Are we there yet? From a Messed-Up to a Meaningful Life with comedian Jeff Allen - Podcast Ep. 171

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Welcome to the Got Questions podcast. On today's episode, joining me is Jeff Allen. He's a

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Christian comedian and author of the upcoming book Are We There Yet? It's an excellent book.

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I would highly encourage you to read it. At the end of the episode, we'll have some links where you can purchase the book.

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It'll also be in the show notes and also when this video goes live on YouTube. Jeff, welcome to the show.

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Hey, thanks for having me. We can't do it without you guys, so I appreciate the opportunity.

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So Jeff, before we dive into the book, I wanted to ask you some questions about humor in general, because we're a ministry that answers people's questions.

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Occasionally we'll receive a question like sort of along the lines of, is it okay to laugh, or what role should humor play in the

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Christian life? In your experience as a Christian comedian, does

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God have a sense of humor? Does God want us to laugh? Why did God give us the ability to laugh as part of our design?

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Well, you can certainly go to science on that one. For gosh sakes, the healing benefits of laughter have been well documented.

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It releases endorphins, which is the body's natural morphine, so laughter is a painkiller.

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If God designed us, he put that in us for a reason. And I used to think about when

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I first became a believer, I used to imagine the blessing and the curse it would be to be able to see the true nature of a person's heart.

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And you got to think at some point when these disciples said to Jesus, oh,

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I'm with you, Lord, I'm there, and he would just go, yeah, right. I mean, yeah, okay.

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So I'm sure he has a sense of humor.

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He has to, I mean, for gosh sakes. I mean, look at us. And our promises and our...

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I don't know what I would do without the ability to laugh.

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I really don't. I mean, through all of our hard times, you talk to anybody.

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I mean, I've been in recovery for 35 years. You talk to some of these horrific childhoods that these people's had.

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The ones that make it out of it are the ones that can look back and laugh. You know, as a family, you sit as a family.

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We were sitting at my mother's hospice. She was probably less than 12 hours from going to heaven.

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And we're out there telling mom stories and just laughing hysterically as a family.

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And the nurse came out and said, you know, not everybody's enjoying this. You need to keep it down.

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But we knew our mom and we knew where she was going. We were secure in that.

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And she had told us goodbye, you know.

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And so just relaying and sitting and talking about her life and laughing at some of the things that were just wonderful helped us to deal with that moment in our life.

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I'll give you a quick story. I was at my nephew's wedding probably three years after my mother passed.

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And my sisters, they really lost their best friend when my mom passed. She was kind of the,

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I'd call my mother twice, two or three times a week just to see how everybody else in the family was doing. I mean,

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I didn't have to call my siblings. I would just call mom because everybody kept in touch with her. So anyway, my sisters were just extremely devastated at the loss of my mother.

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And I was at my nephew's wedding. I had my arm around my sister and I'm taking a picture with her. And right before the camera, the photographer's ready to take the picture,

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I leaned over and I said to Vicki, I said, you remember when mom was in hospice and she was slipping into a coma?

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And Vicki says, I remember that. I said, we all went into say our goodbyes. And she said, I remember that. I said, mom told me

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I was her favorite. And my sister, the cameraman got the picture of her just laughing.

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And she said, well, she told me that too. I go, well, she lied to you. She just didn't want you to get hurt.

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But that's a blessing. I mean, to be able to, you know, three years later, it wouldn't have been a joke

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I made the day after my mother passed away. But that's to me the out the other end part and to laugh at my foibles in recovery rooms.

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When I got into recovery, you know, I was obviously you're beat up, you're broken, you're just destroyed.

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And to listen to the laughter in those rooms at people talking about what they were like 10 years earlier, five years earlier.

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You know, there was a guy that told a story. I'll never forget this, that his wife would chain him, handcuff him to a radiator on Friday night so he wouldn't drink and drive.

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So he'd sit in his chair, handcuffed to a radiator, forced to stay in his chair, had a little bucket that he went to the bathroom in and he would drink a fifth of vodka.

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And he said, I did that for eight months as if it was normal. Not once did he think that was abnormal, you know?

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And again, you get out the other end of it, you look back at it and you go, holy cow, that's insane. That's absolutely nuts.

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But at the time you're in it, it makes perfect sense. So if you can't laugh at that, you're gonna be crushed by your own stupidity, you know?

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So anyway, I hope that answered the question. Yeah, I agree 100%.

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Sometimes you have to laugh just so you don't cry at some of the things you've experienced.

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And God definitely designed us in His image. So laughter is, like you said, it's healing.

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It's cathartic. It can help us to get over things, not in a dismissive, oh, just forget about it, but really put it in perspective.

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And I love that about humor. Something you mentioned earlier is a question that I've actually had recently.

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As a Christian comedian, how do you know where to draw the lines in your humor?

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And not necessarily just in clean versus unclean humor, but some situations are not the appropriate times to make a joke.

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And we all know people who will tend to try to make a joke out of something that's really poorly timed.

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As a Christian comedian, as an expert on humor, how do we know when is appropriate time for humor, and even how do we draw the lines appropriately?

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Well, I'm not an expert on knowing where to draw the line. I've crossed the line a couple times.

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As we all have. And somebody told me, Mark Lowry, a pretty well -known comedian with the

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Gaithers. When I started touring with the Gaithers, Mark said something pretty profound.

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He said, the key is to find the line and then kick it. And sometimes you'll miss the line and step over it.

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He had Bill to pull him back to make light of the fact that, but you acknowledge it if you cross the line.

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The audience will let you know when you cross the line. Bill Cosby said something pretty profound.

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I can't tell you how to succeed, but I can tell you how to fail, and it's try to please everybody. I have a three rule.

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If I get three or four emails on a joke from the same audience, I'll look at it and go, well, maybe that was...

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I remember I was at Estes Park years ago. I was a brand new believer, and I got booked at this

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Christian music thing, and they wanted some comedy to lighten things up. So anyway, there was a video on leprosy ministry, and it was just this heart -gut -wrenching video on leprosy.

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I mean, it was like people were crying. And the producer of the event leans over to me and he goes, you got to go up next.

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We need to lighten up. And I go, I'm not following leprosy. So anyway,

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I went up on stage, and it was one of those times where you just say to yourself, well, I'll deliver a line, and if it hits, we're home.

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We'll keep going, and if it doesn't, I'm going to have to leave. But I said, you know, we were in Colorado, and it was dry and whatever.

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And I said, well, my chapped lips just don't seem so bad right now. And there was this pause, and then everybody busted up laughing, and you needed to break the tension.

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I mean, it was kind of an unsaid thing that we need to get past this.

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And again, I thought at the time it probably crossed the line, but I'll let the audience make that decision, and I'll just say it.

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And again, I make the distinction in today's culture because it seems to me there's this knee -jerk to not only tell somebody they crossed the line, but to destroy their life for it.

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And my question is always to somebody, is there malice behind the joke?

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And if the intent is to malign and to cut somebody, then to me that's inappropriate.

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But if it's pointing out an absurdity, and you just happen to be part of the absurdity, again, there's no malice.

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You know, when I started in comedy in 1978 in Chicago, we picked on every group there was.

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But again, there was no malice. The audience determined that. They knew if you were being malicious. Blacks talked about whites, whites talked about, we grew up together, and we were in those neighborhoods together.

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And the cultural differences were obvious, so you just pointed them out. I mean, again, nothing malicious about it.

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It was just part of everyday humor. It's what we talked about on the corners, and we talked about in high school, and we talked about wherever we ate.

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And then all of a sudden it just got, it was almost like they were putting a kink into the hose of humor to where, yeah, that's off topic.

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That's off. You can't talk about that. You can't, you know. And I sensed it with the drunk driving.

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I got sober, and I was talking about drunk driving. I used to drive drunk, you know, and I'm not proud of that.

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But again, healing is being able to look back at the folly of your life. And it was killing, just killing.

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And then all of a sudden it wasn't. The culture decided that it wasn't good to make light of that.

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And so anyway, I go with the audience. I mean, I'm not there to bludgeon them over the head with stuff they don't want to hear.

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But it was disappointing for me as a comic because it was a really good, strong routine, and there wasn't anything in there outside of pointing out my ignorance and my stupidity, you know.

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And so yeah, there are lines, and there are people that cross them. But again,

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I just look at malice. I look at the intent, if I can sense again. And to me, anything goes.

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As with anything, it's a learning process. And adapting both to your audience, to the culture.

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And you've learned that just as we've learned that in various aspects of our ministry, even how we answer people's questions has had to adjust and adapt over the years.

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But so let's talk about, are we there yet? So what led you to write this book?

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And specifically, why that title? Why are we there yet? Well, it's interesting.

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I'm not a writer. My wife and I, she's been pushing me for 10 years. To write it, because after speaking at churches, people would come over and say, have you written that down?

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For years, you know, have you written it? No, I haven't. I'm not a writer. I'm not a writer. I don't write. And Tammy, my wife, if she wanted to start an argument in our home, all she had to do was say, what'd you write on your book today?

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Nothing, not a word, maybe, and then we would argue. And I said, as cliche as it sounds within the

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Christian circles, I told her, in God's time, this book will be written. If it's meant to be written, it'll be written.

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And about a year ago, a little over a year ago, I was doing something at NRB, the

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National Religious Broadcasters. I was just performing, doing a 10 -minute comedy set to break up the evening.

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And somebody from Salem Media was backstage. And oddly, they had never heard of me.

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I mean, I've been doing comedy since 1978, and I've been in the Christian world for 20 -plus years.

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And anyway, they did a little research on me, and on YouTube, there was my testimony.

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So somebody from Salem Media reached out to my management and said, has he got that written down?

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You know, we'd be interested in doing a book. So I sent them some of my writings, and this was great.

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In my house, this was great. I sent them a couple chapters that I had written, and they said, you're obviously going to need some help.

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And I said, could you call my wife and tell her that I'm not a writer? So what we did was we hired a guy,

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I hired a guy to help me edit the stories. Otherwise, it would have been a 400 -page tomb of all this minutia that nobody's really interested.

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I said, if you could just go through my audio, my talks, and all this stuff, and pick out stuff that you think is relevant to this story,

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I would love to put it down on paper. I think it's written from a 35 -year perch.

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I'm 35 years past this. I wanted to write something for my children and grandchildren to let them know what their parents and grandparents went through, so that in their life, if they hit hard times, this could be a reference to go, well,

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Mimi and Papa got through this. We can get through this as a couple. Are We There Yet came from a friend of mine brought that up.

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He said he took a trip with his kids. He's in his late 30s, and he said,

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I just get tired of hearing that, are we there yet? And we all know that when you have kids.

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And it just really hit me. I think it's a God thing. It just hit me that that's what my journey in recovery was like.

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As a child, you get in the backseat of your parents' car, and they go on a trip. You have no idea where you're going.

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You really don't. You have no idea what the destination is, what the time frame is. You know nothing. You absolutely know nothing except through the questions you ask.

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And are we there? Are we there? Stop at a rest area. Are we there? Are we there? Every time you stop, is this it? I'm tired.

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When are we going to get there? And that was recovery for me. I likened it to your parents leaving you at a rest area, just taking off and leaving you the keys of the car when you're a nine -year -old.

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You don't even know how to drive. You don't know where you're going or whatever. So you've got to rely on everybody around you who's been there, wherever there is.

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And then you realize at some point, I did, 20 years in, there is no there. This side of heaven.

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So it was the impatience of recovery, impatience of the restoration, and then when the redemption came through my acceptance of Christ eight years later, it was like the veil had been lifted.

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This is what I've been looking for. It's just that peace. I just immediately became comfortable in my own skin for the first time in my entire life.

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I was comfortable. What I chased through alcohol and drugs and porn was everything

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I got the day after I accepted

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Christ. I woke up that day. I'll never forget it. I sat on the end of my bed and go, what is, it was such a weird feeling.

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You've heard the term likeness of being. That's what it was like. It was like something that had been lifted and I couldn't put my finger on it.

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I go, holy cow, I feel good. And you don't realize how bad you felt until you feel good.

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And I go, oh yeah, last night I gave my life to Jesus. Is that what this is?

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Again, I'm 40 years old. I was completely naive. So that's the arc of the book.

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I always tell audiences, if you can get through the first six chapters without killing yourself, it's actually an uplifting tale.

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We didn't hold back anything. I wanted the reader to understand what we were like as a couple.

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Tammy read, I wanted her to be involved in the last draft because I said, if you're not comfortable with this, because people are going to want to talk to her when they get done reading it, especially women.

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And I said, if you don't agree with the parts, just let me know.

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Whatever makes you feel uncomfortable, whatever, because I unloaded everything. And she read the first two chapters and put it down and said,

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I can't read it anymore. We were such horrible people. And I said, but that's the beauty of the story.

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Jesus didn't leave us there. The world breaks people all the time and they leave them in a trash heap.

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The streets are full of people that the world crushed. But when God breaks a man or a woman, he doesn't leave you there.

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He invites you into a new relationship and a new life. And so you can look back on who you were and go, holy cow, we were horrible people.

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And we're not those people anymore. So that's kind of the arc of the book. And it's that decision that I made 25 years ago to tell

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Jesus, I'm yours. Whatever that looks like, I had no clue. I had none. I was in the backseat of the car.

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And throughout that journey for the last 25 years, I've had moments where I just go, am

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I there yet? I'm tired. I'd smash a plate, break a cabinet, scream at my family.

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Then I'd sit in my room and just go, I want to be done.

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I don't want to do this anymore. When am I done? And Jesus's answer to me is just, you go out, you repent, you say your apologies, you say you're sorry, and you do better going forward.

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And there is no there. Not till we're there, right?

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There, absolutely. So in your book, a lot of your testimony is sort of like your

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Solomon and Ecclesiastes sort of experience, where basically you tried to find meaning and purpose and joy in everything else and found it to be empty.

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So talk a little bit about that and how that ultimately played such a huge role in bringing you to Christ.

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My goal when I started comedy, I quit a job, I was making $300 a week. So I said, boy, if I can make $300 a week telling jokes, that would be amazing.

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It took me a while, but I got there, right? Then I got to five, then I got to 750, I got to 1 ,000, I got to 1 ,200,

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I got to 15. And I think it was around $1 ,800, $2 ,000 for the week,

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I realized I'll never make enough money. I mean, I just knew it. I was buying more cocaine and more booze.

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So I knew money wasn't the thing, when I got miserable in life,

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I knew money wouldn't bring me happiness, I knew that. So I was looking for other things.

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And for me, I talk about this in the book, it's almost sounds funny, but it was golf.

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I thought if I could change careers and become a professional golfer, what I mean? You'd be laughing if you saw me play golf.

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It's like - Same with me, man. But again, when you're broken, you're thinking, okay,

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I can, maybe, maybe I can do this. But yeah, alcohol, drugs, money,

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I just knew. So I was primed.

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I mean, New Age, I read those books, I read self -help books, I read Buddhism. And it was all of this,

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I always say it's like I had a spiritual thirst that I didn't know I had. It was a spiritual thirst. I was looking for something to quench my spirit.

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So I would read these things. And for brief moments, I would go, this is it, I got it. I would come home and tell my wife,

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I think I got, great, Jeff, we're losing the house. I know we're losing the house, but I'm telling you,

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I think I found something that's gonna mend me, and things are gonna get better.

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It lasted for a week, day, or 10, whatever, it didn't matter. So I was primed to hear meaningless, meaningless, all in life was meaningless.

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Nothing of this earth will ever give you lasting joy. And I think it's in the first chapter of Ecclesiastes, it says, the eyes never get enough of seeing, the ears never get enough of hearing.

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And when I heard that, again, I left because I was in my living room, listening on a boombox to a tape, and I had thousands of tapes and CDs.

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And I had the video library, I mean, hundreds of VHSs of videos.

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And that's true. I never get enough. I mean, I'm always buying stuff for my ears and my hearing and my eyes.

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And it's interesting, I said years ago, I said, if I was the devil and I wanted to eliminate

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God, I'd create ambient light, which would just wipe out the stars.

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I mean, you can't see a star in a city anymore. You look up, it's nothing. So that's gone.

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And then I'd get rid of the still quiet voice inside of all of us. I'd put some ear pods in, and then just make music, loud music.

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And then that still quiet voice, because I used to tell my children, staring at the ceiling in the quiet is a prayer.

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Just laying still for 10 or 15 minutes and staring at the stucco is an activity.

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It wouldn't make a career out of it, you'd starve. But those moments are when

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God can speak to you, in those quiet moments. If it's loud and noisy, it's hard to discern.

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It's hard to discern. So I was primed to hear meaningless, meaningless all night.

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And I went, yes, that is true. And I never thought the Bible was anything, but I felt that was a deep truth to me, a deep truth that I had come to on my own.

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I had come to that conclusion. I was a nihilist. I was hard to be around.

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I really was. I was just negative and sour. But when nothing matters,

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I always tell people, when you're full of acrimony, wait till you get to apathy. Nobody wants to be around you.

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So again, Are We There Yet is an excellent read. As you said, it's difficult at times. I mean, you had a very painful journey with you and your wife, but the way

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God brought you out of it and the transformational change that's happened since you came to faith in Christ, it's amazing.

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So strongly encourage our listeners to acquire this book, to read it and learn from it.

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If nothing else, it's a powerful example of how God can transform a life as He did with you,

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Jeff. So before we sign off, and I didn't prepare you for this one, but I'm pretty sure you can handle it. For you, what is the funniest story in the

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Bible? In the Bible? In the Bible? Well, you won't believe this, but when

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I first started studying the Bible, Ecclesiastes and then

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Job. Job, that book cracked me up. And I'm sorry, but that's just the way my brain wired.

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And when you think of all this stuff, he had no idea what was going on behind the scenes.

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So he's got a, you know, part of his crew comes in and goes, you know, the cows just got fire popped.

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And one thing after another, this calamity. And then when his wife looked at him, you know, and said, are you still worshiping

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God? Curse him and die. I mean, that just made me laugh.

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I thought, you know, yeah, that's a human response to someone who does not have any idea what's going on behind the scenes.

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And it is. I mean, you realize, yeah, that's a lot of garbage. You know, it's just one thing after another, man.

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It's almost, it becomes laughable to me. So anyway, that's my favorite.

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I revisit Job all the time because his friends were completely off base with their advice and assessment of the situation.

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I mean, it's just a really good book for today's, you know, we got a lot of noise out there giving people advice and it's, it's just, you know, get quiet and pray and God will reveal.

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And you might actually make it through whatever you're going through. That whole miserable comforters statement that came out of Job's mouth.

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I mean, talk about the understatement of the year. So Jeff, thank you for this conversation.

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And again, I'd strongly encourage our listeners to pick up a copy of Are We There Yet? Because it is a, again, a difficult book, especially in the beginning, but seeing the amazing transformation that God has done in your life and in your family's life, it's powerful.

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And it's a powerful reminder of what God can do and that no one is beyond God's ability to reach.

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Absolutely. One hundred percent. One hundred percent. And your marriages are solvable.

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They're solvable. They really are. Well, Jeff, keep doing what you're doing. Keep making people laugh and bringing joy.

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Because like I told you before the interview, I was just watching some of your videos before this and you literally brought me to tears, the good type of tears.

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And my wife was looking at me like, why are you laughing that hard? But for whatever, that particular point of humor was just what

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I needed this morning. So keep doing what you're doing. That's great. Allow God to use you. I am, until I go to the other side and actually see the veil lifted.

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Amen. So it's been the Got Questions podcast with Christian comedian Jeff Allen, author of Are We There Yet?