SET APART
A podcast that combines Eastern and Western teaching/story from the scriptures to regain our WHY in God. The purpose of this show is to break down the severe disconnect in today's Church vs how God has called for this life to be lived.. We do this through the scriptures and our guest's stories with each episode.
The American Church teaches an extremely one sided evident driven view of the scriptures. In that danger you lose the poetry and art of story telling to where there is only half truths left. No wonder people are walking away from Christianity by the masses.
These eastern authors intended much more for our hearts with their writings that God inspired. Watch as these ancient truths give you a new/refreshing perspective that will change the way you live. Getting back to the Garden.
SET APART
Ep.5: America's Gospel
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How do you live in the midst of enemy territory? Tyler and Will begin the gospel of Mark to share how the believer can deliver kingdom while living in Empire. Taking on the DNA of christ while shedding the identity of this fractured world.
And we're back. Tyler and Will, Will and Tyler Set Apart podcast. Fun fact of the day. Do you know that sloths can hold their breath underwater for up to forty minutes? Which is up to ten and even maybe twenty-five minutes longer than dolphins. How are we? I think I've said subdude every single time for this podcast.
SPEAKER_00Creatures of habit, and we have to welcome it. Sometimes.
SPEAKER_01Dude, that honestly that blew my mind that they can hold their breath longer than dolphins. You didn't you didn't believe me. I didn't believe you. I had to fact-check you. Yeah, fact-check the fact. And I and what I found out was it might have been longer than the original fact it said. The original said 30 minutes, and then I looked it up and it said 15. How insane is that?
SPEAKER_00A literal creature that lives in the water. Unreal. Unreal. Sloths. They just slow down their heart rate even slower. Yeah. And they just exist.
SPEAKER_01That's kind of sounds familiar.
SPEAKER_00Take a nap. That's right. That's right. I think I know one or two of those. Yes. So it's good to be back. Another episode set apart. Trying to be very consistent with this. Um, recognize that there is a lot of uh what is it? Uh way out there where I'm even I hear a lot of people even say I listen to podcasts more of the music. And so yeah, we're like, okay, well, we can do this. And the continued adventure of accurate spiritual formation, right? Uh are you are you sure about this whole thing with God? Are you do do you if if you you're like, yeah, of course. Well, I don't I don't know about that. Uh, because look around, look how it's going. It's not going very well. It's it's just kind of mundane and boring and very predictable. And God's just the opposite of that. So, yeah, with everything around and everything going on, it just doesn't have to be as confusing as it is. There's a lot more answers to things than than we realize. And I think people know that. And the reason why uh we don't want answers is because it's it's it's more addicting to stay in the unknown. Um, yeah. So really excited about this because we're jumping in the book of Mark today.
SPEAKER_01Or stay in this very small corner of the known. Yeah. It's interesting you said that people listen to podcasts more than music, because I definitely do. I definitely listen to YouTube more than music all the time, all day, listening to YouTube.
SPEAKER_00I don't. I know. I do not. I am music, and every time I get in your car, it's music.
SPEAKER_01It's always music.
SPEAKER_00Has to be. Um I get it. I I yeah, music's great. And podcasts, I'm just wondering how long podcasts will last.
SPEAKER_01There's so you that we're gonna do a fun fact about how many podcasts there are at some point.
SPEAKER_00Though there's so many. Yeah.
SPEAKER_01And there's only I have no idea how many there are, but there's a lot.
SPEAKER_00We gave the stat at the very beginning uh one point, only one point anywhere, one point three to one point nine percent of podcasts make it past episode 21. 21, 21 episodes, and this is our fifth episode. Hey, we're gonna see more to go. Yes.
SPEAKER_01Um then do we get to 22 and then we stop it just just to get above the threshold. Become a statistic.
SPEAKER_00That's my goal.
SPEAKER_01Hey, we're raising the average, man.
SPEAKER_00I just want to be like everybody else.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, right.
SPEAKER_00That's my goal.
SPEAKER_01Dude, I'm really excited to go into Mark today.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, it's gonna be it's very good. The the book of Mark, um, and again, why are we going to the book of Mark? Uh, multiple reasons. And we're gonna go over the reasons. A big reason is there is such an obsession with the New Testament and with the uh uh in the West. Uh, and and when I say the West, and when Will says the West, we're we're mainly talking about America. Why can't we talk about America? This is our home. And I feel like there is a massive, massive false spirituality that's called Christianity that is over our country. And I don't I don't believe that God has partnered with our country one time. And uh partnered meaning laying his expectations on us and and and giving us the favor and watching it all grow um in this alignment and partnership with him. And that is possible, by the way. That's what he's been looking for since the creation of the earth. Not just the not just since the empty tomb and Jesus defeating death with death, but since the creation of everything. He's wanted a partnership to to do all this together. And America has not had a single day of partnership. And my fear is that he will wait for America to pass away for another country, another generation who will look at him and say, You are God. You are everything that I want and everything that I need. I I my contentment is with you. I I know when to not want anymore. My desire and my delight and my joy and my happiness is you. And so um we we've said the line that American Christians have made Jesus their savior, but Paul their Lord. And and you know, they have. And another big reason is why we're go, we would love to do we're gonna do an old testament book after the book of Mark, but uh we feel like to get more buy-in from people, we have to do a New Testament book that we could only do three chapters of Genesis and like all right, hurry up to the idolization part because people need the New Testament. Yeah, and I was I was like that. I'm still in ways like that. The New Testament is beautiful, but it's being treated as this anti and up books after the Old Testament, like it's this iOS version that's being uh uh updated, and that's just so that that is why we have stagnant Christianity, and that's why the bar of salvation is so low, I believe, on getting into heaven. And so the book of Mark is even it is a you know, each book of the Bible has its own agenda, and especially the four gospels. Uh, the book of Matthew is a Jew writing to Jews about Jesus. The book of Mark is about a Jew writing to Empire, specifically in his time, Rome, and in our time, America. And and then you have the book of Luke, who is a Greek, who writes more linear, more volume-like, kind of puts everything in there. Uh, and then the book of John is a Jew writing to Gentiles, the grafted in, the one, the ones who are wanting to know what holds all of this together. What is the in-between of the in-between of the in-between, the substance within the substance within the substance? And John is saying that's Jesus. And what's kind of funny about the structure of Mark is majority of people, if they go to a gospel, it's the gospel of Mark because why? It's the shortest, it's the shortest, it's the quickest. And it is it is the quickest. And and the reason why Mark has 16 chapters is because of he wrote he wrote it the shortest because he knew who he was writing to. And like that's kind of that's it's you gotta you gotta kind of see that as not just oh, he meets them in their place. Well, okay, sure, yes, take that. But also, I kind of take that as a jab. Like, hey, I have to write fast for you because you don't know how to sit and wrestle and adventure and journey. You need the three-point sermons, the seven ways how to do this. Just give me the routine, just give me the workout, just give me the how many weeks is this gonna take. And and that has only gotten us in a horrible relationship with contentment, a horrible relationship uh uh with how to be a human in this world, and just oh my goodness, how easy it is just to become an animal and not know when. And we think we do know when. And and no one realizes how much they're trying to convince themselves on that they're the relationship with Jesus. They're trying to convince themselves that they're okay within it. Like you that shouldn't be happening, everybody. That shouldn't be happening. You've been a believer now, Hebrews 5, uh, at the beginning of 5. You've been uh 5.11, you've been a believer now for so long that you should be teaching this, but now you need the food taken away and you need milk. And so Mark understands who he's writing to, and the amount of times he's having to say immediately, immediately, and immediately Jesus was doing this, and immediately Jesus was doing that. Even within the first chapter, you have like one year going through. And I don't want to be known as a human like that. I want to be known as if someone's coming to me to tell me anything, whether it's a good or bad thing, or a struggle, or I don't know, any anything, you name the subject. I want them to be able to be like, okay, Tyler's gonna be able to sit with me. And I don't have to worry about I'm gonna be able to give him my agenda, give him my goals, give him what I'm hoping, give them this, because Mark's school is a new king, new kingdom, versus the empire that's running the world. And today's empire is America. There's so many empires that are fighting each other right now, but let's just be real. We and and it's the empire, and it's the enemy versus the kingdom, and and that's what Mark is getting at. There, the the empire is the enemy. If you run by the DNA of the empire, then you're running by the DNA of the enemy. And what's really hard, and Mark does kind of shed light to this, is when you when your empire is your home.
SPEAKER_01Yeah. And my every day in my in my Kentucky home, my old Kentucky home.
SPEAKER_00Well, and now our Nashville home. Yeah. Like everywhere we drive, everywhere, this is Empire. Yeah, everyone wakes up 8 a.m. 7 a.m. 8 a.m. 9 a.m. That's when your value within this empire starts. How well did you do today? How many breaks did you produce? How much money did you stack? How many clicks did you get on that ad? How much did you how many likes did you get on that post? What how much how much engagement? How many people did you show up to that service? How much, how much, how much, how much, how much, how much? I mean, it's uh it is bled into I I went to a youth group service um weeks ago and to baptize a player of mine, because I coach high school basketball, and I went to his youth group and they were advertising a trip to Dollywood. And you could get a free trip to Dollywood if you could memorize whoever can memorize the most verses out of the New Testament. And I'm just like, you're we're we're now at this at the point where we're how we're pouring into the next ones to take over, the next generation is to incentivize them to get into the word. To Dollywood of all places, Hillbilly, Vegas, Hillbilly, Christian Vegas, same as freaking Branson.
SPEAKER_01Silver Dollar City. Yeah, don't forget uh Pigeon Forge.
SPEAKER_00I don't care about any of it. So I, you know, there's just an element to why Bark feels like he has to shorten the book. And what do you want to be known as? Like you want to be known as someone as someone that is short attention span? Like everyone talks about like my mom, like everyone with this bad my you know, ex-friends, ex-partners on a lot of stuff, like you know, kind of this weird badge of honor of ADHD. It's it's a weird thing, man. And it's the it was happening, happening even back then. But the empire disguises that as well, we just it's efficiency, it's getting things done quicker. Well, how's that going? Because a lot of the infrastructure we know within our country, how many potholes you run over, Will? Too many. You know, they're talking about legalizing weed in Nashville to fill the and use the money to get it legalized, incentivize it by it's called pot for potholes, and using the pot money to to fill the potholes in. I'm like, listen, whatever saves my tires, because but you know what? That's what happens, right? When you get how fast we we raised up America, now look, no one wants to be a part of this American dream anymore. Everyone's questioning it, thankfully, but they're just inventing a new weird kind of you know self-driven dream that's a self-empire. That's gonna be the scariest empire that's being built, the foundation of it's being built right now because no one wants to be a part of the global empires anymore. So the book of Mark is a Jew writing to Empire and how to live within the empire, very similar to Jeremiah, the prophet, the prophet of tears, saying, Hey, now's not really a time to um yell at God and all this kind of stuff, and and try to question him on saying why, why, why. And now is the time to build homes and to bring kingdom because we know what to do, we know why, we know how we got here. And for us in 2026 today, the tomb is empty. So we should know what what how to live within this empire. Okay. Anyways. I love it. Yeah, so we're not gonna read all of Mark, uh, each of these chapters, but we're gonna read a section out of the chapters to attack uh spiritual discipleship on how it's going today. And we again we pick this book because of the agenda of Mark. We don't harmonize the gospels, we don't synchronize the gospels. That's taking away, that's not letting the text be the context. That's just trying to. I'm just gonna try to let the line by line and try to expository my way through this thing and hopefully I feel something out of it. Yeah, you don't gotta do that.
SPEAKER_01It also makes it also makes people and us feel better because oh, it's it uh it lines up, so there's more evidence for it.
SPEAKER_00It's just an ad that's a reflection addictive to self. It's an addiction to self.
SPEAKER_01And yeah, an addiction to other people's affirmation.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, and you just don't want to be that. You want to be known as someone who is true to God and true to yourself, not fear of man and addicted to approve human approval. Well, I'm 98% in with God, but it's that last two percent because man, I really see Susie and and Joe, and I really want their I want their approval because why? It's because you can see them. That's why people are addicted to the gift of tongues, gifting the spiritual gift of tongues. It's because you can hear it, you can see it. And Paul calls it the least of all the gifts. Be done with it. Okay, so again, only doing one chapter, obviously an episode, but only a section of each chapter. But you y'all need to be reading these chapters, and they're very quick. I mean, come on, he just talked about the quickness of it. Okay, so you might as well be this is Mark writing to America, but then at the at this time, it's it's Empire.
SPEAKER_01Mark for Mark 1, 14 through 20, man. Now, after John was arrested, John the Baptist, Jesus came into Galilee, proclaiming the gospel of God and saying, The time is fulfilled, and the kingdom of God is at hand. Repent and believe in the gospel. Passing alongside passing alongside the Sea of Galilee, he saw Simon and Andrew, the brother of Simon, casting a net into the sea, for they were fishermen. And Jesus said to them, Follow me, and I will make you become fishers of men. And immediately they left their nets and followed him. And going on a little farther, he saw John James, the son the son of Zebedee, and John his brother, who were in the boat mending the nets. And immediately, and immediately, he called them, and they left their father Zebedee in the boat with the hired servants and followed him. So many immediately. So many immediately. Sorry, I had laughed a little bit because I was like, I was laughed because I was as I was reading, I was like, we have skipped, I feel like we've skipped so much and just gone straight to it.
SPEAKER_00Because if you go to Matthew, the Jew writing to Jews, he starts with the genealogy because he know he knows who he's writing to. You always start with the genealogy, and genealogy makes the Hebrew faith of people ball because your name is your career, your name is your destiny. Anyways, so with this, he's having to like fly through things because he's afraid of your boredom. That's what I'm afraid of, actually, as I'm even talking right now. My monologuing too much. Is people gonna listen? What are the downloads gonna be? I'm like, what are you getting caught up in, Tyler? Who cares? Who cares? And so we do this with joy so that people can have a further, closer relationship with God in the garden. Um, and so yeah, you have right here at the very beginning with uh Mark 14, now after John was arrested, and so John's now gone, and he and so here, and what was John saying? John was proclaiming way before Jesus was coming onto the scene, and we know the the contextual relationship between James and or sorry, John and Jesus is they are cousins, they are blood, right? And and there is a more and more evidence, and this is this being one of them, is Jesus was the disciple of John, because Jesus chose, even though being fully man and fully God, to do it a fully man way as a baby, as a as a child, as a teenager, as a young adult, and and in that process, you to become a rabbi, you have to learn under another rabbi. And in one of the biggest evidence that we see with John and Jesus in this format is we see Jesus repeating John's sermon. And that is the number one uh evidence of a disciple and a rabbi is you when your rabbi leaves, and it is time for you to become a rabbi and do your own mission. You the very first message that you give is your rabbi's first message, and John's first message was repent, for the kingdom of God is here. And what's Jesus say right here as John leaves? The time is fulfilled, Jesus says. And the kingdom of God is at hand. Repent and believe in the gospel. The same exact thing that John's message was. And so, what do you do when your rabbi leaves and what what do you say? When you become a rabbi and you do your first sermon, you do his first sermon. Yeah, and so what an unb it just magnifies the atonement of Jesus that he could easily not do any of that. No one's asking him to do that, no one's asking him to follow these rules. Everyone's actually, uh kind of in a Western sense, to be doing everything that he's doing because he's God. But he's not. If you get the right hand of the piano along with the left hand, play both hands with the Bible, you will see how much Jesus is not doing it as a God, and he's doing it fully man. It's unbelievable. And it magnifies the atonement of the cross in that he chose to do it this way when he easily didn't have to. Like, if that doesn't stir your affection, that's a problem. Because what I there's probably a million other things that aren't stirring your affection. So, so there's a big point right there. That's that's one of the biggest things is I want to give credit to John a little bit because he is Elijah reincarnated. Jesus saying that in Matthew 12, right? When when John's disciples come to him, being like, hey, why haven't we gone home yet? And thinking that end times means that the world has to get worse before we go to heaven. But Jesus was like, No, no, no, no, no. I know John is confused while he's in prison, but you got to tell. My cousin and rabbi that he got his end times wrong because the world's getting better. And how did he say that? The lame we're walking, right? Yeah. Lame we're walking. He quotes Isaiah, the blind are seeing, the deaf are hearing.
SPEAKER_01And the prisoners are well, he skips that part.
SPEAKER_00He gives he skips that part because John's in prison and he's not going to come rescue John. So the disciples going back and telling John that. John's being revealed how this is all going to be played out. And he doesn't shake the bars and try to, you know, what's that show? Prison Escape? What's the with the brother? I don't know. He tries to dig him. Shawshank Redemption, but it's that show too where he tattoos all the prison on his body on how to escape it. It's on Fox. It's really, it's crazy. Prison break. Yeah. Prison break. Unbelievable show. He tattoos the full plan to escape out of the prison because he gets his brother out of prison. And he gets in prison on purpose to get his brother, brother out. You know who's not doing that? John. He goes and sits back in prison and gladly goes and gets his head cut off. Why? Because he's not trying to have more of a love affair with this world. He's done. If you're not already done with this world, and yes, you can still want to love and raise a family and all this stuff while being done with this world at the same time. Because this isn't your home. This empire, there's nothing for you. There's nothing for you in this empire. And this is one of the biggest things that Jesus is trying to get you to us to be right here. And Mark trying to get the Romans. Hey, say sorry. Repent. Wake up to this life. Wake up to who you meant to be. Because there is nothing that this American dream can give you. But everything that my father's dream that's always been inside you. But you must get the veil off of you. So Mark's saying there's a new king here. And Jesus saying, I am him, a new kingdom versus this empire. Let go of the empire. All right, let's keep going.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, what's interesting about well, first off, we got to the disciples so fast. I apologize for laughing while I was reading, but wow. But it's interesting that the that they called uh Simon and Andrew. Um, and then there the father wasn't mentioned. Uh, but for some reason for James and John, um the father Zebedee was mentioned.
SPEAKER_00Right.
SPEAKER_01Because they were in the boat. Right. It says in the boat with the hired servants and followed him.
SPEAKER_00And so what Will's beautifully doing is he's thinking Bible. Even with he's he's asking better questions. Because every writer of the book, uh of this whole book of the Bible, all six six books, whatever you're seeing, there's more. Whatever you're seeing, there's more, everybody. So you must ask questions. Can't just read this in a linear fashion and expect depthfulness to be showing up in your life. No, no, no, no, no, no. So asking that beautiful question, yeah, that has to do with the ages that they're at. Right? And has to do with the very intimate fact of what's happened to James and John's father. And James and John and Peter, or I'm sorry, Simon and Andrew. So Simon and Andrew uh are not with their dad, right? Because they are old enough. They are bar misfudd. They're older than 13. At this time, they're probably around 16 to 17 years old. So you're able to be doing your career at this point. You're mature enough, you're a man enough to be doing this. You need to be doing this, especially with the societal way that how things were set up. The same thing with here in our in our um empire. Uh and then when John and James were fishing with their father, it's because they're around 11 and 12, about to be the bar mitzvah age of kind of the accountability age. And also, why was their dad fishing? Well, with context of this whole thing, in that time in that culture, everybody, all boys growing up wanted to be a part of the church, wanted to be a pastor and work for God, and wanted to live for Torah. And but what got what happened for so long now, thousands of years, humans have developed this uh we see that you this kind of status way of you're in, but you're not in, and kind of this, uh, we see that you love God and you know the Bible really well, but how how where you come from in the lack of money, and who your parents are and who your family is, and how you kind of are and how you look, it's a little to what the book of Matthew calls a mumser. And that's a Hebrew word for outcast, bastard, illegitimate. And when you are told that, which you were you are told that at some point in your life, what when you are told that legally you have to go do your father's trade. So when you are rejected, when you are rejected, rejected, you have to go find something else to do. And that became a generational thing. And so kids started assuming at a young age rejection. Set on by who? The people supposedly supposed to be helping you with your spiritual life. If that is not the utterness of today, but it's just being hidden. You tell me what pastor knows they're their smallest owner. You tell me what pastor um doesn't have a more lingering, um, more affectionate relationship with the more cool people of his or her church. There's all the tribalism is at its all-time high.
SPEAKER_01I see that all the time. I remember going to an event, one of the, I remember going to an event one of the members of the church had, and it was a very highbrow event. It was a very artsy event. And it and then the the pastor showed up of the church that I was going to at the time, uh, which I thought was cool at the time. And then I started realizing, oh, I'm going to all these other events from all these other members of the community, and I don't see them there. It's very strange. It was just very strange for me.
SPEAKER_00It was a very eye-opening moment when I'm starting to go, oh, there's a churches run events uh uh for and only certain people who make a certain amount of money, which is what you're talking about, uh uh it make and then when the church realizes that you don't give a certain amount, one because you apparently you ain't really like that to them, to them, to them, not to God, not to anything. You're then not invited to that same event next year. Every I I don't know of what churches aren't doing that in some fashion. With golf outings, with private dinners, with private things. You you know what it sounds like? A startup business asking for seed money all the time. Continue to be this investor. That's what all this has happened. These 501c3s are are just little startup companies that's now turned into empires, little individual empires that has a CEO, has a brand, has a brand, has all this stuff, right? And here's what's tripped out about the the these um once again, these disciples that Jesus called. Did we read that by the way? Have we read that yet? What? The who Jesus calls? So so, real quick, before we get into this, passing along the side of the Sea of Galilee, he saw Simon and Andrew, the brother Simon casting that into the sea. We read this, right? Yeah, we did. Right? Okay. So with this, right? So they're working at what age? 16, 16, 17, maybe, right?
SPEAKER_01Bar Misfit age.
SPEAKER_00Bar Misfit age. He's calling them to do what? A very mature thing. These aren't chosen, does a very poor job, the show of if you haven't seen Chosen, it's this whole thing. It makes it seem like there's it's a bunch of 30-year-olds falling around Jesus. No, no, no, no, no, no, no, everybody. He is calling teenagers. There is a maturity in the Middle East, even to this day, that makes us 30-something year olds, late 20-year-olds, our friends' group, kind of the men, look like boys who can shave. Like we're just now getting what they are fluidly flowing into. Spiritually, physically, work-wise, all this kind of stuff. And so that is a real lack of sense of urgency that we don't have today in um American Christianity. We we just don't have it. We don't have, we don't have that recognition that Jesus was calling teenagers. He called teenagers. Why? And I tell this because I coach high school basketball and I'm at I'm out of high school a ton. And I'm telling this to them. I'm like, come on, y'all. Some of you guys, like you juniors, seniors, got to get this now and join in the partnership. Because something happens at the age of 22, 23, right at the end of college. This crustiness starts to form upon the adult. One, because we think we know, two, because we think we're America, in the sense of, well, what else is there to know backwards of us? We're we're the inventors. No, that's your quickness, that's your fast food culture. That's you getting frustrated with uh the text not going through and letting it go to space or the bottom of the sea. Give it some time. That's Mark making fun of you and being like, uh, I do want to write to the Empire, but I gotta make it short. Because you can't handle depth. You can't handle a wrestling match. It's gonna take too long for you. Can Jesus call you? Would you have recognized the call? Were you too old and cresty now?
SPEAKER_02Uh-oh. How do you help people recognize that?
SPEAKER_00I mean, you you have to be transparently honest with yourself on is this you? Have I been living a mundane, empired way life and disguising it as Christianity, disguising it as a partnership with God? And when I'm talking about a partnership with God, once again, I'm saying that he's able to take expectations from his agenda and be like, here you go individually. And I'm gonna watch them grow on you and bring people to you because God uses God's people to meet God's people's needs. That's how he does everything. He doesn't zap his way through this whole journey and story of his. You've just been allowing this um kind of just, I'm gonna behave my way back to God in hope that takes over my feelings and makes me feel like a human and a master again, right? So how you mundanely do that is uh uh especially sorry, mundanely do that. How do you do that in the mundane? Because that's where everybody's getting tripped up in, is in the silent months. It's when we go to these spiritual high things and get we get spiritually high for two to three weeks, and then it just kind of levels out, and then we start kind of sliding backwards in this way that we honestly don't want to happen, but we're too addicted to the empire and the ways of the empire to be done with it. So, so it has to be God first, have an having a high view of God, and then you have to be for other people and then yourself, being for in every area of your life. It's now gotten to an unfortunate place in our society, in the Christian society, that it's Will and I were talking about this earlier, that it's an inconvenient to go like to go to a friend's birthday, to get out of our house, just to be for the other person. And like, that is such a scary place to be in. And it's like, well, at least I went, you know, a couple hours this morning, and it's like, man, there's so much that's gonna rock us, and maybe not even rock us, but the numbness of this empire. That's the play of the enemy. It's just this inch by inch, and you don't even know that it's happening to you. The spirituality is sliding off of you. The sacrificing yourself for somebody else is a foreign concept to you now. That you know how to audibly in front of everybody be for God. But when that door closes, you are having to convince yourself over and over that you are a Christian, that you have saving faith. You should, if you are accurately and actually saved, you should not have to be convincing yourself. If you're having convinced yourself, you can't even have the conversation of has God partnered with you? Because you are still having to deal with the fact that he's withholding out on you. That what you're still thinking that God is playing games behind your back. You don't know him. And that's a reflection of you you don't know how to live for things greater than yourself. Stop living for yourself. Get so deathly honest with how much you're living for yourself, how much you want to be liked, how much you want to make, the things that you want, the things that you're afraid that you're not gonna have, and you're disguising it as love, as protection, as fitness, as routine, as discipline, and it's not, it's actually anxiety, and your anxiety is pride, and that's why God and Jesus and the Holy Spirit have to go to teenagers, teenagers to partner with, not us adults, teenagers. That's embarrassing, so I want to give Western ways to how to do this, but I'm not going to. We'll get to that in these upcoming chapters. Also, make yourself think like stop looking for me to do that, stop looking for Will to do that, stop looking for your pastor, stop looking for your dad, your mom, your spouse, stop looking for your friends. You have a fire inside of you that you are quenching. The devil's not quenching it, you're quenching it. Stop being the one that God's put potentially throwing you with the majority and being like, I'm just waiting for these people to die and get out of the way so I can wait for the next ones who are being born, physically born as babies today, and and I can't wait till they're teenagers because I still have the fire inside of them.
SPEAKER_02They still have discovery, adventure. It's unbelievable.
SPEAKER_00God knows what he's doing. It's empire versus kingdom. And it is hard when the empire is your home. And I want to see my home change.
SPEAKER_01Blessed be the name of the Lord, dude. Right? Go down Mark chapter 1. Go down Mark chapter 1. I'm gonna love this book so much.
SPEAKER_00It is. It's a it's a it's a Jew writing to America.
SPEAKER_01And whenever and I've told you this before, but the more I study the Old Testament, the the easier, the clearer vision of New Testament is for me.
SPEAKER_00Have to, have to. It is an unbelievable marriage. It's a no wait a second. It's an unbelievable continuation. Continuation of sanctification. Huh? Stop wearing the badge of honor of lowliness. Wake up. We can do this. We have this. Don't be a sloth.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, don't hold your breath for that long.
SPEAKER_00Come on. Stop holding your breath. Breathe. Breathe.
SPEAKER_01Yeah.
SPEAKER_00Praise God. Thanks, dude. Praise out.
SPEAKER_01Um, Father God. We love you. Thank you for who you are. Thank you for what you've done. Jesus, thank you for coming down, for showing us how to live this life as a man, because you you know that we're not God, but you have shown us how to be, how to do every day, how to look to you, how to look in ourselves. You really have done so much and made it so accessible for you, to you. So we thank you for that. I bless everyone listening to this podcast. Bless Tyler Griffin. Um and thank him for his teaching and his monologues and his rants, and they're incredibly helpful. And I hope it stirs the fire and the affection and the the very essence of anyone who's listening. Um, and I hope that that that stirring of the person who's listening can go and stir somebody else's affection as well. This is on all of us, not just Tyler.
SPEAKER_02Thank you, guys. Thank you, Lord. You're good. In Jesus' name we pray. Amen.