cover of episode Erwin Raphael McManus | Girls Gone Bible

Erwin Raphael McManus | Girls Gone Bible

Publish Date: 2023/9/22
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So you switched your podcast from Battle Ready to Mind Shift. Why? But we've thought about changing the name for years. Yeah. But we started Battle Ready because seven years ago I had cancer. And I was writing a book called The Last Arrow. And I finished it before I had surgery in case I didn't come out of that surgery. And when I lived, Aaron said, Dad, if you had died, there's so many questions I would have never had a chance to ask you.

So could we start a podcast so I could ask you all these questions and then we could share them with the world? And so that's actually how we started Battle Ready. And then Battle Ready is the last chapter of the book, The Last Arrow.

Wait, I can't believe it. That's so funny because we brought you on here today literally to answer our questions. That's so incredible. First of all, hi guys. Hi guys. Girls Gone Bible. We love you guys so much. Today is a huge day for us. It's our first guest ever, Erwin Rafael McManus. We are so honored to have you, truly. I have been going to Mosaic. So Erwin is the lead pastor at Mosaic in Hollywood and Pasadena. I've been going to Mosaic for about two years now. Wow.

When I first moved back to Hollywood, I lived two minutes down the street from Mosaic. And I remember I kept passing by Mosaic, and I had never been to a Christian church. I had only been to Catholic churches. And I was two minutes away from it, and I kept passing it, and I just walked in one Sunday.

And you were speaking and I'm not even kidding that day changed my life. It changed my faith I have always had a heart for Jesus. I love him I've always loved him But you truly gave me a mind for Jesus and I really mean that with my whole heart you The way that you speak and your sermons are so they're so intellectual You're obviously one of probably the smartest people on the planet and it's just

you changed my faith completely. You made me so interested in the Bible and your sermons are so educational and we're just so honored to have you today. Thank you for being here. Wow, thank you so much. I can't believe the incredible impact you guys have.

I've had such a short amount of time. It's really amazing. Thank you so much. You make me nervous because you say the same line at the same time in the same tone and you don't even know you do it. It's really weird. And so I'm a little nervous. I feel like I'm in a Stephen King movie right now. I know.

I know. We have everybody in the comments saying we can't tell the difference between you guys. And both of our hair is lighter now. And so it's just really a problem. Working into each other. Basically, this is what today's episode is going to be. When we thought about having you on, we thought, what could we do with him? We could ask about your life. You're so interesting. What could we do? And I realized that just like Aaron had so many questions for you, I have so many questions for you. And we got a list of questions. We talked to people. We put a poll on the Instagram. And we got a list of questions of...

the way that people basically question Christianity and Jesus and the Bible, and there's nobody else better to answer this than you. - Yes. - So before we get into that, I am so curious to ask what your spiritual life looks like. Like every day, your alone time with Jesus, what does that look like for you? - Yeah, it's interesting. You sent me some of the questions ahead of time, or at least you sent them to Aaron. - Yeah. - And then Aaron sent them to me last night.

And when I read the first question about what's my spiritual life look like, my immediate thought was it looks like my regular life. I don't think of a spiritual life and an unspiritual life. But it has changed over the decades. I mean, I just turned 65 and I've been a follower of Jesus now for 45 years.

And so it looked different in the beginning. In the beginning of my faith, because I grew up incredibly irreligious, so it was all brand new to me. I'd never seen a Bible my whole life. I really didn't know anything about Jesus. So when I first became a follower of Jesus, I was memorizing verses every single day and talking to God all the time,

talking to everyone I met about God because I was, you know, a little crazy about whatever I did in life. Yeah. And, um,

And then somebody gave me a devotional called My Utmost for His Highest. And I think it's a guy named Oswald Chambers or something like that. And I would use that every day as a devotional. And then I think when I was at Chapel Hill my senior year, I decided to see how much I could memorize in a day. And the most I ever memorized of the Bible a day was the first chapter of James. And so I realized, okay, I can do it.

a lot. And so I just really just started integrating the Bible in my life, just reading it over and over and over again. And so I don't do that as much now. Now I think 90% of my spirituality is listening. It's like paying attention and just trying to be aware of what God may be doing around me. Yeah.

Yeah. And it's not as, I'm not a highly structured person. Yeah. You know, and so I'm more like a life surfer. I just move through life as it moves and I pay attention to what God is saying and

And it's very, very personal and intimate to me. Just like this past week, I did a talk, or a couple of weeks ago, I did a talk called Singularity. And then last week, I did a talk on leverage. And what happened is I was pumping gas for Kim because she had no gas in her car. So she's sitting in the car. Pastor Kim is the best, his wife. I'm putting gas in the car, and I hear this phrase in my head, I appealed to Caesar.

Now, I don't think I'd seen that in the Bible in years. It just sort of dropped into my soul. And I go around the car, I tap on Kim's window, and I go, I think I'm going to speak in Pasadena this Sunday, and I think I'm going to talk about, I appeal to Caesar.

And so it works the other way around for me. I can't even explain it. Sometimes it just drops into my soul. And then I go, okay, now I've got to spend the rest of the week figuring out what this means. We get a lot of questions. How do we decipher God's voice? Between your own voice and God's voice. Yeah. I wish there were only two voices in my head.

I know. Seriously. I have a very crowded room. Yeah. And a lot of voices in my head. And people do ask me, you know, how do I distinguish between God's voice and my voice and everything? And one of the things I tell people is, look, I...

I pay attention to the voice that calls me to my highest self. I pay attention to the voice that calls me to the most courageous life, to the most honorable life, to the most noble or compassionate life. And so whenever I hear a voice that's challenging me to step up my life, my game, then I accept that as God's voice in my life. I remember one time this guy, I was in Toronto, and this guy was an engineer. He was from China, and he's an atheist. And he came up to me and he said, Hey.

"Hey, you were talking about God's voice. What does God's voice sound like?" I said, "Well, you just told me you're an atheist, so it sounds like nothing." And he goes, "No, no, but for you, what does God's voice sound like?" And I remember asking him, I said, "Why did you come up here?" He goes, "It's a huge auditorium. You have to work your way up here." And he goes, "What do you mean?" I said, "Why did you come and ask me that question?" He goes, "Well, I just wanted to know what God's voice sounds like." I said, "Is it possible there was a little voice in your head that was saying, 'There is a God.'"

I have those things. There is a God. Yeah. And I said, you ever have that little voice in your head? You don't even believe in God, but that little voice is telling you there is a God. Yeah. But you don't know how it got in there because it's supposed to be you. Yeah. And I said, it's like a parasite in your head eating away at your rational belief there's no God. And that little voice keeps saying, there's a God, there's a God. He goes, yes. He goes, it's like a parasite in my head. I can't get it out. Wow.

And I said, that voice that's eating away at your doubt, that's God. Yeah. Wow. And I've just accepted over my lifetime that that voice that keeps fighting for me, that's God. Yeah. Oh, that's so nice. When I feel like I'm not...

I have no value and that voice says no you're wrong I just I know that's God when when I'm filled with fear and I think I don't know if I can do this and there's a little voice that says now you got this I just know that's God and sometimes I go I do not want to forgive that person

And that little voice goes, but you're going to? Yeah, literally. I know that's God and that's irritating. Oh my gosh. We always say that, that if you, like God is for you, obviously. So if you ever have a thought that is against yourself, that's not from you and that's not from God because God will never be against you. So any thoughts that you have that are positive, uplifting, encouraging, that's God. That's God talking to you. I love that so much.

you said about how your spiritual life looks so different and it's because when you started, you built it on such a solid foundation of scripture. And all we talk about like girls gone Bible, we're obsessed with the Bible. When we both started reading the Bible, we realized like we had gone our whole lives loving Jesus without really even knowing who he was, you know? And so when we started reading scripture, it just, it changes you forever. Well, do you want to get into the real crux of the atheist questions? All right.

I actually heard you speak on this in a sermon one time, but I want you to tell everybody today why in the Bible is God referred to as He? Does He have a gender? You know, when you ask that question,

My immediate thought was, I have no idea. But so I started processing that and I thought, well, first of all, you need to understand that we live in a culture where if you're, from one view, he is a negative thing. And if you're living in our gender conflict culture,

it feels as if God, if that's what God did, he's preferring men over women. Yeah. Or that women are now being demeaned. So I want to be really clear that whatever the overarching reason is, God sees no conflict between men and women, male and female. He sees both as equally beautiful and valuable. So if God would choose a pronoun to describe himself, it's not because he thought the other was less. He just didn't think that it was...

demeaning to be one. But remember, any language about God is limited and inadequate. Because even if the Bible uses the word he, which it does,

that's too limiting because God's also spirit. And Jesus had no problem using a female image when he said, Jerusalem, Jerusalem, how I long to hold you in my arms like a mother hen holds her chicks. So Jesus had no problem using a feminine metaphor to describe who God is. But I also started thinking God is, in a sense, putting together this beautiful puzzle. If God had used feminine language

knowing that the virgin birth was going to be the entry point of the Messiah, it wouldn't have worked. The language of God being a he created the space for Mary being a she. And so that God would be, in a sense, Jesus' father, and Mary would be the mother of Jesus. And so I think God is always working from a bigger story. And remember, the Bible says God created them...

It says he created a male, male and female. He created man, male and female. So when we think of man, we go, wait a minute, that's masculine. But in the Bible, man isn't masculine. It's gender neutral. Because man is male and female. Right, it refers to just mankind in general. But I think there was a time where...

fathers were popular. Where it was a good thing to be a man. Where a man expressed the right virtues of nobility and honor and courage. And in the story of Adam and Eve, Adam was first the progenitor and what God is really saying is, "I'm first. There's nothing before me." I heard you speak in a sermon. I wanted to ask this question because I think a couple years ago I heard you speak one time and you said

society and culture in general, they have an issue with God being a father because everybody has, a lot of people have such a broken relationship with their fathers. And you spoke to that just kind of being like,

almost apologizing on behalf of all those fathers that they let you down but just letting you know god will never let you down you know yeah no i think i think the reason so many people feel offended that god's called fathers because they have father issues right so you end up with god issues yeah because you go wait a minute if god is like my father i don't i don't want to have anything to do with god yeah exactly and no god is what your father should have been and and as your father will be

Does it matter if we pray to Jesus more than God? Does it matter who you pray to in the Holy Trinity? Like, for example, I mostly speak to Jesus. Like, that's like what I refer to him. Fundamentally, it doesn't matter, but it does make a difference. Right. Angela. Yeah. If you had a boyfriend. Yeah.

And he just said, woman. And he just always called you woman or girl. Right. And never use your name. You think, what's going on? You know, do you know me? Right. When I use the word God, I think of our search for him.

Well, when I use the name Jesus, think of Him searching for me. And so when we talk about God, it's usually because we can only see the back of God's head, but we don't know who He is. And when you use the name Jesus, it's as if God has turned around and now you see His face.

And so I felt comfortable talking about God before I knew who God was. Yeah. But when I came into a relationship with God, it became more natural for me to talk about Jesus. Yeah. And so when I pray, I actually pray to Jesus because he is the person of God that revealed himself to me. Yeah, yeah.

You know, and so there's an intimate relationship there. Yeah. You know. Okay, guys. Today we have a sponsor that we're so excited about. It is Miracle Made. I don't know if you guys know this, but bed sheets can harbor more bacteria than a toilet seat. Like, it can lead to acne, a stuffy nose, allergies, and it's just

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You guys upgrade your sleep with Miracle Made. You're going to want to go to trymiracle.com/ggb and use code "GGB" for 40% off and a free three-piece towel set. Again, that's trymiracle.com/ggb. Thank you Miracle Made for sponsoring this video. Do you pray every day? Oh yeah, I pray all the time. You pray all the time. Yeah, but I would say that at this point in my life praying is 90% listening and 10% asking. I almost don't ask for things.

Almost ever. In fact, every once in a while I have to remind myself, oh, you should probably ask. Wow. Yeah. I mean, that's, I think, the place we can all want to strive to get to is where we listen because I know it's so funny. I was actually in prayer yesterday and I had a moment where I –

Recently, I have been feeling like I just, I wanted to feel God's presence more. I wanted to have an encounter and that really spiritual stuff that we all long for when you've had it before, because you know, it feels, Jesus is always within us, but we want to feel that, you know, crazy encounter.

And I had a moment yesterday in prayer where I really took my time and I stayed and I finally felt like I really had an encounter with the Holy Spirit. And I had a thought that was like, you can have this all the time. You don't stay long enough. You get down for one second, say a quick prayer, and then you get up and you go. And it's like you have to try. You have to sit and listen and wait for me. It's not just about you talking the whole time, you know?

I love that. No, that's really, really good. I think that praying should be like breathing. Yeah. It should just be a natural part of our life. And what I tell people is, look, God doesn't want you to feel bad about the fact that you were not praying. Yeah. The moment you're aware of, oh, wow, I feel like I've drifted away or I feel like I stopped paying attention to God's presence, that's the moment where God's trying to get your attention. Yeah. And so the moment you go, oh, I should have prayed, it's just God tapping you going, hey, I'm here.

I just want you to be aware of me right now. So good to know. They just move right into it. Yeah. It's really wonderful. It's so easy, too. We make it really complicated and difficult when you, as you said, it should just be like breathing just all day. That's all you should do. And I think it's because a lot of times in our relationships, when there's a little bit of separation, you have to re-earn the relationship. Yeah. Wow. I've been married 40 years. And when I would travel, I'd come back.

I had to spend like two or three days re-earning the right to be home. Because Kim, she wasn't mad that I was gone, but she was mad that I was gone. I come back and I'm like, we should pick up right where I left off. She's like, no, you've been gone. I'm the same way. Well, God's not. And you don't have to do any penance with God. You don't have to re-earn intimacy with him.

all you have to do is just lean in. That's how I feel. I feel like that constantly. That you have to re-earn. Yes. I know. That's so freeing to know. I know. Sometimes I think because we are so like, we have such egos. You're so right about that relationships with other people. Our egos are so big and we forget that God has no ego and it's really all he wants is for us to bring it to him and talk to him about it and have a relationship with him. If I repent, I find myself repenting over and over again, but I don't,

think you need to do that, right? You bring it to him, you repent, you say your forgiveness, and then you just move on, right? What do you think about repentance? I think a lot of us are spiritually OCD. Oh, yeah. You're not repenting because God's mad. You're not repenting because God needs you to. You're repenting because you're trapped by shame and guilt. Yeah, that's what it is. And you're hoping that some pattern will alleviate that guilt and shame from your life. Yeah. Because you can't just accept forgiveness. That's what it is. Yeah.

Wow. The only religion I had growing up was I was Roman Catholic. I was born Roman Catholic. And so I went through confirmation and I prayed the Lord's Prayer and I would do this all the time. And I became so compulsive. I would do this all the time. And my mom would like, what did I do? Give birth to a priest? But it's because I was so OCD and I...

Then I integrated it into religion. Yeah. And I thought, oh, I got to do this. I got to do this. And then if I'd lose my shoes, I thought God was punishing me. If I lose my school books, I would say, I would pray, God, I don't know where I put my school books, but I actually thought he hit them. Wow. I'll be a better person if you help me know where my books are. God, you know. I've done that. I always say that. I won't do that anymore. I say that all the time. And I realized that my entire view of God was this really malevolent kind of like

almost like dark, sinister person who was holding all the things I've done wrong over me. And I finally realized, no, I'm just OCD. And I've attached it to this belief system. All these things that I'm doing, God doesn't need me to do. We project so much onto God, so much onto God, our own insecurities and fears. The hardest thing to do is to go, wow, I'm already forgiven.

Yeah, that's what you do a lot. I do. I've had a really like I have a very pure relationship with God in the sense that I know I just I know who he is and what he says about me and about him and that I am forgiven and I don't need to hold shame or anything. Yeah. Anything.

That's so freeing, though. It is so freeing, I know. And I feel bad because I know a lot of people don't have that pure of a relationship with Him because of external factors and things that have happened in their life. And maybe their parents didn't forgive them or they've never seen that unconditional love that God has for us manifested within their real relationships. And that's really sad. But God loves us. Even when I was in seminary, I had so many people come up to me going,

what is it about your relationship with God? Because I'm always feeling guilty and I'm always feeling shame and I always feel separated. And how do you have such an intimate relationship with God? And I said, here's the irony. You're probably a way better human being than me. I think you read the Bible more than me. I think you pray more than me. I think you try so hard to be a better human being than me. I just know that my relationship with God is completely unconditional. And so I said, I think your problem is that you still believe in

you have to be good enough. And I came in knowing I couldn't be good enough so I never had that burden on me. I knew I wasn't good enough. So now I just move forward. - Yes, so true. It's so true. - Why do bad things happen to good people? Like say someone gets cancer and they're praying and they're asking for healing and sometimes they don't get that healing. Why is that?

One, it's interesting that we ask the question, why do bad things happen to good people? Yeah. We never ask, why do good things happen to bad people? Yeah, I know. Yeah, that's true. And the number one reason people would say they do not believe in God is, I can't believe in God because they're suffering in the world. Yeah. Because bad things happen to people. That's the number one thing people say, yeah. But if you do not believe in God because they're suffering in the world, okay, let's just say then there is no God.

is there still suffering? And the answer is yes. So if suffering exists and there is no God, then where does suffering come from? Most suffering comes from humans hurting each other.

So why do we hold God accountable for what we do to each other? And then don't blame each other, but we blame God. When a person says, I don't believe in God because there's so much suffering, what you shouldn't believe in is humanity. Because it's humanity that actually has caused suffering. So here's why bad things happen to good people. Because it's a broken world and suffering and pain are real. And when I had cancer,

We found out right before Christmas, almost a couple of days before my wife's birthday. And I never had the thought, like, why me? Because my thought was like, why not me? I never had this thought of, oh, wait a minute, I've tried to follow God and so he should protect me from cancer.

I think one thing is that we've been taught the wrong thing. We've been taught that if you are sincere and you love God and you follow Jesus, that bad things will never happen to you. We live in a broken world. And from the moment you take your first breath, you're moving towards your last breath, whether you like it or not. And I mean...

In a sense, death always wins and it always loses because everyone dies physically. But what Jesus came to do was to make sure death didn't win even though we die. And so bad things happen to good people because we live in a broken, fragmented world. And by the way, if bad things didn't happen, we wouldn't be aware we needed God. And so when I look at my own physical experience

I'm going, man, I am not who I was at 25. My body is fighting to stay alive and stay young and stay moving. And it reminds me that life is temporary. When I had cancer, it reminded me that this life is filled with imperfection. And I think that if we didn't have that, we wouldn't believe that there's a problem. The Bible says that all creation groans.

for its redemption. What the Bible actually says is when we separated ourselves from God, all of creation went into disarray. So what it's saying is that every earthquake and tsunami and all the famines and the cancer and the disease and the sickness, all this exists because it is the external proof that our inner worlds are in a disaster. What you see on the outside is what's actually going on the inside.

But if I told you bitterness is killing you, but you never saw sickness, you go, no, we're fine. But we're not. And what's so ironic is even now medicine tells us that so much of our physical illnesses are the result of our emotional, psychological, and spiritual illnesses. Yes. Yeah.

I feel like I'm in church. So we watched Why Jesus last night. You guys can look it up. It's Why Jesus. It was amazing. It's such a good sermon. And you said in there, you said nature might be a reflection of us, not God. And it's because God never intended, right, for...

all of the bad things to happen in the world. He actually intended for us to live like a really beautiful life, but because of the fall of man, Adam and Eve, am I right? That's what happened, and that's when sin entered the world. And because of our sin is the result of every natural disaster, emotional disaster, everything that happens. It's so funny when you look at the story in Genesis and you think,

That's ridiculous that someone eating a fruit from one tree could cause all of creation to go into disarray. Yeah. But now we have complexity theory and quantum mechanics where...

We believe that if a butterfly flaps its wings in the Amazon, it could affect an avalanche in Antarctica. Wow. And so what physics is actually teaching us is that one choice can have catastrophic effect across the entire universe. So what we thought was a myth in the Bible actually is scientifically validated.

And what the Bible is telling us is that God created humanity at the epicenter of creation. And our intimacy with him is what held the universe together. And when we were separated in our relationship with him, it not only broke us, it broke creation. Yeah.

And so it's like creation is waiting for its redemption. And it only gets its redemption when we are restored to God. Yeah. Can you believe that Adam and Eve did that?

That they ate from the... I can believe it because we do that all the time. I know. We really do. We read... We do it every day all the time. Come on. We did an episode on betrayal and forgiveness, and I was sitting there saying how whenever I read the Gospels and whenever we get to Judas betraying Jesus, I always get like... I have a visceral reaction. I get so upset, and I'm like, how could you do that to Jesus? And then I'm like, I do that to Jesus every day. But when you look at... I love Genesis.

And I like the nuances in the first three chapters. When Adam and Eve sin and break their relationship with God, when they eat of that fruit and God shows up in the garden, what's the first thing he asks them?

I mean, if I were God, I would go, "What were you thinking?" You know, and, "I told you not to eat from that fruit," right? You know, I would be that Latin parent. I'd be the Latin mom. And reminding me how dumb my choice just was. God only asked them one question, "Who told you you were naked?" What God's actually asking them is not, "Why did you destroy the whole universe?"

He's saying, what voice did you let into your head that lied to you about who you are? So even when, because that was the first disobedience of all time, right? And so even when God was betrayed for the first time by a man, he didn't even acknowledge the betrayal. He acknowledged the fact that we were feeling shame and we were in pain. That we let a lie convince us it was true.

Because when the serpent says, if you eat from this fruit, you'll become like God, they were already like God. They were created in image and likeness.

And so what they were convinced of is that they were less than they actually were. Oh my gosh, we talked so much about how this is what I want. Okay, a couple years ago, I've seen everything you've ever done. A couple years ago, you talked about how you don't really like to give the devil that much attention. And we talk a lot about the devil on this podcast. Oh, everything. We go, oh, that's the enemy. That's the enemy. I'm blaming on the enemy. I saw that in the questions. And Aaron has a, he always has a little asterisk for me. He goes, be nice. Be nice. Be nice.

Yeah, I know how Aaron feels about that, trust me. If you don't like the question, Dad, be nice. No, it's okay if you don't like the question. Tell us if you don't like the question. But why don't you like to give the enemy so much attention? I don't know. What is your reasoning? I don't know if you remember when you learned how to ride a bike. Yes. And if someone made the mistake of saying,

don't hit that tree yeah or look out for that tree that was a pretty much 100 guarantee you're gonna hit that tree yeah because the moment they tell you watch out for the tree that's all you're watching out for yeah and you hit it what they should actually be saying is keep your eyes on the sidewalk i know

Yeah. Because the moment you keep your eyes on the sidewalk, the tree is irrelevant. Yeah. The moment you're focusing on the devil all the time, that's what you're going to run into. Yeah. And you're going to see the devil everywhere. Yeah. All right, GGB gang. If you know us, we love getting our nails done. Huge nails, girls. You will never see us come on here without our nails done, all right? But we know that the nails get really expensive, so we have been loving Olive and June. Olive and June. Thank you, God, for Olive and June. You guys...

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had so many more compliments on these nails than I do when I go to the salon. And I was just in Florida last week and I painted my mom's nails, I painted my sister-in-law's nails, and they were like, send me the link for this. Visit OliveandJune.com/ggb for 20% off your first Olive and June system. That was O-L-I-V-E-A-N-D-J-U-N-E.com/ggb for 20% off your first Olive and June system. - You feel the presence of the enemy though.

what do you do in that moment if you feel it like, or if you feel evil or if you feel, you know. How would you get rid of that? Did you just say I rebuked this in the name of Jesus? I don't know if I usually talk about this on podcasts. I've had at least, I've had a few situations where I've had encounters with people who came up

and ended up speaking multiple voices. Or bought guns, being told to kill me. So I have had experiences that are really dark, demonic. And I still don't think that we're healthy in the way we think about the devil. First of all, the devil is not God's brother. He's not Jesus' brother. He doesn't have the same powers as Jesus.

We talk about the devil as if he's all-powerful, all-knowing, and all-present. So if everyone is being attacked by the devil, that means he's all-present. Yeah. Which is a lie. He wants you to think he's everywhere. He can only be at one place at a time. Right. Only God can be everywhere. Yeah. At all times. Yeah. So if you're at home and the devil's attacking you, and you're at home and the devil's attacking you, what are you doing? You're giving the devil a characteristic that only God deserves. So it's actually, if you want me to tell you, it becomes devil worship. Right.

Because you're giving the devil the attributes of God. I remember I was spoken at this church. It was a great church. And right before I walked on stage, it had a sign, not today, devil. No, not today. I thought, wow. Right before I walk on stage on Sunday morning to speak from the scriptures about Jesus, they want me to think about the devil. Yeah. That's how unhealthy we've got. Yeah. All right. The primary reason we think about the devil is we do not want to take responsibility for our lives. Yeah.

So I don't think about the devil. And when I do think about the devil, I use it as a way catalyzing me to think about God. Yeah. Because the devil wants you to think about him. And 99% of the stuff in your life isn't the devil. All the dark stuff, all the negative stuff.

I don't want to say it this way, but you're not that important to the devil. Like when people are like, oh, devil's attacking me, I'm going, I don't know, I think he's attacking someone more influential. I don't know. If you look at a hierarchy of spirits, I got a low level demon messing with me. I don't know, mine's pretty strong, man. And here's the reality.

No devil will be like the devil if you don't take responsibility for your life. Yeah. So you don't believe that those little thoughts and anxiety and depression, that's not from the enemy? That's just... I think that some things can be from the devil or from like... Evil. Evil. Yeah. Yeah. But I think most of the stuff gets into us early on.

and by things people said to us, by pain we experienced, by trauma we went through, by our own insecurities and brokenness, and then our souls become an echo chamber, and we hear those things over and over and over and over and over again. By the way, the devil cannot know your thoughts. So I will say, if you are going to pay attention to the dark spiritual world, you need to be careful what you say out loud, and you need to be careful what you do,

Because that can be seen and heard. Yeah. But my inner world, that belongs to me and God. Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. And I think it's really important to know that. Yeah. And there are places in the scriptures where, I don't use the word possession, but I do think that people can be oppressed. Yeah. And that they can have actually, I mean, the Bible makes it clear that there are people who were actually demonized. Mm-hmm.

And I've met people and had conversations with people who actually worshipped Satan and invited spirits into their life. And it's a really dark and painful reality. But what I would say for you as a follower of Jesus is focus on Jesus, not the devil. Definitely. And then when you have a negative thought, attributing it to the devil may be your way of going,

I don't have to take responsibility for it. Right. And just maybe it's better to go, I'm going to stop having this thought. Yeah, I think the reason why we have had such a focus on spiritual warfare throughout this podcast is because we come from, like neither Ari or I, like we grew up not going to church like that. We didn't read the Bible growing up. So we grew up in environments that were rough in a lot of ways. And...

So we, and we know a lot of people who struggle severely with depression and anxiety and addiction. And we're around, we're in Hollywood, like we're around a lot of scary stuff. And we just, we really want people to understand that they're not like they have, they serve a God who is a deliverer and a healer and a protector. And, and that, but there is a spiritual battle happening. I really do believe in spiritual warfare. Yeah. Okay. But when you look at Ephesians chapter six and you look at the armor of God, every piece of the armor of God

is actually a characteristic of character. Yeah. And the problem is that we try to do spiritual warfare with superstition. So we go, you know, I rebuke you, Satan. I rebuke you, Satan. I rebuke you, Satan. But if you're still living in fear, it doesn't work. Or I go, I rebuke the devil. But if you're still bitter and you won't forgive, it's not going to work. And so the problem is when we turn spiritual warfare into magic. Yeah. And you go, you know,

I'm putting on the armor of God. You know? And I'm going, no, you're not, because you're still a liar. Are you doing an impression of me right now? I literally say that. I go, put the armor of God on. The way you put on the armor of God is you tell the truth. Yeah, exactly. The way you put on the armor of God is you hold on to hope. The way you put on the armor of God is you become a person of integrity. Yeah. And the armor of God is your character. Yeah. And so I try to help people understand

Stop living in this magical space and go, no, it's really about your character. And when you let God change your character, you become powerful. Oh, yes. I'll go back. I mean, I used to be in another part of the country, highest crime rate, highest murder rate in the United States at the time. A guy walks into our building on Sunday morning. The church building? Yeah. And carrying a gun and a knife and saying voices, told him, come in and kill me.

They brought him into my office. I don't know why they brought him into my office. And he's sitting with me, and we're at a table, and he hands me his knife. And he goes, here, I want you to have my knife. I don't want you to be afraid of me. And I pushed the knife back and said, you can have your knife. I'm not worried about you. I want the gun. And we went back and forth. And then this guy looks at me, and he says, do you want to call us out by name? Because right before that, I said, John, if you're hearing voices in your head, and they're telling you to come kill me,

You're either psychologically broken and you need really significant therapy or you're demon possessed. So I literally laid out two options for this guy. And that's when he said, do you want to call us out by name? And I listened to this guy and I hear multiple voices come out at the same time. No. And nothing in life ever prepared me for that. Not a master's degree in theology, not a psychiatry or philosophy degree. Oh, no way.

and i looked at him and i he goes do you want us to do you want to call us by name and i said no

I mean, I wish I could go, you know, yeah, it was Mel Gibson and Braveheart. No, you know, I could feel warm all over my body of fear. And I said, I just want to talk to John. You know, I want to talk to the human in there. And I tried to pray for him and he stood up and he said, no. And he goes, let me pray for you. And I said, all right, you pray to your gods and I'll pray to mine.

And then he runs out of my office, and I think he leaves the building. He goes into the auditorium on the stage with a gun and calling all the people together. And so I have to, they come and get me. He goes, in the auditorium. So I go through the auditorium. You kept going? Where the guy was? They let this guy have a gun? Yeah, of course. Where were the cops?

There were no cops. Oh my goodness. The cops are writing us parking tickets. Yeah. Just like here. And I'm walking down the middle aisle and he's up there and

I remember looking at him going, in the name of Jesus, I command you to come down. I said it with a lot more energy. And he didn't. And I said it again, in the name of Jesus, I command you to come down. And the third time, I kept walking toward him. I said, in the name of Jesus, I command you to come down. The guy looked at me, and he just crumbled off that stage and got on his knees on the floor. Wow.

And what's really funny is there was a film crew there from England doing a documentary on the work we were doing there. And we were sending people out for interviews afterwards. And he went out the door and they thought he was our next interview. So we got him on film. No way. Do you have it? Yeah, we have it somewhere. And all I'm telling you is that in that moment, I didn't think of the phrase in the name of Jesus as a...

phrase like abacadabra. Yeah. And that's why I think Christians think of language like that. Yes. What I knew in that moment was I'm standing where I think Jesus would stand doing what I convinced Jesus would do to protect all the people in this place. Wow. If it was going to shoot anyone, it was going to be me. And I think sometimes we try to make everything superstitious rather than actually...

character based right and i think doing things in the name of jesus means you're standing where jesus would stand doing what jesus would do yeah exactly and you don't have to say the right phrase you just have to stand in that presence wow so did he look different to you after you said that and you just crumbled no when he got up he started asking my name and i said i told my name and he started screaming my name he's like erwin i'll be back

And I said, I'll be here. You didn't feel even like one little thing of fear? In that moment, not at all. I can't believe it. That's incredible. God, Adam. While we're on the subject of the devil. Are we on the subject of the devil? We have one more question. How can God send anyone to hell if he loves us all so much? That's a question everyone has.

Well, that's an interesting question because you said it was about the devil, but then you ask about hell. But it actually does tie together because hell was never created for humans. It was only created for the devil and for the angels who fell. And God doesn't send anyone to hell.

All God is doing is trying to keep us from it. And so the language is important. The reason we've used the language of God sends people to hell is because really judgmental, condemning religious people wanted people to live in fear that God was sending you to hell. And that should have never been the narrative. It should have always been God's trying to bring you to life. And for a lot of people, life is very much a reflection of hell.

They're in extreme poverty, in lives of violence and injustice and pain and suffering. They're not afraid of hell. They're trying to figure out how to find some heaven in their life, to have some meaning. And what we need to understand is that God is always the one fighting for us.

And not trying to condemn us. Yeah, it's so true. So true. I know. I really like that you put language to that because there are so many questions as Christians that I think we know the answer to, but then we don't know how to articulate it. And I think a lot of people have trouble being openly Christian because they don't feel prepared to answer those really hard questions that people are going to ask. I did...

Want to ask you can in your opinion. Do you think that you can lose your salvation? You can't lose something that isn't yours Yeah, and like your salvation isn't something that you're like given like a car right and your your salvation

is something that in a sense belongs to God. He's waiting for you to invite him to change your life. And so when you look at the scriptures and you go, oh, if anyone's in Christ, they're a brand new creation. And so you've become something new. You might have a bad day and wish that you had not been transformed, but you still are transformed.

It's like saying, can a caterpillar, once it becomes a butterfly, become a caterpillar again? The answer is no. Once you become a butterfly, it's out of your hands. You can become a bad butterfly. You can be a butterfly who never flies because you want to act like a caterpillar.

But you still are a caterpillar. Right, right. And so I don't think of my salvation as something that I can lose because it's not something that I earned. Yeah. You know, if I earned my salvation, then I could lose it. Yeah. If I worked for it, then maybe I could, you know, work my way out of it. Right. But it's not. And, you know, it's...

When you begin to realize, oh, it's actually a shift in essence. You are now alive. Yeah. And so you can't go from being alive to being dead again. But you can't go from being alive to acting like you're dead.

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Thank you, HelloFresh. A lot of people live in fear that God, like even if they're saved, that they still might not. We got so many questions of people being like, what if I'm scared that I'm still going to hell even though I accepted Jesus? Like a lot of people live in fear like that. It's interesting. Most of the people, when I would work with people who are like psychotic, it's amazing how many of them use religious language.

How many of them would think they're going to hell? How many thought that God was against them? What ends up happening is that we end up thinking too much about ourselves. So if you're constantly in fear that you're still going to hell, my answer to you is stop thinking about yourself. Yeah. And start thinking about other people. Yeah. And Paul actually said, I would choose to be accursed. I would choose to go to hell so that all the people I love could actually come to faith. Wow.

And so when you actually have a faith that's real and dynamic, you're not only not afraid of going, you're not even afraid of going because you're alive. Yeah. And hell wouldn't know what to do with you because you're alive. Yeah. It couldn't hold you because you're alive. Yeah. And, you know, the Bible talks about the dead and the living. And if you were somehow, you know, if this was a movie and you were sucked into hell,

It couldn't hold you because you're alive. Wow. It's incapable of it. It's like trying to hold water with a net. And hell is incapable of holding you back. When is Jesus coming back? Is it in my lifetime? I have great news for you. Jesus already came back. Yeah, 2,000 years ago. The moment you can...

fully experience his presence in this life, you'll never need to know when he's coming back again. - So true. - That is a perfect answer. - That's so good. - The reason we keep hoping Jesus comes back is because he's not fully present in our lives right now.

Yeah, that's, I love that you say that because I, the only reason I ever think like, when is Jesus, whenever people talk about it, I always have a deep knowing that I'm just, I just feel like I don't really, I don't really care. It doesn't really matter to me because he's here. I'm here. We're together already. So that's really interesting that you say that. His disciples asked him and he said, I don't know. Yeah. So if Jesus answered, I don't know.

Everyone who thinks they know is lying. Yeah. Either to themselves or to everyone else. Yeah. There are more books written about the second coming than Jesus said he had information about. Wow. When they said, Lord, when's the consummation date? She goes, I don't know. Only the Father knows that. And then I go, well, then we have all these Christians writing all these books about when is the end times. Yeah. They're actually saying they know more than Jesus. Not good. No, it's a pretty arrogant position. Yeah. You know, and then Jesus not only came back when he rose from the dead,

But he said he had to ascend into heaven so his spirit could come. So he came back when he came to dwell within us. How many times does he need to come back for you? It's so true. It's so true. I know. This isn't on the paper, but I always wonder about this. And I just wanted to ask you. So do you believe that everything happens for a reason? Like our life is already pre-death and he already knows what's going to happen? No. Okay. Okay.

You don't? I don't. I think that, I don't think everything happens for a reason. I think we need to give reason to everything that happens. Okay. And because we're the ones who decide how to interpret our experiences. Yeah. And that's why two people can go through pain and come out differently. Yeah. Two people can go through trauma and come out differently. Because it's not what you experience that shapes you.

It's how you respond to those experiences that shape you. But let's get back to the other side of the question is, is everything determined? By the way, there's actually a society of scientific atheists that meet together usually every year. And in one of the conferences, they talked about how they were all deterministic. They believed that everything was set into place. So what's interesting to me is that atheists and Calvinists have the same view.

that everything is predetermined, that everything's already set into place. And so an atheist believes it's all already predicted because of math. So you have an illusion of choosing, but you're not really choosing. It's all the math. And Calvinists believe the same thing, except it's not math. They think that God has already preset every choice. But here's the crazy thing. The only thing that can't exist without free will is love.

Because you cannot force someone to love someone else. If you had no choice, then love does not exist. When people say, well, no, it's all to glorify God. The Bible doesn't tell us that God did all this for his glory. Because if God was only about glorifying himself, he did a terrible job.

because billions of people don't even acknowledge him, so they're not glorifying him. And then we're living inadequate lives, so we're not glorifying him perfectly, right? So it was all about glorifying God. The strategy did not work. Why would God give us free will if free will would, in a sense, steal glory from him? It's because with free will, love can exist. And

When we have the right to choose and the power to choose, then love can be true. And one of the things I love about the scriptures, what I love about the God of the Bible, is that the driving principle of the universe is love. It explains everything God does and explains the mess of it all. Because love is messy.

When you make love the guiding principle, things like pain happen. Things like suffering happen. Things that you don't want to happen, bad things happen, because love gives the space for choice. So I absolutely do not believe that your life is already predetermined. I do not believe that your choices are an illusion. In fact, I think it's what makes you uniquely human.

I was a part of a conference called TED for like 20 years. I've go to the TED conferences where they focus on technology, entertainment, design, and they say the brightest thinkers in the world were a part of that community. And I realized after a while, every species was valued except for humans.

Like, you know, whales were valued and penguins, you'd march with the penguins and, you know, you'd study why one plant could change an entire ecosystem. But whenever they would talk about humans, it always felt really like demeaning. And so I took some time to start studying what makes humans different than every other species. And what humans can do that no other species can do is we can materialize the invisible. Human beings have an imagination. We can actually dream.

And then out of those dreams we create. Everything that is created in this room existed in someone's imagination before it actually became a material reality. And what humans do that no other species can do is humans create futures. In the same way that bees create hives and ants create colonies and beavers create dams and orbs create silk, humans create futures.

Every time you choose, you're creating a future. And so the question isn't, can you create? That's what it means to be created in the image of God. The question is, what will you create? So not only do I not believe the future is set,

I don't think the future comes to you. I think the future comes through you. Yes. Yeah, because we create it. I guess for me, I look at my life, even how I was in such a dark time, and then Angela comes into my life, and then we start this podcast, and it just, it seemed so planned by God that I'm like... Well, that's different. Okay. Because...

Not only are you choosing, right? You ever have someone else make a choice that affected your life? Yes. Sometimes painfully, sometimes positively. Yes. Right? When Angela and you chose each other, that became a positive choice that someone else made that affected your life in a positive way. Yeah. But you can be driving down a road and a drunk driver runs a red light and cripples you or kills you or hurts you.

That's someone else's choice affecting you. Right. And so you realize that we live in this incredibly dynamic, complicated universe where other choices are affecting us. Yeah. Someone else is choosing that we're not paying attention to. God chooses. Yeah. And God chooses you. Yeah. And God chooses your future.

And God chooses to take all your mess and create something beautiful out of it. Yeah, yeah, that's funny. And so what you need to realize is in the same way that some other human being's choice can affect you, God's bigger choice affects you. Yeah, yeah. So you're right. The universe is leveraged in your favor because God is choosing for you. Right.

On that note, can you, because we talk about this all the time, do you think that we can mess up anything that God has for us? Well, here's God's plan for your life, a future and a hope. That's what it says. I know my plans for you, plans of welfare, not destruction, with a future and a hope. We think God's plan is a micromanager plan. Yeah.

This is what you're going to do on Tuesday. This is what you're going to wear on Thursday. You're going to both change your hair to look the same on Friday. Do you really think? He's a part of that? No. And we act as if God's micromanaging every choice. Yeah. No, God's choice for you is a future and a hope. Yeah. So no matter how much you try to destroy your future, he still chooses a future for you. Right. No matter how much you try to destroy hope, he's always going to choose hope for you.

And the interesting thing about hope is that hope only exists in the future. Hope cannot exist in the past. It's called regret. And so there's this wonderful human dynamic where God creates us as future creatures. In fact, in Hebrews, when it says that faith is the substance of things not seen, the church of things hoped for, what it's actually telling us is that humans are future invisible creatures, that we're designed for the future.

Because hope only exists in the future. And we're designed to live in this invisible space that changes the visible space. You know, when the Bible says that God created everything, Christians normally say God created everything out of nothing, right? But that's not what the Bible says. That's why it's really important to actually read the Bible and not just what people say about the Bible. Because what the Bible actually says is that everything that is visible was created out of that which is invisible. Right?

It doesn't say he created out of nothing. He created out of something that's invisible. Now the oxygen in this room is something, but it's invisible. If it was nothing, we'd all suffocate. What is the invisible material that God used to create the visible reality? His imagination. Everything existed in the dreams of God. You were a dream of God before you ever took a breath. You were alive and created in God's imagination before you ever came into existence.

And so, yes, God is dynamically involved in your life and you can't mess up his plan for your life because the future wins. It doesn't mean that you can't go off course and live a life he wished you had not lived. It doesn't mean you can't make decisions he wished you had not made and even he might have told you not to make. But he leverages everything in your favor so that the future is always yours.

Yeah, he does. That's comforting. Yeah, he does. Real quick, do you think God brings people in your life to teach you lessons sometimes? Absolutely. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. And sometimes he gives you what you want to teach you lessons. Okay. I'm married. My spouse passes away. Then I get remarried. Who do we go with? How do we do that when we get to heaven? I don't know.

Are we married in heaven? Do we know each other? Which one do we go with? First of all, I have no idea. Sorry, this one wasn't on the list of questions. And I think, well, one, well, you know each other, of course. Yeah. You'll know each other more deeply and more beautifully than you ever knew each other on earth. Yeah. And in this life, whatever we experience as intimacy, it's just a drop in the bucket of the intimacy we'll experience with all of each other in eternity. Yeah.

And so we worry about, one minute, am I going to love this person or this person more? Am I going to be closer to this person or this person? What I'm going to say is, in heaven, you're not going to have any separation from anyone. Right, right. And it's not romantic. I think it's all romantic because it's all love. Yeah, right. But it's not all sexual. Right, right. You know, I think that love will be more profound, more deep. Yeah. Because I love pizza. Yeah.

And I love Kim. Yeah. But they're not the same kind of love. Right, right. We know the different layers of love in this life. Right. And I don't think any layer in this life will even begin to touch the layers that will step into eternity. Yeah, yeah. God, I can't wait to get to heaven. You also asked a question about do I think that...

everyone in hell has a place or a chance. Yeah, yeah. Oh, yeah. You skipped it. Yes, and that's really important. Do you go directly to hell if you don't believe in Jesus, or do you go to purgatory slash do you have a second chance? I knew one of you had to be Catholic. Both of us, but yeah, it's me. Okay. Purgatory actually doesn't exist. Okay. Okay. And I don't mean it in a bad way. I'm just saying that a lot of our views were created because we tried to

Wow. Wow.

So they were baptizing infants so that parents wouldn't live in fear that their children were going to go to hell. Wow. It's not, it would have been so much better to say, of course God would not send your baby to hell. Yeah. God's a loving God. And, but we create rituals to try to

Help us escape the fear of God. Yeah. You know? Yeah. And so we create purgatory because we don't really know what to do with people that aren't like evil, evil. Yeah. But not good, good. Yeah. You know? Yeah. Like me. You know? What do we do with people like me? We just sort of go to purgatory, right? And wait it out and hope that something good happens, right? Yeah. One of the things I love in the scriptures is that it says that Jesus, after he was crucified, he descended into hell.

That's what the Bible says. And he proclaimed freedom to the captives. And in Matthew, it says that when Jesus died, that the tombs opened up and the dead came back to life. And that people in Jerusalem actually saw the dead now alive walking among them. And so there's this image in the Bible where Jesus goes into hell, he proclaims freedom to everyone, and he unlocks hell so people can be free. And what we need to realize is that

heaven and hell are outside of time. So that means when Jesus descended into hell in that moment, everyone who ever was or ever would be in hell had Jesus come to them personally to invite them to freedom. And I just know that God loves humanity more than I ever could. And if I want everyone to have a chance to be free, then my compassion doesn't even touch the compassion of God. And so when I read that, I go,

Way to go, Jesus. Yeah. You know, you are not trapped by time or space. In the same way the Bible says that you're already seated in the heavenlies, we're already transcendent. We exist here and in eternity. In the same way, everyone who ever died, no one, I'm convinced, no one stays in hell that doesn't choose it. Yeah.

I agree. Yeah. And God fights for everyone because he fights for love. The problem is that when we try to make God so judgmental, heaven is not Stockholm Syndrome where God takes you hostage even though you don't want to be with him. So you eventually love him because you can't escape. Because if you did not want to know love and forgiveness, if you did not want to be around a God who's holy and pure and beautiful. Yeah.

being forced to be with him forever would be hell to you. So in a sense, if you choose darkness and evil, if you choose hatred and violence, God's presence is hell to you. And that's the irony. It's not that a person, in a sense, gets sent to hell. It's that a person, and it's hard for us to believe, but a person might choose

To hold on to hate. Yeah. Rather than love. 100%. And God gives you the right to hold on to that if you choose it. Wow. Wow. That made me emotional. Yeah.

That's incredible. What a beautiful way to put it. Yeah. Absolutely incredible. And it's, it's, you articulate it in such a powerful way when it's so, it's such a difficult question to answer. Okay. You know what? I just, I, we have one last question for you. Okay. And it's because we're a little bit new to this whole thing, right? We're just a couple months into this podcast.

We wanted to know, do you get hate? And if you do, do you have any advice? Because we've gotten a little hate in our time. How in the world does anyone hate you guys? I don't know. I'm just kidding. I've lived with hate my whole life. If you choose to be public, you're going to choose to have criticism. Yeah. If you choose to have any opinion, you're going to choose to have criticism. Yeah.

And if you choose to love Jesus publicly, you're going to have criticism. And ironically, you're going to have more criticism from Christians than non-Christians. It's the only people we have criticism from. Non-Christians almost have never criticized us. I know. Growing one, I've been a fairly public person for a long time. Aaron, my son, Mariah, you know,

My daughter, they've had to live under the weight of massive criticism all their life. There was nothing Erin could ever do that people were not watching under a microscope, trying to find a reason to hate us. Nothing I could do. And even this week, I had someone who DMed me from Australia saying, make your life count. Like my life wasn't counting because I wasn't making the right choices in my life because I didn't talk enough about Jesus.

And then I had another person DM me this week going, what the heck? He didn't use the language. Yeah. Are you doing? You know, why? Because I work a lot in the business space. Yeah. Most of my podcasts are about personal development, you know, thinking at a higher level, business success. I mean, I'm in a whole different world all the time. People want me because I started Mosaic to only –

speak on Sunday, only speak from the Bible, only talk about Jesus. But I like sports. I like physics. I like science. I like business. I like thinking at a higher level. And so I'm a person who's going to talk about everything, but they don't want me to.

- Yeah, exactly. - And so you're always gonna get hate. - And you are, I know because you did a master class, the art of communication, and you are truly like one of the most gifted communicators I've ever seen in my life, and for you to not be able to go out and help teach that gift and educate people is wild to me. I've always said this about you, Mosaic, everybody,

you guys are so incredible at what you do and it's because of Mosaic is so, it's full of a lot of younger people, right? And so people want to discredit that for some reason. It doesn't make any sense. And something else that I always think is what, like,

why just because you are a pastor that means that you're not allowed to make money? Yeah, I always thought it was funny. If I only got paid by the church, people would go, you see, you're making all your money in the church. Exactly. But because I'm a business guy and I make a great deal of money in the business world, people go, wait a minute, wait a minute, you're not allowed to do that. You can't be a business guy and a pastor. Yeah. And

Or you can't be successful in a pasture because you have to choose to be unsuccessful. Yes. To be humble, right? Eventually, you have to decide, I'm just going to live the life I'm created to live. Yeah. And that's what you have to do. Just realize the people are criticizing you. They're really angry about their life. Right, right. You know, and I realize, oh, they're trying to live like vicariously through me. And if I don't live the life they need me to live, they get upset. So true. And, you know, people listening to you and they might be upset going, why did they get all this influence?

why is their podcast blowing up? Yeah. You know, why not me? Yeah. And the reason is because they're spending their life criticizing other people rather than creating. So true. And so my encouragement to you is, one, try not to read them as much as possible. We've gotten better about it.

Yeah. And realize that you have so many people who love you. Yeah. But if you're like me, you might get 100 people who love you and you only listen to the one who hates you. Right? And then it hits you hard. So one lets you know you're still sensitive, lets you know you're still human.

It lets you know you're still humble. Yeah. You know, but then you got to just put it aside and just live the life you're created to live. Yeah. And enjoy it. You're allowed to enjoy your life. Yes. You know. At one point we felt like we couldn't do anything. Yeah, we were like, I'm going to wear a potato sack. We were going to wear a cash bag over our heads. We were like, I don't know what to do. Okay, so basically what you're saying is don't listen to the prophet who openly rebuked us on Instagram the other day. Is that what you're saying? Oh, you should see the video.

Oh my gosh. Okay. Thank you so much. Pastor Erwin McManus, you are incredible. Right now you have, what do you have going on? You have your podcast, the Mindshift podcast. We do. Aaron and I together lead Mindshift podcast. We have so much fun. And we also have a community, a masterclass called The Arena. Yeah.

And it's a monthly membership. People can join. And we talk about it's really focused on communication, leadership, character, and big ideas. It's where we go just talk about every big idea we can think of. And I love talking about philosophy or theology or culture or leadership. Incredible. Yeah, we go in there. And then we have a conference coming up on October 6th and 7th. I don't know when this podcast is going to come out. Yeah, this is coming out this week. Okay. Where is that? It's at Mosaic in Hollywood. It's not our Mosaic church conference.

It's the first time I've ever done a business conference. I invited a lot of my friends, some of them who are not followers of Jesus to speak. I've got people like Lewis Howe speaking, if you know he has the School of Greatness. And Jamie Kern Lima, who is one of the few women in the world who started a company from scratch, sold it for $1.2 billion after nine years.

I have a friend named John Gordon, who I met when he was a Jewish Buddhist energy coach. Now he's a really passionate follower of Jesus, written like 40 books. And he's one of the main speakers to like NFL and sports, you know, baseball and college sports. And we have a guy named Todd Herman coming who helped Kobe Bryant develop the image of Black Mamba. Wow.

He coaches like Rafael Nadal. So I just basically asked a lot of my friends in the business world, would you come and do a conference? And so we're doing the arena live in Los Angeles. So it's going to be so much fun. We're going to be there. We encourage everybody to go get tickets. We'll put it in the description. Everyone needs a good business class. Seriously. Oh, there we go. Okay.

Gosh, thank you so much, Pastor Erwin. You are an angel. We appreciate you so much. We love you guys so much. Thank you so much. Thanks, guys. Incredible. So you were married? Your husband died? Is that true? No, she's not married. Oh, okay.