Gutter to Glory

00:00 Father, we honor you today. What a privilege it is. We thank you that we get to walk by faith and not by sight on everything we do. And we engage even what we're doing here today by faith. Faith that someone will hear this and be encouraged. Faith that someone will be lifted up. Faith that someone will find hope in what sometimes feels like a hopeless world. So, Lord, it is our privilege and it is our motto and our saying and our mantra: We get to do this. In Jesus' name, amen. Amen. It's Friday, May 29th, 2026. We get to do this. This is episode number 34. This is a life we've been blessed with.

00:41 This is a gift for me. This is a chance we cannot miss. This is the life. We get to do this. Better late than never. Hey, TGIF. Hey, brother, it's Friday. T-G-I-F-W-G-T-D-T. I never can say that. It's very difficult to have to think about it. It doesn't roll off. It's really quick. I know. It doesn't roll off the bus. Do not say it quick. W-G-T-D-T. Yes. That's not exactly the best acronym in the world. Hey, brother, how are you doing? Man, I'm doing great. Just, man, living the dream, getting to be on vacation.

01:21 Yes. Sorry, I got my morning voice happening. A little drainage. It's like we haven't seen each other this week. It's been a long time. How many hours? So we, the foursome, Pastor Jimmy Day Manette, myself, Tina the Keeper, went to Nashville to the K-Love Fan Awards weekend, our third annual trip. Yeah. It's like, what is it? It's like a pilgrimage in a way. It's become that. It is kind of a pilgrimage, which is fun. For those who don't know, K-Love is a ministry that bought up pretty much every single Christian contemporary music radio station in the country.

02:07 And so they have a massive audience. And they are pretty much the outlet for any Christian music today. And they do this weekend where, and it's in Nashville where a lot of these songwriters and performers live. And they have, I mean, it's really, it's non-stop worship, music, culminating Sunday night with the awards, which I believe airs tonight on TV. That's right. It's usually Friday night after the awards. Yes. Cool. So if anybody wants to place a Kelchie bet, we can tell you exactly who won the artist of the year. But we won't. I wonder how many people are betting on that. That'd be solid. That'd be awful, man.

02:48 That's not cool. But it was, it was, you know, just like the last year and the year before, our cups got filled to the brim. It starts. See, we got in, we got in. Well, actually, we left Thursday night, stayed in Austin in the wonderful courtyard by Marriott with the very small, kind of uncomfortable pillows, a mattress. That was pretty. Yeah. I don't want to complain. I just don't want to be like that. You know what I mean? But totally. It wasn't super great. It was not. And so we had an early flight and we got in. First thing we did is we went straight past, we didn't even go to the hotel. We went downtown Nashville. What's it called? The Gulch, the Gutter? The Gulch. The Gulch.

03:33 Cool place. The gutter. It's the gutter. It's the happening place, though. It's pretty cool. Yeah, we met up with Sir Patrick Koble, who was a long time, well, he's the Duke of the South for the No Agenda Show, and he's been a huge supporter of We Get To Do This. And he took us out to lunch at Arnold's. That was awesome. Which is a barbecue joint, which is just so comfort food. It's old school. And in the South, you call that a meet and three. Oh, a meet and three. That's it. Oh, okay. So a meet and three means you get one meat, you get three veggies or dessert. And it's old school, man. Total comfort food. Yeah. Total South. Yeah.

04:12 Total indulgence. And hopefully, I mean, he says, this may be the last time you ever eat here because of the property taxes. I mean, literally, it's almost like that movie where the old lady doesn't want to sell her house and all these high-rises are around her. There's construction all over the gulch. And there has been for a long time, many years. They just keep building and building, but they're like some of these smaller, you know, homeowned businesses and local owned businesses that have been there at restaurants for decades, probably are just getting swallowed up by the big stuff. Yeah, that's the sad part. I get it, though. It's progress. Give and take, all right? Progress. Take the good with the bad. Patrick also gave us our first merch. Yes, which I left it sitting on the table at home.

04:56 Made cool. So I was like, oh man, I got to go. Yeah, no, they're. they're really good. I dressed up for you, obviously. Thank you. I appreciate it. It looks like I'm on vacation. I'm actually wearing the same thing I wore all weekend. There we go. This is my three-nails hoodie. That's the way it works. The way we boys roll, that's for sure. But it was so, so nice just to catch up with him. He's such a beautiful man. He really is. And he's on fire for Jesus. And he's doing a lot with veterans. He's a veteran himself. Man, I love what he's doing. And he's really trying to help. I mean, so many veterans have just so many mental issues. You know, PTSD is real. I've seen it. You've seen it. And he's, and Patrick, too, I think was, of course, how could he not be affected?

05:41 Exactly. He's told us some stories, but really, through the love of Jesus Christ, he's really blossomed into just a guy doing so much for his community. He runs Boy Scout troops. He's just doing so much. And he's doing a podcast, which you can find on. I listened to a little bit. I caught some of that. It's a lot of local, very local. Hyperlocal. Hyperlocal. I love what he's doing. It's now remind me of the name. Very nice. No, I feel dumb. Hold on a second. It's the name of his town. Yeah, you sent me a link. It's the name of his town. Hold on. I feel. Oh, he lives in Fairview. Fairview, yes. Something Fairview. I think it's Hello Fairview. I think you're right. Let me just check.

06:24 I can find this. Sorry, Sir Patrick, bro. Totally bombing our body. I love this show, man. Yeah, Hello Fairview. I was right. There it is. You'll find that on the Godcaster. Hello, Hello Fairview. Oh, that's right. Yeah, it is. That's where I listened to it. Yes. And then the weekend, I mean, your impression? Our buckets are running over. I mean, literally, our buckets are filled. Our buckets are running over. I'm still buzzing from it and just thinking about there was one moment in particular that, you know, the whole thing is good. You can't just say this is the best, you know, because it's all good and all the artists have something unique to bring. But I have to say, if I was just looking for a moment, it was when Ben Fuller came out with just his guitar in the middle of all this

07:09 at the award show. At the award show. He stood up on a table in the middle of the audience. With one spotlight on him and sang this song with his guitar. Black Sheep. Oh, God. One of my favorites. That's such a throwback to another day. That sound, that Western, it's kind of a Western vibe. I mean, you feel like you're watching, you know, Gunsmoke or something, you know, some of the old Westerns. But it is also a storytelling. Yes. It's a story. Anyway, check out that song, Ben Fuller, Black Sheep, just acoustic guitar and just pure heart and soul. It's also, I mean, his story by itself. I mean, I think he was saved seven or eight years ago, I want to say. Well, he's been sober seven years.

07:53 Right. That's what he said. I think he was, you know, it's been a culmination of things. But yeah, I mean, he's got tats head to toe, man. He's just, he's had a long road, but my gosh, he's such a picture of redemption. Of somebody who went, he said he was on cocaine for 15 years and just nearly died. I mean, literally, just crashed himself, crashed his plane into the ground. But to see somebody like Kim kind of reminds me of Mel at our church, who had a hard go of it and then got radically converted, saved, born again, and is totally great. He makes some of the same moves. Daddy, he does that. He's so excited. That's great.

08:36 Man, he does a lot of prison ministry, too. He does concerts in prisons all across America sharing his story because he's been there. He knows those guys. And he walks in and they're like, you're one of us, man. I mean, like, he just has to look. But man, what a heart of gold, you know. But that moment, I think just the juxtaposition of all the glamour and glitz of an award show, massive sets and lights and video and bejeweled dresses. And, you know, I mean, the whole thing. And then you got him out there, just an old. But even Friday night, I think it was Friday night, they do kind of like an opening concert.

09:16 And there's a lot of production stuff that takes place. I remember the first year the bass was like burning down the walls and stuff is happening. First night's rough. You know, of course, lyrics aren't on the screen. This is tough for me because that's one of the main features I feel. I love the lyrics on the screen, man. And it's like the soundboard rebooted the minute he was supposed to come up. And, you know, crash and burn. They all have in-ears. They're standing there. You know, they're playing. They're like, how come people are acting so weird? Everybody's looking at us. And then, yeah, but he just said, okay, hold on. And then just reset. He came out and boom. He just killed him. I mean, so many. so many. And I've seen artists walk away.

09:58 Yeah. And say, I'm not coming back. I'm not doing this. Get it together. I don't want to be a part of this. That's not this. Yeah. And the only thing that, and we talked about this. So we had the writers roundtable, which is really nice because the writers talk about the story behind the song. And so it's understandable that many, a lot of great art comes out of pain and heartbreak. But throughout the entire weekend, with the exception of Brandon Lake during the award show, everything was

10:39 the Lord is here for you when you're going through that season, when times are tough. You got a bad. I mean, it's now cliche almost. You got a bag diagnosis. I mean, these are things that I hear Christians in performance places say over and over again, which, of course, is true. But for me, and I came to Christ in a very happy way. Now, of course, I was broken. I'm still broken. And there's all kinds of things that the Lord helps me with and helps me understand and takes me through.

11:15 But I really didn't get anyone ever saying, with the exception of Brandon Lake, I have joy right now just because I have joy. The Lord is here. I'm happy. Things are going well. It's almost like he couldn't say, hey, man, I'm rejoicing. Thank you, God, for everything in my life is great right now. And it won't be that way. I know, but right now it's great. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Which is, I feel blessed because I early on I'm like, hey, things are great. Thank you, Lord. This is fantastic. And then when it's not, so I think we are so quick to forget. Yes. And this kind of took me down a path of comparing this to the general world that we live in right now.

11:59 Can I comment on that? Yeah, please go for it. Go for it. Go for it. It's a road to follow. So I'm the same. When I came to faith in Christ, I wasn't at the bottom. You know, I just, man, somebody presented the gospel to me. I was leaning over the hood of my truck. I prayed, boom, God's there. And I never had that gutter to glory thing. I mean, I was an idiot. Gutter to glory. That's it. I was an idiot in high school. I mean, I was that kid, right? Just partying, girls, all that, you know, drugs, sex, and rock and roll. I can't see that on you at all. I know you can't, but I did like to have some fun. I was, boys just want to have fun. That was me. And a lot of it was, you know, I was kind of mad at my dad and stuff because my parents got divorced.

12:41 And so, you know, there's that, just kind of just a way to plug the pain. But when I got saved, it was so good because it's called the gospel, which the word gospel means good news, not okay news or so-so, yay. No, maybe you'll make it. No, it's good news. It's the greatest news. So when I got born again at 18, blending over into 19 right about that time, it was all up from there, man. I was just like, yes. Yeah. And I would sit in churches, and I'm not going to name the denomination I was part of, but they were just like somber and sad and mad.

13:21 Yes. I was like, has anyone heard that this is a good thing? Yeah. And I really struggled as a young Christian. And you know my spirit, man. I'm excited on Sundays. You and I are very much the same. Happy to be here. Happy we woke up. We get to do this. It's not just some cute cliche. It is my life mantra. It is my, it's my slogan. You know, I mean, it's, it's my declaration, declaration of faith. And that doesn't mean crap doesn't happen and bad things happen and people get hurt and people die and people betray. I mean, all this stuff, wars happen, you know, the world, the world loses its mind here and there.

14:02 However, on the flip side of that coin, it's a win-win for a Christian. No matter what happens on this earth, this isn't the end game. Amen. And so we know the scripture says where Jesus says, who for the joy set before him endured the shame, he despised it. The scripture says it means he stepped over it. He literally walked over the shame because he knew what was coming for the joy set before him. He knew what was coming after the crucifixion. He knew there was going to be a resurrection. And when you have that mentality of going, man, no matter how bad it gets, there's a resurrection coming after this trial.

14:42 There's good coming. That's how God is. So I agree with you. You know, it was a lot. The whole theme was beauty to. to ashes or ashes just to be beauty. Which kind of sets up a here's my, here's how bad I was depressed last year. Oh, but God's good. I mean, and every one of them had a depression. Yeah. I know. I was kind of like, I felt like you, man. At first, I was kind of, oh, man, this is really good. They're really ministering to people. But then after a day of it, I was like, okay, can we turn the corner now? Yeah. This is good news. Remind people this is good. And I just, I feel your pain.

15:21 And so what this made me reflect. I mean, all the way home, I'm thinking about this. And in particular, I see this pretty much everywhere around me. People are stuck. They're angry. They're sad. Christians. They don't see the joy or the good works God is doing for them. And social media, I mean, we talk about this a lot. I mean, we cannot ignore that this has really captured the, I mean, fear is just such a perfect emotion, and the enemy loves to capitulize on that. And so do algorithms, and so does advertising. The world has always, you know, I've said it before: you want these girls, you better be driving this car.

16:04 Yeah. You know, if you don't drink this beer, you're going to be a loser. So that's all that's fear, FOMO. It's all different versions of fear. But you're going to die if you don't blah, blah, blah, blah. Your kids will have no future, et cetera, et cetera. And what has happened in our culture today is: first of all, I want everything right away, right now. I want the world to be great. I want everything to be fixed. I want it all done. I want everything now, now, now. But also, we want to prosecute the responsible. We need prosecution, we need justice. End this war, kill the rich. The boomers failed us. Israel controls us.

16:41 Hard seasons, as K-Love people would say. And it's so easy then to identify with people who may have it worse than us. And then to go after the people. This is literally what the hard left liberal mantra has been. It's like, this is why you get gays for Gaza, which by itself is just an insane thought. That's an oxymoron. Completely. But now you see people on all sides of the political spectrum going to this, we got to blame someone. And, you know, and it's Trump. The oppressor.

17:22 Exactly. And people don't even see that they are doing exactly what they've probably even railed against maybe two or three or four years ago. So I have such a benefit of being a new Christian. Like, I can still think, hey, we say so easily, we view the world through a biblical worldview. Well, I actually wanted to do that in this case. You know, how I love what Joe Rogan said once: if only there was like a manual or something. I remember that. There's something, some kind of book that could help me get through life, you know.

18:02 And so I did some research, completely admit, I use some AI for this, which is great for research. And it came up with a couple, because I'm just saying, show me the scripture that talks about internal conflict being projected outward. James 4:1, 2. What causes quarrels and what causes fights among you? Is it not this that your passions are at war within you? You desire and do not have, so you murder. You covet and cannot obtain. So you fight and wage war.

18:39 This struck me so hard. I'm like, yeah, when people feel like they don't have control over their lives, finances, or future, which guess what? You don't. I mean, I realized this in 1990. Like, you don't control it. You can only control what you can do at the moment. Then we're always looking for, you know, to hammer something. This is a simple one, Luke 11:34. Your eye is the lamp of your body. When your eye is healthy, your whole body is full of light. But when it's bad, your body is full of darkness. Therefore, be careful lest the light in you be darkness. It's like, look at your own eye, people. And it's easy to say, but when you read it in scripture, I mean, I'm doing it myself.

19:23 I am not immune to any of this, obviously. And then this kind of fits perfectly. Again, I love James. For whatever reason, James just always hits me so right. Let every person be, of course, quick to hear, slow to speak, slow to get angry, for the anger of man does not produce the righteousness of God. Galatians 5. But if you bite and and devour one another, hello, social media, watch out that you are not consumed by one another. I mean, come on, this is so good. So, how do we get out of it? This is, I also went searching for this. And I'm just trying to say, you know, it's like I got a new car.

20:04 I didn't know how something worked. I went to look at the manual. The manual actually wasn't in the car. They forgot to give it to me. And I called the guy, say, hey, man, I don't have my manual. And I really felt lost, even though I went online and you go online. Yeah. Oh, well, this is manuals.com. And there's 8 million different versions. It's not the right one. It's a different variation. So I was so happy. It was just this one light that was coming out. What does this mean? And to me, it's exactly the same thing. Galatians 6:4, let each one test his own work. We've talked about this, for each will have to bear his own load. Focus on what's right in front of you, what's happening in your community.

20:46 It's so limited to go straight to Washington, D.C. Tend your own garden. Yeah. Oh, there's a good one. Thessalonians 4: Aspire to live quietly and to mind your own affairs and to work with your hands. I want you to explain that in a second. As we instructed you so that you may walk properly before outsiders and be dependent on no one. Could you give me some enlightenment on this one? Like the work with your own hands. It's mind your own business. Literally. That's what he's saying. With your own hands. You're not pulling everybody else to your stuff. You do what you do. Stay focused.

21:25 It's very simple. It's so simple we miss it. And that there's a lot of things in scripture that are right there, but we're always looking for a complex answer. It's like if it's not complex, then it must not be truth. Right. Yes. Truthfully, I think it's the transverse. If it's simple, it probably is true. And so these simple truisms, we want things complicated. We're so used to it. We complicate everything, right? Yes. And anything left to itself, you know, moves that way. So, I mean, just think about an extra room somebody has in their house. It just starts to collect things. You know what I mean? It becomes that room, the one that you keep the door closed, and you warn people not to go in that door.

22:06 That's called my studio. And my office at home. So, yeah, Annette comes in here and she always has that look and says, Are you going? I said, Don't even finish the sentence. I know exactly. I'm not going to clean it up. It's perfect. Unless Adam comes over and then I might clean it up. Wow, thanks. You do that for me, which I appreciate. Kind of. I just moved it from the studio into the closet. Oh, I get it. The closet that has a warning lane. You haven't seen my closet. First of all, it has about eight guitar cases. Yes. Oh, yeah. All sticks in a row. And then, oh, it's unbelievable. Anyway, we digress. Yeah. Totally. Digress a little bit. So it literally means focus on your own stuff and quit worrying.

22:52 Run your own race. Stay in your lane. We're always worried about somebody else. And the only thing I learned in track in high school, because I hated it, because I had to do it to run, played football. So it was stay in your own lane. You run out of your own lane. You're disqualified. You're out of the race. Right, right. Not only that, when you look at what other runners are doing, you're going to fall behind. You lose your pace, your rhythm. And I love that as believers, we have these words because it's just a reminder. You know, I think we forget. I mean, I forget all the time, but I'm so new in my faith. I'm like, let me stop for a second here. What happened three years ago? What was it three years ago?

23:32 Not 35 years ago, but three years ago. Oh, yeah. I remember it was the first time. I mean, which brings me right back to A Great Awakening, where not even a decade after the Civil War, they had all forgotten what really got them to that great victory. And, oh, man, we've been praying for our daughters because they all go through different things at certain points. And it's two things. It's fear. And we just, we live in this fear-based culture and blame the guy at the top. And we just, we've forgotten to. Just because fear sells.

24:14 Well, yes, it does. It sells very well. I don't think people even have to do it. You want to get clicks. You want to get comments. You want to get followers. Man, just creak out the fears. I don't even think that people are doing it for the clicks and for the followers. They're doing it because that is the loop. The whole world, the whole culture focuses you on that. And agree. And I sometimes don't even see it. I got into a couple of. of comments on X this morning, and I'm like, and I had to stop myself even as I was preparing for this very show. I'm like, what am I doing? Why am I doing this? Yeah, no. Fish on a hood. And people weren't even, yeah, there's some trolls in there, but people, you know,

24:56 I love this. It's like, you're not as critical as you used to be because you're now a Christian boomer. You know, I'm not sure. I'm not sure. By the way, I was the face of Generation X. Give me those three months to get it. Put a label on there. Wow. So outrage culture. Yeah. It basically is saying, what's wrong out there that I can't fix that I'm going to yell about? Remember that band Rage Against the Machine? No, which, yeah, I have to say, I love that. We were all yelling with them. Even now, I'll pull up on YouTube and watch one of their videos live at one of the festivals. I'm like, wow. That rage was real, man. Those guys weren't. Yes, they were mad.

25:41 But it created amazing art. But when you rage against the machine, what do you really get? A hit record? Tired? Or a hit record. There you go. Hit record. Hit record. That's become a three-hit wonder. That's it. Yeah. So, do you have more scripture? Are you going back to? Well, I was just going to say that. So, what I realized is, so the outrage culture is saying, you know, what is wrong in the world that I can't fix, I'm going to get, you know, rage against the machine. And everything I see in scripture is, and this is, this is what is good right here, right now that I can praise.

26:20 This is what I missed a little bit at the weekend. What can I praise right now? And what is broken here that I'm responsible for mending? Which can even be just a word with your spouse in the morning where you just kind of got shifted in a weird way. And man, the more I think about this, the more I'm stopping in the middle of my day all the time, praying. You know how sometimes your spouse can have a bad day and that affects you. Yeah, of course. And so, and I catch myself like, well, I'm having a bad day now because my spouse is having a bad day. I'm like, no, stop. Pray for your spouse. And it lifts your spirits too. And this is a free gift that I got from our Lord Jesus. And I love exercising.

27:03 I love exercising it every single day. Man, that's all win and no loss. You know what I mean? I got a scripture I want to share with you. Please, you started in James. So I want to loop back to James to the first chapter. Consider it pure joy, my brothers, whenever you face trials of many kinds, because you know, so pure joy, and you know that the testing of your faith develops perseverance. Perseverance must finish its work so that you may be mature and complete, not lacking anything. I mean, that is just so down to earth. Mature and complete. Mature and complete.

27:42 That means finished, man. Yeah. And perseverance. I mean, we've talked about just how we've cultivated a culture through decades of having no resilience, no endurance, no perseverance. And we talk about being forged by hard things. But our parents, I just remember my dad teaching me what it meant to persevere when things got hard. Yeah. It wasn't easy. There were things that were hard in our family and hard in our life. And man, I remember when he was a firefighter, and four firemen got killed in a fire in one fire because their Scott Air Pacts failed.

28:24 It was devastating to that community. And I was part of that community growing up. And I just remember watching my dad persevere. You know, they didn't quit. They didn't run away. You know, when I was in high school playing, our coaches, man, you talk about get in your grill, man. They would like. Today it would be considered abuse. Yes. Then it was harder to call it. Yes. You're right. If one of my coaches pile drive me into the ground to show me how to block somebody, I didn't get up and say, I'm quitting. I saw you're abusing me. If I can just energize, I saw we saw this happening in 2000.

29:03 I want to say it's around 2009, 2010, where bullying, bullying in schools, and then bullying became a hate offense, which later became a hate crime. And I remember I was astounded by all these news reports about bullying. I said, I grew up with sticks and stones will break my bones, but names will never hurt me. And then we saw words are violent. violence. This shift happened 15, 16 years ago, and it was real. And I can only say it was the enemy, probably. I think.

29:46 But it was virtue signaling of the highest order. Yes. Where it was like, oh, these poor people, these poor, they're being abused. And there's a rightness to that because bullying shouldn't happen. I mean, it is a terrible thing. But what became a part of culture and normalcy or normative for all of us, you know, I learned to navigate social issues by avoiding bullies. You know what I mean? You learn things. I was like, okay, here's what not to do. Don't look weak. Okay. Don't stick yourself out there. Okay. Don't go over in that corner of the cafeteria or the playground.

30:27 You learn to navigate hardness and hard things. I'm not pro-bullying. Don't get me, don't, don't hear what I'm not saying. But I'm saying whatever trial you're going through or test you're going through, how you respond to that will dictate the outcomes of your life. And I just learned to avoid it. I learned to navigate. I learned the politics of life. Yes. Well, and it's not a bad thing. And I feel that in some ways, I think I failed my daughter in some ways to some degree on that, you know, made it easy. I made a lot of, I made a lot of things much easier for her than I had.

31:08 I mean, just the fact that we all have a $1,000 phone in our pocket is by itself. I remember I had to beg my parents because I saw the wild one with Marlon Brando. I begged them for a year for a leather jacket. And here's what they made me do. So it was, you know, a leather jacket is expensive. They got me a leather jacket for my birthday. It took me a year of, I need a leather jacket. And they forced me, and I did it. When at school, there was, I had a chain and a padlock, and I had to chain and padlock my leather jacket to the coat rack so it wouldn't get stolen. And I was simultaneously cool because I had a leather jacket and the biggest dork because he's locking up his jacket.

31:55 But these days, maybe it was 300 bucks, but let me ask the question. Did you appreciate that jacket? I did more than you can imagine. I think we all have stories. For me, it was getting a set of Firestone white-lettered tires for my 69 Chevelle. Damn. I had really bad tires on that car because I pretty much burned them up. So driving on bald tires, I was talking to my dad, Dad, I got to have new tires. And here's what I want. I have to have them. And here's what I want. And he was like, hey, I can't afford that right now. You're going to have to wait. I don't want to wait. He said, yours are not dangerously bald. You know, bald. You're still safe. And I'm like, well, it depends on how fast I'm going, you know, at a 119.

32:39 That may not be safe. But I was like, so I same thing for a year. Yeah. Not quite a year, a year. But I remember him. He said, hey, I'm going to take your car to town today. I was like, why? And he came up with some excuse. Some excuse me. He lied. Dad lie. Because he was going to do something nice for me. I'll never forget hearing him come down the road and I saw him turn the corner and those firestones. Oh, it looks. I still have that memory burned in my brain. And I cherished and valued that because I didn't get it. I had delayed gratification. Delay is not denial. No. But boy, it makes it sweeter when it finally comes.

33:21 So this kind of fits into what happened on our way back from Nashville. You guys stayed there, visited family. So we're in the plane. It was going to a small Embraer regional jet. So one seat on the left side, two on the right side. So Tina's a seat and a half ahead of me because a family was sitting there, husband, wife, two kids behind them, and one to the left. And it's okay. It was a relatively short flight. And so I'm listening to, this is the crazy thing. I'm listening to another Glenn Beck episode. Now it was about George Washington.

34:02 We talked about this in George Whitfield and Benjamin Franklin. So he continues with the series of early America. Oh, nice. And I'm kind of fading away. And of course, you can't tell that I'm listening because I'm a hearing aids in. I'm doing Bluetooth thing to the hearing aids. And the guy, he's on the one row ahead of me on the right. He turns around. I said, Adam, I'm like, oh, what? And I have to turn off my. player. He says, but he starts talking in Dutch to me. Oh, wow. He says, you know, I'm Diederich, and I just wanted to say hi. I grew up watching you in the Netherlands and listening to you on the radio. And I've been following your career this whole time.

34:44 And I just wanted to say hi. It's so cool to meet you. And I said, oh, that's really nice. He said, you know, what do you do? He says, I write screenplays, and he's wearing this hat with Young Washington on it. And he said, I wrote the screenplay for this new movie, Young Washington. I'm like, I was just listening to a podcast about George Washington. And, you know, me, I'm like, no coincidences in the kingdom. That's right. And he says, yeah, this is your family. He said, oh, you got a beautiful family. And they were like 10, 12-year-olds. And he said, my wife, Kelly, she's the CEO of Wonder Project. I'm like, what? Crazy. I send you $9 a month. That's awesome.

35:26 And so we're chatting and he says, well, you know, we're just talking about it. He's telling me about the movie and how what a struggle it's really been because his wife set up Wonder Project three years ago with John Uhrman, the director who did House of David and Jesus Revolution, and, you know, how it's been a struggle to get marketing going and stuff. I said, well, I can introduce you to Glenn Beck. I'm sure you'd have a fun story to talk about on his radio show. Yeah, it'd be awesome. And I was really, it was really just one of those meetings. I'm like, there's too much going on here. Yeah, it's amazing. And he sends me a text as we're, you know, we're deep playing and we're leaving.

36:09 And he says, hey, we actually have a screening of this movie coming up on Wednesday. We'd love for you to come. Wow. And this movie is exactly what we're talking about. It's almost like the prequel to Star Wars. It is about George Washington before everything happened. I can't wait to see that. And you want to talk about going through some hard times and what shaped him and what shaped the Virginia militiamen to becoming the blue coats and becoming them who turned out. Notwithstanding that he chopped down the cherry tree. Yeah, you know, there's none of that in the movie, though, right? I don't want to give it away. That's the only thing I remembered as a kid. There's definitely some

36:48 that was, I think that is probably the biggest lie about George Washington, which is literally about not telling a lie, which is kind of telling kind of funny. Yeah. And it has Kelsey Grammar in it, Ben Kingsley. Mary Louise Parker. Solid there. Very, very good cast. And it's a good date movie because there's a little bit of romance in there, a lot of stuff blowing up and guns. Of course. But also history, I really didn't realize about the British and the French and the Indians. I'm sorry, Native Americans. The Indians. They call themselves Indians in the movie

37:25 who were here in the Ohio Valley. But the resilience that built George Washington, one of the founders of our country, is really phenomenal. And they previewed at the LBJ Library. They're doing it at the Bush Library, the Reagan Library. They're doing it at all these different libraries. And it'll be out July 3rd for July 4th weekend. Perfect. Which is a great opportunity to go and see this. And I realized, once again, I don't know hardly anything about the true story of our founding fathers. You just don't know much about it, which I think why this is so exciting. Well, we tend to romanticize a lot of it to think, oh, man, these had this charmed life.

38:09 And, oh, they had some hardships, but we didn't realize, you know, your feet falling off because of frostbite, you know, no big deal, right? I mean, we just don't, we can't put ourselves into that situation. I'm talking about the death march that they made, you know, during the war. I don't know if that's a good thing. No, this didn't go that far before that before. Before all that. But what produced and forged and formed them, to use Brett Hahn's words, was hardness, hard things formed great men, strong men, resilient men, not perfect men, but strong men who were able to defeat the greatest force on the planet at the time, which was the British.

38:50 Who were just, you know, like that's probably a so they were just shining them. Like, okay, you stupid little boys. You know, you can, you can have a rank here. You're colonel. It means nothing because it's not an appointment by the crown, et cetera, et cetera. So it's just a great movie. Gosh. I love this young couple who have been building this wonder project. And whereas I kind of felt a little bit hoodwinked when Amazon gave away House of David for free the first season. And then it's like, now you got to subscribe for Wonder Project. I was sneaky with. wasn't it? Now I felt good. I want to support them. I want to support them. Yeah. Man, I'm glad you got to meet them. And they're also, so

39:33 the distribution is by Angel. Yeah. So they're distributing it in theaters. And it was funny because I said yesterday on No Agenda, I said, hey, I saw this movie. And Dvorak goes, oh, is it one of those Christian movies? Why do you say that? You only go to the movie theater if it's a Christian movie. I said, yeah, I guess. I love John Dvorak. A lot of it was blowing people and things up, but yeah. Oh, man. Man, I'm glad that happened. There's a reason for this. I'm going to see these people more. I know there's something going to come out of this. One of the things Annette and I said as we got on the plane to come back, there was so much favor on this trip.

40:14 I don't know that I've ever been on a trip where more things happened in terms of just, oh, you pray. You and I are in the parking lot. Oh, this was great. Last year we had to park a mile away, right, from the grand old Opry in the mall parking lot. We're out in the boonies, right? And we were late. We had dropped the girls off for the award show. We're like, we're probably not going to get in. So we're hustling. Oh, man. So we dropped the girls off. We turned into the first row of the parking, and you prayed out loud, Holy Spirit, would you something? Would you give us Holy Spirit? Could you please give us parking favor at this moment? And it wasn't 10 seconds later.

40:51 I saw a family walking to their car. We rolled up beside them like criminals, you know, going, hey, you're getting out of there. Hey, don't be afraid of us. We just want something from you. We're a parking spot. You're right. I mean, right. It was so cool. I mean, the rooms we had, which was the most unbelievable. It's unreal. These aren't a junior. That was a senior. There's only like five of these rooms. I looked, you know, just it happens on that one. It happens to be this one configuration. We have this huge living room with basically a regular room attached to it. And that's the room. And we both got those. I know, right? And then it was right around the corner from the venue.

41:32 And if you've ever been to the BioDome, it's usually a mile to wherever you're getting to, right? And it's amazing to get through that place. We were literally right there. Everything was favor. I mean, from beginning to end. It was. Even coming back, I got to meet this amazing lady from Africa who was helping out at the Delta Lounge. You know, she was doing, you know, and she was the sweetest person. She came over to Annette. She started talking to us with a beautiful accent, beautiful older lady. And she talked to us like she knew us. And Annette was like, do we know her? She literally talked to us as though we know each other. And I said, and then she said, maybe she saw Jesus in us.

42:18 Because you know how lounges are. Nobody looks up. It's like, oh, everyone's on their screen. Headphones on. They're friendly. I'm in a covey hole. I'm protected. It's a weird dynamic in those lounges. I just watch and I'm going, ooh, just a lot of coldness, you know? Yeah. Maybe they just feel like you're supposed to do that. It's also built that way. It is with the creatives that are kind of, you know, like little cubicles. Like, please don't interact with your neighbors. Yeah, put your earbuds in and don't interact. But we're just always nice to people. So I'm always talking, hey, thank you so much. Oh, and here's how I hit it off with her. She said something. I said, you have a beautiful accent. Yeah. Where are you from?

43:01 Which in some cases is a microaggression. Really? Oh, you have no idea. They say you have a beautiful. Yeah. Or even worse, where are you from? Oh, wow. Oh, you didn't know this? No. No, I ignore it too, brother. So far, it's been good. I've never had anybody get weird with me. The thing is, when you do it, people are always happy to tell you. Yeah, yeah, absolutely. Every Uber, hey, man, where are you from originally? How long have you been in America since you were a kid? And the answer is that you're not going to be able to talk about themselves. Yeah, that became a microaggression. I'm sorry. That didn't mean that. No, interesting. Anyway, she was so sweet. And then she took care of us after that. She was coming over, picking our stuff up.

43:43 That's a simple thing, but when I see the favor of God on things, I don't see it as simple or less than because anything in the kingdom is good. Yeah. Even if it's little things. And really, if you think about it, it's the little things that make up your day. It's not the big epic moments that happen every once in a while. It's the dailies. And as those things happen and you get a whole string of good things, boom, boom, boom, boom, boom. And you go, that's the favor of God. I mean, just, that's not normal. And to bring it all the way around, these are the moments that I keep trying to remind myself. Thank you, Jesus. Thank you, thank you, Holy Holy Spirit. Spirit. Thank you, thank you. This was amazing.

44:22 This moment, let me rejoice in this moment and not just when I'm feeling down or feeling bad or going through a season. You know, I've talked about this before, but I think it bears repeating. Some things you just need to say over and over, right? I need to be reminded and re-reminded. Most of my prayers, you know, I've been a Christian now a long time, you know, 40, nearly 50 years, and I'm still as excited as I was when I was a kid. I mean, I'm just like, boom, you know, get to do this. And living up in a down world, right? I mean, all of my little phrases have Jimmyisms in it.

45:03 PJisms, yeah. So most of my prayers, I'd say 90% of what I pray is pure gratitude. Gratitude. I am a broken record. I'm sure God's like, I get it. I get it. Move on to another topic, but I can't help it. Partly because I've had hard things happen in my life at different seasons. You know, I had my wife leave me for another man, not Annette, obviously. And, you know, that was devastating and just crushing, soul-crushing. But yet, God brought Annette into my life 34 years ago.

45:40 And we just, we have such a great marriage. It's crazy. And we're best friends and we love to do things together and be together and we work together. It's insane. Yeah. But we love that. I have so much to be grateful for. This life I have. Friendships. Man, you and Tina, I mean, we travel so well together. It's almost insane. That's very few people can do what we do. That's actually kind of cool. Like we'll come back from, we came back from the concert or dinner or whatever. We get into the elevator. You're on four, we're on five. And we don't have to make a plan. It's like, hey, we'll see you tomorrow morning, right? Yeah, okay. Call in the morning. Boom, done. We're gone. We're going to this. And there's no stress. There's no weirdness, no awkwardness.

46:24 Thank you, Holy Spirit, for whatever that is that makes that so easy. This is called good friendship. I mean, it's real, you know? Yeah, we're so blessed. We're so blessed. Thank you. I'm so blessed. Hey, by the way, on the Godcaster, let's give a plug for the Godcaster. You've dumped some new music in there. I've been doing it and hearing the new tunes. Okay, thank you. I'm loving it. Thank you for doing that. I was listening on my Godcaster coming in. Not like I didn't get some inspiration from the weekend. I'm like, I know. Worshiping hands up. Phone. Okay, let me just put that in there. Let me just add this. A lot of new stuff. Yeah. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you for doing it. Some of that comes from Ben Hilligoss.

47:05 Oh, yeah, yeah. At High Point. He's managing Providence Voice, which is their version of Hello Fred. And he is so, I mean, he is so, so all into this. And I gave him the new interface. He was actually my guinea pig for the AI console that helps you manage the station. And he's like, he says, I'm just keeping a spreadsheet here. So, you know, here's another 15 songs. And so I listen to them all like, yeah. And they're pretty much all spot on. I found some shorter versions of some of this stuff, which he appreciates because he just finds the songs that this is it. I'm like, no, let's get the studio version of that and not the eight-minute worship version. Yeah, yeah. So, but it's really a collection. I get texts from

47:51 many of the women in our church who text me like, that's cool. How about this? Do you have this? Is this something? It's 11 minutes long. I mean, I can do that. But most of them are just like hit stuff, you know? I love it. This has really been helping me this morning. I want other people to hear this song. So it's a community effort. It really is. I'm noticing something, too. You're getting a lot more community stuff in it. I've noticed you've been adding layers. Yeah. You know, city council stuff. Yep. Yep. Also, other podcasts, beginning to boost other podcasts that are out in our community. I love what you're doing there, thank you. I'm noticing those nuances. Someone who doesn't listen all the time might not notice, but I do.

48:32 I'm listening. And so I know you do. You're doing great. Just I love it. We need to let people know how to get the Godcaster so they can start listening. Well, you can just go to your app store and type in Godcaster and get it that way. That's really the best way. And of course, we also have web versions. So if you just want to give it a shot, you can go to the Bridge Church website and there's a tab right there, Godcaster. You can listen to it that way. But that's really the ease. And we're building this. And what you're also hearing, brother, is over time, things, you know, I'm like the carpenter. You know, like I'm putting stuff together. I'm testing it. You're a big help, you know, like push.

49:14 pushing back. Like, nuke that. Nuke that. Sometimes if it's real direct, that's some annette. I just say, hey, I'm driving and go, hey, would you tell? So if it's real short and to the point, that's a net. I'm a little more diplomatic. We were in the car on the way back from the movie Wednesday night, and I'm like, do you like this song? It was a worship. It was an elevation worship, but it was long and it was a little screechy. And he's like, no, I really at? Yeah, this is not good. And so I go, you know, hey, Google, sorry if anyone's phone just triggered. Remind me. And it went into this whole thing. It went, well, instead of just saying, okay, I set the reminder, he went into this, well, Adam doesn't like this.

49:58 And it's probably because of Hello Fred that he had. And it's like, and I said, stop, stop. What are you doing? I had a whole bunch of AI stuff. We're going to save that for next week. Yeah, yeah. Because there's actually good and fun stuff to report. We had the Pope weigh in with his encyclical in the fountain in D.C. that Trump finished. Oh, you mean it's making Washington beautiful. He went on for 10 minutes. I watched the entire cabinet meeting. Oh, it's hilarious. Someone actually made a song about it for No Agenda. He was like, this thing is, if you put this thing like a skyscraper, it'd be the tallest building in the world.

50:39 And it's like an Olympic pool. Beautiful. And we took 11 containers of crap out of it. I mean, he's hilarious. It was a builder's conversation. And, you know, I'm like, okay, we have some other stuff. But, you know, we have this rubberize it. We rubberize it. First, we sandblast it, then we pebble blast it. And the color is going to reflect much better. Everybody, enjoy this moment. You will not see another president like this in your lifetime. Enjoy him while he's still with us. You know, one in maybe a billion. So we'll do that on Wednesday. A couple of things. Yeah. I just want to give Brett Hahn another shout out. I've been reading.

51:22 He is like taking me on this journey. You and your Substack crew, man. No, I'm all of a sudden into I love Substack, man. It's not typical social media. That's what I like about it. I mean, long and short form articles, people writing. It's a supportive community. There's no jumping. Yeah, those people don't last on this one. He just wrote one called Whitfield in the Open Field. I haven't read it. I just came up. I'm excited about it. Five hours ago, I'm like all on. I'm going to read that today. I'm super excited about that. But, Brett, and he listens to the podcast. So, Brett, man, thank you so much, bro. Keep writing. Keep bringing us our original history, our actual history.

52:01 And one of his things that I like, he's doing, you know, he wrote a book called Forged. And I love that because he's talking about what forged and formed the men that did these amazing things. We see them as heroes now, right? Yeah. Well, I guess if you're on the right, you do. On the left, yeah, they're terrible. Just baggass. Yeah, there's a terrible old white man sitting in a room making decisions for us. But yeah, so we see them as heroes and rock stars, but it's there was something that formed and forged that. So Brett does a great job of that. Just want to give him a shout out. Bo, La Coste. I need more pickles. I'm just straight up. I will pay you, Bo. Man, send us another batch. I know you're going to hit him up. I'll hit him up. We need more pickles. So I've got five left.

52:45 What is Brett's Substack? What is his Amrev Resurrected? Am Rev, like American Revolution Resurrected. Amrev Resurrected. Todd Substack. So good. So yesterday, I'm not quite sure how it came up in the donation segment. And I said to John, because I didn't know if he listens to No Agenda or just we get to do this. I didn't really know. And so I said, well, you know, I got the Louisiana Pickles and Dvorak's like, what pickles? I didn't get any pickles. Who sent you pickles? I'm like, well, it's the Louisiana Pickles guys.

53:24 I got an email right after the show. No way. He says, I always listen to every show, even the donation segments, all the way through. I'm sending John pickles. Oh, my gosh. Make sure you ask him what he thought about the labels. I'm like, he always writes on top of them. Well, not just that, but all the scripts and the scripture on the label itself. So this will be another ministering moment to Dvorak. Well, I'm giving Bo a shout out because I need more pickles. The Net and I are going to fight over the last five in the jar. I've already eaten all the peppers and onions and the onions. And I've done everything but drink the juice. Louisiana Pickles at Gmail is man, the best pickles you will ever eat, I promise.

54:04 Yes. And if you don't like them, just send them to me and Adam. We'll eat them. And we'll. we'll bless him with anything he needs to make that happen. Any other shout outs you want to give? I mean, we're just so thankful. Hey, real quick, because we're good on time. Yeah, we're good. Little visioneering into where we're going with this podcast. Just a little, you know, to get deep in the weeds, but you know. Merch. I know, right? Already. You know, I think we're both listening to the Holy Spirit in this regard. We feel like there's something here. There's something we want to grow. Maybe not beyond the time limit per episode, but maybe more in the week. I mean, I'm also, you know, just looking at my life and where I want everything to go.

54:49 I love doing this. This is, you know, there's a big crossover of people in my life who listen to this and other things that I do. I brought two or three. More than two or three. I love how our church is listening and involved. We always kind of said this is for our people here, our church. And like you pray in the beginning, if anyone else out there is hearing it, I just feel like there's something here that we need to continue moving forward and building and growing. And like everything else, are we really in control? Probably not. We just got to have ears to hear.

55:30 That's it. And listen to our steps are ordered. Yes. And he delights in the details of our life. Brother, thank you for coming in on your vacation day for this. I want to do this. Not only do I get to, I want to. And we will be back on Wednesday, just a few days until the next one. We get to do this. Have a great weekend, everybody. This is the life we've been blessed with. This is a gift for you. We get to do this. This is the chance we dare not miss. This is the life we get to do this.