00:04:46.100Before I met Jesus at 28, after that, all the Junction City was behind me. I went from just a low-down
00:04:56.880heathen to an ambassador, as though God were making his appeal to us. He's committed to us the message
00:05:06.220of reconciliation. So where he put me, brought me up out of that background. Now I'm an ambassador, a messenger for Jesus. So it's a wonderful thing.
00:05:20.000So a couple of weeks ago, Allie Beth, I was preaching at our local church here, and there was a big bus showed up, and it had about 40 high school girls on the bus. And they all get out. So I was like, hey. So I'll go back and meet them. And they were like, where are you guys from?
00:05:38.040We said, well, we came to Junction City, Arkansas for a high school basketball tournament. And so we just had to come down here and visit y'all's church.
00:05:48.200And so I thought about, Dad, the difference in when you were in Junction City. Now people are coming and saying, hey, we want to check you guys out spiritually, you know, find out what you're up to.
00:05:58.160I've often wondered what kind of, but, you know, my old buddy, he watched me for 12 years after I came to Jesus. 12 years later, at first he came up and said, hey, let's go up the road. I said, no, I'm not going anywhere with y'all anymore.
00:06:16.400I said, you're fellows who I ran with in the past. I said, you're looking for the old Phil Robertson. He died, you know, and was buried.
00:06:24.860I was speaking of my baptism. And this is a new one, the new one. No more drunkenness. So hit the road. So they all drove out, left.
00:06:34.160Well, he kind of kept up with me over a period of 12 years, called me up one night. I went to see him. And he said, guess what the doctor just told me? And I said, I have no idea.
00:06:46.100He said, the doctor said I have an aneurysm near my heart that could explode at any moment. So I'm hanging by a thread. I have to lose some weight before they do surgery.
00:06:56.520And this is the baseball coach at Junction City, right? And he was a biology teacher.
00:07:00.880And a valid atheist. And I said, well, you've been an atheist all your life. Are you having second thoughts about it?
00:07:07.560He said, I want to know what changed you that much. Because he was talking to me 12 years after I was converted.
00:07:15.060So I shared Jesus with him. I baptized him. And then about 30 to 50 days later, a month and a half, the aneurysm did explode. So he cut it pretty thin. But he did make it.
00:07:32.500Well, they called me up, asked me to do the funeral. And I said,
00:07:36.040Which you'd never done a funeral before.
00:07:37.260I said, I don't even own a suit. I said, I noticed most of them guys at funerals, they spiffed up.
00:07:41.680But I said, I've never got around to purchasing a suit. So I think he might have got somebody that's, they said, no, he requested you. I said, okay, I'll be there. So I go up there. It's a packed house, you know, and, and I told him his story, that I would see him again.
00:08:29.46072 or 73. So when we left that house, we, we moved, we still were in Junction City, sort of, but we moved up north right on the state line above it where, and we had a bar.
00:08:42.940And so dad went from being a school teacher to running this bar, which is kind of the heart of, of the, the worst days for us.
00:09:09.720Well, we have a lot of family. My whole, my dad's side of the family is all from Louisiana. My grandmother, we just buried her a couple of years ago, not too far from here. So, yep. A lot of connections.
00:09:18.800Well, you know, which is pretty neat. So out of this house that you were describing. So we, when we moved there, I was four, 1969. We were there about three years.
00:09:28.800And so from four to seven, that's sort of the year you start having memories. So like my idea of the school was right there. And I viewed it as a little small child. It's just this great wonderland because I had the school, the baseball field. There was a dump down there that I, you know, got to burn my feet a couple of times.
00:09:48.260But when I went back and looked at it, because I spoke up there a few years ago and it was this little tiny, I mean, it was so small, but, you know, in a child's mind, it was huge.
00:09:59.760So it was like, you know, kind of brought it into perspective that how much things had changed for me, although the area was still there.
00:10:06.260The house wasn't there anymore. So where the house used to sit is like a bus barn now.
00:10:10.980So they have like school buses and stuff there. So the old house is gone, which was my first place that I really remember living was in that Johnson City house, which is fascinating.
00:10:19.900So Allie's podcast is called Relatable and it's on Blaze TV.
00:10:25.120And also the book, the last time you were on here, we were talking about it was You're Not Enough and That's Okay.
00:10:29.280Have you done anything since then? Are you working on anything?
00:10:31.800I am working on another book, but it's in the very beginning stages. So what have I done since then? Well, I had another baby. So not a book, but very important.
00:10:43.500And so I've been busy with that and the podcast and the next book will come out probably fall of 2023. So we've got a bit of a ways to go.
00:10:52.420Excellent. Well, and dad. So you did an interview with dad, too, probably for one of his projects and you were pregnant.
00:11:07.660You didn't say anything. And I was like eight months pregnant. So it would have been OK.
00:11:11.620Yes. But I remember the story that he told me.
00:11:14.640Yeah. One of the sisters, you know, girl, I didn't know you were pregnant. She said, I'm not. And I said, OK.
00:11:21.860Last time you ever asked that question.
00:11:23.320This kid got me out in the parking lot. She said, you idiot.
00:11:25.740Don't ever ask anybody that. I learned my lesson on that one, you know.
00:11:31.500Well, so so I bet that to jump off here today, I wanted your book to me.
00:11:39.080It really exposed sort of our self-absorbed narcissistic culture.
00:11:46.660You know, I mean, I thought it was so good for that.
00:11:49.160And I look back. And so the last time we had you on, we were just a few months into the pandemic.
00:11:55.700So I thought I want to ask you, since you were here and we had a great discussion, what it over the course of the last year and a half, looking at covid, the response to it, sort of our culture and how that is.
00:12:08.800How how does that what have you seen over that year and a half as to what you wrote about in the book at our culture?
00:12:15.000Or is it better? Is it worse? What do you think?
00:12:18.180Something that I talk about in the book is that this idea that is fed to especially women, that you are enough, you're perfect the way that you are.
00:12:27.200You don't need to change anything about yourself. Everything that you want, you absolutely deserve and you'll get it if you just work hard enough.
00:12:33.080It's this very strange new age idea that really inside of you is like this perfect goddess.
00:12:38.040And if you can just do enough work, you'll finally be able to manifest her.
00:12:42.460And one of the questions that I posed in my book was, well, how is that going?
00:12:47.020Is that actually helping the mental health issues that a lot of young people say that they struggle with today?
00:12:52.680Is it helping the suicide rate? Is it helping people be more confident, more satisfied, more fulfilled?
00:12:57.620It doesn't look like it because those numbers, those statistics for our generation, millennials and Generation Z, aren't doing well.
00:13:04.400And yet we are the generations who have been told from birth that we are awesome, that we deserve a trophy no matter what, that life is all about us.
00:13:12.320We've had these devices in our hands for, you know, over a decade at this point that have made us feel like everything is about us.
00:13:20.300So if we are being told that everything is about us, that the world centers on us and that we're amazing, and yet we are the generation that's suffering more than previous generations with all of these issues of feeling unfulfilled and unsatisfied and desperate and purposeless, then maybe what we are being told and what we are being sold actually isn't helping us.
00:13:42.160And I think that has been demonstrated even more so over the past couple of years as we've seen a lot of young people struggle more than ever with feelings of purposelessness and loneliness.
00:13:52.360And I just keep hearing that the antidote to these things is just loving yourself more, is just thinking about yourself more, is just being more confident in yourself.
00:14:01.900And the entire premise of my book, and I believe this more strongly than ever, is that the self can't beat both the problem and the solution.
00:14:10.360If inside yourself you are finding these feelings of inadequacy and insufficiency and desperation and depression and anxiety and all that, you're not going to find the solution to those things in the same place that your problems are found.
00:14:23.760And so the book is really about how the gospel offers something infinitely and eternally better, that Christians aren't called to self-attention and self-obsession, but to self-denial.
00:14:34.860And that paradoxically, it doesn't make sense to our, you know, worldly, fleshly mind, but denying yourself, thinking less of yourself and thinking, really thinking of yourself less, is the key to the satisfaction and the fulfillment and the purpose that you're looking for and can really only be found outside of you in your Creator.
00:15:00.960Zach, Jill wrote her book, Shallow, which to me has some of the same ideas in it that she just described.
00:15:11.500Speak to that and just kind of how you guys, you know, try to stress that same thing with folks, especially younger people.
00:15:17.100Yeah, we were on our way back from a conference, a writer's conference in Nashville, and this was several years ago.
00:15:22.420I won't say the name of the author, but there was a big buzz about a particular author.
00:15:27.520And I read, so we listened to her book on the way back, and it was basically, the message of the book was exactly what she said, bootstrap yourself up, work hard enough, you know, live your best life.
00:15:44.720But as I'm listening to it, I'm thinking, you know, the problem here is that in the back of my mind, I know that I'm not enough.
00:15:54.840I mean, everybody really knows that in the end.
00:15:56.580So, you know, this idea that we're going to bootstrap ourselves up.
00:15:59.600And I think what Jill was speaking to in her book, same thing, is just like, we've got to get, like, we don't, like, I think the message that we're hearing in culture now is, is you're not that bad.
00:16:08.840You know, God loves you the way you are, you're not that bad, and the message of the gospel is that God sees you and says, you're not that bad, you're actually much, much worse than you think you are.
00:16:18.940And I affirm you there, I see you there while we were still sinners and enemies Christ died for us, Romans 5, and that's, I think that's where the gospel is so powerful, especially in the culture today where we are kind of under a new workspace system of righteousness.
00:16:34.180And, but I think it's just appealing to this inner honesty of, like, like you said, the pragmatic question is, how's it working out for you?
00:16:42.500You know, we're more miserable than ever, we're more isolated than ever, and I think COVID certainly exacerbated that.
00:16:48.180But, I mean, these elements were there, and I think the gospel does provide the only solution to the problem because the gospel is about intimacy.
00:16:57.760It's about restoring intimacy in us, but the only way we're going to be able to find intimacy is if we're known, and the only way that we're going to be known is if we let our depravity be seen, or at least admit that it's there, and then let God, like, say, I see you there, while you're in that place, you know, that's where I came for you, that's where I died for you.
00:17:59.180I mean, what happened where people went in and said, hey, this is something we need to do together, and then now, all of a sudden, you can't.
00:18:07.360Where did we go from the, I heard them talk about it here, there, what little news I get, but the me generation, what was meant by that?
00:21:37.360And, you know, I try to imagine, you know, this relationship, if you would call it, of father and son, that it's ontologically impossible for the son to manipulate the father.
00:22:43.660The fruit of the spirit that God gives us when we, by faith, come to it.
00:22:48.480The fruit you'll see coming forth from God's people, number one of them is love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, self-control.
00:23:08.640But it's a pretty tough sell in today's culture.
00:23:12.140They just really have not thought it through.
00:23:14.580So our job is to own them to the one who's the lover of mankind.
00:23:21.520So, Ali, don't you think, so you introduce something like a virus, and then if your culture is self-absorbed, quickly people begin to think, like, how can we manipulate this situation to gain power?
00:23:36.580So isn't that kind of what you saw at all levels of government and state government and even just individually with the Karens and the, you know, just the whole thing, right?
00:23:47.980I mean, it spun out of control quickly.
00:23:50.860There are so many different aspects to it.
00:23:52.440One, it was an election year, whatever Trump said, you know, Democrats were going to say the opposite.
00:24:00.740But I also saw, I think, this disagreement on what love actually is.
00:24:07.900And you heard one side saying, well, love your neighbor.
00:24:11.020Loving your neighbor means that you have to self-isolate, that you can't go to church in person, that you have to wear a mask, and you have to get the vaccine.
00:24:40.400What does it look like to actually love your neighbor as yourself?
00:24:44.040Is it wearing a cloth covering over your face?
00:24:47.540Because, you know, Anthony Fauci says so, does it mean having to watch a sermon online rather than congregating in person, as Scripture actually tells us to do?
00:25:23.520But I do think, to your point, and I can't speak to the motivations of everyone who kind of put out that line that in order to love your neighbor, you have to get a vaccine.
00:25:31.920But it did come across to me as a little bit more self-serving.
00:25:35.840That, look, now I have this physical manifestation of I'm loving.
00:25:39.900So it doesn't matter if you sit on your couch, you never give to charity, you never help someone, you're never kind.
00:25:44.380And as long as you just kind of have this what's called a virtue signal, I have this mask, I have my vaccine card, I can post about how terrible COVID is or whatever it is on social media, then I can check the box that I'm loving my neighbor.
00:25:57.680Without actually having to be loving in any other way, without actually having to deny yourself and be like Christ, you can just do the thing that you've said is, you know, the loving thing to do.
00:26:09.600And unfortunately, that was very divisive within the church.
00:26:13.520But like I said, it kind of highlighted a helpful disagreement, a fundamental disagreement between different subsets of Christians.
00:26:52.560I thought, I don't think that's really getting the message across.
00:26:55.800It's an opportunity for people, I think, to feel righteous, to feel virtuous without actually having to have any virtue, which is actually difficult to cultivate and grow.
00:27:07.460But for a generation that is averse to true sacrifice and self-denial, wow, what an opportunity to look righteous and to sound awesome and virtuous and selfless by just wearing a mask and scolding other people for not wearing a mask.
00:27:22.080That's a very easy way to kind of, you know, get your virtue points.
00:28:15.200And so it's not actually doing anything.
00:28:17.060So if you are someone who thinks that a mask is helping you not get COVID, then you don't want to sit by me on a plane because that's what I have.
00:28:24.680I never wore a mask and I never caught anything.
00:30:02.980I want to know what y'all think about that.
00:30:04.520I actually have that as my next question.
00:30:06.000And especially for children that have gone through this, because I don't know that all schools are clear now, most are, but even some still are being forced to wear a mask.
00:30:16.500So what's the long-term damage of that, you think, just as a culture, I mean, in terms of what Sad just mentioned?
00:30:23.260Well, I think for young kids, we're definitely going to see developmental delays.
00:30:50.720I see, you know, there are kids playing in parks in our neighborhood, and the kids have masks on, and the parents don't, so it's crazy.
00:30:57.780So I do think we're going to see developmental delays.
00:30:59.900I think we're probably going to see speech delays.
00:31:02.600But I also think that it just kind of creates a culture of distrust and division.
00:31:06.540In a time where division is one of our biggest problems, and we're talking about the importance of loving our neighbor, well, I mean, if you regard your child and you teach your child to regard other people primarily as a vector of a virus,
00:31:20.220and as safety, as the first priority in everything, you are not discipling your kids to be a self-denying Christian and following the Jesus that touched lepers, for sure.
00:31:32.300But also, I think it just creates a culture of fear in general, even outside of the church.
00:31:39.720I don't think that creates a strong, cohesive society.
00:31:42.860Yeah, I would argue, too, that I think on the right sometimes that we've taken this issue and we've turned it into kind of a political football as well.
00:31:52.940And I think we have to have the conversation going back to intimacy and what are the things that are in our culture that are blocking intimacy?
00:32:04.880And certainly, you know, me not being able to see a face is a blocking of intimacy.
00:32:09.700I remember when I first got out of college and I would jump on an airplane and really up until COVID, I'd always talk to the person next to me.
00:32:18.660And now, since COVID, I don't talk to anybody on an airplane because it's too much work.
00:32:25.680So everyone's just sitting there and nobody's communicating.
00:32:28.580And then we wonder why Karen blows her top or whatever, and everyone's so angry or we're not connecting.
00:32:36.620I think that there was a direct correlation with a lot of the racial problems that we've had in the church as well.
00:32:42.980That all manifested and came out after COVID because we weren't meeting together.
00:32:47.860Like the church that you're at, that Jill and I were at for a long time, is probably 50% African-American.
00:32:53.860And so we were coming together on Sunday morning and we may have had, there may have been cultural differences in the body and all that, but we were coming together as the body of Christ.
00:33:04.880We got to do life together and figure this out.
00:33:06.480And even, I mean, there's Democrats in that church that we love and that we're, and we differ on things, but man, we're coming together.
00:33:12.440And then when COVID happens, it just isolates everybody.
00:33:14.980And then we're behind a screen and now I don't have to do life with you.
00:33:19.800Well, that's a precursor for division and fights because I don't have to do life with you anymore.
00:33:24.960And I think it's part of kind of this idea of like, like even like the metaverse and everything's going moving towards isolating people, keeping them in their home.
00:33:35.580And I think the church has to come in at this point and we have to speak a message of not just redemption, but also restoration that we can restore back local communities and cultures and things of this sort.
00:33:47.600But, and to me, I think that's why the local church and I think God's moving in like small churches again, which is really cool.
00:33:53.960You know, like, it's like God's moving these little small communities and he's like, and you see it all over the country, all over the world right now.
00:34:05.180And so I, I speak at a lot of events around the country and it's so evident that people want to be together, you know, cause I mean the enthusiasm level for places I've been, and I've been to a lot of, you know,
00:34:17.700quote unquote blue states that have been under super strict lockdowns more than we have here or you have in Texas.
00:34:24.040And, you know, they're just like, we can't wait to get together.
00:34:27.160So it's just like these events are just bursting at the seams, you know, because it is, it's, it's been able to look at faces again and have conversations and being able to hear, you know, what people are saying and to be able to see that, I think, which is powerful.
00:34:39.780So, so Allie, it's, you know, I follow you on social media and it's very evident that you're pro-God, pro-life, pro-God's order when it comes to gender and, you know, important things that we share with you.
00:34:52.880What do you see as sort of the greatest threats to, to Christianity, to conservative, to traditional, you know, life in America?
00:35:03.100What kind of, what do you see in, in terms of your discussions you're having and, you know, with the people you have on your podcast?
00:35:09.760Well, I think my greatest concern is actually within the church and people who profess to be Christian teachers compromising on things that have to do with the creation order, the created order.
00:35:22.960I think really the big one is sexuality.
00:35:24.840You see that kind of compromise first because it's personal.
00:35:28.780People know someone who, you know, is gay or says that they are the opposite gender.
00:35:33.540And because we don't want to offend, no one wants to offend, no one wants to, you know, be accused of being hateful or something.
00:35:41.220That's typically, I think, the first thing that people compromise on, not to mention just the, the huge influence that the culture has on people.
00:35:51.700And the pressure that young people feel, especially to be accepting of that.
00:35:55.920I mean, it's considered not just bigoted and hateful, but you're almost like a social pariah if you don't accept this ridiculous, you know, maxim that trans women are women or whatever it is.
00:36:06.580And I see compromise in that within the church.
00:36:10.720You know, people trying to say that that's not really what God meant in Genesis 1 and that we're just supposed to love.
00:36:18.880Kind of going back to our earlier conversation about what actually love is, I still see that as a big fault line, as a big dividing line.
00:36:26.440People who say that love is really just this superficial affirmation of people just being nice to people, just staying and doing what the culture wants you to say and do.
00:36:38.480And you mentioned 1 John 4, 8, that God is love.
00:36:42.700And something that I like to remind my audience is that we can't out love God.
00:36:47.920And that's kind of what you see from some people who say, well, it's actually more loving to say that God did not create us male and female, that the definition of marriage is not between a man and a woman.
00:36:57.200It's actually more loving to not say that to simply affirm people.
00:37:00.660And so what they're essentially saying is that they have a higher standard of love than the God who says he is love.
00:37:07.240But that's impossible because we're not love, but God is love.
00:37:10.620So everything that God says is good and right and true or bad or wrong and a lie.
00:37:17.760So the most loving thing that we can do, and this is something I definitely want to emphasize to women who I think are most tempted in this way of just being like,
00:37:26.580I don't want to be seen as hateful, the most loving thing that we can do is agree with God.
00:37:34.320Yes, the world calls it controversial to say that God made us male and female or that abortion is wrong because God made us in his image.
00:37:43.040But these are not political issues for the Christian.
00:37:45.400They're not culture war issues for the Christian.
00:37:47.780These are pre-political, pre-cultural, pre-societal issues for the Christian.
00:37:53.000They're biblical issues that have become cultural and political.
00:37:56.820And so it is the most loving thing I can do to agree with the God who is love about these so-called controversial culture war issues.
00:38:04.880And so, again, it goes back to how we define love.
00:38:08.900We define love by the God who is love and his standards and his law and what he says is right and wrong and good and bad, truth and a lie.
00:38:18.280That, I think, maybe that's always been the essential problem within Christianity.
00:38:21.760I mean, it kind of goes back to the garden.
00:38:26.400I still think that's the question that women and probably men, too, are being asked.
00:38:30.780Did God really say that this is the definition of marriage or whatever it is?
00:38:35.640And so, yeah, I think that's the issue, especially among young women today is caving to the culture when it comes to superficial worldly definitions of love.
00:38:45.460I think it's a fear of being marginalized.
00:38:50.680I mean, just confession, I mean, I fear that in my own life is like, okay, I don't want to be marginalized or cast into this particular category.
00:38:57.340And I think that a lot of people are pushing back on terms like culture war.
00:39:03.100Some of it, I mean, honestly, some of it, I'm like, I get a part of what they're saying.
00:39:08.260You know, like we have, I think the church has taken, there's a segment of the church, and I've been guilty of this, of taking these things that you're talking about and turning them into issues and into political issues as opposed to, you know, we're really talking about people.
00:39:24.420And we're talking about God's design, and I think we've kind of divorced that, and I think it's paved the way a lot of the kind of the, if you want to use the term like the woke left in the church, I think a lot of that is a reaction to hyper-nationalistic tendencies on the right.
00:39:41.220Although, you know, we can't avoid to take pride in our country.
00:39:44.100I don't think there's anything wrong with that.
00:39:45.480But I think when we divorce that and that becomes primary over who God is and our allegiance to his kingdom, I think it paves the way for this.
00:40:08.420Yes, and I thought he did such a great job at like detailing like how we got here and how we got to this place where even sexuality, for example, how did we get to a place where this is our identity now?
00:40:36.120Yeah, it's something I talk about in my book that when you – I think every problem that we have goes back to godlessness.
00:40:43.000When you exchange the God of Scripture for the God of self, you worship yourself.
00:40:47.720You lay anything on the altar of yourself, including truth, including other people's interests or needs.
00:40:55.300You are completely self-serving in the same way that when you worship anything, you are going to serve that thing.
00:41:00.900So when you exchange the God of Scripture for the God of self, something that I talk about in the book is that you start to take on two main values.
00:41:11.380And I think that your primary values become autonomy and authenticity.
00:41:18.180Now, autonomy and authenticity are not bad in themselves.
00:41:21.040But when they become primary, when they are not submitted to God's law, then they just become selfishness.
00:41:28.100Then you start to find your identity and your purpose inside yourself.
00:41:31.120So autonomy, having complete control over everything you do, authenticity, just being yourself.
00:41:36.980When those are your two main values, well, I just want to be myself and do what I want to do and I control my body, you get all kinds of immorality.
00:42:32.160And the essential message of it was built kind of off this, like a Francis Schaeffer concept of conservative humanism is still humanism.
00:42:41.540Like I think he said it, the problem is not conservative or liberal.
00:42:46.920Humanism doesn't matter the variation or the coloration of it.
00:42:49.540It's the humanism that when we're getting the thing from within us as opposed to appealing to the triune God.
00:42:57.760You know, I think that's – and I think the church has – particularly when we talk about politics, man, we're not – conservative politics, if we're being honest, we have – it's bankrupt because it's not founded on the God who is there.
00:43:13.880It's not founded on a non-arbitrary anchor to reality, the Imago Dei, what the Declaration of Independence says, that rights come from God.
00:43:22.120That's not the argument that people are making anymore.
00:43:25.320That is what conservatism is supposed to be.
00:43:27.380But I agree it's kind of gotten detached from that.
00:43:29.840It's gotten – and so I think that the reason why we're losing culturally is because I have a hard time carrying the water for this current political movement on the right because I'm like, that's not of God.
00:43:44.340Like, for example, like, we're not making the case for liberty based on the God who is there, and we're going to get behind – or I'll give you an example.
00:43:54.100Like, we're going to – like, the bumper stickers, I see these stickers on the gas tanks now, and it's Biden pointing to the gas number.
00:44:37.380So somewhere, the reality is right in front of you, and you say, it's going to take something bigger than governments to remove my sin and the escape from Satan, sin, guilt, law, put you under grace.
00:44:57.120The grave, you say, only God can do that.
00:45:00.480So that's where the governments are giving you the impression that they can fix all of your problems.
00:45:09.780That's two of them that they can't touch.
00:46:06.700And when he read the Constitution, he said, this Constitution was written for a moral and religious people.
00:46:12.260It is wholly inadequate for any other.
00:46:15.620Meaning, if the people that are underneath and live by the Constitution, once you lose your religion and your faith in God, this is not going to work out for you.
00:46:31.120It's really, to Allie's point, that self-discipline then becomes from something other than government.
00:47:44.100Yeah, and I just mentioned that, and he got up there on the mic, and he said, the first thing I want you folks to know, and it's really true,
00:47:51.080he said, I got to thinking about it, he said, I don't tell them I love them.
00:47:55.900He said, well, this dude just walked up here, old Robinson, and he said, I'm going to tell every one of you, I do love you.
00:48:03.900You had a response right there to your first sermon.
00:48:07.140Well, I thought about that in Romans, because Zach, in the movie we talked, Rome was one of the civilizations we talked about.
00:48:13.680So, Buma and Paul said in Romans 1, when you exchange the glory of God for, and then he went into what they were doing,
00:48:21.880but you can just draw a blank there and put anything in the blank.
00:48:25.160Anytime you exchange the glory of God for whatever it is that's currently the hot rage in your culture, then you're going to have problems.
00:48:33.240That's what happened to everyone since then, and it's what we're seeing in America.
00:48:36.140Because they did not think it worthwhile to retain the knowledge of God, he, God, gave them over to a depraved mind to do what ought not to be done.
00:48:52.740And you look at that, and every empire you see that rise and fall, that's why they all fall.
00:49:00.280Well, it scares me when I look at our country and I say, whew, 75 years of watching it, I'm like, I've never seen it like this, ever.
00:49:25.760We're going to have, we have what we call an unashamed, an overtime segment, which, by the way, blazetv.com slash unashamed is how you subscribe to get this extra content.
00:49:37.060And on there, I wanted to hear about your personal, we didn't have time to get to it on the regular podcast, your own personal spiritual journey.
00:49:43.640So, we want to explore that a little bit.
00:49:44.940So, come on over if you hadn't already signed up to Blaze TV and do that now.
00:49:51.020Thanks for listening to the Unashamed podcast.