Fish Out of Water - Leaders' Talks

Hey, I'm Steve Holt, the senior pastor of The Road at Chapel Hills.

This is the Road Podcast.

Thanks for joining us.

My heart is to empower you to change the world.

I hope this message impacts you.

Here now is our guest speaker.

So, Eric, come share what's on your heart and what God's done in your life.

We love you.

We're so glad you're here.

Give a big round of welcome to Eric Metaxas, our friend.

We love you.

I love you back, my brother.

What a blessing.

Um, it's a blessing to be invited to a church, but it's a real blessing to be invited back for many reasons.

Number one, you realize you you didn't screw up, they don't hate you.

But also, you begin to build friendships and relationships.

And uh I wish that were true with me and Steve.

It's just not happening yet.

It's sad.

It's sad.

We're just not clicking, we just don't talk.

Um, yeah, I can only joke around if it were true that we are friends.

It's a blessing uh to get to know who is standing at a time when a lot of people are not standing, they're sitting down, they're afraid to uh they're afraid to stick their necks out.

And I think when you worship, there's a song.

I mean we're supposed to believe that Jesus defeated death on the cross.

So we don't fear death.

We are free.

Now, if you don't have that freedom in your life, you gotta understand it's God's will for you to be genuinely free.

To be so free that you don't fear death because you know he defeated death.

If you believe in him, you will never die.

Can you imagine?

Sometimes I think we kind of live our lives in half measures.

We don't really oh, I sort of believe it.

The Lord doesn't want you to sort of believe it, he wants you to know it and to walk as though you know it.

Uh, it's so important for us at this time to be around people who encourage us in our boldness.

Uh, Pastor Steve mentioned Sean Foyt was here the other day.

He has encouraged me in my boldness.

He is just completely bold and free.

And I thought it's catching, it's what's supposed to happen.

We're supposed to encourage each other that way.

A lot of times people wonder, you know, Eric, why did you write biographies?

Why did you write these biographies?

Well, I can tell you why the Lord called me to do it, because it's not like I can claim that I knew what I was doing, right?

But the Lord called me to write these books, and I realize in retrospect, it's because when you encounter a life of boldness and that kind of freedom and that kind of faith, whatever, it inspires you to want to be like that.

It inspires you to want to be free, to want to live as though death really has been defeated.

It's not just some theological thing.

No, it's but he wants us to be free, to walk as though we are totally free, and his life is in us.

So, now I wrote all these biographies, but I never expected to write my own biography, which is called an autobiography.

Do you know the Greek word?

Aftoh, auto, you know, self means I wrote my own story.

Now, the book that I that's for sale out there, the book that I'm talking about today is called Fish Out of Water, and it's only my story up until my 25th birthday, because that's when Jesus came into my life.

And I wanted to write a book that is uh it's something you can give to somebody who is not maybe where we are theologically.

Uh you can give to somebody who's not sure what they believe, if they believe anything, whatever.

I wrote that book for those people.

Now, I also wrote it for us because I think a lot of it is uh, well, a lot of it is very funny.

A lot of it's true.

These are two stories from my life growing up.

They're true.

I don't exaggerate them to make them better or funnier.

They're they're true.

And um so it's an entertaining story, but I wrote it for those people who uh maybe they wouldn't read a Christian book.

If you said, I got a Christian book, here's a testimony, you need to read this.

They'd be like, Thank you very much, thank you.

And then they they're not gonna read it, you know.

And I said, I want to write a book that's something that it's worth reading no matter where you're coming from, um, because it's hopefully entertaining and interesting or well written or whatever.

And then when you get to the end, you kind of see what weaves it all together.

Because the title of the story, the book is The Fish Out of Water, A Search for the Meaning of Life.

Now, the key, of course, is that I didn't know really that I was searching for the meaning of life, and a lot of people were kind of drifting through life, and you know, we don't know.

A lot of times people say, Well, so-and-so's seeking, so-and-so's a seeker.

Well, a lot of people aren't seeking, they're just drifting, they're floating, they're just drifting along.

Now the Lord is seeking.

The Lord is seeking you, he's seeking them.

And the story of my life, uh, to some extent I was looking for the meaning of life, but obviously the Lord was looking for me.

And uh He uh He got me.

And it's it's kind of an amazing story.

But in order to understand what happened to me when I was 25, the Lord spoke to me in a dream, and it was such an amazing dream that now how many people know I can't take credit for the amazingness of the dream?

Yeah, yeah, I don't really write the uh script for my dreams.

I'm unconscious.

Anybody here ever get unconscious?

You ever dream?

You can't really take credit for those dreams, can you?

Except this was a dream, there wasn't a normal dream.

Uh I don't know if anybody's ever had a vision when you're praying or what it's like not a normal, you know, these are not it like sometimes you have thoughts and you can imagine stuff, but if you've ever had a vision from God, it's different.

And you know it's different.

Maybe people won't believe you, but you know.

Well, this was a dream that the Lord gave me around my 25th birthday, and it was unlike any dream I've ever had.

It was a vision that the Lord gave me while I happened to be unconscious, and it changed everything.

But in order for the dream to make sense, you had to be me.

And that's why he wrote the book so you could understand when I had this dream, what it meant to me.

And I'll although I will tell you now, of course, but it was um it was around my 25th birthday, and in order to understand what the Lord was communicating to me in this dream, you have to know really three things about my life.

Which it's kind of a funny thing, because around my 25th birthday, if if somebody had said, Who are you?

you know, or if somebody had said to the Lord, Lord, who is that?

What what what have you put in him?

You know, we all have these stories that are all different and fascinating.

And a lot of times we all we always think because we're insecure, because we're sinners, we believe the enemy's lies about us, right?

And we're insecure, and we think our stuff, our story or whatever is not as interesting as somebody else's story or whatever.

That's a lie from the pit of hell.

Your story is exactly as important to God as any other story in the history of the world.

And so even when people, you know, introduce me and say, Oh, Eric went to Yale, he's a New York Times.

Trust me, folks, I'm as insecure as anyone who ever lived.

And a lot of times we kind of play that game, the pecking order game.

God doesn't play that game.

God demands of us that we believe what is true.

And what is true is that he's no respecter of persons, he died for you, not for humanity, for you.

He loves you, and he knows you intimately.

Intimately.

He knows your story, he made you.

He wants to be with you for eternity.

These are such beautiful things, but I didn't understand these things growing up.

So, my story, roughly, I mean, so I can uh explain what I'm talking about.

Uh I was uh, well, I gotta start with my parents.

Now, on the cover of the book, that's my dad.

On the cover of the book, it's 1957.

He and my mom were on a date at the Statue of Liberty, and my mom took a picture of him, and it ends up being one of the most beautiful pictures I've ever seen.

My mother's not some photographer, so when I saw that photo, I was like, whoa, this is beautiful.

The Statue of Liberty is sort of way up in the background, it's my father.

So they were on a date in 1957.

Now, my mom and dad, they both came from Europe in the mid-50s.

My dad came from Greece, my mom came from Germany.

Uh, they met in an English class in New York City to speak the English language.

Now that's that's an American story, isn't it?

And when you come from countries that are ravaged by war and hunger, and you come to America, you don't say like, yeah, America is a racist country, uh, America is uh not that great, America Yeah, if you have a brain in your head, you realize like with all its faults, America is pretty amazing, and I know I know like I don't deserve to get to live there and to raise my kids there.

I don't deserve it, and God has given this to me as a gift, and I better use that gift for God's purposes.

Because there are people that would do anything.

You know, you look at all those people coming across our southern border, right?

How many people know you you don't blame those people?

Because you would do that if you were them.

You blame a government for stupidly saying, like, oh, we we don't need borders, you know, like right, whatever.

But the point is everybody in the world wants what we most of us take for granted right here.

And my parents didn't take it for granted because when you come from a dark place, you come from countries that my mother grew up in.

I mean, some of you know my Bonhoeffer book.

I wrote about you know the Nazis and that time.

My uh Bonhoeffer book, I'm dead, it's dedicated to my grandfather, uh, after whom I'm named, Eric.

And my mother grew up through that pain and lost her father in the war, and they had no food growing up.

How many people here have been hungry?

I mean, we practically don't have we don't have hunger in America.

You go someplace and somebody says, Oh, we'll help you out.

Well, we'll how can we help you, you know?

If you've experienced actual hunger, malnutrition from hunger, my mother did.

My father did increase.

Once the Nazis are defeated, well, guess what?

Stalin took over that part of Germany, became East Germany, and it became communist.

My mother grew up under that.

So she escaped East Germany in 1951.

She was 17 years old.

Which, you know, growing up, I was like, okay, okay, well, now that I have a daughter who's 22, I'm thinking, you did what at 17 years old?

Escaped the hell of communism to get out, to get to the West.

We don't know what we have here.

And uh my father left Greece.

The communists tried to take over Greece.

He experienced hunger, war, horrors, and then the communists tried to take over Greece.

So my parents, by the grace of God, got to come to America and they didn't look at it cynically.

When they passed the Statue of Liberty in that boat at 5 a.m., the different times they came over, you know, they they and looked at that Statue of Liberty, they got choked up.

They were emotional.

I get to live in America.

And I just want to say that, you know, my parents um, you know, they didn't raise me as an evangelical Christian, they didn't raise me as like you're conservative, right?

They they just raised me to be in tune with what's called reality.

And if you're raised in tune with reality, you know, to some extent it's unavoidable you're gonna be in tune with God because it turns out God created reality.

And so they raised me to appreciate what most people don't have and to clean my plate because they did not get to have dinner every night when they were growing up.

You know, all the stuff.

If you don't have something, you appreciate it, you think of it differently.

So um I was raised by a Greek and a German.

Now that's kind of weird.

Uh if you're raised by a Greek and a German, what that really means is you will be raised Greek.

You gotta understand that.

Because the Greeks know they're the best nationality.

No offense.

If you're not Greek, it's not your fault.

But the Greeks know at the at the at the dinner table, if my parents got in an argument, you know, uh uh about oh, the Germans this or the Greeks other, my father would kind of pull out the trump card.

He'd be like, listen, you know, 2,500 years ago, w when when your people were like living in goat skins and caves and stuff, my my people were like grading writing the greatest tragedy and philosophy of the West, you know, like in the 5th century BC in Athens.

Yeah, that's what we were doing then.

Um so, you know, you got a point there, Pop.

And um, so I I I kind of felt like the one of the reasons my book's titled Fish Out of Water is because I grew up feeling a bit like a fish out of water, right?

If you're raised Greek, as I joke around, you know, we went to the Greek Orthodox Church, so I was raised in the church, and the Greek Orthodox Church is really the Greek community, right?

They they they tend not to communicate the Bible and and and the good news of Jesus and stuff because they're too busy talking about how awesome it is to be Greek.

And it's a tricky thing because there are Greek Orthodox churches where they communicate that, but a lot of times it becomes like a culture club.

And now, you know, some people think I'm putting it down.

Well, the honestly, it's a wonderful environment.

I was raised in a wonderful community, the Greek community.

But the Greek church, you know, if you if you read the book, you're gonna have there's some laughs because there's some stories in there of uh some Greek priests who were not exactly qualified.

One of them ended up in jail.

Uh some weird stuff, some funny stories.

Now, that didn't embitter me toward God, because if you're raised by a loving mother and a loving father, you know, you kind of somehow it inoculates you against that, I would think.

But I also didn't get the download about who is Jesus, that we can have a personal relationship with him, that the Bible is true, that you know, that I didn't get all that.

Um, and then of course, the American dream, oh, we're gonna go to Yale University, great, you know, like you're all excited.

And uh, you know, you don't realize that Yale has been taken over by cultural Marxists.

Um, so uh a lot of times when people announce that Eric went to Yale, and people are like, oh, can I tell you?

Do you have any idea how spiritually dark and messed up these places are?

Do you have any idea how you dodged a bullet if you didn't go there?

Um these places are not, you know, I think we think of the 1920s football version of Yale, you know, like it's like raccoon coats and voodoo do, or I don't know what version we all have of like, oh, that's so great.

No.

Uh so it's gotten worse, but it was very bad when I was there in the 80s.

Um it was a uh a very woke place then, but we didn't know the word woke yet.

We call it political correctness or whatever, whatever it is.

But it's basically cultural Marxism.

It's anti-American, uh, it's anti-God.

If you believe in the God of the Bible, it's like, well, that's weird.

Those are those weird people that believe that stuff.

So so I kind of you know uh ended up there, and only when I got there did I realize, like, gee, do I really believe that stuff?

When we in the Greek church at Easter, you know, they they sing and scream, Christos Anesti, Christ is risen, and then the rejoinder, Alithos Anesti, truly he is risen.

But when I got to Yale, I was like, I don't know if I believe that.

I have no idea what I believe.

Does anybody know?

Can you know?

Was that just an ethnic tribalist kind of cultural thing?

Like, you know, happy St.

Patrick's Day, you know, Aaron Gobra, where's the green beer?

I mean, is this just this kind of fun tribal thing, or do we really believe this?

I didn't know.

And if you go to a place like Yale, and you don't need to go to a place like Yale because the whole culture has become like that, where it says, of course we don't believe that stuff.

What do you believe?

We don't we don't know.

We don't believe in anything.

Well, that's kind of where I ended up uh was at Yale.

And um I felt like a fish out of water at Yale because I grew up in a working class European home.

And so suddenly I'm around these cultural elites, you know, who kind of think patriotism is weird and we don't believe in God or we don't what we believe in, or we believe in anything.

So I felt like a fish out of water there.

When I was uh growing up in the Greek community, as I said, I felt like a fish out of water because I wasn't Greek enough because my mother's German.

And so you kind of feel like, yeah, I'm not Greek enough.

We we don't speak Greek at home.

Is that okay?

And it's like, well, that's weird.

We speak Greek at home.

Do you eat non-Greek food also?

Tell us more.

You know, it's kind of a funny thing because the Greeks are so proud of being Greek that if you're not Greek, they kind of act like it's sad.

It's kind of sad.

We feel sorry for you, Eric, that you're a half-breed.

Why did your mother why did your father marry a German woman?

What is wrong with him?

Couldn't he find a Greek woman?

There are a lot of wonderful Greek women are amazing.

What happened?

Tell us your story.

So it's kind of funny to me that you know, you you grow up being you're taught to like be very proud that you're Greek, you know.

And and and Germans, like Germans or Irish, or or there's certain groups that are so assimilated that people don't be like, I'm you know, proud to be a German, or I'm proud of it.

It's like, you know, you by by this time, you know, the Germans are assimilated enough, or they don't want to remind you about World War II, so they're not really acting like, you know.

Uh but the Greeks, let me tell you, they're you know, it's it's next level.

So I grew up in the Greek community, which I say was a wonderful community, but always felt like a fish out of water because we, you know, my mother doesn't speak Greek, my father doesn't speak German, so we spoke English at home, and in the Greek community, that's weird.

You don't do that.

We speak Greek at home, of course.

So I I feel like a fish out of water growing up, but the Greek identity is a big part of me.

The second part of me, when I tell you the story of the dream, the Lord makes clear in the dream that he knows me.

And there are three things that are highlighted in the dream that were the Lord's way of letting me know he knows me, he made me.

So the one of those things is the Greek identity.

Uh, the second thing is fishing, because I grew up uh when I was a kid, we lived in Queens, New York, but when I was just turning nine, we meant to we went to uh Danbury, Connecticut, which is a working class Middle America, you know, it's not the part of Connecticut where everybody plays tennis.

So it's like the normal part where people, you know, they have gun racks and they fish and stuff.

And so it was like growing up in Middle America, and uh what I did there when I was not studying hard, uh doing my homework, or you know, watching the Dean Martin Rose or Carol Burnett or All in the Family or whatever, I was, you know, it's like I was always into comedy.

Uh what I would do is was fishing, you know.

So I did a lot of fly fishing, a lot of bass fishing.

I was saying uh to the earlier service that I was in a bass fishing tournament on Candlewood Lake.

And I just feel like when I say that, you're looking at me thinking, like, he's wearing a double-breasted blazer.

I don't believe he was in a bass fishing tournament.

He doesn't know what a grape uh worm is, he doesn't know any of that stuff.

And I'm here to tell you, you're wrong, I do.

Um but that was really important to me growing up.

So if you'd said to me, you know, what's your hobby, or what do you do?

It's like fishing, that's it.

That was like that was a big thing for me.

So ice fishing, bass fishing, you know, just kind of what we did uh uh growing up.

And if you didn't do wholesome stuff, like, you know, watch Sanford and Sun on TV, do your homework, fishing, if you didn't do that, you'd end up like, you know, smoking pot behind the AMP or something like that.

And you know, when you have immigrant parents, they're not gonna they're not gonna put up with that.

Okay, they'll kill you before you, you know, go that you're right.

So in love, they will kill you.

So so so that's kind of what I what I did.

Um, and that was a big big part of my life uh uh growing up.

And as I say, then I went to Yale.

And so in a funny way, you can say there are three things that were who I was around my 25th birthday when the Lord spoke to me in this supernatural dream.

One is this kind of Greek identity, another thing is this fishing thing, and I it's kind of funny because I think that if you look at my my life up to that point, it kind of tracks that you know, that's important in my early life, fishing becomes important as I'm a teenager, and then uh when I go off to Yale, the life of the mind, kind of trying to figure out what is the meaning of life and you know what I without knowing that I was doing it necessarily, but as I was an English major, I was kind of curious as I'm reading books.

Well, how does this what does this say about us and about life?

And how does this relate to you know this sort of Christian faith that I grew up in?

And what's the meaning of life?

So these are three kinds of things that I didn't know, but the Lord knew around my 25th birthday that that's who you are, Eric.

And I'm gonna weave that together into a dream that's gonna blow your mind and let you know that I know you.

And um the story Fish Out of Water, I mean, the reason it's titled that is as I said, partially because I always felt like a fish out of water.

In the Greek community, I didn't feel Greek enough.

Uh when I was hanging out when we were in Danbury, Connecticut, growing up with the American kids, I didn't feel American enough because you know my father never heard of Babe Ruth.

Um anybody here unaware of who Babe Ruth is?

Because that means you're a communist, you need to get out.

What is wrong with you?

Uh so all of that American stuff, I never felt American enough when I'm hanging out with so this will mess you up, right?

Hanging out with the Greeks, you're not Greek enough, hanging out the Americans, you're not American enough.

So I was a wounded animal, okay?

I was uh not really true, but it was, you know, it's kind of you feel a little bit insecure sometimes, you know.

So actually, I remember my father one.

Time we we pulled up at a I remember it like it was yesterday, exit eight off of I-84, Danbury, Connecticut.

We pull up, and right in front of us there's a car, and on the bumper is one of those chrome fish.

Now, this was in the late 70s when the chrome fish began to appear.

And um my father says, Do you know what that is?

And I said, No.

And he says, Well, that, now I bet a lot of you here will not know this.

And uh I I love I love communicating things that people haven't known before.

The fish, okay.

My father says, Well, that's a Christian symbol, Eric.

He says, The early Christians they didn't use the cross as a symbol in the early centuries, they used the fish.

Why?

Because the Greek word for fish, now this you can see my father's Greek pride swelling as he communicates this.

The Greek word for fish is Ichthus.

Okay?

It's like we get ichthologists, or if you're a tropical fish person, ick, fish get ick.

Ichthos is the Greek word for fish.

And the reason the early Christians use the symbol of the fish is because the Greek word for fish, ichthys, is an acronym.

Jesus, Christ, the Son of God, your savior.

So the Greek word for fish, Ichthas, pretty clever, huh?

I know you want to be Greek, don't you?

But you know what?

I think you're grafted in.

If you really believe, you get you get to be grafted in.

Um so the Greek word for fish, obviously the New Testament was was written in Greek because the Lord knows it's the best language.

Well, I mean, come on.

What's he going to write it in Gaelic or German or come on?

French, please.

Obviously.

Uh so the Greek word for fish, ichthus, as I said, it's an acronym, okay?

Yota, chi, theta, ypsilon, sigma, okay?

Jesus, Iesus, Christos, theos, imonsotia.

So my father tells me this, and he says, yeah, so the early Christians, when they saw the fish symbol, the secret symbol, it meant Jesus Christ, the Son of God, our Savior.

It's kind of like the secret code.

And I remember uh at this moment, you know, it was kind of a nice thing to have have the Greek part of my life woven into the fish part of my life, you know, because they had never met together.

And um, and so I kind of thought, well, that's kind of cool.

Most people don't know that.

They think fish is just about be fishers of men or something like that.

Well, that's related, but no, it has to do with this Greek word, Jesus Christ, the son of God, our savior.

The fish, that fish is Jesus Christ, the Son of God, our Savior.

So it's this mystical symbol, and suddenly it pops up in the latter part of the 20th century in the backs of cars, and you know, people we start to use it again.

Well, I didn't know what I believed really.

As a teenager, I had some encounters, and I I obviously I write about all this in the book, but I I think a lot of times if you're an evangelical Christian, you have this idea that, like, I was lost and then I was found, and here's the date when it happened, and I'll see you later, right?

Most people's lives with God are more complicated than that.

Now, sometimes it's not more complicated than that, but sometimes it is more complicated than that.

So, you know, when I became a Christian and said to my father, you know, I'm a Christian, he's kind of looking at me like, what?

What do you what do you do?

What were you before?

Like a Muslim Turk?

We went to church every Sunday, uh, you were an altar boy.

What was that about, Eric?

You know, like what are you talking about?

And you know, of course, as a young man, I'm like, well, I was born again, you don't understand, now I know Jesus.

But you realize it's not that simple.

It's not that simple.

I mean, somebody says, When did you get saved?

I will say, 1988, my 25th birthday, the dream, blah-da-da-da.

But there were things happening before then in my life, which were signs that God is, He's doing something.

So I can't know if I really was saved.

But in the book I write about an experience I had when I was 12, uh, where the Greek church youth group somehow, through some clerical error, uh, we spent a Saturday at a Russian Orthodox church with a Russian Orthodox priest who gave us the gospel of Jesus Christ.

Now, you know, the Greeks uh they don't really care if you got the gospel or not.

That's to me, that's sort of funny and sad, but the you know, that's like, but the problem is we definitely don't send our kids to the Russian Orthodox Church.

What's wrong with you?

Like, you know, the Greeks, we don't go, we don't do that.

Well, somehow it happened, and I heard the gospel of Jesus Christ when I was 12, and it really clearly affected me.

And I believe that on some level I accepted Jesus, and I don't know what happened or why the Lord allowed me to kind of drift after that.

We can't pretend like we understand these things.

I don't know.

I mean, I'm happy if the Lord will tell me, but all I know is God was kind of tracking me in some ways.

I had some experiences, so I didn't really push God away.

When I was around, I guess, 15 or I was 16 years old, uh, and I got my first legal job because Greeks, you know, they don't really care what the government tells you.

You're gonna work, you know, whatever.

So when I was 12, I got a job working, you know, as a dishwasher in a friend's diner.

And all Greeks have many friends with diners, so you're just gonna work under the table there and make a few bucks.

And uh so but when I was 16, I got an actual job and um met somebody who was part of a charismatic Christian community in Danbury, Connecticut.

And um, and so I would go there now and again, so I was kind of tracking with this, kind of on board.

But by the time I went to college, I just kind of drifted away.

You know, I went to the to the Christian group on campus a couple of times, and we all know those people are pretty weird.

So um I was kind of like, I don't know, and I kind of drifted away into the woke, you know, humanities world where you smoke clove cigarettes and make fun of Christians.

So I I didn't know what was going on.

I was kind of kind of lost.

But it fascinates me that looking at my life, I see God's hand.

And I think it's important for us to know that there's no cookie-cutter story.

Everybody tells, you know, when sometimes when you say to somebody, when did you become a Christian?

They kind of apologize and they go, like, oh, I was raised a Christian.

I've always been a Christian.

I'm sorry, I don't have like a crackpipe testimony.

It's like, yeah, I'm sorry, man, because that's awesome.

You need to get, you need, you need to get like a, you know, I kill some people, and then in jail the Lord spoke to me and stuff.

We all kind of want those stories, right?

Well, God gives you the story he gives you, and you need to praise him for whatever that story is.

Because if you if you happen to be walking with him early in life, you're gonna avoid some terrible mistakes.

I talk in the book of uh after I graduated Yale, uh, I, you know, fell into my first adult relationship of my life.

And what happens if somebody gets pregnant in the world and you're like 22 years old?

What happens?

Well, obviously, you get an abortion.

That's what everybody does, obviously, right?

Yeah, that's what we did.

Now I shall share that story because I'm here to tell you at the time I had no clue that I was doing wrong.

Now, of course, after I became a Christian, I realized and you repent.

And you know, we gotta say this that the reason it's hard for people to hear that abortion is wrong is because they don't know where to go with that if it's wrong.

If you know that Jesus wants to give you total forgiveness for every horrible sin, then you can admit your sin and you can confess your sin and you can be healed.

But if you don't know that, no wonder you're gonna be like, shut up, I hate you, I don't want to hear that.

So we have to understand part of the reason people can't hear the truth about this is because they're thinking, okay, so you're just gonna condemn me and make me feel horrible about myself.

Well, if you know that on the other side of that is total forgiveness, so we need to remember that why people they can't hear this, because they don't know that there's a God who wants to forgive them totally for that and heal them for that.

And so when people say, like, oh, I'm sorry I don't have like my horrible story, you don't really want a horrible story.

There's sadness, there's brokenness, there's pain.

And yeah, there's redemption and there's forgiveness, but you know, we all know that it would have been better that Adam and Eve did not fall so that Jesus had to be crucified.

So these things are a little bit complicated.

So my story is that God was in my life and I'm tracking, but then I kind of drift away.

Um, I should say that when I get to uh Yale, I was, you know, sort of a Christian.

I mentioned I was part of this charismatic Christian community, but I sort of begin to drift and I sort of start to get the memo that, you know, uh, okay, Eric, you were raised in this European immigrant working class home where they teach at America's great, and we go to church on Sunday, and suddenly I'm among these cultural elites that they're not on board with that.

And being impressionable and not really being clear what I believe or what's true, I kind of I kind of drifted along.

So by the time I graduated, I was quite confused, as you would know from my telling you, and it's a story I tell in the book, that I I would be, you know, willing to go along with, like, well, of course, yeah, that's what we do.

We have an abortion.

We don't we don't talk about it.

That's what everybody does, right?

Yeah, yeah.

You want me to drive you to the clinical?

No, okay, well, whatever.

That's what we do.

That's what everybody does.

And so everybody in the world who doesn't know what we know, that's what they do, folks.

Sinners sin.

That's what we do.

And God wants to deliver us, but we shouldn't get mad at sinners for sinning.

It doesn't mean it's not a sin.

It doesn't mean we shouldn't be political and and and try to uh enact laws that make these things clear.

But on a human level, we just have to understand where people are.

They're called lost.

Anyway, that's complicated.

I'll maybe if if Pastor Steve invites me back, I'll talk about politics uh another time.

By the way, at the conference the other day, uh I I spoke about the subject of my book that's coming out September.

It's called Letter to the American Church.

And it's about all this stuff, and it's about why we need to be uh active citizens and get political and what that means and you know, all that stuff.

Um so uh maybe we'll talk about that another time.

But right now I'm just telling you that I really was lost, and it's funny to think like, so was I lost before when I accepted Jesus at age 12 and this and this and this, and how does that work?

I think the answer is we don't know how it works.

All I can tell you is that we all want to be totally saved and totally redeemed and never look back.

And that's what happened to me my 25th birthday when the Lord spoke to me in this dream.

Now, when I was lost at Yale, I was kind of looking for the meaning of life a little bit.

Nobody had told me for sure, by the way, Eric, life has no meaning.

Um, but that's if you're paying attention, that's the memo you get in higher education, and of course it's trickled down into the culture, right?

It's like those people who believe in meaning and truth and God, like, they're crazy.

We know that we evolved out of the primordial soup through random processes and nothing has any meaning.

We're here by accident, and have a good time, and uh then you die, right?

So I think at places like Yale, they kind of give you this that they're not willing.

Most atheists, if you're coming from an atheist worldview, or if you're a Marxist, atheist, whatever, they they never come out clearly and explain to you, we believe has life has no meaning, there is no such thing as truth.

Um, I think I spoke about this the last time I was here.

That's the atheist worldview, but they never are clear about it.

They always kind of fudge it and pretend.

Like, you know, when when Carl Sagan uh says in Cosmos series, if you're old enough to remember, he says that, you know, there's nothing, the universe is all there is and all that ever will be.

You know, he kind of makes it sound sort of spiritual.

You know, it's like, but you want to say, hey, hey, hey, Carl, you don't believe in anything spiritual.

You just believe in matter.

So you're trying to try to, it's called lying.

You're trying to make it sound interesting and beautiful, but you're against beauty and meaning and truth and whatever.

People who are coming from that point of view can't admit it even to themselves, right?

So when you're at a place like Yale or any of these places, they're not gonna come out and say, listen, we figured it out.

Darwin makes it clear that we've evolved out of the primordial soup by accident, we got here by accident, life has no meaning.

They're not gonna really say that.

They're gonna kind of communicate it in a sidewise fashion, but they don't have the guts to face the horror of it, that life has no meaning.

Your life has no meaning.

They don't really quite say that because they don't believe it themselves.

Because guess what?

They're created in the image of God.

You can't wriggle out of that one.

You might not like it, but you're created in God's image for his purposes, and you long for meaning, and you have an innate sense that life has meaning.

So you're not gonna come out and say, We figured it out, life has no meaning, and we just have to be brave and whatever.

Very few people will say that.

So the memo you get at a place like Yale, since they don't want to lose, you know, your parents' money or anything like that, they they just will say, Well, we're not gonna get into that.

But uh, here's what we know.

Um we don't talk about those questions here.

So we just think study hard, get a good job, have a great career, and uh don't think about whether life has meaning or not, and it'll all be over in a few decades.

So just don't think about those questions because the answers are gonna make you want to kill yourself, and we don't want you to do that because we want you to give to the endowment.

That's sort of true, right?

They don't want to like be really honest about life has no meaning and the love you have for your children or your spouse, whatever it's just meaningless chemicals.

They don't want to go there.

So they kind of just to say, just get a good job and don't think about that meaning stuff.

Well, um I was an English major, I wanted to be a writer, so I graduated, and as you could guess, I did not get a good job.

Uh yeah, I wouldn't have been an English major if I really took this seriously.

I would have, you know, been a comp psi major or something where you get a good job.

So I uh I graduated wanting to be a writer, did not get a good job.

So what do you do with an English degree?

Well, you float and drift after college.

You just sort of float and drift trying to figure it out, trying to be a writer.

And as you know, it's kind of like a mathematical theorem.

If you graduate college and you float and drift, you will move back in with your parents.

There's like no doubt about that.

Now, if your parents are working class European immigrants, they're not gonna be very pleased with this.

They're gonna be like, we grew up without food, we didn't get to go to college.

Why are you here again?

Yeah, we uh we work menial jobs on the weekends to put you through Yale, Eric.

So what what is happening?

Why are you here?

You should have a great job, you should be sending money home, what is the problem?

So now my Yale friends, you know, their parents would be like, Oh, Eric's trying to find himself.

He's a writer, he's trying to find himself.

My parents were like, we want Eric to find himself a job.

Like, that's it.

That's that's about it.

That's that's we're all we're looking for here, and it's not happening.

So when I move back in with my parents, uh, you know, I'm age 24, I'm trying to be a writer, or whatever that means.

And the funny thing too is that like if your parents are working class European immigrants, they don't know how to help you be a writer.

They don't know how to say, like, well, why don't you talk to my friend the poet?

Or I have a friend uh who you know we don't have friends who are poets.

We have friends who are like, you know, they they operate diners.

Like that's those are our friends, and they don't know how to help you to be a writer either.

They never heard of the New Yorker or whatever it is that you're trying to do with your your wasted empty life, Eric.

We don't know.

So, but I knew that if I'm living at home, my father's gonna be like, well, you gotta get a job, you know.

So uh so what can you do with a Yale English degree?

It only cost a billion dollars or something like that.

What can you do with it?

Well, I got a job as a proofreader at Union Carbide in Danbury, Connecticut.

Now that that will make you want to kill yourself, so don't think about that.

But imagine I was the editor of the humor magazine at Yale.

I write poetry and short stories, and now I get a job as a proofreader at an international chemical conglomerate in my hometown, with where they give you, and when we say proofreading, we're not talking about, hey, here's a novel by Balzac, and we want you to read, you know, for no, no.

They're giving you manuals, chemical manuals to proofread.

Like you trust me, uh, if God wants to get your attention, he knows how to make you suffer.

And that's where he sent me.

And I I was lost, and I'm working this job in a chem in a corporate environment, which if anybody knows me, you realize that's not me.

And it was horrible, and I got a little cubicle that was a quarter of a mile from the nearest window.

Have you ever been in that kind of a building, like it goes on for a thousand miles?

And it was just bleak, bleak, bleak.

And in this misery of working this horrible job and then driving home into my parents who were glowering at me, like, why are you here again?

I was miserable.

I was totally miserable.

But we know that God sometimes lets you get miserable for his purposes.

Sometimes he takes you through a tough time.

Maybe uh a divorce, maybe losing a job, maybe losing a loved one.

Whatever it is, God, God can use the horrible things in this world for good.

He's an amazing God.

Romans 8 28, all things work together for good for those that love the Lord and are called according to his purposes.

So don't ever say like, I think all things works out in the end, all everything works out in the end.

No, that's not true.

But for those who love the Lord and are called according to his purposes, you will see that every horrible thing that happens, whatever it is, whether it's the COVID madness or a fraudulent uh presidency or any horrible thing, God says, All things work together for good for those that love me and are called according to my purposes.

So you give every horrible thing to God, knowing that he can weave it together into something beautiful if you cooperate with him.

We're supposed to praise him in all circumstances.

Now that's not normal, but that's what God says.

He says, Praise me.

So I was going through this horrible time, and in the midst of this genuinely horrible time, um, the Lord uh appoints a uh graphic designer to come into my life, like he appointed a fish, right?

And into my life comes a guy who works at Union Carabike Graphic Designer, and he's dropping off some of this abominable text that I have to proofread.

And every now and again we'd little chit-chat and whatever, and it comes clear that he believes in the Bible.

He's, you know, one of those people he takes all this stuff really seriously.

But I think the only reason I allowed him to continue talking with me is because I knew he attended an Episcopal church.

And I I know those people don't believe anything, so it's safe to talk to him, right?

So we talked, and I was kind of playing the cat and mouse game, kind of like pretending like I'm sort of on board, but clearly I'm not.

And but I'm in enough pain to keep talking, but also inoculated against, you know, these crazy conservative Christian types to say, like, no, I don't want to go to church with you, no, I don't want to have a Bible study in lunchroom.

Thank you very much.

I'm fine, which was not true.

But I knew I didn't want that crazy stuff.

But you know, this is kind of how a lot of us are, right?

You're in enough pain to keep talking, but you're kind of like, no, but I'm not ready for that.

Well, the Lord allows this to go on, and in my misery, which was significant, uh, I, you know, was opening up a little bit more and a little bit more and a little bit more to the possibility of God, but not much.

Let me be honest with you.

I wasn't like, hey, God, I'm ready, come into my life.

Sometimes uh my friend Ed Tuttle, who is the graphic designer, he would say, Well, you know, Eric, why don't you pray that God would reveal Himself to you?

And I remember thinking, that's pretty idiotic, Ed, because if God doesn't exist, what am I going to talk to the oxygen and say, God, if you're there, reveal yourself.

In other words, if you don't know God's there, how do you talk to him?

But sometimes if you're in enough pain, you'll do stupid things, like talk to God.

And so I'd be on a run near my parents' house and I'd say, God, if you're there, give me a sign.

Speak to me if you're there.

And then I'd become self-conscious, like, uh, why am I talking to the oxygen?

Uh, let's uh let's keep moving here.

Because, you know, it's one thing to say, I'm in trouble, God, I need your help.

It's another thing not to even know if there is a God to hear your painful cry.

And I think we need to know there's a lot of people out there that they're there they don't even know that there is a God.

And when you make it sound so cavalier, like, well, of course there is, they get angry because they're thinking, like, well, uh, that's not real for me.

Maybe, maybe it's real for you, but it's not real for me, so it's hard for me not to be angry at this God who's not revealing himself to me.

That's the that emotion, right?

So I was in that weird spot, and I remember it vividly, which gives me compassion sometimes on those that are there now.

To realize, like, I didn't, you know, I thought uh everybody does this, everybody does that, everybody gets an abortion if necessary.

What's the big deal?

What are you talking about?

Everybody knows that sophisticated people don't know that there's a God, all the smart people know there's probably not, and if there is, you can't know.

I mean, you know, that's where I was.

But in my pain, praise the Lord, every once in a while I'd be like, uh God, if you're there, give me a sign.

Well, this goes on and on.

My uh uncle passes away around my 25th birthday, and something happened then that I think I'm not sure what happened, but it kind of opened the door a little bit more for me.

In fact, my friend Ed Tuttle, who uh I mentioned he's the one who is leading me toward.

Faith, he said to me, bunch of people in my church are praying for your uncle because my uncle was had had a uh a stroke and and or it was in a coma.

And I'll never forget how touched I was by that.

I remember thinking, these crazy Christians they believe that God hears their prayers and they're praying.

I thought maybe he does.

And then I thought, and how beautiful that these strangers are praying for my uncle.

Like there's just something about that that touched my heart.

Now it wasn't enough to move me to faith, but it was it softened me.

I remember he said, Why don't we pray for your uncle?

Let's go into a conference room and I'll pray for your uncle.

I was like, okay.

And we went to a conference room, a bleak conference room, fluorescent-lit conference room at Union Carbide.

Um, and my friend Ed prayed, and I remember something happened.

It wasn't like a mystical experience, but it was close.

It was like, wow, that was real.

There was something real there.

I felt something, I don't know.

And so it softened my heart a little bit.

Well, my uncle passed away, but I just knew that there was something real about this.

And one night, not long after this, the Lord spoke to me in a dream.

And the dream um was kind of like a fairy tale.

Um you'll understand why the book is titled Fish Out of Water.

Because in the dream, the Lord weaves together these different parts of my life.

And in the dream, I'm standing on a frozen lake uh in Danbury, Connecticut, Candlewood Lake, where I had fished uh many times.

And I'm ice fishing with a friend, and it's one of these glorious, glorious winter days where the sun is bright and the sky is just a painfully beautiful blue, and the ice and the snow is white.

So I'm standing there in the dream ice fishing, and I look down and I see the hole, and poking its nose out of the hole is a fish.

Now, if you ever ice fished, you understand that does not happen.

But in the dream, that's what happened.

Now, I have to tell you, since this is the second surface I'm speaking at, I don't think I mentioned to you that while I was at Yale, I came up with what I thought was the meaning of life.

I haven't mentioned this, have I?

Well, this is brief, but I, you know, I had read a little Jung and a little Freud.

I don't recommend it.

But I got the idea from them that maybe all religions are getting at the same thing.

You hear that a lot, right?

It's kind of this new age idea.

All religions are getting at the same thing, and there's this thing called the God force, divinity, whatever it is.

It's not Jesus, you know.

But it's this kind of energy force, this new age, God, energy force, and it partakes of us, or something along those lines.

Well, so I got this idea, I thought, okay, I had this kind of like literary image of a frozen lake, right?

And I kind of thought, the ice is the conscious mind, and the water beneath the ice is the unconscious, right?

Because Freud and Jung talk about the conscious mind and the unconscious, and Freud talks about, you know, during Freudian therapy, you you want to go into the unconscious and find a trauma, and you know, it's like whatever.

But the point is, Jung says, Jung thought of himself as some some kind of a Christian, really kind of a new agey Christian, but not really a Christian.

But he had this idea that, okay, there's the conscious mind and there's the unconscious mind, and the collective unconscious, the unconscious of all of humanity, is God.

Now, let me say again, that's not true.

It's totally wrong.

But it's this kind of comfortable new age idea of God, right?

That so I came up with this idea that I think the goal of life is to drill through the ice on the surface of the lake to touch the collective unconscious, to touch the water.

That's what all these religions are getting at, is to have some kind of, you know, uh relationship between the conscious mind and this unconscious, which collectively is somehow divinity or something like that.

Now, again, that makes no sense.

It's not true, but as an undergraduate, you'll believe a lot of stuff.

So I come up with this idea and I think that's the goal of life.

All these religions they're talking about somehow we're supposed to drill through the ice, whatever that means, and we're supposed to touch this divinity, touch the water, the collective.

That's the goal of life.

So now in the dream, I'm standing on a frozen lake, and I look at the hole, and I see a fish poking its snout out of the hole.

And I reach down and I pick up the fish by the gills, because it you don't lip land a pike because they have very sharp teeth.

Do you understand this?

I like the fishermen are laughing here.

Um so I reach down, I pick it up, and it's a pickerel or a pike, it's a bronze-colored fish, and I hold it up in the dream in this brilliant sunlight.

And in the dream, looking at this fish, which I've just reached down and picked it up, and I realize in the dream it looks golden, and then I realize it doesn't look golden.

This is like out of a fairy tale.

It is golden, it is made of gold, and it is alive, it is a living golden fish, like in a fairy tale.

And in the dream, suddenly the Lord communicates to me, Eric, you wanted to drill through the ice to touch the collective unconscious, this new idea, new age idea of God.

I have something else for you, Eric.

I have the golden fish, Ichthus.

Jesus Christ, the Son of God, your savior.

That's what I have for you.

You wanted to touch the water, and I wanted to give you my son, your savior, Jesus Christ.

In the dream, I'm holding up the golden fish, and I have a knowing where God just lets me know that's what this is, Eric.

And he, Jesus Christ, the Son of God, your Savior, has come from the other side to be the fish out of water.

What happens when a fish comes out of the water?

It dies.

He sent his son to die for me.

And this all comes together in the dream, and I know I had been somebody who thought, well, it'd be nice if that was true, but I'm pretty sure you can't know that that's true.

Suddenly, in the dream, the Lord one-ups me with my own dopey symbol system and makes clear to me he knows me because the ichthys, Jesus Christ, the son of God, our savior, if I didn't know that, I wouldn't have understood that the golden fish is Jesus Christ, the Son of God, our Savior.

The Lord speaks to me in a way that would only make sense to me and completely blows my mind in the dream so that I know that what I had feared could not even be possible is true.

And that I am holding him, my Savior Jesus, he's come from the other side, and I have him now, and my journey is over.

I have accepted Jesus.

This all comes clear to me in the dream.

Now, how much credit can I take for that since I was unconscious at the time?

We can't take any credit for our salvation, it's all God.

But the Lord spoke to me in a way that changed my life in the dream and makes me realize that what I had hoped might be true, but probably isn't.

It is true.

And I knew it.

And I was flooded with joy in the dream.

I was flooded with joy.

I said, It's true, it's over.

I've accepted Jesus, He's real.

And he knew how to get to me, he knew how to speak to me in a way that I could say, That was not something I ate.

That was God.

But he needed to do that because I was so gummed up intellectually, so messed up that he needed to speak to me miraculously.

And he did.

And the next day I woke up and I go to work and I tell my friend, let me tell you about this story, this dream.

And he says, What do you think it means?

What does that mean, Eric?

And I said to him something I never would have said before.

I would have cringed.

I said to him, It means I've accepted Jesus.

And I knew that my journey was over, that I found the meaning of life, and then I knew that my journey had now just officially begun.

Because once you know that, now you can live.

Now you can live the way he created you to live.

Now you're a car with gas in the tank.

Now you can do what you're supposed to do because what you didn't have, now you have.

It changed everything.

And I think about this, and I think to myself, this is true for every one of you and everyone.

God knows you so intimately that it would freak you out if you had a glimpse of it.

God just gave me a glimpse of it in this dream.

He knows us.

He knows our dreams, our fears, our disappointments, our brokenness.

He knows everything and he adores us and he wants to speak to us.

And I think to myself, how amazing that he knew me in such a way that he could weave these disparate parts of my life together in this glorious fairy tale dream and change my life forever.

I know that that's not just for me, that he has something like that, maybe not a dream, but he has that for everyone, because that's who he is.

And you need to know that.

And you also need to know that, you know, we say, what's the meaning of life?

Does life have been the the Jesus is the answer.

Jesus is the answer.

And I didn't say it in this talk this morning.

Uh I said it more in the nine o'clock, but my experience was always being a fish out of water.

You don't fit in, you don't fit in.

That's called the human condition.

We all know something's wrong.

I'm inadequate.

Uh maybe if I do this, maybe if I do that, maybe if I do that, how can I get how can I get in there?

How can I, how can I, you know, there's a pecking order.

How can I get part of that secret group?

I want to be part.

These are lies from the pit of hell because God says, your answer is me.

I'm your answer.

Yes, you're longing for something.

I'm what you're longing for.

I am your answer.

And the Lord illustrated to me in this dream what he illustrates to all of us.

He says, So you feel like a fish out of water.

You feel broken, you feel lost.

Well, he says, I'm gonna send my son to be the fish out of water.

He is going to leave where he belongs, which is heaven, which is eternity, and he is voluntarily going to come to that sin-sick place called earth to die for you.

He is gonna be the fish out of water.

He will become sin on the cross to change your story.

Folks, it goes on and on.

It's unbelievable the levels of depth of who God is and what he does for us.

But if you feel inadequate, even as a believer or as a non-believer, God says, I am your answer.

You feel like a fish out of water?

Well, I have an answer for that.

I will become a fish out of water.

I will trade places with you so that by faith in me you can come to live in the water where we belong as fish.

It's called heaven, it's called eternity.

It's the place our hearts long for when we think I'm not part of that club.

That's what's going on.

You're longing for heaven.

And the Lord says, I am your ticket, I am your answer, accept me.

I say this, folks, because I want you to know the Lord knows what you're going through.

He knows our stories better than we could ever dream of knowing them ourselves.

And he says, Give me yourself utterly.

Open your heart to me and let me use you for the purposes for which I have created you.

It is why you're here on this planet.

Don't miss any part of it.

Give yourself to me utterly and see what I will do.

I know the plans I have for you.

Cooperate with me and step into a life of true freedom, of faith, of peace, of joy, of hope in the midst of difficulty.

That is his will for you.

He doesn't want you to earn that.

It is will for you now.

Accept it to his glory today and until you see him face to face.

God bless you.

Hey, thanks for listening to the Road Podcast.

It's been my joy to be a part of your life today.

And you know, that's part of what we do here at The Road, and this is what I do in having this Road Podcast is to empower people to change their world.

My passion and desire is that you would take God's word through the power of the Holy Spirit and make that relevant for your life.

You know, the reality is that God has placed your life here on this earth to make a difference.

And if you'd like more information about how to grow in Christ, if you need prayer, if you want more equipping in different areas of your life, go to theroad.org.

God bless you.