Abolitionists at the Capitol: Standing for Life in Public Office

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We are on the last day of Fight, Laugh, Feast, and we are here with Dusty Devers, Andrew Rappaport, and we are sitting down to talk, probably politics a little bit, probably

Prodigal America, that's the theme of the Fight, Laugh, Feast conference. Guys, thanks for being here.

Hey, it's our pleasure. I'm speaking for Andrew, too, it's his pleasure. It's his pleasure as well, yeah.

Andrew loves this so much, this is what he was built for. Are we gonna go street preach?

Amen, now we're talking. Now we're talking. Now we're talking. Yeah, but I just wanted to grab you a little bit,

Dusty. Andrew's been here with me all weekend, sitting in, and we've been doing his podcast, my podcast.

Keith just left using the set. We're just having a good time. I like Fight, Laugh, Feast, because it feels like kind of brothers reuniting for a few days.

I feel like we can have some secondary issues that we might disagree on, but we're all pulling in the general same direction, which is nice.

I have an analogy for that. Sure, what is it? So when you're in the trenches, you wanna use your biggest artillery for your existential threats, for your regime threat, for those big, major threats to your family, to your church, and to your neighbors, but we're in the trenches fighting.

We shouldn't turn that big artillery on each other, but it doesn't mean we can't use guns.

They just need to be rubber band guns, and pop each other, and we'll get over it, and oh, that kind of stung, man, but whenever you're able to really focus our energies rather than dividing the church and ending up in a

Hegelian dialectic or a cloud and pivot strategy, which I'm sure you know, and instead of doing that and being divided and conquered, we are eager to maintain the unity of the spirit and the bond of peace and pick on each other in such a way that it's not degrading one another, that it's still outdoing one another and showing honor.

Yeah, absolutely. Use the way of explaining is there's a difference between ministry and platform building, and what we have a lot of behavior online is platform building.

They're not looking to do, they say they're doing ministry, but what they're really looking to do is get everyone to pay attention to them. So, okay, if I gotta tear down someone else so people look at me and say

I'm good, they do that, rather than just saying, okay, that, you know, well, let's put it this way, use

Paul's words. Paul's saying that, hey, there's some brothers who are, you know, basically attacking him.

They're doing it for selfish gain, and what's his response? I will rejoice because the gospel's going out. As long as Christ is preached.

Yeah. No, that's so good, which that's a whole dichotomy, too, when you walk in elected office and then also ministry, too, because elected office is very me, me, me, what have

I done? You really have to self -broadcast. You kinda, now, you can do it in a non -braggadocious way, but you really do have to go, well, this is what

I've done. This is what I'm trying to do, because you're almost reporting back to constituents as well, too, and I walk that line at the local level.

You probably do a little more at the state level of making sure that it's not pointing towards me, pointing toward, you know, but you do also have to be vocal about that, because you're also, if you're any type of principled,

Christian, moral person at the local, state, or federal level, you will have all the artillery of the secular world pointed at you, and most of the time, at your back.

Yeah, yeah. So, Greg, let me just do this. For folks who don't know who Dusty is, because we're taking for assumption everyone, I mean, I think there might be one or two people in America that don't know, but for those one or two, maybe explain who he is.

Pastor, minister, he came on a year ago and really broke down some SBC stuff, which was very interesting.

Then after that, won an election as a state senator in Oklahoma, which I was absolutely happy to see.

I fully endorse that. We need more men like you at the state level. If we did, this country would not look like what it is.

I believe God has given us a country where we do still have some freedoms and liberties, where we're able to get things done legislatively, where we're able to turn the civil magistrate back to Christ.

I appreciate what you're doing there, but for anyone listening or watching, that's kind of the two things you're known for, but you're much more than that, right,

Dusty? I don't know. You're also a great gray beard. Here's one thing that I think you have done.

You are an abolitionist who was able to win an election, and that really has sparked a lot of people to say, you know what?

People say, oh, you got to stay away from the abortionists. You stay away from the abortionists because we can't touch that. We have to, even

Trump is now trying to side with, let me side with it just to get it out of the arsenal of the

Democrats. Or really quick, Andrew, what people don't realize that aren't in politics, or glom on to the pro -life organization and get that money and get that vote, but then do nothing about anything that's remotely pro -life.

That's the thing in the GOP. You're very clearly against abortion, as best as we can, calling it what it is, murder.

That probably wasn't an easy thing for most people, but you've been an encouragement to a lot of people to say, you know what?

Others can do it. Yeah, I didn't bait and switch whenever I ran my campaign. I knocked 6 ,000 doors twice in our district.

That's small for some folks. We represent about 90 ,000 people in each of the districts in Oklahoma.

And when I was at the door, I was very clear with people. Abortion is a big issue for conservatives and for Republican voters, and I would tell them my position.

I believe in equal protection for all lives from the moment of conception, which is fertilization, and they deserve protection just as much as you and I.

And if the government can define when life begins and by beginning, it's often when life is worth protecting.

If they can define it at the beginning, they can define it at the end. This is a form of eugenics. It's just eugenics early rather than eugenics late, killing off older people who aren't contributing to society or they're a glut on the insurance system, which is largely state -funded.

So they wanna take them off the roll so that they can have more money through their taxes to fund their other various endeavors.

Look at 13 ,500 Canadians have already been euthanized in Canada this year.

No, I'm sorry, last year. This year, they're on track for 17 or 20 ,000. 13 ,000 last year, so that's where that goes.

Yeah, it's a good death. That's what eugenics is. Yeah, that's how they said, yeah. So at the door, I was able to explain this equal protection and what

I found over and over, there were very, very few that actually disagreed, but the overwhelming majority of them had no idea that that's not what the pro -life movement was doing.

And they saw, well, it makes total sense for them to see if we allow a law, if our laws are written such that we have a protected class of people and it starts at 15 weeks or six weeks, but before 12 weeks or before six weeks, they're not protected, then they understood the very fundamental reality that we're playing

God. So they were shocked to hear that and whenever I was able to explain it, they agreed largely.

They might not have agreed with all the fundamentals of how this would be worked out, but they agreed, that's life, we need to protect it.

If we say that murder is murder, then it needs to be murder at all levels. And if any life is to be protected, then all life should be protected.

Yeah, and I would just say, I agree with that because I also knocked 7 ,000 doors in my district. I had the very same experience where when

I actually told them what it is I stood for, probably 75, 80 % of them went, yeah, exactly.

Yeah, protect life, be fiscally conservative. God is ruler of all. That's why

I truly believe most of Americans, most non -believers, and even a lot of believers, they are in a media malaise because when you actually sit down and talk to people for five minutes and you present a case like that and you say, would you have been okay during slavery?

Saying, well, once a slave is 18, then they become a person, they're an adult. That's what you're saying when we're talking 15 weeks, 18 weeks, 24 weeks.

And my personal experience was years ago when I was younger was the fact of, I didn't even know what an abolitionist was.

I didn't know there was a name for it. I just went, well, I believe it's murder, so it should just be equal across the board. How can we say it's murder?

But then I was working with pro -life, even Catholic pro -life organizations that would go, well, we need to compromise 15 weeks, 18 weeks.

Then the heartbeat stuff came out. Scientifically, it can feel pain at this, so that's where we'll set it. And we go, well, why can't we just do what the word of God says and say that life begins at conception?

So, I appreciate everything you do at the state level there. Andrew, did you have something? When Ray Comfort, remember when he came out with the film 180?

And I was using that argument with Ray, but then everyone was accusing me of being Ray Comfort. I don't want to copy others, so I was reading a book on John Brown.

For folks that don't know, he's one of the guys, an abolitionist who helped to end slavery in America.

And there's some things about John Brown that we don't want to emulate. No, we don't. I mean, he argued from, he claimed his

Christian values, but then he did things that were not Christian. Yes. Okay, but he was instrumental in that.

But when I was reading it, that's what, for me, when the connection put, you know, before the term abolitionism was actually being used,

I started calling myself an abolitionist, thinking I was just nuts. But, because, here's the thing. I started to recognize that the argument people make over life,

I actually have a different argument now. And it's this. I actually will talk to someone, if they're going to argue for abortion,

I will argue for slavery. I will argue for it and give the benefits of slavery until they tell me it is wrong to say this is my property.

Because once they say that, I go, okay, fine. Explain to me the difference between this is my property and this is my body.

Because both of them are ownership issues. You're claiming an ownership over another human being.

The difference is slavery, they're not always being killed. Where a successful abortion is always the murder of the person you claim is not a human and you own.

Sure. Yeah, dehumanization is the base of everything to, an excuse for all immorality. We're not image bearers of God.

You can do anything you want. I mean, that's why it's stated right at the beginning. So, let's shift to this really quick, if you don't mind. What can

America do politically? If we're prodigal America, we need to turn back to Christ. What do you see, maybe, some of the one, two, three biggest things that really need to get done?

And if you want to focus nationally, state, or local, I don't really care. But what are the things to get us starting to repent and turn back to Christ?

So, it fundamentally begins at the lowest level. It begins in the home, being faithful fathers.

It begins in your church and being a faithful churchman. The reason why we have the candidates that we have at a national level is because of our inaction, our apathy at a local level.

We have the candidates that we've got that we deserve because the church pulled back.

When you see the word of God not being taught as the sufficient and authoritative word in every sphere, where does

Christ not have authority? Where does Christ's word not apply? Well, it applies everywhere.

He has authority over all things, in his essential role as God and his mediatorial role through the church, teaching them to obey everything that he commanded.

The whole word is the word of Christ. He is the word. So, whenever we don't do that, well, we're going to get the product of our inaction.

So, it truly is that we have a Harris regime and we have a

Trump candidacy. What we have gotten is the product of our discipleship of the culture.

We discipled the culture and the product of our discipleship was a Trump candidate and a

Harris candidate. Don't hear me saying that I despise everything that Trump is doing and he's got some really great things, but whenever it comes to protecting all lives and recognizing, most importantly, that Christ is

Lord, that he is king and we are going to submit to him and we are not going to write laws that are outside of the scriptures and impose the doctrines and commandments of men over the people and end up leading into a despotism.

He is not acknowledging, and I'm not saying he's going to lead us to despotism per se, but I'm saying he's not acknowledging the lordship of Christ very vocally, very forthrightly, and so that's because the church has discipled that.

We didn't get better candidates because we weren't better people and we weren't people who submitted to the lordship of Christ, so it really comes back to, at the local level, we have to start promoting the lordship of Christ in all spheres and actually running candidates.

Now, this is gonna take some time, maybe, but we know that the Lord can break in at any moment and bring revival, but he does that through means, typically, you know, there have been overwhelming times of the work of the spirit, but his normal and natural work, both in the

Westminster and the 1689, is he uses ordinary means, and those means are ordinary men, just people like us, so what you'll find in most states is that their legislatures and their civil leaders are less conservative than the people on the ground in most states.

Yeah, oh yeah. So what does that tell you? Well, we're not electing our best candidates for office at most levels, and why is that?

Well, who are our best candidates? Who are the best among the people? Well, the best are those who would submit their lives to the lordship of Christ, who would practice, who would pursue justice and only justice, and what is that?

The practice of righteousness. Right. By what standard? The standard of his word and being led by the spirit.

Why don't we have that? Well, because we don't have those kinds of people saying, Christ is lord over everything, he deserves the honor in every sphere, he deserves the honor in my precinct, he deserves the honor in my county, he deserves the honor in my district, he deserves the honor in my state, and at all levels.

That's not what we've done, we've got to do that, and I think that's what's happening. The only thing

I would say to that is I've talked to a lot of people, especially guys that stand on principle, that are godly men, that have been in office, and they just go, boy, does it wear on you, mentally and spiritually, to be around that type.

I mean, it did for me, I was at my state capitol for 10 years, and I would just hate going into work because you're just surrounded by darkness and slime and backstabbing and lawlessness and unrighteousness, and it's really a self -selecting group.

It's like those guys, I'm taking you outside of that, but the guys at your state level, and even in Congress, it's self -selecting in the fact that there's only a certain type of person that wants to be around that all the time, or that can be around that all the time.

You know, the guy that's smart and intelligent and godly and principled, he's out building a business, he's out raising a family, he goes,

I don't want to go spend four months out of the year at my state capitol with these guys, I just want them to do their job.

So it's this weird dichotomy, too, to where it's very rare to have guys like you, or guys like, to an extent,

Rand Paul, who I have a relationship with, who sees liberty a different way than most senators.

And it's like, so what do we do there to where I try to recruit guys to go there, and they're like, I don't want any part of that,

I know what they're doing up there, I mean, especially in Lansing, in my state, it's a slime fest, man.

It's like, you go state by state, and you go look up Michigan, you see how much our lobbyists spend and what our guys are accepting and where they're flying to, and the females that are up there, and all kinds of stuff, and good godly men go,

I want to be with my wife and kids, I want to be working on my business, you know what I mean? It takes a real mindset of like, okay,

I'm getting into the trenches if I'm going to get into politics. Well, and specifically, in your case, for folks who may not know, they may only know you from your political life here, but you are really taking a step down from what you used to do.

You are an outstanding pastor and preacher that you were doing, you took that and said, okay,

I'm going to devote some time to helping the country for a period of time, right? People may not know,

I've had the privilege of knowing you before you became elected in office, and you are one of the best preachers.

I got to talk to people who've been under your ministry and talk about what a good shepherd you are to people.

That's where I'm sure you want to be. We've talked over breakfast, some of the stuff that you now have to deal with, so with that,

I mean, this might be a good thing, is you shared, I asked, what do you get to enjoy the most out of elected office?

That would be good for folks to hear. Well, there's a whole lot in this, and so I'll try to parse through a few things, but answering that question first, what

I enjoy the most is getting to preach Christ to a hundred different issues every day. Yeah, nice.

We have the scriptures, it is sufficient for all things, for life and godliness.

It is able to cut to the quick of soul and marrow. It cuts to the quick of any number of issues, too, so whenever I am at the

Capitol, I've preached the gospel on a regular basis, more often through exposure to the broader public and to legislators, it's at least, and I'm not exaggerating, 10 times a day, and then applying the scriptures to numerous issues every day, and it's,

I would say, the most equipped people are the people who have the word of God hidden in their heart that they might not sin against him.

They might not sin in how they write legislation or how they debate legislation, how they talk to constituents or people who come up to the

Capitol or a lobbyist. There are a hundred opportunities every day, whether it's in your office or on the committee or in the

Capitol or on the Senate floor to proclaim the goodness of our

Lord, and I'm just shocked and dumbfounded that I get to honor the

Lord in this way. He chose to use someone like me to be his humble servant.

Can you imagine a better boss? One that would lay down his life, take on the wrath of God for my rebellion, and then forgive me and give me eternal life, forgiveness of sin, and an inheritance with the saints forever, and then say, okay, now

I want you to go and serve me. He's like, I'm not worthy of this. He's like, you're right, but I am, and I'll increase and you decrease, and we're gonna have a great arrangement.

So I get to preach Christ. It's just unbelievable to be able to walk in the pleasures of God in this way and to experience the pleasures of God not just with people who agree with me, but to experience that if I'm reviled for the sake of Christ, then

I'm blessed because he is sustaining my faith. He's growing my faith.

He's growing the faith of our family, of our church. In all these ways, and of the other saints, in all these ways, simply because I just trust that he's going to fight our battles for us.

I'm gonna mess up, and I'll get to repent, and you know what? It doesn't change my future. It doesn't change my eternity.

I'm kept in Christ. My identity's in him. It's not in my performance. It's not in whether I, even after I sin or if I need to repent publicly,

Christ is Lord. He has saved me. So whenever you talk about, well, people don't want to get into that environment, and that's very true.

You have to count the cost. Jesus uses this analogy. Everyone who doesn't, not just initially when you're coming to Christ, you gotta count the cost.

Every builder looks at what it's gonna take. He's going to weigh it out and decide, is it worth it?

Is it worth it? You have to count the cost, not just at coming to Christ, but in walking in Christ and walking by the

Spirit. Is it worth everything that's going to come after me?

And you can look at it selfishly, or you can look at it for the glory of Christ and the joy of others and what it is to actually give yourself over to the providence of God, which is simply faith, trusting and obeying him for not just me and my family, but for the saints at my church, the saints across this nation, and my neighbors who are yet to become saints.

So is it worth it? And I would say, if you count the cost and you say, I just can't put up with those fights, well,

I think in some ways you've got to evaluate whether you're short -circuiting the flow of the grace of God that could come to you through being engaged in those fights.

And not just the grace of God, but you're short -circuiting the glorification of Christ in those areas.

Yeah, that's so good, too, and it's a very kind of apostle, martyr -type attitude that you're talking about there that I think many

Christians would do well to have. You go back and read Fox's books of martyr, they kind of all have this theme of, who am

I? To be used, to be sacrificed for Christ, to be killed, to be this, to write. Paul has that very same attitude, and I think we don't have that paradigm very much in the

Western Christian church. Look, I died in Christ. Right. I am dead in him. If you want to save your life, then you have to lose it.

Lose it. And anyone who seeks to save their life will lose it. Anyone who seeks to lose their life will find it.

They'll be saved in Christ. And this is, so many people, unfortunately, just apply that to the initial justification.

You're being saved. And that initial sanctification, that positional, but the progressive sanctification is, are you going to die so that you can have

Christ? And this is what we, you know, we talk about, John Owen talked about the mortification of sin. Mortification of sin is not just saying, well,

I need to stop doing, I need to stop looking at pornography, or I need to stop yelling at my kids, or I need to stop doing these kinds of things.

What it is is, I need to put my reputation on the chopping block and say,

I don't have a reputation apart from Christ. I need to put my future on the chopping block and say,

I don't have a future apart from Christ. If I have him, I have everything. So stop taking the lies of the culture that says, you have to be a self -made man, and Christians already say, well,

I don't want to be self -made, I want to be made in Christ. Well, that means daily walking in the path of obedience and walking by the

Spirit, and that means real things on the ground, like being reviled, like having your life and livelihood be put on the guillotine in front of the world and say, are you willing to have your reputation chopped off if Christ is the one who is holding the rope to pull it?

One more thing, and I think Andrew had a question there, but my father told me when I was very young, we'd do a proverb every morning before homeschool, proverb a day, and I remember him telling me, he goes,

Greg, if you walk righteously and confess your sins and don't have any hidden sin in your life, he said, oh, he's getting notes, he said, wicked men really can't do a whole lot to you.

They'll hate you, but they can't do a whole lot to you, and I went, boy, is that how it plays out in politics and in life, too, because I'll tell you what, you get into politics and you realize the only thing they have over most people is some type of secret sin or something unconfessed.

If you're walking righteously and you're confessing your sin and you're repentant, right, the wicked can't really do, they can assassinate character and things like that, but they get so angry when they don't have anything on you.

They hate the righteous, they hate it so much because they can't be used, they can't be blackmailed, they can't be, all these things, so I would encourage anyone listening, too, that was good advice for me.

It's almost like a force field, for the Star Trek reference, for anyone out there, that God gives you in his grace, right, where's

James White when I need him, we're talking Star Trek, a force field. It's almost like a natural repellent to the wicked when you walk righteously and confess sin, and say

I don't have anything hidden in my life, and yes, I do fail, like you said, and very powerful if you hold public office.

Oh my gosh, lobbyists and leadership and all these people, they can't do anything with you.

You can say no to something and they can't go, well, is there something I can do to get them to say yes? Not if it doesn't align with Christ, not if it doesn't align with his word, and it frustrates them, but then, people that even are unbelievers look at that and they go, what is it about that guy?

I like it, he stands, whatever they want, he stands on principle, he's principled, well, no, and then

I'm sure you, Dusty, you can even have the opportunity, because I've had it at my coffee hours, to be able to then preach

Christ crucified, to share the gospel. Oh, you like what I'm doing, oh, you're standing against the elites, or you're standing against, well, the reason

I do that is because of this, and then you've let into that, so very cool. There are so many guys who, like you said, they look at the public office and they look at their past record and they say, there are things that they're gonna find, that if they expose it,

I'm going to be destroyed, and that could be true, yeah?

But if we recognize that that died with me, when

Christ died and I was buried with him, and my baptism told me that I was buried in my full allegiance to him, and he has given me eternal life, he has given me the eternal treasures of communion with the triune

God and communion with the saints, you can expose that, and it will be nothing more than an opportunity for me to glorify my

Lord. He already knows. Before the cross, in coming to the cross, on the front side of the cross, it tells us that we are far more wicked than we even imagine ourselves, and I'm taking from someone that,

I'm not, the name that will not be named. We know that the front side of the cross tells us that, you know what, you're far more wicked, you should not be shocked that you've got sin, and other people might act like they're shocked, but then you can tell them the back side of the cross is the rest of the story, that I'm more loved and I'm more found and I have every spiritual blessing in the heavenly places in Christ Jesus alone and not on the basis of my works, and it is an opportunity for you to publicly declare, yes, that's who

I was, but it's no longer who I am, because Christ is in me, and he is the hope of glory.

Yeah. You know, I think about, and if I get this wrong, James White's gonna correct me, but historically,

I think it was John Chrysanthemum, early church father, who was being charged with something.

Chrysanthemum. Chrysanthemum, I knew I was messing up. You could be a flower, too. Golden mouth, because that's what he was, he was preaching what was so good, they called him golden mouth.

Chrysostom. Chrysostom. Yeah, yeah. So, I believe someone was charging him with something, and it was just him saying he didn't do it that was enough.

Right, the reputation. Because his reputation was such that people knew he would never lie, he would never do these things that he was being charged with, and just him standing up and saying,

I didn't do it was enough to convince people. As Christians, could we do that? Yeah. Right?

It's tough. But the reality is, I mean, what does it talk about when it talks about the qualifications of pastors and deacons?

They have to be above reproach. In the Greek, that means you can't nail anything to someone. It doesn't mean you're perfect, and that's how a lot of people try to act.

That's the problem. They try to act like they're perfect, rather than, as you're saying, yeah, I did that.

Yep, that was my past. That's not who I am today. I mean, look, let's get political, right? Everyone's attacking

Trump for things that happened 20, 30 years ago, 40 years ago. Is that the man today?

And I think the reason they have to do that is because they don't have any, I mean, I don't know any other politician, and now he is one, that can claim they've never had an alcoholic drink.

Yeah. Right? That, to me, is like, that speaks to something that he isn't given over to his vices.

Well, that one, at least. At least that one, yeah. There's other ones, right? There's other ones. But, you know.

Yeah, we're not putting him on a pedestal of shepherdhood or something. He's not a Christian, even though someone prophesied that he would be a

Christian after being shot in the ear, but, you know, yeah, that's a false prophecy. But the thing is that it is something to what you're saying is we especially, whether in the pastorate, whether in politics, or even in our

Christian life, just going to a job, if I'm collecting garbage, if I'm, you know, washing toilets,

I should have a reputation that I am blameless, that if someone brings some accusation against me, it doesn't work because I've already admitted to it.

I've already said, yes, I've repented of that. Yeah, I did do that. Yeah, yeah. So there's two aspects of blamelessness.

There's the ontological blamelessness. Here's Chance from 1689 Cigars just trying to steal the show with a baby.

With a baby, look at, yeah. Yeah, that's just like, you're almost like a politician. You put a baby in your arms and, you know, just.

That way, now you can say what you want. He brought it here for Dusty to kiss it, you know. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Kissing babies and shaking hands.

Shaking hands and, yeah, shaking. Did I say it wrong? Kissing hands and shaking babies. Yeah, that might get you in trouble.

So you have, yeah, you have the ontological righteousness, which is not yours.

By my being, by my nature, I was born a sinner and under my federal head,

Adam, but now in Christ, I am ontologically righteousness because the righteousness of Christ is mine.

And then you have the practical righteousness that is blamelessness through practice in our life.

And even, and we're not gonna have the practical righteousness that Christ had.

So what that means is repentance for on both levels is important.

Now, it doesn't mean that you shouldn't have a measure of blamelessness. You must have for the office of pastor.

And you need to have that for the office of overseer of a nation or overseer of a state or a political or a polis, a group of people.

But the reality is with all of that blamelessness, ontologically, you only get ontological righteousness through repentance, through repentance into life as a saving grace whereby a sinner, out of a true sense of his sin, an apprehension of the mercies of God in Christ does with grief and hatred for his sin, turn from it unto

God and pursuit and endeavor after a new obedience in Christ.

So that's the ontological. And then that also includes the practical blamelessness that we're repenting regularly, even though there's a measure that we have to attain to to be a pastor or to hold public office,

I would say. That repentance is always the course that you have to walk, bear fruit in keeping with repentance.

So, you know, I mentioned earlier, you've been an encouragement to many to step into the political realm, to stand on the truth of God's word, to stand for life as abolitionists.

But you mentioned counting the cost. So let's, at breakfast, you and I were talking about this. You know, what are the things you didn't expect?

What are the things you don't like about the office? Maybe for those who are saying, hey, you know, Dusty did this, maybe

I could do this, which we want to see. We want to see more Christians step up in local, state, even federal government.

Give us someone to, we could actually vote for, but give some counsel to these, maybe some men who are thinking this to say, hey, we want to follow in Dusty's shoes.

Count the cost. What are some of the things they may need to think through in that position? Yeah, so yes, they will try to obliterate your character.

They will try to absolutely destroy your life and your livelihood and your reputation. They want to destroy your heritage, but that's what they're wanting to do to your family.

That's what they're wanting to do to the church members. That's what they're wanting to do to the saints from all times and all places.

That's the devil's play, to destroy us. He is a liar, he is a thief, and he is a murderer, and not just over your body, but your livelihood and your reputation.

That's the case. And if you have any exposure to the public, even guys, most guys have a job.

If you - They can do it at your work. They'll do it there, and COVID proved that they were willing to fire you if you wouldn't wear a mask or if you wouldn't get a jab.

There's always going to be 100 things that the devil or through demonic influence will seek to destroy the testimony of Christ and the witness of the saints.

He's going to do that, and you're gonna have to count that cost. And yes, it will intensify if you put yourself in a public office.

That's the nature of it. You're exposing your life to the threats and the slings and arrows of disdain from the world.

Has public in the name. That's right. So count the cost, talk to your wife, but don't do that unfiltered.

Our wives aren't men. I hope. I hope that men aren't marrying men, and then say,

I think I'm a Christian. No, you're not, actually. But you need to filter that through your wife, and especially your kids, to say, there are conversations that I need to have with other men that I count the cost, that I need to shelter you from, because you're not supposed to be on the front lines.

We're always to protect our wife and our children. I am, as a male, built to carry certain things that women just aren't built to, and they're built to carry things that men aren't, like childbearing.

That is not something that I really want to carry, but I don't want my wife on the front lines fighting my battles, and fighting the battles that the

Lord has, in his order, commanded men to carry. So count the cost, but do it in such a way where you're filtering some of those things, and I'm not saying lie to your wife.

Don't do that, but I'm saying that there are certain things that she doesn't, there are weights and burdens that she doesn't need to carry.

And Galatians 6, one says, bear one another's burdens, and so fulfill the law of Christ. Part of that burden -bearing is not making her bear those burdens, too.

So do that, and do that with men in your church. Do it with wise counselors. In the presence of many counselors, there's wisdom.

And do that with your broader church community, and then do it with people who've been through this experience to a degree.

It could be bad. It might not be as bad as what you're thinking. It might be worse, but we look to the promises of our

Lord. Blessed are you when you're reviled and persecuted, not for your idiocy, but for the name of Christ.

Blessed are you indeed, and great is your reward, where? In heaven. In heaven, yeah.

And so you have to store up treasures in heaven where moth and rust won't destroy, and how do you do that? Well, some of that is actually going and fighting for the honor of Christ in those spheres.

So you gotta count the cost with your reputation, your livelihood, but there's a very, very important point.

One of the primary reasons that I ran was seeing my children grow up in an environment where their right to worship our

Lord in public would not be stripped from them, where the world that I hopefully leave in my, the life that I leave for them in the home, in our church, and in our community, and across our state, and perhaps in our nation will be better.

Because of the labor that I did. And so I'm standing on the shoulders of faithful men.

I would dishonor my fathers if I didn't stand on, if I jumped off and said,

I can't carry this burden, somebody else is gonna have to do it. Lord, I know that you're equipping, you're preparing, you've trained, and there's a lot that you have done in your providential circumstances to put me in this environment where I could run for office.

But I'm jumping off the shoulders of my fathers and saying, I'm not gonna fight that battle. That's a great measure of selfishness in my estimation.

And it's not just selfishness, it's a dishonoring of the providence of God through centuries of labor.

So you have to count the cost of the honor of Christ and the legacy of faith that your children are gonna grow up in.

Did my kids grow up under a father who was apathetic to the cause of Christ, who was complacent to evil that was coming and crushing them?

And did they grow up in a worse environment because I did nothing? Was I a bystander or an upstander?

Was I a bystander who saw all the evil around them and said, well, it's gonna happen. And whenever they came for the

Catholics, when they came for the Jews, I wasn't a Jew, so I didn't do anything. Whenever they came for the Catholics, I wasn't a

Catholic, so I didn't do anything. And so it goes. And then when they came for me, I had nothing, no one to stand up for me.

Well, what about when they come for your kids? Yeah, which they are. Because that's gonna happen. Now or later, they're gonna come after us.

And what did you do? Were you an upstander and said, thus far and no further, you shall not pass over my dead body and over the glory of Christ.

You're gonna have to go through it. Yeah. Dusty's preaching. Yeah, yeah. I'm getting hyped. Well, you know, you said something, and I can't remember if during the show or breakfast, but the fact that someone had said, well,

Christians shouldn't be in public office, right? From my background being Jewish, being trained to like, okay, what are the marks of the

Holocaust? How did we get there? Because the Jewish people always said, it's gonna happen again. With that comment, this is the thing, and I wanna encourage folks who are listening to following your path, because yes, it's a hard road, but it's a necessary road.

When the world is saying, no, no, you as a Christian don't have a right, you shouldn't be in politics, it's because they wanna remove the

Christian element out of society so they can trample over it and not have anyone step in the way.

We need more men to step up to do what you're doing, both of you, as you're in local, you're in state, to be able to stand up and say, no, we're gonna engage in this so that there's more

Christian voices so that they can't say we don't belong there, because the thing is, they're gonna wanna say, okay, you can't be in public office, you can't be a judge, you can't be a lawyer, no one that can defend people, then you can't be a teacher, you can't have foster children, none of that's gonna influence.

When they get that accomplished, what ends up happening is now there's no one to stand up, as you were just saying, there's no one to stand up, but if we just sit there and say, well, someone else is gonna, this is what happened in Nazi Germany, the

Jewish people just said, well, I'll let someone else do it, I'll let someone else do it, and they didn't stand up, they pulled back and said, well, we're just gonna try to survive.

How did that work for us? It didn't work well. And Christians need to wake up to the fact that that is where we're at in society right now, in America, this is the turning point.

You need more men to stand up like you. So, the world and the flesh and the devil know that the greatest threat to their system is

Christ and Christianity. 100%. They know that. Do you and I know that? That the greatest threat to the world, the flesh, and the devil is

Christianity, it's the gospel. And we aren't convinced, unfortunately, for the withdrawers and the bystanders, we aren't convinced that the gospel is the greatest threat to the enemy that has ever existed.

I think sometimes we think it's, oh, it's this right policy, or it's this right legislative act, or it's this right non -political policy, you know, it's simply the gospel.

Now, some of those things are based off that as well, too. I would also say, too, to your point,

Andrew, about young men or anyone getting involved in politics, if you're principled and you are justified and sanctified and you are in the word and you are serving

Christ wholeheartedly, I'm gonna tell you a little secret about most politicians at the local, state, and federal level.

They will roll over to a strong -willed person that has a philosophical, logical, religious point that they have a conviction on.

You can get most elected officials, because usually they're apathetic or they're listening to someone else, if you're righteously stubborn, you can get your way most of the time.

And that's the real truth of it, because - That's in the church, too, with pastors. I mean -

And I don't wanna seem like I'm talking down or saying, but generally speaking, if you can outlast, and I take pride in being able to outlast some of my elected officials.

I've gotten stuff at both the federal and state level pushed through, because I will out -talk you, out -debate you, out -whatever.

And they go, fine, you know, because most of them are apathetic and they like kind of working in the corners where no one's really paying attention.

You bring light to it. So I've met a lot of guys here where I go, yeah, go run for local office.

You have that kind of backbone and that kind of mentality of where you can outlast and tough.

I've had, even on my board, I start out, I'm the only one that wants it. No, we'll never get there. And guess what?

It might take six months, but I get it done because I'm relentless. I'm not gonna give up on it. They finally go, fine, we'll vote for it just so you'll shut up.

You know what I mean? And I know that's a horrible reason for them to - The nagging widow. If you have to be, you know what

I mean? Now, it's a little different at state level. There's a lot more going on there. And then when you go federal, it's even crazier, if you can even imagine.

State is that weird thing where you're kind of, you're in the big leagues from the locals, but you're still minor league to federal.

But it's like, there's stuff going on there. I mean, you got billions of dollars moving around state budgets and things like that.

Not that I want to get back into that. But did you have anything else for Dusty? Well, I figure we'll wrap this up. Obviously, this is,

I didn't say at the top of the show, but we're kind of doing a dual show, me and Andrew here. Where's this gonna appear at for people on you?

This will be on the Wrap Report. Wrap Report. So we got Wrap Report, Deadman Walking. We're at Fight Left Feast. I've been here since Tuesday.

He's been here since Wednesday. And we're finishing up day, what day are we on?

Two, three? 12. Gosh, but Dusty, you got a final word for us before we let you go? Well, sure.

He's a pastor. He's always got a final word. I knew I could throw it to him for a final word. 40 minutes in, he's like, okay, that was my introduction.

Yeah, right, yeah. That's how I feel most sermons. We go about an hour. As I close three times.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. In closing, in closing, in closing. I would just say, there are a lot of young guys who probably listen to this and who are energized and want to do something.

And I would say, first, don't neglect or despise the day of small beginnings.

You have to be faithful in self -government and home government and in the oikonomos, in the economy of your house.

And that would include your business. Be faithful there. The requirements or the qualifications for public office, whether it be pastoral office, and I think biblically for a civil office, are that you are a man who has been practicing righteousness.

You have been pursuing justice. That you are a judge of your sphere in a faithful way.

That you are a man who fears the Lord, you don't take bribes, and you're trustworthy. And as you prove yourself in those areas and overseeing those more private offices, then you can consider if you can be in a public office.

That's part of the requirements in 1 Timothy 3, in Titus 1, in 1 Peter 5, that you have to prove that you have a well -ordered home, that you have managed your home well, that your children are faithful.

And it's through that faithfulness in walking with the Lord in those areas that God will then prepare you for overseeing a larger group of people.

You're proving your faithfulness there in the lower level so that you can be faithful in the broader.

And there's a lot of guys who could be, who could think, well now,

I've got a desire to see Christ proclaimed in the public spheres, but don't short -circuit the process that God provides.

You're gonna be changed from one degree of glory to the next. You're gonna gain wisdom from one stage of life to the next.

God, through his providential working, will develop you into that person. So don't short -circuit those processes that God has in your life.

You be faithful in your church. Be a servant of all servants to the people and show that you're a man who is trustworthy with a group of people.

So don't pursue it too quickly. And I say this about the pastoral office. You're a young man.

You haven't proven to be an overseer of really much. Be an overseer first before you have an overseer office.

I wanna encourage you that we need hordes of faithful men in their homes before they're then faithful in the offices of pastoral ministry or civil servant ministry.

That's such great biblical advice. All right, you wanna wrap it there? What do you think, Andrew? That's a wrap. That's a wrap.

All right, guys, thanks so much for listening to another episode, a mashup episode of Deadman Walking Podcast and The Wrap Report.

You can find out more about us at dmwpodcast .com. We have all kinds of snarky merch there, like the wine -em, dine -em,

Romans nine -em mug, or the how -about -you -shut -up -and -let -that -be -your -wisdom Job 13 .5. Sometimes you just have to quote scripture to the pagans, even if they don't like it.

Dusty, thanks so much for coming on. Why don't you take us out where they can find you on Wrap Report, Andrew? So you can go wrapreport .org

for that, or just go to Striving for Eternity. There you can find everything, including the Christian Podcast Community, all the podcasts we have there.

We're still waiting for Deadman Walking to join us there, but hey, it's only been two, three years. We've been asking.

I'm a slow mover, baby. Gotta think it through. No, I'm just kidding. As always, guys, remember, chief end of man is to glorify

God and enjoy him forever. God bless. This podcast is part of the Striving for Eternity ministry. For more content or to request a speaker or seminar to your church, go to strivingforeternity .org.