Renee Esquerra Interview

Welcome to No Compromise Radio, a ministry coming to you from Bethlehem Bible Church in West Boylston.

No Compromise Radio is a program dedicated to the ongoing proclamation of Jesus Christ based on the theme in Galatians 2, verse 5, where the

Apostle Paul said, But we did not yield in subjection to them for even an hour, so that the truth of the gospel would remain with you.

In short, if you like smooth, watered -down words to make you simply feel good, this show isn't for you.

By purpose, we are first biblical, but we can also be controversial. Stay tuned for the next 25 minutes as we're called by the divine trumpet to summon the troops for the honor and glory of her

King. Here's our host, Pastor Mike Abendroth. Welcome to No Compromise Radio, a ministry.

My name is Mike Abendroth, and it is March 912. The good news about doing radio with the virus shut down quarantine is there's just a few of us here in the studio.

So while there might not be 10 people, there are a couple here. And one, he just kind of wandered up to the microphone and said,

I've never done radio. And so I guess I interviewed the guy, Rene Esguerra. What's going on? Nothing much. Thanks for having me here.

This is fun. Rene, how did we initially meet? Well, Luke and I went to master's together.

So I don't remember exactly what, when, but I'd imagine it would have been through Luke.

That would have been funny if it was, yeah, I think it must've been, did you come up to Santa Cruz or was

I just there on campus or something? I might've met you when you moved him in as a freshman. So, okay.

Remember how he was crying and stuff and he needed a friend, he was super nervous and everything. And you came alongside.

Yeah. I remember that. And I appreciate the direct deposit that you guys keep giving to me for being his friend still to this day.

So Rene, tell me where you're from. Tell our listeners where you're from originally. I'm originally from the

Philippines. I was born and raised there, lived there for the first 17 years of my life. Okay. And tell me about the, when

I think of Philippines, I think about, at least spiritually, I think about some

Muslim factions or some Muslim influence. And I think there's a lot of Roman Catholics, but I do hear a lot of evangelicals are there in ministering.

So what's the lay of the land spiritually in the Philippines? Muslims are probably a small minority, probably 5%.

It might be bigger now. I haven't really been paying attention to it, but it's mostly a

Catholic country, probably 70 to 80 % Catholic. We have a lot of Spanish influence from when they were there hundreds of years ago.

So Catholicism is probably the first, the main religion out there. And Christianity, probably the smallest minority of all three of those.

And you grew up as a Catholic? No, I was actually raised in a Christian home. So really thankful for that.

My parents were professing believers and so are my extended family. Okay. So you're 17, you're in the

Philippines and you say to yourself, I probably should go to a Christian school. But since Fuller Seminary doesn't have undergrad,

I guess I go to master's. Is that how it works? You know what? I actually was trying to get in contact with Westmont. I thought

I'd live by the beach. Okay. And they never responded. And so what about, what's that other school right there in Malibu?

Pepperdine? Pepperdine. I never knew about Pepperdine. I found Westmont. I don't know how I found Westmont, but I thought, you know what,

I'll get in contact with their admissions office. Now you said beach. Are there surf beaches?

I know you like to surf. Do people surf a lot in the Philippines? It's a small culture, but I've been a couple of times.

It's far. It's a trek to go surfing. How many actual islands are in the Philippines? Do we know?

Do you, high tide or low tide? 700, or no, 7 ,107, depending on the tide.

Okay. Yeah. Well, I'm wondering if I wanted to become a Filipino citizen, if I'd have to memorize that, to know that, right?

Because when you became an American citizen, you had certain things you had to study, right? What was the hardest question they asked you?

They were all easy. Yeah. Yeah. Okay. It's basic US history. And you said to me, you spoke better English than the person who was interviewing you.

Yeah. So at 17, you come to the United States and were you a Christian then? I was.

I was saved later in high school. Okay. And that's kind of when I decided I wanted to go to a

Christian school. Renee, I've never asked you this question, so it's interesting to me to find out.

How did you get saved? I mean, you grew up in a Christian home, right? We have different options we hear about a lot, and it's some kind of drug addict, and then they're saved, a prostitute, they're saved.

And then we have church kids. They can't really figure out exactly because there's not some kind of crisis.

Do you fit into either of those categories or somewhere in between? Yeah. Probably somewhere in between.

I think it was a little bit hard for me because my friends in school, none of them were believers.

They were Catholics, but nominal Catholics. So they weren't devout

Catholics at all, so they did whatever they wanted to do. But there was an internal struggle for me. I wanted to fit in with those guys.

They were my friends growing up. But every Sunday, I'd still be brought to church by my parents. And I also had friends there.

And slowly, when I was in youth group, the church I grew up in wasn't really a good, solid

Bible teaching church. But the youth pastor while I was there was very faithful in just preaching the word.

I think he's here now actually in Maryland. You should get in touch with him. I should. Say thank you. I should.

You know, I appreciate as I look back in my life and see how God has providentially placed people. I just wanted to make sure you knew that this is what the

Lord has done in my life. And one of the people I want to thank the Lord for is you.

Yeah, I should do that because he was faithful in just preaching the word. Every Saturday, he'd have a

Bible study with whoever wanted to join. And he walked through Romans with all of us.

That is wonderful. And it makes me think, Rene, that how many times do we teach the Bible? And we'll get to this in a moment with you and you're helping out with high school students at Grace Church.

And you're teaching them and you're going over and over and over. Does anybody ever listen? Do they ever get it?

Can they ever grasp this? Will they ever learn or grow? And you know, if you're not careful, you can become frustrated.

And then all of a sudden you think, you know what, years later, you see somebody learning, growing. Now they're a teacher.

Now they're a Sunday school teacher. And you think, you know what? I had a little part of that person's, you know, walk with the

Lord as he used me, a frail instrument. And so the guy in Maryland would probably be happy to hear from you. Yeah. Thanks for reminding me.

I need to get in touch with him. His name is Roe. Really? Okay. And so your name,

Rene, we, you've told me several times what Rene means and I like it.

It gives me that theological punch. It's not as exciting as who is like God, Michael, but it's pretty close.

Yeah. Rene is born again in French, like Renaissance. Okay. I like that. Yeah. So it's almost like regen.

You could be called regen. I would stick with Rene, I think. And is

Rene a common name in the church? Not at all. I think if it were, if somebody was named

Rene, it would probably be Rene with the, with the short, shorter vowel sound, one

E instead of two E's. Okay. So when my mom named me, it was Michael without an A. So a lot of people called me

Michelle. Was there ever a time you thought, why'd you call me Rene, mom? I asked my parents why they named you

Rene and they said, we liked Rene Zellweger. I don't know if they were joking or not.

I never asked them again. So. Okay. Wow. All right. All right. So that describes your psychological profile. You know,

I think I have an older brother and I think my parents only wanted two children, a boy and a girl.

Okay. And out came Rene. All right. So maybe they were planning on naming her Rene. And what's your last name mean, something like a warrior or something?

This is war. Probably. I don't really know what it is. It's Spanish. Esguerra. Have you ever gotten in a fist fight before?

When I was a kid. Okay. When I was in high school. Did you win or lose? Somebody saw us and stopped it. So I'll say it's raw.

All right. So you get saved. You come out to Los Angeles, pretty far from the beach, but you can get there in 45 minutes or something like that.

Yeah, not too bad. And so had you ever heard of John MacArthur before? From Roe, from the guy.

Oh, okay. Yeah. From that church. And that was the reason why I found Master's. Okay. And so you start at Master's University, it was called the college at the time.

And what were you studying? I was studying biblical languages and switched over to biblical exposition.

Seriously? Is that what you got your degree in? Biblical exposition? Uh -huh. I did not know that. Uh -huh. Did that help you find a job in the real world?

Nope. Well, of course, it's fine for people to take, but I remember telling

Luke, don't take biblical exposition as a major because you're going to get out and you're going to go, oh. But anyway.

It took me a while to get a job, so I learned my lesson. But you know, I don't have any regrets.

All right. So you and Luke meet. Did you go to Israel together? Went to Israel together, 2015.

Like what was the craziest thing you guys did? I don't mean tattle on Luke, but just something that was wonderful, crazy, a memory that you'll never forget.

I think I told you this a couple of days ago, but we were in Eilat, which is the southern tip of Israel. And it's almost like their version of Vegas, strips of mall or hotels, and you kind of just walk around.

And we had the night free. They let us roam around Eilat. And we decided we'd jump in to as many hotel pools as we can.

So I think we ended up going to six different hotel pools. And the last one, I think the people that worked at the hotel threatened to call the police on us.

So how do you say police in Hebrew? I don't know. But nobody got arrested that trip?

Nobody. Okay, good. Lots of people love to go to Israel, and they say things,

Renee, like, you know, now that I've been there, the Bible comes alive. And I know what they mean, right?

Because they can see things geographically, how far this walk would have been, where Jesus would have walked up to Decapolis, how long it would have taken, going up to Jerusalem.

It's not north, but it's really going south, it's going up in elevation, that stuff I get. But do you think there's a, do you think, what about people that never go to Israel?

Can't the Bible come alive for them? How do you work through that? Well, you know, I was talking to someone before, I think it was before I went to Israel, and I was telling him how excited

I was for the Bible to come alive. And he said, you know, the Bible's already alive. I think a better way to put it is it puts color into it.

So you, it paints a better picture of what Israel and how all these things fit together when you're reading the

Bible. So for those that don't go to Israel, I mean, I don't know, it's such a unique experience.

Maybe people that go to Israel, maybe that's why they believe in the millennial kingdom. And maybe people that don't, that's why they're

Amil. Do you think that might work? I don't know. I don't want to say what I believe in. Well, I regularly get asked the question, you know, could you do some more shows on what your eschatology is and stuff like that?

So maybe as time goes on, right? What was something that you learned there in Israel that you just thought, you know, this just really makes me think about this passage, and it was one of those moments that the

Lord used as you sat there, I don't know, by the pool of Siloam or something. I mean, is there something that just sticks out?

Yeah, I think it was walking down, because you have to walk down levels to get to where, you know, where it was back in the day.

So we were walking by the wall of the temple, and I was just thinking, this is where God chose to dwell with his people.

And his presence was there. So that was pretty cool. And, you know, the craziest part of that is he no longer dwells in that temple.

And he dwells in believers. He dwells in us. So that's pretty cool.

Rene, as you were talking about that, I thought to myself, remember that little area that you go to?

I think there's the Bible Museum, and you go outside in the back, and you see the replica of Jerusalem back in, you know, whatever, 10

AD or something like that. And you see in the center, there's Solomon's Temple. And you can look at where all the, you know, the gates are, and the sheep pools, and all these things.

And, you know, out of the middle of nowhere, here's this fabulous marble, gold, shiny, the incense, and the trumpeters, and the big lavers, and stuff like that.

God's dwelling there. And then all of a sudden, you fast forward a little bit, and you go, oh, God's dwelling in, that kid, isn't he from Nazareth?

Is anything good to come out of Galilee, you know? And then Jesus is the temple, and then now, of course, he sent his spirit to dwell in us.

So that's a good truth. Rene, you now help serve, you worked at the college for a while, right?

Master's University? Yeah, I worked there for just over a year. And what was your job there? I was student activities coordinator, so I was doing kind of fun stuff.

So tell me, when you're trying to take these college students, and, you know, the thing that you'd always have them do with the peanut butter on the face, and then the cheese balls to stick on there, what was the spiritual truth of that?

I'm not sure I've heard of any. It's like missing the mark, you're aiming for the mouth, but it goes on the face, and it's like, harmartia? Yeah, harmartia, you missed the mark, yep.

Sin. You should maybe take sin more seriously. Now, what do you do these days, you have to make sure that they're not allergic to peanut butter, so is it almond butter as a substitute, or how does that work?

No, just petroleum jelly. I bet it was rewarding, though, to have some of these kids come in, younger people, and then they begin to learn and grow, and they're no longer around their parents.

Some probably go off the deep end, and others really mature in Christ. That was probably rewarding to see the latter. Yeah, I got to know some of the guys, so that was sweet to just be around those college students.

I remember my time there, so I think that was the reason why I even thought about working there, and one of the reasons why

I enjoyed working there was because of my experience at the college. So you and Luke are different in age,

Luke is 23, how old are you? 26. 26, and when Luke first went to the university there, the college,

I was glad that he had older friends like you and Emmett. Did it take a lot to kind of corral this young Abendroth?

Yeah, I mean, it still does. There's not really corralling the

Abendroths. What you don't know in Radioland is Luke is about five feet behind us listening. My wife and I, we complement one another, and that's just the way the

Lord has designed marriage, and lots of times that happens in friendships, too. Do you see that?

Do you see kind of like, well, Luke's got these strengths, and I've got these weaknesses, he helps out. Is there any of that, and vice versa?

Yeah. I think, and we haven't really been in ministry that long. I joined high school staff from junior high at Grace right before coronavirus hit, so I think,

I need to apologize, because I think maybe the Lord was punishing me for leaving junior high. He shut down the churches.

But I'm excited to see how our skills and how the

Lord's gifted both of us work in that way. Well, it's neat to see you and Luke serve together and be friends and sharpen one another.

That whole corona thing, judgment and all that stuff, or you lose your job, God's really chastening me, or you have some difficulty in life, oh,

God's chastening me. As I talked about on Sunday, when you look at that word discipline in Hebrews chapter 12, while there might be some causality,

David sins, his kid dies, we only know that it's causality because it's revealed in Scripture.

Otherwise, we just look at the world, and because of the fall, because of sin, because of consequences of people sinning, we don't know what this is.

But we do know that God uses it to train us, right? A good translation of the word discipline is to train, and so God puts a trial into our life to train us.

And we talked about this yesterday. Do you think this trial is causing people, the

COVID trial, is causing people to kind of go crazy, or are they already crazy and it's just showing their craziness?

What do you think? Depends. I mean... Depends. Masomenos. Yeah, it depends.

Could be both, right? It could be both, yeah. When the kids were little, we liked to sit around and play different kind of board games and card games.

Are we allowed to say card games on this fundamentalist show here? As long as it's not poker.

Okay. The devil's deck we sometimes use. Actually, two weeks ago, before you guys were here, my kids, my girls didn't know how to play poker or blackjack, so we got

Skittles. That was the currency. And so we played five -card draw, because five -card studs a little much, and we need to understand what a full house and flush and all that stuff is.

So I taught the kids poker in the new room. Nice. Yeah. And I just basically tried to...

We had the maximum bet of five Skittles. Just every time, I just bet five and raised them five, because I just wanted all the

Skittles. And I knew I could bluff my way out. Yep. You just bullied your way through the Skittles. I have no idea what we're talking about.

So we move forward, high school ministry together. And what do you actually do there?

What's your responsibility? A shepherd, an under -shepherd, a helper? What do you do? A leader.

I don't really know too much yet, because, like I said, when I started high school ministry, I think I only had gone to one

Wednesday night Bible study, and the following Sunday service was canceled. But I will be part of a

Bible study, and I'll probably lead a small group. Okay, good. How about theological maturation?

You're 17, you're from the Philippines, you come over to the U .S., now you're 26. Anything you can tell our listeners about some things that you've learned in the last several years that have kind of really rocked your world, or something new that you've learned, or something that you've matured in?

Biblical concepts? I mean, I know you believe in the deity of Christ and His soon return, but theological concepts that you've really been enjoying to study, learned, eye -opening, something like that?

You know, it's interesting, because when I first got to master's, I didn't know too much. I knew the basics, and I knew, you know, you're not saved by works, you're saved by grace through faith, and I knew that.

And you know, that's, for a believer, that's all you need to know. We know that, to be clear, in the

Bible. And my time, I was at master's for three years, and I thought

I learned the most when I was there, and I thought I grew the most when I was there, and I did, based on where I was when

I was 17, and when I left master's when I was around 21. And I thought

I did grow a lot, but I think I probably exponentially grew more after having left master's, just being around friends and, you know, studying on my own.

So I don't, most of my theology was probably pretty new to me, so.

Yeah, so you go to master's with Bible exposition classes, and you took Hebrew and Greek? I took one year of Greek and half a year

Hebrew. Okay. And then what happens is, probably like me, I go to seminary, and I learn a lot of things about pneumatology and some basic concepts about who the

Holy Spirit is and why He's God and what He does and His functions and all that. But then for me, just some of the theological concepts came after my theological education.

For instance, like federal headship, right? Adam in the garden, and he represents and is this federal head, and things like, to me, covenant of redemption, that what happened in eternity past between the

Father, the Son, and the Spirit. Things like that were really eye -opening experiences for me.

And I was glad to learn them, made me think, I'm glad to be a Christian because I keep getting to learn more about the infinite

God. Anything like that happen to you? Yeah, and I could probably say that's been happening to me within the last six months, maybe last year, just being around, even being around Luke and our other friend,

Ryan, is talking about all these things, like what you mentioned, federal headship. We were talking about that and covenant of grace, covenant of works, all these things

I didn't learn when I was in school, even as an exposition major. So all these things are pretty new, and I'm really excited to be studying all these things and learning about them, even from you, being around you for the last two weeks.

If people sometimes see a really funny response to some of my

Twitter, that's Rene. What's your Twitter account? Rene Esguerra.

So they cut my last name short, but you can find me on there, Rene Esguerra. Okay, and you love the

Lakers. Love the Lakers. Why do you love the Lakers? I mean, I love the Lakers too, but in the Philippines, what's going on?

So remember 2000, 2001, 2002 Lakers, they won the three -peat, it was Kobe and Shaq.

And I was a kid, I would have been seven or eight years old then in the Philippines. And they don't really show a whole lot of basketball.

Well, actually, basketball is the biggest sport in the Philippines, but they don't show a whole lot of NBA. But when they do, they only show the good teams.

So within the last five years, they probably were showing a lot of Golden State Warriors in the Philippines.

So kids would love, would be big fans of the Golden State Warriors right now. But when I was growing up, they were only showing

Laker games. So I fell in love with Kobe, fell in love with Shaq. And I'm happy to be living in LA, I've seen a handful of games.

So it's nice to be a local LA fan. You know, they probably would have won the championship this year or had a good shot at it.

And then all of a sudden, you can't go to Staples, you can't go to, well, where I used to go, the Forum.

Have you been to the Staples Center? I've been to the Staples Center a handful of times. I've been to the Forum for a concert, but not for a

Laker game. And did you go to the Kanye West concert at the

Forum? I wanted to. Because Maddie and Gracie went, and they loved it. I heard about that.

I think they were telling us to go, but I don't remember why we couldn't go. But it would have been fun to go there. All right.

Today, Rene Esguerra on No Compromise Radio. Anything in the last two minutes that you say to yourself,

Rene, I wish Mike would have asked me that, or I want to say this, you know, this is a worldwide radio show.

By the way, you've done a great job for not ever being on a radio show before. And, you know, some people like to, you know,

Farm League, and then they go to the pros and, you know, semi -pros, they work their way up to the big leagues.

And you just start with the big leagues radio shows. Yeah, you know, I try to model my life after Kobe, who jumped from high school to the majors.

Or LeBron. Was he named after Kobe Beef? You know, I was actually playing a trivia game with my work, and he actually was named after Kobe Beef.

I thought it was Kobe, the place in Japan, but I think it was Kobe Beef. Okay, that's interesting. Well, and he was fluent in Italian and other languages and stuff like that.

What was his dad's name? Joe Jellybean Bryant? Mm -hmm. Okay. See, that's my era right there. Kobe Bean. Kobe Bean Bryant.

That's his name. Seriously? Yeah. I did not know that. Kobe Bean Bryant. All right. Well, Rene, thanks for being on the show.

Thanks for having me. Thanks for being a good friend to my son, Luke. It's been good to have you in the house lately, and I'm glad you don't have any kind of symptoms.

You'll find out in two weeks, I guess, once we leave. I don't know what I'm going to do with you when you're gone, because my kids have heard my jokes a thousand times, and they don't strike them as funny anymore.

But when I say something kind of dumb, you still laugh, and I don't know if it's just you're ingratiating yourself to me so you can spend another night there, or they're just truly funny.

You'll never know, I guess. Rene, thanks for being on No Compromise Radio. If everybody wants to get a hold of him, you can email me, mike, at nocompromiseradio .com.

No Compromise Radio with Pastor Mike Abendroth is a production of Bethlehem Bible Church in West Boylston.

Bethlehem Bible Church is a Bible -teaching church firmly committed to unleashing the life -transforming power of God's Word through verse -by -verse exposition of the sacred text.

Please come and join us. Our service times are Sunday morning at 1015 and in the evening at 6. We're right on Route 110 in West Boylston.

You can check us out online at bbchurch .org or by phone at 508 -835 -3400.