safe I am in Him.
Speaker 3:Yeah, and people have this tendency to say, when I tell them this flesh thing comes up all the time, surprisingly a lot, and I say no, I never pay attention to it anymore and anything, oh, so you're perfect now. They don't understand that this starts the process when you die with Jesus, die to self right and you are raised to walk in theness of life. You just a baby, you just started your walk right, there's a whole lot of walking to do still. There's a whole lot of growth and grace and knowledge to come still. But it's just that switch is so big that they tend to think that, oh, this is the whole thing. You have a right, so you think you're perfect now and you never make a mistake. I mean lots of mistakes, it's just that's I don't identify as the mistake anymore.
Speaker 2:Praise God. I'm trying to figure out where we're going to go back so you can talk to old Arnold. Let me you pick. Where would you go back to talk to old Arnold? If you could jump in the DeLorean and you could go back to talk to old Arnold, would you go back to the jungle? Would you go back to when you're raising these kids? Where would you go back and pull them aside and say my man, my man, I've don't share in this because she said, oh, so I messed you up.
Speaker 3:I said, no, I was messed up long before you came around. This pre-dated you. I would go back to when I was a kid and just tried to get that concept across, that are God's love for us is not dependent on anything other than who he is, regardless of what I do or don't do, how good I am or how bad I am. Even God's love is more constant than the speed of light. I like to say it is a universal constant and it just is. But once we accept that, then it starts changing our whole outlook on why we do anything. It's not because God loves me now I'm going to do this bad stuff because he loves me anyway. I used to do that and he will forgive me anyway. I didn't really understand God's love. Maybe hold up. This love encompasses this unconditional positive regard, which I'm still trying to wrap my brain around, but that idea that God's attitude toward us has always been positive and he always has these great plans for us and he always wants us best for us and he's not upset at us Even if we do bad. It's not like I'm ashamed of you now. You didn't surprise him. He knew all this stuff going in, but he loves us, period. If we truly accept that we can rest from our own labors, as God rested from his labors, we don't have to achieve these things based on our own performance, and then we can just live in his glory all the time. And it turns out if you do that, things turn out much better than through any effort of your own.
Speaker 2:Weird Turns out. Man, thank you so much for coming on. It's been a huge blessing to me. All right, well, thank you. Wow, I love that episode. I love Arnold. I think he has a mind for Scripture, but now he has a heart for Scripture. And if you're in that situation, if you have head knowledge of the gospel but it is not manifesting in your life, you're not becoming love, you're not putting that on Then I want to pray this prayer for you, father. I don't know why I'm not seeing this fruit in my life, but I know that you're the vine and I'm the branch, and so you get to produce fruit and I just get to bear it. So I thank you that you've given me this opportunity to just receive and believe what you have done, and that is what I'm going to do. Whether I see it, I'm going to believe that you are producing this fruit and it will bear in my life, and I thank you for that in Jesus's name, amen. One thing that I want to make sure you guys know about is our Bible studies. Community is what it's all about. Community is where this has walked out and lived. I have a Bible study on Wednesday morning where we just start from Jump Street, where we just go over it and over it and over it again until it's just pounded into our heads that we are free from and dead to sin. And so if you want that information, you can. Text made new to the love reality number. The love reality number is 808-204-4372. So you text hashtag made new to 808-204-4372 and you're going to kick it with me and we're just going to grow in this thing together. So that's going to be so much fun. Thank you so much.