Session 1 - The Testimony of Costi Hinn

Kootenai Church

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All right, let's begin with a word of prayer. Our Father, we are so grateful to You for the many blessings that we get to enjoy together here in freedom, in this place.

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Looking forward to a weekend of being fed from Your Word. And it is our heart's desire that You would speak to us through Kosti, that You would speak to us in Your Word, that You would be magnified and glorified through our fellowship, our worship, and all that we learn here this weekend.

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We pray Your blessing upon this time. We thank You for the faithful hands that have worked so hard behind the scenes to prepare this for us.

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And we pray that You would be honored and glorified through all that transpires through today and tomorrow and into Sunday morning.

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We praise You for Your goodness, for Your salvation, and for Your grace, and pray that it would be magnified today in our lives, in our minds, and in our hearts for the glory of Christ our

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King. In His name we pray, amen. All right, a couple of announcements.

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Welcome, by the way, to our equipping conference. We are excited about this, and we have one of these a year. If this is your first one, we do this around the end of May, 1st of June every year, and you'll see announcements in your booklet as well as on the screen of upcoming conference next year.

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Let me give you just a heads up for the schedule of events. In your booklet, you'll notice it just says session one, session two.

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Kosti didn't get the titles of the sessions to me until about two hours after I had printed these yesterday. So I'm gonna just ask

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Kosti to give us the title of every session at the beginning so you know what to write down in your booklet.

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I think that's all I have. So now I will introduce Kosti. Kosti grew up in a

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Christian, and I would use that term loosely and put it in air quotes, family, probably one that you have heard of, the hymn family.

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And he has an inside view of a segment of Christianity that most of us do not. He serves as the teaching pastor at Shepherd's House Bible Church in Chandler, Arizona.

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He is a graduate of Midwestern Baptist Theological Seminary, and he serves as president and founder of For the

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Gospel. He hosts a weekly podcast providing sound doctrine through digital media, and he is the author of Defining Deception, which was your first book, right, with Anthony Wood, and then

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God, Greed, and the Prosperity Gospel, which is the one that you got there. And you can come up, and Kosti will autograph that for $100, prosperity gospel dies hard, doesn't it?

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He has a book titled More Than a Healer, a book Knowing the Spirit, and then two children's books,

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The King Who Found His Self -Control, and In Jesus Name I Pray. Now, one of those is not available yet, right? The King Who Found His Self -Control is not available yet, but In Jesus Name I Pray, you can get on Amazon.

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And he and his wife, Christine, have five children. Will you please welcome Kosti in? Pastor Jim, thank you so much for letting me serve.

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This is a real privilege. And I have habitually called him Jim Osman, because that's just how

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I've been saying it. But I have been rebuked and corrected. Jim Osman, it just rolls,

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Osman, just rolls off the tongue. So yeah, thank you so much again for your warmth, your hospitality, and your kindness.

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The sessions that we're gonna go through are all a little different. The progression is gonna work this way. Pastor Jim asked me to share my testimony to start.

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If that's redundant for some of you, if you heard the story, then just listen again and test to see if I'm still accurate and all of the details line up.

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Besides that, in the next session, I've titled it Three Historical Heretics, or Three of History's Heretics.

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And what I wanna do for you in the second session is present to you three particular heroes that influenced my life, our family, the prosperity gospel, and the ministry, and walk you through bios on them so you have a good handle of that.

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There are gonna be some moments where you're gonna sit there and think, hey, that's what this guy does, or that's what she does, or I have totally seen that play before.

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And what you'll come to find if I achieve the goal and if the material is clear, you will come out of that session thinking, wow, there's really nothing new under the sun.

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These are just new faces and new modern strategies on one of the devil's oldest tricks.

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So that'll put a lot of us at ease while it doesn't change the fact that these are dangerous players and dangerous movements.

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That'll help you. And then we'll begin to open our Bibles more and more throughout the sessions, all the way, of course, until Sunday when we'll walk through a biblical text from the book of Ephesians.

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But the first two sessions are highly story -driven or history -driven, and so bear with me on that.

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It's been a number of years since I've done any type of conferences where I just share my testimony. So this is really kind of you to entertain the story once more.

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If you haven't heard it before, I hope that it encourages you. But even still, in all those details, my joy is ahead as we open up God's Word and also in the

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Q &As as we talk through questions and the practicals. If you will, go to the

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Lord with me one more time in prayer. Let me ask for His blessing on this particular session and the one to come with the

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Q &A. Father, I wanna pause as well. I know Pastor Jim prayed already, but I wanna recognize that without You, I wouldn't be here, none of us would be, that You are the sovereign

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God who saves, You are a God of mercy, and Your grace, which is literally

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Your unmerited favor, has found us, that You would save us, that You would love us, that You would then give us the privilege of being a part of the body of Christ and be used, be given spiritual gifts, get to use those to edify and build up one another.

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All of that is grace upon grace upon grace. And so in this testimony session, would

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You help me to be accurate, to be clear? Would You also edify those who hear?

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There is a side to this that we loathe, and it is to go back down memory lane, but our purpose is to give

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You glory through it. Our purpose is to think about where we've been and then give

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You glory and honor and praise for where we are now. All of the credit is Yours, all of the glory, the honor, the praise, every detail, orchestrated by Your masterful hand.

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And so what would we do but pause to say thank You and ask Your blessing on this session and the

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Q &A to come. I pray all of this in Jesus' name, amen. So to go back to kind of a point in time in my life where I felt like I was on top of the world would be helpful for you, and then

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I'll rewind the tape and we'll go back to my childhood. But there was a point now some 17 to 19 years ago,

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I haven't thought about it. The last time I shared this with people formally in a setting like this, it was about 15 years total, so I think we're getting close on 17 to 18 years.

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But we were at the Grand Resort Laganese in Greece, and we had flown into Athens, we were on a ministry trip, and used to do layovers in really beautiful places, rent a lot of suites or lease suites, or in other times, houses and whatnot.

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But in this particular point, we're at this hotel where you have the presidential suite, you got prime minister suites, you got every kind of person in government suite, so you can picture that.

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And I'm standing there, and I remember vividly, I was wearing a shirt that was a Canadian shirt, it was a hockey shirt, because I'm Canadian, I love hockey, and I had these clear non -prescription glasses, because I thought

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I was like Judah Smith before he was Judah Smith, and everyone was looking trendy using those kind of cool glasses.

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And I'm standing there, and we're at the Grand Laganese Resort, and I remember thinking that I had made it, like this was my life.

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I had arrived, and I was young still, and so I knew that there was some time before I would see the fruition of whatever

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I believed I was gonna be. But I was old enough to think, like this is my trajectory,

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I've got it made. And I was flying on a private Gulfstream jet regularly, staying in the nicest hotels in the world, working for my uncle, who was

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Benny Hinn at these crusades and services, I was a catcher, which is you catch the people who are falling, and I was his assistant on the road, so that meant carrying bags, checking out of hotels, helping with whatever was needed, and we had the

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Louis Vuitton luggage, the kind of whole deal, if you ever watch one of those crazy reality shows, and you see the

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Kardashians or these other people, and you wonder who in the world spends five grand on luggage, we did.

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So those are realities for me, and I'm just living the dream, and thinking like this is life.

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And I was so confident that it was the John 10 10 abundant life, this was

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God's will, if other people didn't have it, our job was to go and show them how they could, if they never really reached that, it was their problem, they didn't have enough faith, they didn't have a good belief system, or they weren't believing and coming under our super anointed covering, and the irony that day, and that trip, is that we were staying on the

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Aegean Sea, which is connected to portions, bodies of water, in which Paul is on his missionary journeys, and the way

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I've always described it in post, after conversion, is standing there, right near a body of water, where Paul had preached the gospel many times, the only problem was we weren't preaching anything near what

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Paul was preaching, and it was years later that the Lord would open my eyes, but that gives you a picture of what

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I imagined life would be forever. Growing up, my father, his name is

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Henry, pastored a church in Vancouver, British Columbia, he had, along with the family, emigrated technically refugees, we found out just a couple months ago that they were refugees, they escaped war in Israel, they arrive in Toronto, Canada, and as refugees, they begin this life in which they go from having a lot in Jaffa, Israel, to then having nothing in Canada.

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It was my dad filing for his pension in Canada with my mom, and my mom called me and said, hey,

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I've got big family historical news that kind of changes the narrative. I said, what? She said, your dad is actually filed in this country, in Canada, as a refugee, so it maybe helps you understand a little more of what life was like for your dad.

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They didn't immigrate, it wasn't like from Jaffa, Israel, and a good life, over to Canada, right into things, it's these refugees that come over from the

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Middle East, and they are gonna make a life for themselves, and that ties into kind of other ideas, in which even for my uncle and many others in the family, proving themselves, becoming wealthy, achieving the

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American dream, climbing the ladder, if you will, of some sort of lifestyle is very normal for refugees or immigrants who come here and say, whatever it takes, we're gonna have a better life, we're gonna have a new life, and so my uncle ends up finding his way through these kids at school, having very odd experiences, and he finds acceptance within the charismatic movement, in charismatic circles.

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Catherine Coleman becomes a big hero of his, and he sees this woman who has this power and this aura about her, if you will, and he says, that's what

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I wanna do, that's my calling. In the meantime, the family is not at all involved with that sort of branch of belief.

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They were raised Greek Orthodox, and so that was the belief, they came to Canada for peace, not war, they came for education, not religion, and so my uncle goes kind of on his merry little way, and slowly but surely, different family members begin to buy into, at that time, preaching generally repent and believe gospel with a

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Catherine Coleman dream kind of hovering above the whole thing. And in those days, there were a lot of guys that would preach the gospel, just like now.

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Justin Peters told me one time when we first started talking, he said, brother, I've heard your uncle preach a better gospel than some

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Baptist ministers, it's just all the things that come afterwards if he would just stop there. That was very much a reality, and so in whatever version of the gospel being preached, the family starts one by one buying in, my dad being one of the last, and when he jumps all in, he serves my uncle

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Benny, he goes into ministry, following in my uncle's older brother footsteps, and that leads him on a path down to Orlando, Florida, that's where I was born, even though I was raised in Vancouver, British Columbia, he goes down to Orlando, and my uncle had started the church

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Orlando Christian Center, it was a mega church, all sorts of things going on down there, and from there, my dad plants a church in Vancouver, British Columbia.

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It was called Vancouver Christian Center, and it was the same as Orlando Christian Center, it was just the

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Canadian version, and so we had healing services on the last Sunday night of every month, you line them up on your right and left, he would jet out once in a while and do healing crusades, the teaching and preaching was very similar to what you would hear from Kenneth Hagin, Kenneth Copeland, if you looked throughout history and read books or saw teaching from Oral Roberts, these were the heroes of the faith for the family, and so I grew up in a very much word of faith, prosperity gospel, mixed church, we were kind of up and coming, a lot of people would come to the church, they liked the church, but there were also a lot of problems, we would have issues with what we would call dead churches, whether it was

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Baptists or other denominations, even some in the Assemblies of God denomination, there was the revoking of papers, there was distance even from some general

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Pentecostals from our family, all of it labeled as, well, you guys are doing shady things, or you've gone too far.

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Well, the way that I grew up dealing with that was really simple. We were attacked, criticized, ostracized, and separated from because we were being persecuted.

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Ultimately, the devil had it out for our ministry, and these people who went to dead churches, or these other types of Pentecostals that were really just jealous because we had better, more powerful spiritual gifts than them, were really all seeking to undermine our ministry, our power, our authority, and we were just like Jesus, just like the

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Apostles, we were being persecuted. I grew up in a home that was in the ballpark of 10 ,000 square feet, everything we drove was a

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Benz, and we lived the high life and enjoyed life. I viewed the church as a family, no doubt, my friends were in the church,

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I was part of the youth group, I sang songs, I watched the Donut Man, and McGee and Me, and all of these other different shows that maybe some of you remember, if you've heard of the

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Adventures in Odyssey, we listened to that too, very much in line with things that other people would grow up with.

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We sang some hymns, we sang some contemporary music, we sang some Stephen Curtis Chapman, and Michael W.

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Smith, and whatever else was cool at that time, and I remember even growing up that there was a radio station just over the border in Washington State, it was called

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Praise 106 .5, and they had this guy that would come on, and he was called the Bible Answer Man, his name was

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Hank Hanegraaff, which of course we all know, but he would criticize my uncle, and he would criticize sometimes my dad, and we'd listen to him, and I remember my dad saying, you know, this guy is just attacking us, this

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Bible Answer Man is just a hater on all that God's doing at our church.

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There's another example of just a jealous leader who can't stand what we're doing, and all the while,

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I was in these early years of my life watching as my uncle grew exponentially in fame, as my dad throughout

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Canada, and traveling with my uncle, and going different places around the world, was very well known, very powerful, we were very wealthy, and so I very much believed that everybody else was wrong, and we were right, we were in the center of the universe.

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Over the course of my teenage years, my dad more and more traveled with my uncle, because my uncle had left his church, and began to travel full -time, and do crusades.

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And it was around that time where we got heavily involved from an employment standpoint, and become very close, we were always really close with family, because in the

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Middle Eastern family, and with the prosperity gospel ties running through it, I've often described it as a mixture between the royal family and the mafia, because you had the wealth, and the family attachment of the royal family, and even the attention, and the focus, and the care, that would happen there, because we were kind of it, top of the hill, and then you had the mafia, because you just never turn your back on family, you always roll with family, blood is thicker than water, every other one -liner you could think of, you absolutely always side with family.

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So throughout those teenage years, we traveled with Uncle Benny, he always treated me incredibly well,

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I was very close with him, and most of my other uncles, very tight with my cousins, everything was incredibly great, to say it in just a simple way, but there were certain cracks that were forming in the dam, throughout those years.

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In the early years of my life, there were kids that would say, your uncle's a false teacher, my dad says that your dad is a liar, and a scammer, and I would just think, these kids that go to dead churches, they just need the

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Holy Spirit. As I got older, things got a little more serious, there was a gal in my high school class, who was on the swim team, she was healthy, she was popular, and she ended up getting a form of cancer, and I remember asking my dad, if we could just go heal her, just go pray for her, she's one of our friends, just go handle it, and I remember that being met with a, well, they don't really believe like us, and they don't really have enough faith, and in my mind, and even in some of my responses with family,

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I would think and say, well, let's just go do it, then they'll all believe it, we'll just heal her, and I really did believe that we could heal.

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When I was at healing services, even at our church, and people would come up, imagine, it would never happen here, but just imagine in your, what

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JP calls your sanctified imagination, keep it sanctified, but people lined up on my right, and my left, and as they come up, they're walking across the platform, and you pray for them, and they fall, and the ushers are catching, and the whole thing, and you're sitting there as a kid, just thinking, wow, look at these people, everyone's crying, you're singing hallelujah, or whatever song just keeps playing, and you would invite friends, and people would come, and I remember our church would grow by like 200 people on Sunday nights, because all the people from other churches would come to get their healing, or to get prayed for, and all that did was serve as more evidence that to experience the power of God, they've gotta come here, and to experience healing, and real church, and real ministry, where do they go at the end of the day?

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Here, and so I thought, as even a young man, that a lot of people go to these different churches because they have to, or they've got friends there, or family there, but really, they all wanna be at our church.

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They all know who the best in ministry is, who the most powerful is, who has the real anointing, and the real authority, and at that particular time,

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I didn't go against my family, I didn't think, oh, they couldn't heal my friend, but I call it a crack in the dam, because it opened up just a small amount of doubt that what we say we could do, we're not doing.

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I heard certain family members boast that, verbatim, they would say, I have all nine gifts, and if you read the

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New Testament, there's more than nine spiritual gifts, but there are about nine, let's say, miraculous gifts, or that's what they were referring to, those in particular, and they would say, these family members in particular, that we can operate in all of these at any given time, and so the amount of arrogance, and the amount of pride was so deep, and so wide, that it permeated every ounce of our conversations, and the way that we viewed ourselves in ministry, and so if we didn't do things, there was only one particular person to blame.

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It was never us. It was always the person who didn't have enough faith, who didn't believe like us, who wasn't obedient or submissive enough.

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There were multiple moments throughout my teenage years, and these are stories I haven't told much yet, because they were too close still, and there were still some conversations

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I need to have, but I've had all those now, where particular people left our church, and these are fascinating conversations for me to have now, decades later, and at the time, whether it was our church or another family member's church, they would be threatened that death, heart attacks, cancer, prodigal children, their family losing their salvation, losing money, would befall them, would come upon them if they left our apostolic covering, and I remember years later,

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I was at a particular concert, and I ran into one of those families, and we had a really big conversation, and there were things that the

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Lord had done in their life and opened their eyes to, but that was the way it was, and that's why

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I would say it was very much like the mafia, in that if you leave this, you're done, you're dead, and divine judgment would find you.

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As high school was winding down, we were coming out of this era where a local newspaper came after my dad.

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He hit the news nationally. There was a helicopter flying over our house at one point, and I remember, because we were in the basement, we had this really nice built -out basement with ping pong table and foosball and bubble hockey, because I was

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Canadian again, and we had this big theater room. We were all in the theater room, and we were basically watching the news about us, and there was a helicopter flying over our home, and they released a magazine article that was titled

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Jesus, the Devil, and Henry Hinn, and it was about my dad. It was in a business journal, and we were so proud of it that they would fly a helicopter over our house because they were jealous of how big it was, that God's blessing on a man of God was seen through how much money he had and how big his house was, and the world needs to get with it, and church folk are just jealous, and so someone hired a helicopter to fly over our house because they're really just jealous about all that we had.

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As I come out of my high school years, there's really only one thing I wanna do at that time, and it's play baseball. I was playing baseball throughout high school.

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I wanted to play in college and eventually play pro or go as far as I could. My dream was to be in the big leagues, and so like any kid,

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I knew I had to go to college or at least figure out a way to get drafted, and before seeing my dream come true, there was something that I needed to do, and this is, again, part of the belief system.

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If I wanted God to bless me, if I wanted Him to do what I desired, then I would need to make an offering of some sort or to give

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Him my first fruits, and so I remember talking with family and seeking wise counsel, and the wisdom was you should take a year and you should give it to Uncle Benny.

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You should serve him in the ministry. Go work for him, and then go to college, play baseball, and it made total sense to me as I thought, if I want

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God to give me the desires of my heart and I wanna play baseball and I wanna be in the big leagues and I wanna this and that and the other, then

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I need to sow a seed of faith into His ministry, and money wasn't really what

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I was thinking of. I thought the greatest gift that I can give, because I'm part of the family, is to lay down my dream, to give my time and serve

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Him, and so before going to college, I took a year off. I joined His ministry, and that's when I was a catcher and was serving with Him, and that year in particular, it was a year plus, we ended up staying in some of the nicest hotels in the world.

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It's where I've talked about a hotel called the Burj Al Arab in Dubai. We stayed in the Royal Suite. It was $25 ,000 a night,

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US, and we had other suites along with it, and a lot of those other suites were around $1 ,000 per night.

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The reason I know those numbers and remember those numbers is because I was assisting, helping to check out of hotels and checking in, and I was standing with my dad in our room or his room, actually, because I ended up staying in the

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Royal Suite because there were several bedrooms and it's a massive square footage, and one of my, well, my brother -in -law's brother married my cousin.

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This is a side note, but there are two brothers, Michael and Theo Koulianos.

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That'd be another topic for another time, but Michael is head of Jesus Image, and they're kind of a very up -and -coming, they've already upped and gotten.

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They're absorbing a lot of my uncle's partners and a lot of his ministry momentum. Jesus Image is

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Michael Koulianos and Jessica, my Uncle Benny's daughter, and then Theo married my sister, and so Greek brothers, well,

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Michael was on the road with us as well, so Michael and I were staying in the Royal Suite. Uncle Benny had his monstrous room and we had ours, and I remember just living the dream.

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It was like living in one of those weird music videos where there's a bunch of nice cars and Bentleys and all these crazy hotels, and it's just, it's worldly and it's wild, and you're out there living the dream, and then it's ministry, and you kind of turn the switch on and off where it's time to minister, so you go be spiritual, and then it's time to live it up, and so you just go and enjoy yourself, and we flew all over the place.

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At one point, we stayed at this hotel called Villa d 'Este, and it was on Lake Como, which is where George Clooney lives.

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It's in Italy, beautiful place. There's one of the James Bond movies was filmed there, and we're enjoying that.

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We're flying all over the world. We're staying in the nicest hotels.

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At one point, we were staying at the Hotel de Paris in Monaco, in Monte Carlo, and I remember going to the casino next door and gambling and hanging out and just enjoying the life there.

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I shopped at Versace. I mean, everything we bought was just high -caliber and high -class, and this was the life, and during that season, there were a lot of prophecies made over my life that I would be next, that I would be the heir apparent.

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I was the oldest Costi. There's four of us, and one of my cousins passed away a couple years ago, but there's four

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Costis, and the way that it works in the family is you name your firstborn son after your father, so my grandfather's name was

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Costandi or Costihan, full name is Costandi, and my dad had the first Costi, that's me, and there's significance to that, and so I'm to carry on the family name out of all the cousins and typical, like my big, fat

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Greek wedding stuff, it's like that times 10, and so traveling with him, working for Uncle Benny, being around the family,

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I would be prophesied over, and so I remember one time, Oral Roberts laying his hands on me, and to give you a full picture,

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I wasn't fully bought in to, man, I gotta get Oral Roberts to lay hands on me.

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The actual story, and I wrote this, it's in the opening chapter of the book, and it's about the most ridiculous story and the most childish story, but it gives you a picture of where I was at.

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I'm working for my uncle, and I'm back in the green room, and I'm eating Cheez -Its or something like that, and my dad just comes bursting in, and Oral Roberts is about to head out, and he wants me to be prayed for so that Oral Roberts can give me a double portion or whatever,

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I was getting really old, and I just remember his big, sweaty hand, he had big hands, he was a big guy, and he laid it on my head and said something,

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I don't even remember, but it was some sort of prophecy, double portion stuff, and there was another night where this guy named

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Steve Brock, he was one of my uncle's famous singers, made this big, elaborate prophecy that I'm to take over my father's church, and then

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I'm gonna take the healing ministry from all the family to heights that it had never seen, and all this stuff, and everyone's crying, and I'm like, sweet,

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I'm gonna be rich, I'm gonna be next, I'm gonna live in a big house, I really just want nice cars, and okay, and I wanna keep flying in private planes, and all the while, the way that the ministry was framed, there were

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NFL players, big league players, there was at one point where we were flown somewhere, and a particular owner, and I'll spare their identity on purpose, just to respect them,

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I don't know where they're at now in life, but they owned a major food chain and two major sports franchises, and we flew into where they lived, they came onto the plane, and one of the family members had cancer, and they had particularly given a massive donation, and my uncle prayed for them, and so all the while,

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I remember going to Without Walls Church before Paula White and my uncle got caught on camera or whatever with a photo holding hands in Rome, and on the stage at Without Walls was

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Carl Everett, who at the time was playing for the Red Sox, there were multiple players that were around that orbit,

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Darryl Strawberry, before he hit the conference circuit, I don't know where he came from, but now he's everywhere, I'm like, okay, as long as you're preaching the right gospel, but I remember you, there's this whole gauntlet of figures, at one point,

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I don't know how many of you guys remember Sister Sister, remember Tia and Tamara, that show, I watched it as a kid, they ended up on stage at a crusade, because they were kind of in the circle, so you have celebrity, you have athletes, you have major wealth, and all the while, no matter what weird things you see going on, or what scam you think might be happening based on what someone said is going on, how can all of these people, who are famous, who are wealthy, who are influential, be getting taken, there's no way, and so I thought, living the dream,

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I'd seen some things, there were some troubles, but all the while, I would keep fighting those with, yeah, but all of these people, it must be true, there was a couple of moments in particular, that ended up being used by the

31:21

Lord later on, one was in India in particular, there was over a million people at the service, this is on YouTube, we had leased out a bunch of land, and the people went as far as the eye could see, true story, and there were barricades between the stage and us, and my dad one night took me down to the healing lines, he worked a lot of the healing lines, and he takes me down there, and I remember it feeling like a scene, of course it's my younger mind, and it's all overwhelming, because I'm at that age, and I'm having these experiences emotionally, where I'm like something's going on, but I don't think it is, and I'm caught between family, but I would describe it as one of those scenes, from like Private Ryan or a war movie, where it just seems like chaos is happening, bullets are flying, everyone's yelling, things are tinging off walls, and there's a bunch of noise, except it was in this whole section, where people were crying out for healing, they put the sick in one area, similar to the healing crusades in the arenas, where they'd put all the wheelchairs in one section, at this particular instance, they had put in this one particular section, all of the sick, and it was not first world sickness, in the medical term of things, it was more man -made and handmade, and smell and people were there, and I just remember walking through with my dad, and it was like a war zone, and I looked up and this moment seared in my mind, and my uncle was on stage singing or something like that, he's in this perfectly white suit, the suits were made by Monsieur Bichon in Beverly Hills, Monsieur Bichon had a really nice yellow

32:54

Rolls Royce, and he had a Bentley, a lot of other cars too, but the presidents would shop there, and we'd go get these suits custom made, they had the little dove, he had the little knee -root collar, that looks like a

33:05

James Bond villain with the suit, and all that stuff, and I looked up, perfectly white suit, the choir's all in blue behind him, and again, not in the moment, but years later, that flashed in my mind as the dichotomy between the man who could heal, and who had the anointing, or if he was accused of saying he could heal, he'd say

33:28

I'm not the healer, only God is, I just pray for people, all that stuff, all the masterful

33:34

PR, and years later, that moment came to bear on my mind, but in all of that,

33:42

I still pushed the thoughts, pushed the questions away, after all that, ended up going to play baseball,

33:50

I played in California for a few years at a community college there, lived with my uncle for a bit, drove one of my aunt's

33:58

Cadillac Escalades, and lived the dream, and then started playing baseball, and my parents ended up moving there, getting another place, and so now we're in Orange County in Canada, two places, two homes, living it up, at that time

34:10

I drove a really nice Hummer, that had TVs in the screens that I'd turn on, even though no one would be in the car,

34:17

I had rims that, because I saw what Sammy Sosa was driving, who was a pretty famous baseball player at the time,

34:23

I found out what rims he had, I bought the same ones, I mean the whole thing was just all done up, and I go, and the

34:29

Lord opens a door, I didn't realize that he was doing it, although I thought he was, because I was praying to a God somewhere, that he would open the door for me to play baseball, so I ended up at Dallas Baptist University, and at that time,

34:42

I would say you could call this particular category in my testimony, the coach, my coach who's still there,

34:48

Dan Hefner, was a old school, raised in Iowa, you know families involved in ministry, old school small town guy, who probably thought my family was crazy, but was really nice, and didn't really say it that way, but he would have us go through discipleship, and have us do

35:10

Bible memory verses, and things of that sort, and so I joined a Bible study, I was part of the team, enjoyed playing, loved the game, loved being there, and one day

35:20

I remember him calling us all up in a huddle, and it was a practice, we were playing a scrimmage game, we'd call them seven, eight, nines, where you basically play inning seven, eight, and inning nine, he'd put a runner on second, and kind of stage the whole thing, and put pressure on you guys as players, and everybody was a little nervous, because there was a

35:35

New York Yankee scout there, of all teams as well, if it was like at that time the Royals, who got good

35:41

I know, but if it was just some random team, but it was a

35:46

Yankee scout, and he was there to watch a player named Victor Black, who ended up being a supplemental first rounder, a guy named

35:51

Ryan Goins, one of my buddies who ended up playing for the Blue Jays, he's there to watch good players, but if you play well on a day, where a scout's there to see other players, you can get put on the list, you end up getting drafted, and so all these guys on the team are real uptight, and coach

36:04

Hefner calls us all up, and goes hey guys listen, relax okay, I know there's a scout here, I know it's the Yankees, but listen, relax,

36:11

Proverbs 21 one says, the heart of a king is like channels of water, in the hand of the Lord, he turns it wherever he wishes,

36:18

God controls kings, God controls scouts, God controls whether you get drafted or not, so just go out there, play the game, have fun, he's sovereign, don't worry about it, and I remember in my mind, thinking like what in the world, are you talking about, like sovereignty, like and if there is sovereignty, how do

36:38

I get on the good side of that, and get it to work for me, because I'm so used to God being a puppet in a sense, on a string, and my confession gets him to do stuff, my offerings, my first fruits, or whatever else, and I remember also thinking, like whatever this guy's talking about, he doesn't know how to get

36:58

God to work, I do, he was literally driving a white Camry, he was just a weird

37:03

Baptist guy, who seemed pretty boring and plain, and I was driving a Hummer still, I had a

37:09

Breitling watch, which was like a $10 ,000 limited edition watch, that I'd been given as a gift, and lived in my own apartment, like some fancy apartment off campus, didn't even live where the team lived, and where most of the players, like normal college guys were,

37:24

I went to Gateway Church, because that was the connection with the family, and if you don't know that church,

37:30

Robert Morris, and Todd White was a member there for a while, crazy church in South Lake, in Dallas, big church, but you know, and I'm looking at this guy thinking, what does he know, about getting

37:42

God to do anything that he wants, he's just a coach of a little Baptist school, you know, it was

37:47

SBC school at the time, he was a model though, of genuine faith, he loved scripture, and over time

37:54

I began to see his life, I was home one time from a family holiday, or typically where players would go home, to see their family, and coach invited the guys over to the house, who were home and weren't going, or who were in Dallas still, and weren't going home, and I remember being in his house, and watching the way that his wife was, and he had five sons, five boys, and I remember looking at the way he was with them, and the way he carried himself, and he was calm, he was collected, he was biblical, he would rise early, he was in the word, and slowly but surely, that had a huge impact on my life, and that planted a massive seed though, the sovereignty of God was always looming in my mind, as some weird thing,

38:36

I never got drafted, never got God to do anything for me after that, with baseball in that regard, and I come out of DBU, had a great time, graduate from Dallas Baptist, and the next part of my testimony,

38:49

I would call the girl, just a few months after being home for the summer, and then into the fall,

38:54

I ended up meeting my now wife Christine, and I wasn't really serving the

38:59

Lord all out at that point, I got invited to a country concert, and so I played baseball, I liked country music, so I ended up at this concert, at Lake Elsinore Storm Stadium, Jason Aldean was in concert, one of my buddies invited me, so I was the third wheel, it was him, and his girlfriend, and me, and I remember seeing this gal as I just looked over, and it was

39:21

Christine, and for no reason, except obviously now looking back to providence of God, I looked over at my buddy

39:30

Jeff, who married Laura, who we're with, they have four kids, they live in Dallas, he's a Dallas firefighter now, serving the

39:36

Lord, I remember looking over at him, and he's like, what? And I said, I gotta know that girl, and he was like, what?

39:43

What is wrong with you? I said, I don't know, I gotta know that girl, and for no reason at all, and so I go on and on, and I'm trying to figure out a way to meet this girl, and I went,

39:52

I got it, and true story, I still had the Hummer, we had been tailgating, throwing the football around, hanging out, and the car had died, because the doors opened, it wasn't on, we had just been listening to music, and so the car had died, and I said,

40:05

I'm gonna ask him for a jump, he's like, and then what? I'm like, I don't know, I'll figure it out, but I got from concert seats, to the parking lot, to make my next move,

40:16

I don't know, but we'll see, so I walk over, and I ask her, and this other gal she's with, my now sister -in -law, hey gals, we're just sitting over there, my car died, and after the concert, would you be willing to give us a jump?

40:27

And they were like, yeah sure, like real polite, so I go back to the seats, like what'd they say? I'm like, they'll give us a jump, he's like great, like this,

40:33

I don't, well we need the jump anyway, but like, all right, so we end up walking, concert ends, we end up walking back towards the car, we're all striking up conversation, just talking, and my buddy ends up having a mutual friend, with her, and I'm just like, giving him the signal,

40:49

I keep talking, I have no idea what I'm gonna say to her, but I just, I gotta know her, and for whatever reasons, that God allows these things, don't go to Jason Aldean concerts, and try to meet girls, that's not the lesson here, at all, at all.

41:06

You know, the providence of God was working, even through that moment, isn't that amazing? That God is working through, a fool, me, and puts me in the right place, at the right time, seats away, from this gal, who has no correlation to my background, whatsoever, and,

41:29

I run into my now wife, we end up talking, we're on our way back to the car, and I said, hey are you guys coming to the concert again tomorrow, it was a

41:37

Sunday, the next day, and, they said, yeah are you, and I said yeah, but she has to sing at church, my buddy's girlfriend was singing the next day, on the worship team, and, that was a church they don't go to anymore, that you could be on the worship team, and then be out at Jason Aldean concerts, on Saturday night, but, which

41:56

I know, might be a little legalistic, it's okay, so, for whatever reason, she's singing, and they said, oh you're church people, this is what my sister -in -law says, she goes oh church people, well you're like her, she's a little church girl too, and she sasses

42:08

Christine, and, I said oh where are you going to church, and she's like, oh I've just been going to Saddleback, on my own, and listening to Rick Warren, and just kind of learning, and growing, and,

42:19

I'm like okay, and, that's cool, because Rick Warren is like whatever to me, at that point, like Saddleback's just this big church, some of you are like red flags, red flags, you know, and here we are, like, thank

42:31

God for his grace, okay, and so, I'm like oh that's awesome, you need to go to Saddleback, and you're learning about God, and so,

42:38

I said well, yeah let's meet up tomorrow, it'd be great to talk more, and get to know you, and so the next day, welcome to the concert, and I asked her if I could take her to dinner, and she says no,

42:47

I'm really busy, I got school and work, pretty much every day, I said all right, what are you doing tomorrow, she's like school and work, I'm like cool,

42:52

Tuesday, school and work, Wednesday, I remember doing that, like I wasn't giving up, and her sister says, she'll be free

42:59

Wednesday, she'll be free on Wednesday, and I was like all right, and turns out she had to switch shifts, she worked at TGI Fridays, and was a server there, so she switches her shift, with some other person, and we go in the state, and we end up talking, and talking, and talking, and we were polar opposite, she drove, she ended up driving a

43:18

Yaris, a Toyota Yaris, I had my Hummer, very different, she is introverted, she is mellow, hard working, blue collar, my father -in -law worked for a steel company at the time, he was in charge of metal decking, my mother -in -law is still to this day a teacher, and I'm trying to explain, yeah my family, ministry, and one of my,

43:44

I'm trying to explain how I have a Hummer, it's not making a lot of sense at this point, even in my mind, because the minute you meet blue collar, actually wealthy people, and you try to explain, well we're in ministry, and like wow, what ministry is that?

44:03

And so we end up talking, and here's what she starts asking questions about, so what's like the

44:14

Trinity and stuff like that? Because she's really new, she went to Azusa Pacific University, was in nursing there, and just wanted to know more about God, and so I would tell her stuff about the

44:24

Trinity, and it was true, I never said like my uncle that he's nine persons, or anything weird that you'd maybe heard online, she asked me about the

44:33

Father, and the Son, and the Holy Spirit, and I would explain each person of the Trinity, I knew my Bible, I knew verses,

44:38

I knew the Gospel, I knew how you could be saved, I just had all of this baggage with it, like second baptism, and speaking in tongues, and healing, and also weird teachings about the anointing, and what it meant to be called by God, there were a lot of different things, and slowly but surely,

44:59

I was challenged by family members, as they begin to understand there's this gal, and she's not going anywhere, she's just still in the picture, and so I remember

45:08

I wanted to introduce them, I kept her separate from my family for quite a while, because I knew where this was going, and one day it was my mom,

45:16

God bless her, I just talked to her earlier today, I'll explain more of that in the Q and A, but at that time my mom said, all right so this girl, is she spirit filled, and I was like mom don't you start that, yes she's spirit filled, we all get the

45:32

Holy Spirit when we get saved, because I had gone to a Baptist school, so I got at least that in New Testament survey, it was the basics, the basics, even though I was a kinesiology major, you still had to take

45:44

Old Testament survey, and New Testament survey, and there was a pastor, who was the pastor of First Baptist Burleson Texas, that was one of my professors, and I'll never forget, he had been listing off names on the roll, and he goes

46:01

Costi Han, like with a Texas twang, I'm like here, he goes you kin to Benny, and I said yes sir, he goes oh boy, and I was like all right, that was

46:12

DBU, and so he was nice to me, but he made a lot of jokes, when we got to the tongue section of the

46:23

New Testament, and so I had been talked to enough to know some things, and my mom said no no no, you know what

46:33

I mean, and I said no, and please don't, and I remember my family kind of figuring, this girl's not going anywhere, so we need to put the fix on her, it's time, she needs to become one of us, so she's going to marry

46:45

Costi, and so she had to go to different services, there is YouTube footage, if you find it,

46:51

I'll send you a free book, good luck, but she is at a particular service, it's a

46:59

Good Friday service, there's her hint, and it's at Uncle Benny Crusade, and it's a

47:05

Good Friday service, and she is in the crowd, and the camera keeps putting her on, I don't know why, for some reason, maybe they knew that I was dating her or whatever, she's lifting her hands and singing the songs, and my uncle prayed for her after, they tried to get her tongues, and tried to get her in, and she was very sweet and very kind, but very resistant internally,

47:23

Christine's just not into that stuff, and the longer she was around the family, the more she would resist it quietly, but all the while the family began to think, there was really something wrong with her, and so there were prophecies at that time, one family member came to me and said, don't care how nice she is, don't care how pretty she is, she's not your wife,

47:45

I said, oh yeah, she's not, okay, how do you know? Well God told me, she's not your wife, one particular family member said, she'll ruin the anointing on your life, she'll ruin your ministry, there were so many things attached to this woman, that were going to lead to the demise of my calling, as the next in line, and all she had to do, at that time in my mind, was just babble in tongues, how hard can that be?

48:12

Can you just give me something? So last ditch effort, we're at this conference,

48:20

I'm preaching a youth conference, in Kelowna, British Columbia, the interior of BC, and we're up there preaching at a church, the couple that were the co -pastors of this church, were our old children's ministry pastors, at the church my dad pastored, and they invited me to do a youth conference,

48:40

I was beginning to preach a lot more in that time, and so we go, and the conference is going great,

48:45

I'm just preaching good stuff, normal stuff, like you'd probably let me have told it to the youth group here, not crazy heresy, the whole thing ends, they had me preach

48:57

Sunday, I preach a normal message, and at the end, the wife says to me, during the closing song,

49:08

I want you to end this, by getting them all baptized in the

49:14

Holy Spirit, I said, okay, like that, what do you mean?

49:21

Altar call for salvation? And she goes, no you know what I mean Kosti, they give them tongues,

49:27

I'm like uh oh, because I was starting to have the doubts, because Christine wasn't getting it, and I know her, and I'm like something's up, maybe

49:38

I don't know what, but something's up, and so I get up there, and they line up all of the youth, all of them, and I begin to pray for them, and I wouldn't put my hands on their head, because there were things happening just inside of my heart,

49:52

I was getting hesitant, I was getting real insecure with the way that we had done ministry, I couldn't put my finger on it, but I was going

49:57

I don't want to do that, so I would put my hands on their shoulders, and I was praying for them like this, I'd say oh

50:03

Lord, fill them with your spirit, bless them in their life, help them to follow you in Jesus name, amen, and I was praying for normal people, normal ways, and she had had enough, and the woman pastor grabs the microphone, so I do all,

50:19

I pray and I'm like love you guys, God bless you, and I walk up, she grabs the microphone and goes, I want every hand raised, and I want every eye closed, you young people, you're about to get the baptism, fire of the

50:29

Holy Spirit gonna come upon you, thank you brother hand, and I'm just like oh, all right, here she goes, and she starts doing the job

50:36

I didn't do obviously, and Christine's standing there, I'll never forget it, she puts her hands in the air, and she's standing there just silent, and her little like lips begin to move, and I don't know what she was saying, but it was like the like, typically like stuff, whatever, and I remember looking over, and I started to cry,

50:58

I started to tear up, and I thought okay, she's getting it, like crazy woman pastor who took the mic, maybe she's right, now she's getting it, all right, the joke's on me, obviously

51:07

I'm being dry spiritually, I'm not doing what I should do, and I look over, and so the whole thing ends, we leave, they give us hugs, everything's cordial, we get in the car, and I said so what's up, and she just starts crying,

51:23

Christine's crying, and we're driving back to BC, it's just a few hours, and back to Vancouver, and she says just that wasn't it,

51:36

I'm like you got, like you got, I saw you, you're moving your lips, you're doing the little stuff, like you feel like it was coming, like we're there, she's just bawling, she's like no, like I was just saying like nothing, literally nothing, and I was like man, she's like this is not gonna work, like we're pretty much going through the, we're engaged,

51:57

I can't marry you, like you can't get tongues, we've tried everything, even Uncle Benny, Benny Hinn has prayed for you, like hands on your head, which now

52:06

I'm more thankful that she didn't catch anything, but you get it in that regard, my dad has prayed for her, everybody's prophesied for her and against her, and now we're at this little service where apparently you're gonna get tongues, and you know, so pretty dejected, we end up deciding we should check the

52:28

Bible, and I know that sounds real just funny, right, it's like you think, but we had not thought we should check the teaching that we're hearing against the

52:42

Bible, so I don't know how we got there, I don't know if it was Google or what, but we ended up in 1

52:50

Corinthians 12 .30, where Paul is clearly, I don't care if you're a prosperity gospel person, or you're just brand new, it's obvious through just basic grammar that he's being rhetorical, he says not all have gifts of healing, not all speak in tongues, do they, do they, do they, it's all rhetorical, the answer is no, he's talking about how there's different gifts that people operate in the body, and not all will do these things, and I remember looking and just thinking, wow, like we're off the hook, you're off the,

53:23

I think we can get married, we can do this, and she's crying and I'm crying, I'm like okay, we're all right, and there were multiple beliefs at that time, this is the summer, right before our wedding, we got married

53:35

October 12, 2012, and this conference happened that summer, and for a few months, those cracks in the dam start to get bigger, and bigger, and bigger, and bigger, and pretty soon,

53:50

I start thinking, I gotta get out of here, a buddy of mine reaches out, I'm in the basement in the

53:56

Canada house, and he's like hey, how's it going man, you big world changer, he's from California, he's part of a church plant, he wasn't in the same vein as us theologically, he was a friend that was in sort of the seeker movement, and we had ties there,

54:10

Christine had gone to that, their little church plant was just starting, I had been to a couple of services, and then we were gonna move to Canada anyway, and I was over there already, and then she moved over there, and was living in a wing of our house, because in Middle Eastern families, one of the future in -laws will move in, if in my case it's the wife, she moves in to her own wing, my mother teaches her how to cook, she learns how to clean, she learns my favorite meals,

54:32

I know it sounds a little chauvinistic, but it's just how it works in that culture, not a bad idea in today's world, but things are getting more traditional, and feminism is on the rise, so it might be helpful for some ladies to learn how to be

54:49

Titus too, but probably just as helpful for some young men to figure it out too, and learn how to be men, and so Christine's living in the home, in that side of the house, and all of us like one big happy Greek family about to get married, and conflict begins to erupt, so my friend calls me, and I said it's going terrible, he's like what's up, like she can't get tongues, but I'm pretty sure she's not obligated to speak in it, the family's not sold on her, but the wedding's in like two months, she feels spiritually abused, she's stuck,

55:28

I just found her like a week ago in the basement, hyperventilating, she had asthma, and had a crazy breathing attack, and was like slipping unconscious, and having a hard time, and all this stuff was happening, and there was some nebulizer

55:42

I had to get, and like put this thing, this little thing that helped her breathe, and she's going through a lot of these things under the weight of spiritual abuse, and he said man,

55:53

I think it's time for you to stop trying to be your dad's hero, and please your family, and start being your wife's hero, she's your first ministry, and you're about to get married, and I remember hearing those words, and they hit me like a haymaker, that she was my first ministry,

56:09

I was like what in the world, in my thought pattern, and the way I was trained, is ministry, you're married to the ministry, ministry is number one, and the family, everything bows to that, because that's the anointing of God on your life, and you act like a monarchical king, in the lineage of Israel, where you do what you want, and everybody bows, and I remember thinking, like what in the world am

56:30

I doing, so I asked him, and he said, you got to take her on a date, and you got to tell her you're done, I was like what, you're crazy, he goes yeah, you take her on a date, you tell her you're done, you're not going to put her through this anymore, you're going to man up, love her like Christ, and ask her where she wants to move, like what, no this is a bad idea, this is, we're going to be on our own, like he said no ask her, and what opportunities do you have right now,

56:54

I said well I got a job offer in Dallas, to get involved with some sports training, and stuff like that, I could do that, my brother -in -law started a church in Florida, I could go work for them, he offered us to kind of get out of here a little bit, connected to family, but it's away from here, and that's it, and he said well

57:08

I'll give you a third option, both of those options, you'll have money, you'll be fine, but a third option is, you come here, you join the church plant, you be our youth guy, and we can only pay you a few hundred bucks a month, so you're going to have to go get a job, figure that out, but at least you'll be in a stable place, and you'll be away from all of that, and you can just see what the

57:30

Lord has from there, so I took her on a date, to the Beecher Street Cafe, in Crescent Beach, White Rock, Canada, and I told her all this, and she's just bawling,

57:40

I mean people in the restaurant probably thought I was breaking up with her, like she was just bawling, and I said where do you want to go, and she said

57:47

I don't want to be anywhere near your family, no offense, I said no problem, she said I'm not going to Florida, so don't want to be there, and Dallas would be great, be a good life, it'd be you know, probably have a home, and get to kind of be a family sooner, but you won't be in ministry, and I really think you're called to be in ministry,

58:05

I think that calling is on your life, and whatever that means, I think you should be in a church setting of some sort, and California will be hard, we're going to be broke, we're going to have nothing, we're away from everything and everyone, we have no lifelines, but I think that'll be a healthy place for us, that's where I want to go,

58:23

I said okay, so we told my parents, and there was a massive blow up, and she was the black sheep, and they said you did this to him, you've pulled him from the family, we were cut off completely, they said that's it, you're done, and that was it, and so we packed up our cars, she stole the

58:45

Yaris, and we drove to California, and joined this church plant,

58:50

I called an old friend from the baseball world, and got a job, basically making 10 bucks an hour, throwing batting practice to 12 year olds, for a little while, and then started getting involved in training athletically, and doing different things for athletes, and so I had a stable job,

59:03

I was the youth pastor technically, at this church plant, and that's where we kind of land the plane now, with the pastor, so it was the coach, the girl, the pastor, and I would say right there 20, this is 2012, within six months of that moment, moving there,

59:21

I get there, and my boss is a woman pastor, the church is a seeker driven church plant, and Rick Warren's like our hero, he had coached a little bit of the church plant, and our pastor at the time, his name was

59:39

Tony Wood Anthony, some people know him as now, was going through his own little process, as I was kind of just enjoying not being in insanity, and I remember him coming in one day to the office, and saying hey we're going to do this thing, it's like what?

59:57

It's like it's called expository preaching, like what? He said yeah,

01:00:02

I've been kind of going back to my roots, it's like what roots? He's like well dad you know graduated from DTS, and you know my grandfather was a pastor, up in Washington State, and you know he's good pre -meal dispy guy, and literal historical grammatical hermeneutics,

01:00:20

I'm like what are you talking about? He's like and I've been in this kind of mega church game, for a while, and it's just I'm sick of the rat race to be honest, sick of trying to convince people to come to church, every week is the new thing,

01:00:34

I'm sick of the hype, I just I want to do this can't be it, I just want to do church biblically, like you know

01:00:42

I'm like okay sure, I'm enjoying this, it's not whatever

01:00:48

I was in, I can't put my finger on all of it, but whatever that thing that makes people go, oh you're a hymn, that thing isn't here, and at the same time we had like Christine Kane, had come to preach for us, and we had done all these things, that just dabbled in that world, and Tony was very popular in the mega church world, and was preaching a little bit with Furtick, and Louie Giglio, and some different guys on the circuit, and so for him to be exhausted by this was really weird, and so he goes we're going to go through the gospel of John, he's like okay, like what's the hook, like what's the, he's like no it's just going to be called

01:01:22

John, like got it, he said the subtitle will be glory came down,

01:01:31

I'm like okay yeah that sounds, that seems that's kind of cool, it's got a little glory came down, like glory clouds glory like all right, he's like yeah we just we're going to preach through it, like verse by verse,

01:01:40

I was like okay, and I remember we got to John five, and nothing had really changed, nothing externally, we get to John five, and sorry right around this time actually, just before I get to preach out of John five, there was something, he had gone up there one

01:01:59

Sunday like a crazy man, and he had said you're going to see something different today, the church was growing, few hundred people at a church plant, and it was growing, he said it's just going to be

01:02:10

Haley up here with a guitar, and she's going to sing some hymns, and if you don't like it go find another church, so we still had like women in leadership, my boss was a woman pastor, like incremental changes here people, but things were happening, and he said we're not paying musicians anymore, and if you're not saved you're not playing in the band, because we were hiring like boy band musicians, and people were playing the lights out of the place, so we were growing fast, and so there was a bit of an exodus, and he said she's going to sing some hymns, and then

01:02:39

I'm going to preach, and that's the service today, and there were some people that were like what, we're going to Saddleback, we're like go to Saddleback, you know that kind of thing, and so at the time we're literally like three, four miles from Saddleback, so that is a reality, and so that had happened, and we felt like we were still being edgy, like we were the rebels of the seeker movement, kind of like we're going to just be more biblical, and preach through books of the

01:03:04

Bible, and in you know more than three weeks, like I saw one guy not long ago, he's like we're going through the book of Galatians, like awesome, he's like so for the next three weeks, we're just going to cover it, it's like cool, got it, three sermons on Galatians, like and you know some of us come from like, we're on our 98th sermon in the book of Jude, and you're like there's, that's called a word study, you know, just look at the word the this morning, just the, the definite article, you're like okay, all right we're in deep, you know, and so we just thought we were edgy, because we were going through a book of the

01:03:48

Bible, like that's it, and I'm up preaching, I get it's my turn, and Tony throws me a commentary, and he says hey, my dad's been dropping off books again,

01:03:58

I'm like sweet, and his dad, this is backstory, his dad had thousands of books in his library, but he refused to give a single one of them to Tony, because he was doing crazy, you know

01:04:08

Stephen Furtick type of ministry, and he said you can't give him none of my books, you probably don't even read books, unless they're by some crazy guy, and how to grow your church in some pagan way, well his dad starts dropping off books, so whatever was happening, which of course we know now behind the scenes,

01:04:24

Tony was going through this whole conversion thing, where he was just gonna be a different pastor, felt like he was already saved, but was being sanctified and growing, he starts giving me books, and so he gives me a commentary, and goes hey for your

01:04:37

John five sermon, the healing at the pool of Bethesda, this will help keep the train on the tracks, and so I looked down, and real story, like he was just quick in the office, this will help you keep the train on the track, commentary, good stuff, look it up, follow it, do your study first, but you know that'll be helpful, and I look, and it's a burgundy like commentary by John MacArthur, I'm like alright whatever, and I don't even think much about John MacArthur at the time, it doesn't click that like he's the guy, like if you had

01:05:03

Batman and the Joker, like my uncle and MacArthur, that's like you know, that's all going on, so I just look,

01:05:12

I'm like whatever, and I remembered, I'm going through the study, and at the time I had been taught, you've heard of OICA, observation, interpretation, correlation, application,

01:05:23

I've been taught some basics at this point, so I'm doing my preliminaries, and I'm going through the text, and things are sticking out in John five one through 17,

01:05:30

I've got the healing at the pool of Bethesda, and first of all Jesus heals one out of a multitude, and I'm like that's weird, just one okay, thought it's like always your will to heal everyone, so just one, and then if you keep going down in the narrative,

01:05:45

John records that Jesus heals the man, and immediately he gets up, and I'm thinking that sticks out, and in the

01:05:55

NASB, my Bible at that time it was italicized, so obviously it's put in there for emphasis, and immediately meaning the speed, and the quickness of the whole thing, but then

01:06:05

I'm like well the man complained, so when Jesus said do you want to get healed, he said well every time

01:06:11

I try he tells a story, and well that's an unbelieving spirit, that's a complaining negative confession, that's weird, and then you keep going in the narrative, and the

01:06:25

Pharisees come and ask the man, who told you you could pick up your pallet and walk, it's the Sabbath, and the man says, well the man who healed me told me

01:06:35

I could, then John records something very interesting, he says for the man did not know who

01:06:40

Jesus was, Jesus had slipped away, and the word that he uses there for know, this Greek word

01:06:46

Ido, which means basically perceive, the man didn't even have any idea who

01:06:52

Jesus was, he didn't perceive that he was the son of God, that he was the Savior, so now

01:06:58

I'm looking thinking okay, we got immediate healing of one guy out of a multitude, who was a whiner and a complainer, and then he doesn't even know who

01:07:07

Jesus is, so I'm going how did he have enough faith to get healed, how did he move, like okay so commentary time, we're going to figure this out, and so I open up the commentary, and MacArthur just tees off in that section, and he basically says, that unlike many alleged modern healings,

01:07:31

Jesus's healings were complete and instantaneous, with or without faith, and he goes on to say, one of the cruelest lies of contemporary faith healers, is that the people they fail to heal, are guilty of sinful unbelief, a lack of faith, or negative confession, and MacArthur says, this man is a prime example of Jesus healing, in a sovereign way, and that word sovereign, just reverberates in my mind, never forget it, and I think back to coach

01:08:05

Hefner, and sovereignty, and God doing what he wants, when he wants, how he wants, to who he wants, going what in the world, and MacArthur unpacks there, the cruelest lie of faith healers, and I remember thinking, that's exactly what

01:08:22

I always believed, that's what we taught, that's what I took, hook line and sinker, like we're this, like whoever this guy is, this is true, this is absolutely right, and so I end up preaching it, that Sunday, and the date of that particular week, it was

01:08:46

April 30th, 2012, so now over 10 years ago, and sorry, 2013, and so 10 years ago, and I remember preaching it that Sunday, just like a fire hose, more like a shotgun spray,

01:09:03

I was everywhere, I was yelling about everything, I'm glad they didn't record it, it didn't make the halls of history of the church, in the

01:09:11

YouTube channel there, but I went off, and the reason

01:09:16

I did, is because at that moment in study, I began to weep, just cry uncontrollably, it was as though for years, the

01:09:25

Lord had been priming the pump, there were cracks in the dam, but the whole thing just burst, and I was weeping, it was that moment, that particular afternoon,

01:09:33

I repented of my sin, I told the Lord I'm sorry for believing that, for teaching it, I told him

01:09:38

I want to preach the true gospel, I want to be a pastor, I want to serve him faithfully, I'll do whatever he wants me to do,

01:09:44

I'll never do that again, I don't want to be part of it, all of that, and you can obviously know now, because hindsight's 20 -20, that Jesus is sheep, know his voice, you're always a sheep,

01:09:57

I remember Justin telling me this years later, he goes you weren't a goat that turned into a sheep, you were a sheep that was drawn, and so for years prior, were there things happening to you,

01:10:10

I was like totally, like doubts, questions, at one point I preached a string of sermons at my dad's church, when

01:10:17

I was starting to preach a lot at his church, on Job, I'll never forget the weirdest,

01:10:22

I still have them, they're on my computer, they're not very good, I'm preaching Job's story at my dad's church, about how he suffered, and if you're a believer you're gonna suffer, there were weird things

01:10:32

I was starting to say, and I would study, they weren't very good studies, but I would stay up late, and I was

01:10:37

Googling everything, and I was looking at blue letter Bible, and random things, I'm like I'm pretty sure there's people who say stuff about these things that are helpful,

01:10:46

I didn't know, I should get commentaries and all that, but there were things happening already, and I wanted to know more, and I wanted to serve the

01:10:54

Lord, but didn't know how or where, and I remember going into Tony's office, kicked the door in basically, and said like all of it was lies, it was lies, and I'm gonna tell everyone about this, and they need to be taken down, and they're liars, they're cheating people, this whole thing makes sense, like they're literally abusing people, this can't go on, and I'm like I'm gonna this, and I'm gonna that, and he's like sit down,

01:11:20

I'm like all right, so I sit down, and he said what do you want to be, and I said

01:11:28

I want to be a pastor, and he said what does a pastor do, I'm like preach the word, shepherd the flock, serve the church, he's like yeah, so you need to do that, that's where it all starts, if you want to be a pastor, and then if God, since he's sovereign now right,

01:11:46

I'm like yep, if he decides that you're gonna be helpful on these issues, or you will speak about these issues, then he'll decide when and how, but you just focus on being faithful, he's like all right, so basically it was like, you're gonna sit down, you're gonna shut your mouth, and you go back to your office, and do your job, within weeks

01:12:05

I was stripped of my title, I was not the student's pastor, I was a PIT, pastor in training, it was like a pledge at a fraternity, it's like there's a few of us that got stripped of everything, and I was thankful I still got a paycheck to do some ministry, but it was small tasks that the elders would ask me to do, and I ended up getting into biblical counseling, like not being one, but getting biblical counsel, there was intentional discipleship,

01:12:33

Tony started to give me books, and one of them was expository preaching by John MacArthur, and I was like, this is like a thing, like they do this, there's like chapters on it, he's like yes, this is what

01:12:43

I've been looking through, this is what happened, another staff meeting, Lindsay is her name, she walked in, tears in her eyes, and said to all of us, with Pastor Tony of course, with her, gentlemen

01:12:55

I am not a pastor, I was never a pastor, there is no such thing as a woman pastor, and I'm here now to be the pastoral assistant,

01:13:04

I'll be serving and administrating here in the office and helping, and that is my role, and to this day they're at the church, and her husband's a deacon, dear friends of ours, and the church went through a few name changes, and at one point

01:13:18

Tony came in my office, he's like, we're gonna be a Bible church, it's like okay, and he's like we need a name, like we're gonna change the name, we're gonna go, you know what

01:13:25

Bible churches are? I'm like no, he's like there are these churches, they're like Bible churches, and I'm like all right, he's like there's this organization called the

01:13:35

IFCA, and MacArthur was in it, and Alex Montoya, there's all these guys, I met them all, they're gonna come do seminars, and start training our men, like okay, they're from the masters, like okay, and he said so what do you want to be?

01:13:46

What do you think? And our church at the time went from, it was called Moment Church, which was like the seeker name they picked, in the weird little like marketing brainstorm, to Church at the

01:13:57

Mission, which we were at a rescue mission, and we were super ecumenical at that time, so he's like we're gonna go to rescue missions, we were just at the rescue mission, because the guy gave it to us for free, and like a typical seeker church, we're like we're gonna turn this into a marketing campaign, so we're like where would

01:14:11

Jesus do church? At a rescue mission, we're the real church, and so we became Church at the Mission, and then that he's like hey,

01:14:18

I've been reading this book on ecclesiology, the doctrine of the church, I'm like yeah, he's like turns out the church isn't just for the poor people at the rescue mission, it's for the rich, the poor, everyone in between, so we can't be

01:14:30

Church at the Mission anymore, we can't be ecumenical, I'm like what's ecumenical? He's like don't worry about it, we can't do this, we have to be a church for everyone, we're like all right, and he's like what should we call it?

01:14:38

I'm like I don't know, how about mission, just keep mission in there, because the mission of God, but like mission

01:14:44

Bible, Bible church sounds good, you keep saying that, he's like done, so he runs back, buys the domain, and missionbible .org,

01:14:51

if you look it up, that's the church, they're doing great, and I just preached there last week, or two weeks ago, and so all that happens, behind the scenes,

01:15:00

I had sent a thank you email to GTY, their info, because I had started to watch their stuff, and my wife

01:15:11

Christine, I was not like bought into a few things, my wife Christine was taking the whole thing, hook line and sinker, so we're at Lifeway, and she wants a pink

01:15:19

John MacArthur study Bible, and I'm like no, she's like why? She had a little coupon, and I was like no no, this guy, so he was helpful, like the commentary, all this stuff is good, a lot of good things, let's not go too far, he doesn't believe in the

01:15:32

Holy Spirit, and doesn't believe that people can get healed, like there's a whole section in that Bible, no way, she's like I really want this

01:15:39

Bible, my wife's like short, like a little five foot two, she's small but mighty I call her, and she's like I'm getting this

01:15:45

Bible, like a little foot stomp, like in Lifeway, you can't have a fight in Lifeway, we're Christians, and so it was before all of the stuff, now everybody apparently had a fight in Lifeway, but had a fight with Lifeway, so that's all happening, and I'm like fine, but when we get home,

01:16:02

I'm gonna highlight the sections in 1 Corinthians 12, 13 and 14, where he's this cessationist thing, where they don't believe in the

01:16:09

Holy Spirit, she's like you do whatever you want, I'm like I'm gonna do that, so our kids aren't jaded by this man in those areas, but the rest of it's fine, and so no joke, true story, within days,

01:16:23

I'm reading the Pink MacArthur Study Bible daily, true story, and so at that point, it was all

01:16:30

I could do to just send, I poured my entire heart out, I wrote one of those essays that you just send in, and you don't care if anyone reads it, you're just like I gotta get this off my chest, and so I sent that in the info at GTY, and this guy named

01:16:42

Travis Allen ends up reaching out to me, he was the managing director at the time, and he invited me to lunch, and him and another guy named

01:16:50

Jay Flowers, invited me to a Chinese restaurant, and they began to just kick the tires hard, and I had permission to speak freely, so I did, and they would correct me, and then quantify what happened, so I would say things, and Travis would go well, so the

01:17:07

Bible says this, this, this, this, this, so I know you probably felt that way, but here's actually what was happening inside your heart, and your mind according to what the

01:17:13

Bible says, and I was like man, you guys all do that, this is great, like everything's biblical, so I could just say anything,

01:17:20

I'm good, he's like yeah, you just say things how they are, and then we'll help you out, I was like okay, like it was the first time

01:17:27

I'd ever had men talk like that, and I said I wanna know my Bible like that, and I remember Travis saying, so have you been biblically baptized since your true conversion, and I was like oh no

01:17:36

I haven't, but wow should I, he's like well yeah, your first baptism was definitely a false one, and you weren't really a

01:17:44

Christian, he's like that's true, but then everyone at the church will know, he's like yep, it's kind of the point, got it, so I got baptized, and they sent me a ton of books, and one of the books was

01:17:58

Master's Plan for the church, they sent two copies, one for Tony, one for me, and a ton of other books, and then these boxes showed up one day, and Travis said hey care package coming, and it was the rest of the commentaries, because I obviously had one from the

01:18:10

Gospel of John, there's two, and then I had the rest of them, and Strange Fire was in there, I was like what's this, and he had said hey, before getting into too many of those other books, you should watch

01:18:21

Strange Fire, there's DVDs and a book, I was like okay, and I turned it on, and spent days just having a whole crisis of the will, and stayed in our room,

01:18:32

Christine at that time was so kind, she's in the living room, night after night, I was in our master bedroom, and I don't know why, she wanted to enjoy dinner and relax, and I was in there like are you kidding me, and she's like,

01:18:43

I just, you go through whatever you're going through, and then tell me on the other side where we're going, because I have no,

01:18:50

I do not have that baggage, but you're my husband, and then that was where this guy, who was sitting down when he was preaching,

01:18:58

I didn't know why at the time, but he has the session called the devilish puppet, something of the word of faith movement or something, and I'm like who is this guy, there's

01:19:09

PowerPoint slides and everything else, and so that's how I got exposed to Justin Peters, and all of that, there's a million details since,

01:19:18

I ended up going to seminary and all of those things, but the biggest breakthrough was simple, it was

01:19:24

God's word, and it was God's word through faithful people, who just told me the truth, and then loved me enough to walk with me, be kind to me, be gracious in the midst of it, but absolutely unwavering in the truth, and so if there's anything you take away, it's that you and I ought to leave it all in the field, with people, walk with them, keep the door open for them, but keep speaking the truth to them in the midst of that, there is a small group, that you should keep far away from you, there's a small group that you want nothing to do with, and Jude speaks to that, we'll talk about that in one of the sessions, but for the most part, you and I are on planet earth as plan

01:20:05

A, the Lord if he had no more plans to save people, he'd just pull us out of here right now, but he's left the church here to be a beacon, and to be a witness, and so I'm thankful for people who did that for me, and I know it took a little too long on this session, but thanks for listening, thanks for your faithfulness, and thanks for indirectly, somehow maybe your support of ministries, like grace to you and others, and supporting

01:20:30

Justin as a missionary, leads to souls like mine, being saved and sanctified, and the

01:20:37

Lord using that, then we get to be in ministry, and that cycle continues, and one day you go to heaven, you die, and you toss your crowns back at his feet, and say it was all for you anyway, it was a privilege to be used by the king, let me pray for us, and then we'll shift to whatever 10 minute break,

01:20:54

Father thank you for saving all of us, what do we have that we haven't received, as Paul also says, who is adequate for these things, the answer is obvious, no one, and so thank you that you'd let us be your children, that you'd allow us to be useful during our time here on earth, continue to edify, and strengthen, and encourage, and affirm, my brothers and my sisters here, as we celebrate your word, your goodness to us, your kindness, and the glory of the gospel, by using wisdom as well, and discernment, so we can reach others, in Jesus name, amen.