Ever feel like life is slipping away, one checkbox at a time? Meet Jon Lao Longi, who defied conformity to rediscover faith from a religious childhood to a rebellious adolescence marked by expulsions and defiance. In the midst of the pornography industry and drug abuse, Jon found hope in Jesus Christ, leading to a profound spiritual awakening. Committed to spiritual growth, he returned to Los Angeles, sparking faith in others through home Bible study. Despite past involvement in organized crime, Jon's remarkable transformation attests to the liberating power of the Gospel. Ready for this inspiring journey of redemption?
view more resources on our website
0:00 - Gospel Transformation and Redemption
5:10 - Struggles With Checkbox Christianity
10:40 - From Rebellion to Crime
19:41 - Reflections on the Pornography Industry
25:04 - From Trafficking and Brokenness to Redemption
33:34 - Journey of Faith and Spiritual Growth
44:26 - The Transformative Power of the Gospel
57:14 - Freedom and Identity in Christ
1:05:19 - The Power of God's Love
1:09:33 - Revealing God's Pursuit of Us
keywords: faith, rebellion, dark moments, Jesus Christ, redemption, organized crime, Gospel, spiritual growth, inspiring journey.
Ever feel like life is slipping away, one checkbox at a time? Meet Jon Lao Longi, who defied conformity to rediscover faith from a religious childhood to a rebellious adolescence marked by expulsions and defiance. In the midst of the pornography industry and drug abuse, Jon found hope in Jesus Christ, leading to a profound spiritual awakening. Committed to spiritual growth, he returned to Los Angeles, sparking faith in others through home Bible study. Despite past involvement in organized crime, Jon's remarkable transformation attests to the liberating power of the Gospel. Ready for this inspiring journey of redemption?
view more resources on our website
0:00 - Gospel Transformation and Redemption
5:10 - Struggles With Checkbox Christianity
10:40 - From Rebellion to Crime
19:41 - Reflections on the Pornography Industry
25:04 - From Trafficking and Brokenness to Redemption
33:34 - Journey of Faith and Spiritual Growth
44:26 - The Transformative Power of the Gospel
57:14 - Freedom and Identity in Christ
1:05:19 - The Power of God's Love
1:09:33 - Revealing God's Pursuit of Us
keywords: faith, rebellion, dark moments, Jesus Christ, redemption, organized crime, Gospel, spiritual growth, inspiring journey.
Death to Life is brought to you by Love, Reality, a good gospel ministry. Our mission is to tell everyone willing to listen that in Christ, by faith, they are free from sin. Everything that we make is made possible because of the generosity of people like you. Thank you.
Speaker 2:The world doesn't think that the gospel can change your life, but we know that it can and that's why we want you to hear these stories, stories of transformation, stories of freedom, people getting free from sin and healed from sin because of Jesus. This is Death to Life.
Speaker 3:My brother-in-law was making pornography videos at a big warehouse. He had a sound stage. He was one of those guys. He was into mail order and so he needed to make a lot of product all the time, and so I remember being on set and all of a sudden I remember this moment these girls began to occur for me as my daughter. 19 years later, or 18 years later, or 16 years later, it began to occur for me that these girls that I was trafficking in and treating just their utensils once were like my daughter in my arms, and their fathers had hopes and dreams and they bounced them on their knees and it was beautiful and all of my father, I couldn't stop taking it to the set with me. So again, the Bible says train your child the way you should go, and they'll never depart from it. Whatever my father and my mother and my education, my parents' prayers to me had laid in my heart as far out as I went, there was a place where I just couldn't push past them, and so that's why I left the pornography business.
Speaker 2:Yo, welcome to the Death to Life podcast. My name is Richard Young and today's episode is with my man, john, and we have had a lot of different episodes on the Death to Life podcast. We have never had an episode like this. We have never had an episode like this and have never had a story like this. It is powerful man, john's story, just to see what God is doing. I'm just blown away by it. It's a guy who pretty much left, was gone. God gave him a revelation of his love. He came back and for some years that was back but didn't understand the gospel. And then there's gospel. So, yeah, it's a brother who has seen some things in life and has come through on the other side. Love by God. So I think you're going to love this episode. I think it's going to bless you. So let's just jump into it, bugle up, strap in Love. You all Appreciate you all. Here's John. So, yeah, man, talk to me. How do I say your last?
Speaker 3:Okay, so it's three syllables right. So think about it. It's Lao like in loud, but no D so Lao, and then long, not short. Long, and then E Lao Longi.
Speaker 2:Lao Longi. Okay, that's not hard. I've just seen your Exactly. That's exactly the problem, but there's no in in your last name.
Speaker 3:But that's how it's said Lao Longi. In Samoa the G has an inferred N because that's a long G, so Lao Longi yeah.
Speaker 2:Lao Longi Were you born in America.
Speaker 3:So I was born in Portland, oregon. My father was a Marine and he had come across like most Samoans, find himself a beautiful white woman, have some kids, get a couple of retirements from the military, and then that's how they live. And God found him and arrested him and addresses history.
Speaker 2:Crazy. So where does your story start, john, if you're going to pinpoint a place?
Speaker 3:and when I say your story when it comes to spiritual matters in your life, so I'm going to tell you, my father was a pastor in evangelist, so I was four or five years old when he became an Adventist and he had quite the story. We ended up moving to New Zealand to become. He was a missionary in New Zealand and this story had it was a great story of faith because he was 40 years old when he came to faith. He had six kids. He decided to quit the Marines after 15 years and go to PUC get his education. All of his instructors said that no one would hire him and then this call came from New Zealand. This call was tailor made for a man who was Samoan, knew the culture, knew the language, but was also theologically trained by Adventists and at that time my father was one of one. There was the only man that fit that description. So we moved to our. My childhood was just enveloping his faith. Wow, god is incredible. But as I grew up, being raised as an Adventist, going to always Adventist schools, it was very clear, very clear very quickly that this was checkbox Christianity. There are things that I could do and there are things that I couldn't do and I was supposed to do the things that I was supposed to do and that would get me to head on, and this was like the probably the mid 70s, early 70s, and I don't think things have changed since then. That was very clear Do not smoke, do not drink, make sure your dress is. If you're a girl three inches from the floor, she'd go to the beach and you make sure that you don't swim on a certain. It was all, all rules, and so, growing up, the first instinct was to obey these rules and try to earn heaven that way. And man, I was Richard. I was 15, 14, 15. I began to realize that I couldn't do this. My heart was not capable of doing these things. Now I had friends to my left and to my right who would go to church and go to school, and they would. They would try to be good and they would, they would try to fit in. But I knew them on on, on, you know, on Thursday night. I knew them on Saturday night when the sun went down. They were just like me and I also learned quickly that was not a part of a part of life that I wanted to be a part of. I didn't want to be a hypocrite and so probably I would say 14 or 15, I was back stateside, my father was getting his master's at Andrews University and as I began to grow up in this culture, I realized that I always knew there was a God and I always knew there's a God who was a God of judgment. So I knew that there was going to be a day out here. They were fooled by that, but I thought to myself at some point. You know what? I can never be righteous enough for him. So I'm going to go out in the world, I'm going to enjoy all the things that my heart wants to do, and when he comes back he'll just have to deal with me and I'll accept that. A good enough life to balance that against that and so that was the beginning of my story was my father was an adventist, a missionary, so I knew all the books of the Bible. I could get up on stage and say the things I was supposed to say, but in my heart I knew that there is no way I could ever live up to what I thought it meant to have a life that would be deserving of eternal life.
Speaker 2:When did you start feeling? Would you describe it as rebellion or would you describe it as like you didn't. You weren't buying what they were Interesting question.
Speaker 3:I'm sure there was some rebellion in there and my father was a Marine drill sergeant. He was also full-blooded Samoan, so he was six foot two and you weighed 300 at his prime and there's that sense of authority. I think rebellion as you asked me a question was a smaller component. A big, larger component was I bought into what he was selling. I knew that there was a God. I believed in the Bible. I believed that Jesus was coming. I believed in all the doctrines of the church per se. But I think the biggest partnership this answers your question was I thought it was futile, I thought it was useless. On my best day I couldn't measure up. I was a regular dude. I had these come to Jesus moments where, oh my gosh, I want to be good and so I get in my Bible and I'd be good Monday and Tuesday, and I'm Tuesday afternoon, I'd do something and I think I'm lost and I would just zoom back and forth and that ride made me dizzy and it got me tired and I think, ultimately speaking, got me frustrated and it made me hopeless. Is that answer? Is that?
Speaker 2:Sure, what did God think about you, oh? That's in your mind back then.
Speaker 3:In my mind, god loved me. God had a sort of a paternal love for all of us, so I always felt that way about him. But I felt that, god I'm saying these words to the first time I'm hoping they came out good, because this is a good question. But specifically to deal with me, I felt that in order for me to be able to please God, to be able to satisfy him in a way that would allow me to be in relationship with him where he would smile at me and be pleased with me, I had to do certain things, and you're cutting to the chase of what I was trying to say. I tried to do that over and over and I never felt successful. I never felt that I could do a mess, things back to back to have any kind of sustained acceptance. There's the word I'm looking for acceptance from God.
Speaker 2:So God did not accept you then and no.
Speaker 3:I had some moments. There were some moments there where I felt like I had a string together, a couple of days back to back. That felt good. Maybe I could go four or five days, but no over time, yeah, no.
Speaker 2:John, don't you just realize, if you could have just gone a few more days, you would have accepted you and you would have been good. But oh man, you stopped at day three or four. That's tough. So then one ended up happening. Were you living in Bering Springs at the time, or you're living in Michigan at this point, where you're 14 or 15?
Speaker 3:14, 15 is where I made the decision. I still live over my dad's roof and so I was still doing the things I had to do, but it was very at this point in time, before I left my father's house, I was definitely knowing that this was not the path for me. My father got a call to Trinidad and Tobago, so I spent my senior year. The other thing that was happening is that because of this and because of other sort of things in the background, I was getting kicked out of Adventist Academy. I was left and right. I went. I've probably been to every Adventist Academy that there is. I was in Andrews. That kicked me out. I went to Broadview Academy and outside of Chicago, they kicked me out. My father sent me to Monterey Bay, which is this beautiful campus on the ocean in California. So I leave Michigan in the dead of winter to go to Monterey Bay, and four months later they kicked me out. She'd be back to Michigan and so I'm not finding a home.
Speaker 2:It was you say can you give us an example of why you don't have to tell me? Why were you getting kicked out? What did you do to get kicked out of the state?
Speaker 3:Okay, so Monterey Bay here's one of the stories. Monterey Bay Academy had a lights out system where you had to, where it's like it's 9.55, lights out in five minutes, and so I'm not a technical genius, but I always could find people who were, and so we at the time KISS was the most was the largest rock band and the most hated by religious institutions that nothing could send you to hell faster than owning a KISS cassette. Right, I just said KISS cassette? Yes, I did. A buddy of mine hooked up to the sound system this KISS cassette and then, but it said, when they flipped the switch where the lights were to go out, this would broadcast on the entire dorm. And so one night they flipped the switch.
Speaker 2:I want a rock and roll. That was actually the song. That's what it was like.
Speaker 3:And party ever and that and blared over the speakers and both of the deans are running about in the hallway and just going crazy and it was things like that nature and they weren't. I was never hurting anybody, they were more mischievous and incorrigible rebellion. Yeah, a little bit, but it was things like that. I just was having fun.
Speaker 2:Yeah.
Speaker 3:So the administration found out about Gene Simmons blaring out the speakers and they tortured, one little boy to another little boy to another little boy and just the wall didn't hold and it came back to the mastermind and that was ceremoniously asked to return to Bairie and Spreese, michigan. Fun fact, my father slew me out. He made me ride the bus back. He was not happy, he was happy to 40 bus ride with the old men on my shoulders, with spits, all. It was crazy.
Speaker 2:When you were getting kicked out of these places, were you like fine, did you care? I did not care.
Speaker 3:I did not care. Yeah, there were. Well great question. I think the answer that question gives you. My attitude of time towards the religious community was that I don't care what you think about me. I understand already that I'm incorrigible. I understand that I'm redeemable, and so what you think about me means nothing. Now my father six two, and he weighed 265, 275, hit my fear and I did not want to go home because he's a Samoan parent and they don't spare the rod that I feared. So you don't care about the janganza community itself. Man, it was unambiguous my feelings for them.
Speaker 2:Yeah, where did you end up graduating? I did.
Speaker 3:I ended up, my father got a call to Trinidad and Tobago. I went there my senior year. I work, that's where I started my first drink of whiskey, etc. Because I'm in the culture now I'm 17 years old, I'm an American and I looked at it in a certain way in those days when you travel the world. And so I spent my senior year and then the first half year of my next year in Trinidad with my father. I was working to help and support what we were doing in Trinidad and I had probably one of the best 17 year old runs. That in a 17 year old it was a pretty good gig. I came back. Before my father came back I went to live with my sister and then my father got a call to Compton, Samoan Seventeven and the church in 1980. And then I rejoined my father in 1980 here in California. So what are you up to? So I think I'm smarter than everybody At the time. I'm very arrogant. Lots of Cuba's fly around in my life. I've been pushed up a couple of times in classes. I've been educated in the Commonwealth system in New Zealand, and so when I came here, one of the reasons why I was so incorrigible was that we had learned this stuff. The Commonwealth system is so far advanced than the American schooling system. So I came back in ninth grade and I had probably 11th grade education, and so that was part of it, and so I had this mindset that I was smarter than the world. My father said, hey, I'll send you to college and I was like, no, I'm going to go do my own thing. So I started working for some companies and my main mindset, richard, was to get rich. I just talked to myself if I just got wealthy, I'm smart. I think I'm in Los Angeles and unfortunately, I had a nefarious mindset at this time and something that is taking the gospel to the quelch and that is shortcuts, trying to figure out how to match whips. And because my father and I did not see eye to eye on the important things in life, I began to gravitate towards father figures that could admire me, could accept me, can say at a boy, john. And because of my nefarious heart, I ended up running at the age of 24 with a guy who was the consiliere to a mob guy in New York. He was. I remember when I first met this guy. He showed me this guy who was in the mob and Billboard magazine had run this front page article about mob bosses infiltrating Hollywood. And our guy was 18 and had a bullet buyout. He was riding in the charts. He was a young guy, educated at Yale, his dad was a capo and this guy, his name, was Michael Francaise. You look it up, he's a great, good looking guy, educated, and he's making a ton of money. He's doing very well, and so my guy was like his advisor in some ways, and so that allowed us to do various deeds and then if we got into trouble we could run to his guy, who we paid a big to.
Speaker 2:What crime family was like.
Speaker 3:Was he one of the five families? Banana family? Yeah, funny story, not funny story. God is so powerful. Michael Francaise is a Christian today. Michael Francaise today.
Speaker 2:I've heard his name. Isn't he in Hollywood?
Speaker 3:Yes, I see that he goes out to schools and great guy. It's a funny story about his wife and my ex-wife had gone to school together. Such a smaller world. But anyway he became a Christian and he actually goes and speaks on God's behalf. So that was sort of so. At 24 years old I had this guy who saw Lilpa. He had just lost his son to cancer and so he saw me as a son figure. I was looking for a father figure and spent, but this guy led a life of crime. I mean literally. We were confident and Richard, in every sense of the word. We had an office, we had parking spaces, we went there to work in desks, get a telephone, but our only job for probably five or six years in my twenties was to figure out and separate people from their money in so many different ways. And looking back I realized I didn't realize at the time the guy's name was Jared, called Jerry Z. I didn't realize his appeal to me but in retrospect his appeal was I was looking for a father, I was looking for someone to say, john, adequately, you're accepted. And this goes back to our conversation at the gospel, that when you don't understand the gospel and you think that your father in heaven is not pleased with you because of your behavior. This is troublesome. This is an issue, and so men, always like me, will go look for fathers who will love them right where they are, and this guy had no problem loving me right where I was, and that's where I was most of my twenties.
Speaker 2:I bet you were pretty if you weren't street smart. When you started with Jerry Z, you probably acquired some street smarts and were really were you a good con man? Were you able to separate people from their money very easily?
Speaker 3:Well, honestly, way too good. He taught me so many skills. He, like any other good teacher, he'll push into areas that you're uncomfortable. And because of my Christian background and because just my heart that God has blessed me with, I didn't like taking from people. I didn't like taking from companies. But I remember one time, one time there was an elderly woman whose son was a drug dealer, and he was actually dealing drugs to a buddy of mine, a friend of mine, who was part of our coalition. Long story short, her house was free and clear and her son had given us the ability to come in there and refinance the house and use the money for whatever in a fair age needs. And so I was the front man, so I went there. It happened, and they end up losing their house, and it's probably the one thing that really sticks in my heart. I've lost a lot of sleep over this woman who trusted me. She looked me in the eye and I sat at her kitchen table and did all the things, but even at that time, right too much I was breaking. I would go home, and so I wasn't a great criminal. I wasn't a great criminal. I remember one time we brought in these Russian circus. In the late 80s there was a circus called the Steve Lieber Circus and it was perestroika and glass nose was in the air. So Russia was big money, right, rocky five, I think four or five was out. And so these Kuwaiti guys had contacted my guy and said, hey, let's bring a circus from Russia, we'll make a killing. So they brought a circus across and I was the front guy. We'd go to Jonathan City, tennessee, or two of the Hershey Stadium in Pennsylvania and I would be the advanced guy and I would send up all the clown tours in the hospitals and we brought the circus over. But we were just flim-flam guys and when the Kuwait war happened, our backers all of a sudden couldn't hear or hide nor hear, and so I was stuck there in the lounge, georgia, with 126 men, women and children, with lions, tigers, bears, all this baggage, and it went to hell in handbasket. It was terrible, took a year and a half of my life. People, families separated. These men and women, who were Russian heroes because they were circus performers, went home just completely embarrassed and humiliated. And those two events made me think to myself that I need to be careful about what I put my energy into, because I could see the human toll right Taking medicines that you're dealing with. That crushed me and that's really what sort of led me out of doing what I was doing there. My brother-in-law we do a lot of business with, he was the largest pornographer in the valley for a while and he had told me one day he told my sister John would be the best con man, but his big problem is he's got a conscience. He's got to lose that stuff, then he could be perfect. He'd be the perfect guy and, as I mentioned earlier, my brother-in-law was making pornography videos in the San Fernando Valley. He was a quintessential, valiant guy. He had a big warehouse, he had a sound stage, he was one of those guys who had. He was into mail order and so he needed to make a lot of product all the time. And so one day I had actually fleeced him for not a lot of money. I'd run a game on him and I had I made like a grand or something and he said to me he called me to listen, go, pay me back. I know that you pulled a fast for not me, but work for me, come, work for me. And I said what I do because I make these videos go on the sets and you can be a production assistant or whatever. And so his main director at the time was a guy named Ron Jeremy. He was in the news recently and so I would go on set with Ron Jeremy, I would be his production assistant and then pretty soon my brother-in-law promoted me to production manager and I was directing these things and so I'd gone legit a little bit. I was actually earning money now, as opposed to stealing it from people, but it was just a different sort of game, and I did that probably for about a year and a half going out there, and I had three kids at the time. I was married. At the time, I had a daughter and two sons and they would know that dad was flying in San Francisco or dad was going to Vegas to shoot movies, and when they got older they would take dad when can we go to the movies to see these movies? You're like no, exactly. I'm like wow, and then one day, I'm sure, as a spirit of God working rich, I'm at one day being on a set and all of a sudden this is I remember this moment all of a sudden, these girls begin to occur for me as my daughter 19 years later, or 18 years later or 16 years later, like it began to occur for me that these girls that I was trafficking in and treating just that they're just utensils once were like my daughter in my arms, and their daughters had their fathers, had hopes and dreams, and they bounced them on her knees and it was beautiful, and all of my father, I couldn't stop taking it to the set with me. So again, the conscious within the Bible says train your child the way you should go, and they'll never depart from it. Whatever my father and my mother and my education, my parents' prayers show me had laid in my heart as far out as I went, there was a place where I just couldn't push past them, and so that's why I left the pornography business too. For that exact reason.
Speaker 2:Was this world that you were in, in the pornography world? Did it seem as terrible as it, as we all know it is? Or was it just? Oh, these are just people, everyday people doing their jobs. Did you try to put on rose-colored glasses? To do it for as long as you did?
Speaker 3:Yeah, interestingly enough, most of the folks that are in the business love pornography. I know you, I'm sure you know the statistics 90% of America has watched pornography, and I know this to be true from experience. I would go with Ron Jeremy to a supermarket or to a record store, and who didn't know him? These are not people you think are watching pornography. These are school teachers, these are police officers right, we would go to that. We would go. He knew poison, he knew guns and roses all the people at that time and so we would hang out. It was very prolific, but I was not one of those guys. If I did not, was not introduced to Ron Jeremy, to my brother-in-law, I would not know who he was. I had never watched porn as a kid growing up. It was not my vice, and so I was unique in a way that I came into the business, of course being in my mid-20s and probably being the youngest director, because they're mostly older dudes. It was. It was a little bit of a charge, but it wasn't like, oh, I'm in my world, this is so cool, I was making good money at the time. It was petty to be the leader of an enterprise who flew people someplace, and it's more like that than the actual business With respect to the people themselves. Honestly, the sets that I were on was much more decent than you might imagine. Yes, of course these people there are people on the set that were more nefarious than the guys to the left or to the right, but every you can go to a church and find that. You can go to a school and find that these are, by and large, regular people like us who just had this hole in their heart and they were trying to fill it through different methodologies. Some of them were it was a money game, but I think a lot of them had father issues. A lot of them had, like love issues, that there was a hole in their heart that they were trying to fill and they sold themselves this idea that it's just their body, it's not their soul. But ultimately speaking, richard, not one of them escaped the grinder that I saw not one.
Speaker 2:After that, did thoughts ever come in your mind? From time to time you still believe that God existed. You just believe you were too far gone. But like when he came into mine, what was that?
Speaker 3:Interesting, trying to think back in those days. Never, ever, didn't think there was a God. Did I pray at that time? Probably not. I don't remember having conscious thoughts about God. I remember looking at being an Adventist and understanding the anti-message as much as I did. I did follow the news of my father and I would get into vicious conversations about politics and about how the world was going. So there was a cognizance that the world was going towards a place that the Bible had talked about. So I guess in some level I was still trafficking or operating on these premises, but day to day I didn't really think I was divorced from God. I guess that's the best word to say in my mind, in my heart, what he thought of me, very similar to the authorities that we talked about earlier, that the religious community that I was like. I was ambiguous. I know you don't accept me, I know you don't love me, so I'm going to live my life. I think that's probably analogous. I think that, yeah, I didn't. God was there. I knew he was out there, but I knew he'd never accept me. He's certainly not going to accept me now. I'm just going to live my life and we'll see what happens.
Speaker 2:Wow, what did happen? God is so good.
Speaker 3:God is so good. I was such a cad that in my, at 30 years old, I had divorced my wife. I had eight year old, six year old and a five year old and ran off with this 19 year old and we shacked up and burbanking. I was trying to go straight, getting away from porn, getting away from all that stuff. And then I had a little run in San Diego and we had a little thing going on Again. No, no, chris, she's not happening there, she's trying to build my life. It was all built on the ferries and I was low to get a job. I felt like employment was beneath me. I own companies, I run companies, I don't work for people. And so I got through this mindset. It was just, it was vacuous, it was empty, it was completely heuristic and it was empty. It was. There was nothing there. And I didn't realize this till afterwards. But my 10 year relationship with my girlfriend she understood it at some level as well. And in the 2001, we were living in Burbank and I was doing sort of straight movies. At the time I had done some HBO stuff, I was trying to branch out, and so we made a little bit of money and I'd sent her to Miami to do some stuff and she came back and I found pictures in her purse of her and another man and anyway, her boy should broke up over infidelity. And I had been through tons of stuff I had been through. I've been homeless in my life before. I've been through ups and downs and it never dawned to me. But this infidelity thing, yeah, it just took the wind out of me and I didn't even understand it. And then my life began to spiral and it began to join more and do more cocaine and use, use, bike and even things out again. And this is, this was going on for about a year and a half as God was. In retrospect I see that God was just breaking me down, like he was taking everything away from me that I was using to prop up this facade of who I was the Mercedes and the beautiful girlfriend and the position and stuff. And so girlfriend went first. Wow, I was processing that I had consulting work, I was doing some. I had a friend at the mayor's office that would refer me to consulting business and one by one all those consulting guys began to dry up a little bit. And I remember I had one gig. There was something about 70 grand on. That was just it was done deal. It was the one thing I could count on and the last minute that fell away as well. It was just nuts. And so I'm in my Burbank house and it's three in the morning. I got I'm sure I have cocaine in the gate. I got my jacket, coat on my side, I listened to Sarah McLaughlin music in the background I have candles burning. Richard, I'm not suicidal, but I'm just bonded like I am and I'm going to clean up next morning, go and look like John and shiny again. But in my heart I'm having a hard time hiding this back and I'm broken. I'm broken. And in that moment I hear the sort of not an audible voice, but this impression that says go, warm your hands by the fire. And the image that came to my mind was as a church on the off, the 134. If you live in LA, you'll know that to go from Burbank to Pasadena there's a free we call the 134. And up on the hill there's like a sombrero shape shaped. Sda church called the Vallejo Drive, said that in the church is a huge church, it's a conference church, and that was the image I got. And so that night. So I stayed up till the next morning. I didn't go to sleep. I took a shower, my best suit on, try to make sure my nose was clean I'm sure I was still a little drunk. I put my trench coat on, put my big wayfarers on and I drive to this church. And thank God, this church is like cavernous, because I didn't want to see anybody, I just was just had this instinct. I got to get to warm my hands by the fire and I go in the church and nobody says hi to me, thank God. I go upstairs and there's a huge balking upstairs if you've been there and they go to the very, very back. And so here I am, I got my trench, my three piece trench coat. They stick wayfarers on the back hair and this crazy thing happened. This Hispanic woman walks on stage and the stage has a cross on it and she begins to talk about the love of Jesus. And I'm sitting there, richard, I'm 40 years old, I grew up in Adventist, I went to all the Adventist schools and she began to tell me a story about Jesus Christ, who loved me, right where I was. And that moment, man, the day I'm just birthed, and my tears flying out of my eyes, not coming out of my nose. My chest was heaving. Of course, the church was so big, nobody was noticing, but I was having this Holy Spirit moment when, again 40 years old, and for the first time, I understood that Jesus Christ loved me, right where I was. I didn't have to check this box and that box or this box, and her name was Elizabeth Talbot and she was just awesome, preached that gospel, that good gospel, to me, and I went home and got my makeup back on and everything. I've ended up studying with her and go to that church on Friday nights and she had a great news program at the time and she baptized myself and my wife. I had a baby I had had a girlfriend at the time that she was pregnant and so we, elizabeth, married us and she my daughter, attended our wedding and an interdictal love boat in her office. And then she baptized us and she dedicated our young, my oldest, daughter by my wife, norma. And then we began from there and that's that's my conversion story, from from where I was to where God had brought me.
Speaker 2:What was different about what she was saying that you hadn't caught from before? You knew it, right, you grew up in it. But what was she saying that was different, or was it I saw this quote the other day that the rock at the bottom of rock bottom is Jesus Christ? I don't know if it was that rock bottom experience or you tell me.
Speaker 3:That's a good question. I watched your interviews. I love that these questions can take things or excavate things that maybe weren't there for me before. I would say both. I would say the frame is rock bottom, because I had had many setbacks in my life before, but I never, ever, felt compelled to go to the church, and so something about my condition with the infidelity, with all the things were happening in my life, created an opportunity for this. But what she was saying to me was revolutionary, and that was that in the moment, I'm a sinner, I have cocaine in my system, I have Jack Daniels in my system, I've done all these things and much more that I've described to you, richard, and yet in that moment she told me that the man and she was the prodigal son, by the way what an amazing sort of God with this and that God loved me right where I was. I was the prodigal son, I was coming back home, and in that moment I realized that my father still loved me like he loved me, like he loved me. So I'm not sure what words she actually used, and maybe it was a context of the prodigal son story, but I never heard this before. Growing up, I was told keep this out, don't smoke, don't drink Right. Do these things, and you too can be saved.
Speaker 2:Were you assured of your safety and salvation In that moment?
Speaker 3:yes, In that moment. Yes, praise the Lord, there's been a migration since, but I want to make sure that moment, that our audience and that you, as the intercessor, know that moment was complete. That was a complete moment. In that moment I felt healed, I felt forgiven, I felt accepted as I began to journey. I ended up moving to Portland, oregon, in 2003 with my wife and my new baby, because I'd shared the life that I had. I described for you the life that I'd shared here in Los Angeles and it became apparent to me that's probably not a good place for me to begin my Christian journey. And God had moved some things in the background and I ended up moving up with my sister and my mother up in Portland and I began to go on a journey you know Christian journeys together and as I began to go down that journey, I began to remember and re-experience some of the philosophies and theologies of Adventism. I've created an internet relative to checkbox Christianity. A quick story for you. And when I went up there, I was still smoking cigarettes. I've been plagued by cigarette smoking all my life. I grew up in the 70s, I really let smoke, so cigarette smoking has always been an issue for me. And when I moved up to there, one of my commitments was I was not going to put on my father's religious jacket. I was going to travel with Jesus Christ. He was going to show me how he wanted me to connect my life. I wasn't going to go get the checkbox for my father, and so I was still smoking cigarettes and I had the most, some of the most amazing spiritual experiences at five through in the morning, tears right in my face, open to biblical texts, with a cigarette and an ashtray, and it matches to my side. But at some point God had said to me hey, john, I love you, it's time for you to move on. And so this journey was happening in my life.
Speaker 2:So you're up in Portland and you're going to church. You don't want to be religious, you want to be a follower of the way Christians were. They follow their followers away. How long were you up there and what were you growing in at that time?
Speaker 3:Just, okay, I was up there from 2003 to 2011. What was I growing in God was building my faith in him, little by little. Here's a funny little sort of anecdote In Los Angeles I had the best radar for schemers. Like I could always go into a room and I'd detract the schemers and we'd do some scheming. So I was a good networker. I came home from work one day with my wife and said, oh man, there's all these Christian that my shops that I visit, I'm in sales, I sell money for a little like everywhere I go, these Christians are there. And then it dawned on me that these Christians are always there, these schemers are always there. God is wiring me differently. So I'm actually now that they're attracted to me. I'm attracting them right, and so my life as God gets rewired me in terms of how I think about life, how I think about the future. Parenting was huge Raising my daughter Arianna, who's now she's at Berkeley, she's in her third year. And then my son Aiden, who was, against my wishes, bouncing the basketball. After I told him not to, he's outside there watching the Niner game. He's 14 years old, and so it's a completely different experience than my first three kids, because now I have eternal thoughts in my mind. I'm trying to make sure that I'm passing along them. So God is using that in the background. So I'm getting, I'm adopting little by little I guess to answer your question a more spiritual worldview. Right, that used to come in silos, right? This is the silo of the world and this is the silo of Jesus, and it's becoming more and more integrated, where the John's worldview has now become very much aligned with what I'm reading every day.
Speaker 2:That's awesome, man. And yeah, what was God's thoughts towards you random day in 2009, as you're growing? I love this. I love this Okay.
Speaker 3:Because there's a jump off point. So there were moments, like I said, where I'd be under my desk like crying, just feeling the Holy Spirit, feeling such acceptance and such love. But I was growing in Christ and I had moments where I wasn't very Christ. And marriage can do that to you and being a father can do that to you, and those moments I wasn't sure to be honest with you. There was a gray area in my theology between being in the spirit and being in the flesh, and it's never spoken or stated, but I know that I had the complete understanding that I could not be in the spirit and do and make a mistake. No one ever told me that, but it was just in my mind that if I had done something that was not aligned with the character Jesus Christ, then I had taken myself out of salvation, taken myself out of acceptance. I was at the during that period of time there, throwing myself on the grace of God, saying I don't know how that works. I'm gonna still follow God because he's the reality of life.
Speaker 2:I just don't like dying, like you're saying that you still believe that if you made a mistake, you were. I did and then you I.
Speaker 3:Did I know, like I was just explained to, I think in my mind I was thinking God is gracious, god is good. I hope I died at the right moment. These weren't conscious thoughts on my head, but I recognized that I was not 100% perfect and my beliefs at that time didn't accommodate that I could be less than perfect and still be saved. It was confusing. It didn't occur. Confusing it was. But the gospel is okay news. It's not.
Speaker 2:I think I resonate with that completely. I don't think I ever thought, oh, if I the old, if you say a swear word and you, when you're driving and you get in the car accident and die, you'd be lost. I don't think I really believe that, but I don't think I also didn't believe that I don't know what I believed. You know what I'm saying. It's just, I hope it was exactly exactly. Richard, exactly, and so eventually you end up down, back down here back down here.
Speaker 3:In 2011. We moved back down here. I moved to Newhall. I live now in Santa Clarita and I began to. My son was going to a private school, not an avid school, but a Christian school. I wasn't really. I didn't have church. Community Probably needed for broadcast to get into my head in terms of religious institutions, but some things that happened in the past where I really wasn't very trusting of religious institutions, especially the seven-day Adventist religious institution, and so I wasn't really attending Adventist churches and I had this Bible study, my house, I there was some kids, parents, my son's friends, parents who were pastors at Sunday churches and they would come to my house on a Thursday morning. We break the Bible open, we study together, and it turned wind from 8 to 8 30, 8, 45 to 9 30 Pretty soon. We're spending like Thursday mornings, like 8 to 12, just in God's word, tons of spiritual energy. And Then one of them said dude, you need to find church. This, the church, is the place to express the spiritual energy that you have. And I went out there with my kids and he started looking at churches near and I ended up going to a place called Valley Crossroads, which was in the appointment and a valley crossroads. I got hooked up with the ministry run by a pastor, michael Johnson. It's an evangelistic Ministry called can you hear me now? Youth conference and all that. And then Michael Johnson got a call to passion, passing the seven-day of his church, and so I followed him there as well. And so the next sort of Blip in the story is I Mean, I'm doing the thing. I do right. Like you said, I'm not sure about all the different moving parts, but I'm going forward because I'm a man of activity. I want to do what God wants me to do, so I'm the director of CYC. It's 2020, it's COVID, so we're inviting our speakers to come in and we're zoom broadcasting instead of going up on the mount over you normally go. And one dude comes down he's from Fresno, again, alvin mirage and I said, hey, alvin, how you doing, brother? And he says to me Ah, jesus is amazing. And it blew my hair back. I was like why? And I, as he walked by me, I was like listen, I know, intellectually, jesus is amazing, but I don't feel that way about him, wow. And so I began to percolate in my head there's something I'm missing. There's something I'm missing, and so I go home, that not after the series is over, and again my knees, I say, god, I have one singular prayer. I'm gonna pray forever. I said I want you to open my heart, to feel your love in such a way that I feel like that. I want that, whatever he's smoking, whatever he's drinking, whatever he's imbibbing, I want to feel like that about you. And I don't, and I'm afraid that all this busyness done, busy, busy myself with, what does it mean if it's not motivated, it's not motivated by my love for you? What's it motivated for? And I begin to feel hypocritical in a way. Right, I know we don't run our spiritual eyes on feelings, but there was something missing. So I've been to pray. I've been to pray, god, for your love of my heart. I want to get to a place where every single thing that I do is simply, simply a response to your great love for me. And then one day I have a buddy of mine. Pastor Byron Sent me this little podcast and it was a. He says hey, I haven't fully vetted this out yet, but check this out to give me your opinion. And it was a gentleman named Richard Young. Apparently, he's a Kansas City fan, which you didn't know at the time, otherwise I probably would not have listened to it, but buddy because it was right after this.
Speaker 2:It was it before the Super Bowl, or it was after Super Bowl? Yes, after that, yeah, if you want to see God's providence, he did not let you know that I was a chief.
Speaker 3:That one definitely thrown the wall up for sure. I listened to it. I'm like wow, and the woman you were interviewing, her story wasn't exactly my story but it was close enough for it resonated with me. There's something here like shit pierced through whatever veil. That was over my Experience and I dug deeper and I know that you jockelyan are do you remember what episode was the first one you listen to?
Speaker 2:Wow.
Speaker 3:I'll go back in my text and, look, I want to say your name is Ruth, but I think I've talked about it with you in the past and there's no Ruth. It was a young lady from that Midwest and she ended going to Hawaii a couple times to work on the team and she had some breakthroughs. I'll figure this out.
Speaker 2:Was it Chloe? Howie? Was she his?
Speaker 3:no, oh.
Speaker 2:She from sorry, this was she from. Oh yes, midway and she had it like her voice has cut, like a really yes, not yes, I'm sitting voice but. You know I'm talking about and that Absolutely, that is Mrs Yonkers.
Speaker 1:Oh wow.
Speaker 2:Yeah, she's awesome.
Speaker 3:So I heard this in the and I dug deeper and figured out you had mentioned their name, jobs, a Leonardo, in there. So I do good jobs a Leonardo. And I got on and started listening to some of the love realities, the series stuff, and boy, there was a three month period in my life. Well, I did. It was race after work, after dinner, to our sponsor place. I would just one after the other and I and there's a series that we did in in Lincoln, nebraska, and one here and I would just go over and over and over. I should probably recite them by art. I did preaching at the time and so a lot of times my sermons begin to look sound like this. But I began to understand the gospel Richard in a way that I never Understood before. I began to understand that that I'm free from sin, I'm gonna under. I beat that little doubt thing that you and I talked about earlier about my hope. It works out because God is God. It shattered all that doubt and all of a sudden, more and more, I begin to live in freedom and Assurance that today, salvation is mine. Today I'm free from sin.
Speaker 2:All right, we're gonna take a quick break from the podcast. Right now. I'm gonna bring on my friend Kelly. And Kelly, why do you love the death of life? Podcast?
Speaker 1:Because it's so awesome to hear the stories of lives, transformed, lives that have been brought from death to life. In Jesus name.
Speaker 2:I Love it. Do you have an episode that sticks out to you?
Speaker 1:Oh, man, there's so many good ones. You know I love Tyler and Morgan's just because they're friends of mine and hearing their stories it's just been amazing.
Speaker 2:Also, your buddy Aaron has been on the podcast and and your friend Annabelle. I love to have black Hills people on the podcast. We need maybe more black Hills people, right, I think so some people you can hit up. So you've decided to donate to keep this thing going forward. Why is that important to you?
Speaker 1:Because it's just such an important ministry as we see people's lives just get transformed. Those testimonies, those are, those are the difference maker for the kingdom. It's just seeing what God has done in people's lives and how he's brought them from death to life. That's a huge thing and that's that's what makes it's a best sermon that can be preached.
Speaker 2:Wow. So if you're listening, you want to partner with us to keep this thing going forward. You can go to loverealityorg slash give and we can just keep this, this ball rolling and these stories going so people can hear the good news that God has Reconciled them back to him through Jesus Christ. So, loverealityorg slash give and man, we would. That would be such a blessing to us. Thank you so much, kelly. Appreciate you, yeah, thanks.
Speaker 3:I begin to understand that I'm free from sin. I'm gonna understand that little doubt thing that you and I talked about earlier about my hope. It works out because God is God. It shattered all that doubt and all of a sudden, more and more, I begin to live in freedom and Assurance that today, salvation is mine. Today I'm free from sin and in this concept of walking out by faith, which I always thought was like, the Holy Spirit comes inside of you and then you here's like hobbled together, gospel, before this, god empowers you with this spirit, right, this, and then the Holy Spirit maneuveres like a puppet and if you completely surrender your will, then you know the perfect life, a boy. Every time John puts his will in there, I sent boys back to the beginning again and the series listening to over and over again, being the permeate, my thinking, my gospel thinking. I began to realize I'm free.
Speaker 2:What was the first thing that stood out to you immediately? That? And did any of it hit you weird? Or was it all? Oh, it says it right. Oh my gosh.
Speaker 3:Was there any tension? I'll be honest with you, there was zero. I'll say zero. There's probably none. None that was wrecking, none that was palpable, none that was like, shouldn't be, can be talked about or whatever. Because because what was this? I Knew the Bible, I had read the Bible and I couldn't put that piece together Just in going backwards after understanding the gospel. Now I read Ephesians man, it explodes on me. Now I read Romans Explodes on me. And all these other pieces were to get in my mind. But they needed that gospel thread to make them all alive, to make them all Intrigal, to put them all together. The first thing I did that, the thing that rocked my world, me, honest with you, is the idea that I am Perfect and blameless. Today. I had every spiritual blessing in the heavenly places today and my job is to walk out, walk it out by faith. That was revolutionary to me. I didn't. I thought that it was progressive. I thought that I get stronger and I guess said the Holy Spirit comes and occupies me and then I get better and better at this and hopefully Jesus doesn't come or I don't die before I get to that place where I'm fully empowered by the Holy Spirit. This idea, that this word says that it's true of me today and my job to walk of faith is to walk as if it's true today. That blew my mind, richard. That blew my mind.
Speaker 2:You know what? I'm not gonna blame any of this on you, because I think it really is in the way and I'm not gonna blame anybody, but I just believe it's something that we believe, and I say we. And if you're not having this and you're not listening to this and you're listening to this, then maybe you don't understand this. But it's not in the way we talk about sanctification, because we're like sanctification is is this thing that takes place through your whole life and you're never going to. It's like this thing that you'll never arrive or you'll never fully get it right, and I I don't. I think that idea where there's something about that, there's some truth in something there. But also, sanctification is to be set aside for holy purposes. It's to be made holy, and there are verses in the Bible that say you are sanctified in the same way that you are holy, like you are holy. Holy is to be set aside for a holy, for a spiritual purpose, for God's purpose. He has good works for you to walk out and in order for you to walk them out, he sets you aside for them. Therefore, making you holy, therefore sanctifying you by one sacrifice. He has made perfect all those who are being sanctified. The way we talk about sanctification is, I guess, we talk about it like God's pruning us. That God is pruning us and while he is and we are growing in spiritual maturity, it is because we are sanctified that we are growing in spiritual maturity. Amen, it's because we are set apart. But I didn't understand that. I didn't know that, did you? When you're starting to learn about what does sanctification mean, like all of these religious, holy, spiritual words that kept us at arm's length? When we just see the definition and how Scripture uses it, it becomes a lot more understandable, and then you can see it in your life.
Speaker 3:Oh my God, yes, and I love the way you phrase things there, richard, because that was a mindblower for me too. It's two sides of the same coin, this idea that I am saved and yet Christ is saving me. That's not the right way to save this. The idea that I am sanctified and then, at the same time, christ is sanctified me. I didn't understand that. I thought that baptism, in a way, was like the matriculation, the graduation, and then at that point in time I better be good. Afterwards I didn't realize that baptism is the start of the journey. Baptism is like the entire journey. I'm on the tariff firm of the perfect life of Jesus Christ and the salvation that he provides to me. Right, I didn't know this. I thought that it was that my foundation, my salvation, was me, and so, as I got better and worse, I went up and down, and so this idea that I am that's not true that I live, I breathe, I operate on the terra firma of the salvation Jesus provided for me, is mind-blowing for me, because now I have assurance, now I have joy, and, ironically, the very behavior I was trying to get to in the old way is only available to me in this way, because God begins to use the love that I'm receiving from Him to transform me. And there are so many things, richard, that have next to me over the years and I've had focus on them and prayed about them Once I began to understand the gospel and God's love. I look around and they're gone. I didn't even fight them, they're just gone. I had a marriage to my wife here that there were issues that were just were just vexing me, and being able to really receive and understand the great love that God has for me. I no longer now have to look to her and make her responsible to give me that love back. You preach a sermon on our church that just had me in tears because you're preaching directly to me, and that was my experience. That once I freed my wife from having to give me this love that I thought I needed to get from her because I was getting it from God, it now freed me to love her. I could just love her. I didn't even think back from her, and that has revolutionized my marriage and my relations with others. Right, and so this is visceral, this is DNA level. This is the foundation of any transformation. You want has to be this, otherwise it's just white muckling compliance.
Speaker 2:You. It sounds like you believed that you understood righteousness by faith. But what you didn't really believe? You knew it, but by the letter, but by practice. You were figuring out how to be obedient enough to be saved.
Speaker 3:Totally. I would say like this I thought that righteousness by faith meant that my righteousness comes by faith in Christ, and if I have faith in Christ, I will do right things. The moment I do a bad thing, clearly I've lost my faith in Christ. Therefore, there's no more righteousness by faith and again, no one says this, but it's sort of in the background.
Speaker 2:No, no, no, no, no people do this.
Speaker 3:Okay, yeah, okay.
Speaker 2:Yeah, and I wish they wouldn't, but people for sure say that and it's the kind of scared straight method like where you're trying to scare somebody into doing right. But I rock it doesn't work.
Speaker 3:No, and ironically, the Bible. And then again, once you understand the gospel in this way, you read the Bible the way it comes alive to you, and you realize that when God says it's going to give you a new heart, that's what he means and you got to let them, because that new heart is is at the basis of my transformation. Anything, any, any obedience that you render to be true, obedience has to come from your heart. You can't, if you will one thing and do another and do the right thing, if you will the wrong thing and do the right thing, or do the right thing for the wrong reason. James is clear that still sin right, it's not obedience, it's not. You're not aligned with the law of God. Right, and the only true obedience, the only true obedience comes from having your heart realigned. And the only way your heart can be realigned is if you receive the gospel of Jesus Christ and begin to understand his great love for you. And so that was a piece that was missing from me and I think, parking me back to the beginning of our conversation, I think that I carried this concept of God's paternal love to me, but me having to be very specific with with respect to my behavior and making it accept me. My conversion had downgraded that a little bit, but it was still lurking in the background. I didn't know how to deal with it. I knew that God was a reality, I was going to give my life to him. That piece had not been satisfied. That piece was still lurking in the background there and I thought I'm not smart enough. I'm not, I don't understand enough to go on. But I know that this is the right path. I want to keep doing ministry, I keep preaching. This is good. And the boy when, I you know, heard the podcast and began to fall down the rabbit hole of the gospel. This has just got to another level, brother. It's crazy cool.
Speaker 2:So the first you were saying the first thing Holy, righteous and blameless above approach now in Christ, and that you are in Christ. What else started to open up for you Like, when did that hit you before? I am like Roman 611?. I consider myself dead to sin and alive to God in Christ.
Speaker 3:No, that actually came very recently, richard. Gentlemen name Richard Young looks very much like you and that our church in Pasadena and I preached in my buddy Arnold, you know noodle noodle on that First and I was in the background listening to that conversation and I took it home and began to process it on the side. That's your. What was the conversation? What were you talking about? Anna was asking you he was talking to you about his flesh and how his flesh kept on influencing him to do things and how to deal with that. And you said I don't believe you.
Speaker 2:Okay, this is what actually we're talking about. Remember, we're talking about how the flesh is, this state where you are under sin, under the law, and you don't do what you want to do, and you want to do things that you don't do. Oh, wretched man that you are. And I preach this sermon about how you're not in the flesh and then Arnold says to me he said but I do want to do those terms. And that's where I said I don't believe you. Because here's the thing we get tempted by something and we believe that temptation is us, that we actually want to do that thing, even though beforehand we would be like, no, I don't want to do that. And then afterwards, if we did it, we'd be like man, I didn't even want to do that. Why did I do that? That's what I believe. But if you give into temptation, one of the main reasons that you give into it is because you believe that you actually want to do that thing, and I think this concept blew my mind. A buddy of mine who's been on the podcast named Jake Hotchkiss. He wrote this book called no Longer I and he points out this verse in Romans 7, that it was the sin in you. It wasn't. It's not. Actually, you don't want to take part in those things. But if you don't know that then you'll just fall for it Hook line and sinker.
Speaker 3:So you heard that conversation and hopefully we'll have Arnold on here one of these days and we'll talk about it, sure. One of the things that resonated was your response to him, was and I'll tell you the proof of that the proof is that after you did it, you didn't feel. You didn't feel the digit. Yeah, that's a sign of a qualified heart. I'm not sure I ever heard that term before, so I took that moment being realized. That's. That was true of my case as well. Right, that even in those moments when I go astray or do something that's not aligned with with how I feel, with how I, how God wants me to, that's not Christ. I choose my words carefully here I realized that I do have those pains. Right, you have that moment, and it made complete sense to me. But prior to that I'd never thought about being free from sin. I would say prayers, like I go to preach and just hey, god, the dull John here, I don't know where he starts, he stops and you start, but I know that's pride and his hubris take it away. And so it's wrestling and I need you to get the upper hand here. And then I realized that, no, I am in Christ, I'm a new creation, I am free from sin. If I have those thoughts that you talked about and again I'm going to glean from your conversation. It's pattern thinking. It's just the way that John has always thought. It's muscle memory, and so now I treat it as such, as opposed to treat you like look at John John's here trying to get what's his again. And it really freed me in a broader sense. It was a progression, right, that's recent bro. That sense, that moment that you confronted Arnold.
Speaker 2:Wow, so let's talk about this for a second. When you were very? At what age do you believe that you are the most and you use this word, the vocabulary on this episode hubristic or prideful? What age do you think? That was at its max?
Speaker 3:Probably in my late 20s at the height of the porn business and organized crime. That piece right there.
Speaker 2:Did you know at that point that you were super prideful and hubristic?
Speaker 3:No, I would have told you, like Moses, that was the most humble man in the world.
Speaker 2:So when you're sitting here now and you're like, oh, I'm prideful, Lord in Christ, if you are acting in a way that's not like, you absolutely know it and you can name it and you can call it out and be like, oh, I'm doing this thing. When you're deceived and I've said this a million times on this podcast part of the definition of deception is that you don't know You're deceived. You don't know it. You didn't know that you were prideful. You didn't know that nobody could tell you anything. You really believed you're good and it isn't, and this is one of the secrets to life. You don't know it until it's over and you can look back. I didn't know I was in a horrible marriage. Now my wife knew. I didn't know I was in a horrible marriage until I wasn't in one anymore, and then you can look back. But now, if things are starting to go sideways because it's my selfishness, I know I'm being selfish and I can name it and I could say Richard, love your life. Richard, do not lose your cool, you don't. That doesn't have any power over you. You can actually live the exact way you want to live, because who you are is Christ in you, the hope of glory. Anything that's outside of that, you're not being yourself.
Speaker 3:I love that Totally, and every time I talk to you I can lean more information to put into the equation. I love that idea. I'm not being myself, I'm in Christ. I'm in Christ, I'm in creation, yeah, and so when you're right, when I think outside those, I'm not being myself. It's not John saying look at John, you're being the best. That's not good English. I'm not John anymore. John is dead. I am in Christ.
Speaker 2:And so those thoughts that are going on, yeah, old John, new John, has been crucified with Christ. Yeah, the life he lives is by faith in. Christ, who loved him and laid his life down. Amen, that's who you actually are. So if the you is the, john is John that could ever be. John is Christ.
Speaker 3:Amen, oh, that's all yes.
Speaker 2:Because that's what it was for the foundation of the world. Like he never created you with the oh, and then John's going to leave and he's going to be wild and he's going to do all these things. He created you to love you. He created you to be his kid, to grow in him, to never be separated.
Speaker 3:Amen.
Speaker 2:And so, now that you're not like, that's who you, that's who you've always been, who that was your purpose and destiny from from John's foundation.
Speaker 3:That's so good, that's so good, richie, that's so good Love that man Guilty is charged, guilty is charged. I am in Christ, I am in a creation, creation. I am crucified with Christ.
Speaker 2:Fine, I'll take it. I've been crucified with Christ, no longer I who live with Christ. That lives in me and the life I now live in the flesh, amen.
Speaker 3:Amen.
Speaker 2:Amen, amen, amen. So you're growing in this thing. You're hearing these, you're. And then just recently, when I was in Pasadena and man, that's been such a blessing for me and you're going to hear some for the listener, you're going to hear some episodes of man, some stuff that happened in Pasadena has just been a huge blessing. But then you started to understand that the empire of sin, this capital, s-i-n sin. You have actually been set free from that by Jesus Christ. You didn't break out of it, you didn't get victory over it yourself. Jesus Christ actually came and opened the prison door and set you free from it. That started to really take root in the summer.
Speaker 3:Yes, yes, it's amazing how we find this strand of the gospel everywhere in the Bible that we look. We just did a if you are following the Saddus School Quarterly, we just did Ephesians for 14 weeks and Ephesians cool book and thinking back now I thought about it. It's in the New Testament. God bless you, mindblower, like when you understand the gospel. What you just said about being free from sin. This book comes alive in ways that I couldn't have fathomed, and so having your the way that you presented freedom in the background and then journey to this book of Ephesians has been it's like going to IMAX. It's been a real enlightening experience for me, and every day as I contemplate the life around me, I see it newly in ways I haven't had before. The struggles that I thought I was having I'm not having anymore. I am freed from sin. That construct in your mind has you engage your world around you completely differently. And then the reason I bring up Ephesians. Ephesians is like this rich storehouse treasure. So we find that verse that I have all spiritual blessings in Christ right. I have the patience of Christ, I have the purity of Christ, I have the courage of Christ. So when I get up in the morning. I am facing a challenge as opposed to God. Oh God, help me get through the state today. I go God, thank you. It just happened yesterday, before I preached, I was having some issues. As opposed to God, help me, it's God, thank you. I affirm that your promise to your word, that you will never leave me nor forsake me, that when I go on that stage there, that you said that you'll give me the words to say thank you. I believe you, I trust you. I walk on that stage with joy and assurance that you'll put the words in my mouth. It's a different way to face life. You face life now armed right. As opposed to God, help me get through this. It's going to happen tomorrow. I do know what's going to happen tomorrow. God's going to be with me. I'm in Christ, christ is in me and that's the end of the good story, right. So it's a different construct than I faced the walk before, even recently, right.
Speaker 2:Right, so tell me if you're like me. I can preach a million sermons, but it's always the same sermon. I was preached when I was in Pasadena. It was I don't know how many nights I was there like seven or eight nights but it's all the same sermon at the end of the day. This is what he has done. You used to preach a lot and I still think you preach a lot. What is the sermon? If I went to hear you preach for 13 Sabbaths in a row, I'm walking away. I'm like man, that brother, john man. He wants me to know what is the thing that you've been preaching.
Speaker 3:It's funny to say that I'm doing a Daniel and Revelation series centered in the gospel of an ox. Our word last night was week 13 of 24. Right, and so that's an easy answer to your question. By the way, if you just click on the appeal last night, you'll get your answer. The answer is very simple. We did the second coming last night. We were talking about the second coming, we leaned into the left behind series a little bit and the very end we went over the second coming when it's going to look like. And my appeal went something like this Listen, I know a lot of you guys are celebrating because the second coming is going to be fantastic. A lot of you back there are thinking your heads. I'd love to celebrate and maybe I'll celebrate in front of my people here when I get home tonight. I'm not celebrating because I don't think I live the kind of life that would qualify me for salvation. So I'm not going to be embarrassed. But when I go home and my closet in my room I'm not really feeling that about the second coming is my life won't qualify. And I said to you I will say this this is the gospel, that the life that you think it took for you to qualify for heaven. Jesus has lived it for you and those things that you've done in the past, that you think Jesus has died on the cross to pay for those things you believe that you can celebrate today that you have salvation. You can celebrate today that you're free from sin. You can celebrate today that when the second coming comes, you're not mourning, you're not weeping, you're not gnashing teeth, you are one of the joyous ones that the sun will rise, like righteousness, over you, right. So that's really what you need to hear every time, some different form. I know that they not disparagingly, but funny. My church, they call me the gospel preacher because John Lee comes in the one flavor. I'm like you, richard, I come in one flavor and they look. The package may look different, or the wrapper. One day may look different, but what the other day? It's one flavor.
Speaker 2:I am a one trick pony. I've got one drum and I bang it everywhere.
Speaker 3:Amen.
Speaker 2:And that is the gospel of Jesus Christ. Man, you just said the life that you think you needed to live to qualify you to resurrect in the second coming. Jesus has lived that life and has given it to you for free. What let's go? Okay, let me ask you this as we wrap this up and usually I take you back in time to a spot. But, man, maybe I got to take you back in time before, because in this moment where you're in your Burbank apartment and you hit rock bottom and you go to the church and praise God for Elizabeth Talbot who preached the gospel to you, yeah, if you get to go sit with that guy let's say he didn't go to the church that night, let's say two weeks before or something, when you just found out about your girlfriend and you get to wrap your arms around this guy, maybe take him to In-N-Out and sit down with him and we're California themed for this episode you sit down with this guy and you put your arm around him. What are you going to tell this sweet John who has just had his world rocked and doesn't know if he's ever going to make it out of that?
Speaker 3:I would tell him that hole in his heart that he's feeling that he tried to fill with his girlfriend's love and that he tried to fill with the adoration of people by wearing nice custom made suits and driving nice cars. That hole can only be filled by the love of Jesus Christ. And you can go another 40 years in this planet, young man, and nothing's going to change. Get the love of Jesus, find the love of Jesus, put that into your heart and watch you become free, watch you have the life that you've always wanted to have. I was born with it. God was good and he made me. He gave me a heart that I love people. I truly in my core. It's not a hardship for me to get up. Some people are just gifted that way and I love those around me and I love to serve those around me. But I had to get in my own way and so getting my love from God. I would tell this young man that hole in your heart, fill it with God's love, because then you can fill your real purpose, your real love, your real passion, which is to serve others and help others. But you have to be at the source first. That's what I would say. I had this future.
Speaker 2:You got to get a revelation of his love for you. That's it. That's it. Yes, john man, you've been a testimony to me. You've been an encouragement to me just seeing your passion and your heart for people. I know you have a passion for the Lord because he's loved you very well, but you're also one of these people that God has created in a special way, that people are your thing, and you've ministered to me when I was out there and you continue to minister to me. We text back and forth and, yeah, you're a testimony of God's goodness and I think he's just going to be doing more and more through you. As long as you got air in your lungs, I feel like this is going to be. This is the story and it's pretty much. God loves you with an everlasting love. He loves you so much he reconciled you back to himself through Jesus and now you're in Amen.
Speaker 3:Amen. Hey, you came and rock our world to your brother and this has been so good and I love you, cayman. We shook us up a little bit because we're having some cool conversations. I think, ultimately speaking, we'll serve our congregation to be able to go out there and preach the ever-lasting gospel here at these end times, because Jesus is coming soon.
Speaker 2:God be praised, my man. This episode just it's such a beautiful picture of God and how he's just chasing and chasing and he just is wanting for you to see who he actually is with a clear view. You know, his first Corinthians 2 talks about that we have the mind of Christ, that we are supposed to understand the mystery of what God has done. But if you've heard this episode and perhaps maybe you're like young John and you think you've gone too far, you think that it's too much, Maybe you understand that God will never leave you or forsake you, but you don't know it in your heart. I want you to pray this with me, Father I know that you say you won't leave me or forsake me, Yet I don't know it. I just understand it in my brain but it hasn't reached my heart. Father, I want you to put it in my heart so that I can know without a doubt that you would never leave me, you would never forsake me, that you've never been disappointed in me, that you love me with an everlasting love and that you will chase me till the ends of the earth to show me that. I'm asking you to put this in my heart because I don't know how to get it there and I believe you will, because I'm praying this in Jesus's name, Amen. Hey, if you are looking for more, you've heard this episode and you want more. You want to actually break down the Bible and read why are we free from sin? You know, you heard all these stories. What you can do is go to our Love Reality YouTube page and on our Love Reality YouTube page there's we go through wave one and you can see it explained and you can see it in Scripture and you can understand how this truth is for you. So go to the Love Reality YouTube page and you can do that by just going to YouTube and searching for Love Reality. We're going to pop up and watch wave one. I think you're going to be really, really, really blessed by it.