The Eric Metaxas Show - Malachi O'Brien

Episode Date: March 8, 2023

Malachi O'Brien, Guinness-record challenger, literally runs into the studio to discuss his 152 consecutive  marathons, not only to beat records but to champion worthy causes.

Folks, welcome to the Eric Mattaxas show, sponsored by Legacy Precious Metals. There's never been a better time to invest in precious metals. Visit legacy p.m.investments.com. That's legacy p.m. Investments.com. Welcome to the Eric Metaxas show. I shouldn't tell you this, but Eric hired someone who sounds just like him to host today's show. But since I'm the announcer, they told me, so I'm telling you, don't be fooled. The real Eric's in jail.

Folks, welcome back. If I seem tired, it's because I'm tired. I ran 22 miles yesterday, right? I endured it. I did it. We're hoping that our friend Malachi O'Brien will appear in a few minutes and that we will have him on the program today in studio to talk about setting this world record.

It's insane. I'm sitting here now with my friend Barry McGuire. Barry, so we're talking about your book, ignite your life, defeat fear with effortless faith. You and I last night at dinner with Malachi, we're talking about your experiences with David Wilkerson and what it is, and again, when I came to faith, I assumed that if you're born again, if you accept Jesus, you have this kind of an adventure, which is exciting and fun. But as the years passed, I met a lot of people who call themselves evangelicals or born again,

or whatever, who don't have this joy, who don't have this life. And I kind of think, gosh, what's the point of that? It just seems like they're missing the adventure of walking with the living God. I mean, here you are talking about miracle stories. You and I could talk for days about miracle stories. We could. And I think there are a lot of people that think, like, well, that's not for me. But you're saying it is.

I mean, the book we're talking about, brand new book, ignite your life, defeat fear with effortless faith. Now, why do you say defeat fear? How does that come into it? Well, let me go back to joy first, because it's a really important point. You know, I am where I am right now, Karen and I are where we are right now, because we are searching for joy. I was raised Sunday morning, Sunday night, Wednesday night in church. I mean, and a sacrificial giving time, resources, whatever. We did all that from the first day of marriage on, okay? Okay, but it was a little bit legalistic. Well, yes. Absolutely. Absolutely. I was coming on the Nazarene Church, and that's what you do. And my folks modeled that well. But Karen, I realized that we didn't have joy. We had no joy. We kept saying, God were doing all this, we're trying to earn God's favor. Right. Folks, God loves you. You can't make him love you any more than what he loves you.

But we didn't understand that, and we were just trying to earn our way somehow. And so we started praying for joy. God, we want joy. We went to a lunch in our church one day. It was the 50th anniversary of the San First Assembly of God. And the speaker was Herb Ellingwood. Herb Ellingwood was the Legal Affairs Secretary for Governor Reagan. Governor Reagan. That's how far back we're talking. I've been doing this for a long time.

So this is the 60s. I'm 80 years old. I'm proud of it. Yeah. So, but what a ride. So, and because of this, I sat next to him at the head table. And for an hour, we didn't talk about Reagan. He talked nonstop about his faith sharing experiences. He was laughing.

He was crying. And then last night, you can't believe. And he was going off. And I got under such conviction. I walked away in tears. I said, that's what I want. I want his joy. And Karen and I started talking, and we prayed.

We said, okay, for now on, we're going to move everybody we can closer to Jesus. That was 1976. Okay. That was 1973. Excuse me. Okay. Three years before, I thought it was going full-time ministry. And you know what?

Before we knew it, we just were talking about. I said, Karen, we got joy. We do. We have joy. We've had it ever since. And surely after that, we found this scripture that we'd read before but didn't have any meaning to us. And now it does. He says in John 1511, it's that last parable where the dry branches and the ones that bear fruit, he says, when you bear fruit,

ah, then you're my disciple. And my joy will remain with you. My joy will remain with you. Imagine Jesus saying that. And your joy will remain full. And it works. It does. We've had, ever since then, we've had joy.

And I can give you a lot more scriptures about why. What an amazing word for Jesus to use. My joy will remain with you. Notice it's his joy. His joy remains with us. He brings us joy. When I walk away from faith sharing experiences, which is every day, I often look up, and I see Jesus smiling at me, you know, we can grieve God.

But did you know you can give God joy? Did you know you can? Your joy doesn't give you strength. It's his joy. And when I know, he just direct me into a conversation, and he just gave me the words to say, and I just saw a life change, and I walk away from that. I look up and he's smiling at me.

What do you think that does for me? But to bounce in my step, it'll put, it'll ignite your life. That's what I'll do. See that, okay, so obviously the book is titled, ignite your life. But the fact is, I mean, again, it's taken me years to see that there are many people, you know, I hope I'll see them in heaven. They seem to believe some of the theology that I believe, but they don't have this adventure. They don't have this joy. And it's one of the reasons we're friends and your wife, Karen, is exactly the same. There's the joy. It's like a secret joy. Like,

I've got this secret inside, and I can't hide it because it's bubbling out. out. It's this joyful relationship with a Father in heaven who really loves me. I'm not performing to get his love. He loves you because he loves you, not because he can use you. It's primarily because he loves you. He spends full time with you. He spends full time with me. He spends full time with you. The capacity of God, we can't even fathom. But he spends full time with us. Think of that. He spends full time with us. And he wants to direct your stuff. He wants to be our friend. He wants to speak through us.

He wants to use every moment so you just know you're powered by the Holy Spirit. You know, last night we talked about the scripture, one of my favorite scripture is Romans 828. All things work together for good for those that love the Lord and are called according to his purposes. Yes, yes. Now that scripture, I realize that since 1988, I was just saying my book came out in paperback, fish out of water that ends up with me accepting Jesus. Since that moment, I can look back and see clearly

how God has directed my steps oftentimes totally miraculously. Like where you just say, like, wow, that was God. That was not coincidence. It's so clear. And I think to myself, God wants that for everyone. He wants us to be able to experience him in a visceral daily way that's not just, I got this theology and I'm doing my best, but I have a joy. And because you have, look, first of all, I'm glad you wrote a book about it because we could talk about this, but the book is, ignite your life, defeat fear with effortless faith. And you, you live this, Barry. You live this. You're not in full-time ministry, but you are talking to people about Jesus. You're right, you're not officially in full-time ministry, but it is your, it is your life. And I want to, I

Obviously, have you, I want to record more with you so we can continue the conversation tomorrow the next day because there's so much more, and I want to get into the book. But we just got two minutes left before Malachi blows through here in his running gear. The book is Ignite Your Life, Defeat Fear with Effortless Faith. There are many Christians who, you know, when you say they don't have joy, the downside of that is that they, I mean, the other, I should, should say, not the downside of that, but the flip side of that is there's a fear operating. It's almost like they're fearing, they're fearing God's judgment more than they're appreciating the joy that this awesome God, who is a judge, loves you and wants to speak to you and walk with you.

80% of Christians are living in fear today. It's unbelievable, they're living in fear today. And if you're living in fear, you don't have faith. Of course, without faith, it's impossible to please God. But more importantly, if you're living in fear without faith, you can't share your faith. So I would say that Satan has sterilized. He's paralyzed, but he's sterilized the church today. Where without faith, we can't share our faith so we can keep us so we can't reproduce ourselves. Actually, now, the way you put it last night, which I think is really telling, is or people are sharing their faith in a wooden,

religious formulaic way that pushes people away. People are looking for joy and light and something and authenticity, and they see this kind of formulaic religious, like you need to believe this and do this and pray this prayer. And a lot of people, they kind of just back away because they go, you know what, if there is a God, that doesn't smell like the God that I think. And it's hard. All the effort, I have to remember the script and get the points in

and I'm sweaty. I did that to begin with, and then I read the scripture. Jesus said, they'll know you, you're my disciple by your love. And when you just love, forget about getting him saved. Just generally love on people. Think of that one. Wow. We're going to put a pin in it.

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Just go to patriotmobile.com slash Eric, patriotmobile.com slash Eric or call them at 878 Patriot. Get free activation today with the offer code Eric. Folks, welcome back. Now, you know, all through this show, I've been teasing the idea that while I'm sitting here doing this show, my friend Malachi O'Brien, is out there running the streets of New York, completing what is meant to be his 150-second consecutive marathon, one per day. I mentioned that yesterday I ran part of his 151st consecutive marathon with him. The question is, will he make it to the studio in time to be on this program so that you can meet him? And here's the good news.

Yes, here he is. Malachi, welcome. Eric, thanks for having me. Malachi, look, you just finished running a marathon today before the program. You just finished, you got here, they put makeup on you, and here you are. Yes. You have finished running your 152nd consecutive marathon. I want to shake your hand.

I am, like, honored that this would work out, that you came to New York to do these two marathons in New York City so that you could come on the program. I don't know where to begin. Let's just start with the fact that you're planning to fly home tonight. Kansas City and to run your final 153rd marathon at home among your family or in the in the in um simple question I I've been talking to you a lot about this but my audience doesn't have a clue first of all if you if somebody says to you apart from running these marathons what do you do in your regular life when you're not breaking records like who are you well you know I have a family.

You know, people go, how can you, are you married? The answer is yes. You know, my first wife and I have been married 21 years, so still married to her. We have five kids. And obviously, I pastor a church in the Kansas area. I'm an entrepreneur and involved in a lot of things. And people go, how do you do all that? I go, well, first off, there's no balance in my life.

I'm not trying to live a balanced life. A balanced life is a boring life. I live an obsessed life. And so that's what I've been doing. This is why I love you because you're crazy in the right way. It's very important to be crazy, but in the right way. Now, to your kids, do they still recognize Daddy? They don't remember my name.

They forgot about you. No, but you've been doing most of this running you've been doing in the neck of your woods at home. Your wife obviously is a saint to allow you to break a world record, which you broke over a month ago. And you're going home today. But you are someone that, I mean, to be. to even think about, I want to break a Guinness World Record, and it's not balancing billiard balls on my nose. It's to run consecutive marathons.

You've done it. What gave you the idea to do this, especially at this point in your life? I mean, you're a young man, you're 39, but you run a church. You've got kids. You've got all this. Like, it's just... Yeah, I think the origin story, and you know this because we're close friends. there are two traumatic events in the life of our family that really are causes I've been running for.

One would be youth mental health and the other one would be adoption foster care. A little over a year ago, you know the story. My oldest daughter attempted to take her own life. And that kind of woke my wife and I up to the need of just youth mental health and what the next generation is facing. And then we got involved in a foster care situation that we ended up adopting a young man out of the foster care system. But in the midst of that, we realized how broken the system is. how overwhelmed the system is. And so those were two causes that it kind of, I decided I wanted to run four.

But really, this is kind of mind-boggling to some people. I had a conversation with Tony Robbins, like the Tony Robbins, about a year ago during a live Facebook challenge he was doing. And just for about a minute. So when you talk about Tony Robbins, you're talking about the, how does he describe himself? He's the something guru. I mean, what is he?

He's the world's number one most well-known life and business strategist. He's coached people like Oprah Winfrey, you know, you name it, famous athletes. Bill – he actually coached Bill Clinton, you know. I mean, he is the most renowned, renowned business strategists in the world. And life coach. Life coach. But he's the guy who is like about, you know, like smashing the ceiling. Like we're not going to – I mean, he's the one that does the fire walks.

And, I mean, it's – we don't need to get into that now. But you've, I mean, you're a profound Christian pastor, and we can talk about that. You're a student of revival. You're big in prayer and fasting. But you're saying about a year ago, you met with Tony Robbins. Yeah, I had a conversation with him, and he said, if anyone wants to change your life, you have to change your identity. And so that got me thinking. And they said, if you want to do something big, you've got to take massive action now.

And so I said, okay, I'm going to do something I've never done before. And I just heard about a lady, Jackie Hunt's Busma, who was a blade runner. She lost half her leg to cancer. And she was in the midst of breaking the women's Guinness World Record for consecutive marathons. And it's one thing to do with two legs, but to do it with one leg and then a blade, that's another thing. And so I just said, I'm going to do it. And I didn't think about it. And that's a good thing.

It's obvious you didn't think about it because if you thought about it, you might not have done it. Sure. I applied to Guinness. And months, months later, months later, I heard back from them that I had approval to attend. the world record. Okay. You apply to see people don't know this and I don't even know that I knew this fully. So you decide based on what Tony Robbins says. Now again, we get into this whole theological thing. When you accept Jesus, you become a new person, right? This is what I believe, right? So this is a truism. What Tony Robbins is saying is it's true. But it doesn't need to end with when you accept Jesus.

Now, there's this whole concept of being a new person. We don't need to get into that right now, but I'm saying, but you accepted that as a concept, even though you are a new person in Christ, you're walking with God, you love your family, whatever. You're not like a wreck. No. But you just decided you wanted to embrace this concept. And then you're telling me that, so you say, yeah, I'm going to do that. And you have to apply to the Guinness Book of World Records.

so this could be potentially official. Yeah, if you don't apply, it's not official. There's a lot of people that have run marathons or done other things, but if you haven't applied before you do this, it doesn't count. And then if they accept you, they send you a list of rules that are ridiculous for documentation, record keeping, and how you have to complete every single marathon. I mean, I have 15 terabytes of video footage that I've got to turn into Guinness. I've got a running log of every day.

I've got thousands of pictures I've got to give to them so they can verify that I actually did this. There's a whole process of that. So part of our run yesterday, I mean, I saw you, we had to stop every five miles for you to change the battery on the GoPro because you're videotaping the whole thing. Yeah, and you're part of the history now. I mean, literally somebody at Guinness is going to see you in the video. You know, you're part of history now, which is phenomenal. I just have to say that it was so much fun running with you yesterday. you know, because I thought, when would I ever do this?

I mean, I ended up running 22 miles, which is insane. Now, we did, of course, walk little bits and stuff, and it's a slower pace than my normal running pace. Because this is about endurance. This is about completing this insane distance. But what boggles my mind, Malchaisa, you let me just taste it yesterday. I mean, I ran once like five miles with you back in the beginning

when we were in Pennsylvania, right? So I ran like five miles. But this was like to taste what this is. And then I thought to myself, you know, okay, I ran 22 miles. You ran 26.2 miles yesterday. And today you just finished. And the day before, and the day before and the day before. So I still want to know what prepped you.

When you get this idea like, oh, yeah, I'm going to do that. You must have had a background that like, oh, yeah, I can do distance running or that's in my wheelhouse. potentially. Yeah, I've been an ultra runner. You know, I've self-identified as a semi-professional ultra-runner. Okay. But I actually...

That needs to be said. Yeah. Just in case somebody's going to do that, it's like, no, no, no, no. You have done ultra running. And ultra running means... Any distance over 26.2 miles. So I've done two 100-mile races. I actually did not finish the first ever ultra I competed in, which is a 50-mile race.

Because I didn't know how to make it through the moment where your body wants to quit. You're in so much pain. you have to learn to go into the pain cave. I was telling you about that yesterday. Find another gear and get out of it. I didn't know that the first time around, but I learned it the second and the third time around. But isn't it also because I think you told me this yesterday on our run?

This is the fun thing about running with you. It was like we had this wonderful fellowship talking and stuff. Didn't you just like run at a pace that was too fast? Oh yeah. So back in 2012 when I ran the ultra that I quit, the 50-mile race, the weekend before I ran a 314 marathon, which isn't bad. Okay, excuse me, you're crazy. You ran a 312 marathon.

I am very impressed. You ran a 312 marathon, and then you decide a week later to run an ultra-marathon. Yeah, I was David Guggins before David Guggins was David Guggins, and I tried to do that. Nobody knows who David Guggins is except you just told me about him yesterday. He's a marathon. He's an ultramarathon, like, maniac. He's an inspirational person. And so I ran too fast.

And it's kind of one of those metaphors. Every day I'm learning things, the Lord's teaching me just about life in general. I ran too fast and I wasn't prepared. You know, some people don't realize there is a pace to these things. Okay, hold on. First of all, we're going to be back. Plenty more. Malachi, I cannot believe we're sitting here.

152 consecutive marathons. Today, you just finished 152. Tomorrow, the final one, we'll be right back. Just yesterday morning, they let me know you were gone. Tell me why Relief Factor is so successful at lowering or eliminating pain. I'm often asked that question just the other night. I was asked that question. Well, the owners of Relief Factor tell me they believe our bodies were designed to heal.

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844-863 Hope. God bless you. We don't normally do this on this program. We don't normally have a freewheeling Marx Brothers approach to the program. But today, I said, if we can do this, Malachi O'Brien, my friend, you and I ran yesterday. You did your 151st consecutive marathon. Tomorrow in New York, you're going to attempt to run your 152nd consecutive marathon. Could you do it before the program so you could be on the program and talk about it?

And you did it. I heard you leave my house this morning because Georgie barked at like 630 a.m. or something like that. Georgie Barker was like, George, you shut up, it's Malachi, he's going on and run.

You just finished. You made a decision, there's a lot to talk about, but you made a decision, you know, when you broke the record of 104, at what point do you say enough? Like, how does that work?

You know, actually, I didn't know how to say, how to stop. I mean, literally, I felt like I'd go forever. And so it was really through council of friends. Because I want to keep going, but I can tell my body's breaking down. I want to see how far I could push the limits.

You want to see how far you can break your body down. See, this is where as one of your friends, I want to say to you, no, stop that. You've got to be careful because you could actually do permanent damage. And you want to be, you know, you want to be a good steward of your body. But at some point, you said what? How far did you decide you thought it reasonable to go? I actually a couple weeks ago, and it was really kind of the start of the Asbury Revival.

And there were some thoughts around that because the Lord really did a work in my heart during that time. I decided I was also running for revival. And just some things that my spirit shifted and then just conversation you and I had and a conversation other people had. I said, you know, it's time to put a bow on this. And I told you, I'm going to do 151. And you said no. I mean, you're the reason why I'm doing two more because you said no. Well, because I thought if you're doing 151, if you're just going to pick, like why would you pick that number?

What's that number? There was a lady in Australia did this, did 150 marathons back to back, tip to toe. I believe it will be Guinness qualified if everything gets turned in for her. And so I knew I was just a few weeks behind her. Oh, so there's a potential. So 104 might be the record, but you thought in order to make sure that I get the record, I would need to do 151. Correct. So you at that point said, okay, I will go that far.

And that's when I said, wait a second, if you're going to do that many, why not do 153? Because 153 is a magical number from the Gospels. When Jesus says to them, you know, throw your net on that side of the boat, and they caught so many fish. It was like just an insane miracle, but they counted the fish. I think I've written about this in two of my books. They counted the fish and it's up being 153. And the specificity of that number is not like it was a lot of fish. It's a number that obviously told the people, of that day, like, you want to know how many fish they caught? I mean, if you're a fisherman in Sea of Galilee and somebody says we caught 150, they'd be like, what? Because it was not just some random number we caught a lot of fish. But also, it just has this magical significance as a number to me, because it's so random. Well, it also, they've debated that it might have actually been the number of nations that were in the world at that time, too. Well, that's what I mean. There's a lot of speculation on what does 153 mean. And I thought, if I were you, which I ain't, and my thighs can

attested that today having run 22 miles yesterday but i i just thought how cool it would be to do 153 so your goal of course is to fly home tonight and tomorrow to run this final marathon uh in the bosom of your family yeah and actually the good news is the weather's going to be nice tomorrow because a lot of these marathons have been i've done them at 1 a.m. 2 a.m. one of those days they did it when it was minus 20 degrees below like minus 20 you don't need to say minus 20 below it's implied by the minus Yes. But wait a minute. So when you told me this, I got really upset, you were in Colorado?

Yeah, Woodland Park, Colorado. So you're like up in the mountains. Yeah. Way high altitude, not enough oxygen. 8,500 feet of elevation. Okay. So already insane. Like, I can't function at that elevation because there's not enough oxygen.

You decide, you're there with your family. You decide, oh, okay, I'm going to do marathon up here. and if that's not bad enough, you're telling me it was 20 below. Yeah, the decision was already made in my mind. There was no other option. Like, I literally had no other option every day I'm going to run a marathon. So it was 20 below. I just had to figure out how to, like, not die.

And so, I mean, I had so much clothes on. I had a mask on. I couldn't even wear my glasses because the mask I was wearing, but my eyes were freezing shut, literally. Like, I'd have to wipe my eyes every 60 seconds because they were literally freezing shut. It was that cold on that day. I think the Spanish word is loco Honestly I just can't believe Are you going to write a book about this?

100%. 100%. I mean I really, I just I can't believe it's now You're running for a number of causes I want to talk about that Because I do think

Now do you have a website Where people can go and find you Everything's been on my social media Which I'm the only at Malachi O'Brien on the planet That's the beauty of having the name Malachi is there's not a lot of them. It's either the Bible or children of the corn, depending on where people's background is.

So, okay, so Malachi O'Brien is you're on Twitter and on Instagram. Twitter, Instagram, they have a public Facebook page. You have a public, okay. So Malachi, people can reach you, whatever. But you have been doing this to raise money for anything, and that gives me a segue here. On this program this month, I've got to say this before we go to the break, we are raising money for food for the poor. They feed the hungriest, poorest people in Central America.

And what we're asking everyone who listens to this program to do is to give to food for the poor, to give anything, to give something. $72, think of this, will feed two kids in Honduras, a nutritious meal twice a day for one year. This is unbelievable how far American money goes when you give it to food for the poor. 144 kids would bless four kids for an entire year plus drinking water. We need you to do this. MetaxistalkisTalk.com. Metaxistock.com. You'll see the banner.

You can text Eric to 911-99. Folks, please do this. Text Eric to 911-999. We'll be back with Malachi. O'Brien. Get ready for a riveting new documentary called Come Out in Jesus' Name in theaters nationwide March 13th. It follows number one bestselling author and Pastor Greg Locke's epic journey from a small church in Tennessee to a global deliverance ministry. Following a startling chain of events, Pastor Locke took a 180-degree turn from his mainstream religious traditions and led his church to the brink of revival.

He's exposing and fighting an unseen enemy that's destroying families and churches and paralyzing Christian. with fear and bondage. Knowledge is power. Learn how Pastor Locke and the team show the church how to defeat the enemy, get delivered, and set free. The most important awakening in church history has begun. Don't miss Come Out in Jesus Name in theaters nationwide.

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Come. Make like a Mr. Milk Toast. Folks, I'm talking to my friend Malachi O'Brien. Malachi, once again, I got to tell my audience, I can't believe we never do this kind of thing, but you finish you 152nd consecutive marathon today. So you're going to go home tomorrow. You're going to do the final one. I had the privilege of doing this with you yesterday.

And we had fun because I thought to myself, when you're running at the time, you're running at that pace, you can actually talk. And so you and I talked and we just had this wonderful fellowship. And we found ourselves, I mean, I don't know if I said this when I was talking to Albin before, but like we ran to New Jersey. We ran across the George Washington Bridge, which of course was my idea. I'd done this once before on my previous world distance, world record, personal record run. But the idea that from my house, you could run across the Hudson to New Jersey on the bike path. That was insane and fun to do with you. We took pictures.

But then on the way home, we passed a number of sites central to the story of Bonhoeffer. And I was able to point out where he stayed. That's the room where he stayed in 1939 when he made his big decision. And this is Riverside Church that welcomes Fidel Castro into its pulpit. but in 1939 when Bonhofer was here, he went to hear a sermon there. And this is all in my Bonhofer book. But I was able to tell you this story and then to say, and then that evening he heard another sermon at this quote unquote fundamentalist church,

a few blocks south on Broadway. And how delighted he was. And so it was just fun running with you. And if you come back to New York, I just want to do more of this with you because there's other fun things that we can do and see. But it really, it just was fun. So I just want to thank you for letting me be a part of what you're doing. This is historic.

But I want to talk again about why you run. You said you're running. You're adopted. Talk about that. Yeah. Again, I have three causes, but I was adopted when I was three years old by family. And that made a massive impact on my life. I mean, I don't have time to go into the backstory, but my birth parents were, you know,

know, there's some major issues there, but family took us in when they didn't have to. And that deeply impacted my life. And then when I gave my life to Christ, my church family became my family. And I mean, God called me to ministry when I was 13 years old. And, you know, I got married when I was 18 years old. Hold on. That can't be right. When you told me that, I mean, I know this is true, but that, you're like literally no one gets married when they're 18 years old in this generation. But you did. So you're 39. And you have, a daughter that is... You have a daughter that's 19, son that's 17, a son that's 14, a daughter that's 10, and then an adopted son who's, who he's just turned 10, my other daughter's 11.

And so, but again, my wife and I have always felt like we wanted to adopt, want to adopt, and we always thought we'd adopt from overseas. I went to India when I was in high school and thought, that's what we would adopt. But then, through a series of events, this young man that was in our church was going to be put back in the foster care system, he'd been there his whole life. Like, it'd been there his whole, almost his entire life. And we knew he's, if he's, if he's, If someone doesn't adopt this kid, he's going to age out in the system. And so the Lord put on my wife's heart first and said, you know what, we can do it. You know, we have a house.

You know, we have the resources. We just need to be able to say yes. So we did it. And it's, you know, it's been a challenge, but we've never go back on it. We've learned so much. I mean, the Lord called us to adopt, and that's given us a deep heart for foster care and adoption. So many things we wanted up sharing with people. So that was one major cause because the church can actually solve that problem in America.

Like, that's a tangible problem that the church, can take to zero with Fosca. See, that's an amazing thing. As you know last night, we had dinner with Barry McGuire, who was my guest earlier in the program today. And, you know, he talks about something similar, that if everybody who claims to be a Christian would joyfully share their faith, it would change the world. It would change the world.

And you're saying something similar. and I say the same thing when I'm talking about my book, Lettersy the American Church. If people would live out their faith, it would totally change the world. All these problems. I mean, when you talk about the foster care system, I just, I want to cry when I think about the fact that there are kids struggling in that system and that there are many Christian families that God might call to make these kids parts of their family. So I assume when you write a book on this, you're going to get into this. Oh, 100%.

And that's one major cause. The other one is youth mental health. health. I mean, the reality is the majority of teenagers in our country right now are taking some sort of substance now that, you know, weed is legal in a lot of places. I mean, it's, it would blow people's minds if they knew what's going on with the next generation. And oftentimes we just want to ignore it and pretend it doesn't happen. But kids are being crushed with anxiety, overwhelm, peer pressure, so many things. And so the number of kids that attempt to take their own life is scary. And so we think we can make a difference by high,

that and helping to equip parents and pastors and churches to know how to deal with this. So that was another big issue. And then the third issue that came out two and a half, three weeks ago was the Asbury Revival. You know me, we've talked about this before. I've had a deep heart and passion for revival. And so I had a conversation with a friend of mine, Greg Stier, runs there to share. And he says, just say you start running for revival. So I said, I'm going to do that, Greg.

And the Lord actually reignited my heart through the Asbury Revival. Well, you went there. I did. Yeah. In the middle of setting this record, okay, you went to Colorado Springs with your family, ran in minus 20 degree weather, you're in New York now. I ran with you in Pennsylvania back in October. You also recently went to Asbury to see with your own eyes.

Talk just for a minute about that. Yeah, I ran at 1 in the morning, finished it 7 in the morning, got on a flight, got to Wilmore, Kentucky. You know, was that, yeah. I can't believe you do this stuff. You ran it from one in the morning to seven in the morning and got on a flight. Correct. Correct. Flew to Asbury.

It was there for the final night. It was the collegiate day of prayer. Walked in the room. And I've never experienced anything like it in my life. And I've been a part of a lot of amazing events. But it was a room full about 1,200, Gen Z young people, handful of adults. But you could sense the tangible presence of God in the room. You could, there was hunger.

There was peace. There was a sweetness. There was kids praying for kids. People at the altar. It was such a moment. you didn't want to leave and you didn't want it to end. You said, I'm part of like this is what we've been crying out for. And if everybody could experience this, it would change the church.

It would change the nation. And so to be there that night for hours was a gift I'll never forget. It changed me. I mean, we know this is the answer. And I believe that God is doing it. He's begun to do it. Asbury is just the beginning. We have our friend Greg Lorry's film is out.

called Jesus Revolution. I want to say to everybody, folks, see that film. This is the guy who came up with the phrase, the fame of revival leads to the flame of revival. When you're talking about revival, this is all beautiful. We'll be right back final segment with Malachi O'Brien. Folks, welcome back. I still can't believe I'm sitting here.

Malachi, you did it. Today you ran your 152nd consecutive marathon. Malachi O'Brien. you're going to be in the record books. You've got to send 15 terabytes of, what, videotape? I mean, to the Guinness book so that they can verify this. And then tomorrow, by God's grace, you run your 153rd marathon. You say you've been running for revival.

You've been running for adoption. You've been running for teenage mental health. So we hope you're going to put this all in a book. 100% going to put in a book. I mean, I can't but not. It's been a gift that the Lord's given me to have six hours almost every day to be in my head and be in my thoughts. And I've reflected on so many things that I feel like I have to go on paper that I believe would really help a lot of people. So absolutely.

Will you remember all these thoughts? I just can't believe. I've journaled almost every day after I've run. So I wouldn't forget any of it. Oh, my gosh. So now when you, you stop this, you're so obsessive that you said you're not going to stop running. You're just going to stop running a marathon a day.

Yes. I'm going to keep running, no days off, keep the running street going. I'm going to apply for two other Guinness records I want to attempt in the future. Now, can you talk about that? Yeah. I'm going to apply for the most consecutive half marathons ever completed, and I'm going to apply for the most consecutive half marathons run on a treadmill ever completed? Because I've had to run all these marathons outside.

So I'm kind of curious what it would be like do on a treadmill. I actually think that would just be horrifying to run on a treadmill. Why would you do that? It's my, I want to test the limit. I want to find out the mental and physical limit. I think a lot of people never push themselves so they never really discover who they really are. If you never go through trials or tough times, you never discover what you really made of and what you really can accomplish.

Most people live technical lives in a 4K HD world, and they need to press through some hard times to discover who they really are. And then also I'm going to be running a – I'm going to apply to to be a part of a backyard ultra race in Arkansas this summer. That's going to be a really fun race. That's the one where you have to run four miles every single hour, each hour. The top of each hour. Fast or slow, but you have to complete four miles in the end. 4.1-6666-67.

That's a technical distance. And you have to run until no one else comes else to the starting line except for you. Well, wait a minute. So you mean you run four miles. Okay. Then you stop. Yep. But then in a few minutes, you got to go again because it's the top of the hour again.

And so if you're doing, let's say, a 10-minute mile, you do it in about 40 minutes. So then another 15, 20 minutes. I go again. So you're telling me that people will do that, and then another hour they'll do it again and again and again. And the question is how many hours? I mean, this, I can't believe that. And believe it or not, there's a U.S. national team for this.

There is a world championships of these backyard ultras that take place out of a, you know, LAS, you know, the Biggs backyard Ultra. And outside of Nashville, he's the guy that started it. He's the guy that started the Barclay marriage. So what's the world record of that? This is what's insane. It happened just a little less than a year ago. I believe it the nation was hungry, but I could be wrong. But 101 or 104 happened just this last year.

Okay, that's several days. Yeah, that's 101 hours. They call it a lap when you finish four miles. They did 101 laps. But that's four days. Four days. So you don't get to sleep for four days? Nope.

You keep running for four days? Yes. Okay, I rebuke that idea. I totally rebuke that idea. Malachi. We achieved our goal. My goal was to get you in the studio today to talk about this. We're going to keep you around and do more talking, either for tomorrow or another day.

But I am just so thrilled that this worked out. Thank you, my friend. Thanks for having me on the show.