The Unexpected Plan — How God Rewrites Your Story

Cyle, Ryan, Matt, and Mark, kick things off with a laugh about Mark's fading pink hair from a recent student challenge, then take a detour into the lost art of chain letters (and whether it's time to bring them back). Cyle shares his excitement over a Kickstarter board game called The Game Makers — a worker-placement game about building iconic board games — sparking a conversation about everyone's board game history and those early-morning sessions with cameraman Nick.

The guys also preview the upcoming Pathfinder Camp (July 19–21), talking about the power of early faith experiences and the life change already happening among the 60+ students attending or serving at camp this summer.

The main conversation digs into the Sunday message from the Hollywood series, centered on the Angel Studios film Solo Mio. The crew discusses how God's plan rarely looks like the one we mapped out — whether it's being deployed three days after 9/11, an unexpected pivot away from music education, a chance meeting at a funeral, or a calling to pastoral ministry felt on a bus. Drawing on Romans 8:28, Cyle encourages listeners that the unexpected moments — good and bad — are all working together toward something bigger.

Transcript

SPEAKER_02 0:01

Hello and welcome back to the HoddCast. It's Kyle.

SPEAKER_01 0:05

I'm Ryan.

SPEAKER_02 0:06

I'm Matt.

SPEAKER_03 0:07

And I'm Mark.

SPEAKER_02 0:08

And Mark's here. Hi Mark. Hi Kyle. Mark, your hair is going back to well, not normal, but it's going back to something.

SPEAKER_03 0:15

It's not as less pink. Yeah, that's less pink. Much less pink.

SPEAKER_02 0:19

That's good. So um, how was your adventure in the land of pink hair?

SPEAKER_03 0:25

I would forget about it until people were looking at me weird in public, and I'm like, well, uh oh. That's right. That's uh I don't look normal right now. It was fun though. I was worth it for the kids. I I probably would rather not do another hair-related uh challenge with the students.

SPEAKER_02 0:40

I don't know. They they seem to like it though. I mean, look how many did it with you.

SPEAKER_03 0:45

Next time you do stripes and your son suggested we'd buzz it all and then do leopard print hair for like a buzz. Like, why? That would actually be kind of cool.

SPEAKER_02 0:56

Hey, whatever you can to get kids to show up and do business.

SPEAKER_03 0:58

I love it. It's fun. I love that the kids had a blast with it.

SPEAKER_00 1:01

I told Ben Bauman, I'm like, if there was anybody who was gonna do like blonde stripe, pink stripe, blonde stripe, pink stripe, like it would have been you. I'm surprised you didn't. He's like, I actually thought about doing that.

SPEAKER_03 1:14

Well, that would have taken so much longer.

SPEAKER_02 1:17

You gotta be creative because they're gonna want to do it again. Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 1:20

I've got to come up with something like that to do it.

SPEAKER_02 1:22

Maybe get Ryan to join you next time. You're lost turning off scene.

SPEAKER_01 1:29

You never know. Yeah, you never do. Big Fobbio over here.

SPEAKER_02 1:35

All right. So I got something, uh I got something in the mail yesterday, and I'm very excited about it. Anyone guess what I would be excited about coming in the mail?

SPEAKER_00 1:41

Chain letter.

SPEAKER_02 1:43

Rift phone cards. Chain letters are not a thing anymore. I know, right?

SPEAKER_00 1:47

What's a chain letter?

SPEAKER_02 1:48

Chain letters. Chain letters, you would get a letter in the mail, and then you were supposed to like put your name on it, or like put something with it, and then you mail it to somebody else, and it just travels around the world, travels around the country.

SPEAKER_00 1:59

Oh it's like what they do on Facebook now or used to do, with you know, you have to send this to five other people, or else you're gonna be cursed forever. Oh, they would literally do that.

SPEAKER_02 2:08

Yeah, they did that in the mail, though, where you actually send this to 10 people, and so you would send it to 10 people, or like send 10 people a dollar. And like there's a get rich uh scheme back in the day where everybody sends ten dollars out to ten people, and then you send it to ten, but like, but you have to send the last ten people, and you don't know any of these people, but like theoretically, over time, you're gonna get all this money from all these different people, and so you're gonna get it. Ah, yeah, the whole some people it works for it, it's kind of like a multi-level marketing scheme. If you're the guy that came up with the idea and people buy in, you can make a lot of money, but most people are gonna get not even their ten dollars back or whatever it was. But true. Um, yeah, we participated in some of those back in the day. Um, yeah, we definitely definitely tried that. But I think we failed every time we just lost money, but it was like 10 bucks, and you'd get like two back or something. But that was in the days before the real internet and cell phones. It's crazy, but no, not a chain letter. That would be cool. I probably would do it just because that would be okay. We should do a chain letter just for fun.

SPEAKER_00 3:04

Just to see where it goes. Let's do it.

SPEAKER_02 3:06

You guys want to do a chain letter? Did you ever do chain letters?

SPEAKER_01 3:09

I no. No, but you you know what it is. I know what it is. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_02 3:13

I know what it is. What about you, Nick?

SPEAKER_01 3:15

I'm sure I've got them before.

SPEAKER_02 3:16

Let's bring back chain letters.

SPEAKER_01 3:19

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 3:19

Let's bring it back. I I don't know. Let's think about this. What would we do?

SPEAKER_03 3:25

The reason why it died. Postage went up. Postage going up.

SPEAKER_02 3:30

That's 70 cents not to send that chain letter. So now you send 10 of us $10. It's you know, it's not even enough to buy us postage stamps barely. So like the dollar doesn't go as far as it used to. So you'd have to do like $10 each. I think we should do it. I think it could be fun. I'm gonna melt everyone in church a chain letter. Send this to your 10 friends. Yeah, I love it. Um, if you're listening and you think we should do chain letter, tell us at church.

SPEAKER_03 3:56

Not the pyramid scheme version, though. You give them ten dollars.

SPEAKER_02 4:00

No, that's not pray for the ten people on this list and their prayer might be. We should do a prayer chain. There was prayer chain letters. That was actually a thing. That was a thing. There were all kinds of chain layers. There was like get rich quick schemes. There were there were luck ones. If you want to be lucky this week, you know, send this out to ten people or you won't be lucky, you'll be. There were prayer ones, there were all kinds of stuff. It's true. Um, but I mean I forgot chain letters exist. That's not it. That's it's random that you went there. Not ever would be a thing I would go to just randomly. Yeah, chain letter.

SPEAKER_00 4:30

Well, I mean, at least we spent seven minutes talking about it now, though. So sorry.

SPEAKER_02 4:34

So if you don't know what chain letters are, I'm sorry. Your life is a bit incomplete. Um, but what else would I be excited about coming in the mail? Well, I'll just say I've been waiting this for a year.

SPEAKER_01 4:45

A game.

SPEAKER_02 4:46

Yes. I kickstarted a game, uh, which I occasionally do, and I may have done a few this year after saying I was done. Um, but ready for this? Sure. It is a game about making board games. It's a board game about making board games. That's funny. It's called The Game Makers, and I got the completionist version, so I got the full extended version with all the bells and whistles. But it literally has 300 games in it. So you're literally you it's a factory that makes games. And in the 300 games, they got the rights to 300 of the top games in the world, which I own a number of. But it's all the games I play Catan, um, Cascadia, like uh uh Agricola, the my favorite board games are in so you're building them in the game. You put them on your shelf, and you have to build 12 games and put them on your bookshelf to win the game. It's crazy. Interesting. So it's really cool. So it's a game about making board games. It's like the best thing I could ever do.

SPEAKER_00 5:47

Is it about making the games or collecting the games?

SPEAKER_02 5:49

No, you're making them and then you collect them. Okay. Like you get little factory forklifts and you have to move them from place to place, and then you can take actions with your forklift, and then it this it changes, and then you have to like collect the pieces to make the game. And then like worker placement is like a worker placement engine builder, but then it's like you get the little cards of like the most famous game, Brass Birmingham, which is the number one game in the world. Yeah. Um, Earth, like all the big games are in it, and Galactic Cruise.

SPEAKER_03 6:15

It feels like Inception, like it's just so good.

SPEAKER_02 6:18

It's like it's like I'm going to go deep down the rabbit hole in this one. But like, yes, I'm gonna play. I mean, I'll probably play that today. So that's my goal. It's Patty's birthday, so I'm probably not probably playing doing whatever she wants. Fountains. Yeah, yeah. Probably not playing any games. She said she'd play fromage, and we can make cheese in a game today. So um, so that's uh that's the thing. We'll see. But uh we're going to Atlas for lunch, so that's good. And they're gonna eat cheese. Yeah, that's what we're gonna be a lot of cheese today. But yeah, so that's my Ryan, are you?

SPEAKER_00 6:50

Sorry, what? Are you much of a board gamer?

SPEAKER_01 6:54

I'll play whatever, you know.

SPEAKER_00 6:56

Yeah, that's a that means no, yeah.

SPEAKER_01 6:58

I mean, I I am not at the nerd level of Kyle, if that's what you're asking.

SPEAKER_02 7:02

Who is? Yeah, right, right. I mean, Matt's getting there.

SPEAKER_01 7:06

I mean, I like board games, I like playing them, but I mean how many board games do you have?

SPEAKER_00 7:11

I'm not anywhere in your category, but probably between 75 and 100.

SPEAKER_02 7:16

Okay, so what you're 10 years younger than me though, right?

SPEAKER_00 7:19

No. I'm 43.

SPEAKER_02 7:20

Okay, you're five years younger than me. So four years. So give and take, the number of years in your life, plus or minus, yeah, you can catch up. Caleb's probably gonna beat us both.

SPEAKER_00 7:32

More than likely, yes.

SPEAKER_02 7:34

Yeah. Caleb's gonna kinda Caleb's gonna be up there. He likes games.

SPEAKER_00 7:37

So he does. Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 7:38

And Joe. Joe, there's always hope for Joe.

SPEAKER_01 7:41

Joe likes board games. He likes all games. Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 7:45

You know, our cameraman Nick over here, he comes over and plays board games. We play like 7-30 in the morning before work. That's hardcore. He brings his buddies from his job. They both they all start the day with a board game. Like, that's so cool. Now that he's back, I'm excited. I'm waiting for the next board game sessions.

SPEAKER_00 7:59

All right, I know he's not mic'd, but what's your go-to game?

unknown 8:02

Oh, it's either magic or riff out.

SPEAKER_00 8:05

Yeah. Board game, not card games. Sorry, board game. Monopoly.

SPEAKER_02 8:08

Monopoly game. Monopoly. Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 8:10

That's a classic. He can't beat a classic.

SPEAKER_02 8:12

Yeah, that's it. It's a little loved here, but it's good. Yeah. He's very new to board games. Yeah. He kind of joins the other guys. Jessariah, his friend. Jess Ria's getting a shout out on the podcast. Jess Riah. We love that guy. Um he likes board games a lot. So that's kind of Nick kind of comes along with Jessaria. Nick's kind of the go-between. He's like, hey, let's play with Kyle. Like what's the civilization game event? We played a game called Small World. You like Small World. Oh, yeah, absolutely. Matt loves that game. So it's pretty simple. And we've played a couple times.

SPEAKER_00 8:40

That was actually the first board game you ever got me to play.

SPEAKER_02 8:43

That was Small World, yeah. So like maybe we should break Ryan into Small World. We should. Yeah, it's a small world.

SPEAKER_01 8:49

I it's not that I don't like ball board games. I generally have a little child attached to me, and they have a tendency to make board games not fun.

SPEAKER_02 8:55

Yeah, actually when we were spending the weekend hanging out with you, I was like, I should bring board games. I'm like, nah. Tommy likes to throw everything and I love my games. I actually had this thought to myself. I was packing them up. I was like, nah. Yep, yep. Because I don't want to get mad at Tommy throwing my very valuable pieces somewhere. I'm like, Where is he at the dirt? That's why I didn't bring any board games. So it wasn't because I didn't want to hang out and play board games. We we just did other things, but it checks out. Tommy's not my friend, so I think I think we've we've broken through.

SPEAKER_01 9:24

Yeah, he'll still throw all your stuff.

SPEAKER_02 9:26

He definitely will. Yeah, he definitely will.

SPEAKER_00 9:28

You've always had a hard time with kids, though. Like little kids for the longest time just not like you.

SPEAKER_02 9:33

I'm just telling you, there's this like when they're really little, they don't seem to like me, although the Kalia loves me right now. But there's this age, like Tommy's age right now. Tommy's what, two? Yeah. In like that two, I'm just I think I'm too big and terrifying for them. Yeah. But then I work really hard to get them to like me because they are so terrified of me. Then there's just this day that it just it just flips. It does. Like at three, and then they love me. Like um, Lila, Lila's one of my favorite. Um, Maisie, one of my favorite. And like these kids like will come and look for me after that changes. But I remember like even Tommy, Tommy would never like talk to me. So I'm I'm really working on Tommy. There's gonna be there's gonna be this day, it's gonna just it's just gonna click.

SPEAKER_00 10:10

And it goes all the way back because my nieces were the same way with you, and then Caleb was the same way. It's always been the way something.

SPEAKER_02 10:16

So like, but then there's this this sweet spot of like three to five, six, uh, seven, eight years old. But like then then they get too cool and they'll like me anymore. Like, I'm just not cool enough anymore. And then they get to middle school and then they realize how cool I actually am again. So it's just like I recognize like where my my sweet spot of ages is. So we're gonna do this Pathfinder camp, and we're really excited because it's K thu third, and we want our K thu third students to come and stay overnight at Somerset, and we're gonna do like Patty and Carver are gonna leave. It's gonna be awesome. But like that is such a fun age group, they're crazy, right? That's what he keeps saying about like, oh, you don't know if you want like my kid to come. Like they're but they're so when they get outside of the house, like my kids do this. When they get outside the house, they're all if you raise them right, they they really have good behavior elsewhere. Yeah, it's when it's when the we show up that our kids go nuts, right? But like when we're not around, we can really see their character that we've developed in them. So it's so much fun to just see these kids because they soak up everything about the Bible, everything's new and exciting, every experience is fun. Like they like simple things like playing carpet ball and writing, like uh swinging on swing sets. Like that's fun, and that's really easy to spend time with kids when they can everything can be fun. Uh when you like teenagers can be hard because everything's gotta be like some amazing new experience. But little kids they could have so much fun. So we're actually looking forward to it. I'm I can't wait for Pathfinder Campus can be fun. My whole family's gonna be there serving and just be a great time to connect with the with the kids at our church and see them see them grow. I accepted Christ at church campus six, and so I think it's such a formative time for families that they don't recognize how important getting that early experience with the Lord and the Bible can be in kids' lives and it can change their lives forever. But it did in mine, it did in my kids' lives. So and and my kids are excited about having an opportunity to teach other kids that were their age when they went to camp and accepted Christ, and then it has stuck with them. So I think that's kind of where we're we're going. So yeah, I'm looking forward to it. But send your kids to Pathfinder July 19th through the 21st.

SPEAKER_00 12:17

Yeah, it's also cool that I've been hearing stories now from some of the CITs that have been going to camp and serving and working and doing stuff like that where life change is happening for them from that position as well, which has been really awesome doing to hear some of those stories.

SPEAKER_02 12:32

Yeah, the discipleship that's happening at camp in the summer for a lot of our families and kids that are going, it's awesome. Like I don't think people realize how changed the heart of the lakes is gonna be because we've had the opportunity to send 50 students already to camp. And then we have a bunch more that are going and serving as in leadership, serving and and and learning in the Bible and getting deeper in the word as they're teaching others, but also then growing deeper. So we're gonna have near 60 students between serving in in the ministry and attending camp already. That's gonna change our church, it's gonna change families, and so that's that's what what we're so excited about having the opportunity to go somewhere so close with somersa beach and be a part of it and reinforce what we're doing in our ministry. So it's exciting. So I'm I'm looking forward to it. But send your kids to Pathfinder Week, it's gonna be awesome, and you can have three days of rest. So Ryan, you might actually be able to sleep.

SPEAKER_01 13:27

I I know I was thinking about planning something actually. So go away.

SPEAKER_02 13:31

Yeah, Lila, you cannot come home because daddy and mommy went away. You're staying there. Yeah, no, that's gonna be cool. But well, let's talk a little bit about the message because I think we've got a long time without talking about. Um, we this week we're in we're in our Hotel Woods series. We did Solo Mio at Brooklyn campus, and Solo Mio is a romance movie. Have you guys seen it?

SPEAKER_01 13:53

We we watched it last night.

SPEAKER_02 13:55

Did you like it? Yeah, yeah. What would you rate it out of 10?

SPEAKER_01 14:03

Seven.

SPEAKER_02 14:03

Okay.

SPEAKER_01 14:04

I liked, I mean, and and for Kevin James, because Kevin James, you know, I don't know, you know He's kind of corny, let's be honest. He's not great in movies.

SPEAKER_00 14:12

He was good in hitch. He was good in hitch.

SPEAKER_01 14:15

He's not good as a leading. He's just corny.

SPEAKER_00 14:17

Yeah, he's too corny.

SPEAKER_01 14:19

But but I thought I I really liked it. I thought it was it was it had a couple corny moments, but I I thought it was there's one scene that I super hate in the movie, and I want to talk about that a little bit.

SPEAKER_02 14:28

What did you think about it?

SPEAKER_00 14:29

I only got to watch part of it because I was I'm sorry, man.

SPEAKER_02 14:32

I tried. I tried to get it in.

SPEAKER_00 14:37

All right, fair enough. I'm kidding. I'm kidding. I will tell you this. I thought that the production value was really good for being an Angel Studios movie. Angel Studios is knocking it out of the park, like they really are. Like I was very surprised by that. Usually you see something like that, and you're you already lower your expectations.

SPEAKER_02 14:54

I've seen a lot this year and last year from Angel Studios has been top-notch. Yeah, it's been really good.

SPEAKER_00 15:00

What I did see of it I thought was really good, and I got to see like Trevy Fountain and everything like that, which I thought was awesome because I heard you talk about it and stuff, so that was cool.

SPEAKER_02 15:08

Yeah, that's cool. Did you see it?

SPEAKER_03 15:11

No.

SPEAKER_02 15:12

Okay. Nick, have you seen it? I just got caught up on the goal.

unknown 15:15

So I'm a weak behind.

SPEAKER_02 15:16

Yeah, he's a weak behind. He watched the go. Okay. So Solo Mio's love story. Kevin James gets left at the altar. Um, it's his basically his journey through like recovering from heartache and heartbreak, and he ends up falling in love again. That's the story. But um, but it's in Italy, which is the love of my life. No, I'm just kidding. I love it. Like it's in my favorite place in my favorite town in the world. So it's like Patty and I, I'll watch this movie over and over again. It's not because Kevin James, it's because I just love watching all these places I like to hang out when I go to Italy and uh and the cheese shop that we buy cheese from. And uh did you watch him? Did you go to when they bought they went to this little tiny town and they bought a he they she bought a sandwich when she that's a different movie, never mind. I've watched a lot of Tuscan movies, but there's a little town that they go to in the movie, and that is you know where we where we kind of have our experiences at and go to, and so we love it. But um, so yeah, that's that's the movie. But there's one scene I hate, and I hated it so bad, and I still think about it, is when he's Kevin James is crying on the balcony. He doesn't actually sound like it's it's terrible. It's like the the fakest cry I've ever heard in my life. And it wasn't like funny fake, it was like he doesn't really know how to act. I guess so. I don't know. Do you know what's the I'm talking about?

SPEAKER_01 16:31

Um, yeah, I do know what you're talking about. I I like where they hear him crying.

SPEAKER_02 16:35

Yeah, I hate it. Like it just it's the worst fake cry ever. It's like you should have practiced more. I think I'm a terrible fake crier too, so like it's I I feel like I feel funny Hang on, hang on.

SPEAKER_00 16:45

How often do you have a need to fake cry in your everyday life?

SPEAKER_02 16:49

I do it a lot because I try to get the dog to give me sympathy and come snuggle with me sometimes. So I'm not ashamed. Emotional manipulation. I'm not ashamed. Like when she's ignoring me, I'm like, oh, come over here. Yeah, no. I want to see if she actually cares about me. She does, by the way. Um but we talked about we we we could have talked a lot of things about the movie, but we really talked about is the understanding of like God's plan for you. Like there are unexpected things that happen in your story. Like we all have a story. Like being left at the altar is unexpected. The life you expect, the life you plan doesn't always happen. You can have bad health diagnoses, breakups, heartache, loss of job. Like that's the reality of life. But God is still bigger than all that, and you still can be a happy ending if you follow his plan. It may not be the ending that you expected or you planned for yourself, but it may be the ending that God has for you. And really it's just about trusting God and knowing that God has bigger plans for us. So I think that was ultimately the the theme of which we I shared on Sunday, and I think if you watch that movie, you'd be like, oh yeah, I can see that. Um so when we when we talk about that, what's been the biggest unexpected event in your life that kind of threw your life in turmoil? And how have you seen God move you to a better ending or towards a better ending?

unknown 18:05

Anybody.

SPEAKER_02 18:06

You want to go first?

SPEAKER_01 18:07

Um, sure. You know, I mean, I don't know. I I I just off the cuff thinking about this question. I mean, I know I know that when I was when I was 18, I joined the Marine Corps and I joined the the the reserves and I had this idea that oh it's gonna pay for my college and and there was nothing happening in the world and and life was pretty easy, so I figured, oh, one week in a month's not a big deal. And uh then I graduated on September 14, 2001. Um, so three days after 9-11. And and so then everything changed. And I spent the majority of my time on active duty and you know being deployed and everything else, which was a major I can I mean those are those memories are vivid, like getting that paper where like, oh here we go. Oh, like not what I planned on. This was not this was not in my plan.

SPEAKER_02 18:56

Yeah, and and you know, but truthfully, you wouldn't probably be here had your life went a different direction.

SPEAKER_01 19:03

Yeah, we may not know you. Oh, I'm sh yeah, yeah, who knows?

SPEAKER_02 19:06

So it's I'm well, so I'm thankful.

SPEAKER_01 19:08

Yeah, throwing the monkey. Yeah, I'm grateful for it all. I mean, I'd do it all over again.

SPEAKER_02 19:12

Not not all the trauma you went through, but I'm thankful that your path came this way. Sorry about all that trauma in the in between.

SPEAKER_01 19:18

Thanks, God.

SPEAKER_02 19:18

Yeah, but I'm glad. I mean, I mean, really, if you think about it, your life might have gone a completely different direction. We may never know you exist, and you may never know us, and life may be completely different. So the path led you to where God knows you. It's awesome.

SPEAKER_00 19:32

I think that for me, there's I could pick any number of things. I could pick my divorce, I could pick, you know, all the different things that I've been through in life. But I was actually talking about this with Lisa not that long ago where we were talking about you specifically, where I said, you know, what if I had been somewhere else the weekend or the week that you did the funeral where I first met you, where I just wasn't available to go or didn't make it happen or whatever. And those like kind of tracking back some of the bigger decisions in your life to the areas where you maybe said yes to something when you could have said no or you made a choice that was, yeah, this is the thing that I'm gonna do, can sometimes lead to huge outcomes, not just negatively, like you could have positive outcomes that come from just you know saying yes in a moment when you might have said no. Where having somebody come into your life and kind of speak into and say, What are you doing to follow God? You know, what are you doing to serve him? What are you doing to this and that and the other? And having people take that moment and invest in you just because you happen to show up at a certain event, or finding out where that you're going to be moving after you have gone through a divorce, or finding out any of these other details. Like I look at the condition of the things that my son is doing right now, and I know beyond the shadow of a doubt that if he was not in Michigan at Heart of the Lakes, he would not be as spiritually healthy as he is right now because there was not a church in Altoona that was doing the things that Heart of the Lakes is doing where he would have been fully plugged in and fully involved and fully invested in everything. And those types of things come because of the way choices play out in your life.

SPEAKER_02 21:17

Yeah, it's crazy. I do not show it up at that funeral, we would have never met.

SPEAKER_00 21:20

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 21:20

Ever. Like our whole life, you know, we we would never have any of the experiences, ministry experiences, friendship experiences. Yeah, it's crazy. Just have one moment. Yeah. That's cool. You got anything?

SPEAKER_03 21:30

Well, I have a couple things that come to mind. The fact that I'm not a music teacher, like, because I was gonna be, I was lined up to do that, and I was doing really well, but I kind of felt this conviction that that's not where God had me. I had a good conversation with a friend that kind of helped me realize where my heart needed to be. And um 'cause I w I was doing that. I was studying, I was doing great. It was a lot of schooling, but it got a different direction. So I love Jesus more than I love music. So that was kind of the conversation I had with the guy. He's like, well then I guess you gotta think about that. And I'm like, well, there goes $40,000. Sweet. Um man.

SPEAKER_02 22:13

I love Jesus that much.

SPEAKER_00 22:16

$40,000, but he's still trying to figure out ways to count that as tithe. He just hasn't come up with a game.

SPEAKER_03 22:25

But uh this like I don't know, it wasn't like a catastrophic thing that happened, but it was as I was realizing the direction and the conviction that I was having and the ways that I could see God trying to set things up in my life, I was like, oh, okay, we're pivoting massively right now. So I guess it's a little different than like a traumatic thing that happened, but it was a huge switch up where I was not expecting things to end up the way they did.

SPEAKER_02 22:51

That makes sense. Yeah, it's good. Thanks for sharing. Now I could only think of Tony Stark when I think of you. What? Because there's a moment in the movie where he's like, I love you 3000, and now I'm gonna teach you to think, I love you 40,000. You close your prayers, you know. In Jesus' name, amen. I love you 40,000. If you don't know Marvel or Tony Stark, I guess you won't know that.

SPEAKER_00 23:13

That totally needs to be a sermon you preach sometime, though, of I love you forty thousand.

SPEAKER_02 23:16

You should do that as a Hoddlewood thing one time. So some in the future, that'd be awesome. Yeah. Forty in particular, 42,962 people. Uh so uh I mean I've had lots of those moments in my life where unexpected things happen. And I would say the one I continue to talk about at church and share is when I I thought I was gonna be a missionary, thought I was gonna, you know, I was playing football, you know, living living the the dream. And then I was just on a bus and just like it just hit me. Like, nope, you're not doing that. God God was pretty clear you're gonna be a pastor and you're gonna, you know, I kinda had I don't want to say I had a vision, but I had a like a I kind of sensed the future of what God had for me, and it was like, oh, I'm going into pastoral ministry. So not what I thought, not what I anticipated, not what I told Patty when we I proposed to her and what our life was gonna be like. And so ultimately I started I started immediately calling churches and got plugged into church, and that kind of changed everything. Kind of changed my desire to play football. Kind of last two years, I didn't really care anymore because I was now serving in church. So God has a way to put you on the path, and like you know, my life is my life is good and God's had a plan for it. So I think you you know, you just have to be open to his leading and like let him in the unexpected moments find what God has for you because just because it's could be bad doesn't mean it's not God moving you down a journey. Like, and so some of these things are good unexpected things and some of these things are bad unexpected, but ultimately every God it says in Romans 8.28, God works everything together for good. So it doesn't mean that everything is good, it means everything works together for good and ultimately towards his plan, which is always good. So I encourage you to look at life differently because the good and bad things that happen are if you're moving towards Jesus, they're always going to work together for good in one way for you to end up where God's God has you. And so keep plugging away, keep keep praying, keep encouraging each other, keep seeking him, and watch what God does in your life when the unexpected moments come because he's got big plans for you. So thanks for listening. We'll catch you on the next episode of the HODL cast, and uh yeah, play more board games.

unknown 25:20

So, yeah, I'm gonna be able to do it.