There is More to Life Than Ministry

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All right, everybody. It is January 16th, Year of Our Lord 2025, and I wanted to start today's podcast by announcing that I'm going to be speaking at a one -day conference in Shelbyville, Kentucky, on March 1st of this year.

It's called Reformation War Room, and it's going to be myself and John Harris. We're going to be speaking on marching orders for the kingdom of God.

It's called Don't Waste the Win. So it's all about how to—now that the vibe is shifting, you know, what do we do?

How do we make progress in the years to come? It's going to be a good time. There's going to be absolutely no blackpilling allowed at this conference.

It's going to be a lot of fun. It starts at 2 o 'clock. I think it's 2 to 7, something like that, in Shelbyville, Kentucky.

If you want to check it out, go to 5solaspress .regfox .com.

Yeah, regfox .com. I'll include the link in the description of this video. Early bird pricing for the conference ends on Monday, and now let's get to the video.

All right, all right. Today or yesterday, rather, Defiant Baptist here on X requested to see what my opinion was of this clip from Dr.

James White. Dr. James White in this clip is trying to offer a Christian alternative, a

Christian role model, a positive role model for young men. Instead of someone like Andrew Tate, you know, maybe you should be more like this guy.

He offers up his suggestion. And so I'm going to listen to it and respond to it.

I don't always take requests, but oftentimes, if it looks like an interesting topic that I care about,

I will. And so let's listen to the good doctor, and we'll go from there. You can't look through history?

I have mentioned to a number of people over the past two days.

We do have great men that we could direct our young men to who lived self -sacrificial lives.

I'd like to use Adam Naram -Jensen. I've talked about his story.

There are plenty of books that you can read. But here's a manly man, a godly manly man.

Not a manly man like we're talking about today. We're not talking about someone who spends two hours in the gym each day and has got some roids going and can really get those pecs going.

No, we're talking about a godly man. We're talking about a man who was imprisoned for his faith, and they would put his feet in stocks with the other prisoners.

And then they would raise the stocks up so that you had to sleep with your shoulders and your head on the ground and the rest of your body lifted up in the air with everything that that would then do to you.

That sounds horrible, yeah. Imprisoned in that way. Gave up on all the easy things of life to learn a foreign language, translate the

Bible into that language, and to live a life seeking to direct people to Jesus Christ.

And lost wives to death, lost multiple children to death, lost almost everybody who worked with him, traveling to and from, they'd get diseases and die.

Death was all around him, and he remains faithful to the end of his life, and we don't have examples?

We've got to go, but look at Andrew Tate? Seriously? I'm just left going, oh, okay.

Yeah, he's astonished. Absolutely astonished. It happens quite a lot to Dr. James White these days.

He's quite often astonished. Well, you know, here's what I have to say about that, and this is the first time

I've heard that. And so let me start by saying I'm not going to be counter -signaling

Adoniram Judson, obviously. I'm not going to be counter -signaling missionaries in general, obviously.

I'm not going to counter -signal somebody who decides that he's called to spread the gospel in these crazy jungles and suffer for the faith and stuff like that.

Obviously not going to counter -signal that. But what strikes me here is just a...there's

not a category error, I don't think it's a category error, but there's just sort of a miscommunication that I think is happening here, and I think

I know part of where this comes from. I was talking about it yesterday, actually. But here's the thing.

Here's the thing, right? When I grew up in the faith, and this is something that was never like...it

was never directly taught, right? But it was just in the air that I breathed, right? It was just in every book, there was this assumption, right?

Every book I read, there was this assumption, this...again, it wasn't stated in a syllogism, it wasn't openly said that this is the way, but it was just the...I

don't know how else to say it. It was just...it felt like the emphasis was that if you wanted to be a serious

Christian, if you wanted to be a mature, serious Christian, like you wanted to progress in your faith, you wanted to move forward, and who wouldn't?

I mean, obviously, as a believer, my goal is to become more godly, you know?

He even used the word godly here to describe this, which I'm not going to counter -signal that. I think that it is godly to behave in such a way, to spread the gospel and to become a missionary and stuff like that.

I'm not saying that's not godly. I'm saying it is godly. But the idea that...I

think a lot of people...listen, I'm going to speak for myself. Maybe you resonate with this.

Maybe this applies to you as well. But the idea was that if I really wanted to take my faith seriously, then

I had to go into the ministry. That was the next step. I went into ministry of some kind, whether that was as a pastor, as an elder, which is what

I tried to do, or street witnessing, or missionary of some kind, which is another thing

I consider doing, becoming a missionary, an overseas missionary. That was the progression, right?

That's what life was all about. Everything else was...I mean, I guess you have to work.

I guess you have to do these other things. You should have a family, I suppose.

But really, the uber -Christian, the way to become a truly faithful, a truly mature

Christian is to go out there and become a missionary. Become a pastor. Become a deacon.

Become a churchman. And all of that. That's the progression, right? And if you're not doing that, I guess you could still be saved, but you're not really taking your faith quite as seriously as the next guy.

I remember reading Radical, and you have to live a radical life, radically on fire for the

Lord. And it looks a certain way, where you give up your possessions, and you give up the American dream, and you don't really enjoy stuff for yourself.

You enjoy it so that you could serve the Lord, and all these kinds of things.

Again, this is not openly stated, but it's very often stated in the examples that are chosen.

In the examples that are chosen. So, listen, I'm not a pastor, and I'm definitely not your pastor, that's for sure.

But I just do not think that if you read the Bible, just read it.

You know what I mean? A lot of these people call themselves Biblicists, whatever. I don't call myself a

Biblicist, but I just don't think that you can read the Bible in any serious amount of times, and come up with the idea that that's how it works.

You know what I mean? Most, you know, the life of a Christian is a life to progression to eventually one day you're in ministry.

That's not the case. That is not the case. And so we don't have to find an example of a minister, or a missionary, and say, well, this is the example of a godly life.

Listen, it is an example of a godly life, but most of us are not called to be missionaries.

Most of us are not called to be pastors. Most of us should not be pastors.

Most of us should not be missionaries. You don't have to live this radical, like, crazy life to be a mature

Christian. You can just have an ordinary life. An ordinary life where you work, and you build your household up, and you know, you build your businesses up, and you have your small little kingdom that you're, you know, the vice regent over.

Of course, God is king. He's the king of kings. He's the lord of lords, right? But you're the lord of your little kingdom here.

You know, I love that song in Mary Poppins. Mary Poppins, you know those tweets that people put out that they say, name a movie villain that was right about everything, right?

I never had an answer for that. You know, I never could figure that one out. But I do now. My answer is

Mr. Banks, right? He wasn't a perfect man. Mr. Banks wasn't a perfect man, but he kind of, he understood.

He understood what being a man was all about. And he was right. He was right. He's the lord of his castle.

And he didn't have a huge castle. He had a house. He had a house, and a wife, and two children, and some servants.

He was the lord of his castle. Just like I'm the lord of my house. And you know, and I look to expand my borders.

Like this is what I do. I have a normal business, you know? I'm a recruiter.

I have a recruiting business. And I connect and partner with many other companies as they build their businesses.

And I'm trying to do that more with businesses that align with me and my goals personally.

But I do it across the board too. And obviously I'm not going to do anything immoral. But I do that so that my resources can expand.

My resources and my ability to have the things that I want for my family and things of that nature.

I want to expand that. I want to be able to leave an inheritance to my children's and my children's children.

You know what I mean? I think nothing would be more satisfying than that. But that's ordinary stuff. It's basic stuff, right?

And I want to enjoy life. I mean, obviously that's not going to be my highest good to enjoy everything that life has to offer.

That's not my highest good. But it is a good and it's something that's totally fine. You can enjoy life. You can seek to enjoy the creation that God has created for us.

And you can do that without apology. You can do that in a godly way.

This is the dichotomy that I think we so often get. In order to be truly godly, you just have to reject doing anything for yourself, enjoying life for yourself, and expanding your borders for yourself.

You just have to reject all that stuff. I don't think that's the case.

I don't think you can read the Scriptures and understand it that way. The Scriptures are full of stories of godly men who did exactly that.

They had a whole bunch of stuff. They had a whole bunch of borders, and they expanded their borders, and they expanded their possessions, and yet they were godly.

Yet they lived mature, godly lives. They weren't perfect. We get that. They weren't perfect.

But they were mature. They were godly. They were lords of their situations. That was seen as completely normal.

That was seen as a blessing from the Lord. Why take so many blessings that God gives us?

So many blessings. He's given us this amazing creation. He's given us the skills and resources that we can use to expand that, and to improve it, and to increase, and all of this stuff.

God gives us these things. And we're going to sit here and just, you know, nah,

I'm going to go to a jungle. That's the only way to be a mature Christian. I'm going to go to the jungle, and I'm going to put my children and my wife into harm's way.

That's the only way to become a mature Christian. That's the only way to live a godly life. Look, if you're going to try to compare

Andrew Tate, for goodness sake, like, I can't stand Andrew Tate, obviously. He's an idiot.

We all get it. He's an idiot. Like I said yesterday, or two days ago, I've had Andrew Tate muted, the word

Andrew Tate muted on Twitter for a year or so. Because he's annoying. He's just a disgusting man.

Absolutely. We get it. We all get it. But that doesn't mean that every single thing he's said is disgusting.

That doesn't mean that every single thing he promotes is disgusting. Just in general, I don't want to see his content. But you see, this is not the right comparison.

This is apples and oranges. One guy's a missionary, doesn't have anything, you know, his kids and wife are all dead, then he eventually dies, and all of that stuff, ends up in prison, he's tortured, and all this stuff.

And then there's Andrew Tate over here doing whatever it is that he does. Who cares? That's not the right comparison, though.

That's not the right comparison. I just, I don't see how that's helpful in any way. It's not helpful.

You know what I mean? I don't care if, you know, I hate when people say, oh, it's not helpful. It's just the wrong comparison. It doesn't do anything for you.

You know, if you're going to compare someone to Andrew Tate, you know, compare a normal person, right? A normal person who understands that he's not a missionary, he's not an elder, but he does have an understanding of acquiring and using resources for God's glory.

You see, because that's the thing. That's what most guys out there are trying to figure out. Like anybody can go and, you know, martyr themselves for any cause.

There's martyrs for all kinds of causes, right? Like the martyrdom in and of itself isn't, like, the ideal.

Like, look, you know, like we should seek to have a faith that if necessary, we would die for the

Lord. But what about living for the Lord? What about living and improving and expanding and growing for the

Lord? What about that part? That's the part that's missing. That's the part that's missing.

We know about missionaries. We know about missionaries and martyrs and stuff like that.

We all get it. What a lot of people don't understand is not only how to live for the

Lord in such a way that uses the skills and the resources that he makes available to you to grow them for the

Lord, but also what we're missing is the idea of that even being legitimate for a

Christian. Like I could see like a young man, you know, I could,

I mean, I don't know that there's anybody out there like this. I kind of do know that there are people out there like this, but I could see a young man, you know, a teenager or something like that.

And you know, in a Christian home and, you know, in youth group and all this kind of stuff and, you know, talks to his youth group pastor and the youth group pastor says, what do you imagine being when you grow up?

And the kid's saying, you know, I want to be a millionaire by the time I'm 18. I want to be a millionaire by the time

I'm 21 or whatever. And then the youth group pastor, like, could you see a youth group pastor that would honestly say, man, that's awesome.

Good for you, man. Good for you. Here's what the Bible says about this kind of stuff. Not wrong.

Not wrong. But you should do it in such a way that gives glory to the Lord. You should do it in such a way that honors

God. You've got this motivation. Get the skills. Here's some resources for you to get the skills, the discipline that you're going to need.

Here's what you're going to have to watch out for. Things like that. No, no, no. You would see youth pastors poo -pooing that as if it was somehow dirty to desire to be a millionaire by the time you're 21.

That's not what's missing. The martyrdom stories, the missionary stories, we've heard them for our whole lives.

We get it. We get it. But I'm not a missionary and I'm not an elder. I live in America.

Like, I'm not, I don't live in Papua, New Guinea. How do I be a

Christian in America today? How do I figure out what I want to do today?

How do I do it in a moral way today? It's just this kind of presentation.

Look, I'm not counter signaling Adoniram Judson. He made those decisions.

I know nothing about those decisions. I don't know anything about them. But what

I do know is that we've heard that story so many times. We all get it and we all agree.

What we don't necessarily see eye to eye on is how, it's not how we die for the

Lord. It's how we live for the Lord when we're not a pastor, when we're not an elder, when we're not a missionary.

How does the regular Christian live for the Lord? That's the kind of situation that I think there's a complete lack of information or even acknowledgement that that's a legitimate choice.

I don't want to ever be a pastor. I don't want to ever be a missionary. Okay, how do I live my life?

What kinds of things should I be pursuing? Is it moral? Is it okay to pursue excellence in everything, including my finances, including those kinds of things, including my own body, my strength?

Is it good to pursue excellence in those things? The answer is yes.

Obviously, it's good to pursue excellence in those things. It's never, ever, ever, even almost approached in the

Bible saying that those things are not good. They're good. God gives us this machine made out of flesh, you know what

I mean? The more you learn about this body that we have, the more incredible and amazing it becomes.

Like, I don't have to stay flabby. I don't have to stay weak. I could actually do some things, some basic things, and gain more strength just by eating and doing some basic things.

I can do that. That's amazing. That's a gift. We treat it sometimes like it's a snare.

I mean, I can apply mental energy and just have a few conversations, make a few phone calls, and improve my financial situation just like that.

I could just do that. Let me work on that. Let me work on getting better.

Maybe I'll make some more phone calls. Maybe I'll read some books that are focused on improving what's going on up here so that I could actually do that better.

Instead of approaching that as, yeah, that's amazing, God gave you that ability to do that, we approach it like it's a snare.

Look, guys, this is the thing. This might become a new theme of my channel because I've been talking about this a long time, but the more

I think about it, the more serious this becomes. I'm trying to think how to word this.

Maybe I won't even say it, but this epidemic, this is like an epidemic of Christian ministers acting like their job is literally the only one that freaking matters ultimately because the minute anyone talks about excellence in any other job, it becomes, well, you're just forgetting about the gospel.

Are you even reformed? It's unbelievably self -centered.

It's unbelievably self -centered. Pretty much everyone is not called to be a pastor or a missionary.

Pretty much everyone. The amount of people that are called to be that are few. And so why act as if it's the only job that matters when

God has given us all of these realms, all of this work, all of these different areas that he wants excellence in?

Christians should be the best at everything. Christians should be at the bleeding edge of everything.

And there's everything good about that. There's everything good about that. And even though I know most of my audience gets it, you're still going to see comments in here talking about how we're supposed to give up our lives to find it and stuff like that and all this kind of stuff.

And the thing is, those kinds of passages, they're just missing the point. I'm not talking about being saved.

I'm not talking about your ultimate mission as a human being. I'm not talking about that.

But what I am saying is that God saves us and then gives us all kinds of marching orders, all kinds of quests, all kinds of missions, and he expects a return on all of them.

He put us out there and he made us all individually different. He made this amazing to think about how

God does this. Like he saves all kinds of different people, right? With all kinds of different skills that he himself put inside you.

Some of them are innate. Some of them are learned. Some of them are just our potentials that you have.

And he puts all of that together, right? He puts them all together. And he gets a return on all of it.

And it's all good. And it's all good. And yes, in a way, elders are a special gift.

A special gift. You guys are already special, all right? You got elders, missionaries, you guys are already a special gift that Christ gives to his church.

That's wonderful. And that should be enough. You don't have to act like it's the only one that matters.

You're special already. I'm telling you. 80 Robots is telling you, you are special. But you are not the only occupation.

You're not the only thing that matters. And again, this is so often not explicitly stated because he doesn't say that.

James doesn't say that here. So don't go running to James White saying that I said that James White said that pastors are the only ones that matter.

I didn't say that. It's not explicitly stated often, but it's just so often just the air we breathe.

It's the examples we choose to use. It's the way you kind of mistakenly put up this missionary martyr against Andrew Tate.

This doesn't make any sense. It doesn't make any sense. Most young men out there aren't called to be a pastor and never will be called to be a pastor.

And that is totally fine. They should pursue excellence in the areas that a lot of times this is the best part too.

This is the thing I've noticed talking to people, right? The things that I'm best at doing, and this is common.

I've talked to thousands and thousands and thousands of people in various occupations, right?

I've got a lot of knowledge in this area about vocation and stuff like that. I've also got a lot of knowledge about H -1B visas.

I've talked to hundreds and hundreds of them, maybe thousands. If you want to know about what's going on with H -1B visas, just let me know.

I'll gladly come on the channel. A lot of them are very, very pleasant people.

Anyway, but one of the things I've noticed is people tend to be good at things they enjoy.

You're good at things that you enjoy. I don't think that's just accidental.

You just randomly enjoy because you're good at it. I think you actually are good at things that you enjoy doing.

That sounds like the same thing. Maybe it is. I think God writes that into us. He writes that into us, man.

You can find the things you enjoy and that you're good at. Of course, within God's boundaries,

God sets the rules of the music. We just play it. God writes that into us, man.

You can enjoy things that aren't ministry and be excellent at it for the Lord. We don't have to over -spiritualize it.

We don't have to under -spiritualize it. It can just be. I think that's all

I have to say. I think I'm done. Yeah, I think that's all I have to say. In any case, I hope you found this video helpful.