Latest / The Lila Rose Show / E244: Atheist at 8, Gang Leader at 10: Ruslan's Path to Jesus w/Ruslan KD | Lila Rose Show

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E244: Atheist at 8, Gang Leader at 10: Ruslan's Path to Jesus w/Ruslan KD | Lila Rose Show · The Lila Rose Show

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  The stuff I grew up on indoctrinated me.
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  Snoop Dogg and Doctor Dre discipled me into utter
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  debauchery. We start breaking into houses,
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  smoking weed, all sorts of craziness.
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  In every era, our job is going to be salt and light.
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  Is it God's Kingdom I'm building or is it my castle?
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  I'm just going to sit and wait for the Prince to come when we
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  are called as women to become the best we can be and to use
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  our talents for the Kingdom of God.
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  Come on, we are planting seeds and we're tending gardens for
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  the next season. The only thing that grows
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  overnight is weeds and magic mushrooms.
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  At age 8, he decided he was an atheist, and by age 10 he had
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  started a neighborhood gang. Today on the Lilara show, I sit
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  down with Ruslan, one of my favorite YouTube creators who is
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  now a Christian, leading a media mission to bring more souls to
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  Jesus Christ. Ruslan has a new book out called
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  Godly Ambition. It has a lot of tools and tips
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  for how you can discover your best talents and how you can use
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  them for the Kingdom of God. And you can develop a godly
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  ambition yourself to help create beautiful things for Jesus
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  Christ. Thank you everybody who's been
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  subscribing to the show. The quickest, easiest way to
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  help this show is to hit the subscribe button.
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  Make sure you like this video and make sure that if you're
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  listening on podcast app, you also subscribe over there and
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  give us five stars and leave us a review.
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  I think we're in the top 60 now in Spotify, which is very
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  exciting for the society and culture vertical.
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  We're rising in the ranks. And thank you so much for making
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  that happen. Make sure you're subscribed and
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  enjoy this episode. Ruslan, welcome back to the
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  podcast. Yeah, hot topics.
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  You're you're in the Lions game. A little bit right now.
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  It's it's been a fun week. Yeah.
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  So we're just talking about that.
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  We will talk about that. Also Congrats on your book.
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  Thank you. Very excited to talk about.
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  This too. Yeah.
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  God, the ambition. The first book's always the like
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  the big thing, and this is very cool what you're doing.
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  So excited to talk about this and how's it going It's.
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  Going great. It's going great.
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  I just, I don't know when this is coming out, but I just came
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  from Bryce Crawford's house. I'm not sure if.
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  You're nice. Yeah, he's amazing.
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  Podcast he was great great interview so yeah we hung out
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  with him and been a bunch of traveling and speaking and
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  preaching and conferences and all kinds of crazy stuff you've.
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  Been all over the place. Moving around.
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  Very cool. Are you sharing publicly what
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  you just shared? Can you?
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  Can we do it here? Is that OK?
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  This isn't coming out for another week or so.
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  OK, sweet. So I'll I'll talk about it on
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  my. Channel first, yeah.
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  Yeah, yeah. So yeah, we're having another
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  baby. Congratulations.
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  Thank you so much. Yes, that is the baby's dropping
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  after the book is dropping. Perfect.
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  Timing. It really is perfect timing and
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  there's there's even a deeper testimony about it someday I'll
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  share with you. I'll share with you off camera.
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  It's a little too close right now, but baby's coming out,
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  books coming out September 9th. I'm doing a bunch of traveling
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  through September to early October and then baby is coming
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  being late October. Early amazing.
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  November ish. Amazing. 3rd baby Yeah, super
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  excited. Boy or a girl, do you now?
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  Boy, but we didn't find out what the 1st 2:00.
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  Might start crying. Just so beautiful that this one.
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  We found out and so we're very excited.
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  Okay, We all pray for a boy, myself and my wife because Zoe's
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  amazing. But Zoe is 4 going on 14.
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  Like my daughter is just a ball of energy.
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  She is the most extroverted person in our house.
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  She's she's amazing. But my wife is like Levi was
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  easier. Boys are easier and having going
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  from 2:00 to 3:00. So we were, I was praying for a
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  boy Zoe's praying for, I mean, my wife was praying for a boy
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  Levi wanted her brother. Zoe was the the odd one out.
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  Sister. Hey, the next baby.
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  Yeah, she, I don't know about that.
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  And she was not happy. She was not.
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  Happy tell her if it's in God's plan, it's going to like just.
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  Another one will come, Yeah, another one will come.
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  You have to come as my wife with that.
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  One at a time, one at a time. We, we, we we need to have a bit
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  more support for her with with four, but yeah, so we're excited
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  for three, but yeah. So Zoe really wanted his sister
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  and she was not happy. Yeah, super excited.
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  Yeah, well, when she meets this baby, I'm sure she'll fall in
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  love. We'll see.
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  Yeah, we'll see. And how's your wife doing?
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  Is she getting? Getting ramped up Trooper week.
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  She sounds like an amazing heroic she.
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  She's a real fun person to be around in general, but when
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  she's pregnant she's great. Like she's.
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  Great. We just went to Hawaii and she
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  was planned this family hike that's kid friendly and so me
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  and the kids are like this is awful like.
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  We're so many mile it. Was like a mile a mile down.
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  That's a lot. Mile up.
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  That would be a lot. Yeah, and we're sweating.
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  It's hot. Kids aren't happy.
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  And she loves it. She's like, this is her, this is
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  her thing. She loves hiking.
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  She loves you know, so we so we hike for like an hour.
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  And she's pregnant and she's pregnant.
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  Very pregnant showing, yeah. So we hike up for like an hour
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  to see a waterfall for 15 minutes and took a picture and
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  it came back and the coming down was dangerous.
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  It felt more dangerous because it's slippery and it's wet and
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  it's all the humidity. Like, don't worry, I'll pick you
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  up if you fall. Yeah, she's just chilling.
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  Yeah. So my wife is, is the best.
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  Yeah. Yeah, that's so fun.
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  Congrats. That's really exciting.
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  Thank you. Very, very exciting #3 for us
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  was actually people are like, it's so I feel like the
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  transition to 2 was definitely felt more dramatic than the
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  transition to three. OK, that's good to know.
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  Because when it's just one, you're like learning the baby
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  and stuff. And then it's 2:00 and you're
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  like, OK, let's you know, now we have 2.
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  But when it by the time it's three, it's sort of like, OK,
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  we're, we're doing this. We've little kids, we're having
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  another one. And then, you know, just keep
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  going. I was just with my sister-in-law
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  this morning. They have 7 under 9. 7 under 9
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  and she's like, you know. I was I, it's so funny when I'm
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  hanging out with her, she I'm like getting my kids up and
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  ready to get to the car and she's like, do you need help?
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  I'm like Molly, you have 7 kids. I have three.
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  I think I can handle my three. I should be helping you, right?
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  Now I wonder if the old like in that dynamic, do the older ones,
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  are the older ones a bit more responsible?
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  100%, yeah. Because that's the thing.
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  Big families are just having siblings, period.
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  It teaches you life is not just about me.
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  There's other people and you get so much joy from that.
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  They're your best friends, right?
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  You learn from them, you play with them, you do things with
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  them, but then you also learn that I'm here to love you and do
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  to help you and so that it makes a big difference, I think, to
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  their development. So every sibling is a gift to
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  the other siblings. That's really that's really
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  helpful. I grew up with just me and my
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  mom, and so I have other siblings.
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  So I I love family, I love people around I I love that and
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  I love that my my kids would get because I always wanted siblings
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  as a kid and I didn't get to see my brother and sisters much.
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  You know, now we're much closer than other we're adults, but I
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  didn't get to see them much. And so I'm, I'm pumped.
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  I'm pumped that like my. Did you have cousins or other
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  friends that were close growing up?
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  Friends, a lot of friends, yeah, but not like cousins.
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  No one like really around. Yeah, because my mom and my dad
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  split and there was a lot of, you know, just tension between
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  them really tension for my mom towards my dad.
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  So I just didn't get a lot of time with other kids that
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  weren't, like, friends. Yeah.
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  So you came here. How old were you when you came
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  here? You were six years old.
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  Yeah. Yeah, 6 from Azerbaijan, which
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  is in the Middle East. It is right next to Armenia.
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  So we're ethnically Armenian, but we came from Azerbaijan as
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  religious refugees because conflict between Arzis and
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  Armenians and Arzis getting displaced.
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  Armenians then got displaced from Baku, which is a capital
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  and crazy enough, just about from maybe 3 weeks ago, 3 weeks
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  ago from the time of the recording of or the release of
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  this. Trump just signed the first ever
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  peace treaty between Azerbaijan and Armenia.
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  Wow, they've been working for 35 years.
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  So in the late 80s is when I came the pilgrims of Baku,
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  hundreds of thousands of Armenians fleed.
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  Near Christian, religious, personally, culturally,
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  culturally. Christian, so it's same
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  persecution. And was it?
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  Was it Islamic persecution of Christians?
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  It was. It was more ethno.
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  More ethnic base. Ethnic base, but yeah, in that
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  part of the world, you don't detangle ethnic identity from
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  faith. So it's all the same.
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  You're Armenian, you're Christian, you're or Muslim.
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  It's it's really cut and dry. And so there's a lot of overlap.
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  And they had 100, over hundreds of thousands, like a million
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  people displaced and ethnically cleansed from Baku in the late
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  80s. That's when my dad first left me
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  and my mom stayed behind because we're more fair skinned.
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  But then just in 2023, there was 120,000 Christians, Armenian
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  Christians displaced from the mountains of Azerbaijan, the
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  Naboto Kadagak region, which was a catastrophic.
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  And you get people can look it up and it's just like rows of
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  people walking and leaving and driving, trying to get out of
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  there because the Arzis, you know, didn't want them in that
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  little autonomous region in the middle of Azerbaijan.
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  And so to have this peace treaty signed, which who knows, is not
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  only like, huge for the region, but it could potentially allow
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  me to go back to the city I was born in, I've never been able to
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  go back. So that would be cool.
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  Wow. Yeah, And all of the displaced
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  Armenian Christians, are they? If this peace treaty is signed,
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  are they able to go back to their land or what does that
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  look like? Super shocked if they were able
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  to go back to their land. No, I think they they've been
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  warring. 2020 there was a war once they 2012 there was war.
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  They've been warring for a very long time.
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  So I'd be shocked if they allow Armenians to go back to that
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  region. But maybe we could travel there.
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  Maybe we can go and, you know, vacation there.
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  I don't know who'd want. To they have they?
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  Where have they resettled? Where?
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  Where are they now? Over the Armenian diaspora.
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  I guess them came to obviously California.
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  Yeah, the Armenian diaspora is is very spread across.
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  There's a huge Armenian population in Jerusalem.
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  The quarter of the Old City is Armenian.
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  So there's a lot of Armenians in Jerusalem.
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  There's obviously Armenians in Glendale.
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  There's Armenians all over, yeah.
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  When you came here and then you were kind of learning, you know,
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  California, learning America. I mean, it was probably a
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  culture shock. Absolutely.
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  And were you already speaking English?
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  No. So you had to learn.
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  At six years old, I. Had to learn at six years old,
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  my mom spoke English a bit because her dad, my grandfather,
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  we fought in World War 2 with the Soviet Union and he was an
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  English teacher. So they were teaching them
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  English pretty early, or at least her.
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  And so she knew like English, but it was very broken English
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  and it was almost like, I don't know, it's got like British
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  English, like her English was very different than American
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  English. So, but she was like a
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  translator for all the Armenians.
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  Like she was like the the person that would go with them to their
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  meetings and was trying to help everybody out because she was
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  the only one that could kind of speak English.
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  So I know we talked about this the very first time you came in
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  the show, which was over two years ago.
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  You're one of the OGOG guests. People loved it.
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  You were sharing part of your faith journey.
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  And I think it's connected to your book and it's also
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  connected to some of the stuff we were going to talk about,
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  which is Christian celebrity culture and just influencing and
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  sharing the faith through media and godly ambition.
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  But I would love to hear and have people hear from you about
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  that more of that story, because I think you're I think it's
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  fascinating. And it's also just shows the
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  really the the faith of your mother.
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  I know she was not necessarily on the same journey yard today
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  with faith, but that she came here to start a new life that
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  takes, takes a lot of courage and initiative.
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  And then your journey being raised by basically a single mom
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  and not being raised with the faith you have today, but
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  discovering that faith here. Tell us more about that.
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  Yeah, I had a really tumultuous childhood with my dad being out
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  of the picture. The Armenian Apostolic Church is
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  where I got christened and I got baptized and was an altar boy
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  and it was a very beautiful experience.
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  They're a part of the Oriental Orthodox Church, which is like
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  the Ethiopian Ethiopian Orthodox is like our cousin church, if
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  you will. And so I loved it.
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  I mean, and I don't know if this is we might have to clip this
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  out because I don't know if our Catholics would find this
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  offensive, but. We we have both.
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  Well, I'm a Catholic. I'll see.
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  We'll talk about it. But yeah.
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  We were delegated with finishing the leftover communion wine.
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  So as you can imagine as an 8 year old, we found that very
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  very fun to say the. Hold on, so you were Armenian
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  Christian and you were an altar boy and they said you finished
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  the comedian wine? You couldn't discard the blood
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  of Jesus, right? Right.
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  So I see. Well, you shouldn't discard
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  that. You don't just put that down the
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  sink. Yeah.
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  Exactly. So we got.
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  To how much wine? How much?
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  How much was it? Oh, wow.
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  Yeah. Did they explain that they
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  believe this is the body blood? So.
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  Yeah, I understood what it was and I understood why we did it.
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  I'm just saying as a kid, it was also.
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  There's also, you know, yeah, excitement to be the kid that
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  finishes the communion wine. Yeah, it's a big, it's a big,
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  it's a big responsibility. So the Christian Armenianism or
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  Armenians are not under Rome, so they're their own.
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  There are. Armenian Catholics.
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  Though there are Armenian Catholics for sure that are
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  ethnically Armenian. Yep, absolutely.
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  This is a part of the Oriental Orthodox arm of the Church.
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  So I think, I think that I think the understanding of that the
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  the communion that you were receiving then is that it would
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  have been valid but not listed. Meaning that really was used as
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  a body, blood, soul and divinity.
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  But it's not listed in that. It's not under the authority of
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  Rome. So anyways, but yeah,
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  interesting. So I don't know this.
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  So you were, you were. No, I mean, I don't know about I
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  think your intention wasn't to be sacrilegious as a kid, but it
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  is Jesus body, blood cell and Infinity, which is pretty cool.
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  But you got to receive him at 8 years old. 8 years old yeah, so
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  we. And the priest is supposed to
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  help with that too, I think, You know, not just about the altar
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  boys. Was he helping?
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  OK, all right. He was helping.
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  Were there not a lot of people at the at the the Mass or?
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  No, oddly enough, I think it was the refugee community that came
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  like filled the church up. So there's just an.
• 13:27
  Abundance of it was. Just a lot of wine leftover.
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  OK, interesting. Yeah, so that was fun being also
• 13:33
  it was fun. I didn't.
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  Did you feel like you knew what this was like, This is Jesus?
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  Was that part of like the education that you received it?
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  Was it more, oh, this is something we do because we're
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  Armenian Christians? There was not an explanation of
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  the gospel of like why did Jesus die?
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  That that wasn't Why are we drinking his blood, right?
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  Now and then, like and then like, what does it mean that he
• 13:54
  rose and what it what are the implications for that?
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  And how did how does that change you?
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  It was more so like, you know, there's a reverence and there's
• 14:02
  a respect and there's a beauty and there's images and there's a
• 14:06
  ritual and there's incense and there's you being you're you're
• 14:10
  stimulated and you understand that you're you're in this is
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  this is different. This is holy, this is set apart.
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  Like you. I understood that, but there was
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  never a clear explanation to me of like this is, you know, This
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  is why. And this is what it means to be
• 14:24
  a follower of Jesus. And this like that wasn't
• 14:27
  clearly, maybe it was and I don't remember it, you know, but
• 14:30
  no, that that wasn't really explained to me at that age.
• 14:35
  And So what what ended up happening is a couple of things.
• 14:37
  My mom and my dad split up and then the Thedfi and our our
• 14:42
  priest remarried my dad and my mom was under the assumption
• 14:48
  that they were never divorced. And so she was like how dare
• 14:51
  them? We're not supposed to get
• 14:52
  remarried and they remarried. Was there some form of annulment
• 14:55
  in the Armenian church or no, It was just they just went for it.
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  They're like. Claim was from my dad's
• 15:00
  perspective was that they were already done back in Baku and
• 15:05
  they came here as a family to give it like one last hurrah to
• 15:08
  try to fix their marriage. So in our, in our, in Armenian
• 15:11
  Christianity, in that sect, divorce and remarriage is
• 15:15
  allowed. No, that's what I'm saying.
• 15:17
  No, it's not supposed to be. Yeah.
• 15:19
  So she was upset at the church. What was the justification that
• 15:22
  the priest used to do that? Because it sounds like it was
• 15:23
  illicit for him to do that. I.
• 15:24
  Don't know what his reasoning was, I never asked him but I
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  know from my my dad's perspective was hey the marriage
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  was already done back in Baku. What?
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  Does that mean to be done? I guess they didn't go to church
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  back in Baku either, so I don't know what that meant because.
• 15:37
  In the Catholic, so in the Catholic Church.
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  You just can't remarry at all. Can't.
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  It's like, and if you want to, if you're separated or divorced,
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  like legally divorced from your spouse and you say, oh, I'd like
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  to remarry, you just can't. But if you contest this wasn't a
• 15:50
  marriage to begin with, it wasn't actually fulfilled.
• 15:53
  You know, it's not wouldn't go in it with full knowledge, full
• 15:55
  freedom. They certainly prerequisites
• 15:57
  that makes it a marriage including full, you know,
• 16:00
  consent, like full consent of the spouses.
• 16:03
  And you can prove that. And the basically like the court
• 16:06
  system in the church. Then you can have something
• 16:09
  called an annulment, which says this didn't this marriage didn't
• 16:12
  even happen. You thought you were acting like
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  you're married or you're acting like you're married, but you
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  weren't actually married. And so then that person is free
• 16:18
  to go and marry. Yeah, I don't know.
• 16:20
  I don't think he walked through that process.
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  Yeah, sounds like he probably didn't.
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  Yeah, so she was, she was mad at the church because of that, and
• 16:26
  she stopped going to church. The Armenians.
• 16:28
  The Armenian. Church, yeah.
• 16:29
  And then I ended up experiencing essay by some older altar boys.
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  So I'm like 8 or 9 and they're like 1314.
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  And so then that did a number on me.
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  And just the trauma of it, the way the community reacted, the
• 16:43
  way the church didn't react, like they didn't have anything
• 16:45
  to they knew what happened. They didn't have anything to
• 16:47
  say. There was no, hey, you guys are
• 16:49
  in sin. You need to sit down.
• 16:51
  Hey, how can we help you? It was more just ignored and
• 16:55
  then the community, just because I was, I was a child in a
• 16:59
  situation made me out to be the villain and I didn't know what
• 17:03
  was happening or how you know, the, the the whole thing was,
• 17:06
  was just very damaging. So that mixed with my dad not
• 17:10
  being in my life sent me down just a really dark spiral as a
• 17:14
  kid to the point where I think age 1011, like I'm saying, like
• 17:18
  I'm an atheist, like I'm, I had to have been the youngest
• 17:20
  atheist walking around because I was like, there's no God.
• 17:23
  And if there is a God, he definitely doesn't love me.
• 17:25
  You know, that that's where I was at because I felt the
• 17:28
  problem of evil was, was something that I didn't hear an
• 17:31
  adequate explanation for. You know, I didn't understand,
• 17:34
  like, why would these things happen to me and why was it not
• 17:38
  dealt with and didn't the only time anything was ever dealt
• 17:41
  with was the was when in 4th grade, I remember getting my ear
• 17:44
  pierced because that was a thing.
• 17:47
  My dad's friend was like a tattoo artist and had an ear
• 17:50
  Pierce. And I got my ear pierced and I
• 17:52
  came to church and the dead had to set me down and confronted me
• 17:55
  about getting my ear pierced. And I'm like, dude, when I was
• 17:58
  at SA, like you guys had nothing.
• 18:00
  You, there's nothing. And now you're going to confront
• 18:01
  me about getting an ear piercing?
• 18:03
  Like, sounds like some unjust scales in terms of how we're
• 18:06
  navigating all of this, you know?
• 18:08
  And so I grew very resentful and bitter towards the church,
• 18:10
  unfortunately. And yeah, breaking into houses.
• 18:15
  How old was how old were you at this time?
• 18:17
  So you experienced essay when you were how old?
• 18:20
  I would say between 1st and 2nd grade, like like 6 to 8 years.
• 18:24
  Old. Yeah, so sorry.
• 18:24
  Yeah. And you said it was older.
• 18:26
  Boys, yeah. So the boys would probably be in
• 18:27
  12/13/14 years. Old teenage boys.
• 18:29
  Yeah, teenage boys. And they, they like, there was
• 18:32
  no accountability and they weren't like, they just wanted
• 18:35
  you to pretend like nothing had happened, like continue as an
• 18:38
  altar boy. That's what it was, is they when
• 18:40
  it when somehow someone found out not only was there that, but
• 18:43
  then they made it. They spun it to make me the
• 18:47
  instigator and initiator of it all.
• 18:49
  And I'm like, no, like, that's not what happened, you know, So
• 18:52
  it was, it was this weird framing of it that in my opinion
• 18:56
  was just never, never dealt with and never resolved, you know,
• 18:59
  And so that the, the way it was all handled made me really angry
• 19:03
  about all of it. The church, my, my own ethnic
• 19:06
  group of people, I felt like betrayed me.
• 19:08
  And so I, it was, it was the refugee community and then and
• 19:12
  then the rest of the area was, it was a predominantly black
• 19:14
  neighborhood. And so like, this is around the
• 19:16
  same time as like the rise of gangster rap and like my
• 19:19
  American friends were all into that.
• 19:21
  And so I immersed myself in, you know, Doctor Dre and Snoop Dogg,
• 19:27
  the Chronic album, doggy style album.
• 19:30
  And it's like a 8-9 year old, you're listening to doggy style,
• 19:33
  which is like, I can imagine my 10 year old listening to this
• 19:36
  sort of music. Then that was basically what
• 19:38
  discipled me. It was what indoctrinated me
• 19:40
  and. This is the 90s, right?
• 19:42
  This is the early 90s, yeah. And so my Co worker, excuse me,
• 19:47
  my Co worker, our apartment manager, her name is Cherie, was
• 19:52
  kind of involved in some questionable St. activities.
• 19:55
  Weird stuff would happen, but she ended up taking me and her
• 19:58
  son Steven was like my friend, my best friend at the time, to
• 20:01
  see Doctor Dre and Snoop in concert at the San Diego Sports
• 20:03
  Arena. I couldn't have been no older.
• 20:05
  So this is. I'm 93 because I think doggy
• 20:08
  style had been out 9394. So yeah, I could have been no
• 20:11
  older than 8 or 9. And so like I'm the only, I'm
• 20:14
  one of the few kids in the audience, but I'm definitely one
• 20:17
  of the few white kids in the audience.
• 20:18
  And it's just we had great seats where front row everyone's
• 20:23
  passing blunts and smoking and and, and there I am like in the
• 20:26
  midst of it. And so then I'm like, super
• 20:29
  influenced by this. We start breaking into houses,
• 20:32
  we start just smoking weed, drinking all sorts of craziness.
• 20:37
  And in the midst of this, I get arrested and at 11 caught
• 20:43
  breaking into a house and something interesting happened.
• 20:45
  Cherie, the same lady that was around my mom's first American
• 20:48
  friend, her son was my first American friend.
• 20:50
  She ends up getting arrested for trying to move cocaine through
• 20:55
  through we didn't have TSA back then, but through a flight she
• 20:58
  got caught. And so she goes to jail for a
• 21:01
  couple years. Did you know, or was that
• 21:03
  something your mom knew, that she was selling drugs?
• 21:05
  We knew she was involved with some questionable sex.
• 21:07
  Here's a really sad story we and Steven would have.
• 21:12
  That's her son. Her.
• 21:13
  Son have sleepovers and so sometimes I'll sleep at their
• 21:15
  house. We'd have sleepovers.
• 21:16
  Sometimes you come in and one night, by the grace of God, he
• 21:19
  was, we were sleeping over at my house.
• 21:20
  He was at my house. She wasn't home and her her
• 21:24
  apartment was connected to the back of an alleyway.
• 21:28
  And so one night someone drove through the alley and did a
• 21:31
  drive by on her apartment and there was bullet holes and
• 21:36
  fragments where Stevens room was where which is where we we'd
• 21:39
  have been in in her room. And so like, I don't know.
• 21:41
  Because of the drug dealing, we don't know.
• 21:43
  We don't know. Was it her?
• 21:44
  Was it the people she was with, the guys she would have over?
• 21:46
  And so she was tied up in some crazy stuff.
• 21:49
  We knew that much. And she goes to jail for trying
• 21:54
  to move this cocaine and she comes out and she is like super
• 21:58
  on fire for Jesus. Like she's all the way
• 22:01
  Christian, loves Jesus, is all in.
• 22:04
  And then our apartment complex, I don't know if she just started
• 22:07
  converting everybody or she just started moving in friends from
• 22:10
  her church, but everyone is basically Christian in our
• 22:13
  apartment complex except the two Armenian families, the two
• 22:15
  refugee families. And so then I have to do
• 22:18
  community service hours because I'm arrested and I got to
• 22:20
  fulfill these hours and it's the last minute.
• 22:22
  And of course I waited. This is 7th grade now.
• 22:24
  And I remember the only way I can get them done in time is if
• 22:27
  I did them at her church. So now I'm hanging out at a
• 22:30
  church, Charles and Willie, that my next door neighbors, I'll
• 22:33
  have to do the hours with them. And they were just so adamant
• 22:37
  about telling me about Jesus telling me that, hey, you know,
• 22:40
  you, you have some issues, like you're out of control right now,
• 22:43
  but like God still has a plan for you and God, you got you.
• 22:45
  I remember one time they told me God's going to use you to do
• 22:48
  great things for Jesus someday. And I was like, you guys are
• 22:50
  insane. Like there is no God.
• 22:52
  And if there's a God, he wants nothing to do with me.
• 22:54
  And that's where I was at. And so they just kept planting
• 22:57
  those seeds. It was a beautiful.
• 22:58
  This is they, they, they were in the black Baptist tradition.
• 23:01
  So that's, that's kind of the black gospel music cause and,
• 23:04
  and, and that their temperament was interesting because they
• 23:07
  would tell me the truth. Hey, you got some, you got some
• 23:09
  issues like you're insane. You know that right?
• 23:11
  But they would never withhold like grace and mercy and
• 23:14
  affection for me like they were still told me, Hey, you're going
• 23:17
  to turn it around like it's going to be OK.
• 23:20
  And so those were like the first seeds planted.
• 23:23
  And then we, everything gets crazy.
• 23:27
  I I'm I'm I get the community service hours done, but then we
• 23:30
  break into another house and. And you're 12 at this point.
• 23:34
  How this is? 7th grade, 7th grade, so 1211,
• 23:39
  maybe third going on 13, I think.
• 23:41
  And we break into another house. And then at this point we have
• 23:44
  the reputation as like the kids that broke into houses in a
• 23:46
  neighborhood. So there's a guy, he's being
• 23:50
  sent to beat me up. He's outside of my apartment
• 23:52
  complex with a baseball bat. There's a this Samoan kid who I
• 23:57
  was friendly with at school who brought a gun to school and told
• 24:00
  me he brought up a gun to school.
• 24:02
  And then for you like to shoot you not not to shoot me, but he
• 24:06
  tried to stab me because he brings his gun to school and
• 24:09
  then he gets caught with it. He gets expelled with it and
• 24:13
  then told the police officers that it was my gun.
• 24:16
  So then the police officers confront me and I'm like, this
• 24:19
  is not my gun. And then and then he thinks that
• 24:22
  I snitched on him because I said this is not my gun.
• 24:24
  So he wanted to stab me. And thank goodness he was fat
• 24:28
  because I just juked him out and ran as fast as I could down
• 24:32
  alcohol. Where is this?
• 24:34
  We're in Southern California. City Heights area.
• 24:36
  So if anyone is familiar with San Diego, there's Normal
• 24:38
  Heights, there's City Heights, there's North Park.
• 24:40
  This is kind of that area. I went to Wilson Middle School,
• 24:42
  so this is City Heights right in the heart of it, between the 15
• 24:47
  and El Cajon Ave. And I ran for my life.
• 24:49
  And So what happened was after all of that, you remember that
• 24:52
  show Scared Straight? It's like I, yeah, I didn't have
• 24:56
  to go on scared straight. Like, I was scared straight.
• 24:58
  Like, I was like, I'm done. Like, I'm, I'm done.
• 24:59
  And my mom thankfully relocated us to Vista, which is still the
• 25:02
  city I think. Because of the bad antics, she's
• 25:05
  like, I got to get Ruslan out of here.
• 25:07
  Yeah, she got a job working at Ocean's 11 Casino and Vista.
• 25:10
  I came to Vista, moved to Vista and I went from having like a
• 25:14
  one point O GPA to having like a 3.8 GPA by the end of my 8th
• 25:17
  grade year. Like I flunked to 7th grade.
• 25:19
  Why? What?
• 25:20
  Environment, the environment. Environment, the environment.
• 25:23
  I think in hindsight, I think this was the mercy of God and
• 25:25
  that like I got the partying out of me at the by the age of 13, I
• 25:29
  was done partying. I was done smoking weed.
• 25:31
  There was nothing there for me. I know that like that the
• 25:33
  trajectory of this is I'm going to die or I'm going to end up in
• 25:36
  jail. And so at that.
• 25:37
  This is before really understanding anything about
• 25:40
  Jesus and the Gospel. Like I knew that like this is
• 25:42
  not the life. Like I'm not built for being
• 25:44
  criminal. Was there anything that your mom
• 25:46
  did in changing it the way she was parenting you that helps you
• 25:49
  see that or no? She just was like, the best
• 25:50
  thing she did was get you out of that space as quickly as.
• 25:53
  She's got, she was, she was working nice.
• 25:55
  She's a single mom. You single mom.
• 25:56
  It was hard. Wow.
• 25:57
  So she got me out of it. Subsequent year, my freshman
• 26:00
  year, I get into music, I win a talent show, and there's this
• 26:04
  girl that that I'm starting to talk to.
• 26:05
  And the only way I could see her over the summer is if I go to
• 26:10
  church with her and her family. So that's how I start going to
• 26:11
  church. It's always a girl.
• 26:13
  And then I start hearing the gospel more and more and my
• 26:16
  heart slowly softened. Another two or three years of
• 26:19
  wrestling with God and apologetics and polemics and
• 26:22
  other religions and all that sort of stuff.
• 26:24
  And then finally, yeah, like the end of my junior year, I finally
• 26:26
  had a good come to Jesus surrender moment when me and
• 26:28
  that girl finally broke up and plugged into a church, started
• 26:32
  serving, started leading Bible studies.
• 26:34
  And that was, gosh, almost 25 years ago.
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  this incredible tool to deepen your relationship with God.
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  And it's so beautiful to hear that you, I mean, you were a
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  smart kid, like deciding you're an atheist at whatever it was 8
• 29:15
  years old. And then, you know, obviously
• 29:17
  God was God's merciful. He's always working on all of
• 29:20
  us. But he got you.
• 29:23
  He got you at 17. But there was there were some
• 29:26
  foundations there before. But to your point about the
• 29:28
  Armenian Christianity, like they it you didn't feel that you had
• 29:32
  really understood or were told the Gospel.
• 29:33
  It sounds like like the why behind the motions that you were
• 29:36
  doing. Yeah, I didn't.
• 29:37
  I didn't quite get it. And I don't know if maybe I just
• 29:40
  didn't want to get it. Maybe I was just too hard and
• 29:42
  maybe I was too young. I don't know.
• 29:44
  But yeah, I definitely didn't understand it.
• 29:46
  And then it just kind of came alive when I was a teenager.
• 29:50
  And so that turned into, you know, hey, I want to use my
• 29:53
  gifts for God. So that initially look like
• 29:55
  music and trying to figure out how to use that for God.
• 29:58
  And then I met my wife. I started doing music video
• 30:03
  stuff, got a job at the church, worked in ministry for a couple
• 30:06
  years. And that's really where the
• 30:08
  culmination of understanding the tech side of like all the behind
• 30:12
  the scenes stuff here as well as like the communication side of
• 30:15
  like how to communicate and all along God was like slowly
• 30:18
  preparing me did music from 2015 to 2020 and then 2020 to now is
• 30:25
  when the YouTube really took off.
• 30:27
  All right, I want to get into celebrity and influence and
• 30:31
  godly ambition and we're getting there.
• 30:33
  But I I have to ask about something about more about your
• 30:36
  childhood and how you now are leading your family today.
• 30:40
  And I think it's really inspiring to see because you're
• 30:42
  raised, you're raised by a single mom.
• 30:44
  You went through like refugee didn't even know the language,
• 30:47
  got caught up in I don't know if gang is the right word.
• 30:49
  Was that a gang? That was you were a gang.
• 30:52
  OK, You were a gang. We.
• 30:53
  We jumped each other in and but it wasn't.
• 30:55
  All right, you you, you literally invented your own gang
• 30:58
  at age 9 and. You're an inventor.
• 31:00
  You were an, you were an early inventor.
• 31:02
  You were an early, you were a leader, Ruslan.
• 31:03
  You're a leader today. You're just a different kind of
• 31:05
  leader then. But and then you went through,
• 31:07
  you know, sexual abuse like you, you you've been through a lot in
• 31:10
  your life already, like fleeing your home country, like all of
• 31:13
  this. So a few things.
• 31:15
  First of all, what would you say you have intentionally applied
• 31:19
  as a parent now as a husband? You know, your mom didn't have a
• 31:24
  husband. I mean, she did, but he left
• 31:25
  her, right? They separated as a father, you
• 31:29
  know, you're, you're, you didn't have that and you had a father,
• 31:31
  but he, he was absent, right? How do you look at your past and
• 31:35
  how do you apply? You know, how do you learn the
• 31:38
  tools that you, you've obviously are living now in your family
• 31:42
  based on, based on what you didn't have as a child?
• 31:45
  Yeah, well, I think there's daily and weekly rhythms that we
• 31:49
  can build our lives around that create safety and guardrails and
• 31:56
  systems for optimal flourishing. Like you can't control all the
• 32:01
  variables of your kids lives. You can't control all the
• 32:03
  variables in a marriage, but you can do everything you can to tip
• 32:06
  the deck. So for us, I think foundation,
• 32:09
  like we're people of faith, you know, so Sunday, every Sunday,
• 32:11
  church non negotiable. We don't take church off, we
• 32:14
  don't sleep in, we don't take vacations from our faith.
• 32:17
  Like we are people of the book and we lean into our faith.
• 32:21
  So I would say foundationally like church non negotiable every
• 32:23
  Sunday. I think outside of that there's
• 32:27
  opportunities to serve and engage in some ways shape or
• 32:30
  forms. Like my son does a junior
• 32:32
  leaders thing. He's 10 so he gets there early
• 32:35
  every Sunday and then is the cutest thing the other day.
• 32:38
  So I drop him off at 9. I go do my prayer walk and then
• 32:42
  I come back for the 10:00 service and that's when my wife
• 32:44
  gets there for the 10:00 service and she gets there with my 4
• 32:46
  year old and my 4 year old goes into her class.
• 32:48
  She's not a big fan of the the class sometimes.
• 32:51
  This day she goes in and then I went and peeked in and Levi was
• 32:55
  leading the four year old class. That's so sweet and worship with
• 32:59
  the hand gestures. It was the sweetest thing ever.
• 33:02
  So I was like, oh, that is so cool.
• 33:03
  And she probably felt more comfortable because he was in
• 33:05
  there. So she was excited to go in the
• 33:07
  class. So I was, Yeah, church is a, is
• 33:09
  a big rhythm for us. And not just like go to church,
• 33:12
  like be a part of the church, like engage, serve.
• 33:14
  My wife leads a women's group at the church.
• 33:17
  She does this super cool thing called Kids King production
• 33:19
  where they do plays and productions.
• 33:22
  Yeah. For Easter, every Easter and
• 33:24
  every Christmas, they do a big production.
• 33:26
  And it's a cool way for the kids just to learn scripture and
• 33:29
  learn stories that connect to the, to the gospel.
• 33:32
  And then they end up memorizing Scripture and then they bring
• 33:34
  their family and it's super cool.
• 33:36
  So she does that. And then I help with the young
• 33:37
  adults. I would say church is huge.
• 33:39
  I would say having meals together, like dinner together.
• 33:43
  So we we almost have every single dinner together.
• 33:46
  Sometimes we have breakfast together.
• 33:48
  It depends on if the school happening or not.
• 33:50
  But yeah, I'll say dinner traditions and dinners.
• 33:53
  So like Rose and Thorn every single night, Rose and Thorn.
• 33:56
  And then I'm trying to. What is the Rose of your day?
• 33:58
  What's the thorn of your? Day.
• 33:59
  Exactly. Yeah.
• 34:00
  What? Is the high day.
• 34:01
  How did you guys come up doing that?
• 34:02
  We we do that too. Yeah, we do.
• 34:04
  What was your low light and your highlight?
• 34:06
  Yeah. I like Rose and Thorn, though.
• 34:07
  That's cute. Yeah, Rosen, Thorn, just.
• 34:10
  To open it, get people opening up for the dinner table.
• 34:12
  I love that. Yeah, my mother-in-law lives
• 34:13
  with us, so she's a part of it, you know.
• 34:15
  And so, yeah, every night we do it and it, it opens them up.
• 34:19
  And then I'm always trying to like find like, OK, what did I
• 34:22
  read in the scriptures today? What can I tie in to this moment
• 34:26
  to kind of speak some, some, some word of God into them?
• 34:29
  So I'd say that's like a, a rhythm that we've developed
• 34:32
  fairly consistent. And the kids look up, look
• 34:34
  forward. They're always arguing about
• 34:35
  who's going to go 1st. And you know, I'm going to do my
• 34:37
  rose first. Sometimes it turns into a fight.
• 34:40
  But yeah, so, so I say those are foundation.
• 34:42
  Then the last one, which I think segues nicely into celebrity and
• 34:46
  media and and Christianity, I think is curating what your kids
• 34:51
  consume because the stuff I grew up on indoctrinated me like it.
• 34:56
  Like Snoop Dogg, Snoop Dogg and Doctor Dre discipled me.
• 34:59
  You know, they discipled me into utter debauchery and utter
• 35:02
  lawlessness. So sad, Rusan.
• 35:03
  I mean, I mean, it makes me want to cry when I think about all
• 35:06
  the media that's shaping young minds today.
• 35:08
  That's so. Destructive.
• 35:10
  Yeah. Maybe Sunday.
• 35:12
  Maybe Sunday I'll meet Snoop, Andre and we'll have this.
• 35:14
  Conversation, give him a hug and give him the gospel.
• 35:17
  Yeah, because I don't think they understood the ripple effects
• 35:19
  and the influence that they had. They just thought they were
• 35:21
  being edgy and fun, but you're brainwashing a nine year old
• 35:26
  right now. Yeah, straight up.
• 35:27
  And so the media that my son has access to the, the, the music
• 35:33
  that he has access to the, the stuff he's watching, like it is
• 35:38
  so wholesome and so edifying. So musically, music drives a
• 35:43
  lot. I think music plays a huge
• 35:45
  factor in it. Like musically, this the the, in
• 35:48
  my opinion, the best music being made right now is by Christians,
• 35:51
  right. So if you're talking hip, like
• 35:53
  flat out like hip hop stuff, like indie tribe, no big deal.
• 35:56
  John Keith and and these are friends of mine.
• 35:59
  So like he's meeting his favorite rappers because they're
• 36:02
  just coming over to do a podcast or awesome.
• 36:04
  Yeah, we're going to Smoke Fest this weekend.
• 36:06
  It's a big Christian rap festival fest.
• 36:08
  So. So yes, possible.
• 36:09
  But no smoking it's. Like a play on it.
• 36:10
  It's called Holy Smoke. Fest nice.
• 36:12
  Like, so you're like, there's no smoking, there's no smoking.
• 36:14
  There's the Holy Ghost. Yeah.
• 36:15
  So he he gets to meet these people that he listens to and is
• 36:20
  wholesome as edifying. Then there's like Hovie and
• 36:23
  Forrest Frank and all these guys that are like crushing it.
• 36:25
  I mean, Forrest Frank right now is doing, I mean Arenas, he's an
• 36:29
  Arenas 15,000. People, I'm Holy Spirit with the
• 36:31
  forest rank stuff like the miracle that he just
• 36:33
  experienced. With his back being broken,
• 36:36
  right? And so this is now.
• 36:37
  So I don't know if you tracked because someone told me about
• 36:40
  him recently. I didn't even know about him,
• 36:42
  but it was. An acquaintance a.
• 36:43
  Few months ago and I was looking into stuff like this is great I
• 36:46
  like these songs and then I started following him and I saw
• 36:49
  him saying Oh my backs were like poor guy like pray God hope he
• 36:52
  feels better. But then I was tracking his
• 36:55
  story of his back we broke and he explained how God had been
• 36:58
  this advisor of him spiritual advisor been telling him to
• 37:01
  journal after his concert series and to start getting equipment
• 37:04
  to film his music process. Then he like flat on his back
• 37:07
  after this accident on a skateboard and it's like the
• 37:10
  Lord was allowing this to happen to tell a larger story, a
• 37:15
  testimony and then he has starts.
• 37:17
  You know this other that hilarious account Figgin the
• 37:21
  guys who collab with him on the Lemonade song.
• 37:23
  Lemonade song. Yep, I don't remember the name
• 37:24
  of their account, but it's like Fig and something really
• 37:26
  talented guys, but they're all doing it via IG as my
• 37:29
  understanding. Like it's all like this crazy
• 37:31
  collaboration Holy Spirit moment, and then you have this
• 37:34
  fun song that my kids love listening to in the.
• 37:36
  Car it's it's it's incredible the stuff that's happening and.
• 37:39
  And, and just to brag on for us, like he really is that guy like
• 37:43
  like some sometimes people are like, oh, like he makes music
• 37:46
  for kids or like it's too happy, like it's too positive, right.
• 37:50
  And it's like, yeah, you don't understand how important music
• 37:53
  is to kids, right? And then seeing him alive and
• 37:56
  kind of knowing his team a little bit.
• 37:58
  I saw we saw him in November in front of like 1400 people at the
• 38:02
  North Park Observatory. And then we just saw him at the
• 38:05
  San Diego SDSU Arena in front of like 11,000 people, you know,
• 38:09
  sold out crowd. Incredible stuff that Gods was
• 38:13
  already doing with him. Like he God was already doing
• 38:15
  stuff. And then to see this whole
• 38:16
  thing. So like, this is the sort of
• 38:17
  stuff that like is an amazing time in media really.
• 38:21
  Have this really quick for people that don't know the end
• 38:24
  of the story, can you share what happened with Forest?
• 38:26
  Yeah. And also can you give us the
• 38:28
  sing us the lines? Life gave me some lemons now, my
• 38:32
  Jesus. He making.
• 38:33
  Lemonade. Lemonade, yeah.
• 38:36
  So he was thinking that the miracle was just in the fact
• 38:40
  that he documented it. He was thinking a miracle was in
• 38:42
  the Lemonade song being the number one song.
• 38:44
  He was thinking that that's it. And then at two weeks, he I
• 38:48
  think he fractured 22 vertebrae or one vertebrae.
• 38:50
  He and this is all like verified, like he's showing you
• 38:53
  the X-rays on his Instagram. That's a big deal.
• 38:55
  By the way, my husband had a back injury.
• 38:57
  He was, you know, in the Navy and rowing all this stuff and
• 39:00
  it's, it's a big deal to get a back injury.
• 39:02
  Like you don't just like, oh, no problem.
• 39:04
  I'm going to like just walk away.
• 39:05
  Like it's a lot of pain. There's a lot of like their
• 39:08
  physical therapies you have to do in time it takes etcetera.
• 39:11
  So the projection for the recovery was supposed to be at a
• 39:15
  minimal 6 weeks, but more like 6 to 12 weeks is how long that was
• 39:19
  supposed to heal without surgery.
• 39:21
  And then at two weeks he says he randomly got up.
• 39:24
  And this is all on Instagram, people go look it up.
• 39:25
  He says he randomly got up. He posted a video right after
• 39:27
  this and he said he forgot to put on his back brace and was
• 39:30
  picking up his, his kid and was like, I don't have any back
• 39:34
  pain. Like I'm healed, you know, And
• 39:35
  he he'd be in a video. He's like, hey, I put the back
• 39:37
  brace on just for measure, but I called to get emergency X-rays
• 39:40
  to see. And then apparently upon the
• 39:42
  X-rays, he was he was totally healed.
• 39:45
  Either way, it's God. It's it's incredible, God,
• 39:47
  whether it's a instant healing or whether it was a facet like a
• 39:51
  speed up, heeling, whatever you want.
• 39:53
  To call, yeah. It's incredible.
• 39:55
  And so you're so like, this is the stuff that like my son is
• 39:59
  growing up with, like the media and the music that he's growing
• 40:01
  up. That example.
• 40:02
  Yeah, and, and then, and then having a household that's
• 40:05
  immersing him, I'll, I'll, I'll brag on some of the other stuff.
• 40:09
  That's like really, really awesome.
• 40:12
  Two of the biggest Youtubers right now.
• 40:14
  Well, one of the biggest Youtubers right now is Dude
• 40:15
  Perfect, right? And like their stuff is fun,
• 40:18
  it's light, but many people don't know that.
• 40:20
  Like Dude Perfect, unapologetically Christian at
• 40:23
  the end of every arena show they do, they say, hey guys, if you
• 40:26
  guys want to stick around, we're going to tell you guys the real
• 40:28
  reason why we do this. And so you're welcome to leave,
• 40:30
  but we're going to hang out a little longer.
• 40:31
  And then they share Jesus with every single person that goes to
• 40:34
  their shows that is willing to stick around.
• 40:35
  Right? Ryan Trahan, I don't know if
• 40:37
  you've been keeping up with him. My son loves Ryan Trahan,
• 40:39
  another acquaintance of mine who is traveling 50 states in 50
• 40:45
  days to raise funds for Saint Jude Children's Hospital.
• 40:48
  And I think he's, he's raised like 10s of millions of dollars
• 40:51
  for them. And there's a there's, there's
• 40:53
  just wholesome media that is in, it's not sleazy, it's not edgy,
• 40:59
  It's just good media. And this is the stuff that like
• 41:02
  Christians are growing up with now.
• 41:03
  So if you like a Christian fan, like this is a great time to be
• 41:05
  alive and to experience. Like I would say if it's a
• 41:09
  revival where some something's happening, there's something
• 41:12
  awakening happening where, you know, five years ago, 10 years
• 41:15
  ago to to just be unapologetically Christian in
• 41:19
  Word, but Christian in deed and in standard.
• 41:22
  Like, hey, I'm Christian and like, and I think like abortion
• 41:25
  is bad and murder and we shouldn't do that.
• 41:27
  Hey, I'm Christian. I think marriage is designed for
• 41:28
  one man, one woman. That's it.
• 41:30
  Preach to say that 10 years ago. I mean you would.
• 41:33
  You can get cancelled. The big yeah.
• 41:35
  To say that today. Much was much easy, much easier
• 41:38
  to say today than it was 10 years ago, and more people are
• 41:41
  saying it unapologetically. Today And at the very least
• 41:44
  saying it unapologetically or at least going, well, you know, I'm
• 41:47
  not sure if I'm there yet, but I I respect you and I understand
• 41:49
  why you we've come to that conclusion.
• 41:51
  Yeah, that's really awesome. It's really awesome and it also
• 41:54
  just it's a cultural renewal. I think that's happening that's
• 41:58
  desperately needed because our culture has gone so dark and so,
• 42:02
  so many destructive places. And I was just in Rome a few
• 42:06
  weeks ago, similar to thing you're describing, but but it
• 42:10
  was really beautiful because there were over 1000 of these
• 42:13
  Catholic influencers. So the Vatican is now.
• 42:16
  I'm so glad you went to that. It was a hard thing to go to
• 42:19
  because of there are a lot of just practical considerations,
• 42:23
  but I felt a strong call like you got it, you got to show up
• 42:25
  the. Vatican's calling you got.
• 42:27
  Of course. Well, yeah, of course, of
• 42:28
  course. I, I So I'm grateful that I got
• 42:30
  to go. It was amazing.
• 42:31
  But there were 1000 Catholic influencers there and they were
• 42:35
  all just on fire. And then there were a million
• 42:38
  Catholic youth that descended on Rome for the jubilee.
• 42:41
  And then they just canonized several Saints, including Pierre
• 42:44
  Giorgio Farsati, who is a right Pierre Giorgio Farsati.
• 42:48
  They not blessed anymore. St.
• 42:50
  And then and then St. Akutis, who these two young guys
• 42:54
  who died very young, but we're very on fire for the faith, you
• 42:58
  know, community. And then Akutis was into using
• 43:01
  early tech. I mean, I think it was the early
• 43:02
  2000s. So it wasn't like what we have
• 43:03
  today, but he was basically documenting Eucharistic
• 43:06
  miracles. And so it's just very beautiful
• 43:09
  to see this resurgence of young people and creators who are
• 43:13
  using with all of our flaws and imperfections, but we're using
• 43:17
  together whatever craft we can and technology to share the good
• 43:21
  news. Yeah, it's incredible.
• 43:23
  It's incredible. And it's a privilege to be a
• 43:25
  part of it. Yeah.
• 43:25
  And I think the the amazing part to to add to everything you're
• 43:29
  describing is that there there's some seems to be some sort of
• 43:31
  shift. Gavin Ortman calls it a vibe
• 43:33
  shift. He's like, there's something,
• 43:34
  something's happening. But then that has ripple effects
• 43:37
  to the folks that like, maybe they haven't made a overt
• 43:40
  profession in Jesus yet, but they are willing to platform the
• 43:45
  Christian voices, right. So you think of a Joe Rogan and
• 43:47
  like, I don't know where Joe is with Jesus, you know, but he's
• 43:51
  admitted to going to church. He.
• 43:53
  Seems curious. He keeps having Christians on.
• 43:55
  He had Wes Huff on. He just had another gentleman
• 43:58
  on. I can't, I can't remember his
• 43:59
  name, the Navy SEAL who was just on there.
• 44:01
  He's had Steven Meyers on. He's had a lot of Christian
• 44:04
  guests on and he's opening up his platform to have
• 44:07
  conversations around these things that again, 10 years ago
• 44:11
  he was very hostile towards Christianity.
• 44:13
  And now there's consistent Christian representation on the
• 44:16
  biggest podcast in the world world or amazing Jordan
• 44:18
  Peterson. You know, I know his wife Tammy
• 44:20
  is amazing. She's on fire for for the Lord
• 44:23
  and she had an incredible miracle.
• 44:25
  But he has, I think probably as a byproduct of that, like is
• 44:29
  very open and warm and has conversations with Christians of
• 44:32
  all streams pretty regularly. And it's, it's incredible to, to
• 44:36
  see that even the, the, some of the thought leaders in this, in
• 44:40
  the, in the world, they may not all the way be there or maybe
• 44:43
  they haven't gotten baptized or maybe they haven't made a
• 44:45
  proclamation of faith that's over.
• 44:47
  But they're having the conversations.
• 44:49
  Oh, yeah, I and I think it's happening.
• 44:52
  I think technology, for all of the evils technology has
• 44:55
  launched in the modern world, like pornography and like all
• 44:58
  the anxieties and loneliness and social issues that come with
• 45:02
  social media, all of that. There's also this, the, the
• 45:06
  sharing of the faith all over the world, all over the globe,
• 45:09
  and people are picking it up and picking up pieces of it before
• 45:13
  where maybe they would have never been exposed to it.
• 45:15
  And what an incredible time to be alive, to get to be a little
• 45:18
  part of that and to get to see it happening more and more.
• 45:20
  And that's I think how God can bless media and God can bless
• 45:23
  technology to use it for his glory as opposed to letting
• 45:26
  Satan and the dominion of the evil one try to take, you know,
• 45:29
  take the land and say, this is our space.
• 45:31
  And I think that's also the Christian path, right?
• 45:33
  In every era our job is going to be salt and light and everything
• 45:37
  that is good is of God God. Everything good, true beautiful
• 45:40
  belongs to God, and so we're called to take what is the hero
• 45:44
  creation Co create, make things for him have godly ambition.
• 45:48
  Come on, that's a nice tell me I.
• 45:50
  Like it, that was. Smooth by the way, this new book
• 45:52
  is out by respond that's that's so tell tell me about your godly
• 45:56
  ambition. Tell me about what you think
• 46:01
  Christians who have giftings should, the responsibility that
• 46:07
  people who have talents have, and what we should do to not
• 46:12
  bury the talent in the ground. Yeah, well.
• 46:14
  And tell me your take on that parable too.
• 46:16
  Yeah. So I think man, there's again,
• 46:18
  you just beautifully pointed out like how rare of an opportunity
• 46:23
  this is and how unique of a time in history this is.
• 46:26
  And so we're in this amazing renaissance of sorts.
• 46:31
  And yet it's also difficult. Like there's also the house, the
• 46:36
  cost of living is going up, housing is going up, right?
• 46:39
  Like AI is here. There's, there's all sorts of
• 46:41
  things that are happening. And so it's like, from one
• 46:44
  standpoint, we have this beautiful opportunity to share
• 46:46
  about Jesus and to usher in beauty and goodness and to talk
• 46:50
  about social issues like the unborn and all these things from
• 46:53
  another standpoint, like it's, it's, it's getting hard, right?
• 46:55
  It's getting hard for, for people.
• 46:56
  And so young people tend to be the most susceptible.
• 46:59
  They tend to naturally be a bit more liberal.
• 47:01
  And it's tend to naturally be a bit, you know, considering the,
• 47:05
  the, the, the things that are, they're being influenced by
• 47:09
  culture in different ways, right?
• 47:10
  But there is a disillusionment that's happened with young
• 47:14
  people, young men, where they're, they're wrestling and
• 47:17
  they're trying to figure out like, am I going to have, you
• 47:19
  know, the same the quality of life my parents had or the, or
• 47:23
  the, the generation before me? And they're wrestling through
• 47:25
  this. And so then when you're when
• 47:26
  you're, when you see what's happening systemically, for
• 47:29
  whatever reason, and you consider whatever ISM you want
• 47:31
  to talk about. And if I grant every ISM under
• 47:35
  the planet, racism, sexism, if I grant all those, which I don't,
• 47:38
  but let's just say I did you, you're still left with, what are
• 47:41
  you going to do with what you've been entrusted with, right?
• 47:44
  And thankfully in the West, by the grace of God, we aren't
• 47:47
  under the same persecution that the apostles were under.
• 47:50
  We're not under the same persecution that people in
• 47:53
  developing nations are often under, right?
• 47:55
  Where you're talking about what's happening in parts of
• 47:57
  Africa and Uganda. And just like flat out Christian
• 47:59
  persecution, right? That's not what's happening
• 48:02
  here, right? Right here.
• 48:03
  Generally, if you're a follower of Jesus and you're living by
• 48:06
  his ways, it tips the scale in your favor to thrive and
• 48:11
  flourish and be blessed to be a blessing to, to help those that
• 48:16
  are being martyred, to help those that are without clean
• 48:18
  drinking water, to help those in your local communities.
• 48:21
  And I think the issue is that we, we get caught up in this
• 48:23
  cognitive dissonance of like is, is it, is it God's Kingdom I'm
• 48:28
  building, or is it my castle, right?
• 48:30
  Are these godly motives that I'm trying to build something for
• 48:33
  God in his glory? Or is it about my selfish
• 48:36
  ambition? And when you have that, that,
• 48:38
  that those, those conflicting thoughts, a lot of times what
• 48:41
  people do is they just do nothing.
• 48:42
  They just do nothing. They just, they, they bury their
• 48:44
  talent and they analysis of paralysis and then they punt it
• 48:48
  because like Jesus is coming back.
• 48:49
  So like the hell with it because it's like the Hell's going
• 48:51
  world's going to hell in a handbasket.
• 48:52
  It's hard. And you just start seeing the
• 48:54
  negative and you just punt it. Did you have this experience?
• 48:58
  I had. Were you afraid of like, I'm not
• 49:00
  going to go, I'm not going to be big on YouTube because it's it's
• 49:03
  too much about me. It needs to be about God like.
• 49:05
  How did you various degrees. Yeah, so, so one foundationally,
• 49:08
  like, no one really sat me down when I was a young man in my
• 49:12
  early 20s. And we're like, hey, dude, like
• 49:15
  glad you're into rapping, but like, you got to pay the bills,
• 49:18
  you know, like no one sent me that.
• 49:20
  Like, hey, you might want to think of a different job.
• 49:23
  You know, you may want to like go go wait tables and make some.
• 49:27
  People do pay the bills with wrapping but you're saying it's
• 49:29
  it's a really hard Rd. When you're getting it off the
• 49:32
  ground right, it's very. Hard to raise a family on that.
• 49:35
  Right, Yeah, it's very difficult.
• 49:36
  And, and and I did for a season from 2015 to 2020, I was a full
• 49:39
  time. You were actually doing that?
• 49:41
  Yeah. It's crazy.
• 49:42
  It took a decade. It took a decade to get there.
• 49:44
  It took longer than a day. Every overnight sensation, it's
• 49:46
  a decade. And it's at least a decade,
• 49:48
  right? And so no one sat me down and
• 49:50
  gave me any of the practical wisdom.
• 49:52
  Like there was no like, hey, this is what work ethic looks
• 49:54
  like. Hey, this is what faithfulness
• 49:56
  looks like. Hey, let's think about the
• 49:57
  skills you currently have and what skills do you need so that
• 50:01
  you can level up and what is the deficits?
• 50:04
  No one sat me down and had these conversations.
• 50:06
  No one, no one taught me, Hey, you know, you need to figure out
• 50:10
  how to earn more and you need to live on less and you need to
• 50:12
  avoid debt. And if you're in debt, you need
• 50:13
  to get out of debt as quickly as possible, right, in terms of
• 50:16
  consumer debt and that sort of stuff.
• 50:18
  And so these were conversations that that that weren't had.
• 50:20
  And so I'm like, man, some things that took longer.
• 50:23
  It's like the children of Israel wandering through the promised
• 50:26
  land for 40 years on a journey that if it's if you take the
• 50:30
  direct path, it's like 11 days, 12 days, right?
• 50:33
  And is. That really the case?
• 50:34
  Yeah, that's really the case. If you look at the the trip from
• 50:36
  from where they were at in Egypt to where the promised land was
• 50:39
  in Israel, it's like a 12 day journey.
• 50:41
  And here they are wandering for 40 years.
• 50:44
  And how many of us are wandering in our purpose, wandering in Our
• 50:47
  Calling, wandering in our? Purpose just wasting the
• 50:49
  opportunities before us, like we only have one life before this
• 50:53
  eternity. And the good news is, in
• 50:55
  eternity, eternity is what counts, right?
• 50:57
  But he wants us to do whatever the best we can with what we've
• 51:00
  been given. Yep, Yep, Yep.
• 51:02
  And so I started, I started seeing this and then having fear
• 51:08
  of becoming successful, like in my own life.
• 51:11
  Like, man, what if, what if, what if I'm successful?
• 51:14
  And then what if it ruins me, right?
• 51:15
  And so I'll give you a, a story. It's in the opening chapter.
• 51:18
  I spoke at a young adults ministry several years ago and I
• 51:23
  met a young man and I like, love to hang out, love to mingle,
• 51:26
  love to chat. And I met a young man comes up
• 51:28
  to me. He's on the worship team at the
• 51:29
  church. He's well dressed.
• 51:31
  He works at like a cool vintage shop and he's, you know, just
• 51:34
  dressed well. He tells me, hey, like, I'm a
• 51:36
  visual artist and I'm like, oh, that's cool.
• 51:38
  Like, can I see some visual art? He puts up his Instagram and he
• 51:41
  shows me his visual. I was like, this stuff is really
• 51:42
  good. I love, I love this visual art.
• 51:44
  And I go so like, are you pursuing it?
• 51:46
  And he's like, no. And I'm like, why not?
• 51:50
  And he's like, well, just, you know, I'm just kind of hanging
• 51:53
  out and like, what are you doing?
• 51:54
  And he's like, oh, you know, I'm working 20 hours a week.
• 51:58
  And I'm like, what was he doing? And what?
• 52:00
  And what else? Video games.
• 52:01
  I'm just pickleball. You know, I'm just hanging out
• 52:03
  and I'm like, OK, and what else? I'm just saying, OK, so why are
• 52:08
  you not pursuing this? Like you're good, Like, pursue
• 52:10
  it and he's telling me something, he said.
• 52:12
  I'm just afraid I'm going to be too successful and I'm like too
• 52:16
  successful. Like do you know what Jesus said
• 52:19
  in the parable of the I'm like too?
• 52:21
  Successful. Like, dude, there's a chasm of a
• 52:24
  difference between where you are right now and becoming too
• 52:28
  successful. It's funny, right?
• 52:30
  So like, we're solving for problems that we're nowhere near
• 52:33
  the horizon. So it's like this because I
• 52:35
  think some people think that like success is easy or like
• 52:37
  earning money is easy. Or that success is bad.
• 52:40
  Or like I think that success. Is bad and so it's like dude too
• 52:43
  successful. It's like the person and
• 52:45
  sometimes it's it's the ladies. So I'm gonna pick on the ladies
• 52:47
  for a little. It's like, it's like the woman
• 52:48
  that's like, hey, like I'm afraid to start working out
• 52:53
  because like, I'm gonna get too bulky.
• 52:55
  I'm going to get too buff. And like, hey, there's a
• 52:58
  different there's a chasm of a difference between where you are
• 53:02
  now one Rep and looking like Dwayne The Rock Johnson.
• 53:05
  You're like just do 10 push ups. That's all you have to do.
• 53:07
  Trust. Me, you're not going to become
• 53:09
  too bulky, like let's just get outside and get 10,000 steps and
• 53:13
  do a little bit of strength training, right?
• 53:15
  And so I think like we start solving for problems we don't
• 53:17
  even have yet. And the reality is that in his
• 53:19
  situation, he just needed to sustain himself.
• 53:22
  Like you just need to move out of your parents house first and
• 53:24
  foremost. It's like you need to make sure
• 53:26
  that you can cover your own expenses as a young man, right?
• 53:30
  And so that temperament, like I'm afraid I'll be too
• 53:34
  successful, is very prevalent. You know, it's interesting, I
• 53:36
  think about women, and, you know, a lot of women, they want
• 53:40
  to be moms, They want to be wives, which is beautiful.
• 53:42
  Most of us are called to that, and we should prepare very
• 53:44
  intentionally for that. But I've heard some women are
• 53:47
  like, OK, well, I don't want a career because I want to be a
• 53:50
  wife and a mom. So they're kind of like just
• 53:51
  waiting. They're like waiting.
• 53:54
  And I'd say, well, it's not about so much the career as it
• 53:56
  is about using your gifts and talents to love people.
• 53:59
  Come on, That's what it's about. Come on.
• 54:00
  So think about it that way. And if it turns into a career,
• 54:03
  which it probably will in some way or another, let the Lord
• 54:07
  bless it and be open and be prepared for and preparing for
• 54:11
  wife and motherhood because that's what your heart is and
• 54:13
  where you feel called. And your career can then serve
• 54:16
  your wife and motherhood, not the other way around, Right?
• 54:18
  But I think there is a sort of, you know, damsel in distress,
• 54:21
  like, I'm just going to sit and wait for the Prince to come.
• 54:23
  When we are called as women to become the best we can be and to
• 54:27
  use our talents for the Kingdom of God.
• 54:29
  Come on and and the beautiful part about you said to you said
• 54:31
  to love people, right. I think love and serve people.
• 54:35
  And so when you learn to love and serve people the way Jesus
• 54:38
  loved and served people you, it changes you So like you may
• 54:42
  like. So my, my last real job before I
• 54:45
  was in ministry ministry's real job.
• 54:47
  But like my last like Joe job is I worked with adults with
• 54:49
  developments with disabilities and I got to serve people who is
• 54:53
  often forgotten about by the society at large.
• 54:57
  They're kind of invisible. And I had this beautiful
• 54:59
  opportunity to serve people who were developmentally disabled.
• 55:05
  They, I would pick them up. I would take them to the gym.
• 55:06
  I would take them sometimes to run errands with me, take them
• 55:08
  to school, take them to the beach, take them to the library.
• 55:10
  And it was one of the most fulfilling jobs because what it
• 55:12
  did was in me serving people and making it about other people.
• 55:16
  It changed me. Like, it transformed me.
• 55:19
  And it made me a more loving, patient person.
• 55:21
  Right. And I think sometimes we think
• 55:23
  virtues are just going to fall in our lap, like guys just going
• 55:25
  to sprinkle magic virtue dust on us.
• 55:28
  And then we're going to be these virtuous, godly people.
• 55:30
  And it's like, no, no, it's just to work out your salvation with
• 55:33
  fear and trembling, right? For God has worked in you and
• 55:36
  given you a new heart, new desires.
• 55:38
  And so it's like we're working out these things.
• 55:40
  And that whether that's, hey, you want to be a visual artist,
• 55:43
  great. Like start pursuing that, start
• 55:44
  figuring it out what other skills you do you need to be a
• 55:47
  successful visual artist. You probably need to learn
• 55:48
  social media. You might need to learn video,
• 55:50
  might need to learn SEO, or it's like, hey, you want to be a mom.
• 55:53
  Fantastic, beautiful. OK, so how can you serve people?
• 55:56
  How can you serve people right now?
• 55:57
  Maybe it's learning to cook. Maybe it's right.
• 56:00
  I don't, I don't know what. No, I actually, I mean, I think
• 56:03
  what I say to single women is if you are hoping to be a wife and
• 56:06
  a mother one day, which again, highly recommend and I think
• 56:08
  it's a calling for most women, not all, but most, then you
• 56:11
  should be doing the things today that will prepare you to be a
• 56:14
  Good Wife and a mother as well as developing all of your gifts.
• 56:17
  Like don't let some of your gifts just sit because it's more
• 56:19
  career related. Like I'm really good at, I don't
• 56:21
  know, like I'm really good at business, but I'm not going to
• 56:23
  do business because I'm just going to be a state like no, do
• 56:26
  like you're single right now. You're open to love, you know,
• 56:29
  invest the gifts that you have today.
• 56:31
  And young people have this window of time, like between 18
• 56:35
  to 25 before they may get married and have a family where
• 56:38
  you have a lot of time, you got a lot of opportunities and you
• 56:43
  don't have a lot of responsibilities.
• 56:45
  And so like that window, that 18 to 2418 to 23 window can set you
• 56:49
  up for the next decade. And it it especially, you know,
• 56:53
  with within the context of family, like it requires a
• 56:56
  degree of persuasion, a degree of encouragement for your kids.
• 57:03
  It's for your husband even, right.
• 57:04
  Like a question my wife will get all the time.
• 57:06
  It's such a funny question is like, Hey, like how do you, how
• 57:10
  do I get my husband to be more ambitious, you know, and my
• 57:13
  wife, my wife is like, I got nothing for you because like I
• 57:16
  don't, I don't know that. But but but but I think the
• 57:18
  deeper question is like, how do you, how do I encourage him and
• 57:22
  call him to something greater than he even sees for himself?
• 57:25
  Right, and be a helper for. Him and be a helper.
• 57:26
  For him and know him for him, because I think the other thing
• 57:29
  that's connected to all of this and unlocking your full
• 57:32
  potential of your time, talent, treasure is your personal, what
• 57:36
  you bring to the table, what, what God has given you in terms
• 57:38
  of talents, but also temperament and your personality And people
• 57:42
  that are more hard drivers naturally.
• 57:43
  Like the call it we just had on this lovely couple talk about
• 57:46
  temperaments and the choleric, choleric temperament or the
• 57:49
  sanguine people that are more like friendly, happy and more
• 57:52
  hard drivers. People are that are more like
• 57:54
  idealistic big thinkers versus people who are more like just
• 57:57
  kind of the chill people that like harmony.
• 57:59
  And again, these are just like boxes that you don't put the
• 58:02
  person fully in. But you say there's an element.
• 58:04
  This can be an element, right? And so if you're married to the
• 58:07
  man who's more phlegmatic, let's just say as an example, they're
• 58:09
  more, they're not naturally as ambitious as maybe a Collaric.
• 58:11
  And I'm not even saying you're a Collaric.
• 58:12
  I don't know, I would guess Collaric actually sounds about
• 58:15
  right. The kid who at age 8 is like,
• 58:17
  I'm an atheist. You're probably like a Collaric,
• 58:20
  but anyways, but that's also part of all of this is when you
• 58:25
  love someone or you are wanting to do what God is calling to you
• 58:29
  and let let God love you fully, right?
• 58:32
  Part of it is being known like, what are my areas I need to work
• 58:35
  on? What are my talents?
• 58:36
  What are my fears? You got into fears a lot.
• 58:38
  I know in this book, like getting very, very personal
• 58:41
  because what works for Ruslan might not work for the next guy
• 58:44
  or the husband of your, you know, wife's friend, right?
• 58:47
  And so that I think is really key is like making it super
• 58:50
  personal so we can understand how do we really motivate this
• 58:53
  person, encourage them or how do I get myself motivated and
• 58:56
  encouraged. And I think ultimately what what
• 58:59
  I'm exploring in the book is like when it comes to calling
• 59:02
  purpose, identity, like why are you supposed to be here?
• 59:05
  I, I distinguish even in the book, there's a chapter on on
• 59:08
  calling. And I distinguish, Hey, there's
• 59:09
  a difference between your purpose, your assignment and
• 59:13
  your calling, right? Like, so our, our purposes is,
• 59:16
  is steady, like everyone who exists has a creator.
• 59:19
  And our job is to know that creator and make him known to
• 59:22
  know God and make you know make make God known is that's every
• 59:25
  person that has existed. That's your purpose.
• 59:28
  No God will make him known. Your assignment looks different
• 59:31
  based on what is happening in your day-to-day life.
• 59:33
  So like my assignment when I was working with adults with
• 59:35
  developments with disabilities is different than my assignment
• 59:38
  now. My wife's assignment when she
• 59:40
  worked 2 jobs while we were just trying to get out of debt and
• 59:43
  figure out her life is very different than her assignment
• 59:45
  now as a mom that stays home with the kids, homeschools them
• 59:48
  and helps us with the business right, like the these season.
• 59:50
  And I think in America, we tend to equate our purpose with what
• 59:54
  we do for money. And our purpose is not what we
• 59:56
  do for money, because what we do for money may be an assignment
• 59:59
  and our purpose sometimes the most valuable thing, like
• 1:00:02
  motherhood, like in my opinion, like what is more valuable than
• 1:00:05
  cultivating godly offspring, right?
• 1:00:08
  Motherhood and fatherhood. Yeah, yeah.
• 1:00:09
  Motherhood and fatherhood aren't always rewarded with a spike in
• 1:00:13
  the GDP and what you're generating for the economy.
• 1:00:15
  Right. Long term it is.
• 1:00:17
  But but yeah, individually, you're not getting a paycheck.
• 1:00:19
  Yeah. And so it's like, but it's
• 1:00:21
  extremely valuable, right? It's so it's so important, it's
• 1:00:23
  so essential and so like purpose is steady.
• 1:00:26
  Your purpose is the same. Your assignment will change,
• 1:00:29
  which should give you a breather and go, OK, I'm I'm in a season
• 1:00:32
  right now like this, your season.
• 1:00:34
  And then when you understand that your your assignment is
• 1:00:37
  changing, then you could be excited for the season because
• 1:00:40
  that season may not come around again.
• 1:00:42
  Like when your kids are little and it takes a lot to make sure
• 1:00:46
  they don't kill themselves because a lot of the first
• 1:00:48
  couple years is like, let me just make sure this shot.
• 1:00:50
  My son Leo this morning was walking down the stairs, or
• 1:00:53
  maybe it was yesterday with the scissors.
• 1:00:55
  Yes. And I'm like, well, thank God I
• 1:00:57
  was there and I don't know again, they he's so smart.
• 1:00:59
  But I'm like, you don't we don't walk with scissors.
• 1:01:01
  We just don't. But mom, I need a friend.
• 1:01:03
  I'm like, we just don't. You don't walk with, we don't
• 1:01:05
  run with. We don't do it.
• 1:01:07
  We definitely don't run with it, Yeah.
• 1:01:09
  You know, and so it's like how like, but that, but that season
• 1:01:12
  like that, this little window of time that we get with our kids
• 1:01:15
  when they're little, yes, it's hard and yes, it's challenging,
• 1:01:18
  but we don't get that back. So when you understand this for
• 1:01:19
  a moment and it's for a season, you could be more present in a
• 1:01:22
  season and say, man, my 4 year old's never going to be like
• 1:01:25
  this again. She's going to be more mature at
• 1:01:27
  5 and she's going to be more mature at six and enjoy the
• 1:01:30
  moment that you're in. And so, and so that's the
• 1:01:33
  difference between purpose and assignment.
• 1:01:34
  And then the last part is like the calling and the calling.
• 1:01:37
  I I define calling as the overlap between your mission,
• 1:01:41
  like the thing that keeps you up at night, your vocation.
• 1:01:44
  What do you currently get paid to do or what could you get paid
• 1:01:47
  to do and your passion. Now passion is a tricky word
• 1:01:51
  because when we say passion, we often think, you know, what is
• 1:01:54
  the thing that makes you euphoric and happy, right?
• 1:01:57
  Like I, I was passionate about basketball, but like I'm 5 foot
• 1:02:00
  10 in Armenian, like I'm never going to be a professional
• 1:02:03
  basketball, but it's not in the cards for me, right, But I was I
• 1:02:05
  was quite passionate about it, right?
• 1:02:07
  And so it's, you know, people say like, find something that
• 1:02:10
  you love to do so much, you'll do it for free and you'll never
• 1:02:12
  work a day in your life, right? And it's like no, like work
• 1:02:14
  we're called to work, right. But the.
• 1:02:16
  By the way, I think that's a temperament thing.
• 1:02:18
  People that are like sun, like the sanguine temperament,
• 1:02:19
  everything's great. It's like I've never worked a
• 1:02:21
  day in my life. But that's more like your
• 1:02:23
  personality than it is the reality, I would argue.
• 1:02:26
  But. Yeah.
• 1:02:26
  And we and that's good. That's great to point out
• 1:02:27
  because you take personality things and you prescribe them
• 1:02:30
  that scale for all society and that's not helpful.
• 1:02:32
  But the the wild part about that word passion is when we look up
• 1:02:36
  the second definition of passion, it actually says agony.
• 1:02:41
  And this is an Oxford dictionary.
• 1:02:42
  And right next to agony, it says the passion of Christ, the
• 1:02:46
  suffering of Jesus. That's crazy.
• 1:02:49
  So, so, so passion is actually demonstrated by not what makes
• 1:02:54
  you euphoric and feel good. Passion is what are you willing
• 1:02:56
  to suffer for? What are you willing to put your
• 1:02:59
  head down and do when no one's acknowledging you, no one's
• 1:03:02
  celebrating you, no one's giving you any Harrahs or attaboys and
• 1:03:05
  suffer for and do the things that other people aren't willing
• 1:03:07
  to do. That's your passion.
• 1:03:09
  And and I'm not saying we're going to suffer like Jesus, but
• 1:03:12
  Jesus demonstrates his passion through the cross, through
• 1:03:15
  suffering for other people, for serving other people.
• 1:03:17
  And so I think like if, if we can tap into that and we go,
• 1:03:20
  wait a minute, So it's not about me.
• 1:03:21
  I'm not the center of the universe, I'm not the main
• 1:03:23
  character in the story. Jesus is.
• 1:03:25
  And that I'm ultimately here. And God's deposited some burdens
• 1:03:28
  in my heart, some things that keep me up at night.
• 1:03:30
  And I have some skills that I can currently get paid to do.
• 1:03:33
  And I have this thing that I'm just, I'm willing to suffer for
• 1:03:36
  it in a way that no one else is willing to.
• 1:03:38
  The overlap of those three things is what you're calling
• 1:03:41
  us. That's a great tool.
• 1:03:42
  Yeah, it's it's in a great tool and there's a free little PDF
• 1:03:45
  that we actually are doing with the.
• 1:03:46
  Two I like, Have you been thinking about this for years?
• 1:03:48
  Oh yeah. I've been thinking about this
• 1:03:49
  for for. Because you've been, you've been
• 1:03:50
  living it. You've been just figuring it out
• 1:03:52
  as you go, yeah? Because because in my own
• 1:03:53
  journey, like I knew that I love Jesus and I love ministry, but I
• 1:03:58
  knew that I wasn't a pastor because there's a pastors have a
• 1:04:00
  temperament. A pastor is someone that can
• 1:04:02
  shepherd you. A pastor is someone that can
• 1:04:04
  show up to the hospitals. So someone that can that will do
• 1:04:06
  the funerals, that will do the counseling.
• 1:04:08
  They will they will be in you through the thick of it.
• 1:04:10
  And that is a very specific gift set that I knew I did not have.
• 1:04:14
  Like I knew. Do you know your Myers Briggs?
• 1:04:16
  I I've done it. Are you?
• 1:04:17
  ENTP probably, I don't. Remember it I need to redo it.
• 1:04:21
  Though can you do it and get back to me?
• 1:04:22
  I'm curious if it's an ENTP would be my guess.
• 1:04:24
  And I probably, but yeah, I, I totally hear what you're saying.
• 1:04:27
  And all of these different, all of these different elements are
• 1:04:31
  like different personalities, different skills, different
• 1:04:33
  persons obviously are needed for the to build up the Kingdom of
• 1:04:36
  God. But I like your framework of I
• 1:04:39
  like the very practical element of your framework, quite
• 1:04:41
  frankly. I know a lot of men are going to
• 1:04:43
  be benefited by this, but it goes for women too.
• 1:04:46
  OK. How does this translate into
• 1:04:47
  your daily bread too? Like obviously Jesus is Our
• 1:04:50
  Daily Bread and I believe in the Eucharist like he is the daily
• 1:04:52
  bread. I get to go to Mass in the
• 1:04:53
  morning and get to receive him. But in terms of your daily work,
• 1:04:57
  what does that look like and how is it?
• 1:04:59
  Yeah, you need to. We need money is not a bad
• 1:05:01
  thing. You know, money is a wealth, a
• 1:05:04
  sign of wealth and wealth creation is good.
• 1:05:06
  We're actually called the bad. So it's not like, oh, you have a
• 1:05:08
  secular job. This is not under Christ
• 1:05:10
  dominion. Like actually it's all under
• 1:05:11
  Christ dominion. Under Christ dominion.
• 1:05:13
  That's right. So we're all it should be all
• 1:05:14
  done for Jesus Christ and for his church.
• 1:05:16
  And So what does that look like for the individual?
• 1:05:18
  I like your framework of understand what can you do that
• 1:05:21
  can actually be make money where you're adding adding value.
• 1:05:25
  So someone would want to pay you because what is money?
• 1:05:28
  Money is a sign of like wealth creation, right?
• 1:05:30
  It's a tool of transfer of wealth creation.
• 1:05:33
  And I'm not saying that as well as an economist on this show
• 1:05:36
  would probably say it, but it's an.
• 1:05:37
  Exchange of value it's all it. Is it's an exchange of value.
• 1:05:39
  Just little, little pieces. So what value are you bringing?
• 1:05:41
  What value are you bringing? And, and if you have specific
• 1:05:45
  temperament, specific passions, specific anchors that, that,
• 1:05:50
  that keep you up at night, and then you have skills that can
• 1:05:53
  complement those. You can start by just being a
• 1:05:56
  bigger asset, right where you are, right?
• 1:05:58
  And that usually is connected to a skill deficit, right.
• 1:06:01
  So like for me, I knew that I like ministry, but I knew I
• 1:06:04
  wasn't a pastor. I knew that I like music a lot,
• 1:06:09
  but I knew that I didn't want to travel anymore.
• 1:06:11
  And I also knew that I, I, I like to be more direct with like
• 1:06:15
  music is sometimes it's a little artsy and you're trying to tell
• 1:06:17
  a. Story you like to You're good at
• 1:06:18
  talking. I'm, I'm good at talking.
• 1:06:20
  And so then it's like, OK, so it's like, I don't want to go
• 1:06:22
  into ministry and I am. And I did the music thing and
• 1:06:25
  then I found this beautiful overlap of YouTube and like
• 1:06:28
  contextualizing and preaching from the church and finding that
• 1:06:31
  out. And that was a journey.
• 1:06:33
  Like it was a process to walk through.
• 1:06:35
  I wrote a book, which is another.
• 1:06:37
  I had a skill deficit, right? I knew that I wanted to
• 1:06:39
  communicate these ideas, but they were just jumbled all in my
• 1:06:42
  head. They were just, you know, and so
• 1:06:43
  like, OK, no, you got to sit down.
• 1:06:45
  You got to sit down and you need to think about what you want to
• 1:06:48
  share with the world. You need to organize it and then
• 1:06:50
  put it on paper and then put it in a way that connects with
• 1:06:52
  people and tell stories, right. And so all of that together is
• 1:06:57
  the daily process of discovering these things, but then also
• 1:07:01
  being faithful. So I, I break it down into two
• 1:07:03
  buckets, two buckets and then one word that I think will help
• 1:07:07
  people. Bucket number one is every
• 1:07:08
  single one of us has to work to eat, right?
• 1:07:11
  Thessalonians talks about Paul says he a man who a man who not
• 1:07:14
  work ought not eat. So every single person has to
• 1:07:16
  figure out a way to work to eat. That looks like sustaining
• 1:07:19
  yourself, paying the bills, taking care of responsibilities,
• 1:07:21
  right? Can I do a very quick sidebar?
• 1:07:23
  I don't don't lose the thought because I'm here with the other
• 1:07:25
  bucket in the one word for women.
• 1:07:27
  Again, this is such AI think and we've done episodes on this, but
• 1:07:30
  I think there's a lot of women have a desire to be a stay at
• 1:07:34
  home moms, which is very beautiful.
• 1:07:35
  And I fully you know, I I consider myself a full time stay
• 1:07:39
  at home mom in the sense that I'm, you know, primarily with my
• 1:07:41
  kids and things like that. But anyways, but IA lot of women
• 1:07:44
  don't want to have to work. They want to just be at home.
• 1:07:47
  But being at home is working. Being at home is working.
• 1:07:51
  She works so hard. So I think instead of the
• 1:07:52
  framework of my husband works and I don't, it can be more like
• 1:07:55
  who's responsible for which element of the family economy.
• 1:07:58
  That's right. That's good.
• 1:07:59
  And I think that in that framing instead, I think frees up, it
• 1:08:03
  creates more unity, quite frankly.
• 1:08:04
  It's not like you're providing and I'm just here, it's like,
• 1:08:07
  well, we're sharing the family economy.
• 1:08:09
  You're providing in this specific way.
• 1:08:11
  That's really essential. And I'm so grateful for I'm
• 1:08:14
  providing in this way and taking your provision and like being
• 1:08:17
  the COO or being, you know, this manager of this household
• 1:08:19
  economy, whatever. But we are both working.
• 1:08:22
  Yep. I think having that mindset is
• 1:08:23
  actually really important for both the unity and the family,
• 1:08:26
  as well as helping women understand the value of what
• 1:08:28
  they're doing and why. These are two sides of the same
• 1:08:32
  coin for the sake of these beautiful children that you're
• 1:08:34
  raising together. I think you said that so well,
• 1:08:36
  because it is work. And my, my goodness, I look at
• 1:08:39
  all the stuff my wife is responsible for on top of the
• 1:08:42
  stuff she does for the business with which is payroll, which is
• 1:08:46
  making sure that everything is running and operating fine with
• 1:08:49
  whatever, you know, taxes need to get paid with our CPA.
• 1:08:52
  Like, like there's a lot that my wife does, but the, but the
• 1:08:55
  responsibility of renting a household is, is work.
• 1:08:57
  It is absolutely work, right. And so I think that is like a OK
• 1:09:01
  bucket number one, work to eat the second bucket.
• 1:09:04
  And this is where this is where people get caught up is the
• 1:09:06
  second bucket is so to reap, so to reap for the next season,
• 1:09:11
  right? So me and my son Levi, my 10
• 1:09:14
  year old, we were in the backyard and we were eating
• 1:09:16
  cherries. And I, I am not a freak.
• 1:09:20
  I don't swallow the cherry seeds.
• 1:09:22
  I spit the cherry seeds out like like a normal human.
• 1:09:24
  And I spit the cherry seed out and I got him on a napkin and my
• 1:09:27
  son goes, hey, dad, we should plan it Cherry Tree in our
• 1:09:30
  backyard because we have like a couple apple trees and whatever.
• 1:09:33
  And I'm like, all right, like, so I'm like, let's Google how
• 1:09:36
  long it takes to to grow a Cherry Tree.
• 1:09:38
  How long do you think it takes to grow a Cherry Tree?
• 1:09:41
  That's a great question. Yeah.
• 1:09:42
  Should I just guess, I don't know, 10 years?
• 1:09:44
  Is that to? 7 to 10 years, Yeah.
• 1:09:46
  To grow a Cherry Tree. And so we have a generation of
• 1:09:49
  people. They they, they they're barely,
• 1:09:51
  they're barely working to eat, right?
• 1:09:54
  But then they're sowing to reap. And they think that like, I'm
• 1:09:56
  going to plant a cherry cherry seed today like my 10 year old
• 1:09:59
  and there'll be a cherry in a week, Cherry, cherry, Cherry
• 1:10:01
  Tree in a week. And it's like, no, a decade,
• 1:10:03
  dude. It's going to take a decade for
• 1:10:04
  this Cherry Tree. Don't.
• 1:10:05
  Plant the seed, you don't get the tree.
• 1:10:07
  That's it, that's it. And so we are planting seeds and
• 1:10:11
  we're tending gardens for the next season.
• 1:10:13
  The only thing that grows overnight is weeds and magic
• 1:10:18
  mushrooms. That's it.
• 1:10:20
  And I don't as followers of Jesus.
• 1:10:22
  Don't do it. We don't want either.
• 1:10:23
  We don't want weeds in your in your, in your garden.
• 1:10:25
  And you don't want magic mushrooms.
• 1:10:26
  That's the only thing that grows overnight.
• 1:10:28
  And so you have to work to eat and then you have to sow to reap
• 1:10:32
  for the next season and to say, hey, what do we want life look
• 1:10:35
  like in five years, 10 years, 20 years, 30 years, right.
• 1:10:38
  Different, different seeds are going to take longer to grow and
• 1:10:42
  they, they may take more work to the land and may take more
• 1:10:45
  intentionality to get the, the, the, the weeds out and keep the,
• 1:10:49
  the, we have really bad Gophers in our area.
• 1:10:51
  So we got to keep the Gophers out and the birds.
• 1:10:53
  I guess it's like a lot to go into it, but it's for the next
• 1:10:55
  season. And when you're not thinking
• 1:10:57
  about the next season because you're so inundated and stressed
• 1:10:59
  out by today, you don't know how to manage your levels.
• 1:11:01
  You don't know how to manage cortisol and stress and anxiety
• 1:11:04
  and all these things. You're just, you're just going
• 1:11:06
  to freeze. But like you, we have to do
• 1:11:07
  both. Now how, how do we do both?
• 1:11:10
  To me, the, the most simplest thing is to do both.
• 1:11:13
  You have to break your day down into daily non negotiables.
• 1:11:17
  So every single day and every single week there's non
• 1:11:21
  negotiables. Church for us is a non
• 1:11:23
  negotiable. That's that we, we don't, we're
• 1:11:25
  going to go to church Sunday. Like that is not up for the
• 1:11:27
  bait. We're going to church Sunday no
• 1:11:28
  matter what. Netflix were like it is.
• 1:11:31
  It's a mortal sin. I like that you guys got the
• 1:11:33
  mortal sin. I think we can.
• 1:11:33
  Learn that big deal. You go to, you go to mass
• 1:11:36
  worship God. You got to go.
• 1:11:38
  So that's a non negotiable, right?
• 1:11:40
  What what what else? What other non negotiables are
• 1:11:42
  there? OK, well, I I need to know how
• 1:11:44
  to manage and regulate my mood. I need to know how to not be
• 1:11:47
  stressed out because when I'm stressed out, I'm irritable.
• 1:11:51
  I'm short with my kids. So I need to know how to manage
• 1:11:54
  my own mood. What does that look like?
• 1:11:56
  That means like I'm going outside and I'm walking, I'm
• 1:11:58
  moving and getting fresh air, I'm seeing the sunlight daily,
• 1:12:01
  I'm exercising. That just helps me be that just
• 1:12:04
  helps me function and not be a jerk to my family.
• 1:12:06
  Just those things alone. So I got to have a little bit of
• 1:12:08
  non negotiable to take care of myself.
• 1:12:10
  I got to have non negotiable. I'm always I'm always reading
• 1:12:12
  the scriptures every day. I'm I'm praying every day.
• 1:12:15
  I'm trying to learn something every day.
• 1:12:17
  What skill deficits do you have? OK, What skills do you do you
• 1:12:20
  currently need to you currently have that can complement the
• 1:12:24
  skills you need to get right? So I'm learning every day.
• 1:12:26
  I'm trying to learn. So like I had never written a
• 1:12:28
  book before, I had to learn to write.
• 1:12:30
  I had to understand the process of telling stories and packaging
• 1:12:33
  information, right? Just like the number of five
• 1:12:36
  point paragraphs. Tell them what you're going to
• 1:12:38
  tell them, tell them three points, right?
• 1:12:40
  I had to relearn all that sort of stuff, right?
• 1:12:42
  So there's like a skill deficit I had, but I can talk and I had
• 1:12:45
  ideas. So that I had to learn to write.
• 1:12:47
  I had to learn to. So what are we learning on our
• 1:12:49
  day-to-day basis? What, what plans do we have?
• 1:12:52
  And then you can, you can get as detailed as you want.
• 1:12:55
  We got out of debt. We were $100,000 in debt.
• 1:12:57
  We got on a budget that we ridiculously tracked.
• 1:13:00
  We didn't go out to eat for a season.
• 1:13:02
  It was about 18 months. We, we, we went scorched earth.
• 1:13:05
  We only ate out, no vacations. And in 18 months we were debt
• 1:13:08
  free. That was a sacrifice we made in
• 1:13:10
  the short term to have a longer, you know, beautiful freedom to
• 1:13:15
  have more margin in our life. So it's like the crazy part is
• 1:13:18
  whether you're trying to get out of debt, whether you're trying
• 1:13:19
  to garden, whether you're trying to build something.
• 1:13:22
  The beautiful part is when you think about non negotiables,
• 1:13:26
  they've they've done studies and you've heard the 10,000 hour
• 1:13:28
  rule got to be 10,000 hours to be an expert.
• 1:13:30
  But here's the flip side to the 10,000 hour rule is you can
• 1:13:33
  become competent in almost anything with 20 hours of
• 1:13:37
  deliberate focus. So 20 hours of the. 20 instead
• 1:13:40
  of 10,000. Instead of 10,000.
• 1:13:41
  So you want to learn to play guitar?
• 1:13:43
  So you're like, hey, I want to play acoustic guitar.
• 1:13:44
  I want to lead cheesy worship songs, right?
• 1:13:48
  OK, 30 hours a day, 3030 minutes a day.
• 1:13:51
  Spread that across five days a week.
• 1:13:53
  In four weeks, 30 minutes of deliberate focus.
• 1:13:55
  You can learn to play at a competent level.
• 1:13:58
  Those cheesy Christian worship songs, right?
• 1:14:00
  You want to learn to code? You want to learn to do video
• 1:14:02
  editing? You want to learn to design?
• 1:14:03
  You want to learn AI? Like fill in a blank 20 hours of
• 1:14:07
  deliberate focus and you could almost feel any skill that you
• 1:14:11
  need to fill. Now, some of us are going to be
• 1:14:13
  faster learners based on previous skills.
• 1:14:16
  Others are going to struggle. But that's why we take an
• 1:14:18
  inventory of what do we have now and then.
• 1:14:20
  So a daily non negotiable is like, I'm going to learn
• 1:14:22
  something every day, right? I'm I'm going to create
• 1:14:26
  something new, something beautiful every day.
• 1:14:28
  And I think when we start thinking about that, then it's
• 1:14:30
  then it really becomes, let me just do the right inputs.
• 1:14:34
  If I do the inputs, if I sow the seed, if I, if I tend to the
• 1:14:36
  land, if I pull out the weeds, if I, if I do the inputs,
• 1:14:39
  eventually the garden will grow. Like eventually it'll come.
• 1:14:42
  God, God so has to send the rain.
• 1:14:44
  God so has to breathe on it, but eventually it'll come.
• 1:14:47
  And so again, I think we're in a time though, where people just
• 1:14:49
  announce for us. I don't do nothing because I'm
• 1:14:51
  just holding on for dear life as everything is chaotic and that's
• 1:14:56
  where the order comes in, that's where the structure comes.
• 1:14:58
  In or I think because we see so many other people's big wins
• 1:15:02
  online or just in the world, and we're inundated with all these
• 1:15:04
  images and ideas and messages from other people and other
• 1:15:08
  entities and stuff. So we just think that doing
• 1:15:12
  these this thing is either too hard, it's impossible, like we
• 1:15:14
  get discouraged too quickly because we're seeing people at
• 1:15:16
  their end at their, at their height, right?
• 1:15:18
  Or we think, you know, we are. You know, if if we start trying
• 1:15:23
  and it's hard and we try for a few weeks and it doesn't work,
• 1:15:26
  then therefore we can't do it. We give up before we should.
• 1:15:30
  Yeah, we think resistance and friction is a sign that we
• 1:15:33
  shouldn't do something. I remember with my little
• 1:15:35
  YouTube channel, like there was a few weeks where we were under
• 1:15:38
  1000 Subs and it was just, I was like, and I wasn't starting from
• 1:15:43
  total scratch. I had live action.
• 1:15:45
  We were growing at live action. We were doing amazing things.
• 1:15:48
  And I was like, I felt very, very strongly called to start
• 1:15:50
  this YouTube channel, you know, my independent show podcast.
• 1:15:53
  And I wasn't doing ad dollars. I was just very like, it's
• 1:15:56
  always been very organic, the show and and I was starting.
• 1:16:00
  I was like, OK, this is like, am I ever going to, you know, so I,
• 1:16:03
  I hear people say, oh, it's too hard or I, I stopped going
• 1:16:08
  because it wasn't taking off. I'm like, you've got to show up.
• 1:16:11
  Whatever it is, you have to put the time in overtime.
• 1:16:14
  And how many subscribers are you at now?
• 1:16:16
  I mean, I think we just hit 350. Come on, we're not at 8, almost
• 1:16:19
  800 like you, but you're at 800. But you did in two years.
• 1:16:22
  It has been two years. I've been fairly consistent on
• 1:16:25
  YouTube since 2018, you know so. Forged the path or is that?
• 1:16:28
  Yeah. So, so, so, but that's a
• 1:16:30
  testament to like what happens when you just put your head down
• 1:16:32
  and just do the thing. You just do the inputs over and
• 1:16:34
  over and again. You had some momentum, you had
• 1:16:36
  some other skills, you had some other influence.
• 1:16:39
  And so it was, you did it in two years, but how many?
• 1:16:42
  So say you don't have any skills.
• 1:16:43
  So you want to do it. You love what Lila is doing.
• 1:16:45
  You love what I'm doing. You're like, I want to do, OK,
• 1:16:46
  great. If you have no influence, no
• 1:16:48
  connections, no relationships, it might take you 10 years.
• 1:16:50
  Yeah. Are you willing to suffer for 10
• 1:16:52
  years? Right and.
• 1:16:54
  And there'll be wins along the way and there'll be losses along
• 1:16:56
  the way. And, and, and often when you are
• 1:16:59
  deliberate and focused and are actually paying attention and
• 1:17:03
  not just doing the thing because whether it's the 10,000 hour
• 1:17:06
  rule or the 20 hour rule, the key is deliberate focus, right?
• 1:17:11
  Deliver focus. So if you're doing a YouTube
• 1:17:12
  channel, are you paying attention to the click through
• 1:17:14
  rate? Are you intentional about the
• 1:17:15
  titles? Do you have a thumbnail?
• 1:17:16
  I remember the first five years I did YouTube, I didn't have a
• 1:17:19
  thumbnail. Like I was just winging it, you
• 1:17:21
  know? Did you know that thumbnails
• 1:17:22
  mattered? Or you.
• 1:17:23
  It wasn't really in your mind yet.
• 1:17:25
  I didn't, no, no, until I went to my buddy Sean Cannell's very
• 1:17:31
  first Growth Video Live conference, and he made me sit
• 1:17:33
  down with a, oh gosh, what is it called?
• 1:17:37
  There's a software that people use for YouTube stuff, and we
• 1:17:39
  still pay the subscription because I'm so loyal to these
• 1:17:41
  people. I can't remember.
• 1:17:43
  Vid IQ. Give him a shout out response.
• 1:17:45
  Vid IQ. Which I I still pay.
• 1:17:46
  For do we use vid IQ? Because Vid IQ sat me down.
• 1:17:50
  They sat me down and they did a channel audit and they looked at
• 1:17:53
  my channel and they said you need to do thumbnails if there's
• 1:17:56
  one thing you need. To how much did you have to pay
• 1:17:58
  for that advice? Nothing.
• 1:17:59
  OK. I was, I was, I was at a
• 1:18:01
  conference. I mean, I was a $200.
• 1:18:03
  Conference, but you showed up to the conference.
• 1:18:05
  See that's the thing you were doing like God cannot move the
• 1:18:08
  car that is parked like you have that you have your free will.
• 1:18:10
  You got to put the car in motion.
• 1:18:12
  That's right. Pray, do your best and then let
• 1:18:14
  God be your jet fuel, I guess for your car.
• 1:18:17
  You know, let God bless that and he and He does and He will.
• 1:18:20
  Yeah, I was at 5000 subscribers. This is August 2018 and.
• 1:18:24
  Got there pretty quick. Yeah, that one thing.
• 1:18:27
  I mean, in a year I grew at 3X my subscribers just through
• 1:18:30
  that, right? Through thumbnails.
• 1:18:31
  Just through thumbnails. And so that's what I mean is
• 1:18:33
  like people, the comparison thing is brutal because yeah,
• 1:18:36
  and if you're struggling comparison, you might need to
• 1:18:38
  take social media off your phone for a while.
• 1:18:40
  Like you might need to just unplug from everyone else or be
• 1:18:45
  very intentional with who you're allowing.
• 1:18:46
  Because if you're just looking at people's highlight reels,
• 1:18:49
  it's going to distort you. Like you're going to think that
• 1:18:52
  why am I not there? And it's like, yeah, because you
• 1:18:53
  didn't put in 10 years of. Work I found with comparison
• 1:18:56
  that in comparison doesn't have to be bad.
• 1:18:58
  It can actually be really great in terms of someone can educate
• 1:19:01
  and inspire you to greatness. And so I found when I see
• 1:19:04
  creators like yourself, who I look up to in terms of what
• 1:19:07
  you've built and, and I see what you've done and I say, OK, I
• 1:19:10
  want to learn from this person. I, I admire them with what
• 1:19:13
  they're doing. And so that's a positive
• 1:19:15
  comparison in that sense. But if you're looking at someone
• 1:19:17
  who's like now you're like self flagellate.
• 1:19:19
  I'm not, or you're just judging them like, no, no, no, no, like
• 1:19:22
  whatever. That is not constructive.
• 1:19:25
  It's in unconstructive comparison that leads to self
• 1:19:28
  criticism or criticism of others.
• 1:19:30
  That's just destructive. So no need to, no need to do it.
• 1:19:33
  Then you can unfollow or mute or get yourself off of social
• 1:19:37
  media. But I think there can be really
• 1:19:39
  positive comparison. That's good.
• 1:19:40
  And I think the, the, the way you combat that, like, I think
• 1:19:43
  where you're getting almost like that competitive spirit, it's
• 1:19:45
  just by celebrating people like celebrate other people.
• 1:19:48
  Like, like when, when you're going viral, like I'm excited.
• 1:19:52
  I'm cheering you on in the comments.
• 1:19:53
  For a good reason. I mean, it's usually for a good.
• 1:19:55
  Reason. I know I try to always make it
• 1:19:57
  for a good reason. I think it depends who's making
• 1:19:59
  me go viral, You know, which part of the Internet is doing
• 1:20:03
  the viral part. But yeah, totally, yeah.
• 1:20:05
  Yeah, this is very exciting. So this is coming out when?
• 1:20:08
  So it's available September 9th, but we're doing a special
• 1:20:12
  pre-order so they can buy it on Barnes and Noble, Amazon, all
• 1:20:16
  those wherever they buy books. But what we're doing is we're
• 1:20:19
  providing people with a, a pre-order incentive.
• 1:20:23
  Or if they pre-order it and they get a screen grab of their
• 1:20:25
  receipt, they can go to mygodlyambition.com and there's
• 1:20:29
  a there's a package they get, They get the 1st 4 chapters in
• 1:20:32
  audio video, which I think I sent over to you.
• 1:20:34
  So they get me reading the first four chapters telling the back
• 1:20:37
  story of some of the the things in the book.
• 1:20:39
  They get the 1st 4 chapters in the ebook.
• 1:20:41
  They get a 25% off code for a shop.
• 1:20:44
  They get the Godly ambition action sheet for free as a part
• 1:20:49
  of the pre-order. And they get an exclusive
• 1:20:51
  podcast with me and Jonathan Bekluta who did the forward to
• 1:20:55
  the book. And then on my Godly
• 1:20:57
  ambition.com, they also can see the events we have coming up.
• 1:21:02
  We're doing 3 little book launch events, one in Nashville, one at
• 1:21:07
  Rhythm Church in Oceanside on September 9th, and one in Dallas
• 1:21:11
  on I think it's September 30th. And so all they got to do is
• 1:21:14
  just RSVP for the event and then bring a proof of purchase for
• 1:21:17
  the book and they get it for free.
• 1:21:19
  And I'll be signing all the books at those events.
• 1:21:20
  If you're in Nashville, if you're in Dallas, if you are in
• 1:21:23
  Oceanside or San Diego, Orange County area, all of that is on
• 1:21:27
  my Godly ambition.com. And so, yeah, pre-order the
• 1:21:29
  book, pre-order it for like if, if you're like, hey, I, I got it
• 1:21:33
  like, sweet, I figured it out. Cool. pre-order it for that
• 1:21:37
  nephew, pre-order it for that grandkid, pre-order it for your
• 1:21:39
  child, pre-order it for that teenager, that young adult,
• 1:21:42
  because that's, that's who really needs it.
• 1:21:43
  Like my, my heart is like, man, if I can help people compress
• 1:21:47
  time a bit, if it doesn't have to take them two decades, like
• 1:21:50
  it took me, maybe we can take what I learned in 20 years and
• 1:21:53
  compress that down to 5 for some people, right?
• 1:21:55
  That that's the goal is like, we don't have to wander in, in in
• 1:21:59
  the desert like the children of Israel for 40 years on something
• 1:22:02
  that could have took us, you know, two weeks to do.
• 1:22:04
  And it's a, it's a mentoring of the younger generation, which is
• 1:22:07
  what you needed when you were in your early 20s.
• 1:22:09
  I was. Talking to Rice Crawford and and
• 1:22:11
  he said he's like, bro, I wish I had this when I was, you know,
• 1:22:13
  18 just going fast. Me too, I know because we we
• 1:22:17
  talked about so we. Talked, we had great stuff and
• 1:22:19
  great resources and wild at heart and every young man's
• 1:22:22
  battle and all, and it was great.
• 1:22:24
  And it was like, yes, awesome. Like stop looking at porn.
• 1:22:27
  Like porn's bad. Stop looking at less than half
• 1:22:29
  the girls bad. OK, great.
• 1:22:30
  But what am I supposed to do? Like what else am I supposed to
• 1:22:33
  do? OK, I understand those vices are
• 1:22:35
  bad. RIP those vices out.
• 1:22:37
  They're terrible. But I was never told on how to
• 1:22:40
  chase my purpose and how to honor God and how to replace
• 1:22:43
  those things with virtue. And if we're just removing the
• 1:22:47
  weed? And how to build something.
• 1:22:48
  Yeah. And how to build something.
• 1:22:49
  A family and a career, I mean, and a mission.
• 1:22:51
  Absolutely. And if we're just removing the
• 1:22:53
  weeds, but we're not planting gardens like the, what are we
• 1:22:56
  doing? What are we doing?
• 1:22:57
  OK, to finish us out here, if you could leave our listeners
• 1:23:01
  with three truths or tips or tools.
• 1:23:03
  And you've already given us a few sneak peeks into the book,
• 1:23:06
  which are very cool frameworks people can use.
• 1:23:08
  But three truths, tips or tools that they can use.
• 1:23:12
  And you can refer back to what you've already shared if you'd
• 1:23:14
  like. But that you think are key to
• 1:23:16
  people understanding their own path here and and and living a
• 1:23:21
  godly ambition. What would those things be?
• 1:23:23
  Yeah, I would say foundationally Luke chapter 22, I would read
• 1:23:26
  that that the story it's the it's the Last Supper.
• 1:23:29
  It's a beautiful story. Jesus.
• 1:23:32
  It tell this is in in a parallel passage.
• 1:23:34
  He washes their feet and then he's saying one of you guys are
• 1:23:37
  going to betray me. And then you would think that
• 1:23:41
  they would like I'll get it together like it's bad.
• 1:23:44
  They start arguing about who's going to be the greatest in the
• 1:23:46
  Kingdom. So this is like just the they
• 1:23:49
  just misread the room, right Washes their feet.
• 1:23:53
  Hey, one of you guys are going to betray me.
• 1:23:54
  And then it says and in a dispute arose among them about
• 1:23:58
  who is going to be the greatest. He's about to go to the cross
• 1:24:01
  and and it's. Crazy when you think about it.
• 1:24:03
  And so it's like they're expecting this political Kingdom
• 1:24:07
  to to be established and, and Jesus about to go to the cross.
• 1:24:10
  And so something interesting happens.
• 1:24:12
  I mean, this isn't the first time they argued about who's
• 1:24:13
  going to be the greatest by the way, They this is this argument
• 1:24:15
  they've had before. And so Jesus does something
• 1:24:17
  interesting. He doesn't rebuke their desire
• 1:24:19
  for greatness. He doesn't rebuke their
• 1:24:21
  ambition. He doesn't reject their
• 1:24:23
  ambition, which Jesus had no problem with rejecting and
• 1:24:25
  rebuking. He rebuked Peter, right?
• 1:24:27
  There's times, but he does something interesting.
• 1:24:29
  He redefines greatness. He, he, he redirects it and he
• 1:24:35
  redeems it. So he redefines it and says the,
• 1:24:38
  the, the, the, the Gentiles and the pagans, they Lord over each
• 1:24:41
  other and they are, they're, they're dominating over each
• 1:24:43
  other. Shouldn't be like that among
• 1:24:44
  you, the greatest among you is, should be the biggest servant
• 1:24:47
  among you, right? So he defines greatness and
• 1:24:49
  ambition and he says it's actually about service.
• 1:24:52
  It's actually the biggest servant is the one that's going
• 1:24:54
  to, to, to love and lead people. Well.
• 1:24:56
  So I think one like understand that God's not against your
• 1:25:00
  ambition. He's not against your dreams.
• 1:25:01
  He's not rejecting and rebuking you, but he is redirecting it
• 1:25:04
  and redefining it and, and, and, and saying, hey, it's service is
• 1:25:08
  what godly ambition is about. Stewardship is what godly
• 1:25:11
  ambition is about. So those people that are
• 1:25:13
  struggling, like I don't know if I want to do this thing or Lila
• 1:25:16
  built this nonprofit, I feel the same thing, but I don't know if
• 1:25:19
  I can. Like you can, you can.
• 1:25:21
  And Jesus is not rejecting that and he's not rebuking that.
• 1:25:24
  So I'll say foundation, like godly ambition is servanthood
• 1:25:27
  and stewardship. It's, it's, it's being faithful
• 1:25:30
  and putting others above yourself and it's serving them
• 1:25:32
  and it's being faithful with what you have your time.
• 1:25:35
  Talented, sure. So that's foundationally that I
• 1:25:38
  would say #2 is your identity should not be something that is
• 1:25:42
  what the world is telling you that you're valuable because of
• 1:25:44
  the amount of money you make or because you're a star athlete or
• 1:25:46
  because you are good looking or because or you're not good
• 1:25:49
  looking or whatever. Like that is an outside in
• 1:25:51
  identity and it also your identity isn't inside out
• 1:25:55
  identity. Your identity is not what you
• 1:25:56
  feel you are right? Well, I just feel ashamed.
• 1:25:58
  I feel broken. I feel like I'll never be any
• 1:26:01
  better. I feel I'll always be an addict.
• 1:26:02
  No, your identity is actually and Jay Wonder Wallace coined
• 1:26:06
  this. I love the language.
• 1:26:07
  It's not outside and it's not inside out.
• 1:26:08
  It's top down. Your identity is who Jesus says
• 1:26:11
  you are. The identity is defined by what
• 1:26:13
  God says about you, not what you feel and not what the world
• 1:26:16
  says. And so I think the more we get a
• 1:26:17
  hold of that top down identity. That in baptism you literally
• 1:26:21
  receive the water in the name of the fathers and Holy Spirit, and
• 1:26:23
  you become baptized, adopted into the family of God.
• 1:26:25
  You become a new creation in Christ.
• 1:26:26
  That's right. And it's a new identity.
• 1:26:28
  And so in that I'll segue to the Third Point, that new identity.
• 1:26:31
  Then what happens is people go, OK, I understand God isn't
• 1:26:34
  rejecting my ambition. Praise God, I understand I have
• 1:26:36
  a new identity. How do I then discover God's
• 1:26:40
  will for my life, Right. And I think that the, the
• 1:26:42
  question is flawed because what we're really asking is what is
• 1:26:47
  God's will for my life? And I think God is much more
• 1:26:49
  concerned with why then and how then what, right.
• 1:26:53
  So it's like, what, what do you want?
• 1:26:54
  Well, I, I, I want to get married.
• 1:26:56
  OK, praise God, you want to get married.
• 1:26:57
  Why do you want to get married? You want to get married because
• 1:26:59
  you're, because you're, because you're, you need validation and
• 1:27:01
  affirmation and you're insecure and you're and you're
• 1:27:03
  codependent. A lot of dudes do this with
• 1:27:05
  women. Hey, why are you on the phone
• 1:27:07
  till 4:00 in the morning sharing all your deepest, darkest
• 1:27:10
  dramas? You need a therapist.
• 1:27:11
  Like you don't need a girlfriend.
• 1:27:13
  You need a therapist. I go to therapy and deal with
• 1:27:14
  your junk. Your girlfriend's not your
• 1:27:16
  therapist, right? I feel lonely, I feel isolated.
• 1:27:19
  OK, those aren't good reasons, right?
• 1:27:21
  But if you're like, hey, why do I, why do I want to get married
• 1:27:23
  or I want to get married because I want to have a godly family
• 1:27:26
  and I want to usher in goodness and beauty and I want to honor
• 1:27:29
  God with my body. OK, now we're talking good, good
• 1:27:31
  reasons. And so it's the why and it's the
• 1:27:35
  how and the how matters. How are we going about dating?
• 1:27:37
  How are we going about career? How are we going about launching
• 1:27:39
  that nonprofit? The how matters to God.
• 1:27:42
  So it's less about the what should I start the nonprofit?
• 1:27:44
  Should I not start the nonprofit?
• 1:27:45
  Should I start the YouTube channel?
• 1:27:46
  Should I not something to you? It's just, hey, why do you want
• 1:27:50
  to do it? Is it about God's Kingdom or
• 1:27:51
  your castle? And then two, how are you doing
• 1:27:54
  it? And so the way I simplify this
• 1:27:56
  and we can, we could end with this is God's will for our lives
• 1:28:00
  is in God's ways for our lives. The ways of God, the way he
• 1:28:05
  moves, the way he operates. And God's ways are in God's
• 1:28:08
  word. They're in the Scriptures.
• 1:28:10
  So lean into God's will by going to God's ways.
• 1:28:13
  You examine God's ways, you go to God's word.
• 1:28:15
  And the more you walk through that process, the more you'll
• 1:28:17
  start discovering that God's will is not this fork in the
• 1:28:19
  road. Oh my gosh, I went left when I
• 1:28:21
  should have went right and I screwed up my.
• 1:28:22
  Destiny, the message in a bottle.
• 1:28:24
  It's not that. It's day-to-day.
• 1:28:26
  It's more about who are you becoming and less about what
• 1:28:29
  you're doing. Amen.
• 1:28:31
  Thank you, friend. Congrats.
• 1:28:33
  Thank you. It's a big deal.
• 1:28:34
  It's really hard to write a book.
• 1:28:36
  Yes. You've written down.
• 1:28:37
  You've written. One I wrote one, it was really
• 1:28:39
  hard and I'm very impressed and I think this is a beautiful
• 1:28:42
  message and I'm so excited for its launch.
• 1:28:45
  So congratulations. Thanks for also just being the
• 1:28:48
  light that you are. Thank you for so many people.
• 1:28:50
  It's it's an inspiration to me and grateful for you.
• 1:28:53
  Well. Thank you to you for having me
• 1:28:55
  on again and again, and thank you for coming to our Blessed
• 1:28:57
  God Summit. That was very fun.
• 1:28:59
  Lila came to our Blessed God summit, You guys in this Lila
• 1:29:01
  came. She was like, she was like a
• 1:29:02
  beetle, guys, how's that You she.
• 1:29:04
  She went to Beetle They. Swarmed you.
• 1:29:06
  You were like Paul McCartney. They swarmed you.
• 1:29:09
  You're like Beyoncé. They're.
• 1:29:10
  Great people there. Yeah, they, they, I remember
• 1:29:12
  walking out one point and you just had a circle of people
• 1:29:14
  around you. I was like, Oh my gosh, like we
• 1:29:16
  gotta get Lila some security. Like, what is going on?
• 1:29:19
  She's you. You just like chilling, talking
• 1:29:20
  to everybody. Fun there is there is the people
• 1:29:23
  at your the Blessed God Summit were really great people because
• 1:29:27
  there were these very sort of big hearted, passionate, driven,
• 1:29:32
  curious, like loving people, kind of entrepreneurial, a
• 1:29:37
  little bit like walk to the beat of their own drum, willing to do
• 1:29:40
  things differently, but really wanting to make an impact on the
• 1:29:42
  world. It was a great crowd.
• 1:29:44
  So, yeah, great. We'll have you back again.
• 1:29:45
  That was really, we're about to do it again at the Seabirds so.
• 1:29:47
  That sounds. Let's do that.
• 1:29:48
  That's great. All right, Thank you.
• 1:29:50
  Awesome. Thanks.
• 1:29:51
  Thanks so much for listening to this episode of the Lila Rose
• 1:29:53
  Show. Hope you all enjoyed it.
• 1:29:55
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• 1:29:57
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• 1:29:58
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• 1:30:01
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