Episode Transcript
[00:00:00] Speaker A: Like, how many times throughout our church world have we told people to just be themselves? Because I haven't. That hasn't been my.
[00:00:07] Speaker B: No, we told him to be like someone else.
[00:00:10] Speaker A: Yep. Be like Mike. Be better.
[00:00:13] Speaker B: Yeah, yeah. Mike over there, he's good, man.
[00:00:17] Speaker A: Yeah. To do better.
[00:00:18] Speaker B: Yeah.
[00:00:19] Speaker A: And the reality is that once we can rest in and know who we are in Christ, we can be us. Because us is new. We have a new heart, a new spirit within us. And anything that's not looking like that new heart and that new spirit is not who we are. And just. Just processing that alone, because yes, there's still flesh, yes, there is still sin. John 14 says, Anything that's not of that trust and that faith is sin. But that sin doesn't define me. Hello.
We welcome you to another episode of let's Talk Life. In fact, it's episode 48. We're nearing Carlon.
One full year of doing this together. 52 weeks.
Yeah. And we've journeyed much longer than that, of course, together.
But it's kind of mind boggling for me to think about that. It's. It's almost been 52 weeks for us to specifically be talking life, man. I don't think I would have been ready. And yet I say that all the time when I come to my office. God, I don't know what I'm doing.
And it just takes minutes for God to just say, you're doing it and you're okay.
Yeah. So that's such a beautiful picture. So Carl and I are coming off of. Well, we didn't even have a podcast last week.
[00:01:39] Speaker B: Yeah. What have you been doing, Man, We've been slacking.
[00:01:42] Speaker A: We said we still wanted to have one with a guest and that's. That's so much harder to set up because then you got a third person schedule to deal with. But.
Yeah. What have we been doing? Carl, do you want to share a little bit of last week and let's.
[00:01:57] Speaker B: Let's talk life. And so, yeah, so we were together in person, which is amazing, up in West Michigan, and I'm wearing the Wild at Heart shirt. We just did a Wild at Heart for pastors and ministry leaders. And it was.
[00:02:15] Speaker A: I would.
[00:02:15] Speaker B: I would just say coming off of this, man, if you got my handy Danny feelings wheel, that I am ecstatic, I am optimistic, I'm excited. Very content of surrendering expectations and possible disappointments to God, seeing him do more than I could ask or imagine. Yeah. Of that, of that, of the entire week, but specifically with also the experience of all the hard experience together.
So how about. How about you coming off?
[00:02:51] Speaker A: Oh, man, it's been a beautiful couple of weeks. I was up in Michigan for 12 days, actually. We just flew back yesterday. And so it was awesome connection, too, with my family. My oldest son, I didn't see my oldest daughter.
But the retreat, I mean, I've done, that's the second one that I've, you know, been to and been a part of with you and leading music boy. I just think, yeah, there's. There are so many amazing connections, and I just. I. I can't get over, like, just the processing of how I used to maybe have approached what I was doing last week compared to how I do it now.
[00:03:35] Speaker B: Right.
[00:03:36] Speaker A: And what's so amazing that I bring that up, because I think of a couple of guys that I was getting to know, but didn't even really know what they did, like, on a regular weekly basis, and that a couple of guys were like, big music guys, you know? And even as I began to learn that throughout the time that we were together, it didn't intimidate me.
I.
It was okay. And in the past, that's what I'm saying is I would have been afraid.
[00:04:09] Speaker B: Right.
[00:04:09] Speaker A: I would have been scared. I would have been intimidated. And so that's. That was a really beautiful picture of what was happening there and also flowing into even this coming week, because I had an opportunity as I was literally our last night in Michigan and coming back to Florida here yesterday morning. So two nights ago, getting a call of we were looking for somebody to come and teach this weekend. And I'm like, well, I'm free this weekend, but, man, what does that look like? And am I ready? And that's another thing that I would have been in the past, very intimidated by. Wow.
And I don't feel that one bit.
And I don't feel like I have to spend 20 hours preparing because I'm new. And so, yeah, the connection to guys on that retreat was so fantastic.
And I haven't even had time to process it because life has just been going 100 miles an hour. Right, Right. One thing into another. And now I come back and I have, like, 24 hours, basically, to prepare for this retreat.
Yeah. So I'm so excited for how God has. Has made me new. And I'm so thrilled to see that. Well, he actually made me new way back when I was nine years old in third grade.
Wow. And I just simply didn't.
[00:05:31] Speaker B: Right.
[00:05:32] Speaker A: No.
[00:05:33] Speaker B: Is that, like. Is it really true? Right.
[00:05:35] Speaker A: Yeah.
Right.
[00:05:37] Speaker B: And. And I'm Just gonna pause and interrupt you for a second because what, what I love about this whole hearted living, what this, this Christ in me living is. We are, we are fully prepared.
Like we are fully equipped.
[00:05:53] Speaker A: Right.
[00:05:54] Speaker B: For every good work. Like, like everything in your life has brought you to this moment. To be a husband, to be a dad, to be a son, just to be a friend to.
[00:06:06] Speaker A: Right.
[00:06:06] Speaker B: You know, it just, it's just a different way to live.
[00:06:11] Speaker A: For sure.
Yeah, it really is. It's a beautiful way to live.
It's like.
[00:06:17] Speaker B: Yeah.
[00:06:17] Speaker A: In the, in the past, like we're always kind of. And we have to, you have to process through these things.
In the past, it was a striving to become something that we want to achieve and become.
[00:06:32] Speaker B: Right, Right.
[00:06:33] Speaker A: And the more that I am able to trust and live from the reality of who I am in Christ.
Yeah, man. Just the ministry aspect of everything.
So much different. It's so much different.
It's so much better. And I'm trying to find a verse that you said. I, I threw something at you and you sent it back and I sent a note back to you saying that I love verse nine of.
[00:06:57] Speaker B: Yes.
[00:06:57] Speaker A: Second Peter, chapter one.
[00:06:59] Speaker B: Right, Right.
[00:07:00] Speaker A: And I'm not even looking in the Bible that I marked up, so now I have to find it.
But being short sighted and having forgotten, those were the two words that I had written back to you about. Wow, this just really struck me.
Is this not. It's not that we are not something.
Right. It's just that we have forgotten who we are. So I, I act out of the flesh or I, I give in to fear or whatever because I've simply forgotten, not because I've changed.
So it was just such an incredible revelation for me there, reading further on to what you shared with me.
[00:07:42] Speaker B: Right. Because it's not, it's not that, Zach, you haven't arrived yet, especially when you sit around with other pastors and ministry leaders where the conversation turns to who's got the busier schedule and who's got. The more, you know, the bigger church.
And all of a sudden it just becomes a bloviating session of pride and ego.
And the opposite of that is just the, the path of humility.
[00:08:11] Speaker A: Right.
[00:08:11] Speaker B: And so it's. So it's not you trying to become like someone else. It's not you trying to earn or strive or work harder to get somewhere else. It's actually you remembering.
Right? Because nearsighted is, is the version that I have there.
So I'm nearsighted. I've forgotten. But yeah, I forgot who I am.
[00:08:32] Speaker A: Right.
[00:08:32] Speaker B: Forgot that. Yeah. I am not defined by this sin. I'm not defined by the behavior or the worst day of my life. I'm actually defined by my Father in heaven, who has cleansed me from all of my sins.
[00:08:45] Speaker A: Wow, that's beautiful. So. So that's.
[00:08:47] Speaker B: That. That's calling. And you said it's better. And I put down there, it's freeing. I know we use that word a lot, but I don't think we could use enough that. It is so freeing. So for this experience that you and I were on together, there were 16 guys total. And so the old me would have been like, oh, I need to connect with everybody. I need to talk to everybody. I need to be. I need to be the most important person in the room.
And it is so freeing to just ask questions and to join who God connects you to involve who got to knowing that, hey, you know, I'm not going to be able to have meaningful conversations with 15 other guys in three days, but if God gives me three or five or six conversations, man, that's.
[00:09:36] Speaker A: Going to be great. Yeah, that's great.
[00:09:38] Speaker B: And. And also in this path, this path of vulnerability, it gets you deep.
Yeah, just a vulnerability. It makes. There's this deep connection immediately without years of experience or years of conversations or years of, like, just vulnerability gets you into the depth of God's love and God's grace.
Just like that. And all of a sudden, right. Regardless of who was there, man, we could be. We could be the closest of friends right now present.
[00:10:12] Speaker A: Right? That's exactly it. I. I love the way that you just described that because it's out of the cure. It's termed the room of grace. And when you find rooms of grace with people, you don't have to set it up with all this fluff and nonsense.
You can literally just connect and be friends immediately because you both can recognize you're on this journey and you can just be so real with the journey that you've been on and the difficulties that you're having even presently. And there's not this condemnation. There's not this idea of people or Jesus himself standing on the other side of the room disappointed in your sin, as Zakir says.
But instead, it's just a genuine room of grace where you can journey together.
It's so amazing.
So, yeah, I love that description.
[00:11:08] Speaker B: And I love. I love going through the wild heart. I'm not going to talk too much about it because, you know, it is. It is a journey that I want everyone to Go on. But there's nothing secretive. I know there's some, there's some Christian renewal groups around me and it's all secretive and no one will tell you. Listen, it's an adventure to live, a battle to fight, and a beauty to love. Like, that's the whole premise and not the caricature of a man that we think of in America, and especially in American Christianity of what a man looks like.
[00:11:36] Speaker A: Yeah, right.
[00:11:36] Speaker B: But it's like, man going after the mission is a man. And so I come home and here's, you know, I couldn't really take this on the plane, but for those who don't have video, that's a, I don't know, 18 inch statue and bronze that I received from a group of guys putting on the Band of Brothers Wild at Heart in Pennsylvania about four years ago. And it's a paratrooper and I guess, you know, maybe World War I or World War II. So apologize. Don't know the historical accuracy there, but it's, it says on the bottom, it says another mission.
And it's just like, you know, the paratroopers just say, hey, we got one more mission, got one more jump, we got one more life to save.
It's. Man, I'm just getting excited goosebumps right now. As I, as I think about what God's called us to in this ministry of reconciliation, this ministry of real grace and wholeheartedness is that there's guys out there, and women too. But you know, my mission's for men.
And specifically coming alongside pastors and ministry leaders, there's guys that are wounded and there's guys that are hurting.
And this is a reminder of what God's called me to in Luke 22, to strengthen your brothers. So anyway, so I, so I see this today and I'm like, man, I need to put this on here as a reminder of like. And you can even see in the guy's face, there's a sense of contentment and purpose and intentionality and, and it's so opposite of how I used to live. Passively and without purpose and just full of genesis of the flesh and, and not living, not living out who God's created me to be. And so it's so different.
[00:13:15] Speaker A: So different.
[00:13:16] Speaker B: So I don't know if you want to speak about any of that.
[00:13:17] Speaker A: It's so different and it's so beautiful and we're actually able to live out of our true purpose. And that's what's so satisfying about it. So here, just, just going back to that analogy that that statue represents is a soldier not even knowing if they're going to make it to this next mission. And just having that stance and that contentment that I'm here doing what I'm called to do. And I'm at peace with that. And it's. It's no different than the warfare that we're in now as believers because the enemy is very real. And we never know what tomorrow's going to hold ever. I mean, not anybody does. And at the same time, we can stand confidently in who we are. And I was so encouraged, actually just this morning, I'll read this prayer.
Kyle Winkler has been somebody that I follow, but he's also become such a friend.
Yeah. And I'm going away this weekend and I'm teaching at this place called Sanctuary Clinics to a group of people that are there. And next weekend I'm. I forgot that it was even this close. My wife actually reminded me next weekend I'm actually going back to Dallas to wow here.
Andrew Farley and Kyle Winkler putting on a little conference there.
[00:14:37] Speaker B: Okay.
[00:14:37] Speaker A: And so my wife kind of was like, you should go. And I'm like, I don't know if she's sending me away intentionally or she's not, she. But she encouraged. I'm just like, I don't know, it's too expensive. It's. I don't want to do. She's like, you just need to go. You know, it's like. Because she knows to the journey of just stepping to all this. And. But I love that this is what he wrote. And I. And I texted him this morning, Kyle, because I said, Kyle, three things. And one of them was thank you for this prayer that you put out there. Because I needed it. And you'll understand once I read it, I needed it this very week. This is his prayer, Father.
He says, first of all, this is a prayer that I've been praying lately. Father, thank you for creating me with purpose.
I don't have to be someone else to be used by you.
You've given me a story, you've given me a style, and you've given me a spirit filled heart to reflect your goodness.
So help me to trust that who I am is enough to point others to you. May my life be a living example of your grace and may every moment be a witness to your love.
And it just, it so struck me as this is. This was first of all coming in this morning and I was here for a little bit yesterday processing through what am I going to do this weekend? What could I possibly Share. How am I supposed to put a whole thing together? Like, I was thinking six sessions. It's actually seven. How am I supposed to do this in one day? And I was already at peace with this yesterday. And then this morning, I came in to him praying this prayer, saying, maybe this prayer can help you, too. And I'm like, this prayer helped me too, Kyle. Thank you. I don't have to be someone else.
I can be me.
[00:16:22] Speaker B: Can you read that last part again? About every moment?
[00:16:25] Speaker A: Every moment. He says, may every moment be a witness to your love, and may my life be a living example to your grace. So this comes out of. I. I actually looked up further. He has another post from yesterday. This was posted this morning. Another post from yesterday, where this comes from. He was to preach this message into, like a bullhorn thing. And he's. He and I had little bullhorn. A bullhorn. Like, I don't know. What do you call those things? Like a megaphone?
[00:16:54] Speaker B: Literal. Yeah, literal. Okay, go on.
[00:16:56] Speaker A: Yeah, yeah, literal. Like a. Like a soapbox opportunity, you know, street preaching.
He's. He and I have connected because our personalities are so similar. We're both very bashful, very afraid. So he said that was his story, is it was my turn to get up there and preach, and I just ran and hid. And in that moment, he just felt like, am I even a Christian? Like, I should. I should want to do this. What's wrong with me? And so he heard this voice from God. This was. This is where it came from. He said, be you. I've given you a personality, a style and a story to do something that other people can't do.
And I just thought that was such a beautiful picture. That's where this prayer that he's been praying comes out of.
Like. Like, how many times throughout our church world have we told people to just be themselves?
Because I haven't. That hasn't been my message.
[00:17:46] Speaker B: We told them to be like someone else.
[00:17:48] Speaker A: Yep. Be like Mike. Be better.
[00:17:51] Speaker B: Yeah, yeah. Mike over there, he's good, man.
[00:17:55] Speaker A: Yeah. To do better. Yeah. And the reality is that once we can rest in and know who we are in Christ, we can be us. Because us is new. We have a new heart, a new spirit within us. And anything that's not looking like that new heart and that new spirit is not who we are.
And just. Just processing that alone, because, yes, there's still flesh, yes, there is still sin. John 14 says, Anything that's not of that trust and that faith is sin.
But that sin doesn't define me. And so it's. It's just a whole different way of processing all of it in it. And so it's. It. That's what's been so exciting about even preparing for this weekend.
You always throw this encouragement. You have what it takes. Like, you're telling me that you have what it takes. You always text me that.
And it's like, it's so true.
Because God has already instilled in me everything, and I am already a new creation. I don't have to strive for that. I don't have to try to go and beat out all the other speakers that have ever been to this. And, oh, I just need to be me. That's. That's all I gotta do. And. And it's frustrating because there's like, I'm coming from up north. I have these allergy things going. I feel like, oh, am I gonna lose my voice? I'd love to bring some music to some of it. Can I even sing? It's like all of it, though. Well, God, it is what it is.
Whatever happens, happens.
[00:19:17] Speaker B: Right. And that's that surrender piece like. Like even going back to, you know, you, me, and Scott praying the night before of just like, praying, praying, surrender to what we want for what he has for us.
[00:19:30] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:19:30] Speaker B: To walk through, you know, expectations. You know, what are your expectations as you go into this weekend? What are your hopes?
[00:19:36] Speaker A: What are your.
[00:19:37] Speaker B: And just submitting all God saying, all right, God, whatever. However you want to use me.
[00:19:42] Speaker A: Right.
[00:19:42] Speaker B: Right.
[00:19:45] Speaker A: Amen.
[00:19:45] Speaker B: Whatever it looks like. And that's for all of us.
[00:19:48] Speaker A: Right?
[00:19:48] Speaker B: That's for all of us. And whatever.
[00:19:49] Speaker A: Yeah. Instead of.
[00:19:51] Speaker B: Instead of.
[00:19:52] Speaker A: Right.
[00:19:53] Speaker B: Control and fear and manipulation, which all is just.
Yeah. That's not very peaceful.
[00:20:00] Speaker A: No.
[00:20:01] Speaker B: That's not very freeing.
[00:20:02] Speaker A: Not at all. And I. I don't use this as much, but I have it in front of me as well.
The feelings wheel. I love it.
[00:20:11] Speaker B: Yeah.
[00:20:11] Speaker A: And I'm actually looking for. For that word controlling. Is it on here somewhere? It's, It's. It's got to be in one of these frustrating areas. Angry, maybe, I don't know.
But I'm just looking at the words trusting in the middle because all these.
[00:20:29] Speaker B: Words, you know what I would.
What I would say is that these feelings. Control comes out of these feelings.
[00:20:35] Speaker A: They do.
[00:20:36] Speaker B: So my feeling of fear, my feeling of anxiety or insecurity, but I'm going to try and control people or situation. Go ahead.
[00:20:46] Speaker A: It's always. It's always out of the not so good feelings that control comes.
Like, if I'm living. Like, I'm looking at the word trusting right now.
[00:20:57] Speaker B: Yeah.
[00:20:57] Speaker A: And I feel assured and hopeful and secure and confident.
[00:21:01] Speaker B: Right.
[00:21:02] Speaker A: Going into a weekend that I'm like, I've never done this before. I've never been to this place. I don't know these people. Like, there's a million things that could cause so much fear and then that can cause me to want to control.
Trying to have every word, everything figured out that I'm going to share.
And I don't have to do any of that because I feel like I'm in a place of, I'm trusting you, God. I approached the whole thing like, yes, I'll do this. Okay. God, I don't know what this looks like, but I'm trusting you.
So. So it's beautiful when we can live from that, from that perspective.
So I think that's already past 20 minute mark. And it's always a joy today, just talking, talking life. We talk life in Christ because that's everything that we are and, and what we talk about. But in the midst of life too, just how does that relate? And that's the joy of the journey with other people, with each other.
And so we hope that that encourages you today.
