You Don’t Have to Be Perfect to Follow God with Pastor Kyle Prichard

0:00If you've ever worked with someone who creates chaos, plays the victim, and blames everyone else, then this podcast is for you. So here's your host, Adam Holbrook.

0:19Welcome to the Managing Difficult People podcast. I am your host, Adam Holbrook. The reason I created the Managing Difficult People podcast was I was seeing so much conflict, both in our personal lives and at work. And I'm seeing self-sabotage and our amount of our mental health struggles in this country. And I said, maybe, just maybe, I can create a place, a safe place where people can listen to my story, to my guest stories, and maybe gain awareness of where they're struggling in their own lives and maybe have a pathway forward. My name is Adam Holbrook. I am a John Maxwell leadership trainer.

1:01I am a keynote speaker and an executive coach. And if my message resonates with you, you can reach out to me on the managingdifficultpeoplepodcast.com. today we have our former guest Kyle Pritchard pastor Kyle Pritchard with us again and the reason I invited Kyle back on the podcast is our podcast by far reached more people than any other podcast I have had ever and I've had some powerful guests and the reason I believe that podcast is reaching so many different people, thousands of people, I'll get the exact number in a few days, is because people are hungry to find God, what it is to serve God, and how they can enter God into their lives more.

1:53And I'm so grateful that Kyle has agreed to come back on the podcast today. Kyle Pritchard is a lead pastor at Bethany Church in Tazewell, Tennessee, where he has served since launching the church in 2017. He's also a founder of Unbound Ministries, equipping churches and community leaders to respond to addiction, mental health challenges, and recovery with compassion and practical strategies. Kyle serves as chairman of Live Free Claiborne, a non-profit dedicated to reducing stigma and expanding recovery support in royal communities. A graduate of Lee University with a degree in Bible and theology, he has trained faith leaders across Tennessee, presented at national conferences, and is passionate about helping people experience lasting formation.

2:49Whether speaking in churches, community settings, or leadership events, Kyle brings a blend of biblical insight, real world experience, and practical encouragement that inspires people to live with purpose and hope. Please welcome to the Managing Difficult People podcast, Pastor Kyle Pritchard. Man, after that introduction, I feel like there needs to be some music playing. Here he is. Hey, so two things as we start, Adam. First of all, I am from the south i am i live as adam said in east tennessee and so in the south we a lot of times spell things differently than we say things and so it's taswell tennessee taswell tennessee yes it's just spelled taze well the second thing is this i know we're doing we're doing video here and people might I see moving boxes in the background.

3:51Those that are watching on YouTube, that's not our furniture. We don't decorate with Home Depot boxes at home. We just recently moved a couple of months ago. And if any of your listeners and those watching have ever moved, you know, it takes like, I don't know, two years to unpack stuff. You got to do it in bits and pieces. And I like the furniture. It looks beautiful. It's good to be here, man. And I am so glad that we've got hungry people out there. I'm excited that you're here. I think the Northeast was stunned that we did this podcast on finding God, serving God. And I think it really opened up some eyes.

4:35And I'm so grateful. And since our podcast, I have been making a list of questions to ask you. because these are questions that are kind of hovering over a lot of people in my community. I don't know where else, but if they're hungry in my community for these answers, they got to be hungry throughout the entire United States and beyond. Yeah, you know, you and I were talking in a conversation like people are hungry. They're hungry. They're hungry for more. There's something else out there. We're tired of what mainstream media is giving us. And like we need truth, our souls, who we are on the inside, the way we were created, we search for truth.

5:15We're looking for the truth. So I'm excited to have this conversation today and share some more truth about this loving God that calls us into a relationship with him. Well, that's just a perfect lead up to this question. How are you certain that God exists? Boy, you're going right for it. Right at it. We're not going to leave our listeners hanging on. Let's go right into it. So I have to start. I have to start personally. I have to start with my experience of how I'm certain that God exists. I'm 53 years old. I've got a huge, I've got a huge, as a matter of fact, I want to read something real quick.

5:59I wasn't even planning on this, so I didn't have it. I didn't have it marked in the scripture, but I was doing a staff meeting. We have a, every time we do a staff meeting, we have a devotion and our devotion this past Monday morning, I read the scripture. This is in 2 Timothy, the Apostle Paul writing to his kind of protege, Timothy. He says, for people will be lovers of self, lovers of money, boastful, proud, demeaning, disobedient to parents, ungrateful, unholy, unloving, irreconcilable, slanderers without self-control, brutal, without love for what is good, traitors, reckless, conceited, lovers of pleasure rather than lovers of God, holding to the form of godliness but denying its power.

6:4719 characteristics in like two verses of those that are ungodly. I read this and I'm like, oh my gosh, I tick all those boxes. Or me in my flesh, in my past, like looking at the last 53 years, tick, tick, tick, tick, tick. on all these characteristics of the ungodly person. And then I step back and I look at my life now, Adam, and I look at how I have been transformed into something new, into a new creature that I wasn't before. And there's no way that any amount of self-control or self-help or whatever of me doing it could create literally what I would call a new person. And the Bible says that if anyone is in Christ, he or she is a new creation, And I've become a new creation.

7:37And so for me personally, that causes me to have no doubt that there is God, that God exists, that God is in control, that God is all powerful and can do things even even slash. And especially on a personal level for somebody like me and somebody like you and anybody that's listening to this or watching this. So that's answer number one. So you ask the question, how can you be certain that God exists? So answer number one is my personal testimony of who God is and what he's done in my life, what Jesus has done in my life. Look, the truth of the gospel is this. Jesus died on the cross. He gave up his life on the cross 2 ,000 years ago to make us, the creation, a son or a daughter of the living God.

8:24So we could call him father. So then we could pray our father who art in heaven, dot, dot, dot, right? Okay, so that's answer number one. Answer number two, so let's go. So we call it apologetics is taking biblical arguments to prove that God is real. So I'm going to throw out a couple out there that I'm not going to go into detail about, but I'm going to give your podcast listeners a little information. I sent you a couple of links on some videos that I think we can share for them to go. Louis Giglio, Louis Giglio is a pastor who is just a fantastic apologetic pastor, and he's got a couple of videos.

8:59And one of the videos is on laminin, all right? So laminin is a protein. I'm talking about some stuff I don't understand, but a glycoprotein that holds us together. So in your flesh, at your smallest level, microscopic level, there are these glycoprotein that holds you together. If you look at them under the most powerful microscopes that exist, and they make a cross, They're literally in the shape of a cross. Yes, the tiniest thing that holds anything together, this glycoprotein called laminin, is in the shape of a cross. So I'm sharing that. It's crazy. Go watch it. I think it's about 45 minutes long.

9:44So pick some popcorn and sit back and relax and watch this video. So then there's another one by Louis Giglio. I believe the name of it is How Great Is Our God or something like that. And so he goes from a different angle. So in the first video, he goes inward to the smallest microscopic level of who we are as creation. On the other, he goes out into the universe. So we flip from microscopic to telescopic. And he does this journey through the universe and how Earth was created. And do you understand that on a biological level, there are so many things that had to perfectly line up? I mean perfectly line up.

10:20They couldn't be off just a smidgen for Earth to exist in our universe and for us to be here to be able to breathe and communicate and grow and so on and so forth. Anyway, so he does this. And so he takes this. He goes out. He starts with Earth and goes out, out, out, out, out, out, out. Till he gets to what we're going to call. I'm doing quotation marks for those that can't see me. Air quotes. Right. He gets out there and it's an eye. This is like the center of the universe is like this. I don't know. All seeing. I am using some of my own language here. That's not literally an eye. Don't get me wrong.

10:54But the galaxy or whatever it is, you got to watch the video, the galaxy, whatever is like what we would call again, air quote in the center. It looks like a giant eye looking over everything, man. It's crazy. It's crazy. And to me, it points to God. So I am going to read a verse. I'm not going to preach a big, long sermon to anybody, but I do want to share a little bit of scripture because scripture is absolutely, it's God's revelation to us. It's his truth to us. And so in Romans chapter one, verse 20, Paul, the apostle Paul writes this for his invisible attributes, that is his eternal power and divine nature, who God is, have been clearly seen since the creation of the world being understood what he has made.

11:37They've been clearly seen it. The sunrise, watch the sunrise, watch the sunset, go to the beach and watch the waves that just continuously. And we've got this eco, this world ecosystem that all works together and get into some biology and some science and look at how perfect everything must work in order for life to exist on the realm that we know it. And then you want to question whether there's a creator or argue that there's not a creator. So then let me go a different route. Okay. Another guy, Lee Strobel is his name, okay? Look this guy up. He was a journalist slash is a journalist, I guess, an atheist, I believe from Chicago.

12:18This was maybe back in the 1980s, and he was an atheist, and he set out as a journalist to prove that God didn't exist. He did investigation. He did research. He did all this stuff, and what did he do? He proved that God did exist, okay? You got to read his stuff. So he has this Case 4 series. So the Case for Christ, the Case for Faith, the Case for the Bible, so on and so forth. You can go look them up on Amazon. Just search Lee Strobel Case 4, and you're going to see all these books. And even if some of your podcast listeners want to talk to their kids and help their young children, there's some Case 4 kids books, Case for Christ for Kids, Case for Faith for Kids.

12:58It's all really good. I love it. By the way, I love you, man. That was so beautifully articulated. read it. Number one, you gave us three different angles from it. You not only gave us scripture, but you gave us examples and you explain the scripture because sometimes the scripture is confusing when you first read it. I would love to read something to you and I would love to hear your insights to this. Two twins are talking in their mother's womb. The first asks, do you believe in life after delivery? The second replied, why of course there is. There has to be something after delivery. Maybe we're here to prepare ourselves for what comes next.

13:41The first asked, nonsense, there's no life after delivery. What kind of life would that be? The second answered, I don't know exactly, but there will be more light than there is in here. Maybe we'll walk with our legs and eat with our mouths. The first laughed. That's absurd. Walking is impossible. And eating with our mouths? Ridiculous. The umbilical cord supplies everything we need. Life after delivery is impossible. The second thought for a moment and said, well, maybe it's different than in here. Maybe we won't need the cord anymore. The first replied, if there's life, then why has no one ever come back from it.

14:21Delivery is the end of life. After delivery, there's nothing but darkness and silence. The second responded, I don't know, but I believe we'll meet our mother and she'll take care of us. The first asked, mother? You actually believe in mother? If mother exists, where is she now? The second smiled and said, she's all around us. We live in her and we move through her. Without her, this world wouldn't exist. The first answered, I don't see her, so it's only logical that she doesn't exist. The second quietly responded, sometimes when you're very still and you listen carefully, you can hear her. You can feel her love.

15:07Wow. Yeah. So, I mean, it's funny as you were, as you begin, even the two twins talking in the womb is their life after birth, whatever my mind went to is their life after death, you know? And, and again, I think that's such a good, when we begin to open up to this possibility that there is this creator God, he's not a God of the past and he's not just a God that sits on the throne, but a God that wants to have a relationship with us that wants to be with us and even made a way for that to happen. I'm not going to get into all that right now. When we open ourselves up to this, we begin to see things differently.

15:50Everything in life becomes differently. And I'll say even the hardships in life become differently, become different. Like the dark days aren't as dark as they used to be because of the life that's around us. And because we have this realization that we're walking, walking and living in the creation of God. Does that make sense? That's the thing. We could, it's being with God, isn't going to eliminate our problems. It's just going to show us purpose through our problems, right? And different perspective. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Now I want to ask you this question in gospel of Luke. This is six 38. It says give and it shall be given unto you.

16:35Now, this actually quote, the first time I had heard this quote was from Rhonda Byrne, The Secret. The Secret is a book about manifestation, and it's about asking, believing, and receiving. Now, there's many people out there that are giving back. They're giving to their communities, and they have their dream, and their dreams are to serve God more. And after a while, they're discouraged because life has them down. They're constantly giving, giving, giving. And they might think they're on the right path, but responsibilities take over, money responsibilities, family responsibilities. And then they say, I don't know if I can serve God the amount that I want to just because of life circumstances.

17:22What would you say to that biblical quote and to that person? Okay, so let's start with this. So context, context is huge. So we have to start with the context of the quote. So I want to read it again, Luke 638. And I'm reading out of the Christian Standard Bible. There's a whole lot of different, that may be something for another conversation on a different podcast. Why are there all these different Bibles? All right. Okay. So give, and it will be given to you. A good measure, pressed down, shaken together, and running over will be poured into your lap. for with the measure you use, it will be measured back to you, is what Jesus said.

18:03So we always have to go back to context. The context of actually what Jesus is talking about is forgiveness in this. Yes. So what he says in the verse before that is do not judge and you will not be judged. Do not condemn and you will not be condemned. Forgive and you will be forgiven. Give. What's he talking about? He's talking about forgiveness. Give, and it will be given to you. A good measure, pressed down, shaken together, and running over will be poured into your lap. In context. Now, I also believe that words can have context. I believe that scriptures, we always have to look at context, but I believe we can also sometimes get more meaning out of one verse.

18:51So, for example, we talk about the giving and second Corinthians. Paul says this. The point is this. The person who sows sparingly will also reap sparingly. And the person who sows generously will also reap generously. Right. Each person should do as he or she has decided in his or her heart, not reluctantly at a compulsion. since God loves a cheerful giver. So look, yes, Jesus is talking about forgiveness in context of Luke 638. But I believe that's also a true promise when we're giving and when we're cheerful givers to others that the Lord will bless us. And I don't believe in giving to be blessed.

19:41That's what we call prosperity gospel. I'm gonna give more so God will give me more. It's about giving. I got to stop you there because in the book, The Secret, right? And this is kind of where I have been playing with this for many, many years. And I feel like a little bit stuck with it. Rhonda Byrne talks about The Secret being released, one of the all-time greatest books. I'm sorry, one of the most sold books out there. And she talks about while she's struggling with finances, she doesn't have any money to get this book released. and she takes money off of her credit card and she starts passing money out to people on the streets.

20:20And then magically this stock that she owned for many years that she didn't know about starts exploding and she gets this check for, I don't know, I think it was$25 ,000, which was enough for her to get the book published. So no, I hear that. I've given before and like, and I love to give giving is the purpose of life, right? Yeah. I'm going to give more than I'm capable of. And like, I would receive back. I'd feel great about myself. And I think that's the purpose. But if we're just going to give everything that we have away and drain our own self and drain our own family self, I don't know that that's the answer.

21:04Oh, here. Yeah. So that's great. That's good stuff. Okay. Okay, so there's a whole lot in there. Okay, so first of all, you've got a lot of preachers that preach, again, what we call prosperity gospel. And honestly, I think they're just wanting to make money. That's just my, somebody can get mad at me and they can leave bad comments on here. That's fine. I don't care. In other words, you know, give, give, give. And the more you give, the more God will give you. Now, there's a lot of truth to that, but it's all about why we're giving. I do not give to receive from the Lord. I give to give. God loves a cheerful giver.

21:38If I'm being a cheerful giver, then I'm literally giving without expecting anything in return. And you're also not promoting it either, right? The Bible talks about that as well. Yes. So if I see a homeless person that's hungry and I say, oh, here, I'm going to give you$10, hoping that God will, again, I'm going to go back to the scripture, give me a good measure of press down, shake it together and running over. They're talking about corn, by the way, in a jar. Press down, and then you shake it, and the corn falls down just a little bit more. And, like, you cram this jar full of kernels of dried corn, right?

22:12This is what it's saying. And so I go to this homeless person. I say, I want to give you$10. And if I'm going, okay, God, I gave them$10. I want you to give back to me now. That's not, I want to give you$10 because you need some food, and I love you, and God loves you, and here you go. And then I want to go on with life and I may receive blessings over that, number one, that are not monetary. They can be any number of things. And it may be monetary. I don't know. But when we're giving just to give, that's not what God means by or Paul means by God loves a cheerful giver. Now, the other thing was when we just give and give and give and give and give.

22:49So you mentioned in my intro that, you know, I've launched Unbound Ministries. And so I go around and I do a lot of work with faith leaders and community leaders and nonprofit leaders and whatever, trying to I teach on and speak on all kinds of different things. But one of them is compassion fatigue. I talk a lot about and I've got a presentation that I do on compassion fatigue. And so compassion fatigue is when you give, give, give, give, give, and you're just out of gas. In other words, if you bring me a glass, if you bring me a cup like this and say, hey, can I get some water? And I bring you an empty pitcher and I can hold that pitcher upside down over your cup as long as I want to.

23:28And if it's empty, you're not going to get your water out of it. And so that's not what God calls us to do. Now, I hope this is so important. So there's some other scripture in Hebrews chapter 13, Hebrews chapter 10, I'm sorry, that tells us not to neglect the gathering of the saints. So what that scripture mean is don't neglect other brothers and sisters in Christ around you. So this is a call to go to church. OK, this is a call to gather together in community. If you ask the book of Acts in the Bible is the historical book of the early church. They gathered in community. They were always together in community, okay?

24:09One of the reasons that we're called to be in community is because we feed off of each other. Anytime I talk to you or have a conversation with you, I get some feeling out of it that allows me to go pour out into other people. And so I surround myself. Yes, I work with a lot of people that need a lot of things that I have to pour out to. I pastor a church. I preach two sermons every Sunday. and it's a pouring out. It's exhausting. And so this is the whole key to the word Sabbath. In Hebrew, the word is Sabbath. It's a day of rest. It's a time of rest that God commands us to do. God says, hey, stop working, stop pouring out, stop doing what you're doing and take a beat.

24:52Just take a breath. Now, in the Old Testament before Jesus, the day of Sabbath was a day that we had to legally take. In the New Testament, Jesus becomes the Sabbath, so it's actually me resting my life in him. What am I resting in? I'm resting in his power to heal, his power to save, his power to deliver, his power to all the promises of God. I had a note of this. His promise to be faithful even when I'm not faithful. God promises me that. Even when I'm not faithful, God's still there going, hey, Kyle, you're my son and I'm your dad. and yes anyway I know I got off on a tangent there sorry compassion fatigue is and you got to make sure you fill your cup to make sure that you serve yourself yes and look I notice it sometimes with people that are have the victim's mindset and I want to I love those people but they're going to just constantly drain your energy the same thing with those people not just serving and giving to others but you're giving to them by listening to them but after a while you need to have space.

25:58Read in the Gospels, Jesus was constantly, Jesus is our model. That's why we have Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John in the Bible. They teach us who Jesus is and tell us about Jesus. And so we read those and we go, okay, I need to try to be more like Jesus. That's what the word Christian means, Christ-like. So I want to be like Christ. And so what did Jesus do? Jesus was constantly withdrawing by himself. And sometimes even with his close few, two or three buddies, closest friends, and going off and resting in the Father's presence and praying. And we've got to learn to take time to do that for ourselves.

26:38And he wanted to be by himself. There was a lot of that. He wanted to be by himself. Yes. Yes. Hey, you saw The Chosen. You said that you watched The Chosen. Do you remember that episode? Fantastic. I've watched every episode at least three times. Do you remember the episode where they were up on a mountain and there were a whole lot of people around and all day long people kept coming to Jesus and coming to Jesus to be healed. They were coming to be healed and to have the evil spirits out of them and all this bunch of stuff. And at the end of the day, Jesus is absolutely exhausted. And he says, I need to rest.

27:12Yes. And his mom, even Mary, his mom is there in the chosen, right? And again, this is not, It's extra biblical. She's like, you need to go sleep. Come on, you need to go to sleep. And so she takes him and yeah, and she gets him kind of ready for bed and all that. And it's being a good mom, like rest is so important. Sabbath is so important. Rest in your mind, rest in your body, rest for ministry. And again, rest is not, I'm just going to go be lazy and veg and binge watch whatever. I'm not saying it's not okay to watch stuff. I'm not saying that. I'm saying, let's call it what it is. Rest is not going and doing what you want to do.

27:53Rest is, okay, Lord, I'm going to take a breath in you. I'm going to let your promises be real in me. And yes, I'm going to thank you. Even if you are, hey, I just need some time to spend 10 minutes on a video game or to watch an episode of this or whatever it is, it's stopping and remembering, God, thank you that you've blessed me with this rest. And when you do that, just workaholics and we want things and we're just pushing, pushing, pushing. And I got to say, after I speak on stage, I'm exhausted. I'm exhausted. And last time I spoke when you were there, we sat back in the chairs and we're just hanging out.

28:31And then I got to tell you, when I went back, I was exhausted. I was done. I just kind of wanted to be at peace. I preach every Sunday morning and every Sunday evening. I come home every Sunday afternoon and take a nap that's fantastic kyle let's move on yes yes if someone wants to serve god more or get into god more where should they begin should it be the bible the advice that i was given was to read john in the bible start with john in the bible but to me i still don't go to church i would like to be able to get to that place but there is a lot of moving factors in the relationships with the kids and working out things, I'm going to get there.

29:11I promise I'm going to get there because that's one of my ultimate goals. But where should someone start? Okay, let's talk about all that. So let's start with the Bible. Bible's tough to read. It's a hard book to read. It is the number one selling book in the history of the world. And it's so hard to read because there's cultural stuff in it. There's customs. There's a lot of words and a lot of names that we can't even come close to pronouncing. I just make names up when I'm preaching sometimes because I'm not, I'm not Jewish. I'm not. And so I don't know how to pronounce them. And we skip over things in anyway.

29:44And so gaining an understanding of the Bible. So yes, I believe everybody needs to sit under a good Bible teaching preacher, pastor, whatever. Everybody needs that because God has gifted. That's a gift that God gave me. This is what we call a spiritual gift. God gave me a gift to be able to read this and discern it and get more discerning and getting information and having a love to dive deep. I look into Hebrew words and Greek words and customs, and I want to understand what it means shaking and pressed in and shaking in the jar of corn because when you understand that, it can get that picture, that giving.

30:22Let me read it again. Pressed down, shaken together, and running over. Like God says, I want to give this to you. I'm going to cram it in there, and it's going to be running over into your lap, right? So anyway, going back and studying those things and being able to explain that to people and help people fall in love with it. So that's important, but the Bible's hard to read. So let's start with this. So John's a great book. If you want to see Jesus, start with the gospel. If you're not familiar with the Bible, don't start in Genesis and try and read the Bible all the way through. I don't mean to be Debbie Downer here.

30:52You're not going to make it. You're not going to make it, right? I'm not one of these. I'm not saying that there's anything wrong with people reading the Bible through in a year, but it needs to read the Bible through in a year. You need to be somebody that already understands what you're reading. And that's where The Chosen had come out for me, Kyle. I started watching The Chosen, and then I started reading the Bible over, and I'm like, oh. Yes, yes, yes. Oh, this connects it. Or I pick up a YouTube video of a pastor preaching. And I don't know. Do you have a recommendation? Are you on YouTube?

31:26I'm not on YouTube, but like pretty much all of this guy. Yeah. Well, pretty much all of my messages are on our podcast page. It's BethanyChurch.me, M-E, BethanyChurch.me. Go to our podcast page. There's a lot of different ways to preach. I'm not really a topical preacher. I'm an exegetical preacher. Like I'm going to take scripture. We're going to start at this verse, and we're going to work our way down. and I'm going to teach while I'm preaching and trying to help people understand that. So I want to urge people, go listen to the messages and reach out to me if you have questions. I love that.

32:01I would love to help anybody anywhere better understand things. Now, Adam, when we got ready, I'll share this behind-the-scenes stuff with all your listeners. Before we started with the podcast, Adam was like, I don't know if this is going to be 20 minutes or 45 minutes. We're just going to go with it. Listen, that's how I preach. I don't, I'm not a 30 minute, after 20 minutes or 30 minutes, I quit preaching. My sermon, my messages, I want to teach what the Lord gives me to teach. And so sometimes I teach for 30 minutes or 45 minutes or an hour. So I do, I want to urge that. Find somebody that you trust that can give you the truth of the word and help you understand it.

32:36Now, let's go back to reading in the Bible. So John, the gospel of John, I normally take someone that's new to the Bible that's never done. I send them to Mark, the gospel of Mark. The reason that I send them to Mark, Mark is like, did you see the movie or the series? There's like a bunch of the Fast and the Furious. Did you watch any of those movies? The Fast and the Furious. All right. Okay. Well, anybody that's listening gets it. The Fast and the Furious. I call Mark the Fast and the Furious of the Gospels. Okay. Because in Mark, Jesus is constantly on the go serving people. Mark is all about Jesus being the servant of others and loving others and putting others first.

33:14And it's short. It's concise. there's not a lot of custom stuff, Jewish custom stuff or whatever in it. So it's kind of easy to understand. So I always suggest people to start with Mark, but again, John's not a bad, not a bad place to start either. John's my favorite gospel. I'd rather read John than any of the gospels. I love them all, but anyway. Okay. So let's the Bible, because the Bible's important. Psalm 119, 105 says, your word is a lamp unto my feet and a light unto my path. Okay. So it's God's work. The Bible is God's revelation to us. It is God's love story. God's love letter. God, God, my Bible, you can, I've got, I don't know if you can see this or not, but I've got a highlight and I draw lines and I make myself, I make myself, I got a larger Bible because I can't read the words as my eyes get older, right?

34:06So I got this massive Bible that I can, can we do that? I'm different colors. For those of you that are on the podcast and not watching, like I literally like highlight different colors and all kinds. This is my personal Bible. It's okay to write your Bible. Don't let anybody tell you it's not. They don't know what they're talking about, right? This is my personal Bible. This is God speaking to me. So the Bible's important. But take it in little bits. Don't try and it's not a marathon. It's a sprint. If I get through a page a day, that's great for me. Listen, sometimes this morning, I spent probably 45 minutes on one verse, just contemplating this verse and what it means in my life and so on and so forth.

34:48So there's that. The second thing, when we talk about serving and how do I serve, I feel like I'm called to serve God, but I really don't know what I want to do. So yes, number one, start with the Bible. Number two, ask him prayer. And when I say, I'm not necessarily prioritizing these, sometimes prayer needs to come first, right? So Lord, I want to be honest with God. He, be honest. He is, he, if you can learn, so, oh gosh, I don't want to go too deep into this, but so we have God and then we have what we call the Trinity, the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit. And so there, God is one, but the Trinity, I'm going to use this loosely, are like the three persons.

35:28They are the three persons of God. They all have different attributes. So God is my father, but God also came to earth as Jesus, the son. God also lives in me as the Holy Spirit. When we can begin to understand that God is our father, that changes everything because then we can just go have a conversation with dad. The Bible calls him Abba, Abba. So it's a Greek word and it really means daddy is the best way. It's very affectionate and would translate into English as daddy. So go into God as daddy and say, daddy, I want to serve you more. I don't even know where to start. Will you? This is so important because what you're saying is we all find our path a little bit differently.

36:11And I'd like to share my path because I'm recently getting back into God more. It was me on my morning walks talking to God. I'd say the Lord's prayer on my morning walk. I talked to God as a friend. hey why did you do this I don't understand why you did this thank you for this just talking to him as a human being I watch the chosen I try to watch 20 minutes of the chosen chosen every day I like to read the bible three times a week a page maybe a half an hour at a clip I would like to start finding a church again but the dynamics my kids I've been start talking to my kids about Jesus I talk to my kids about Jesus at nighttime I talk to my kids about Jesus my son loves the stories I tell him about Jesus and it may, I don't know where it's all going to go, but I, the next step is me is to go find a place where I could be part of the community.

36:58But that, that's, that's work for me. Right. And I don't know when that time will be, but right now I, this is the path and I'm being consistent. Let me speak into that, Adam, because I believe you've probably got listeners that are dealing with the exact same thing. So can I tell you, that's not work for you. that's not something you need to do. What you need to do is go, God, I want to worship you and I want to live for you. And I hear this need for a church community and that's something I want in my life. So here, I'm giving this to you, Dad. I'm going to give this to you and I want to trust that in some supernatural way that I'm going to run into somebody at the grocery store maybe that I don't even know and they're going to invite me to church and I'm going to go.

37:38Let's do it. I'm leaving it in God's hand. God, find me that direction. I love that. I absolutely love that. So that's how it all happens. God, I got goosebumps. I got goosebumps. I love this. God, I want to serve you more. So God here, I'm going to give this to you. This is my heart. The Bible says God knows the intentions of the heart. I love that because even because my heart is to love God and to serve God and to love people and all that. I constantly worship little G gods. I get focused on other things or sometimes I don't love somebody the way I should or I don't serve the way that I should.

38:11And I love the fact that the Bible says God knows the intentions of the heart because God knows my heart. My father knows my heart. And he goes, I love you, Kyle. I know what your heart is, even though you're kind of messing this up right now. I know what your heart is. And so anyway, so look, so ask the Lord, God. I absolutely love that. Now, I got to say one thing here. I want to move on. Okay. So last episode, when you were on, we talked about I was saying my prayer and I was reading my scripture. at night and then you said everything throughout the day is to be within God and you made this hand gesture that is goes over and over and that impacted me huge so I'm gonna I try to take God with me throughout the day I try to have him in my presence through all the decisions am I perfect no do I make mistakes yes but I need to read this because a pastor recently said this and this has me completely discouraged it he said because if I have only one more question with you this is the question that I want to ask you.

39:13You can't live in sin and follow God at the same time. To me, this is the most discouraging thing because I screw up every day, Kyle. I screw up. So every time I screw up, I'm going to have to start all over again. It's so hard to live within God. And like where God gives us forgiveness. God talks about giving us forgiveness, but it's saying you can't live in God, live in sin and follow God at the same time. Please make this clear for me. Okay. So, absolutely. So, first of all, you are absolutely correct. That's not the right. Discouraging is the right word. We, we get this idea that, okay, if I say a cuss word, God doesn't love me anymore.

40:00So again, I want to go back to God knows the intention. God knows the intention of the heart. God knows what's on the, God knows what's on the inside. And so I get the idea behind it because we are called into holiness. We're called into godliness. I'm doing a little men's coffee group on Tuesday mornings right now. We're all reading through a book together called Disciplines of the Godly Man. You know, what does it look like to be a Christian and to grow in the Lord and to grow in my relationship with God? And so we are to be transformed. Number one, I want to go back to this in your very first question you asked me, my very first answer was it's the spirit of God that transforms us.

40:41You're not going to quit cussing on your own. You're not going to quit pornography on your own. You're not all the sin stuff, the self-centeredness stuff, the worshiping idols and stuff. You're not going to quit that on your own. Okay, you're going to try and you're going to fail at it. But when we learn to submit and surrender to God's spirit that lives inside of believers, there's a power inside of us that will transform us. Again, I'm going back to your first question. You asked me how I knew God was real because he's made me new. He's turned me into something. I am not who I used to be. My wife and I have been married 11 years this coming Saturday.

41:19And my wife will tell you right now, I am not the same person that she married. I mean, my attitude is different. my anger. I used to have anger problems and just get mad at the snap of a finger. And I'm not at all that person. I can't even tell you the last time I got mad and lost control of my anger over something, right? That's nothing I could do on my own. It's everything that God did in me and for me because, well, because I belong to him. And I want to come back to your answer, but I want to, it's just crazy that you, that you've brought this up. So the, the verse that I said I was meditating on for over about 45 minutes this morning, just studying over a highlight.

41:58It says, but I consider my life of no value to myself. My purpose is to finish my course and the ministry I received from the Lord Jesus. So the whole idea of Christianity is going to be this. Jesus died on the cross. He died. He was a man. He was fully God and fully man. Again, we just got to walk it by faith. I don't understand that. Can't explain it to you. I have faith. Jesus is fully God, fully man, and fully divine at the same time. But in his flesh, the man Jesus died on the cross, shed his blood, okay, to purchase you. The biblical or theological word is redemption. Read Ephesians chapter one.

42:41That's a good place to read about our relationship with God. To redeem you, to purchase you for God so you no longer belong to yourself. A Christian no longer belongs to themselves, they belong to God. Now, I want to go back to your question because it's all going to tie in together. So there is a difference in following Jesus and living in fellowship with Jesus. There's a difference in following Jesus and living in fellowship with Jesus, okay? Now, you know the Bible's full of marriage language. We talked about this in our last podcast that we did together. The Bible's full of marriage language, so I use marriage language a lot because it's the relationship with my wife.

43:22Truth is, I can be married to my wife and commit adultery and cheat on her. We're still married, but I have sinned against my wife. Do you agree with that? Yes. And because I sinned against my wife, we're not going to live in fellowship together, in oneness together. There's going to have to be something that brings us back together for us to live in oneness after that. So it's the same thing with God. when we're living in sin, we still belong to God. God still loves us. We're still his child. He wants us. He's calling us. He's saying, hey, come back to me. Quit living in this over here because, well, John, 1 John chapter 1, I think verse 5 or verse 6 basically says you can't live in darkness, so sin, and be in the light of God at the same time.

44:13So it's not that you don't belong to God. It's just your focus is on something else. Your focus is on whatever it is that's distracting you, that's keeping you from God. And so that's why we're called to live in holiness, because when I'm living in holiness, then I'm walking in fellowship with God or walking in communion with God is a good way to put that. Does that make sense, Adam? Yes, but we're not starting over once we sin, right? Like if I've been trying to follow God, but then like I'm following God, but I'm trying to live within him as much as I possibly can. And then I, like I sin, like I make a mistake, I screw up.

44:51Like it's not like I'm restarting. And that's kind of what this was interpreted through this other pastor. You can't live in sin and follow God. And that was what was discouraging with what he said. But you're saying that's not true. We can just continue to live within God. If we live within God, then we're actually going to be able to get to this, place? Am I understanding this right? Adam, give me just a second. I'm having some technical issues here. Can you hear me now? Yeah. I can hear you. We got about two more minutes, just so you know. We've talked about some good stuff and it's been a lot and now we're going to have to do this again.

45:39Kyle I didn't even get to half of my questions I didn't even get to half of them but I'm like wow it was absolutely incredible I'm so grateful that you were able to come on again to the podcast I think that I know exactly why the listeners love listening to you and they come back in floods to listen to you you're preaching to our savior God Jesus Christ you are serving so many people you're helping so many people on my website managingdifficultpeoplepodcast.com you can ask Kyle a direct question there through the voice so you can ask him a question and you can ask me a question there and I will refer it over to him he'll answer it directly but if they want to contact you if they want to hear more and I'd love to have you on again because we didn't even tip over this iceberg, where can they reach you?

46:29So probably the easiest thing is pastorkyle at bethanychurch.me is my email address. Pastorkyle at bethanychurch.me, M-E at the end. I know that's weird, but it's also pretty cool. bethanychurch.me. Anyway, so yeah, reach out any time and I love answering questions. I love leading people closer in their walk with the Lord.

46:56You've helped me. Thank you, Pastor Kyle Pritchard, for being here on the Managing Difficult People podcast. Till next time. Thanks for watching.

47:26drawing to win a$10 ,000 private VIP day with Adam Holbrook himself. Be sure to head on over to managingdifficultpeoplepodcast.com and pick up a free copy of Adam's gift and join us on the next episode.