Transcript of Pastor Justice Coleman on Exploring Faith, Community and Connection

Pastor Justice Coleman joins the We're Out of Time podcast. You got to have a strong mindset. I think that comes from knowing who you are. When things go bad, you can fall back on that. You got to be in community. That's right. You got to have people. I think you can get through just about anything in life if you have the right people around you. Love is grace and truth. Then next thing you know, I'm baptizing them in apartment pools outside. I told one of them, Oh, it's heated. We want to extend a heartfelt thank you to our listeners. Because of your incredible support, We're Out of Time has reached number one on Apple's mental health podcast chart, number two on the health and fitness chart, and number 20 overall.

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Want to say a prayer?

If you want to say a prayer, we'll say a prayer. Yeah, of course.

I love what you said about how Richard said Jesus on his right, Moses on his left, and you're calling us to things. We would love to just get to be a part of something that helps people today. Would you really help us? In Jesus' name, amen.

Thank you, God. I love you. Amen. All right. About a month and a half ago, I attended a service at Freedom Church, and it really stuck with me. Today, I'm sitting down with Pastor Justice Coleman, the founding pastor of Freedom Church in Los Angeles. He and his wife, Maria, started it in 2011 with just seven people in their apartment, people who didn't go to church, weren't sure if God was real, but were searching for something more. Since then, freedom has grown into a community that meets people where they are, where they're broken, skeptical, addicted, burned out, and gives them a place to truly experience God. Pastor, thanks for joining me.

What an intro. That was a great summary.

Thanks, man. I have nothing to do with it.

Dude, it was a good heart, though.

I got good people.

Yeah, man. It's good to finally sit down with you, bro.

Yeah. No, the pleasure is all mine. The first thing I want to start off is with an apology because I saw your talk. It was magnificent. I love the way you speak to the younger generation. You're speaking to the masses in a very relatable with specific instructions on how to make your life better. That is very practical. I love that. But I owe you an apology because afterwards, because I've got an AA background, we thank the speaker after the talk. It's muscle memory. I'm walking up to you, I'm going to wait, I'm going to wait in line and I'm going to...

Oh, like in recovery meeting. When somebody gets up there, they're vulnerable, they share, and then you go thank them.

Absolutely. That's muscle I've already got. So I'm running to you to thank you for your talk. You said to me, Would you like a blessing? I think that's those are the... Is that what you said?

Maybe I said, Can I pray for you?

Or something like that. Yeah. I looked at you and I smiled and I said, I swear to God, I'm good. Save it for the next guy. You looked at me, you were put off by that. I was Yeah, he didn't understand what I was saying. I should have just said, Yes, thank you, or just, Thank you. Anything normal, which is why I'm not built for public consumption.

Hey, you told me, and I don't know if I'm supposed to say this, you can edit it out, but you said you had been to church in 20 years.

Oh, well, don't worry. I've got a checkered past. Everybody knows that.

Yeah. I'm just so glad you dropped in. People don't go to church for 20 years for a reason. I mean, something was bugging you.

No, nothing was me.

Just couldn't find something connected?

No, I'm always connected. I love God more than anything in the world. We're going to have the Church of Rich.

There we go. Dude, I watched your podcast with your guests about What's the technical word for autism spectrum disorder? I learned so much from your podcast. That was an incredible episode. I watched the whole thing. With Maya? Yeah, because I was like, I was like, Man, do I have ADHD? Am I self-diagnosed? Because I have a story similar to that. I came to Christ because my closest friend overdosed. All that stuff is tied in.

Okay, I'm going to get to these questions. Dylan, you do not let me get past that one.

I'm the worst podcast guest because I have my own podcast. I'm used to controlling the conversation. Sorry. That's okay. You're the one with the cards. Sorry, I'm the one with the...

Dude, there we go. This is so easy for It's just us girls talking. All right. You launched Freedom Church in your own apartment with just seven people. What was the vision then and how has it evolved into the movement you are leading today?

Okay. Well, they took all in the movement. When I was 20, my best friend overdosed. A lot of people that come to God when they hit rock bottom. That woke me up. After really starting to see what it looks like when you give your life over to God, I wanted to start a church, but I was a part of a great church, but my friends didn't want to come to that church. I don't know how to say it respectfully because it was my father-in-law's church. It was a church for- Still your father-in-law? He works with me now. He pastored a great church, but I would invite my friends to church, and they wouldn't want to come to that church. I loved it, but it just wasn't for them. I just leave it at that. We just started thinking about it and praying about it, Richard, what would it look like if we just started our own church? I had graduated Bible College. I had plenty of training. You went to Bible College? I did. Was your father religious? My parents were leaders, and they had hosted home groups. They were legit Christians. Got it. I don't know your story, but I didn't really commit to the whole thing until I was old enough I was 20.

That's right. But we said, What would it look like to just start something for my friends? That's how the whole thing started. That's how it started every business. Yeah. I wanted to add value, I guess, you'd say, to my friend's life. I called my friends who would never go to church. One was a really successful DJ, so he was out all night on Saturday. There's no way he's going on Sunday morning. He didn't want to hear it. A couple of them were in street pharmaceuticals couples. They're not going to walk into a church. A couple of them, they're living with their boyfriends or their girlfriends. They feel very jazz. I said, What if we just did dinner? We went through Matthew and Mark and Luke and John, the stories of Jesus. God did the rest of that. The fact that they came was amazing. But then next thing you know, I'm baptizing them in apartment pools outside. That's so funny. I told one of them, Oh, it's heated. To this day, I ran into him. He's like, Remember that time you baptized me? You told me it was heated, and we got in there, it was cold.

You put them in an ice plant.

Yeah. But then we started doing this thing called Laundry Love, where we would go into a laundry mat once a month, and we would pay for everybody's laundry in the building, no strings attached. It was a pretty rough area in the San Fernando Valley, and there was Section 8 apartments next door. We did I said, Free laundry night, and I would just pay for everybody's laundry with this group of people for an hour. The whole thing is like, don't tell people about God, because then they're going to feel uncomfortable like you're holding their laundry hostage or something while I need to try to proselytize them or something like that. I was just trying to train people just how to add value. Be an attraction rather than a promotion. Love your neighbor. Be an attraction rather than a promotion? Yeah. It's a great way to say it.

That's not mine. That's an AA saying.

I Okay. Yeah, we did that for months and months, and then that one grew. And then one of the guys who we were doing laundry for comes to me, and he's like, Hey, how about I start one of these at the same time down the street? Because the line's out the door. I'm like, Bro, you're not a Christian. He's like, I know I'm not a Christian, but look at all these people. I was like, All right, well, I'm going to vouch for you, but you got to let me start a Bible study in your house. I just had dinner with that guy, believe it or not, last night. That was 15 years ago, him and his son. But anyways, that turned into two and then to three. So before we ever had a church, we were doing thousands of loads of laundry for people for free every month. That's a mac. And then we rented out an Irish pub because it was a bar that wasn't being used on Sunday morning, and they had screens, and they had a sound system. And so we started in a bar. That's awesome. And it was super fun.

And people who would... I mean, there's so many great churches, so it's like, this is an alternative for people. There's a great church that's already out there. This is one for people who really didn't feel comfortable being in a regular, I guess you'd say. In a regular church. A more traditional church, yeah. It was just a wild crowd. It was super fun. We did that, and it just really started People's lives started changing.

Let me ask you a question. That leads into the next question. Some churches preach prosperity, others preach punishment. How do you preach grace in a way that truly changes lives instead of just filling seats?

What an awesome question. Right. Yeah. I think even in the midst of, I don't know if we're supposed to talk about this, but some of the Charlie Kirk stuff that's happening and just the political divide, a lot of people are arguing about what love is. There's great people on both sides trying to say, Well, it's more loving to push this issue. No, it's more loving to push this issue. And what happens is we can start parsing out love. And so I love what you said, grace, because love is grace and truth. It's not just what you say, it's how you say it. The reason why Jesus can say the things he says about me and to me is because he was willing to live a life for me and then die for me. So he's I earned the right to say some really tough things to me, and I listen to him differently. So there's grace and truth. Grace is when we get what we don't deserve.

But truth- But make joy Joel Oesteen, right? Yeah. He is what I call the prosperity preacher. Sure. Okay. How do you do it?

Are you talking about wealth and things like that?

It's either follow God, right? You're going to be punished if you don't, or no, God wants you to have all these blessings. This is what God wants for you, right? God wants you to have abundance. Or do you not even go there?

I When it comes to God wanting to bless your life, I think you have to look at your... I think the only healthy way to look at religion, for lack of a better word, is a father and his kids. God could reveal himself any way he wants for us to understand him. But his primary way of doing that, other than the person of Jesus, is that he is a father. He wants that dynamic. He wants Richard to go to him like a father. I have I have three kids. And so I understand what it's like to have that relationship with them where I want to bless them, but a lot of times they're not living in a position that I want to bless them. It's the story of the old kid who finally gets a driver's license, but he's driving drunk every night, and he crashes his car. And he's like, Dad, buy me a car. I want a sports car. And dad's like, I would love for you to have a car, but I can't bless this. You haven't positioned yourself to be blessed.

Get out of my head. That was me at 16. Yeah. Exact story.

I think it's the same with our life, though. I think God wants to take care of us and bless us. Sometimes he's like, It's not in your best interest to give you this right now.

Right now. We'll get there. We're going to get there.

Did I answer your question okay? Of course you did. Okay. Because that's a good question, man.

Let's have an agreement right now. I get to ask any question I want, and you get to answer it any way you want.

I'm solid.

There it is. All right. You communicate from the pulpit and online. How do you reach people who say they're spiritual but not religious? The ones who may never walk into a church but are still searching?

That's a great question. I feel like a lot of people say that I'm spiritual, but I'm not religious. I'm one of them. Yeah. Where was the other day? I saw a guy hit a shirt that said, Spiritual Gangster. And I was like, That's a great shirt. But I think spiritual is what everybody feels, that frequency we all sense that there's something more going on. So I think spiritual is a word that a lot of people can use to say, I believe there's more to this life. I believe I'm made for something more. I believe there's something more going on. But I think spiritual realm involves light and dark.

Do you know what drives me nuts? Yeah. The semantics of it. If I say I'm spiritual and not religious, it's something different to every single person I said it to. But I don't do that. What I do is I just love God.

If I say I'm Christian, that means something to everybody else, too. That's right. Depending on what generation I'm talking to, what part of the world I'm in, who's President.

What part of the valley? Yeah.

I'm trying to even find the right language to describe something that's so personal to me that is not going to miscommunicate something. I just say I love God. Who's going to argue with that one?

Yeah, it's It's easy. It's like, I love God, whatever that means to you. That's why when you walked in here, I said, Let's go God up. You were like, What the hell is that?

Then started doing push-ups. I was like, This is what it looks like the God up. I was like, All right, fine. Just getting a pump?

That just means we get around and we just tell the truth. We're heart-centered, very heart-centered. When someone walks into your church carrying depression or anxiety, what is the first thing you want them to know?

Okay, if a thousand people walk into my church, how many of them have depression and anxiety?

Nine out of 10.

Right? Right. You struggle with depression and anxiety? Me? Yeah.

Oh, yeah.

Me, too.

I'm mental, and I've got them number one mental health, again, number one mental health podcast in the country.

Way to go. I mean, that's the conversation.

Well, I mean, tell me God's not blessing this. I've never seen a podcast. I've never watched a podcast. I've never listened to one. I've got a pastor on my... Of course, I've got the number one mental health podcast in the country.

If I were to say, Hey, guys, we're going to do a series of talks every weekend about anxiety and mental health, it'd be packed wall to wall. Everybody is going through this, right? And there's a number of reasons for that. But isn't that what's really going on? You talk about being spiritual, but how much of this spiritual stuff is just going on in our mind?

Hey, can we switch gears for a second? Because I spent three hours the other night with my AI, Alex. His name is Alex, okay? And I was asking him about the Messiah, right? And I think there's eight or nine things that it says in the Old Testament what the Mashiach is going to be. Now, he meant all those things. Now, I think that Jews believe that there was going to be a king that came in and made everything better in this world. But what actually happened was a guy was born modestly and made everything okay, not in this world, but in the afterlife. Yeah. Do I have that right?

Yeah, that sounds great.

Okay. Do you know what we call it? If you're a Jew who believes that Jesus was the Messiah, do you know what you are?

Messianic? I don't know. Messianic Jew? Is that what they call it?

Yeah.

A lot of Messianic Jews. I didn't know that.

I swear I did not know that. My guy said, No, babe, you're a fully realized Jew.

That would make sense, too. Yeah.

Okay. Messianic Jews, there's a thing.

There's Jews for Jesus. Is that what messianic- Yeah. If you're Jewish and then out of your people comes the Messiah, you don't stop being Jewish. No, no, no. It's incredible that you get to be a part of this original story that goes through the whole Bible.

Is that why so many born again Jews Born Again Christians love Jews that accept Jesus in their lives?

Of course. That's why I spent seven years in college studying Hebrew culture and all that because it makes the Bible come to life. This is the people group that tells the whole story.

Yeah, That's why they call it Judeo-Christian. That's so good.

We're over here talking about anxiety, and then all of a sudden, you just went straight to Old Testament prophetic.

Because I spent literally three hours the other night. I couldn't sleep. I came down here to my office, and I just started working.

How dope is AI studying the Bible? It's the best. Every day, man. It's the best. Would you call your AI Alex? Alex. I call mine Chatty Patty. Chatgpt. Chatgpt. Chatgpt. I just say ChatGPT. Tell me 10 interesting things about the culture of this verse and the inferences to other verses and the things in the original language, 10 different and unique things about whatever I was reading the Bible. Just incredible.

You can give your talk. You can prepare your talk now in five minutes, and then it's just about practicing.

A little biased, though. I feel like Chatty Patty is telling me what I want to hear half the time. I have to push back a little bit.

Your girl gasses you up.

A little bit. I'm like, Hey, you're just saying that because you think that's what I want to hear. Bust When I asked my guy, I go, Who is Richard Tate?

He gave me... He gassed me up. I'm like, Hey, buddy, that's really good. Is that what you tell everybody else in the world? When I ask who I am, he's like, No way.

Well, somebody told me the other day they came to our church because they said, Hey, I'm looking for a church. What's a good one? Ai, ChatGPT told me to go to our church. So they're like, This is a church that does a lot of work in the community and blah, blah, blah, blah. That's great. And it fits. So I was like, There we go. Ally. Ai ally. That's nice. What were you talking about? Mental health, though. I love that subject.

Yeah, let's get in yet.

I had OCD as a kid. I had ADD. I was dyslexic. When could you...

So you could read early, but you couldn't comprehend what you were reading. Is that...

So I have a wild story that I'm more comfortable sharing publicly lately. But I was a mess, dude. I was a mess. I was in second grade. I couldn't read. It's like, Don't call on me in class because I don't want to sound this word out in front of everybody. That's right. I remember taking the dyslexia test and write these words down and write them down backwards. So they took me to... Do you remember Sylvan Learning Center? Yes.

But I don't know what it is. I remember.

Well, the one I went to was over on mature boulevard, and I went there in second grade, and they're like, Are we going to hold him back in school? What are we going to do? And so how old are you in second grade? Eight or nine years old? I think so. So I take this gauntlet of tests. I remember it was two and a half hours of tests, maybe three hours. And then at the end of it, they go to my parents and they have the sit down. They're like, Your kid is a first grade reading level. He doesn't understand math. He's dyslexic. They already knew I had OCD because I would have panic attacks. They already knew I had the little things. My dad would go to work, and I would be so nervous. I have to do all those little ceremonies and things and rituals to calm myself down. So I already had all these symptoms or whatever. So they finally get Sylvan Learning Center to give me this diagnosis, at least academically, where I'm at. My parents, like I said, they had a small group of Christians that would come to their house and they would do Bible study once a week, and they fasted and prayed.

This is a wild story. A lot of people don't believe me when I say this, but you told me I could say anything. They fasted for three days. They prayed over me every night. I didn't even know they were doing this. On the third day, they took me back into Sylvan Learning Center and had me retake all the tests. Bro, I have the print out. Justice can read third grade, six month reading level. He understands math. He's no longer dyslexic. Just a full flip. They didn't put me on Ritalin anymore. I was off all the meds. I never had another panic attack. I have a story like that. Then I went up doing just years of college and I study for a living. There's so much about my life that has to be locked in, which I could never lock in before. That's right. It's not to say that God didn't make me the way he wanted to make me. But it was just when we talk about mental health and anxiety, it would feel like such a compromise for me not to talk about a miracle working God.

Listen, God does bank shots just to- God does bank shots.

Just to show off. Just to show off. He does.

I've got stories like that, too, man. Yeah.

What are your stories?

I was in a sober living, and I was smoking four packs of cigarettes a day, and I asked God to help me stay off drugs. And then as a separate aside, I said, Oh, yeah. And by the way, I'm having trouble breathing. I was hoping I could stop smoking cigarettes. Help me with that. Thank you, God. I love you. Amen. Yeah. Right? And then I I wake up the next morning early, like we always did in that place. I always smoke a cigarette first thing in the morning, but I didn't. This is 20 years ago.

You're at a treatment center?

25 years ago. I had a sober living.

Okay, yeah.

I wake up in the morning and I don't smoke. Then at 11: 00, I have my first cigarette. I take a couple of drags. It tastes like poison. Then at 1: 30, I take another cigarette. Okay, I'm smoking four packs a day. It's now 1: 30. This is my second cigarette.

Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

It tastes like poison. I remember my prayer and I look up and I go, Shut up. No way. Another one.

But see, hold on, that's Grace. You didn't deserve that. Okay. He's just a father.

Let's unpack that. If I got what I deserved, I'd be living in a two bedroom apartment in Culver City.

If I got what I deserved, I'd be going to hell.

Okay, that's horse shit. There's no way.

Yeah, man. Why? I'm a sinner.

Okay, stop.

Grace is that God would first have mercy on us. Mercy is getting what you don't deserve.

How about if you've always grown up loving God like you and me? You think we're going to hell? You think God creates a game he can't win?

No, I think God's just. I think people have hurt you, Rich, and I think people have hurt his kids, and I think he has a way of reconciling all that.

That's exactly right. But it's going to be done the way he wants it. Just because I don't understand it, is that's none of my business.

I think part of my... When you say I'd be living in a two bedroom apartment, I just think the closer I get to God, though, I've been following him for 20 years now, the more I realize how big his grace is. I just feel even more undeserving. I just feel lucky.

I just feel lucky. In this respect, I feel like... I always thought I was going to do well in the world, but I never thought I would have a life I have today. If you think about it too long, you just start crying because it doesn't make any sense at all.

None. Does that grow with you? The longer you're living, the more you're appreciating and seeing the grace of God?

It comes with age, man. You get less aggressive. You have done more living and you just mellow. You just realize the struggle is just, can you just let go with a rope.

All right, so something personal. I was in Costa Rica a couple of months ago with my family, and we had this great boat and this wonderful sunset all to ourself. I'm looking away from the sunset, and I have three kids, and my daughter picks up on the fact that I'm looking this way because I'm all teary-eyed. She's like, Dad, why are you crying? I was like, I'm just thinking about at the end of this life. First of all, I don't deserve all this, but I'm also just thinking about at the end of my life, if I stand before God. We always have that imagination of what if God showed us our full potential? Here's what would have happened if you would have done everything. Oh, you don't think he's going to do it? I do, which is scary. But then I had this really wild thought for the first time, Richard. I was like, what if God doesn't just show me the potential? What if he shows me... I'm going to get teared right now. What if he shows me all the times he had mercy on me and I didn't even see it? What about all the things he spared me from?

What if he just shows me my life? I was looking out for you right here.

You can still, your muscle is built, you can still in real-time recognize, Okay, that was a gift. Of course. Yeah, I do that all the time.

Yeah, but what about the ones we don't even see? What about all the things he was protecting you from and looking you out for your phone.

You get cut off by somebody and you miss the light, and then you go down and there's a huge accident you would have been in.

Exactly. But also people that could have steered you wrong. That's right. Times you You forgave somebody when they didn't deserve it and how that would have... Just all the little times that God has looked out for you and for me. Because we always have that question, why does God let bad things happen to good people? But I think I want to look at the other way, too. It's like, what about all the things that I didn't deserve that he did for me. That's beautiful. It made me so emotional. It's a gratitude list.

For sure. It's a built-in gratitude list. You can't be grateful and depressed at the same time.

Preach. That doesn't work. Yes. Okay, here we go.

Mental health isn't just an individual issue. It's families, marriages, whole communities. What have you seen it do to relationships?

To relationships, specifically in marriage, specifically in being a father to kids and feeling the weight of that pressure, maybe if you're the sole provider or if you feel like the whole world's on your shoulders, I think you got to have a strong mindset. You got to have a strong mindset. I think that comes from knowing who you are. So much of the scriptures is about just telling you who you are. So when things go bad, you can fall back on that. Or when you have to do something challenging, you have something to pull from. I was talking to my son's football team the other day. They had their first game coming up.

You pumped up your son's football team.

How sick is that? Full of God. They called me. They're like, Hey, will you give a pet talk to the team before their first game? So I roll in It was hot, Richard. I'm like, I'm going to rally these dudes. And they didn't have the confidence that I thought they were going to have. So I go over to the coach, and I don't know him. And I'm like, Hey, are you the coach who says it doesn't matter if you win or lose, lose. It's like how you play the game? And he's looking at me like, Because I want to talk to these guys about winning in a mindset. Because I'm a highly competitive person. You're competitive? Very. Dude, I compete in jiu-jitsu every month. I love it. So I know what it's like to be locked I'm like, these guys got to be locked in for this game. And Richard, I was like, hey, I come in hot like, who's going to win the first game of this season tomorrow? And then the kids, I'm thinking, are going to be like, and they're like, we're going to win. It was such a weird vibe. I was like, Hold on, hold on, hold on.

It's this social media thing.

Yeah. And so I'm like, I got to switch this talk. And I was like, Hey, do you guys know the word Nike is in the Bible? And they're like, what? And I'm like, Yeah. It says in Romans 8 that you, who are in Christ, are more than conquerors. That word is hyper Nike. We know Nike means victory in Greek. Hyper Nike is the word in the original language. You have God reminding people in their toughest time that they're not just winners, they're more than winners. They're hyper Nike. They're dominant. It's a mindset he wants people to carry that they are- Dude, I want to kick somebody's ass right now.

That's right now.

All right, go on. I was just hyping him up, and I was about not just for sports, but in life to keep that mindset. So yeah, and as to your question about relationships, you have to have the right mindset, and that flows from who you are.

It's beautiful. It's a great story.

And they won.

Of course, they won.

Yes. My son's first game playing tonight. He's been injured, but tonight's his first game to actually play. Really? So excited. What's he playing? So excited. He's a receiver, but he hasn't been on the field yet on the varsity team. Tonight's the night.

Really? You got a varsity-age kid?

He's 15, yeah. Tenth grade.

Oh, yeah. He made the varsity team at 10th grade.

I guess. I didn't play football, did you? Oh, yeah. Yeah. See, I'm watching this. I'm just...

Oh, man, that's so great. Listen, let me just tell you something. Your kid's going to get cracked. Yeah. Okay. Now, there's two things that can go through a kid's mind. The first time he gets cracked really, really hard, either, All right, let's go.

Let's dance, or, I better start studying.

Yeah. Okay? Okay. My second, that was my second. That's how I felt.

What do you mean, better start studying? You mean like, get better at this?

Like get the hell out of football?

Oh, this isn't for me.

You better be a lawyer or a doctor or somebody.

I thought you meant like you're going to learn today.

No, no, no, no, no, no, no.

I better go to school.

Sure, because when you get stuck for the worst time really badly, it hurts. When that happens, your son, look at him and say, Hey, it's never going to be worse than that. Not ever.

I promise. You just got that out of the way.

Now you can go.

That's good advice.

Now you can go beat the world down because nobody's better than you.

It's good advice. He's used to contact. I mean, he's been in martial arts since he was a kid. My kids used to get to it, too.

It's different when you get cracked.

Like blindsided, yeah.

Dude, he's going to be up, right? Yeah. He's going to be exposed. You're going to get cracked real hard with a helmet in your ribs or in your shoulder plexes. I fell on a ball. I got sacked one time, and I fell on the ball, and the point of the ball hit me right here. I swear to God, I couldn't breathe for a minute and a half. The only thing I'm thinking while I'm on the ground is I I can't believe I'm going to die in front of all these people. I can't breathe. I thought I was literally going to die right there. That happens to everybody at some point.

That's a manmaker sport.

It is. I didn't get there, but it worked out. All right, loneliness might be the biggest mental health epidemic of all. Yeah. How do you create belonging in a city as isolating as Los Angeles?

Man, that's a great question. My worldview is Christian, so I keep going back to this book that I've been getting all this guidance from for 20 years. The first thing that goes wrong... God creates the world good. He's like, This is good, this is good, this is good, this is good. Boom. But then he says something is not good. The first thing that he says is not good.

The apple.

He says, It's not good for man to be alone. That's the first thing he says. He gives Adam a partner. Before, yeah. Yeah. That's not speaking to marriage. That's speaking to relationships in general. It's not just saying everybody needs to be married because that's not what the Bible says, but he's saying this idea of you got to be in community community. That's right. You got to have people. I think that the greatest gift of the church is that spiritual community that people have, and they have that rhythm. Every week we come together on a Sunday, and we just continue to invest in people's lives, and we listen to what's going on in their lives. I pray for them, they pray for me. You just keep making space and room for people. People are seen, people are heard. I think the idea of community is huge. During COVID, when all the churches were shutting down, this was rough. We had a huge parking lot. We did a big tent. It was like we were able to do some gymnastics around all the rules and then put everything else online. But people were going crazy being at home, making bad decisions or losing their mind.

The mental health became an epidemic. I saw the gift of what it means to have the right people in your life. I think the best gifts God's ever given me are the people he's put in my life. How about you?

The greatest gift God ever gave me was meeting a woman that I would have children with.

So a relationship? Yeah. I think you can get through just about anything in life if you have the right people around you. So relationships are crucial.

And the other and the flip side of that is, if there's someone in your life that isn't creating value, run the other way.

Well, I would push back on that because I would say, decide why you're in their life to begin with. Because there's people in my life that don't give value to me, but I serve them. So it's like, this is not an I scratch your back, you scratch mine situation. Of course not. Remember, Christ- But if somebody's negative, if somebody is negative in your life, If somebody's not an asset, if somebody's constantly being a bad influence, that's what I'm referring to, in your life, you have to cut those people loose. If it's impacting you, yeah, and you can't handle it. There's this illustration in the Bible. Sorry to keep going to the Bible, but there's like- Don't be sorry to go to the Bible.

That's why you're here. Okay.

You've seen yokes that go over oxen, the big wooden handcuffs that go on the backs of their necks, and they yoke two oxen together to pull for grain and for farming. You've seen that? Okay. There's this language that's used over and over again about not being unequally yoked.

That's right.

This idea like you're an ox and you're going this direction. But if you put somebody who's weaker than you and you yoke to them, you'll You'll have to do even more work and you can't go the same direction. You'll just start going in circles because you'll be stronger. That's right. But if you have another ox that's as strong as you, the weight is not double. That's why they say equally yoked Christians, marry Christians. Yeah. I think just in fact, relationships. There's people that you spend time with who are going the same direction as you. You're going to go faster and further with them. Maybe not faster, but you'll be further and stronger with them. They're going to keep you on the same direction. I'm all about building- And there's people that drag you down and pull you into patterns and circles. And you're like, here I go again with the same person, and I've already been through this before with them, and here it is. I think that's a cool illustration that whoever we yoke ourselves to is going to determine our direction and our strengths.

Okay, this is a tough one.

Give me the tough one. Oh, it's tough for me.

Suicide is tragically common now.

Yeah.

What do you say to a parent who has lost a child to that despair? Have you had that experience yet?

Yes.

Tell me about that.

Well, since I'm just sharing all the stuff with you, I don't know if I've ever talked about this publicly, but my grandmother committed suicide. My dad was greatly impacted by that at 12 years old.

You're lucky to be here. Parents, kids that have parents that kill themselves, kill themselves.

Yeah. Sometimes I wonder if the struggles I've had with depression and whatnot have come from some biochemical passing down. Sure. It's possible. But I'll be at the lobby in church on Sunday, and right before service is going to start, and someone will push me against the wall and say, Hey, my sister unalived herself. Is she in heaven or is she in hell? I get these questions all the time. There are some people that are more comfortable What do you tell them? My Catholic friends have a statement from the Pope. Basically, they have like, This means you've ended your life. This means you go to hell. They're comfortable saying that. But my authority really doesn't come from the Pope. I'm just looking at the Bible and the teachings of Jesus and saying, This is what I'm really confident in. Not that I would disagree with what the Pope says necessarily, but I'm not going to go, well, because he said so, I'm going to pass that on. I did a whole podcast episode on this because people would write these questions into us all the time. In the answer to your question, I don't see anywhere in scripture where God would hold somebody responsible for the last thing they did like that.

That doesn't line up with a father. I would never tell someone that this person... I have so many of these stories in my life. What do you tell him? I tell him God's just. I tell him I'm I'm trying to trust God all the time when I don't understand. That is exactly right.

Okay. The Bible talks about the body as a temple. How do you connect that to mental health and the dangers of putting poison like fentanyl or meth into your system?

Man, these questions.

I got smart people, pal.

Okay, so the Bible does say our body is a temple. I think a lot of times people look at the body as a shell and the spirit as the sacred thing.

That's how I look at it in the Quran.

So your spirit is sacred, but so is your body. You are two parts, your body and spirit. Even when Christ comes back after he's dead to his disciples, he's in a body. Remember? He's like, Put your finger in my hand. Put your hand in my side. He's in a body. I mean, it's a glorified body. But we don't want to treat our body like it's just some temporary shell that we can treat like garbage because the spirit is the real thing. Because Christ gave us- I always thought that, by the way.

All of us do. In treatment, we completely debunked that, and you're exactly right. I'm sorry, I interrupted. Go on.

If you think about it for 30 seconds, you go, you can't look at just physical things and say they're spiritual. I mean, say they're not spiritual, right? Sex is not just a physical thing. We know that's a spiritual thing. We know that. So it says in that same passage about the body being the temple, it says, your body is not your own. You were bought at a price. So honor God with your body. And the way I help people see that is when a kid, it's hard to be graphic, but he's taken advantage of by someone older, and it's a sexual sin or it's a sexual thing that happens to him. That jacks that kid up for the rest of his life.

Yes.

Because that wasn't just physical. No, of course. That passage says sexual stuff is the only thing that happens inside the body. That's why it's worse than anything else. It says that. What do you mean? It says sexual sin is the only sin inside of you, and everything else affects the outside of you. So he's saying that sexual sin actually is not just physical, it's spiritual. It hurts the person. So that's what I was saying. If a kid is molested, of a rape victim, she'll go take a shower. Let's say it's a woman, and she'll take a shower Again, she'll still feel dirty. She'll take a shower again. She'll still feel dirty, right?

It's my fault. I can't tell anybody. They're going to look at me differently.

It feels like it's inside. Yeah. It may have happened to her body, but it feels like it happened to her spirit. That's right. Because you can't really separate those two things. If you eat like crap today, how are you going to feel? Horrible. Right. That's a spiritual thing because you weren't taking care of your body, and your body is designed to work like that with your spirit.

That makes so much sense.

We got to be careful just saying one is more important than the other.

God gave you the body, so take care of it. That's how I look at it in my head.

But also God gave you his son's body.

And so that takes care of that.

Right. Okay.

I think place to end. What do you think? All right. See you next Tuesday.