WeLuvSanDiego
The Mixtape
I'm letting Ai tell you about this weeks show since it's so much smarter than me. Take it away Ai...
"Discover the transformative journey of Ryan McFadden, whose path twisted from the dazzle of Hollywood to the humble calling of Christian evangelism. This episode is a tapestry of tales, weaving the humor of a Valentine's Day adventure at Pala Casino Buffet with the introspection brought about by a committed prayer life. Ryan, with candid warmth, shares how the simple act of dedicating time to prayer and Bible study can shape your days and focus your purpose. You'll be amused by his throwback to a seventh-grade mixtape fiasco and inspired by the earnestness of his current endeavors."
I'm letting Ai tell you about this weeks show since it's so much smarter than me. Take it away Ai...
"Discover the transformative journey of Ryan McFadden, whose path twisted from the dazzle of Hollywood to the humble calling of Christian evangelism. This episode is a tapestry of tales, weaving the humor of a Valentine's Day adventure at Pala Casino Buffet with the introspection brought about by a committed prayer life. Ryan, with candid warmth, shares how the simple act of dedicating time to prayer and Bible study can shape your days and focus your purpose. You'll be amused by his throwback to a seventh-grade mixtape fiasco and inspired by the earnestness of his current endeavors."
Thank you for joining us on we Love San Diego. Our host, Ryan McFadden, is one of the most in-demand evangelists today. As an actor who shared the screen with the likes of Robin Williams, Don Johnson and later became part of the MTV Comedy Tour, Ryan had his life mapped out in front of him but, through the power of the gospel, God radically changed his life and perspective to go on from being served to serving. Today, Ryan and his wife Rose run one of the premier Christian outreach organizations in the country, called we Love San Diego, as they bring church to the people, bringing hope to the hopeless and serving those that society often turns a blind eye towards. Join us today, as Ryan shares a message of hope that we believe will impact your life and inspire you to live the life that God is calling you to live Now. Here's your host of we Love San Diego, Ryan McFadden.
Speaker 2:Well, guys, I'm sorry, I'm at Flagstaff, here at our studio. I realized I messed up. I thought about it this week this is we Love San Diego, by the way, and a very different way to start our show. But I realized as I was thinking about it this week the Valentine's Day is past, it's over, and I failed to give you my tips for Valentine's Day, my money-saving tips. Now, probably mostly for the guys I don't want to discriminate. Maybe the females will appreciate this as well but I realized I failed everyone, because this is after the fact, you're not going to be able to use any of these tips to do the things I'm telling you to do. But then I realized something. You can look at this one of two ways you can look at this either as this is a couple of weeks late, or this is just 50 weeks early for next year. So I felt led by our Lord to give you these money-saving tips for Valentine's Day, because here's the reality With Valentine's Day.
Speaker 2:I used to work in a restaurant and I didn't come up with the prices. I just happened to work there. But if you know, on Valentine's Day, whenever you go out to a restaurant, the prices are like double or triple. You go the day before Valentine's Day and the steak is $20. You go the day after Valentine's Day the steak is $20. But on Valentine's Day they'll put it in a package so you don't realize how much they've jacked the prices up, but that same $20 steak is now like $60. And how can you afford that in the economy that we are living in today? And that's why I have these tips for you to save money on Valentine's Day. Really any special event this will work for, but again, 50 weeks early, for 2025's Valentine's Day.
Speaker 2:I learned this on accident. So me and my wife, we moved down to San Diego in 2014, and where we moved to was about 10 minutes or so from one of the great casino buffets the Pala Casino Buffet that I've ever had. Now I'll tell you a secret I love a buffet. You're looking at me right now and you're thinking to yourself you love a buffet, and this Casino Buffet, a Pala, is as good, if not better, than any buffet I've ever had in Las Vegas, anywhere in the world. I mean, they have lobster, they have crab, they have prime rib, they have a. Every dessert is handmade. They have a ravioli making station, they have sushi, you name it. They have it.
Speaker 2:I haven't asked one time for orange soda, which I don't think, as an adult, that's a cool thing to ask for. But I asked for orange soda and you know what they told me. They said we don't have orange soda, but we'll make it for you. I said really, how would you go about that? And the guy looked at me like I was nuts and he was like we would just put Sprite and orange juice together and I said, you know, just give me the lemonade. Just give me the lemonade. Don't don't yeah, you don't have to, you don't have to do that.
Speaker 2:But it was so good until COVID, of course, destroyed so many good things in our life. It doesn't exist anymore, but back then it existed and it was great. And in fact the Palate Casino Buffet is so good. It's one of the reasons me and my wife moved back to San Diego from Arizona. I'm not making that up. We would sit there in Arizona and we would say, man, if only we could go to the casino buffet, it was so good, I wish we could do it. So when we moved back, it was like, hey, that's gonna be cool, we're gonna be able to go there anytime we want. And then, three months after we moved to, covid hit and it never existed again.
Speaker 2:But on Valentine's Day, when we moved down here, it was 2015. It's our first Valentine's Day and we love this buffet. And we thought to ourselves where do we wanna celebrate Valentine's Day? Because we know the prices are so high. So we came up with this idea. Nobody is going to the Palate Buffet on Valentine's Day. Here was our theory. That's not romantic. Now, I mean, how romantic is it to just shovel food into your face on Valentine's Day? No one wants to do that, even though everyone wants to do that. No one wants to do that on Valentine's Day. So we were like you know, no one's gonna wanna have like lobster sauce in their beard. No one's gonna be there. We do, we don't care, we're married, so we have nothing to prove to each other. So let's just go and enjoy ourselves. It'll be great. And that's what we decided to do. We were like we're gonna go at four o'clock. We're not gonna eat all day. We're starving at this point. So we head down to the Palate Casino Buffet and, I kid you not, when we get there, we're assuming we're gonna walk in, walk out. It's gonna be a great time.
Speaker 2:The line was so long that it was you would have to wait until the next Valentine's Day to get in. Like, basically they were like hey, you can go to the end of the line. You're not gonna make it this Valentine's Day, but next year you'll be right up to the front and you'll be able to get in. Like it was the longest line I've ever seen in my life. I've never seen anything like this Disneyland lines. They don't even compare to what we were looking at and we're starving. We're like we're not gonna stay in this line.
Speaker 2:So we decide, okay, we're not gonna go to Palate, we're gonna go close to home, cause we live in a small town. In fact it's not even a town, it's an unincorporated area. There's only like 30,000 people that live there. We're like who's gonna go in town on Valentine's Day? Like the restaurants are nice, but everyone who lives in town is gonna go out of town and no one's really coming, cause it's kind of secluded areas, so no one's gonna be there. So we go to some of our favorite restaurants. So we go to one of them. It's like a three hour wait and we're like you gotta be kidding me. Who is going to this place on Valentine's Day, we go to another one.
Speaker 2:It's a two hour wait and at this point and I'm not gonna name names but one of the two of us out of me and my wife gets very angry. When they're hungry, they're, I mean very, very angry. I think they call it hangry. I think they call it that because I didn't know up until this point that people, when they're hungry, actually can get mad. And if you do the math, you can figure out which one of the two of us was starting to get a little upset on Valentine's Day because they hadn't eaten all day.
Speaker 2:And that's when I came up with a plan, and that's what I want to share with you today. I said you know what we love. We love Sonic Drive-In. I know that might not feel like Valentine's Day, but again, we have nothing to prove. We're married. Let's just go to Sonic Drive-In. And that is what we did. And here's what I want to point out Sonic doesn't raise their prices on Valentine's Day. That slushie is still the same price as it was the day before.
Speaker 2:And here's what I also realized, and this is a very important thing Any restaurant can become a buffet if you just order enough food, and that's what we did. We ordered like $100 between the two of us of Sonic. You have no idea how much food that. I don't even know what we did with it, because we definitely couldn't eat that much. It was like we'll get this, we'll get this. And I mean we even got a red slushie because it was Valentine's Day. It was a romantic slushie, a red slushie and I wanna just encourage you next time on Valentine's Day I don't know how you're gonna pull this off, but that is the place to go. Share a tater tot with your loved one. Share a tater tot. It's a good time. And now I feel like the weight of the world is off my chest because I've shared this advice with you. I do wanna point out that one of my favorite things by the way, this is a Christian show and I'm gonna talk about prayer here in a moment but I do wanna share with you One of my favorite things about holidays and our producer, todd, and I were talking about this a few weeks ago is, after a holiday, when you go to the store and all the holiday candy is on sale.
Speaker 2:It's like 50% off. If you hit it at the right time, you might even get it for 90% off. And I went to Albertsons. I went to a bunch of different places looking for candy and I found nothing. Todd, did you happen to go and get any after the holiday candy? I know we have the cherry cordial incident of Christmas.
Speaker 3:No, I did. I found some after Valentine's Day. It was those Reese's hearts.
Speaker 3:Oh, those are amazing and the thing is that I really like the peanut butter inside, but I'm not too big on the chocolate. So since they were half off, I didn't feel bad peeling the chocolate off. You peeled the chocolate off, I peeled the chocolate off which is pretty, fairly easy to do with the hearts, Really and I just smashed two of the peanut butter centers together and called it a day. Wow, wow. If it was regular price I would have eaten the chocolate as well, because I'm like I gotta get my money.
Speaker 2:You gotta get your money. But since it was like half, the price.
Speaker 3:I'm like, hey, I can throw this chocolate away.
Speaker 2:Well, good for you. I didn't find any, I could not find any candy. I mean, they had those, those like chalky hearts that no one wants to eat.
Speaker 3:And then they had. Those are like just decorational. Nobody eats. No one eats those.
Speaker 2:They have a little message on it, like when you were in elementary school, you ate those all the time, but now you couldn't pay me enough money to eat. One of those Is they're terrible. Yeah, I was disappointed with the selection of after the holiday candies that I found out there, at least in my small town. Maybe my small town doesn't have a big inventory, I don't know, but I digress Valentine's Day 50 weeks away, if my math is correct. Here we go, get ready. Now we're going to talk about prayer. So the last few weeks we've been talking about the uncomfortable moments in life and the reality that God oftentimes has to make us uncomfortable or we would never move, and the reality that a lot of times this is why the cliche is that if you're wealthy like you're doing very well in life, you're very successful it's harder for you to have a relationship with God. It's not 100%. I know it's cliche, but the thought behind that is like, let's say you're a billionaire, you say, well, why do I need God? Like I have everything. Now we know the Bible. I know the Bible that you're not going to take any of this with you, but, realistically speaking, that's why a lot of people that are doing very well in life. They're not going to church because it's like what do I need God for? But when you're uncomfortable, when you're in a tight spot, all of a sudden God is so crucial in your life and that's why a lot of times I say God has to make you uncomfortable in order to get you to move. And we've been talking about that.
Speaker 2:You can all listen back to those shows on our podcast. You can listen to all our previous shows on we Love San Diego. You can listen on Apple Podcasts, iheartradio. Love is spelled L-U-V. You can subscribe to that and get all the updates. Each week we put a new show up there. You can also rate it. But, as I said before, if you're going to rate it like a one or a two I don't need to hear that Send me a letter and just say hey, you need to improve. I don't like this show. Don't rate it a one or a two. Rate it a five, maybe a four. I would take a four, I would take a four. But if it's a one or two, just send me an email. You can write to our show and tell me all of your complaints and what you don't like. That's fine. But if you're going to rate it, just rate it high or don't rate it at all. But you can subscribe to it and listen each week. But that's what we talked about the last few weeks.
Speaker 2:I want to start just the introduction on prayer this week Because I really do think it's a critical, critical thing. In fact I know it's a critical thing in our lives and that's why I want to share it with you today. So here's my first thought Think about it from this standpoint If you were able to pray one hour a day, how dramatically different would your life be? Now I know the thought is like well, one hour a day seems like a lot because we are all short on time. In fact, for me, I never had this time. What I had to start doing was getting up at five in the morning because I have kids and once they're up, I mean that's my entire focus. So I'd start getting up at five in the morning. I have been getting up at five in the morning because that's a quiet time and a time that I can have. No other focus. I can read my Bible, I can pray. I'm not a morning person. I don't want to get up that early when my alarm goes off at five o'clock, the last thing I want to do is climb out of bed, but that was the adjustment I had to do in order to get in this time.
Speaker 2:But again, if you gave one hour a day, if you were able to find that time, one hour a day, read your Bible and pray, your life would be completely changed. And here's the reality of it. Simple math Highlands Elementary School, pittsburgh, california taught me that there's 168 hours in a week. If you were to just pray one hour a day, seven hours out of the week, you would still have 161 hours to do whatever you want, or get at least all your stuff done, I should say. But your life would never be the same again. One hour a day and I'm not saying put a clock on it, the reality is one minute of prayer is more important than a genuine prayer, is more important than putting in just an hour of time and checking a box. I'm not trying to put a timeframe on it, but that one hour a day is so critical. That really put God first, put you in the right mindset and watch just how your life takes off and changes from that time that you're spending with God.
Speaker 2:But the one thing I found by people that when we talk about prayer is they start to talk about their issues of being able to talk to God and that they don't really know what to say. And I mean it's hard to pray for two minutes, let alone an hour, like how do you really do it? And what often ends up happening is it's such a disingenuous prayer. It's almost they start repeating just a general prayer that they've heard before. They start saying the same things over and over again, babbling, and they don't really know what's coming out of their mouth. And I'll tell you it's critical to know what's coming out of your mouth, because when you don't know what's coming out of your mouth, you might not get the results that you're thinking. I know this firsthand because in the seventh grade I did something without actually putting the thought into it and it conveyed a very different message than what I thought.
Speaker 2:Now I've told you junior high stories before about how a girl once tricked me into being her boyfriend. You could listen to that show. It's on our podcast. But this time it was my fault. Here was the situation and I'm going to use a fake name here for this girl because I'm still friends with her. She's doing very well in life, but we'll just call her Julie because, no, I don't know any Julie's in my life. But this girl, julie, was friends of mine. We had been going to school together for years and I found out that Julie was going to move away. And when you're in the early 90s and you're in junior high and you find out that your friend is going away, I did what any person any guy, I should say would do during that time I made her a mixtape.
Speaker 2:I made her a mixtape, but here was the problem. So it was on a cassette. I had the dual cassette where you put one cassette in here and record on the other. But I was poor. I didn't have enough tapes to actually make a complete mixtape. But I could record, and I did what poor people did in Pittsburgh, california, when you want to make a mixtape but couldn't afford to do so.
Speaker 2:I just recorded the top 10 list that night and I was lazy, I didn't listen to any of the songs. I just recorded it and the next day I gave it to Julie and I said hey, julie, I'm so sorry you're leaving today, but I made you a mixtape and I walked away thinking my job was done and a few hours later I had girls coming up to me and they were doing this weird thing where they were fanning their eyes. They were doing this and I don't know if people still do that. It either means you're crying or about to cry, but you're actually not crying at all, you're just fanning your eyes the whole time. And girls were coming up to me that were friends of mine and Julie, and they were like oh my god, ryan, oh my god, I had no idea that you liked Julie. And I said you had no idea, neither did I. What are you talking about? They said the mixtape and I said what about the mixtape?
Speaker 2:Well, here was the issue with the mixtape. I should have listened, because song number one on the mixtape, when they put it in and played it, was a song by new kids on the block, or as we affectionately know them, nkotb, and the song's title is I'll be loving you forever. Why did Julie think I was in love with her? Because the first song was I'll Be Loving you Forever. I don't even think they listened to any other songs For the next. I don't know how many months Julie called me every single day and I didn't ever have the heart to tell her like, hey, I just thought it was a cool song. I just thought it was a cool song, I made you a mixtape. I didn't have any clue what message I was conveying, because the thoughts that I had when I was giving it to her were not genuine. They weren't honest.
Speaker 2:And it's no different in our prayer life. Like when we sit down and we're praying to God and maybe we're just repeating a prayer or we're just saying random things that are you know, we're not even talking in our own normal language or talking like they did in the King James Bible, like whatever. That is that man that is going to kill your prayer life. You'll never be able to sustain a prayer life when it's not genuine and honest. Like this is a conversation with God. This is just you sitting down with someone who loves you, someone who cares about you, someone who is in complete control of every circumstance in your life, and all he wants to do is talk to you, have a conversation. He wants to hear what you're thinking, how you're feeling. He wants to hear your joys, your complaints, your heartache, everything that's going on in your life, and that's what the prayer time is supposed to be. In fact, jesus even instructed us I'll read it to you here on how to pray.
Speaker 2:It comes to this in Matthew 6, 7 through 13. This is Jesus talking. He says when you pray which I want to stop right there because he doesn't say if. He says when. When you pray, don't be like the hypocrites who love to pray publicly on the street corners and in the synagogues where everyone can see them. He says I tell you the truth, that is all the reward they'll ever get. He says, but when you pray again, when, not if. When you pray, go away by yourself, shut the door behind you and pray to your father in private. Then your father, who sees everything, will reward you. And he goes on again to say when you pray, not if.
Speaker 2:When you pray, don't babble on and on as the Gentiles do. They think their prayers were answered merely by repeating their words again and again. Don't be like them, for your father knows exactly what you need even before you ask him. So, rather, pray like this, and he gives us what we call the prayer outline of the Lord's Prayer. This is our Father in heaven. Holy is your name, your kingdom come. Your will be done on earth just as it is in heaven. Give us this day our daily bread and forgive our sins, as we forgive those who sin against us, and lead us not into temptation and deliver us from evil. He says that is the outline. We'll dissect that in coming weeks. All you need to know is right there. That's how you pray. Like. These are going to be sections and you're going to have content under each section of how to pray. And look, here's the reality of prayer. It's going to start out slow. It's not something where you're going to instantly sit down and say, okay, I can knock out an hour easily. Maybe someone can, but for the most part it probably is something that starts out slow, but then it's going to grow and the more genuine and honest you are and you're not putting on a show for anyone, the more that that prayer is going to be important to you, that you're going to look forward to doing it each and every day.
Speaker 2:The issue that a lot of people get into and the reason that they don't often pray is they start to think to themselves like I just don't feel like anything's happening when I pray. And can I be honest with you? That was always my issue because I'd sit there and I'm sitting in a room by myself and I'm talking to God and I'm praying, but at the end of the day I don't see anything happening. Like I didn't see any change. Like, again, I wanted instant change. I wanted, like the Amazon Prime type of change where, like, you order something and somehow it's at your door before you've even paid for it. That's what I wanted in life, where it's like I wanted that prayer to be instantly answered, even if it wasn't necessarily something that I would be good for me, because who knows, like God knows, I don't but I would sit there and I'd say it just doesn't seem like anything's happening. But I want to equate it to this Nothing is no different than planting seed.
Speaker 2:If you take a seed right now and you were to put it in the ground and you were to stare at it, you would guarantee that nothing is happening. In fact, you could stay all day and stare at it and you would tell me look, this is the seeds dead, like there's nothing happening. I'm looking at it. I planted in the ground, I put water on it, ryan, there's nothing happening. You would even come back the next day and look at it and say see here's proof. There's nothing the next day, same thing. In fact, you would have to stay there for so long before you actually even saw the slightest change take place. And it's no different with prayer. The reality is, with prayer, as long as you keep consistently coming back, you'll eventually see that seed turn into something Beautiful, something more than you could ever imagine or think.
Speaker 2:And if you were someone that was like a journal, you wrote a journal when you're praying and and all the things that you're praying about and where your life is that. And you were To look back and be like a seed that is ultimately sprouting and growing in the ground. And that's what prayer is and that's how you have to look at prayer. And the more and more you're able to do it, the closer You're gonna feel to God. You're gonna see changes take place in circumstances that you know. People that aren't Christian or going to church Might call coincidences, but you're gonna know, boy, there's a lot of weird coincidences happening in my life. There's a lot of change happening in my life. There's a lot of things that I thought were impossible that are happening in my life, and if you journal it or you have just a really good Memory. You're gonna start to see that over time, the more consistent you are in your prayer life, the more things are miraculously changing. And that's what I want to encourage you today.
Speaker 2:Have that one hour conversation with God. Maybe you start out reading your Bible and getting into the right mindset. Then you sit down and pray. Maybe you sing a song I don't sing a song, but maybe you have a better voice and God actually wants to hear it. Sing a song. Whatever it takes, get into that right mindset of spending time with God and, like I said, you're gonna see that seed plant even more. One final thought as we close here.
Speaker 2:The importance of prayer is critical and I know a lot of people wonder like well, why should I pray if God already knows my thoughts? Like, why should I even do this? Can I point out one final thing to you? In Jesus's final moments he's in the Garden of Gethsemane and do you know what he's doing? He's not sitting there preaching. He's not sitting there teaching. He's not saying I'm gonna have one final look at this.
Speaker 2:He knows his time is coming to an end. He knows he's about to go to the cross. He doesn't say I'm gonna, I'm gonna see this last person. Just spend time with them. You know what he was doing in those final moments. He was praying. If Jesus and his final moments before he goes to the cross is Praying, how important is prayer and I want to encourage you to take those moments with God and see your life change forever and ever. For he says in his word he says here I am, I stand at the door and knock. If anyone hears my voice and opens the door, I will come in and eat with him and he will eat with me. Pray and see your life change.
Speaker 1:Thank you for joining us for we Love San Diego with Ryan McFadden. We pray that this message has blessed your life. If you'd like to learn more about we Love San Diego or to partner with us, visit WeLoveSanDiegoorg. Spelled W-E-L-U-V. Sandiegoorg. That's W-E-L-U-V. Sandiegoorg. For additional information on the W-E-L-U-V. Sandiegoorg. For additional messages, find us on iTunes or wherever you listen to podcasts at WeLoveSanDiego. Also, if you live in the San Diego area, you can find out where and when the next outreach event is by following WeLoveSanDiego on Facebook and Instagram. We so value you listening to our show today and hope you tune in next Sunday at 9 am as we bring another message of hope to you and your family. And, as Ryan always says, find a need and fill it, find a hurt and heal it. This has been we Love San Diego.
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