- AJ Jones? - Yes, sir.
- Episode 292. - No.
- Of keeping up with the Joneses. - Amazing.
- You're looking resplendent. - Thank you.
- Should we talk about the outfit for those people
who are not watching the video?
Just describe your ensemble.
- I went for the farmer look, well, sort of,
the fashionable farmer look, yeah.
- You're gonna drive that steak into the ground, are you?
- Yes, I'm wearing black overalls.
With red and white stripes.
- And overalls for our British listeners, dungarees.
Okay, dungarees, that suits my farmer thing even better.
And yes, so red and white striped thing.
- I've never seen a farmer wear a red lipstick.
I'll be honest with you.
- Well, that's what makes it fashionable.
I'm like, I'm like juishing it up,
but I realized also that as I sit,
the straps are getting looser and looser.
And so by the end of the podcast,
it could be that I'll be going for like sexy,
fashionable farmer or something,
because I'm not true, they're gonna stay up.
But it's okay because it's not like I'm not like wearing a shirt.
So it's all good.
Well, our podcast is taking the twist and the new turn apologies for all the visual thinkers
out there.
Is it the fact that the straps don't hold up the dungarees because these are $6 overall
so you got an Amazon?
No, they're not $6 but they're like $23.
So I just...
They have the cheapest straps ever.
Well, it's actually the material that they've made the straps out of.
isn't thick enough for like this class thing
because the other pair that I got by the same company,
that's right, I have two that's blue jeans.
They made the strap out of the same blue jeans
and they stay up fine.
- Oh, this is great.
- So yeah, this is the kind of fashion content
you're looking for, so.
- Give the people a weekly update.
I've already done math.
- You've done math?
- On a weekly update.
- Well, okay, I have some concerns about that
because your math is usually on your fingers and toes.
- Well, I'm redoing mental arithmetic,
and I'm actually counting my fingers right now.
- Okay. (laughs)
Okay, what kind of math are you gonna?
- In five days.
- Yes.
- We drove, you drove.
- Yes.
- I was in the passenger seat beside you, 1700 miles.
- Wow.
- Give the people a run then.
- Okay, well, yes, this past week,
there's been, it's been, it was a great week.
It feels like it was more like two weeks worth of adventure.
But anyway, on Thursday morning,
We left during storm warnings and drove to Tulsa, Oklahoma
to go and go to some revival meetings there
and see John and Carol and some old friends.
So that was a 10 hour drive
through two tornado warnings and a flood warning.
Yeah.
- Anything else happen on that drive?
- Yeah, oh, yes.
I got a speeding ticket.
- And then your defense?
- Apple Maps led me astray.
a little bit.
- You leverage information,
incorrect information Apple Maps was giving you,
and you still made a sinful decision.
Talk to them about your sinful decision.
- Okay, well, I wrote my knee to know
I make that same sinful decision all the time.
- Let me hear the math.
- Okay, so basically, I always, when I'm driving,
which anybody who's driven with me knows this,
I pretty much plan on going nine over on the highways.
Not on regular roads, but on the highways.
- Why nine?
- I don't know, because somebody told me once,
If you go 10 over, police will pull you over,
but nine over, they just let you drive by.
And I've never been pulled over, so it's always worked.
- Can we have any police officers
who are listening to this episode confirm?
- I mean, so--
- Don't you just use a rule of thumb of 10% over?
- Sweetheart, I love that you say that,
and you said that on the drive,
like I use the rule of 10% over,
except that we all know you can't figure out
10% on the fly in your head,
so let's not go there.
- No.
- It's like, because if you could,
you could figure out 20% to tip,
and I wouldn't have to sign every single check
because you can't figure it out.
- The thing is, I can't, 10 is the easy part.
But multiplying by two, sometimes you trick--
- Oh yeah, that's really tricky.
- The other thing is-- - Four times two is eight.
You know what, you can get MJ to start doing it for you.
- Okay, I let you pretend it's not too mental.
- No, you can't.
- I can't.
- It's laughable that you're like,
"Don't you just do two 10% over?"
- No, I don't.
And neither do you.
- You can do that.
- Of course I can. - So you could be 10%.
- But why would I want to?
Because 77 is better than 79.
- No, 79 is faster than 77.
(laughing)
- But what was your problem?
- I've never been pulled over at 79.
Anyway, I think I'm happily going along at nine over.
And--
- What do you think the speed limit is?
- I think this, I think the speed limit is 75
because Apple Maps is showing me on my screen that it's 75.
I have seen several signs for 75.
- And to be fair, there's no other road signs
that we've seen recently.
- And there's no other road signs we've seen recently.
- And you're crossing a state line.
- Yep, and what do you know all of a sudden
there's lights behind me and I did see him
start to move off the side and I literally thought to myself,
there's no way he's going for me
'cause I'm not going that fast.
- And I have on a good authority that
cops don't pull you over for now.
- That's right, so I should be fine.
Anyway, he pulls me over and then,
I haven't been pulled over for speeding before.
I mean, I have when I was like 17 or 18
and was having asthma attacks and driving to the hospital,
those kind of situations.
And I did speed in other situations,
but I never got caught.
Well, no, that's not true.
I got caught a couple of times.
I've never gotten a ticket.
- Stay on target.
- But since moving to America,
I have never been pulled over for speeding.
- To pulled over.
- And pulled over.
- Very nice cop.
- Very nice.
And so he comes over and he says,
you know, ma'am, you were going 84 in a 70.
And I like point at our screen and I was like,
it's a 75.
Then he goes, no ma'am, it isn't.
- And I'm just remembering
Every cut friend of her has like,
don't argue your case on the side of the road.
Argue your case in court.
So I'm like, X day on that.
- Well, I said it nicely.
I was like, oh, I'm sorry, I thought it was a 75.
And he's like, no, it's a 70.
And I was like, okay.
And, you know, license and registration and whatever.
And off he goes.
And I was just like, you know, waiting to see what would happen.
I have no idea even how much tickets are, nothing.
Anyway, he came back and he gave us a ticket for 10 over
instead of 14 over, so that didn't give us points
or anything on my license or whatever.
And then he said, you know,
just you wanna keep checking the signs
'cause quite often Apple Maps isn't correct,
which we did find from there on in,
I noticed a couple times when it wasn't right.
So I'll keep that in mind.
It was a good lesson.
I was glad he was kind and--
- He was really kind, very gracious.
And we appreciate him offering your build down.
- So nine over, still seems safe.
14, definitely not a good idea.
- But let's use my 10% trick.
- Why?
- 'Cause if it was 75, you would be going
seven and a half miles over,
and seven and a half miles over in a 70
would have just been under your magic threshold
and you wouldn't have got a ticket.
- That's not true.
- Math works.
- No, it wouldn't have been.
- Is my math incorrect?
- If it was 75, and I was going seven and a half over,
right?
So...
- You would be going 77.5 miles an hour.
if it was 75.
- See, this is what happens.
I think I'm right.
It all, it's like--
- This is my life, friends.
The amount of math conversations that we have to have.
And I have to slow down and speak like he's four.
- Tell me if you're like--
- And he's convinced he's right.
He's convinced until it finally like this moment happens
and I just have to try to be gracious.
- Stay with me.
What speed would you be doing if you thought it was 75?
- 82 and a half.
- All right, so you still would have been--
I would have been tagged.
So yeah, okay.
Yeah.
See, you're cute though.
No, but this.
No, but you're cute.
This right here is what happens all of the time.
All of the time.
And often I'll double down.
I'll pull out a calculator like no, babe.
No, babe.
Like, but the amount of times you've done that,
pull out a calculator and I've already given you the number
and you're like, I'm just double.
I'm gonna make sure we have, oh, what is what you said.
I don't learn.
No, you haven't.
Maybe married, how long?
18 years.
18 years.
18 years.
And I don't think you've ever been wrong.
- And I think I've always been wrong on that.
- Yes, with math.
- Always.
- Yeah.
- I don't know if this is a single time I've won a victory.
- No.
- On that.
- But you're cute.
So that's all that matters.
Anyway, we drove to Tulsa.
- Well, let's not forget that we drove through
two tornado warnings and a flood warning.
- I think I said that, but yeah, I was pretty insane.
I mean, the first six hours of the trip,
I literally, like I drive with both hands on the wheel
anyway, but not death gripping the wheel.
- Sure, she goes nine over,
but she does like to drive to 10.
I remember I was taught in a driving school.
So, you know, I'm still, yes, and I'm still,
I know why I drive like that.
So anyway, yes, six hours of death gripping the steering wheel.
It was so windy, trucks are going all over the place.
I'm wondering if we're insane.
And then the rain was really bad at times,
couldn't see anything.
But we made it to Tulsa.
- We made it, yep.
- John and Carol called us.
- Yes.
- Our spiritual mom and dad, John and Carol Arnott
from Toronto, they're in Tulsa and said,
"Why don't you drive to Tulsa?"
- Yeah.
- We looked at the map and we're like,
it's only eight and a half hours.
- Yeah, it's closer than Toronto, let's do it.
- Yeah, let's do it.
- Yeah.
- Got a babysitter, thank you so much,
Chris & Amanda for stepping in and watching her kids.
Drove down and didn't realize that almost everybody
and their mother was going to be there.
- Yeah, they'd called in a whole bunch of people.
So we got to see tons of people, yeah,
that we haven't seen in like years,
which was wonderful.
- And it was also great to be prayed for
and be in the atmosphere.
- Yes.
- We heard an amazing testimony.
So we went Thursday night.
- Yeah.
- Friday they're doing testimonies.
- Yeah.
- And there was a woman who stood up
and gave a testimony.
And I love a testimony when it comes from somebody
who clearly doesn't want to be giving a testimony.
- Yeah, she did not want to be on the mic at all.
- Didn't want to be there.
But a little bit of backstory, she had,
she was a cancer survivor.
- Yeah.
- So she'd had one by a cancer, had treatment.
- Yeah.
years ago that was. But what do you know?
They found something else.
Talked to family tumor in her body.
Yeah.
And she's scheduled to go for a biopsy.
Yeah.
Actually, the day after. So it's Thursday night.
She gets prayer Friday.
She's testifying.
And Friday she and I love this part.
She got prayer and I didn't feel a thing.
Mm hmm.
I love those.
I love the secret squirrel.
Holy spirit moves.
Yeah.
And didn't feel a thing.
She said I went in and they're obviously, you know, they're using
the ultrasound to find where the tumor is so that they can
so that they can buy out.
- I see it, yeah.
- They cannot find the tumor at all,
even though they were the people
who identified the tumor in the first place.
- And they knew where it was, yep.
- No tumor.
- No tumor.
- Place goes nuts.
- Yep.
- I was like, I love that.
- And the doctors had just come back in six months,
which is her normal, you know,
she's had cancer before type scenario.
- Yeah, like, come back six months.
- Yeah.
- That night, we had a culinary experience,
a cultural and culinary experience
that I think is worth exploring on the podcast.
- Oh, okay.
- We finished late at night.
- Yes.
- There was nowhere really open.
- Yes.
- So we went to IHOP,
which you'd never been to.
- Yeah, with our friends Duncan and Kate.
- The International House of Pancakes.
- The International House of Pancakes, not.
- Well, what did you order?
Tell the people what you ordered.
Let me tell them what I ordered.
- Okay, yes.
- I ordered a short stack of blueberry pancakes.
You know why?
International House of Pancakes.
You ordered.
- Let me tell the people what I don't like.
Breakfast food.
So I don't like pancakes or waffles
or pretty much anything breakfasty.
And so I ordered the salmon.
(laughing)
- You know what, I never think when I go to IHOP
or any breakfast place,
I sure hope they have some salmon on the menu.
- Well, it isn't called International House of Salmon.
- How was your salmon?
- Oh, very dry.
Yeah. - It stank
and it spoiled my pancakes.
- No, it didn't.
- I will put pancakes down, but it did have a pungent aroma.
- But it was just dry.
It tastes like the flavor of it was okay.
They just overcooked it
'cause they're not salmon chefs, they're pancake guys, you know, so.
So, quick John down to Tulsa.
And it needs to be said, or doesn't need to be said,
but I do all the driving on these scenarios.
So you don't switch in, but you're usually editing the podcast or whatever,
and I don't want you to switch in.
Yeah, well, I was gonna touch on that.
Can you put into words kindly why you prefer to do all the driving?
Because you're terrifying.
I'm sorry, did you say kindly?
Am I terrifying or are you controlling?
It's hard to say, but here's the thing.
You've made statements in the past
and usually it's while all three of our children
are in the car potentially asleep on a road trip
and you'll say things like,
I really haven't even been paying attention
for the last 20 minutes.
No. And I'm like--
That's what you infer from the state.
No, no, no, you say exactly those words.
No, I say things like, oh, where are we?
Where are we?
Yeah.
I haven't really been thinking
in the last 20 minutes.
Yeah, and I'm like, oh dear God.
Like everything that matters to me is in this car.
Maybe I just pull over.
Maybe I just put myself on autopilot.
That still doesn't comfort me at all.
Multitasking isn't one of your gifts.
No, I get bored very easily.
You do.
Especially when driving.
You do.
And the way I put it is you're one of those people
that likes to drive.
I do.
Like you find enjoyment from driving.
I do.
You generally speaking do not like to be driven.
No, but yeah, by most drivers I do not enjoy being driven.
No.
when you're not driving, you're still driving.
- Yeah, I'm still aware of everything
because I'm worried that the person driving isn't.
- Yeah, I don't mind driving.
It's not something I like to do though.
Like, oh, yeah, I'm gonna, like, you know,
it's entirely utilitarian for me.
- Yeah.
- And you love it and I don't love you driving
while I'm driving, so it just works greatly, you drive.
- Yeah.
- And you seem content for me to put nice,
dancing headphones in and do it in my own world.
- Yeah.
- Well, I don't know on the timing.
Last week's episode, we recorded,
we heard, I think we recorded like Tuesday.
You know, our topic this week is being at Asbury,
or Asbury Experience.
And round about the time that we were recording
is when we started getting lots of emails
from people saying,
"Hey, are you gonna record an episode in Asbury?"
And I think I'd only just heard about Asbury,
which is why we talked a little bit about it.
- Yeah, we talked a little bit about it.
- I really didn't know too much.
By the time we got down to Tulsa, everyone was talking about
Asbury and on the evening when we were leaving,
they were talking about, our last public service in Asbury
is gonna be tomorrow.
- Yes.
- You know, so like the amount of time that it started
and finished or our awareness with the episode release schedule
was a little bit off.
So it's funny that we're recording about Asbury now
and by the time this is released,
there will be no more public services at Asbury.
- Yeah, so you were editing the podcast
on the way back, then Sunday,
we just hung out with the kids,
I took Abby on a date.
- Well I was sick, do you remember?
- Yeah, you just were feeling rough.
- I hadn't slept in like five days,
I had this congestion thing that just,
at first I thought it was the mother of all allergies,
which is not uncommon in potency.
- No, you get them pretty bad too.
- But then we drove to Tulsa and nothing was in bloom
and I still had them.
So I hadn't really had good sleep.
So by the time we got back Saturday, I slept 13 hours.
So you took Abby on a date,
did you take T on a date by the way?
No, we were supposed to go on a date on Monday,
but then a little friend of hers called and said,
"Could you come to my house and play all day?"
And I got ditched, which was good
'cause we decided to go to Kentucky.
- Yeah, well, let's bring up that.
So we come back.
- Well, if we're moving on to Asbury,
I would like to mention one other victory story
before we move on from our weekly catch-up.
- Sure.
- We managed to cut the guinea pigs nails.
- And boy, do they need them.
- So badly.
But there, when you're on your own,
like as a one person, I haven't been able to do it.
Like I haven't been able to sort of hold them,
and I mean, without, I'm just worried that I'll hurt them.
Between COVID and then whatever the snotty thing was
you had after that, we just haven't done it
because we haven't wanted to get the guinea pig sick.
And so yesterday you were healthy and held them
and we bribed them with lettuce and got their nails trimmed
actually was the fastest it's ever happened. But I mean, they're large rodents and they just don't
want you to come near them with clippers. No. All right. From trimming guinea pigs,
toenails. Yes. They call toenails fingernails. Do they have fingers or are they like little
finger paws, finger paws, paw fingers? I don't know. We trimmed them. Yeah. From manicuring of guinea
pigs to going to Asbury. Yes. In our consciousness, you know, we're hanging about with a bunch
of people who love revival all weekend and they're talking about Asbury. And meanwhile,
I've got friends who've gone to Asbury and I'm calling them and saying, Hey, what was it like?
What was your experience? Other friends are going to text me, let me know your experience.
And for whatever reason, there's something in my heart that is so excited by it. I'm assuming if
if you listen to this podcast, you already know what Asbury is. But for those of you who don't,
a couple of weeks ago, there's a small, I don't know, there's a college in certainly a small
town in Kentucky, which is about three and a half hours away from us. They have their Christian
college, so they have chapel Monday, Wednesday, Friday at the Wednesday chapel. By the way,
I don't know if you know this, the minister who spoke there, as soon as he finished speaking
Texas wife gone, it was a dud message. That's what I heard. Yeah. So he spoke with just a normal
chapel service. And what happened was people were moved and they stayed and then they never left.
And in that time, thousands of thousands of thousands of people all flocked to this tiny little town
in Kentucky to go see what God was doing. The thing I loved about what I was hearing
was it was all organic, like nobody was hyping up,
quite the opposite.
Like when I went to Asbury's website
to try and find some information about how to get there
and they weren't talking about it all week.
In fact, the first time I saw something official
from Asbury University was their notice that,
hey, we're actually going to be closing
these meetings to the public.
- Yes.
- Yeah.
- And so nobody's driving it, there's no big name,
there's no celebrity.
- No, but the news is showing up.
- The news is showing up.
and people from everywhere are flocking to this town.
- Yes.
- So that's what I'm hearing.
- Right.
- And that's encouraging to me.
The other thing that's encouraging to me
is that I'm reading lots of criticism online.
And I'm like, "Ah, this is gonna be good."
- Right, why?
Because, you know, the critics,
if the critics are coming out,
there's likely something legit going on.
- Well, one of my favorite tweets that I saw
was basically like, "Ah, oh God, please send revival."
God, there you go.
"Ah, here's the things that we wanna critique, criticize."
- Yeah, well that's what it feels like, isn't it?
- Yeah. - And some of the criticisms
that I saw, it just head shaking.
- Yeah. - Are you serious?
- And several of them really unfounded,
which is like, anyway.
- So we're aware of it. - Yeah.
- We'd like to go. - Yes.
- But it's now getting crazy.
Like we had friends who went
and I think it took them 10 and a half hours to get in.
- Wow. - They went to wait and.
- Yeah, I mean, I had one friend,
one set of friends say like five, five and a half
another set said seven another one nine.
So we had quite a few different friends that went and just.
And the longer it took the longer, sorry, the further it went on,
obviously the more people who were coming out, like we ended up going up on the Monday.
Yeah, which was the final public service.
Yeah, I think on the Saturday or the Sunday they said they had eight to 10,000 people show up.
Yeah, I heard it was more than that.
But yeah, so we're aware of it.
Yeah.
It's got all the hallmarks of stuff that we love.
Yes.
It feels sovereign.
It doesn't feel like anybody's driving it.
From what I'm hearing is it sounds rooted in meekness.
- Yeah.
- And it's producing good fruit.
- Yeah.
- And good fruit is like changed lives.
Healing, people are talking about,
especially around anxiety and depression.
They're salvations and there's the worship
of the name of Jesus.
So you're like, "Ah, yeah, I'm in."
But logistically it was hard to pull off.
- Yeah.
It was quite amazing what they did actually.
Like in terms of, I can't imagine trying to pull together
their response to hosting all these people
they never expected to have from this tiny college
in this tiny town.
It looked like when we were there on Sunday
and we had been told that they had five different counties
providing-- - Who is there on Monday?
- Sorry, Monday, that they had five different counties
providing police services showing up.
And you saw all these different county police cars because they have like 10,000 people
waiting outside to get in.
And I don't know if it was that many on Sunday, but it was, there was, the line was really
long.
Like we left, we got up at 5am and started driving around
5:45am and we got there at
10:15am
or
10:20am because we didn't know there was a time change.
So I thought we'd get there earlier.
And we were thousands of people back.
When we got in line there was a person in front of us who'd been there for the last couple days yeah she'd been going every day and we asked her how long do you think this line will take.
Yeah and she said this line will probably take five and a half hours to get in and i would like to say she was on the money bang on the money five and a half hours and at the time i didn't think there was thousands of people in front of us i didn't feel like that.
It did to me but that is your for take and also it's a thousand people ahead of us i think so.
If you think about like there was that whole group of people in the middle and whatever.
- Yeah, and then they had two lines.
They had a line for Gen Z who could go straight in.
- Yeah.
- And then there was a line for anybody who wasn't Gen Z.
- Yeah, well they were super clever.
Like this is where I'm like, man, somebody's really thinking, you know, like thinking on
their feet because they basically started their Gen Z line and filled up the bottom with Gen Z
and the top with others, we would be others, you know, so that they could feed both lines,
but there was way more seating for Gen Z than there was for other.
So they're prioritizing that generation, which I thought, oh, that's, I mean, that's
just thinking on your feet.
And, you know, but there was a whole bunch of things that, that struck me about even just
standing in the line.
Tell me.
First of all, it's the happiest group of people I've ever seen standing out in the freezing
cold, which is, and it's occasionally spitting rain for hours and hours and nobody's getting
grumpy or anything. There's people singing and leading worship in different places and
introducing themselves to one another and whatever. Then the Salvation Army is there with the mother
of all snack trucks and there's like three or four of them spread out throughout the line
and they're serving coffee and water and all that kind of stuff. I was just sort of like,
"Man, I was super impressed both by the quality of what they did to host and that they'd have
their staff coming by every once in a while, like maybe every hour or so you'd see one of their
staff come by and sort of explain, okay, so when the doors open, like they'd sort of just nice
explain how everything's going to work again and then, you know, as you get closer, they're telling
you, you're going to need to unzip your jacket, you can't have any weapons, blah, blah, you're
you're gonna be checked before you go here.
But everything was just running so smoothly and beautifully
and very well organized and it felt totally organic.
So they did organize and organic together and it worked.
And I love that.
'Cause I think often we think if we're organized
that that will break down the organic and it doesn't.
- Right.
- You know, it doesn't have to.
- Yeah, or equally if it's organic, it's gonna be chaotic.
Yeah, and it does not have to be.
Yeah, I also loved all the different denominations
of people that I met, like just in the line,
you know, Church of Christ and Methodist and, you know,
just Lutheran, I met a Lutheran.
I mean, just, so I'm like, I don't know what you wanna call
us, non-denomination people as river people,
whatever we are, you know.
We can often think there's only certain subset of people
that are actually looking for revival,
like within the body of Christ.
And that often I think we can think that
the more traditional denominations are not.
And they were there.
- They were there.
- They were all there.
And I was just like, I was so encouraged.
I was like, standing there talking to a Methodist pastor
who was just like, I just need more of God.
And I'm like, this is awesome.
It reminded me a lot of Toronto.
It really like--
- Long lines of hungry people.
- The long lines of hungry people that,
We met people that drove 13 hours through the night
with their two children in the car from Massachusetts.
There's people that flew in from Yemen.
I just was like, man, people are hungry.
- I agree, I think, and I wanna be very tender
when I say this.
One of the things I love when I go to Toronto,
for not talking about Toronto, the revive,
I'm talking about Toronto, the city,
is the multicultural aspect of it.
We live in Franklin, Tennessee,
where generally we just tend to see people
with the same skin colors as us.
- Yes, and when we moved here,
that was the weirdest part of moving here.
- Right, and to be clear, there are people with
different skin colors. - Yes, of course, of course.
- But by and large, we're surrounded by white people.
- Yes.
- And then when we went to Wilmore, Kentucky,
I don't know what I was expecting,
but that was maybe the most racially diverse line.
You were talking about the diversity in--
- In denominated. - In denominated.
- Yeah, in denominated. - Yeah, in denominated.
but also the diversity in ethnicity was amazing.
Which was odd because one of the criticisms
I heard online was there wasn't that.
And I was like, what?
Why you don't listen to criticisms you hear online?
I know, but I heard all kinds of stuff online
that I was like, that's not true.
So I was really struck by the diversity of faith,
the diversity of color,
and led by hunger for Jesus.
Again, nobody was hyping up.
- Not at all.
- Nobody was hyping up.
- Not at all.
- At all.
- Yeah.
- In fact, the only people,
no, in fact, I didn't see anybody.
I didn't see anybody from that organization hyping it.
And you can't make people spend their,
you know, Monday was present today,
so National Holiday in America.
- Yeah.
- You can't make people drive there and yet.
- And spend their day in the cold and the drizzle.
That was really, that was really beautiful.
I was really touched by that.
And I don't, again, this is where I don't want
what we say to be taken as gospel.
Remember what we talked about last week?
Our experiences, our experiences,
not everybody else's experience,
where we're not the judicators on whether this is
or isn't anything.
So, you know, we don't want to be,
anything I say, I hope is not being critical.
It's just commentary, not criticism.
But I would say that being outside of the building
just felt like normal life.
Like I had people go,
"Oh, you could really hear the feel the presence of God."
I said, "I did not feel the presence of God."
- I didn't feel anything different now outside.
- I just felt like normal.
- Yeah.
- And so there's no sense of what you're going into.
Like if you think about a Disney ride.
- You could feel, I would say what you could feel
was people's excitement and people's hunger,
but I didn't feel like a resting presence
of the Lord outside, yeah.
- Yeah, no, no, neither did I.
And this is a bad example,
but it serves to illustrate my point.
You go to a Disney ride,
you're waiting two, three hours in line,
but there's stuff to do
and the stuff that's building up your anticipation,
and there's the pre-ride story,
and there's this and there's that and--
- And even if that people get so grumpy in those lines.
- Well, this, it was just, you know, it was just--
- There's nothing.
- Nothing. - No.
- And yet people are hungry.
- Yeah.
- But the absolute absence of hype,
the absolute absence of excitement.
That could sound critical.
I mean, there's no criticism in that.
It's just that that is remarkable.
- Yes.
- So after five and a half hours of waiting in line,
we got in, what was your experience
of getting into, what was the name of the whole?
- Hughes Auditorium.
- Hughes Auditorium.
We get into Hughes Auditorium.
And what is your experience?
- Well, first of all, even in that,
they were super well organized.
There's somebody at the door who's, you know,
would come out and say, put up two fingers or three fingers.
How many seats they had, because they're not benches.
They're like movie theater type seats that fold down.
And then you'd follow someone inside.
You get pointed to that person who'd walk you into your seat and,
and they'd make sure that you have water and a snack, you know, on your way.
And I was just like, wow, like it was pretty great.
When we went in, they were in the midst of telling some testimonies of people
getting touched and healed and things like that.
Paint the scene for everybody.
It's packed.
It is. So the reason I'm saying, hey, you got two.
Yeah. Or we've got like, we've got four seats,
but they're all four single seats.
Yeah. They're just filling in the people who have left.
Yes.
With new bodies.
So it is absolutely packed.
It's absolutely packed.
We ended up on the ground floor, which, you know,
I didn't really care where we ended up,
but we ended up on the ground floor.
It was again, very multi-racial, which was beautiful.
Like so beautiful.
And you could feel just like a very sweet,
but very heavy presence of the Lord.
Heavy?
Heavy in that it wasn't like,
oh, is that God?
It was like, oh, God is here.
It felt very sweet to me.
That wasn't the expert.
It felt sweet.
I wouldn't have described it as heavy.
It felt very sweet.
It did feel tangible,
but there was a light in a spirit from it.
I mean, heavy in a bad way.
I mean, it wasn't like you had to think about, is he here?
Right.
- I think the weighty, cabbard presence of God,
where you can't think, you can barely stand down.
- Oh no, not that.
- That's where my confusion came from.
- Yeah, yeah, yeah.
- All right, you could feel a deliberate,
intentional, sweet presence of Jesus.
- Yeah, at one point, I also smelled something
that smelled the same as one of the things
in the revival meeting from Thursday.
- Some people were there, we forgot about that.
- So when we were at this meeting on Thursday,
there's a guy there that had a Bible
that has been leaking oil, it sounds like for years.
So he's in Tulsa.
And Tulsa.
And he has to keep it in this large ziplock bag,
or it just leaks oil everywhere, I guess.
And so he had that with him.
And some people got prayer.
He came over and prayed for me, whatever.
He'd just wait for oil to come out of the--
and he prayed for hundreds of people,
and there was still oil coming out of this Bible.
And it had a very distinct smell, which actually reminded me
way back in the beginning of the revival of the smell when
I felt like I was like, what is that smell?
and Kara was like, that's him.
So to me, it was a really familiar smell.
I was like, oh, that's so amazing.
And I smelled that again when we were sitting in
and he was out of time just for like a few minutes.
And then it was gone.
When we first came in, there was some guy again,
you don't know who anybody is.
And nobody's saying who they are.
Nobody's taking any level of credit.
It's really lovely.
And so there's some guy, I guess maybe a professor
something who is interviewing people who have had some sort of touch from the Lord, other healing
or something that they're some sort of breakthrough that they've seen. And then he would get people
to stand up, Hey, if you need that and stretch your hands and everybody's just praying for everybody
else. There's tons of hunger in the room. He did a call for repentance. They worshiped a bit,
then they did a call for salvation. And it's, you know, they're switching out teams. It's kids from
Aspiri
leading worship along with some adults who I guess are staff of some sort and
There's no
big show big lights big names
That's what struck me if you can just imagine a
traditional church with stained glass windows. Yeah uncomfortable
Oregon with a slope for a pipe organ. Yeah a big pipe organ. Yeah, just you know like it's not a pretty building
- I don't even know if there was a rich burgundy carpet,
but that's how I imagine it.
- That kind of scenario.
- The wood on the back of the pews is peeling.
Just think like an old traditional church
with a pipe organ.
And I would say is one of the most authentic experiences.
It reminded me of my childhood.
And what I remember being 14 and Teen Ranch,
which was a--
- I know what Teen Ranch is.
Teen Ranch organized a Bible study in Brotty Ferry.
I think it was either every Thursday
or every second Thursday.
You can't make 14 year olds get excited about anything.
Certainly not a Bible study.
- Especially not in Brotty Ferry.
- But all I wanted to do was go to this Bible study.
And all my friends who went to this Bible study,
we just wanted to go there.
And again, we didn't go there because there was a famous speaker
that in fact the person leading the Bible study
would change every time we'd go.
We didn't go 'cause there was amazing snacks.
We just went, I didn't have language for it at the time,
but we went because there was the authenticity of
not just Jesus, but fellowship.
So fellowship was one of those words that's kind of overused.
We tend to think about fellowship is,
eat some sandwiches together as friends.
But there was this intense bond of believers together
that felt authentic.
It wasn't, 'cause you got a lot of churches who are like,
"Hey, say hello to the person next to you."
you're trying to fabricate a sense of connection. In that room, there was the sense that we are
the body of Christ and Christ is in our midst and we're worshiping. It was so authentic. It
reminded me of my childhood experiences. It did feel very authentic. And what was curious for me
was if you were to print out a transcript of what was said, the transcript was so familiar to me.
It was all the same language that we in a charismatic revival based church culture would have.
but it was coming from what I presume, certainly evangelicals, but perhaps
reformed, perhaps uh, denominator, mainline denominations, which when I've been in mainline
denominational churches, they don't use phrases like literally this guy said, "This might be the
easiest altar call I will ever give in my life." This thing is not meant to stay here, it's meant to go.
So you've come and seen, now go and tell, if you feel like God has sent you here to bring it back
to your friends, your family, your neighborhoods, your churches, your campuses, your organizations.
Stand up, we're going to pray for an impartation. Right, and everybody.
And then he's like, put your hands up in the air. Yeah. And he said, "Holy Spirit, come."
And we're just like, "What is good?" So, you know. Oh, so good. It was so weird.
Not weird as an off-putting. I mean, it was just so alarming to hear somebody use language,
which of course is perfectly biblical language,
but I'm used to hearing it culturally said.
- Yes, and it didn't matter again.
What denomination was there?
I mean, I didn't see anybody not stand up
and want to take it back.
I mean, just amazing.
There was a lady sitting like a row behind us
in two seats over, and I could have listened to her sing
all day long.
- Behind us?
- Yeah, yeah, such a wonderful voice.
- Absolutely, I'll try and see who it was.
- Oh yeah, she was, I mean, she was a beautiful woman as well,
but I was just like, "Hey, I had like such an anointing on this, you know, woman's voice."
And the guidance they gave us was like, "You stay as long as you feel like you need to."
Yeah.
And when you feel like it's time to go, please go because there's...
They said when you're released to go, go ahead and head out so that the people in line can get in.
And again, even that, I was like, I mean, brilliant.
One of the things that I...
And this language might not make sense.
But one of the things that really struck me was there was a certainty about the way they
were doing things that wasn't arrogant at all.
It wasn't like, well, you don't need to tell us what we're doing there.
That wasn't even there.
But the certainty was so clear.
Yeah.
But I wonder if that has to do with like, I don't, I don't remember if we talked about
this last week, but I remember reading something about like anybody who was going on the stage
your into the, to be on the worship team or to do any of the speaking was going into a
consecration room beforehand for half an hour.
I'll post a link to that in the show notes.
Yeah, and getting prayer and making sure like, hey, we're good, we're clean.
Do you know what I mean before they're going on the stage?
And I wonder if that was some of it was just like, hey, actually they didn't start this.
And they had a revelation that they didn't have to manufacture it.
And so they just went out there and just did whatever they heard.
I think the dean of the university, I was reading yesterday,
last night I put a link again, the show notes to it,
where he was talking about the pushback that they've had of like,
"Well, you're stopping this."
And he's like, "We didn't start this.
This thing is bigger than us."
But we have a mandate to care for our students.
And while we love what's happening,
our responsibility is to create a place where
minds can be molded and students--
And students will see.
And you have no idea that of disruption,
this has brought that we welcome and we celebrate,
but also we have no fear of stopping
anything that we didn't start.
- Right.
- And I was like, what a humble response.
That is a beautiful, beautiful response.
So when I was talking about the authenticity,
I would say humility was marked with that.
- Oh, yeah.
Yeah, so much humility.
I mean, that you felt that for sure.
Yeah.
- The other thing that was interesting was again,
they didn't use the word walking in the light.
No, they didn't, but they did do that.
But they did do that.
They were offering prayer lines for anybody
who needs to repent of anything.
Come on up.
- Yeah, get free.
- And they talked about the need for that,
why that's different from, you know,
confess your sins.
Well, confess your sins one to another,
and this way you'll be healed.
It's different than, you know,
if you confess your sins,
he's faithful and just will purify you
from all on righteousness.
- And you'd see people start to go up,
and the thing I thought was amazing is
there was literally no strong-arming in that either.
- You're a pro.
And I have been in revival meetings where it's like,
come to the front now and there's none of that.
It was just a normal guy up there saying,
hey, if you want freedom, come up to the front
and people just coming up to the,
I mean, it was just beautiful.
- It was beautiful.
I went down the basement to use the restrooms.
And so I went down all the stairs.
And someone really touched me,
I got to the bottom of the stairs
and there was just pallets high of bottled water.
- Yeah.
And it just made me think,
someone's food in the bill for this.
Someone is paying for all these waters and all these snacks.
And there's all these volunteers
who genuinely felt grateful that you're here.
There's no sense that you guys are kind of screwing things up
for us.
- They didn't look carried or anything.
They literally looked like we're excited that you're here.
And it felt authentically that.
Like not like somebody had said,
hey, put a smile on and get out there for your shift,
but like they literally were.
Yeah.
everything felt genuine, which I was really, really touched by.
It was genuine and it was humble.
And it was beautiful.
- Yeah, it was really lovely.
I think often when you're in any kind of revival meeting
or importation type thing, we can be thinking, okay,
so like, if you're talking to a friend,
did you feel something?
Like, what do you feel like you got?
I think I would have to be like, I don't know,
but I went hungry, I went expectant, he's a good dad.
So I got something, right?
And so I've got something now that I get to give away.
And I don't know what that is and when that,
you know, what that's gonna manifest like,
but I feel like, oh yeah, I'm so glad we drove there.
- Yeah. - You know?
Yeah, so I didn't know, like I was just,
'cause I was just thinking, like we were often,
and I don't know what you name the mindset,
but sort of, I guess it's like,
well, what's in it for me?
Like what did I get out of it?
- What's the tangible benefit?
- Yeah, part of what I got out of it was,
I got to lay down hours worth of driving
and standing out in the cold, I hate being cold,
to get something that I really don't know what I got,
but I maybe, hopefully, got some of the humility
that goes along with doing that.
Well, yeah, but also like, you know, like,
it wasn't convenient.
- No.
- And if I'm honest, I didn't want to get up at 5 a.m.
on Monday and drive again.
Did I want to know?
I didn't want to.
- But what motivated you to do it?
- I didn't want to,
you know, if God's pouring out within driving distance,
I didn't want to stay at home because I'm tired
and I've driven a lot in the last couple of days
and wanna and miss what God is doing.
- Yeah.
- You know, like I don't ever wanna not be hungry.
And four hours seemed like a pretty easy, easy pay, you know,
to go and see what God was doing.
Does that make sense?
- It does make sense, yeah.
Yeah, because we talked about it, like we were like,
you know, trying to weigh the practicalities of it.
- And we didn't bring our kids.
We decided not to do it.
I mean, partially that's 'cause we have a really little car.
So they essentially have to sit on top of each other
in the back seat, which is fine for short trips,
but in longer trips, they don't enjoy that.
- You know the thing that I,
I'm not saying this is some total of what I took away,
but one of the things I loved about it in the room was,
I have this saying that I say to myself
that humility is the ultimate long game.
So a long game is a con, you know,
so con artists, when they talk about doing a long game,
they're talking about putting in the work
that actually doesn't look like it,
but it's gonna be a major heist at the end, right?
So you pay the price and it's not an easy,
get rich quick, but it's a long game.
And I think the people I love
and the people I admire the most in ministry,
they came to my attention when they had quote unquote made it.
That makes sense? - Yes, yes, yes.
I understand, yeah. - So,
so the difficulty is what happens is people look at them
now that they're in the public spotlight and think,
"Oh, if I do what they do, I'll get what they have."
- Yes. - And I'm like, "No, no, no, no, no.
You need to do what they did for 30 years in secret.
that was unseen and you'll get.
So one of the things I've always cherished
about the Lord is his meekness.
Like I love the Lord's meekness, he's so meek.
That verse that says, "A bruised reed he would not break
and a smoldering wick he would not snuff out."
And I think one of the things I've not seen celebrated
in my contemporary experience of being a Christian
is meekness, like that hasn't been lauded as a value.
And yet the kingdom of God, you know, "Blessed are the meek, for they'll inherit the world."
Like there's such a value on meekness.
And I think going into that room and seeing how meekness works, you know, meekness and
humility works.
Yeah.
Look at this.
Like, no, there's no master marketing plan.
No, there's no clever, you know, Twitter strategy.
There's no, you know, there's no marketing collateral.
absence of that. Yeah. There is just the meekness of the body of Christ and people are flocking
to it. And I love that. And so for me, I was like, "Lord, if ever I could be part of a revival,
I would love it to be rooted in..." Like, first of all, I'll take whatever form of revival you
want to give me. But if we get a say, I would just love that it was marked by meekness.
And that's how lots of people miss Jesus, because he wasn't doing what they thought
He should do and he was meek.
Yeah.
Yeah.
So that can't be him.
And it can't be.
This isn't an attractive quality to the world.
Yeah.
But that's the thing that stood out to me where it's like, "Oh, Lord, this is beautiful.
This is so beautiful."
So maybe the first that we've ever cried on our podcast.
I don't think so, but I love it when you cry.
Thanks.
Yeah.
Now your eyes look all glassy and cute.
(laughing)
- I had a thought that I shared with you yesterday,
but we didn't unpack for thought.
I had just thought once I came back from Asbury.
And I, again, I'm not making a prophetic declaration.
I'm not ruling on this thing at all.
All I'm saying is I went, this was my experience, that's it.
- Sure.
- However, I couldn't help but think that Asbury
was John the Baptist.
And I was thinking about Jesus' words to the people.
"Hey, when you went out into the wilderness, what did you expect to see?"
A reed blown around the wind, a man dressed in fine clothing.
No!
And I love that rebuttal because some of the criticisms I've seen online,
I'm going to post, by the way, in my show notes,
a link to some of my favorite tweets and threads about what I've seen.
I don't mean I'm going to post to all the negative things,
that's not what I'm going to do.
But some of the criticisms are met in Jesus' rebuttal.
Like, what did you go out to see?
Like, why did you go?
Did you go to critique?
Did you go give your opinion?
Did you go to give it a seal of approval?
Yeah.
Or did you go?
Because God was moving.
Yeah.
And for that reason, I can't help but wonder what Asbury's going to produce.
In the same way that John the Baptist was the forerunner to the main event.
Yeah.
Again, I don't mean to denigrate or diminish what's happening.
at Asbury and just...
John the Baptist was amazing.
Like Jesus had great things to say about him.
But I can't help but wonder if Asbury
is a foretaste of what is coming.
- Yeah, yeah.
- But I shared that with you, not that unpacking.
I just shared, "Hey, babe, I think that Asbury
"is John the Baptist."
You said, "That's crazy.
"I was thinking the same thing."
- I was, yeah.
- What were you thinking?
And what, yeah, unpacked what you were thinking?
- I mean, literally similar to that,
just like, oh, it's interesting that, again,
people are going to the middle of,
essentially, it's not the wilderness,
but like, it's in the middle of nowhere in Kentucky.
Like you would never find this place, you know?
And they're coming hungry because they know there's an answer
for what they're hungry for.
I don't think anybody knew what to expect.
So that's all I was thinking is like, oh, okay, Lord,
like the hungry are coming to the wilderness.
And to me, that's so encouraging.
To see, again, I said this earlier,
to see the body of Christ being hungry
and going after God and taking time out.
- Right.
- You know, it's not just a Sunday morning service.
It's the commitment to drive there,
to all that kind of stuff.
So yeah, I mean, it was that.
- All right, Jones, you're ready for a listen's question.
- I am ready.
- This comes from Analamus.
anonymous as you will. I'm able to tell why. Great question. Okay.
Hi guys. My question is, how do you let people say stuff about you that isn't true and not say
anything back? Back story. My cousin has different expectations and the rest of my family has
regarding the level of involvement we should have in her life. Instead of reaching out to anyone
on the family, she posts passive aggressive statuses about my family and just straight
up lies on social media.
It's really hard for me to hear my family lied about, but I have remained silent for
over two years not commenting on anything.
Recently she made a post saying that she has lost family because she's chosen a life of
sobriety and I just about lost it.
I remain calm, texted her directly instead of engaging on Facebook and asked her if she
was thinking about my family when she posted that. She responded much later and said she
was disappointed that my family wasn't there for her and how we hadn't come to her kid's
birthday parties and basically just told me that my family could do better. That made
me upset because it's an unrealistic expectation for someone that lives so far away.
I've come to the conclusion we have very different expectations of relationship and instead of
communicating her hurt to me she decides to post passive aggressive comments. I've been advised
to not respond and to leave it and just pray through it. But honestly, I just want to talk
it through with her because she's saying false things about me and my family. How do you guys do
it? I have watched you guys over the years stay silent when people have said unkind things about
you and you have just risen above it and took it to the Lord. How do you not go off on people?
I love that question and I love the honesty in that question.
Yeah, I also love that instead of responding on Facebook, you texted her directly.
Like, well done.
I mean, that's a mature response, actually.
Of course, I do agree with the advice that you've been given to just pray and sort of
let it be what it is at the moment.
I think there's so much in the answer to that.
Yeah, what do you want to begin?
I mean, I guess I keep thinking like everybody's constantly writing stories, right?
We've talked about that so many times.
And I'm constantly writing them, like not on purpose, but you know, we all the time
are writing stories about other people's motivations, why they are not doing whatever
they are not doing, right?
And the more sort of we let bitterness or whatever start to write, they just get a little bit
like grunge your stories.
So I'm not sure you can argue with people's stories if they're not looking for truth anyway.
You mean the following going to speak to a person who's already made up their mind about
the story?
Yeah, they've made up their mind that this is what you are, this is what your family is.
This is why you're not meeting their needs or expectations.
And I think you're unlikely to convince somebody out of their story anyway.
If they're not asking for truth.
Now, it's different if somebody comes to you and says, "Hey, here's the story I've written
about this interaction with you.
Is it true?"
Then absolutely.
like, you know, speak truth and talk about the story
and try and get it resolved.
But it doesn't sound like that's what your cousin is looking for.
It looks like it sounds like your cousin's quite hurting about the events.
And she's now got a fairly elaborate story about that.
And I think unless she's looking for truth,
really all you can do is pray and let God sort it out.
I was thinking about the question and I was thinking,
it's probably more than three,
but I can think of three reasons
why people say mean things about other people.
- Okay.
- Number one is because they don't have better tools.
- Yeah.
- So in their fear, their sadness.
- Yeah, they lash out
'cause they don't have a better tool.
- They don't have a better tool.
- Yeah.
- I think the second reason that people say mean things
about other people is just plain old sin.
- Yeah.
they're envious, they want to cut people down, whatever it may be.
But it's important to remember in moments like that,
that it's not, we don't war against flesh and blood.
- No, well since crouching at the door, isn't it?
- See, that doesn't master you.
- Yes, yeah.
- And then the third reason that people say mean things
about other people is they might be telling the truth.
- Or there might be a level of truth in it.
- And we just don't like what they're saying.
Those three things have really informed
the way we've approached, and by the way,
I love that you've laid at our feet some mystical power that we have.
We have my moments.
We're not actually this at all.
Yeah.
And by that to say, you know, like, how do you know it laying to people?
Well, I don't know that we lay into people, but I know, but I certainly felt like.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Given the sense that we're not trying to paint ourselves as some pies, you know,
people who've got this all sorted out.
And if you can just mature to the level, that's not what we're saying.
We've also had great leaders and great people help us with all of this over the years.
Yeah.
Holding those three things in tension, that people don't have better tools, that people
are sinful and we all have a tendency to flesh out.
And there might be some truth in there.
And there might be some truth in it has informed our approach really.
Yeah.
It's one of the things, I don't remember who taught us this, but like, you know, even if
there's 2% truth in this, can we mind for truth in order to grow?
Yeah.
Like is there something in there that is, that is truth?
And I think you only know that by taking it to the Holy Spirit and saying, Holy Spirit,
wow, this is really hurtful information.
My heart feels, you know, X, Y and Z.
And what do I need to know about me?
Yes.
of this so that you can grow. And often even with that kind of information for us, if the Holy
Spirit's like, "Yep, here's your 2% or here's your whatever percent of truth," we've taken that to
people we're in relationship with and said, "Hey, I feel like God has spoken to me about this. How
have you experienced me? Like, can you help me with that?" Because again, if you have relationship
where people know they can tell the truth,
then you can actually grow and learn about yourself.
- But what do you do with the people who are not doing that?
I remember when we first moved here,
so this is going back years ago.
We started emanating.
So our young adult's gathering very early on.
Almost immediately we taught people how to prophesy
and how to hear God's voice.
I brought to my attention somebody posted on Facebook
Just this scathing review of me and you which I found delightful to be to be honest
There's so much energy on why we were false teachers false prophets this person was warning everybody about staying away from
You know emanate and this and that it was just this so much energy and I found it delightful and what do I mean by delightful?
Well
Clearly this person doesn't know us. Yes because the things are saying about us are not true and
And then what are you going to do about it?
And I was really struck when I traveled with John on it.
I remember one church we were at, we're at a church in England,
a very famous church in England.
And John and Carol were invited in to do revival meetings
and they did a revival meeting.
And the senior associate pastor was furious with what happened.
The senior pastor who'd invite John and Carol loved it.
The senior associate pastor was incensed, was furious, thought this was dangerous,
thought it was totally demolishing the reputation of the very famous church.
Right.
And John noticed that the senior sociopaster was not in the meetings and so he asked the senior pastor
and the senior pastor just told him up front like this guy does not like you. He, you know, he thinks this, that, the next thing.
And John's reaction, because I remember watching, John's reaction was, "Oh, maybe I can take him to breakfast and answer his questions."
And I so loved that the response to all this vitriol was John going, "Clearly he's, you know, John didn't say this, but the impression I got was clearly this man has just
misunderstood what's going on. Let's buy breakfast and be with him.
Yes.
And I think why I was excited by this Facebook article, yes, was I was like,
I'm going to do the same thing with this guy.
And you did. Because I, you know, I loved I loved John's response.
So what I did was I weighed until next week at M&A, where the guy who'd written
these articles actually showed up. And so I, you know, we finished
ministry at the end, he approached me. And before he approached me, I
addressed him by his name. Right? And he freaked out that he knew
his name. He's like, how do you know your name? I was like,
well, behold, I'm a prophet. And I said, I'm just kidding. I
said, I read your article. And the color drains from his face.
Yeah. I said, I read the article, I would love to meet with
you for breakfast. Can we unpack it? Yeah. And so he was like,
yeah, yeah. And it's that whole thing about Proverbs as a
gentle answer turns away. Yes. Now you can't do that with
everybody because no, some of the people who are writing
mean things aren't interested in your perspective, or
restoration or anything like that.
- They're just getting away from themselves with pain.
- Yeah, they wanna stay in their story at the moment.
- But no matter what their responses,
if you can find a way to treat people with kindness,
bad things go so wealthy.
- Yes, you know, Philippians tells us Jesus made himself
of no reputation.
- Yeah.
- People said all kinds of things about Jesus,
and people are gonna say all kinds of things about you.
They're gonna say all kinds of things about me.
And I think if we can stay centered in, again,
what God says about us and be taking everything to him,
it becomes a lot easier to let people think whatever they think.
Now it's still hurtful.
It is. It's still hurtful.
It's a little depending on who's saying it.
Yes, depending on how close they are,
but I've cried many, many times over things
that have been said that I'm like,
I would like to correct that and I can't.
(laughing)
Like without without making somebody else look bad, I can't confront that.
Yeah.
I need to just let you think whatever you think, even though that's not who I am or what I'm about.
And to me, as a truth teller, it's killer.
Like I'm just like, oh, I I want to go in with truth blazing and set everything straight.
And I'm actually supposed to be of no reputation.
So I need to be okay with being misunderstood and misaligned.
And as much as I'm making that sound easy, it isn't.
- Right.
- You know, so it is journaling about it.
It is praying, it is hearing from God and saying,
God remind me who you say I am
because I'm hearing awful things.
And it is painful, but it's well worth it, I think, in the end.
I don't think you can defend,
you can't spend your life defending yourself.
And all you can do is if you know you've hurt someone or if you know you've made a mistake,
go and own it. If that person won't come to you and you don't actually know the details or whatever,
all you can do is pray, "Okay, Lord, if this is something that can be restored, bring them to me,
and I'll have ears to hear." And then just lay it down again because you can't fix it.
I think it was Alex Sealy who said this.
I think I heard her say it was just about Jesus was perfect.
Like no flaw in Jesus.
And yet people still didn't like him.
Yes.
And people said unkind things about him.
Sure.
So none of us are going to be perfect.
But even if we were, that wouldn't solve the problem.
Right. Right.
So we need a better solution than.
Everybody loving us.
Oh God, that's just a waste of time.
It's just not going to happen.
No.
But I love that.
But like Jesus made himself with no reputation.
Why are you worried about yours?
And the more energy we put it,
like that is just not gonna go well at all.
- No, and then you're gonna just become
the ultimate people pleaser
because you're afraid of what everyone else is thinking.
And if you're the ultimate people pleaser,
you're never gonna be an ultimate God pleaser
because you can't do both.
- Can't do both.
- I heard Chris Veltin say that what other people,
what people say about others says more about them
than it does the people they're talking about.
- Yeah.
- And I think that's also like part of that,
people don't have better tools.
so you can have compassion, you can have mercy.
But people are also sinful.
- Yes.
- Ourself is included by the way.
- And again, affected by our own stories.
- So we have our lenses, how we see things.
- So that whole thing of like sewing and reaping
comes into play.
Like I think one of the most important things you do,
we don't have a simple straightforward answer for this.
We're just giving you a bunch of stuff.
- We're just rambling over here.
- Is to not judge because you don't want to become
that what you've judged.
So constantly giving away free gifts of forgiveness and grace
and realizing, you know, not everybody has the full story
and that's okay.
Just, but if you can be content to not fix your own reputation,
you'll see too that God takes care of that.
I was with, I don't have the permission,
I don't have the person's permission to tell the story.
So I'll keep it anonymous.
But I was with a well-known minister a while back
and they have, I don't know how we got onto this topic,
they happen to talk about their Wikipedia page.
And their Wikipedia page doesn't just have errors,
but they have malicious things written about their character
by people who don't like them.
- Yes. - Right?
So I was like, well, that's super easy effects.
Like Wikipedia could be edited by anybody.
I said, why don't you change it?
And this person just looked at me and said,
I'd rather have the anointing.
And I said, can you unpack that?
And that's where they were talking about
Jesus made himself of no reputation.
If I'm gonna leave where I am
and be concerned about my reputation,
then I've lost the ability to be stigmatized
for the cost of the anointing.
I'd rather have the anointing.
And I was like, that is a great response.
And there's a certain freedom.
- In letting people believe what they wanna believe.
- Oh my gosh, imagine what life would be like
if you had something infinitely better
than what everybody else was trying to offer you.
And when people are trying to offer you,
oh, you need to correct your reputation.
I'm just like, you know what?
Like, I'm just calling everybody.
Now Bill Johnson, if you don't live by the praises of man,
and you won't die by the criticisms of man.
I'm not saying that you just want to be indifferent.
I don't care what people say.
No, of course not.
You want to get a remarkable--
You're going to love well.
Also, you have to have your source of well-being
and confidence placed other than what people think about you.
Yes.
Because people are going to have different thoughts
about you all of the time, whether you're
meeting their needs or not.
Yes.
There's a curious passage.
I don't like this passage.
Shift passages in Scripture you don't like.
2 Samuel 16, poor David's having one of the worst days of his life.
All right?
Absalom's coming to overthrow him.
And on his way out, there's a guy, I think he's from Saul's family,
but anyway, he starts accusing the king and throwing stones at him.
And one of David's men is just like,
you're going to let this dead dog say these things about you?
And in essence, I'm paraphrasing here, but David's just like,
actually, he might be right.
It might be the Lord and I don't want to oppose him.
And so having the curiosity, the humility maybe,
to just be like, maybe it's,
maybe what they're saying is right,
allows the Lord to get a message to you in a way.
I just, I think there's beauty in it.
There's beauty in criticism.
And there's beauty also in not being betrothed
to people's criticism or feeling like the need
that you have to set the record straight
and just move on again, not within difference,
but with like, ah, well, the Lord's my defender,
he'll sort it out.
So you're back to living in tension in terms of,
you're living in the tension of there's what God says.
And there's not living by the approval of man
and feeling understood all the time and whatever.
Like there's living out of just the confidence
of actually God's good, he's working on me.
I'm a work in progress.
I can keep heading on, believe what he says
about me, blah, blah, blah.
And I have this information over here.
And some of them might be true.
And so I can actually, because of this side,
because of the confidence in who he is,
confidence in what he says about me,
I can actually look at the other side and say,
okay, God, what do you wanna say?
- What do you mean?
- Yeah, what do you wanna say to me about this?
- Without being tanked by this.
- Without being tanked, yeah.
But I feel like a lot of the Christian walk
is some sort of tension between two, not extremes,
but even just two differences where you're sort of saying,
Yes, what if both are true?
You know, what if there's truth on both?
And thank God we have the Holy Spirit
who helps us work through all of that stuff
and is the speaker of truth?
- Well, let's see if we can land this thing
'cause I think part of the thing I love
about Listen's question is it gives us something
to just ramble on. - Wax about, yeah.
- But I also wanna meet the need
of the person asking the questions.
- Yeah.
- What do you do, AJ Jones,
when people speak badly about you
or speak things that are not true about you?
- Well, first of all, try not to judge.
So it doesn't boom around back on you.
- That's right.
Assel Lord, what if it is for you to learn from?
- Yeah, Lord, can you redeem the sting?
- Yeah.
- There's this, what do I need to know
that I might not want to know?
- Yeah.
And then I think carry on,
like carry on with what God's asked you to do
and trust that he's gonna bring redemption.
- Yeah.
The one thing I'd add to that is,
depending on the level of relationship I have
with the people who've said those things,
is if I've got lots of relationship,
I might go confront that.
- Yeah. - Say, "Hey, I don't know,
I don't do gossip, but I heard that you'd said this.
Is that true and can we talk about that?"
- Is there something we need to talk about?
- And if it's something that I just don't even know,
like, you know, then I just wanna show mercy.
I mean, hopefully I'm showing mercy in both of those.
- Right, hopefully.
- But I wanna show mercy because people walk in the light
of the revelations they have.
Like, I have benefited from the mercy
that other people have shown.
I want mercy in the future.
If you want mercy, you gotta show mercy.
- Yeah.
- So.
- Good question.
- Great question.
If you would like to show notes for this week's episode,
go to, I was trying to remember which episode this is,
go to alynandaj.com/292.
- And if you would like to ask us a question
that we can answer on air for you,
go to alynandaj.nope, yes, Alyn, I forgot our website
for a second, isn't that funny?
- Oh, we're professionals here.
- It's been a long day, it's cool.
alynandaj.com/ask.
- And if you'd like to follow us on all the social medias,
We're just basically @alynandaj on YouTube Twitter, Facebook and Instagram.
A huge thank you to the members of our show
who directly support the show.
Thank you.
If you'd like to become a member,
if you'd like to get priority Q&A,
if you'd like to get discounts on our products,
if you'd like to watch the video versions of these podcasts,
by the way, you can watch snippets
of the video versions of these podcasts
at youtube.com/alynandaj.
But if you wanna become a member,
go to alynandaj.com/join for all those benefits.
Thank you for being with us.
We look forward to being with you next week.
