The Time I Dodged a Huge Bullet - Sovereignty

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Hey, well, good morning. I hope you had a great weekend here on a Monday morning. Nice, beautiful, crisp day here in Vermont.

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The leaves are changing, the air, you can see your breath. I love it, I absolutely love it. So I hope you're having a good week so far and that your week ahead is productive.

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I hope you're productive for the kingdom of God, productive for your families. I've got a pretty big week with a lot of potential, a couple customer meetings, things like that that look pretty promising.

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So hopefully that those things will work out. Prayers would be appreciated, of course. I wanted to start off this week with a little bit of story time, a little bit about my past, a little bit, it's relevant,

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I think, to our conversations here on this channel. But last Friday, if you didn't know, the

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University of Maryland football team played Penn State. And it was a big primetime game.

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It was the kind of game that University of Maryland doesn't get all the time. And we lost like 50 -something to nothing.

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It was pretty pathetic. But it was a big game. And so in the time leading up to the game,

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I was on Twitter and I saw somebody, a random person, someone I don't know, share this picture.

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And this is a picture of a fraternity house with a little banner trying to insult Penn State students. And it just so happens that this is a fraternity house that I lived in for like four years.

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I even lived in this house after I graduated, as pathetic as that sounds. But it's true. And that little window here where all the arrows are pointing, that was my room.

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I lived in this particular room. Sometimes I'd climb out this window, come on the balcony here, and watch the rats go by in the grass below, that kind of thing.

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Had a lot of times in this house, a lot of different stories I could tell about the time I had living in this house.

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This house was a pretty wild place. There's no question about it. There were some good times, there were some dark times, no question.

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And I cannot stress how different of a person I was back then.

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I mean, I still had a kind of a similar personality. I still joked around a little bit, and I still, you know,

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I wasn't like, like, I mean, look, the reality is that back then, if you would have known me, you probably would recognize me and from a sense of like my sense of humor and stuff like that.

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But I was different. I was different. I was completely given over to all of my vices and things like that.

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It's not, I don't look at it with regret necessarily, and I'll explain that in a minute, but I was not a good guy.

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There's no question about it. You know, had some good times, but was not a good guy in general. I was a different person back then.

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When I lived in this house, I had, this is the story I wanna tell. I had a girlfriend that I liked very much.

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And during the course of my life, we parted ways and that was a very difficult thing for me.

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She broke up with me and I did not take it very well. I was, this is embarrassing.

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It's true, but it's embarrassing. I was, you know, very self -centered, very, you know, it's hard to explain exactly what kind of a person

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I was, but I didn't take it very well. And I took to a ton of drinking. I would drink all the time to kind of try to forget this lady.

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And it seemed like my world was ending. It really did. I mean, this, for whatever reason, I felt like the fact that this girl broke up with me, that, you know, that was really it for me.

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So I would get hammered all the time. I would do all kinds of drugs. I would wake up in the morning and, you know,

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I would smoke hookah until my lungs felt like they were gonna collapse, you know, hookah's tobacco.

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But I also did other drugs as well. It was just a dark time, a really dark time. I'll never forget one time my roommate woke up in the morning, you know, with me and he said, hey man,

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I'm smoking hookah, right? You know, and he goes, isn't this a little excessive? And I remember thinking about that and I was like, yeah, it kinda is, it kinda is a little excessive.

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Anyway, long story short, you know, eventually I got over it, of course. You know, that's what typically happens. You get over it. And actually we ended up getting back together years later, years later.

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And we were about to move in with each other. And then I ended up breaking up with her.

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And so it was kind of a weird thing, like just kind of this really weird thing where I, you know,

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I was depressed probably. I, you know, would cry all the time. I would weep when she broke up with me.

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It was pretty pathetic. I was a pretty sad case, there's no question about it.

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Because I had no other real, like, I mean, I was not a Christian, you know, so I had no idea, no idea of things happening and why they happened.

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And, you know, I had no concept of there being a higher power, you know, looking out for me and things like that.

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I had no concept of that. Anyway, recently I, you know, was scrolling through my timeline, killing a little bit of time,

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I think before a phone call, something like that. And I came across this lady's Facebook page. And she started a business.

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And my goodness, my goodness, did I dodge a bullet. There's no question about it.

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This girl that I was, had fallen to pieces over losing, I had, you know, was weeping constantly, drinking to try to forget her, things like that, has opened up a company where she sells apparel.

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And she is the epitome of social justice warrior. It is unbelievable.

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She sells shirts that say, for kids, stand against Trump. Can you imagine buying your three -year -old, your toddler, a shirt, a political shirt?

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So stand against Trump, that's not even the worst one. She talks about how her husband always wears a shirt that says

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F Trump, F45 in Morse code. He wears it all the time and he loves it.

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I mean, that's some activism right there. F Trump in Morse code. Nobody knows what it says, but it says it.

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It says it, that's how you know you're making an impact. Here's one, this is a shirt that is for the little girl in your life, kid sizes here, kid sizes.

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Right, wanna know what it says? It says, we are the granddaughters of the witches you could not burn.

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This is the girl that I almost ended up living with. I mean, only a few things needed to change in our relationship and we could have ended up married.

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I mean, I dodged a tremendous bullet. Listen, listen, listen, this is, she's got kids showcasing this one.

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Climate change is real, bro. My goodness, I'm a rebel just for kicks.

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That's another one for a kid. Oh, this one's being worn by a little toddler as well. Ally is a verb.

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We've talked about allyship before on this channel. I mean, this is a full -fledged social justice warrior.

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Little girl, probably two years old, wearing a shirt, smash the patriarchy.

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This is the girl that I fell to pieces over. Oh my goodness gracious, don't tell me to smile.

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There's another shirt for a little kid. That's a good one, that's a good one. She's got one picture of the smash the patriarchy shirt where there's a little girl playing with her dad and her dad's got that face, you know that face.

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You know that face that all the liberals, liberal men wear for some reason.

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I wonder what the biology behind this is. Anyway, and the father is wearing the smash the patriarchy shirt.

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That could have been me, my friends. That could have been me. You see, you get the idea here. This is the kind of, this is the kind of, oh my goodness, oh my goodness.

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She's selling a key chain that says we will dance on the graves of the patriarchy and drink the bitter tears of mediocre men.

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A little kid sporting a t -shirt that says notorious and has a picture of Ruth Bader Ginsburg on it.

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My goodness, my goodness. I can't even imagine what my life, look at this one, this is a coffee cup.

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Today's plans, feminism, socialism, witchcraft, taking over the government, and pizza.

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That's a cute one, I like that one. But anyway, so what's the point of all this, right? What's the point of all this? When I was an unbeliever, you know,

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I had no concept of the sovereignty of God. I had no concept of God, God's promises and his oaths that he made to his people and for his people.

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I had no concept of these things. And so when it felt like my world was crashing down around me, I mean, it seemed like there was no way out.

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There was no, there was nothing to look forward to. It just, you know, all I had to look forward to was the next drink, that kind of thing.

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But as Christians, you know, we understand that God has made promises. He has a covenant, he has covenant promises for his people.

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And so when we're in the mire, when we're in all of these situations, look, we're not, there's no way we can predict what's gonna happen to us, but there's one thing that we can hold on to that we have to hold on to, is that God, all things work together for the good of those who love

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God. So if you love God, if you're a Christian, you love the Lord, Christ is your Lord, he's your savior, all of these things, when you're in the midst of this dark black place, right?

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You understand that God has vouched for you. God has promised to keep you. He will be with you.

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He will watch you wherever you go. This is an amazing thing because I could have never predicted back then when this girl broke up with me and my life was a disaster and stuff like that.

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I could have never predicted how it would turn out for us, right? How I could be the guy in the smash the patriarchy shirt.

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I could be the guy that had a situation that, maybe even I came to Christ, right?

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Maybe let's just imagine, imagine I come to Christ and I start to realize all this stuff is just nonsense. All this stuff is just complete nonsense.

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And yet my wife is Ruth Bader Ginsburg fan and opens up a business where she's selling

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Ruth Bader Ginsburg shirts and abortion rights and all this kind of nonsense, right? Man, that could be a bad situation.

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That could be a real bad situation. But God protected me from it. And yet he protected me in a way that caused me tremendous pain.

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Tremendous pain. I mean, guys, I cannot, look, I'm kind of joking around about it now, but when I was in it, when

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I was in this dark place, it hurt. It hurt, man. Like, I don't think

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I've ever wept more than I did at that time. It was a dark, low place.

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It hurt me. But all that time, all while I'm in the midst of my pain and in the midst of all this stuff, in all that time,

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God was protecting me from my own decisions. Think about all the other ways that this could have possibly happened, how this could have possibly gone down.

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And yet God was protecting me and he gave me a wife, a wonderful wife. A wonderful wife who isn't a crazy social justice warrior, who isn't a smash the patriarchy type of woman.

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Not at all. Not at all. And so, you know, honestly, I don't really know what else to say about this, but I just wanna encourage you because, look, we're not all gonna be able to predict how things are gonna turn out for us.

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We're not all gonna be able to look back and see the very clear ways that God has protected us from ourselves.

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But just know this, that right now, God is doing so many things in your life. He is protecting you from so many attacks of the enemy and you're probably aware of like a handful of them.

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I think I heard, who was that? I met John Piper say something similar. Anyway, anyway, I hope this video was helpful and, you know, reveal it a little bit more about my past and myself here.

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And it's kind of an embarrassing story to tell, no question about it. But I'm grateful to God. I mean, I was a different person back then.

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There's just no question about it. I was a completely different person when I was living in that fraternity house and I had no idea, but God was working in my life tremendously.

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Anyway, I hope this is helpful. God bless. You know,

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I was actually thinking a lot about the time I lived in that fraternity house recently because I saw this picture. I haven't thought about this in a long time, but I remember there was a moment, there was a moment and I was sitting in my frat house.

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I was probably pretty drunk, let's just be honest. Sitting there, we're watching movies and we're kind of just kind of scrolling through the channel, wasting our lives, you know.

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And I'll never forget this. One of the channels, HBO or something, they were showing the

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Passion of the Christ, right? I remember one of my friends was just like joking about, like, it was like one of the most violent scenes in it where Christ is dying, you know, and being beaten and stuff like that.

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And I remember one of my friends was joking on it, right? Just like making jokes about Christ dying in that way and things like that.

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And everyone was laughing, it was hysterical. He was, there were stupid jokes. Like, I don't even remember why they were funny, but it's probably just because we were drunk, you know.

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And I remember I wasn't laughing. And I don't know why I wasn't laughing because again, I wasn't a Christian back then, but what

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I was seeing on the screen and what my friends were doing just seemed like such a weird thing, right?

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And I'm not saying I was like, you know, better than them or anything like that, but I'll never forget that because it makes no sense why

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I wasn't laughing because I would normally laugh at all of their horrible, disgusting jokes, their stupid jokes.

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But this one, I just remember thinking, this is wrong. I didn't say anything. I, you know, again, I wasn't a Christian. I didn't say anything, but I wasn't laughing.

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I thought it was just really weird how he was joking about this. And this is the thing. It's not that I didn't think violence was funny.

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Back then, I used to laugh at all kinds of stuff, but I didn't laugh about this. And, you know, I don't know.

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I don't know what that means. Probably nothing, but man, I'm just so grateful to God for it.