From Workaholic To Redeemed Father

He chased success hard enough to build a global career and still ended up empty. Mitch Guinn joins us to tell the truth about what it looked like to spend years hunting for acceptance in all the wrong places: performance, sex, alcohol, and the constant need to be seen as “a man.” The cost was real: three marriages, five daughters growing up with an often absent father, and a level of guilt that nearly ended his life.

We walk through the roots of that pattern, including an absent dad, the craving for affirmation, and the way workaholism can masquerade as responsibility while starving your family of presence. Mitch shares the moment he first heard the gospel clearly, why it reshaped his understanding of worth, and how change can be both immediate in the heart and painfully slow in daily habits.

The conversation also goes where many Christian podcasts avoid: what do you do when your past echoes into your children’s choices, and you cannot fix what they decide? We talk about loving adult kids with clear boundaries, resisting constant arguments, and staying faithful to your “part” while trusting God with what you cannot control. Mitch explains the discipleship model that grounded him, the one Jesus laid out in his stories, plus the simple practice he credits with keeping him alive and growing for decades: opening the Bible daily, establishing direct contact and a living relationship with the God who created you, and maintaining communication with the source of all power.

If you are carrying a prodigal past, feeling disqualified, or trying to rebuild after divorce, addiction, or failure, this is for you. Subscribe, share with a friend who needs hope, and leave a review with the line that challenged you most.

Visit www.thesavagepath.com for more on David, his book The Savage Path: A Memoir of Modern Masculinity, and the Savage Path Ministries Corp.

Transcript

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Welcome And The Inner Fight

SPEAKER_01 0:00

Welcome to Wrestling with the Internet. This is the first fight we face. Each and every day is a fight with our own flight. Do we listen to our self-estinful nature or to our divine nature? Guided by the Holy Spirit. Your host David Sabbath is the product of the West Exist and energy. It's designed to inspire to help other men with spiritual warfare. We hope you're ready to rumble because wrestling with the inner man begins.

SPEAKER_02 0:35

Good afternoon, wrestlers. Perhaps the most well-known story in the Bible among both Christians and secular society is the story of the prodigal son. All of us have had a little prodigal in our past as the youngest son portrays, but we also begin to identify with the older brother, envious of the party throne for his profligate little brother when he was the loyal and dutiful son, or the father, waiting and hoping for that moment of repentance and return of our beloved. After going through our various stages of manhood, from rebellion in our teen years to our stage stage now in our retirement years, we begin to reflect on the sum of our experiences, like the old and wistful Solomon in Ecclesiastes. Not proud of everything we've done, but having a deep desire to impart wisdom to the young so that perhaps they may avoid some of the lessons we learned through pain. And that is truly what this entire show is about. Not just this episode, but wrestling with the inner man as a podcast. We look for people with stories of transformation and how, like the prodigal, they finally came to their senses and surrendered their rebellion and struggle to God. And when they did, they actually found the peace that surpasses all understanding.

Career Highs And Marriage Chaos

SPEAKER_02 1:54

Today, my guest is that man. Mitch Gwyn has more than 70 years of life behind him and has courageously agreed to come on Wrestling with the Inner Man to share his story of wrestling with his prodigal past. Mitch, welcome to Wrestling with the Inner Man. Please introduce yourself a bit further to our listeners before we begin your story.

SPEAKER_00 2:16

Well, thank you for the kind words and your invitation to this podcast and explaining the reason why we do this is to tell their stories so that somebody else doesn't have to live through them. I've often thought I'd need to write a book of how not to be a good man. So because I I haven't been. Driven to succeed and to prove my self-worth because I never felt it at home. Friends started getting married. We were at college, friends started getting married, and I what I heard was to prepare for work to be seen as serious, you need to be married. So I got married in 19, had one daughter, graduated in 74, uh, went to work, and work was everything to me. So I got divorced and married at 26. And by that time I had three kids, three daughters. That wasn't enough for me, and still working. Uh got divorced and married at 32 years old, and had two more daughters. So now I've had five daughters. Owned and operated a gas gathering system, started subsea engineering in 1986 when the bottom fell out of the oil business. I traveled all over the world. I've done work for several of the majors, managed well-capping response in the Gulf of Mexico for six years before I finally retired.

SPEAKER_02 4:05

Well, that's a good summary. We'll we'll just uh pause there. So that's quite a career, actually, in life, and we're gonna start peeling back the layers like peeling an onion. And so let's let's begin with your own childhood.

Absent Father And Approval Hunger

SPEAKER_02 4:18

Share about your relationship with your own father and what gaps there were in your training that led to some of these uh mistakes you made early in life.

SPEAKER_00 4:28

Yeah, um my father was pretty much absent most of my childhood. When he was home, he was the center of attention. We all wanted to have his blessing and say he was here. We all wanted to hear he was proud of us. We were looking to him for our acceptance, his acceptance that we were okay. And that's what I think is longing in every man and woman, every child uh is looking for that acceptance from someone and their and your parents or the first place you receive it or supposed to receive it. And even when you don't get it there, you look it for other other places. You look for acceptance by in your work style, you work acceptance at school, acceptance from your friends, and a lot of this Facebook and a lot of this social media thing is all about people searching and longing for being accepted and being uh being somebody telling you you're okay the way you are. Uh his my dad's message was work hard, play hard, and compete to be the best. In other words, acceptance comes from those from what others think of you. You're always fighting for acceptance from other people and competing with others to be the winner, and and that will satisfy you. When you when you've won, when you've become accepted, that'll satisfy you. My work was everything to me because I could be recognized and and rewarded, and I I was recognized and rewarded several times in my career. I was too busy trying to be accepted to see that my wife and my daughter needed me to accept them too.

SPEAKER_02 6:07

Yeah, I wasn't modeled for you very well, so lots of times, and I I think this is a very common uh situation today because there has been a real gap, you know, in uh leadership in the home, let's just say. And part of that's been due to the assault on biblical masculinity, on dads being the spiritual leaders in the home, being more present, and and also rugged individualism of the United States where we live, and you know, that aspirational lifestyle, and let's you you always want more. But if you don't have a model, you don't feel like you've got it to offer to someone else. You know, if your pockets are empty, what what what do you have to give someone else? So uh you told me, you know, that all all you wanted as a young man, you know, was for just for someone to be proud of you for something. And uh, you know, I'm the youngest of four children, and you know, my brother was the oldest, and I had two sisters in between. And when you're when you're the youngest, you know, there's a whole photo album of my brother, you know, where he's the only child, and there was barely any pictures of and I I kind of can relate a little bit. I didn't have I had a good father and I got attention and love from him, but it just seems like you're always striving for that. Like you, you know, you're you're the the the caboose, you know, on the on the train. And so I've had a little bit of that, you know, and it drives you. It drives you to achieve and to try to, you know, find merit in the world or or from others. And so but what what drove that longing in you and where did you seek that approval from then since you weren't getting it from your dad? And and would you say that words of affirmation are are your love language? Uh because that's even more important if that happens to be your love language.

SPEAKER_00 7:55

Um I'm not so sure about the love language part, but affirmation is important to everybody. You're you're we're we're not made to be alone, we're not made to be of ourselves, we're made to have people around us, and you're looking for to be accepted by the people around you. And one of the things about marriage is uh when you um find someone that you like, you want them to like you. And without getting into all the social media stuff that's going on right now with and choices of life choices of male or female and all that, uh you're looking for acceptance and when you find it, you hold on to it.

Sex Marriage And False Acceptance

SPEAKER_00 8:35

At 19, what I heard from counselors and and people around me was that marriage will show your employer that you're mature, you're more adult. So so I got married and had no idea what being married was about. Nobody had ever had a chance to talk to me. And I don't want to turn this into blaming the way I was growing up, the way I my parents raised me and all that. It's not their fault. They had no one to teach them. Uh it's just the facts are I didn't know what it meant to be accepted, so I was looking for acceptance in whatever way I could find, looking for not competing, but being being uh seen as a man. And again, at 26, what I wanted was someone that accepted me for the workaholic, alcoholic, raging man that I was at the time. And that was difficult to find, but I found somebody in a heart, you know. So uh they liked what they saw, and the one I was with didn't like all that. So that was my second marriage. And then at 32, I began to engage my uh enjoy my successes, but realize I was headed for disaster if I didn't change my way of living. I started asking myself, why why am I like this? Am I really an alcoholic? Where do I go from here? And in the meantime, divorced another woman because wanted something better. So all three times I got married, I had sexual relations with my wife before marriage, not counting all the other women, but I started the marriages with sex first because that was acceptance. That resulted in that was a you can't go to bed with somebody without being accepted. Right. Uh that resulted in five daughters from three wives in less than eight years. And I don't say that to brag. Uh I'm ashamed of that life. And but you feel accepted when you tell when you're when you find someone to be intimate with because that's the way God made you. But that's not the way sex is supposed to be used. And every time you get that involved, then you're kind of stacking the deck against you because you're you're believing in things that aren't really true.

SPEAKER_02 11:04

Yeah, that's you know, unfortunately, I've been through a divorce too, and I also was sexually active before uh our marriage, and you know, you just end up putting the cart before the horse. You know, because sex isn't just physical sex, it's intimacy. And so you're getting, you know, a level of intimacy that you're really not prepared for. You still don't know one another. There could be some huge red flags about your beliefs, your values, your how you want to raise your children, if you want to have children. And if you haven't, you know, discussed all of that first, you know, that could be the deal breaker in that relationship, and then you need to move on. That's not the person you need to marry. But, you know, if they're already your intimate partner, it's kind of hard to like, yeah. I'm just gonna toss that out. You know, you're you know, God made us to be together like that. And so uh so but now you did this uh a couple of times. Now when when did you begin to say, well, maybe I've got the formula wrong here and do some of the introspection, you know, that's required to go, man, I don't want to, I don't want I'm getting the same results because I'm doing the same foolish things, and you know, and then I I why don't you describe a little bit of what your relationship was like with your daughters?

SPEAKER_00 12:17

It was um it was rough not being around, but uh during my first year of my third marriage, I was 33 years old and at a church here off Allendale Road.

Hearing The Gospel Then Hitting Bottom

SPEAKER_00 12:30

Um I heard the gospel for the first time. And I've grown up in the Episcopal Church and never heard the gospel preached. I I finally heard a preacher say, I realized that day that Jesus paid for my sins by his death on the cross so God would accept me. And I heard those words. He watched all the part all the past and made me a new creature so so that God could only see the beauty in me and not all the ugly parts of my past. That said something to me that changed me internally. I I fought it for years after that, but that changed me. I started realizing that's where my acceptance comes from. That's where I can always be accepted, I can always be loved, I can because Jesus paid for my sins and washed me clean of all the past. If there's no way to to get cleaned up, God's not going to accept you. You can't be accepted by a God that's perfect in in all ways. And uh anyway, that's when I heard the gospel. So I started down the road of following Jesus, being changed by Jesus, and learning what it meant to be on mission with Jesus. Now don't get don't misunderstand me here. I I said I started down the road. Right. I spent years struggling with alcohol, with running around on my wife, not spending time with my daughters, being away from home, working all the time, building up a farm and a city house to retire in. I did all those things, and not really taking you know, looking back, I should have stopped and realized how little I was around the kids. I I was never there. And then finally things came to a head. I was caught in a sexual affair, and my wife and I separated for seven years. I was ready to commit suicide when that happened because of all the guilt and the damage I had caused my wife and my daughters to suffer almost crushed me. I remember having a knife in my hand when I picked up a Bible in the hotel room bedside table and started reading about Jesus, his love and his grace for sinners just like me. I finally began letting Jesus change me. Uh I finally started listening. My wife finally accepted me back in the house after seven years. Although being intimate with her was not something she could accept. I kept I kept attending church and kept my practice of daily reading the Bible and began sharing with the with uh and began singing in choirs all over Texas. I kept trying to show her that my change was real, but the pain was just too much for her. We slept in the same bed but on opposite sides for over 20 years. I kept going to church, I kept trying to do all the things, trying to make up for my past, genuinely. But once I had finished our retirement home, she filed for divorce after 39 years. You said when you started this podcast, you can't escape your past. Paul couldn't escape his, and you can't escape your past, you can't you know wash it, you can't forget it and and never act like it never occurred, but Jesus does. He washes it all away and cleans you up so you can uh approach God. And that's what I was learning in those years.

SPEAKER_02 15:54

So how about you know, so you you're married to your your third wife, you had this daughter from your first marriage. Were you able

The Cost To Wives And Daughters

SPEAKER_02 16:01

to see your your daughters from your prior marriages? Were you in their lives at all? Or, you know, because of the way those marriages ended, you know, they just and and because you know you were just working hard. You were like, hey, I'm gonna provide, I'm gonna take care of them, but I'm not really gonna physically be there.

SPEAKER_00 16:20

I just um my first daughter after the divorce, uh, my ex-wife remarried, and they um wanted to adopt her. And uh I was out of work at the time back in the 80s, out out of work, and couldn't afford the child support, so I have the child support anyway. They let that go for about a year, and then they were gonna put me in jail if I didn't pay the child support. And when I had no money, I had I had I didn't have it away. So I I I let her let them adopt her, and so I didn't see her for 40 something years. Wow. She was five years old. They sent her a six-year birthday present back to me. They didn't want me to have anything to do with her life or anything. So and then in uh marriage number two, uh my ex-wife took my daughters and tried every way in the world to keep me from seeing them. I was supposed to have had them for six weeks during the summer, and she kept them involved in all kinds of things to keep them from coming up and spending time with us. And so I just never really had time, and then because I was working so much, I barely had time to spend with the daughters that I had all. It was it was kind of uh I was kind of crushed again, but not bitter. Uh I understood how my wife could leave at the last after 39 years. I understood how the pain I caused was just too much for her and my last two daughters to deal with. Um when you talk about not being around, pretty soon, even when you come home, they're not, you know, they're not gonna jump up and dad, glad to see you, because you haven't done anything. Right. It's kind of hard to keep keep a relationship if you're not spending time with each other. And uh my daily reading and work walking with God kept me going because it helped me to survive the pain, the guilt and the shame and the frustration and allowed me to have this peace and his forgiveness and to be confident in his plans. I I can't describe that enough is about my daily walk with God for the past thirty-something years. Led me to find a wife. Now of four years today, matter of fact, we've been married four years at a church that is on a mission with Jesus to tell others about the forgiveness and the and the peace that you can know through Jesus only through Jesus. You you can't find that kind of acceptance and that kind of forgiveness anywhere else.

SPEAKER_02 18:51

So you make this peace, you know, uh in your heart, you know, and you you're you're getting to know Jesus, you're on your journey, but you had this uh significant pain, you know, with your daughters having that birthday present sent back and being kept from seeing them. And you know, and you can stuff that like most men do, and then you know, like a lot a lot do, you you medicate your pain, you know, with alcohol or other substances and things. And but you know, you you begin singing these churches, and by the way, folks, Mitch has a wonderful, glorious voice, and so uh he's uh he's he's terrific to hear him sing worship. You know, we have uh we met through this Airstream community and we had a retreat in December and he sang on holy night and I was like, just got chilled. So he uh if you see him today, there's just no way that you would know any of this about his past. His wife now, if four years married, they are like uh high school sweethearts walking around holding hands all the time, just their affection and love for one another, the way they look into each other's eyes. It's almost uh disgusting, you know, it's they're just so in love. And and when he sings and he's always smiling, and he's really come through it, made that transformation in himself, and has worked to this point of being a true new creation, having a new identity in Christ, but then you got five daughters, and they grew up kind of without a father that they were seeking that same recognition, and they've made some choices that are pretty difficult. And

Prodigal Children Boundaries And Prayer

SPEAKER_02 20:33

uh, could you share about your children and their choices, you know, heading down their own prodigal path? And what should someone do when they are so desperate about their children's choices?

SPEAKER_00 20:44

Yeah, that's part of part of what you cause, part of what you're responsible for in your children is being around and helping them, and because I wasn't in there, got their help from all kinds of uh sources. Uh, my number one daughter uh that I didn't see for 40 years went through a divorce and and in a long sh another story we can talk about. She came back and uh brought my two grandsons, they were 20, 19, and 21 at the time, and I'd never even seen them. And they she brought them here, we had dinner, and we celebrated her 45th birthday together. 40 years I didn't see her, and we celebrated her 45th birthday. This year she'll be 48. She lives in our garage apartment, and we have a wonderful relationship. We get to see each other every day. I'm getting to know my grandsons, they're graduating from AM now, and it's just been a m remarkable story of come back and how many nights I've prayed about seeing her again. And number two lives out in Alabama and she's married with a great husband and two grandson kids. My grandson just graduated from high school out there. Um We have a wonderful relationship. Don't get to see 'em as often as we wanted to. But while I was single and while I was running around uh had the time before Mary and I got married, we had I've spent a lot of time out there, visited with them, and they know me and we we have a relationship. But number three is uh I I kind of lost her for a while and I don't know how long that's gonna be. She's um got messed up with some bad company and uh lives up in Vermont now. Uh but her kids, or her my grandkids, I now have two twin great-grandsons and a great-granddaughter up in upstate New York, and I don't get to see them that often, but we do talk quite a bit and have a relationship that I know one day maybe they'll count on. But number four, looking for that acceptance is what I'm why I wanted to make that real clear. When you start looking for acceptance, you're gonna get it from somewhere, whether it's drugs, whether it's alcohol, whether it's the opposite sex, or whether it's the same sex. And my number four is married to a woman. They've got they're raising a eight years old now, uh, boy. Uh you talk about praying. When they got married, I was praying that the other girl is the one who got pregnant and had this child, and I kept praying, please God, let it be a boy. Because there'll come a day of reckoning when this may this may help solve the problem when he starts asking questions. But uh uh she's they're raising uh up in Virginia, and I don't get to see them at all, we don't talk at all. Uh because they know how I I tried to tell them in nice ways that that's not a lifestyle I can accept. Uh I still love them. My d my daughter, uh, every now and then they get in trouble, I still help them out. But they we don't talk because I I just I told 'em, I I I can't, I'm not ever gonna accept that. I'm gonna love you, you're but you make a mistake. You need to pay attention to what you're doing. But they don't go to church. And uh my number five took off in the same direction and had girlfriends, moved off to Alaska. I don't get to see her because it's so far up there in Alaska. We don't talk because she took up for her sister, number four and five, kind of paired. They they they went through a lot because I wasn't ever there, so I can't I can't fault the relationship. They're really close, but they my he's she's finally started dating men, and maybe that'll come around, but they're in my prayers every day, uh, both of them.

SPEAKER_02 24:44

See, yeah, so you you've done all that you can do to redeem those relationships, and you've made that effort, and I think I wanna I wanna recognize you for that, I want to commend you for that. You know, that's uh acceptance is uh it's important, you know, from one man to another to say, look, man, you're out there trying, and that's all you can do. You're not you're not saying, hey, I'm perfect, uh look what I did, or you know, I wasn't there, and you're acknowledging that, but just just to continue to pursue them, but also to have healthy boundaries, and that's important, you know, for our listeners to understand is you know, if you've got, and I'm talking to you listeners, you know, if you've got some prodigal past and you know your failures, you you feel like you're the least person to uh offer advice or but you can love them and then you can try to redeem them uh to the best of your ability, and then what Mitch said, and then you pray for them. You you give them up to God because they're his anyway. Um we can't ever control what another person does. And there are many, many things in our culture today with the whole alphabet soup of LGBTQ, whatever the letters are, and people thinking that they can make themselves different than the way God made them. And that's just I I can't accept that either. That's not a choice that we're able to make. You know, there it we're it's it's a binary system, you know, you're male or you're female.

SPEAKER_00 26:07

What's helped me a lot, and I did realize part of my uh my reluctance to accept it was anger in my part. I was mad at myself. And I had a friend of mine tell me that. He said, You're mad at yourself because you let it happen. He said, You're not mad at them. You spoke you love them. And and he helped me realize, I mean, there's three parts to this equation of getting along with people. There's your part and there's God's part and there's their part. And as long as you do your part and you know God will always do his part, but they've got to do something, they've got to do their part, and you can't be responsible for their part. Jesus didn't argue, you never read about him arguing or raising his voice except at the dur in the temple a few times with the Pharisees, but talking to people out on the street or out on the road, he never raised his voice, he never beat them on the head with a Bible. They didn't have a Bible back then, but he didn't beat them up, he didn't start a fight and tried to convince them it's wrong. He told the story and he told his life and stories, and they could believe it or accept it. And he told his disciples, when they don't accept it, wash your feet off and go to the next town and go to the next. Don't don't sit there and make a big scene about it. If they don't accept it, that's their part.

unknown 27:23

Right?

SPEAKER_00 27:24

They've have heard the story and they have a choice, and everybody has a choice, but we're still supposed to love them.

SPEAKER_02 27:30

Right.

Discipleship Daily Bible And Peace

SPEAKER_02 27:31

So, Mitch, you you told me about you know your fully developed faith now and which subscribes to a model of discipleship in the small groups which come alongside one another to be present on the journey as a companion or fellow pilgrim, but not to fix or judge anyone else. And I really like that. It's a different kind of church, you know. And uh discipleship is is really what Jesus did, you know. That's how you multiply believers as you disciple them in one-on-one relationships or small groups. So tell us more about how you came to this as your doctrine. And uh did your experience of growing up without a model of discipleship help you in coming to peace, you know, where your prodigals uh maybe remain today.

SPEAKER_00 28:14

Yes, it did. Uh it's about it's about following Jesus, being changed by Jesus, and on mission with Jesus. That's what life is supposed to be about. You're right. That's the message he was preaching, and that's how the church exploded from twelve guys to thousands and thousands during a short period of time all over the known world at the time. Because you're talking about Jesus who accepts you the way you are, right where you are, and starts showing you how simple life is supposed to be, the way he planned it to be, and the way it will be one day when he comes back to get us all. But he's but knowing Jesus and and being changed by and on mission, making disciples who make disciples who make disciples. That's that's what the Bible talks about. That's the way Jesus did it. He had twelve guys, and they had fifty, they had seventy, and then they had a hundred and toni, and then they had thousands. And everybody met each other, saw each other every day, talked about the stories that he told, and they told each other's stories, and that's the whole message is staying connected to Christ and being changed by Christ. You're not going to be perfect overnight, you're perfect in his eyes, and you're perfect in God's eyes. You can stand up before God now because you've had him clean you up, and he's teaching you the whole time and being changed by and on mission. That's our whole job. We think our jobs, I thought my job was to make money. That's not your job. Your job is to go out and work hard, work with your hands, work with the tools God gave you. The parable of the talents, you probably should read that again. If you've got five talents or two talents or one talent, you're supposed to go out and take what you have and do the best you can. And in the meantime, walk with him and let him show you how to do it the best. And that peace, I just can't describe it. I uh that peace that you know and feel, I mean, we're the ones who bombs going off, bullets flying, and we're walking around, you know, searching for the next person we can help.

unknown 30:27

Right.

SPEAKER_00 30:28

It doesn't matter. I'm I'm here today, and we're a wisp of air, a dust, and we're gone. And what's gonna matter in the end is how many people you told about Christ and what they did with it. And uh that's their whole that's the whole Bible story from the Old Testament to the New Testament, is God's salvation plan and his way to contact you, to know the way the to provide a bridge so that he can actually be with you and your salvation depends on Christ. He said, I'm the only way here, and you're gonna be accepted and know that you're accepted, then why do you care about what somebody else thinks? Why do you care what the world thinks? He's op he said, You're gonna have trouble in the world. You're gonna have trouble in this world, don't worry, I've overcome the world. So he's got this. So if you put all the bad things that are gonna happen to you in one hand and all the good things waiting for you, there's no there's no scale that's gonna balance that out. It's it's worth the effort, it's worth the time. And uh that's uh do I if I had any advice, don't approach time with God only as a 15-minute daily meeting, hoping that that will sustain you for the rest of the day. You'll never be able to bring others into a presence of a God in whose presence you don't live. I read that the other day well several weeks ago, and it just stuck with me. Here you can't talk about God and Jesus if you're not living that every day. And it's all day long. When you get up in the morning, when you go to bed, when you walk down the street, when you have dinner, when you talk to each other, uh just reminding somebody that hey, there is a God, there is Jesus was real, he really does love you, and he really wants your back. And life is just good no matter what happens.

SPEAKER_02 32:27

Well, you know, I was gonna ask you if you wanted to leave our audience, you know. So let's just imagine there's uh there's there's five men out there that are listening to you right now in our audience that had a very prodigal past, and they're sitting there looking at the wreck, you know, uh in the rearview mirror and going, Man, no one's gonna ever be able to forgive me. You know, I'm not I'm not lovable. You know, what what would you say to men who are experiencing those feelings right now?

SPEAKER_00 33:03

What I did in that hotel room was pick up a Bible and started reading it, John. And and then made it a practice for the last 30 something years of I I don't go to bed without reading the Bible. The day the day happens, whatever happens that day, and set out at the end of the day. Uh I used to teach completion class at uh oil company, and I tell him, I didn't come here today, wondered what I was gonna do. Well, you prepare for the next day at the end of the day, you go over the things that you did that day, and talk with the God who created you and read about him and read another story. And you don't have to read pages, just read another story he told in the Bible, and you're preparing yourself for the next day, and really the Jewish days start in the evening at sundown, starts the next day, so you're really at the first of the day. Getting prepared, going over what happened today, getting prepared for tomorrow, and just remember that Jesus loves you and he died for you. And every time you feel like you're overwhelmed, just look at the cross. You talk about overwhelmed, they haven't nailed you on a cross and beat you to death. So you you can't imagine the pain he went through to save you.

SPEAKER_02 34:22

Right. All right, well, that's a perfect spot for us to just wrap it up there. And I just

Final Encouragement Closing Prayer

SPEAKER_02 34:27

want to again say, Mitch, thank you. Thank you for sharing your story. That and I hope that it is gonna help uh young men out there who we all have had our prodigal stages, we all have wished for maybe a better model. And it is too easy to blame. It's easy to go back and well, you know, it's not my fault. You know, that's I think accepting personal responsibility for our choices, you can't move on until you do that. And so uh let me just close us in prayer right now. Dear Heavenly Father, I just thank you for Mitch Gwynn and for the life that he's lived and how he's been living it with you daily, every day, every morning, in discipleship, side by side with other people, not judging, just walking that path. And hey, here's where I am. This is what this podcast is all about, you know, and why I try to find men like Mitch who have stories that they can tell honestly, you know, that deep wounds, you know, things that have to be processed and dealt with. But what they've done is they've finally ended all human ability, all money, all talents, all everything that we can try to do to solve these problems, which is spiritual warfare. And you see, we're flesh. So when we get in the spiritual realms, we just get hacked up. We have no defense. We're naked in the spiritual realm. All we can do is call upon a hero for us who wins every spiritual battle, and that's Jesus Christ. And and Mitch just described that perfectly. And and uh it it's visible when you see him, when you meet him, when you hear him sing, and that's what we are to be, is just this light, it's just shining so that other people see it and go, you know what? I want a little bit of what Mitch asked and we just asked that this this podcast be uh uh a beacon of life for your glory in Christ thing.

SPEAKER_01 36:23

Thanks for listening to Wrestling with the Internet with David Stoppett. We believe the winter is great greatly followed low and protect work and better. For information we talked to David at David F. Stabit F.com.com or visit his website, stab it.com as wrestling with the internet tackles more tough topics to train up the generation of better men.