From Nominal to New

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In this episode of No Compromise Radio, host Mike Abendroth flips the script as Pastor Steve Cooley takes the lead, interviewing Mike about his own journey to faith. Mike shares his background growing up in a nominally Lutheran home, his years of spiritual indifference, and the turning points that led him to truly embrace Christ. From searching for meaning after his father's passing to discovering biblical teaching through Christian radio, Mike recounts how God used various circumstances—both joyful and painful—to draw him to salvation. The conversation is filled with humor, personal anecdotes, and reflections on the power of God’s Word. Whether you’re curious about Mike’s testimony or looking for encouragement in your own faith journey, this episode is a must-listen.     Video Episode 5: “From Nominal to New” Hosts: Pastor Mike Abendroth (Pastor & Author) Special Guest: Steve Cooley (Pastor) Produced/Edited By: Marrio Escobar (Owner of D2L Productions)  Watch on YouTube: https://youtu.be/ZaJ-PgC9PWk [https://youtu.be/ZaJ-PgC9PWk]

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00:12
Welcome to No Compromised Radio Ministry. My name is Mike Abendroth, and with me, partner in crime, trying to make him...
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I've been hippotized. He's a jimmy! That's a David Letterman thing. Steve Cooley, welcome back,
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Steve. Hey, thanks for having me. It's really great to be here. The other day, I thought of Larry Bud Melman.
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Oh, yeah. He was on David Letterman as well. Stupid pet tricks, stupid human tricks.
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Man below the stairs. Who's that? Well, sometimes it was...
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What's the guy's name? He was in... Chris... Farley.
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No, no, no, no. He was in the... Yes, I know who you're talking about now.
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Yes. He was in Groundhog Day, and I'm trying to think of his... Chris Elliott. There you go. Chris Elliott was kind of like...
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He was probably a writer, and then was so good at writing, they gave him a little screen time. He always played the sarcastic guy, which is funny, because Letterman needed somebody to be sarcastic, but...
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That's kind of what we're doing today. You're Letterman, and I'm Chris Elliott, or Larry Bud Melman, or something like that.
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Really? So you get to take... So I get to be the cynical, mean guy, and you just had to take it.
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Pretty much. I do that on a regular basis, 57 minutes. So last show,
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I talked to Steve about the Lord's work in his life, and I think we're going to flip the script today.
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So anything you want to say, or do, or ask? Mike, why don't you tell our listeners here how you got out of the
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Mormon church? Well, I was living on this planet named Coolsville.
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Coolsville, I like it. Actually, the only interactions I had with Mormons probably were in my...
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I first started having interactions in my 20s, and I played a lot of pickup basketball. I was living in West LA, Brentwood area, and people said, hey, at 10 o 'clock at night, we have access to this gym, and we can go play basketball.
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And it happened to be at the Mormon, not the temple, but whatever. It's a ward building, or a stake center.
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And I felt so bad because one time while we were playing, we took a break and we snuck beer in because we thought sneaking beer into the church.
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And the elder, some elder guy, he came in and saw it, and I felt so bad because in my mind,
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I thought, Jesus Christ, Latter -day Saints, it's a holy place, and here
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I am sneaking beer in, Coors Light. So I felt bad. That was my first -
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The janitor saw you and said, is that all you got? Come on. No. But growing up in Nebraska, not hardly any interaction with Mormons.
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By the way, I did that for a while. I was a janitor at the church. And the reason
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I was a janitor at the church is because I needed the work, I needed the money. And so they would show you what you needed to do and all that stuff.
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At the Mormon ward? Yeah. Okay. But yeah, I mean, the
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Mormons are really big on sports. So every building has its own basketball court. Now, the one
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I grew up in was probably about two -thirds regulation size, something like that.
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I mean, it wasn't, but - Well, I remember when we first got to know each other, you were living in Santa Clarita, and within your complex there of homes, whatever it's called, the neighborhood, the technical term, neighborhood, we went and shot baskets.
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And I thought he used to be able to play. Yeah. When you had knees. Yeah, when I had knees, yeah. Yeah. Man, oh man.
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Yeah. Makes me want to get knee replacement surgery. So tell the listeners what your own faith journey was.
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Pilgrimage. Yeah, you grew up Jihad. You grew up Lutheran, right?
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That's correct. So you were probably baptized as an infant. I found my baptismal picture with the clothes
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I had, and it was June. You're good with dates. It was June 2nd, I think, 1960.
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I was baptized in the Lutheran church. Now, was this a credo baptism? I believe.
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I am truly reformed. Uh -huh, yeah, I guess so. Because I, that was a baptismal.
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So you were never baptized again? Because if you were - Well, let's just change the channel now.
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Welcome to the Heilcast. I had a mother and a father, both
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Lutheran background, although my grandmother was Roman Catholic, but she said no to her
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Catholicism, at least externally, when she married my grandfather. So Carl Otto Anderson, who has a middle name,
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Otto. Carl Otto Anderson was a Lutheran, and so when my grandmother Nona married him, she decided to go into Lutheran church.
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And at the time, Steve, I think a lot of the church's focus in the
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Catholic church and the Lutheran church were pretty similar. Yeah. Right, baptismal regeneration, Apostles' Creed, Nicene Creed, do good.
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We bust the chops of evangelicals teaching moralism and pietism all the time, but that's kind of what it was back then in both the
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Catholic mass and the sermons. Actually, my sister preached a sermon, Youth Sunday, and I still have the cassette.
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And her sermon was basically be good in the Lutheran church. I went on backpacking trips as a teenager.
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We did cleanups in the neighborhood. I went on a missions trip to Galeana, Mexico. And it was kind of a sports trip.
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We would play basketball in the center of the town. And then they would come out to see the white people play in the small town.
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And then we would give the gospel message. And I don't know what that gospel message is. I believe that Jesus died on the cross and was raised from the dead, but I don't know what
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I was doing. That was probably 15, 16 years old. Would go twice a week, sometimes stay home with dad.
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Dad would make sure we went. I don't know what he'd do during the... I just said the wrong thing.
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He would make sure we would go. So marginally Lutheran background.
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But I was happy to now look back and think Trinitarian, check.
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Hypostatic union, truly God, truly man, check. Literal resurrection. Heaven and hell.
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Virgin birth. Virgin birth? Yeah, so I was glad for that. Fundamentals. I remember in Los Angeles, and it was probably 1987 -ish.
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And I met this girl at my apartment complex and her name was Aria. And her real name was
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Sharon. Sharon Ladder. She was a Jewish lady from Scotland. And she told me that she had a picture of herself with Jesus.
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And I said, like Jesus Christ? Yeah. And it was this 55 -year -old man, young now, but at the time
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I thought, here's this old guy and he's got his arm around her and his name's Jesus.
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I said, that's not Jesus. And it was a guy named John Rogers. And he was a cult leader, changed her name, et cetera.
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So I had enough sense to go, that's not Jesus, but not enough sense to say, I need to trust the
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Lord Jesus. And essentially I wanted to live my own life. And I thought I was gonna die and go to heaven, but did all the things that I wasn't supposed to do.
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Salvation by death, right? That's what it was, yeah. Or maybe just minimal knowledge, kind of maybe
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James 2 .19. I believed, and I probably shuddered some to think about hell, but I certainly wasn't going to go there because I've been baptized and I believe in Jesus.
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Kind of lowest common denominator Christianity. Like I wouldn't, I think it's safe to say probably a lot of people are in that same boat, sort of nominal
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Christianity. Of course I'm a Christian. I was baptized, I was confirmed.
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What are you talking about? I go every so often. Steve, as you're talking, it's probably no different than in Southern Baptist churches.
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Many of them, right? We know the lingo, we know the nomenclature, and we call them nominal
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Christians by name only. They would deny John Rogers, but they're not going to be true believers.
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And maybe that's why psychologically a
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Lordship salvation type of thing really resonated with me because there's a lot of people who say they're
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Christians and aren't. And whether you're Lordship or non -Lordship, anti -Lordship or Reformed, that's true.
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There are unbelievers who call themselves believers. And so the real question is, I guess, how do we root them out?
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Which is maybe another show, but hey, you're lead today. So I just follow your lead.
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Okay, so fast forward a bit. We know that you're in California playing basketball, living the white men can't jump life here.
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I can dunk once in a while, but not very often. Well, so did Woody Harrelson. Didn't he dunk in the movie?
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I think he did. Yeah, but he probably had a trampoline. Yeah, a stunt man. I had pro kids. Woo! Suede. But the real issue is how do we get to the point where you kind of come out of your nominal baptized only, sort of minimal
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Christian background and actually come to faith in Christ? How does that happen?
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I was 27, 28 -ish. And I thought, do you know what?
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I'm single and I'd like to get married sometime. It's been kind of fun to be in Los Angeles as a young man.
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I loved music. I loved concerts. I loved the beach. I loved it that I could go to Las Vegas.
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I could go down to Ensenada. I loved that life. And it was a tragic life, but I thought it was the life at the time, the high life.
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But I thought I'd like to get married. And so my next thought was, I'd like to get married to someone who would be moral, who would raise children, who wouldn't be a crazy 25 -year -old in Los Angeles.
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I'd like to marry someone who's not like me in that sense. I didn't think that at the time, but I was looking for somebody, who do you marry?
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Right, I guess you try to find a girl that you could bring home, right? And you wouldn't just be ashamed of.
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And so I thought, where do you find those kinds of girls? Well, you find them in churches.
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So I need to find a church girl because punk rock clubs usually aren't the place to meet those kinds of girls.
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I found an old article, Steve, when I was interviewed in Nebraska for my radio show, I had a punk rock radio show and they were asking me about punk rock in Lincoln, Nebraska.
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And I said, I was quoted in the newspaper, the small newspaper, that the real punk rockers were in Los Angeles and the
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Nebraska punkers were just posers. Deep, deep thoughts. So I started going to church and I thought, you know, there's some pretty girls there and some kind girls.
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And so I just started going from church to church to church. And pretty soon there was a group of about five of us that would start going to church together.
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And I was driving down Sunset Boulevard with four other people.
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And I don't know the guy in the front seat, but we are all giving testimonies. I don't know,
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I don't know what's a testimony. These are interesting things. My testimony is I got baptized. I'm a
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Christian. What do you mean testimony? How do you know you're a Christian? And the guy's like, you're a
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Christian? Because I said I was a Christian. And he goes, you're not a Christian. And I'm like,
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I want to punch you. Of course I'm a Christian. Who do you think you are? And of course he knew my background and just everything that a young man would be into, under the auspices of sex, drugs, and rock and roll.
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And he's like, you're not a Christian. Steve, I wish I knew that guy's name and had his phone number because that was a jolt to the system, much more than I need to find a girl to marry.
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But that guy said, I'm not a Christian. Then my dad gets cancer. He's 54 years old.
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They give him six months to nine months to live. He lived a year watching some six, four, two, 40 healthy man just shrivel down to who knows, a hundred and some pounds.
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And I'm thinking, I need help. I need answers.
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What's going on? So I picked up a Bible. I found my old RSV. And there were things underlined in it that I underlined, but had no need for.
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What banner of witchcraft is this? No need for anything when you're living the fast life in Los Angeles.
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And I thought there's answers in this book about life and death and heaven and hell and suffering, but I couldn't find the answers.
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And so looking back, I didn't have the Holy Spirit to illuminate. I had no kind of compass or anything.
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I just couldn't figure it out. And so I didn't throw it down in disgust. I just kind of tossed it.
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I could have told you Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John. I could have told you probably Isaiah nine, but I just couldn't find any help.
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So there was a lady that the cult person, Arya, introduced me to, and her name was
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Kim. She became my wife. And I started asking Kim questions because her dad, foster father, was a conservative
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Baptist pastor. I didn't know that at the time. I just knew he was a pastor. And so Kim and I started going out for drinks, talking about the
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Bible in Santa Monica. She was a brand new Christian, and she said something to me that's very interesting.
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She said, do you know you could learn the Bible by listening to people on the radio?
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And I'm like, Jimmy Swigert, I've already done that. You know, they just want, I knew enough that he just wanted money.
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And she goes, no, there are people that teach the Bible on the radio. And it's
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KKLA, it's 99 .5 in Los Angeles. And instead of listening to sports talk and Jim Rome or K -rock and new wave music,
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I could learn the Bible. And I thought, that's what I want to do. I'm going to learn the Bible because I was so embarrassed when the pastor said to me, my
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Lutheran pastor in Omaha, Nebraska, when I flew home from my father's funeral, he had the
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Bible and he went like this. And he said, Mike, you're the oldest. What would you like me to say from the
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Bible about your dad in two days at the funeral? And I've never been so ashamed in my life, but I knew what to do.
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I was in sales and I just said, oh, you know, I'm just so emotionally a wreck. And I was a wreck. I can't think now, whatever you think is best.
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And he goes, okay. But I said to myself, I will never be embarrassed like that again. If somebody says, here's the
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Bible, tell me what's in it. I'm going to know. So even that spark, I don't mean
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Jesus is a divine spark nor the Holy Spirit, but that spark in my unregenerate heart,
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I'm going to know the Bible. Of course, the Lord is working everything together for my good in that particular case.
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And so I started listening to KKLA. And before you know it, there was this guy named
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Raul Reese, Calvary Chapel on at 1030. Another guy on after that, he seemed kind of technical, but he sure knew the
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Bible, John MacArthur. I listened to Chuck Swindoll, Charles Stanley, just driving.
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That was my job is driving around and going to hospitals for work. So I started knowing the
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Bible that way. And so that's kind of what happened. It was a mixture of finding a girl to get married to, knowing there was a wrong
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Jesus in a cult, some guy saying, you're not a Christian, and my dad dying a
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Christian. Four points. Let's have a poem and we'll close. So what, if I could just press this a little bit further, what was your father's funeral like?
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What was that like for you? Some stuff, Steve, I remember, and some stuff I don't.
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I remember the night before the funeral, sitting in my room, my old bedroom in Nebraska, because I'd moved to Los Angeles in late 82.
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And so my dad died in January, January 31st, 1989.
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So it was January 30th, and I was in my old room drinking beer with my brother,
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Pat. So I was 29, 28, and he was 20. And that's how we were kind of getting through it.
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We woke up the next day and we were picked up by the limousine, the hearse, whatever, the limousine.
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And it was so cold that my tears were freezing to my face, standing by the graveside.
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I don't know what he said. I don't know what the funeral was like.
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I don't know anything, except one man sang, and I could probably get emotional thinking about it now, the song that has no more tears, no more crying.
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No More Night. Uh -huh, No More Night, a man sang that. And now that I think about it, I heard we sang
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Up From The Grave He Arose. And that's about all
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I remember. Two months before my dad died, I do remember this. The pastor said
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I was back in town to visit my dad. And the pastor said, if any family needs special prayer for a loved one that might be sick, come up to the front.
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So my sister, brother, and myself and mom went up to the front, dad was at home. Couldn't get out of the house, he was just thrown up the whole time.
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And I remember the pastor praying for us, had his hands on us, and then he started speaking in tongues.
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And he started going, but this is how he was speaking in tongues. This is the closest I've ever been to someone who was really speaking in tongues.
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I mean, the whole shit about Han and all that stuff, just laughing about it on the radio show. But he started doing this. He touched me and he started going, that, that, that, that, that.
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I don't know what's going on, but this is weird, right? I'm a stoic German Lutheran. So I wish
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I remembered what happened at my father's funeral. But it was just, not because I was drunk, but it was just a blur.
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I couldn't really think through. But I mean, it certainly seems like that had a major, that event, the whole thing had a major impact on you too.
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So Steve, when they talk about things that affect people and cause anxiousness, worry, big life events, here was what the
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Lord did to deconstruct me, to use that term, in 1989. January, my dad dies.
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April, May -ish, I buy my first house, North Hollywood, California. That was $215 ,000 at the time, which was a big deal in 1989.
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It's a big deal now. I wish I still had that house, by the way. You know that house, 6132 Carpenter.
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I get engaged in May. I get married in June and get saved in September.
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So all pretty big life events. And one of the things that happened when we got married,
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Kim was a brand new Christian and she would not know what a nominal Christian versus a real Christian would be like.
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And of course, we'd go to church on the way sometimes, Jack Hayford, we didn't go to a great church at the time.
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And so she thought I was a Christian. I remember coming home one day, we were arguing and I never laid a hand on her or anything like that.
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But we had an Ikea dresser. And actually at the time it wasn't
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Ikea, it was a store called Store, S -T -O -R. I don't know if you remember it. It was in the city of industry.
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Sort of. And it's got the two dots on top of the O, the umlaut on top. And it was like Ikea. And I got so mad at her that I just slammed it down.
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And the good news about things from Ikea is they're inexpensive. The bad news is they break.
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And so instead of like a wooden dresser, this particle board dresser hit the ground.
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And in my mind, I mean, it's probably 10 pieces, but it seemed like a hundred pieces. It just shattered.
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And I looked at Kim and she had the look on like, I can't believe
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I'm married to you. And now looking back, Steve, instead of saying
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I had an anger problem that I need to deal with, looking back,
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I was the problem. If you have anger problem, just go get anger management. But what if you are the problem?
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How do I get a new me? I needed a new me. And so when I got saved,
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I don't know. I kept listening to all those shows and shows and Rahl Reese. And I remember one time they had,
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Steve, an ultra call. I'm in the radio and the ultra call was playing broadcast on 99 .5. And I thought
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I can't go up to the front of the church, but maybe I'll move up close to the dash.
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I put my hand up on the dashboard like, yes, Lord, I want that. And so that was September, October of 1989.
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And so it was an accumulation of Bible knowledge from when I was five years old to 29.
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And I don't know the exact moment when I got saved, but when I read Titus chapter three and I think about how he saved us, it was
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God's work in my life in a variety of different ways to have
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Mike come to an end of himself and think, do you know what? There's only one
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God and he deserves to be worshiped. You couldn't go to the Mike store and get a new Mike.
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I know. God had to do that. Somehow, and of course, looking back, it was regeneration.
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And we love the first Peter chapter one, verse three. He caused us to be born again, right?
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I didn't bear myself out of my mom's womb. I didn't bear myself into the kingdom of God. I was born again.
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And after that, the Lord had already used my desire to study the
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Bible as an unbeliever. So I had a lot of data. And then now I just had a way to put all that data together.
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And it just started clicking. And it was like one Bible study to the next, to the next. I went to Valley Book and Bible, the bookstore.
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What did we used to call that? Valley Book and Heresy. And I walked in, I just thought, there's so many books.
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Just give me the book that I need so I won't go off the deep end because I knew the Robert Tiltons of the world.
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And those guys were charlatans. But after that, I've just had a desire to study the Bible and to know what's in it.
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Now, Steve, I think to myself, people could hand me the Bible and say, what's in this book? And I could answer them.
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But there are a few things in there, like Paul says, like Peter says, are a little hard to understand. A little difficult, yes.
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So I call up Richard Barcelos or Steve Maestro when I have Trinity. The real smart guys. Yeah. And these days, when
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I see people who have that spark and that desire to study, I say to myself,
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I've seen that before. I want that again. And so far I've - Well, it's so much better than,
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I see that in him and I want to stomp it out before it gets carried away. Well, you think sometimes about Jeremiah and these words, they're like food and I didn't eat them.
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Right? You're just like, okay. And so I think what that's done for me and probably for you too, I want to teach the
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Bible. If people come to church, I want them to know the Bible. If it's a funeral,
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I'm going to teach the Bible. If it's a radio show or whatever, let's teach them the Bible.
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So if I ever stand up in front of anybody except at the Holden Town Hall, I'm going to teach the
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Bible. What do we have for time? Five minutes. Okay, I guess you're going to have to figure out a question.
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Well, tell me what your first, I guess, your entree or introduction to Grace Community Church, MacArthur, how that all came about.
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What made you go there? When I first got saved, I had thought to myself,
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I like Raul Ruiz a lot. He was a pastor, is a pastor at Calvary Chapel.
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Used to be at West Covina where you were born, right? And at that Safeway. Then they moved to - Yeah, wiped out my favorite store.
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Then they moved to a Diamond Bar, because God told them. Because Diamond Bar is a nice area.
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Next to the Safeway, there was a bookstore that was Calvary Chapel Bookstore in the
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Safeway building. And the first book I ever bought, crazy that I would buy this book, was by Michael Horton, Agony of Deceit.
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Wow. Because I knew there was these charlatans out there. So I started going to West Covina, Sunday morning, Sunday night, sometimes
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Wednesday night, because I wanted to hear what Raul Ruiz would say. Here's finally a man will stand up and teach the Bible.
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I don't care if you don't believe Jesus is the only way, he's the only way. I don't care if you don't think the God of the universe wrote the
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Bible, he wrote the Bible. And so Raul was point man in the infantry, karate guy, black belt.
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And I go, finally, there's a man. I mean, you can be a man of God and teach the Bible with a squeaky voice and be five foot, but you just have to teach the majestic God who's not just close to us, but he's over us.
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I didn't know that at the time. I wanted like a John Wayne Bible teacher. Yeah. So I started reading the
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Bible, studying the Bible, going to Calvary Chapel. And now what was the point again was your question? How did you get to Grace Community Church?
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Oh yeah. So I'm listening to John MacArthur more and more because Raul's on at 1030 and John was on at 11.
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And then I thought, wait, Grace Church has this thing called Logos, Logos Bible Institute.
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And instead of driving on Thursday nights, Sunday morning, Sunday night, Wednesday night to West Covina, it's an hour. I'm gonna go to that.
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So I started taking classes at Logos Bible Institute, Dennis McBride, Bible study methods, pneumatology,
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Dick Mayhew. By the way, when I walked into that class, I had my hair shaved here, but long hair.
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And I had those weightlifter pants on, the baggy ones that were trendy in the eighties, a hoop earring and like chains, like three crosses around my neck and stuff.
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And I - Like a white Mr. T. Yeah. I saw Mr. T once at the LA, at the forum for watching
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Laker game. And I had two thoughts. Number one, I thought he's short. Number two, I could take you. And Dr.
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Mayhew got kind of bugged at me because I had been studying the Holy Spirit on my own. And so he would say, dear class, there's a passage in the
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Bible that has the sevenfold ministry of the Holy Spirit. Isaiah 11, two. I just knew these passages.
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Finally, he's just like, okay, I've had enough of you. But I said to myself, you know what? These classes are so good.
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Kim, why don't we put up with a stuffy hymns at Grace Church and just start going to Grace Church?
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And so we went a couple of times and compared to the Maranatha where we weren't really into it. We didn't think the worship was as good.
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And, but we liked the preaching. So eventually we said, you know what? Let's just transfer over.
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So that was 1991 -ish. I stayed there until 1997 when
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I became the pastor here. Beat me by much. I mean, I was there probably in 92,
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I think. Okay. That's a mic drop right there. That's a Bible drop.
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It's a live TV, live TV. I think about the days teaching the
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Bible study. And, you know, you have a desire to teach and you want to share, but we should have probably been muzzled for a while.
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I remember with two people, Grady Burt and his wife. I don't remember his wife's name. I had a
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Hendrickson commentary and we were going through Ephesians and we got to Ephesians one and it talked about predestination and election.
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And I just thought this cannot be. Plus with the Calvary Chapel background, there's no possible way this can be true.
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Trying to figure out, what do you mean God chooses? So while you, and while I bust people's chops all the time about, of course, election's true and God chooses the 12 and He chooses
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Israel and, you know, Deuteronomy 7, all these things. You were there, I was there, right? How can
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God choose people? And just finally submitting to the text, saying whatever it says, I will believe, help my unbelief.
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Those are good days where you just think, okay, I'm just going to submit to what the text says. And once I did, the
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Bible study started growing. Yes, it did. I mean, I can remember a lot of times just thinking, we wanna get there early because otherwise we'll be like in the kitchen somewhere or whatever, you know.
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Well, you're a patient man with me now, but even back then, probably more because I probably went on for an hour, 70 minutes, surely dry, this word's used so many times in this context and it's got a preface to it, a prefix and a suffix and all these things.
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But you wanted to know the Bible too. Yeah, and I remember having a friend, taking a friend to your
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Bible study one time and when we left, he said, we don't have anybody at our church who can teach like that.
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I said, none of your elders, not even your pastor? He said, no. And I go, what does that tell you about your church?
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I think that was the message I did on hell. I don't remember what it was. Yeah, very interesting.
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Well, I think we better probably wrap things up. Any parting words, Steve, for the viewers, just in general, how they can write you or anything like that?
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You can write me at Mike at nocompromisedradio .com.