When your House Burns to the Ground

All right, there are times that we have tragedy come our way. There are times that we're not always prepared for tragedies in our life.

And the reality is there are ways that not only can you prepare, by the way, that's what we've been dealing with in our daily episodes all week long.

But today we're going to have an interview and talk to someone who not only did he have tragedy in his life, but he's actually someone that I look to model after as someone who took tragedy and didn't look at it as something to be crying about, but actually looked at it as an opportunity for the gospel.

Welcome to The Wrap Report with Andrew Rappaport, where we provide biblical interpretations and applications.

This is a ministry of Striving for Eternity and the Christian Podcast Community. For more content or to request a speaker for your church, go to strivingforeternity .org.

All right, so we have a guest with us this week. If you're familiar with Striving for Eternity and you've followed us for any length of time, you will know who this brother is from four years ago.

Four years ago, he had a fire in his home. It was the

Sunday before Christmas. And one of the things that always amazed me was the fact, the testimony actually, and you see it in the journalists that did a report about the fire, about the fact that here's our brother,

Joe Conkle, sitting in his pajamas outside of his burning house, and he was more concerned with sharing the gospel with people.

So Joe, welcome to The Wrap Report. Well, thank you for having me,

Andrew. You and I, we have a friendship that goes back many years. You live out in Ohio.

You do a lot of evangelism out there. So that kind of is a thing that you and I have in common. We've gone to some

Super Bowl outreaches together that are hosted by Sports Fan Outreach International. Bill Adams runs that, which, by the way, you found a great trick for the

Super Bowl, didn't you? Indirectly, in handing out tracks when you were really cold one year, right? You have to refresh my memory.

Well, remember when you were really cold and Caleb bought you a jacket? Oh, yeah.

That was at San Francisco, yeah, the 50, Super Bowl 50. He bought me a nice jacket, and people thought

I was part of the event staff and kept asking me questions. I was trying to direct them to the proper place to go, and I would hand them a track and they would just take it.

So I was able to get rid of a lot of tracks because they thought I was part of the event staff. Where they usually don't take our tracks at those events.

Yeah. New Orleans. New Orleans was the same way.

I mean, I kept, I stand in there at a choke point, and I kept,

I was trying to pass out tracks and nobody taking it, and I just started to hold them up and say, Superdome, and everybody, people were reaching around me to grab one.

Well, let's start, let's have folks who may not know who you are. First, let's give a little bit of background of who you are, and then

I want to focus most of the show afterwards about what happened to you four years ago, what's happened since then, be a good update for folks.

But first off, you are an evangelist, you do pretty much now kind of full -time.

Talk about your ministry, where God has you, what your background is. Well, my background was a retired correctional officer, and as far as street evangelism,

I do regular courthouse evangelism here in our local town, and I get to share the gospel with a lot of people, pass out a lot of tracks, and I set up a prayer stand, and it gives me an opportunity.

I always ask people if they need prayer for anything, and going into a courthouse where they're going to stand before a judge, a lot of people, they request prayer, and then it gives us an opportunity to share the gospel with them.

The prayer stand, let's talk about that for a moment, because I know it is, a lot of folks may, that's a great witnessing opportunity.

Describe what the prayer stand is, and describe how that helps in sharing the gospel. Well, I think in a situation where at the courthouse, it's a non -confrontational type of thing to start to share the gospel with someone, because it stands up, it's skinny, and it's a tripod stand, and the middle is a carousel that you have different tracks in, and on the top of the pole, it says prayer.

So people know, you know, people have been saying to me that this has gone on my sixth year doing the prayer stand there, so people get to know who

I am, get to pray with even some of the staff that work in there.

I've had people ask me to pray for them as they're coming to work, because I get out there before everybody gets in, and as they're coming in, and I've got to pray with a lot of different people out there.

But it's non -confrontational, and everyone would like prayer when they're going to stand before a judge, and then we've got a custom track that we made that has the two judges that they stand in front of, and on one side it talks about court etiquette, and it shows a picture of the judges that you'll be standing in front of, and then the backside, it talks about the ultimate judge that you'll have to stand in front of.

And the prayer stand is something that, I mean, the thing I love about that, the guy who had created it,

Tom Kaiser, he used to be in New York, he's now out in your area, and we used to go out to Union Square every week with it, and if you're interested, folks that are listening can check it out at goforthall .org,

I'll put a link in the show notes, and that's his website where he's got the prayer stands. And the thing that always amazed me,

I mean, son, he developed where you can carry it on your back, and just walk over to where you're going to go, it is heavy, but he designed it to be able to withstand the wind and the rain, all your tracks stay dry because that carousel is waterproof, he really put a lot into it in thinking through, and it was always amazing as I would stand up and do open air preaching, and I'd be on the box,

I'd look over where he is, and he would just have person after person just walking up, asking for prayer, he'd have opportunities to share the gospel with them, he listened to what their prayers were, he prayed for their prayers, he prayed for their salvation after explaining the gospel, handing them a gospel tract, but he would have, he was always talking to someone with that stand, and it really was an interesting thing, because it gets people to come to you versus you having to go to them, and that's why

I love the prayer stands. You're still doing the Super Bowl outreaches?

I'm not doing this year, I've got a situation with my other knee I'm dealing with, so, as you know,

I'm a retired correctional officer, and I medically retired because I was injured in the line of duty with my knee, and now it's been forcing me to work with my other knee, and now

I've been having trouble with it, trying to get into a doctor, but I'm not going to be able to get in, so, after the first of the year, just see what's wrong with it.

But, you know, that ministry requires a lot of walking, a lot of standing, a lot of, and so,

I'm going to have to get this checked out first before that. Yeah, well, and we'll get into why your knee may be hurting, because you've been pretty busy doing something that we're going to get to, but let's talk about four years ago.

We know, those of us at Striving Fraternity, we, you know, really, we heard about what happened four years ago, we put a

GoFundMe and tried to get you some support with this, but let's first start, what happened four years ago, for folks who don't know, bring them up to speed with what happened that day, because the thing that I really want to focus on is the fact that your attitude that day has always been amazing to me.

It's something that I've always looked to and said, if something like this ever happens, I want to be like Joe Conkle, I mean,

I hope that this never happens, but I've always been impressed with you and how you handled yourself, even when

I read that article that was written up, even the journalist couldn't believe your attitude, and so, talk us through what happened four years ago.

Well, I usually get up early in the morning before sunrise, and I think

I was up a little bit before 6 a .m., you know, you read the Bible and you pray, and it was around close to 8 o 'clock, 8 a .m.

at this time, and I was going to go in, and at the time, I was making homemade bread, you know,

I was ahead of the mill, I would grind my own grain, so I mean, I was really into this, and I was getting ready to make some bread, and then

I heard a popping sound, and then

I just continued to go, and I heard it again, and I turned around behind me, and I had an exhaust stack, we had remodeled our kitchen, so we had an exhaust stack that came down, stainless steel that came down from the ceiling, and I saw smoke coming out of it, so I kind of took the filters out and looked up there, and couldn't see anything, it was just smoke, and I, so I went back, and at the time, my wife and my daughter was there, that was the only ones that were there, and I told them,

I woke them up, I said, hey, there might be a fire in the exhaust stack, you might want to come out, you might want to get up, and then

I walk, so I leave them, walk to the garage and open the door, and it's an inferno, right, and then

I just absolutely panicked, I've never mentally prepared for fire, and I was panicked, so I was screaming, you know, out of the house,

I mean, I was screaming so bad, I lost my voice, and that's never, I'd never lost my voice before, so we, they gathered up, my wife, in her wisdom, grabbed the animal, one of the animals, and we had to duck going out the door, because the fire was coming out of the eaves of the house, so, and within minutes, the house was engulfed in flames, and I'm in, you know, a pair of shorts,

Crocs with a pair of socks on, and a Carhartt hoodie, and that's all

I had on, and so we, we got outside, and like I said, it was, it took, seemed to take forever for the fire department to get there, they finally, they finally arrived to put the fire out, we're standing over at the neighbor's house, as we're watching, they're putting us out, and he says, well, you won't have to worry about where you're going to stay, and I said, what do you mean?

He says, well, you can stay in my dad's house. Now, his dad had died two years prior to that, and the house was two doors down from where I live, so it was on the same side of the street, and so here, four hours after the fire, you know, he, we're inside this house, and nicer than the one

I had, the electrics on, the gas is on, the cables on, four hours after that, the refrigerator and cupboards were full, beds were made, so there was, there were three beds in there, so there was enough, you know, places for us to sleep, we didn't have to buy pillows, everything was there, towels, and you know,

I just, you know, except for personal items, and you know, the bath soap, and things like this, deodorant, these things were given to us.

Well, even more than that, it was also given, what also was given was, this was the Sunday before Christmas, you even had all the

Christmas presents, not the ones you bought, obviously, replaced, but I remember there being people that brought

Christmas presents over for you guys. Yeah, yeah, yeah, so we had, we had, we had

Christmas presents, all of it was lost, yeah, so I mean, it was a, it was a, they said it was a total loss, there were some items that we were able to salvage, probably the thing that, that, one of the things that got me the most was, my grandmother gave me my grandfather's

Gibson banjo, okay, she, she gave it to me, because she knew I'd never sell it, okay, and you know, so, you know, my grandpa loved this, my dad played it, my uncle played it, and my dad died before my grandmother, so my grandmother had given it to me, and I had that in a closet, and that was the only closet that had not, the, had not had fire damage from, the fire burnt from the top down.

Wow, I didn't know that. So, it did not burn through that, so the fire department, when they actually went in and started putting out a fire, they started bringing stuff out, and they brought out this banjo, and then, that was, that was somewhat emotional, you know, it's only, it's only something, but it meant so much to my grandfather, you know, to my dad, to my grandmother, so it was just kind of one of the things that, and they, the, the company took it to clean, clean it, the outside case and all that, because it smoked damage, but other than that, it's, it was, it was perfect, so we're,

I was blessed, that's just one of them things that you would never be able to replace. Yeah, yeah, because of the sentimental value, but talk about, because there's two incidences

I remember, and I want to talk about the first one, was the day of the fire, you're outside, people are coming out, just to look,

I mean, they want to see what's happening, you had reporters that came, the fire department's there, what were you busy doing?

Well, you know, people were, people were talking to me, asking me questions, you know, and I was just, you know, thanking

God that I was awake, was thanking God that my son wasn't in the basement, because I don't know how he would have gotten out, and was just, you know,

I mean, I had gospel tracts that I had in my pocket, I was able to pass some of those out, but yeah, and when the reporter came over to the house to talk to us, she was, you know, asking me questions, and she commented that, she said, you're really happy, she goes,

I don't understand, why are you so happy? And I said, you know, I said,

I was, I said, my house was on fire, I just lost everything, and I'm standing in a nicer house,

I'm warm, you know, I said, we got cupboards that are full, and you know,

I said, what is there not to be thankful for? What's there not to be happy about? And I said, you know,

I said something to the fact that, you know, that God's taken care of me through this tragedy, and you know, so she, she never, she never included that into the report.

Yeah, I wonder why? You know, but that, that's the amazing thing,

I was talking actually about you in my Bible study Wednesday night, and what you went through, and actually,

I was talking about you again this Friday night, a Bible study that I teach, and the thing that always amazed me is, it was your perspective, it's the fact that we see in Scripture that those who, who sin much, right, they recognize their sin before holy

God, not that you sin more than others, but the idea of, I think, those of us who properly understand what sin is, we view our sin as so bad, that because of that, we love much.

The question that came up on Friday night's Bible study was talking about someone bringing up the fact that they were talking to another person, and they're talking about the wrath of God, and this person says, no, no, no, no, no,

God's not like that. And the reality is, when you look at the person's life, the person that thinks

God's not wrathful, has a really, if they're a believer, it's a really, you know, immature faith that they have, because they really don't seem to show that they love

God much. But those of us who really understand sin, really understand God's wrath and His justice, it's in light of knowing

His wrath and justice, that we love Him so much, that we can, in light of something like you went through losing everything, can be thankful for what

God has provided, because we recognize we don't deserve any of it. We don't deserve anything. We deserve

God's wrath and His justice, and instead, He's given us His mercy. And in light of losing everything, in a worldly sense,

I mean, when your house went up, you lost, you know, a lot of your personal possessions were gone, never to be retrieved again.

You had your car, your Bible, things like this, that you can't replace, like all the notes that you put in your

Bible, right? And these things are just gone. But we can rejoice because we know

God is still active in our lives. And like you had said, He's still blessing you.

He's giving you a bigger home to temporarily, but a bigger, nicer home with a fully stocked fridge.

Within a day, people were giving an outpouring of care and love for you.

And yeah, the community was wonderful. The community came together.

They brought us food, blankets, clothes. You know,

I mean, just we had no need for anything, you know, and they even gave us gift cards.

I mean, we were able to pay for Christmas with gift cards. I mean, it was just absolutely amazed at God's care,

God's, you know, care for me. And to the whole thing, there wasn't like,

I never in my mind questioned God. I never thought, you know, why would God allow this to happen?

It was just like, you know, it was just like there was a peace about it. It's hard to explain, but I was at peace with the whole situation.

I mean, now there was anxiety. I mean, when you, for a few days after the fire,

I mean, it's, I mean, you have a little post -traumatic stress. So that you struggle with because fire is the noise.

It's very fearful. And so every night

I'd hear a popping noise in the house and I'd wake up in the middle of the night thinking, I hear this popping noise and I'm walking all around the house looking, this happened for a few days.

But literally just there was never one time I was worried about what's going to happen.

What, how are we going to do? How are we going to get another house? How's all this going to work out? And I just told, you know, my wife, she was, you know, she was a little worried.

I told her, I said, listen, you know, God will take care of us. I'm not concerned with it. And, you know,

I can't even begin to tell you, I mean, to fully explain how God has provided to this whole thing.

I mean, one of the desires of my heart was, is I told my wife that I, we really needed to focus on paying off the mortgage so we could spend more on evangelism, you know, and, and not just, you know, myself for evangelism, but also to support other brothers in evangelism.

You know, there are several brothers that I, that I support financially because, you know, every little bit helps.

So I'm just one of many pieces in there of people that can, that can help. And if I've got the money, if I, you know, then why not give it to help support ministry?

So that's one thing I've done, but I had spoke to, spoke to my wife and told her, so we really need to focus on paying off our mortgage.

Well, the house burns down. Okay. So, so we're going through the process of, well, to rebuild the house we were going to rebuild.

I thought to myself, well, we, we have to rebuild there because the community had been so helpful to us.

But my wife says, well, let's, let's think about getting some other place. Let's move in somewhere else. So, okay.

So, you know, I reluctantly, you know, gave in to her and we found a house and bought it.

And then with the settlement of, from personal property, the house and all that, with the, with the, with the property that burned up,

I have to pay the mortgage off with this money. So I have to pay the mortgage off. So the property is mine, free and clear.

So I got a hole in the ground, basically, you know, I got a, a, a burn up home.

Well, and given that to another Christian, I just gave him the property.

If he was going to build a home on it. And then we were able to purchase a house.

We got a good price on his house and, and in a town, 15 minutes from where we were, right.

Minutes from where Brenda would work. So I'm retired. So minutes from where she's at, and it was nicer than the one we had, and we were able to pay it off in cash.

Not only that, but we were able to furnish it, you know, in cash too.

So that was a, that was a huge blessing right there. So now the desire of my heart was to pay off my mortgage.

So we had money to spend on evangelism. Well, two things happened in there. Number one,

I was able to buy this house and be mortgage free. All right.

So no longer a mortgage. Plus my church ordained me as an evangelist and they support my ministry.

They support all my efforts, what I do. I just, they reimburse me.

My church gives me a budget of $6 ,000 a year, which is very generous.

And so I'm able to do a lot with that. And I would,

I would encourage other churches to think about that is if you have Christians in your church who do evangelism, not that they go out for an hour or two on the weekend or something, but guys like Joe, who are going out regularly, going to different places, think about maybe setting some budget aside to support those evangelists within the church to be doing that.

Now, Joe, you and I are doing this show because as you well know, someone in my church four years after your incident, but very, again, very close to Christmas, went through a very similar thing.

We have two members of our church, Kurt and Annie, who have woke up at one in the morning.

So this is unlike you and you and I were talking about this. They woke up to hearing the fire alarm go off.

So that's even scarier. And just having to go through that. And what ended up happening in their house is the fire department came, put the fire out.

So they thought, but what ended up happening is some of the embers actually started smoldering in the attic.

And after the fire department left, the house caught fire a second time in the attic and the fire department had to come back and put it out.

And the pictures are just devastating. I remember the pictures after your house. And I am going to put in the show notes a link to the

GoFundMe account for Kurt and Annie. What I encourage is for Christians, you know,

Joe, being a very mature Christian for years, was prepared for tragedy.

He saw things in light of what God has done for him in his life. Kurt and Annie are newer believers, and this is a real test of their faith.

I'm asking for the church, Universal Church, to stand up and help them out.

To help this couple as they're going through what Joe went through four years ago. It's devastating for them.

And they've gone through a lot. I mean, Annie has some health issues. So this has been like trial after trial after trial.

Maybe some of you can identify with that. You know, you profess faith in Christ and all of a sudden it seems like everything in your world turns against you.

That's sort of what their life has been. And it's really been something where we get to see them grow.

But if you can, I know it's the Christmas season and you're buying gifts for everyone else, but here's a couple who just lost their entire house.

He called me, or I called him actually to see how he's doing, and he told me the one thing he was upset with is they lost their

Bibles. I said, is there anything I can get you? He's like, can you get us replacement

Bibles? I had MacArthur study Bible and, you know, Annie had the ESV study

Bible and we just, they can't even think of buying new Bibles now. They have so many things they have to do, but they're like, go to church and they don't have a

Bible now. That's the mindset that they're having. And these are newer

Christians. I encourage you to go to the show notes and think about clicking that link to support them in this way.

This is where the church needs to come together and do this. And I want to talk about some things that happened, Joe, after a commercial.

I want to talk about some things that happened during the fire. There were some ways you had opportunities to share the gospel through this.

So right after this announcement from supporting podcasts, take a listen to this.

Justification. This theological term is legal in nature, but to understand it, we must first understand our legal predicament.

Because we have sinned against God, i .e., broken His law and thoughtward indeed, we are guilty in His court and must be punished as lawbreakers.

You see, since we have sinned against an infinitely holy God, we deserve an infinite punishment.

Enter justification. This is the one time event when God declares the lawbreaker, us, righteous in His court.

It's been said that to be justified means that God sees me just if I'd never sinned.

This is more appropriately stated, God sees me just if I'd been Jesus. See, Jesus lived the life we couldn't live and died the death we should have died and was resurrected on the third day.

In this, Jesus fulfilled the requirements of the law and paid the fine for our lawbreaking.

If we repent and believe in Him, God credits His righteousness to our account. Only then are we seen just if I'd been

Jesus. This has been another Growing Moment with Robert Houghton. For more information, visit growthproject .org.

That's a great view on things, isn't it, Joe? I mean, that's exactly the view that brings us through trials like this, when we recognize justification.

And that's from the Growth Project radio podcast. But Robert's got a great point.

It's not just as if we never sinned, but it's just as if we were Jesus. And it's that justification,

I think, that can bring us through trials like this. Don't you agree? Absolutely.

Like I said, there's a piece about the whole thing that's hard to explain.

We trust God, but it's when the rubber hits the road.

You can always say, well, we'll trust God if something happens.

But when you're in it, and you can say to trust

God, but then to have this peace about it, that's what's hard for me to put my finger on, how to explain that.

I had no fear, no worry, no doubt, other than, like I said,

I had trouble sleeping. So when you're subconscious, when you were unconscious sleeping, it kind of would take over.

But there was just an absolute peace about it that I can't, it's supernatural.

And now let's talk about, there was something that happened. When you told me this account,

I've always got to chuckle out of it. But there was a time you're living up the street from your old house that burned down.

And there was an account where you saw some guys with some air conditioning units. Tell the audience that account, what happened?

Well, like I said, I was two doors down. So I just happened to be out in the backyard and saw somebody walking around the property, two guys.

But I saw one guy standing there and the walking around. So I walk over and I said,

Hey, guys, what's going on? And they said, Well, we're from this local home improvement companies.

And they want us to come here and clean this stuff up around the property over here.

And then he hollers at the guy, you know, I'll take care of this and not acting like he's a supervisor.

And he said, I said, Well, who told you to come on the owner of the house? And I said,

But do you have a business card? And he said, He didn't have so. So I let him go on for a little bit.

I said, Listen, I said, I'm gonna be straight up with you. I said, I'm, I'm the owner of this house. And I didn't call anybody.

And then I have to look over and I saw the air conditioning unit was flopped over on its side.

So it had been cut loose and it's flopped over. And I said, just, you know, just admit you're lying.

I says, you know, I'm not going to tell anybody, but just, you know, just take off, you know, nothing will happen.

And then I explained to him, I said, you know, I mean, what you're trying to do is you're stealing.

I said, that would be a thief, because I said, this is my stuff. And, and then

I went into a gospel presentation with him. And the guy I gave,

I didn't have any tracks on me at the time. And he said, Well, I'm sorry.

He said, I'm sorry. He said, we'll see you again. And he left. Okay. A couple nights later,

I happened to, I'm coming back from, from somewhere and I see my air conditioner now is out to the street.

So I go, I go back to the house. I said, well, I'm going to get my truck and go over there and I'll put it in my truck.

So I went over there and picked it up and put it in my truck. And then as, as I'm sitting there putting it in a truck,

I see these two guys drive past me in a pickup truck, you know, a little

S10 pickup truck. And so I'm sitting there in a road, I wait for them to come back around.

So they came back around. I said, I said, I thought I told you guys to, that, you know, to, that this was mine and, and don't come back here and anymore.

And they said, well, we saw it sitting here on the edge of the road. And we thought we would, they thought you didn't want it anymore.

And I says, no, I said, I said, I said, oh, wait a minute. I said,

I said, no, you know, I've talked to you before about not lying to me, telling me the truth. I said,

I'm looking here in the road and I can see glass and insulation. So you've tried to put this in the back of your car, didn't you?

And it fell out of the back in the street and you moved it back over. You could see where it was scraped on the And I said, yeah, that happened.

And I said, well, listen, I said, you clean this stuff up, clean this glass up out the street and all that.

And I said, and I'll let you have this air conditioning unit. Oh, oh really? Let me have it.

And I said, yeah, I said, listen, I said, I'm, I'm extending grace to you. I said, like I explained to you, you don't deserve this, but I'm going to let you have this.

Right. And, um, went and just shared a little bit more of the gospel.

And at this time I had gospel tracts on me. So I gave them a couple of man parts and, uh,

I gave them one of my business cards and I said, listen, I said, you want to sit down when I read the Bible, you want to talk?

And the guy that was real apologetic and, um, and they said, yeah, they would, uh, they would get back when they said, this isn't, you know, this is like, um, this is probably, uh,

January, maybe at the time in February. And so I usually start my street ministry in, uh,

April and in March, depending on when the weather is, I get back out there regular every day or not every day, twice a day or twice, twice a week.

And, um, so, but later on that day, after I let them have it and they took it, uh,

Sheriff comes to the house. Sheriff asked me, he says, uh, if I, he asked me the story, if I did that.

And I said, yeah, they explained it to him. He said, yeah, it's exactly what he said. Then he explained to me that they didn't know who the one guy was, but the main guy that acted like he was the leader said, he's a heroin addict.

And, uh, he said, we were very familiar with him. So here I'm, I'm feeling guilty now that they probably used us to, you know, to buy heroin.

Uh, it was months later and I saw the man at, uh, he come up to me,

I'm doing the street evangelism at the court. He come up to me, I got a picture taken with him.

He said, he was, uh, he said, he's been clean. He said, he's going to church. Uh, he said, he's, uh, he's gave his life to the

Lord. Uh, but I haven't seen him at the courthouse, so I haven't seen him. So I don't know how he's doing, but he still has my business card.

But, uh, um, and he looked healthier. So when I saw him before, he looked kind of sickly.

When I saw him this time and he said, he's, you know, turned his life around and, uh, he looked much healthier.

So I was, uh, praise God that, uh, that hopefully this man will endure to the end.

You know, and that's just a testimony to you. I mean, this is why I'm always amazed with where your walk is with Christ.

The fact that so many of us with someone stealing from us, I mean, our pride would be like, you're not stealing from me.

I'm going to call the cops on you. And actually, I mean, there was an incident with, I think if I remember correctly, with the, where the cops were involved because the truck that he had wasn't really his, it was from a dealership and the, and the manager, if I remember correctly, followed him.

But yeah. Yeah. They borrowed it from a dealership to test drive it and the dealer knew something was up and he followed him.

So that's how the police got involved. The police was kind of watching them and they took it to a certain place.

Uh, and then that's where the police got on them. And the police asked them the story and the sheriff was, uh, it was a county sheriff and the county sheriff came to my house and asked me the story.

And I explained it to him. He said, that's exactly what he said. And he stuck his hand out. He said, I want to shake your hand. And, uh, and I said, okay.

He said, uh, he says, uh, not, not many men would, uh, uh, I forget how he said it.

He said, it's not, um, not many men would respond that way. And I told him, uh,

I said something to the fact that I've been forgiven, uh, for much.

And I can, it's easy for me to forgive others for, for things that they do.

So. And that's, that right there is the whole point that amazed me. And this is why

I did a whole week of my daily podcasts about the dealing with tragedy, preparing for it, because we don't prepare for tragedy.

And when it comes, many people are caught off guard, but I'm, I am always so encouraged by you that when

I, when, when I think about how many people you, you lost your house to a house fire and how many people heard the gospel because you lost your house.

I mean, it blows me away that there are people who will be in heaven for eternity because you lost your house to a fire.

And that's not a perspective. Many of us, and I can only wish that I can have that perspective.

I don't know what my perspective would be, you know, until I'm in a situation like that. I hope never to be, but I can only wish to be like you in a situation like that, that so many people got to hear the gospel of Jesus Christ because your house burned to the ground.

I remember, and I don't know if I ever shared this with you, but I was in, I understand what you mean about opening that door and seeing the inferno of flames.

You know, that I grew up in a, in a well -to -do family. My father had a, you know, he was a professional captain on, on his own yacht and it burned to the water in probably about 20 minutes.

We were aboard. I remember I just went into the berth to take a nap and my brother was at the helm and my dad had seen black smoke and he went down to check it out.

And I remember seeing him come down and he opened the engine room door, which was right in view from where I was.

And it was just, I mean, when you open the doors, just smoke poured out and it was just all flames.

And he just, he sealed that door immediately, ran to the back of the ship to where my sister was sleeping.

She was the only one that was back there. Woke her up, dragged her out. Like your wife, my dad basically, we had a dog, a little miniature collie that didn't like men and he didn't like my dad.

And so what my dad had to do was actually close, he chased the dog outside and then closed all the doors so the dog couldn't get back into the boat and to grab the dog and throw it overboard.

But we all went overboard in about 20 minutes. That's probably all it took for that large ship to just burn down to the waterline.

And I was a brand new Christian at that point. I was, I had gotten saved that summer.

I got saved in July 21st and this is August. And I'll tell you when

I saw the flames and my father turned and said, get overboard. I, at that time,

I had thought nothing but for myself. I thought of self -preservation.

I didn't think of others and I was just like, I just thought of self.

I look at you and say, you know, if that happened again, would

I act more like you? Because you were walking with the Lord much longer at that point. And that's the thing.

I think that when we have a proper view of who God is and these tragedies happen, we can deal with them.

We have an outlook. Like you, I mean, I am just always amazed how many people heard the gospel because your house burned down.

I mean, nobody heard the gospel because I was on a boat fire. I mean, not even my family, but thing of my family didn't know

I was a Christian for two more years. That's how brave I was. But, you know, that's an important thing to think about.

And the fact that your heart was for the ministry of evangelism and sharing with others, paying off the mortgage, that is something that I think many can learn from.

And there's many that I know, and you know, that a lot of folks had helped you out.

And with that, I hope that a lot of folks, let me ask you this, and this may,

I don't want to get too personal for you. So if you don't want to, I can edit this out.

But Kurt and Annie are going through this right now. They're dealing with this. How much was it when we did that GoFundMe for you and people that helped you out financially, how much did that impact you?

Well, I was able to buy a car with it. It was about $6 ,500 altogether that was raised.

And it was, I guess the thing in it, the insurance company, when they settled for my car, they settled for less than trade -in value.

And, you know, I explained to them, I said, well, I mean, that's, I can't, I can't replace it with,

I said, I can't even replace the worst shape car of the same one for what you're giving me.

And so I told my wife,

I said, well, you know, and I tried to argue what they wouldn't give me. So I said, well, we won't, we won't worry about it.

And then here you had, you know, so we're looking for another car and this

GoFundMe came up to like $6 ,500. And it's exactly the amount that I paid for the other car that I got.

And then we only had that one for six months.

I got in an accident, got rear -ended. But yeah, that's another story.

But anyways, that's another story. That's another story where God can take care of me.

But yeah, so I mean, it was, you know, the people were very kind and very gracious and, you know, it was emotionally overwhelming, the outpouring of generosity from people that to this day,

I just, you know, I like, like when I see you, you know, I think about, you know, the fact that you were so kind enough to share that on your show and all the people that stepped forward.

And I tried to thank everyone. It was, you know, everything was coming so fast and it was hard to stay organized.

And I hope I didn't miss anyone. But if I had, I'd take the opportunity right now to genuinely thank everyone that stepped up and helped us financially.

It was a much needed blessing in a time where the insurance hasn't paid anything, the insurance, nothing to kick in.

So it was, it was a, it was a great blessing to, to have that.

And yeah, just like I said, it's overwhelming. And then, then you realize you're, this is

God working through other people too, and their generosity. So it's, it's, yeah, it kind of chokes me up thinking about it now.

And I meant to make a video for you to show you and everyone in the house, but I'm going to do that now because we got another house.

Yeah, that's true. Yeah. Well, we'll get to that before we end, but here's the thing, you know, for folks who are listening,

I want to encourage you, please go in the show notes. I'll have a link to the GoFundMe for Curt and Annie, for the house that burned down in Freehold.

You heard how that impacted Joe's life and his family. I'm going to give you a plea.

Now I'm not going to give you a plea to anything that I haven't done. And Joe, I know you have as well to help donate to them.

The money goes right into their bank account to help them out. And like Joe said, they don't get this money from the insurance company for a while.

So it's goes on credit cards, things like that. This is to help them immediately to get back up, to get clothes.

They have no clothes. They, people are buying things that our church is trying to help them out. And I encourage you to consider going out to the

GoFundMe and seeing what you can do to help them out. Joe, after this commercial, I would like to play a game that I know you will enjoy because you know what this game is, our spiritual transition game.

So right after this commercial, would you consider donating to Striving for Eternity? This ministry is one that tries to reach out to some of those smaller churches that most people, most speakers want to avoid, but by our monthly donors allows us into small churches and provide for them the seminars and conferences that usually only larger churches can do.

We can do that because we have monthly supporters who on a regular basis support us so we could support others.

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slash donate and set up for a monthly donation today. Your donation helps us be able to spread the gospel around the world, to be able to disciple others, and to provide resources for churches and people who are struggling to grow deeper in God's word.

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to host a bible interpretation made easy seminar in your area.

All right and now it is time for a game. Now Joe I know you are familiar with this game because we play them at our conferences that we host and you have been to many of them both in Ohio and you even drive out to Jersey for them.

So I don't need to explain the game to you but I do need to explain it to maybe some new listeners. The way we play this game and the purpose of this game, the way we play this game is

Joe is going to give me something and I'm going to have to transition from whatever he gives me to the gospel. I don't have any idea what he's going to give me and this will not be edited out therefore if there's long pauses of silence it means

I'm stumped and so we purposely won't edit that out. And the other thing about this game, why do we play it?

It's very simple. Joe you are an evangelist. You love to evangelize but you and I both know that one of the more difficult things to do when starting conversations is to swing from the natural world to the spiritual.

Once we get in the spiritual realm where we feel right at home, we know the bible, we can talk to that.

But it's that transition and this is a game we play so that you can practice the transition because there is a way to transition from the natural world to spiritual.

It just takes really just thinking over whatever the topic of discussion is, talking through that and finding a nice transition in a way where people don't even realize, oh now we're talking religion.

We want to be able to do that so that the conversation and that's what should be a conversation not a presentation.

The conversation is very natural and so Joe is going to give me something. I don't know what it is and I'm going to have to transition to the gospel and I'm scared because Joe probably knows this is coming and it has something hard for me.

I'm sure it won't be as hard as Matt Slick gave me I'm sure but he gave me big words that I don't even know what they mean.

So Joe what do I have to transition to the gospel from today? Well I'll try to not make it a sports team.

Because you know that I am so into sports. I'll give you a laugh.

I'll tell you how into sports I am. It was recently Thanksgiving and we went to dinner and my brother's got this huge hockey ring.

It is the Washington Capitals they were championship ring you know and I'm looking at him going and he actually took me to a

Washington Capitals hockey game and I'm going who are they again? Yeah I'm really into sports.

I'm just totally into it. Well how about corrugated metal?

Say that again. Corrugated metal. What is okay what is corrugated metal?

You do it. So you did give me something. You are trying to be like Matt Slick. I knew it. It is like a roofing material that they put on top of like barns or something like that.

It is metal sheeting that's wavy. It has waves in it.

You know well I'll tell you I mean just the fact that you have to get up on a roof. Now here's an interesting thing of how perspectives change as we get older and life changes.

I used to be a race climber and so a race climber is someone that does mountain climbing but you're doing it in a race and I didn't mind hanging off a cliff when

I was like 20 years old. I thought it was kind of cool. My 10 -year anniversary my wife and I went to Alaska and I got an opportunity to do glacier climbing.

Now I don't know if you've done any kind of mountain climbing but glacier climbing is very different. You have to use axe picks and it's just it's very different.

I've always wanted to do it and I was up on a glacier probably about 30 feet in the air and suddenly had a fear of heights and I've never had the fear of heights before but you know there's a reason

I had a fear of heights. What was going through my mind as I was on that mountain what was going through my mind and what

I was thinking about was the fact of I knew how dangerous it was what

I was doing and the time I was going it was the guides kept emphasizing exactly how quick the ice was melting and how careful we had to be and the thing going through my mind is if I fall if I die which

I know is a real possibility because it is a dangerous thing to do and I'm thinking who walks my daughter down the aisle when she gets married.

I didn't have life insurance at that time. What would happen to my wife and my kids if I fall right now and I actually that change of perspective gave me such a fear for something that I used to get a thrill out of I now had a fear of and by the way for the record my wife my daughter just got married recently so I was able to walk her down the aisle so check that off the bucket list thank you.

I lived long enough to do that but I got a real fear that occurred because of the fact that my perspective changed and there's an interesting thing that can happen in our lives where something that used to give us a thrill can suddenly give us a fear.

I had a second time in my life that things that gave me a thrill suddenly gave me a fear and I don't know if you ever experienced this in your own life but I had a point in time where I noticed things that I did that we would call sin things that we we know are wrong but I had a thrill out of doing them.

I didn't fear them. I enjoyed it and there was a time where I recognized that I was accountable to God and all of a sudden that thing that it was a thrill suddenly became a fear not because I was no longer saying oh it's not a big deal it's just fun it's because I realized

I was accountable and there was a consequence and in that brought a fear and that fear was was so overwhelming

I realized I had to do something just like the fact that on my glacier climbing after that I still

I have not been up I tried climbing up to my roof to clean out the gutters after that trip and I couldn't do it

I have now had maybe that fear is gone now that my daughter's married and I have life insurance but that caused a fear that ended up affecting the rest of my life or at least as far as I know but the fear that I had over sin when

I realized I was accountable to a holy just wrathful God who is also so loving that he came in hit in the flesh he became a man to die across I suddenly realized

I was accountable to him my Judaism wouldn't have saved me I realized

I was going to have to give an account for the things I did wrong and suddenly that fear so gripped me I realized

I had to be right with God now I don't know about you if you've ever had that fear in your case

Joe I know you have but to others I don't know if they've had that fear that they realize suddenly they're accountable to God if you have then realize that God himself came to earth died on a cross as a payment of sin rose from the dead to vindicate that he was who he claimed he was

God almighty and that he has the authority to offer the forgiveness of sin so that you though you've been a criminal on his site can be set free and have eternal life what you have to do is repent turn from trusting yourself as a good person turn from trusting your good works turn from your genealogy if you're born

Jewish or Catholic or whatever you might think turn and trust Jesus Christ and him alone and you can have eternal life so that's how

I would go from a metal a roofing metal that I have no knowledge of to the gospel and note

I didn't even talk about the metal because knowledge of it so Joe I it's it's been a testimony you have you're now moving into your fourth home in four years and you yes yeah

I mean your house that you were in a house it burned down you were in a temporary house that you then moved into the house that you bought and you sold that house to your your son in law and daughter who recently got married not not all that long ago but a while ago and by the way

I'm not holding grudges but I still haven't been invited to the wedding yeah I'm not holding a grudge against it but but hey actually you know what we should do let's hear a word from your son -in -law on marriage and and his wisdom on marriage shall we yes go ahead it's been challenging but it's it's good

I feel like it feel like it's already been forever it's only been 16 days so so after 16 days he felt like it was so Josh should have known that that was going to get played on this broadcast the rock report but we love

Josh and you're oh we love Josh Josh is I couldn't have asked listen

I if if I if I specified height and weight when

I prayed to God for a son -in -law I'm sure he God would have gave me that because this young man is exactly who

I asked for for my daughter God gave exactly the man that I asked for my daughter well

I fully I fully understand that having just given my daughter away to a very very godly man one who

I'm so thoroughly impressed with and I I totally understand the sentiment because I was able to give my daughter away to a man that I am so proud of and I am honored to call him my son and I know you have that same that same and we bust on on Josh but he and your daughter have bought your house and you're moving and so congratulations on that and we hope that they don't kick you out like early just you know they give you time to move into your new home

I hope yeah hope they'll be kind to you we're out in the country we're out in the country this is this was my wife's desire so my wife's desire was to live in the country so so now we've got four acres and we're about 15 minutes from the town so and it's just beautiful out here and just praising

God on his kindness kindness to me that that that I should be throttled every day because I'm a wicked sinful individual but God is kind and gracious to me and I am overwhelmed at what he's done for me and this this couple whose house burned down yeah

I encourage everyone to you know please help out you know just a little bit helps you know especially when it comes from a lot of people and it it you they will be blessed and know that it is from God from for all you people that have will contribute so I think that would encourage them and help them in their

Christian life especially since they're brand new to me I was a little more seasoned in my faith but to a young couple this could be you know pretty devastating pretty pretty hard on them and yeah so if you have anything that you can contribute please do and I thank you

Joe for your testimony for your life you've been a blessing to us at striving for eternity and we're glad to I'm glad personally glad to be able to call you friend and so folks think take take what

Joe said to heart if you can help out we appreciate it until next week just remember to strive to make today an eternal day for the glory of God this podcast is part of the striving for eternity ministry for more content or to request a speaker or seminar to your church go to strivingforeternity .org