Transcript of #327 Josh Howerton - "In 50 Years, China Will Have More Christians Than America"

Josh Howerton, welcome to the show, man.

All right. It's an honor, my friend.

It's an honor to have you.

It's an honor.

So, yeah, I've been, you know, my chief of staff came from Dallas and she kind of put you on my radar. And I was, I was watching some of the stuff like, I don't remember how you popped up, but she had made a suggestion about you coming on and I was like, he's already on the list.

Well, dude, I think she's a former Lake Point member.

She is. Yeah, she is. Awesome.

Yeah. So that was a very cool connection, man. Well, and you know, it's cool to meet the people you listen. I've been, you know, I've been watching you for a minute.

Yeah.

I appreciate you.

Well, thank you for saying that.

Yes, sir.

But so yeah, we got a lot of stuff to talk about today.

I'm in, man.

I'm pumped.

I'm in. Hey, before we get started, can I give you something?

Yeah.

I got to give you a gift.

Of course.

So I appreciate what you've done for our country. This is a big deal to me. It took me a long time to find this. Here's what this is. You may have seen this. Have you ever heard of a Heart Shield Bible? You ever heard of this?

No.

This is like, this makes my eyes sweat a little bit. So here's what this is. I want you to hold that. So that's a 1943 Heart Shield Bible. And what that is, 1943, President FDR, he partnered with, I think, the Gideons. And they handed out these little pocket New Testaments to active World War II soldiers. And bro, what they did is, here's why that thing, I don't know if the viewers can see, the front of that thing is plated brass. And the reason they did that is they designed it so that it could fit in the front pocket of an active World War II soldier so that it could stop a bullet.

No way.

And dude, so that guy, you'll see it on the inside, the one I found, that guy, there was a, I think an Air Force colonel. That wore that into active duty. And Sean, honestly, man, one of the reasons I said, I don't do this, I don't travel and I don't travel. Yeah. I got kids and I'm focused. One of the reasons I said yes to this is just what I see God doing in you and through you. And the reason that that thing means so much to me, dude, that's what that is. That's a prayer that the president wrote for those soldiers to read that book. Wow. And the reason I want you to have that is, man, you know, I'm in it with you. There's that thing that above all, it would sit right over a soldier's heart. And there's that thing, above all else, guard your heart, for from it flows the wellspring of life. And how do you guard your heart? I've hidden your word in my heart that I might not sin against you. So there you go, man.

Man, thank you. No, that's really cool.

Thank you. Thank you. Wow. I thought it was pretty cool.

Thank you. This is awesome.

Yes, sir.

Thank you.

Yes, sir.

Beautiful. Beautiful. Well, I got a present for you, but it's not that sentimental. Come on, get you a bag of gummy bears.

I love gummy bears.

Full of sugar, red dyes, yellow 5, all the bad shit, but they taste amazing. So And they'll probably be illegal here in a couple of months.

I mean, is there pot in those? I need to know right now.

No pot.

All right, good.

Sorry.

I can have it.

Sorry about that.

But yeah, no, no, that's good, man.

But just candy. Just candy.

All right.

But let me give you an introduction here. Pastor Josh Howerton, you're senior pastor of Lake Pointe Church in Dallas, one of the largest churches in the country. You're known for addressing difficult issues at the intersection of faith, culture, politics, and apologetics. You're also the host of Live Free Podcast. You're a husband to your wife, Jana, and the father of 3 adopted kids. Welcome to the show.

It's an honor. It's an honor, my friend.

So before we get started, you want to pray?

I would love to.

You want to lead us?

Yeah, I would love to, man. All right. Jesus Christ, thank you for being the sovereign and loving Lord of all the universe. And thank you that for from before the foundations of the world, you picked this moment for me to have the honor of talking to Sean and every man and woman that will listen to this thing. Father, I pray that you would just— you'd kiss it from heaven. There'd be an open heavens over the conversation. Lord, you would lead us in paths of righteousness for your namesake in a way that would be a blessing to Sean, his family, and everybody that listens. I pray that in the crucified, risen name of Jesus Christ. Amen.

Amen.

Amen. Amen.

Thank you. All right, here we go.

Let's go, man.

Here we go. So third generation pastor, correct?

That is correct.

And you, you were here.

I was here. I was here, dude. So my papa, Jerry Howard, and my life hero, he was, you know, kind of blue-collar Ozark Mountains kind of kid and grew up, became a pastor. He's a little rural. Rural church pastor all over Kentucky, Missouri, Michigan. I mean, all over the place. Drove a truck for a little while and became a pastor. And, uh, man, I miss him. Bet one of the best men I've ever met. And then my dad, Rick Howard, pastor as well. And, uh, he started a church, rubbed two sticks together, start a little church here in Spring Hill, kind of around this area, the Bridge Church.

Oh yeah, that's like 15 minutes out there.

That's right, man. So my dad started that church, and then I had, uh, one of the greatest honors of my life to step into my dad's shoes and, and pass that church for about 10 years. And, um, was there for about 10 years. Lord did a really unique thing and then called us to Dallas.

Right on. How did you— I'm just curious, how did Christ come into your life? I mean, how did you— what, what built your faith? Did you just always have it, or did something happen? I mean, I'm a Hard Knocks guy. He had to slap me around a little bit. He still does it. I'm going through one right now. But you know what I mean? But I don't like it in the moment, but it'll 100x my faith every time it winds up happening. And to the point where it's not even faith anymore for me, it's fact. And so I'm wondering, you know, did you just— did you always have it because you grew up in it, or are there any specific events that really just hit you? Like, okay, all this stuff that we're talking about, it's real.

This is for real, for real, man. Honestly, I'd say both. You know, I'll just honor my parents. Uh, I got, I got, uh, make my sweat a little bit. I got good parents and they love me. And, uh, man, you know, I grew up in the '90s. I'm an '80s baby, but the '90s made me kind of thing. And, you know, growing up in the '90s, it was kind of like cool to be a pastor's kid and kind of rebel. And, you know, I didn't understand that at all because I like every second of my life. I love being Rick Howard's kid, Pastor Rick's kid, loved every second of it. So whatever they experienced, they had the opposite. So I grew up like my parents raised me, just like the word says, in the fear and admonition of the Lord. You know, I got a million memories of Mom sitting there and quizzing me on Bible verses growing up, you know, all the stuff. But I will say there definitely came moments where it was like— so here's how I say it sometimes, like what you just said is like, man, every now and then you'll go through it a little bit.

And, you know, you have those moments where, you know, you kind of get knocked flat on your back. But what you'll notice is whenever you get knocked flat on your back, you're finally looking in the right direction kind of thing. And, you know, when I look back at my life, there were moments where it was like, oh, like, I'm a for real, for real sinner and he's a for real, for real savior. And I need something. I don't got this. I need something a lot bigger than me. And so, you know, I think probably around college, you know, I had a couple head-on collisions with my own depravity. And I remember I'll just— I haven't talked about this in a long time. I remember writing in my journal in college, like, where, you know, dude, you probably got the same stuff. I'm just like, just like you, that you sin the same dumb sin for the millionth time.

And, you know, thank God I didn't journal back then, but I didn't go to college. But that age, Yeah, yeah.

I remember journaling in college and I was reading the gospels. And you know, I think a lot of people think Christianity is like a bunch of good people telling bad people how to be good. And hey, you know, it's like you figure out real quick that is not what this thing is. The whole thing is like, I'm not good. It's actually, you know, it's a bunch of forgiven nobodies trying to tell everybody about somebody who can save anybody kind of thing. I remember being in college and sinning the same dang sin for like the millionth time. And I remember reading about Jesus hanging out with prostitutes and tax collectors. And it was the first time, dude, I haven't talked about this maybe ever. It was like the first time in my life where it hit me like, oh, I fit right in. Prostitutes and thieves, I fit right in. And I remember journaling and going like, man, it really dawned on me today. That, you know, Jesus didn't come for good people. He came for prostitutes and murderers and thieves and race traitors and da da da. And I remember journaling, and today I realize I fit perfectly into that category.

And I honestly think that's usually the minute when somebody meets the real Jesus. Because you got to know you're a sinner to realize he's a real savior, you know. So I had a, I had a bunch of moments like that.

Right on. When did you know that you were gonna kind of follow in the family footsteps, that you're going to become a pastor? Dude, you know, how long have you been a pastor?

You know, I, I started traveling around and preaching like in college. Actually, my youth pastor Jeff Carlisle, he stood me up to preach when I was like 16. In the youth group. And I just honestly, you know, you've probably seen the same thing. The difference between men that grow up and they become good men and builders and makers instead of takers and breakers kind of thing, it's usually they got other good men in their life. Like, that's literally the difference, you know. And I had a bunch of good men in my life, and Jeff Carlisle was one of my youth pastors. And, uh, It was like I was 16 and he stood me up there and he was like, "Hey man, I want you to preach at youth group." I was like, "I don't know what I'm gonna do." And I just explained a verse that I'd read. And he grabbed me afterwards, he's like, "Hey man, I want you to know, when you talked, everybody listened. There was a little heat on that thing when you did that." And I just, people around me kept saying, "Hey man, we see it in high school." The guys who maybe weren't on the same path that I was, you know, they're a little joke.

They called me Rev, you know, kind of thing. Kind of half making fun of me a little bit maybe. But it's just something everybody kind of saw in me, you know. And then there was— I couldn't imagine doing anything else.

How was your first— how was it ministering your first congregation? First time up there?

You know, honestly, dude, not good. You know, dude. So I was— I went up to I went up to, uh, it was, uh, Mount Washington, Kentucky. I was going to seminary, which for everybody that's listening, that's like post-grad, that's like Bible school. You're getting a theological degree. So I'm up there on Mount Washington, Kentucky, little rural First Baptist Church up there, which sweetest people ever, like best experience ever, you know. I know some people have bad experience with churches, whatever that is. I had all the opposite, you know. And, uh, the, the— I was there for like 3 years. And I grew it from like 150 students to like 120, you know. And it honestly, it went okay. But, you know, it's one of those things like the Lord was with me and I was figuring it out. And just like you, you know, stuck with it. Yeah.

Right on.

Yeah, man.

Right on. All right, let's get into some hard stuff. This is a new question I just started asking. I'm going to ask everybody this question that comes on. That's, that's kind of in a position like yours. Why is Christianity the one religion that is totally acceptable to disparage?

Yeah. All right. Can I give— let me give a starting point here.

Absolutely.

All right. I'm going to show you something, and I know you've seen it because it's right up there. So do you remember this whole thing? This is gonna blow your mind. You remember that little thing?

Oh yeah.

All right. So what that is—

We'll put it up on screen.

Yeah. So what that is, is that is a chart of every cross-reference in the Bible. So what I wanna talk about, I wanna give a starting point. The answer to your question is, in large part, because that's exactly what the Bible said was gonna happen. So here's why, like, I'm always gonna go Bible, you know. I'm dumb about a lot of things. I try to love the word of God. So here's what that is. 16— that is every cross-reference in the Bible where the Bible references other parts of the Bible. There are 16,791 cross-references where parts of the Bible reference other parts of the Bible. And when you look at that, dude, it kind of blows your mind a little bit. Well, I just want to point this out.

Did you say 16,000?

16,791, from what I understand.

I thought it was 62,000.

It may be 6— actually, you're right. Actually, Sean, you're right. I think it's 67,700.

I think it's 6—

I was off by an order of magnitude.

I think I, I do. I think it's 62,000 and some change.

Okay, okay. It's in the 60,000s. When you look at that thing, I mean, it'll blow your mind a little bit.

Uh-huh.

And if you were to see that and one person wrote a book that did that, that many cross-references and dovetails into other parts of the word, you would look at that person and you would think, that is the greatest author who has ever lived. Like, goat. No one will— opus and masterpiece. Okay, but that book was not written by one man. It was written by over 40 men across 1,500 years across 3 continents, Asia, Europe, and Africa, in 3 different languages, Greek, Hebrew, and Aramaic. It has 1 unified story. It has 0 contradictions. Now listen, man, when I see that, like, that'll make my eyes sweat a little bit because there is only 1 way to explain that, and it's that that book over there It was written down by men, but it was authored by the Word of God, by God himself. So when you ask that question, the response to the question, why is it the one thing that everybody can disparage? Well, man, like when we open the Word, what we know is from Genesis 1, 2, and 3, we know immediately what Satan does after the fall of mankind. Is he begins to wage war on the offspring that God is going to use to redeem the world.

So that's the storyline of the entire Bible. It's word versus world. If you skip forward all the way to the end, you go to the Book of Revelation. A lot of people, they get into Revelation and it's like, you know, they start reading and it's like, you know, Jesus looks like metal and his eyes are flames of fire and it's, you know, three-headed dragons eating babies and, you know, I think people start to go, "I didn't know they dropped acid in ancient Rome." You know, kind of, "What are they doing?" What the Book of Revelation is, is it's really, it's not, a lot of the Book of Revelation isn't revelation about what's gonna happen in the future. It's revelation about what's been going on behind the scenes in the spiritual realm throughout all of human history. That's what a lot of the Book of Revelation is. If you get to Revelation chapter 12, you get this little vision of a dragon that represents Satan. And what it says that he does is he wages war upon the woman, which most Bible scholars go, man, that's the church, the bride of Christ and her offspring. So, man, if you're going, why is Christianity the one thing that you can disparage?

Is because the Bible says the whole world lies under the power of the evil one. The Bible actually calls Satan the little g god of this world. Actually, if you want to get this kind of a little— it's really interesting that actually in the temptation of Jesus, Satan does this thing where he comes to Jesus and he goes, hey, I'm going to show you all the kingdoms of the world. And he tells him, he's like, hey man, if you'll bow down and worship me, I'll give you all of these kingdoms. Now, what's really interesting is Jesus doesn't say they're not yours to give. There's like this tacit assumption throughout the entire Bible that Satan is really over all of the world systems, and that's why everything in the world aligns against one thing in particular, and it's Christianity, Christ, and Christians. That's baseline.

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In fact, actually, can I go a layer deeper?

Yeah, okay, keep going.

So dude, I'll give an— I'll give you an example of this. So do you know who Raymond Ibrahim is?

I do not.

Dude, you need to know who that guy is. Okay, so Raymond Ibrahim—

is he alive?

He is. Raymond Ibrahim He comes from Egyptian Coptic Christian family. I just had him on Live Free, and he's like, uh, he, he actually got famous around 9/11 because he's a doctorate in Arabic. He got a job at the Library of Congress, so he's back in the stacks. This is going somewhere, I promise. He's back in the stacks, so those are the books no one has access to. And he finds in Arabic transmissions from Osama bin Laden out to a bunch of, you know, terror cells or whatever that have never been translated. And then he like blows the whistle on, hey dude, here's what this guy is saying. This is what they're saying on BBC and CNN about why they're doing all this stuff. Here's what Osama bin Laden is actually saying. And it's, you know, it's kill the infidels and all that stuff. So he blows the whistle on it. That's where Raymond Ibrahim comes to fame. So anyway, he's on a podcast. He's a leading scholar on intersection of Christianity and Islam. Very interesting. Okay, so Ibrahim's on the pod and off air he tells me, he's like, hey, you know what actually pushed me to Christianity?

I started studying the world and I noticed everything aligns against this one thing. And then he gives, dude, he gives this example. Which I think a lot of people wonder about this. The example he gives is like, have you ever noticed that progressivism and Islam, they always seem to be on the same team, at least in America? You kind of seen that? Yeah, it's kind of, kind of in general kind of tends to be, be a thing, which makes no sense because you kind of got, hey man, we're over here, you know, gay rights, women's rights, you know, freedom of expression, progressive, And then you kind of got Islam is kind of, you know, kind of oftentimes the opposite of those things. Well, if you start asking the question, why would this— the women's rights people kind of align with kind of the thing that at least in many countries, hey man, they kind of, you know, they'll do something to a woman that's not wearing a burqa, you know, kind of, hey man, why are we doing, you know, Queers for Palestine? You know, that's kind of like chickens for KFC, you know. That didn't make sense.

Well, the unifying principle is the enemy of my enemy is my friend. Anything but Christianity and anyone but Christ. And Ibrahim sees that and he's like, everything's aligned against one thing. There must be something to that one thing.

Interesting. You know, do you know who Eli Crane is?

I don't.

Eli Crane is a congressman out of Arizona. He was a Navy SEAL. He's a good friend of mine. And he's a huge fan of yours. He somehow— he must have saw the post where you were coming on. So he wanted— I wanted to wait till the end to ask this, but me and Eli bat the Israel topic back and forth pretty consistently.

Yeah.

And we just disagree. We have wildly different ideas of you know, what this is and what the relationship should be and what's going on. And, and, but I, you know, I respect Eli. He's a really good friend of mine. And so he wanted me to ask you about Islam and prophecy.

Oh, geez. Okay. All right. Just go with it. Just go for it.

Hit it.

All right.

You already know if you watch this, you know, we go to some dark, dark times.

Yeah. Yeah. Let's go. Okay, well, quick caveat. I'm just going to start right here. I'm a pastor, and what my heart beats for more than anything else is for everybody everywhere to know Jesus Christ and the love of the Father. So my— that's my starting point. So before I say anything, I want you, Eli, and anybody else that listens to know, um, I love every person that calls himself a Muslim. And I hate Islam because it destroys people and eternities. And I can do both of those things. I can love a person and I can hate what I believe is a demonic ideology. So let me just point some things out. So like some things that are interesting to me, and let me give a quick— I want to set this up. So like, especially you, maybe you, Sean, or maybe some people that are listening, you're going to hear some things and here in a minute, you'll be like, man, there's some real dark stuff in the world. Like, in fact, I think a lot of the reason that you're seeing a resurgence of the purposes of God— I think, Sean, I think a rising hope— I think we got a chance to see something special, man.

I do too.

I think we got a chance, and I'm willing to pour my life out for it. I think part of the reason, dude, is in the era leading up to where we're at now, and I'm going to get back to what you just asked, I'm making my way there, is the obviousness of darkness became so smack you in the face that people awoke. They, they awakened to the reality that there was a non-ignorable dark force in the world. And then, dude, I think what a lot of people do, especially young men, right now is they're going, man, if there's a darkness, there must be a light. And that light has a name, and his name is Jesus Christ. I honestly think that's a lot of what's going on. Now, that dovetails to what you're saying. I just want to point some things out that, you know, you or anybody else can think I'm an idiot. That's fine. You know, whatever. Let me point some things out. All right, so, um, uh, what, uh, what Muslims do in general what a lot of Muslims do is they trace their spiritual lineage to Ishmael. So what we're going to do, we're going to Bible nerd out for a second and we're going to go, we're going to do some Old Testament theology and then make our way forward.

Okay, so we're going to do a little Bible study real quick. So in the Old Covenant, God makes his covenant with Abram, who becomes Abraham. Okay. And he tells Abraham, through you and your offspring. And it's very interesting, Sean, this is very interesting. Just for— I'm a Bible guy. When it says offspring, It's singular. So in other words, you have— you're going to have one future offspring, and through that one future offspring, somebody out of your lineage, Abraham, is going to bless the entire world.

Okay, how do you know it's singular?

In the book of Galatians, it specifically talks about that. In the New Testament, the Apostle Paul calls attention to the fact that it says offspring. So Paul is— I'm— what I'm doing right now is I'm making the same point the Apostle Paul makes in the New Testament. And so it points that out. It's a singular. Okay. Now, obviously there's nations that come out of him and all of that stuff. So, but, but there's a— the specific promise is going to find its termination in one future offspring that I'll just pull my punch is Jesus Christ. Okay. So that's where we start. Now, the promise and the covenant that was given to Abraham, obviously he was going to have a child. Now, uh, the child, uh, he has to wait for a long time, and he's waiting around for the promise to happen, and he takes matters into his own hands. And, uh, and his wife— this whole deal— his wife Sarah gives him his servant Hagar, and they have essentially a, a covenantally illegitimate child named Ishmael. Then later, he and Sarah have a child named Isaac. So here's what you got. What you end up with, because of he and Sarah's disobedience, is you have one covenant but you have two sons.

And now we got a problem because now we got two sons, they're going to end up fighting and all of their offspring are going to end up fighting in the spiritual realm. I believe it's connected to that over this one covenant. So then what you have is you have the children of the promise who, who— those are the Jewish people historically. And then you have what Muslims do is they trace their lineage to Ishmael. So this is what you have.

The other son.

The other son.

Okay.

Okay. So now one covenant, two sons. Now you got a thing going on. Okay. You got that thing going on. Okay. Now fast forward in Galatians 1:8, Paul says this. He says, but even if we or an angel from heaven— now this is really important. I'm going to give you two verses where you can connect some dots. He says, but even if we or an angel from heaven should appear to you and preach to you another gospel let him be accursed. Bookmark that in your head. Then you got another Bible verse in the New Testament that says that what Satan does is he, quote, masquerades as an angel of light. All right, now dude, I'm a, I'm a, you know, I'm a dumb rural Kentucky kid, but you start putting some things together, and in the, the 600s, what Muhammad says happens is he— now first of all, let me just say, I'm not like some Islamic scholar. I'm doing 30,000-foot big rocks. What he says happens is he wanders in a cave and he essentially does this. He goes, man, man, I was in there and this real weird thing happened. I was in there and this angel of light appeared to me and he started revealing to me another way to God that's different than the one that we've had.

Now, dude, all of a sudden I'm going, well, that's real interesting because 600 years before he's doing his thing, You got a Bible verse saying what Satan does is he masquerades as an angel of light. And then you have a specific warning that throughout history that an angel from heaven may appear and reveal to you another gospel. Why? Because Jesus came and he said, I am the way, the truth, and the life, and nobody comes to the Father except through me. And dude, I just want to say this, and this gets me a little trouble. You know, you may have some experience with this. Every now and then you'll do something, the internet will get mad at you. That happens to me. And, uh, and, you know, uh, one of the things that, uh, pastors don't have to try to be controversial. They just got to read Bible verses. And one of the things that Jesus said that, man, people, they just hate it. But, man, I didn't say this. Jesus said it. And, man, what kind of— I'd be a whore, I'd be a liar not to tell you what Jesus said. And he said he was the way, the truth, and the life, and nobody comes to the Father except through him.

What he didn't say is, I am a way, a truth, and a life, and some people come to the Father except through me, or also through me. So then you got that. So you have the birth of Islam, and it seems to me, man, like it's the fulfillment of exactly what was warned against in the scriptures. Now I'll give you, I'll give you two other things. Jesus said, I think it's in the Gospel of John, he said the time will come, and he's talking about the end, okay? I'm not a huge end times guy, but He's talking about the end, and he says, the time is coming when they will kill you and think they are offering service to God. Now, I think what a lot of people have done, especially in America for like the last 30, 50 years, is a lot of Christians have been like, man, we're nervous about the rise of secularism and the rise of atheism, and people are just deconverting and apostatizing, that kind of thing. But honestly, you take that verse that Jesus said real clearly And what Jesus seems to be saying is it like the final boss, like when Jesus— like right before Jesus returns, the final boss, it's not going to be atheism.

It's not going to be secularism. It's going to be some other religion that believes that killing infidels is offering service to God. Seems like that's one clear meaning of what Jesus said. Now, I'll give you one other one. And then I'll just point this out. In the book of Revelation, again, Revelation is peeling back the curtain on like, man, what's been going on in the spiritual realm throughout human history. One of the things that it says is John gets this vision of all the martyred saints. All that means is just Christians. So all the Christians that were martyred because they refused to not worship the Lamb. They're like, we're— that's Jesus. We're Jesus people. We're team Jesus. And it doesn't just tell us they were martyred, it tells us specifically how they were martyred. And it says he saw the souls of those who were beheaded. Now, dude, again, I always want to take this with a grain of salt. Like, I'm not a big, like, here's all the charts and here's when Jesus is going to return, all this stuff. Um, but dude, I do want to have my eyes open with my Bible in front of me.

And it is interesting to me, man, that I'm aware of, there is one major world religion and one only that doesn't just specify to sometimes kill people who have a different faith than you. It specifies how, and the Quran calls it striking necks, is beheading. So you got that. And then I'll do one last one. It's hard to do from memory, but I'll do my very best. In, in Islamic eschatology. So that's what eschatology means. It's two Greek words. Eschaton means last and ology means study of. So study the last. In Islamic eschatology, like the end of the world, what it says is there'll be this figure that rises up called the Mahdi, M-A-H-D-I. And different in the same way that in Christianity there's like different sects of Christianity. That view end time stuff differently. And that's like not my fastball, but, you know, is what it is. It's the same thing in Islamic eschatology. Different Muslims believe different things, but there's some really interesting things that they believe about the Mahdi. They believe that he will rise to power during global tumult. They believe that when he rises to power, he will unite the world in a one-world Islamic government.

They believe that that government will be, uh, headquartered in Jerusalem. Uh, they believe that when he does it, he will slaughter the Jews. They believe that he will usher in a 7-year peace treaty, uh, in that area. Uh, they believe that he will ride in— they believe things like this— that he will ride in on a white horse. Now, dude, I, I just want to point this out. If anybody's listening and like hair standing up on the back of your head and there's little alarm bells going off. I just want to point this out: if little alarm bells are going off in your head because you read your Bible before, that's because a lot of the aspects of the Islamic Mahdi are the exact descriptions of the New Testament Antichrist. So do I know that's what's going to happen? Nope, I don't. But I do have my Bible open. And I want to be a guy that's like, hey man, I'm ready. I got my eyes open. I'm waiting. That's interesting to me.

Interesting.

Interesting.

Is Christianity— is it, is it growing or is it shrinking?

It's globally growing. Globally growing, if I understand correctly.

Because it seems like— but I've seen a lot of charts and I think it's globally— I think it's growing. I think there's a resurgence happening. But when you see all these college kids getting baptized and—

Ross the best.

You know what I mean? And I just saw another one. It was like a couple thousand people, I think, got baptized on the beach.

Yes. That's my buddy, Joby Martin.

What do you mean?

That's my buddy, Pastor Joby Martin. His church— that's one church.

Oh, really?

Oh, one church. Church 1122. Shout out. One church. They baptized, I think it was almost 4,000 people on a beach down there in Florida.

Yeah. Wow. 4,000 people.

4,000 people. I mean, what do we're seeing, man? You know, I'm not a super emotional guy, but if there's one thing that makes my eyes sweat is that, man, we are— I'll just say this. So like in my lifetime, Christianity in America has generally been declining. I'm 43, 1983. Feels like the tide's turning. And every pastor I talk to, man, I'm like, every pastor I talk to, it's like more people getting saved they've ever seen, more people getting baptized they've ever seen, uh, church attendance spike. Like, tide's turning.

That's what I feel like. But then I see charts and it says, you know, it's a decline.

Yeah.

I don't know if that's real. Do you have any insight on any of that?

Well, I'm not a sociologist. What I can say is— I don't like talking about stuff that I don't know for sure. What I have been told is that in places that have generally been characterized as the West— can I ask you a question a second? Am I allowed to do that?

Yeah. All right.

In a second, I want to ask you why you think the tide is turning. But from what I understand, places that have been generally characterized as the West. So you're talking about like Eastern Europe and North America and Canada. From what I understand, in my lifetime, Christianity has generally been declining in the global— what's been called the West.

Okay.

From what I understand, Christianity has been exploding in Africa, the Global South, Asia. That's from what I— from what I understand. So you're hearing stuff about like, you know, Chinese house church movement. That stuff starts to explode, especially in the last 50 years. You know, I read something a few years ago, and I may get a detail wrong on this, that at current growth rates of Christianity in China, there will be more Christians in China in 50 years than Christians in America.

Wow.

So now listen, that's like—

wow.

So there's stuff like, man, there's stuff like that that's happening.

Well, here's some stats. In 2007, 78% of US adults identified as Christian. By 2023-24, only 62%, a 16-point decline in just 15 years. Among women 18 to 29, 43% religiously unaffiliated in 2025, up from 29% in 2013. Churches were losing 1.2 million members annually before COVID Disengagement has accelerated since. For the first time in American history, young people grow up with Christianity as one option among many, not the baseline assumption. So, you know, I don't— I mean, I just— but I live in a, you know, this area is a little different than most parts of the United States. You know, this is Tennessee. We're in the Bible Belt. So everywhere you go, the first question is, you know, what church do you go to? And it's not like that. It's not like that very many other places. Right. But I mean, you asked me, why do I think we're seeing a resurgence? I think we're seeing a resurgence because, I mean, I agree with you that the darkness— I also think that nothing makes sense. I think, I think the search for— I mean, there has never been more distrust in, in U.S. institutions, world institutions, our government.

We've been lied to a lot by pretty much both sides of the political spectrum. And I think people are looking for something that's concrete, and they're finding it in the word.

I agree.

You know, I think, I think it's, it's that basic. I mean, we can't even figure out what gender people are anymore. We can't— everything has turned out to be a lie. These wars, lies. Past wars, Lies. Government corruption. Lies. Does it get fixed? No, it continues on, you know. And, and there's just nothing to really ground yourself in anymore, anywhere, except the word.

That's right. That's right, Sean. That's right, Sean, man.

I, I think that's, you know, maybe it's a good thing all this shit's happening.

There's a verse in There's a verse in Hebrews 12 that says what God does is, uh, he shakes the things that can be shaken so that only the things that cannot be shaken remain. And I think throughout human history, the Lord does that where he just decides, like, hey man, I gotta— almost like I gotta flip— I gotta flip the Monopoly board real quick. So that you guys see like, hey man, stock markets and institutions and ideas and ideologies, they're going to come and go. Jesus Christ is the same yesterday, today, and forever. I also think, I think, I think what you said, like our church, you know, is especially reaching, you know, a bunch of tons of young men, young dudes walking in with families. I think what we said earlier, like, that's a little thing that's like a little bit of my theory is that I think Satan is so real and so evil. You know, it's like that thing, like the enemy comes to steal, kill and destroy. But I have come that you might have life and have it to the full. And I think he's so full of evil and hate that in every generation, when he gets some momentum on the field, there's that thing I said earlier, the devil always overplays his hand.

And I think a little bit of what happened in the last 15 years, it's like, I think you nailed it. You make a good theologian over there, Sean Ryan. I think what he did is we got to this spot where people are looking around and they're honestly like, like, I'm just like normal, normal guys. They're looking around and they're kind of going like, man, like, who's going to tell my son he can't be a chick? Who, you know, who's going to, you know, who's going to— is that, that kind of stuff. And honestly, you got to the spot where there wasn't many places in our culture left besides the Church of Jesus Christ.

Even a lot of churches are putting that out.

Yeah, I don't like calling— I don't—

probably not in Texas.

Yeah, yeah, there are.

You can go to the Northeast and you can see, you can see it, you know. Yeah, but he's welcome. Everybody is welcome. Why do you have to say it like that? We know everybody's welcome.

Yeah, that's right. You know, that's right. Yeah. I would not call those churches, but I understand what you mean.

I think another thing too, you know, is— and I'm not trying to get political here, but it just is what it is. I mean, I think that, you know, we've seen— and I'm guilty of it. You're probably guilty. I'm sure everybody's guilty of this at some point. But You know, you, you, you know, we've just become so tribalized here and we've put our faith in, in men, in human beings. And, you know, you go on one side of the aisle and it's this guy's going to save the country and da da da da da da. 90% of it was fucking bullshit. You know, you go to the other side of the aisle, same thing. And so you got these two groups that were both really, I mean, the majority— the statistics aren't lying, you know. The, the majority of both parties have been let down by the people that they stood behind and propped up. And it's, it's disheartening. And, and you can see what's happening and what's happened, and it doesn't align with, with, with what people want, you know. There's some kind of— something's going on in there. I mean, I think there probably always has been.

It's just the limelight's kind of on it. These younger generations are a lot more skeptical than we ever were and the people before us. And so when you see how bad it actually is, I mean, where do you— there's nowhere else to go.

Yeah, it's funny. It's like, man, I got a lot of thoughts on what you just said. I think you're on to something. There's a reason the word says trust not in princes. You know, it's like some things that I can hope that a human leader will do, you know, but at the end of the day, you know, I'm not going to trust a king. I really got to put something in a King of Kings, you know? Yeah.

Yeah.

You know, your thing of like, at the end of the day, where are you going to go? I think, I think that's what people, you know, what it reminds me of. I love how this kind of lands on you is, you know, parable of the prodigal son. And you got to, you know, you got the kid who, you know, great, great dad. The dad represents God and he runs away and he spends all his money on parties and strippers and alcohol and, you know, whatever. And then if you read that, there's this little verse, and everybody skips the verse that I think is most important, where he gets the spot where he spends all the money and everything's— everything that he thought was gonna make him happy, and it just didn't. And so he, uh, he's out of money and he's, he's in pig slop. He's feeding pigs, which obviously for a First century Jewish guy is like, "No, no." And then there's one little verse that says when he was feeding the pigs, it says, "And then he came to his senses and he started running back to the father." And a little bit, man, I feel like we got a bit of a prodigal nation.

It's like, and a little bit where you said, "Where am I going to go?" I think that's what happened to the kid in the story. Is he woke up one day, he's like, where am I going to go? And honestly, man, he went, oh man, everything else didn't work, but I know I can go home to Dad. And I think a little bit in our country, I think everybody's going, man, we honestly do. We tried everything else and it didn't work. And I think there's a little bit of people that's going, you know what I can do? I wonder if I could go home to my Heavenly Father. I think that's a little bit what's happening.

I think so too. I think so too. Let's talk about forgiveness.

All right. I'd love to.

How do we forgive? Here's a question for you. Justice and forgiveness.

Yes. Not at odds.

They're not at odds.

I know. Yeah. No.

How can you want justice and still be able to forgive?

Yeah. All right. Well, so, you know, this— let me just do a few things here. Yes. Yeah. So a few things. One, Let me just get one thing out of the way, because what I don't want somebody to think if they hear what I'm about to say and they're like, man, somebody abused me, or like, somebody committed a crime against me, somebody raped my daughter, whatever it is. And when they hear what I'm about to say, they think, oh, because I forgave them, I don't need to call the authorities. That's not true. Justice and forgiveness, I don't got to reconcile them because I don't reconcile friends. In fact, what I'll get to in a second is that actually the foundation of true forgiveness— you know, Sean, you probably figured this out, you know, some things that you've been through in your life. Nobody makes it unless they learn to really and deeply forgive. Dude, they just don't make it, man. I've seen a lot of things as a pastor. One thing I can make you a promise, nobody makes it. That doesn't learn to forgive. So let me just get this one thing out of the way.

What do you mean by that? Nobody makes it.

So, dude, what I mean is, man, there's hardly anything that'll mess you up more than not— than clinging on to— so there's a verse in Hebrews, it talks about a root of bitterness. Hey, you make sure that a root of bitterness doesn't spring up in you. The reason it calls it a root is because roots always grow up into fruits.

Right.

So, dude, what I've seen— like, let me just— okay, let me do it like this. If, if heaven is the place where everybody's forgiven and hell is the place where nobody's forgiven, when we forgive, we pull heaven down into our lives. And when we choose not to forgive, we pull hell up into our lives. Now, you know, what I want to point out is there's this really weird connection in the Bible between satanic and demonic activity and unforgiveness. I'll just give you a couple of little examples. So first of all, Jesus calls Satan Beelzebub. What that literally means, it literally translates to Lord of the Flies. And the implication is like, man, if you get like a deep wound like a flesh wound, what flies do is they get in there and they infest the wound. And then something that hurts you, well, now all of a sudden it becomes fatal because they get up there and they infest the wound. And, and so when Jesus calls Satan Beelzebub, what he's saying is, hey man, every wound you got, if you don't, by the power of Jesus Christ, his blood and forgiveness, close that wound, that is a wide open pathway for Satan's work in your life.

I'll give you another one. In the book of Ephesians, it says, hey, don't let the sun go down on your anger. Why? Because I don't want you to give any opportunity to the devil. The book of James, it does the same thing, this weird connection between demonic activity and unforgiveness. It says that bitter people, it says bitterness is, quote, earthly, unspiritual, demonic. So, dude, a lot of people miss that, that there's like a really powerful connection in the Bible.

Can you say that again?

Unforgiveness is earthly, unspiritual, demonic. All right, so they miss it. They do that. Apparently there is some in the supernatural realm, the spiritual realm, there's a way that unforgiveness, it's like a portal, like straight in your soul for Satan and demons. I don't understand how that works. I just know that it works to get in your life. And one thing that it'll do, man, is like, I'm 43 and my life goal, I love being a pastor. I like teaching people the Bible. All that's awesome, man. My life goal is to finish my race having been faithful to Jesus. I don't want to be one of those pastors that somebody tells a story about someday. Remember what that guy did? I want to finish well. I want to be faithful to my wife. I want to sit in a rocking chair next to Jana, old, wrinkly, holding her hand, watching our great-grandkids play around in the backyard. And they love us and they love Jesus. So one of the questions I ask myself the most as I get, you know, I'm getting a little older every year, you know, is if you watch people, there's some people who they get older and the older they get, the more cynical they get, angry they get, and they just get a little crusty.

And then I'll see some other people who it's like, man, the older that guy gets, he's just a little more joyful, a little more soft in the right ways and not the wrong ways. Just a little happier. I don't know. And man, when I meet people who are the second one, you asked me a question you've started to ask everybody. When I meet people whose age starts with like a 6, 7, 8, 9, and they're just like old and happy and they got a joyful heart. I always tell them, hey, it seems like people end up this way or this way. What's the difference? Here's what I think the difference is. One person, they cleaned out all that junk in their heart throughout their entire life with forgiveness, and one of them didn't. And over the years, they just almost become like, just real slowly, man, it's real slow. In fact, if you'll let me bobble nerd out, You know, a little thing. When you read in— when you read in the Gospels and it talks about people being, quote, demon possessed, that's a bit of an inelegant translation of what that is. It's literally— it's one Greek word.

We make it two English words. It's one Greek word. The word is demonized. So kind of like we say fossilized, demonized, like in the same way that a fossil, it started out as this, but then very, very, very slowly over time It was this, and now it's this. Honestly, man, a lot of times that's how like demonic activity works in people's lives, is hey, it's slow, it's imperceptible, gets up there maybe in a wound, something like that. And how'd that guy end up old, angry, cynical, crusty? There's like no love in his heart, it's all anger, you know, man. Just very very, very slowly. He didn't learn to clean it out with forgiveness, which brings me back to the beginning— demonic activity and unforgiveness. If hell is a place where nobody's forgiven and heaven is a place where everybody's forgiven, every time we learn to forgive, Sean, you know, you pull heaven down into your life. Every time you choose not to, you pull hell up. That's a, uh, I don't think that's a question you asked me.

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We just released new gear including this beautiful moisture-wicking VE Performance hat and SRS campfire mugs, and you guessed it, Vigilance Elite gummy bears. Oh shit! Every purchase directly supports the show and helps us continue bringing you independent conversations without compromise. Visit seanryanshow.com and grab yours today. I've been thinking about this for a couple years pretty hard, about forgiveness, and I, I think it's more of a, uh for lack of a better term, almost like it's kind of a selfish thing to do because it's really, you know, what I've figured out is it's, it's, it is, it's for yourself, you know, which is what you're saying. I mean, you're healing, healing wounds by forgiving. And the more I do it, the more I figure it out. The better I feel because you are letting go of shit.

That's right.

And it doesn't, you know, it doesn't mean you have to, you know, be around this person, pray.

That's right.

You know, praise them, talk about them. But I mean, it's just, it's just kind of like letting it go.

Yes.

Wrong about that, bro.

You're dead on, man. So, man, the path, like, if I'm a self-cleansing process, 100%, man.

It's really hard to do, but in some circumstances—

but people who really haven't been through something, they don't realize this. You probably do realize this. I think very frequently the hardest thing a man ever has to do in his entire life is forgive somebody. Very frequently. Now, when you say that, honestly, man, it's like you— they're like, yeah, It's like you're saying Bible verses and you may not even know it. It's like, so in Matthew 18, you're talking about, man, it honestly feels selfish. Feels like it's for me. Yeah. There's a reason we called the podcast the Live Free Podcast. Live as people who are free. Only do not use your freedom as a cover-up for evil. It's like, so in Matthew 18, Jesus tells this parable. And, uh, he— I'm a, you know, 21st century— I'll do my best— is he tells this parable about a guy who like owes a moneylender, a bank, and it says like 10,000 talents or something like that. But it's essentially a word that's like this guy owed this guy the net worth of Elon Musk. Like, that's what it's implying. He'll never— he'll literally never be able to repay it. And the guy's like, hey man, your debt's due.

And he runs up and he falls on his knees and he begs and he's like, man, would you please, please, please forgive me? And the guy, it says, out of the kindness of his heart, he forgives him. But then that guy, he turns around and he finds somebody in all 21st century. He finds somebody that owes him, you know, like the cost of a postage stamp. And in Jesus' parable, he like choke slams the guy for real. He like starts laying hands on him. And he tells the guy, like, you know, pay me back everything you owe me. And, you know, I'm going to put you in prison. You're not going to get out till you pay the last penny. And honestly, man, I'm skipping ahead a little bit. Somebody may hear that and be like, what? How could the guy that was forgiven the net worth of Elon Musk turn around and exact revenge on the cost of a postage stamp? Who would do that? And Jesus' answer is, you would. Jesus' answer is, hey, man, I'm cutting to the chase a little bit. Is the basis for us becoming forgiving people is understanding I have been forgiven by God more than he will ever ask me to forgive anybody else.

He forgave me the net worth of Elon Musk. And every time I hold a grudge against somebody, I'm like making them pay for the postage stamp. Now, what's interesting about that parable though, let's take it back to where you started, is you're like, man, it kind of felt like it's selfish. In the parable, when the guy is not forgiven, what he is, is it says that he's put in prison. And the implication, Bible scholars think what Jesus is saying is he's saying, hey man, do you know what unforgiveness is like? It's like a prison. And do you know who's in the prison? You are. And you probably notice this, man. The people who don't learn to forgive, what they do is honestly, they get stuck in time and they spend the rest of their life responding to something that happened ages ago. And they live the rest of their life out of that one event. Well, that becomes a prison.

But I think there are definitely different degrees of or maybe levels of forgiveness, you know. I mean, forgetting— forgiving somebody for, I don't know, stealing a water bottle out of your refrigerator is a little bit different from forgiving somebody that raped you your entire childhood, you know. And so it's a bit different, you know. It's, it's, it's some— sometimes it's more challenging than others, and, and So how do you do it? How do you do it? How do you do it when—

Yes. Yeah.

I mean, you're a popular guy. You're borderline celebrity. People are using you.

Servant, not celebrity. I always like to get it in there.

People are using you. People will abuse what you have. And the same with me. And I mean, it just is what it is, you know. There's no getting around that.

I've seen people do that to you.

So you can forgive them, and I have forgiven them. You probably have too. But then it keeps happening.

It does.

Same people.

Yeah.

And every time it happens, it's a little fire comes up, you know, and it's— you get pissed. And then you start thinking about things you probably shouldn't be thinking about.

Yeah.

And so my question is, is that forgiveness? Did I really forgive them for the original thing? And I've distanced myself and I've come to peace with it, but then it happens again.

Yeah.

And then it happens again and you have no control over it happening.

No, you do not.

So how do you deal with that? How do you deal with that? With forgiveness?

Yeah.

Something I personally struggle with.

Welcome to Team Human. Yeah. Hey, hey, brother. Me. Can I just get this on the table? Me too. I just want to be super honest, man. I need the same grace I preach every week. Me too. In fact, there's no reason for me to go into it on here. That's one of the hardest, most consistent fights in my life. It is. So let me just say a few things. Actually, can I tell you a story about what it looks like? Let me start here and then back up and answer. So every now and then, and when I became a pastor, I knew what I was signing up for. So every now and then I'll say something and the internet will get mad at me. That'll happen. One of the first times that happened to me, dude, I didn't know what was going on. And yeah, honestly, the first thing— you probably remember the first one of the first times that happened to you. The first time that happens to you, it's pretty disorienting. You know, I was a young pastor and, man, you know, I remember I was taking a long walk and I remember thinking like, man, is my— maybe I wonder if my ministry is over.

Like I was getting— I was— I won't go into it. I was getting crushed.. And I came home and I was like, man, I wonder if my ministry is over. And I honestly wonder if I've ruined everything. And how am I going to provide for my family? That kind of thing. And dude, I walked in the door and I smelled something. And as soon as I walked in the garage door, my wife, Jana, was there with my 3 little adopted kids. And they all yelled at the same time, "Welcome home, Dad." And they brought me into the kitchen. And Jana had all the— like, she'd cleaned up everything. It looked spotless in there. And she'd gotten these candles out and she'd lit them on the table. And she had cooked my favorite meal. It takes a long time to make my little favorite meal. And I was like, "Hey, what is going on?" And she said, she quoted a verse from the Sermon on the Mount. She said, "Jesus said, Josh, blessed are you when people revile you, insult you, slander you, and falsely say all kinds of evil against you falsely on my account.

Rejoice and be glad, for great will be your reward in the kingdom of heaven." And then she said, "So tonight we feast." And we prayed. Jana made me. We prayed for some of the people who, you know, they were just, you know, teeing off, you know. Can I just say something to you? Without Jesus, there is a zero— I'm just telling you right now, dude, a 0% chance that we can be like that. So you asked the question, how do you do it? And man, this is not you, but if somebody's listening and you don't know Jesus, I'll be honest, man, I don't even know what to tell you. I really don't. I don't know what to tell you. Because if I did not believe that— two things— that every single sin will be fully recompensed for. Either— and I'm skipping ahead— either that person that committed that sin against me will become a Christian, and at that point their sin was paid for by Jesus dying on the cross, a gruesome, horrific death. Or they won't become a Christian. I'm going to say something really straightforward, and I'm not trying to be a jerk.

This is just like This is just Bible. Or they won't become a Christian, they'll die, and they'll go to hell, and they'll pay for that sin forever. One way or the other, that sin's getting paid for. If I didn't believe that, man, in addition to the second thing, the reality that I know, dude, I know down to the deepest parts of my bones, I know I've been forgiven more than the Lord's ever going to ask me to forgive anybody else. If I didn't believe that, I don't know what the heck I do. I don't know what I do. So like, I'll give you a, you know, this, like, this honestly deserves a lot more time. But if somebody's like, how do you do it, man? I'll give you a quickie. Here's a quickie.

We don't need a quickie. All right. We need, we need the, we need the real deal.

All right.

Like, here's an example. You know, I can't stand being used. I don't like being used. Tried the church thing. That felt like that was getting ready to start happening. Then we do a Bible study, a couple families, because I— in privacy, you know, we wanted in privacy. Things start getting leaked, personal things. I call a lot of shit out on the show, a lot of evil. Pisses a lot of people off. Pisses evil off. They had to hire security. I've had to double that security. I haven't had to triple that security. I've had to move. Now I have to move into a gated community because people can't shut their mouth and stop leaking shit. And every time it happens, I forgive them. I'll never do that Bible study ever again, ever again because of that. It put my family at danger. It continues to put my family at danger, but they get something out of it. Leaking personal shit about my personal life and my personal family when the whole thing was set up for discretion. How do you forgive that?

Hey, first of all, man, you know, I'm a nobody. I'm sorry.

Hey, it's— I mean, it is what it is. People are going to people.

Yeah, that's a good way to say that. But people are going people, you know.

But how do you— you know what I mean? How do you forgive that? Yeah, you try to move on, but it just keeps happening.

Yeah, dude.

And that's just one of 100 examples. And I'm sure everybody's dealing with shit like this, you know, one way or another.

The thing that keeps happening, literally everybody. There's a few things when you preach on them, you know, every single time it's gonna, you know, whatever you want to, you know, people are going to talk about it. They need it. The view counts are good. Like, it connects. Forgiveness, 100% hit rate. 100% hit rate because of what you just said. So, man, let me say a few things. Number one, if somebody's going to sit down and I'll just give listeners homework. If you're like, hey, man, what do I do? This thing happened to me. What do I do? What you need to start doing is study Matthew chapter 18. Matthew 18 is where Jesus starts walking through. Jesus essentially does a Bible study on what to do when your brother sins against you. Okay, so there's a few things. I'll just, I'm gonna rapid fire these and just, you know, do my best here. He starts the passage saying, if your brother sins against you, there's a few things there. Number one, if you need to make sure, did somebody actually sin against me or was it honestly, was I just offended? Because, and I'm not talking about you, by the way, these are just generalities.

If your brother sins against you, the first thing I got to figure out is if— did they really sin against me? Is it like an actual Bible sin that occurred, you know, or honestly, man, am I just being a little sensitive? Yeah, it's really just my feelings. If your brother sins against you. Number 2, it says if your brother sins against you. The second question I got to ask is, man, is this person a brother in Christ? Like, I'm just telling you how I'm going to pastor somebody through it. Is this person a brother in Christ? 'Cause if not, man, me having a conversation about this forgiveness happening, that's really not the conversation I need to be having. I need to be having a conversation about this, like you and Jesus, man, like y'all gotta get good. So if your brother sins against you, was it against me? I'm making sure this thing, what I don't need to do is take up somebody else's offense and then I'm angry on behalf of somebody else. Like we call that Twitter. What are you gonna do? So then it says, well, the next thing you do is it says, go and show him his fault.

You know, hey, I'm gonna go talk to you, man. Man to man, I'm just gonna talk to you. Here's what you did. Okay, now you do all this stuff, you kind of walk through that process. If that doesn't work, then it says what Jesus says is, if that doesn't work, then take 2 or 3 others. You know, let me take a few other brothers, like, hey man, would y'all come with me? We all, we all love each other, we all love Jesus. This is our little band of brothers. Let's talk about this thing together with an open Bible and open hearts, see if we can figure this thing out, reconcile. Let me pause and say this. There is a difference between forgiveness and reconciliation. Forgiveness takes one person and it's always possible. Reconciliation takes two people and it's not always possible. Forgiveness can, like, literally every time I can forgive anybody of anything because honestly, dude, that forgiveness, I have just to put it in a straightforward way, I do not have a right not to forgive somebody who sins against me because Jesus paid the penalty for that sin and he has commanded me to forgive everyone who sins against me.

So I wish it were different sometimes. I'm not allowed. Takes one. Okay, but reconciliation takes two people. Takes two. You got to want to reconcile. They got to want to reconcile, and they got to be willing to own what they did, bend the knee, Hey dude, I messed up. I'm sorry. And then you have to go— we're doing a little Bible study here— you got to go to the book of Proverbs, and Proverbs gives a taxonomy of 3 types of people. And man, Sean, just as I think, I think there's a blessing on your life. And like the fact that you'll even have a pastor, like I saw you have Bryce on and some other guys, Jeremiah, some other guy, like you're going to have some people who try to take advantage of you. And sometimes that's going to be because the enemy's going to work in it. Okay. So you're going to have this, you know, you're going to have this thing happen. This is like for guys who, man, for whatever reason, they got a lot of people who know who they are like you. This little thing from the Book of Proverbs might be one of the most important things you ever internalize.

In the Book of Proverbs, there's three types of people: wise, foolish, and evil. And so when you're deciding whether or not you reconcile with somebody, and I say this not just Sean Ryan, I say this anybody, you got to figure out, is this a wise person? I probably want to reconcile with a wise person. Is this a foolish person? Ah, question mark. Because fools, fools can, can hurt you, right? Is this an evil person? You definitely want to stay away from an evil person. So I think you can ask that question. Then I think what I'd say, if you just going, hey, how do you do it? Number one, if you don't get like, dude, like down deep, deep, deep in your soul, the reality of the gospel. The gospel is the good news that I am not a mistake or in need of a life coach. I'm a sinner in need of a savior. And that God so loved the world, he gave his one and only son, that whoever believes in him will not perish but have eternal life. That like, man, God so loved Josh Howard and that he gave Jesus Christ so that if Josh Howard believes in him, Josh Howard would have eternal life.

If I don't receive that forgiveness, it's like in Kentucky— I grew up in Kentucky— might say it like this: you can't give what you don't got. Can't give what you don't got. So one, I got to start there, right? That I'm going to start there. Now I'll do these others. Try to be a little more— try not to do a whole sermon here.

Uh, you can do the sermon, man. All right, it's all good.

I'm trying to respect you. All right, I'll do my best here.

There's no reason to speed it up.

All right, all right. What most— what happens to most people, in my opinion, is honestly, man, they never fully realized what happened to them and is still happening to them because of what happened to them. And it's like, you can't forgive what you didn't identify. I can't solve a problem that I didn't define. If I can't define it, I can't solve it. So I got a buddy that recommended this, and I've been recommending it for years, is that parable in Matthew 18. It says that when somebody sins against you, it is as if a debt has been occurred. That person took something from you. So in your analogy, that person may have taken your ability to feel at ease and safe around pastors away from you. I hope the Lord redeems that. And I would just say to anybody, this is not— this is not about you. This is just about anybody, anybody who receives a wound, anybody. Satan will get in there and try to capitalize on it. And that's the prison. Hey, because that thing happened to you, you can never— you'll— you make an inner vow, I'll never do that again. I'll never trust men again because that dude did that to me when I was 6.

I'll never go to— what people don't realize, when you start using that type of language, that's prison language. In other words, bars have been erected between me and that thing. And I just want to give a gentle watch out to everybody listening. Sometimes that thing is a really, really good thing that Satan's trying to use an old wound to keep you from ever getting that good thing again. Okay, so what you got?

If you're talking about— are you talking about my particular situation? I'm saying I did say I'll never do it again.

No, that's— I use that analogy. I'm talking about anything.

Doesn't mean I'll keep myself from the word. It just won't be particular.

Of course. Yeah, that makes sense. I'm saying no, no. What I'm saying is typically when somebody is deeply wounded, And it doesn't matter, your thing, anybody's thing. And this is not what you're saying. What Satan will sometimes do— I'm preaching my little sermon here— what Satan will sometimes do is get them to make an inner vow. Like, let's say a girl is abused when she's 7 by her uncle. She'll make an inner vow. It's like a demonic reverse covenant is what it is. I'll never trust men again. And what Satan is trying to do is cut her off from honestly a lot of men that she's going to need in her life to become the beautiful, noble woman of God. You see what I'm saying? Does that make sense?

That's perfect sense.

There you go.

Now let me ask you this. Do you think that wisdom can come from people sinning against you?

Oh, bro, yes. My gosh, yes. It's like, because if you, you know, with that comes experience.

And while you may, maybe it would be foolish to say, I'll never trust another man again, I think a lot of wisdom could be pulled from that. And maybe I, I will never trust this type of man again. You can see through, you know, you, you know, a lot of times, you know, you can just see right through people, you know, through experiences of things happening. And then you'd notice patterns that come with every human being that's like that.

Yes. I strongly agree with that. That's exactly what the word means when it says that God works all things for the good of those who love him and are called according to his purpose. And all things includes all the jacked up things. He'll redeem all those things. All right, so if we're going back to how do I do it, man, this next thing that I'm going to say is like, for real, it's one of the hardest things you're gonna do. And it's one of these things you can't do in 5 minutes. Like, it's gonna take like 5 hours, 5 weeks, or 5 months. But this thing has got recommended, and I've been recommended ever since. You gotta, you gotta almost like make a debt ledger. This is what Jan and I have had to do for people who have very egregiously sinned against us, and they were never going to own it. They're never going to own it. You know, this is what we had to do. So Jesus, Matthew 18, says like a debt So what you do is you get a sheet of paper. It's a little exercise. It's not fun. And you sit down and first of all, you pinpoint who sinned against me.

And I need specificity. What you got to watch out for is they, you know, there was one time, you know, a lot of people don't think about this because people do get hurt by pastors. So you got that story.

I wouldn't say I've been hurt by a pastor.

There you go.

I would not say that. I don't want to put that on anybody.

There you go. But, you know, with some—

I'm just trust.

But yeah, it makes sense. Makes sense. But what, you know, and I'm not— this is not a pity party at all. But what I will say, what some people sometimes don't realize is, man, you know, pastors can get shot at. Sheep bite. Yeah. Sheep. Yeah. So there was one time I was I went to counseling for a little bit when I was in Nashville, because I was honestly part of— because I was struggling with some unforgiveness. And this guy asked me, he was like, you know, hey man, what's going on with you? And I was like, man, this— the church— I'm a pastor. The church hurt me. I'm doing this thing. And he paused. It was one of the most powerful things he ever did, is he stopped me and was like, hey man, He, you know, he judo moved me. He said, well, hey, hey, wait a second, man. What do you mean by the church hurt you? I said, well, church hurt me, man. This is— we're going through this thing. And he said, wait a second, Josh, um, your church— I think my church at the time was 1,000 people or something like that.

Say, hey, man, your church is 1,000. Did all 1,000 hurt you? I'm like, well, no, shut up, shut up. No, no. He said, well, hey, man, here's what I want you to do. Write down the names of every single person who actually hurt you. And I wrote down those names with Jana, and when we got done, it was 7 people. But what I think Satan had done is he had gotten me to transmit the pain that came from 7 people onto the church. So what you gotta do is it starts with getting specificity. Who specifically sinned against me? I think step 2, and it's not fun, is you got to take inventory of what was taken from you. Right? So I'll give an example that probably a lot of guys that listen to this podcast, like, now you better watch out, this will get you, is your story is one time you stood at altar and you said, 'Til death do us part,' and you meant it. And then one day you woke up and found out she didn't. And now somebody else is tucking your kids into bed at night. All right, well, heads up, man, that's gonna leave a mark.

You're gonna need some— need to clean some things out. When you get to that debt ledger, what you gotta get down— okay, this is who sinned against me. Now I got to start going, I need to name everything. That was taken from me. And dude, you got to write down, you got to write down like all the stuff. Like, man, it's hard for me to, you know, let's say this example I just used, it's hard for me to trust women anymore. That was taken from me, man. I spent 8 months of my life not sleeping good and drinking too much. Because of that girl. Hey, uh, you know what's taken from me is half my income. You know what was taken from me is all the job opportunities that I would have had if I'd have been able to focus for that year on my career. Hey, do you know what was taken from me? The ability to— now I see my kids, you know, 50% of the time. I just lost 50% of being a dad. Like, you got to get down and like— and the reason I say that, man, is people who don't do that Like if you don't get like, this is what's going on, what's taken from me.

You can't cancel a debt that you never inventoried. And if you don't do that, like, okay, now once you got your debt ledger, okay, and that'll take you a minute. You have two choices of what you're going to do with that. And the first one, they both suck, but in different ways. You can, one, you can hang on to it. I'm gonna keep this, I'm gonna keep this debt ledger for the rest of my life, you know? And everywhere I go, everybody's gonna know the reason I'm pissy and angry and crotchety is, everybody's gonna know, is because they did this and I'm holding onto the debt. And actually, and I will say this, one of the biggest reasons nobody likes to talk about that people don't forgive is because if they forgive somebody, they lose the excuse for why they act like they do.

It's a damn good point.

It's like, if I forgive them, I don't got an excuse anymore for why I'm angry all the time and why I don't trust nobody and why I'm cynical. All that, you know, it's like, you got to watch out for that, man.

You know?

So you got that, you know, you either you can hold on to it, but that comes at a real big price. It costs you the joy for the rest of your life. Or I think it's the book of Colossians. You can do this, and it's not easy, but it's the best thing that'll ever happen to you. It says that what God did is he canceled the record of debt against us with its legal demands, nailing them to the cross. And what you can do is you can take that debt ledger And I'd encourage you to like actually like physically do something like this. Like me and Jana, Jana burned hers. She took it out to our fire pit and burned it. I got— we got an old cross on our property. This we built. It's got some sentimental value to me. Sometimes I'll walk out there and I'll literally just like old school, late '80s youth camp, like I'll nail it, I'll nail it on there. But you've got to make a decision to cancel that debt and just say, okay, Jesus, I'm trusting that either you paid the penalty for this sin on the cross or that person will pay the penalty for it in hell.

But what I know is it's not up to me. Vengeance is mine. I will repay, declares the Lord. Not up to me.

What about forgiving yourself?

Yeah, man.

That's probably the biggest one of all.

Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. So when people say forgiving themselves, that's a big ledger. It's a big ledger for some people. It's the biggest one. Biggest one. I had a guy write me from prison. A few years ago after listening to a sermon, and I was talking about the grace of God and how God can redeem anybody, you know. And he said, he said, he wrote me a letter and he was like, hey man, I want to believe that, but you don't know what I've done. And now what I would say to that guy, actually what I did say to that guy is, hey man, that's actually not the problem. The problem is you don't know what he did, uh, because Jesus Christ went to a cross and he paid the penalty of your sin for you, man. What about forgiving yourself? There's this really interesting thing that happens the longer somebody walks with the Lord, where the longer they walk with Jesus, there's this weird thing that happens where, um, the better you are but the worse you feel. You know, it's a— it's actually a weird thing. I think John MacArthur, an old dead pastor, said that.

And, uh, it's interesting, um, if you watch the life of the Apostle Paul A lot of people miss this because the books of the Bible are not in chronological order of like when they were written. They're in a different sequence. But if you line all the books up in the order that the Apostle Paul wrote them, he starts by referring to himself as one of the apostles. And then he goes a little farther and he says, "Well, I'm the least of the apostles." And then he goes a little farther and he says he calls himself the least of all the saints. And then in, I think, the last letter he ever wrote, he says, this saying is trustworthy and deserving of full acceptance, that Jesus Christ died for sinners, of whom I am the foremost. So it's almost like a reverse testimony. It's almost like he started feeling like— and the reason for that is the longer you walk with the Lord, you sort of know him a little better. And, and the more you know him, the more of his perfection you see and the more of your imperfection you see. And you feel that gap.

So what happens is that gap gets bigger and bigger and bigger. Here's what I should be and here's what I am. And honestly, the longer you live some life, you sin some more sins. It's like the gap gets bigger and bigger. You know, you've done some stuff and seen some stuff. But what happens is the longer you walk with the Lord, the gap gets bigger and bigger between you and what you should be and what you are. But if we're really understanding, we're looking at the cross and we're understanding what Jesus did for us, what really ends up happening is your understanding of the grace of God to you and what Jesus did for you on the cross, it gets bigger and bigger and bigger and bigger. So John Newton, who wrote the hymn Amazing Grace, He, uh, he was involved in the slave trade, uh, I think when he got saved, if I remember correctly, and had a pretty radical conversion. And it bothered him for the rest of his life. At the end of his life, um, he had his, uh, he had— I think he had a little dementia. And, uh, at the end of his life, one of the last things he ever said was, though I am old And my memory is fading.

I remember two things very clearly: I am a great sinner and Christ is a great Savior. And man, if somebody's going, how do I forgive myself, man, honestly, what I would say is you got to get your eyes off yourself. And it's really not about what you've done. Uh, it's about what he did. And there— I'll just— last thing, I'll just say this: there's a little bit of me that just wants to just gently, gently with a pastoral heart look at a guy that says that and be like, hey man, who do you think you are? You know, do you think you're a better sinner than he is a savior? I don't think so, man. I don't think so. So I think you just got to go back to the cross over and over and over again and know, hey, that thing was nailed to the cross and I really am free. I really am.

The original question was, how can you forgive, still want justice, but not be overcome with vengeance?

Yeah, that's right. That's good. This gets into a, um, something is called, uh, it's called the theological term for it is sphere sovereignty. I'm going to be a little nerdy for a second if that's okay. So in the Bible, God has established three institutions that when they work like they're supposed to work, it's good for people and it's good for societies. And the three institutions are the family, the church, and the state. And all three institutions have different roles. Okay. So, you know, kind of the image that theologians have used to just Bible, be Bible, you know, Bible nerd for a second is what they'll say is, you know, You know, you got the, the rod, the keys, and the sword is what they'll say. You know, the sort of the image, that's the logo of the family is the rod. You know, hey, we're good fathers, discipline their children, raise them in the fear and admonition of the Lord. The image of the church is the keys. That's Jesus when he talks to Peter. I give you the keys of the kingdom. Whatever you bind on earth will be bound in heaven. Whatever you loose on earth will be loosed in heaven.

That kind of thing. Keys. It's about ordinances, you know, helping people understand, helping people be saved, and then helping people understand that they are saved. Okay, keys. And then the image for the state is the sword. That comes from Romans 13, and it says that the government, the human governments, as very imperfect as they are— I think we agree on that— that they have been instituted by God, that actually governments are a good thing. You know, you know, Bad governance is a real bad thing, but a world with no government is a real bad thing. And what it says is that God has— one of the roles of the government is to, quote, "bear the sword and be vengeance to the wrongdoer." So to get back to this question, how can I forgive somebody and still seek justice? Well, here's what you do. Okay, Romans 13 is the passage where it talks about the role of the government is the store— is the sword. It's to bring justice on the wrongdoer. What's very interesting is right before that, in Romans 12, it says this. I— you're actually alluding to it. It says, vengeance is mine, I will repay, says the Lord.

In other words, don't seek vengeance, don't ever do that. What it's acknowledging is there's a difference between the role of an individual and the role of the state. So you as an individual, my job is to love you, to forgive you, to release you from your debt. Like, I'm not walking around trying to take vengeance on you. It's actually wrong for an individual to try to do the job of the government. Okay, there. Okay, so I can forgive you, but then it's still a good, godly, and just thing for the government to do its job to try to bring justice on the wrongdoer. So man, honestly, it's fully appropriate for somebody that like commits a crime against somebody for you to forgive that person and then call the police and be like, hey man, this person just did this, and report them. Those things are not in conflict. Does that make sense?

Mm-hmm. That makes sense. Does make sense. Why did Jesus have to die on the cross?

Yeah.

Why did he have to do it? I mean, he's God's son. He's God's only son. Why didn't God make another son? We got a lot of questions here. I mean, I just don't— I just— I don't fully understand why it had to happen.

If he is God, why couldn't he just forgive?

Exactly.

Yeah, yeah, man, that's like my favorite question to answer ever. All right, so the Bible says that God, uh, did it that way so that he could be both let me say it and then explain it. So he could be both just and the justifier of the ungodly. All right, so just and justifier. All right, so my favorite way to illustrate this is by a story. Okay, so best illustration of why Jesus had died on the cross I've ever heard. All right, it goes like this. Once upon a time in a far-off kingdom, there was a king who is known by everyone in the kingdom to be the most just and loving king who had ever lived. But then it was discovered that somebody was stealing from the king's treasury. And so the king, being a just king, he sent out an edict that whenever it was discovered who was stealing from the king's treasury, that that person would receive 10 lashes. Well, the theft continued. And so he issued another decree. When it's discovered who's Stealing from the king's treasury, it would be 20 lashes. Theft continued, 30 lashes, until finally the king issued a final decree, and he said, when it's discovered who's stealing from the king's treasury, it will be a sentence of 40 lashes.

Now, the problem with that was that 40 lashes was a death sentence. And so the theft continued until eventually it was discovered that none other than the king's daughter was the one who was stealing from the treasury. So then a question began to ripple through the kingdom. What will the king do? Some thought he would forgive her, but then how would he be just? Some thought that he would issue the sentence, but then how would he be loving? Well, it was decided. The king sat down and decided, you know what? The sentence is just. The punishment must fall. And so the decree stands. And so one day the entire kingdom was gathered, and in front of everybody, the king's own daughter was marched up to the podium in front of the entire kingdom, and she was bent over the podium and the back of her shirt was ripped open. And the executioner stood there and he began to raise his whip to land the first slash. And as soon as he did, the king yelled, Stop. And there was a silence that fell. And the king strode forward and he took off his own shirt and he bent over and he wrapped his body around his own daughter and looked back up over his shoulder and he said, now hit her.

And the executioner objected and he said, but King, those lashes, they'll fall on you. And he said, the sentence must stand. It's just. Hit her. And so 40 lashes fell on the body of the king that protected the body of his daughter, and the king died in the stead of his daughter. And what happened, Sean, in that story is the king was both just because payment for the sin had to be made, and the king was the justifier of the ungodly. She went free because he took the penalty. See, the reason Jesus had to die on the cross is because God is just, and so payment for sin has to be made. Like, if somebody walked into a courtroom and a judge just went, "You know what, man? You raped that girl when she was young, but you're real sorry, and I have the power to do it. You're forgiven." Nobody would think that was a just judge. So penalty for sin had to be made. But God is love, so he made the payment himself. That's what the Bible means when it says, for the wages of sin is death, but the free gift of God is eternal life through Jesus Christ our Lord.

Okay, so it's a substitutionary sacrifice. In my place condemned he stood.

Wow, it's a great explanation.

Does it make sense?

Makes perfect sense. Okay, thank you. Yeah, you want to take a break?

Let's do it, man.

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We just wrapped up forgiveness, but I did have one more question. Is there anybody or anything you're struggling with to give forgiveness? You got any, any stories on that? Anything going on right now, dude? Because I think we all struggle with it.

Yeah, tough.

It's, it's hard to do.

Yeah, man, you know Um, probably not, you know, you know, I don't know if there's anything I'll put— I would want to put on air.

Gotcha.

You know, there's probably, probably like you, maybe something I could be transparent about. Being a pastor is a, it's a weird thing. It's a, it's a peculiar, it's a peculiar life, you know. And, uh, why do you say that? It's just a, it's a weird life, man. It's like What's weird about it? Hmm. Well, you know, everywhere you go, probably similar to you, at least where you are, people know who you are and they have extremely strong opinions about what you do. And then you kind of talk, you know, you get on top of that, man. My job is to say, to open the word of God, and then do my very best to apply it to your life. And man, sometimes that's going to get up all in your—

Do you let those opinions get to you? Does that bother you?

Not as much anymore. Not as much anymore. However, there are people who over the years, and usually it'll last for like— this is weird. I've kind of talked about this publicly. There are people who for whatever reason might be a personality type, might be something else, who they'll just decide they hate you. And they'll just— it's almost like a dog on a bun. They'll like latch on and like they make this destroying you their life calling for a few years. And, you know, man, it's like that affects— I'll give you an example. Here's how it affects me. Like, this is a debt ledger kind of thing. You know, like I preached a sermon a couple years ago that got into cultural and political applications. Uh, that year, uh, our home insurance application was denied. Uh, they got it. We were threatened by multiple people, uh, lawsuits. Uh, they got a hold of Jana's, my wife's, cell phone number and just spammed the cell phone. They posted our address. That's probably— that happens to all Everybody, this public, they post our address a million places, a million stories. Like, you know, it's like every time to open the internet, it was, he's a, he's a pedophile.

He's, I mean, like insane, you know, you know, stuff, uh, posted, you know, pictures of our, uh, of our kids playing in our yard on the internet. I mean, it's like privacy violation. Yeah, dude.

And it's like What did you get out of that? Yeah, why'd you do it? Did you get something? I hope you got something out of that.

Yeah, well, they don't know.

You didn't?

Yeah, they don't.

Wait, like, you, you think your friend gives a shit that you— yeah, saw my kids playing out front? They don't. Yeah, they don't give a shit. And then they do it again. Yes. And then they got to pretend to be your friend, or that, you know, that's kind of like some of the stuff that I was kind of getting at earlier. You know what I mean? And it's just, it's like, they just don't realize how much that, like, it's not even, it's a safety thing. Yeah. And it's like, what did you get out of that?

Yeah.

I know you didn't mean anything by it, but what'd you get out of that?

Well, no, I think they do mean something by it sometimes.

Well, yeah, I mean, okay. I was talking about, you know, people that don't mean you harm.

There you go.

You know, but then there is the other side of it.

But yeah, dude, when I got, you know, that year we had some, you know, I don't— I think it's okay to talk about it. We had somebody like arrested on our property. You know, I was, you know, our kids are coming home asking, why is Dad on the news? You know, because they're— yeah, it's just like, honestly, it doesn't bother me when it starts messing with my kids.

Yeah.

That's a new ballgame.

Yeah.

So yeah, yeah, I do. Yeah, I do, dude. I want to go back to one thing you said earlier. You asked the question, it's like, man, the same thing will happen and it just, it just sends me like, I just keep feeling the same thing over and over again. One of the misconceptions I think people have about forgiveness is they think it's a one-time event. There is a reason Jesus says, hey man, you're going to have to forgive 7 times 70 times. And honestly, Sean, what I've learned is a lot of times all of them are for the same thing and the same person. Like, I'm gonna have to forgive. If somebody's husband cheats on them, they forgive him and they reconcile and they keep the marriage. That happens in our church all the time. Then every time they see their husband talk to a woman, even completely innocuously, in the lobby at church, it's like just saying hi to somebody that's on their serve team, she may have all those same emotions shoot back up even though he's not doing anything wrong. She's going to have to forgive again and again and again for the same sin.

So you're saying every time somebody sees the perpetrator. It comes up again and you have to go through the process all over again.

That thing Jesus said of how many times should I forgive Jesus? 7 times. And in Matthew 18, Jesus goes, no, Peter, it's actually going to be 7 times 70 times, 490 times. And what he's saying is infinite. And honestly, a lot of times you just have to forgive the same one sin over and over and over because it keeps coming back up in your heart. The reason that's important is people will live with false guilt and they'll think, man, the fact that I still struggle with the anger on this, it means that I haven't forgiven. I must not be a good Christian. It's like, no, man, you're a normal human and you're just doing the forgiveness thing over and over and over.

That's a good point. Let's go back to the comments. Sounds like— it sounds like people's opinions bother you.

They, you know, at this point, you do you—

does that— does that— is that in your head when you're up there giving your ministry?

Oh gosh.

You know, is this—

not at all.

Good.

No, not at all, man. The first few times it happened to me when I was younger, it does.

It did.

No, like, you don't become a pastor unless you like and care about people. I hope, you know, there's probably some psychopaths out there. So yeah, the default mode is you do, man. You want people to love and trust you. And the first time, you know, you get a little internet mob or whatever it is, it does mess with you. At this point, it's just so, you know, there's always a little other. You just kind of get to the spot where it's Galatians 1:10, for am I now trying to please man, or am I trying to please God? If I'm trying to please man, I am no longer a servant of Christ. And you just sort of— let me just turn it off.

Yeah, I was just going to bring that up. I mean, it's interesting, you know, I'm kind of going through that right now, and I've never— I never thought that I was influenced by my audience, but really by anybody. And then, uh, you know, and, and that's really important to me, that I'm not influenced by anybody. And I always say what I— I always say what I'm gonna say. I don't let anybody dictate what I say, what my opinions are. I don't care, you know. But I do care. I did care a little bit You know, I would get the internet mobs and it would, it would hurt. And then I would steer away from certain conversations for a little bit until I felt like I was healed, and then I'd dive back in the fight, you know. And, and, um, and I realized that, um, what am I trying to say here? You know what I realized? I, ever since I came to Christ, probably about I don't know, 3 years ago maybe, um, like fully committed. I read this thing in the Bible once that said that many people— I'm not a guy that quotes scripture, so— but he was talking about many people will say they're doing things in my name and they aren't.

That's right. And That's right.

I kind of self-reflected on that, and that may have been like 6 months ago, maybe half a year ago. So I'm like, shit, man, like, I feel like I'm, you know, he's always in my head, you know, I'm always trying to do the right thing. But then you get all these people coming up to you and they're like, oh, you're doing God's work. And you look at the comments and they're all like, oh yeah, you're doing a great job, Sean. You look at the views and the likes and the negative shit too, you know, and you get pumped up, you know what I mean, by all these people. And then it, I mean, for lack of a better term, it mind fucks you. You're like, oh shit, I am doing the right thing. But it's just a bunch of people that don't know any better than me or you or anybody. You know, and just going with the flow. And so you, you are, you, you, it tricks you into thinking that you're doing that. And I'm not saying I was doing the wrong thing. I think I've done some stuff that's wrong, you know, on here that I thought was right, that I was influenced by praise, you know, and I feed off the like, oh, well, if all these people think I'm doing the right thing, that I must be doing the right thing, right?

But they don't know shit.

Yeah.

And I don't know shit. And so I just recently just cut it all off. I'm not on— I don't look at any of it anymore. I don't even look at the financials behind anything anymore.

Really? Okay.

Because I don't— I just don't want to be— I want to be totally uninfluenced and in touch with God as much as possible without man, human beings getting in the middle of that relationship. You know, I really want to know, like, what do you want me to do here? What do you want me to talk about? What do you want me to do? Not what all these people, you know, 6 million people want me to do. Want to know what you want me to do. So I cut it all off. I don't, I don't even have, I don't have any of it on my phone. I will watch YouTube. And that's it on my TV. But I don't, I don't look at any of that shit anymore. We'll see how it goes. I could crash and burn.

I bet not.

But it feels pretty good so far.

Dude, I think you're heading in the right direction. I think I'd love to know what you think about this. You know, kind of what, what I learned when some of that stuff started happening is like There's a proverb that says, "Whoever walks with the wise becomes wise, and a companion of fools will suffer harm." And it's kind of that principle of, man, over time, you and me, we will end up becoming whatever is like the average of the 5 people who are closest to us. Whoever those 5 people are, you extrapolate out, 5 years, 10 years, that's who I'm going to be. And so, you know, how I've kind of thought about it, I'd love to know what you think. How I've kind of thought about it is like, man, you know what I'm going to try to do? What I'm really going to focus on is assembling the band of brothers around me and getting— I care who that is a lot. Like, who are those like 5 ride or die guys that band of brothers like They know my junk, I know their junk. And when it hits the fan, that's who I call.

And those are the guys that like, I got those guys. I got 5 or 6 guys. They know we text multiple times per day. They're praying for you today. And it's like, hey man, what do you see in me? Am I missing it? And just like, hey, I need you to, 'cause I will say there are some people who like, who are they?

Who did you put around you? Do they work with you? Are they part of your ministry?

There are.

They the guys out the side there?

There's a few, uh, some of them. Yes, actually, some of those guys do function like that. So our elders, we've got elders at our church. Every year I do the same thing. What do y'all see? I'll say, what I do every year is I'll ask them. First of all, they've got an open door. The key to this that I've noticed is you probably felt the same, is like, man, as a man, I, you know, I say this with humility, I hope That, you know, as your, as your platform grows, your notoriety grows, it gets harder to find people who will be honest with you. So then what I've noticed is I have to like deputize people. Like, I'm giving you authority to call me if I'm, if I'm breaking the speed limit. That's your job. Like, I'll say, I need you to keep me out of the newspaper. I'd rather be embarrassed in front of you than embarrassed in front of however many millions of people or whatever. So for me, we got elders at our church. They're like, we're meeting constantly and they know, like, hey man, tell me. Once a year I ask those guys, what should I start doing?

What should I stop doing? What should I keep doing? What do you see in my life? I've obviously got Jana. Jana should be number one. Jana, me and Jana take a walk. I'm not saying anybody's got to do this. I got a lot of problems in my life. I got a real good marriage. I got a real good marriage. Uh, Jana is a wise, very courageous, very godly woman. We take a walk at least— we usually take 2 walks a day, so we usually walk about 4 miles a day together. And really all we're doing is it's just like we're just— we're talking about Jesus, we're talking about life, we're talking about our kids, we're talking about ministry. And Jana will— Jana will tell me If she sees something, Jana's gonna tell me. But she'll also be the person that if I were to ever need to preach something that was difficult, it's like, I know this is gonna make people mad. If I flaked and I walked off stage, Jana will be the first person to be like, I love you, you flaked. So she'll speak into my life. She'll also put steel on my spine.

She'll do that.

Nice.

And then I got, I got some of these guys out here. I got a group of pastors that I've been friends with for a long, long, long time that we're on a group text and we, we keep in touch. These are guys, a guy in Arizona, uh, there's a guy up in the state of Washington, uh, there's a guy over in Atlanta, those guys. But they, you know, I mean, it's interesting.

I love it. And I do the same thing. And I've got everybody's in. I mean, everybody got 4 people in this building that have been with me since the beginning of this damn thing or right at the beginning. One of them came before that, 17 years old. When I was teaching tactics. He's been with me for 10 years now, and these, these people are like my family. And, um, so I have that now on the flip end, and I love them and they love me, and, and we've been through, we've been through a lot of shit together, and we'll go through a lot more stuff. And I always take, you know, what they say into into account. And but the interesting thing is they're also influenced by the success of this. Mhm. And so you can't 100% buy into everything that they're telling you because they are influenced. Their lives are influenced by this, so of course they're influenced by this. Same with your guys out there. They're influenced by the success of what you're doing. And so that's right. You have to keep that in mind.

That's right. You got to have the outside. But what that does, at least for me, is when stuff hits the fan, which I pray is not frequent, you know, the little axiom becomes for me, criticism should be weighed, not counted. So I'm not taking a poll of how many people liked it and how many people didn't like it. And if more people didn't like it than liked what I said, it was wrong. Now, man, we got Bible verses for that. Let God be true and every man a liar. Amen. We're going to be in the minority on a whole bunch of stuff. We're going to stand on the word of God and let God be true and every man a liar. We're okay with that. But when it hits the fan and I'm start asking people, man, what'd you think? Did I miss it? I'm not counting how many criticisms that I get. I'm weighing who did it come from. If it came from Jana, I almost don't need to hear anything else. Like, you know, if it's one of my elders, I almost don't need to hear anything else. If it's one of those guys, it's like a ride or die.

So that's how I kind of think about it.

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After you purchase, they'll ask you where you heard about them. Please support our show and tell them our show sent you. My wife's the same. It sounds like our wives are very similar. You know, my wife, there are days that she just is like, we can stop at any time, we don't need anything else. And I think about that, and I'm glad she's like that because, you know, if it's the other way, she would just want more and more and more.

I was gonna say, dude, with it, that tells me everything about your wife. Yeah, because what that tells me is she's into Sean, not what Sean can do.

Yep. She doesn't like this. She loves what I do. She doesn't like—

why don't you like it?

She doesn't like the notoriety that comes with chill.

She low-key— yeah, that's how Jana would roll if she could.

Yeah, we were gonna do that editing room over there with all the computers. That was going to be our studio. We were going to do a husband-wife thing, and we did 9 pilots, and they were wildly successful, and We deleted them all.

Because she didn't like the eyeballs.

She's like, we got kids. One person on the light is more than enough. And I don't want anything to do with it. And that's cool, man. Because most women, opposite. Yeah.

Man, I don't know anything about her. That's a good woman. Yeah. Genesis, you know, pattern of marriage. And that's— this is one thing that'll get you in trouble a little bit, uh, is, hey, in a God-honoring marriage, husband's job is to be a loving head and her job is to be a respectful helper. And there's nuances to that, but when it says helper, it's, uh, it's even— the Hebrew is even azar. It means necessary ally. And the implication is Man, God designed her for Sean Ryan, and there's a whole bunch of battles that Sean could not win if that woman was not at Sean Ryan's side. And, you know, if you watch, every man either marries a launch pad or a lid. And, you know, you probably feel the same way as me. There are guys that, man, do they're They were way, way more talented than me and way better opportunities and that kind of thing. And a lot of the things that— that's one of the other things. There's a couple of things I can't talk about with my ass sweating. One of them is Jana. The reason that we've been able to just see happen some of the things that happen is because I married a launch pad and not a lid.

There's no way I'd go a tenth as far as, as, you know, we've been graced to do if I had married Jana Howard. And how'd you meet her? Blind date.

A blind date.

Blind date. I was, uh, I was a senior in college and I was single. Jana was— she got saved, she gave her life to Christ in college. She was the president of her sorority over there at Western Kentucky University. And so she went to college in the town where I grew up. So the guy that discipled me— and for listeners, all that means, like, when I became a Christian, it was an older godly man that I met with to like— and he showed me, here's how you, here's how you be a Christian man. That's all that means. He discipled me. The guy that discipled me, his wife discipled Jana after she gave her life to Christ in college. So then Jana's there and she's president of sorority and everything, and they just, they just start asking her, hey, why are you single? You know, and she goes, I don't know. And they sat her down and, did you grow up in church at all?

Say that again.

Did you grow up in church at all?

Catholic. Catholic.

Did that— I don't— this is—

this—

I'm going to show my ignorance real quick. Did they have like an old— when I was growing up, we had church directories where they'd have everybody's names and pictures and phone numbers. Did they have that?

Not that I'm aware of. All right.

Well, in my old Baptist church, they had that. So they, they were sitting down with Jana and they pulled out the church directory and started finding all the guys her age. And they were like, what about him?

What about him?

They did. They did. And then they finally got to me and they were like, what about him? And she was like, man, I don't know. And so they sent me an email and his name, Jeff Carlisle, I mentioned him earlier, my youth pastor. And he was like, hey man, I got this girl that you need to trust me. You need to meet this girl. And I'll be honest, man, the first time he emailed, I was kind of like, well, man, I'm Josh Howerton. I'm not desperate, you know. And then he sent me a picture and I was like, I'll be there next week. And I drove up to Bowling Green, Kentucky, and blind date. And we dated for 4 months, got engaged, engaged for 4 months, got married fast as we could. Best decision I ever made.

What'd you like about her? What was the first thing that hit you?

Well, first of all, she was very attractive. That's the first thing I noticed because I've got a picture, so I'm gonna— yeah, I'm gonna say that first thing I noticed.

When you met her?

When I met her?

Oh, what?

Say it again.

What's the— what's the— what's— other than that, what's the first thing that hit you, man?

She loved— she loved the Lord. Awesome. That was like in 2 seconds. Like, all she wanted to talk about was like how she wanted to pour herself out for stuff that mattered. Uh, I figured out real fast, uh, she obviously wanted to enjoy a great marriage. She wanted to find somebody that she could live and die with, throwing haymakers for the kingdom of God. I figured that out real fast. And she was wise. She is a wise, wise person. Very wise. Her judge of character is ridiculous. Every— you probably had a few moments where you got betrayed by somebody and it's like, are you kidding me? Like, I knew you for 8 years or 12 or whatever.

She saw it.

There has never been a time— a 100% hit rate.

Yeah.

That sound familiar? Oh, yeah.

Oh, yeah.

The Bible doesn't call him a helper for nothing.

Yeah. Yeah. Sounds like an amazing woman.

She— yes, she is.

So these elders, do they have different opinions than you on topics?

Oh, yeah. Yeah. Well, we'll have meetings and now there's a, there's a great unity of spirit. But man, they, they love me and they love me enough to, hey, man, what do you— here's what we're thinking. We'll pray about it and talk about it and argue about it and then pray about it some more until we get consensus on a thing. That's very— oh, very— there's a very, very high level of trust and love among those guys. And those guys at our church, they're not, uh, you know, like you said, hey man, you got to watch out when somebody's, you know, it's like their livelihood is tied to the success of the thing. That'll affect their judgment. These guys at our church, man, not every church like our church. At our church, they're just godly church members. They're not getting a dime from the church. They're not tied to that, which gives them the ability to love me enough and just like, hey dude, here's what we're seeing, here's what we're thinking. Yeah.

Now the guys I'm talking about, I mean, they could, they, you know, they, yes, there is that aspect, but they're also, you know, just to give a credit. They all tell me like, hey, if you end this today, we're good with it. We just want what's best for you. So I got to give credit where credit's due. And like I said, I love those dudes. But I also like talking to Eli. I brought up Eli Crane earlier, and if you watch, that's been a topic on this show, the Israel topic. And I talk to him every couple of months. Battle it out and he hasn't changed my opinion. But, you know, maybe one day he will. And I love it when somebody does change my opinion because it means, you know, you're growing.

That's right. And but that's iron sharpening iron. Yeah, that's what you just described. We got a Bible verse for that. That's right. That's great. Sometimes sparks fly when, when iron hits iron. It's like, sometimes. And usually a lot of times those are the best friendships that take you the farthest.

Yeah, he's a good dude. And, uh, and I know there's, there's, there's no financial incentives behind him, you know, that are swaying his opinions. And, uh, I deeply respect that, especially, especially a man in politics, you know. So, but, um, how many people are in your church?

On a normal week now, let's say here recently, 30,000.

How many? 30,000?

Yep.

Holy cow.

30,000. I know, man. I know. It's a lot of people. I know. Wow. Yeah.

Did you watch my episode about the religion business?

I was sent clips.

What'd you think? I got a lot of texts.

Well, man. You know, there's, you know, I don't like commenting on stuff that I didn't dig in on. I know there's a lot of misconceptions about that kind of thing. And, you know, there's some truths. It depends who you're talking about. So let me just— I'll shoot you real straight. There are some guys that are, you know, quote unquote pastors. The MS, like, that's not a good guy. Yeah, absolutely. Yeah. But, you know, the weird thing about what I do is like a lot of those guys that are like pastors of, you know, bigger churches, like, I know all those guys, you know. And it is the thing that, you know, again, this stuff I've never talked about publicly. The thing that can be tough for me is when a guy that I know and I'm like the internet mob, whatever, the public perception is this. And I'm like, I know that guy. I know what you're commenting on. And I know how that is like a freakishly cartoonish caricature of this thing that actually happened. But because of the realities of the terrain, he's never going to— he's never going to correct the record.

That's tough. That's tough to see, you know. Uh, again, because he's got something to gain off of it.

That's what you—

what do you mean?

Is that what you're saying? Somebody that will start controversy to make themselves relevant even though they know it's not true? Is that what you're talking about?

So it can be, you know, and dude, I'm not talking about anybody. I don't have a name in mind. I might, but I'm not gonna.

Well, 30,000, it could be any name. You know what I mean?

Oh, you're talking about church members?

Oh, I don't know. I thought that's what you were talking about.

Oh, I'm talking about just like in public when you'll see pastors get shredded, like, you know, like kind of that, that kind of vibe.

Mm-hmm.

I'm talking about when there's like this massive gap between like, do I know that guy? And I know the real story on that thing. Oh, you see what I'm saying?

Okay.

Yeah, that's what I'm talking about.

Okay.

That can be tough.

When you're watching— okay. Yeah. When you're watching somebody that you know be defamed, is that what you're talking about?

And I know, bro, that is not— yeah, that ain't what happened.

Yeah.

And so what'll happen is some of these, these guys is because, you know, the incentive— you've, you just mentioned you've experienced this— the incentive structure of the internet is for people to be big game hunters. Who's got a big platform? If I can create that person, uh, if I can create controversy by attacking that person, I can harvest some of their platform for me, uh, which— and not in all cases. Let me just really quick say, there are some people who abs— they are saying righteous and true things about people who are not good men Absolutely. So let me just say that. I don't want anybody to get me wrong on that. Then there are other people, it's like, man, what's real interesting is, you know, you're saying this about this guy that he's just doing all this for money or whatever it is, when actually what's happening is you have a monetized website and whenever you create a bunch of controversy, you drive a bunch of clicks to your monetized website. You know, it's— It's weird. It comes off weird.

What are some misconceptions, man? Anything in particular?

Uh, so first of all, my big caveat is there are guys— and I'm not, I'm not gonna go there on public— uh, there are guys that I don't know well enough, but when I hear about him, I'm like, that guy does not sound like a good guy. That guy don't sound like a good guy. I've been around some guys where I'm like, it just didn't feel integrous to me. I think I'm going to make my band of brothers these guys over here. So let me just say that. But sometimes, man, the gap between reality and the vibe of like, man, all these all these big church pastors, they're all having affairs and they're all just in it for the money and they're just exploiting people and getting rich. I'm like, dude, that is, it's just not true, man. Like, here, let me, I'll give you an example of this. So I was 16 years old, God had just called me to ministry and I'm in high school. The pastor— I'm going to say his name— the pastor of the, at the time, I believe, the second largest church in America. The man's name was Bob Russell.

He pastored Southeast Christian Church in Louisville, Kentucky. Okay. I'm 16 years old. God calls me to ministry. And my dad, because he was a good dad, my dad went, hey, Josh, so here's what you need to do if you want to be a pastor someday. You need to find good, faithful, fruitful pastors You need to go get in front of them. You need to ask them intelligent questions. You need to write down everything they say, and then you need to do everything that they said. That's the book of Proverbs. Step 1 of getting wisdom: get wisdom. You got to go get it.

Okay.

So I was like, well, you know, who's the best pastor I've ever heard of? And I was like, probably Bob Russell. The problem was he passed a church that like in the '90s was a church like 20,000 people or something. Which back then, like, that didn't even exist back then. So I'm gonna confess a sin real quick. Uh, I was 16 and I drove up to the Southeast Christian Church, uh, new members class. It was for people who are trying to become members of the church. And the reason I did it is because I knew on a weekend, because there's 20,000 people there, even though he's always in the lobby, I probably— I might not be able to talk to him. But I knew he taught the new members class and there was only a few people there. I was like, "Well, I'll go to that." So I sat through the whole new members class, and then at the end I came up and I said, "Pastor Bob, I am so sorry. I'm not trying to become a member of your church. I live 2 hours away, but God called me to be a pastor.

Is there any way I could take you out to lunch? I'll only take 45 minutes of your time. I'll drive to you. I'll bring prepared questions, and I just want to ask you questions about how to be a pastor." And he said, he said, you know what, Josh, if you'll reach out to my assistant, you know, we'll see if we can set something up. So she set something up for— I think it was 2 years later, if I remember right. Now, that was probably a gentle way to see, is this kid going to fall through? You know, I think it was like 2 years later. Now I'm going to give you a— I'm going to give you a date. Okay. Bookmark this date in your head because it's going to be important in a second. She set the date for, I think it was September 13th, 2001. So 2 years later, I'm in college and I wake up that day. And, uh, now remember, I just want everybody to remember, this is the pastor of the second largest church in America. I'm a 16-year-old nobody, even more of a nobody than I am now when he meets me.

So that day I wake up and I drive 5 hours from Union University up to Louisville, something like that. And I get there and I sit down with him. And back then it was pre-iPhone. So you remember those little tape recorders that you could put on a table and you press the thing? I brought one of those. I still have the tape. And I sat there at the time. I was 18 then, and I put it on the table and I had spent 2 years thinking of what are the 20 best questions I could ask a faithful pastor. And I sat there, and Bob Russell, the pastor of the second largest church in America, he sat with a 16— then 18— he sat with an 18-year-old nobody, college kid, didn't even go to his church. He sat there for 2 hours and 2 hours and answered my questions. And I still have the tape.

Wow.

In fact, I mean, the story is not over. The best part's to come. In fact, to talk about what we said earlier about our wives, I'll never forget this, dude. The last thing I did is I said, Pastor Bob, is there anything that I need to know that I didn't ask you? And he said, yeah, Josh, there is. You need to know that the most important decision you make for your ministry will not be what seminary you attend or what first church you take. It'll be what woman you marry. I never forgot it, dude. I never forgot it. Mic drop. All right, so we finish. And then I drive him back in my little '96 Kia Sophia to his church and I drop him off. And as I drop him off, his assistant goes, "Do you know what he just did for you?" And I was like, "Man, yeah, he spent 2 hours with me. It was amazing. Thank you so much." And she said, "No, no, no. Did he tell you what he did to meet with you today?" Now, I said earlier it was September 13th. It was September 13th, 2001, 2 days after 9/11.

Bingo. She sits there and explains that that morning he had gotten called by the largest radio station in America and the largest TV station in America to do an interview, a nationally syndicated interview about God and 9/11. And Bob Russell said no, because a righteous man swears to his own hurt and he does not change. And so instead of talking to the entire country that day, he said no to that so he could sit with an 18-year-old nobody and tell him how to be a faithful Christian man and grow up and try to be a faithful Christian pastor. Now, some of me looks back and I'm like, I think I would have done the other. But what I will say is those are the types of stories— sometimes it'll bother me 'Cause all the, you'll hear these bad stories that go viral and it's like, that story doesn't go viral.

Yeah.

And there's a million, a million of those.

That's a cool story, man. I like that. In fact, somebody said that once. I saw this somewhere, I heard it somewhere, you know. You know who the most important person in the world to me is right now? You are.

I like that. I like that. I like that a lot.

It means something if you think about it.

It sure does. And people feel that. They feel that from you. I'll, um, Sometimes when I'm around these guys and I won't use their names because they're the kind of guys they wouldn't like it. But it is weird because they're all my buddies. Like, I know them. So like, here, I'll just give like maybe just a couple examples. So like one, and it's fun for me because all the names pop into my head, you know. One, one of the pastors of one of the three largest churches in America— nobody will ever know this— he asked his elders to cap his salary years ago. They don't raise it. And he and his wife sit down every single year and they go on a generosity retreat and they try to figure out how can we give more. And they're now up to giving away 60% of their income just to help people and they'd give these little anonymous donations to people in church and they're never going to know it came from that guy. One guy was a pastor of, uh, I think one of the two largest churches maybe in American history. Maybe, maybe. He wrote a book at the time.

He wrote a book that became, I think, one of the three or four best-selling books in America, in world history. And what a lot of people don't know is what he did with all the money is, uh, he reversed— first, he repaid the church every dollar that they'd ever salaried him, and then he and his wife sat down and they figured out how to reverse tithe on the money. So they gave away 90% and they only lived on 10%, and he used that money to start a series of nonprofits that just helped the poor. Um, this guy's name I will say— I'm gonna brag on him because he's, he's on our teaching team at Lake Pointe. There's a guy named Pastor Mike Breaux. He pastored a church of over 10,000 people in Lexington, Kentucky. I grew up listening to him as a kid. Wow. Now he's on our teaching team at Lake Pointe, and I'm gonna brag on him. He pray he may kill me, but I'm just gonna brag on him. That guy retired, stepped away from his church when it was like, I mean, peak, like crushing. And he stepped away, and you know what he ended up doing?

He ended up helping his daughter plant a church in a city in California. Like, rub two sticks together, nobody's there. Help his daughter plant a church in a city that like didn't have many churches. And you know what that guy does now? Every Thursday he wakes up and he leads a little Bible study at a local Starbucks for recovering addicts, and he volunteers his Thursday afternoon to help widows repair their homes and mow their lawns. This dude, like, everybody would have been like Mega church pastor. Like, now, and I could keep going. Like, dude, I got— there's another guy who's— he sets aside another one of the pastors of the largest church in America. They set aside a large portion of their personal income to help families in their church adopt kids. Uh, and what they do is they set it up where every time somebody in their church is adopting that person anonymously gets sent like thousands of dollars and they'll never know it, but it's from that guy, that's the senior pastor, and they've set a goal of funding at least 100 adoptions. Now I could keep going on and on and on and on, but when people hear that, I think a lot of people hear that about these mega church pastors and I think they go, well, man, Josh, yeah, but why don't I ever hear those stories?

Because planes that land safely don't make the news.

It's a good point. Thank you for sharing that. I always notice when somebody goes the extra step. It does not have to be some huge thing. It could be someone following up when they said they would, giving you a straight answer, or taking a little extra time to make sure the job gets done right. That sticks with you because it shows they actually care. And if you're hiring, that same thing matters. You don't just want someone qualified, you want someone who actually wants the job and is willing to go the extra step. That's where ZipRecruiter comes in. Candidates can tell you in their own words why they're interested in your job, which gives you a better read on who is really paying attention. And ZipRecruiter has a new feature that shows you the most interested qualified candidates first. So you meet the right people faster. ZipRecruiter's powerful matching technology finds qualified candidates quickly, and no wonder ZipRecruiter is the number one rated hiring site based on G2. Try ZipRecruiter and meet great candidates who go the extra step for your job. 4 out of 5 employers who post on ZipRecruiter get a quality candidate within the first day.

Try it for free at ziprecruiter.com/srs. That's ziprecruiter.com/srs. ZipRecruiter— meet your match on ZipRecruiter. So in a church of 30,000 people, I'm sure everybody's wanting to get some time with you. They want your advice, they want some help. How do you determine— how do you determine who you personally give your time to? Because it's impossible to die, divide it up to 30,000 people, plus you got 3 kids and a wife.

I do. And that's my first ministry. Well, a couple of things I say is that's true in any church that's really over, you know, honestly, I don't know, 600, 800 people. It's kind of the same thing. So what I say is a few things.

Do you give it to anybody?

Give what?

Your time.

To just anybody.

Who do you give it to? Do you give it to—

Oh, do I give it to— Oh, of course. Oh my gosh. Yes, of course. Yeah, man. Like what I've— what I've— So let me say a few. What I do now is what I try to have this motto of do for one what you wish you could do for all. So, man, can I do it for 30,000? No, I can't always do that. I'm going to talk— I'll talk about that in a second. But I never want to get to the spot where the shepherd doesn't smell like the sheep. Okay, so what I'll do is me, me and Jana, whoever it is, first of all, we're in the lobby after services praying with people. You know, I said like after every service every week, unless I preach too long and I can't get out there, you know, and we're just praying, praying with people. Anytime I'm not preaching, we just travel. I did this last weekend. We just travel all the campuses and we just get there early and stand in the lobby and we just sit there and pray with people. It's like the Dude, it's like the best thing. It's like my favorite.

It's the best thing ever to do that stuff. One thing that I'll do, and then what I do is— so in the book of Acts, when the church— because the same thing, Sean, the first church ever existed, Acts 2, you got 3,000 people. By Acts 3, it's 5,000 people. There's indications later in the book of Acts that the church definitely grew larger than that. So this has been around since the beginning. And in the book of Acts, I think it's in the book of Acts, when it gets to the spot where the church grows to the spot where there were a group of widows in the church that the pastors, the apostles themselves, they were like personally handing all the food to distribute to the widows to help them. The church eventually grew to a spot where they were spending so much time doing that that the Bible says they were distracted from two things: prayer and the ministry of the word. So then what they did, if you read the book of Acts, is they essentially restructured the leadership of the church. They added a layer of leadership that we now call deacons. That's where that came from.

That deacon word just means servant. You know, they did a leadership restructure, added a layer of leadership, and it uncorked a little kink in the hose so that now, hey man, these deacons are the ones, they're administering this ministry to you so these guys can focus on prayer and the word. It's kind of been the same thing forever. So that's really what we try to do is, man, my job as the senior pastor of church is not to personally do every aspect of ministry in church. My job is to be responsible as best I can that ministry happens for every single person at church. It's like we have, you know, our team, we have hundreds of pastors that are trained. So When somebody grabs me in the lobby, they're like, hey man, I need to meet with you. Well, one, I'll talk to you right now in the lobby. Let's talk. What can I help with? I can pray. But one of my questions is, I will sometimes ask, hey man, which one do you want? Do you want help or do you want me? Because if you want help, I can get you with a person that's actually more gifted than me for the ministry that you need that's actually going to get you better help.

That's why the Bible talks about how there's one body, with many parts. Everybody, including every pastor, has different spiritual gifts. Let me get— like, bro, you don't want me counseling you. It's like, you know, when I used to do some counseling, I'm just not great at it. I'm like, hey man, quit doing that, you know, let me pray for you, and here's a sermon to listen to. And, you know, but we have people on our team who, like, you know, I'm not the best preacher in the world, but God's given me some good ability there. We have guys on our team who are like, they are way more anointed and gifted to personally counsel somebody going through a really traumatic thing than I ever will be. So I want to try to get them to the pastor that can help best help them. The last thing that we do is, you know, we just never want to get to the spot where the shepherds don't smell like sheep. So we constantly got people in our house We lead at our church called a Rooted group. It's a little discipleship group. And Jan and I, we usually lead at least one per year.

Last time we just led a big discipleship group of 30 young adults, just sort of random young adults, bunch of kids sitting around our living room, and we're just discipling 30 kids in church. Or if I hear sometimes about somebody that's like going through it, like, I'll just tell you, man, we had one of my favorite church members in our whole church. Just died of cancer. He's hugging Jesus now. Kelly Goudreau, best dude ever. For the last part of Kelly's life, I'm calling Kelly and checking up on him. I'm praying with him. I'm seeing if I— hey man, what kind of— and we interacted almost every day for the last however many time. So what I try to do is do for one what you wish you could do for all and stay connected to the sheep. Does that make sense?

Does make sense.

That's what I try to do.

Does make sense. And I get it. I mean, I'm not a pastor, but got a lot of people that watch this, a lot of people that want to come on here. I look for the biggest impacts. Biggest way I can make an impact. Let's move into passing the torch, meaning how do you get your kids? How do you get young adults? How do you, how do you, how do you really— I mean, like I told you, you know, I grew up Catholic, went to church every Sunday, did the Sunday school thing. And it never sunk in. It never sunk in until I got slapped around a little bit. And, and then it sunk in. And but, you know, hopefully not everybody has to go through what I go through because it's tough, real tough. And so how do you successfully pass the torch and get them to get it. Like, really get it, not just sit there, you know. I mean, I, I'm still Catholic, you know, I bring my kids, but, you know, bringing a, bringing a 5-year-old to a Catholic Mass is like torture.

Good luck.

You know, but I mean, how do you, you know, how do you, how do you get the little guys engaged? How do you get them to get it without having to get knocked around?

Yeah, well, one, um, I don't want to give somebody a promise that's not a promise. So let me just say, here's why I say that. Like, as a pastor, what I've learned is when I say what I'm about to say about how to do it, what you're going to have is hundreds of thousands or millions of dads, moms, grandpas, grand— grandmas that when I say what I'm about to say, they're going to get overwhelmed with regret of what they wish they did, and they're going to start blaming themselves for their kid getting sideways or going prodigal or whatever. So here's my caveat.

It only works for you, you know what I mean? It's just one way. There's, there's 100 different ways to do this. I'm asking how you do it.

Okay, okay, that's good. That helps.

Your way wouldn't necessarily work on everybody else, but I'm just curious, you know, How do you do it?

Yeah. All right, that's good. That's good. All right. My caveat for those people to dovetail you making that point is I do not see a promise in the scripture that if you do this 100% of the time, your kids will turn out this way. Okay? My example of that is Garden of Eden. Garden of Eden. You've got a perfect father. God's a father. That's pretty perfect. You got a perfect father. You actually have perfect kids. Adam and Eve don't got a sin nature yet, and you have a perfect environment, Eden. There's no— it's a perfect— so you have perfect father, perfect kids, perfect environment, and they still rebelled. So I will just say, hey man, give yourself some grace. Yeah, that kind of thing. Now I'll tell you, as far as how I'm doing it, my kids are 15, 11, and 7. So I'll be honest, man, uh, jury's still out. We'll see. We'll see if I do my job. But I do know I'm going to give it everything I got. Let me— here's, here's why. Like, here's what my dad did that I'm like, that worked. And I'm doing it with my kids and I'm going, that seems like that's working.

Okay. I say 3 things. Hey, Number 1, your faith doesn't got to be perfect. It does got to be real. So like, dude, I remember being a little kid growing up in church and my dad sitting in the front row and, you know, we're worshiping, singing hymns or whatever. And my dad's like not a super emotional guy, but like, I remember watching Dad and like just a little, his eyes would just start sweating just a little bit, you know? And I remember being 13, 14, 15, 16 and watching that and being like, that man is not just leading a service, that man is worshiping his God. And I remember thinking like, man, I want to know who he knows. He knows somebody. I want to know his God because that's real. And there's a million times I saw stuff like that, like, whoa, whoa, That's real.

Okay.

So it doesn't gotta be perfect. We're gonna need grace, but it does gotta be real. Number 2 is what everybody tells you when you're younger, you're a new parent, is like, hey man, here's a secret. You know, here's a secret, Sean. You gotta get down in their world. You know, if they're into Bluey, you're into Bluey. You know, if they're into Cocomelon, you're into Cocomelon. You know, whatever it is. Uh, now that strategy, that might be fine, uh, I'd say until they're like 6 or 7, okay? Uh, but eventually reality kicks in. And oh, by the way, reality's undefeated. And, uh, I'm gonna say something with a bit of an edge to it, but like, again, reality's undefeated. Uh, kids are fools. We like— we got a Bible verse for that. Foolishness is bound up in the heart of a child. Kids are fools. Their default mode is foolishness. That's why they need moms and dads, godly moms and dads. Okay, so here's the thing. I don't need to get down into their world as they get older. Their world is full of rebellious— rebellion and foolishness. I don't want to get down in their world of rebellion and foolishness.

Instead of getting down in their world, I want to pull them up into my world. So here's what I started to see. Like, my dad, he's a pastor. He's got a good band of brothers. I remember growing up It's like every— I think it was Tuesday night. I remember growing up, their whole discipleship group was coming over, a bunch of couples that like, they were awesome. Like they were like, like actual normal people that loved Jesus and loved each other and had fun lives. You know, I'm seeing all them like opening that book and like talking about it and, you know, all that stuff. So then I get a little older and my dad started doing this thing. And looking back, I'm like, I know what he was doing. I didn't know what he was doing in the moment. My dad started doing this thing where the church staff, who were all awesome, they would go out for lunch. And my dad would be like, hey, Josh, you want to duck out of the thing you got today? Why don't you come to lunch with the staff today? So then here's what's happening is now he's pulling me up into his world, and his world was full of wisdom and righteousness.

And he's pulling me out of my world of rebellion and foolishness. So then I'm growing up around all these people, and I'm— dude, I'm growing up going, man, the people that I respect the most, I'm like, it's Jeff Carlisle, that's one of my dad's adult buddies. It's this— like, I can— I can name all the families to this day. And what that did is I grew up sitting around at those lunches or at our home and going, you know, I want to be the type of person that can fit in with these people. Instead of looking at like foolish rebellion, rebellious kids and doing that thing. So like Hillary Clinton wrote that. Was it a book that she wrote? I think called It Takes a Village, something like that. I can't remember. She wrote something. I can't remember what it was. That's a lie. I'll just tell you right now, that's a lie. Okay. Because if the village that you're using to raise your kids is a bunch of like woke pagan secular Swifties or whatever, if that's the village, well, if the village is a bunch of pagans, they're just going to help raise a whole bunch of other pagans.

So you don't need a village. Here's what you need as a dad: you need a redeemed village. The Bible calls that a church. So it's like, I got to grow up. What I'm doing right now, I'm doing exactly what my dad did. Like, I was like, literally this week Yesterday was our all-staff meeting at church. That's so funny, I didn't even think about this. I literally yesterday did what my dad did growing up. My dad's awesome. Uh, yesterday was our all-staff meeting. My 15-year-old Eliana, right now she loves Jesus, she loves people, and there's a call, there's like a, there's a little grace on her life leading worship, you know. She, she loves serving at church, love doing that stuff. So yesterday I'm like, hey Eliana, why don't you— that's so funny, dude. I I did exactly what my dad did. I was like, hey, Liana, why don't you duck out of what you got today and come to staff meeting with me and your mom? So what's she doing? She's sitting around, I don't know, 400 pastors and their wives and people who love the Lord and they're trying to serve him. And that's who she's around.

Well, what am I doing? I'm not getting down into her world. I'm pulling her up into my world. Last thing I'd say is, and by the way, I got these from a buddy of mine named Josh McPherson. He's probably the best dad I've ever seen, is whoever tells the best stories wins. Dude, this is a total cheat code parenting hack, man. So what's interesting, if you go back and next time you read your Old Testament, You'll notice all these times where God does this amazing thing, parts the Red Sea or defeats Ai or whatever it is. And then he tells all the people, hey, before you leave, will you guys please set up a big pile of rocks right here? And the Hebrew word is— there's a hymn that if you're listening and you grew up singing those old hymns, there's an old hymn called "Come Thou Fount." And one of the lyrics of "Come Thou Fount" is "Here I raise my Ebenezer," is what it says. That word Ebenezer, it comes from two Hebrew words. I said it, I'm just realizing I said it wrong earlier. Two Hebrew words, "Eben Ezer," which means stone of help.

Okay. So what all those little rocks were that God said, pile those up, is he was going, hey, all throughout this little country the size of New Jersey where you're raising all your kids, every time you walk past one of these piles of rocks, God was going, hey, hey, Dad, what I want you to do is stop and you're going to point at that rock and tell your son, man, when Papa was here 60 years ago, He was standing right there. And him and all his buddies, they marched around that city 7 times, son. And you're never going to believe what happened. The Lord gave us this promise. You don't got to fight. You just got to be still and I'll fight for you. And son, you're never going to believe this, but our God is so powerful that when your grandpa was over there and did it, God conquered that thing. And so they grew up telling all these stories. So here's the deal. God was wiring into how the culture was structured. He was giving all the dads and moms, here's all your story opportunity. So for me growing up, like us sitting around the dinner table at night, you know, it's like I was just constantly hearing all these stories.

Dad would come home from work. And I was constantly just hearing all these stories about, man, this widow that somebody just gave her a car and I just, because they out of nowhere, and this marriage got healed. Guys, that addict that we've been praying for for 3 months, they just got free. And, you know, I was just hearing all these stories and it just, it just, it just gripped me. And the older I got, I was like, well, I want to be a part of the thing where all that cool stuff happens. You know, it just rubbed off on me. So I think the thing I say that the— just encouragement I'd give to, you know, guys who are in the thick of parenting like you and me and all the guys listening and trying to figure it out, doing their imperfect best just like me, is, man, the most significant thing you do with your life if you're a father, it's probably not going to be something you accomplish. It's probably going to be somebody you raise, so pour it all in.

That's cool you said that. Training your replacement, it's good stuff, man.

That's what we're doing.

Thank you.

Yes, sir.

I got one last question. It's a hot question. Oh, buddy, I actually have one here, but I got my own.

Okay.

What is your favorite miracle that Jesus performed in the Bible and why?

Well, am I allowed to cheat and go resurrection?

You know, let's do it.

All right, all right. You know, uh, other than that one, other than that one. Dang, man. Oh, that's fire. That's good. All right, this is shooting from the hip. If I have more time, I might think of something else. All right, I think it's when Jesus touches the leper and he heals him.

Can you go into it? Can you tell the story? Yeah.

Well, he heals lepers a few times. Okay. And honestly, there's not much description to this miracle, but there's a specific time, or maybe a couple of times in the Gospels where Jesus reaches out and he touches the leper. Now, but there's a reason that, like most people, it's not the kind of thing you see. There's a reason that's my favorite. Okay. Might be my favorite. So in the Old Testament, there's all these laws. About what to do with somebody that's got leprosy. And in the Old Testament, if you had leprosy, you were ceremonially unclean. And the kind of the rules were that if a clean person touches an unclean person, the unclean person makes the clean person unclean. So then, you know, what you would have to do if you had leprosy is in that time you would have to stand according to tradition, maybe 50 paces away from somebody, and you'd have to yell, "Unclean, unclean, unclean." So when I read that miracle about Jesus just walking right up to the guy, and he's like, "Hey, will you make me clean?" And Jesus is like, "I will." And he touches him. "I will be clean." One, that guy that had spent his entire life having everybody stay 50 paces away Jesus walks up and he's like, man, I'd really like to get right up in.

I want to get right up where you are. I want to be close to you, brother. I get close to you. And then when Jesus touches him, it heals him. And for the first time in the entire Bible, instead of when a clean person touches an unclean thing, the unclean thing makes the clean thing unclean. Jesus works it backwards. And because he's clean, the clean thing touches the unclean thing, and the clean thing makes the unclean thing clean. And it's like a— it's a picture of what happens when you, by faith and repentance, reach out and touch Jesus Christ. And when you touch him, he makes you clean.

That's a good one.

I love it.

How did the people react to that?

Well, in different times they reacted different ways. A lot of people did not like it when Jesus did healings. They did not like it.

Why?

Because it messed with a lot of their traditions that had built up around the thing. In fact, one of the things that sets off the series of events that leads to the crucifixion of Jesus is him healing people on Sabbaths. They were like, hey man, you ain't allowed to. That was like one of their little rules. What legalist— what legalistic people do is they take the rules that God actually gave in the Bible, and then legalistic people add rules to the rules, and then they condemn you for not obeying the rules they added to the rules that actually God didn't make in the first place. And they did that with the Sabbath laws. I think they're called the Targums. They did that with the Sabbath laws. They took one command, hey, don't do work on the Sabbath, keep it holy as unto the Lord, and they had a bunch of rules about what counts as work. And then they added rules to the rules and ended up all this time— well, one of their rules was, hey, no healing on the Sabbath, you know, which is real dumb. Like, God never said that. And, uh, so one of the reasons that they got mad is Well, you're breaking our, our little religious tradition.

You're making us look like idiots. We said you couldn't do this and you're doing it.

I just, I never understood that, you know, it seems, and, and I'm not well versed. I read it, I don't understand half the stuff I'm reading, but when I read that, you know, the miracles that he did, it seems like the people were pissed every single time he performed one.

Very frequently.

I don't understand. I mean, like He's doing unexplainable things unless you have faith in God. And so what I mean, he's doing it right in front of them.

Mm-hmm.

How are they?

Yeah, how are they?

How do they not get it?

Well, I think two things. You know, I think one, it was a threat to their fame and religious sort of the power that they had. It's like, hey, quit busting up our thing. We're the ones that are in charge of all the, all the stuff. So when Jesus kind of, you know, he kind of rolls in and starts breaking the thing, there's two things the Bible says about the Pharisees. Now, there's actually a time where Jesus pronounces woes on the Pharisees, and I won't be able to rattle them all off off the top of my head, but he gives seven woes. And it's essentially like, here's what's wrong with you. You know, you know, you ask people to tithe a tenth of this, and you neglect the weightier matters of the law, justice and mercy and loving your neighbor. And he goes through like 7 different things. But 2 things the Bible says that Jesus says about the Pharisees is they loved the praise of men more than the praise of God. So one, what they cared about, like, you're like, hey man, why wouldn't they want people to have faith in God? Because that really wasn't— they cared— that's not what they cared about a whole lot.

What they cared about a whole lot was people thinking they were awesome. Power.

Yes.

They loved the praise of men more than they loved the praise of God. I think power plays into that. And they were like, man, what we really care about in their heart of hearts, everybody cheering us on and applauding us. And then it does say that they loved money. And so I think those two things, if Jesus rolls in and busts up their thing, That's a threat to their two things. Right on.

What's good, Miracle? But I like that.

I like it too.

Like how you told that. Well, Josh, it was an honor, man.

Josh, my honor. Thank you.

Thank you.

I appreciate you.

God bless. Yes, sir. No matter where you're watching The Sean Ryan Show from, if you get anything out of this at all, anything, please like, comment, and subscribe. And most importantly, share this everywhere you possibly can. And if you're feeling extra generous, head to Apple Podcasts and Spotify and leave us a review.