In this conversation between Terry and Ben Armstrong, the Overseer of Prophetic Ministry at Bethel Church in Redding, CA, Ben recounts his early encounters with God that emphasized the significance of prophetic ministry and the manifestation of signs, wonders, and miracles. Ben opens up about entering ministry, facing a crisis after an affair, and the miraculous restoration of his marriage with Heather through the intervention of Jesus. The discussion touches on their concerted efforts to strengthen their relationship and how it's lead to them sharing their story to help married couples across the world. Ben's book, "The Dream Journal: Unlocking Your Dream Life," is highlighted, shedding light on his passion for dream interpretation as a means to understand God's language.
*Buy "The Dream Journal: Unlocking Your Dream Life"*
-Bethel Bookstore: https://shop.bethel.com/products/pre-order-the-dream-journal-unlocking-your-dream-life
-Amazon: https://www.amazon.com/Dream-Journal-Unlocking-Your-Life/dp/B0CT8YVQFF
*Follow Ben*
-Website: https://armstrongministries.com/
-Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/thebenarmstrong/
-Bethel Prophetic Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/bethel.prophetic/
Follow Terry:
In this conversation between Terry and Ben Armstrong, the Overseer of Prophetic Ministry at Bethel Church in Redding, CA, Ben recounts his early encounters with God that emphasized the significance of prophetic ministry and the manifestation of signs, wonders, and miracles. Ben opens up about entering ministry, facing a crisis after an affair, and the miraculous restoration of his marriage with Heather through the intervention of Jesus. The discussion touches on their concerted efforts to strengthen their relationship and how it's lead to them sharing their story to help married couples across the world. Ben's book, "The Dream Journal: Unlocking Your Dream Life," is highlighted, shedding light on his passion for dream interpretation as a means to understand God's language.
*Buy "The Dream Journal: Unlocking Your Dream Life"*
-Bethel Bookstore: https://shop.bethel.com/products/pre-order-the-dream-journal-unlocking-your-dream-life
-Amazon: https://www.amazon.com/Dream-Journal-Unlocking-Your-Life/dp/B0CT8YVQFF
*Follow Ben*
-Website: https://armstrongministries.com/
-Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/thebenarmstrong/
-Bethel Prophetic Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/bethel.prophetic/
Follow Terry:
[00:00:00] Terry: All right, guys. Well, I am very excited because on this episode, I'm talking to the overseer of the prophetic ministry at Bethel church, as well as the author of the dream journal, unlocking your dream life, Ben Armstrong, Ben, thank you so much for coming on the show.
[00:00:17] Ben: Absolutely, Terry. I'm, I'm so excited to be with you.
And yeah, it's an exciting time, for, for me and, and just the dream journal coming out. And yeah, a lot of, a lot of cool things, but excited to be on your show.
[00:00:33] Terry: Yeah, it's, it's always a privilege to be able to talk to someone from Bethel. My wife and I, we're here in Minnesota, but we have been following, Bethel.
And part of their online community for probably the last 10 years, if not longer, definitely throughout the duration of our marriage and super blessed by everything you guys are doing and Ben super blessed by what you're doing with the prophetic ministry, with the dream interpretation. Um, it's, it's absolutely amazing what you're doing out there.
Um, my wife and I just had the privilege of going out to Bethel for the first time this past January for the Randy Clark conference and, left, left completely. And radically changed. And, man, we're bringing that back to Minnesota here to set this place on, on fire for revival. But Ben, I'm so excited to, get to know you and your story.
I know that you've got an amazing redemption story, but I always like to start way back at the beginning, Ben. So tell us a little bit about where did you grow up and what was family life like for you as you were growing up?
[00:01:33] Ben: Yeah, that's good, Terry. Uh, it's my, my family life growing up. I was born in a little small town just outside the Ozarks, uh, called West Plains, Missouri, and I don't have much of a memory of West Plains, Missouri, because When I was a young boy, we moved back to a little small town called Weaverville, California. I say back to there because my dad was actually raised in Weaverville. My grandparents lived there. Oh, for nearly 75 years before they passed away. My grandpa was a dentist in that town and it was super fun growing up in a small little mountain town. Well, four months after we moved to Weaverville, we were going to a little assemblies of God church and a guy named Bill Johnson came and took over, uh, that church. So not many people, uh, They hear about Weaverville and it's nostalgic. Ooh, Weaverville, Bill Johnson, all that stuff. You know, Chris Vallotton and his wife, Kathy, they came about that same time. Oh, Eric Johnson, um, Bill's son, his oldest son would have been maybe one year old. Brian was about to be born soon. Leah wasn't even around yet. Jason wasn't born yet. Um, so, you know, growing up in Weaverville, it was pretty awesome, you know, we were pursuing God in a little small mountain town, hungry for, probably hungry for what we would define now, Terry, as revival. Revival culture, the supernatural culture. We just read, we were, I guess, you know, we ignorant enough or even maybe we were smart enough to take God at his word and we'd read the Gospels, heal the sick, raise the dead, cast out demons, you know, freely you receive now freely give. Okay, well, let's do it. And so we would every Sunday we'd have our staff and elders come up in front of the church And we'd say, if you need healing in your body, if you need breakthrough in your finance, you need breakthrough in your relationships, come up, we're going to pray for you. We're going to believe God is going to heal those spots.
The problem is, you know, it was different than Bethel. Now, back in Weaverville, we would pray and nothing would happen. And so, uh, one thing we didn't do Terry, that was really important is we, we didn't create a theology. Or a negative theology around what's not happening. We just thought, Oh, we need to keep trying.
We need to keep going after this. And a lot of people, they hear Weaverville and they think, Oh, you must've come out of the womb, you know, laying hands on the sick and they recover, you know, you must have been prophesying. since you learned English. And it's like, no, that's not, not quite how it was. You know, we were, it was kind of like R and D research and development.
It was a hidden away place. We're hungry for God. We're hungry for community. Uh, we had a passion for worship. That was a, that's a big component of what we did. My dad, Jeff Armstrong, was the worship leader there for 18 years. So Bill and my dad would meet early in the morning and what they would do on Sundays, or they'd meet early in the morning.
They'd pray into the service and then they'd go across the street. Uh, there was a little restaurant called the brewery. It, it would, it didn't brew beer. It was just called the brewery. It was the old. Old brewery and, uh, we have an old historic town, so they'd go get biscuits and gravy at the brewery and then come back and do Sunday service and, and so, you know, we kept praying, we kept praying and then finally we'd, we'd see little breakthroughs, you know, Sister Sally's headache would get healed and it'd be our one testimony, it'd be our testimony that we would share for the whole year, you know, on the prayer lines.
Hey, well, remember sister Sally's headache got healed. Let's believe, you know, that you're going to get healed too. And we would pray and pray and pray. And then, you know, like a year later, brother Bob's backache would get healed. And that's two and two years. We called that a pattern, you know, nothing's stopping us now.
The snowball is rolling downhill and, you know, fast forward to today and, you know, healing is a regular part of our ministry and we're seeing hundreds, if not thousands of people connected to our ministries and our travels and all the stuff we do healed every week. And, and so it started somewhere. I would encourage anyone who's listening.
And hearing the testimonies way back then, it, it should all give us hope for where we're starting at, you know, we're learning. And then one of the things that is great about us as a movement is whenever we've learned, we try and be generous with and like, hey, Let's, let's learn together, let's grow together, and it's creating an acceleration.
There was another thing growing up, uh, young in Weaverville. You know, everyone knew your business. You know, we, uh, we were raised not just by my mom and dad. Uh, I had four brothers and sisters, uh, the youngest being twins, uh, my brothers. They were Eric Johnson's age, and I have an older sister and a younger sister.
Uh, and we're all five years apart. So five and five years, mom and dad were popping them out and yeah. And, but it was, uh, it was a fun time. So, you know, if any one of us. in the church got in trouble and we were with someone else's parents, we'd get parented by those parents. So, you know, I'm pretty sure I got spanked by every mom in the church at one point, you know, because, uh, that's just how it was in, in Weaverville growing up.
And then the prophetic ministry, you know, people think. Chris was doing the prophetic the whole time. No, Chris was, Chris Vallotton was the owner of the 76 station, the service station there. And so, uh, Chris was the type of guy I can remember growing up. We, we, our church started growing and it was too big for the small spot we were at.
So we started renting the theater. It's just one theater. So you one movie at a time theater, you walk in the front doors and there's a snack bar on the left side. With the box office first, then the snack bar and then bathrooms on the right side, and then you walk into the sanctuary. Well, Chris, every Sunday he'd stand at the end of the, the snack bar and the way he showed affection to the young men in the church was to arm wrestle them.
And he would arm wrestle them and slam their arm down and you would go off crying and Chris thought we were all super loved, you know, so it was. It was, it was, it was different, different time. But we had times where, you know, we'd sing like as the deer pants for the water, so my soul longs for you, you know, those kinds of things, or.
Your name is like honey on my lips and and worship was a big deal So we we'd be in it in worship and it would usually be a really calm Spot Terry and then all of a sudden someone you would yell out thus saith the Lord And you'd be like, Whoa, what, what, what is this? And then the person would start talking like they were God.
And I would say to you today, and it had a cadence, had a rhythm. And I can remember as a young boy, hearing that kind of stuff and looking up and thinking, mom, you're not God. Why are you saying thus sayeth the Lord? You know, and we just called it, Oh, they got a word from the Lord. They got a word from the Lord.
And so, uh, We we grew up with this kind of stuff and and growing in it and we had people like Iverna Tompkins Dick Mills and Dick Joyce some old old prophets and prophetic voices who really Dick Mills was the type of guy who would come and he would call a person out in the crowd and he Memorize the like something like 7000 promises of God in scripture and what he would do, Terry, he would call you out in a service and he would quote three or four of the promises of God over you.
His wife would sit there on a chair on the stage. And he had this notepad that said, A note from Dick Mills. And she'd write down the references, and after he was done, she'd hand it to you, and you'd keep it in your Bible. So it really brought a lot of credibility back to the prophetic, where some of that was harsh.
I think my biggest role model in the prophetic was actually an evangelist who was a good friend of our house in Weaverville. His name's Mario Murillo. I don't know if you've ever heard of him. Great evangelist, love the man, love what he carries on his life, but he had a belief system for regions, states, cities, and revival that was right up there with what prophetic is all about.
You know, he, uh, he was that guy who. Who just believed in people. He was like a Barnabas who believed in cities that no one believed in, who believed in the down and out, the worst of the worst and always spoke the best. And I think he formed a prophetic thing in me more than anyone else. And then prayer.
Uh, the nations were a big deal in it when we were kids there in Weaverville. Weaverville's 3, 000 people, Terry. It's, it's tiny. I mean, it's, it's super small. And, uh, and I can remember at a young age, we had this mindset as kids, it was our job to change the world. And and we did, we had that because we continued to so into missionaries.
Missionaries were my heroes growing up. I would see the missionaries on the wall. I'd hear the stories. We had a lady named Tracy Evans, who's still a missionary in Mozambique. Worthworth Heidi Baker. Amazing lady. And, and she was one of the ladies we supported. She lived in Weaverville for a while too. And she would tell crazy stories about guns being held to her head, being fired and the bullets never firing, you know, and then people getting saved and like, these were my heroes.
So, so nations and missions were a big deal. I didn't know, and I don't know that we knew that God was developing an apostolic mandate on our house. Uh, this mandate to carry the kingdom culture around the world, to carry the prophetic culture around the world, to carry healing around the world. You know, we knew we were supposed to impact the world.
We just didn't think it'd be like it is right now. So I had two marking encounters as a young man that sent me on a journey of the prophetic. Uh, the first one, Terry, I was reading the Bible at eight years old. And I read Proverbs 18, 21. Life and death are in the power of the tongue, and those who love it will eat of its fruit.
And I heard God speak immediately after. He said, Ben, I want you to speak life. Now you need to know, that was the first time reading the Bible where it actually came alive to me, Terry. I read it and it was like The Logos, the written word, became Rhema to me. It became God's own breath to my life. Now, he didn't say, Ben, you're going to be, you know, uh, the overseer of prophetic ministries at Bethel Church one day, you're going to travel the world, you're going to train and equip in the prophetic.
He didn't say any of that. He just said, Ben speak life, but you need. Here's a snapshot of Weaverville growing up. Weaverville is a mountain hunting fishing town. It's also a logging town. So I don't know if you've ever heard lumberjacks talk, but they have some colorful language. usually not quite, uh, appropriate in church setting.
You know, it's not G rated, right? Yeah. Well, well that was normal and we were, and it was normal. Even if you didn't talk like that, it was normal to show affection not through greeting each other with a holy hug or kiss, but a holy punch in the arm and kind of ripping on each other. So we would rip on each other.
And that was a sign of affection until your kind of coarse joking became too close to home and then it hurt people. And then the punches in your arm became punches in your face and then you realize, Oh, I crossed the line of joking. You nod your head so much, Terry, like you know what that's like.
[00:15:53] Terry: Oh, yeah.
Yep.
[00:15:56] Ben: Definitely. Yeah, so, so You know, when God says speak life, you need to know in my culture in Weaverville, speaking life wasn't normal. It wasn't normal to speak life all the time. And you know, we're a, we're a hunting, fishing town. I can remember my dad saying one day before school, he said, son, it's towards the end of hunting season.
We got one or two days left. Do you want to go hunting before school starts? And I'm like, yeah, let's do it. So we get up early in the morning to go hunting. My grandpa had some old property on top of this mountain. So we go. hunting on this mountain. And dad says, I'm gonna go down the mountain around, hopefully push something up to you.
You go around this way and we'll meet on the other side. So I come around this corner. My dad's down the mountain somewhere. And two bucks are running across the field. So I take aim at one of them and shoot it. And, uh, it, it was awesome. I'm pumped. I'm so excited. The adrenaline is flowing through my veins, but I only have one tag and the other deer goes up the hill.
And he's probably wondering what happened to his friend, Frankie here. Why are you laying down, you know, and he stops for a minute. So I yelled at my dad, dad, dad, get up here. And he comes running up and, and that buck works this way all the way to the top of the Hill. And it's about to go to the other side.
And, and, uh, I'm like, dad, you need to shoot. You need to shoot now. And he shoots and drops the deer right there too. So we both get a deer same day. Epic moment. It's awesome. Well, we gotta, you know, clean our deer. And then you got, in Weaverville, you didn't have enough money to take your deer to a butcher, so you butcher them yourself, you.
freezer pack and put them in the freezer and we're going to eat good because my dad was a general building contractor and it was feast or famine and we were, uh, if he had a job in the winter, oh, we're going to eat, we'll be all right. If he didn't, we're living on rice and whatever we hunted. So hopefully, you know, we get deer.
So, you know, it was, it's a small town, you know, things like that are, are kind of normal for growing up. And so we get done. Obviously, you're going to have a little blood on you. You got to go shower and everything. I'm super late for school. I probably get there maybe around noon and we go into the administration's office, you know, the, uh, attendance lady and the attendance lady, uh, barb went to school the same high school with my dad went to that same high school.
And so we go into this. Jeff, why is your son late to school and we're like, ah, we got we got a deer and so we're late and she said Okay, and she writes down on my attendance slip excused absence providing for the family and I I love that because that that's kind of a snapshot of Weaverville. It's kind of a snapshot of what it was.
Soon after that, I had one more encounter that I think kind of led me into the next season of my life was, um, I heard the audible voice of God and he said this to me. He said, Ben, um, when you love people the way I love them and you see them the way I see them, I can trust you with the secrets. of who they are, not what they've done.
And I didn't know it at the time, but that was really the core of first Corinthians 12, 13 and 14, and really the heart of the prophetic. And God had sent me on that journey. I finished high school. Um, I was planning on going to Cal Poly for architecture and to play football. And, uh, I went on a mission strip, uh, we smuggled Bibles into China, and then, uh, the next year, uh, we went to, uh, the Ukraine.
Uh, and we, we went in and we did open air street ministry in Russia and in the Ukraine. And uh, God transformed my life in such a way where I felt like I was called to full time ministry and I didn't know what I should do. So I went to my youth pastor who was Bill Johnson's, uh, brother, Bob Johnson. And I said, Bob.
You know, I feel like I'm supposed to be a pastor. I think I'm supposed to do ministry. What do I do? He says, you need to go to Bible college. And really, honestly, Terry, I had never heard of Bible college at that point. I was like, Oh, well, what the heck is Bible college? I just knew there was college university, you know, And he's like, you should go to this one.
So I went to Bethany Bible College. They called me Pentecostal Ben because I was a little different than people, super positive. I believed in healing. We would pray for people. They'd recover. Um, just, you know, simple things. Hey, you got a headache? Go have Ben pray for you. You know, something will happen.
We did that. I finished university, and Bob Johnson was starting a church in Redding, California, Bill's brother. So Bill was still in Weaverville, and he's like, I'm starting a street ministry called Frontline. Frontline International Ministries, and our plan is to go and do street ministry in cities all over, and evangelism, care for the poor, the down and out, the whole deal.
So We, um, we decide, okay, let's do this, and so I'm a youth pastor, I'm a bus driver, I'm the convalescent pastor, I'm the associate pastor, I'm the janitor as well, and you're lucky to get paid. Seriously. It was, I think I started at 800 a month. And, um, even then it was probably in between three to six months where I would actually get one of those checks.
So I was always picking up odd jobs and stuff, but we started street ministry, uh, in the parks and we do, uh, church in the parks. We got an old rundown warehouse, started a church in a warehouse. And, and then Sunday night, instead of doing Sunday night church. We'd make soup all afternoon, grab loaves of bread, and go out to all the rundown hotels.
and do church at the rundown hotels and serve meals and then do a church service, see people get saved. And so evangelism was a big deal. A year after we started that church, Bill Johnson gets an invite to, uh, come and be the senior leader of Bethel Church, Redding, California. And, uh, a couple of years later, uh, we're still doing ministry in the same city.
And we felt like, hey, we need to start a ministry in San Francisco Bay Area, and we're going to take all of our, we had all of these cool vehicles, buses that would clamshell open into a stage, and then we had these huge barbecue trailers that we towed behind that. And then we'd have these sidewalk Sunday school vehicles that would open out and do a stage and we had cotton candy machines and snow cone machines and we'd drive up to a block and do a straight church service block party, feed people.
We'd, you know, churchify old songs and stuff like that. Old Leonard Skinner songs and stuff like that. And make them Christianized. And so the tune would catch people and then they'd be singing just stuff about Jesus and we'd share the gospel and feed people and they'd get saved. So. We're like, Hey, we're going to do this in San Francisco.
And at that time I'm talking a lot, Terry, if you want to jump in, you know? Yeah,
[00:24:19] Terry: let's, uh, let's, let's maybe pause there. Cause there's a, there's, there's a lot to unpack there. And man, what really stands out to me, Ben is, you know, people think of Bethel and, you know, they see how. how big and powerful and blessed that ministry is.
But, you know, as you're talking, like it really started in Weaverville, Weaverville, a town of 3000 people, like you said, kind of research and development, you guys are just trying things and, you know, seeing what sticks to the wall, so to speak. And you, you mentioned that, man, we, we went after healing, but we didn't see it for a while.
And if we did, it was like once a year, uh, eventually, eventually it sounded like there was a breakthrough there. Can you kind of tell us more about that? Like, you know, can you Kind of put your finger on, you know, what eventually helped turn the tide there. What, what helped there to become more of a, uh, evidence of, of the healing that it was just more commonplace for you guys.
[00:25:11] Ben: Yeah. Well, I think it was, what was crazy is we would go after it. We believe for it. We continued to pray. I think consistency in that was exercising a muscle. I like the way Bill puts it. You push against a thousand pound boulder for long enough when you turn around and push on a 500 pound boulder, all of a sudden it moves.
And I think some of that was going on, uh, Terry. And then as well, um, I think the biggest jump we saw was, um, going to places, you know, some of the vineyard movement that was seeing healing, um, you know, the Toronto blessing that was seeing breakthroughs and stuff, um, different places like that, Toronto blessing wasn't till later, but.
I think we had a humility that said, like, Hey, just because it's not happening here doesn't mean we're a failure, but we need to go to places that is happening and see what's going on. And what's crazy, Terry, was Bill went to a couple of places and they were saying the exact same things he was preaching.
They just saw different results. And when Bill didn't feel like he got something exponential or like God came to him on a flaming pie and hit him in the face and all the sudden lightning bolts flew from his fingertips, it wasn't stuff like that. He just came back and for some reason there was an impartation.
For some reason there was something different when he came back and we saw an acceleration. of healing. And then I can remember when we were kids, we read a little pink book called How to Heal the Sick by, I think it's Jim and Francis Hunter. And they had this deal where they, they saw so much breakthrough in growing out legs.
And they're like, I don't know why, but it seems like it's the easiest miracle to do. And so we started in our youth group, measuring everyone's legs. And we started praying and we saw legs grow out and we saw, you know, spines adjust and scoliosis be healed. And hip alignment and all kinds of backs being healed because of right alignment.
And it was like, Oh, even the kids can do this. That came, you know, that taught us there's no junior Holy Spirit. You know, we get the same level no matter what age you are. So, yeah, I think it was that research and development. It was being humble enough to say. Hey, you know, if it's not happening here and it's supposed to happen, let's go to a place where it is happening and see, um, and I know Bethel and Redding has become that for a lot of people and they've come and, and maybe they didn't have that, you know, fell on the ground, shake, laugh, cry, you know, they just were there.
It felt great, felt amazing, but they go home and all of a sudden they realize, hey, something's different. We caught something, you know, and I think that there's some things you can be taught, and then there's some things that only can be caught, and you can know all this stuff, but until you get into the place of experiencing it, it's like going to school, right, Terry?
We go and, you know, a lot of western, uh, uh, way of teaching is just all theoretical, very little experience. You can, you can know how to run a chainsaw. And you've, you've studied it and in and out, and you know how to put it, take it apart, put it back together, but man, until you get a chainsaw in your hand and almost cut your leg off, yeah, you don't know what a chain, how to use a chainsaw.
So...,
[00:29:14] Terry: right. Yeah. I work as a marriage and family therapist and in throughout both my undergraduate and master's degree, I think I had two classes where you actually practiced. Counseling people. The rest was you're reading books, you're writing papers. And it's, it's exactly like you're saying, Ben, it's just like, no, we need that experiential learning.
And yeah, I mean, what you said about, you know, people come into Reading to, to kind of get that, uh, impartation, so to speak, that's my wife and I, you know, we we've had a desire to go off after healing for so long and, you know, we went to the Randy Clark conference and we, we saw, you know, Hundreds upon hundreds of miracles and healing to take place and man, we've, we've come back.
And just in my practice as a therapist, I've had clients come in kind of complaining of certain things. And, uh, I've had three clients specifically. Complaining about certain physical ailments. I prayed for all three and Holy Spirit has healed all three. And yeah, it's incredible. And like you said, like if you don't see it where you're at, go where it's actually happening and then bring it back.
I mean, that it just stirred our faith that it elevated our faith through the roof. And so I love how you spoke to that, Ben. And you know, I'm curious, you mentioned your dad was a worship pastor. You got a couple of guitars hanging behind you. Do you yourself play guitar or sing?
[00:30:35] Ben: Yeah, I play guitar. Uh, you know, I cut my teeth, uh, you know, as a youth pastor, leading worship, playing guitar, playing bass.
Um, uh, me and Brian Johnson before Brian Johnson was Brian Johnson and Bethel Music was Bethel Music. I can remember him and I, uh, practicing singing and we'd, we'd sing old Brian Dirksen songs. We'd sing old, uh, oh, we liked Christian reggae back then too. Little Christafari and, um, and then, you know, old kind of rockers, Rez Band, Petra, all those guys, Mylon Lefevre and the Broken Heart Band.
You know, I'm a little older, I'm 50 now. But we, uh, we would have a boom box and we'd record ourselves singing. And then we play it back to hear how we sound so we can train our voice. And, and Brian just was a way better steward of that than I, I was. I went more towards the preaching, teaching vein. He went towards that worship vein.
My wife is also a piano player and led worship as well. So when we got married, it was on, you know, um, so now, now my daughter, uh, plays. guitar and piano. She leads worship. She's doing her second year school of ministry. My middle daughter Kira and all of our family worship is a core of who we are. And even if you're not a worship leader, uh, you're kind of your own worship leader, right?
You get to lead the worship in your own heart. I feel like our family has a little bit of a Davidic call to call people to worship God in spirit and in truth. And it's, it's super important. So yeah, we love it. Are you a musician too?
[00:32:31] Terry: Uh, I play drums. I, I, I've always wanted to play guitar, but, uh, I just never had the patience to sit down and learn.
Drumming just always came naturally to me. So I've just stuck with what works.
[00:32:43] Ben: That's awesome. And you got the long hair for it too. So that's good.
[00:32:47] Terry: Right. Right. You were talking about your kids, Ben. And I was curious again, being a therapist, I'm always, you know, kind of looking at family dynamics. And you mentioned that you're, you're kind of a middle child.
And, you know, we always hear the stories of the middle child feeling like they were neglected or left behind or, you know, whatever the case was. And, you know, your dynamic is interesting too, because you got a, an older sister, a younger sister, and then twins. So my mind goes to the twins had each other.
Your sisters had each other. Yeah. And then there was you. And so what was that like, Ben, just, you know, with those family dynamics of, of being the middle son in your
family?
[00:33:25] Ben: Well, you, you, you hit on it. You, you nailed it as a marriage and family therapist. You're, you're doing therapy on me already. Yeah. Um, no, I, it was, it was.
It was a bit lonely. It was a bit lonely for me. I had good friends so that that helped out. But yeah, in the household when we all got in a fight, I was on my own, you know, and, uh, I was the oldest son. So, um, a lot of times when my parents got older, I was the kind of boss of the house when, My mom and dad go on a date and everything.
Um, so it, it, it, it was kind of me against the rest of them a little bit, but I think one thing it did for me, I had some times where I felt super lonely when I was young and I'm a, uh, what we call a feeler. And back then there was no such thing as that. We didn't have a language around, uh, people who are, super sensitive to environments.
And, you know, I don't know if there's, I know in psychology it's, it's a certain study and it actually relegates the spiritual side of things out, out, you know, uh, like they're not real. So, but they are real. And I was, I was sensing them. I was feeling them. I was feeling the people dynamics too. And sensing those, there was a few times where I would pack all my stuff up, Terry, uh, in a backpack, throw a little food in there and I'd run away for the day.
And then I'd come back and I'd come back at dinner. Cause I was hungry. My no one knew I was gone. And I'm like, see, they don't even care. You know, I'd cry myself for a day away because I just felt lonely. But I think those times were also a time where I developed a, a deep sense of communion with the Spirit of God and a conversational relationship with Him, which is tied into the prophetic.
And, you know, I lived in a small mountain town, so God speaks to me through His creation, you know, Romans 1, it says, God's invisible attributes, His divine nature, and His eternal power can be clearly seen through what He's created. And I started learning the language. of metaphoric thinking and signs and symbols in that time.
But we have a close family. We, I thought, I think we got along pretty good. You know, it was funny cause I was, I was the older brother. So when my brothers got in trouble and mom was upset and going to spank my brothers, it was Ben, get in here and hold your brothers down so I can spank them. So, yeah, you know, that's back when even at school we had.
Uh, corporal punishment and you'd get spanked. They had this big old paddle you get whacked with. We all turned out pretty good though.
[00:36:38] Terry: Yeah. Right. Yeah. Yeah. And, and, and so you're, you're talking about just kind of feeling, you know, like the, the loner in the family at times, what was school like for you, Ben?
Like was school a place where. Um, you know, that, that you looked forward to going to, because, you know, you had friends, maybe you had people that you could relate to and felt like support by, or was school a place of struggle for you? What was that
like?
[00:37:03] Ben: School was a real place of struggle all the way to probably till seventh and eighth grade.
Uh, for me, I had started school, public school and got pulled out of public school and went to a little tiny private school. I got pulled out in, I think, first grade and, uh, and we go to this tiny, uh, uh, private school at the Nazarene church in town. And there's probably 30 of us total at school from, from first grade to eighth grade.
And I was a little nerd at the time, buzzed hair, big old glasses. And so I, I got, I got my butt handed to me quite a bit and got picked on a little bit, um, there. So it was, it was a weird thing. And then I came back to, and the, and during that time as well, I skipped. Uh, I got held back one year. Uh, my mom was like, Oh, you just need to stay home with mom for a year.
And then, uh, I always felt like I was behind. So one of my teachers, I think in second or third grade, she's like, if you'll do, because it was a mixed classroom, if you'll do both the work of second grade and third grade at the same time, you'll get to skip up with your, your class. Well, they never told my parents this.
Until the end of the year when I had finished everything. And so I caught back up fifth grade. I go back to public school and that was, that was good, but bad. I started getting a few friends, but I was out for so long and in Christian circles, different than public school took me a couple of years and.
And then, you know, start hitting puberty, start getting a little better athletically, uh, start playing some, some basketball and some other sports, and then really spring up my freshman year in high school, uh, did football, uh, wrestling, and then made the varsity baseball team my freshman year. And really high school was the jam for me.
I felt like I hit my my stride. Uh, you know, I didn't look like a nerd anymore. I had some muscles on my body. I could perform in sports. You know, had a few girlfriends throughout high school as well and just was popular. You know, I was, uh, an all American scholar athlete. Uh, had some pretty big things, you know, uh, in.
I was all league football, all league wrestling, all league baseball. We were state champs in baseball. Um, yeah, just section champs in, in, in wrestling. So, you know, we felt good. Finally got team sports, really grew with, with teams of people and, and that actually developed my leadership skills because then I became, you know, captain of our teams.
Um, even at a young age, sophomore, I was captain of our best wrestling teams. And so, you know, learned how to lead people older than me as well. And I was, I was a workhorse in high school. Did really good with grades too. Didn't have to work very hard and then went away to Bible college. Had fun there too.,
[00:41:04] Terry: that's awesome. How, like you said, you feel like you really kind of came into your own during those high school years. What was your relationship with God like during that time? Ben, obviously like it, obviously you grew up always. Knowing the Lord, it sounds like, I mean, from day one, like you were, you were in the church.
And so often those teenage years can be, uh, I mean, difficult for all of us, whether you're a Christian or not. And like you said, hitting the puberty bug and going through all these changes, you know, start to maybe challenge, uh, Challenge our parents with, with certain things and just rules, we become rebellious.
What was your walk with the Lord like during those teenage years?
[00:41:39] Ben: Well, yeah, my teenage years, man, I, I, I super loved Jesus and I had a great youth group. Bob Johnson was my youth pastor. Actually. We didn't have youth group until I was in high school and there was no such thing. I had never heard of youth group.
Uh, it was just like we were in big church all the time, but, uh, we finally had youth group. We started doing missions, trips, missions to Mexico, Tijuana, Mexico, building houses, uh, building orphanage stuff, doing stuff like that. So I think that anchored me and I had a great relationship. with my youth pastor, Bob and his wife, Casey.
And that felt like I just had someone running with me who were older than me, but believed in me. That makes a massive, massive difference. Now, you know, I got in trouble a few times. I can remember Trying to be cool. And I had my, uh, black Levi's jacket. And I remember my friend had some condoms. And so I was like, Oh, it's cool to carry a condom.
So I put a condom in my jacket. I wasn't having sex. With my girlfriend or anything, um, but I thought it was cool, so I put that in my jacket, and then, my parents in our house didn't allow, uh, any secular music, but, you know, back then, there was a band called NXS, And, uh, I N X S, N X S, and they had a song called Devil Inside.
And, but I had this tape, this N X S tape, in my other pocket, just cause I thought it was cool, it was awesome music and everything, and I was You know, I was into the skater scene as well in 7th and 8th grade and freshman year, and I used to ride half pipes and do that kind of stuff. And so I come home and my mom goes to clean my jacket and she finds this stuff and she thinks I'm a heathen, you know, I'm like the worst guy in the world.
And I'm like, no, you know. It was just to be cool. I wanted to carry this stuff. So those are the kinds of things that I, I did. I didn't really get in trouble in high school. And, uh, you know, even out of, uh, in university, it was, uh, Christian University. I. I was a pretty, pretty great leader there. Felt a real call to God.
We actually started a Christian celebration day at Santa Cruz Beach Boardwalk because they had them at the big amusement parks, but they never had one of the beach boardwalks. So a bunch of the crew that I worked with started a Christian celebration day there, and we had a bunch of Christian artists come in and that was the very first time I was ever an emcee.
And so we did the whole deal. And I think that got me into public speaking and, and doing some of that stuff and, and then straight out of university going into, you know, planting a church, doing that kind of stuff. I got married, I met my wife, Heather at that time, Terry, and, uh, she, I didn't know, but she wasn't.
She was a backslidden believer who had just come back into Reading for the, the summer to work, uh, and stay at her uncle's house, and, uh, he was part of our church, and she was going to University of Reno, Nevada, and just Had lost her way, you know, drinking, her parents got divorced young, and, uh, got into relationships with guys that was just bad news, and she was hoping to kind of get her life right, and I was doing a, a youth camp, I was leading, I was the activities director, and we needed one more woman counselor, and I met her this night, I got a note on my car, actually, Terry, this is funny, I get a note on my car that says, Hey, come to our house and meet your future wife and have root beer floats.
And that was from Bob and Casey Johnson, uh, saying, you know, that, and I'm like, yeah, whatever, but I love root beer floats. So I go to their house, I'm like, I'm in. And if the girl's cute, then that's great. You know, right. I'll talk double one. Yeah. So we get there and all of a sudden this lady comes to the door and it's, it's my wife and, and before my wife is Heather and.
I can remember looking at her and I thought, man, she's got kissable lips, but she's a little too snooty for me. She's like, she seems a little uppity. And, uh, so we had a little bit of a conversation. I needed one more counselor. And so, um, I asked her if she'd come be a counselor. And, uh, a week later we were engaged to be married.
Wow. So I wouldn't suggest that actually the first night of the camp, um, I gave an altar call and she was the first one at the altar. She's supposed to be the camp counselor at the Christian camp, but she was the first one and she really dedicated her life to Jesus. And I think, you know, if you ask Heather, she needed that, she needed that kind of quick turnaround.
Cause if she would have gone back to Reno, she would have got back into those. She said, I would have wound up pregnant out of marriage and just have a rough life. And so, yeah, I would say our first year of marriage was pretty intense. Uh, we didn't know each other. Um, coming from some, some major brokenness and some stuff, we, we, we fought a lot and we're learning a lot.
And back then, I don't think we have the tools that we have nowadays. And we don't have the normal like, Hey, go get help. It was like, Hey, just put on a face. You're okay. So we did that. We kind of figured it out. Went through some things and it's pretty kind of rough, but kind of figured it out and then moved to the San Francisco Bay Area.
I had to get my contractor's license. To pay for us to do full time ministry. So I'm doing 40, 50 hours a week construction, Terry. And then I'm doing another 30, 40 hours a week ministry. And we just had our son and we're just about to have our, our first daughter Kira, and we don't have time. You know, I have no time for my family.
So I finally said, Hey, I'm done. I'm done with full time vocational ministry. I'm just gonna go, um, you know, be a part of a local church and build homes. So we did that for a few years. And when the market crashed in, in 2007, 2008, 2009 in the Bay Area, I had three homes in inventory. I was doing spec homes, construction, doing really well.
I lost close to a million dollars in three months. And we couldn't get rid of the houses. We had to sell them off at the cheap. I had to sell my, my house I built for my wife and I and try and rebuild and like, what are we going to do? And my wife was, uh, my mom was the vice principal. At the Bethel Christian school, and we would hear these stories about what God was doing with the young kids.
And I said, well, maybe we need to go back and to reading and put our kids in that school. And so we did that. And for a year, I commuted back and forth to the Bay Area. to finish up contracting and just try and keep our head above water. I did that for a year and then I got a call, uh, from a lady named Sherry Silk.
Uh, Danny and Sherry Silk. Sherry Silk said, Hey, we want to talk to you about school of ministry. And I thought, Man, I'd love to do your School of Supernatural Ministry, but I just, I've got to support my family and I'm in so much debt, there's no way I could do that. And so they call me in and they start asking me questions, Terry, and I think, this is the weirdest school interview I've ever been to.
And two weeks later, Chris Ballatin calls me in his office and says, Hey, will you be a Revival Group pastor? in our school of ministry. And that meant making about eight times less than I could in construction. Um, And Chris looks at my wife, Heather, and says, Heather, you get to choose, which was she needed, you know, she needed to have that, that the power of that choice.
And really, it was going to cost her if we did this, you know, and the family and she would have to work as well. And about that time was where we said, Yeah, it feels like, ah, let's do this. And she got into professional photography at that time. And so she started her photography career. I'm in school of ministry and we start going this way.
We start kind of growing apart from each other. Now, here's the horrible thing, right, Terry? No one else ever does this, especially not any of our listeners. Um, compare your marriage to everyone else's marriage, rather than listening to the voice of the Holy Spirit that says you're disconnected. You know, oh, well, we don't do that.
Well, we don't argue like that. Well, you know, we go on a date once in a while. And we continued to grow distant and, um, and at that point I grew, uh, closer to a lady that I was working with and I started getting needs met in this relationship that I wasn't getting met at home. And Long story short, we, you know, that, that progresses.
It's like pebble. I call it pebbles in your garden where the enemy throws a pebble of compromise in your garden. And you're like, Hey, it's not a big deal. It's not sin. You know, I'm dealing with myself. I'm okay. I'm good. The relationship's fine. You know, I'm, I'm convincing a lot. Meanwhile, I'm living in the dark.
And so the enemy is always faithful to continue to throw pebbles if we don't deal with compromise. And one day I looked down and there's a whole pathway in my garden and I'm like, what's this? And I walk on the pathway and I look up and I realized I'm not in my garden anymore and I'm in full blown sin.
And. I, I don't say I fell into an affair. I chose this. And so two separate times of connection with this lady, physical connections. Um, you know, I call it an affair. It wasn't full blown sex, but It might as well have been. I violated my relationship with my wife, um, with my family, with my ministry, with everything.
And, uh, yeah, I remember Jason Vallotton was preaching a message on a Friday night about living in the light. And I'm like, Ben, you're not living in the light. You're living in the dark and you're living a lie. And my wife all the while is feeling something. She knows something's wrong. She just couldn't pinpoint it.
And that night I go to my wife. Well, that day I, or the next Monday I go and talk to Jason and Mark, uh, my leaders in the school of ministry, tell them what's going on, call my dad, say, come pick up our kids. I need to talk to my wife and tell my wife. She takes her ring off and throws it at me. And goes off and now we're in this huge mess and I'm like, okay, I've ruined my life with my wife.
I'm on the road to divorce. Uh, I've ruined my relationship with my kids. My son's 10 years old at the time. Kira's. Uh, uh, at that time, like seven Maddie's five. Um, and I'm like, I've blown this up. I've blown up ministry. I'm going to have to go get a job construction now. Cause there's no way they're going to keep me.
And so I just tell them all and what was amazing that first night she didn't. Make me leave. She said I could stay and even sleep in her own bed. But man, that was how that was the worst. And we went on a journey. And, um, I can remember Jason telling Heather at one point, hey, at least give it 3 months. Um, you know, give it three months and, and I can remember telling the church and telling everyone and what, what I had done and, and my heart to clean up my mess and, and just be real.
I wanted to own a hundred percent of me. I wasn't making excuses why, how, or blaming anyone. It's just like, Hey, I need to figure out a hundred percent. What did I do? How did I get to this place? There's a bunch of things. So I started counseling the church. Let me keep my job. Well, that's crazy. Um, now I wasn't pastoring.
I was an over glorified grader of papers. I was sitting in the school of ministry every day. I can remember the day they took my name tag off as a revival group pastor. and put someone else's name up. And then I was just in the room and, and, uh, I can remember Dan Fairley coming to me at one point and saying, Hey, you got to ask yourself, are you cut out for ministry?
Can you handle it? You're anointed, you're called, but can you handle it? And some people can't handle ministry like the position it puts you in. with relationships and with intimacy and with details in people's lives. It's like this is a dangerous spot and you got to really ask yourself. Can you handle it?
I know you're called. I know you're anointed, but I don't know if you can handle it. I was like, oh Yeah, that's true. And I was at the point where I was like, my wife's leaving me. Danny Silk says, hey What's it look like to come back to ministry? I said, what the heck are you talking about? I'm not coming back.
Like I'm going through a divorce. My wife's going to leave me. And he says, you know, my wife decides she wants to fight for our marriage and to stay. And I think part of that was because I was owning a hundred percent of me. And I wanted to make it right. We went after it at one point. I can remember she was ready to leave.
We ran out of taco seasoning. One, one of these times you'll have to hear her side of the story, uh, Carrie, but she's, she goes like, Hey, we ran out of taco seasoning. I'm making tacos tonight. Go to the store and get tacos. She gets an email when I'm gone that says you need to leave your husband from an old friend and it's like, you need to go, you need to get out of this.
And she's like, I can do it. I can just leave right now. And then she hears the voice of the Holy Spirit that says, I choose us. And she says it out loud three times. I choose us. I choose us. I choose us. And it broke and we made the choice to fight. I made the choice to clean up a mess and go a hundred percent after wholeness.
So we were going to counseling. I was going twice a week. to counseling once with her, once by myself, I gave my counselor free reign to tell all of my leaders what was going on, what he was counseling me and where I was at because I wanted to live in the light. I wanted to live real and I wanted to get whole and I wanted to make sure What had happened never happened again.
And I, I knew I was not the man I was supposed to be or the husband or the father. And so we got real with our kids. We told our kids age appropriate, right? I was honest with our kids and we thought, Oh, they're going to need 50 million sozo's and counseling sessions. And Danny always told us, no, if you'll just be real with your process, it'll be the counseling your kids need.
And it was for them. It was, it was beautiful. And our kids worked through it. I can remember a point, Terry, where my wife got this brilliant idea from the Holy Spirit. We're going to play the I feel game. We're driving in the car and it was just like, I feel, and, and the kids were like, what's the I feel game?
And my wife says, well, I feel sad and hurt because of what dad did. And the girls are like, I feel happy because the sun's out, you know, their brains are, I feel happy because I have my dolly. And Connor's not saying anything, my, my oldest, and we're dropping him off at a friend's house to stay the night, and we park in front of the friend's house, and my son says something.
It was the most devastating thing I've ever heard in my life. He said, I feel like I don't have a dad anymore. And it was the most painful, beautiful moment because it was painful in the fact that he said that, and I had created that, but it was awesome, Terry, because he was telling the truth. And he was sharing his emotions.
And, uh, that put us on a journey. Fast forward to the end of that year and through the process of continual counseling, uh, through the process of, I was meeting with students on a regular basis. listening to how I destroyed their life, how I hurt them, how I made a mess. And most of it was, you know, their dad had done that.
Their pastor had done that. Their mom had done that. Some leader had done that or they had been the one in that and they were venting their pain. Most of it wasn't what I had caused. It was a trigger for a pain they had already had, you know. But one of the things that caused in me was owning 100 percent of my mess.
And the effects that it had on in an environment and, uh, it wound up getting streamed when we went in front of the school to tell them what happened that I'm stepping down and repent and it accidentally got streamed all over the world. But, um, the restoration has gone far beyond that as well. And it's been powerful.
We have an incredible marriage. We have incredibly healthy Children and we help people who have blown up their marriage. I learned a lot in that process. I learned, uh, you know, I need to live in the light, even in a place where you think you have. It's Bethel Church, right? This is a perfect spot. Why would anything like that ever happen?
Well, everyone has Anytime there's a free environment, it takes responsibility. And I have to be responsible for my own life and living in the light. And I was hiding and I had learned that in ministry to hide things. You got to be perfect. You got to do it. All right. I didn't have enough men in my life.
My wife would always say, Hey, you need more friends. I'm like, I got friends, but baby, I got you and I've got the kids. That's all I need. I didn't know she was actually saying, I can't handle the weight of being everything to you. Yeah. And, and see, that's what happens a lot of times. People, we think we've got a healthy marriage because the husband and wife spend all of their time together, non stop.
They're all we need. No, no, no. God won't even do that for us. He's like, no, I'm going to reserve portions of myself only to be revealed in Terry. So I, I, I only going to get real health if I, I, I pull on Terry. And then I get the fullness of God. And so I didn't realize I was putting a weight on my wife that was actually pushing her further away, not actually put.
And then we were both content in our stuff, but we had needs. And we're just shutting down our needs and they were going to get met some way. We're going to self medicate somehow to get our needs met. And if we don't have a healthy outlets for those. And so that was me. I had to work a lot through that.
And that was in, uh, 2010, you know, 14 years later, uh, we have, uh, a real thriving marriage, uh, super whole, uh, the redemption of life and ministry. I mean, I'm way beyond where I was back then in life and ministry, which is a rarity in ministry. Yeah. And it, it, you know, it takes a community to do that and it also takes a person to make some choices and it takes a husband and wife to both make choices.
My wife decided, Terry, somewhere in that process, she says, I'm going to go get counseling too. And, and I'm like, why is that? She's like, well, I contributed to our disconnection. I, I didn't cause you to do, you make your choice. You made your choice. And, but I know I made choices that contributed to our disconnection and I need to make sure I get healthy too.
And she didn't operate as a victim and she didn't hold that over my head. And because of that, we have a super healthy marriage. And I think by me owning me and going after it tenaciously and pursuing my wife and her heart and really building up health.
She went after it too, and we got super healthy, and our kids got super healthy in the process. It was awesome. So there's that big mess we were talking about earlier.
[01:05:11] Terry: Yeah. Big mess, but an even bigger redemption, which is really the takeaway that I hope everyone, uh, has with this. And, you know, Ben, as you were talking, I, I, I couldn't help but think back to your childhood.
You know, you said there's a lot of time that you felt lonely and here you are, you know, you make this mess. You know, your wife is upset with you ministry like you have to step down and, and I just imagine just you may be feeling alone in that time. And so I'm curious, like, what was that like, especially early on as, as, as it came out as you were taking ownership, um, maybe feeling alone, dealing with the shame, where was God and all that?
Like, what did your relationship with him look like? What was he speaking to you during that season? Yeah.
[01:06:00] Ben: Yeah. Um, well. It was lonely. The one thing I had, Terry, that was super important, was a counselor. Um, because I was in a work season, I was even lonely from my wife. You're not getting intimacy the same way, um, you know, even the conversations you're having isn't always loving and connected.
It's working. It's a work season. It's a grind season. I'm, I'm no longer getting the connection. As much as I was in my work setting as well, and so I'm, I'm having to pursue connection. I started meeting with three guys on a regular basis. I said, and this is not a mentorship. This is us. We're doing life together.
We're going to be real. We're going to be honest. We're going to be transparent. We're going to do life together. We're going to hold each other accountable. We're going to call each other up higher. We're going to do all those different things. So that was. That was really, really important. And then, um, and then my counselor, I knew I had my anchor twice a week.
I'm, I'm gonna get anchored. I'm gonna get, um, some health. I'm gonna get encouragement that I need during that time. And that really helped as well as my wife and I started bonding together more, I started learning what it was to get healthy connection outside in other areas. I started opening up in my life in deeper ways, and I start, started getting needs met that I didn't even know I had.
I'm like, oh wow, I need this. Oh wow, this feels good. So consistently having that kind of stuff. I've got a group of men that I hang with, um, we, we do these special hangs quite, quite often and, and then in, in life and ministry, we're running with each other a lot, but we're having deep conversations where we're, we're really.
Getting some good stuff and you know, there's a bunch of things that contributed that You know, I don't know how raw we want to get but even at a young age. I Had some sexual abuse from a babysitter as well I won't get into the details of that but you know, I learned that when you're in trouble Um, sexual comfort was really important.
And I, and like, I, so whenever I felt, um, stress, whenever I felt, um, you know, fear or I'm in trouble or things are, I'm like, Oh, I need, I need comfort. I need intimacy, really. But there was a perverted version of that. And there was a lot of things throughout life that caused me, you know, be hidden. You know, that, they're not excuses, they're just contributors.
Choice, you know, choice is my choice, you know. It doesn't matter what I faced in life, I'm not a victim to my life. I made choices, and those were horrible choices, and, but at least I made some healthy choices afterwards to figure out all the stuff that contributed that. So it would never happen again. And that was, you know, the meetings with individuals that you, you've ruined my life.
You've blown, you know, you hurt me. You're what you did and all this. I'd be like, yes, I did this. Here's my mess. Is there anything else I did that maybe hurt you that I don't know of? Here's what I'm doing to clean up my mess. Here's my relationship with my family. Here's what I'm doing to make sure it never happens again.
Here's my healthy structures in life, and I got real healthy. I, uh, I learned a lot in those sessions.
[01:10:15] Terry: Yeah, I bet. I bet. You know, and again, what stands out to me is like you said, you guys got engaged after a week of knowing each other and, you know, got married young and just started doing life together.
And would it be fair to say, Ben, that going through what you guys went through? Did it give you? a time and an opportunity to actually really get to know each other.
[01:10:43] Ben: Uh, back then, no, it gave us no time to get to know each other. It gave us no time to understand each other's needs. Uh, and we're busy working, you know, we're trying to make ends meet, you know, uh, it was stressful as you know, a young married couple and she had just come out of Uh, some pretty big unhealthy life circumstances and there's some real trauma in there too.
Some real pain and then even, you know, her, the, the divorce of her parents and some, some things in there. So yeah, I don't think we had that. I wouldn't suggest. For people to get married after four days, not knowing each other. I love the tools we have nowadays with, um, some of the pre marriage stuff that we can do, healthy relationships, stuff that's available.
I love after marriage stuff. I, I think people should have post marriage counseling more than they should have pre marriage counseling. And I know my wife and I, whenever we perform weddings for someone and we're doing pre marriage counseling, we do at least four sessions their first year of post marriage counseling.
Because I think that's where the, that, that's where you're in it, right? You read all the books about marriage. You know all the stuff theoretically. Well, you haven't practiced it. Go practice it. And then this, this has some coaching. So we needed that. And so we've been, uh, yeah, we've had, uh, some hard, hard knocks.
We've had the school of hard knocks, really, of learning each other, learning each other's needs growing. And we're not the same people. That we married. Praise God. Yeah. We're not, you know,
[01:12:40] Terry: yeah. And, and I just see again, Romans 8 28, all things work together for the good of those that love Christ Jesus. Um, you know, kind of, kind of like what I was saying there.
Yeah. You didn't have that time at the beginning of the relationship to really get to know each other because you just went into life. But through this hell that you guys worked, that, that you guys went through, it sounds like you did now have that opportunity to really get to know each other, to really understand each other.
Yeah. Like what, what are, what are our needs? How do we fulfill them? How, how do we feel loved? And so, uh, again, I, I hate that you guys had to go through it, but I'm, I, I bet, but I, I, again, I'm just always amazed at the faithfulness and the goodness of God, even in situations like that. And Ben, one of the biggest questions that I get asked as a therapist, when I'm working with couples in similar situations as you and Heather were, is how do you rebuild trust?
And so I want to pick your brain. How did you and Heather rebuild trust in your marriage?
[01:13:38] Ben: Yeah, I would say this, uh, Forgiveness is easy, trust is hard. Now, what I mean by that is this, Forgiveness is a choice that we don't, uh, Unless you don't want to go to heaven, you don't have a choice, you have to forgive.
And that means I can say, I forgive you, and choose to forgive you, and apply forgiveness. The problem is we confuse trust and forgiveness. And so people keep having to go back and forth. Saying, oh, I forgive you again. I forgive you again. I forgive you again. I forgive you again. No, no. You're actually working on trust.
Not forgiveness. Forgiveness you, you gave. Now let's work on the trust. And Heather had to crack windows of trust. You know, she wasn't just opening the door to that. And I had to create avenues of that. That meant, you know. When we first started in this journey, she needed to know where I was at at every given time.
So, uh, we have this app, uh, That we use for our kids, too, when they were younger, um, called, uh, Life360. I call it Stalker 365, because you can see where they're at. It's a great tool, but I'm like, baby, I'll put it on my phone so you can see where I'm actually at. Um, I made a deal that if I'm going to meet with women, I'm going to have another woman in the room, uh, for the most part, unless it's a public setting, but for, you know, probably seven, eight years, I would never meet with a woman one on one.
I just would have another person, not because I was unhealthy, but because I was actually really healthy and I could have. Full safety in conversations and, and, and she, I would know that woman can't grab more than she should and I can't grab more than I should. So, I, I, I think those things continued to build trust and you build that over time.
Uh, there was certain things where she'd get feedback from our counselors and my counselor and that helped her trust. Hey, is he really working on this? It seems like he is over here, but I don't know. She would come into the school environment and see me sitting there and everyone looking at me and me having to go through, through a journey past shame and guilt, you know, in that thing.
And she realizes, Oh, he is working on himself. He, he is feeling the weight of He has to see everyone every day. You know, I see one, she sees one or two people. I see hundreds if not thousands a day who know my mess. And I'm writing it with the, in the middle of them. So, that, that gained trust. Um, as her, my leaders, uh, grew trust, they gave feedback to Heather.
And, and that gave trust. As they, she saw me pursue her, it increased her trust. She saw me be able to deal with her freak outs, without freaking out. Without protecting or accusing, without coming back, just being okay to be attacked. Yeah, I created that mess. Yeah, I'm sorry you feel that way. Yeah, I can see how you feel that.
And even sometimes when travel started picking up again for, for me, uh, coming out of that, you know, that was hard, you know, can I trust this? What, what if, what if you're alone with a lady? What if, you know, and so I just be really clear Uh, as transparent as I could be career one time, uh, one of my team, uh, posted another lady on my Instagram about something, uh, some mission that she was doing.
And I'm like, yeah, we'll support her. Well, my wife didn't know about it and I'm doing a ministry trip and she calls freaking out. Who's this woman? Why are you friends with her? I'm like, I don't know her. My team actually said we should promote her. So, you know, you gotta be okay with those moments of like.
There's feelings there. Um, I think you need coaches. If you're trying to gain trust with someone who broke trust with you, you need coaches with you. You need people to actually speak rational, because your mind sometimes is irrational. And it's not true. You can feel like it's true. And, and there's, there's a person called the accuser.
You're right. The, the enemy of the saints who's always accusing and would love us to connect with that kind of thing all the time. Now, so there's a lot of different ways that I was built. I was building trust by my investment in our own kids. By me making sure they were healthy. That was gaining trust, uh, with my wife.
So there was, yeah, just a myriad of things that, uh, you know, trust was the hard one. Trust. Yeah. I wait, I had people who would call me seven years after and say, finally I can trust you. I've been watching you this whole time. Finally, I can forgive. Some of them were withholding forgiveness that long. Okay, now I can forgive you, because I've been watching you.
I didn't know they were watching, but they were watching. And so, some people, they need time. They may need longer time before they crack open a window of trust. Uh, you know, it's, it's just, yeah, it's a big deal. Yeah.
[01:19:47] Terry: Well, thank you for speaking to that. I, I think that's, uh, again, a huge issue in, in marriages.
And I think it really comes down to as well as like, you have to want to trust your partner. And that includes like, you have to like actually look for the things they're doing that shows that they can be trusted again. And, um, you know, that's the process too, with that person being hurt and angry and you don't want to do that.
But, you know, like, like you said, it comes down to forgiveness and then, you know, we can go from there. And, you know, Ben, like you said, you eventually got restored back to your position. And since then, even beyond that, how long did that take? Like, was there like a specific timeframe that it took for you to kind of be restored back
into the ministry?
[01:20:28] Ben: So it was, it was, uh, over a year before I came in back into a pastoral role. I think that was healthy. I think that was important. And then even then, the very first day of my first revival group, these are people who I'm gonna lead for the year, my wife and I told them what we've been through and gave them an option.
If you want to go to another revival group, We can put you in another revival group. We just want you to know where, where we're at and where we came from. And we did that for probably three or four years. Um, uh, every first revival group, because, uh, we wanted them to feel like they were part of our process, part of our testimony.
Not one person left the revival groups. They're like, this is the biggest testimony. I've ever heard in church. So this is, I thought it was coming for healings. And seeing people, someone healed of cancer or something like that, I thought that would be big, but this is the biggest miracle. And so, yeah, it's, it's, uh, it's, uh, it takes time.
And then even then I was still gaining trust with my environment. So I was a revival group pastor for another, uh, four or five more years and then became the prophetic ministries director at Bethel Church. And, uh, just recently promoted another lady as the director. I'm the overseer of prophetic ministry.
Um, I'm on the senior leadership team at Bethel Church. As well as the church leadership team. Uh, I'm one of the apostolic exporters of our church. So I travel the world and do all those things. So yeah, I'm, I'm, I'm whole, I'm healthy and, uh, and my family is whole and healthy and it is that testimony of redemption.
You know, did, did, was Jesus's broken body and blood sufficient? You know, was his resurrection sufficient for all sins or just one sin? And uh, I, I like that, you know, we, we do finally have one or two testimonies in church settings now where there's restoration and even where there's some major falls and pains right now.
You know, the hope is that all parties included in any of this kind of stuff, they would get healed. Uh, they would be fully restored that God would do a miracle in their life, you know? So it's a big deal. It's a big deal.
[01:23:22] Terry: Amen. Yeah. And if, if, if God can do it for you and Heather, he can do it for anybody.
He's the same yesterday, today, and forever. Right. And, uh, I, I so admire both you and Heather for being willing to, you know, the old cliche saying, right, take this mess and turn it into your message. Um, because it's. It's obviously speaking to people and it's bringing hope, you know, to, to dead marriages.
It's helping to bring them back to life. And, uh, it's, it's absolutely incredible what the Lord has done with you guys. And like you said, Ben, I mean, that's, that's a big testimony, but you have other testimonies. And so I just want to, you know, we can kind of do rapid fire here. What are some other, um, just, you know, cool testimonies that God has done with you?
Maybe even since that, that whole mess, how has God shown up in your life?
[01:24:10] Ben: Yeah, well, uh, you know, I, I think some of the main ways he showed up is, you know, there's the, there's the whole restoration portion, but my, my life and my heart and my wife and I's. Life is, is to be ministers, is to, to love people, to love our city, to, to love the world and, and to invest in that.
And we've seen, oh, incredible miracles. We've seen cancer healed, uh, multiple times through ministry. We've seen marriages restored through our testimony. We've seen, um, God answer so many prophetic words over our lives, over individuals lives. You know, uh, Terry, I get to travel all over the world and we're seeing signs and wonders and miracles in incredible ways.
I just got back from Moscow. Um, just, just, uh, after Christmas and, uh, it was incredible. The miracles, the healings that were there, even, uh, the signs and wonders, uh, there's plainclothes police officer in one of our meetings who fell out into the, under the power of God. And he's all in black and he's covered in sparkle.
I don't know what it is, but he's just covered in it. Uh, glory dust, whatever you want to call it. Another person falls out in the back, same thing, covered in this stuff. Another person over here, covered in the stuff. It starts going in the air. And at that point, I'm like, I'm not preaching tonight. You know, when Moses saw the burning bush, everyone turned aside and went after it.
And so, it was like dogpiles of glory in the room, and these Russians were just, were going crazy. What God's doing in Germany. Pretty amazing. Um, the investments we've made in there is super fun. Um, you know, I, I get to train and equip in the prophetic all over the place. Uh, we train, uh, our BSSM students and we've had, uh, Thousands and thousands of students, uh, trained and equipped in revival, sending them out all over the world.
Uh, these are all fun portions, you know, where it has the Armstrong fingerprints on it and it's fun. We just, uh, launched armstrongministries. com. We just launched our first, you know, the dream journal, our first work there, and I'm just about done with a deep dive in dream interpretation. It's a whole book that will even take you further in Terry.
Uh, we're a dreaming family. So our family, uh, we have a heritage of dreamers and Connor, Kira and Madison are all dreamers. They're all great at dream interpretation. Um, they all love Jesus. Our daughters, both are engaged to get married and, uh, both are getting married this year, May 18th and October 5th.
So pray for me, uh, that I sell a lot of books. Uh, but you know, our heart behind the dream journal is to activate a gift, a language of God that many people don't know is available. And I want people to understand, you know, in there we try and simplify the process, right? The four main types of dreams, the four lenses of interpretation.
And then give them a road map, a real map on how to interpret your dreams and how to get in with this partner with the Holy Spirit and understand standing context and the emotion in the dream and your life and personal experience. And I love it because it's activating people. It's also causing stewardship.
of our dreams. God cares about our life. He cares about what we're living in right now, and he cares about our future. And sometimes you have dreams that are for now or situation you're facing right now and what you're facing in the future. And if we're honest, if we pay attention to dreams, it tells us a lot emotionally to tells us about our soul.
It tells us about our body. It tells us about our spirit. And I think people who pay attention to their dreams Are, uh, their emotional, well, kind of their EQ is quite a bit higher if they'll pay attention. So, I, I, I don't like say, well, I don't know how I feel. I'm like, no, you're just not willing to look.
So let's look into these and dreams are a portion of that. And then also it's the idea of a heritage. So I'm hoping that people fill up the dream journal with dreams and they don't just chuck it and get a new journal and fill it up again because some of your dreams may talk about the future way in the future.
And it may actually be something that Some people, Terry, hope you pass yours down to the next generation, because who knows if you might not be having the dreams for a generation you'll never see. As an inheritance. So there's a, uh, a guy in the Bible. He's an unknown prophet who prophesies about a king named Josiah, and he prophesies about this king over 300 years before the king shows up and then King Josiah reads this prophecy about a guy, his name with his name, and it gives him a strategy for his kingship.
What if the dreams were having right now? Or an invention for a problem our great great great great great grandchild faces and you have it in your dream journal You know, that's that's that's my jam. Like I'm looking for a heritage of dreamers Remember Joseph in the Old Testament. He shares this in his dream with his brothers and his mom and dad They know exactly what it means They're offended by it.
Why? Because this was a family of dreamers. So we can, we can impart this to, to everyone. I know in, in counseling and marriage and family therapy, dreams are a big deal. And, uh, they show a lot of stuff, especially with people in trauma. And what I've seen that's really cool, Terry, is I've seen a dream, a right dream interpretation catalyze 20 years of counseling.
And all of a sudden it comes together and wholeness and healing comes in a moment. And I think part of that is because a prophetic word, if I give you a prophetic word, it's external, it's from me. But if you have a dream, it's internal. And it gets behind your defenses and gets in places that I don't know.
God can only touch. So it's, it's pretty powerful. It's, it's fun stuff. And yeah, our, our life, my wife travels with me now. I think we have seven trips this year where we're going to be traveling and ministering all over the United States and then all over the world. Um, so it, it's pretty precious. My kids get to travel with me now.
My son went with me to Chile. I had an incredible trip with him, uh, in, uh, just after August. I think it was in September. And, uh, I love going places. So it's, uh, it truly is a family ministry. So what God is doing is, it's pretty amazing.
[01:32:04] Terry: Yeah, he's he's crafting quite the legacy in the Armstrong family, like you said, just that heritage.
And, you know, Ben, I'm, I'm someone who throughout my life, I haven't really valued dreams. I've always just thought, you know, I have dreams, but that's weird, whatever you Yeah. Kind of pass it off. My wife is a huge dreamer, her and her family. And starting back in August, I started having these really vivid dreams.
And so I started keeping a log of them on my phone. And then when I saw that you were coming out with, uh, with this book, the dream journal, I'm just like, okay, like. I gotta get this because I need to figure out like, what are these dreams actually mean? And Ben, I love how you have this set up. You really kind of give us a really simple roadmap as far as kind of how to interpret this.
And like you said, what lens to look through this. And so, um, can you give us maybe in the listeners a quick overview of what is the process that you use to interpret dreams?
[01:33:02] Ben: Yeah, well, I, I really am the type of guy, I, I want to see the, I want to see the big picture, I want to see the forest through the trees, and I've been in church long enough to know that any Anyone who's any bit familiar with the prophetic, uh, sometimes gets into the weeds with things and gets, like, too detailed, and everything has to mean something.
And so I simplify the process. I really, even though there, we could define dreams in a bunch of different realms, really I simplify it to, we are body, soul, and spirit, and we are triune beings made in the image of God. So, simply put, we can receive information in dreams on those four main levels. And I say four, even though that's only three.
Let me share with you what I mean. We can receive information, body dreams, we can receive soul based dreams, and then spiritual dreams. Spiritual dreams, uh, are two pronged. How many of you know that the spirit realm is made up of God's kingdom and the devil's kingdom? So there's demonic dreams and there's God dreams.
And then beyond that, there's four main lenses of interpretation that I I anchor, uh, dreamers in that I think is vitally important. Number one, it's the Holy Spirit. So, uh, Genesis chapter 40 verse eight, uh, Joseph is talking to the cupbearer and baker. Both of them had a dream this one night and they're like, there's no one to interpret our dream.
And he says, does not all interpretation belong to God? So that is our foundation. And really, if we look at first Corinthians, first Corinthians chapter 12. where Paul is talking about gifts of the Holy Spirit. He goes through a bunch of gifts, like the gifts of prophecy, healing, word of knowledge, you know, uh, the word of wisdom.
He keeps going down, and he gets to, uh, the gift of tongues, and the gift of interpretation of tongues. But if you look at the original language there, it says it's the gift of languages. And the gift of interpretation of languages. See, I grew up in, uh, Pentecostal circles, right? And so we, when I heard tongues, I thought, Oh, speaking in your heavenly language, you have the gift of tongues.
But actually, what Paul's saying there is, The gift that you're receiving from the Holy Spirit is the gift of the ability to not only speak and understand language, all kinds of languages, and dreams are a language of God. You also have a gift of the interpretation of languages. So if we want to grow in our gift of Dreams, and the gift of interpretation of dreams, then we need to be connected to the Holy Spirit, because he's the giver of the gift, right?
So if you want to be proficient in your gifts, and represent the one who gave the gifts, then you need to be close, an abiding relationship. So that's the number one lens of interpretation, vitally important. We don't interpret without the Holy Spirit. This is why in my deep dive book that I'm about to release to.
Um, Terry, I don't have, uh, a, a, uh, encyclopedia of biblical signs and symbols of what everything means. What's the color green mean? What's the color red mean? What's the number 11 mean? I don't have any of that. Um, in, in, in my thing because I, the problem is it's based on Holy Spirit's voice. He can change it.
It can mean one thing one time and it can mean another thing another time. But also, we want to go with the emotion you had in the dream. So what's your emotion, positive or negative emotion? If I have a negative emotion and the color green was in my dream, green could speak of maybe envy, green with envy.
You know, um, uh, maybe you've watched the incredible Hulk in your life. Maybe green could actually be anger. Or have you ever seen that emoji on your phone? That's throwing up and is green. Maybe it could speak of sickness. So my emotion is giving me the lens that I'm using to interpret that symbol. What if, what if it's positive?
Well, green could mean. Maybe life, or growth, or if we talk about the Bible, uh, there's a scripture that says these leaves are for healing, the healing of the nations. Maybe green could be healing. Maybe if you're from the United States of America, green could mean provision. Because our money's green. So again, it changes.
And then the other two lenses, um, one lens, number three, is Uh, the dreamer's cultural and life experience. So, like Terry, you have your own cultural or life experience being from Minnesota, land of 10, 000 lakes. You know, it's like, okay, you have an experience with certain things that is unique to you. And remember, you have the dream.
God speaks your language. He knows you. So have you had an experience with that thing? Uh, did you watch a movie where the law of first mention, you know, that shows up many times. Connor had a dream one time, my son, where, um, God was in his dream. I said, what did he look like? And he said, uh, he looked like, um, God in the movie, Evan Almighty, Morgan Freeman.
And I'm like, he had watched that movie, so he didn't need interpretation. Why? Because he knew immediately that's God, because God was speaking his language. So, I love that, and when we honor those lenses, we start tracking with interpretation. And then, if I'm interpreting Terry's dream, then I can bring in my own cultural and life experience, too.
But I do it in the form of a question. Well, could it mean this? Because I'm still, we're still looking for that. Holy Spirit resonance. We're still looking for that ah ha moment. Ooh, that's it. And then we, what we try and do is, I always say people, to people, and it's in the Dream Journal as well, um, hey, uh, title your, your dream.
Just in titling your dream, it kick starts the interpretive process. Title it, date it, because it can have context to your life experience right now. I like to date it. If, if you woke up at a specific time and it was highlighted to you, write that down. Maybe it's a scripture reference, I don't know. But I like to write those things down.
What's your main emotion, positive or negative, you circle that one. And then we're looking for our primary Or, and sub focuses. Primary focus, usually, if I have the dream and I was actively participating, I'm the primary focus. And most of the time in that, uh, scenario, uh, I'm gonna be literal, right? I'm the, I'm literally that person.
Um, and it doesn't need interpretation, but the sub focuses, a lot of times, are symbolic. There was a car in my dream. Well, what type of car? What color car was it? Put that, that's a sub focus, but those are also descriptors of the sub focus. So keep that with that sub focus, and then put the other things.
Maybe there's another person in there. Maybe you're You know, my daughter had a dream years ago of her friend Destiny was in the dream. Well, Destiny wasn't her friend Destiny. It was actually symbolic of Kira's destiny. Um, so, those are things you, you want to pay attention to, um, in, in your dreams. And then you want to kind of figure out, okay, which, which, which, what's literal, what's symbolic, and what's the interpretation of these signs and symbols.
And I like to tell people, limit your sub focuses. To between five and eight sub focuses so we don't get that over analysis paralysis that a lot of people do and then once once we summarize what we think the dreams about the information, the truth or whatever, the revelations that's been revealed. I like to go into the application phase and uh, and.
I, I think just like in the prophetic or in dreams, there's revelation, interpretation in the prophetic, sometimes declaration or an application, but in dreams, you got revelation to dream itself is the revelation and, and then, and then you need interpretation, which is what you're doing in the dream journal.
You're interpreting it. Now we need to ask God, what's the application? Okay. Based on this truth, What's one thing I can physically do on a daily basis that says I believe this truth? How do I apply this? What if it's The devil, what if it's the demonic dream? Well, that's a lie. That's what the enemy wants to produce.
So then I get to connect with God. God, what truth do you have in place of this lie? And, and I get to replace truth for the lie, and then based on that truth, what's one thing I can walk out? Because habits are what actually Change our behaviors, change the way we think, and help us apprehend. You know this in counseling.
If we can get people to create some new habits, a bunch of other things will automatically change that line up with that truth. This is another portion of, of the Dream Journal, and it's super fun. It's, it's very accessible to anyone. I'm working on a project with, uh, my middle daughter, Kira, who's going to do a kid's version of this as well with super cool artistic doodles and all kinds of fun stuff, because we want kids doing this.
But even what we have right here with the Dream Journal, young kids can journal their dream with this and figure it out. And we're, we're, we're starting to think like God thinks in the language of mystery and intimacy, and we're starting to value our night season a lot better. Rest that stuff. So super fun. .
[01:43:32] Terry: Yeah, no. And, and like I said, I'm, I'm living proof of this. I didn't really value dreams for most of my life. And, uh, man, I've, I've been using this since Sunday night and, uh, every night. God has been giving me a dream. Uh, and it's usually like three 40 in the morning. And so I take out my phone and I write it all down.
And I look forward to getting up and pulling this out as a meeting breakfast and going through it. And I'm telling you, Ben, like even that first night, Sunday night, I had this really. vivid dream. And if I wouldn't have gone through your process of interpreting it, I would have, I would, I would have had no idea what it meant.
But God spoke to me through that interpretation. And it spoke to something that he had been telling me for the previous two weeks, something that I needed to do. And so God brought confirmation I believe it now, man. I believe it. Like dreams are super valuable. And like you say in the book, like we sleep a third of our lives.
By the time we're 60 years old, we're going to have slept for 20 years. Right. And it's just, it's just amazing. Like God always wants to talk like his, his communication never stops with us. And, uh, this is radically Wrecking me in the most beautiful way and transforming me, Ben, I've been emailing your personal assistant breed to set this up.
And I told her that I'm just like, first night, God, God just completely just, he just met me in such a profound way with this resource. And so I want to thank you for the work that you're doing with this, Ben. Again, it's the dream journal, unlocking your dream life. Ben, where can people pick this up? .
[01:45:10] Ben: Yeah, you can, uh, you can go, uh, Bethel. com in our Bethel Bookstore, or you can go straight to Amazon. com and look up the Dream Journal, uh, uh, by Benjamin Armstrong. That's me. And, uh, and you can order it direct from there. They'll ship it straight to your house. On Amazon, if you have prime, no shipping. So that's awesome.
[01:45:34] Terry: Yup. That, Hey, that's, that's what I did. I ordered it and I think literally the next day it came and, uh, yeah, Ben, this is, this is awesome. I'm really looking forward to the next book that you have, the kind of the deeper dive into the interpretation. Uh, any, any ETAs on that, that you could share?
[01:45:51] Ben: Yeah, well, we're, we're looking about three or four months from now.
Uh, to launch that and then I will say this. We're looking to launch in October, uh, a book from my wife and I that is a deeper dive into our testimony called I choose us. And so that's going to be a great book and a great resource as well. Uh, you can check our ministry out at armstrongministries. com. You can, uh, click on the link there too to go and purchase our book.
And then we have Dream Coaching and some other cool things as well. And you can see where we're at around the world if we're in your neck of the woods. Uh, people can visit us. That whole stuff. So next time you're, you're at Bethel, Terry, come and give me a big hug. I'd love to hang out with you.
[01:46:42] Terry: I I'd love that too, man.
And I'm going to put all those links in the show notes. So all you guys listening and watching, you'll be able to get it right away. Just click the links. Uh, and then are you on social media at all? Ben, can people follow you there?
[01:46:54] Ben: Yeah, Instagram mostly, uh, the Ben Armstrong and you can follow us as well at Bethel Prophetic.
Um, uh, just Bethel Prophetic on Instagram. I do have a Facebook, but I haven't visited Facebook in like eight years, so sorry. Uh, uh, and, and then I do have a Twitter and that kind of stuff, but mainly do Instagram. So check me out there.
[01:47:22] Terry: That's, that's the hot social media right now is Instagram. So again, I'll put that on the show notes for you guys, Ben.
This has been, uh, amazing just being able to connect with you and hear your story. My final question for you is, as you look back and you reflect on everything that we talked about, and I know that there's even more that we didn't get to talk about and you look at the goodness of God. What comes to mind as you think about the goodness of God in your life?
[01:47:49] Ben: I think about the main thing that stands out to me in this, Terry, is he's relentless. He never leaves me. He never forsakes me. But in that, he gives me the power to make choices and I've made bad choices and I've made good choices. But let me tell you what, no bad choice you've ever make can trump the good choices that you make partnered with God.
He can redeem it all. And I really believe that there's going to be people listening. That actually you're at that point is like, what is my choice really going to matter? I'm telling you what, when you make the right choices with God, he will transform your life. You will accomplish things way beyond you think, what you can dream or think of.
And, you know, I, I'm from Weaverville. I'm writing books. I'm like serious guys. I'm traveling the world. Like God's doing some amazing things and not that that's bigger than, you know, raising kids. It's, it's all kingdom. Right. And I think the power of choice is something so, so important when it's connected to God.
[01:49:06] Terry: Love it, man. I love it. Ben, you and your family are world changers. I have so much respect for what you guys are doing. Uh, thanks again, man. It'd be great to stay in touch with you.
[01:49:16] Ben: Yeah, will do. Bless you, Terry. Bless all that you're doing and we really appreciate you. Love you.