Girls Gone Bible - Erwin Raphael McManus | Girls Gone Bible

Episode Date: September 22, 2023

GGB GANG. TODAY IS A MASSIVE DAY. WE HAVE OUR FIRST GUEST. AND ITS A BIG DEAL. ERWIN RAPHAEL MCMANUS. Erwin is the lead pastor at Mosaic in Hollywood and Pasadena, California. He's also an author, a podcast host (Mind Shift Podcast), the founder of The Arena, a fashion designer, serial creator, and mindset expert. We had him on to ask him the hard-hitting and difficult-to-answer questions that people ask when they're debating and questioning Christianity. We cover Jesus, the Bible, heaven & hell, why bad things happen to good people, whether you can lose your salvation or not, and when is Jesus coming back?!? We hope you enjoy this conversation with Pastor Erwin as much as we did. God bless you guys and read your Bible. We love you so much. Jesus loves you more. -Ang & Ari if you’d like to support Girls Gone Bible 🙏🏻🕊️🤍 Paypal- https://www.paypal.me/girlsgonebibleinfo Venmo- https://www.venmo.com/u/girlsgonebible

Wait, so you switched your podcast from Battle Ready to Mind Shift. Mind Shift, yeah. Why? But we've thought about changing the name for years. Yeah. But we started Battle Ready because seven years ago I had cancer. And I was writing a book called The Last Arrow. And I finished it before I had surgery in case I didn't come out of that surgery.

And when I lived there and said, Dad, if you had died, there's so many questions I would have never had a chance to ask you. So could we start a podcast so I could ask you all these questions and then we could share them with the world? And so that's actually how we started Battle Ready. And then Battle Ready is the last chapter of the book, The Last Arrow. I can't believe it. That's so funny because we brought you on here today literally to answer our questions. That's so incredible. First of all, hi, guys.'t believe it. That's so funny because we brought you on here today literally to answer our questions. That's so incredible. First of all, hi, guys. Hi, guys.

Girls Gone Bible, we love you guys so much. Today is a huge day for us. It's our first guest ever, Erwin Raphael McManus. We are so honored to have you, truly. I have been going to Mosaic. So Erwin is the lead pastor at Mosaic in Hollywood in Pasadena. I've been going to Mosaic for about two years now. And when I first moved back to Hollywood, I lived two minutes down the street from Mosaic. And I remember I kept passing by Mosaic, and I had never been to a Christian church. I had only been to Catholic churches. And I was two minutes away from it and I kept passing it and I just walked in one Sunday and you were speaking. And I'm not even kidding, that day changed my life. It changed

my faith. I have always had a heart for Jesus. I love him. I've always loved him. But you truly gave me a mind for Jesus. And I really mean that with my whole heart. The way that you speak in your sermons, they're so intellectual. You're obviously one of probably the smartest people on the planet, and it's just, you changed my faith completely. You made me so interested in the Bible, and your sermons are so educational, and we're just so honored to have you today. Thank you for being here. Wow, thank thank you so much and i can't believe um incredible impact you guys i've had such a short amount of time it's it's really amazing

thank you so much you make me nervous because you you say the same line at the same time in the same tone and you don't even know you do it and so i'm i'm i'm a little nervous i feel like I feel like I'm in a Stephen King movie right now. I know, I know. Everybody in the comments say we can't tell the difference between you guys. And both of our hair is lighter now. And so it's just really a problem. Working into each other.

Basically, this is what today's episode is going to be. When we thought about having you on, we thought, what could we do with him? We could ask about your life. You're so interesting. What could we do? And I realized that just like Aaron had so many questions for you, I have so many questions for you. And we got a list of questions. We talked to people, we put a poll on the Instagram, and we got a list of questions of the way that people basically question Christianity and Jesus and the Bible,

and there's nobody else better to answer this than you. Yes. So before we get into that, I am so curious to ask what your spiritual life looks like. Like every day, your alone time with Jesus, what does that look like for you? Yeah, it's interesting. You sent me some of the questions ahead of time, or at least you sent them to Aaron. Yeah. And then Aaron sent them to me last night. And when I read the first question about what's my spiritual life look like, my immediate thought was it looks like my regular life.

I don't think of a spiritual life and an unspiritual life. But it has changed over the decades. I mean, I just turned 65, and I've been a follower of Jesus now for 45 years. And so it looked different in the beginning. In the beginning of my faith, because I grew up incredibly irreligious, so it was all brand new to me. I'd never seen a Bible my whole life. I really didn't know anything about Jesus. So when I first became a follower of Jesus, I was memorizing verses every single day and talking to God all the time, talking to everyone I met about God, because I was a little crazy,

but whatever I did in life. And then somebody gave me a devotional called My Utmost for His Highest. And I think it's a guy named Oswald Chambers or something like that. And I would use that every day as a devotional. And then think when i was in uh at chapel hill my senior year i decided to see how much i could memorize in a day and the most i ever memorized of the bible today was uh the first chapter of james and so i realized okay i can memorize a lot and so i just really just started um integrating the bible in my life just reading it over and over and over again. And so I don't do that as much now. Now I think 90% of my spirituality is listening.

It's like paying attention and just trying to be aware of what God may be doing around me. And it's not as—I'm not a highly structured person. And so I'm more like a life surfer. I just move through life as it moves and I pay attention to what God is saying. And it's very, very personal and intimate to me. Just like this past week, I did a talk or a couple of weeks ago, I did a talk called Singularity. And then last week I did a talk on leverage. And what happened is I was pumping gas for Kim because she had no gas in her car. So she's in the car I'm putting gas in the car and I hear this

phrase in my head I appealed to Caesar now I don't think I'd seen that in the Bible in years it just sort of dropped into my my soul yeah and I go around the car I tap on Kim's window and I go, I think I'm going to speak in Pasadena this Sunday and I think I'm going to talk about, I appeal to Caesar. And so it works the other way around for me. I can't even explain it. Sometimes it just drops into my soul and then I go, okay, now I got to spend the rest of the week figuring out what this means. We get a lot of questions.

How do we decipher God's voice? Between your own voice and God's voice. Yeah. I wish there were only two voices in my head. I know. Seriously. I have a very crowded room and a lot of voices in my head. And people do ask me, you know, how do I distinguish between God's voice and my voice and everything?

And one of the things I tell people is, look, I pay attention to the voice that calls me to my highest self. I pay attention to the voice that calls me to the most courageous life, to the most honorable life, to the most noble or compassionate life. And so whenever I hear a voice that's challenging me to step up my life, my game, then I accept that as God's voice in my life. I remember one time this guy, I was in Toronto, and this guy was an engineer. He was from China, and he's an atheist. And he came up to me and he said,

hey, you were talking about God's voice. What does God's voice sound like? I said, well, you just told me you're an atheist, so it sounds like nothing. And he goes, no, no, but for you, what does God's voice sound like? And I remember asking him, I said, why did you come up here

it was a huge auditorium you had to work your way up here and he goes what do you mean i said why did you come and ask me that question he goes well i just wanted to know what god's voice sounds like i said is it possible there's a little voice in your head that was saying there is a god there is a god yeah and and i said you ever have that little voice in your head? You don't even believe in God, but that little voice is telling you there is a God. But you don't know how it got in there because it's supposed to be you. And I said, it's like a parasite in your head eating away at your rational belief there's no God. And that little voice keeps saying, there's a God, there's a God. He goes, yes. He goes, it's like a parasite in my head. I can't get it out. And I said, that voice that's eating away at your doubt, that's God.

And I've just accepted over my lifetime that that voice that keeps fighting for me, that's God. You know, when I feel like I'm not, I have no value and that voice says, no, you're wrong. I just, I know that's God. When I'm filled with fear and I think, I don't know if I can do this. And there's a little voice that says, no, you got this. I just know that's God. And sometimes I just, I know that's God. When I'm filled with fear and I think, I don't know if I can do this. And there's a little voice that says, no, you got this. I just know that's God. A hundred percent. And sometimes I go, I do not want to forgive that person. And that little voice goes, but you're going to.

Yeah, literally. I know that's God. And that's irritating. We always say that, that if you, if, if, if like God is for you, obviously. So if you ever have a thought that is against yourself, that's not from you, and that's not from God, because God will never be against you. So any thoughts that you have that are positive, uplifting, encouraging, that's God. That's God talking to you. I love that so much.

You said about how your spiritual life looks so different, and it's because when you started, you built it on such a solid foundation of Scripture. And all we talk about, like, girls gone Bible, we're obsessed with the Bible. When we both started reading the Bible, we realized like we had gone our whole lives loving Jesus without really even knowing who he was, you know? And so when we started reading scripture, it just, it changes you forever. Well, do you want to get into the real crux of the atheist questions? All right. I actually heard you speak on this in a sermon one time, but you want to get into the real crux of the atheist questions? All right. I actually heard you speak on this in a sermon one time, but I want you to tell everybody today, why in the Bible is God referred to as he?

Does he have a gender? You know, when you asked that question, my immediate thought was, I have no idea. I know. But so I started processing that that and I thought, well, first of all, you need to understand that we live in a culture where if you're, from one view, he is a negative thing. And if you're living in our gender conflict culture, it feels as if God, if that's what God did, he's preferring men over women, or that women are now being demeaned. So I want to be really clear that whatever the overarching reason is, God sees no conflict between men and women, male and female. He sees both as equally beautiful

and valuable. So if God would choose a pronoun to describe himself, it's not because he thought the other was less. He just didn't think that it was demeaning to be one. But remember, any language about God is limited and inadequate. Because even if the Bible uses the word he, which it does, that's too limiting because God's also spirit. Right. And Jesus had no problem using a female image when he said, Jerusalem, Jerusalem, how I long to hold you in my arms, like a mother hen holds her chicks.

So Jesus had no problem using a feminine metaphor to describe who God is. But I also started thinking God is, in a sense, putting together this beautiful puzzle. If God had used feminine language, knowing that the virgin birth was going to be the entry point of the Messiah, it wouldn't have worked. The language of God being a he created the space for Mary being a she. And so that God would be, in a sense, Jesus's father and Mary would be the mother of Jesus. Yeah. And so I think God is always working from a bigger story. Yeah. And and remember, the Bible says God created them.

It says he created a male, male and female. He created man, male and female. So we think of man. We go, wait a minute. That's masculine. Yes. But in the Bible, man isn't masculine. It's gender neutral because man is male and female. Right. It refers to just mankind in general. Yeah. But I think there was a time where fathers were popular, where it was a good thing to be a man, where a man expressed the right virtues of nobility and honor and courage. And in the story of Adam and Eve, Adam was first the progenitor, and what God is really saying is, I'm first. There's nothing before me.

I heard you speak in a sermon. I wanted to ask this question because I think a couple years ago I heard you speak one time and you said society and culture in general, they have an issue with God being a father because everybody has, a lot of people have such a broken relationship with their fathers. And you spoke to that just kind of being like almost apologizing on behalf of all those fathers that they let you down, but just letting you know God will never let you down, you know? Yeah, no, I think the reason so many people feel offended that God's called fathers because they have father issues. So you end up with God issues.

Yeah. Because you go, wait a minute, if God is like my father, I don't want to have anything to do with God. Yeah, exactly. And no, God is what your father should have been and as your father will be. Mm-hmm. Does it matter if we pray? Okay, does it matter if we pray to Jesus more than God? Does it matter who you pray to in the Holy Trinity? Like, for example, I mostly speak to Jesus.

Like, that's what I refer to him. Fundamentally, it doesn't matter, but it does make a difference. Right. Angela. Yeah. If you had a boyfriend. Yeah. And he just said uh woman

and he just always called you woman or a girl right and never used your name you think what's going on you know do you know me right when i use the word god i think of our search for him well when i use the name j, think of him searching for me. And so when we talk about God, it's usually because we can only see the back of God's head, but we don't know who he is. And when you use the name Jesus, it's as if God has turned around, now you see his face. And so I felt comfortable talking about God before I knew who God was. Yeah. But when I came into a relationship with God, it became more natural for me to talk about Jesus.

Yeah. And so when I pray, I actually pray to Jesus. And because he is the person of God that revealed himself to me. Yeah. Yeah. You know, and so there's an intimate relationship there. Yeah. You know.

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oh yeah i pray all the time you pray all the time yeah but i would say that at this point in my life praying is 90 listening and and 10% asking. I almost don't ask for things. Wow. Almost ever. In fact, every once in a while, I have to remind myself, oh, you should probably ask. Wow. Yeah.

I mean, that's, I think, the place we can all want to strive to get to is where we listen. Because I know, it's so funny, I was actually in prayer yesterday, and I had a moment where I, recently, I have been feeling like I just, I wanted to feel God's so funny. I was actually in prayer yesterday and I had a moment where I recently I have been feeling like I just I wanted to feel God's presence more. I wanted to have an encounter and that really spiritual stuff that we all long for when you've had it before because you know it feel Jesus is always within us. But we want to feel that, you know, crazy encounter. And I had a moment yesterday in prayer where I really took my time and I stayed and I finally felt like I really had an encounter with the Holy Spirit. And I had a thought that was like, you can have this all the time. You don't stay long enough. You get down for one second, say a quick prayer, and then you get up and you go.

And it's like you have to try. You have to sit and listen and wait for me. It's not just about you talking the whole time. You know? I love that. That's really just about you talking the whole time, you know? I love that. No, that's really, really good. I think that praying should be like breathing. Yeah.

It should just be a natural part of our life. And what I tell people is, look, God doesn't want you to feel bad about the fact that you were not praying. Yeah. The moment you're aware of, oh, wow, I feel like I've drifted away or I feel like I stopped paying attention to God's presence, that's the moment where God's trying to get your attention. And so the moment you go, oh, I should have prayed, it's just God tapping you going, hey, I'm here. And I just want you to be aware of me right now.

So good to know. Then you just move right into it. That's really wonderful. It's so easy, too. We make it really complicated and difficult when you, as you said, it should just be like breathing just all day. That's all you should do. And I think it's because a lot of times in our relationships when there's a little bit of separation yeah you have to re-earn the relationship yeah and i've been married 40 years and when i would travel i'd come

back i had to spend like two or three days re-earning the right to be home because kim she wasn't mad that i was gone but she was mad that i was gone i come back and i'm like we should pick up right where i left off yeah she's like no you've been Because Kim, she wasn't mad that I was gone, but she was mad that I was gone. Oh, the best. She's so great. I come back and I'm like, we should pick up right where I left off. Yeah. She's like, no, you've been gone. I'm the same way. Well, God's not.

And you don't have to do any penance with God. You don't have to re-earn intimacy with him. All you have to do is just lean in. That's how I feel. I feel like that constantly. That you have to re-earn intimacy. Yes. I lean in that's so freeing I feel like that constantly that you have to re-earn yes I know that's so freeing to know I know sometimes I think because we are so like we have such egos you're so right about that relationships with other people our egos are so big and we forget that God has no ego and it's really all he wants is for us to

bring it to him and talk to him about it and have a relationship with him. If I repent, I find myself repenting over and over again, but I don't think you need to do that, right? You bring it to him, you repent, you say your forgiveness, and then you just move on, right? What do you think about repenting? I think a lot of us are spiritually OCD. You're not repenting because God's mad. You're not repenting because god's mad you're not repenting because god needs you to you're repenting because you're trapped by shame and guilt yeah and you're hoping that some pattern will alleviate that guilt and shame from your life yeah because you can't just accept forgiveness that's what it is you know wow the only religion i had growing up was i was um roman catholic i

was born Roman Catholic. And so I went through confirmation, and I prayed the Lord's Prayer, and I would do this all the time. And I became so compulsive. I would do this all the time. And my mom would like, what did I do? Give birth to a priest? But it's because I was so OCD.

And then I integrated it into religion. And I thought, oh, I got to do this. I got to do this. And then if I'd lose my shoes, I thought God was punishing me. If I lose my school books, I would say, I would pray, oh, God, I don't know where I put my school books, but I actually thought he hit them. I'll be a better person if you help me know where my books are. God, you know, I won't do that anymore. And I realized that my entire view of God was this really malevolent, kind of like almost like dark, sinister person who was holding all the things I've done wrong over me. And I finally realized, no, I'm just OCD. And I've attached it to this belief system. All these things that I'm doing, God

doesn't need me to do. Yeah. We project so much onto God, so much onto God, our own insecurities and fears. And the hardest thing to do is to go, wow, I'm already forgiven. Yeah. That's what you do a lot. I do. I've had a really like, I have a very pure relationship with God in the sense that I know, I just that I know who He is and what He says about me and about Him and that I am forgiven and I don't need to hold shame or anything. That's so freeing, though. It is so freeing, I know.

And I feel bad because I know a lot of people don't have that pure of a relationship with Him because of external factors and things that have happened in their life and maybe their parents didn't forgive them or they've never seen that unconditional love that God has for us manifested within their real relationships. And that's really sad. Yeah. But God loves us. Even when I was in seminary, I had so many people come up to me going, what is it about

your relationship with God? Because I'm always feeling guilty and I'm always feeling shame and I always feel separated. And how do you have such an your relationship with God? Because I'm always feeling guilty, and I'm always feeling shame, and I always feel separated. And how do you have such an intimate relationship with God? And I said, here's the irony. You're probably a way better human being than me. I think you read the Bible more than me. I think you pray more than me.

I think you try so hard to be a better human being than me. I just know that my relationship with God is completely unconditional. And so I said, I think your problem is that you still believe you have to be good enough. And I came in knowing I couldn't be good enough. So I never had that burden on me. I knew I wasn't good enough. So now I just move forward. Yeah, so true.

It's so true. Why do bad things happen to good people like say you know someone gets cancer and they're praying and they're asking for healing and sometimes they don't get that healing why is that well one it's interesting that we ask the question why do bad things happen to good people yeah we never ask why do good things happen to bad people yeah i know yeah and it, why do good things happen to bad people? Yeah, I know. Yeah, that's true. The number one reason people would say they do not believe in God is, I can't believe in God because they're suffering in the world.

Yeah. Because bad things happen to people. That's the number one thing people say, yeah. But if you do not believe in God because they're suffering in the world, okay, let's just say then there is no God, is there still suffering? Yeah. And the answer is yes. So if suffering exists and there is no God, then where does suffering come from? Most suffering comes from humans hurting each other. So why do we hold God accountable for what we do to each other? And then don't blame each other, but we blame God. When a person says,

I don't believe in God because there's so much suffering, I'm going, what you shouldn't believe in is humanity. Because it's humanity that actually has caused suffering. So here's why bad things happen to good people, because it's a broken world and suffering and pain are real. And when I had cancer, we found out right before Christmas, almost a couple of days before my wife's birthday. And I never had the thought, like, why me? Because my thought was, like, why not me? I never had this thought, oh, wait a minute, I've tried to follow God, and so he should protect me from cancer. I think one thing is that we've been taught the wrong thing. We've been taught that if you are sincere and you love God

and you follow Jesus, that bad things will never happen to you. We live in a broken world. And from the moment you take your first breath, you're moving towards your last breath, whether you like it or not. Yeah. You know, and I mean, you know, in a sense, death always wins and it always loses. Wow. You know, because everyone dies physically.

But what Jesus came to do was to make sure death didn't win, even though we die. And so bad things happen to good people because we live in a broken, fragmented world. And by the way, if bad things didn't happen, we wouldn't be aware we needed God. Yeah. And by the way, if bad things didn't happen, we wouldn't be aware we needed God. And, you know, so when I look at like my own, you know, physical reality, I'm going, man, I am not who I was at 25. Yeah. You know, my body is fighting to stay alive and stay young and stay moving.

And it reminds me that life is temporary. Yeah. You know, when I had cancer, it reminded me that life is temporary. When I had cancer, it reminded me that this life is filled with imperfection. And I think that if we didn't have that, we wouldn't believe that there's a problem. The Bible says that all creation groans for its redemption. But the Bible actually says is when we separated ourselves from God, all of creation went into disarray. So what it's saying is that every earthquake and tsunami and all the famines and the cancer and the disease and the sickness, all this exists because it is the external proof that our inner worlds are in a disaster. What you see on the outside is what's

actually going on the inside. But if I told you bitterness is killing you, but you never saw sickness, you go, no, we're fine. But we're not. And what's so ironic is even now medicine tells us that so much of our physical illnesses are the result of our emotional, psychological, and spiritual illnesses. Yes. Yeah. I feel like I'm in church. So we watched Why Jesus last night. You guys can look it up. It's Why Jesus. It's such a good sermon. And you said in there, you said nature might be a reflection of us, not God. And it's because God never intended, right, for all of the bad things to happen in the world. He actually intended for us to live like a really beautiful life. But because of the fall of man, Adam and Eve, am I right? That's what happened, and that's when sin entered the world. And because of our sin is the result of every natural disaster, emotional disaster,

everything that happens. It's so funny when you look at the story in Genesis and you think, that's ridiculous that someone eating a fruit from one tree could cause all of creation to go into disarray. But now we have complexity theory and quantum mechanics where we believe that if a butterfly flaps its wings in the Amazon, it could affect an avalanche in Antarctica. Wow. And so what physics is actually teaching us is that one choice can have catastrophic effect across the entire universe. So what we thought was a myth in the Bible actually is scientifically validated. And what the Bible is telling us is that God created humanity at the epicenter of creation.

And our intimacy with him is what held the universe together. And when we were separated in our relationship with him, it not only broke us, it broke creation. And so it's like creation is waiting for its redemption, and it only gets its redemption when we are restored to God. Yeah. Can you believe that Adam and Eve did that? That they ate from the... I can believe it because we do that all the time. I know. I know. We really do. I say, we read... We do it every day all the time. Come on.

We did an episode on betrayal and forgiveness, and I was sitting there saying how whenever I read the Gospels and whenever we get to Judas betraying Jesus, I always get like, I have a visceral reaction. I get so upset. And I'm like, how could you do that to Jesus? And then I'm like, I do that to Jesus every day. But when you look at, I love Genesis, and I like the nuances in the first three chapters. When Adam and Eve sin and break their relationship with God, when they eat of that fruit, and

God shows up in the garden, what's the first thing he asks them? I mean, if I were God, I would go, what were you thinking? And I told you not to eat from that fruit. I would be that Latin parent. I'd be the Latin mom. And it reminded me how dumb my choice just was. God only asked them one question. Who told you you were naked?

What God's actually asking them is not, why did you destroy the whole universe? Yeah. What God's actually asking them is not, why did you destroy the whole universe? He's saying, what voice did you let into your head that lied to you about who you are? So even when, because that was the first disobedience of all time, right? And so even when God was betrayed for the first time by a man, he didn't even acknowledge the betrayal. He acknowledged the fact that we were feeling shame and we were in pain. That we let a lie convince us it was true. Because when the serpent says, if you eat from

this fruit, you'll become like God, they were already like God. They were created in an image and likeness. And so what they were convinced of is that they were less than they actually were. Oh my gosh. We talked so much about how, this is what I want okay a couple years ago I've seen everything you've ever done a couple years ago you talked about how you don't really like to give the devil that much attention and we talk a lot about the devil on this podcast. Oh everything we go oh that's the enemy. That's the enemy. I saw that in the questions and Aaron has a um he always has a little asterisk for me yeah I know how Aaron feels about that trust me if you don't like the question dad be nice no it's okay if you don't like the question tell us if you don't like the question but how do you why don't you like to give the enemy so much

attention I don't know what what do you what what is your reasoning i don't know if you remember when you learned how to ride a bike yes and uh if someone made the mistake of saying don't hit that tree yeah or look out for that tree that was a pretty much 100 guarantee you're gonna hit that tree yeah because the moment they tell you watch out for the tree that's all you're watching out for yeah and you hit it what they should actually be saying is, keep your eyes on the sidewalk. I know. Yeah. Because the moment you keep your eyes on the sidewalk,

the tree is irrelevant. Yeah. The moment you're focusing on the devil all the time, that's what you're going to run into. Yeah. And you're going to see the devil everywhere. Yeah. All right, GGB gang.

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Exactly. And it's kind of fun too. It is. Because you can pick something different every time. You don't get bored. Yeah. I have also had so many more compliments on these nails than I do when I go to the salon. Yeah. And I was just in Florida last week and I painted my mom's nails. I painted my sister-in-law's nails and they were like send me the link for this visit oliveandjune.com slash ggb for 20% off

your first olive and june system that was o-l-i-v-e-a-n-d-j-u-n-e.com slash ggb for 20% off your first olive and june system you feel the presence of the enemy though what do you do in that moment if you feel it like or if you feel evil or if you feel you know how would you get rid of that i don't know if i usually talk about this a podcast i've had at least i've had a few situations where i've had encounters with people who came up and ended up speaking multiple voices or bought guns to being told to kill me. And so I have had experiences that are really dark, demonic. And I still don't think that we're healthy in the way we think about the devil.

First of all, the devil is not God's brother. He's not Jesus' brother. He doesn't have the same powers as Jesus. We talk about the devil as if he's all-powerful, all-knowing, and all-present. So if everyone is being attacked by the devil, that means he's all-present, which is a lie. He wants you to think he's everywhere. He can only be at one place at a time. Only God can be everywhere at all times. So if you're at home and the devil's attacking you, and you're at home and the devil's attacking you, what are you doing?

You're giving the devil a characteristic that only God deserves. So it's actually, if you want me to tell you, it becomes devil worship. Because you're giving the devil the attributes of God. I remember I was spoken at this church. It was a great church. And right before I walked on stage,

it had a sign, not today, devil. No, not today. I thought, wow. Right before I walk on stage on Sunday morning to speak from the scriptures about Jesus, they want me to think about the devil. That's how unhealthy we've gotten. The primary reason we think about the devil is we do not want to take responsibility for our lives. So I don't think about the devil. And when I do think about the devil, I use it as a way catalyzing me to think about God. Yeah. Because the devil wants you to think about him. And 99% of the stuff in your life isn't the devil.

All the dark stuff, all the negative stuff. It's a result. I don't want to say it this way but you're not that important yeah to the devil yeah you know like when people like a devil attacking me i'm going i don't know i think he's attacking someone more influential i don't know and uh like i gotta like you know if you look at a hierarchy of like spirits yeah you know i got probably like i got a low level demon messing with me. I don't know. Mine's pretty strong, man. And here's the reality. No devil will be like the devil if you don't take responsibility for your life. Yeah. Wow. So you don't believe that those little thoughts and anxiety and depression, that's not from the enemy? That's just...

I think that some things can be from the devil or from like... Evil. Evil. Yeah. Yeah. But I think most of the stuff gets into us early on and by things people said to us. Right. By pain we experienced. by trauma we went through,

by our own insecurities and brokenness. And then our souls become an echo chamber and we hear those things over and over and over and over and over again. By the way, the devil cannot know your thoughts. All right. So I will say, if you are going to pay attention to like the dark spiritual world, you need to be careful what you say out loud. Yes. And you need to be careful what you do because that can be seen and heard. But my inner world, that belongs to me and God. And I think it's really important to know that.

And there are places in the scriptures where, I don't use the word possession but but I do think that people can be oppressed yeah and that they can have actually I mean the Bible it makes it clear that there are people who were actually demonized and and and I've met people and had conversations with people who actually worshipped Satan and invited spirits into their life. And it's a really dark and painful reality. But what I would say for you as a follower of Jesus is focus on Jesus, not the devil. And then when you have a negative thought, attributing it to the devil may be your way of going,

I don't have to take responsibility for it. Right. And just maybe it's better to go, I'm going to stop having this thought. Yeah, I think the reason why we have had such a focus on spiritual warfare throughout this podcast is because we come from, like neither Ari or I, like we grew up not going to church like that. We didn't read the Bible growing up. So we grew up in environments that were rough in a lot of ways. And so we know a lot of people who struggle severely with depression and anxiety and addiction.

And we're in Hollywood. Like we're around a lot of scary stuff. Hollywood. Like we're around a lot of scary stuff. And we just, we really want people to understand that they're not like they have, they serve a God who is a deliverer and a healer and a protector. And, and that, but there is a spiritual battle happening. I really do believe in spiritual warfare. Yeah. Okay. But when you look at Ephesians chapter six and you look at the armor of God, every piece of the armor of God is actually a characteristic of character. Yeah. Yeah.

And the problem is that we try to do spiritual warfare with superstition. So we go, you know, I rebuke you, Satan. I rebuke you, Satan. I rebuke you, Satan. But if you're still living in fear, it doesn't work. Or I go, I rebuke the devil. But if you're still bitter and you won't forgive, it's not going to work. Yeah.

And so the problem is when we turn spiritual warfare into magic. But if you're still bitter and you won't forgive, it's not going to work. And so the problem is when we turn spiritual warfare into magic. Yeah. And you go, you know, I'm putting on the armor of God. You know? And I'm going, no, you're not because you're still a liar. Are you doing an impression of me right now? I literally say that. I go, put the armor of God on.

The way you put on the armor of God is you tell the truth. Yeah, exactly. The way you put on the armor of God is you hold on to hope. The way you put on the armor of God is you become a person of integrity. Yeah. And the armor of God is your character. Yeah. And so I try to help people stop living in this magical space and go,

no, it's really about your character. Yes. And when you let God change your character, you become powerful. Oh, yes. I'll go back. I mean, I used to be in another part of the country, highest crime rate, highest murder rate in the United States at the time. A guy walks into our building on Sunday morning. The church building?

Yeah. And carrying a gun and a knife and saying voices, told them come in and kill me. They brought him into my office. I don't know why they brought him into my office. And he's sitting with me

and we're at a table and he hands me his knife and he goes, here, I want you to have my knife. I don't want you to be afraid of me. And I pushed the knife back and said, you can have your knife. I'm not worried about you.

I want the gun. And we went back and forth. And then this guy looks at me and he says, do you want to call us out by name? Because right before that, I said, John, if you're hearing voices in your head and they're telling you to come kill me, you're either psychologically broken and you need really significant therapy, or you're demon possessed. So I literally laid out two options for this guy. And that's when he said, do you want to call us out by name? And I listened to this guy and I hear multiple voices come out at the same time. And nothing in life ever prepared me for that. Not a master's degree in theology, not a psychiatry or philosophy degree. Oh, no way.

And I looked at him and he goes, do you want to call us by name? And I said, no. I mean, I wish I could go, you know, yeah, it was Mel Gibson and Braveheart. No, you know, it's like I could feel warm all over my body of fear. I would have too. And I said, I just feel a worm all over my body of fear. I would have too. And I said, I just want to talk to John. You know, I want to talk to the human in there.

And I tried to pray for him and he stood up and he said, no. And he goes, let me pray for you. And I said, all right, you pray to your gods and I'll pray to mine. And then he runs out of my office and I think he leaves the building. He goes into the auditorium on the stage with a gun and calling all the people together and so I have to they come and get me goes in the auditorium so I go through the auditorium you kept going where the guy was? They let this guy have a gun? Where were the cops? There were no cops. Oh my goodness. Cops are writing us parking tickets.

Yeah, just like here. And I'm walking down the middle aisle, and he's up there. And I remember looking at him going, in the name of Jesus, I command you to come down. I said it with a lot more energy. Yeah. And he didn't. And I said it again, in the name of Jesus, I command you to come down. And the third time, I kept walking toward him. I said, in the name of jesus i command you to come down and the third time just i kept walking toward him i was i said the name jesus i command you to come

down the guy looked at me and he just crumbled off that stage and got on his knees on the floor and um and what's really funny is there was a film crew there from england doing a documentary on the work we were doing there. And we were sending people out for interviews afterwards. And he went out the door and they thought he was our next interview. So we got him on film. No way. Do you have it? Yeah, we have it somewhere. And all I'm telling you is that in that moment, I didn't think of the phrase in the name of Jesus as a magical phrase like abacadabra. Yeah.

And that's why I think Christians think of language like that. Yes. What I knew in that moment was I'm standing where I think Jesus would stand doing what I am convinced Jesus would do to protect all the people in this place. Wow. If he was going to shoot anyone, it was going to be me. And I think sometimes we try to make everything superstitious rather than actually

like character-based right and I think doing things in the name of Jesus means you're standing where Jesus would stand doing what Jesus would do yeah exactly and you don't have to say the right phrase you just have to stand in that presence wow so did he look different to you after you said that and you just crumbled no when he got up he started asking my name and i said i told my name and he started screaming my name he's like erwin i'll be back wow and i said i'll be here you didn't feel even like one little thing of fear in that moment not at all i can't believe it incredible god adam wow well while we're on the subject of the devil we have one more question how can god send anyone to hell if he loves us all so much that's a

question everyone has well that's an interesting question because you said it was about the devil but then you ask about hell but it actually does tie together. Because hell was never created for humans. It was only created for the devil and for the angels who fell. And God doesn't send anyone to hell. All God is doing is trying to keep us from it. And so the language is important. The reason we've used the language of God sends people to hell is because really judgmental, condemning religious people wanted people to live in fear that God was sending you to hell. Yeah. And that should have never been the narrative. It should have always been God's trying to bring you to life.

Yeah. And for a lot of people, life is very much a reflection of hell. They're in extreme poverty. Yes. very much a reflection of hell. They're in extreme poverty, in lives of violence and injustice and pain and suffering. They're not afraid of hell. They're trying to figure out how to find some heaven in their life, to have some meaning. And what we need to understand is that God is always the one fighting for us and not trying to condemn us.

Yeah, it's so true. So true. I know. I really like that you put language to that because there are so many questions as Christians that I think we know the answer to, but then we don't know how to articulate it. And I think a lot of people have trouble being openly Christian

because they don't feel prepared to answer those really hard questions that people are going to ask. I did want to ask you, can, in your opinion, do you think that you can lose your salvation? You can't lose something that isn't yours. And like your salvation isn't something that you're like given like a car. Right. And your salvation is something that in a sense belongs to God. He's waiting for you to invite him to change your life. And so when you look at the scriptures and you go, oh, if anyone's in Christ, they're a brand new creation. And so you've become something new.

You might have a bad day and wish that you had not been transformed, but you still are transformed. Wow, yeah. You know, it's like saying, can a caterpillar, once it becomes a butterfly, become a caterpillar again? Yeah. The answer is no. Once you become a butterfly, it's out of your hands. Yeah. You can become a bad butterfly.

You can be a butterfly who never flies because you want to act like a caterpillar. But you still are a caterpillar. Right, right. And so I don't think of my salvation as something that I can lose because it's not something that I earned. If I earned my salvation, then I could lose it. Yeah. If I worked for it, then maybe I could work my way out of it. Right.

But it's not. But it's not. And, you know, it's when you begin to realize, oh, it's actually a shift in essence. You are now alive. Yeah. And so you can't go from being alive to being dead again. But you can't go from being alive to acting like you're dead. Okay.

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It's easy breakfasts, quick lunches, fresh snacks all throughout the day. And didn't you used to use it all the time, right? Yeah, I used it. all throughout the day. And didn't you used to use it all the time, right? Yeah, I used it. So I got HelloFresh during quarantine and it was truly life-changing because I used to hate, like I was not interested in cooking at all and it was hard and I would mess up and I would burn things and I would like not portion things correctly. And then HelloFresh made it so easy because you can't mess it up. It's foolproof. And and during quarantine i was cooking for my whole family and they were loving it and i love taking care of them with really not having to put that

much work in but just getting so much out of it that's so convenient i love that okay guys so you're gonna go to hellofresh.com slash 50 ggb and use code 50 ggb for% off and you get an extra 15% off in the next two months. Again, that was hellofresh.com slash 50GGB. Use code 50GGB for 50% off and you get an extra 15% off in the next two months. Thank you, HelloFresh. A lot of people live in fear that God, like even if they're saved, that they still might not. We got so many questions of people being like, what if I'm scared that I'm still going to hell even though I accepted Jesus? Like a lot of people live in fear like that. It's interesting. Most of the people, when I would work with people who are like psychotic,

it's amazing how many of them use religious language, how many of them would think they're going to hell, how many thought that God was against them. What ends up happening is that we end up thinking too much about ourselves. So if you're constantly in fear that you're still going to hell, my answer to you is stop thinking about yourself. Yeah. And start thinking about other people.

Yeah. And Paul actually said, I would choose to be accursed. I would choose to go to hell so that all the people I love could actually come to faith. And so when you actually have a faith that's real and dynamic, you're not only not afraid of going, you're not even afraid of going because you're alive. And hell wouldn't know what to do with you because you're alive. Yeah. It couldn't hold you because you're alive. Yeah. And, you know, the Bible talks about the dead and the living.

And if you were somehow, you know, if this was a movie and you were sucked into hell, it couldn't hold you because you're alive. Wow. It's incapable of it. It's like trying to hold water with a net. And hell is incapable of holding you back. When is Jesus coming back? Is it in my lifetime? I have great news for you. Jesus already came back. Yeah. 2000 years ago. Yeah. The moment you can fully experience his presence in this life, you'll never need to know when he's coming back again.

So true. That is a perfect answer. That's so good. The reason we keep hoping Jesus comes back is because he's not fully present in our lives. Wow. I love that you say that because the only reason I ever think like, whenever people talk about it, I always have a deep knowing that I'm just I just feel like I don't really I don't really care it doesn't really matter to me because he's here I'm here we're together already so that's really

interesting that you say that his disciples asked him and he said I don't know yeah so if Jesus answered I don't know everyone who thinks they know is lying yeah either to themselves or to everyone else. There are more books written about the second coming than Jesus said he had information about. When they said, Lord, when's the consummation date? She goes, I don't know. Only the Father knows that. And then I go, well, then we have all these Christians writing all these books about when is the end times. They're actually saying they know more than Jesus. Not good.

No, it's a pretty arrogant position. Yeah. And then Jesus not only came back when he rose from the dead, but he said he had to ascend into heaven so his spirit could come, so he came back when he came to dwell within us. How many times does he need to come back for you? True. Yeah, I know.

It's so true. I know. This isn't on the paper, but I always wonder about this, and I just wanted to ask you. So do you believe that everything happens for a reason, like our life is already predestined, he already knows what's going to happen? No.

Okay. You don't? I don't. I don't think everything happens for a reason. I think we need to give reason to everything that happens. Okay. Because we're the ones who decide how to interpret our experiences. And that's why two people can go through pain and come out differently.

Yeah. Two people can go through trauma and come out differently. Because it's not what you experience that shapes you. It's how you respond to those experiences that shape you. Yeah. But let's get back to the other side of the question is, is everything determined? By the way, there's actually a society of scientific atheists

that meet together usually every year. And in one of their conferences, they talked about how they were all deterministic. They believed that everything was set into place. So what's interesting to me is that atheists and Calvinists about how they were all deterministic. They believed that everything was set into place. Yeah. So what's interesting to me is that atheists and Calvinists have the same view, that everything is predetermined, that everything's already set into place. Right.

And so an atheist believes it's all already predicted because of math. So you have an illusion of choosing, but you're not really choosing. It's all the math. And Calvinists believe the same thing, except it's not math. They think that God has already preset every choice. But here's the crazy thing. The only thing that can't exist without free will is love. Wow. is love. Because you cannot force someone to love someone else. If you had no choice, then love does not exist. When people say, well, no, it's all to glorify God. The Bible doesn't tell us that God did all this for his glory. Because if God was only about glorifying himself he did a terrible job because billions of people don't even acknowledge him so they're not glorifying him and then we're living inadequate

lives so we're not glorifying him perfectly right so it was all about glorifying god the strategy did not work why would god give us free will if free will would, in a sense, steal glory from him. It's because with free will, love can exist. And when we have the right to choose and the power to choose, then love can be true. And one of the things I love about the scriptures, what I love about the God of the Bible is that the driving principle of the universe is love. Yeah. It explains everything God does and explains the mess of it all. Because love is messy. When you make love the guiding principle, things like pain happen. Things like suffering happen.

Things that you don't want to happen, bad things happen. Because love gives the space for choice. So I absolutely do not believe that your life is already predetermined. I do not believe that your choices are an illusion. In fact, I think it's what makes you uniquely human. I was a part of a conference called TED for like 20 years. I've gone to the TED conferences where they focus on technology, entertainment, design, and they say the brightest thinkers in the world

were a part of that community. And I realized after a while, every species was valued except for humans. Like, you know, whales were valued, and penguins, you'd march with the penguins, and you'd study why one plant could change an entire ecosystem. But whenever they would talk about humans, it always felt really, like, demeaning.

And so I took some time to start studying what makes humans different than every other species. And what humans can do that no other species can do is we can materialize the invisible. Human beings have an imagination. We can actually dream. And then out of those dreams, we create. Everything that is created in this room existed in someone's imagination before it actually became a material reality. And what humans do that no other species can do is humans create futures. In the same way that bees create hives and ants create colonies and beavers create dams and

orbs create silk, humans create futures. Every time you choose, you're creating a future. And so the question isn't, can you create? That's what it means to be created in the image of God. The question is, what will you create? So not only do I not believe the future is set, I don't think the future comes to you. I think the future comes through you. I guess for me, I look at my life, even how I was in such a dark time, and then Angela comes into my life, and then we start this podcast, and it just seemed so planned by God that I'm like. Well, that's different.

Okay. Because not only are you choosing. Do you ever have someone else make a choice that affected your life? Yes. Sometimes painfully, sometimes positively. Yes. Right? When Angela and you chose each other, that became a positive choice that someone else made that affected your life in a positive way.

Yeah. But you can be driving down a road and a drunk driver runs a red light and cripples you or kills you or hurts you. That's someone else's choice affecting you. Right. That's someone else's choice affecting you. Right. And so you realize that we live in this incredibly dynamic, complicated universe where other choices are affecting us. Yeah.

Someone else is choosing that we're not paying attention to. God chooses. Yeah. And God chooses you. Yeah. And God chooses your future. And God chooses to take all your mess and create something beautiful out of it. Yeah, that's funny. And so what you need to realize is in the same way that some other human being's choice can affect you,

God's bigger choice affects you. So you're right. The universe is leveraged in your favor because God is choosing for you. Right. Amen. Amen. On that note, can you, because we talk about this all the time, do you think that we can mess up anything that God has for us?

Well, here's God's plan for your life, a future and a hope. That's what it says. I know my plans for you, plans of welfare, not destruction, with a future and a hope. We think God's plan is a micromanager plan. This is what you're going to do on Tuesday. This is what you're going to wear on Thursday on Thursday you're gonna both change your hair to look the same on Friday we act as if God's micromanaging every choice yeah no

God's choice for you is a future and a hope yeah so no matter how much you try to destroy your future he still chooses a future for you right no matter how much you try to destroy hope future, he still chooses a future for you. No matter how much you try to destroy hope, he's always going to choose hope for you. And the interesting thing about hope is that hope only exists in the future. Hope cannot exist in the past. It's called regret. And so there's this wonderful human dynamic where God creates us as future creatures. In fact, in Hebrews, when it says that faith is the substance of things not seen, the church of things hoped for,

what it's actually telling us is that humans are future invisible creatures, that we're designed for the future because hope only exists in the future. And we're designed to live in this invisible space that changes the visible space. You know, when the Bible says that God created everything, Christians normally say God created everything out of nothing, right? Yeah. But that's not what the Bible says. That's why it's really important to actually read the Bible and not just what people say

about the Bible. Exactly. Because what the Bible actually says is that everything that is visible was created out of that which is invisible. It doesn't say he created it out of nothing. He created it out of something that's invisible. Now, the oxygen in this room is something, but it's invisible. If it was nothing, we'd all suffocate.

What is the invisible material that God used to create the visible reality? His imagination. Everything existed in the dreams of God. You were a dream of God before you ever took a breath. You were alive and created in God's imagination before you ever came into existence. And so, yes, God is dynamically involved in your life, and you can't mess up his plan for your life

because the future wins. It doesn't mean that you can't go off course and live a life you wished you had not lived. It doesn't mean you can't make decisions he wished you had not made and even he might have told you not to make. But he leverages everything in your favor so that the future is always yours. Yeah, he does. That's comforting. Yeah, he does.

Real quick, do you think God brings people in your life to teach you lessons sometimes? Absolutely. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. And sometimes he gives you what you want to teach you lessons. Okay. I'm married.

My spouse passes away. Then I get remarried. Okay. Who do we go with? How do we do that when we get to heaven? Are we married in heaven? Do we know each other? Which one do we go with?

First of all, I have no idea. Sorry, this one wasn't on the list of questions. I think, well, one, well, you know each other, of course. Yeah. You'll know each other more deeply and more beautifully than you ever knew each other on earth. Yeah. And in this life, whatever we experience as intimacy, it's just a drop in the bucket of the intimacy we'll experience with all of each other in eternity.

And so we worry about, oh, am I going to love this person or this person more? Am I going to be closer to this person or this person? What I'm going to say is, in heaven, you're not going to have any separation from anyone. Right, right. And it's not romantic. I think it's all romantic because it's all love. Right, right. But it's not all sexual.

Right, right. You know, I think that love will be more profound, more deep. Yeah. You know, because I love pizza and I love Kim. Yeah. But they're not the same kind of love. Right, right. You know, we know the different layers of love in this life.

Right. And I don't think any layer in this life will even begin to touch the layers that will step into an eternity. Yeah, yeah. God, I can't wait to get to heaven. You also asked a question about do I think um everyone in hell has a place or a chance yeah yeah oh yeah do you skipped it yes and that's really important that was do you go do you go directly to hell if you don't believe in jesus or do you go to purgatory slash do you have a second

i knew one of you had to be catholic because both of us but yeah it's me okay one purgatory actually doesn't exist okay Okay. Okay. And I don't mean it in a bad way. I'm just saying that a lot of our views were created because we tried to help God look better. Wow. And it's the reason, as Catholics, we would baptize infants, is because during the plagues, a lot of infants were dying. Yeah.

And since they hadn't been baptized, people thought they were going to hell. So they were baptizing infants so that parents wouldn't live in fear that their children were going to go to hell. Wow. It would have been so much better to say, of course God would not send your baby to hell. Yeah. God's a loving God. But we create rituals to try to help us escape the fear of God. And so we create purgatory

because we don't really know what to do with people that aren't like evil, evil, but not good, good. Like me. What do we do with people like me? We just sort of go to purgatory and wait it out and hope that something good happens. One of the things I love in the scriptures is that it says that Jesus, after he was crucified, he descended into hell. That's what the Bible says. And he proclaimed freedom to the captives. And in Matthew, it says that when Jesus died, that the tombs opened up and the dead came back to life. And that people in Jerusalem actually saw the dead now alive walking among them. And so there's this image in the Bible where Jesus goes into hell.

He proclaims freedom to everyone. And he unlocks hell so people can be free. And what we need to realize is that heaven and hell are outside of time. Yeah. So that means when Jesus descended into hell in that moment, everyone who ever was or ever would be in hell had Jesus come to them personally to invite them to freedom. Wow.

And I just know that God loves humanity more than I ever could. And if I want everyone to have a chance to be free, then my compassion doesn't even touch the compassion of God. And so when I read that, I go, way to go, Jesus. You are not trapped by time or space. In the same way the Bible says that you're already seated in the heavenlies, we're already transcendent. We exist here and in eternity.

In the same way, everyone who ever died, no one, I'm convinced of it, no one stays in hell that doesn't choose it. Yeah. I agree. Yeah. And God fights for everyone because he fights for love. The problem is that when we try to make God so judgmental, Yeah. And God fights for everyone because he fights for love. The problem is that when we try to make God so judgmental,

heaven is not Stockholm Syndrome where God takes you hostage even though you don't want to be with him, so you eventually love him because you can't escape. Because if you did not want to know love and forgiveness, if you did not want to be around a God who's holy and pure and beautiful, being forced to be with him forever would be hell to you. So in a sense, if you choose darkness and evil, if you choose hatred and violence, God's presence is hell to you. And that's the irony.

It's not that a person, in sense gets sent to hell. It's that a person, and it's hard for us to believe, but a person might choose to hold onto hate rather than love. A hundred percent. And God gives you the right to hold onto that if you choose it. Wow. Wow. That made me emotional. That's incredible. What a beautiful way to put it. Yeah. Absolutely incredible. And it's, you articulate it in such a powerful way when it's so, it's such a difficult question to answer.

Okay. You know what? I just, we have one last question for you. Okay. And it's because we're a little bit new to this whole thing, right? We're just a couple months into this podcast. We wanted to know, do you get hate and if you do do you have any advice because we've gotten a little hate how in the world does anyone hate

you guys i don't know i'm just kidding um i've lived with hate my whole life yeah um if you choose to be public yeah you're going to choose to have criticism. If you choose to have any opinion, you're going to choose to have criticism. And if you choose to love Jesus publicly, you're going to have criticism. And ironically, you're going to have more criticism from Christians than non-Christians. It's the only people we have criticism from. Non-Christians almost have never criticized us. I know. Growing one, I've been a fairly public person

for a long time. Aaron, my son, Mariah, my daughter, they've had to live under the weight of massive criticism

all their life. There was nothing Aaron could ever do that people were not watching under a microscope trying to find a reason to hate us. Nothing I could do.

And even this week, I had someone who DMed me from Australia saying, make your life count. Like my life wasn't counting because I wasn't making the right choices in my life because I didn't talk enough about Jesus. And then I had another person DM me this week going, what the heck?

He didn't use the language. But are you doing? Because I work a lot in the business space. Most of my podcasts are about personal development, thinking at a higher level the business space. Most of my podcasts are about personal development, thinking at a higher level, in business success. I mean, I'm in a whole different world all the time. People want me, because I started Mosaic, to only speak on Sunday, only speak from the Bible,

only talk about Jesus. But I like sports, I like physics, I like science, I like business, I like thinking at a higher level, and so I'm a person who's gonna talk about everything, but they don't want me to. And so you're always gonna get hate. And you are, I know because you did a master class, the art of communication, and you are truly

one of the most gifted communicators I've ever seen in my life, and for you to not be able to go out and help teach that gift and educate people is wild to me. I've always said this about you mosaic everybody you guys are so incredible at what you do and it's because of Mosaic is so is full of a lot of younger people right and so people want to discredit that for some reason it doesn't make any sense. And something else that I always think is why just because you are a pastor, that means that

you're not allowed to make money. Yeah. I always thought it was funny. If I only got paid by the church, people would go, you see, you're making all your money in the church. Exactly. But because I'm a business guy and I make a great deal of money in the business world, people go, wait a minute, wait a minute. You're not allowed to do that. You can't be a business guy and I make a great deal of money in the business world people wait a minute wait a minute you're not allowed to do that you can't be a business guy and a pastor yeah yeah or you can't be successful in a pastor because you have to choose to be unsuccessful yes and to be humble right eventually you have to decide I'm just going to live the life I'm created to live yeah and that's what you have to do just realize the people are criticizing you um they're really angry about their life right right you know and are criticizing you um they're really angry about

their life right right you know and i realize oh they they're trying to live like vicariously through me and if i don't live the life they need me to live they get upset so true and you know people listening to you and they might be upset going why did they get all this influence why is their podcast blowing up yeah you know why why not me yeah and and the reason is because they're spending their life criticizing other people yeah rather than creating so true and so my encouragement to you is one try not to read them as much as possible yeah and and realize that you have so many people who love you yeah and but if you're like me you might get a hundred people who love you and you only listen to the one who hates you right and then it hits

you hard and so one lets you know you're still sensitive lets you know you're still human it lets you know you're still humble yeah you know but then you got to just put it aside and and just live the life you're created to live yeah and enjoy you're allowed to enjoy your life yes you know at one point we felt like we couldn't do anything yeah we were like i'm gonna wear potato sack and i'm gonna wear a cash bag over our heads we were like i don't know what to do okay so basically what you're saying is don't listen to the prophet who openly rebuked us on instagram the other day so you should see the video oh my gosh okay thank you so much pastor erwin mcman, you are incredible.

Right now you have, what do you have going on? You have your podcast, the Mindshift podcast. We do. Erin and I together lead Mindshift podcast. We have so much fun. We also have a community, a master class called The Arena. And it's a monthly membership. People can join.

And we talk about, it's really focused on communication, leadership, character, and big ideas. It's where we go just talk about every big idea we can think of. And I love talking about philosophy or theology or culture or leadership. Incredible. Yeah, we go in there. And then we have a conference coming up on October 6th and 7th. I don't know when this podcast is going to come out. Yeah, this is coming out this week.

Okay. Where is that? It's at Mosaic in Hollywood. It's not our Mosaic church conference. It's the first time I've ever done a business conference. I invited a lot of my friends, some of them who are not followers of Jesus to speak. I've got people like Lewis Howe speaking, if you know, he has the School of Greatness. And Jamie Kerm Lima, who is one of the few women in the world who started a company from scratch,

sold it for $1.2 billion after nine years. I have a friend named John Gordon, who I met when he was a Jewish Buddhist energy coach. Now he's a really passionate follower of Jesus, written like 40 books. And he's one of the main speakers to like NFL and sports, you know, baseball and college sports. And we have a guy named Todd Herman coming who helped Kobe Bryant develop the image of Black Mamba.

He coaches like Rafael Nadal. So I just basically asked a lot of my friends in the business world, Kobe Bryant developed the image of Black Mamba. Wow. He coaches like Rafael Nadal. So I just basically asked a lot of my friends in the business world, would you come and do a conference? Yeah. And so we're doing the Arena Live in Los Angeles. So it's going to be so much fun. We're going to be there.

We encourage everybody to go get tickets. We'll put it in the description. Everyone needs a good business class. Seriously. Oh, there we go. Okay. Gosh, thank you so much, Pastor Erwin. You are an go okay gosh thank you so much pastor erwin you are an angel we appreciate you so much we love you guys so much thank you so much for having me so much thanks guys incredible you were married your husband died is that true no she's not oh you