EP 47 | Death Day to Birthday...Mercy and Grace, the Pastor Matt Maher Story

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for the first time in my life, the Word became real. I think prior to that,

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I read it more as a duty. It was a checked box on a list of my

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Christianity, and that's why I was a compromised, hypocritical

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Christian, and I'll be the first to say that publicly. But from prison and the 55 months that I spent there,

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I often tell people, I'm a pastor today, just as introduced, which is always comical to me, knowing that God is willing to take the least of these and the foolish things of the world to make much of Himself.

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I fit that category. But I didn't go to seminary to be here. I often tell people I went to a cemetery to be here, and I have no problems with seminary, but I do have this to say.

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A seminary without Jesus is a cemetery, and a cemetery with Jesus becomes a seminary, and that is the place that God ordained and chose for me to find my calling.

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Welcome to Tearin' Down High Places.

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My name's Average Joe. Pastor Jeff and Pastor Tim in the house and a guest. Say hi, guys.

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What is up? Hello. And we've got Pastor Matt Mayer all the way from Ocean City.

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Matt Mayer, please introduce yourself to the audience. Yes, what's up, guys? Those that are watching and listening, it is my honor to spend this time with you.

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I hope that it encourages you, ultimately inspires your conscience, and as I always say, instigates the

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Christian's conviction. Fantastic. Thanks so much for being here. And when we did the show prep, we learned about your testimony.

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We'd love to hear. Tell us your testimony, Matt. It's a great thing. Tim was talking about how much he appreciated it.

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Where'd it start? How'd you end up a pastor down in? Tell us about your church first and how you got there.

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Yeah, so I gave you guys a, and I'll do it again because time is always limited, but I dropped a gospel grenade on you guys last time as we had the intention to perhaps film or record a completely different podcast thread.

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And I said, well, do you guys know my testimony? And you're like, well, not really. And that led us to this. So long and very involved story short, as we say, or very thick story made thin.

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I was born and raised in South Jersey, Cape May Courthouse to be exact. I am the youngest of four boys.

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My mother and my father raised up their children, I often say, not just in the church, but in Christ.

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So I remember being exposed to Christianity at the earliest of age. I went to a

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Christian school. I knew the Bible inside and out. I had a very good memory.

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So I often would memorize scripture and then have to recite them for a

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Bible class grade. I then transitioned from Christian school to Middle Township High School, primarily for sports.

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I was a standout athlete, both in basketball and soccer, played up several years in soccer specifically.

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That became the bread and butter, if you will. In high school, led the state of New Jersey in goals, won a state championship for basketball.

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I received a full scholarship to attend Temple University in Philadelphia to repeat that cycle of excelling.

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It was in Philadelphia playing Division I soccer where I can probably draw a line where I see my compromise begin, compromising my faith.

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I am a young adult, as we say, I'm on a secular college campus.

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I'm dedicated to my sport and the academic part of the school, but I am flirting with the ways of the world more than ever before.

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And I'm able to justify it, guys, because I'm still reading my devotional. I'm still attending

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FCA huddles, Fellowship of Christian Athletes. I'm beginning each game with a word of prayer with my teammates, right?

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Everyone knew I was the Christian, but here's kind of where I began to depart that foundation of faith.

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And I like to pause and pivot and talk about it as Jesus presented it, because I think it'll make sense.

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He talked about those that hear his word and do his word. And he likens those individuals onto one who builds their house on the rock, a foundational underneath the house is that foundation.

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And if it's built on the rock, he says, storms come, rains fall, winds blow, beat up on that house and it stays standing.

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Okay, then he actually says this, those that hear my word, but don't do my word,

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I will liken them onto a man who builds that house on the sand. And now you have the juxtaposition of a foundation built on rock and sand.

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Same storm comes, beats up on that house, rains fall, winds blow, and great is its fall.

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And I like to tell that because at a certain time in my upbringing, I believe there was a foundation of faith beneath my feet.

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I believe it was built upon the rock of Jesus Christ. I believe I gave him my life at an early age, but then

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I began to craft a sandcastle. And the sandcastle became more or less an accessory or a decoration of my life, because after my senior year at Temple, I was drafted to play professional soccer.

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So now my sandcastle is beautiful to behold, right? I live near the shore my entire life.

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They have sandcastle competitions and you should see some of those structures and some of the beautiful art pieces that are made out of sand.

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And I'm like, that was my life. People would look at it and go, wow, he's playing professional soccer. He's young.

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My wife would say, he's good looking. And yet here's the reality. I was the king of my own sandcastle because I was living for the world.

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And the Bible is very clear. It says, pride goes before destruction. So I was a young man full of myself.

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And as I began to sow to the wind, I of course, reaped the whirlwind. And the reality is on March 1st, 2009,

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I unfortunately tore my ACL and my meniscus. That would be the last time I would play professional soccer. And then during that week, an

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MRI confirmed that it needed surgery to repair. So I, of course,

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I'm waiting in limbo. That weekend, March 6th, is a Friday evening.

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And instead of falling back on my faith foundation, the rock, trusting God, regardless of my circumstances,

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I went the way of the world. I placed my trust in the sand, let's say.

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And Friday evening, March 6th, rolled over to the early hours of March 7th. I had gone out in the city of Philadelphia.

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I had been drinking. At the end of the evening, I decided to get into my vehicle with a friend.

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And our intention was to make it to Atlantic City from Philadelphia. I am under the influence, obviously not thinking clearly.

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And about mile post 18 .7 on Atlantic City Expressway, I unfortunately, recklessly rear -ending another vehicle.

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And that resulted in the at -fault drunk driving fatality of a man named

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Hort Kapp, a 55 -year -old man from Cambodia. So you're talking about my entire life as I knew it, and everything

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I prided myself in came crashing down. And I think it's appropriate to say it here because it's true.

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When you hit rock bottom, you discover Christ is the rock at the bottom.

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So that sand castle was completely exploded. And unfortunately, because of the weight of my tragedy, another family was deeply impacted.

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Their life imploded. And we don't have enough time to talk about the legal nuances from March 7th, 2009, that fatal and fateful night, all the way to January 7th, 2010, the day

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I would stand before a judge to be sentenced to prison for the crime that I committed.

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But what I like to stress during this 10 -month period is the emotional weight, and the grief, and the guilt, and the shame, and ultimately the humiliation.

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And remember, pride lifted me up, and it was the fall that tore me down.

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But it was in that very vulnerable space and place that the Lord Jesus Christ got my undivided attention.

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And one of the verses that was an anchor during that season was Psalm 46 .10.

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And this is the word of the Lord and the voice of the Lord in the Psalms. It says, be still and know that I am

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God, that first part. And I remember those two words, be still in Hebrew, meaning to surrender or to let go.

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We say, let go and let God, there's your verse. Be still, take your hands off of the wheel of your life, get out of the driver's seat and get in the passenger seat where you belong and let the

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Lord begin to drive your life. It was in that space where I learned dependence and humility through humiliation.

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And I learned what my father, a godly man, my earthly role model taught me when

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I was a younger man, that if you make a decision, you own the consequences. And that means good, bad, or indifferent.

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That's the definition of accountability. You own the consequences. So in that same 10 month period,

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I wrestled with obviously my fate, but it was not hard to own my consequences.

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There was no excuses, there was no justification. And I think because I had a solid family that believed in the providence of the

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Lord in that season, their encouragement in my life, again, another way the

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Lord used people to encourage me in that season, long story short,

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I knew the only thing that I could control in that season was my heart, and whether or not

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I would repent and be remorseful over what I did versus being regretful.

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And I believe there's a wild difference between the two for our listeners, remorseful and regretful.

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Regret says, I wish I can go back and change what happened, but you can't, so it's unrealistic.

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In fact, people live in regret and they never recognize what it is God wants to do in the present because they're stuck in yesterday's tragedy or in yesterday's scenario.

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And yet remorse drives us forward and repentance is a change of mind. So I remember grappling with all of that theology, all of the

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Bible that I knew growing up, which was intellectual, came crashing into my heart in a very real way.

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So I knew I had to seek forgiveness. And I knew that January 7th, the day that I would stand before a judge would become that opportunity to seek that forgiveness.

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And again, we don't have enough time to get into all the details, but January 7th came quick. I would be sentenced to five and a half years in state prison, first degree aggravated manslaughter, and I would start my prison journey on that same date.

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But there was something that took place on that day that I believe highlights the gospel.

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And what happened was I was able to share my heart with the victim's family, asking them to forgive me. And then the family had spokes people, a daughter and a son and others speaking on behalf of them.

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And the son actually stood up. He followed his sister's words and her words were more or less memorial to her dad.

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And I remember she even turned to me at the time and said, we've heard nothing but good things about Mr. Mayer here. And I'm sitting at the table, as you can picture the courtroom, the judge is on his stand.

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I'm at one table and then the family is on the other side of the courtroom and the prosecutor is at the other table.

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So I'm giving them my undivided attention. And then her brother stood up and he kind of threw off that entire vibe.

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And he began to tell everyone how he heard about his daddy dying.

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That was kind of how he framed it. And then he began to express with great anger at me, the object of that anger, how this had destroyed his world.

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And I remember guys sitting there, giving him my undivided attention and praying that the

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Lord would show me mercy. And I kid you not, and there's a video of this.

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People can go to my website. It's all over the internet. It's all over YouTube. There's a video of this sentencing day.

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And his very next words to me, after he said, this destroyed my world, he stopped, a composure came over him.

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And he said, but I forgive you my brother, just like that. And he came walking over to me and the bailiff told me to stand and I stood and me and my victim's son right there in court embraced each other and we hugged and all of that guilt and all of that weight that was debilitating and crushing as God is my witness, it evaporated.

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I felt set free before I would spend a single second as an inmate of the state.

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I had never felt such freedom in my entire life. I go away after that experience, that encounter.

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I go to the county jail. They transition you to the state reception facility and then they eventually place you in a state facility.

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So you're talking a few days journey before I end up in the state facility. When I got to the state facility, it was then that the

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Lord began to, in my heart, show me this picture of his gospel that came to light in my courtroom experience.

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And I remember like it hit me like a ton of bricks. I remember almost as if the

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Bible came to life that one day every single person will stand before God as a judge.

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And on that day, everyone is guilty as charged for breaking the law of God.

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And on that day, no resume will be enough to get that person out of the penalty that they deserve.

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No lawyer will be able to articulate the law of God in such a way that he'll be able to convince a jury of that offender's peers to find them innocent or not guilty.

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No, that day, that charge of guilt is set in stone unless, and there's only one way out, unless a son decides to stand up in that courtroom, unless a son decides to enter in, unless a son decides to take that penalty and pardon you.

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And that is what the Lord showed me. And I remember going, oh my goodness, that is God demonstrating his own love in that while we're in sin, jacked up, messed up, far from God, that is when

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Christ died for us. And it set me on fire. So I became a man apart in prison.

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I didn't look at my circumstances as the punishment that most people would see it as.

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I looked at it as more or less an incubator or a time to get back in good standing with God.

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So I fell back on that faith foundation. I began to read the word of God real.

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I think prior to that, I read it more as a duty. It was a checked box on a list of my

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Christianity. And that's why I was a compromised hypocritical

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Christian. And I'll be the first to say that publicly, but from prison and the 55 months that I spent there,

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I often tell people, I'm a pastor today, just as introduced, which is always comical to me, knowing that God is willing to take the least of these and the foolish things of the world to make much of himself.

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I fit that category, but I didn't go to seminary to be here. I often tell people I went to a cemetery to be here and I have no problems with seminary, but I do have this to say, a seminary without Jesus is a cemetery and a cemetery with Jesus becomes a seminary.

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And that is the place that God ordained and chose for me to find my calling.

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So fast forward, I'll give you a redemptive conclusion here. And there's been so many. I get out August 4th, 2014, and I served 55 months as an inmate of the state.

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I exit prison and just trusting the Lord to do his will, doors began opening for me to go tell my story, to share my testimony.

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And I did just that. God gave me the greatest gift of my life in my wife, my now wife, Sarah. We just celebrated our 10 year anniversary on November 8th, a few weeks ago.

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We are the parents of two beautiful children. My daughter is five years old going on 17.

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My son is three years old. So I have Willow Joy and Ezekiel, and we are expecting our third in June.

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I think the first week of June, we're expecting our third. Every single year on March 7th, as you guys can imagine, is the anniversary of that incident.

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And there wasn't a year that passed from 2010, that first year anniversary of March 7th, as I was an inmate of the state, all the way to last year,

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March 7th, 2024, that I did not send the family some type of letter or some type of recommitment to honor, one, my faith and their father in the way

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I live my life today, right? Without even thinking twice, that is my commitment.

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And they receive it every year. And they, in fact, support my ministry. And again, long story short, the 12th year anniversary was approaching.

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The year was 2021. The only difference approaching that anniversary was my wife was pregnant with our second child.

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So as the year unfolds, January, I'm thinking, all right, here comes March 7th. I can't believe it's gonna be another year. And there's a spiritual nausea kind of that rises up in my soul when

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I think about what I did. I remember how reckless I was and how foolish

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I was and how prideful I was. And I get spiritually sick. Yes, I know the family has forgiven me.

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I know God has forgiven me, but we all know one of the hardest things to do is to forgive ourselves.

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So I often reapply that punishment that Jesus took upon myself, and I wrestle with it.

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And as March 7th, 2021 was approaching, the only difference in that equation that year was my wife was pregnant, due at the end of February.

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And of course, wanting that baby to be out of her on that due date or before.

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Moms know what I'm talking about. And yet the due date came and the due date went. Eventually, February 23rd turned to March 1st.

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So now we're a week late and she's frustrated. She wants, you know, get that baby out of her. None of us are thinking.

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In fact, it's something I wouldn't dare think was that on March 1st would turn to March 3rd and March 3rd would turn to March 5th and then

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March 5th would turn to March 6th and then her water would break. And it was on that day where I began like going, there's no way, there's no way that we're gonna go through this entire day and not have the baby.

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So Matt, I'm listening to your testimony and I'm really interested in what it looks like when you're witnessing to someone and you kind of notice that this person doesn't see their need for a savior.

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They don't see their own sinfulness and you have this really unique perspective on your own sin debt.

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I mean, how does, what's that conversation look like? Yeah, so I usually, obviously, you wanna kinda meet them where they're at.

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And most people don't recognize the sin debt that they owe.

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That's the point of the gospel, eyes are blinded. And when we've had our eyes opened and we recognize our sin debt has been paid in full, you know,

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I obviously can use my situation, the legal consequences, the legal system, physically as I walk through it and use that and say, hey, in our society, when you break laws, there's consequences, right?

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And that's the affirmative. Yeah, we have an entire penal system that shows that there needs to be debts paid.

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You get that, right? Yeah, well, so does God. And usually that's like the line I can draw because there's a law that God has and we've all broken that, there must be a consequence.

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And yet our gospel tells us that God sent his only son and whoever believes in him, that sin debt can be paid in full.

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And that is where we find true spiritual freedom. So I think I have the advantage of using my own situation as already shared with you guys.

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My sentencing day points to the fact that a son entered in and gave me what

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I did not deserve. And that's ultimately what everyone has access to. And then ultimately, knowing that my child, as I was saying, that date,

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March 7th, my wife gives birth to my second child.

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And that date, March 7th, the day that my hands took life became the same day that God ordained my hands to receive life.

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So for me, March 7th now becomes bittersweet where a death day has been turned into a birthday.

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And that again is the gospel. What do you mean? Well, anyone that comes to Christ on the cross, that is a death day.

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Christ died our death. That death day, if you believe that death was in your place, you become born again.

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That day then becomes your birthday. And from that point forward in my life, just having these unbelievable experiences that I don't deserve, nor would

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I write if you gave me a pen and said, Matt, write out how this thing unfolds. Write out a couple chapters.

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I wouldn't dare write some of these experiences in, but God allowed them.

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And that is why I'm very passionate about sharing them. And at times you can think you share your testimony too much, and I'm blessed by a community here that says, no, keep telling your story because it's a reminder that God can take any situation.

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He can take the worst of situations and bring redemption to them. So that's pretty much it in a nutshell.

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That's how I became a pastor, just saying yes along the way and sharing at different churches and youth groups.

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And eventually the elders at this church here ordained me to become a pastor in its official capacity.

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And now as the pastor of Landmark Church, take this calling very seriously. So I'm grateful for you guys, even giving me the freedom here to kind of just throw that out there.

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Wow, that's fantastic, Matt. Guys, do you have any questions before we transition here for Matt? I mean, about his testimony, how powerful is that?

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It's just amazing. Are you in touch with the family regularly or do they respond back when you write a letter?

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It's great, yes. So not only am I in touch with them regularly, but on sentencing day, when they took me out of the courtroom,

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I did not know this until two weeks later when my parents visited me, their first visit to see their son.

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I'm wearing, you know, your prison browns. We call them khakis. Inmate 314 -525 -A and I come out into a visit hall and I'm excited to see my parents.

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Obviously, I had been set free two weeks earlier. Like, even though I'm locked up, I'm free. So I'm coming out excited. And I could see that they had some type of glow to them.

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And I remember knowing, I remember thinking, okay, there's something going on.

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I just, I remember that first visit. I walk out and they're excited to see me, but it was more than just seeing their son.

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And I sit down, like, you won't believe what happened. I was like, the first thing they said, I'm like, what? Soon as they took you out of the courtroom, we requested to meet the family.

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And they said, yes. So they took us into a side courtroom and it was in the courtroom where we all introduced ourselves.

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And then we all prayed together. We all held hands and prayed together.

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And then we exchanged contact numbers. And my mom said, she's been in contact with one of his daughters from that point forward.

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Now that was two weeks. Talk about all these years later, my mom has been like a mentor.

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In fact, we just had a women's Christmas brunch at our church recently. And Mr.

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Hortcap, my victim's daughter, Somali was one of our guests. Like at our church's women's ministry event, there is this daughter of a person whose life

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I was responsible for. I also spoke at a church not too long ago. Her church in Philadelphia, where she was invited by her pastor to tell her story.

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And then the pastor kind of invited me up. Now the whole entire congregation has no idea who

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I am. She just gets done telling her story. And then the pastor's like, we have a guest speaker today. And then I get up and I tell my story.

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And you can almost see the whole entire congregation go, oh my gosh, that's the guy that she was just talking about.

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And like, we had this amazing moment where we married the two. And then afterwards we took the stage together and she was asked questions and I was asked questions.

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We took pictures together. My wife was there. Her son was there with his firstborn child.

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And we have a picture of my wife holding, making it Somali, Mr. Hortcap's daughter, her grandson, which means my wife is holding my victim's great -grandson in her hand.

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And it's like, here's this picture and you're going, this is not the typical outcome to these types of tragedies.

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And I recognize that. And yet I'm not gonna shy away from telling it as it is because I want people to know who are in deep shame and deep regret,

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I want them to hear and see the power of the gospel of Jesus Christ. And yes, there are scenarios in life that are very heavy and drinking and driving is one of them.

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I'm constantly brought into scenarios where people are either locked up for doing what I did or a family's navigating the pain of losing a loved one.

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And I'm right there in the middle and I'm trying to help the offender see that there's light at the end of the tunnel. It's not a train.

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And I'm trying to help the family who's navigating the grief to let them know like forgiveness is the only way forward. Like God has me in a unique position to be able to minister to both sides of the equation.

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Wow, praise the Lord. Yeah, I'm thinking of a listener who maybe isn't a believer in Christ.

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And they think, you know, Christianity is something that you inherit from your parents.

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And you know, you're only a Christian because you learned Christianity. What can you say to them about having inherited from your parents, but the reality of the gospel that this was your only hope, your only lifeline.

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How real is our faith? Is it based on what we learned by tradition or is there something that's different from every other religion in the world?

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I love that question because I just said recently, I'm teaching 2 Timothy and the passage in the first chapter,

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Paul highlights Timothy, this young pastor in Ephesus, his spiritual legacy.

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But you gotta understand though he was trained up to know the scriptures, his grandmother and his mother coming to faith, they could not pass their faith down genetically.

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And I think a lot of people out there, whether they're non -believing or have been raised in a

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Christian context, they think they're Christian. There has to be a complete separation from the traditions of man, from the response.

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Oh, I was raised in a strong Christian household or I was, yeah, I'm religious. Yeah, I'm good with God.

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And yet being born into a Christian family doesn't mean you're born again into God's family.

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Faith must be passed down like a baton. It cannot be passed down by genetics.

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So I'm just grateful that I have that background where my parents labored to lay those spiritual bricks beneath my feet, but I had to make a decision,

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Pastor Jeff. I had to come to a place of repentance and I had to own, this is what

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I did not do. I did not own my faith. I allowed my upbringing to be more or less what made me a

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Christian. I was a Christian by name. So I would say to the person that doesn't believe in anything, they don't know where to start, that God and our

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Savior, Jesus, He wants to be in relationship with you and He is knocking on the door of your heart.

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And if you look back in hindsight, you will see the times where He was trying to get your attention and yet it's never too late.

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It takes but a moment to open up your heart and say, I want fresh forgiveness. I want to know that I am saved.

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I want to have eternal life and it becomes real. And this is how Jesus begins to work in one's life.

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So we as ministers understand how easy it is to get religious and how easy it is to allow religion to keep us in bondage.

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And I think that's what Jesus had a very strong rebuke for that we didn't keep it mental or intellectual, but we allowed it to literally change our hearts and our lives from the inside out.

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So I hope that answered your question. I'm just kind of like, it's real. I wouldn't be here if it wasn't.

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Trust me, there's no way I'm in an office at a church as a pastor, not because I chose this in essence, like I wouldn't have chose this route.

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It was what God ordained and called me to and I had to say yes to it. And the rest has been history.

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So again. Matt, Christianity started this way. It was with the Son of God raised from the dead.

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That takes the power of the living God. And it's been this way with the Apostle Paul, who was a persecutor of the church.

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He murdered Stephen, he stood by and held the coats and then yet God called him and saved him.

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There's grace for the sinner, but there's also law to the proud. So the Lord is able to humble us out of our pride and bring us to faith.

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And that's what he did for you as he's been doing for all these 2000 years since Jesus came the first time and he's coming back soon.

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So to any listener, I would just say, hear this testimony. We overcome the devil by the blood of the lamb and the word of the testimony.

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That's right. If you hear a testimony like this, it points you to the reality of Jesus's blood. And anybody listening who hears this should believe for themselves that Jesus is the

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Christ, the Son of God, who died and rose from the dead. And they too can have forgiveness of sin. Amen.

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Matt, what you just said, that was amazing and really stuck to my heart because the first time

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I ever preached the message was in Kensington, Philadelphia. And I think people thought

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I might've had like a nervous laugh, but like the whole time I was thinking like, wow, I'm really up here in Kensington, New Jersey, preaching the gospel.

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And I just couldn't believe that God put me there. And I'm like so overjoyed where I was like kind of laughing as I was preaching.

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And it was like probably not the right thing to do, but I just couldn't believe that God would do something like that with me.

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So you sharing your testimony, that's a testimony that when you hear that testimony, you're never gonna forget it because it's just an amazing testimony of God's grace.

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And I just wanna ask you like, what do you think the most important part of a testimony is or like what the most important part of your testimony is?

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Yeah, so telling it one, getting used to telling it, a lot of people shy away from the bad things that they've done or that they were into or that they're ashamed about.

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And I get that. Shame is very real. But if you let shame fester, it ultimately keeps you in a totally different type of bondage in my opinion.

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People that are in bondage to shame and regret. Paul says to Timothy in the same epistle, he says, do not be ashamed of the testimony of the

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Lord. He says it in a twofold way. Do not be ashamed of your testimony in the

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Lord. In other words, Timothy, tell your testimony of what the Lord has saved you from. And he also says, do not be ashamed of the testimony of the

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Lord. What is the testimony of the Lord? At the time in a Roman context that Jesus is Lord, that was a indictable offense to not say

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Caesar is Lord. That was one of the reasons Paul the apostle is in prison for this point. He is saying

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Jesus is Lord and he is pioneering a path that is leading people out of darkness into the light.

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And yet there was a sense that people were ashamed of where Paul was and the message he was preaching.

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So the third thing that Paul says to Timothy is do not be ashamed of me, his prisoner. Now, let me just stop because there are people who think that their testimony has to look a certain way.

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In fact, I heard somebody say one time, they came up to my mother after she told her testimony that involved losing a son in 2005, my oldest brother passed away.

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And then ultimately, only three years later, her youngest son, me, making a decision that would end up taking a life and ended up in prison.

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So she shares all that. And you gotta be like, whoa, man, that's heavy. Well, this woman came up after and said,

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I can't believe you shared all that and related to my mom in a way that her husband was in jail.

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And my mom said to her, wow, that's powerful. And she goes, no, no, no, I dare not tell people that.

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Get this, that would ruin my testimony. That was her idea was that her husband being in jail would ruin her testimony as opposed to what the

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Lord has allowed in our lives to enhance our testimony. That's what Paul wrote. He's like, I'm a blasphemer, I'm a sinner,

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I'm the chief of sinners. And if God can save me, God can save thee. So tell your testimony, don't be ashamed of what you've been through.

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Obviously, you don't wanna dwell on it. You don't wanna glamorize it. But I don't shy away from saying what I did.

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And here's why. You better believe I struggle before I take the stage to tell a large audience what

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I did. So I go like this in prayer, Lord, what do I say? And he says, in his still small voice in my heart, tell them what you did.

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And then the follow -up question that I ask is, okay, after I tell them what I did, then what? Like, man, that's embarrassing telling them what

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I did. And then that still small voice says, then you tell them what I do. You get out there, you tell them what you did, and then you conclude by telling people what

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I do. And that's a testimony. That's what it's built upon. Let us tell people what we did. We are sinners.

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And we then tell people what God did, and he saved us. And that's why he's our savior. That's what it is.

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Salvation belongs to the Lord. Salvation belongs to the Lord. That's what he does. He keeps saving sinners like us, of which

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I am chief. Amen. What a great testimony. And, you know, we're gonna make that just a separate episode.

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That was phenomenal. So much hope for people who have kids coming out of college and they're not really with the

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Lord. And, you know, God is faithful to put you on the path he designed for you.

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So, how awesome. Hey, let's - I appreciate it, guys. Let's pick a brother up and tear it down.

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So we're gonna end this the right way. Okay? Matt, this is your training session.

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We'll get you on the next episode. But, Tim, you ready? Yep. I'm ready.

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If you see a brother down, lift him up. Pick him up. I love it. And if you see a high place, tear it down.