Brandin Reed // Witness

Welcome to the Lookout Weekly Podcast.

Jesus in his presence.

Transform the world with the love.

Visit us alive at the lookout.

Alright, so microphone check one, two.

We might have to turn this up a little bit.

How y'all doing?

I'm resetting here.

So, first off, I just want to commend.

I want to just brag on uh your pastor here for a second and the first lady.

It's always such a religious pastor thing to see the first lady.

I met them, I don't know, a couple years ago.

Never met him before in my life.

He let me stay in his house, in his basement.

Don't even know me.

That's the type of guy he is right there.

We want to talk about welcoming.

That's your pastor.

He sits there and then I realized, man, his wife can cook.

Golly, she can cook.

Went to a writing camp and there was like a full spread.

It was like a Thanksgiving feast.

And it's like I asked my buddy Dave Powers, who's the cook?

So I had to go back to the kitchen and see who this was.

And listen, she's the mama of the house, so I think she needs a big round of applause for what's going on.

And then when I left the house, what was so cool, because Luke is like such a great dad.

You can obviously see it.

He's doing communion with his family over there.

I'm just like, golly, he's just checking every checkbox off of a great dad, you know.

But as I was leaving the house, he's like, hey guys, he grabs his kids, he's like, let's pray for Brandon and your little daughter.

What's her name?

Amelie, she prayed for me.

God, thank Brandon and bless him, this and that.

I was just like, man, I remember those moments.

It's not it's not ordinary.

So what you're doing here is is really extraordinary.

It truly, truly is.

And I just wanted to say that about him.

He's a he's a good dude, even if he slams me with the AI stuff.

All right, so my name is my name is Brandon Reid.

I'm from Dallas, Texas, Texas.

I dropped my roots in Texas about 20 years ago.

I love Texas.

It's it's awesome, it's flat, but it's beautiful and it's southern, and people are awesome there.

It it rains and it's violent, and then the sun comes out.

Before that, it was Portland, Oregon.

And before that, it was Los Angeles, Phoenix.

My father was an evangelist.

We'll get into that in a moment.

And I know we gotta move quick because I got about 30 minutes, so I'm gonna be tracking real fast, but just track with me here for a sec.

But there's something special about this place and this day and my life and my message that I'm gonna bring, really what God has done through me for right now.

I don't believe in coincidences, I believe in divine appointments, and I believe this is one of those.

So if you're here, whether you're young, you're old, maybe you haven't been here for a while, maybe this is a regular church home.

It's no accident you're here this morning because I believe the spirit of God is gonna move on your life.

Do you believe that?

I'm talking about a tangible spirit of God, not something that you have to dream up, not something that you have to, it's not an emotional response, it's something different.

And when it comes upon your life, it's undeniable.

It's something that breaks the bondage of your life, it's something that comes in and will come underneath addiction where you try and you try and you try to stop, and nothing works, and the spirit and the love of God comes in and all of a sudden you're set free.

I don't know how it happened.

I can't explain what went down, but it happened.

That's the mystery of the grace and the love of God.

And that's what I love to talk about because it flows through me, and this is a day that it's just gonna pour out.

If I happen to cry, if I happen to, you know, get a little emotional, forgive me because it's locked up inside me and it's gonna come out today by the word of God.

Amen.

So, Father, in the name of Jesus, I pray right now in this place, in this church, the history of this church, every seed that has been sown in this place, every act of kindness, just the season we're in.

Father, I pray right now that your spirit would fall, and I pray that the love of Jesus Christ would be a revelation to us like never before, and we'd have a hunger for people and for the lost.

In Jesus' name, everybody said, Amen.

All right, so here's the connection.

You're gonna trip out on this.

This is this is a story.

Are you ready?

Say, I'm ready.

All right, here we go.

So I go to Estes Park a couple years ago to a writing camp with this guy named Dave Powers.

I don't know what to expect.

I'm from Texas.

I pull up, guys are wearing beanies and it's snowing.

We're at a YMCA up there, YMCA up there.

It's like a resort more than a YMCA.

I'm like, this place is cool.

And we're going there to write songs.

I sit down in this in this camp and I'm paired up with three people that I kind of know, and we're gonna write together.

And Dave Powers, he has amazing songwriting camps, him and his wife, Tara.

And I'm sitting there, and actually, y'all were there.

And Dave begins to pour out his heart.

He's like, you know what?

Listen, God's gonna give you songs, and it's all about the condition of your heart.

You know, you're gonna write beautiful things.

So we got the pristine writing room, we got the chapel with the grand piano, and I got two great piano players with me, one incredible lyricist, and we sat down and we're like, we're gonna write the best worship song that's gonna go across the world.

Here it comes.

Here it comes.

Are you ready?

We're playing the grand piano, and all of a sudden, just nothing happens.

Just straight up, like we're hitting a wall.

And so one of us tries and we're trying different things, nothing happens.

So finally I just start danking around the guitar, like nothing worship-oriented, and out comes this melody.

I've never known a love like this, I've never known a love like this.

And Bree and Brian Ming start the two whitest people on the face of the earth, start writing this kind of funky little pop thing.

So, fast forward, I go to Brazil, to Sao Paulo, Brazil.

God opens a door for me to sing a song or to sing some songs in front of what they call marcha pre Jesus.

If there's any Brazilians here, you know what I'm talking about.

Six million legitimate six million people coming through Sao Paulo, which makes New York look small.

I mean, talk about the concrete jungle, it's massive.

But six million people come through this place and marching for Jesus, and they all end up at the very end of the block, packed, I would say a few hundred yards from left to right, and as far as you can see, people.

What am I doing here?

What am I playing?

So, what do I decide to sing?

I never known a love like this.

From Estes Park, all the way to Sao Paulo.

But we sang it in Portuguese.

Anu também louracy, a nuclear lord.

It was bizarre.

I'm like, what am I doing here?

What in the world?

God will just take you from the smallest thing, the most new beginning of a tiny source, and bring it to thousands of people.

But before this, before I go out on stage, I'm in the back of like on the stage, and you have to have a VIP pass.

It's packed.

I mean, there's thousands of people out there.

And I'm thinking to myself, how am I gonna how am I gonna stir this crowd up?

They don't know my language.

What am I gonna do?

And I'm looking around and I see this guy walking around, just some random guy.

And it looks like he's just like doesn't belong there.

Bro, he's got a keeper on, like a yarmulk.

So I'm like, oh, he's messianic, he's Jewish.

He's walking around, he's kind of just looking at me.

And finally he spots to me, he spots me, comes up to me, and just makes a beeline for me.

And I look at my friend Lucas, said, Lucas, come here, he wants to say something to me.

And I'm thinking, oh no, this guy's gonna tell me he's Moses or Jeremiah or something, it's gonna be weird, you know.

So I'm just like, okay, what's up?

He tells me, I see an angel beside you with a sword.

And I'm like, okay.

I'm not taking it lightly, but he's just giving me a word.

I'm not dismissing it, but I'm just kind of like, okay, thank you.

And he's like, and I see you singing, I see it going all through all the world.

I said, and then he says, and it's gonna start in Portugal.

Now that's a brave word.

It's gonna start in Portugal.

What in the world?

So I remember that.

I do my performance, I go off, I go back home, I go to Denmark.

That was another crazy story that got opened up.

I think I'm going to a little Bible camp with a hundred kids.

I pull up, there's 3,000 Danes in a massive uh uh Bible camp at 60 years old.

And I'm like, at that time I was struggling, musician, and I'm like, meet's back on the menu, boys.

You know, I get to make a little bit of money.

There's a lot of people here.

So I pull up and they're singing my buddy's song, I Speak Jesus, Dustin.

I go, I said, Dustin, listen, they're singing your song in Denmark.

It's only like two months old.

What the heck?

You know, and then they're singing my song, uh, Heal My Heart.

I'm like, what in the world is going on here?

God is moving.

So the the camp was awesome.

I go uh throughout the day, and then there's food trucks, and there's tons of campers and tents, and everybody is just like having a great time, going to this camp.

And I I'm eating, I'm trying to order food, like chicken, nuggets, and fries out of this food truck.

And all of a sudden, I start talking to this guy.

His name was Soren.

And Soren says to me, I start talking, making small talk, and I start telling him about my father.

My father was from San Quentin Penitentiary and got saved in Teen Challenge in Los Angeles in the late 60s.

He became this radical, praise God, hallelujah, the boldest guy you ever met when it came to Jesus.

Preached all over the world in the streets, loved the down and out, loved the drug addict, loved the prostitute.

That was his life.

That's how I was raised with a guitar.

Come on, sing.

I've been in Rikers Island Penitentiary.

I've been all over the world through the streets.

I've been on the streets of London with my dad as a little kid.

He bred me for evangelism.

My mom was a musician, so anytime he could, he would just come on, tell him about Jesus, sing about Jesus, and just throw me out there.

So I began to talk to Soren about my dad, a teen challenge.

Oh, that's that's interesting that you're from Teen Challenge.

He's like, Yeah, I'm over all the teen challenges in Denmark.

Wow, that's pretty cool, man.

That's awesome, man.

And and he's like, Yeah, there's a guy named Tom, Tom Bruner or something like that, Bremer.

And I said, he's over all of them in all of Europe.

I'll I'll connect the two of you.

Cool, let's do it, you know.

So I go back home, I fly to the Denver airport to come here.

Piper picks me up.

I love Piper.

She's on a sabbatical I hear, right?

This means she's in Las Vegas.

No, she's come on, Jesus.

No, no, I'm just playing.

She's awesome, and her husband's uh an awesome dude, too.

And Piper picks me up and I start talking to Piper Piper, you're not gonna believe it.

You know the song we wrote in SE's Park?

I was singing it in Brazil, it was crazy.

She's like, I can't believe it.

And I'm like, yeah, and I went to Denmark and I met this guy, and I told her all the stories I just told you.

And I met a guy, he told me he wants to introduce me.

This guy named Tom, Tom Bruner.

She's like, Wait, Uncle Tom?

Tom?

That's my uncle.

I said, get out of here, dude.

Are you kidding me?

It's it's the uncle from the guy.

What the heck?

And we started, we're tripping out.

And I'm thinking, like, God, what are you doing right here?

What is transpiring?

But see, when God gives you a word and God begins to have like these key of David moments or like these divine things that only God can open up.

There's no way, I mean, I, dude, I hustle, I'm tenacious, I'm like kicking doors down, trying to make money, trying to network.

That's just my nature.

God knows me.

He dangles the carrot before me, and he's like, hey, go get it, you know.

But there's certain appointments that God gives you that only he can open up.

This is one of them.

And I believe it's for this morning.

Okay?

So there's a little setup right there.

Now, I wanna I want to talk about evangelism and the and the theme.

I I do run a record label, it's called Go Public Music.

Go public music.

Where did I get that?

Sounds pretty cool, right?

Well, it wasn't mine, I based it out the word of God.

Can you pull up a scripture for me, Matthew chapter 5, if you guys don't mind?

Matthew 5 · chapter mention

This is what I want to bring to you.

Matthew 5.

Jesus is all around Galilee.

He's touring, man.

He's going from town to town to town.

He's a young rabbi, he's 30.

All the older rabbis are cynical, they're judging him because he's gaining all this popularity.

All the lost, the least of these are broken.

Crowds are following him.

And he's got a few misfits with him called his disciples that are young and just, you know, misfits.

And he and and so here he is.

And to get away from the crowd, he goes up on the hillside.

And we before this is a beautiful passage, probably one of the most beautiful passages that I love in the gospel, the Sermon on the Mount.

Y'all know what the Sermon on the Mount?

Well, this is kind of towards the middle to the end of that.

He says, listen to this, you are the light of the world.

You, he's talking to himself, you're the light of the world.

A town built on a hill cannot be hidden.

Neither do people light a lamp and put it under a bowl.

Instead, they put it on a stand and it gives light to everyone in the house.

Now listen to this.

In the same way, let your light shine.

We all know that, right?

If you're old like me, you remember the newsboys.

Shine, mega wonder, what, you God?

Mega thing.

There we go.

Right?

So let your light shine.

Now here's the kicker.

What?

Before men.

Let your light shine before men.

Well, I thought we're supposed to just bring the light and just have it be our own.

And don't don't intrude on anybody's privacy.

Don't let it shine out.

Just respect everybody.

No, that's not what Jesus is saying.

Let your light shine before men.

Why?

So they may see your good deeds.

Woo! And glorify your Father in heaven.

Not enough to see your spiritualism, not enough to see your word that you're proclaiming over the city, not enough to see all the sensationalism.

That's all great.

We're all humankind.

We all have emotions.

But what does he want us to see?

The light of God is to see your good works, the action, the deeds.

So when I go out with Go Public Music, I don't go out just to sing songs and be like, hey, I got some songs, cool.

Videotape it, post it, get a following, write great music.

Christians listen to my music.

Mm-mm.

That's not what God has called me to do.

God is calling me to, in conjunction with singing, do something for the community.

Do something for the need of that place right there.

It may be in a neighborhood.

It may be for a person.

It may be for some mental health thing.

It may be for a hospital.

It may be for the poor.

It may be whatever the case may be.

It's always paired up with something that's an act of kindness, charity, a good deed.

These are not my words, these are the words of Jesus.

Right?

So I love Eugene Peterson, the message Bible.

It's like rereading the Bible for the first time.

God rest his soul.

He was incredible.

He passed away like five years ago.

He said it like this: God is not a secret to be kept.

We're going public with this.

It's public as a city on a hill.

I said, Yeah, dude.

That's my that that's it.

That's it.

Go public music.

Well, why music?

Why?

Because you can sing things that you can't say.

Society and culture try to lock you up.

Don't don't don't don't uh I can't so you have to socially conform to what we're doing as a society.

No, I don't.

No, I don't have to.

I'm socially conformed to Jesus.

Jesus was the most, he broke all the rules.

Are you kidding me?

Look up this next scripture for me, guys, out of Luke chapter 5.

Luke 5 · chapter mention

This is this one is is actually just as special, and it came on to me recently.

Then Levi, or Matthew, here's a disciple, who was the tax collector, right?

And tax collectors at that time were like guys that were hustling and shady, working with the Romans, working with Gentiles.

Levi is a Jewish, he's a young Jewish boy, but he's intermingling with the culture.

And he's he's frowned upon.

He's with Jesus.

Jesus is kicking it with this guy, right?

Then Levi held a great banquet for Jesus at his house, and a large crowd of tax collectors and others were eating with them.

But the Pharisees and the teachers of the law, uh-oh, who belonged to their sect, uh, complained to his disciples, why do you eat and drink with tax collectors and sinners?

Jesus, why are you with these people?

They're unclean, they're unpure.

I have not come to call the righteous, but sinners to repentance.

I have not called, I'm not called to for the righteous, but for sinners to repentance.

I love worship.

I write worship songs, I write with the best of them.

I love it.

I spent my whole life doing it.

I got a publishing deal with integrity, music, I write my own stuff.

It's all great.

I was a worship pastor for over 15 years.

I loved it.

I I thank God for the worship.

I thank God for the production.

When I was younger, man, it was so hokey and so corny.

It's like, I'm so glad that Jesus set me free.

With like a tambourine and a one piano that was somebody that couldn't play.

Right?

This was this was this is so I thank God for for it evolving.

I thank God that we can bring people and show them this the success and the and the quality of worship, right?

But if we're not careful, that's where we stay.

We just stay there.

In the music industry, all the worship bands, one person cuts a record of worship and they sit around in a white room with green plants and sure 57 microphones, and they sing to each other, worship, and we soak.

That's fine.

But all the time?

To what end?

Where's Jesus pointing us to?

Where would Jesus be if he was here today?

Where's the presence of the Lord?

Oh, the presence of the Lord.

If Jesus were here, where would he be presented?

Where is he?

Oh, you'll find him.

With the poor, with the sick, with the hungry, with the outcast, with the sinner, with the shamed.

That's where you're gonna find the presence of Jesus.

And this is not something that I came up with.

This is something that was bred inside of me that I watched my father do.

Here's the story.

I want to talk about an opportunity that I had in Encino, California.

And I won't say the name because this is streamed.

I don't want to embarrass anybody.

But I got I got to play with a drummer.

My mother, my father passed away in 2013, my mom in 2016.

And around 2017, my mom left me a little bit of money, not much, on my on her life insurance.

God bless her.

She didn't spend it after my dad passed away.

And I had a little something, something.

We divided up with the kids, and I'm like, I'm making a record.

And I did.

I was like, I'm going for it.

It was the most free.

I had so many, so much songs.

And I played with a drummer that is a well-known session drummer.

He plays, young people, he plays for you know, Taylor Swift and Post Malone, all these guys.

He's the dude.

He was playing with, he's John Mayer's session drummer.

An opportunity opened for me to come in in the Cino in his house, and we just spent a few days recording music.

It's like, what an opportunity, man.

This is so cool.

So, you know, me, it's like, I said, Lord, if you give me an opportunity, you know I'll share your you to this guy.

But this guy, I don't know if he's a believer or not.

I think he's a kind of agnostic, and I'm not there to judge him, you know.

But one day we were out uh eating out in Los Angeles.

Outside, it was beautiful, sunny.

He's got his glasses on, all the session musicians are around, and we're sitting there, and uh he looks back and I felt the Lord tell me now.

Sink or swim, Brandon.

Hey, let me tell you a story, guys.

Aaron, check this out.

Let me tell you a story about my dad.

And I began to tell him the story, which I'm about to tell you.

I'm 16 years old, it's like 1993.

I'm in the Bronx, New York.

My father had been taking the youth group, which had a dance team at the time called I'm just gonna date myself so hard.

It was called the 24-7 Posse.

And our pictures up there, that was us, dude.

The AI pictures was us.

And it was like we would plagiarize all the music, right?

I mean, think of like posting alone and you flipping it and putting Jesus in there and like dancing around and doing all this stuff.

Well, my dad thought it was a brilliant idea to take all the youth to New York, tickets right on the streets.

And if you don't know my father, this is what he would do, okay?

He would pull up right into the thick of traffic.

It'd be like going into downtown Boulder and going to the most popular spot on the corner with some sort of cranked amplifier or guitars or something that he had, and he didn't preach hellfire and brimstone.

He wasn't like Turner Burn, you know, none of that nonsense.

He'd get up there and say, He was from the prison, so he'd be attention in the yard, you know, like let me tell you about somebody who changed my life, man.

I used to shoot heroin in my arms.

I couldn't stop using, man.

I tried, and but Jesus loved me.

He would start preaching, he would look cool.

He was all tatted up in a Kangle hat.

He'd just walk around, and people would just stop like, what the heck is this guy doing?

The boldest, dude.

He don't need no permits, he don't need nothing.

He just go.

He was radical, man.

He'd been arrested so many times, he don't care.

He'd like, I don't care if you go with me or not.

I got me, Jesus, and the Holy Spirit.

There's three of us.

We go.

Right?

But he said, I'm going to take you to the Bronx.

And he did.

We pulled right in the Puerto Rican projects and we get out and we just start testifying.

And people would stop.

People would walk right up and just be crying.

Just walk up to him.

They don't even know what they're doing.

They're just like, He would just get turned on.

That's how he was.

And then everybody's with them, right?

He'd take people from the church with him, right out in the open.

They're like, where are we going to?

What are we doing?

They'd stand in a line behind him when he started talking.

And this is what he did.

Come on, give him Jesus.

Testify, tell him what he's done for you.

His philosophy of I don't give you any opportunity to think, I just sink or swim, I go for it.

And people, well, let me tell you about what God's done in my life.

And they would get turned on immediately.

It was like something that was missing though.

Once they let go of that fear, once they let go and they let the Holy, it was like a conduit, a funnel just boom, went through him.

Now people say, oh, that was for back then, you know.

Today's different.

Yeah, it is.

But it's the same spirit, it's the same boldness of God.

So we're there in the Bronx, and one of the days, my dad, my father's gonna be preaching that night.

So we he takes all the youth out and he says, Hey, go down to this cul de sac right here, and I want you to walk around and I want you to knock on doors and invite them out to church.

Okay, dad, no problem.

So we go down, and I'm as insecure as they can be.

I'm like the same height they am right now, maybe 140 pounds, jacked-up teeth, a mullet, you know.

I'm listening to like Iron Maiden and Metallica at the time.

I have no security other than my older brother.

All these guys are like that I'm with that, the youth are all cool and like, you know, RB hip hopped out and all this stuff.

And I'm like, I just don't fit, but I'm there, and God's working on me and changing my life, and I'm making relationships with people.

So I go to the very end of the cul-de-sac, and I see this young black lady behind the screen door, and I walk up to her and I walk up her steps, and there's a rail, a railing, and I look at her, and she looks at me through the screen door.

And I'll never forget it.

She had these eyes that just pierced me.

And she's like, she looked at me and I could hear her thoughts.

It was, white boy, you better get off my porch.

And one of them.

And I said, ma'am, would you like to come out and listen?

God loves you.

Cold as I didn't want nothing to do with me.

Man, I walked down those steps of her patio there, and I felt so defeated.

I was like, Man, what did I do wrong?

You know?

I walk down, I see my friend Rosa coming up.

She's Hispanic, same age, 16.

Rosa, you're Mexican, you're a girl.

Go over and talk to her.

I feel something about this lady.

She walks up, same thing.

Not much room for anybody.

All of a sudden, my father comes up.

He's just like looking around, seeing all the youth do the work of God.

He's just like, Yeah, yeah.

He's like 65 at the time.

He's just enjoying it.

He's like, man, yeah.

And there was just a coolness and an ease about him, right?

I walk, said, Dad, there's this lady at the end.

I really feel like God wants to, you know, go down there, Dad.

See if you see if you can talk to her.

I kid you not.

He walks up to the door, and Rosa and I are sitting there with him.

He walks up, and by this time he looks at the lady.

Kids are screaming in the back.

You can tell the girl's strung out, you know.

And she has the screen door kind of cracked open.

And he leans his hand on the rail and he looks at her, and it's like I watched them with lock eyes, and he goes, Come on, girl.

Come back home to Jesus.

He loves you.

She sat there with just tears coming down her face.

I was like, the Jedi Master is just, what in the world?

What the heck happened?

And I never forgot it.

And after my father passed away, it wasn't until like three years ago, I started to understand what was transpiring.

So let's go back when I'm telling Aaron, the drummer in LA, this story that I just told you.

And he's sitting back with his sunglasses.

And everyone's like, you know, he's talking Jesus.

When I said he said, Come on, girl, and she started crying.

Aaron perks up.

I just said his name, Aaron Sterling, sorry.

He he he perks up, says, he says, I love it.

He's speaking her language.

And I never forgot that.

He's speaking her language.

Come on, girl.

Come back home to Jesus.

He loves you.

It's like two guys that went to Nom together, you know.

They don't need to say much.

We want to talk about the war.

Guys that spent time behind bars.

They know.

It's just like it's a shared experience.

So why when we come to the Lord, we take our past, we're new, we're born again, right?

We're a new creation in Christ.

Old things are passed away, and behold, everything has become new.

So then we forget about our testimony and we shed that and we become sanctified and dignified, and all we do is have our Christian knees talk, and all we have our own lexicon and our own spiritual talk.

That's fine.

But people out there don't understand your spiritual talk.

What they understand is where the rubber meets the road.

They understand when they got food on their tape on their plate, they understand when they get they can go out and pay their rent.

They understand when they don't have medical or anything for their lives.

That's the language of love.

That's the good work that Jesus is talking about.

What did Jesus tell us?

Remember the poor.

Remember the poor.

He said it to uh uh the apostle said it to Paul.

All we ask is that you remember the poor.

You see?

So what does that mean?

Do we have to be solely we just fixate on the homeless?

No, it's not what he's talking about.

Your pastor said it here this morning.

Acts of kindness.

I get up every morning and I say, Who can I help today?

In small ways.

None of us, some of us are called to go into all the world, some of us are meant to be on a platform.

Some of us are just meant to be that hand that says, Come on, I'll help you today.

Come on, you want lunch?

I'll buy you lunch.

But for what?

It's it's it's it's okay to have that, you know, the intention behind that active work is cherished, and it's it's okay to like not want to put that on display.

But Jesus tells us, let your light shine before men.

It does no good when it's sitting in just in the church and the four walls.

It's got to bust out of this place.

I'm telling you, and I'm gonna give you a word for this place.

There is gonna be a divine appointment, a divine season that we're going through boulder, and we're gonna tear the place up for Christ for the love of God.

And people aren't gonna say nothing about it.

They're not gonna accuse us of any sort of theology or hate or discrimination because we're gonna show them through our actions the love of God.

And we're just gonna, we're just gonna happen to do it around really cool music.

And we're gonna cut the music and we're gonna record the music here, and people are gonna know that the lookout church is, oh, that place, the lookout?

That's kind of cool.

We're looking out for these people down here.

They were like you and me, they were lost.

I when I was a Christian, just because you're a Christian don't mean you're you're you're out of the subjection of being misguided or lost.

There's a lot of people on the college campus who are believers, have their mind has been twisted.

What do you how do you unravel a twist?

How do you unravel a stronghold?

You can only do it one way: love.

Love bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things.

Paul tells us, let me tell you the most excellent way.

Love.

The love of God.

Though I speak with the tongues of angels and have not love, I am nothing.

Though I give my body to be burned, I do everything, all my money to the poor and have not love, I am nothing.

The love of God, that's what saves me.

That's what I'm gonna close with.

And I want to pray for everybody here, not just for the young people.

I want to pray that a hunger would stir in your heart.

A hunger.

But it's something that you're responsible for.

You're the one that takes the bowl over the light and lifts it off.

You're the one that takes it off.

Not Jesus.

You're the one.

Jesus said, You're a city on a hill.

He's in Galilee, he's probably pointing at Zephhat, where they used to light fires and signal the whole holy holidays, right?

He's making a demonstration, an example.

You're a city on a hill.

What I want you to do, I want you to remove that.

That's all God is asking.

Yeah, that's me.

How can I do it?

Young people, we're gonna do it.

I promise you, we're not gonna do something corny.

I promise you, dude.

I will not do that.

I will do something radical.

I have a bus that I bought.

A 19, a late 60s Volkswagen bus.

Pull that up real quick, guys.

That video real quick.

You can continue to play, bro.

That's cool.

Here's my bus.

You know how long I believe for this thing?

Man, I believe for like five years for that thing.

I couldn't afford it.

I put up a GoFundMe for 40 grand to build one in Brazil.

I put it up one day, and my heart said, take it down, it's not time.

I don't have the money to do that.

I left on, I left my worship position to go do, to be an evangelist and to sing and be in the record business.

It's hard.

But I have no plan B.

But I went out and God spoke to me about last summer.

He said, Brandon, if you don't believe in yourself, no one else is gonna believe in you.

I found this on Facebook, I went to like three or four buses, they all fell through.

I found this one in in St.

Augustine near Jacksonville, Florida.

I took a plane, a one-way frontier airline that I could barely afford, and I flew down there during a hurricane.

A Category 2 hurricane was coming through the Tallahassee area.

And I'm like, I'm packing the night before.

I'm like, there's no way.

Frontiers, they're not gonna fly through this.

Somehow, they're like, ladies and gentlemen, thank you for flying Frontier.

We're on our way to we're gonna fly through the hurricane.

We come around, I land in, I drove it all the way back.

I drove it through the eye of the hurricane.

It was the dumbest thing I ever did in my life.

The whole thing was leaking.

I pulled it, I pulled it through the Tallahassee, I pulled off at a rest stop, I shut the curtains, and I slept there.

I crashed at night, didn't have money for a hotel.

And I woke up to guys mowing the lawn around me and the rest area.

Put up, brushed my teeth, I got back in, I drove from Tallahassee all through the that Panhandle Georgia line there, Mobile, Alabama, Mississippi, all the way through Louisiana, all the way to Texas, nonstop, 17 hours.

And I pulled into my house.

My dream is to take this bus and to truck it here in Colorado.

My dream is to take all the young people out here and write music for you, write music with you.

It's not about branding.

I'm not trying to make a brand for myself and have me be in front of it.

Look at me, you know?

No.

I'm here to take it out.

Why the bus?

Why?

It could have been anything.

Well, my father had a late 60s Greyhound bus that I grew up with my family and he had bunk beds in the back, and we went from city to city, city.

During the late 60s movement, and just preached the gospel.

And everybody that got saved, we picked up, you want to go to this next city?

They went.

I come from a strange gypsy soul.

Nomads.

My mom finally settled them down.

And then she raised me right, you know.

But that's in me.

I'm not gonna do that with y'all.

But I the bus represents what?

Counterculture.

Get rid of all.

I'm so tired, man.

Parents, what do you want your kids to do?

Sit here for eternity and just be locked up in this for their entire lives?

Is that what we're meant to be?

Just post music that we're singing and lip syncing to, and ha ha ha ha ha, for the sake of following, for the sake of emptiness?

No, I want to I want to take the bus out there, I want to pull up, no permits, nothing, get out.

This is what we're doing.

It's rock and roll style, whatever genre we want to do, and we sing and we just tell the love of God to people until they tell us to stop.

And we videotape that and we cut records right on the street.

And we post that because it's something new.

I'm trying to break the mold of this old tired tech way that's robbing us of real humanity, real connection, real people, real need.

Come on, man.

Right?

You go out with me, bro.

You and me go out.

That's what I'm here to do.

So I'm not trying to preach my own agenda.

I'm here for you this morning.

I got four minutes, and I'm gonna pray before they kick me out and the hanger comes out.

My story is this, I'll just touch on it just for a second.

When I was 30 years old, listen, I gave my life to the Lord and I was 16, served him, been married, kept myself from marriage, you know, been married 25 years.

I've done it all as best as I could with the Lord.

When I turned 30, I was diagnosed with severe obsessive compulsive disorder, OCD.

I never in a million years thought I'd have some sort of mental disorder.

If you would have told me that when I was younger, I'd have been like, you don't know Jesus, man.

No way.

Yeah, me.

That was me.

I battled with it for 10 years.

Up and down.

I've been on six or seven different SSRIs over that whole time.

Almost took my life.

My wife almost left me, almost lost my kids.

I just, all I had to look forward to was to get up and look forward to falling asleep because that's when it didn't hurt.

That wasn't that's when I wasn't in tormented by intrusive thoughts.

That's when my compulsions and my ticks and my tourette would let go of me.

And I didn't want it.

God, why are you allowing me to go through this?

I remember sitting in my room, punching holes in the wall.

I hate you, God.

How could you do this to me?

And my wife said, No, you don't don't say that.

And I'd storm out the door, thinking I maybe I'm just in my genetics, I'm supposed to be a heroin act like my father.

And that's something that I struggled with, man.

I couldn't shake it for nothing.

And I'm a strong-minded person.

I'd run marathons.

I'm trying to just shake it, do everything I could.

And I would run, I would take a vacation to Maui, couldn't even enjoy Maui.

I'd run out in the hills and just look at the blue ocean over the vacant lots on the hills that they were developing and just sob.

Ah, because I couldn't stop the tormenting in my mind.

I didn't want it.

But why does God allow you to go through stuff like that?

Why does God allow you to be a go through struggle for what?

To set you free for what?

Because he can trust you with the scars, man.

He can trust you with a heart that says, Man, I've been through that.

And I got empathy for you.

Why do you think my father could look at a a crowd of people and be like that guy's using right there?

Because he knows he was a dope fiend.

That's all he ever knew.

But God uses your story, he uses your past, he uses your junk, he uses your misfit, your stuff that ain't all perfect.

He just wants it to be to put on display.

For what?

For us to put it all together?

No, for him to be like, watch what I do, watch when you put me on display, what I do through you.

But some of us are just so stuck in, oh, but I'm just, I can't do it.

I don't have the energy, or you don't know my story, or I've tried a thousand times, nothing works.

No.

Jesus delights coming behind locked doors.

When all hope is gone, when you've tried everything you can to stop it, and your relationship that you tried, I can't make it.

Divorce is the only option, or I can't kick this, I can't kick prescription this and that.

I can't, I'm addicted to watching stuff online that I shouldn't lie.

I keep coming back.

I can't.

No, Jesus is gonna come in the midst of that this morning, and he's gonna heal you, deliver you, and fill you with the Holy Spirit, like he did me.

That's what he's gonna do.