Everything was Great with Andrew Until this …

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See website for details. One, two, three. Welcome to The Rap Report with your host,

Andrew Rapoport, where we provide biblical interpretation and application. This is a ministry of striving for eternity and the

Christian podcast community. For more content or to request a speaker for your church, go to strivingforeternity .org.

Well, welcome to another edition of The Rap Report. I'm your host, Andrew Rapoport, the President and Executive Director of Striving for Eternity and the

Christian Podcast Community, joined with my co -host, Bud the Wiser.

Sir, how are you? Well, I never feel wiser, but I am grateful to be here.

And it's very good to see you today, Andrew, as we record. Yes, because I almost wasn't here.

I want to find out a number of things about a few posts you made online about some issues you were going through and whether or not there was a

MyPillow involved in what happened last night. I have a feeling you didn't get to enjoy that. No, I did not.

I actually was going to say something to the nurse that, you know, I'm really missing my MyPillow right now.

But yet we will get to that. We will explain all of this. What we're going to do, folks, is

I know that I've posted some things and people are concerned. People have some questions.

Even though we're recording this the day after I posted certain things on social media,

I know that you'll hear this a week and a half later. I get that. I don't want to take all the time to talk about myself, but I do believe that I owe it to you, my audience, to give you guys updates on things that are happening with me.

And, you know, I feel a connection with you guys when I go to conferences. And so many of you that come up to me and tell me you listen to the podcast or you contact me on social media and tell me that you appreciate the podcast and what you're learning.

And I know you don't want to hear about me. You want to hear about the content. I get that. And I know there's some who do want to hear, do want to know what's going on.

Does that sound good, bud? I think that's fine. Okay. It is the rap report, so. Oh, I thought we were on the bud zone.

Oh, good. I thought we warped into the bud zone where the buds of the faith get together and talk.

And you had a great one with Les Lansphere, I'm just going to say. I enjoyed that. I learned, you know, I know

Les, but I learned more about him. You're good at getting people to pull things out. Although, you know, he was expecting the question and still stumped it.

You asked him any questions that I should have asked you. He knew that was coming and he was still stumped.

He said that. He was like, great. Oh, yeah, that was fun. I really enjoyed that. And I had him and David and Tim on about Cessationists, the movie that they're working on, a couple weeks ago.

And I was really provoked by some stuff that Les had said, and I wanted to hear a little bit more about his story and how the

Lord has providentially moved him out of some really wonky areas of Christianity and to a robust, reformed faith.

So that was good to hear. To a safe place. A safe place, yeah. So let's get into what's going on in my personal life and what some people are wondering.

I had said on social media that I asked for prayers because I'm really, in a personal spot,

I'm at one of the lowest points in my life. And so, no, it wasn't a suicide watch as one person.

I'll get to who called and there's some people I want to thank. But, you know, what ended up happening was, it's just when you're hurting, sometimes you just need to hear from other people.

You just need to know at times when you're feeling alone that there's people that care about you.

I'll say this, I was surprised on Twitter, that tweet, at least as of today, which is less than 24 hours, has 123 ,000 impressions.

I think it was like 3 ,000 likes or something like that. I'm still trying to figure with Twitter what a like means because I read it that I click like meaning

I've read this already. But people are liking that I'm in the emergency room or that I'm at a low point.

So 3 ,300 people liked that I could use prayer because I'm at the lowest point in my life.

So what's going on? Let me just try to explain. I had several things all occur at one time this year.

This year's probably been the hardest year. Back in December, I've discovered my mother was dying.

And so we were getting down there a bunch to, you know, just to be able to see her, say goodbye for my wife and I so we could share the gospel with her.

And, you know, we were dealing with that. Then she died in March. There's the grieving process. And during this whole time,

I have been, and Bud, I know you know this, I've been working three full -time jobs. I've been working for two and a half years as a preaching in a church plant, not getting paid anything.

So I had no salary at the church plant. I had been working full -time at Striving Fraternity, which, as you know,

Striving Fraternity is a ministry that targets smaller churches. And so because of that, none of us really get a salary.

I do get a small salary. It is a very small salary. The only reason they started paying me a salary was when my kids went to college and I realized

I wasn't going to be able to afford college. I told the board I was going to have to go get a second job that paid so that I can pay for college, and they decided to start paying me a salary to cover the college expense.

And then they just decided to keep it afterwards. So it's not a very big salary.

So I do side work as well. Now, granted, for years I've been doing bivocational

Striving Fraternity because I don't sleep much, and I've been able to handle that for years, working roughly about 100 hours a week, which is a lot for many.

But if you're not sleeping, if you're only sleeping three hours a night, you have the time to do things like that. But when

I added another job, added 40 more hours, yeah, that didn't work well.

It was like, what, 168 hours a week? So do the math and you realize I was just going, going, going, going, going.

I was nonstop. And I think I've done a podcast about the need for rest. And even though I did that and learned that at one point,

I fell back into the bad behavior just because I had a lot to do. Like, I understood

I needed to rest, but at the same time, I'm always working. And so that caused several health issues.

The high blood pressure, basically it's stress -related. That's causing other issues that I don't want to get into.

It's just painful. But, you know, so, and then

I had a health issue that we'll get to that happened last night. But what

I ended up doing was having to make one of the hardest decisions that I needed to make is realizing that I'm really not being very effective at any of my three full -time jobs because I'm just,

I'm doing too much. And I wasn't being fair to anybody. And so I had to do what

I thought was the hardest thing, was to resign from my church as doing any of the preaching and teaching. It's not easy for a guy who just loves the people.

I mean, that's the whole thing that I want to, you know, I like working with people, discipling people, training people, and watching them grow.

And it was hard for me to do that. But I was just doing too much for too long. And so I had to drop the one that, you know, that wasn't paying and, you know, it just wasn't working out.

And some of the time constraints I had were, you know, just I wasn't able to pour into the leaders and the people the way that I wanted to.

And, you know, my thought was, hey, if we go slow, things will work out. But things never do work out.

You can't ignore things. You have to, as a pastor, it's a full -time thing. You've got to pour into your pastor.

I posted actually on Twitter recently, you know, I've been working with now six pastors.

It was five until yesterday. But I've been working with six pastors in the last six months who have had church members and church leaders, even fellow pastors that have been just vicious to the preaching pastor.

And I've been counseling them. And so, you know, I counsel a lot of pastors around the country, and that weighs on me too because I look at what they're going through and I've got to counsel them.

Well, I don't have to, but I do because they come to me and I have people I go to, and I'll mention some of them.

But it's good to have that, and I know how good it is. So when a pastor comes to me and he's struggling,

I don't want to blow that off or be like, hey, I'm too busy. And I've been dealing with guys. I mean, I know a guy, 30 -person church, and the assistant pastor was making accusations.

What it is is he really wants to be the preaching pastor. And he just isn't gifted in that, but he took, they had 30 people.

He took 26 people and left the church and just was working behind the scenes so that when he left, they all went with him.

So this pastor was blindsided. He didn't know that this guy had been doing all that. Just someone who was serving for three years as the preaching pastor on a church plant.

And he really, he's an engineer by trade. He's a software engineer, and he never thought he'd be a pastor.

But when they started this church, he had told me, which was kind of touching, I'll tell this part now.

I won't say who it is until later. But he said that he learned how to preach from working at Striving Fraternity.

He said, you never taught me directly, but you taught me. Just in the way you go about things, you were teaching me how to preach.

You were teaching me how to run a ministry. And you never sat down and said, this is what

I'm going to try to do. But he said, just the way you do things, you're always discipling, and you were teaching me.

And he's like, a big reason why I felt I could preach was because of all the years you poured in. And so, you know, he's struggling.

You know, you get, you know, suddenly he decides, okay, maybe I should be the pastor of the church.

And it's like, as soon as he makes that decision, that's when someone comes out, and it's like they start, now

I'm trying to remember, I'm mixing, I may be mixing up two pastors now. I think I am. So there was a different pastor who I was thinking where, was getting along fine with the congregation, one person got upset with something he did and said he did something he didn't do, and when he tried to say, but I didn't do that, they were like, oh, you're being argumentative.

And he's like, no, I'm not. I'm just saying I didn't do it. You know, these things happen in ministry.

I said, you know, so I posted, like, my 30 plus years of ministry experience has taught me that people in church, unfortunately, will stab you in the back as a pastor.

They will criticize you. I like, you know, I posted this earlier as well from Dave Cuttingham, he told me, he reminds his people that, you know, you would hate if I nitpicked into your life the way you do the pastor's life.

Yeah. You know? And I think, Bud, you've been in ministry long enough, you've seen this with churches.

The preaching pastor is a hard position, it really is, because everybody is, they're looking at your kids, they're looking at your wife, they're looking at everything you do, and it's hard to be under that glass while doing two other full -time jobs.

Yeah. Yeah. You know, I'm sitting here thinking about, and I hope

I can explain it astutely. When I was back in the

Southern Baptist Convention and the Southern Baptist Church, there was this sort of understanding among most of the people, at least some of the men, in a couple of men's groups that I was in, that you never question the pastor.

Now, you don't, whatever he says is always right. So there's that sort of standoffish, from the standpoint of doctrine, you don't question him.

From the standpoint of his preaching, you don't. He's sort of insulated, segregated, isolated.

He's different. Well, I disagree with that completely. I question everything

Christians are to do that. What I think in your case becomes particularly burdensome is that you're very accessible.

You love people. You're trying to do ministry. That makes the familiarity with you an option for those that might want to attack, because they feel this sort of association with you, because you're very accessible, which

I think you need to be. I think ministers have to be, particularly pastors, because you are engaged in the life and the discipleship of that congregation.

So that's a sad reality, I think, in the church. And the

SPC approach, where the pastor is untouchable, is completely wrong. But to go to the other side, where there's a pastor like you, a minister like you that is accessible, that doesn't need to be abused.

There's still a deference and a respect that you need to show, even in light of the accessibility.

So, curious circumstance. Yeah, you know, it's hard for a pastor to step down.

I mean, at least a shepherd. I mean, it's hard for me, at least. Why? I love these people. I poured into the people, and I just don't want to see...

I know that me stepping down causes hurt, right?

It just will, because there's people who came up, who told me, like, we never had a pastor that would take us to Truth Matters and Shepherds Conference and take us down to the

Ark Encounter as a church and do things like this with us. Someone else was like,

I've never had a pastor who I could call him, and he'll always pick up the phone. It is a thing where I know

I'm hurting, and some don't even understand, like, why then do

I feel like I've got to leave that church? Now, this is something a lot of people who are not in ministry don't really understand.

One of the hardest things for my family was when I left my first pastorate, because my daughter had some real good accountability there, and I didn't quite understand the depth of it, but the reality is that it would be unfair to any future pastor that comes in if the previous pastor is there.

Now, there are some people who could probably pull this off where they can point people to the new guy, and most people say they can do that, and they don't.

I mean, when the new guy comes in and the old pastor is still there, the old pastor is still the old pastor, and everyone goes to him, and then if there's anything the new guy is doing, they go to the old pastor and say, hey, we don't like these changes.

And the new guy never gets to be the pastor of the church. I'm not saying there's one pastor, but he's...

You know, you have the pastor, the preaching pastor, who sets the vision for the church, and he can never set that vision if the old preaching pastor is there.

It doesn't work well. Now, I would like to think that I have the ability to do that and would be able to do that, but I'm not going to risk the church to do that.

Like, what if I'm wrong? What if I stay and I... People still come to me.

They used to come to me for counseling and say, I don't want to rebuild everything with the new guy. You already know my history, right?

Well, I would have to say, no, you need to go to him. He's your pastor now. And, you know, there's no guarantee that, as you know, bud, not everyone gets along with one another.

You find a pastor you can really talk to, especially, like for me, if I'm more accessible and the other guy is not, guess what?

People are going to want to come to me because he's not as accessible, but I'd have to not be in that position because it's unfair to the next guy.

And so some people think, like, it's really wrong when pastors resign and then leave, but I understand why they do it.

And for people that don't understand ministry, it's actually better for the church, for the unity of the church, for the pastor to move on so that the next guy,

I mean, you could maybe come back years later after he makes whatever changes and people really see him as the visionary of the church.

But that's the hard thing. I mean, I moved out to Pennsylvania for the church and now I have to walk away from the church so that they can find another person because that's what's best for the church.

And so my mindset is what's best for the church, not what's best for me, right? So you go through that, and for a person like me who's very,

I'm very motivated by being with people and teaching people, it makes it hard. And I work out of the house, so just my bride and I, now we don't have the connection with the church.

So it's like, oh, well, now in God's providence, we see a future. I mean, look, I'm struggling.

I mean, I'll be open with you guys, my audience. Because I love you who listen, and I want you to feel that you can know me and I can know you.

Well, I can know you if you let me know that you listen. You can always email info at strivingforattorney .org.

Love to get the emails, especially the encouraging ones. I know

I get all the ones of things I say wrong and do wrong, those I get all the time. I don't know if you know it takes -

I'm sending them, but I'm trying to help you, bro. It takes 10 encouraging emails to make up for one criticizing email, just so you know.

But yeah, I mean, I've been counseling for 30 plus years. I know that, you know,

I'm in the verge of a depression or in a depression, no different than many. I mean, you look at Spurgeon and John Edwards and Luther.

I mean, so many, I'm not saying I'm at their level. No way. I'm just saying many in ministry struggle with depression.

It's not a bad thing. But I also have the counseling to know how to get out of it. And so there's things

I'm going to be doing to, you know, you need to focus on others, not self. And so it's been hard.

That's why I said I'm at the lowest point, because it's all these things. I mean, I just got done grieving my mother, realizing that because of all that was going on,

I ended up realizing I needed to step down. I went from one type of grieving to another. And it's just been a really rough year.

I mean, you know, working that many hours takes a toll on your body, and it's taken its toll.

And so, you know, so I had to, I just had to step down from the church.

And I'm going to try to focus again on, you know, the time on Striking Fraternity. But I explained to the board,

I'm not going to be putting in 60 hours anymore. I'll do 40 and, you know, 30 to 40 hours, and try to do that until we can, you know, get to a point where I don't need the secular work, and then maybe

I'll raise that back up to 60. I am getting older. I know that surprises you, bud, because, you know,

I mean, I just don't look as old as some. You look great. Yeah, not if you see the pictures from years ago.

And still your grandfather, so. See, and that's where God's, you know, when things like this happen in folks' life, you look and say, what's

God doing? My daughter is pregnant. My son -in -law and daughter will move after the baby's born.

That's the plan at least, I think. I mean, you know, you know how to make

God laugh, right? How's that? You say, I got a plan. He goes, yeah, really?

Let's see about that plan. And so, you know, but I would never consider,

I mean, I've always said when my kids settle down somewhere, we'd retire and move to wherever they are, so I kind of encourage them to move somewhere warm.

So kind of warm where? Florida? I don't know, I just keep dropping that. Like, Florida's a nice place to raise a family.

Florida's great. There's still a couple of houses down the street from me available. Ooh, we should talk.

So, yeah, I mean, so if I was pastoring, there's no way I would even consider moving.

But, you know, right now I'm thinking my bride has been by my side in ministry throughout our marriage.

I've been in ministry for about 35 years, and I've been married for 28 of those years, and she's been by my side through thick and through thin.

It's been some very rough years. And if you don't know, it's hardest for a pastor's wife, because she watches the pastor get attacked and criticized, and she's helpless to do anything about it.

And a good pastor's wife supports her husband. And, like, my bride knows when to say things and when not to, and when you need encouragement and when you need correction.

And my wife's not afraid of bringing out a baseball bat to give correction if she needs to. Baseball bat being the word of God, but she kind of swings it the same way,

I think. It just feels that way. But it's been hard for her. And I'm like, you know what?

It's time she's Asian. A big part of the Asian culture is that the grandparents take care of the kids.

And so she really, I think, wants to be there with the grandchildren, and so we may follow them. We would never have been able to consider that.

So, like, we look at this and go, what's God doing? If I focus on me, I could say, wow, this is really bad.

I'm having to give up something I love more than anything. You know, like,

I love doing what I do at Striving Fraternity, but it's different when you're preaching every week and teaching midweek every week and doing all that and then getting together with men on Saturdays or doing a

Sunday school. When you get to pour into those people week after week after week. I pour into you guys, and I pour into far more people here through this podcast, you know, because we get hundreds and hundreds of downloads, or thousands of downloads,

I should say, and, you know, Church of 25. And it may sound weird to some people.

I'd rather be the Church of 25 than the thousands of people. It's just the way I'm wired, because I like to watch people grow.

And you guys who are listening, I don't get to watch you grow. Unless, of course, you come up to me at a car. I mean, I still can tell you that there's one family at G3 that probably means more to me than anyone, because I had this young girl come up to me, but I don't know if you were around for this.

But there was a girl comes up to me at the booth, and she tells me she watched our

Striving Fraternity Academy in homeschool. That was their homeschooling, was going through our entire academy.

And she loved it and learned so much, and she had the syllabus, and she said her whole family went through it.

And so she grabbed her sister, and she and her sister came over, so she introduced her sister to me. Then they found their brother and brought the brother over.

Then they brought their parents over. I got to meet this entire family. The parents also went through the study.

And I never planned it for homeschooling. And they're telling me how much they learned and grew. Like, that's what

I get excited about. And I get to see that more in a local church setting.

And so it was hard. It was hard. It was hard to walk away, but it's what's for the best.

And as a shepherd, you have to do what's best for the congregation, not what's best for you. Even if you know it's going to cause you pain, and it causes me probably more pain than it does them, but I know it's also my actions causing them pain, which causes me pain.

But there's a thing to do when you're in situations like this, is you need to have people you can call on.

I'm going to name some names. I'm going to name names, and some of them you're going to know, and most of them you won't.

But I just want to give a thank you to some of those that reached out to me. Why? Not to say, oh, look at these people who

I know, because I know there's some critics that are just going to go, oh, you're trying to name drop. No, I'm not. Because I'm going to show that there's a lot of people you don't know that I appreciate just as much, if not more than the people you do know.

Because this is what we need in our life, people who will pour into us.

We have to be willing to say, hey, I need help. I need some encouragement.

I need prayer. Almost as soon as I posted that,

Daryl Harris texted me. Michael Coghlan called me. Most of you probably don't know

Michael. He used to work at Striving Fraternity. Justin Peters called me.

Joel Sedeckis. Probably don't know him. Wonderful guy. Disagree on, you know, end times.

You disagree with him too, buds. Don't worry. But he's a great guy. I like him a lot. He texted me. Tom Buck texted me.

Pastor Brad Jones texted me. He's a G3 network church. Justin Peters, who you may know from Apologetics Live, texted me.

Joe B. called me. Now, I have to just say Joe B. because none of us, he's a friend from my old church in Jersey, and none of us can pronounce his last name.

We just call him Biker Joe. Because there's no way to pronounce his last name.

Not without butchering it. I've tried. But he called. Ken Cook, good friend, called.

My friend Josh Comstock, our webmaster, he called. John Evans called. I had someone,

Ashley, who I used to evangelize with for years.

We haven't talked, I would say, in a decade, texted me. Tom Mammon, who

I used to work with in the ministry and do a lot of evangelism with, but I haven't spoken to since he got married several years ago, sent me a text.

Aaron Brewster, one of the podcasters at the Christian Podcast Community. Kofi, I'll just go with Kofi, because I'll butcher his last,

I always butcher his last name. Adu Bowen, I think is something like that.

Okay, sorry, Kofi. But, you know, he called. Alexander Wright sent me a text.

Chris Honholz texted me. Mark Spence texted me. Mike Ebendroth called me.

Gene Cliet, Squirrel Chatter, from the podcast Squirrel Chatter, he reached out and texted me. Josh Bice, I should say this is about seconds after Daryl Harrison texted, that's when

Josh Bice had texted. You know,

Anthony Silvestro, who many of you at Striving Fraternity know, reached out, called me.

Matt Slick called me, a pastor that I've known for, since I was in seminary. Pastor Gary Becker, he just retired, and, you know, he called me.

Austin Hitchens from First, what is it,

First Love Press, you know, he works over there, he called me.

Pastor Josiah Nichols, you may know him from Apologetics Live. All these people called.

And, I mean, you could see all the comments online as well, but why do I go through all that? Well, oh, and one other,

Jim Osmond called me. And, so why go through that? Because this is what we need.

We need, when we see somebody who we know, who may be struggling even a little, reach out.

You know how encouraging it is to me to have that many people? That was a long list. And I'm hoping

I didn't forget anybody. You know? Well, and there's a longer, and I know your point, to reach out and provide that support.

But you had over 3 ,000 people. So the prayers are being lifted up.

So that's the ministry of the saints. But, yeah, we do need encouragement, and we do need to know that those people are there that you can call, that you can use as a resource.

Because we all move through these sort of seasons where sometimes we're the guy giving encouragement, but then sometimes we're the guy that needs it.

And we have to let people know when we need it. I'm not the kind of guy that does that very well. I'm the kind of guy that just, hey,

I can plug through this. That's my personality. And it's not always good.

And I was doing that for several weeks to months now, and it hasn't been working.

So, you know, I've just been going more and more into a depression. But by sitting there and just saying, hey, folks,

I need prayer. You know, it's all of you, all those names I mentioned, and then all the people who have read hundreds and hundreds of comments.

That's what got me to go, you know what, hearing about people telling me how the ministry has helped them, it encourages.

And that's what we should be doing. So let me leave you, in this portion of it, let me just leave you with this, is pray for your pastor.

Like, maybe if anything, I give you the heart of what a pastor goes through. I mean, most pastors don't work three full -time jobs.

They're not tri -vocational. Most are bi -vocational, if anything. But either way, ministry is really hard.

Pastors live their life in a fishbowl, and people criticize everything. And they usually talk to each other before talking to the pastor.

So by the time they talk to the pastor with whatever grievances they have, that's not really the real grievance, usually.

It's the one that everyone bought into. And usually the things they really had issue with are even more petty, and they build it up.

But I've seen that with so many men's lives. So pray for your pastor. Like, really,

I'm encouraging you to take time. Maybe pause this podcast and just take 20 minutes to pray for each of the pastors in your church.

Because it's hard work. It really is. And so, with that, you asked me what happened last night.

And why did I wand on my pillow? And so I'll encourage you guys, if you want to get on my pillow so you can get a good sleep, not like the one

I had last night, go to MyPillow .com. Use promo code SFE. That's promo code

SFE for striving for eternity. MyPillow .com. Get an American -made pillow. Right now they're running a sale.

Two pillows for the price of one. You can get their two premium pillows for the price of one. It's a great deal.

I think their slippers are at their lowest price ever. Just use that promo code and you'll be able to get a great discount.

American -made products. They're supporting an American -made company. Someone who stands up, at least stands up for the positions we would hold to biblically, even though we would have a lot of differences with him theologically.

But I think that it's something that you can get a good night of sleep and support

American citizens at the same time. So go to MyPillow .com. Use promo code SFE. So why did

I wand on my pillow? Well, my wife and I decided we'd sit down and watch a show.

Now we watch some Asian shows. We're watching an Asian series right now because, well, the

American TV just can't be watched. You know? It's just, you know, my wife commented last night, the difference between, like, we started trying to watch a show that was on ABC, so we figured it'd be safe, was

Grey's Anatomy. And it's, like, medical, you know, doctors. And a couple episodes in, my wife goes, you know,

I don't want to watch the same. Every episode, someone's sleeping with someone. Like, there's no nude scenes.

There's no, there's no, they don't even show anything that's, like, even remotely sensual. It's just you know that they're, you know, they're hooking up.

And she's like, I don't even want to watch it. And I'm like, yeah, so. So we start watching this and she says last night, man, the contrast between that last thing that we tried to watch and this, because I'm just trying to sit and watch some

TV to relax. So I'm spending time with her and we're doing something. And so, yeah, so I'm sitting there and I make,

I got some peanuts or some almonds and walnuts and I'm just eating them while we're watching. And all of a sudden,

I'm noticing my lip is blowing up. And I'm going, huh. I think, it must be an allergic reaction to walnuts.

And I didn't think much of it because, I mean, I've had allergic reactions to food sometimes and maybe your lip, it blows up and then it goes away.

But this wasn't going away. It kept getting bigger and bigger and bigger. And I was like, you know what? It's 11, like 11 something at night.

Let me see if there's any pharmacies that are open at CVS to go and get something.

Oh, the one right by us is open. I go there. Nope. The hours online was wrong. But I found one that was 24 hours.

So I go over there. Fortunately, the pharmacy was still open by God's providence. Now, I'm just thinking it's an allergy, food allergy to a walnut.

It's probably not going to be a big deal. And I'll just get Benadryl. And so I walked over to the pharmacy and I showed him my lip and I said, this just started an hour ago.

I just want to get some fast -acting Benadryl. He says, okay, shows me where it is. He says, listen, if you start having any kind of breathing problems,

I mean, that looks like you need to get to a hospital right now. But if you're starting to have any breathing problems, go to the hospital.

Don't hesitate. I'm like, okay, yeah. So I called my wife and said, he thinks I should go to the hospital. Maybe I'll come pick you up.

I'll pick you up and you drive me to the hospital. And she goes, okay, well, I pass the hospital and I don't know if it's because the doctor put it in my head, breathing issues, because that can happen.

I started thinking, am I having issues breathing? Huh. And I said, I'm on the phone with my bride.

I just said, you know what? I'm turning around. I'll go to the hospital. Meet me at the hospital. And she doesn't, I got this little car.

She doesn't like driving it and it's raining. She doesn't like driving at night and it's raining at night. It's my car.

I mean, it's a trifactor of bad. Right? And she's like, I hope I make it.

And I get to the hospital and they told me, you know, first off, they told me I'm going to be there for six hours.

So I called my bride and said, turn around, go home. You know, they're not letting me out till six in the morning anyway.

So get some sleep. So she turned around. Basically what it was, was the, because of the health issues, because of all the stress

I was under, I ended up having, not only do I have a high blood pressure, but the high blusher, high blood pressure medicine that I take,

I now got an allergic reaction to. And basically they said, you could be taking this medicine for years.

I've been taking it for months, maybe a little over a year and I never had a problem with it.

And all of a sudden I had this. And she said, if you have it once, you will have it again if you ever take this medicine.

So I won't, I have to be off the medicine. I have to find a different medicine. She said, you will get it again and you'll, you'll have to have a tracheotomy, which is kind of bad if you speak for a living.

So basically what happened was, is that they informed me that the way this reacts, had

I not come in when I did, they were able to put a, you know, give me some medicine that would stimulate my lungs so that I could breathe and act as an anti -inflammatory,

I guess, so that it doesn't swell up and it would go away. But she said, most people wait until the throat starts closing and it's too late.

So the fact that I, by God's providence, just said, you know what, let me get Benadryl, happened to go to one where the pharmacist was still there and he had, if it wasn't that I asked him,

I wouldn't have gone to the hospital. But when I got to the hospital and they explained, yeah, it's good that you got here because you wait, if you had waited longer, you would have been in trouble.

And so, I was, I spent the night in the hospital sitting with this very uncomfortable pillow.

It was definitely not a my pillow. And I wasn't even in, because I was in the emergency room and not even in like a curtained area.

They just had me in the hallway. I love the RN, he comes by and says, well, here I'll put you in the deluxe suite.

And he goes, it's just, he goes, it's just temporary till we find a room, because they were going to check me in.

And instead, they just left me right there all night. And I just, after everything

I had been through, I just dozed off. And I dozed off really just, I was reading through Twitter and reading through comments people were saying and fell asleep and had a comfortable sleep.

Even in the hospital, even though I kept waking up but I woke up a lot more refreshed. As you can see, bud, my lip is normal.

It was getting so bad, I was slurred in my speech. You know, it looked bad.

I got some pictures of it, but not at its worst. Whether I ever post those pictures or not, totally different.

But yeah, so it was, it was a scary time. And, you know, all of this, you know, due to stress.

And so, you know, it's something where we have to see, you know, and like I said with the earlier part of this, ask what

God is doing. It's by God's providence that I'm able to sit here and talk with you today.

Right? Yeah. Because this is last night and I would have been in the hospital getting a tracheotomy had

I waited too long. Because I didn't think it was any big deal. I came home and said to my bride,

I'm like, I didn't think it was any big deal. Just, it's walnuts, I'm not really allergic, but I probably had too many.

Because I've had things where I have too many of something and sometimes my lip will swell up for a little bit and in a couple hours it goes back.

I'm just glad that God put it on my heart to go get the Benadryl, that that was the place, that one

CVS still had the pharmacist there, that I went and asked him so that he could see it and encouraged me to go to the hospital.

And instead of being, you know, the manly man who toughs it out, which is more what

I'm prone to do, I'm not prone to take medicine, I'm not prone to go to a hospital.

I decided to do it. And I'm really glad that I did because it may have saved my life.

Well, I'm glad you did too. Now, I want to speak to one thing that is meant to encourage you.

And I've run into this before because of this issue of depression. This happens. We all go through this.

And as a pastor, you need to preach to yourself the same counsel that you would give to someone that comes to you that's facing this situation.

But one of the very simple things that I think we always miss, it harkens back to something that you said, is sort of this self -absorption.

Well, we've got two great commandments. We've got the great commandment, love the Lord your God with all your heart, mind, soul, and strength.

And then love your neighbor as yourself. So we've got these two commandments. Implicit is that third one, which is part of the second one, love your neighbor as yourself.

Normally we get that out of sync. We love ourselves before we love

God. Now maybe God's in part two or position two or others. So the solution to address this onslaught of any depression is to get those things in order and focus on Christ.

Look at Christ first. And you do that through the word. You do that through prayer. You do that through preaching.

You do that through all of these means that he's given us. So you love him first, and then you look to others.

So you get those things in the right order, and it requires you necessarily to therefore less focus on self.

It's self -denial. And the Lord blesses that because we're being obedient.

So that's always something to keep in mind. It's hard to do, but you know that counsel,

I know that counsel, and we all suffer with this from time to time. And the Lord is tilling that soil to draw us closer to him.

This is the entire point. So don't forget that, brother. You've got a lot of people that love you.

I missed two people, and this is going to be really bad. I forgot to mention you, bud.

You reached out to me. You texted me pretty quick too. So sorry for forgetting you. The other one, what you said, that's what made me think about it was

Dave Cunningham also. Because Dave was the one who said to me, he's like, Andrew, you've been counseling long enough.

You know what you need to do. Now here's the thing. He's like, but that could be the problem. And that's why

I put the post out because he actually knew, I've been, you know, some of these men that I mentioned, some of them knew already what was going on.

Dave is one of them because he's been close with me and counseling with me and calls to see how

I'm doing. Same with Justin Peters. And these are guys that I pour into me and I tell them things.

And so as I'm struggling, that's who I go to. And Dave, so Dave, before this was like,

Andrew, your problem is you know what to do, which means you won't seek out help.

You're going to do it on your own. And you know that's not the right thing to do. And that was a big reason why

I put that post out there to just say, all right, take his counsel and say, I don't know who's going to respond, but just say, hey,

I could use some prayer. And just, you know, I don't need to get into that.

I got into some details here to explain why here and not Twitter because you're my audience. You know, people that I don't know on Twitter who aren't even following me on Twitter, like I, you know, it's just a different audience.

And you guys, I feel I'm closer with. You're the ones that come up to me at conferences and email me and tell me that you listen.

So I feel like I owe you more. I wanted to, I put it out there because I just said, you know,

I know that part of the recovery process in this is to move off of self.

And that's what depression is, itself. It's a focus of self. A woe is me. Things didn't go my way or things aren't happening the way

I planned or something happened outside of my control. I mean, I just, it happens that I was preaching through James on how to deal with trials as I'm going through these trials.

It's just God's providence in how he does things. Yeah, we always forget that line in the

Lord's prayer. Your will be done. Correct. Sometimes that's difficult when it contradicts ours.

Yeah. And so that's basically what it came down to, is I really needed to focus in on what

I needed to focus on. And those of you who reached out to me, you helped me more than you could ever know.

The encouragement meant more to me than you'll ever know. And so I don't typically,

I've done this I think twice in five years, six years of podcasting, twice that I've gotten, done a whole episode on me.

I don't like doing that. But the two times I have, it's because something, now granted the last time was much shorter

I think, but it's because I feel I owe you guys. You may not realize as an audience how much you mean to me.

And hearing from you how much it means to me. I'm talking to a microphone. I get to see Bud's pretty face.

I feel bad for him. He's got to look at mine. But it's me and this microphone and Bud on the other side.

I don't get to see you guys, but I love you guys. I pray for you guys. I don't even know all of you by name.

I will sometimes pray through those who write reviews on the podcast. I look at those and pray for those people because that's how

I know names of people who are following the podcast. So that's something that, just to leave it out there, is that I want to encourage you to encourage others.

I want to encourage you to be praying for your pastors. This Sunday, maybe think of something that you could do to surprise your pastor with a showing of appreciation.

Don't wait for October on Pastor Appreciation Month. Do something out of the ordinary.

Do something he might, and some churches have more than one pastor. We think of the preaching pastor.

No, you've got to have more than one pastor. Even the lay pastors are pastors, even if they say they're elders. Do something for them.

Just come up with something. It could be something small. Get them a gift card at Amazon. Go get them a cake if they like cakes.

Just do something just to say, hey pastor, I appreciate you. It will mean more to your pastor than you'll ever know.

They'll never be able to explain how much that encourages them. So I want to encourage you to think about doing that. That's your homework assignment for this week, or we'll be back in the, or Striving for Return Academy, where I can give homework.

Your homework assignment is to surprise your pastor this week with something to show appreciation.

Now some of you are going, but Andrew, I am the pastor. Okay, do you have other pastors at the church?

Surprise them. If you go, well, Andrew, I'm the only pastor in my church. You have any friends that are pastors?

Surprise them. Maybe what you could do, if you're the pastor, surprise someone in the congregation.

Just be like, hey, I just wanted to do this to show how I appreciate you. There's somebody in your church you can encourage.

And it'll probably mean a lot to them that their pastor thought about them. I mean, let me, I'll just put it this way.

Let me just read something. I responded to Pastor Josh Bice when he texted me.

And he texted me twice when I put the post about the, being at a low point.

And then first thing this morning, he said, are you okay? When I said I was in the hospital. And I said to him, so he posted, he came out, reached out twice.

I said, it means a lot to me as you are, oh boy,

I see typos. I should really proofread. But as you are so busy with so many important things that you have to do and you reach out to me, it means more than you can ever know.

I mean, Josh is a busy guy and Josh and I don't know each other that well. Josh is not, he's not someone

I would say that he would consider me a friend or I'd consider, we were acquaintances. We know each other. We love each other.

We all talk to each other. But we don't talk often. Usually we talk when we have a need. You know, hey

Josh, here's something I need from you. You know, he needs, usually I'm asking him for requests, right?

But it's for some reason we need to talk. It's not we just pick up the phone and talk. So having someone like that that's as busy as he is, like that means a lot.

So Pastor, if you reach out to someone in your congregation, they look at you as being really busy and all of a sudden it's like, wow,

I mean, I could tell you from personal experience, a pastor that's accessible, people really appreciate that.

Yeah, because it's unusual. Well, we've been going for 50 minutes, bud.

That was not a 30 minute. Someone, someone, bud, must be you, had just running of the mouth there,

I think. It could have been me. I apologize. Edit that out.

But we love you. Thank you for what you're doing. This is a valuable ministry.

The Lord is blessing it. You know that. And you focus on the things that you know you'd counsel others in and be there when

I come to you and need it. You know, I should also mention, you know, we got, you know, two of the main names that I mentioned.

There are some names I mentioned are from the board at Striving Fraternity. And that's the thing. I have a board. I got a good board.

You need people around you that not only will encourage you, but also correct you. It's actually one of the things, bud, you know this. The only way you can get on the board of Striving Fraternity is you have to have a proven track record that you would correct even me.

So even the founder of the ministry, you got to show that you're, you're willing to correct me.

That's the type of people I want around me. I don't want a bunch of people who are going to be like, you know, oh, the, you know, they just say, oh, well, you know, you said this, we're going to follow it.

I don't want a bunch of followers that are just going to yes, be yes men and say, well, we're going to do this because Andrew wants that and he's the founder.

No, I got guys around me that are going to be like, Andrew, we think you're wrong. Sometimes they say, that's what

I enjoy about being on here. I'm not a yes man to you. You're not a yes man to me. We can, we can bat things back and forth.

But that's wonderful. I mean, that's a blessing to be able to do that and not rip each other's throats apart.

It's healthy because we need the correction, right? We need that in our lives. And so we need both.

So if your pastor corrects you, don't be so quick to be like, hey, it's a problem with the pastor.

Maybe he's just doing it in love. I hope. They aren't always. You know, sometimes in the congregation, pastor, when the congregation corrects you, okay, sometimes they don't seem to be doing it out of love, but maybe they are.

Maybe they have a funny way of showing love. We got to try and take it that way. You know, it's, I've had hard lessons over in the ministry and I've had to learn that you got to take it, you know,

I don't always agree. And, you know, one of the things I get, you know, if I don't agree with someone's accusation of me, you know, someone says something and I don't agree with it,

I'll say, no, that's not true. But, you know, I've learned over the years, and my wife has helped me a lot with this, is to say, you know what?

A lot of the people, they're not actually trying to say you're wrong. They just want you to say you heard them.

And so she's got me to just say, you know what? Just say, okay, I hear you. I understand what you're saying. Don't have to correct it.

You know, I have this sense where I always feel like every wrong has to be corrected. I'm learning every wrong doesn't have to be corrected.

Gets me in trouble on social media. And it's not that I'm, you know, it's just, I want people to know the truth.

And so I want to teach truth. And so it ends up happening. You know, not everyone accepts correction.

You know, and then, you know, I'm guilty of it too, I'm sure. So a little bit more personal episode, a longer episode than we thought.

Well, but sorry about that. Those of you that are still here, next episode we're going to do is we're going to talk about soteriology, the doctrine of salvation.

This is a heated one often. We're going to get into lots of issues. We're going to spend a lot of time in this. Next episode, we're going to give you an overview of it so that we can dig in to each of these points next week or the next several weeks.

And what we're going to do is give you some recommended resources as well for you to start reading in the area of soteriology so that maybe you can do some other reading and really beef up in this area.

So I hope that this has been encouraging to you. I hope it's been helpful to you.

And I hope that you learn something. It's a different episode than we usually do, but I hope,

I hope God can use it in your life. Amen. And with that, bud, that's a wrap.

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.

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