0:00:00 - 0:00:24 Goes. So I'm Rob and you know me, if you're on this channel and my guest here is Todd mclaughlin. Might say your last name, right. Mclaughlin mclaughlin. It's, uh mclaughlin. So it has a mug. So, all right. So, uh, I don't want to embarrass Todd. We're recent associates, I guess. And, uh, we've had some 0:00:23 - 0:00:44 interesting chats, one on one. so Todd was kind enough to agree to come on and help me experiment with this whole livestream thing. And I think what our intent is is we're gonna go over some of these questions and have a conversation about them. Um, and hopefully keep each other on the rails. Does that 0:00:44 - 0:01:08 sound about right? That's about right. Yeah, I'm really happy that we're doing this. Um, let's see how it goes. I think that if I hit this button, I might see the chat as we go and I don't know. All right, it's sending me to this thing. I don't care. Hopefully I didn't just block Todd's face for every 0:01:08 - 0:01:28 , ok, it's fading out. So somebody want to say something so we can see if a chat happens. All right. Well, I'm not seeing anything so I guess we'll just roll and we'll see what happens. Not sure why that I'm gonna put it on my computer so maybe I can see it roll up. Yeah, you let me know if you see some 0:01:28 - 0:01:50 comments coming up. Ok. Well, well, maybe I'll just, oh, there we go. Look at that. Thanks, Daniel Patrick Angelina. How's it going? Ok. So I'm just gonna read, there were a whole lot of questions and thank you all for everyone who participated in that. And uh I got some emails too, some privates, uh 0:01:50 - 0:02:09 private messages with some, some questions and Todd and I took a look over them and, and we kind of, we were, we were clustering them trying to um isolate some themes here. And so I want to read a cluster and I didn't preserve the names of the people who said this. I just kind of put it in a and it's 0:02:09 - 0:02:30 , it's four quotes. So just bear with us. Um And then we'll kick it off. So Todd, if you have something brilliant to say right after I finish this quote, I'm gonna put you on the spot, manage expectations, right? As alluded to in some of these comments, obedience to your highest and best use of your 0:02:30 - 0:02:52 conscience versus how much of that obedience comes from sheer sheer willpower or is an actual gift from the Lord to where you look upon sin with abhorrence is a good topic. How do I get that gift because I surely can't do it on my own. Another quote, for example, person a is struck with an overwhelming 0:02:51 - 0:03:11 temptation to eat a Twinkie, but their conscience says that they should not sooner or later, they will inevitably eat the Twinkie because temptation can keep it up longer than willpower can resist. That's actually the opposite of the truth. But I, I don't wanna interrupt this too much. However, you teach 0:03:11 - 0:03:30 that there is some other way that actually works. If you can say no more, I guess I'll just read the book, meaning the repentance book because I had asked this person if they had read it another quote. It looks like the key idea in regards to my issue is noted on page 108 of your book Repentance. It 0:03:29 - 0:03:51 says, quote, all willful sin is committed because the sinner wanted to sin more than they wanted to obey God. End quote. That's my problem in a nutshell. On a good day. I do want to obey God more than I desire sin on a bad day. I don't want to obey God more than I desire sin. I have good days and bad 0:03:51 - 0:04:12 days. So in order to be sinless, I must never ever have a bad day. Not true. Sometimes I can go weeks without a bad day. My record is about three months, but inevitably a bad day does happen. I'm very aware of the bad consequences of sin. But on a bad day. I quite literally don't care. So, one more short 0:04:11 - 0:04:30 quote, some of my weaknesses are the same as what I had 30 years ago on a bad day. I just want what I want and I don't care. That is not the best thing to do. Take, for instance, my love of ice cream, it makes me sick and fat on a bad day. I just want my ice cream even though I'm perfectly aware that 0:04:30 - 0:04:45 it will make me sick and fat on a bad day. I don't care about the negative consequences. And that, that's the end of the quote. There was, there's one more thing I'm just gonna inject there because I forgot to copy, paste it into my list here. And that's this theme of when I try to do my best. I get 0:04:45 - 0:05:09 exhausted and worn out. OK? What do you have Todd? But I'm starting on this. There's a, there's a lot to say about this because when you, when you're writing this, I feel the weight of what the, what the writer is saying. Like this is at the core of so many people's fundamental struggle with um moving 0:05:09 - 0:05:34 forward closer to God and I, I get it. Um There's a lot to say so I don't wanna take up more than a minute here just to kick this off. But let's maybe let's initiate with this principle two quick principles and one is, there is something so exponentially powerful about initiating the Lord before you're 0:05:34 - 0:05:56 compelled to be, to initiate him. So if you initiate the Lord by your own free will and choice without being put into a pressure cooker. Um And you make a habit of that initiation of that engagement, you'll find that those quote unquote bad days where you don't feel like keeping the commandments become 0:05:55 - 0:06:20 less and less. And I would say not at all, let me give you a quick example. What I mean by that? If you make it your, your um your habit to at, at, at, at the cost of everything, the moment you wake up in the morning, you orient yourself to the Lord and you, and this is I'm gonna talk from personal experience 0:06:19 - 0:06:37 . You open your heart and your mind to light no matter where you're at in your life. And you do the first thing that you're impressed to do in that moment, first thing in the morning, it will initiate him. You might be really wealthy and healthy and your family is great. And if you do that, that has 0:06:37 - 0:06:56 a crazy compounding effect of spiritual power. If you are in the depths of hell and the biggest trial of your life and you do that, that's gonna have a, an incredible effect on your life. But if you initiate him by your own free will and choice, the first thing every morning and you reconcile yourself 0:06:55 - 0:07:18 to light and spirit. Um I'm gonna submit that you won't have you, you will put yourself into a, into a pattern of power that will surpass the darkness and deception and distortion that you're gonna probably face that. What are your thoughts? Thank you, Todd. Um, I agree. Next question. No, just kidding 0:07:17 - 0:07:43 . Uh No way. It's hard for me to pare down all the things that I'd like to say about this. Um In part because I think some of them can't be said. Uh Even if you had all the words in the world, there's a significant chunk of the gospel that can only be experienced. Uh It can't be conveyed verbally and 0:07:43 - 0:08:16 this actually has everything to do with this topic. Um There's a psalm psalm 1 1971. It says it is good for me that I have been afflicted that I might learn thy statutes. So everything that God commands us, one is within our power to obey and two is absolutely the best thing that we could do. Now, we 0:08:16 - 0:08:41 have to dig into this and the whole idea of the connection between desire and feelings and affliction and uh loyalty to God and love of God and all these things. It's a, it's a sticky wicket which is a phrase that apparently Todd and I both enjoy using. Uh Yeah, but let's just try to cut through this 0:08:41 - 0:09:16 with a laser. Why is it or how is it that afflictions help us learn God's statutes? Well, you can transform this question into something. Like, why don't we see that the things God asks us to do are the best. And I have to dig into the idea of the best will absolutely lead to the greatest feelings possible 0:09:15 - 0:09:41 . So why don't we actually believe that? Because like the Twinkie thing, right? So if I want a Twinkie and I happen to believe that I shouldn't eat it from like a moral perspective, what am I really saying there? What I'm really saying is that God, who knows all things and who loves me more than I love 0:09:41 - 0:10:02 myself based on what he knows. He knows I'm going to be happier. I'll have more joy by not eating that. And again, you know, there's nothing wrong with the Twinkie. I'm just saying if, if that's what your conscience says, the reason is because where you are right now, everything you are and you understand 0:10:01 - 0:10:25 God knows that your greatest happiness lies in not eating that right? And so if you disagree with him, my question is why? And I know the answer to the question. So I'm about, I'm about to answer that too. It's because the environment that he provided you, it's like a tadpole tail. It's, it's just for 0:10:25 - 0:10:48 right now because it's the best learning environment. It keeps you protected from the full weight of reality so that you can figure out as much as you can and make the most of when that shell is taken off, which happens when you die, if not sooner. So he's trying to direct us all to develop in the ways 0:10:47 - 0:11:10 where when all that comes full flood on us will have the greatest possible happiness forever. And so when it doesn't seem like we desire to obey him, it's because we think we know better than he does. Right. Yeah. Let me, let me try to articulate what I think. I hear the writer saying a little bit and 0:11:10 - 0:11:33 see what your response is. Sure thing. And that is, yeah, when I'm in a good state of mind and I'm healthy and I'm in my reason and faith are operating in a healthy place nine times out of 10, I'm gonna get this right. You know, but you have those days where something really bad happens or you're just 0:11:33 - 0:11:51 dark and you have a spirit of, of depression or a cloud that's over you and you might be able to do this all the time. But we all know whether it's gonna be tomorrow or in five years from now that one day is gonna pop up where you don't have. You don't have, you might have a rational perspective but 0:11:51 - 0:12:11 the, the, the crushing feeling of dark and overwhelming. Now this is great. What do you do so that you don't have, you have the confidence that no matter what your day is gonna look like in your perspective that you don't return to your stance like in other words, this is a question. How do you really 0:12:10 - 0:12:31 say it? Well, you know that Todd, you, you hit it like 10 ways, 10 different ways. There you hit it in the first way was you said nine out of 10. And that's like, dude, my little alert goes off right. Here's a topic and that is the depth of conversion because we do think that nine out of 10 ain't bad 0:12:31 - 0:12:52 , which is like a weirder version of that meat loaf song. But nine out of 10 is bad. It literally is bad, right? Because that one out of 10 will absolutely keep you from God, especially if you have, especially if you know that and deep down in your heart, you can't, you don't have these things in your 0:12:52 - 0:13:10 rearview mirror, right? OK. And, and now we get into the practical. So what do I do about it? And that gets back to the song I shared. It's good for me that I have been afflicted that I might learn by statutes and I'm about to hit you with something that you probably don't wanna hear. So we read in Hebrews 0:13:09 - 0:13:34 58 though Christ were a son yet learned obedience by the things which he suffered and you might be thinking, yeah, but he was sinless. Yes. But he grew over time. And that's not really the point of what I'm saying. The point is if, if you really want to say what this is saying, maybe you rephrase it 0:13:33 - 0:13:59 something like though he was a son. In other words, you'd expect him to just want to obey because he's a son, right? He still came to comprehend the full value of submission through what he suffered. And so when you look at the end of his mortal mission, what he submitted to was not because it looked 0:13:58 - 0:14:22 good and it's not because it's what he wanted to do. It's because he had fully flipped the switch from what I feel like doing to what I reason to be the best thing that I could do in the way you do that. There is no other way except submit to him in the things that are before you and be willing for him 0:14:21 - 0:14:41 to hit you with. Remember I said there was a shell that insulates us for most of the consequences of reality. You can ask him to take that away. You can ask him when, when he asks you not to eat. The Twinkie is like what we keep talking about, you can say, but I like Twinkies, tell me why I shouldn't 0:14:41 - 0:15:06 eat Twinkies and he will. Twinkies are pornography. Oh, is that it? That's cool. Everybody. That's what they're calling it these days. Um But ask him what? Well, ok, porn, let's talk about porn. Ask God why that's not something you should be involved in. And I'm gonna warn you. Ok? Because when he takes 0:15:06 - 0:15:30 off that shell, it's gonna come in the form of a baseball bat to your face. He is going to squeeze you and crush you to show you that. Now, I say all that, he's not actually squeezing you or crushing you. He's just getting out of the way and letting this flood of reality hit you. And as it does see you're 0:15:30 - 0:15:55 approaching him in faith. You remember when um that interchange with the Lord, that guy says, um Lord, I believe, help my unbelief. That's, that's what he, you know, that's what this is all about. It's I don't believe you God, but I believe that you have a reason for me to believe. You tell me what it 0:15:55 - 0:16:16 is and that's very different than um then pretending, you know, better. And then in the end, the band aid gets ripped off because now you're dead or sometime before that you're whacked in the face with the consequences, a greater share of the consequences of your choices. And now you see, but now it's 0:16:16 - 0:16:40 too late. Now, the last thing I wanna say about this is that the metal level um that's not what's actually going on here. It's not about Twinkies. It's about, can we get to the point where we develop, develop implicit trust in God so that we, we go up the gradient from I'm doing this because God has 0:16:39 - 0:17:02 shown me that it's worth doing to, I'm doing this because I know it's from God. And that's all I need to know. Yeah. And the reason that's important is because the greater part of the gospel can only be, you can only be led into and through that once you have transcended, the need to understand. Yeah 0:17:02 - 0:17:21 , that's Mosiah 319. I love, I love how you talk about it. The more faith that is required for you to move into that structure, the more that God can impart to you, the more you'll be blessed, the less faith that is required, the less you can be blessed by that structure. Is that an articulation of how 0:17:20 - 0:17:49 you would approach that? Absolutely. I, I think that um faith begins as reason based in our, I don't wanna say carnal desires, but let's just say our initial desires. So God, God makes a case that hey, do you want this? OK, do this and then that's supposed to go step by step towards um God. I want you 0:17:49 - 0:18:14 in anything you send me. I will, I will automatically fully assume is better than anything else to the point that I will actually feel joy walking into it no matter how much it would hurt or does hurt. A lot of a lot of why this is hard is one way to frame it is, is that truth really is the enemy to 0:18:14 - 0:18:38 comfort, right? Like comfort is the enemy to truth. And there's obviously an embedded irony because if you fully submit yourself to truth, it is technically called the comforter, you move into a, a structure of comfort with the Lord that surpasses anything else that has eternal, has an eternal bearing 0:18:38 - 0:18:59 to it. But if you're in this moral sphere and you're, you're in an environment where you have to act by faith and you're purposely put into a place to learn these principles that you become possessors of them. Um You have to have the faith to move out of your concept of comfort into a place that seems 0:18:58 - 0:19:22 like it might be cold and comfortless, right? That's the view. Look, you know, the view of faith that keeps people from having faith, right? If I do that thing, I'm going to lose all of the structure, I'm gonna lose all of the scaffolding that protects me and stabilizes me, uh that I understand in my 0:19:22 - 0:19:43 current state. And if I let go of that scaffolding, if I let go of that, what I think is firm ground, but we, what we really know is it's very flimsy, it's, it's sand. Um And I move into this space where I don't know if I'll be supported. Um That type of faith then grounds you in an eternal, in an eternal 0:19:43 - 0:20:09 um comfort structure that surpasses you look backwards in your rearview mirror and you realize where I was was not comfort, it was pain, it was sorrow even though I thought I was stabilized. And so what I hear you making is this really, really good case of, hey, step back, choose to have faith. You can 0:20:09 - 0:20:29 choose to have faith and give your entire being to this project of moving in trusting God. Knowing that if you, if you belly flop off the edge of this abyss that you can't really see into that. Once you do, you will receive a comfort and strength and power rooted in eternal things that you think you 0:20:29 - 0:20:54 kind of have now. But you are completely in a structure that is unstable. Does that? Yeah. No, that's beautiful, Todd. Thank you. I it, it, it, I think perfectly segues into the comments I summarized but didn't quote about becoming exhausted. Um There really isn't a place where comfort in the world intersects 0:20:53 - 0:21:19 , comfort in God. Um As much as people think there is there, there really isn't. And as you transition towards the Lord, he's going to show you the inadequacy of the other supports and part of the way he does that is he asks you to do things that you don't think are possible for you to do. And that will 0:21:18 - 0:21:41 absolutely drain you in any way though. They might kill you. I mean, kill you in the sense of you're just your comfort, your security, your power, everything that you kind of grasp on to would be eliminated. And it is, and here's the thing is that what would be nice is if it were this adjustment, whereas 0:21:41 - 0:22:00 the one, while the one knob turns down the other one turns up in equal proportion, but it does not happen that way. When, when Peter walked out of the boat, there was a distance between the boat and the Lord and to go closer to the one, he had to leave the other even more. And there's this, no man's 0:21:59 - 0:22:19 land in between and this is like Leigh walking through the darkness. Um And there are a lot of other examples of this sort of idea. Um I think of it like a train tunnel. Um I grew up on the East Coast, there's a lot of train tunnels and when you walk through one of these things, it's, it's really weird 0:22:19 - 0:22:40 because before you go in the light seems like it's really close on the other side, you can see it and if you walk in, it's like cold and damp and it just keeps getting darker and darker and darker for what seems like forever. And then all of a sudden way past what seems like the midway point, it, it 0:22:40 - 0:23:12 turns and it starts getting brighter and the fact is that you really have to be emptied out before the Lord will uh refill you and kicking over. I mean, the draining is, is so far beyond anything anyone else ever does without going into that explicit path um that there's really not much you can say to 0:23:12 - 0:23:33 try to explain it. So it's kind of like when salmon go out to sea, uh when they're young and then they get whatever transformation they need to go through to be able to, to, to operate in salt water. When they come back to spawn, they go through a, um, another transformation to be able to survive in 0:23:33 - 0:23:55 the fresh water again. And it's a one way trip. The path to God is a one way trip. That's the bad news. Right. The good news is you really don't have an option because everything you think is the alternative is going to burn up right in front of your eyes or collapse to dust right in front of your eyes 0:23:54 - 0:24:17 . And so the choice is just to do the right thing now while it gives you the greatest benefit and obviously benefits those around you the most or wait until doing the right thing, barely renders you anything in return except for regret. Right. Right. You want to initiate as fast and as quickly as possible 0:24:16 - 0:24:36 without the motivation to initiate, right? Like you, like there's such an exponential effect. Like for example, like if you're listening to this right now and you look around at your life and you say, ok, well, I have plenty of money to take care of the things that I need and most of my wants, my kids 0:24:36 - 0:24:54 are all healthy. My marriage is pretty stable. These are pretty good. I got a good vacation planned in the spring, you know, whatever and you look at all of that and all those comforts that are really kind of keeping you back from abandoning yourself to God because things are just kind of good. And you 0:24:54 - 0:25:14 might be part of, of, of a religious structure that says you're ok, like you're on the, you're in the group that gets to be saved. So you're not too worried about your existential long term prospects if you're in that environment and you take a step back and you say I am going to engage God in a way 0:25:14 - 0:25:35 that I'm going to humble myself before him and I am going to do whatever he asks of me in this environment that has such an exponential effect on, on his ability to bless you. And it's not to say that you're going to stay in this comfort zone. This is what you're saying, right? Like he's gonna squeeze 0:25:35 - 0:25:54 you in ways according to your desires to really open up your understanding to your awful situation because most likely you're in an awful situation. Um But when you initiate the Lord on your own free will and choice without him having to give you cancer or lose your job or whatever it is that drives 0:25:53 - 0:26:11 you to your knees. And if you can go to the Lord and muster every aspect of your being that you're aware of and you submit it to him and you go through that, that has such an effect and power to bring you closer to him because you're doing it in your own free will and choice. I have to be compelled to 0:26:11 - 0:26:34 . And that, that's an incredible thing. And even if you're in the, in the worst trial of your life, um, do, do it anyway. You probably are doing it right. Yeah, I know. Yeah. Do it anyway. There's nothing the first, the first thing you have to do every day. Um, you know, I have the advantage. It used 0:26:33 - 0:26:49 to be. I used to think it was the, um, the punishment God was giving me. But I have Children that would wake me up every night. Like every night I'd wake up like at three in the morning, someone would wake me up or something. I'd have insomnia that so I'd stay up like 3 to 6 or 3 to 7. I wouldn't go 0:26:49 - 0:27:10 back to that almost every night. And, um, you know, so I would take that time to lay there in the quiet of the night and to breathe with the Lord and ask him to send his light to soften me, soften my heart, soften my mind. I wasn't pleading for him for things that I thought I wanted. I would rarely talk 0:27:09 - 0:27:30 in the sense of like I need this and I need this. I would just ask, you know, for two or three hours a night, would you please just soften me? Like, can you just soften this ground like hardened, you know, you're a farmer, you know, can you stop, I pretend to be, prepare it and I'd find it would take 0:27:29 - 0:27:49 , you know, a guy who I, you know, I had a pretty self righteous view of my stuff. I'm a, I'm an, a player, the Lord blesses me and prospers with me and I'm finding out that the vast majority of my soul is hardened against him and then just asking for him to soften me and then to, and then to give me 0:27:49 - 0:28:14 things to do that will put me into his light and to receive. And um these, these mornings over the years have produced revelatory experiences beyond what I thought was truly possible. You know, things that you learn and things that you experience uh just by making yourself available even in times of 0:28:14 - 0:28:42 , of, of good as you might think they are, you know. Yeah, we have, uh it needs to be said that we're in a special situation with that. Um People in the past, they had the option to sort of willingly submit uh beyond the circumstances of, of plenty that they were in. Um of course, historically, things 0:28:42 - 0:29:06 like famines and those sorts of things um were more common than they are today, at least in the, in the first world countries. But we're in a special place because um every single person that's alive right now, if they live long enough, they will live to see every single support kicked out. Yeah, that 0:29:06 - 0:29:28 is what the end times does that, that is synonymous with uh saying that the Lord's kingdom will come, you know, till I put the make the earth your footstool. Um That has a lot of deep meaning this is only one facet, but the kingdoms of the world are gonna shake and everything that the world values is 0:29:28 - 0:29:54 going to be taken away. And what's left will depend in large part for you as an individual on how soon you let the Lord teach you true value. What really has worth and what needs to be let go of because it's one thing um it's one thing to have a Twinkie as a treat, right? And it's another to um focus 0:29:54 - 0:30:19 your well being and your happiness on the presence of Twinkies which are going to be taken away. And uh a a lot of the problems in the world today are because we have, we have used what has a good use for things other than good. Yeah. And I think your definition of this really reframed. Um your, your 0:30:19 - 0:30:41 definition of idolatry if I remember, right? You said something to the effect, it's giving value to something beyond the actual value that that thing has. It's like the best definition I've heard because we wanna jump to things that like are obvious with that problem, you know, like buying a Ferrari 0:30:40 - 0:31:01 or living in a mansion, you know, or owning a yacht and those are like everybody jumps to those like, oh yeah. I'm not an idolater because I don't do those egregious things that I see on social media or in Hollywood. But when you start looking around in your own comfort structure that you've built around 0:31:01 - 0:31:21 you, how much of what you build around you, the kingdom, your kingdom that you've built is for the purpose to insulate you from the requirements of God. And you can do so by temporarily comforting yourself with things that you're using for a purpose that are beyond what they're intent, right? It's like 0:31:21 - 0:31:46 Paul said, uh I know how to be a based and I know how to be exalted. Um The thing is, is that we, it's so easy to fool yourself and say, oh, I don't rely on having a house. I don't rely on having a job. I don't rely on having food to eat. I don't rely on my kids being healthy and well, when God takes 0:31:45 - 0:32:16 those things from you, you'll see how much you rely on. And um I don't wanna get too much into that. I could say a lot about it, but um the goal state is going back to what Paul said is to be able to fully enjoy things that have value 100% rooted in gratitude towards God in the sense that if he took 0:32:15 - 0:32:39 them away immediately, your gratitude to Him would not change in the least bit. That's the goal is to be able to praise God for taking things away as much as you do for, for having them. It's the perfect articulation of that principle. Um There's a philosopher story in Kirkegaard. Have you, have you 0:32:39 - 0:32:56 spent much time with them or have you looked at that? I am woefully ignorant of philosophers. It's probably, it's probably like a good thing. Well, the reason why you studied philosophy, CS Lewis said is so that, you know, so you can understand why philosophy is bad. Like you, you can understand. Um 0:32:55 - 0:33:12 I actually got my degree in philosophy and it actually end up being really useful because it helps you discern very quickly sophisticated fallacies of people's thinking and stuff. So um the story c are he talks about what they call a Night of Faith is what you're describing. And he says a night of faith 0:33:12 - 0:33:30 can be anybody. And it's somebody who lives transparently before God, he both actively received from God and he both actively gives everything he has to God in a continuous flowing moment. And he says, the night of faith doesn't have to be some spectacular spiritual superstar that everybody acknowledges 0:33:29 - 0:33:44 . He can be the storekeeper. This is like your hidden all. I guess it's really interesting. I, I when you talk about certain things, I, I see a lot of connection, how you ever explained. And he says, he'll take for example, the storekeeper who is a knight of faith and he locks up his shop at night, he's 0:33:44 - 0:34:01 excited because his wife is making mutton and he can't wait to get home to eat this mutton. And he's excited and he goes home and there's no mutton. She didn't make it. And he says, and he's happy just the same. It's like the gift and love and blessings of God flow through him and he gives everything 0:34:00 - 0:34:25 equally and freely and he lives in this state of peace and rest and power because everything is rooted in the Lord's goodness as opposed to him, hedging and negotiating with God all the time for his resources and his happiness. Right? No, that's, that's really good. Um I think it, it very much ties back 0:34:25 - 0:34:49 to all the things we've been saying here. Can you transcend the value of a Twinkie uh to attach it directly to its source, which is, which is God, any value that anything actually has it, it comes from God and it is uh most fully experienced in God. And so the more direct you can connect to that the 0:34:49 - 0:35:14 um the more you transcend these ups and downs of what is closer to us in our earth experience, but is not as clear in terms of its uh it's eternal value. Yeah. You know, one thing you, you explained to me and you gave a perspective to me that I thought it was so good was um and I'm going to try to articulate 0:35:14 - 0:35:31 this the way I heard it. So you're gonna have to like push and pull on this if I get this wrong. OK, I'll try but good luck. But, uh um you know, you talk, we were talking about the principle tithing and, and you kind of step back and you gave a much more macro view. I kind of thought I always saw the 0:35:31 - 0:35:48 macro view of tithing. But you, you step back even farther and really gave me this perspective about just the use of resources. And you know, this is something that I felt like I had kind of a handle on. But you just said something that really struck me. And that is, you know, you have resources available 0:35:47 - 0:36:07 to you. You know, let's just call it money. But money obviously can be uh anything, any asset of value from the house to uh time to whatever, let's just call it money. And you, let's say you have $1000 that the Lord gives you and you look at that $1000 and you say I can do X amount of good work with 0:36:07 - 0:36:29 a percentage of this. So like for $700 of this 1000 I can implement this into the best things that I can manage, feeling fully confident in the faith of the Lord, that those resources are going to the best things that I can possibly manage myself with the stewardship given to me. Well, I have this other 0:36:29 - 0:00:00 $300 beyond that, that I have to now implement or give to somebody that has a greater reach so that we're maximizing the reach and the power and the blessings of God given this, this contained amount of, of resources, money, right? And I love that because it, again, it reframed it for me like, yeah. 0:00:00 - 0:37:11 Do I think of all my things as Gods? I, I'd like to think I do. But what you said really helped me reanalyze every aspect of my material experience here. So like is everything in my world, do I really think of it as is this doing the best thing that God could intend with it in the moment? Anything from 0:37:11 - 0:37:35 a hamburger that I'm making for dinner to a paycheck that I get maybe a bonus to a car I'm gonna buy or not buy because of this principle. And there really is this sort of free flow that you can step into or you need to repent of if you're not in it. Um Because there's also this sorry to keep going on 0:37:35 - 0:37:56 this, but there's this flip side problem with the idea of consecration. And that is, is if I possess anything materially, I'm doing something wrong because th because the having an asset is somehow a de facto example of my wickedness because we should not be tied to anything materially. And you move 0:37:56 - 0:38:15 into this sort of reverse problem that is like this, it's not stoicism, but it's this, I don't know what's the word this minimalism like I can't hold on to anything because anything is gonna keep me from God. And so like, if I have money, I gotta get rid of that as fast as I can and go into this destitution 0:38:14 - 0:38:41 . Otherwise I am being captured by something that has an inherent evil, wicked aspect to it. You know what I mean? Yeah. It's where it's a, our first jump into probably pretty deep thoughts and the pattern that strikes me with this is there are so many questions in the gospel where you can't just give 0:38:41 - 0:39:03 one uniform answer because doing so would be prescribing harmful behavior to some people in some situations. Um which is funny because we tend to assume that it's quite the opposite that almost everything in the gospel can be described with a uniform answer, right? When it comes to the disposition of 0:39:03 - 0:39:28 resources, um, it depends. Right. And for some people, the absolute best thing they could do is go to the minimization route and get rid of everything and just be a pauper for the rest of their lives or live in a cave or something. Right. Exactly. Exactly. And, um, there's a reason for, for why he said 0:39:27 - 0:39:55 that to that specific person, there's always a reason. And then in some cases, the challenge can be holding on to ma material resources while uh maintaining the consecration of those for the benefit of others. Um not, um not using it for yourself in any way that, that shows a preference for yourself 0:39:55 - 0:40:20 over others. Right. That, that's really hard. And, and to your point, you know, um, it's not a popular thing to say. People don't like to hear it but different, people have different abilities to manage resources. I mean, um, I've walked into people's houses before and I just felt like, I wish this was 0:40:20 - 0:40:39 my house because it's so nice. Um, like it's, it's decorated and it's just beautiful in here and uh I could never do anything like this. This is just so far beyond anything I could do, right. I'm looking at your room and it looks really great. No, it doesn't. This is plus this is like this is officially 0:40:39 - 0:40:59 , this is the guest room that I've taken over. So it's quite a mess. I'm just giving you the one angle where you can't see my 3d to do list on this bed that a dog jumped on and wrecked. And, um, but, but, um, you know, that's an example and some people are like this with, with business in general or 0:40:58 - 0:41:21 with farming. You know that if you give 10 people the same one acre plot of land, um you'll get 10 very different results, right? And so if you want to maximize the benefit of something, whether it be time or some resource, um it kind of has to flow to the people who are best at that, right? And uh what 0:41:20 - 0:41:43 complicates this even more if it weren't already complicated enough is that uh benefit part to calculate. It's not just a question of dollars and cents, a lot of times the most beneficial path um does not line up with one that multiplies money. So it's really hard. It's a, it's a hard problem. And so 0:41:42 - 0:42:05 many things in the gospel require our internal, deepest part of our hearts to be clean, pure uh in order for us to see correctly. And that, that's an interesting word to look through the scriptures uh pure or clean because we, we think of like, you know, you throw it in a laundry machine and a washing 0:42:04 - 0:42:31 machine and, and you add some soap and whatever, but to purify actually, it requires removing things. And so it's to take out everything that would impede the maximal value. Yeah. Yeah. Well, and, and the possibility for deception is, is almost unmanageable high when you have resources because it's so 0:42:31 - 0:42:54 easy to move into this place of like, well, yeah, everything is the Lord's, I'm gonna buy this $200,000 to ski boat so I can take the scouts skiing, right? I Yeah, and this is for my family and, and this is for us to bond, you know, and, and you want like, like you said, you want to be careful how you 0:42:54 - 0:43:18 judge because every situation there's so many high, there's so many particulars. But to be honest to the degree that puts you in puts you in a state where you're complying with the law of consecration. It requires, as you've said earlier in this conversation, the total full submission of everything willing 0:43:17 - 0:43:40 to lose everything. If that's what the Lord required of you before you can even move into those areas that you can be trusted to manage your resource. Because that resource, the chance is that thing overtaking you in your heart is almost 100% you know, in a world that comfort is I, I struggle. I'm thinking 0:43:40 - 0:43:57 through as we're having this conversation, I'm even like going through my assets and thinking, no, I'm not doing it there. I'm not doing it there. You know, I'm realizing as we're talking things that I need to shift and change, you know, just by, by talking through it, write it down. Yeah, my repentance 0:43:57 - 0:44:14 notebook is like, really it's already full. You need a, you need a four inch three ring binder. Do you mind if we jump to another part of that question that you read in the beginning, please? Yeah, I'd like to um I wanna throw something at you and get your response because I don't know if you, if you 0:44:14 - 0:44:33 and I really talked about this yet. So I'm kind kind kind of doing this on the fly to see if um what you think about this principle. So back to this idea of how do you keep the commandments 100% all the time. Um Well, let me even take one step further back than that. Like when you and I were talking 0:44:32 - 0:44:57 earlier um a couple months ago, um I had this massive realization thanks to some things that you said to me that my entire life, I thought I was forsaking my sins. Like that was an aspect of repentance that um I was forsaking. And the reason I thought that is because when I was quote unquote, repenting 0:44:56 - 0:45:18 in those moments of repentance, my desire was to never do that thing again, right? Like in the moment of contrition and asking for the Lord's forgiveness. Yeah, not forsaking. I don't wanna do it again, but I never had the confidence that I wouldn't do it again. And because that confidence wasn't there 0:45:17 - 0:45:41 , I realized that even though within a certain parameter, I could spiritually progress and the Lord in his grace and mercy would continue to give me answers to prayers and insight and knowledge. I've always felt that I've been pretty much treading water. Um hoping that someday the chains would be released 0:45:40 - 0:46:01 and I could just jump forward and I never ever thought about it in terms of forsaking sin because I always felt like that was a no brainer. I was forsaken. But what I didn't realize is that I didn't have the confidence in me that I wouldn't return to my sins. I wouldn't return to my vomit at some point 0:46:01 - 0:46:26 in my, in my paradigm, in my paradigm born of a religious tradition was do your best. God will take care of it. Don't worry, as long as you are just treading water as hard as you can. God accepts your treading, you know, and I thought that was a mercy or a view of grace that was actually useful or helpful 0:46:25 - 0:46:54 . And, and because, you know, in my concept, perfection was an impossibility anyway, so back to forsaken what I learned that was definitely a product of a conversation you and I had and some things that you said to me was there are certain types of weaknesses that are sort of designed so that you can't 0:46:54 - 0:47:12 overcome them by just saying I'm going to overcome them. Your, your experience is designed to for failure. And there's a reason for that and this is what I want to get. You might disagree with this. I'm really interested to see if you, how you push and pull on this spot, ok? But let me kind of walk it 0:47:12 - 0:47:34 through it and get your thoughts on it. And the reason for that is, is because there is a danger of you standing up and saying I am righteous because of my own power and not because of God's and I am righteous because I chose to be God and not because God enabled me to be God, ok? And that's one way 0:47:34 - 0:47:50 of maybe saying this and let me give you an example. Let's go back to the Twinkie, let's say the Twinkie is the thing that you were given since you were two years old. It's the, it's the way that your brain has calculated. The neurons are established to give you comfort. And at any time of deep darkness 0:47:49 - 0:48:07 , you can always rely on the Twinkie to temporarily numb you and medicate you from the uh the exhaustion of your existence. Um And so the Twinkie is something you always go back to. So when you repent of eating the Twinkie, you always say, sorry, Lord, I ate this Twinkie in a moment of weakness and he 0:48:07 - 0:48:27 says, OK, you're right, keep going. But the reality is, is tomorrow or in 10 years from now, I think I'm gonna eat that Twinkie again. So I never have the confidence to move forward. Well, what if the law of sacrifice is given to us for the purpose of overcoming eating the tweaky into perpetuity? And 0:48:27 - 0:48:43 so it looks something like this and this is a big build up. So I hope that what I'm about to say is, isn't already exhausted in this conversation. You go to the Lord and you do what you've suggested first and that is you reconcile yourself to the commandment. And so instead of saying I'm gonna stop eating 0:48:43 - 0:49:02 Twinkies, I'm gonna say, I'm gonna, I'm gonna frame it positively. So instead of stop doing a bad behavior, I'm going to look at what the actual commandment is and say, OK, I'm gonna reconcile myself with the commandment, which is um uh you need to eat healthy so that it maximizes the light and spirit 0:49:02 - 0:49:21 into your body. Ok? Um Actually I'm gonna change. I don't like this Twinky thing anymore. Let's, let's turn to something more realistic. Let's say it's um anger. I don't wanna be angry anymore. I don't wanna lose my temper. Well, you can't just say I'm gonna recognize hell myself to not just lose my 0:49:21 - 0:49:40 temper. You have to reconcile yourself to the positive aspect of the commandment. You're breaking, which is I want to live in a state of continual love. That doesn't break because that's what really maybe in one respect, anger is doing right? Like anger is you, you break that bond of love and then you 0:49:40 - 0:49:55 are extracting a vengeance on something or somebody because you don't think God is gonna be just in that thing, which is another conversation to have. But so let's just say that the commandment you're breaking is, is you're not going to be in a steady state of constant love for the beings and people 0:49:55 - 0:50:13 outside of you. Well, I'd like to be able to keep that commandment perfectly into perpetuity. But the chances of me getting bitten on the butt by something is kind of high and I'm gonna break that in a moment of weakness. So you go to the Lord and you say, ok, I first and foremost, reconcile myself to 0:50:13 - 0:50:33 this commandment and what that means is, is I bring myself to the honest state of sin. I will keep that commandment at any sacrifice required of me. And you have to be honest about that. You know it, if the Lord says, ok, go sell your home. Is it worth it to sell your home to keep that commandment? And 0:50:33 - 0:50:51 you're like, ah, no, that's pushing it. Yeah. Now you really have to be in a state of whatever the sacrifice is required in me. I will do that thing to keep that commandment. And so once you get yourself to that place, you might be able to do that in five minutes, it might take you a year to get yourself 0:50:50 - 0:51:13 softened and softened, hard to be able to, to make that sacrifice. And then you go to the Lord and say, OK, what sacrifices can you give me that? If I do with perfection with 100% perfection, the power will flow to me that will enable me through the power of Christ to keep that compa and he might say 0:51:12 - 0:51:33 , ok, well, here's your sacrifice. You will fast one day a week, the rest of your life and you will do B and you will do C and those are things that you can do no matter what. And you say, ok, lord, I will keep those sacrifices and by virtue of you keeping the sacrifices associated with that commandment 0:51:32 - 0:51:55 , a power and a spirit. So beyond you flows through you and the Lord keeps that commandment on your behalf so that you have the confidence moving forward that you will always be in that structure. And it's in your rearview mirror to sit and that is how you move forward in your spiritual progress. And 0:51:55 - 0:52:15 I'm convinced that even in my intimate groups of friends who are like minded, we really don't ever move forward in the church that I belong to. We don't ever move forward. In fact, we're backsliding on crazy because no one believes in forsaking sin. It's almost like the silver bullet solution would be 0:52:15 - 0:52:32 like problem that we don't believe in forsaking our sins and moving forward into higher structures of light and power and, and, and law with the Lord. So the law of sacrificed as a mode to keep the commands perfectly. What are your thoughts? Did I step in a hole in, in this, in this experience from this 0:52:32 - 0:52:51 view? What are your thoughts on this? Um So I'll, I'll try to address this. I, I don't, I can't promise that I'll remember everything I wanted to say to this. But uh let me, let me start with two levels of covenant. There are two levels of covenant and one is what you're describing, which is do one thing 0:52:51 - 0:53:13 to get another. Um There are a lot of other ways you could describe that the, that's the lower level of covenant though the higher levels to become, it's to become the same as the mediator. Um So I'm reading this comment is the idea of sacrifice to keep the commandment, what the Lord meant by plucking 0:53:13 - 0:53:41 out our eye or cutting out our hand. Uh Not exactly, but that's a, that's a useful application of that um useful but not primary. Yeah, the the primary one is is that if someone comes along with more light than you and is helping you inviting you to improve and what they say, contradicts something that's 0:53:41 - 0:54:05 part of uh your identity. It's better that you let go of that part of your identity than to reject a person who's bringing greater light to you. Um So anyway, um so there's two levels of covenant, the higher level is to become and the reason that's important, uh There's two reasons this is important 0:54:04 - 0:54:27 with this idea of give me a sacrifice that will make it easier for me to obey this other thing. Uh One is that there, there, there can be power that flows that way. Um But that's not news to you because it's what you described. But I think the, the bigger picture is the hidden part of that, of why it 0:54:27 - 0:54:53 works in the first place. It turns out there's no secret tunnels or anything. Uh No, no shortcuts. Um The reason it works is that all things are connected to all things and we, we can't repent of a sin. It doesn't work that way. You can repent of all sins. Or no sins. And so when we're trying to repent 0:54:53 - 0:55:13 of a sin and we're struggling, it's almost always the case that the real reason is because we're ignoring all the other ones at the same time. And, and whenever you don't obey God fully and submit to him fully, you create these anchors that prevent your progress towards him, it's like, it's like climbing 0:55:12 - 0:55:35 up a rock wall while you're tethered to the ground. And you think that the next thing is that little knob that you have to grab, it's not the next thing is you gotta cut that rope that ties you to the ground. Yeah. So and then uh it makes me think of the phrase remission of sins. So for the longest time 0:55:35 - 0:55:56 , it's like, oh, this great mystery, what could this possibly mean? Uh It's not that hard. It means that uh you don't sin anymore, right? You don't commit new sins. That's what permission means, right? Like if you go into remission of cancer, it means you have no new tumors, right? It doesn't mean you 0:55:56 - 0:56:22 just cut out the old ones, you don't grow new ones so you stop, you stop sinning. And um that is in a, a nice segue into uh maybe some imagery to help illustrate this. So this is kind of a gross story. I'm sorry. Hopefully it's not TMI I had this nasty planter's wart on my foot right under one of the 0:56:21 - 0:56:44 , the bones, you know, and the way I walked it was like one place on my foot that would be most painful to have a wart. That's where I had and I, I got it like, way back in the dark ages, probably like 2001. Uh, uh, 1 of the several gifts I got from basic training. I also broke my foot, um, which has 0:56:44 - 0:57:04 had lifelong issues because of that. But anyway, um, so I've gone through all these spans of trying to get rid of this war and sometime, I don't know, it might have been two or three years ago. I said to my wife, that's it. This thing is gone for good. And I don't really care if it kills me. One of us 0:57:04 - 0:57:25 is gonna die, me or the sport. And the reason this is illustrative I think is because when you haven't yet been converted, you haven't forsaken your sins. You go through all these many cycles of thinking you have and then like you said, something comes up and you're like, oh, shoot, I slipped whatever 0:57:24 - 0:57:46 . Um, but it's not like let me try the same thing again. You have to go deeper than you did before. Right? And there's the way they, what's that? There's a meta problem. Right? There's a deeper underlying problem that produced it. Exactly. It has nothing to do with the specific sin, you might say, oh 0:57:46 - 0:58:12 , I'm addicted to this. I struggle with that. No, you don't. You struggle with trusting God. That's it. That's the only problem is you believe your ideas about reality more than you believe. God. That's it. That's the only problem that ever exists in terms of sin. Mhm. So, you have to dig deeper. Right 0:58:11 - 0:58:36 . And, um, I thought originally I could get rid of this war by just putting one of those pads on it and whatever, or, um, I, I tried, like, duct tape on there and we went through like all these levels of duration of time and depth of pain and, you know, scraping and whatever, just nasty, extremely painful 0:58:36 - 0:59:03 stuff. Well, the, the all out nuclear war was I got, I'm not for, I'm no one should do this. This is not safe at your foot. Do not do this. Um, but, but I got this like crazy concrete acid and I, I became an expert in using duct tape to make a dam around the wart on my foot. And I would dump this concrete 0:59:02 - 0:59:23 acid on my foot and it was excruciating. It was like, I was getting stabbed to death and then I would scrape it out with a razor blade. And I determined that all the other times I was doing this, I didn't go deep enough. So I went down to like, it was like eight months. I did this every single day and 0:59:23 - 0:59:47 it was excruciatingly painful. Um, and I'm pretty sure I, like, I went down to the bone. I basically dug down to China on my foot. And um I, I went like way past when I thought it was good enough and then um it started to grow back and everything was fine. And so when you discover that you haven't gone 0:59:47 - 1:00:08 deep enough, you have to go deeper, right? And you have to figure out what the real issue is. Yeah, I love that. Like that, that really resonates deeply with me. And um I'm getting answers to questions in real time. Like as you're saying to me, like how to fix your foot, how to fix my Yeah. Now I know 1:00:08 - 1:00:28 um and this kind of speaks to a point you have talked about where um I know I shared with you, I was reading Jacob Jacob Ether uh two or three where moon talks about, you know, if you don't have, if you, because of your unbelief, you don't have the experiences of the brother of Jim, right? He basically 1:00:28 - 1:00:45 says this to the gentiles and I'm saying to the Lord, what are you talking about? I believe anything you tell me like I, I'll believe it. Just tell me I, I'm the unbelief. Then the spirit taught me this really important principle of. It's like, well, it's not the things that you don't believe is that 1:00:44 - 1:01:00 you believe so many things that are false, that instill fundamental unbelief in you that you don't even, you're not even really aware of. It's like in the source code, like, like you don't even understand the degree of unbelief you carry with you because it's actually kind of hidden from you because 1:00:59 - 1:01:16 it's just operating in the background. It's not, it's not on the front of your awareness, your consciousness. And so I was telling you, one of the biggest revelatory experiences I've ever had in my life was asking the question, what do I believe? That's not true. And I just took a piece of paper and 1:01:16 - 1:01:33 a pencil and it was just like, I filled up like 50 things in about 10 minutes, you know. And I was like, whoa, yeah, I do believe that the Lord is just like he was just like waiting for this question. So you can just start rattling off all this nonsense that I had in my belief structure that was wrong 1:01:32 - 1:01:54 . And so the reason why I'm bringing that up at this point in the conversation is, is because you're talking about going deeper and repenting of things deeper than you think, or you're digging out this wart that's way deeper than you understood from the outcome. One of the most productive things we can 1:01:54 - 1:02:19 do to do this is to sort of open ourselves to the prospect that most of what we think we know is just not true. And that's an tethering very, very difficult thing to kind of face. But if you do it with the Lord, he has the ability to dismantle an atomic bomb you know, um, sometimes, and I know we've 1:02:18 - 1:02:40 talked about the value of ripping all the wires at once versus taking one wire at a time. But the Lord knows how to dismantle you. Um, and if you're all in, on the prospect, he'll do it with you in a way that you won't, you won't, like, die in, in the sense of like, abandon it. And, well, if you die 1:02:40 - 1:03:01 it'll still be better. You know what I mean? Like he's gonna, he's gonna manage this with you, right? Well, this, this, this reminds me actually in a weird way of, of um another set of questions that was asked, there were at least two on this line, which was, it was something like, um does our relationship 1:03:00 - 1:03:22 , our perceived relationship with the Lord right now is that always, is always, is that always true to what it is? I don't know if that makes sense the way I phrased it. But like, you know, Moses went a long time in his life before he came face to face with the Lord. And that doesn't mean his life wasn't 1:03:22 - 1:03:42 going the right way. It's just that, you know, is there a sense of timing or is it that you don't have the relationship you want perceived, does that imply that you're doing something wrong? And I, I'll kick this one off if that's OK. Um This is one of many topics in the gospel, which I already referred 1:03:42 - 1:04:01 to that it's very hard to give a prescrip prescriptive, cover all the bases answer because it's exactly the kind of thing that the wrong kinds of people will latch on to, to justify continued sin, they'll say. But no, I'm, I'm right with the Lord. I'm doing all this stuff. I know I shouldn't. And I'm 1:04:01 - 1:04:29 not doing all this stuff. I know I should, but I'm right with the Lord covenant. Right. Yeah. And he's gonna come to me later like when I die or whatever. Um But there's, and also this has a lot to do with the end times. Uh There, there are reasons where he will delay. Um You could say restitution for 1:04:29 - 1:04:53 justice. Um There's a lot of different ways you could describe this, but there are, there are many situations where there is benefit to you from, for him to withhold what you merit. And um so it's an opportunity to exert greater trust in God and exhibit that and, and then uh it, it multiplies your blessings 1:04:53 - 1:05:16 . You're keeping your chips on the table and one piece of this that I'll share with you is that um there are things that you can't do and can't be taught when you have certain experiences that are happening to you. I'll throw a weird one out that uh I'm guessing no one's ever thought about. But the Lord 1:05:16 - 1:05:37 promises that it's possible uh for a person to gain power over their life in this life so that's all over the place. And John, for example, and so he, he never didn't have that power because he lived without sin. But you can come up to a point with the Lord in your life that you have power over your 1:05:37 - 1:05:59 life. And so this this I'm sorry, this might be a deep dive. But it raises the question uh why is it that only Jesus could do what he did? Because doesn't that mean that hypothetically some person could have come to the earth and sinned like we all do overcome his sin or her sin and then gain power over 1:05:59 - 1:06:24 their life, which would enable them to, to do what Jesus did in Gethsemane. And you know, does that mean that that could have happened? And the answer is no, because that path to getting power over your own life, it comes with experiences with God that would make it impossible to, to uh not perceive 1:06:23 - 1:06:43 the presence of the Father, which is one of the many things that had to be true for Jesus to do what he did. And that's not to mention the whole importance of being a perfect sacrifice, but we won't, won't get into that. But, but the point is it's an example of this principle that there are, there are 1:06:42 - 1:07:09 certain things that you can only do before that happens, whatever that is some experience with God, some relationship with God. And this is one reason why sometimes um you need to um you need to wait, you get to wait. It's not that you need to. My kids say dad, do. We need to, I say you get to, you get 1:07:09 - 1:07:37 to clean your room, you get to whatever. Um So we, we have the, the privilege and opportunity to exercise greater faith sometimes waiting for the Lord to um to fulfill his promises. What do you think about that? But it's a dangerous, it's a dangerous principle because invariably, and this is, this is 1:07:37 - 1:07:56 really tricky because a lot of the things that you can say to try to help people, um the people who need to hear what you're saying, um They're not going to listen to what you're saying. And the people that, that really shouldn't hear what you're saying are gonna grab on to it and run the opposite direction 1:07:55 - 1:08:20 . They should. And so it's really hard to convey um information or relay blessings in a way that they're not going to be misused. One of the um one of the most helpful things for me in my life is to assume I'm in a relative state of height deception at all times that unless I'm really in a confluence 1:08:19 - 1:08:41 with the spirit of the Lord that I don't see things clearly. And if you're in a state of self deception or self delusion, and you get something that's higher knowledge like you just shared, it's really easy to use the words of God or a principle to enable that deception into perpetuity, right, to like 1:08:40 - 1:09:03 support it just, I think that's what you're saying is like, it's a hard thing to share because you don't want someone to take that information and then use it, build it into their narrative that keeps them in a right. Right. And this uh this is a point opportunity to raise lightly the access they have 1:09:03 - 1:09:26 to information today uh through technology such as this. And I think it's super important to understand. I won't get into the full story of this, but just a little bit um this is part of why the world is going to be destroyed right here that today the channels we have to share information are public 1:09:25 - 1:09:47 for the most part, they're public. And so things you'll see in books that I haven't published yet and developing this disclaimer to put in the front of the book that says that something like if we were having a face to face conversation, I'd never tell you any of these things unless I knew you had read 1:09:47 - 1:10:08 this, this and this book and you're doing everything that those books describe because knowledge is incremental. And when you gain access to things that you're not ready for, the most likely thing is that you're either gonna turn away from something that's good or abuse it and use it for evil. So then 1:10:08 - 1:10:31 that begs the question, why would you share those things then? And the answer is because time is up because the people who wouldn't use it for good are basically gone anyway. They will be shortly. And so it's time to just blast the world with truth because we're in the end. Yeah, it's the Hail Marys 1:10:31 - 1:10:54 . That's right. Right. And, and, and so, so let me flip this around and ask another question that I'll also give you the answer to. Why were these people reserved? The uh the people who have been reserved until the end? Why were they reserved? Well, one reason is because what they required to activate 1:10:53 - 1:11:19 them is a blast of truth. So if you've ever tried to start a big engine, it takes a lot of torque to get that thing spinning. And if you had a smaller engine, it might blow the thing away to put that much torque on it. And in, in our day, we've got a lot of big engines sitting around that aren't started 1:11:19 - 1:11:44 yet and the information that will start them will also uh basically destroy everything else. And this is, this is exactly what the scriptures mean when they say the, the marvelous work is to one way or the other. It's a fullness and a plainness that will get you one direction or the other. Yeah. And 1:11:44 - 1:12:05 um I know it says this in various places, but Brigham Young said it and Joseph Smith, I believe, said it too. Is that the endowment will make angels or devils of you will make gods or devils of you. Yeah. All information does that. It's a wedge, it's pushing you. It's, it's this idea that there is, you 1:12:04 - 1:12:26 know, all creation is predicated upon a separation of light and darkness, right? So, which way are you going to create into? That's right. And, and tying this back into the wart idea because we're going to try to prevent as many people from eating lunch as possible. Um, your two choices are you dig it 1:12:26 - 1:12:46 out yourself or you have someone else cut it out of you and most reasonable people are going to go to a doctor and get it cut out of them. Right. But my personal again, I'm not giving anyone medical advice and I need attorney advisement here to, to, to disclaim this. I don't want to get sued. No one 1:12:45 - 1:13:09 should do anything I tell them to do for any medical purposes. Don't use cement acid. No, don't do that. But my experience, I've had a lot of health problems in my short life and my, my experience, my uniform experience with doctors has been horrifically disappointing. And so before I do anything, the 1:13:09 - 1:13:29 first thing I do is I look at peer reviewed research to see the likelihood of, of outcomes. Like I tore my shoulder in three places. I saw that 80% of shoulder surgeries lead to worse outcomes. And I thought, well, let me just try other things. So anyway, letting it heal up on its own. Ended up. I'm 1:13:29 - 1:13:53 fine. I'm 100%. Um, so with this foot thing, I, I hit the internet, I'm like, ok, what's the procedure for this? Ok. Doctor cuts it out. And then how often do they grow back? It's a huge percentage. Right. So, I ended up going my own way with that and figured out a way to get it to work, have to do with 1:13:52 - 1:14:16 anything. Well, the number of people cut a planter war out of their own foot. It's a very small number. Right. That's a weird thing to do because it freaking hurts and most people would rather hand that off to someone else to do to them, hopefully under anesthetic. So I don't want to get too much into 1:14:16 - 1:14:43 it, but this very much intersects into this idea of the ministry of men because you either cut yourself or you get cut by a priest and that's the way you get cut and shaped into a pure vessel for the Lord. There are a lot of things that um we could talk about with that but, but there are millions of 1:14:43 - 1:15:06 flow into this. But um in the end, end times in which we live, this is relevant to what we were just talking about because what's going to happen is that tons and tons of information is will flow down from heaven and people are going to react to it. And part of the reaction is that uh these people will 1:15:06 - 1:15:26 hear these people we've been talking about, they will hear what they're hearing and, and then broadcast their own version of this life. And so it gets brighter and brighter and brighter because it's like this flow of light. And uh yeah, that, that's all over the scriptures, the imagery of, of fountains 1:15:26 - 1:15:45 springing up in the wilderness and deserts and things. Uh other sheep I have which are not of this fold and on and on and on. But people will activate and then they become a conduit of light because of what's been cut out of them or given to them. Depends on how you all look at it. And then they have 1:15:45 - 1:16:10 a greater access to the spirit and it's just a flood of light on the earth and um that causes consequences and people have to react to that, right? Like light in its physical forms and its spiritual forms has as much of a destructive effect as it has an enlightening effect, right? Like um this is like 1:16:10 - 1:16:28 the idea of a laser versus an incandescent light bulb. So like you can submit yourself to like this light bulb that's here on my ceiling. And what it has is a lot of different waves that's kind of dispersed, but a lot of them cancel each other out because they're not. And it, and it gives me a general 1:16:27 - 1:16:49 view of light like I can see kind of in the in the sphere in which I exist, it kind of is useful. But what happens with the laser is you get highly coordinate light waves that come into a synchronicity that in order for that to be of value to you, in terms of, of uh enlightenment, you have to be of the 1:16:48 - 1:17:11 same order of frequency of that light. Otherwise that laser will, will, will cut you in half right, and has a complete annihilating effect on um on its environment if it's an intense laser. And so you either have to move into the structure where you are of the same vibration or the frequency of the light 1:17:11 - 1:17:27 in which you are receiving and that becomes part of you and becomes part of you, you being or an extension of your being or you become an extension of that light or that thing just burns and destroys everything in its path. And so what you're sort of, I'm gonna articulate maybe what I'm hearing from 1:17:26 - 1:17:49 you is by your own free will and choice move into those structures by the complete submission and faith required for you to resonate at the level of that light before that light becomes a complete annihilation and a destruction to you because that's the inevitable trajectory in the short term that we 1:17:49 - 1:18:11 really are looking at with an end time scenario. Yeah, you know, and specifically with that, it's, it's the consequences of response to the outpouring of truth because you've got certain folks who will respond with that to that by trying to persecute those people. And then you've got uh natural disasters 1:18:10 - 1:18:32 and such that are part of that response. Yeah. So anyway, that, that's a big bucket of worms. We should probably try to wrap this up into it, right? But every level of existence will respond in its own dimension to that type of input in its own way. Yep. What are the, any parting thoughts here before 1:18:31 - 1:18:51 we close this up? I have a kind of a parting question and this is a question I get, you know, I'm um I'm obviously um I'm a big fan of, of the things that you're teaching. And I've, it's, it's been an enormous influence to me and very, very helpful and the answer to prayer. Um Sometimes I get a response 1:18:50 - 1:19:13 um to the things that you share um that goes something like this. And I like to see if you'd respond to it. Um What, what Rob teaches is awesome, is powerful, but it feels like there's this sort of this element that um no, let me rephrase this. How does Christ enable you to do the things that you talk 1:19:13 - 1:19:30 about? Because, you know, I have associates and friends who say things like um well, so what we're to be, we're choose, we're to choose to become God. And then once we become God by our own discipline and power and choices and then all of a sudden you become like God and then we get to hang out with 1:19:30 - 1:19:50 Him. Where does the flow of grace and mercy and enablement um through the power of Christ occur? Or is it just a matter of you like just learning how to be awesome and do everything God says? And then you get to be like him and sharing him? So does that make sense? The way I'm answer asking this question 1:19:49 - 1:20:11 ? Like, where do you engage Christ in this process? Um Because the way you explain, I think is extraordinarily helpful, but I wanna make this connection or ask you about this connection about where Christ is with you in this process of obedience in faith. Yeah. So um there are a lot of different ways 1:20:11 - 1:20:36 to explain this. I, I take one tack with this uh in a book called God's Justice. There's a chapter on mercy and grace. Um But you can't get that book yet. So that doesn't do much, much good to anybody. Uh It's been done for a while but um uh I have a couple other ones. I have to come first. Um But let 1:20:36 - 1:21:05 me, let me just try to take this ad hoc um folks who oppose that question are, are setting up this, this, this idea like somehow I believe that through what, what we, we do, we can come up to God. And they say, well, you're overstating the contributions a human could make and I would actually flip that 1:21:05 - 1:21:32 around completely and say no, actually you're ignoring the contributions God has already made and overstating. You're the one that's overstating what humans can do. Not me, because I already recognize that everything you think is good about you is worthless. If it's actually good, it came from God and 1:21:31 - 1:21:53 he gave it to you before you paid for it. And so I would flip that whole thing around. I think it's a, it's almost a non sequitur. So there's this backdrop structure that you are working with this, this, this broad assumption that everything good in power and light and movement and everything in your 1:21:53 - 1:22:18 being that you do, that is a shift in reality is already empowered by God. That's good and true. So like it, it, it's not an assumption that is, that is absolutely true. And I know it without a shadow of a doubt. So it's so um as you, as you say, often, it's important to read everything you've written 1:22:18 - 1:22:47 because frankly, Rob, what you're doing is you are upsetting so many false belief systems that have to be upset in order to, to move forward. You, you said that you said that best Todd with the comments you're making about how uh would you say you prayed about what more you should believe? And um yeah 1:22:46 - 1:23:12 , yeah, it was very productive. Um Shoot you just froze up. Can you hear me? OK. Oh Yeah, everything just froze for a second. So this is really good to hear you articulate. I'm assuming this in your approach, but I just wanted to hear you articulate it because it's gonna, there's a lot of people who 1:23:12 - 1:23:28 leave my small sphere of friends and influence who are really turned on to the things you're saying it's extremely helpful in their progression. This is, this is a common question I have is, well, it sounds like it's just like us doing it. And then at some point you get a kick in with uh no, it's really 1:23:28 - 1:23:51 good to hear you kind of step back and articulate the backdrop to this knowing. So, yeah, so the, the question is not whether grace is Him giving us something we don't deserve. It's, it's how much can he give us at a time? And then what do we have to do after that to make the most out of it? And um here's 1:23:51 - 1:24:13 another thing that, that's gonna shake some understanding a little bit. Um I think most people that would say something like I just did, would try to draw a focus on to what you do in response to what God does. But it's this relationship like this between Him and us. Actually, I would turn it around 1:24:13 - 1:24:40 like this. So everything we do is because God um did it first and he did it for us. He loved us first before we deserved it. And then what he asks in return, we think of this in terms of our obedience to him as if we're giving him something that's worth something to him. Actually, what he asked us to 1:24:40 - 1:25:09 do is to turn and love others as he's already loved us in the same sense that they don't deserve it. Just like we didn't when he did it to us. This is the right. Yeah. And in a crazy, crazy arithmetic. That is the very way that we come up to be more like Him because it's only in what you suffer for others 1:25:08 - 1:25:32 that you can really come to know Him who has suffered so much for you. Yeah. Um The moment, the moment you sin and light withdraws from you, the adversary will almost always immediately teach you a lie in that space of withdrawal. And this is why sin can be such a destruction to you with sin always comes 1:25:32 - 1:25:50 a deception or a lie that's embedded in that experience. And one of those experiences is that you have like Adam and Eve experience. I have to now hide from God and we've even framed in our tradition. The idea of repentance is, is this approaching God again? So he likes you again. I have to repent. So 1:25:50 - 1:26:11 God likes me. It's this negotiation that I have with Him of, of how can I, how can he like me again? And when you have the understanding of what you just described, if you can digest this in your spirit, that everything that's happening to you is because God's love for you is so so fond that you can 1:26:11 - 1:26:33 even comprehend. You quickly want to abandon yourself to that process as opposed to negotiating with an adversary in a repentance process, which is, I think what happens because the adversary deceives us into that to that view. Um So I'm grateful for your witness and your teaching of this principle that 1:26:33 - 1:26:53 God loves you so intensely that even in your darkest moments and you don't see things clearly. Everything is, it's not how you trying to reach and grab it. He is behind you and preparing you and giving you everything you possibly can manage to the degree that you will open yourself to be faithful and 1:26:52 - 1:27:17 obedient to Him to the degree that you can repent, um which is to turn everything in your being to Him and to receive everything from Him. So I love that you are teaching and sharing this true principle that God is in everything good and in everything behind you and ahead of you and to the side of you 1:27:17 - 1:27:46 and that He already did it. He already moved through it. And what you have to do is employ this principle of all in because if you're not all in, if you're lukewarm, you get spewed by necessity. Not because he's mean, but the, the trigger to access the fullness of His grace is this principle of all of 1:27:46 - 1:28:06 your heart might mind and strength and um and I appreciate that. Like I know that's true. I know that that is the principle that triggers a rush of power to really overcome the darkness that you're facing is, is that, does that comply with how you're, you're positioning this? I hope it is. Yeah. And 1:28:06 - 1:28:31 I, I would just underscore it's, it's, you know, not only has he already, he, he is already responsible for all the good, you know, he is absolutely consummately, pumping good to you all the time. It's, you're, you're swimming in a flow of light from God all the time and, and everything He wants you 1:28:31 - 1:28:57 to do is to get you into even more. We love God because he loved us first. That was the most profound principles. I think scripture and he wants us to love others as far as we understand His love for us. And that's how you move, you move forward that way. And that, that, that can be a tremendous motivation 1:28:56 - 1:29:25 for repentance. Um It's sufficient to think in terms of um the exchange is sufficient. So even the most selfish person has every reason in the world to fully submit to God because that will maximize what they say they're all about. But sometimes a much stronger motivation is um how much you care about 1:29:25 - 1:29:51 other people. And when God shows you some measure of how much He cares about you, you know, all you can do is think about what can I possibly do to help other people because they don't know this yet, right? Love you measure love. Someone asks what is love. Um Love is how much you're willing to suffer 1:29:50 - 1:30:14 for the benefit of another person. That's what love is. And with God, the only limit to his love for us is what would decrease his love for others because it's a universal optimization. And other than that, there is no limit and this is something that I wish I could help people understand better than 1:30:14 - 1:30:36 they do. There is no limit to what He will do for you. And too often people accuse him and say, well, why does God allow this? Why does God allow that? There is an answer for every single one of those questions. And if you knew, if you knew you drop down on your knees and you'd spend the rest of your 1:30:36 - 1:31:08 life praising Him. He does everything he can for everyone all the time. It's he is not part of the equation. What he gets out of it is your joy. And that's how we have to be to understand how He is. We have to come towards that. Yeah, I had an experience once where I um I saw rings of people within people 1:31:07 - 1:31:28 , within people, within people and the joy of their redemption would flow out into eternity. And each time a person was in a redemptive experience and it, and it pushed out to greater and greater redemption the joy of the Lord. It would increase in the term that was given to me was an infinity of infinity 1:31:28 - 1:31:54 and it was his joy and his glory that you experience. When you experience the intense realization of God unveiled, that makes you feel legit like like you are going to cease existing is so intense. Like you know, the idea of a rock falling upon you to hide you, um your awareness of your unworthiness 1:31:53 - 1:32:19 is so intense. And the Lord taught me that that was his joy that you were experiencing. It was his joy that would actually eradicate your existence. If you weren't veiled, or you were up to the ability to, to uh experience it with him. And that's a different, it's a different experience of I have a friend 1:32:18 - 1:32:37 , I don't need to probably wrap up, but I have a friend who shared with me once he said I was in the throes of temptation and I was ready to give into a temptation. And he said, the spirit said to him, I love you just the same if you give into this temptation. And he said that thought eradicated the 1:32:37 - 1:33:00 desire for that temptation and safety. And it was a really, really powerful experience for him because he realized that God wasn't an adversary that he was trying to uh negotiate with, for his happiness that everything God did was for him. And he, and he, you know, he had this knowledge of that in that 1:33:00 - 1:33:25 moment of how much love He had. And that love that God had for Him, eradicated that knowledge and information about eradicating the pull of that temptation. And uh I think that teaches a lot of, a lot of truth in that experience. The love of God is the only thing that matters at the end of the day. Everything 1:33:24 - 1:33:49 is for that. Well, Todd, I appreciate your time and being here. I think we should wrap up. Uh Thanks everyone who we've had about 40 people give or take on the stream. So, thanks for your time. I hope this was useful. Um And thanks again for folks for sending in questions and uh we were reading the chats 0:00:00 - 0:00:24 Goes. So I'm Rob and you know me, if you're on this channel and my guest here is Todd mclaughlin. Might say your last name, right. Mclaughlin mclaughlin. It's, uh mclaughlin. So it has a mug. So, all right. So, uh, I don't want to embarrass Todd. We're recent associates, I guess. And, uh, we've had some 0:00:23 - 0:00:44 interesting chats, one on one. so Todd was kind enough to agree to come on and help me experiment with this whole livestream thing. And I think what our intent is is we're gonna go over some of these questions and have a conversation about them. Um, and hopefully keep each other on the rails. Does that 0:00:44 - 0:01:08 sound about right? That's about right. Yeah, I'm really happy that we're doing this. Um, let's see how it goes. I think that if I hit this button, I might see the chat as we go and I don't know. All right, it's sending me to this thing. I don't care. Hopefully I didn't just block Todd's face for every 0:01:08 - 0:01:28 , ok, it's fading out. So somebody want to say something so we can see if a chat happens. All right. Well, I'm not seeing anything so I guess we'll just roll and we'll see what happens. Not sure why that I'm gonna put it on my computer so maybe I can see it roll up. Yeah, you let me know if you see some 0:01:28 - 0:01:50 comments coming up. Ok. Well, well, maybe I'll just, oh, there we go. Look at that. Thanks, Daniel Patrick Angelina. How's it going? Ok. So I'm just gonna read, there were a whole lot of questions and thank you all for everyone who participated in that. And uh I got some emails too, some privates, uh 0:01:50 - 0:02:09 private messages with some, some questions and Todd and I took a look over them and, and we kind of, we were, we were clustering them trying to um isolate some themes here. And so I want to read a cluster and I didn't preserve the names of the people who said this. I just kind of put it in a and it's 0:02:09 - 0:02:30 , it's four quotes. So just bear with us. Um And then we'll kick it off. So Todd, if you have something brilliant to say right after I finish this quote, I'm gonna put you on the spot, manage expectations, right? As alluded to in some of these comments, obedience to your highest and best use of your 0:02:30 - 0:02:52 conscience versus how much of that obedience comes from sheer sheer willpower or is an actual gift from the Lord to where you look upon sin with abhorrence is a good topic. How do I get that gift because I surely can't do it on my own. Another quote, for example, person a is struck with an overwhelming 0:02:51 - 0:03:11 temptation to eat a Twinkie, but their conscience says that they should not sooner or later, they will inevitably eat the Twinkie because temptation can keep it up longer than willpower can resist. That's actually the opposite of the truth. But I, I don't wanna interrupt this too much. However, you teach 0:03:11 - 0:03:30 that there is some other way that actually works. If you can say no more, I guess I'll just read the book, meaning the repentance book because I had asked this person if they had read it another quote. It looks like the key idea in regards to my issue is noted on page 108 of your book Repentance. It 0:03:29 - 0:03:51 says, quote, all willful sin is committed because the sinner wanted to sin more than they wanted to obey God. End quote. That's my problem in a nutshell. On a good day. I do want to obey God more than I desire sin on a bad day. I don't want to obey God more than I desire sin. I have good days and bad 0:03:51 - 0:04:12 days. So in order to be sinless, I must never ever have a bad day. Not true. Sometimes I can go weeks without a bad day. My record is about three months, but inevitably a bad day does happen. I'm very aware of the bad consequences of sin. But on a bad day. I quite literally don't care. So, one more short 0:04:11 - 0:04:30 quote, some of my weaknesses are the same as what I had 30 years ago on a bad day. I just want what I want and I don't care. That is not the best thing to do. Take, for instance, my love of ice cream, it makes me sick and fat on a bad day. I just want my ice cream even though I'm perfectly aware that 0:04:30 - 0:04:45 it will make me sick and fat on a bad day. I don't care about the negative consequences. And that, that's the end of the quote. There was, there's one more thing I'm just gonna inject there because I forgot to copy, paste it into my list here. And that's this theme of when I try to do my best. I get 0:04:45 - 0:05:09 exhausted and worn out. OK? What do you have Todd? But I'm starting on this. There's a, there's a lot to say about this because when you, when you're writing this, I feel the weight of what the, what the writer is saying. Like this is at the core of so many people's fundamental struggle with um moving 0:05:09 - 0:05:34 forward closer to God and I, I get it. Um There's a lot to say so I don't wanna take up more than a minute here just to kick this off. But let's maybe let's initiate with this principle two quick principles and one is, there is something so exponentially powerful about initiating the Lord before you're 0:05:34 - 0:05:56 compelled to be, to initiate him. So if you initiate the Lord by your own free will and choice without being put into a pressure cooker. Um And you make a habit of that initiation of that engagement, you'll find that those quote unquote bad days where you don't feel like keeping the commandments become 0:05:55 - 0:06:20 less and less. And I would say not at all, let me give you a quick example. What I mean by that? If you make it your, your um your habit to at, at, at, at the cost of everything, the moment you wake up in the morning, you orient yourself to the Lord and you, and this is I'm gonna talk from personal experience 0:06:19 - 0:06:37 . You open your heart and your mind to light no matter where you're at in your life. And you do the first thing that you're impressed to do in that moment, first thing in the morning, it will initiate him. You might be really wealthy and healthy and your family is great. And if you do that, that has 0:06:37 - 0:06:56 a crazy compounding effect of spiritual power. If you are in the depths of hell and the biggest trial of your life and you do that, that's gonna have a, an incredible effect on your life. But if you initiate him by your own free will and choice, the first thing every morning and you reconcile yourself 0:06:55 - 0:07:18 to light and spirit. Um I'm gonna submit that you won't have you, you will put yourself into a, into a pattern of power that will surpass the darkness and deception and distortion that you're gonna probably face that. What are your thoughts? Thank you, Todd. Um, I agree. Next question. No, just kidding 0:07:17 - 0:07:43 . Uh No way. It's hard for me to pare down all the things that I'd like to say about this. Um In part because I think some of them can't be said. Uh Even if you had all the words in the world, there's a significant chunk of the gospel that can only be experienced. Uh It can't be conveyed verbally and 0:07:43 - 0:08:16 this actually has everything to do with this topic. Um There's a psalm psalm 1 1971. It says it is good for me that I have been afflicted that I might learn thy statutes. So everything that God commands us, one is within our power to obey and two is absolutely the best thing that we could do. Now, we 0:08:16 - 0:08:41 have to dig into this and the whole idea of the connection between desire and feelings and affliction and uh loyalty to God and love of God and all these things. It's a, it's a sticky wicket which is a phrase that apparently Todd and I both enjoy using. Uh Yeah, but let's just try to cut through this 0:08:41 - 0:09:16 with a laser. Why is it or how is it that afflictions help us learn God's statutes? Well, you can transform this question into something. Like, why don't we see that the things God asks us to do are the best. And I have to dig into the idea of the best will absolutely lead to the greatest feelings possible 0:09:15 - 0:09:41 . So why don't we actually believe that? Because like the Twinkie thing, right? So if I want a Twinkie and I happen to believe that I shouldn't eat it from like a moral perspective, what am I really saying there? What I'm really saying is that God, who knows all things and who loves me more than I love 0:09:41 - 0:10:02 myself based on what he knows. He knows I'm going to be happier. I'll have more joy by not eating that. And again, you know, there's nothing wrong with the Twinkie. I'm just saying if, if that's what your conscience says, the reason is because where you are right now, everything you are and you understand 0:10:01 - 0:10:25 God knows that your greatest happiness lies in not eating that right? And so if you disagree with him, my question is why? And I know the answer to the question. So I'm about, I'm about to answer that too. It's because the environment that he provided you, it's like a tadpole tail. It's, it's just for 0:10:25 - 0:10:48 right now because it's the best learning environment. It keeps you protected from the full weight of reality so that you can figure out as much as you can and make the most of when that shell is taken off, which happens when you die, if not sooner. So he's trying to direct us all to develop in the ways 0:10:47 - 0:11:10 where when all that comes full flood on us will have the greatest possible happiness forever. And so when it doesn't seem like we desire to obey him, it's because we think we know better than he does. Right. Yeah. Let me, let me try to articulate what I think. I hear the writer saying a little bit and 0:11:10 - 0:11:33 see what your response is. Sure thing. And that is, yeah, when I'm in a good state of mind and I'm healthy and I'm in my reason and faith are operating in a healthy place nine times out of 10, I'm gonna get this right. You know, but you have those days where something really bad happens or you're just 0:11:33 - 0:11:51 dark and you have a spirit of, of depression or a cloud that's over you and you might be able to do this all the time. But we all know whether it's gonna be tomorrow or in five years from now that one day is gonna pop up where you don't have. You don't have, you might have a rational perspective but 0:11:51 - 0:12:11 the, the, the crushing feeling of dark and overwhelming. Now this is great. What do you do so that you don't have, you have the confidence that no matter what your day is gonna look like in your perspective that you don't return to your stance like in other words, this is a question. How do you really 0:12:10 - 0:12:31 say it? Well, you know that Todd, you, you hit it like 10 ways, 10 different ways. There you hit it in the first way was you said nine out of 10. And that's like, dude, my little alert goes off right. Here's a topic and that is the depth of conversion because we do think that nine out of 10 ain't bad 0:12:31 - 0:12:52 , which is like a weirder version of that meat loaf song. But nine out of 10 is bad. It literally is bad, right? Because that one out of 10 will absolutely keep you from God, especially if you have, especially if you know that and deep down in your heart, you can't, you don't have these things in your 0:12:52 - 0:13:10 rearview mirror, right? OK. And, and now we get into the practical. So what do I do about it? And that gets back to the song I shared. It's good for me that I have been afflicted that I might learn by statutes and I'm about to hit you with something that you probably don't wanna hear. So we read in Hebrews 0:13:09 - 0:13:34 58 though Christ were a son yet learned obedience by the things which he suffered and you might be thinking, yeah, but he was sinless. Yes. But he grew over time. And that's not really the point of what I'm saying. The point is if, if you really want to say what this is saying, maybe you rephrase it 0:13:33 - 0:13:59 something like though he was a son. In other words, you'd expect him to just want to obey because he's a son, right? He still came to comprehend the full value of submission through what he suffered. And so when you look at the end of his mortal mission, what he submitted to was not because it looked 0:13:58 - 0:14:22 good and it's not because it's what he wanted to do. It's because he had fully flipped the switch from what I feel like doing to what I reason to be the best thing that I could do in the way you do that. There is no other way except submit to him in the things that are before you and be willing for him 0:14:21 - 0:14:41 to hit you with. Remember I said there was a shell that insulates us for most of the consequences of reality. You can ask him to take that away. You can ask him when, when he asks you not to eat. The Twinkie is like what we keep talking about, you can say, but I like Twinkies, tell me why I shouldn't 0:14:41 - 0:15:06 eat Twinkies and he will. Twinkies are pornography. Oh, is that it? That's cool. Everybody. That's what they're calling it these days. Um But ask him what? Well, ok, porn, let's talk about porn. Ask God why that's not something you should be involved in. And I'm gonna warn you. Ok? Because when he takes 0:15:06 - 0:15:30 off that shell, it's gonna come in the form of a baseball bat to your face. He is going to squeeze you and crush you to show you that. Now, I say all that, he's not actually squeezing you or crushing you. He's just getting out of the way and letting this flood of reality hit you. And as it does see you're 0:15:30 - 0:15:55 approaching him in faith. You remember when um that interchange with the Lord, that guy says, um Lord, I believe, help my unbelief. That's, that's what he, you know, that's what this is all about. It's I don't believe you God, but I believe that you have a reason for me to believe. You tell me what it 0:15:55 - 0:16:16 is and that's very different than um then pretending, you know, better. And then in the end, the band aid gets ripped off because now you're dead or sometime before that you're whacked in the face with the consequences, a greater share of the consequences of your choices. And now you see, but now it's 0:16:16 - 0:16:40 too late. Now, the last thing I wanna say about this is that the metal level um that's not what's actually going on here. It's not about Twinkies. It's about, can we get to the point where we develop, develop implicit trust in God so that we, we go up the gradient from I'm doing this because God has 0:16:39 - 0:17:02 shown me that it's worth doing to, I'm doing this because I know it's from God. And that's all I need to know. Yeah. And the reason that's important is because the greater part of the gospel can only be, you can only be led into and through that once you have transcended, the need to understand. Yeah 0:17:02 - 0:17:21 , that's Mosiah 319. I love, I love how you talk about it. The more faith that is required for you to move into that structure, the more that God can impart to you, the more you'll be blessed, the less faith that is required, the less you can be blessed by that structure. Is that an articulation of how 0:17:20 - 0:17:49 you would approach that? Absolutely. I, I think that um faith begins as reason based in our, I don't wanna say carnal desires, but let's just say our initial desires. So God, God makes a case that hey, do you want this? OK, do this and then that's supposed to go step by step towards um God. I want you 0:17:49 - 0:18:14 in anything you send me. I will, I will automatically fully assume is better than anything else to the point that I will actually feel joy walking into it no matter how much it would hurt or does hurt. A lot of a lot of why this is hard is one way to frame it is, is that truth really is the enemy to 0:18:14 - 0:18:38 comfort, right? Like comfort is the enemy to truth. And there's obviously an embedded irony because if you fully submit yourself to truth, it is technically called the comforter, you move into a, a structure of comfort with the Lord that surpasses anything else that has eternal, has an eternal bearing 0:18:38 - 0:18:59 to it. But if you're in this moral sphere and you're, you're in an environment where you have to act by faith and you're purposely put into a place to learn these principles that you become possessors of them. Um You have to have the faith to move out of your concept of comfort into a place that seems 0:18:58 - 0:19:22 like it might be cold and comfortless, right? That's the view. Look, you know, the view of faith that keeps people from having faith, right? If I do that thing, I'm going to lose all of the structure, I'm gonna lose all of the scaffolding that protects me and stabilizes me, uh that I understand in my 0:19:22 - 0:19:43 current state. And if I let go of that scaffolding, if I let go of that, what I think is firm ground, but we, what we really know is it's very flimsy, it's, it's sand. Um And I move into this space where I don't know if I'll be supported. Um That type of faith then grounds you in an eternal, in an eternal 0:19:43 - 0:20:09 um comfort structure that surpasses you look backwards in your rearview mirror and you realize where I was was not comfort, it was pain, it was sorrow even though I thought I was stabilized. And so what I hear you making is this really, really good case of, hey, step back, choose to have faith. You can 0:20:09 - 0:20:29 choose to have faith and give your entire being to this project of moving in trusting God. Knowing that if you, if you belly flop off the edge of this abyss that you can't really see into that. Once you do, you will receive a comfort and strength and power rooted in eternal things that you think you 0:20:29 - 0:20:54 kind of have now. But you are completely in a structure that is unstable. Does that? Yeah. No, that's beautiful, Todd. Thank you. I it, it, it, I think perfectly segues into the comments I summarized but didn't quote about becoming exhausted. Um There really isn't a place where comfort in the world intersects 0:20:53 - 0:21:19 , comfort in God. Um As much as people think there is there, there really isn't. And as you transition towards the Lord, he's going to show you the inadequacy of the other supports and part of the way he does that is he asks you to do things that you don't think are possible for you to do. And that will 0:21:18 - 0:21:41 absolutely drain you in any way though. They might kill you. I mean, kill you in the sense of you're just your comfort, your security, your power, everything that you kind of grasp on to would be eliminated. And it is, and here's the thing is that what would be nice is if it were this adjustment, whereas 0:21:41 - 0:22:00 the one, while the one knob turns down the other one turns up in equal proportion, but it does not happen that way. When, when Peter walked out of the boat, there was a distance between the boat and the Lord and to go closer to the one, he had to leave the other even more. And there's this, no man's 0:21:59 - 0:22:19 land in between and this is like Leigh walking through the darkness. Um And there are a lot of other examples of this sort of idea. Um I think of it like a train tunnel. Um I grew up on the East Coast, there's a lot of train tunnels and when you walk through one of these things, it's, it's really weird 0:22:19 - 0:22:40 because before you go in the light seems like it's really close on the other side, you can see it and if you walk in, it's like cold and damp and it just keeps getting darker and darker and darker for what seems like forever. And then all of a sudden way past what seems like the midway point, it, it 0:22:40 - 0:23:12 turns and it starts getting brighter and the fact is that you really have to be emptied out before the Lord will uh refill you and kicking over. I mean, the draining is, is so far beyond anything anyone else ever does without going into that explicit path um that there's really not much you can say to 0:23:12 - 0:23:33 try to explain it. So it's kind of like when salmon go out to sea, uh when they're young and then they get whatever transformation they need to go through to be able to, to, to operate in salt water. When they come back to spawn, they go through a, um, another transformation to be able to survive in 0:23:33 - 0:23:55 the fresh water again. And it's a one way trip. The path to God is a one way trip. That's the bad news. Right. The good news is you really don't have an option because everything you think is the alternative is going to burn up right in front of your eyes or collapse to dust right in front of your eyes 0:23:54 - 0:24:17 . And so the choice is just to do the right thing now while it gives you the greatest benefit and obviously benefits those around you the most or wait until doing the right thing, barely renders you anything in return except for regret. Right. Right. You want to initiate as fast and as quickly as possible 0:24:16 - 0:24:36 without the motivation to initiate, right? Like you, like there's such an exponential effect. Like for example, like if you're listening to this right now and you look around at your life and you say, ok, well, I have plenty of money to take care of the things that I need and most of my wants, my kids 0:24:36 - 0:24:54 are all healthy. My marriage is pretty stable. These are pretty good. I got a good vacation planned in the spring, you know, whatever and you look at all of that and all those comforts that are really kind of keeping you back from abandoning yourself to God because things are just kind of good. And you 0:24:54 - 0:25:14 might be part of, of, of a religious structure that says you're ok, like you're on the, you're in the group that gets to be saved. So you're not too worried about your existential long term prospects if you're in that environment and you take a step back and you say I am going to engage God in a way 0:25:14 - 0:25:35 that I'm going to humble myself before him and I am going to do whatever he asks of me in this environment that has such an exponential effect on, on his ability to bless you. And it's not to say that you're going to stay in this comfort zone. This is what you're saying, right? Like he's gonna squeeze 0:25:35 - 0:25:54 you in ways according to your desires to really open up your understanding to your awful situation because most likely you're in an awful situation. Um But when you initiate the Lord on your own free will and choice without him having to give you cancer or lose your job or whatever it is that drives 0:25:53 - 0:26:11 you to your knees. And if you can go to the Lord and muster every aspect of your being that you're aware of and you submit it to him and you go through that, that has such an effect and power to bring you closer to him because you're doing it in your own free will and choice. I have to be compelled to 0:26:11 - 0:26:34 . And that, that's an incredible thing. And even if you're in the, in the worst trial of your life, um, do, do it anyway. You probably are doing it right. Yeah, I know. Yeah. Do it anyway. There's nothing the first, the first thing you have to do every day. Um, you know, I have the advantage. It used 0:26:33 - 0:26:49 to be. I used to think it was the, um, the punishment God was giving me. But I have Children that would wake me up every night. Like every night I'd wake up like at three in the morning, someone would wake me up or something. I'd have insomnia that so I'd stay up like 3 to 6 or 3 to 7. I wouldn't go 0:26:49 - 0:27:10 back to that almost every night. And, um, you know, so I would take that time to lay there in the quiet of the night and to breathe with the Lord and ask him to send his light to soften me, soften my heart, soften my mind. I wasn't pleading for him for things that I thought I wanted. I would rarely talk 0:27:09 - 0:27:30 in the sense of like I need this and I need this. I would just ask, you know, for two or three hours a night, would you please just soften me? Like, can you just soften this ground like hardened, you know, you're a farmer, you know, can you stop, I pretend to be, prepare it and I'd find it would take 0:27:29 - 0:27:49 , you know, a guy who I, you know, I had a pretty self righteous view of my stuff. I'm a, I'm an, a player, the Lord blesses me and prospers with me and I'm finding out that the vast majority of my soul is hardened against him and then just asking for him to soften me and then to, and then to give me 0:27:49 - 0:28:14 things to do that will put me into his light and to receive. And um these, these mornings over the years have produced revelatory experiences beyond what I thought was truly possible. You know, things that you learn and things that you experience uh just by making yourself available even in times of 0:28:14 - 0:28:42 , of, of good as you might think they are, you know. Yeah, we have, uh it needs to be said that we're in a special situation with that. Um People in the past, they had the option to sort of willingly submit uh beyond the circumstances of, of plenty that they were in. Um of course, historically, things 0:28:42 - 0:29:06 like famines and those sorts of things um were more common than they are today, at least in the, in the first world countries. But we're in a special place because um every single person that's alive right now, if they live long enough, they will live to see every single support kicked out. Yeah, that 0:29:06 - 0:29:28 is what the end times does that, that is synonymous with uh saying that the Lord's kingdom will come, you know, till I put the make the earth your footstool. Um That has a lot of deep meaning this is only one facet, but the kingdoms of the world are gonna shake and everything that the world values is 0:29:28 - 0:29:54 going to be taken away. And what's left will depend in large part for you as an individual on how soon you let the Lord teach you true value. What really has worth and what needs to be let go of because it's one thing um it's one thing to have a Twinkie as a treat, right? And it's another to um focus 0:29:54 - 0:30:19 your well being and your happiness on the presence of Twinkies which are going to be taken away. And uh a a lot of the problems in the world today are because we have, we have used what has a good use for things other than good. Yeah. And I think your definition of this really reframed. Um your, your 0:30:19 - 0:30:41 definition of idolatry if I remember, right? You said something to the effect, it's giving value to something beyond the actual value that that thing has. It's like the best definition I've heard because we wanna jump to things that like are obvious with that problem, you know, like buying a Ferrari 0:30:40 - 0:31:01 or living in a mansion, you know, or owning a yacht and those are like everybody jumps to those like, oh yeah. I'm not an idolater because I don't do those egregious things that I see on social media or in Hollywood. But when you start looking around in your own comfort structure that you've built around 0:31:01 - 0:31:21 you, how much of what you build around you, the kingdom, your kingdom that you've built is for the purpose to insulate you from the requirements of God. And you can do so by temporarily comforting yourself with things that you're using for a purpose that are beyond what they're intent, right? It's like 0:31:21 - 0:31:46 Paul said, uh I know how to be a based and I know how to be exalted. Um The thing is, is that we, it's so easy to fool yourself and say, oh, I don't rely on having a house. I don't rely on having a job. I don't rely on having food to eat. I don't rely on my kids being healthy and well, when God takes 0:31:45 - 0:32:16 those things from you, you'll see how much you rely on. And um I don't wanna get too much into that. I could say a lot about it, but um the goal state is going back to what Paul said is to be able to fully enjoy things that have value 100% rooted in gratitude towards God in the sense that if he took 0:32:15 - 0:32:39 them away immediately, your gratitude to Him would not change in the least bit. That's the goal is to be able to praise God for taking things away as much as you do for, for having them. It's the perfect articulation of that principle. Um There's a philosopher story in Kirkegaard. Have you, have you 0:32:39 - 0:32:56 spent much time with them or have you looked at that? I am woefully ignorant of philosophers. It's probably, it's probably like a good thing. Well, the reason why you studied philosophy, CS Lewis said is so that, you know, so you can understand why philosophy is bad. Like you, you can understand. Um 0:32:55 - 0:33:12 I actually got my degree in philosophy and it actually end up being really useful because it helps you discern very quickly sophisticated fallacies of people's thinking and stuff. So um the story c are he talks about what they call a Night of Faith is what you're describing. And he says a night of faith 0:33:12 - 0:33:30 can be anybody. And it's somebody who lives transparently before God, he both actively received from God and he both actively gives everything he has to God in a continuous flowing moment. And he says, the night of faith doesn't have to be some spectacular spiritual superstar that everybody acknowledges 0:33:29 - 0:33:44 . He can be the storekeeper. This is like your hidden all. I guess it's really interesting. I, I when you talk about certain things, I, I see a lot of connection, how you ever explained. And he says, he'll take for example, the storekeeper who is a knight of faith and he locks up his shop at night, he's 0:33:44 - 0:34:01 excited because his wife is making mutton and he can't wait to get home to eat this mutton. And he's excited and he goes home and there's no mutton. She didn't make it. And he says, and he's happy just the same. It's like the gift and love and blessings of God flow through him and he gives everything 0:34:00 - 0:34:25 equally and freely and he lives in this state of peace and rest and power because everything is rooted in the Lord's goodness as opposed to him, hedging and negotiating with God all the time for his resources and his happiness. Right? No, that's, that's really good. Um I think it, it very much ties back 0:34:25 - 0:34:49 to all the things we've been saying here. Can you transcend the value of a Twinkie uh to attach it directly to its source, which is, which is God, any value that anything actually has it, it comes from God and it is uh most fully experienced in God. And so the more direct you can connect to that the 0:34:49 - 0:35:14 um the more you transcend these ups and downs of what is closer to us in our earth experience, but is not as clear in terms of its uh it's eternal value. Yeah. You know, one thing you, you explained to me and you gave a perspective to me that I thought it was so good was um and I'm going to try to articulate 0:35:14 - 0:35:31 this the way I heard it. So you're gonna have to like push and pull on this if I get this wrong. OK, I'll try but good luck. But, uh um you know, you talk, we were talking about the principle tithing and, and you kind of step back and you gave a much more macro view. I kind of thought I always saw the 0:35:31 - 0:35:48 macro view of tithing. But you, you step back even farther and really gave me this perspective about just the use of resources. And you know, this is something that I felt like I had kind of a handle on. But you just said something that really struck me. And that is, you know, you have resources available 0:35:47 - 0:36:07 to you. You know, let's just call it money. But money obviously can be uh anything, any asset of value from the house to uh time to whatever, let's just call it money. And you, let's say you have $1000 that the Lord gives you and you look at that $1000 and you say I can do X amount of good work with 0:36:07 - 0:36:29 a percentage of this. So like for $700 of this 1000 I can implement this into the best things that I can manage, feeling fully confident in the faith of the Lord, that those resources are going to the best things that I can possibly manage myself with the stewardship given to me. Well, I have this other 0:36:29 - 0:00:00 $300 beyond that, that I have to now implement or give to somebody that has a greater reach so that we're maximizing the reach and the power and the blessings of God given this, this contained amount of, of resources, money, right? And I love that because it, again, it reframed it for me like, yeah. 0:00:00 - 0:37:11 Do I think of all my things as Gods? I, I'd like to think I do. But what you said really helped me reanalyze every aspect of my material experience here. So like is everything in my world, do I really think of it as is this doing the best thing that God could intend with it in the moment? Anything from 0:37:11 - 0:37:35 a hamburger that I'm making for dinner to a paycheck that I get maybe a bonus to a car I'm gonna buy or not buy because of this principle. And there really is this sort of free flow that you can step into or you need to repent of if you're not in it. Um Because there's also this sorry to keep going on 0:37:35 - 0:37:56 this, but there's this flip side problem with the idea of consecration. And that is, is if I possess anything materially, I'm doing something wrong because th because the having an asset is somehow a de facto example of my wickedness because we should not be tied to anything materially. And you move 0:37:56 - 0:38:15 into this sort of reverse problem that is like this, it's not stoicism, but it's this, I don't know what's the word this minimalism like I can't hold on to anything because anything is gonna keep me from God. And so like, if I have money, I gotta get rid of that as fast as I can and go into this destitution 0:38:14 - 0:38:41 . Otherwise I am being captured by something that has an inherent evil, wicked aspect to it. You know what I mean? Yeah. It's where it's a, our first jump into probably pretty deep thoughts and the pattern that strikes me with this is there are so many questions in the gospel where you can't just give 0:38:41 - 0:39:03 one uniform answer because doing so would be prescribing harmful behavior to some people in some situations. Um which is funny because we tend to assume that it's quite the opposite that almost everything in the gospel can be described with a uniform answer, right? When it comes to the disposition of 0:39:03 - 0:39:28 resources, um, it depends. Right. And for some people, the absolute best thing they could do is go to the minimization route and get rid of everything and just be a pauper for the rest of their lives or live in a cave or something. Right. Exactly. Exactly. And, um, there's a reason for, for why he said 0:39:27 - 0:39:55 that to that specific person, there's always a reason. And then in some cases, the challenge can be holding on to ma material resources while uh maintaining the consecration of those for the benefit of others. Um not, um not using it for yourself in any way that, that shows a preference for yourself 0:39:55 - 0:40:20 over others. Right. That, that's really hard. And, and to your point, you know, um, it's not a popular thing to say. People don't like to hear it but different, people have different abilities to manage resources. I mean, um, I've walked into people's houses before and I just felt like, I wish this was 0:40:20 - 0:40:39 my house because it's so nice. Um, like it's, it's decorated and it's just beautiful in here and uh I could never do anything like this. This is just so far beyond anything I could do, right. I'm looking at your room and it looks really great. No, it doesn't. This is plus this is like this is officially 0:40:39 - 0:40:59 , this is the guest room that I've taken over. So it's quite a mess. I'm just giving you the one angle where you can't see my 3d to do list on this bed that a dog jumped on and wrecked. And, um, but, but, um, you know, that's an example and some people are like this with, with business in general or 0:40:58 - 0:41:21 with farming. You know that if you give 10 people the same one acre plot of land, um you'll get 10 very different results, right? And so if you want to maximize the benefit of something, whether it be time or some resource, um it kind of has to flow to the people who are best at that, right? And uh what 0:41:20 - 0:41:43 complicates this even more if it weren't already complicated enough is that uh benefit part to calculate. It's not just a question of dollars and cents, a lot of times the most beneficial path um does not line up with one that multiplies money. So it's really hard. It's a, it's a hard problem. And so 0:41:42 - 0:42:05 many things in the gospel require our internal, deepest part of our hearts to be clean, pure uh in order for us to see correctly. And that, that's an interesting word to look through the scriptures uh pure or clean because we, we think of like, you know, you throw it in a laundry machine and a washing 0:42:04 - 0:42:31 machine and, and you add some soap and whatever, but to purify actually, it requires removing things. And so it's to take out everything that would impede the maximal value. Yeah. Yeah. Well, and, and the possibility for deception is, is almost unmanageable high when you have resources because it's so 0:42:31 - 0:42:54 easy to move into this place of like, well, yeah, everything is the Lord's, I'm gonna buy this $200,000 to ski boat so I can take the scouts skiing, right? I Yeah, and this is for my family and, and this is for us to bond, you know, and, and you want like, like you said, you want to be careful how you 0:42:54 - 0:43:18 judge because every situation there's so many high, there's so many particulars. But to be honest to the degree that puts you in puts you in a state where you're complying with the law of consecration. It requires, as you've said earlier in this conversation, the total full submission of everything willing 0:43:17 - 0:43:40 to lose everything. If that's what the Lord required of you before you can even move into those areas that you can be trusted to manage your resource. Because that resource, the chance is that thing overtaking you in your heart is almost 100% you know, in a world that comfort is I, I struggle. I'm thinking 0:43:40 - 0:43:57 through as we're having this conversation, I'm even like going through my assets and thinking, no, I'm not doing it there. I'm not doing it there. You know, I'm realizing as we're talking things that I need to shift and change, you know, just by, by talking through it, write it down. Yeah, my repentance 0:43:57 - 0:44:14 notebook is like, really it's already full. You need a, you need a four inch three ring binder. Do you mind if we jump to another part of that question that you read in the beginning, please? Yeah, I'd like to um I wanna throw something at you and get your response because I don't know if you, if you 0:44:14 - 0:44:33 and I really talked about this yet. So I'm kind kind kind of doing this on the fly to see if um what you think about this principle. So back to this idea of how do you keep the commandments 100% all the time. Um Well, let me even take one step further back than that. Like when you and I were talking 0:44:32 - 0:44:57 earlier um a couple months ago, um I had this massive realization thanks to some things that you said to me that my entire life, I thought I was forsaking my sins. Like that was an aspect of repentance that um I was forsaking. And the reason I thought that is because when I was quote unquote, repenting 0:44:56 - 0:45:18 in those moments of repentance, my desire was to never do that thing again, right? Like in the moment of contrition and asking for the Lord's forgiveness. Yeah, not forsaking. I don't wanna do it again, but I never had the confidence that I wouldn't do it again. And because that confidence wasn't there 0:45:17 - 0:45:41 , I realized that even though within a certain parameter, I could spiritually progress and the Lord in his grace and mercy would continue to give me answers to prayers and insight and knowledge. I've always felt that I've been pretty much treading water. Um hoping that someday the chains would be released 0:45:40 - 0:46:01 and I could just jump forward and I never ever thought about it in terms of forsaking sin because I always felt like that was a no brainer. I was forsaken. But what I didn't realize is that I didn't have the confidence in me that I wouldn't return to my sins. I wouldn't return to my vomit at some point 0:46:01 - 0:46:26 in my, in my paradigm, in my paradigm born of a religious tradition was do your best. God will take care of it. Don't worry, as long as you are just treading water as hard as you can. God accepts your treading, you know, and I thought that was a mercy or a view of grace that was actually useful or helpful 0:46:25 - 0:46:54 . And, and because, you know, in my concept, perfection was an impossibility anyway, so back to forsaken what I learned that was definitely a product of a conversation you and I had and some things that you said to me was there are certain types of weaknesses that are sort of designed so that you can't 0:46:54 - 0:47:12 overcome them by just saying I'm going to overcome them. Your, your experience is designed to for failure. And there's a reason for that and this is what I want to get. You might disagree with this. I'm really interested to see if you, how you push and pull on this spot, ok? But let me kind of walk it 0:47:12 - 0:47:34 through it and get your thoughts on it. And the reason for that is, is because there is a danger of you standing up and saying I am righteous because of my own power and not because of God's and I am righteous because I chose to be God and not because God enabled me to be God, ok? And that's one way 0:47:34 - 0:47:50 of maybe saying this and let me give you an example. Let's go back to the Twinkie, let's say the Twinkie is the thing that you were given since you were two years old. It's the, it's the way that your brain has calculated. The neurons are established to give you comfort. And at any time of deep darkness 0:47:49 - 0:48:07 , you can always rely on the Twinkie to temporarily numb you and medicate you from the uh the exhaustion of your existence. Um And so the Twinkie is something you always go back to. So when you repent of eating the Twinkie, you always say, sorry, Lord, I ate this Twinkie in a moment of weakness and he 0:48:07 - 0:48:27 says, OK, you're right, keep going. But the reality is, is tomorrow or in 10 years from now, I think I'm gonna eat that Twinkie again. So I never have the confidence to move forward. Well, what if the law of sacrifice is given to us for the purpose of overcoming eating the tweaky into perpetuity? And 0:48:27 - 0:48:43 so it looks something like this and this is a big build up. So I hope that what I'm about to say is, isn't already exhausted in this conversation. You go to the Lord and you do what you've suggested first and that is you reconcile yourself to the commandment. And so instead of saying I'm gonna stop eating 0:48:43 - 0:49:02 Twinkies, I'm gonna say, I'm gonna, I'm gonna frame it positively. So instead of stop doing a bad behavior, I'm going to look at what the actual commandment is and say, OK, I'm gonna reconcile myself with the commandment, which is um uh you need to eat healthy so that it maximizes the light and spirit 0:49:02 - 0:49:21 into your body. Ok? Um Actually I'm gonna change. I don't like this Twinky thing anymore. Let's, let's turn to something more realistic. Let's say it's um anger. I don't wanna be angry anymore. I don't wanna lose my temper. Well, you can't just say I'm gonna recognize hell myself to not just lose my 0:49:21 - 0:49:40 temper. You have to reconcile yourself to the positive aspect of the commandment. You're breaking, which is I want to live in a state of continual love. That doesn't break because that's what really maybe in one respect, anger is doing right? Like anger is you, you break that bond of love and then you 0:49:40 - 0:49:55 are extracting a vengeance on something or somebody because you don't think God is gonna be just in that thing, which is another conversation to have. But so let's just say that the commandment you're breaking is, is you're not going to be in a steady state of constant love for the beings and people 0:49:55 - 0:50:13 outside of you. Well, I'd like to be able to keep that commandment perfectly into perpetuity. But the chances of me getting bitten on the butt by something is kind of high and I'm gonna break that in a moment of weakness. So you go to the Lord and you say, ok, I first and foremost, reconcile myself to 0:50:13 - 0:50:33 this commandment and what that means is, is I bring myself to the honest state of sin. I will keep that commandment at any sacrifice required of me. And you have to be honest about that. You know it, if the Lord says, ok, go sell your home. Is it worth it to sell your home to keep that commandment? And 0:50:33 - 0:50:51 you're like, ah, no, that's pushing it. Yeah. Now you really have to be in a state of whatever the sacrifice is required in me. I will do that thing to keep that commandment. And so once you get yourself to that place, you might be able to do that in five minutes, it might take you a year to get yourself 0:50:50 - 0:51:13 softened and softened, hard to be able to, to make that sacrifice. And then you go to the Lord and say, OK, what sacrifices can you give me that? If I do with perfection with 100% perfection, the power will flow to me that will enable me through the power of Christ to keep that compa and he might say 0:51:12 - 0:51:33 , ok, well, here's your sacrifice. You will fast one day a week, the rest of your life and you will do B and you will do C and those are things that you can do no matter what. And you say, ok, lord, I will keep those sacrifices and by virtue of you keeping the sacrifices associated with that commandment 0:51:32 - 0:51:55 , a power and a spirit. So beyond you flows through you and the Lord keeps that commandment on your behalf so that you have the confidence moving forward that you will always be in that structure. And it's in your rearview mirror to sit and that is how you move forward in your spiritual progress. And 0:51:55 - 0:52:15 I'm convinced that even in my intimate groups of friends who are like minded, we really don't ever move forward in the church that I belong to. We don't ever move forward. In fact, we're backsliding on crazy because no one believes in forsaking sin. It's almost like the silver bullet solution would be 0:52:15 - 0:52:32 like problem that we don't believe in forsaking our sins and moving forward into higher structures of light and power and, and, and law with the Lord. So the law of sacrificed as a mode to keep the commands perfectly. What are your thoughts? Did I step in a hole in, in this, in this experience from this 0:52:32 - 0:52:51 view? What are your thoughts on this? Um So I'll, I'll try to address this. I, I don't, I can't promise that I'll remember everything I wanted to say to this. But uh let me, let me start with two levels of covenant. There are two levels of covenant and one is what you're describing, which is do one thing 0:52:51 - 0:53:13 to get another. Um There are a lot of other ways you could describe that the, that's the lower level of covenant though the higher levels to become, it's to become the same as the mediator. Um So I'm reading this comment is the idea of sacrifice to keep the commandment, what the Lord meant by plucking 0:53:13 - 0:53:41 out our eye or cutting out our hand. Uh Not exactly, but that's a, that's a useful application of that um useful but not primary. Yeah, the the primary one is is that if someone comes along with more light than you and is helping you inviting you to improve and what they say, contradicts something that's 0:53:41 - 0:54:05 part of uh your identity. It's better that you let go of that part of your identity than to reject a person who's bringing greater light to you. Um So anyway, um so there's two levels of covenant, the higher level is to become and the reason that's important, uh There's two reasons this is important 0:54:04 - 0:54:27 with this idea of give me a sacrifice that will make it easier for me to obey this other thing. Uh One is that there, there, there can be power that flows that way. Um But that's not news to you because it's what you described. But I think the, the bigger picture is the hidden part of that, of why it 0:54:27 - 0:54:53 works in the first place. It turns out there's no secret tunnels or anything. Uh No, no shortcuts. Um The reason it works is that all things are connected to all things and we, we can't repent of a sin. It doesn't work that way. You can repent of all sins. Or no sins. And so when we're trying to repent 0:54:53 - 0:55:13 of a sin and we're struggling, it's almost always the case that the real reason is because we're ignoring all the other ones at the same time. And, and whenever you don't obey God fully and submit to him fully, you create these anchors that prevent your progress towards him, it's like, it's like climbing 0:55:12 - 0:55:35 up a rock wall while you're tethered to the ground. And you think that the next thing is that little knob that you have to grab, it's not the next thing is you gotta cut that rope that ties you to the ground. Yeah. So and then uh it makes me think of the phrase remission of sins. So for the longest time 0:55:35 - 0:55:56 , it's like, oh, this great mystery, what could this possibly mean? Uh It's not that hard. It means that uh you don't sin anymore, right? You don't commit new sins. That's what permission means, right? Like if you go into remission of cancer, it means you have no new tumors, right? It doesn't mean you 0:55:56 - 0:56:22 just cut out the old ones, you don't grow new ones so you stop, you stop sinning. And um that is in a, a nice segue into uh maybe some imagery to help illustrate this. So this is kind of a gross story. I'm sorry. Hopefully it's not TMI I had this nasty planter's wart on my foot right under one of the 0:56:21 - 0:56:44 , the bones, you know, and the way I walked it was like one place on my foot that would be most painful to have a wart. That's where I had and I, I got it like, way back in the dark ages, probably like 2001. Uh, uh, 1 of the several gifts I got from basic training. I also broke my foot, um, which has 0:56:44 - 0:57:04 had lifelong issues because of that. But anyway, um, so I've gone through all these spans of trying to get rid of this war and sometime, I don't know, it might have been two or three years ago. I said to my wife, that's it. This thing is gone for good. And I don't really care if it kills me. One of us 0:57:04 - 0:57:25 is gonna die, me or the sport. And the reason this is illustrative I think is because when you haven't yet been converted, you haven't forsaken your sins. You go through all these many cycles of thinking you have and then like you said, something comes up and you're like, oh, shoot, I slipped whatever 0:57:24 - 0:57:46 . Um, but it's not like let me try the same thing again. You have to go deeper than you did before. Right? And there's the way they, what's that? There's a meta problem. Right? There's a deeper underlying problem that produced it. Exactly. It has nothing to do with the specific sin, you might say, oh 0:57:46 - 0:58:12 , I'm addicted to this. I struggle with that. No, you don't. You struggle with trusting God. That's it. That's the only problem is you believe your ideas about reality more than you believe. God. That's it. That's the only problem that ever exists in terms of sin. Mhm. So, you have to dig deeper. Right 0:58:11 - 0:58:36 . And, um, I thought originally I could get rid of this war by just putting one of those pads on it and whatever, or, um, I, I tried, like, duct tape on there and we went through like all these levels of duration of time and depth of pain and, you know, scraping and whatever, just nasty, extremely painful 0:58:36 - 0:59:03 stuff. Well, the, the all out nuclear war was I got, I'm not for, I'm no one should do this. This is not safe at your foot. Do not do this. Um, but, but I got this like crazy concrete acid and I, I became an expert in using duct tape to make a dam around the wart on my foot. And I would dump this concrete 0:59:02 - 0:59:23 acid on my foot and it was excruciating. It was like, I was getting stabbed to death and then I would scrape it out with a razor blade. And I determined that all the other times I was doing this, I didn't go deep enough. So I went down to like, it was like eight months. I did this every single day and 0:59:23 - 0:59:47 it was excruciatingly painful. Um, and I'm pretty sure I, like, I went down to the bone. I basically dug down to China on my foot. And um I, I went like way past when I thought it was good enough and then um it started to grow back and everything was fine. And so when you discover that you haven't gone 0:59:47 - 1:00:08 deep enough, you have to go deeper, right? And you have to figure out what the real issue is. Yeah, I love that. Like that, that really resonates deeply with me. And um I'm getting answers to questions in real time. Like as you're saying to me, like how to fix your foot, how to fix my Yeah. Now I know 1:00:08 - 1:00:28 um and this kind of speaks to a point you have talked about where um I know I shared with you, I was reading Jacob Jacob Ether uh two or three where moon talks about, you know, if you don't have, if you, because of your unbelief, you don't have the experiences of the brother of Jim, right? He basically 1:00:28 - 1:00:45 says this to the gentiles and I'm saying to the Lord, what are you talking about? I believe anything you tell me like I, I'll believe it. Just tell me I, I'm the unbelief. Then the spirit taught me this really important principle of. It's like, well, it's not the things that you don't believe is that 1:00:44 - 1:01:00 you believe so many things that are false, that instill fundamental unbelief in you that you don't even, you're not even really aware of. It's like in the source code, like, like you don't even understand the degree of unbelief you carry with you because it's actually kind of hidden from you because 1:00:59 - 1:01:16 it's just operating in the background. It's not, it's not on the front of your awareness, your consciousness. And so I was telling you, one of the biggest revelatory experiences I've ever had in my life was asking the question, what do I believe? That's not true. And I just took a piece of paper and 1:01:16 - 1:01:33 a pencil and it was just like, I filled up like 50 things in about 10 minutes, you know. And I was like, whoa, yeah, I do believe that the Lord is just like he was just like waiting for this question. So you can just start rattling off all this nonsense that I had in my belief structure that was wrong 1:01:32 - 1:01:54 . And so the reason why I'm bringing that up at this point in the conversation is, is because you're talking about going deeper and repenting of things deeper than you think, or you're digging out this wart that's way deeper than you understood from the outcome. One of the most productive things we can 1:01:54 - 1:02:19 do to do this is to sort of open ourselves to the prospect that most of what we think we know is just not true. And that's an tethering very, very difficult thing to kind of face. But if you do it with the Lord, he has the ability to dismantle an atomic bomb you know, um, sometimes, and I know we've 1:02:18 - 1:02:40 talked about the value of ripping all the wires at once versus taking one wire at a time. But the Lord knows how to dismantle you. Um, and if you're all in, on the prospect, he'll do it with you in a way that you won't, you won't, like, die in, in the sense of like, abandon it. And, well, if you die 1:02:40 - 1:03:01 it'll still be better. You know what I mean? Like he's gonna, he's gonna manage this with you, right? Well, this, this, this reminds me actually in a weird way of, of um another set of questions that was asked, there were at least two on this line, which was, it was something like, um does our relationship 1:03:00 - 1:03:22 , our perceived relationship with the Lord right now is that always, is always, is that always true to what it is? I don't know if that makes sense the way I phrased it. But like, you know, Moses went a long time in his life before he came face to face with the Lord. And that doesn't mean his life wasn't 1:03:22 - 1:03:42 going the right way. It's just that, you know, is there a sense of timing or is it that you don't have the relationship you want perceived, does that imply that you're doing something wrong? And I, I'll kick this one off if that's OK. Um This is one of many topics in the gospel, which I already referred 1:03:42 - 1:04:01 to that it's very hard to give a prescrip prescriptive, cover all the bases answer because it's exactly the kind of thing that the wrong kinds of people will latch on to, to justify continued sin, they'll say. But no, I'm, I'm right with the Lord. I'm doing all this stuff. I know I shouldn't. And I'm 1:04:01 - 1:04:29 not doing all this stuff. I know I should, but I'm right with the Lord covenant. Right. Yeah. And he's gonna come to me later like when I die or whatever. Um But there's, and also this has a lot to do with the end times. Uh There, there are reasons where he will delay. Um You could say restitution for 1:04:29 - 1:04:53 justice. Um There's a lot of different ways you could describe this, but there are, there are many situations where there is benefit to you from, for him to withhold what you merit. And um so it's an opportunity to exert greater trust in God and exhibit that and, and then uh it, it multiplies your blessings 1:04:53 - 1:05:16 . You're keeping your chips on the table and one piece of this that I'll share with you is that um there are things that you can't do and can't be taught when you have certain experiences that are happening to you. I'll throw a weird one out that uh I'm guessing no one's ever thought about. But the Lord 1:05:16 - 1:05:37 promises that it's possible uh for a person to gain power over their life in this life so that's all over the place. And John, for example, and so he, he never didn't have that power because he lived without sin. But you can come up to a point with the Lord in your life that you have power over your 1:05:37 - 1:05:59 life. And so this this I'm sorry, this might be a deep dive. But it raises the question uh why is it that only Jesus could do what he did? Because doesn't that mean that hypothetically some person could have come to the earth and sinned like we all do overcome his sin or her sin and then gain power over 1:05:59 - 1:06:24 their life, which would enable them to, to do what Jesus did in Gethsemane. And you know, does that mean that that could have happened? And the answer is no, because that path to getting power over your own life, it comes with experiences with God that would make it impossible to, to uh not perceive 1:06:23 - 1:06:43 the presence of the Father, which is one of the many things that had to be true for Jesus to do what he did. And that's not to mention the whole importance of being a perfect sacrifice, but we won't, won't get into that. But, but the point is it's an example of this principle that there are, there are 1:06:42 - 1:07:09 certain things that you can only do before that happens, whatever that is some experience with God, some relationship with God. And this is one reason why sometimes um you need to um you need to wait, you get to wait. It's not that you need to. My kids say dad, do. We need to, I say you get to, you get 1:07:09 - 1:07:37 to clean your room, you get to whatever. Um So we, we have the, the privilege and opportunity to exercise greater faith sometimes waiting for the Lord to um to fulfill his promises. What do you think about that? But it's a dangerous, it's a dangerous principle because invariably, and this is, this is 1:07:37 - 1:07:56 really tricky because a lot of the things that you can say to try to help people, um the people who need to hear what you're saying, um They're not going to listen to what you're saying. And the people that, that really shouldn't hear what you're saying are gonna grab on to it and run the opposite direction 1:07:55 - 1:08:20 . They should. And so it's really hard to convey um information or relay blessings in a way that they're not going to be misused. One of the um one of the most helpful things for me in my life is to assume I'm in a relative state of height deception at all times that unless I'm really in a confluence 1:08:19 - 1:08:41 with the spirit of the Lord that I don't see things clearly. And if you're in a state of self deception or self delusion, and you get something that's higher knowledge like you just shared, it's really easy to use the words of God or a principle to enable that deception into perpetuity, right, to like 1:08:40 - 1:09:03 support it just, I think that's what you're saying is like, it's a hard thing to share because you don't want someone to take that information and then use it, build it into their narrative that keeps them in a right. Right. And this uh this is a point opportunity to raise lightly the access they have 1:09:03 - 1:09:26 to information today uh through technology such as this. And I think it's super important to understand. I won't get into the full story of this, but just a little bit um this is part of why the world is going to be destroyed right here that today the channels we have to share information are public 1:09:25 - 1:09:47 for the most part, they're public. And so things you'll see in books that I haven't published yet and developing this disclaimer to put in the front of the book that says that something like if we were having a face to face conversation, I'd never tell you any of these things unless I knew you had read 1:09:47 - 1:10:08 this, this and this book and you're doing everything that those books describe because knowledge is incremental. And when you gain access to things that you're not ready for, the most likely thing is that you're either gonna turn away from something that's good or abuse it and use it for evil. So then 1:10:08 - 1:10:31 that begs the question, why would you share those things then? And the answer is because time is up because the people who wouldn't use it for good are basically gone anyway. They will be shortly. And so it's time to just blast the world with truth because we're in the end. Yeah, it's the Hail Marys 1:10:31 - 1:10:54 . That's right. Right. And, and, and so, so let me flip this around and ask another question that I'll also give you the answer to. Why were these people reserved? The uh the people who have been reserved until the end? Why were they reserved? Well, one reason is because what they required to activate 1:10:53 - 1:11:19 them is a blast of truth. So if you've ever tried to start a big engine, it takes a lot of torque to get that thing spinning. And if you had a smaller engine, it might blow the thing away to put that much torque on it. And in, in our day, we've got a lot of big engines sitting around that aren't started 1:11:19 - 1:11:44 yet and the information that will start them will also uh basically destroy everything else. And this is, this is exactly what the scriptures mean when they say the, the marvelous work is to one way or the other. It's a fullness and a plainness that will get you one direction or the other. Yeah. And 1:11:44 - 1:12:05 um I know it says this in various places, but Brigham Young said it and Joseph Smith, I believe, said it too. Is that the endowment will make angels or devils of you will make gods or devils of you. Yeah. All information does that. It's a wedge, it's pushing you. It's, it's this idea that there is, you 1:12:04 - 1:12:26 know, all creation is predicated upon a separation of light and darkness, right? So, which way are you going to create into? That's right. And, and tying this back into the wart idea because we're going to try to prevent as many people from eating lunch as possible. Um, your two choices are you dig it 1:12:26 - 1:12:46 out yourself or you have someone else cut it out of you and most reasonable people are going to go to a doctor and get it cut out of them. Right. But my personal again, I'm not giving anyone medical advice and I need attorney advisement here to, to, to disclaim this. I don't want to get sued. No one 1:12:45 - 1:13:09 should do anything I tell them to do for any medical purposes. Don't use cement acid. No, don't do that. But my experience, I've had a lot of health problems in my short life and my, my experience, my uniform experience with doctors has been horrifically disappointing. And so before I do anything, the 1:13:09 - 1:13:29 first thing I do is I look at peer reviewed research to see the likelihood of, of outcomes. Like I tore my shoulder in three places. I saw that 80% of shoulder surgeries lead to worse outcomes. And I thought, well, let me just try other things. So anyway, letting it heal up on its own. Ended up. I'm 1:13:29 - 1:13:53 fine. I'm 100%. Um, so with this foot thing, I, I hit the internet, I'm like, ok, what's the procedure for this? Ok. Doctor cuts it out. And then how often do they grow back? It's a huge percentage. Right. So, I ended up going my own way with that and figured out a way to get it to work, have to do with 1:13:52 - 1:14:16 anything. Well, the number of people cut a planter war out of their own foot. It's a very small number. Right. That's a weird thing to do because it freaking hurts and most people would rather hand that off to someone else to do to them, hopefully under anesthetic. So I don't want to get too much into 1:14:16 - 1:14:43 it, but this very much intersects into this idea of the ministry of men because you either cut yourself or you get cut by a priest and that's the way you get cut and shaped into a pure vessel for the Lord. There are a lot of things that um we could talk about with that but, but there are millions of 1:14:43 - 1:15:06 flow into this. But um in the end, end times in which we live, this is relevant to what we were just talking about because what's going to happen is that tons and tons of information is will flow down from heaven and people are going to react to it. And part of the reaction is that uh these people will 1:15:06 - 1:15:26 hear these people we've been talking about, they will hear what they're hearing and, and then broadcast their own version of this life. And so it gets brighter and brighter and brighter because it's like this flow of light. And uh yeah, that, that's all over the scriptures, the imagery of, of fountains 1:15:26 - 1:15:45 springing up in the wilderness and deserts and things. Uh other sheep I have which are not of this fold and on and on and on. But people will activate and then they become a conduit of light because of what's been cut out of them or given to them. Depends on how you all look at it. And then they have 1:15:45 - 1:16:10 a greater access to the spirit and it's just a flood of light on the earth and um that causes consequences and people have to react to that, right? Like light in its physical forms and its spiritual forms has as much of a destructive effect as it has an enlightening effect, right? Like um this is like 1:16:10 - 1:16:28 the idea of a laser versus an incandescent light bulb. So like you can submit yourself to like this light bulb that's here on my ceiling. And what it has is a lot of different waves that's kind of dispersed, but a lot of them cancel each other out because they're not. And it, and it gives me a general 1:16:27 - 1:16:49 view of light like I can see kind of in the in the sphere in which I exist, it kind of is useful. But what happens with the laser is you get highly coordinate light waves that come into a synchronicity that in order for that to be of value to you, in terms of, of uh enlightenment, you have to be of the 1:16:48 - 1:17:11 same order of frequency of that light. Otherwise that laser will, will, will cut you in half right, and has a complete annihilating effect on um on its environment if it's an intense laser. And so you either have to move into the structure where you are of the same vibration or the frequency of the light 1:17:11 - 1:17:27 in which you are receiving and that becomes part of you and becomes part of you, you being or an extension of your being or you become an extension of that light or that thing just burns and destroys everything in its path. And so what you're sort of, I'm gonna articulate maybe what I'm hearing from 1:17:26 - 1:17:49 you is by your own free will and choice move into those structures by the complete submission and faith required for you to resonate at the level of that light before that light becomes a complete annihilation and a destruction to you because that's the inevitable trajectory in the short term that we 1:17:49 - 1:18:11 really are looking at with an end time scenario. Yeah, you know, and specifically with that, it's, it's the consequences of response to the outpouring of truth because you've got certain folks who will respond with that to that by trying to persecute those people. And then you've got uh natural disasters 1:18:10 - 1:18:32 and such that are part of that response. Yeah. So anyway, that, that's a big bucket of worms. We should probably try to wrap this up into it, right? But every level of existence will respond in its own dimension to that type of input in its own way. Yep. What are the, any parting thoughts here before 1:18:31 - 1:18:51 we close this up? I have a kind of a parting question and this is a question I get, you know, I'm um I'm obviously um I'm a big fan of, of the things that you're teaching. And I've, it's, it's been an enormous influence to me and very, very helpful and the answer to prayer. Um Sometimes I get a response 1:18:50 - 1:19:13 um to the things that you share um that goes something like this. And I like to see if you'd respond to it. Um What, what Rob teaches is awesome, is powerful, but it feels like there's this sort of this element that um no, let me rephrase this. How does Christ enable you to do the things that you talk 1:19:13 - 1:19:30 about? Because, you know, I have associates and friends who say things like um well, so what we're to be, we're choose, we're to choose to become God. And then once we become God by our own discipline and power and choices and then all of a sudden you become like God and then we get to hang out with 1:19:30 - 1:19:50 Him. Where does the flow of grace and mercy and enablement um through the power of Christ occur? Or is it just a matter of you like just learning how to be awesome and do everything God says? And then you get to be like him and sharing him? So does that make sense? The way I'm answer asking this question 1:19:49 - 1:20:11 ? Like, where do you engage Christ in this process? Um Because the way you explain, I think is extraordinarily helpful, but I wanna make this connection or ask you about this connection about where Christ is with you in this process of obedience in faith. Yeah. So um there are a lot of different ways 1:20:11 - 1:20:36 to explain this. I, I take one tack with this uh in a book called God's Justice. There's a chapter on mercy and grace. Um But you can't get that book yet. So that doesn't do much, much good to anybody. Uh It's been done for a while but um uh I have a couple other ones. I have to come first. Um But let 1:20:36 - 1:21:05 me, let me just try to take this ad hoc um folks who oppose that question are, are setting up this, this, this idea like somehow I believe that through what, what we, we do, we can come up to God. And they say, well, you're overstating the contributions a human could make and I would actually flip that 1:21:05 - 1:21:32 around completely and say no, actually you're ignoring the contributions God has already made and overstating. You're the one that's overstating what humans can do. Not me, because I already recognize that everything you think is good about you is worthless. If it's actually good, it came from God and 1:21:31 - 1:21:53 he gave it to you before you paid for it. And so I would flip that whole thing around. I think it's a, it's almost a non sequitur. So there's this backdrop structure that you are working with this, this, this broad assumption that everything good in power and light and movement and everything in your 1:21:53 - 1:22:18 being that you do, that is a shift in reality is already empowered by God. That's good and true. So like it, it, it's not an assumption that is, that is absolutely true. And I know it without a shadow of a doubt. So it's so um as you, as you say, often, it's important to read everything you've written 1:22:18 - 1:22:47 because frankly, Rob, what you're doing is you are upsetting so many false belief systems that have to be upset in order to, to move forward. You, you said that you said that best Todd with the comments you're making about how uh would you say you prayed about what more you should believe? And um yeah 1:22:46 - 1:23:12 , yeah, it was very productive. Um Shoot you just froze up. Can you hear me? OK. Oh Yeah, everything just froze for a second. So this is really good to hear you articulate. I'm assuming this in your approach, but I just wanted to hear you articulate it because it's gonna, there's a lot of people who 1:23:12 - 1:23:28 leave my small sphere of friends and influence who are really turned on to the things you're saying it's extremely helpful in their progression. This is, this is a common question I have is, well, it sounds like it's just like us doing it. And then at some point you get a kick in with uh no, it's really 1:23:28 - 1:23:51 good to hear you kind of step back and articulate the backdrop to this knowing. So, yeah, so the, the question is not whether grace is Him giving us something we don't deserve. It's, it's how much can he give us at a time? And then what do we have to do after that to make the most out of it? And um here's 1:23:51 - 1:24:13 another thing that, that's gonna shake some understanding a little bit. Um I think most people that would say something like I just did, would try to draw a focus on to what you do in response to what God does. But it's this relationship like this between Him and us. Actually, I would turn it around 1:24:13 - 1:24:40 like this. So everything we do is because God um did it first and he did it for us. He loved us first before we deserved it. And then what he asks in return, we think of this in terms of our obedience to him as if we're giving him something that's worth something to him. Actually, what he asked us to 1:24:40 - 1:25:09 do is to turn and love others as he's already loved us in the same sense that they don't deserve it. Just like we didn't when he did it to us. This is the right. Yeah. And in a crazy, crazy arithmetic. That is the very way that we come up to be more like Him because it's only in what you suffer for others 1:25:08 - 1:25:32 that you can really come to know Him who has suffered so much for you. Yeah. Um The moment, the moment you sin and light withdraws from you, the adversary will almost always immediately teach you a lie in that space of withdrawal. And this is why sin can be such a destruction to you with sin always comes 1:25:32 - 1:25:50 a deception or a lie that's embedded in that experience. And one of those experiences is that you have like Adam and Eve experience. I have to now hide from God and we've even framed in our tradition. The idea of repentance is, is this approaching God again? So he likes you again. I have to repent. So 1:25:50 - 1:26:11 God likes me. It's this negotiation that I have with Him of, of how can I, how can he like me again? And when you have the understanding of what you just described, if you can digest this in your spirit, that everything that's happening to you is because God's love for you is so so fond that you can 1:26:11 - 1:26:33 even comprehend. You quickly want to abandon yourself to that process as opposed to negotiating with an adversary in a repentance process, which is, I think what happens because the adversary deceives us into that to that view. Um So I'm grateful for your witness and your teaching of this principle that 1:26:33 - 1:26:53 God loves you so intensely that even in your darkest moments and you don't see things clearly. Everything is, it's not how you trying to reach and grab it. He is behind you and preparing you and giving you everything you possibly can manage to the degree that you will open yourself to be faithful and 1:26:52 - 1:27:17 obedient to Him to the degree that you can repent, um which is to turn everything in your being to Him and to receive everything from Him. So I love that you are teaching and sharing this true principle that God is in everything good and in everything behind you and ahead of you and to the side of you 1:27:17 - 1:27:46 and that He already did it. He already moved through it. And what you have to do is employ this principle of all in because if you're not all in, if you're lukewarm, you get spewed by necessity. Not because he's mean, but the, the trigger to access the fullness of His grace is this principle of all of 1:27:46 - 1:28:06 your heart might mind and strength and um and I appreciate that. Like I know that's true. I know that that is the principle that triggers a rush of power to really overcome the darkness that you're facing is, is that, does that comply with how you're, you're positioning this? I hope it is. Yeah. And 1:28:06 - 1:28:31 I, I would just underscore it's, it's, you know, not only has he already, he, he is already responsible for all the good, you know, he is absolutely consummately, pumping good to you all the time. It's, you're, you're swimming in a flow of light from God all the time and, and everything He wants you 1:28:31 - 1:28:57 to do is to get you into even more. We love God because he loved us first. That was the most profound principles. I think scripture and he wants us to love others as far as we understand His love for us. And that's how you move, you move forward that way. And that, that, that can be a tremendous motivation 1:28:56 - 1:29:25 for repentance. Um It's sufficient to think in terms of um the exchange is sufficient. So even the most selfish person has every reason in the world to fully submit to God because that will maximize what they say they're all about. But sometimes a much stronger motivation is um how much you care about 1:29:25 - 1:29:51 other people. And when God shows you some measure of how much He cares about you, you know, all you can do is think about what can I possibly do to help other people because they don't know this yet, right? Love you measure love. Someone asks what is love. Um Love is how much you're willing to suffer 1:29:50 - 1:30:14 for the benefit of another person. That's what love is. And with God, the only limit to his love for us is what would decrease his love for others because it's a universal optimization. And other than that, there is no limit and this is something that I wish I could help people understand better than 1:30:14 - 1:30:36 they do. There is no limit to what He will do for you. And too often people accuse him and say, well, why does God allow this? Why does God allow that? There is an answer for every single one of those questions. And if you knew, if you knew you drop down on your knees and you'd spend the rest of your 1:30:36 - 1:31:08 life praising Him. He does everything he can for everyone all the time. It's he is not part of the equation. What he gets out of it is your joy. And that's how we have to be to understand how He is. We have to come towards that. Yeah, I had an experience once where I um I saw rings of people within people 1:31:07 - 1:31:28 , within people, within people and the joy of their redemption would flow out into eternity. And each time a person was in a redemptive experience and it, and it pushed out to greater and greater redemption the joy of the Lord. It would increase in the term that was given to me was an infinity of infinity 1:31:28 - 1:31:54 and it was his joy and his glory that you experience. When you experience the intense realization of God unveiled, that makes you feel legit like like you are going to cease existing is so intense. Like you know, the idea of a rock falling upon you to hide you, um your awareness of your unworthiness 1:31:53 - 1:32:19 is so intense. And the Lord taught me that that was his joy that you were experiencing. It was his joy that would actually eradicate your existence. If you weren't veiled, or you were up to the ability to, to uh experience it with him. And that's a different, it's a different experience of I have a friend 1:32:18 - 1:32:37 , I don't need to probably wrap up, but I have a friend who shared with me once he said I was in the throes of temptation and I was ready to give into a temptation. And he said, the spirit said to him, I love you just the same if you give into this temptation. And he said that thought eradicated the 1:32:37 - 1:33:00 desire for that temptation and safety. And it was a really, really powerful experience for him because he realized that God wasn't an adversary that he was trying to uh negotiate with, for his happiness that everything God did was for him. And he, and he, you know, he had this knowledge of that in that 1:33:00 - 1:33:25 moment of how much love He had. And that love that God had for Him, eradicated that knowledge and information about eradicating the pull of that temptation. And uh I think that teaches a lot of, a lot of truth in that experience. The love of God is the only thing that matters at the end of the day. Everything 1:33:24 - 1:33:49 is for that. Well, Todd, I appreciate your time and being here. I think we should wrap up. Uh Thanks everyone who we've had about 40 people give or take on the stream. So, thanks for your time. I hope this was useful. Um And thanks again for folks for sending in questions and uh we were reading the chats 1:33:48 - 1:34:00 as this was going. I was um so thank you all for your participation. We appreciate it. Yep. Thank you. Have a good one, everybody. We'll see you.