Venture Unfiltered #9: Wanderlust

Hey, everyone, this is pb Aster Brandon. Welcome to our tenth episode

of Venture Unfiltered. Again, I am without my co host Tony Mattar.

This is his last week of vacation. Ironically, over the last month,

I think I've talked and seen Tony more while he's been on vacation than I

normally do normally talk to him, but I had a really strange experience that

I want to share with you. With Tony and Tony and I have one

thing in common, and one of the main things that we have in common

is many things we don't have in common. I have hair, he doesn't.

I have muscles he doesn't. One of the things we do have in

common is we love comedy. We love comedy shows. I always tell everyone,

if you really want to learn how to be a good speaker, you

need to study comedians because they are, in my opinion, the best communicators

in the world, because a comedian is trained to read a room and be

funny on the spot and very spontaneous and so Tony and I have an appreciation

for comedians. We especially love like Nate Bargotzy, We love Jerry Seinfeld.

Comedians like that, and there's a couple of Christian comedians today that are just

excellent. Of course, John Christ. You cannot beat John Christ. In

fact, John Christ's recent comedy special on YouTube might be the funniest comedy special

I've ever heard in my entire life, and it's totally clean. He's amazing.

But another Christian comedian that I personally love is Andrew Stanley. And Andrew

Stanley's claim to fame is he is Andy Stanley, pastor of the megachurch North

Point Church in Atlanta's son. It's every pastor church planner's dream that someday your

son grow up not to replace you as the pastor of the church, but

to be a professional comedian. Ander Stanley is super funny. My favorite thing

about Andrew is he is the king of homeschool jokes and pastor's kid jokes,

so he does that. So recently, Andrew Stanley was actually at a comedy

club in Seattle, and so me and Tony and actually Pastor Morgan also went

to. We went because we wanted to see Ander Stanley, so we showed

up. There's probably twenty people there, and because Andrew's a friend of mine,

they gave us VIP seats right in the front row, and there's rules

at comedy clubs. So whenever Di and I travel, we will go to

comedy clubs just because they're fun. And oftentimes you'll have famous comics that are

trying out new material and be at a local comedy club. So you just

never know who you're going to see. And there are times that the opening

acts of comedy clubs you don't recommend. They're not funny, they're way inappropriate,

they cuss like drunken sailors, and yeah, they're just not really that

good. And dian I learned a long time ago that when you sit towards

the front, the opening acts are looking to riff on the crowd. And

what they do is they want to find something funny about someone in the crowd

that they can make fun of. And the number one things that people will

make fun of if they ask me what I do for work. If I

say I'm a minister, i am officially made fun of for the next three

hours at this comedy club. So not that I'm ashamed of Jesus, but

I don't want to make it awkward for everyone else in the comedy club to

find out I'm a minister. And then this guy says things that he shouldn't

say that aren't super appropriate. So I will, oftentime avoid the topic of

me being a pastor. I'll tell them I'm a college professor, because that

is one of my side hustles, so that I teach at Northwest University,

so I'll normally say I'm a professor. So we're at this comedy club.

They had three opening acts before Andrew came out. Two minutes into the opening

act of the first comedian, he starts making fun of Tony, and he

asks Tony what he does for work, and Morgan and I can see this

is going to be bad from the beginning, and both Morgan and I are

like, don't you dare? Don't you dare? And Tony makes the mistake

of telling this opening act comedian, who frankly probably had no material to begin

with, that we were ministers. So for the next hour and a half,

all three of the opening acts before Andrew spent the vast majority of their

time making fun of the three of us. Now again, I thought Christian

comedian odds, are most of the p people the twenty that are there are

Christians? Now we found out really quickly it was just Tony, me and

Morgan. We were the only Christians there. They asked, how many of

you go to church? No one goes to church. How many you believe

Heaven and Hell? This is just me and Tony and Morgan raising our hands.

We are it and we realized really quickly that we were alone, and

we were made fun of the entire time. That is one of my greatest

memories of Tony is Tony ruined an entire comedy club experience for Morgan and I

by announcing proudly what our profession was. And again, I'm not ashamed to

be a minister. I love my job. I love my profession, but

I know the settings where it's going to be awkward for me and everyone else

to find out in that moment that I am a minister at a comedy club

in Seattle is the time you avoid answering the question. So we learned that.

But my incredible co host is going to be back next week. We're

super excited for Tony to be back. We're excited to hear about his month

off and different things. But we do have a special treat for you today.

I have two amazing guests. I have, first off, our young

adult pastor Pastor Claire, Hello, everyone, glad to be here. Claire

tone just thirty seconds about yourself, who you are, what you do,

Like, what's your deal? What's my deal? Okay, Well I'm Claire.

As you said, I am engaged. That's like my main personality trait

right now that everyone talks about. I love why, I love doing,

I love hiking, I love the outdoors. Just tried wakeboarding for the first

time the other day. Did you wreck? Yeah? I did not.

I did not do good. I was with one of our other young adults

and she was trying to teach me how to wakeboard, and I literally could

not get up. Did you know when I was in high school, me

and my buddies would meet at Lake Washington. We all went to a prep

school in nor Seattle. We meet at Lake Washington at six am. And

this is when wake boarding first started, and wakeboards were huge and heavy,

and we would wakeboard every morning for an hour and a half before we went

to school. Did you get up? Like, were you good? Oh?

Yeah, oh yeah, we were really, really, really good at

wakeboarding back in the day. But yeah, I spent my entire junior and

senior year of high school wakeboarding, dude, I wish that'll be me next

time. Yeah. Then I became a minister and my weekends weren't free,

and so I never wakeboarded again. Yeah. My other co host today is

Hannah Peterson, who is one of the young adults at our church. Hannah,

why don't you welcome everyone and tell him a little bit about yourself.

Hey everyone, I'm Hannah and I currently attend Northwest University and I'm pursuing my

degree in ministry and I'm just happy to be here. Thank you for having

me. I do want to mention to everyone that my allergies are kicking up

a little bit, so if my voice sounds weird or after occasionally sniffle,

I apologize about that. It's Paullen's season outside. Here's what we're gonna do

today. We have been in the middle of a series called Wanderlust, and

part of our series has been really helping people understand when God is speaking to

you, understanding God's will for your life. It's pretty much the number one

question that I have whenever I meet with people, and really it doesn't even

matter the age. I can meet with somebody who's sixteen, and I can

meet with someone who's sixty and they're still saying, I'm really trying to understand

what God has for me and what God has next. So the month of

July we have spent from the perspective of four of our different pastors, really

talking through how you understand God's will for your life, how you hear God's

voice. And I thought it would be great if Claire and Hannah and we

talked at the very beginning of the month that they would write questions down that

they'd heard from their friends, that they had thought about these messages and really

help people wrestle through what is God's will from my life. So they have

written down questions. We'll go back and forth, and what our hope is

is that as you hear these questions, you think, you know what,

That's a question that I had to that was something that I was really wrestling

through too. And this is all my opinion, This is my advice.

It's not necessarily gospel. This is just thirty years of being in ministry,

fifty years of life doing the math, thirty five years of being a follower

of Jesus. This is the way that I would answer, and this is

from my own life experience, but they're going to ask me questions, will

dialogue on those questions, and then our hope is that this is helpful to

each one of you. So we'll start off with Hannah. Yeah, Hannah,

where were you? You just got back in town? Yeah, I

was in Lake Tahoe. I actually just just drove into the church like a

few minutes ago, and I'm here. So I drove up from Eugene this

morning. Lots of traffic, but I'm happy to be here. So did

you have to speed to get here? I did not speed. I actually

had a cop right behind me for a good chunk of time, So no

speeding for me. So Hannah and her family live like two blocks away from

where dian I live. And twice. Now there's this main road in front

of my house, Fifth Avenue, muckle Teal Boulevard's kind of a main drag

that connects muckle Teo and Everett, And twice I have seen Hannah pulled over

getting tickets from cops. Twice. It's true, and it was within like

a week apart from each other. Oh my gosh, wait what Yeah,

it's sorry true. Oh she's a total scoff law. Hannah, go ahead,

ask the first question that you have. Yeah, Pastor Seawan shared about

the danger of living life in neutral? How would you say we can resist

living life in neutral when we might be in a waiting season? First message

in our Wanderlust series, So if you can go back to our venture podcast,

Pastor Seawan Share did an incredible message on and what he talked about was

the worst thing that happens is if you find yourself in neutral, you drift.

And he talked about our natural inclination is to drift away from Jesus.

So we have to intentionally seek after God and not find ourselves in a moment

that we're drifting. So, Hannah, your question is how do we not

live in neutral if we're in a waiting season? So I think there is

a huge difference between waiting and stopping. One of the things that I deal

with with people is that they have a season where they have this dream or

they want to start a business, or they want to finish school, or

they want to go into ministry, or they want to go on this epically

long hike, and they're in a season of training and waiting before they get

to do the thing. And what I see a lot of people do is

instead of doing anything, they stop and they get paralyzed. So I guess

what I would say is, when you're in a season of waiting, maybe

there's a promise that you have from Jesus and you're waiting for that to happen,

you should still do something like never stay still. One of the things

that I always say is, if you're early twenty something, you're not really

sure about what to do, the safest thing finish school, Like go to

school. You know every no one will ever hear me say anything, but

finish school. If you don't know what's next, at least take one class,

because there's nothing worse than dropping out of school and having to go back

into school. And the world is full of people that say, I wish

I would have finished my degree, I wish I need to go back to

school. And once you get out of the habit of doing homework and reading

and studying, it's really hard to swing back into that. So I tell

people, when you're in a season of waiting, just make sure and do

something. Don't like be frozen in time. There's this great verse that I

love. It's Colossians three twenty three, and it says, whatever you do

work at it with all of your heart as working for the Lord, not

for people. So even when you're in a season where I'm doing a job

that's not my dream, you should still work. You shouldn't just be paralyzed

and do nothing. You should still be moving forward and trying to do something.

So the Paul talked about in Thessalonians, he talked about not living idle

lives, and I think one of the hesitations when we don't have an answer

for what we're supposed to do or we're in a season of waiting, is

we have this tendency to stop. So my advice would be do something that's

good. Yeah, Claire, what's your first question? Well, mine's actually

off of that same sermon from Pastor Sean. I was just thinking about how

I feel like a lot of the time, just in this area, specifically

like in Mill Creek, I think a lot of people not everyone in our

church, but a lot of people maybe live more comfortable lives, you know,

their families, working, you know, maybe good paying jobs, things

like that. And I feel like something I've noticed is that, even especially

with young adults, it can be really easy to switch in a neutral because

you kind of let church be something you can just check off a list of

like, oh, I've done it, I've read my bibe, or even

just I've gone to church, and then that's it, Like I don't even

think about God the rest of my week. And I guess maybe in an

area where people are more desperate for Jesus, like man, I have no

money or just lower income, things like that might be easier to be too

when you go to church, let that be your whole week. But like,

how in this more comfortable, cushiony area of Mill Creek would especially and

again for young adults too, How do you resist that and not let your

living situation be like, you know, just checking off. Okay, I

just went to church. That's good, you know. I actually think it's

a great question that applies to like the Seattle area in general. Statistically,

what we know about Seattle is that people in the Seattle area it's one of

the most affluent areas in the country. It's arguably one of the most educated

areas in the country. It's also the most fit area. One of my

favorite stats about Seattle is that there are more gyms, yoga studios, things

like that in the Seattle area than there are fast food restaurants. So we

live in an area full of people that are pretty, they're educated, and

they have discretionary income. Oh yeah, and by the way, we're surrounded

by just epic beauty around us. Water, mountains, trees, hikes,

there's just unlimited things to do. What tends to happen in that is people

have this false idea that they don't need God, and it's really easy.

I always say, to get seduced by our culture, seduced by our region,

and you miss out on what matters most. And then what will end

up happening is you wake up one day you're in your forties fifties, and

you look around and you're like, there has to be more to this life,

and you missed it when you were younger because you got kind of seduced

by everything that this area has to offer. And so I would say,

really, two things about it is life was never meant to be lived alone.

So you want relationship. And I think that's a major connection that people

have with church is you find friends, you find people that have similar values,

things like that. But I also just deep down have this innate belief

that every single person was created to be in a relationship with Jesus that we

live our lives. I describe it this way, that we were born with

a hole in our heart, and that whole can only be filled when we

submit our life to Jesus. We have a relationship with him, and that

the enemy tries to get us to fill that hole with all these counterfeits.

So we try education, relationships, wealth, extremism, whatever it is,

engaging with nature, all these different things. But in the end were like

Solomon and Ecclesiastes. And the amazing thing about Solomon is I love song of

Solomon was written by him, and it was when he was young and in

love, and it's this glowing thing about relationships and life and hope. And

then Ecclesiastes was written by him as an adult, like an older man,

and he looks back and he reflects on his life and what he says in

Ecclesiastes, he says, I achieved everything. And what we know about Solomon

is God gave him an option and said Solomon, I'll give you whatever you

want. Ask for it, you get whatever you want. And I think

the Lord expected Salomon was going to ask for wealth and hour, and instead

he said, give me wisdom to lead, And the Lord said, because

you asked for wisdom to lead, I'm gonna give you everything too. So

Salomon was the wealthiest, most influential, most powerful, smartest, wisest king

in the history of Israel. Owen he also had like a thousand wives.

So Solomon in his entire life lived out to the extreme of everything that the

world would say there is to offer. And when Solomon looked back at his

entire life, he said, I realized that it was all meaningless, that

everything else outside of Jesus, outside of God, was chasing after the wind.

And that is one of my number one fears for people in our region,

is that they don't understand that that's whole in their heart, only filled

by Jesus. You'll try everything else, but in the end you're going to

wake up one day, look around and say this is meaningless. So I

would say, while you're young and being blessed by life and surrounded by beauty

and educated and in shape, passionately pursue Jesus because in the end you're gonna

need him. And in the end, it gives you a purpose for your

wealth, It gives you a purpose for your knowledge, It gives you perspective

and everything you learn. The other thing that I would say too is I

also watch the pendulum swing to the other side where I watch people live these

incredibly blessed lives and they feel guilt because their life is blessed. They feel

guilt because I got a good job. I love my church, I love

my marriage, and life is great, and I love where I live and

I love my hot And there's this sense that we should be miserable like that.

Part of being a follower of Jesus is like we've got to be perpetual

martyrs, and we forget that. Sometimes you're faithful and God blesses your life

and you're in a really good position. And again we're talking about wander lust

here, and sometimes you just need to stop, step back and say,

you know what, I got a pretty good life. I love my church,

like my job. I'm not going to mess everything up by getting a

little bit antsy and shifting everything. So I think there's a little bit to

both of that. But great question. Yeah that's good, Hannah. Yeah.

U. Pastor Johnnie talked a lot about getting outside of the comfort zone,

and I feel like a common theme I see with a lot of people

in the young adult kind of age demographic is that they get stuck in the

comfort zone because they're really lacking that vision, that direction for your life.

What advice would you give to someone that's lacking that vision? And where do

you think people should start in kind of pursuit of that. So you're talking

more about we found ourselves kind of being apathetic, we're comfortable, we're afraid

to take risks. What do we do? I would say you, this

is a totally different teaching for a different day. Like I could go into

detail on this, but I think every single person needs to go back and

evaluate what are their core values, like what is like, what are the

things that are your personal non negotiables and does your life align with your core

values? And so sometimes we want to take risks just for the sake of

taking risks, and that's not smart. Yeah. Other times we get so

comfortable that we just say I don't want to mess up what I have,

so I don't want to step out in faith and try anything. But I

think your life has to align with your values, and so you go back,

regardless of your circumstances in situation. If you sincerely went through a process

of really developing good core values. Those drive your decisions, and if your

life currently what it is aligns with those decisions, pursue Jesus. Stay the

course. And if for some reason, even if you're comfortable, you look

and saying wow, like I'm I got a job that pays really well,

but this does not align with what I value, you should probably take a

step back and take a risk. I would say this also that we have

one life to live, and I'm a firm believer in swinging big swing with

your life. Don't let yourself get too comfortable, but swing away, stretch

yourself. And there's seasons of your life where you can do the stretching more

than others. I mean, when you have a family that you're providing for

and you've all these demands on your life, you can't constantly live a life

where you're risking everything. But when you're younger, you don't have a lot

of bills, you don't have a lot of debt, you don't have a

family. You can take kind of bigger steps of faith and things like that,

but you've got to be cautious and careful. But we don't want to

wake up and be comfortable because comfortable people get really lazy. Totally. Yeah,

And how would you say, going off of that, how would you

say with those non negotiables, how you determine what a good non negotiable should

be versus maybe something that could be negotiable. So there's an entire process that

my wife will do also I do, where we take people through developing core

values. So and I would say for me personally, like really solidifying what

my core values were, and core values, these are your non negotiables.

They should be from the moment you established them. By the time your life

is over, your core values should stay the same like they shouldn't like if

you did the process right to begin with. These makeup who you are,

who your personality is, who God hardwired you to be, and they guide

the directions of your life. So for me personally, I have five core

values. I say I only have five, not because five is a magical

number, but because I can only remember five things. I've got to have

enough fingers where I can remember it. My faith is a core value,

so I don't do anything that deters or hurts my faith. So it's like

the most important thing in my life. Number two core value for me is

my family that I make decisions for my family. This fall Venture in November,

Venture has our nineteenth birthday, so kind of a crazy thing. So

I've been a minister for thirty years. Thirty years, I was a youth

pastor for twelve years. I've been a senior pastor for eighteen years. I've

worked at three churches. That's it. Three. Most ministers over thirty year

period of time, it'd be their tenth church by now eighteen years at the

same church, this would be their fourth or fifth church. That would be

normal. You add in the fact that I, by my nature have wanderlust

like I like change, I want things different. The fact that I am

still at the same church eighteen years later is utterly shocking to me because I

am cool with change constantly to my detriment, because I actually think in ministry

longevity is the ultimate success and the more the longer you're out of place,

the more influence you have. Thesier ministry is. But going back to the

core values, there were multiple moments where we had an opportunity to transition,

and every one of those moments brought me and again remember in my head,

I want to because that is my natural bent to want change, but each

time I went back to my core values and making the decision to leave and

go here didn't align with them. The biggest example that I always give is

there was a MEGAMEGAMEGA church like bigger than anything. It would have been twice

the size of the largest church in the state of Washington, pretty much had

offered me the job. I was actually heading to the airport for my final

interview, and as I was heading to the airport, one of their board

members called me and said, hey, we just want to verify one thing,

and they said, I noticed on your church's website that you guys refer

to your wife as a pastor. Now, we just want you to know

that even though we're a non a nominational church, that in our origin we

have like Baptist Reformed Foundation and they're you know, subsequently non denominational, we're

charismatic and things, so those parts fit me. But they said, we

probably wouldn't want you ever referring to your wife as a pastor here. And

I tell everybody the story that I didn't even go to the airport that immediately.

That did not align with my core values because my family matters to me

and then my third core value is calling and my calling, my wife's calling,

or something that we value, and I would never be in a ministry

position. I wouldn't choose my own ministry position at the determent of my wife's

and my wife's calling is equally as important as mine. And as soon as

this church said well, you can do whatever you want, but your wife

is going to get shelved, I was out. And it was most people

would say, look at the salary, look at the size of the church,

look at the opportunity, look at the city where it was. Everything

would say, go, there's just this minor thing that maybe you can change

later on, and for me didn't align with my core values. Fourth core

value is courage. I define courage personally is I'm not allowed to be driven

by fear. Fear was a major thing in my life, probably for the

first thirty years of my life, controlled me. And I made a decision

that I would never say no to something because I was afraid to do it,

that I was going to live, for Jesus a courageous life. And

then my last core value is flexibility. And I love working at Venture,

love it. Part of the reason that I love it is I have such

an amazing staff that gives me the flexibility to do these side passions like this

podcast and things like that. But I think everything boils down to developing these

But these core values have carried me through my whole life because when I did

the process initially, I did it right. And they have in moments where

I was at a crossroads and those things come, I kind of knew which

direction to go based upon them, even if I disagree with it. Claire,

Yeah, that's good. I was actually gonna say, based on what

you're just talking about about how you love change and shaking things up and not

like staying complacent in your life. And I feel I'm sure that's how you

were when you were younger too, but especially for young adults. I feel

like a lot of the time I see young adults come to me and they're

like, I feel like God told me to whatever it is, quit school

or go to a different church, or kind of just the idea of like

he called me to this thing, but I think it's time to go,

whether it's school or you know, a relationship, something something like that.

And in your last sermon, you were talking about how when you don't know

what to do next, go back to the last thing God told you to

do. And I guess I'm just curious for people my age specifically, like,

do you ever feel like there's a time where God will call you to

something and then once you start it tell you to like leave or quit.

This is venture unfiltered, So I'll be blunt, absolutely not like I in

my own personal experience thirty five years of walking with Jesus and serving Jesus.

If I know that I heard clearly that God told me to do something,

he would never make me stop it. He would never tell me to stop

it midstream. I think the read I think people love to blame Jesus for

stuff, Like they love to say God told me to do this, and

then they love to follow it up when it gets hard six months later by

God told me to quit this, or God told me to do this and

this and really now again, I'm fifteen nowt so I just kind of don't

play those games anymore. And I call people out on it, and I'm

quick to say God did not tell you to do this. You want to

do this if God like it is possible, you missed God initially, and

that is your own fault that Jesus says this. He says, just say

as simple yes I will or no I won't. So this is the words

of Jesus. And he follows it up to say, if your yes is

not yes and your no is not no, anything beyond that comes from the

enemy. So the wavering yes, I'll do it, but not then not

doing it that like God wants us to be men and women of our word.

And in the end, I'll just use venture. Eighteen years right now,

nineteen years in November. This church is amazing, incredible. Two things

could have happened. I could have missed out on this by my natural and

desire for change, and I probably would have blame God and said, well,

I left venture and went over to this other church because God called me

and things like that. So I could have missed out on it. Or

it's possible that a key part of all this is venture, the area and

mine and Dy's leadership and Venture would have missed out on all of this too.

So it's all of these things working together. So my advice would be,

if you are somebody who has a habit of saying yes to something and

then later on changing your mind, be slower to say yes to it,

yeo, And like, if you know you're the young adult pastor, if

somebody commits to being on your young adult team, there's nothing more frustrating than

three months later finding out that I decided I go to a different church.

I'm like, you need to grow up like that. Paul said this.

He said, when I was a child, I talked like a child,

I acted like a child. But when I became a man, I put

childish ways behind me. When you turned eighteen, you're legally allowed how to

vote, you can drive. You are an adult. You can make your

own decisions, and you have to own I said yes to this. It's

one of the number one things that I tell my kids is you know,

if you say yes to something, you can't blame it on being young anymore.

You are an adult. You got to own your decisions. And I

think one of the challenges that people have is they're so quick to change that

when it gets hard, they learn the habit of not working through difficulty.

Usually on the other side of difficulty is blessing, and they never see the

blessing because they never worked through the difficult parts. And like being when I

was a youth, pastor for twelve years, every Wednesday, the youth staff

had to melt down before the service. It was their worst day at work,

their worst day at school. They got to fight with their spouse.

And I always told them it's because the well hates you. Of Course he

knows that your impact in the lives of these students tonight is going to be

amazing, So of course he's gonna do everything in his power he can to

get you to not go to the service. And every time I give him

that pep talk, they end up forcing their way through go to the service.

God moves, And then they grabbed me afterwards and say thank you.

I'm so glad I didn't quit. I never have anyone's say afterwards, I'm

so happy I quit, But I have lots of people that thank me like

crazy that they didn't quit. I'll add one thing, and I'm answering way

too long, alluding to this a little bit on Sunday when I preach.

But one of the themes about my life, like if you say, what

do people learn from me? Brandon doesn't quit. In our family, we

don't quit on Sunday. I'm gonna share a testimony or I'll share some stories

about with our kids where our kids really wanted to quit something. I'll tell

the story of when Rachel played basketball. Imagine my little Pip squeak daughter,

Pip squeaked daughter playing basketball. I'll tell the story about we wouldn't let her

quit. Judah is a third degree black belt in taekwondo. What most people

don't know is three weeks into that like he had a meltdown, wanted to

quit, and in our family, you don't quit. So I start my

doctorate. Now, I will tell you, I don't think God told me

to get my doctorate. It was just why not. I got an opportunity

and I went for it. So I don't think it was a matter of

pleasing or displeasing God either way. In this process, I don't need a

doctorate from my job. I don't need a doctorate from my future. It

was just solely for personal growth and it was hard and all I wanted to

do is quit. And I finally got to the point where I was done

done quitting, and I started meeting with everybody. I told the board I

was going to quit. I told my family I was gonna quit. And

I'll never forget what Elijah said to me, like Elijah was like, and

he was really flipp I mean, he was being a punk twenty two year

old, you know. He said, Dad, I don't really care what

you do, but this is just so weird. And I go, well

why, and he goes, I thought, in our family, we don't

quit. I've never and he looked at me and he said, I've never

seen you quit anything before. And he of Lissas, I have a big

diploma on my wall that says I'm a doctor. Now, wow, he

called you out. I hate it when people preach my own sermons at me.

That's good, all right, Whose turn is it? Hannah? Yeah,

So my question is when, in regards to calling and following God's will,

when do you think it's important to take a step back and reassess what

you're doing, and when is it important to really press in. I challenge

people with this so again one habit, I say again, you start with

the core values. I do a prayer retreat twice a year, and at

these prayer retreats, I do one in January one in August, and that

is where I step back and I look back at the last six months and

I evaluate them with my core values. And the goals that I'd set,

and I saw if my life and my habits over the last six months aligned

with those things. So that is a moment where I assess and I look

at my life and sometimes like I had set goals at the beginning of the

year for myself or for the church that I just looked at afterwards and I

said, you know what, that's not a big deal. I'm tossing that

one. It didn't really fit. The church is in a different season,

and so I make some modifications and do that. So I really do that

in January in August. I really only do the step back and reassess twice

a year. And I learned this from a friend of mine. So I

have this buddy pastors a big church and renting. His name's Troy, and

Troy describes it. It's gonna sound totally cheesy, but the illustration stuck with

me forever. He said. When it comes to being a vision and looking

ahead to your future, he said, you need to be like a turtle.

He said, there is a moment you stick your head out of the

shell and you look around and you imagine what could be. So the problem

with being a visionary is that you can get your head in the clouds and

they never leave, and you always imagine what could be. But we got

jobs, and we got to work, and we got and life is routine

and every day. And he said, but before you let the dreaming distract,

you said, put your head back in your shell. And he said,

hunker down and work. So I describe it this way. Life is

faithful, faithful, faithful, faithful, and then you have this explosion of

fruitful, but it happens by being faithful. So that's where I think you

reassess. I think in the pressing in, I would say that should be

every day, everything you do you should commit to God. Like one of

the main verses that I think everybody has memorized that's ever gone to church before,

as Proverbs three to five, that says trust in the Lord with all

your heart, and lean not on your own understanding, probably the first verse

I ever memorized. And all your ways acknowledge Him, and he'll make your

paths straight. There's another killer verse Psalms thirty seven five that says, commit

everything you do to the Lord. So when do you press in? You

should press in always every single day you start your day you're driving to work,

press into Jesus, and it says if you commit everything you do to

the Lord, you trust him, he will help you. So that's when

I think you press in daily. That's good. And here's the deal.

Sometimes you're gonna struggle with, well, what if I made a decision,

What if I did something and it was wrong. Here's the deal you're gonna

have. You're gonna swing and miss, You're gonna make right decisions, you're

gonna make wrong decisions. And I always say, especial see when it comes

to leading the church, that we are gonna swing for mission. Right.

If we're gonna swing, and we're gonna swing hard and we're gonna risk everything,

We're gonna risk everything for mission. As long as what we try aligns

with those three core values mission community, generosity will swing. And if we

miss, at least we missed doing something that was we thought was good,

that we thought was right. Now, if you're swinging and missing because you

were in a season of intense selfishness, you gotta deal with you in Jesus

with that. But if if you're gonna do something wrong, at least make

sure that what you were doing was with good intent right intentions totally. We

got time for another one. I think we got maybe ten more minutes.

Okay, I'm just curious. This is a smaller question, But do I

think in your last sermon you talked about people hearing the audible voice of God

or like or maybe that was actually I think that might have been Pastored I

who talked about hearing God's voice. It's one of you guys. But um,

anyways, do have you ever heard God's voice audibly or how? I

mean if not, like, how how do you normally feel like God speaks

to you? Because I feel like a lot of people is again since this

kind of aimed at young adults, like I feel like a lot of young

adults really struggle with like hearing God's voice and what it sounds like, and

I mean most of the time is because yes, it was Pastored I who

talked about not opening up God's words, So how do you how are you

going to know if He's speaking to you? But a lot of people are

like, oh, I haven't read my Bible, but yeah I don't.

I also haven't heard from God. But I guess it's a two part I'm

just curious out of curiosity if you've ever actually heard God's voice slash, then

the other part is how do you normally hear him? I shared on Sunday

a couple of weeks ago that we always want God to speak to us in

the spectacular, but most of the time God speaks in the every day.

So I remember the Old Testament, and there's minor prophets, major prophets.

There's prophetic words and a historical narrative, but that encompasses thousands of years,

so prophets might speak four or five times in a ten year period of time.

Yet we think Jesus should be speaking audibly to us on not just a

daily basis, like an hourly basis, or he doesn't love us. And

that is because we always want the spectacular, and God normally speaks through the

every day, and we've got to learn to see Him in our every day.

I don't know if I've ever heard God's voice audibly like you guys are

talking to me. I can remember a couple of times, and again,

thirty five years of being a Christian, I remember a couple of times that

I heard God's voice as clear as day in my head, one of which

I was nineteen. It was this or is eighteen as some of my senior

year of high school, and I was working two jobs. I worked at

a bank during the day and then I delivered pizzas at night because I had

to save money for college, and I was doing my pizza job. I

had just had an appendicitis, so I had had major surgery and it was

the first time I'd worked my pizza hut job. So embarrassing to talk about

this since my appendicitis. And I couldn't wear a seat belt because I had

this incision. And I had this little tiny Honda Civic as those little green

cars about three feet long. It was like one of those old school like

fiats that you see in Europe. So I mean the car is basically like

a full on death trap. But it got fifty miles per gallons. It

was great for this pizza job. And I was driving home and my parents

were out of town. I was driving to their house and I pulled into

the middle lane to turn left, and I heard, as clear as day

from God, Brandon, put on your seat belt, and so I reached

up put on my seat belt, and the next thing I know, I

woke up in the back of an ambulance and I had gotten rear ended by

a guy driving seventy five. And the first thing when I woke up in

the ambulance, the EMT says, Son, if you would not have been

wearing your seat belt, you would have shot through the back of this car

and you would be dead. So I remember that one clear as day,

Brandon put on your seat belt. So there's that. We had this great

story at church that I just I got to brag on. I only shared

this in the eleven thirty show this because it happened. I heard about it

in between the ten and eleven thirty, But I had shared this message on

we expect God to speak through the spectacular, but he mostly speaks through the

every day. And I used the example of Elijah where he wasn't in the

wind, and he wasn't in the earthquake, but God was in the still

gentle whisper, And I said, stop only looking for the spectacular and wait

for the whisper. And this guy comes up and he says, here's my

story. He said, I own a software company and I had a partner,

and he said, in all of our copy written information was locked in

this computer and my partner had just changed the password and didn't share it with

me or write it down, and this was all the information. This is

the trademarked information. Basically, the entire business was locked in this computer.

And you know, if you're a tech person, software engineer, I mean,

when they locked down a computer, nobody's gonna hack that thing, because

this is what they do for a living, right, And his partner died

tragically. He didn't have the password, and so he said, I tried

every single possible password imaginable, sitting in our ten o'clock service. This is

a true story. He's in our ten am service. He hears me talk

about we're only looking for God in the spectacular. So he said, the

whole time, I was expecting God to shout the password to me. And

he said, and you talked about that, and then there was this moment

where it was quiet and we had a chance to respond, and he said,

and there was this whisper of this strange assortment of numbers and letters in

my head. And he was like, no way, And he said,

I got on my phone and I tried to log on, and he goes,

and that was what the password was. So God does that stuff.

He does God also speaks in He'll speak to you in visions, but I

think God speaks to you through other people. The longer you walk with Jesus,

the more familiar you get with the way that Is speaks to you totally,

and the more comfortable you get with that. So I guess I would

say, I don't know if I've heard him audibly like that, but I've

seen God speak to the spectacular, but most of the time he speaks to

me in the every day. We probably got time for two more questions,

Yeah, I can go. Um, So you talk a lot about Elijah

in one of your sermons and how you know he like you were saying,

he was seeking God in in the extraordinary, not in the ordinary. I

feel like a lot of times, especially for young adults, we may find

ourselves in this mindset of like, if I'm not experiencing all these goose bumps,

if I'm not like weeping and stuff, if I'm not like really moved

in a really big dramatic way, then I'm not I'm not experiencing God.

U. I think our church culture is so saturated and experience and feel how

do we get out of the mindset of just seeking a feeling or an emotion

or or an experience. Well, first off, it's not just young adults

that struggle with that, it's everyone. Yeah, I think growth in your

faith comes when you can connect your head in your heart. Like, what

I don't want is I don't want a bunch. I don't want our church

full of a bunch of super passionate dancing during worship, shouting when I preach,

but don't know that Genesis is the first book in the Bible and Revelation

is the end that like don't know who Abraham is or the story of Moses

and the Exodus. So what I don't want is people that like only are

passion but are biblically illiterate. So but on the other hand, I also

don't want a church full of people that are so knowledge base that they don't

believe that like, we serve a Jesus that we don't see, we can't

have an audible back and forth conversation with we can't touch. There has to

be this element of the supernatural to it. So I think spiritual growth is

a connection of both, and I think it's something that you'll constantly struggle with.

But the reality of our life, the Bible says without faith, it

is impossible to please God. So my question really simply is if God is

only showing up over and over again in the spectacular, giving you the warm

fuzzies, speaking to you clearly, how does that take any faith to believe

him, to believe in him? It takes none. No, this Christian

life, it's ordinary, routine every day. That's what most of it is

like. But again it's life is faithful, faithful, faithful, faithful,

then you're fruitful. So what I would love our church to be as people

that seek after God's word. God speaks to him to us clearly through his

word. It is the full revelation of God. God is not saying anything

that He has not already said in his word. There is no such thing

as I got a new revelation from God. If anybody says that false prophet

right there, heretic. They do not know what they're talking about, because

God will never say anything that is not aligned with his word. Period.

I want people that passionately love the word of God, but at the same

time they respond to altercalls because maybe God shows up in the spectacular. Maybe

this is the Sunday God heals me restores my marriage, does some miracle in

my life. I want people that show up at worship nights and go crazy

during worship. So I think if you can take people that know God's word

and have the desire to grow, and you add it with passion, you

have created an unstoppable movement. And I also think that that spiritual mature.

So that's my two cents on that last question, Claire, I get a

good one then, yep, yeah, Okay, this is about Pastor Johnny's

message about living out of your comfort zone, and my question is on sharing

about your faith, especially in this area where I think you shared a statistic

a while back about like how many people in the Greater Seattle area are Christians

and it's like none basically, So I guess for you being a pastor,

I mean, like I know, for me, when people ask what I

do for a living, that opens the door to lots of conversation. But

most people aren't me and you, And honestly, even when I do sam

a pastor, sometimes it can be awkward or people are like, oh,

and then have you ever donated a comedy show admitted that you're a pastor?

There? Of course Tony would do that too. No, I haven't.

I haven't, but I have situations like that all the time where people are

uncomfortable. But I guess, just like, how how do you share your

faith with other people? Live out of your comfort zone in that way?

And like especially just young people college age, Like, nobody my age believes

in Jesus. Besides, like people who go to venture, you know,

my church friends, nobody, nobody loves Jesus. It's very awkward to talk

about. So how would you suggest people my age share their faith in a

not weird way? I describe it this way. For people when you leave

for church on Sunday morning, Notice how many driveways are full of cars.

We are we are a Yeah, we're a rare group around the Seattle area.

I think we share our faith through relationship and the way that we live

our life. I think Christians like one of my so I have my personal

core values and also have my personal mission statement, and my personal mission statement

is I exist to make Jesus look good. I just want when people find

out I'm a Christian, I want them to think really, huh, And

then I want them to think, you know, that guy's a pretty good

guy. He's a good neighbor, like, huh, he doesn't cuss,

you know what, I've never okay that all oh now, And then it

gives me the opportunity to say, well, the reason that I live my

life this way, that I have a solid marriage, that I love my

kids, that my family loves each other, that I work hard, that

I'm a good neighbor, that I love my community, that all of this

this is based upon. You know, I have a relationship with Jesus and

I live a transform life because of him. So I think it's that way.

Like I somebody asked me, it might have been you, as somebody

else asked me about this, and they were saying, how do I share

my faith to strangers? I don't necessarily think I should unless God like gives

me a clear open door, because when I first meet somebody, if the

first thing I do is preach at them, I probably won't be having a

second conversation. And I have learned that most people, it's I want to

build a relationship with people, get to know people, and then organically,

as this subject comes up, I'll share it and less like I really just

feel compelled by the Holy Spirit to speak something. There's times that I am

talking to somebody we just met, and you know, in the back of

my head, I'm thinking I'm engaging really well with this person. I'm saying,

Lord, give me a word, give me a word, give me

a word, give me something, give me an oppression about this person that

I can share. That opens up the door to share faith. But I

think we share everything out of relationship. And we talk all the time about

living missional lives. And what I mean by that is we view ourselves as

we are missionaries in the Seattle area. That's what we are. We are

the equivalent of taking a group of people that have a faith, belief system,

an ideology, a value system, uprooting us and putting us in a

foreign culture. We are we speak a different language, we think differently,

we act differently, we live differently. When you view yourself that way in

Seattle. So if you were a missionary on a foreign mission field, the

first thing you do would be to get to know people, build relationships,

and you would develop the ministry out of that. And that's the way we

live missionary here is We're not where we are by accident, so we should

build relationships with people, get to know them, and then a natural outflow

of that should be our faith and yeah, I like that. Well,

there we go. That was about an hour long podcast. So for those

of you that have asked, and I have actually been asked by multiple people

that our podcast would be closer than hour versus thirty minutes because you listen to

it on your commute back and forth from work and you want to have a

complete podcast. There you go, you got your wish. Next week,

my amazing co host, Tony Mattar will be back. Yeah, first sound

effect of the evening, and we are gonna talk next week about things that

have happened in our world, and we're gonna talk about things that have happened

culturally over the last month. We're gonna talk about things like that never happened

in a small town. We'll talk about what's going on with the Pac twelve,

We'll talk about the Barbie movie, different things like that. So if

you want an update on what Pastor, Brandon and Tony think about things that

are happening in the world right now, that's what we're gonna talk about next

week. Last shout Out, we broke over a thousand unique downloads with last

week's episode, so thank you for listening. Thank thank you for sharing,

and we look forward to sharing next week.