Jesus Promised Rest, So Why Are You Still Exhausted? | Tim Ross

He said, I am leaving you with the gift. It's the only gift that the Holy Spirit has an assignment to fulfill. I mean, he could have chosen anything. Power. Anointing. He could have used every word in the vocabulary. He could have made up a word, right? He's the Messiah. He's God, and he says peace. There's a difference between being a peacemaker and a peacekeeper. Jesus said, blessed are the peace makers. Sometimes the only way to make peace is through disturbance. You're listening to the Provoke and Inspire podcast. What's up guys? This is Ben from Provoke and Inspire and I am super pumped about today's episode. I got to talk to someone who I've been a fan of for a long time. His name is Tim Ross. He's the founder of the Embassy Church in Dallas. He has almost nine hundred thousand followers on Instagram, a massive YouTube presence. He is an author and he has a new book coming out on May the fifth called The Missing Piece How to Be Held together when you're falling apart. This was the subject of our conversation today. We talked about peace. We talked about Christianity in general, and why so many followers of Jesus know so much, but feel so little of the peace that he promised. But the conversation went far beyond that into areas of identity and intimacy with Jesus, and how to follow him faithfully. Look, I know I say this a lot, but this was one of my favorite conversations I have ever had on this podcast. Tim is a powerful man of God and he has humility but deep insight. And just generally he was great to talk to. And so I hope you enjoy this conversation as much as I did. In case you forgot, and I'm sure you haven't, this podcast is part of an organization called Steiger. It's a missions organization that my parents started in the eighties. That's where my brother and I were born. And among other things, my dad decided to start a punk rock band to reach a culture that was not going to come to the church to find Jesus. And so he went to them to their places to lift up the gospel. And so that's where I grew up, in clubs throughout Europe and eventually the world. And to cut a very long story short, we're now in two hundred and sixty two cities around the world doing that exact same thing, reaching those who will not walk into a church if you go to Steiger. Org. You can find out more. All right, let's get on to my conversation with the one and only Tim Ross. Yeah, well, let's do this. So, Tim Ross, we are rolling. As I said, this has been a long time coming for me. I've been a fan from afar, but here we are, not quite in person, but, uh. But close enough for now. Close enough. Close enough for now. So thank you for being on the Provoke and Inspire podcast, man. Thank you so much, Ben. I'm grateful to be here with you, man. Yeah. Well, man, before we started we already were going off on a billion tangents. I'm not surprised. There's a million things I'd love to pick your brain about, but you have a book coming out May fifth. The missing piece. Clever title. Love that. How to be held together when you're falling apart. And I'd love to dive right in. Because when I look at the world though, we are promised peace. I see a lot of Christians that don't seem to be at peace at all. Yeah. So what kind of peace was Jesus talking about, and why do so few of us have it? So you have you have teed me up. This is like, this is tee ball right now. Uh, the goal. That's the goal. I really appreciate you. So, um, Isaiah describes the coming Messiah several different ways. But one of those ways is as the Prince of Peace, right? Wonderful counselor, everlasting father, mighty God, prince of peace. And then Jesus says in John fourteen twenty seven, I am leaving you with the gift, peace of heart and mind, and the gift that I give the world cannot give it, which loudly implies the world does have a version of peace. It's just temporary. Yeshua is eternal. And that's why he goes on to say, um, neither be thou troubled or afraid. So when I think about this peace and I'm I come from black Pentecostal church. Okay. So acts chapter number two, we will run around and do laps about the Holy Ghost. Right? We got the Holy Ghost and we got power. Um, but starting off, when you read about how Jesus describes the Holy Spirit in fourteen chapters, fourteen, fifteen, sixteen, he starts off by giving you this context that I'm giving you an extravagant gift. And the gift isn't power. The gift is actually peace. In acts chapter number one, he goes on to say, you shall receive power when the Holy Spirit comes upon you. So when the peace comes upon you, you'll be empowered to do all the other things. But you can't do that from a dysregulated nervous system. Yeah. And I truly believe I know that mental health now is in vogue. I've been a believer for thirty years. I've been in some form of counseling and or therapy for twenty eight. I know for a fact that the peace that the Holy Spirit is meant to bring is not just to allow us to do supernatural things like open up blind eyes and resurrect the dead and, uh, make the lame walk. It literally is to regulate our nervous system. Think about it this way. All the disciples who would be apostles are scared out of their mind and completely cowered behind locked doors before they have the Holy Spirit, right after they have the Holy Spirit. There is a regulation in their nervous system to the point that they can stand in front of Peter and John. Chapter number three, going into chapter number four of acts. Those two literally stand before the same high priest that put the hit on Jesus. And they're like, yeah, we're not gonna. I don't care what you do. We're not going to be able to stop talking about them. And you're the one that killed them. Well, that's that's not just that's not power. That's peace. Yeah. From a from a regulated nervous system. You can speak truth from a regulated nervous system. You can deal with a dysregulated world. But if that doesn't happen from the inside out, then we go through life trying to take things from the outside in to bring us peace. And it's only temporary. What would you say are the the main culprits that are pulling us away from that peace? Ooh, in the year of our Lord twenty twenty six. Man. Is there anything you can think of at all? I'm in Minneapolis, keep in mind. Yeah, absolutely. Well, well, social media for sure. Yeah. Uh, our news agencies for sure. Uh, when you have people that feed more off of external sources for their information, for their insight, for their well-being. It's not going to last too long, right? When we talk about biblical literacy, we're not just talking about people that, like the Bereans in the book of Acts, could study the scriptures and search the scriptures to see what other people are saying is true. But when you when you have a biblical worldview and the peace that the Holy Spirit brings, you can actually calm down because you see everything that's going on in the world and you're like, wow. As an ambassador, on behalf of the Kingdom of Heaven, I get to intersect, intervene, and interact with all these dysregulated people and tell them that there's a peace that passes all understanding. All of this drama that's going on is not what we're supposed to be caught up in. Like, this is something that we're supposed to engage in, but this is not something that we're supposed to completely be enraged by because it's not our narrative. It's a narrative that's going on in the world, but it doesn't belong to us. But we do get to interact with it. Yeah. Wow. You described how peace is this thing that that comes upon us. Galatians five talks about peace being a gift of the Holy Spirit. But as you talk, the thing that comes to mind is that peace almost seems to be the barometer that the evidence of a well-ordered life, evidence that you actually have intimacy with Jesus and not just you, sort of sprinkled a little Jesus on top of your politics, your busyness, your own agenda. Right. So in some ways, peace kind of the indication that you truly are surrendered to an intimate with your creator. Yeah. Uh, the comment sections would tell us that there are a lot of people that don't have his peace. They don't have his temperance. They don't have his self-control. Right. They they they don't have kindness. The very fruit of the spirit that is manifested through the person of the Holy Spirit. You can just do a cursory search of a comment section. Take your pick on the right or the left, or in the middle, somebody's sermons clip somebody, whatever, and you'll realize, oh, wow, the the these people don't have the fruit of the spirit emerging from them. It's interesting to me because of course, we're imperfect. Of course we struggle in sin. And yet at the same time, it seems so foundational that the purpose of following Jesus is to know love and follow Jesus. Right? So how have we gotten to this place where there's such a massive disconnect between the basics? Even even the idea of peace just kind of seems like, ah, you know, it's kind of that fluffy surface level thing. Like, what greater gift is there than being at peace? Yes. Right. It's the gift. It's the only gift that the Holy Spirit has an assignment to fulfill. because that's what Jesus said. He said, I am leaving you with the gift. I mean, he could have chosen anything power, anointing. He could have used every word in the vocabulary. He could have made up a word, right? He's the Messiah, he's God. He could have set us out on a course for, I don't know, some ancient water that only comes out of the Jordan River, right? Whatever he could. And he says, peace. This is going to be your foundation. Your, your, your power is going to come from your peace. Your power is going to come from your ability to be regulated in your nervous system. It is literally meant to regulate the body. Paul gets a prophetic word in the book of acts that we would have all rebuked Ben. He's about to go on this journey. Some prophet comes out of nowhere, seemingly, uh, the local community knows him, but he emerges from the crowd and he takes Paul's belt and he ties it around his arms and his feet, and he says, the man that wears this belt will be bound. Like I'm bound in Rome. And everybody's like, oh my goodness. This prophetic word is a warning from the Holy Spirit. Paul, don't go. Please don't go in your next missionary journey. Look at this word. God's giving you a word as a warning. And Paul goes, paraphrase. Y'all are breaking my heart. Why are you crying like this? Not only am I ready to be imprisoned for the gospel that I'm preaching, I'm ready to die. Yeah, Paul's not a lunatic. Paul's not. Paul doesn't even have a death wish. Paul's at peace. Yeah, he pins from prison the book of Philippians and says, the peace of God that passes all understanding will guard my heart and my mind. So this guy is writing his happiest letters while he's imprisoned. Yeah, like that's all because of peace. And so if we would get to that, there is a multiplicity of things in this world at our present time. You just mentioned it being that you live in Minnesota, that that is enough to trigger us. That's enough to dysregulate us. That's enough to anger us. That's enough to enrage us. That's enough to to to make us not sleep good at night. And with the peace of God that literally passes all understanding, we can still take these things that are happening in our world currently and have peace at the same time. We don't have to sacrifice one for the other, right? Yeah, yeah. And I think that's where people get hung up sometimes I think peace can be interpreted as this passive thing, as this. You're this chill hippie who doesn't care or doesn't do anything because you're at peace, right? And yet what it is is that you know your identity. It's in Christ. You know your hope and future. It's in Christ. You know your ultimate allegiance, which is Christ. And then from that foundation, like the heroes of our faith, you're in the battle. You're in the trenches, you're making a difference. You're fighting injustice. You're alleviating suffering. So it's not a passive thing. This piece. Right? That's right. That's absolutely correct. This piece empowers you to go speak truth to power. This piece empowers you to get involved in areas where there has been injustices. This piece empowers you to show up and be present for the disenfranchised and the vulnerable. It doesn't make you hide. It doesn't make you passive. Um, there's a difference between being a peacemaker and a peacekeeper. Jesus said, blessed are the peace makers. Sometimes the only way to make peace is through disturbance. Peacekeepers are passive, right? It's like, oh my goodness, you know, I don't want to get involved there because I don't want to ruffle any feathers. No, a person empowered with peace shows up and goes, hey, I want to make peace. Come here. And I might have to be the disrupter that brings in that piece. I might have to disrupt the chaos to bring in peace. Yeah. Wow. That's powerful. So as someone who's listening to this and they desire peace because who doesn't, right? Even if we have a superficial understanding of it. Yeah. You know, I want to connect this to something. I think you have really made an emphasis, and it's been encouraging for me, which is vulnerability and being real and being authentic. Would you say that for someone listening to this and they're not sure which bucket they're they fit in based on the way we were describing, this is the first step, just to be honest and honest about their own feelings, honest about the way they're reacting to the world. Honest about who they might be before God. Is vulnerability the first step to peace? In a way? It is. And I'll tell you why. Because the body literally relaxes when the truth comes out. Nothing regulates the body like the truth. Nothing dysregulates the body like a lie. It's the reason why you can hook up somebody to a lie detector and say, hey, what's your name? Where you're from, you know, where did you go to school? Where did you have your first kiss? Whatever. Right. And then they'll ask you a question that's out of pattern and your body against your own will. Unless you've been a trained triple undercover sleeper agent. Right? From Russia to China to the US. Right? The average person, the average human being, is going to literally dysregulate at a level that can be detected by a machine. Yeah. That's crazy. We weren't created to lie. We learned to some of us get really good at it, but we weren't created to lie. And nothing brings regulation back to the body like the truth. And the reason why accepting Jesus brings this regulation because he said, I am the way, the truth and the life. So the truth that we're talking about isn't some doctrine. It isn't a denomination. It's an actual person. And his name is Yeshua. Yeah. That's powerful. Why is it so hard when that's true? When we even know that empirically through science, when we've experienced that personally? What is it about church culture at large and Christians as individuals, rather than being famous for our vulnerability? Why is it a cliché that you come to church and nobody knows who you are, man? Ben, what you just said. Wow. It's like you threw salt in my eyes. I'm like, I'm about to cry. We should be famous for our vulnerability. Yeah, we should. And I think, um, every person in the entire world needs to be fully seen, fully heard, fully known, fully loved. Every. Every person in the world. The fifth is not actually necessary, even though we want it. It's not a requirement. The fifth is to be fully agreed with. That's not guaranteed. Right. But, but. But married? Exactly. Exactly. Have you. Have you been alone with yourself? You don't even agree with yourself all the time, right? Like, why did I just do that? Right. So we should all be fully seen, fully heard, fully known, fully loved us. Even if we're not fully agreed with. Four out of five ain't bad. That's the greatest four out of five you'll ever get. We are so deathly afraid, as a society of being seen that we. That we hide behind everything. Yeah. We. We've been hiding since Genesis three, right? In this digitized world. We now prefer our avatar over our own real picture. We now want chat to do a caricature of us. And that becomes what we post online, because we're desperately doing anything we can to have a filter in between who we present ourselves to be and who we really are, because we're deathly afraid. If we are fully seen, fully heard, fully known, we won't be fully loved. Quite the opposite will be absolutely rejected. That's not true of our relationship with God. And Scripture is very clear that that should not be true about our relationship with each other. But if you don't have that connection to God, you'll never truly love yourself. And if you don't love yourself, you cannot fulfill the golden rule to love thy neighbor as yourself. There's a lot of people out here that cannot love their neighbor because they truly cannot love themselves. Yeah, they can't accept who they are. So I lament that. And, uh, it is my I learned I don't know if you ever heard of the the big, uh, the big hairy audacious goal. Uh, but I turned mine into the be happy that my big, hairy, audacious prayer is I'm going to spend the rest of my life trying to normalize vulnerability for every human being on Earth, and I have a joy in spending the rest of my life doing this, because I know it's not going to be fulfilled in my lifetime. So I never have to worry about accomplishing this mission and being bored. It's too many, too many people on earth, right? I'll be doing this the rest of my life, and I'll die. And hopefully I'll put it so deep into Nathan, Noah and the dwellers that we just keep doing this to as many people as we can, right? Yeah. It's such a profound demonstration of having submitted to God's unconditional love for me that I can present the fullness of who I am to the world. Correct? Not in a flippant way, not in a I don't care. I struggle like a genuine desire to grow. It's not that right. It's not that we're being vulnerable for vulnerable sake, but at the same time, man, we are already fully loved and fully known at this very moment. Not for the person we will be, but for the person we already are. And it completely reframes your relationship with sin, right? Because then it's almost like a coach cheering you on. Like, we can do better than this. Come on. Right. I love you exactly. Yes. Cut this stuff out. It's hurting. That's right. Don't. Don't be stuck in this anymore. And it it becomes an adventure of growth. Not like a cowering from a judge. Correct. That's absolutely right. I, I have a huge burden this year, specifically, uh, to teach on what it is for us to be sons and daughters of the creator of the universe, who also happens to be our father. Right? So when I was in California, right when I was. How much time you got? Exactly. So when I was in California this past weekend, uh, both of the churches that I preached at, I preached the same message. I am a child of God. I do really simple titles, and I just walked them through what it is like to really understand God as father, and to really settle into what it is to be a son and a daughter, and how much it clears up and how you show up in the world. I'll never forget when I gave my life to Jesus. Uh, January fourteenth of nineteen ninety six. I preached my first sermon five weeks later, and my dad, who died in two thousand and four, I twenty twenty four, excuse me not two thousand and four, but in twenty twenty four, after every sermon that I preached, he told me it was the greatest sermon he ever heard. So I grew up in ministry thinking that my sermons pretty much rock because my dad told me and I had a few people early on in my twenties who said that they experienced me as cocky, arrogant, or prideful around my preaching and I wrestled with that. I went home and I asked the Holy Spirit, please, you know, please show me if I have pride, if I'm walking in it, please just help me. Right. And then the Holy Spirit. Holy spirit responded one day after, like, I'm really seeking this. And he just said, Tim, I don't experience you having pride. You have a dad and your dad told you you were the greatest preacher he ever heard, and that's the only way you know how to show up and emote because you're convinced you believe your dad. And the way other people experience it may be triggering their own self-consciousness, low self-esteem, low self-worth, lack of fathering, lack of somebody speaking into your life and really giving you that strength and that boldness. And so, you know, to get people to. Experience that when they didn't have a loving father to experience, that when they did have an abusive father. It changes the way you show up in the world when you know that your dad is cheering for you. Like like it. To your point, it makes the way you view sin differently. I'm not. I'm not trying not to sin because I have a stepdad that's about to put me in a dungeon. Yeah, yeah, yeah, I don't want to. I don't want to sin because he loves me and he's pleased with me. And when I do sin, it it creates this disconnect. And then I feel like I can't approach him, which is my own ugly ickiness. And he wants to accept me with open arms. Even if I woke up in a pig sty like the prodigal son. So I would just rather stay in the dad's house and kill a fatted lamb or calf and eat it, then to like run out of the house and trick off the money on a bunch of Foolishness and didn't come home broke and be like, hey, dad, you know you got a job for me. You got a job? Yeah, man. And I've had and I've had, I've had to do that. I've had to do. I've had I've been the prodigal son more than once. Right. And after a while, you're like, yo, you're really looking at me crazy. You're really looking at me like, son, do you not know you have the largest trust fund in the universe? Why would you compromise it? Yeah. Yeah. So, yeah. But man, all of this, all of this is intimacy with Jesus. That's where all of this comes from. That's where all of this, the whole dynamic changes. And like you said, I think because that's my dad, I still feel like a kid in front of my dad because I know he's got my back. Like, I know he thinks everything I do, he thinks I'm competent at everything when I'm clearly not. Um, and that's given me that's given me confidence that at times been interpreted as arrogance in the same way. And look, I've been arrogant and I and I'm fully capable of it, but yeah, but I'm also like I'm also self-aware. I'm also like, I know I'm there's other things, like I need a GPS to get from my bedroom to the bathroom. I'm so directionally challenged, like, I have my weaknesses and there are many. But the things I know God has called me to and the things my dad, both heavenly and earthly, have said you, this is you. Yes, I there's no critic that can stop me because no, no, no, not at all. So profound. So man, the world is so devoid of these kinds of fathers. How heartbreaking is that? It is. It took me a while to get here, but we're coming up on the second year anniversary of daddy's death. Right. And I, I've had all of these voicemails that I know I've needed to go through and categorize in my phone. And Apple had like two updates that really freaked me out because they were they were so significant in my little, um, iPhone thirteen that I thought it was going to wipe out the data that I already had saved. So I was like, I can't do this anymore. I've gone through two updates. I'm not going to risk it. This has happened once before, and I was super angry. So I spent a Saturday morning, been going through all of the voicemails I had from my dad between September of twenty eighteen and January of twenty fourth of twenty twenty four, which is, you know, maybe five weeks, four or five weeks before he passed away. I have eighty five voicemails from my dad, bro. Wow. Eighty five. That's awesome. And the majority of them, because twenty eighteen through twenty twenty two, I was still pastoring our church, so the majority of those calls are on a Sunday with him driving back from church with my mom in the passenger seat and him going, son, you did it again, man. I don't know how you topped yourself. You just know you are my favorite Bible teacher on earth. I don't know anybody that can break down that word of God like you do, man. You. You convicted me. You. You encouraged me. I got eighty five voice notes from this guy, man, that I can literally pull up because I tagged him. And I actually described what the car was about. Like, dad calls because he doesn't know how to subscribe to. He doesn't know how to become a member on my YouTube channel. Uh, dad called the Netflix account. Yeah. Yeah. He couldn't get into the Netflix account. He. Dad called. He's in the parking lot while mom is in Walmart. Like, I have these cherished memories and and his voice. I can still totally recall at any time that changes your perspective, and a person that did not grow up with a father still has the opportunity to experience that type of love. Yeah, yeah, yeah. They first have to acknowledge that their heavenly father and their biological father or their stepfather are not the same people, and that their bio dad or their a spiritual father or a stepfather, they are not the informants of how, as my friend Lisa calls him, uh, Lord God, real dad. That is not how Lord God, real dad responds to us. We have to. We have to be informed about the love of a father from the right direction. And it's not from the bottom up. It's from the top down. Yeah, it's such a such a heavy weight though, right? Like, as a dad, it's like that. You're right. And it's true. But too much is given. Much is expected. And I feel that that pressure of like, man, my son is seeing God through me and imperfect as I am and as grace filled as God is to me, it's a it's a big responsibility. And kind of on that note, it's like, well, one of the areas I think that that God reveals his character to us is through leaders, through pastors, through Christians in positions of authority. And I don't have to tell you, man, like we live in a really rough time with big platform Christians, with big C church and mega pastors and all that stuff. And I don't know, I was thinking about this question. I was like, man, if I frame it this way, if Jesus was to come and give a state of the church address, what do you think he would say about our church today? What would he affirm? What would he confront, and where would he call us to repent? I think he would affirm, now I'm in the Bible Belt, so it just depends on where Jesus decides to show up. America is a big country, right? So, you know, question and a big area. I totally understand. Yeah, I think he would affirm maybe our zealousness on both sides. Right. Whether you are Southern Baptist, Church of God in Christ, some version of a Maga Christian, some version of a deep blue democratic Christian, we're we're hella zealous for whatever it is that we are into. We are we are very passionate about it. Right. So if he were to if he were to affirm anything, he would be like, man, you y'all are man. Y'all are really. Y'all are really, really zealous about what you believe on my behalf. But you got the other part down. Yeah, exactly, exactly. You might need to read Tim's book, but everything else, man. Right, right, right. So I think he would. If there's anything to affirm, he maybe he can affirm, like, at least y'all are passionate about whatever it is you believe. Um, what he would confront is our hypocrisy. Yeah, I think he would confront the planks that we have in our eye while we're looking at our neighbor's speck. I think he would confront our resistance to really following his way. I think we've turned, you know, the the early believers were referred to as the followers of the way, which I loved. Right? Because he said, I am the way, the truth and the life. And so these followers of the way, I think his way has now become more of a suggestion. So, I mean, is it the way or is it just like it's a suggested way? Right. I want my Bible and my gun and, you know, if somebody breaks in, I'm gonna have to kill him, because I'm gonna have to write. Um, and so this is it's more it seems like more of a suggestion than I think he would confront us on a multiplicity of things, but I would say that would be one of them. And then what was the third one? I mean, it's it's a different way of saying the same thing. Where would he call us to repent? Oh, I think if there's something that we could all have in common and, you know, something that he addresses, uh, with one of the seven churches, I forget which church it was. But you lost your first love. I listened to some something profound last night. A guy was talking about, uh, David's repentance to the Lord in Psalm fifty one. And he said, when he repents, he he doesn't say, like man, take this lust spirit from me. Help me not to sleep with my neighbor's wife anymore. I I'm an adulterer. He, he, he says, restore unto me the joy of my salvation. Crazy dude. Oh my dude. It might as well be a roundhouse kick to my soul. Yeah. He said the the the biggest thing that David understood was if I don't remember and experience your joy, I get reckless real quick. Yeah. Reckless with my mouth. Reckless with my actions. Reckless with my ways. Reckless with my eyes. Reckless with my behavior, with my finances. Reckless with my spouse and my kids and my pets. You know, we we got to remember what the main thing is like. Jesus died on the cross so that I could have a family reunion with my dad, who also created the universe. That's why he got on the cross. He got nailed to a tree stripped of his clothes. The first man, Adam, was seduced by a tree and had to be clothed. So I want the guy who's vulnerability was on display for all of humanity to see. Every single depiction of Jesus on the cross has a loincloth over his penis, because we are absolutely terrified of a full frontal, beaten, broken body on the cross. If we put this over him, then we can keep our little piece of fabric over us. But intimacy says. And vulnerability says if I'm not willing to be completely exposed to you, I am not willing to be completely loved by you. And I believe in many ways, Yeshua is still waiting on us to reciprocate that level of vulnerability. Yeah, I think you're right. I think if we just solve that would solve everything else, man. Oh, it's like that puts the exclamation mark on on anything. On everything. It's like. And I think it's been the through line in this entire conversation, which is that Jesus does not call us to improve facets of our life and add features to the app that will make it more useful, or to reduce pain points and stressors. He asks us to, you know, and then to ultimately experience the only source of life that will truly satiate the deepest longings of our hearts. It's the most fundamental. Simple, but but but hard. Yes. Everything in our flesh, man like. Because Satan, he's fine with us, turning our faith into a political party or a system for moral improvement, or a fashion or an industry or another way to become famous or successful. He's fine with all of those iterations. In fact, he's helping a lot of those. That's right. But, but but in the Quiet place, deep intimacy. He's gonna do everything and anything to get in the way of that, right? Correct. That's absolutely correct. Yeah. He he has no problem keeping us distracted. You know, I have been in the faith long enough to have seen a couple of people legitimately demon possessed. And it's it's interesting that America, in particular, the country I live in. So I could talk about it. He doesn't need to possess anybody over here. We don't see that a lot on this side of the world. Right. If you go to Africa or down in South America, this this is kind of commonplace. Like real evil and witchcraft and and and evil powers on display and manifesting and doing all kind of stuff. He has kept us so distracted. He's like, I don't know, man. Please, I'll just give you Netflix and I'll, you know, you came over, you came over here protesting. So I'll just I'll just keep you protesting. I don't know how a t turned into a d. I don't know how we pronounce protest tant as Protestant, but we came over protesting, and we're still protesting. We're. We're special. We're specialists at protesting. Yeah, we're not specialists at unity. So he's happy for us to have fifty five thousand different variations of our Christian faith and counting. He's more than happy for us to tell our neighbor, our brothers and sisters in the faith. Your worship sucks. It's not the way you do it. If you don't do it this way. You don't even understand the Bible. Your whole ethnicity needs to shut up. I've heard it all and I'm just in the corner just going, I will. I'm not going to participate in that. I'm a part of the largest fraternity and sorority on planet Earth. Yes, there are some brothers and sisters that I have in the kingdom that frustrate me, but if I saw him in person, I'd throw my arms around him and hug him. I can't fight with him. I don't have a commandment for that. I don't have an instruction for that. And then, like, even even having an interview with you, we've never met and we're brothers. Yeah, I'm not giving that up to be right. Yeah, right. I want to stand on the truth. And the truth has to be the person, right? Not the explanation of the person. Right. Uh, I just I think the kingdom is really simple, and we found a way to make it really difficult, and we found a way to convolute it. Then we found a way to make what should be a beautiful stroll up Calvary's hill into into the American Ninja obstacle course. And it's like, man, Christ died on Calvary's hill, not Calvary's mountain. Yeah, if he died on a mountain, okay, then I would get it. Only the elite can get up there. But, I mean, Jack and Jill got up the hill. Mhm. So should we. Yeah. Yeah. But again it's, it's precisely because I can't earn it and therefore broadcast it and be proud of it and lord it over other people. It's precisely because it is the great equalizer, because I have to lay down my convictions that, you know, God and I are kind of co-sharing this lordship thing, right? That's the paradox. It's so simple. But unfortunately, we have to lay down all of our own ego at the door. That's right. The hill's not hard to climb at, but we just can't climb under the delusion that I'm doing it. That's that's the paradox that that keeps us from, you know, we kind of want it to be a mountain because I think I'm a mountain climber. Right, right. That's the thing. And you're not. Right. But if I continue to see it that way, then I can kind of lord myself over it. But. But then you, you lose the very thing. See, when I hear you talk, Tim, I hear someone who's playing with house money. Right. You care about these issues, but you're not bound by them. You're not caught up in them. Your hope is not. And that's not to dismiss them. But you're playing with house money because you've got the greatest thing already. And so when you have that already, whatever. Playing in the playground, man, it's not to trivialize the issues, but it's it puts them in their proper place and that changes everything. It does, it does. I mean, I think about Jesus's life in ministry three and a half years, right? I mean, you got four thousand years of prophecy all pointing to one guy. Yeah, I got to be thinking to myself, this dude's about to wreck shop, right? He's about to have a fifty year ministerial reign. He's about to right every wrong in the book. Not only is Rome getting overthrown where the Mongolians at? Who's up next? Like we coming for everybody? Like, you know what I'm saying? Like we about to we about to Molly whop everybody like that's the if you, if you've been waiting for a thousand years for somebody. Yeah. You would think he about to, he about to fix everything right. Okay. So then he comes, he starts his cousin baptizes him. Holy spirit does a quality assurance check on his on his sonship. And then, you know, he goes to a wedding and we're on and poppin, bro. This dude, we've been waiting for a thousand years. And your focus is the lost sheep of Israel. You have nothing to say to Caesar. You have nothing to say to Rome. You have nothing to say to the Herods or the Agrippas who are in cahoots with Rome. That Rome makes twenty twenty six America look like the first drawing of Walt Disney. Like we think we we think we we going through something, right? We got legitimate stuff. And it ain't nothing compared to the Rome Yeshua actually lived and did his ministry in. And the only thing he said about that government structure, that entity, that system, was make sure you pay your taxes to it. Can we move on? Yeah, that ain't even my problem. Listen, Isaiah already said that the government is on my shoulders. Whoever the Caesar is is only temporary. I'm going to be king for eternity. Y'all calm down. Where do these lost sheep at though? And it's amazing. This guy had a very singular focus. So. So was there homosexuality in the Rome that Jesus was in? Yes. Well, how come he didn't address it head on? He was focused on the lost sheep of Israel. All these issues don't come into his purview unless it has to do with his target audience. And I think we need to get a target audience. Every other every other group has a target audience that they're going after. Every other enterprise has a target audience that they're going after. We're the only ones that think that we actually need to get into every affair. Yeah, I think the spirit of it is self-preservation. Truly. That's the target audience. I'm the target audience It's preserving my status quo, my picket fence. You know, my four hundred one K. I'm the. I'm the status quo. Yeah. Wow. Wow, I, I could go on and on with you. You are. Hold on. Time out. Dude. Time out. What you just said is profound. Just please give me, like, a minute to unpack it. Oh, please. Do you take all the time you want? I just want to make sure I'm respecting your time, that's all. Oh, no. I'm. I'm enjoying this. I think you said something. What you just said is profound to me, Ben, because I'm. And it's sobering. Right? You say that. And like, I'm both intrigued. And a shudder went through my body. Because if I'm the target audience for my gospel changes. Yeah. If I'm the target audience, what I preach and teach changes. If I'm the target audience who I choose to share the gospel message with, with changes. That's scary bro. Yeah, I think I'm I'm. I just think it's worthy to pause and reflect on just like Lord. And have I in some way made myself, the audience I'm trying to reach. And and if there's any fraction of that that is true, Holy Spirit, reveal it and get it up out of me. Let me humble myself. Let me get back on the main thing. Why? Why do I think this is about me? This is not about this can't be about me. It can't be. I had a company that I founded last year, and, um, I had to part ways with my business partner and pretty much lost seventy percent of my income. And, you know, people were like, oh, man, that had to be a hard year. Well, if you lose, if anybody loses seventy percent of their income, yeah, that's going to be hard. And and they were like, well, how did you get through it? I was like, or what did you learn? That was a question. Somebody asked me a really good question. What did you learn from that? I said, I, I said, I learned that manna is delicious. That's what I learned. Yeah. We didn't have all the discretionary income that we've been used to, and all of our needs were met all year. Because my faith in Yeshua does not guarantee that I'm going to have a bulging bank account with enough discretionary income to take an international trip for three weeks, right? He didn't get on the cross for me to have vacations. It's preposterous, right, that we would even think that this is the promise of Yeshua is I can pay my mortgage. No. You buy a house you can afford and you live below your means and you save some money. And if you want to buy Uber Eats, you can but get out of here, right? So I lost seventy percent of my income. Manna is delicious, and I got to experience God in a new way and be reminded that when Juliet and I, twenty five years ago, barely had enough to get by and it was just her and me in an apartment, that same God took care of us all of twenty twenty five when there was me, her two children, mother in law, mother, house, cars, all the things. He's the same guy. Yeah. Wow. And again, to keep beating on this drum, it's it's it's fine, but it's not the thing, right? And the thing that, that provides that rich consistency is the access that never changes to the thing you long for most. That's right. Right. Which is why you go on that missions trip and you see the people with nothing at all but love for Jesus. And they seem way richer than your miserable friends with depreciating assets and snot nosed kids who don't care. That's right. Right. That's right. Truly right. That's right. It's just, man, we learned the same lessons over and over, and I know I'm guilty and susceptible to man like we all are. But yeah, there's nothing that brings joy and satisfaction and richness. I the things in my life that I'll look back on. The eulogy goals have nothing to do with the three week international trip. It doesn't have anything to do with any of that stuff. Exactly. We know it. We know it academically. We know it intellectually. And then we get sucked back into the stuff, the thick of thin things. As my friend Andy Crouch says. And I'm like, I don't. I don't want my life to be filled with thin things. I want to make my life count in the ways that matter, and then you get to enjoy these things come or go as they might. That's right. But that's not what life's about. And I'm not tethered to that. And that is the greatest blessing of all. Absolutely correct. Absolutely correct. Oh, man. Um, this has been awesome. I really, really appreciate you and I my prayer for this book is that it'll it'll do extraordinary things. Um, but for you, this this has blessed me, this conversation. I hope you feel the same. Oh, well, the feeling is one hundred percent mutual, one hundred percent mutual. Awesome, awesome. Well, I hope we can do more of this. I will be following from afar, as I always do. Thank you, thank you Tim. Thank no thank you and your family. Keep on doing what you're doing man. The world needs truth tellers and God is using you powerfully. So thank you. Thank you. I appreciate the encouragement. Awesome. All right. Well that's that dude. Thank you. Oh my heart. My heart is full, homie. Like, are you kidding me that that was like, that's the best interview I've had this year. Well, it's because we invited the Holy Spirit into it and he took over, right? That's how I feel. I feel like he just he was here and man, I when I, when I do these, my genuine heart is, is that if nobody was to hear this, you and I would grow in our love for Jesus. Yes, that's how I feel. Yeah. I don't care if this ever comes out. I feel closer to Jesus and I got to share that with you. So that's that's a gift. And I really appreciate it. Thank you so much, Ben. I am just your heart. And, you know, I have this statement about, um. I got it from the story of Jacob and tragically, his four women that he had his twelve children with, right. His twelve sons with. And, uh, Leah has six children. Rachel only has two. So then they get their handmaids in on it. So Zilpah has two, and then below has two. And that's where you get the twelve sons. And you know, there's a statement that my God sister shared with me that I never forgot. And she said that women are the ones that, uh, put the culture into the children. And so whatever the woman's culture is, ethnicity is. That's what's going in the child. Hmm. Interesting. And so, um, I just thought about how Joseph was betrayed by his brothers, thrown into a pit, sold into slavery. And he's he's the second in command. He sees his brothers again, but he doesn't reveal. He recognizes his brothers. His brothers don't recognize him, and he won't reveal who he is until he finds out if Benjamin is okay. Because Benjamin's the only one that came out of the same room as him. Oh, Interesting. Yeah. The only ones that got the same mom. These are all his half brothers. Benjamin is his full brother. He wants to make sure y'all haven't done to him what you did to me. Yeah. Okay, so once he finds out Benjamin is okay, then he reveals and blah, blah. What? What you meant for evil. God turned it for good. Great. But it got me to thinking about we. We are our brothers and sisters in Christ. We all got the same daddy. We don't all had the same mama. We're raised. We're raised in different tents. And depending on the tent you're raised in, I can tell by your cadence. I can tell by what you say, how you say it. Okay. Lee, is your mama right? Like that's my brother. But. But Zilpah is his mama. Because that's what zilpah be saying all the time. And, um, I hope I'm not being presumptuous, but I. I really felt that before you even pressed record. I can pick up on a cadence that lets me know, oh, we were we were raised in the same tent. Yeah, like we got the same, you know what I mean? Like we got the same mama. Like. Yes, of course, that makes sense to you. And of course, what you say makes sense to me. And then it's like, that's why we're putting this podcast out, because we want everybody else to get it as well. Yeah. But it's it's it really is like, you know, when you're talking to the person that was in the same tent as you. And that's how I felt talking to you today. Oh, dude, that's very encouraging, man. I appreciate that. And I don't know if you feel like your tent doesn't belong anywhere, but that's how I feel. Like my tent. Like I feel like I'm a nomad. That's how I know I'm with someone that I have in common. I'm like, yeah, he kind of feels like an alien, just like I do. He feels like he doesn't belong in any of the categories. He's got problems with everyone and everyone's got problems with him. It doesn't make any sense. Exactly right.

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