Explore Didier's captivating journey through Panama, Paris, and spirituality, resonating with universal themes of belonging and self-discovery. From the shadows of Y2K to grappling with religious legalism, Didier's story navigates the complexities of adolescence with humor and insight. Discover his transformative encounter with the gospel, celebrating the power of faith to redefine lives and inviting listeners to find their own place in the journey of love and redemption.
0:00 -Transformation and Faith Stories
12:52 - Identity and Belonging Through Childhood
18:23 - Identity Search Through Pop Culture
26:00 - Journey of Self-Discovery and Faith
41:46 - Meeting People at University and Camp
58:08 - Journey to Spiritual Enlightenment
1:08:27 - Impact of Gospel and Freedom
1:23:54 - Journey of Faith and Identity
1:34:59 - Embracing Faith and Community
💰 DONATE & SUPPORT our Ministry: lovereality.org/give
👍 LIKE us on Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/alovereality
📷 FOLLOW us on Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/riyoung31/
📚 LEARN more at our site: lovereality.org
Explore Didier's captivating journey through Panama, Paris, and spirituality, resonating with universal themes of belonging and self-discovery. From the shadows of Y2K to grappling with religious legalism, Didier's story navigates the complexities of adolescence with humor and insight. Discover his transformative encounter with the gospel, celebrating the power of faith to redefine lives and inviting listeners to find their own place in the journey of love and redemption.
0:00 -Transformation and Faith Stories
12:52 - Identity and Belonging Through Childhood
18:23 - Identity Search Through Pop Culture
26:00 - Journey of Self-Discovery and Faith
41:46 - Meeting People at University and Camp
58:08 - Journey to Spiritual Enlightenment
1:08:27 - Impact of Gospel and Freedom
1:23:54 - Journey of Faith and Identity
1:34:59 - Embracing Faith and Community
💰 DONATE & SUPPORT our Ministry: lovereality.org/give
👍 LIKE us on Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/alovereality
📷 FOLLOW us on Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/riyoung31/
📚 LEARN more at our site: lovereality.org
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 2:Somewhere along the way, I adopted this mentality, this notion that Jesus was somehow like convincing the Father to step in the way of me to satisfy this unquenchable wrath for sinners like me, the trash that I was, so he would step in the way. Annoyingly, I adopted that notion and that the Father hates me. So Jesus stands in the way. God the Father is so disgusted with me, he sent Jesus to stand in my place. I'm this disgusting thing. Well, because Jesus died for my sins, he sees Jesus. He doesn't see me. He sees Jesus because I'm revolting.
Speaker 1:Yo, welcome to the Death to Life podcast, your friendly neighborhood podcast. My name is Richard Young and this episode is with my brother, dda. I think I said it right it's a French name. I've known DDA since 2022. Man, he is a wonderful, loving dude. He's a humongous human being. He's like 6'6". You're not going to be able to tell that by hearing the podcast, but you can hear his huge heart for people and how he's been changed by being loved. And so let's get into this episode. This is DDA. Buckle Up, strap in Love. Y'all appreciate y'all. So, dda, where does it begin, my boy? Where does the story start? How far are we going?
Speaker 3:back. Oh man, Where'd you?
Speaker 2:have to got it down on your notes.
Speaker 1:Yeah, we are.
Speaker 2:So my story begins really with my parents. My mom was born in Panama, in the country of Panama, Panama City, and my father was born in Paris, France. They were raised in.
Speaker 1:We might be related dog, we might be related. Seriously, I believe that Panamanian, there we go, we probably are related dog.
Speaker 2:I would hope so. So my mom's family was raised in a broken home, very broken home, and my dad was too. So in the 70s my parents, both without knowing each other, moved to a little town called Miami, Florida, and they attended a community college and my parents met each other there. My dad learned Spanish to talk to my mom and he was a polyglot. And so what is that? They that he spoke a lot of languages. He learned English pretty fast, he learned Spanish, he spoke Creole, Pretty much any romance language.
Speaker 1:His first language is French. Yeah, his first language. Did he speak?
Speaker 2:Portuguese? No, but he would think he did. But so he had the ability to communicate with a lot of people, and with my mom especially. So in the 80s they had my brother and I. I am the oldest of two. My parents, like I said, they came from two very broken homes, so they tried to give my brother and I what they didn't have, which was a stable home. They worked very hard at that and it was stable For some reason. From an early age I just had this strange anxiety to things and so, like if I went to the doctor, I was like four years old and the doctor put the blood pressure cuff on me and I would freak out and my blood pressure was through the roof and the tests would say like, oh, he has high blood pressure and I'm four, and the person's like, okay, he just has anxiety, and that was something that stuck with me for a long time. My parents were very helpful with my brother and I as far as spiritual things. They took us to church, they paid for church school eventually, but they never took part in church themselves. They would like drop us off and then like go do stuff and then when church was over, they would like guesstimate, when church was over and they'd come and pick us up. So my brother and I had a very strange upbringing. What church, just? They would pick a random church, no. So my grandmother this is the big part of my early life was my grandmother. My grandmother was the matriarch. All roads led to my grandmother and my family and my mom's mom. I wasn't very close to my dad's family because they didn't live in the States, but all of my mom's family ended up living in the States, in Miami. So I was very close to my mom's family. My grandmother was the matriarch. She was extremely religious. Like her middle name should have been seven day Adventist, because like that was her, yeah, like Jonathan, like that was her identity. She was really passionate about the Bible, really passionate about Adventism, but like Hispanic Adventism, which was this super conservative, dare I say, works based situation, she was really passionate about one subject from early on in my life she was very passionate about prophecy. Like prophecy was everything. So imagine I'm sure you're familiar with this net 97 with Mark Finley we went to a Spanish church where they had a massive satellite and they had someone translating it to Spanish, hialeah SDA, which I don't even know if that even exists anymore. But yeah, yeah, we would watch net 97. She didn't even know how to say Dwight K Nelson's name for net 98, but like we were there and it was everything Dwight K Nelson. And so, yeah, when, when that 98 happened, like something happened and like she really became convicted. Her and my grandfather became really convicted about leaving the cities, because right around the corner was this crazy thing that was going to happen. Why 2K? And so she's like we're getting Ellen White says to get out of the cities, so we're going to get out of the cities, we're going to dig a well and we're going to get our own water so that when stuff goes down we have access to water. She started canning aggressively and yeah, and so she kept all of her canning stuff because when the time of trouble came she had to be ready. She would buy Adventist stuff, she would listen to Adventist pastors. One specific one Hugo Gambeta. My grandmother was a huge fan of Hugo Gambeta and we used to listen to his sermons all the time. There's a specific way that he said Babylon in Spanish that I cannot get out of my head ever since I was a kid Babylonia, anyway. So she bought these, these tapes, these VHS tapes called Keepers of the Flame. I don't know if you've ever seen this before, but it's like a blow by blow story of, like the history of the Protestant church and then the Adventist church, and the imagery was amazing Amazing is maybe not the right word so like it's going through prophecy and she's teaching us about prophecy. She's like, look, there's a woman in Revelation and she's running through the desert in the wilderness and the dragon is chasing her. And the dragon that appears on screen is Darth Vader chasing a woman. And I'm just like this is unreal, like what is happening right now. So like I'm you know, learning about? Are you being? serious it was Darth Vader. It was I have. I went back today and I watched the link again because I thought I was making it up. It's on YouTube. There's literal Darth Vader with a sword, chasing a woman through the desert. It's wild.
Speaker 1:Bro, how creepy would it be if that's how it actually is.
Speaker 2:Right, exactly, a woman dressed in white, looking like Leia quite a bit, except for the little cinnamon rolls in her head, but and then Darth Vader running after her. It was wild. So she was really passionate about like Adventism and learning about, you know, prophecy. Like as a from a very young age like I, instead of like liking superheroes and you know Batman, I was more concerned about the state of the debt, like that was the thing that mattered, you know, because my grandmother made it the number one thing she taught us and she would tell us, like you know, if you meet people that try to tell you you know, here's a story that I can say. She had a deep, deep, you know. Just she was. She was raised Catholic and one day an Adventist woman found her and told her the gospel and she was ever since then she was very, very resentful of Catholics because she was, like I lived, devoted to this thing that made no sense, at least biblically, you know. That was her interpretation, and so she would tell us things about Catholicism and the fruit of all of this was that one day I was about six or seven years old, maybe a little bit older I had my first and only friend as a kid was a girl named Marie Luce, and Marie Luce was Catholic. She was the daughter of one of my mom's work friends and it came time for her first communion. And when my grandmother heard about this, it was. She held a meeting at my house with my brother and I. She said look, I can't stop you from going to this, but if you're going to go, there's some things you need to know. Okay, first of all, the Eucharist, that's not a thing, it's not literal. Second, don't ever cross yourself on the basketball court or in the church. And I'm like, I'm just kidding, I shouldn't say that, but like, seriously, like she was, like, never do this thing, you know, never do. That is idolatry, that's pagan. And they're going to tell you to do this and they're going to tell you to stand up and they're going to tell you to do all these things. Don't do it. And so obviously, my anxiety kicks in the day of, and I'm shaking like I'm in front of this church, this cathedral or whatever it's called, and I'm shaking Like I'm thinking I'm about to walk into enemy territory, like it was. I was scared straight. You know, I went in there. Sure enough, they were trying to make us do a bunch of stuff, and I don't remember all of it, but like I was just on edge the whole time, you know. But it was a healthy man, this kind of mentality of you know, us versus them, and because all of the prophecy stuff that my grandmother focused on was just like you know anyway. So the fruit of that also ended up coming out like in school. I remember in third grade I had this friend named Katrina and she was new to the school and I was trying to befriend her because she was nice and of course, the first question I had was what religion are you? She's like I'm Catholic and I was like oh snap, oh, my goodness, now I got a lay-o word on you. So where are your relatives right now, the ones that died? And she's like they're in heaven watching me. I'm like no, no, no, no, they're not. They're dead, like really dead. The dead know nothing. Okay, that's what my grandmother told me. And the girl's like are you sure? I'm like no, they're dead, they're really dead. This is what God has told me to tell you. They're dead, like they're really dead. She starts crying, like crying. The next day she comes back to school and the teacher's like hey, dda, you shouldn't be talking about stuff like that. People disagree on how that all that works, I'm like. Well, just as long as she knows that her dead relatives are really dead, like dead and dude, there was no love.
Speaker 1:There was no love. But as long as she is heartbroken that her-.
Speaker 2:That's what I want. She needs to understand. So it was this loveless judgment that I had for people, and slowly the gospel became something I bludgeoned people with, especially myself. There was no love. I wasn't a gospel, bro? Yeah, exactly, it wasn't the gospel, it was just this thing that I thought was the gospel. The real gospel was far, far better. So it was all fear-based. Man, don't do this because you'll lose salvation. Don't go to church, I mean don't go to the theaters, because God leaves you at the door. You can't go and be doing foolish things. You don't eat this because Ellen White says that you shouldn't be eating this and mixing this with this. And, of course, when my grandmother gave us the full lecture on the end times and prophecy and all that kind of stuff, it freaked me all the way out. And so, growing up in Miami in the 90s, I'm half Panamanian, half French, living in a culture where I don't look like most Hispanics. People from Miami thought I was from India or Pakistan, and so they would never assume that I was Hispanic. I didn't speak English. When I started school I only spoke Spanish. I had to take ESL for kindergarten first and most of second grade, because I just didn't speak any English whatsoever. So my identity was always like well, I don't really know who I am because I don't really fit anywhere. Being extremely religious didn't make me very popular either, and especially for a third grader I was tall, though I remember in third grade I was 5'3" and I remember 5'3" being important because at the time the shortest player in the NBA, muggsy- Boggs no, muggsy Boggs was 5'3", played for the Charlotte Hornets, and so I was like I'm at least as tall as someone who's in the NBA and I'm in third grade.
Speaker 1:You were in third grade taller than my wife. Like my wife is Kim Kardashian and my wife they're both like 5'2".
Speaker 3:That is hysterical.
Speaker 1:In third grade you were taller than them.
Speaker 2:That's freakish. That's it is. I was calling you a freak. Well, it is, and you know what's creeping crazier is. My son is even taller than that. Well, not that, but he's tall than I was at his age.
Speaker 1:How old is that again?
Speaker 2:Five.
Speaker 1:I'm gonna get to that. And he's like six foot now. No, exactly.
Speaker 2:When.
Speaker 1:I met him, I was like how's your 14 year old son? He's like he's six Rich.
Speaker 2:He was actually he was four at the time and I was like man, this kid, and he just gets bigger. He's 60 pounds. Anyway, I digress.
Speaker 1:I thought he was your dad.
Speaker 2:My dad wasn't that tall, he was about six one. So yeah, my mom is 5'10.
Speaker 1:What are you? 6'5, 6'6?. How tall are you?
Speaker 2:I'm six. Depending on what shoes I'm wearing, probably about 6'6. Naturally I grew a lot but like my interests were not aligned with societies. So like in spelling class, when the teacher's asking how do you spell this, I would raise my hand and I would say did you know that in April of 1912, the Titanic sank in the North Atlantic Ocean? Because I was obsessed with the Titanic, like obsessed Before the movie, before the fanfare, like I was an original Titanic obsessive person Because of my dad. My dad loved the Titanic, he loved ships, he loved cruise liners and that was one of his things In math class. She naturally, of course In math class to be asking a math question. I'd say did you know that in 1993, alan Prost won the Formula One World Championship? And the teachers were like look, we get that, you're a passionate kid but you have to focus. I just none of my passions align and I didn't know the right time and place to talk about anything Kind of like this right now. Spanish speaker again didn't really, didn't really mix with the people because I didn't look like the people that spoke Spanish in Miami. But slowly my identity became like what can I offer the people around me? Because clearly I can't encumber people with the things that I like. I keep raising my hand in class talking about the things that I love, because no one's gonna listen to me. At least the teacher might, but then it wasn't the right time. So clearly I have to adjust myself somehow to fit the milieu to use a French word the surrounding, the people around me, to have something in common with them. So I collected pieces of knowledge that I could have something to connect with people with, because it was lonely, just liking the things that I liked that no one liked Sports, pop culture, history. I even tried shoes. It was not very helpful because I couldn't afford the Jordans, the 10s or the 11s or the 12s like the kids had, and so I was wearing Reeboks. You know, it's just not the same thing.
Speaker 1:They had one or two good ones.
Speaker 2:They had one, the pumps, but dude, that was before.
Speaker 1:Did you ever do feelas? Did you ever do feelas?
Speaker 2:Did you do? I did feelas and I did champions. These are like monarchs.
Speaker 1:but like works, Champions is Kmart, champions is Kmart. Feelas is like a legit brand.
Speaker 2:Feelas because of Horace Grant and not Horace Grant.
Speaker 1:Oh, grant Hill Grant.
Speaker 2:Hill, grant Hill, grant Hill, right, right, right, sorry. And so yeah it was. Yeah, I collected pieces of knowledge so that I could connect with people. I started listening to different kinds of music, bro. I started watching pop TV, vh1. I was the only boy that I knew in my school that on the day of the release of Spice Girls, the first tape, I went and bought it. I asked my aunt for my birthday. I was like I need this because it's on TV and it's popular. Right, this is popular. People like this. Right, the Spice Girls, of course. And I was the only kid and my brother, who was younger than me, knew how weird it was and he would be like you know, that's really weird. I'm like I don't care, I want to be popular. So I.
Speaker 1:Let's talk about this for a second, though. I'm sure do you have Netflix, I do yes. Did you watch the David Beckham documentary?
Speaker 2:Richard, you're skipping around in my story because David Beckham was my first soccer idol. David Beckham was my first soccer idol.
Speaker 1:No, okay, but I want to make this point when they show Posh Spice in the Wanna Be Music video, did we ever realize that she doesn't sing once? She doesn't sing once and once?
Speaker 2:Yeah.
Speaker 1:I, I'm watching it. I'm like when is Posh gonna sing? I honestly, I'm glad we're having this conversation right now to talk about it.
Speaker 2:Absolutely, absolutely no. I yeah, posh, it wasn't even them. It was like I just want to be popular and if they're popular, I got to know about them Because this is what kids like and I was completely off the pulse. None of my friends cared about the Spice Girls. In fact, they thought they were weird because they were British and we were Americans, kind of because we're Anyway, we're from Miami, like we don't care about what they're doing in the UK. Okay, like Ricky Martin or whatever you know, I still this day, I don't know Will Smith, will Smith, let's just get jiggy with it, whatever you had the song about Miami. Welcome to Miami, Bienvenido a Miami. So I started listening to stuff that just erroneously, Thinking it was popular, I just wanted to fit in, and it became pretty obvious to the people around me that I was just desperate for affirmation, Some kind of validation. I wanted to be impressive, I wanted to impress people, I wanted to be original. The sad part about all this and I'm trying to get through the death part because you know anyway, I didn't talk about this with anyone for ages because I was convinced for a long time that this actually didn't happen. But when I was in kindergarten I remember I used to go to lunch and the lunch lady would, she would touch me in inappropriate places and I just remember not understanding what was happening and my brain tried to like block it out. For a long time, but not that long ago the memory came back to me and I was like, oh man, this is some wild stuff and it was all in the open, I had the idea of what was going on. I had no idea. I thought if you're doing this, this must be normal and I must submit to whatever it is that you're telling me to do, because I'm a kid, I didn't speak English so I couldn't really defend myself and so, or speak up about it, because none of my teachers oddly enough, in kindergarten my teacher didn't speak any Spanish and I didn't know that I had to like make an alarm about this or like raise a fuss and say something was going on. The second thing was this is the other sad part was that In kindergarten, my first day of school, I met a girl and I thought she was so pretty. So I came home and I told my mom, and my mom made the mistake which is not in her character to tell family about stuff, but like she told my entire family that I had a crush on a girl, and my family, out of relief, just inundated me with attention about it, and it made me feel so uncomfortable that I swore I would never tell anyone that I liked a girl ever again, even if I, I would never do it because I was so on the spot and embarrassed. And so the years went by in elementary school and one day I was under the care of someone and this person was well-meaning but man, they put on some LUST on the TV. This person had the little black box where you could get pay-per-view in the 90s and they put on something. They put on a woman's showering and they were like this, this right here, this is good, this is what you should like, this is good and this is natural and it's normal. And my brother and I were there and we were watching this and I remember feeling us thrilled, like not in anything nefarious, more like I know I'm not supposed to be seeing this, I'm just curious, like what is happening here. This is so interesting. Apart from that, the whole thing late, dormant. So the years went by and I didn't think anything else of it, but that went dormant. I will say I went to high school. In high school I went to Greater Miami Academy, class of 2008. Gma GMA, the Warriors High school was decent. I didn't play sports, which was rough because I was like six foot two in freshman year and all the basketball coaches are like do you understand what we could do with you on our team? And I'm like dog. I'm sorry, I don't really like that much. I don't like basketball. I'm not that good at it, I'm very awkward, I'm not, it's not my thing. And they're like, come on, just join the team. And I'm like, nah, I'm good. And so like people would look at me and be like man, you're such a waste of height. I was like, whew, my goodness, ok. So I couldn't fit in there either. So I was like I'm going to get, I'm going to learn about different cultures. So, of course, any kid in the late 90s, early 2000s that wasn't really into sports, I started getting into anime and watching TUNAMI naturally Watching TUNAMI. When I got home, the thrill that I would feel watching Dragon Ball Z is whew. So my brother and I would just like, oh, dragon Ball Z was our thing. Then we got into more deep anime, more obscure anime that was dubbed and et cetera. But Miami culture just wasn't my thing. Clubbing the vanity, it just it didn't suit me and I kept looking for an identity that I could put on. I got a job at the ABC, the Adventist Book Center, so I got this kind of when you're in Miami what comes with Miami, the Adventist Book Center. The Adventist Book Center, bro, I had discounts to all the best Vegemite.
Speaker 1:Oh, you guys, you want a Jamie George CD for 8.99?. I got you, fam Say let us, bro.
Speaker 2:I remember. I remember because in Miami we don't have white people. So I remember going to the music section and seeing Avalon and I'm like what is this Like? Do you all look? Like that girl that Chandler dated in? Like season five of Friends. Like what is going on? I had never seen these people before Is all I see is Hispanics. You know, like I said, I had the best discounts on like all the Vegemite Fried Chick, golden Croquettes. What you know about Golden Croquettes?
Speaker 1:bro Ben, what you know about that dinner roast. I bet you were smashing that for Thanksgiving, though Roast meatless wham.
Speaker 2:Prosage links big Franks, let's go. So that was. I didn't have that job for very long because I sucked at it. I was just, you know, not doing what I needed to do because I was 14 years old, almost 15, and I didn't really know how to have a job. So I got let go. Unfortunately Wasn't a good fit Hired from the ABC bro, hired from the ABC bro, and the guy who was performing was a legend that went to Southern and was like adored, and people were like we wish you was here. I'm like I'm here and they're like you suck. And so it was rough. It was rough Around. This time I was, I'm looking for something to love. So I fall in love with this sport called soccer, football, and the first game I watched was a team in red but it went just to United. So I, just in 2002, october of 2002, I remember where I was, I remember the moment and I was like, okay, soccer, this is my thing. I'm not very good at it, I'm not, but I want to get good at it. And I started watching the games totally single. I had no girl interests, partly because, like in the humidity of Miami, my hair made me would just puff up like Councilman Jam from parts and rec. And so I wasn't the most attractive kid walking around. My hair was always and I had to get here I was like I'm gonna take some photos, dude, we need to see some. You will see photos. You will see photos. Okay, go on, my mom and dad would? They would buy me really like antiquated looking clothes. So I didn't look cool. But in high school if you asked me, kind of like, what my picture of God was, I would say he was this person that was gonna come back one day. I was hoping that I would be good enough to earn heaven. You know, that was the picture that I had of what religion was, what God was I I that in high school was where lust came back into my life. It wasn't really a thing until at all until my freshman year in high school, when, like students would be asking me, like do you watch the stuff? You know, do you? Why don't you? Like that's crazy. Like why wouldn't you watch the stuff? I'm like I don't even know how to find it. Like what are you talking about? I like geography and they're like you don't? You don't do things to yourself. Like what's wrong with you? Like that's weird. I'm like, okay, well, I guess I gotta learn how to do this. And it was this. That's kind of what it was. Man, like I have to be normal. If I feel this unnormal, I gotta do. What's making, what would make me normal so twisted? I understand, I know now?
Speaker 1:No, that's exactly how it was with me.
Speaker 2:Yeah.
Speaker 1:Just like. I guess I gotta learn how to do this.
Speaker 2:Gotta learn how to do this, because everyone does it and it's weird that I don't, and so I need to be normal. So here's like whatever, and it became something that consumed me right off the bat. There was in high school as well, when I had an encounter with someone that I respected very much, a very gregarious person in my family that everyone loved. But this person had a thing, and their thing was to find out what your weaknesses were, and they would observe you and, at the right time, if, in case, you ever went at them, they kept these cards in their back pocket and they knew how to verbally undress you, basically when they felt attacked by you. And, of course, being so religious and not understanding what the gospel actually was led me to be a very judgmental person, extremely judgmental person, and I went at that person one time, and that person said some things to me that I immediately took on as my identity. They said you are arrogant, you are selfish and you are an absolute narcissist, and I believed everything that person said, and so, in order to balance the scales of this egregiousness, that was who I was, that was my identity. I adopted the identity of absolute trash. Like I am horrible. I, I'm disgusting, I am a horrible person and that would kind of in my, in a twisted way, like balance, the imbalance of this crazy, offensive person that I was told that I was. And it was around this time that my grandmother, on May 6th 2001, my grandmother was taking some food to a church member who had been hurt and and couldn't come to church, and so she was taking some food to this person and she got into a car accident and died 15 minutes later. And I remember I Remember feeling like, okay, she was my source to God, she was my avenue in the most ironically like Way ironic way, like she was my avenue to God. She was my source of knowledge about religious things, spiritual things, she was my spiritual Mentored. I had put her on a pedestal, basically, and so when she died, like I had so many questions about my Salvation, about my relationship with God, if there would ever be anything like that, because she was gone, it was a huge vacuum in my spiritual life and so Just the way that played out was very sad it I, I didn't know that. I, you know, you remember how Harold and his podcast said like his family still get depression. We don't have that. What is that? That's that we can't get that. That's kind of how I. It's impossible for us. I I went through that that. I was like there's no way, I have that. But I would be crying Uncontrollably for no reason you know over the death of my grandmother. She was such a huge part of my life and it hurt a lot. So Once high school was kind of done and dusted, I had to take a moment to like think about what I'd become. You know, I was lost. I Was this arrogant, narcissistic thing that was disgusting. My sin, all of the lust and Pride and all those things that was the evidence of who I was. So somehow, along somewhere along the way, I adopted this mentality, this, this notion that, like Jesus, jesus was somehow like Convincing the father to step in the way of me to satisfy this Unquenchable wrath for sinners like me, the trash that I was and my sin. So he would step in the way and this weird theology began, unknowingly. I that's not weird, I Mean it is weird when you know the truth.
Speaker 1:That's how people teach it, bro.
Speaker 2:Yeah, that's how people actually, you know what I mean. I I feel like I can't pinpoint when it happened. That's the thing. I don't know where I learned that.
Speaker 1:I know it gets baked in.
Speaker 2:Yeah, and unknowingly I adopted that notion and that the father hates me. So Jesus stands in the way. God the father, so disgusted with me, he sent Jesus to stand in my place. I'm this disgusting thing. Well, because Jesus died for my sins, he sees Jesus. He doesn't see me. He sees Jesus because I'm revolting. And this led to some strong questions about Like, why would I have any allegiance to the father? I didn't understand what the role was. If this dude loath me, why, oh why, should I love this guy? I see Jesus, I get Jesus like he's the one that's my shield and my representatives. But why would I care about the father? What does make any sense? And Because of the evidence of my sin so being so overwhelming, I really began to see myself as sin waiting to happen, like just, it's gonna happen. It's who I am. So how is salvation possible. My grandmother told me something before she died. She said in passing, and it like influenced my really my view of like, life and Religion so much. She said you know, when God comes, the only thing that changes is your body. You're your person, the person, your character that's sealed in Christ. And I was like, oh, oh, really, this is the worst. They said, if it's not like a promise, it's not like a sentence, because I was like there's no way I could be good, there's no way I'm lost, there's no way, it doesn't make any sense. So heaven didn't, that wasn't a, that wasn't even possible for me, like I didn't match up. I didn't. I didn't come up to the level that I knew I needed to be somehow and I couldn't bear that. I couldn't match up. So if it served me in some way, I could go through the motions of being spiritual. But if I wasn't around people that were spiritual, if I had nothing to gain From being around people or being spiritual around people, you would never know that I was a Christian. Because of this, like the gospel became a hammer, a Hammer on myself, that what I thought was the gospel became a hammer on myself. It became a hammer on the people around me. I Didn't have good news to tell people when they asked me about God, which they suddenly ever did, but when they did, it was just well. I'm sure that shaming, condemnation, is how the Holy Spirit talks to you, because that has to be it, because that's all I feel all the time, and the Holy Spirit is disappointed in me, so he's like shaming me into trying to be better, but it's that never works.
Speaker 1:Fun fact that never did work because people say that the Holy Spirit convicts you of sin. I don't think I've ever sinned, and not known it, that the Holy Spirit needed to come and tell me that that was a sin. I don't think the Holy Spirit has ever like tapped me and be like. That was a sin and I had no idea.
Speaker 3:No.
Speaker 1:I didn't know that looking at porn was a sin. Thank you, holy Spirit. No, the Holy Spirit convicts of righteousness. That's what the Holy Spirit convicts of it. You're violating when you violate your conscience and you're living double-minded.
Speaker 2:You, you kind of know, you know yeah, absolutely, and I knew how wretched I was. So I was like I If and if I treated myself this way, richard, can you imagine how I treated other people Like badly people. People were the sum of how dirty they were. That was what they were, and it was just like me. I'm just a sum of how disgusting I am. I Was, and because of this, rich I was a shame Magnet man, like anything that would bring shame. I labeled myself as that immediately. That must be who I am, as you can imagine, true, into some intimacy with people, with friends was nearly impossible In intimacy, I mean, like vulnerability, to be friends with someone to take on some of the you know burdens of each other. I Couldn't not give people my burdens. It was too disgusting. I was this, like you know, hideous thing and I had an intense fear of rejection, like intense. So I would never put people in positions where they had to like choose me, because if they didn't, it was a confirmation of my value, like that's who I am, bro. It got down to like pick up sports games. Like it was I, bro. It was crippling, you know. Like, oh, you get picked last. Well then you must be garbage, you know, and I was only as good as my life was going, and if it was going bad I couldn't run to God. The father hated me and I had disappointed Jesus with my life, and so the Holy Spirit couldn't work in my life. That was the, the dots that I had connected and I didn't deserve him whatsoever. So gradually I became disillusioned with life, rich like I Couldn't feel because of my. Later on in life I would learn, like some of the ways, that lust, especially lust, affects the brain. Like you, you lose the ability to feel the highs of life, like the good stuff, because you're a dopamine machine and your sensitivity has gotten so Low to it, or I don't know how to say this properly, but you just something intense has to happen for you to feel any form of enjoyment and satisfaction, and so I became disillusioned with life. I couldn't feel the highs. So I searched the world high and low, putting on identities, to see what does this, does this shirt give me a thrill of life? You know, does this thing bring me a thrill of life? Does this? And? And nothing did so. My brain, I kind of lost a function and I I could talk myself, you know, as a hopeless, hopeless optimist like I kind of. I guess I I could talk myself out of the lows by like recklessly believing a Future high that could possibly fix me. You know, and it was this person that decided okay, well, I'm gonna take my talents to this school in Tennessee called Southern Adventist University. My brother graduated in 2006 and I had hung around Miami for two years going to community college. I worked as a barista at Starbucks and when he decided he graduated high school and he decided to go to To Southern, I was like I might as well go with him. So I went Southern Adventist University. I Arrived and that was, in short, my notes say, best years of my life. Up to that point. I Made friends at Southern that I still I would say, 90% of my friends that I have to this day. I met at Southern Adventist University I'm I met people there that had been on this podcast. I met Byron Rivera and Sean and Cheta very early. I met by in 2006. More on them later. I Saw from a distance these two people you may have heard of, jaila and Eddie. I actually saw them become a couple from a distance, safe distance. I didn't really know them.
Speaker 1:I had classes with Peruvian guy with that six to.
Speaker 2:Black women is the only woman that when I talked to, I can see directly straight ahead, I don't have to look down. I was because I'm six, six. So it's bizarre when I can talk to anyone, let alone a woman, and she's like at my eye line, um, and because she's thin, she's taller than me somehow. So I had classes with floor, I had science classes with four, because I was gonna be a doctor.
Speaker 1:I'm not laughing.
Speaker 2:Doctor, dog, absolutely, yeah, okay, I was in a friend group of a bunch of ladies that sang with Joyce, so I met Joyce a long time ago. Could people the affirmation that I received for being whatever version of myself I decided to be that day was insane at some white people walk around with a confidence. Again, I'm from Miami, dog. I've never seen white people, like really gotten to know white people before, and these kids from like Pizga and GCA and Forestic Academy because, believe it or not, there's white kids there Like it was wild to see the confidence that these kids walked around with look at these Living in the natural habitat and their natural habitat at towel hole. These white boys walking around going into community shower without a towel on covering like completely just hey, this is who I am and I'm just like, oh my gosh, you know are crazy, this is insane. You know great people again. It's just not the same. I went to day school like I had never had a dorm experience and the only about that.
Speaker 1:For a second us us day, school kids. We were not ready.
Speaker 2:No Doug at all.
Speaker 1:We were not ready for the dorm dude.
Speaker 2:No, no, and like on top of it, like in my day school days in high school, I lived like 30 miles from school so I never hung out with my friends on the weekends because I didn't have a car. I had for some bizarre reason, I don't remember anymore. I didn't have a license so I couldn't drive and go hang out with friends. So I was, I had, I had the day school experience without any weekends. So when I got to Southern and I could hang out with my friends at night in the dorm or you know, I had friends on both sides. I had friends in the girls, dan, and I had friends in the guys dorm and I look, I'm not gonna put it lightly I became Paco for the first time in my life. People liked me. Richard, I'm not gonna sugarcoat this bro. I'm not gonna sugarcoat it bro. I was loved. Like I would walk into the cafeteria and I could walk up to almost every table. I have a conversation with someone that I knew and it was. It was crack for my soul. I love. I'm an extrovert as you cannot crack, as I don't know yeah exactly, and so people Were so comfortable with me and they were so kind to they knew how to pronounce my name. Bro, let me tell you my name is did you? Okay, it's French. Yeah, yeah, you go exactly in Miami. I was diddier.
Speaker 1:Oh my gosh, I almost just vomited like, yeah, that's a terrible name If your, if your name is diddier, it's a terrible name, but it is a da Did you? I'm cultured now.
Speaker 2:I, I'm cultured, I'm suave, like I have Culture that you have to now discover. You know I'm interesting, I'm intriguing.
Speaker 1:That's a French name, that's a. French name a French name. If you know if you know, of course, yvonne Sally.
Speaker 2:So like, I'm just, I'm loving it, people are, I mean even spiritual stuff. I'm like, okay, I'll go to worships, I'll go to Vespers Whatever people dress really nice for first Vespers. So I'm like, okay, I'm gonna show up and it's gonna be amazing. And I Met people that generally wanted to be friendly, spiritual revivals for sure. One year we had David Ashwick come and did a whole week of prayer and the dude asked some really tough questions, really tough questions about Things that I had been struggling with. Like you know, I just as conversations with the students, really good series, and I just remember spiritual things. Like I Just want to be friends with people. I want to. I want to collect the Pokemon cards of friends. I just want to be friends with everybody. So I Naturally the next step after we're going to Southern Abbey University in the summers what are you gonna do? She'll go, no work at camp, of course. So in 2000, 2007, I started working at Camp Colaqua Just to hang out with my friends from Southern. It was at Camp Colaqua that I met Some other people Kessia. She was a pastor for the week for the kids, but Kessia had a way of preaching that Everyone in the crowd also was being preached to. If she wasn't just preaching to the kids, like the staff members were like, yes, jesus loves me so much he still is your favorite pastors, favorite pastor man, she's right. She is, and I Worked there for three summers. I met some kids from Union that apparently you know my people and it was great. I enjoyed it very much. Then in my third year I got recruited by a guy named Abner Sanchez A legend in my family in my life To work at Mount Etna Camp in Hagerstown, maryland. It was at Mount Etna that I met my future wife. I also met Connor Yonkers and Ben Williams pre-gospel, I should say pre-gospel Ben Williams and pre-gospel Connor. Yes, sir, yes sir, made on them in a little bit. So you know these people. I just started meeting a lot of people at camp and Pouring into kids the little that I understood, like the meager little drops in my, in my cup of what I understood about God and the mentorship that those kids received is actually was shocking to me. And you know, I worked at camp with a bunch of my friends, people who have been on this podcast, and it was just we all discovered, like this love for ministry somehow in some form or another, because it was just seeing these kids coming back the next year asking to be with you, because they saw some version of God that was Beneficial to them, that changed their lives in some way, and that what. That felt really good. But you know, I'd leave camp and then the guilt of my sinful ways that's so bad that I would resort to, like white knuckling, you know. You know white knuckling, like I'm gonna read Ellen White devotionals from the morning, I'm gonna read a spirit of prophecy in the afternoon and but not the great controversy, because that book freaks me out. But, like you know, the Patriarch and prophets, let's do it, I'm about it. You know, putting alarms on my phone every 12 minutes to pray, like just white knuckling, and it never really worked. I try this thing to sermons by all kinds of pastors. When I felt you know out of whack spiritually, I would just watch the. When I felt you know out of whack spiritually, I would just watch sermons to kind of like wake me up, and it would work for a while. But it didn't really take root. I took a year to go to France because I got tired of being introducing myself to someone. They would say, oh, didier, that's a French name, right, do you speak French? And I'd say, no, I speak Spanish. And they're like what? So I got tired of that and I went to Colonge sous-salev, the Adventist.
Speaker 3:Adventist um.
Speaker 2:Frank, I was. I was at a level. There's like four levels of French fluency that you need to. There's four levels that they categorize you for. The top level you can go to university. The second to top level you pretty much speak like a high schooler. I was the third level, so it was better than nothing and I spoke no French because my dad at home, my dad, found English so much more efficient to communicate in that he never tried to teach us French, I mean when I was a little boy. But I don't remember any of it.
Speaker 1:Would you say it's a difficult language.
Speaker 2:It's probably the hardest of the romance languages, for the simple fact of the faux amis, the false friends, because articles in French are almost always opposite to what they are in Spanish and Italian and Portuguese. There's no way I was going to learn Romanian, but I can understand Italian pretty well. I speak Spanish, portuguese, especially Brazilian Portuguese super easy to understand. But French was impossible because French is really, really hard. It is the. I think it's the toughest romance language so far, but I enjoyed it. I did things in France that I had experiences in France. I wasn't really a drinker, but I drank in France. I wasn't really a smoker, but I smoked in France. I did a lot of things that I don't think I needed to do, but I was so curious as to what that was like and so I indulged in them. But coming back to the States wasn't hard. I came back to the States and I met my wife. Well, I met a lady named Lindsay and we started dating. It was my first girlfriend. It was my first kiss. I was 26. Yeah, I was 26. 24, sorry, it's 24. It was my first kiss, my first girlfriend, I mean just. And so when people would hear that from me, they'd be like really, and I'd be like, yeah, I know it's embarrassing, they're like, no, that's beautiful, I'm like what that doesn't Okay, cool, but she was super special. The thing about Lindsay was that Lindsay did something radical for me. She found me like the real me and she found me interesting, like she would ask me about me, not like what I could offer her, what we could connect on. That she liked no, no, no, no. She wanted to know what I liked and she found what I liked interesting. Again, I did not know this was possible. There's a lot of parts of my story same university from Southern that I All the girl disappointments that I don't really talk about because they don't really matter. Meeting her was really special for me. I didn't think it was possible to find someone that actually saw me, the real me, and liked me. So I graduated from Southern with, not pre-med. I graduated with a degree in mass communications with an emphasis in international studies the most vague degree ever.
Speaker 1:Yeah, with that kind of degree you can work at Chick-fil-A, absolutely, you can work at Hobby.
Speaker 2:Lobby, you could be a translator for nobody because you're not proficient in French not to that level. With a minor in photography and photography. Speaking about looking for a place to put my identity, photography really became that thing. If I took a bad photo and someone critiqued it, my life would fall apart. Basically, I put my entire identity into photography.
Speaker 1:And photography was popping too.
Speaker 2:Was popping. I had a friend, Natalie Mazo, who I think you know For sure. She was a recruiter at Southern and I would go to her house and we'd talk about photography incessantly. She'd show me the photos that she was taking the sessions. I learned a lot from her. Photography just became everything 2008, 2009. The DSLRs were really popping back then, and so I adopted that.
Speaker 1:That's when I started my blog. That was about photography.
Speaker 2:Let's go. I was it on Tumblr.
Speaker 1:I had a Tumblr, but it was called loves2picmccom, and I just bought a DSLR and started taking whack photos. I ended up becoming better. Let's go.
Speaker 2:But they started just whack, let's go Dude. My blog was called my curious right eye and it was just all the photography that I could find that I could shoot myself and just posting it. And I was, look, I'm a different person today than I was back then as far as an artist, and so I look back on those photos and I laugh, you know, nowadays, but it was good to just create. It felt amazing to come up with an idea that I wanted to execute. That was very rare. Like how often do you get that chance to like say I want to shoot something like this and then go and try and make it? It's a lot of fun. So when I, when we started dating, you know I taught Lindsay about photography, we shot some weddings, you know it was a lot of fun. But then, as we got married, I brought all the baggage that I had mentioned before, all of that stuff. I had kind of brought that into my marriage. I had an incessant need for affirmation, still had the lust issues. I thought that the the all familiar story that I thought marriage would fix my lust issues.
Speaker 1:Nope, hold up. Mary didn't fix your lust issues, sure did. We need to go back to the drawing board.
Speaker 2:I will say, though, that I had found God, had found someone for me. She was so patient with me. She was so different from me. Lindsay is a very introverted person, very introspective, very, very thoughtful, very the slow to speak, quick to listen. I'm kind of the up the way around, and her confidence in God was wild to me. Like when things got bad, she didn't turn to anxiety. Her first thing was to turn to God, and I was like this is what? How do you even do this as wild? She just had a thinking to mine, you know, and yeah, I, I couldn't run to God because he would condemn me. That dude hated the father, he hated me, but she would run to him and like that is what, how to? To have your confidence, my goodness. So she was that adventure that I had longed for for so long, and God was very merciful to me with that. Getting to know her Like the real her was like the honor of my life and a privilege that I cherish to this day. It wasn't perfect. Our marriage wasn't perfect, but it was beautiful. It was mine. I couldn't believe. I was at 24 years before I met her. I was like marriage is never going to happen to me. This is not a thing Like I didn't have a girlfriend. I never had a girlfriend, and so to be married. I was just like wow, I'm fortunate. In 2018,. We got married in 2013. In 2018, we had our little boy named Olivier, and I'm kind of rushing through my life because I just want to get to the life I don't.
Speaker 1:Let's get to the life, man, I had my son, I want to get mad, I want to hear yeah.
Speaker 2:I just want to get to the life. So I had a little boy. We have a little boy named Olivier and when he was born, rich, like the early glimpses of a true gospel started to lay their foundation, unbeknownst to me, because I would like. I would look at this boy and I would say to myself how can I see him as anything other than precious? How, how can, how, can it be possible that he is anything other than Precious, then, like dear to me? Is it possible that God? Is it possible that God? No, stop it with your foolishness. Dba, you're a sinner, remember. And time passed, and as time passed, this cognitive dissonance, like I was so uncomfortable with a divide between the things I believed and my behaviors, and how inconsistent, contradictory I was. So I spiraled, you know, and one day, in December of 2021, byron had this thing where he would just call me once a month, just for no reason, for years. And I mean I would say Byron was supposed to be in my wedding, he was supposed to be one of my groomsmen, but a funny thing happened His daughter was born on the week of my wedding and he couldn't make it to my wedding. It was fine, I was not mad, I know. So I put my dad in my wedding, which was a master stroke because, yeah, you'll hear about that in a little bit. But I was spiraling and Byron calls me and I'm so fed up with, like, my inability to conform with what I knew was right, somehow, what I thought was right, and so he spoke life to me. He told me I want you to read a book I don't remember the name of the book and I want you to also do a second thing for me. I want you to listen to a podcast. And he said it's called the death to life podcast. And I was like all right, cool, cool, cool. That sounds interesting name for a podcast. Okay, so on January 16th 2022, and I remember it, I remember this day. What a glorious day. I remember this day because it was the first time in my life where I had that moment in jaws where the camera pushes in, but the camera's being, but the lens is zooming in, but the camera's pulling out. I'm driving home, the dolly shot, the dolly shot. And I hear Tyler. This guy named Tyler, who sounds exactly like one of my friends that I went to France with, the dude, is so gregarious Tyler felt like a party that I really wanted to go to and I'm listening to this guy talking about his life and the way he explains things. And then he goes into something about freedom from sin and I've heard a lot of people's different reactions to hearing that. I've listened to 154 episodes of this podcast at this point and I've heard a lot of people's reactions to this. But my gut reaction, the first thing and I remember saying it out loud in the car I was like this is the only way heaven makes sense. If freedom from sin is a thing, then there's a chance for heaven. Because I went back to that thing. My grandmother told me as a kid you know, the only thing that changes is your body, but your character. It remains the same. And I was like if, if, if, all the things that this dude on this podcast is saying is true, then that's the only way. Like the one plus one equals two two being heaven, one being like perfection, two being, oh, freedom from sin. In my early thoughts it was this is the only way this is possible. There's no other way that heaven makes sense. I've tried well, I've incorrectly tried absolutely everything and it's all failed. This thing, this is the only way it makes sense. And I just remember, richard, have you ever driven a road like a lot, but then one day you have to walk that same road?
Speaker 1:Tell me more.
Speaker 2:How has that? If that's happened to you, like it's happened to me, you start to notice different things. Normally when you're driving you don't look so much what's around you. You keep on looking at where you're going because you're a safe driver and you want to keep your discount with State Farm. But, like when you get to walk, when you have to walk that same road, you have time to look in little alleyways and different businesses along the road and you realize there's things there that you never saw. That's what listening to this podcast felt like, because I saw things, I heard things and links started making like click things, started clicking that. How could I have never seen this before? But it was always there. So my core takeaway from listening to Tyler's podcast was I am free from sin. Just the first episode. Oh, his podcast was the best news I've ever heard. This was like okay, spirituality might be possible. If this thing is true, spirituality could probably like God and everything that might actually have hope. And what I took away from that podcast after listening to Tyler's episode was the gospel isn't a hammer, this exceedingly burdensome thing that bludgeons you to death. That's not how God loves you. That's not how God speaks to you, he speaks to you in love. And I started listening to Morgan's episode. And Morgan's episode was, I mean, if anything, it was even. It was just as powerful. And I was just like I'm hearing different sides of this story and I'm seeing a picture of God. And immediately this beautiful thing happened. Like Jesus, this notion that like started hitting me. Like Jesus wasn't like this rogue agent of heaven that like somehow came on a mission to pacify the wrath of the Father. No, jesus was the Father coming down to us and immediately like, oh, you mean for God, so love the world. That he gave his only big, gotten son. That who should ever believe in him? Should not parents to have a relaxing life? And then the second verse, the next one, that one for God did not send his son to the world to condemn the world, but to save the world through him. And I'm like wait, wait, wait, wait. This whole time my distorted view of the Father. The Father loves me because he reveals himself in the person of Jesus to give me, to restore me to something Again. I had never, never heard that. It was wild to me, because God has a bias towards saving Richard and not shaming and condemning, you know, and he came to rescue lost daughters and sons, rescue from what I'm like well, what could he be rescuing me from? Well, death, you know. And listening to the first you know, five, six episodes, I was like, wait, I can be liberated from all the stuff that I've believed about myself for so long. And I just remember like, okay, now I have to go home and fact check this stuff. Like Lord, please, let this stuff be true, please, please, let this be true. And I felt I had, I felt it freeing me from the condemnation of what I knew the law said. And I was just like Lord, this feels right, but like, please, let it be true.
Speaker 1:Okay, we are going to take a quick break from the episode and I'm bringing on my guy Huey Pham. Huey, what's going on, my brother?
Speaker 3:Not much, but my account on here says Huey and Beebe and if you want to hear a funny story, Michael Loomis thought that my wife Beebe's name was Queen Beebe, because everybody referred to both of us at the same time and it sounded like Queen Beebe when they were actually saying Huey and Beebe.
Speaker 1:So he's referred to you guys as Huey Bee. When I talk to him, when I talk about you guys, I'm like yo, where's Huey Bee? So Huey question for you how long have you been rocking with the gospel, my friend? Since 2018. Since 2018. What has the gospel done in changing your life?
Speaker 3:It has set the correct lens to discern everything Like so. Before I did not have a way of discerning what is right and wrong, what is good or bad, with clarity, the clarity that I have now because my identity has been firmly established and the Holy Spirit lives inside of me. So when you ask how, what is the impact or effect of the gospel on my life, it is in the smallest decisions, the biggest decisions, and all of those decisions now I know are clearly lead to life and I'm no longer second guessing any of the, any of the big or small decisions that I make, because I don't not seek the counsel of the spirit before making any decisions.
Speaker 1:So Wow, man, you have given of your energy, of your time, years of your finances. You have sacrificed to keep this message going forward. Why is that so important to you?
Speaker 3:Because if we talk about the idea of prosperity, right, because if we talk about the idea of prosperity, my fundamental, the fundamental shift in my investment strategy has gone from material to people, because the scripture says very clearly the return on investment that God is looking for from all of his children on earth is more people. That is the game that we are playing, that we are playing we are in a war game with the world to bring more of his children home by setting them free, here and now. And so, if there is no other point, what is the purpose? The Christian always asked what is our purpose? There is only one to pay forward the message that sets you free to deliver others from what you have been delivered from and in so, setting them free from the sin that binds them. And the point of it is that they could come home. The point of it is that they would take their seat at the table in heavenly places. And so there is no greater purpose, right, especially in this time and place. There is no greater purpose, right? Worship God, love God and love others, right? How do you love others? Now you set them free. So, yeah, 100% return on investment, right? That's what God wants from us, and so if we have been set free, then we pay it forward.
Speaker 1:Man, if you want to partner with us, if you are listening to this and you are like I, want to help with this message that sets people free, you can go to loverealityorg slash give, and every dollar you gives goes towards this message getting out there. Whether through this podcast, whether through Bible study, whether through one of the other podcasts that we have the Love Reality Group, every single dollar goes towards getting the message that Christ has reconciled the world back to God to these people out here. So that's loverealityorg slash give and, man, we would love it if you moved with us to get this thing going forward. Queen man, thank you so much, my brother Peace.
Speaker 2:I had no idea who Jonathan Leonardo was. When I actually turned on YouTube and I got to Wave 1 on PVC, I actually started the Campion series and it didn't make any sense to me. So I was like, maybe I clicked the wrong link, I'm going to go to the PVC one. I didn't know what PVC was. So this dude starts preaching. I have a custom at work because I do creative work. I watch YouTube on the side as I'm editing or editing photos or editing video because I work in creative field, and Jonathan starts talking about his identity, how he claimed the wrong identity. And, richard, after 20 minutes, jonathan, how do I say that? I cried so hard, I had boogers coming out of my face and I had to run to the bathroom several times because Jonathan verbalized things about things that I believed, about myself, that I couldn't believe. Someone knew that, someone thought the same way. I felt so seen in deception, which was wild, because the things he said I was like I believe that and that's not true. Tell me more. The thing that really hit me in his presentation was when were they free? When were they free? They were free. When he said they were free and I was like free, freedom and you guys just throw around this term in your podcast. When I got free, when I got free, when I got free and I was like, bro, you don't get free, he frees you, but you don't get it, you don't do it yourself. But then, little by little, I was like wait, when did I understand this? When did this actually happen? It happened a long time ago. I don't know how to express it, but I have freedom now. It's not this thing. I'm not going to work towards this. This is something that starts now. I'm like this is wild, this is revel. I've never heard anything like this. And that my life begins from freedom, not to freedom. I had never heard that idea and I literally was hanging on to everything this dude is saying. Anytime you made a joke, I was laughing. Anytime he would speak something ridiculous, I would be like, oh my gosh, this makes so much sense. I didn't know how else to explain it. So when he said that my ability to sin didn't identify me as anything other than what he says I am, I am running to the bathroom. I can't look professional if I'm crying this much and I'm listening to the first episode and then I immediately pick through the second one, the prodigal son, or the parable of the faithful father, as TJ would say. And I'm just like this is the most beautiful story I've ever heard that I'm always a son. What? Because the law taught me to grovel. That's how I had to create this distance between myself, the trash that I believed that I was. That was what created the distance for then him to then like his goodness, to look like goodness, because I had to be garbage never for him to look amazing. And then there was a justification for Jesus. And Jonathan said that and I'm just like oh my gosh, this, I, this, I've never experienced anything like this. And I was hungry, bro, I was just like the son, I was hungry. And then Jonathan hates me with that. I'm dead to the law.
Speaker 3:What.
Speaker 2:What.
Speaker 3:What, what, what.
Speaker 2:No the dude. No, I had never heard that. But the thing was I didn't reject it. I was like, please, let this be true. The fact that Jonathan was adorned is like you had never heard that. No dog, no, never Bro. I was the law, was the rubric, and if that wasn't right and if I didn't match up to that, I'm doomed, that's it, and I'm like I'm not under the law. This is the best news I've ever heard. I heard like what? And I'm under grace. I don't even know what that means. And Jonathan explains this and I had like a part of me was just so welcoming. All of me was so welcoming because he goes. The verse in Luke 15 says that the father, the father, when the son was a long way off, his father ran to him. I, bro, I tell you like, erect me, because for so long I'm going to get emotional, Okay, calm down. For so long, the lies that I believed about myself, that was what I allowed to define me. But Jesus, seeing me, the father, seeing me from a long way off, starts running towards me to get to me before the lies can destroy me. I had that image in my mind and I'm thinking so wait, if the father is for me. Who told me that I was trash? Like? Who holds that smoking gun? Who calls me? Who's calling me a slave? Like who calls me trash? And the Spirit puts scripture in you, man, I'm telling you, matthew 1328,. Jesus said an enemy did this. There is no truth in the enemy and thank God I'm not under the law, because there is no mercy there either.
Speaker 1:And understanding that you were free from the law because you are now married to another. Like did you? How quick did that concept start to land?
Speaker 2:The concept was a beautiful thing that I believed conceptually, but in my heart it took a long time, much longer than I'm happy to admit, because the tendency was to run back to the thing, the old pattern of thinking, the double-mindedness, the sin consciousness and the freedom from the hold of the law, the dead to sin, the freedom from sin, like that was so revolutionary it took me. I was so happy that, like in my head it made sense, but it didn't make sense in my actions and I identified with that Roman 7 guy so much. First of all, let me just back up Up until this point in my life, before I started watching, before I started the podcast. Like Romans had one chapter, it was chapter 8, okay, ephesians only had one chapter, it was the chapter about the armor of God. I had never read the book of Colossians. I thought that, richard, that you made up the title death to life. Like I thought you made that up. I thought, oh, that's pretty cute. No clue that Jesus said that in John. Like no notion of that and oblivious to what the gospel was actually saying this whole time. And when John, then when I'm reading, when I'm listening to you guys in the podcast, especially talking about Romans 6, romans 6, romans 6, I was like, okay, I'm going to open the book of Romans and Holy Spirit. You have to make it make sense, because this book is spaghetti soup for me, like this is. I've never even tried to read this book because it never made any sense. And immediately it's like the most simple thing in the world, richard, like consider yourselves dead to sin. You died with Christ. You're resurrected with him in the newness of life. How can, how could it be any other way? How does any other way make sense, dda? And it's like oh my gosh, oh my goodness, it's in the book and I kept hearing you guys saying this and I'm like what it is? It really is. And that was really the thing that got me to this other, like incredible thing, which was the secret place.
Speaker 1:The secret place when you, before you, go to the secret place. When I first saw you, it might have been like on a Friday night thing like this is back in the day, when we were doing those Friday night.
Speaker 2:This was probably January. No January or February of 2022.
Speaker 1:And you were chilling. But then when you grabbed the mic, you just like took over, like a force field, like you were just like, oh Jesus, like you took over, and I was like how much did you understand? Had this already happened with you listening to Jonathan preach this stuff?
Speaker 2:I watched Wave 1 twice, then I watched it a third time with my mom, then I watched it a fourth time with my wife. Then I would watch it with anyone that would sit next to me long enough. I would send the podcast. I must have listened to episode 57, theology and freedom, I think at this point. At that point I listened to it like four or five times because I wanted to understand the mechanism. I'm not a very technical person, but the spirit did this wild thing that, like he told, the whole spirit told me, like, search me, I am able to be found. So like, dive in, why not? And I kept learning and learning, and learning and I would tell anyone that would listen to me about it. And honestly, some lies started to creep in, like, oh, you just want to talk, oh, you just want to show people, you know all the lies that I used to believe about myself. And actually I fell into some deception about that. I actually withdrew a little bit from some of the gatherings because I was like you're only there to talk, you're not there to listen, you're not there to be spiritually present and share in the body of Christ, you just want to talk. And I tried to believe those lies and you know, anyway, it was rough because, you know, when you see the encouragement that Jesus gives to his disciples as he leaves the earth, he tells them I promise you there's going to be trouble, like life isn't going to be beautiful, it's not going to be perfect, you're not bad, things are going to happen. But take heart, I have overcome the world and for me, that notion was like okay, so life isn't going to be this beautiful. A steady sea never made a skilled sailors. I had to take that to heart. You know, and I remember when I joined the sessions at first, I was just on fire. I was on fire and that fire lasted like let me put it to you this way In 2020, my dad got diagnosed with cancer during COVID 2021,. In October of 2021, my mom got diagnosed with cancer breast cancer. In January of 2022, I heard the gospel for the first time in my life. On March 26, 2022, my dad died out of nowhere from cancer, and that doesn't sound like it makes sense, but like he went to the hospital for a routine draining of his lung and he coded and died out of nowhere. If it hadn't been for the gospel, if it hadn't been for the beauty of the message that I had heard, I don't think I would ever have turned to God, that I would have ever been able to survive the times that I went through with the death of my dad. My dad was someone that I just I thought that I would have, so I learned about. I got free in January 2022. The first thing that I did was tell my mom about it. I would call my mom on my way to work and on my way home and just tell her everything that the soul and spirit was revealing to me, everything I learned in the way of one, all the podcasts, every piece of information that I got. I would share it with her. Because my parents again, they weren't really spiritual, but my mom, after her cancer diagnosis, I think life started to make more sense to her and she wanted to hear more about God. And I told my mom and I tried telling my dad, but it didn't really make a lot of sense to him. He had no foundation for spiritual stuff. The only spiritual stuff he knew was when, every time that he would visit my grandmother, my grandmother would sit him down and tell him about prophecy. So like he didn't have a basis for like understanding the gospel and the love of God and that kind of stuff. So I say that I ultimately didn't have enough time to tell him about Jesus. But you know I had that and that was a lot for me to process. But but if it wasn't for the gospel, I wouldn't have been able to. If it wasn't for freedom, if it wasn't for understanding who I am, what my identity actually is, that I'm always a son, I would never have made it through those times. And you know, the secret place, the whole concept of secret place. It's crazy because I said a lot of stuff about my grandmother but my grandmother had a lot of beautiful things about her. My grandmother had a tree that she would pray at every day. It was her time with God, it was her secret place. And when I say secret place, the person listening is this notion from Matthew, chapter 6 and a sermon on the Mount that when you pray don't go praying around and when you spend time with God don't go lording it around to people to see it, but when you do it, go to a secret place, close the door and your father, who sees what's done is secret, will reward. Like this notion of intimacy, and intimacy with your father, and I started doing that and the revelations that God gave me in the secret place were stuff that I don't think I've ever I've shared it with Byron, but just things that concepts that I had never even begun to believe I would be able to understand one day. And one of the things that emerged for me was like folks read your bibles, like I thought I knew the Bible, but it turns out my understanding what the Bible was was skewed completely and it was completely incomplete. And there's so much understanding in that for me. And once these things came into focus and being free, being free to love people, being free to love humanity, being free to love myself, to treat myself and to see myself as reckoning myself as dead, to sin, reliance in Christ, the alignment and the vertical and horizontal alignment of reality became a thing for me. Vertically aligned because I'm loved by the father, I am redeemed by his son and I'm empowered by his spirit. I am reconciled In him. I have every spiritual blessing in the heavens. And then horizontally aligned, because I am free to love humanity at all costs. It's no longer I who live, but Christ who lives in me, and I can look at others the way God sees them, and I always turn to this funny story. I was on TikTok a long time ago and I was watching this interview with AJ Brown, a wide receiver for the. He had just signed for the Philadelphia Eagles and he's wearing this chain around his neck and it says LJ or something. And a reporter asks him you have a teammate named Larry Johnson. I don't know what his name was. Are you wearing his name around your neck? And AJ Brown looks at the guy and he goes do you really think I would wear another man's name around my neck? And for so long I had adopted this identity of disgusting, trash or cast out and disgusting and broken, and that's not my chain to wear. That's not the identity that I have around my neck, the identity that God says about me. Whatever it is that he says about me, that is my identity. That's who I am, that's how he sees me, and so I live from there and I focus on the things above, because I'm not what the enemy tries to say, that I am what he lied to me for so long about. I'm not that person. And so since then, yeah, I've just. It's not been a cakewalk, it's been hard at times. You know my dad dying and struggling with COVID, believe it or not, and seasonal affective disorder and a bunch of stuff. But through it all, first and foremost operating from the notion that I am loved desperately and that I am the father himself loves me, that I am free from the condemnation, I'm free from the shame, guilt and condemnation that I had put myself into for so long. That changed me.
Speaker 1:Man, if you got to go back, let's go. Where are we going? Guess where I'm taking you, I don't know. Tell me, we're going back to high school. Yeah, Because when you started getting all that affirmation, it was the mask to what you truly believed about yourself, right? I don't know if it changed until you know, you just were hiding it because people are sweeter in college than they are in high school. High school, I think it seems more like real life than college. Yeah, high school like, because people are, they're just, they're not trying to hide anything, they're kind of being their jerk selves. If they're jerks, yeah, if you got to run into this kid, put your arm around him. What would you tell this guy?
Speaker 2:I would tell that kid, that awkward, super tall afro haired kid in the humidity. I would tell him you are radically loved by a father that is obsessed with you and chose you before the world was made. The proof of this is that he sent his son on a mission to bring you back to himself, to be set apart, blameless and above any form of shame or condemnation, and because of this you are free to be what he created you to be, to have his spirit inside of you, and no one, no lies of the enemy, can change that.
Speaker 1:Man, we've been hanging out here. You said January 2022?.
Speaker 2:January 16th of 2022.
Speaker 1:Hearing you guys Did I meet you in 2023? What was the first time I met you?
Speaker 2:No, you met me that same year you came to Atlanta because you were going to a chiefs game and I met you at a pizzeria with my wife and son and you wanted to stay with us. But I didn't have any space because we lived in a tiny apartment and we didn't have a guest room or anything, and it was. I'm not gonna lie to you, bro. I was nervous man because I was like this is the podcast maker, like this dude. I've listened to this guy's voice as much as I've listened to like my wife's voice. I listened to this guy every single day as well.
Speaker 1:Now, man, it was so good to meet you, and I think that's probably the only time we've been around each other in person.
Speaker 2:Yeah, it was.
Speaker 1:But you've been a testimony on the pot or on the Bible studies, on internet church, and your energy, like nobody, like you're a special and significant part of the body of Christ and nobody can do the work that God has specifically set aside for you to do. And I'm seeing you do it and it's just a blessing man, your energy for the Lord. So I want to thank you for your faithfulness to his faithfulness, and I'm sure that you are shining. If you're still working at that school, you still are. I'm sure you're shining there and you're a bright star man, and so thank you for sharing your story. And it's just powerful man, it blows me away. Praise God, praise God. Brother man, if you are in a spot where you are the sum of all the things that you've done and you're living with that shame and there's no way God can love you, if you're in that spot, then this prayer is for you, father. I'm hearing the lies that positioned me as less than, and I hear that it isn't true, that you see me as the pearl of great pride, that you laid your life down for me, and so my value is that Please give that to me so I can be convicted of it in my heart, I have it in my head, but move it to my heart so that I can believe, because I am struggling to believe. I know you will do it, because I'm praying it in Jesus's name, amen. Guys, join our circles Bible study, go to loverealityorg. Go to circles. We want to hang out with you every day of the week. We hang out every day of the week and we want to do that with you. So check it out, loverealityorg circles, and let's go. Let's hang out Bible studies all day, every day, not all day, but every day. Love you, I appreciate you.