Truth Unites - I Let My Followers Ask Me Anything

Episode Date: October 15, 2026

Gavin Ortlund answers 15 personal questions about life outside of theology, including marriage, parenting, sports, board games, travel, writing fiction, productivity, and more.Truth Unites (https://truthunites.org) exists to promote gospel assurance through theological depth. Gavin Ortlund (PhD, Fuller Theological Seminary) is President of Truth Unites, Visiting Professor of Historical Theology at Phoenix Seminary, and Theologian-in-Residence at Immanuel Nashville.SUPPORT:Tax Deductible Support: https://truthunites.org/donate/Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/truthunitesFOLLOW:Website: https://truthunites.org/Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/truth.unites/X: https://x.com/gavinortlundFacebook: https://www.facebook.com/TruthUnitesPage/

This video is going to be me working through 15 questions that you all asked that have nothing to do with theology. So just for fun, but also hopefully some of these topics will be edifying. I'll put up the topics we're going to cover, everything from parenting advice to advice for young men to just some more fun topics like my novel, travel, personality, sports, all kinds of fun stuff, music. So this would be great. Number one, I'll put up two examples, but several people asked about how my wife and I met. So I thought it'd be fun for us to share about that together. All right, we're going to try to record this without laughing too much. And our kids are downstairs right now, so we might get interrupted as well.

We'll see. But let's share real quick, how did we meet? And then if we want to share any advice for people in light of our story. So I just graduated college, was working out west at a Christian conference center for the summer, was not planning on getting married. But we met and we were married within 13 months. Yeah. So I had just finished my junior year of college and my roommate, Carrie,

and I had just road-tripped all the way from Nashville to Northern California. and we arrived, hopped out of the car, chatted with Gavin and then another coworker for maybe five minutes, and hit it off. And we got back in her car and she said, is that your future husband? And I said, I hope so. Yeah, I think we just laughed a lot and had,

we just felt comfortable around each other pretty quickly. Not that that always has to happen in every circumstance, but just for us, I think we just became friends very quickly. And that's one piece of advice. I would give for young men pursuing a woman, if you're interested in marriage, look for healthy ways to build a genuine friendship with her. And, you know, whether you're going on dates or whatever else you're doing, just pursue a healthy

friendship. So much comes out of friendship and the ability to laugh together and so forth. So we got to know each other really well that summer. I knew within a few weeks that I wanted to marry you. And then we got engaged about six months after the same. summer was over. So we just had a, and every particular couple will have a different experience, but in terms of maybe counsel we could give or things we could share with folks, I would say, well, let me, what would you say in terms of advice or thoughts to share? Because a lot of people

watching probably are in the season of life where they may be pursuing marriage or maybe newly married. Yeah, I guess thinking back 20 years ago to my experience, getting to know Gavin was, I could just tell his character. I thought, okay, this guy. is the real deal. And I still think that even more now after 19 years of marriage. But I respected him. I thought, okay, this should be a new standard for what a guy should be like in my mind. And that really stood out to me. I thought he was very wise and spiritually mature for his age. So I'd say, look for those things. Look for character traits. Be reflective on your own life and think, am I pursuing godly character?

Am I a kind person? Am I compassionate? Am I honest? Do people trust me? Do I have friends? You know, it's probably a good idea to know how to make a friend if you want to get married one day. And have people in your life speaking into just who you are as a person, encouraging you, and also look for those same types of traits in a person to be interested in.

Are they someone you would enjoy being around? Are they humble? Are they kind? Can you laugh together? I mean, I think we don't need to overthink it fully. Yeah, no. Exactly.

Like, you know, sometimes we think of, oh, Christian dating advice has to be like really disciplined and really serious and so forth. But that sounds funny to say, like, you really, you know. But think of like Ecclesiastes talking about enjoying your youth and walk with integrity before God, but also just enjoy that whole process, whatever that process is like. But I think what you said is maybe the main thing of just seek godly character.

I was attracted to you because you were so beautiful, are still so beautiful, but also just I could sense a similar thing of what you were describing of. I felt like I knew you would stand by my side and ministry. And it's really fun for me, for my YouTube viewers to get to know Esther, because we've always approached ministry together. So everything I do, like, you know, a pastoral ministry that was always you and I together, like doing premarital counseling together. And you were always, it was always us as a team thinking to everything.

And it's the same with my YouTube channel. I couldn't do anything I do without Esther because she has such godly character and she does so much to serve our family and to support me and so forth. So I would just close by saying marriage is a great blessing. Not everyone is called to marriage and it's certainly not always easy. But if God's leading you to marriage, don't be overly hesitant because it's such a blessing from the Lord. Okay.

The video is all downhill. after that because it would be fun to have Esther on a little more. We should do a video together sometime. But someone else asked, what are your favorite hobbies outside of theology? Did you ever play video games? So I thought I chose these questions on an airplane ride home yesterday. And I just picked out some that I thought would be fun to talk about. Yes, I have played video games a lot throughout my life. Not anymore. So my, this will date me, but when I was in kindergarten, we got a regular Nintendo. Most of my viewers are younger. You may not even know that there is such a thing. Oh, man, it was fun. Regular Nintendo, then I got a

second genesis when I was in third grade, or my family did. I had a bunch of siblings. We would play. We got one hour on Saturday, one hour on Sunday, none on the weekdays, two hours a week. That's how strict we were. So I barely got to play it. But it was so much fun on, of course, Saturday mornings, you're into playing Zelda and all these other games. But when I was in later, I think, middle school, there was the Nintendo 64 and the video game, Golden Eye came out, great first-person shooter, multiplayer game. A lot of hours spent playing that. And then when I was in college at the University of Georgia, I played Halo 1 and Halo 2. Again, this is the old days, but it was really cool at that time to be able to sync up four different TVs and get 16 people playing. So we do that

in the dorms. And it was, yeah, a lot of fun. But I have a lot of other hobbies as well. Well, so things that people may not know about me as I play guitar. When I was 16, I got a guitar. When I was 18, I was working at a summer camp, the summer between high school and college, and I had a bunch of free time during the day between when I was doing things, and I would just play guitar all the time. And I made it my goal that summer extending through my freshman year of college to learn every single Dave Matthews song on the guitar.

And Dave Matthews is my favorite musical band. I love Carter Beaufort's drumming. I think they have such energy in their live performances. I have over 500 CDs of their live performances. Part of that is a friend donated all of his to me as well, so I've been collecting them. I think I got rid of most of them, actually, but at one time I had over 500, every live performance is different of theirs. So I love listening to them.

I still listen to him all the time. So I learned all of his songs. I was really proud of myself. There was only like five that I didn't learn or maybe five or ten because they're in a different tuning on the electric guitar, if you remember their album every day. I didn't learn all those songs. So I got really into guitar, and that was like one of my big hobbies all throughout college. I led worship for our campus ministry at the University of Georgia for one year and loved playing guitar. I've kind of fallen away from that now, but I'll still pull it out sometimes just for fun.

And then I love sports. I just think sports are such a great way to connect with other people. I played sports all growing up, football, wrestling. Those are my main two. And then when we moved the new school I moved to didn't have either of those, so I switched over and played basketball. And then when I was in Ohio pastoring, I started playing soccer. And I hadn't played soccer since I was a little kid, but I just really got into it. We would play twice a week. And again, there's just something about sports that is relaxing and it's fun. And it just, I don't know, I don't, I can't put it into words. What is it, what is it about sports that feels healthy and rejuvenating? I don't know, but something. So now, but I can't play soccer

anymore here, so I've got to figure out what sports I can do. Mainly I do bike rides now, just because I like being outside of nature. So those are some of my hobbies. Thanks for the great question. All right, here's one that I'm going to take some time on. This is a really great question. CPT, Donner asked, what's the best advice you have for young men who want to become good husbands and fathers? He explains a little of his circumstances. And then Mike Winger, thank you for commenting, Mike's obviously got an awesome YouTube channel if you don't know of it. He says, what advice would you give to men who are trying to figure out how to walk out there? masculine role in God-honoring ways. I'd love to hear your thoughts on this. So I'm going to take a

second on this answer. Again, you can skip around on the timestamps to whatever you want to listen to. Will anybody watch this video? I don't know. We'll see. I just thought it'd be fun because I'm absolutely fried from travels. I was in Alaska and then California and a few other things and then I've got more travels coming up. I didn't have time to script a really long, intensive video. So thanks for asking these questions. I thought this would just be more of a fun one. But this is a great topic, and I had scripted long ago, a video on five pieces of advice for men in their 20s. So I'm just going to give you the bullet points for that video to answer this question, if I can remember them all. And then maybe I'll do a full video on that sometime, but I get this

question a lot, and it's such a great one. So the things I remember talking about is number one for vocation. If you can find a career path that doesn't just feel like a job, but feels like a passion and something you enjoy and pour yourself into that, that is so worth doing, because you're going to be spending a lot of time doing whatever you do for work for the rest of your life. Not everybody can do this, but to whatever extent you can angle yourself

towards things not on the basis of finances alone and not on the basis of circumstances alone, but on the basis of the passions of your heart. And finding a career that intersects with your passions, I think that's a great thing. Number two, I always say this to young men. Pursue deep, healthy friendship with other young men. I just think that is so lacking.

I think that I remember a pastor once saying that when he looks back on his life, the seasons where he was happy and the seasons where he was unhappy were distinguished by two things. The happy seasons were when he was A, walking with the Lord, and B, had deep community and friends. And I always think it's so interesting that it wasn't just the first of those. But it makes sense. You think of Adam in the garden. God says it's not good for him to be alone, right? There's something about the human soul that was wired for community and fellowship,

not just with God, not just with God and your wife, but for other people. And I think it's just a huge blind spot in our culture. I've talked about this a lot. In the old world, you had David and Jonathan. You have this ideal of friendship. this is seen as the highest form of love in some respects. And today we put so much focus on romantic and sexual love. We've lost a sense of friendship love.

And I'm very passionate for young men to pursue that. I think so many other things in your life will go well if you have deep friendships. Number three is root out sexual sin in your life and especially pornography. I think that's such a temptation and a lifelong battle for many men and women, but especially young men and were not set up for success. in that in terms of the technology and availability. But I see this as, just to say this, without in a way of hoping to give instruction and fatherly help and love and encouragement, not a sense of judgment, but a sense of, here's why this matters so much. The Lord designed

our sexuality to be a tool for connection with another person. And yet what pornography does is it takes that very experience and uses it to make you feel more lonely and more discise. connected, even in ways you can't fully tell. Over time, and I'm less concerned about someone who says, like, ah, I, I, you know, I sinned in this way on this particular occasion, and I'm, you know, now I'm drowning in guilt about it. I'm more mindful of the person who is addicted, who's getting pulled in more and more and more. Not to minimize any one instance of sin, but in terms of the soul formation, one fall is going to be much less significant than a pattern of addiction that is shaping you and forming you in a certain way. And I think I would just sum it all up by saying,

after lots of work in this area trying to help and encourage young men, pornography is a thief of joy. And it will just steal from you more and more and more. And it is just so wonderful to know God can help you overcome that sin. Jesus died and rose again, not to have no effect in our lives, but to transform us, just as his own body was transformed in the grave. God wants to raise us up out of our darkness and into the light. And so I just want to be an encourager of young men to take this issue seriously and say, by the power of the gospel, I'm going to overcome this.

And I'm going to follow the Lord in this area of my life. I'm going to be a protector of women, not a predator, because you're going to be one or the other. We tend toward one or the other. And pornography can make you into a predator without even fully realizing it in the way you just start to instinctively objectify women and relate to women. And I'm just speaking to young men here because of the question. I know this isn't just a struggle for young men. Nonetheless, the word is a word of encouragement and hope to say, you can do this with God's help. You can become a protector of women and one who honors the dignity of women. My dad has a really good book on this topic, if that's helpful for anybody out there.

but that's the thing I want to speak to a young man about because I know it's a very common struggle. Number four is give some money to charity. Whether it's your local church tithing and or something else, it just is healthy for your soul. And number five is commit deeply to a local church and dive in and serve your local church. Offer your strength, your time, your resources, your availability to your local church. You're going to give it to something, and that is never a place you'll regret investing yourself over the long haul. All right. Number four, what inspired you to write a novel? Thanks for asking this. Theology in discourse. Also, what's your writing process? When do you find time? And then Ryan Rourke, who's done some

great work for my animated videos, done them all. Thank you, Ryan. So do you have any desire to write novels? If so, what genre would you write? Okay, so let me just share about this. And I'm going to put out a whole other video, Lord willing, once we hear back officially from a particular publisher, it's being reviewed right now. So I'll have more to say about my novel. Lord willing, maybe in about one month or about three weeks, but Lord willing. But it is, I'll just say this, I'm not going to tell you the title or anything about it. I'll tell you it is a, it's a fantasy novel that I have written this summer and it's the first of a trilogy.

So Lord willing, and I just wrote last night, chapter one of book two, because I was working on it on the plane ride home yesterday. So I'm excited to share more about the details of that in a future video, but now I'll share about the writing process because it was really surprising for me how it came about. And I'm just going to tell you the facts, because I don't even know how to interpret these. I'll just tell you what happened. I have no idea what happened. I took July off. I didn't do any social media the entire month, and I didn't do any work. I read, I played with my family, I went on lots of bike rides, I hung out with people, it was great. I just needed a rest. I saw, I had a few videos come out,

but I wasn't monitoring them. Thanks to Zefinaia for my social media manager, for just running things for that month and he does so much. So if you ever just leave a random comment, thank you, Zephaniah in the comments. I'm sure he'll notice. But for the month, I just kind of eased myself off of things and I really needed that and I realized the honest truth is I didn't feel rested by the end of it, even though I really enjoyed it. And I realized I've been pushing so long, so hard, I need to build in more rhythms like that. So I'm going to do take time off regularly. But one thing that happen is this. With all this mental space that I had during this month off, about halfway through the month, I just started to write. And I had designed a potential plot if I were to ever write an eighth

chronicle of Narnia about 12 years ago. Now that's the dumbest idea in the world. Who could possibly write one of the chronicles of Narnia like C.S. Lewis, who wants to follow in his footsteps, right? but so very quickly I just kind of scrapped that but the idea the broad idea was still in the back of my mind if you're nerdy enough to know who this is it concerned the character ram who's the child of shasta in the horse and his boy but that's completely irrelevant it was basically about a prince who escapes from captivity and so forth anyway scrap the narnia book but the plot structure is still kind of reverberating background of my mind and on july 15th i sat down on my computer and thought, you know, if I were to ever convert that to a different non-Narnian world,

at least the broad kind of plot that's in my mind, what would the world look like? And I thought, well, I love medieval Scandinavia. I've done one video chronicling some of my research on that world. I find it really fascinating. And I thought, that would be a really cool world to inhabit. And so I thought, that's where a book like this could take place. And then I thought, you know what, if I were to write the first sentence of this book, what would the first sentence be?

So I wrote the first sentence. And then, well, okay, what would the second sentence be? And I wrote the second sentence. And then this was about, I don't remember, actually. I wish I didn't remember. But I think it was around July 15th. And something happened whereby the sentence number two, I was just pulled in. Maybe it's because I had more mental bandwidth.

But I think the honest truth is I just needed something that was a refreshing break from more propositional truth. five or six years into YouTube and writing books and speaking, I deal with propositional truth a lot. And fiction is this wonderfully different realm where you have freedom to write. No one is going to have a rebuttal video or, you know, there's less right and wrong, and it's more fluid, and it was fun. And it's just interesting because, you know, July 14th, if you would have asked me,

if you ever thought about writing fiction, I would have said, nah, not really. But by July 15th, I was so pulled into it. And then I just really gave myself to it. And so it was really in about a period of six weeks that I wrote the whole thing. And I just, because I was on vacation and then in August, it was a relatively slower month and I just poured myself into it, at least the rough draft I wrote then. And I just found it, I'll just say this. If you've ever had the experience of reading fiction and you get lost in this world and it's this immersive experience where you can't put the book down, it's just fun. It's just a healthy, fun thing.

That's what writing fiction can be. I discovered. I didn't know that. And so I gave myself to it. And it was just a lot of fun. And I'm so excited to share more with you about that book. But for right now, I'm just telling you the process. And I will look for a video out of my channel in the next couple weeks.

And I'll show you more about what the book is and when it's coming out. The bad news is it won't be told probably Lord willing, maybe, I don't know, maybe more than a year from now that it would come out. But I'll share more as I know. All right. Question number five. Who are some of your favorite Christian musicians? from Judd talks a lot. I will be brief on some of these. So Christian musicians, when I was a kid

living in Eugene, Oregon from ages two to six, I remember listening to like Christian rock music with my brother, like Petra. Have you ever heard of Petra? They're awesome. Look them up if you don't know. But I feel like the 80s and 90s had a lot, this was very popular, like Christian rock music. And it wasn't worship music, which is like Christian rock. And now I listen back and it's very nostalgic, takes me right back to being like seven years old. But then as I got older, I got really into Cademan's Call and Andrew Peterson and just loved their lyrics when I was in high school. I remember in my youth group, a ton of people loved. Remember like when the album 40 Acres came out from Cadman's Call? If you don't know Cadman's Call, check out their older stuff.

It's great. It's been sad to see Derek Webb go down the path. He's gone, but nonetheless, still a lot of their older stuff. And then recently on my bike rides, I just, I love all kinds of worship music. So I listen to all kinds of stuff, probably Shane and Shane and Phil Wickham and the Passion Worship bands are my, I don't know if you call them that, you know, passion worship. Like if you go to Amazon music and there's Rediscover Passion, I just found that like a week ago and I've been listening to a ton of older passion songs, Christian Stanfill and Chris Tomlin and those guys. I pretty much love all worship music. It's hard for me to find a style I can't get into in some way. And that's what I've been enjoying lately.

All right, my friend Justin Menard at Transfigured Life asked a fun and great question about top three favorite board games. And someone else, Trey Dean asked favorite tabletop game and why Catan. And that is true. I love Settlers of Catan. That's number one. Just because the game mechanics are so good and the games don't last forever. A number two option would be, I have to say, for pride of place because I played it so much growing up is risk the board game, which I don't really enjoy anymore because it takes so long to get. get a game of risk going. It's like a three hour. But I remember growing up in the Chicago

suburbs, some of my friends and I would play risk on like, it's like a Saturday morning and it takes like all day. And now I look back on that and think, why did, you know, but you miss those days when you had more attention span, I guess. But the third one I would mention is I'm building a board game and I've told you about this in the past, but it's going to be a long time before it's out because I just haven't had any time to work on it in the last year. But I'm building a board game called Church History, the board game. And the game mechanics are kind of a blend of settlers and risk. A picture a map of the whole world, and you have 20 turns. Each turn represents a century in church history. The goal is not domination or fighting other people. It's planting churches

and fulfilling the Great Commission. And then each century, there are unique challenges, and you can adopt different strategies for how to plant churches. I probably sounds really lame like that. but I'm working on the game mechanics. I'm going to take as long as I need and do as much play testing as I need to make sure the game mechanics are good because what I believe about board games is everything is about game mechanics.

If the concept and the like physical structures are cool, but the game mechanics aren't, then it's not going to be enjoyable. It's like Settlers of Catan. It's kind of a random concept, but the game mechanics are so good it keeps people coming back. So I'm working and I'm working

and I'm working, and hopefully I'll have more to say about that someday. All right, Michael McPherson asks about my favorite episode of The Office and then favorite single scene. This is a great question, which maybe he's heard me reference to show. My wife and I love The Office, and we've watched every episode. And I am a big fan of Steve Carell and just the whole, just the, how do you describe that show, just the vibe, just the feeling of it? it's really hilarious, but you also, my impression is that they enjoyed working together during it

and it had kind of a wholesome sense of friendship among the actors. And I don't know, I just, I just, I just love the show. My favorite episode is tough. I like anything in like seasons two and three of The Office are classic. Seasons four, five, six, all those are great too. But anything in there is hard to go wrong. But probably Scott's Tots would be, you know, that's one of the first that comes to my mind and just the way, if you've never seen this show, don't worry about this, but the way that the main character, Michael, builds up the awkwardness as much as possible. So I don't get me started. But my favorite scene, I think I would, that one is more clear in my mind.

And that's fun to mention. And that is at the very end, the show finale. Just the way it all, I liked how they ended that show. Jim and Pam's marriage ended in a healthy way. I like that. But then this theme of the. beauty of ordinary things, which I think comes out through the ethos of the show, but also in that very end. So you have Pam's statement. There's a lot of beauty and ordinary things while she's

looking at the painting of their office at the very end, but also the famous line from Andy Bernard that I wish there was a way to know you're in the good old days before you've actually left them. I think that's, I'm getting the rough gist of that right. And I just, I think that's a very profound statement where we have this tendency to only notice something is sacred and special in hindsight. And very rarely, in the midst of the ordinary, do we really see how special it really is? And once you start thinking about that and you try to apply that to the present, it actually is really edifying and really helpful to remember. Someday I might look back on this and wish I could come back.

You know, for my wife and I, because we're about to get to parenting advice here, and we have five children and sometimes life is very demanding, but we always try to remind ourselves, we're going to miss this, we're going to wish we could come back. Just remember someday you'll give anything to be able to come back to this. It's a helpful thing to remember throughout your life. All right, these are really fun questions that I chose, and some of them all go faster on than others, but I hope you guys find some sort of value in this video. Andrew Watts asked, If you could pursue a career in something non-religious, what would you want your career to be in and why?

So the most realistic answer to this, and this is a fun one, is so I'm, I, several people were asking, like, you know, what are some things about you that are surprising and that kind of thing? But I'm not all that interesting. That's the danger of answering all these personal questions. You don't want it to be narcissistic, like, oh, I'm really great. I'm very normal.

And you probably know me pretty well in that the main thing I love to do is, I do love working with ideas. I love reading. I love thinking. And so the most realistic answer and the true answer is I'd probably want to be a professor at a university of a different subject, maybe philosophy. I think I've shared before about how I had a dream to go to Princeton and study philosophy. And so then God called me toward pastoral ministry, and then he gave me my desire of a PhD back after I'd sort of surrendered that when I was serving in pastoral ministry in Southern California. So academics for me has kind of been something I thought I'd go into, surrendered it, and then God sort of allowed me to still do that, which I'm really grateful for.

But I just love, I even love campuses, like university campuses, college campuses. I'm just happy. Like when I was in Ohio, I would regularly drive to universities on my day off and just, and I even had an arrangement with one to just go and be able to study in the library. I just like being on college campuses and I love libraries. So even just that, like the thought of working at a university every day is kind of joyful to me. However, when I was on Lila Rosa's show earlier this year, she asked, you know, something like this. And I mentioned acting.

So when I am on YouTube, there's a few things I watch on YouTube. Of course, theology stuff on YouTube, music. I'll have music playing from YouTube. One of the few other things I will watch is videos about acting. Like, just act. Oh, another thing I've been watching a lot lately is advice about fiction, of course. But I watch videos about acting just so. I think the craft of acting is interesting.

I am not interested in it in what you might think of, of like, oh, a lot of actors are famous and it's kind of a glamorous profession. That's not what makes me think of it. I'm interested in the craft of it. Something about the thought of kind of, I don't know, fitting into another personality and responding in the way another person would just feels like such a fascinating thing to do. I've never taken an acting class,

but watching YouTube videos about acting, you get to see how hard it is. And I'm just fascinated by it. I just think that'd be a fun craft to learn. And I think it intrigues me in this season of life because I'm somewhat burned out on propositional truth and apologetics, as you probably picked up on if you watch all my videos.

I'm just sort of weary with some of the nature of that, but I'll keep doing it and find fresh ways to come at it. But that's why fiction is so fun, but I think that's probably why acting is so intriguing to me too, because acting is something you do almost by instinct rather than by thought, and I'm just really interested in the different parts of your brain that that accesses.

All right, number nine, tell us about your upbringing. This would be a fun one to answer. What did your parents prioritize that you see as important to emulate? And then Baptist Dogmatic says, What's the greatest parenting lesson you learn from your parents? This is fun to answer because I get to honor my parents, who I love, who are some of my great heroes, my dad and mom, and maybe say something that could be more edifying.

And there's one dominant lesson. My family is not perfect, you know, but the family I grew up in really was special in some ways that I look back on now and realize, man, I'm thankful for my family. And to this day, I still think of my parents as people that I, I, just really admire a lot. But one of the things I've heard my dad say, and when he said this, I thought, okay, that resonates is the importance of enjoying your kids. And I know we, when we think

of parenting, we probably think about a lot of duties and disciplines, like how, when do you discipline for this behavior, how do you inculcate values? Do you do, you know, people ask me all the time, but I got a lot of questions about parenting. People ask me a lot about, you know, do you do family devotions at the dinner table and this kind of stuff. And we have certain rhythms. So I'm in charge of putting all the kids to bed many evenings, most evenings, and so I'll pray with them and we have certain structures and habits. But honestly, I think if there's one piece of advice that I could give about parenting, and it's certainly something that I saw from my own family, it would be to enjoy your kids. And yes, in the midst of discipline and in the midst of everything else, to genuinely enjoy

being with them. Now, I know that's not always easy. Family life, no matter what relation we are, whatever person we are in the family, there's always little stressors in family relationships. And sometimes when you have like a sick child or a sick baby or something like this that's keeping you up all night, I wouldn't want to say this in a way that kind of makes it seem like unrealistic. Like sometimes it's hard being a parent and you get underslept and so forth. But we all my, this is what my dad said that I thought, this is helpful. He said, we all experience being enjoyed as a form of love. If someone is hanging out with us as a duty, we kind of almost feel offended by that. But if someone like genuinely delights to be in our presence, we feel cared for by

that. And our kids can pick up if we delight in them. If we see them and we just, our heart goes out to them. And I think everything else we do in terms of discipline and shaping values and spending time with our children comes across better when there is that sense of our child being able to detect the delight of our heart toward them. We don't just love them. We like them. And if we can do that, if we can help them feel that, everything else goes better. And that's something I think my parents taught me. All right, let's keep it rolling here. 10 out of 15, we're almost at the end. I'll be brief on some of these. What's your Myers-Bring personality type? I love these personality tests. They all have weaknesses. They all have limitations, but you can learn a lot from all of them. And my wife and I,

we were first getting to know each other, and then in our first year of seminary. So we met in 2006, as you probably heard, though I haven't recorded that session with her yet as of recording this. but back then we started seminary together, and during that first year of seminary, she was getting a counseling degree. I was getting my Master of Divinity degree. We studied a lot about personality stuff, and it really is helpful. You know, you take it all with a grain of salt, but, boy, it can really help you understand different tendencies and just like communication styles. So, for example, the N versus S, differences, intuitive versus sensing, which has to do with how you take in information on a Myers-Brig personality indicator. Boy, that affects life a lot and it affects how you communicate with people because it just leads to major differences.

People misunderstand these different letters a lot. But anyway, I'm an INFJ. So introverted, intuitive feeling, and judging. And I could explain all of those maybe, well, okay, real quick. Introversion versus extroversion, most people think they know this, what this means. but oftentimes we misunderstand it as though extroverts are merely more outgoing. My understanding of this is more so it has to do with where you derive energy from being alone.

So some introverts can build up incredible social skills, but they just need a recharge time more frequently, whereas extroverts tend to get energized from being with people. The intuitive versus sensing has to do with how you take in information. Intuitive people tend to notice patterns more. Sensing people tend to notice details more and then build out from their that is a huge difference. Feeling versus thinking has to do with how we make decisions, relying upon logic versus feelings, and that plays out in all kinds of other ways as well. And then judging versus perceiving has to do with our habits and our structures and how structured

we are in our habits. I'm a pretty strong J, which means, for example, I love having a to-do list and crossing things off. I'm such a J that if I have seven tasks in a day and I've already done four of them. I'll write out all seven just so I can cross off the first four. Because I like the feeling of accomplishment of being able to say, tick, I did that. So yeah, INFJ. Rarest personality type of all, by the way, I'm not bragging. I'm just saying that's true. And people have said that's the personality Jesus had. I'm not bragging. I know that seems weird. Some people say Jesus didn't have a personality, but it's like, now he was fully human. He had eye color. He had hair. color and he probably had a particular personality. But anyways, who knows what it was on Myers-Brick?

Number 11. Jordan White asks sports fan. If so, what's your favorite sport? And then your favorite team within that sport. Denver Broncos here. Thank you for your work, sir. Thanks, Jordan. Hopefully this video is kind of refreshing because the internet can be so intense these days just to have something where we're not taking things super seriously. So my sports loyalties are really, really unique and anecdotal to me. So I grew up in the Chicago suburbs from 1989 to 1998. My dad taught at a seminary there, Trinity Evangelical Divinity School. He was an Old Testament professor. I went to the public schools in Chicago, and of course, you're going to be a Chicago Bulls fan during this era, the Michael Jordan era. I can remember before I would ride my bike to

school, to Copeland Manor School, I would memorize the stats in the Chicago Tribune. I just love the You can't not during that time. It's actually hard. Like I feel for people who grew up after that, which is probably most of you watching this, it's hard to describe because I feel like professional basketball just has never been the same since then. Maybe I'm biased.

But they just, they played so well as a team despite having someone as good as Michael Jordan, which is pretty amazing. But in other sports, I had these really weird, and by the way, I'll put up Timothy Thomas's question here too because this is going to go into how I answer this. Who's the best athlete you ever saw?

A person who played a sport with such skill that made you shake your head in awe. So this is part of the answer to this. So in baseball, I became a fan of the Oakland Athletics, which is very random, but it's because you can't control it sometimes where I was in maybe second grade, and I saw Ricky Henderson, who is an amazing, base stealer and just player in general. And I saw him, I just started watching a baseball game, and he walked, he got a walk,

then he, I think within like a succession of three or four pitches, stole second, stole third, and then stole home. I'd never seen someone steal home before. And I was blown away. And I thought that's really cool. And I started watching them. And they were pretty good. They had a bunch of other good players like Jose Canseco and Mark McGuire and others.

And you know how it is if you just start watching a team. you just grow to love them. And so I became a fan of the Oakland A's, and I loved the movie Moneyball. And the same thing with the San Francisco 49ers for football. I started watching Joe Montana and Jerry Rice, late 80s, early 90s, into the Steve Young era, and just became a huge fan.

However, in 1998, we moved down to Georgia, and my dad pastored a large Presbyterian church, and I went to the private school, connected to that church. So for the first time I wasn't, and that's when I had to switch the sports I played. And in that context, people didn't really get into sports as much. And I just completely stopped watching sports for some reason. So basically, I have like encyclopedic knowledge of some sports data from like 1992,

partly because I played a lot of Super Tecmo Bowl on my regular Nintendo back then. And then I know almost nothing for a lot of the era since then. So that's why I say my sports. And I just haven't had time to kind of watch as much sports, though I enjoy it when I do. don't really keep up with it or have a lot of loyalties anymore. I wish I did. All right, number 12, Isaac asks, what's your favorite place you've ever visited and why? What's the place you most want to visit? But I haven't had the chance to yet and why.

And then there was another question along these lines as well. So the place, I thought this would be fun to answer in case anybody who's out there wants to invite me. Though it's hard to find time to go far right now, I think I'd make, see if I could pray and make it. work. I would love to go to Switzerland. So I love Europe and I love church history. And the thought of going to cities like Zurich and Geneva and others would be pretty cool to learn Reformation Church history. And I've been to, so last year, I have accepted a lot of my invitations to go to Europe because I love it so much. So I had the awesome honor of being in Munich. Love my time there with just some wonderful brothers who invited me doing wonderful ministry.

That was great. And then we went down to Austria, on the western edge of Austria. That's the name of this, Innsbruck, Austria. And that was really beautiful and really cool. But I haven't been over to Switzerland yet. That's on my bucket list. I would love to do that. This coming summer, I'll get to go to Cambridge for a week and do some writing to finish

a book. So I'm really excited about that as well. That's probably the place I'm most wanting to go to and haven't been to. yet. Oh, but I didn't answer what has been my favorite. So I studied abroad when I was in college in Oxford, and I just loved it. My two roommates and I all rented bikes for three months. We were there, 2005, September to December. And so I ride my bike all around Oxford. And when you're there for longer, you get to know the city, not just as a tourist, but you get to know it a little more. And I loved the tutorial style of education? Hey, it's a fun video. Why not ramble? So the tutorial system is just

often one-on-one or two-on-one or three-on-one with a professor. No, no lectures. All you do is write a paper. Come once a week, read the paper aloud and defend it. I love that style of learning because it forces you to work hard. It's like there's nowhere to hide and you don't take any tests or any quizzes. All you do is read papers, but one paper a week. And I learned a ton from doing that. That's really when I fell in love with philosophy that fall 2005. But I remember the first day I got to my literature professor's room, this huge office with stacks of books everywhere. So I felt like a library. And he said, okay, who are you?

And I told him. And then he said, okay, what class is this? And I told him. And then he goes, all right, well, what do you want to do? And then he offered to smoke a pipe with me. And I was like 18 or no, I was 20, 20 or 20. but I was a senior in college. But it was so fun to just explore the freedom

to explore topics you're interested in. So that was great. And then I just loved the city of Oxford. I remember going to Blackwells, the bookstore. I remember vividly like one afternoon sitting in Blackwells for three hours reading about Kirkyard. And again, that was like when I began to discover how much I loved philosophy.

So I think Oxford is my favorite city I've ever spent time in like that. Bill Murphy asks, what is your favorite? fictional character. So the runner-up answer would be Atticus Finch in the book, To Kill a Mockingbird. I love his wisdom. But I think it would be the character Jesse Pinkman in Breaking Bad. Just because part of it is I'm biased because there was one day in Ohio when I got to meet Aaron Paul and his wife, Aaron Paul, awesome actor who played him. I feel like he's one of the most iconic TV characters ever. So just

really admiring Aaron Paul and finding him to be such a friendly person probably biases me. I never, in Ohio, you see celebrities a fair amount because it's just that kind of city where people get away to it all the time and many celebrities live there now. But I never talk to celebrities because I'm always aware. They probably have people coming up to them all the time. But on this one occasion, there at the Libby Park in Ohio, my daughter and several of my kids were there. My daughter was the last child there. along with, I think, his, maybe one or two of his kids, and they started playing together. And I'm like, all right, let's do this.

So I went over and I started, I was like, are you Aaron Paul? And I started talking with him. He's the nicest guy. But I just really admire the work he did in kind of, what is it about that character that makes him so relatable and you like him more, maybe in comparison to Walter White? I don't know. But I just think he's a pretty cool character. All right.

Second to last, what animated movie has struck you most deeply or tugged at you. your heartstrings the most and why. I put out a short about the movie Inside Out too, and I was just trying to remember everything, but that movie, some of these children's movies are pretty insightful. The insights about the nature of anxiety in that movie and the way anxiety is a different thing than fear, the way anxiety is trying to protect you, it thinks it's protecting you, and then the struggle between joy and anxiety and the way joy has to kind of let go, seeing how powerful anxiety can be.

I don't remember everything I said in my short, but that movie I thought was really interesting about emotions. But the animated movie I've cited the most in my public work as a theologian is Frozen 2. People will make fun of me for sure. But there's actually a lot of themes in these children's movies. And the theme of permanence versus transients in that movie, I've talked about this a lot. Even I think I cite this in my academic book on just dealing with the nature of love and the statement of Olaf. I found something that lasts forever because the whole movie is exploring. What is it that really lasts amidst the seasonal changes of life?

And Olaf says love is what is permanent. And I think that's an interesting philosophical statement. Is that true? And so I talk about that in my work. But the song in Frozen 2 do the next right thing, I mean, that's really my answer to this question. That song is very profound in terms of what it feels like to work through depression and hopelessness, feelings of hopelessness.

that sense of you're just, it's like one step at a time is all you can do sometimes. And I think I've shared about that, but that's a pretty powerful song. So I'm leaving it there. And if people make fun of me for that, that's fine. All right, last one. This is about productivity. Someone says, how do you manage everything in your life personally and professionally? Husband, family, travel, speaking, writing books, teaching, preaching. Always wanted to ask you this, but others would like to know, too. and someone else said, there are a couple other questions like this. I want to hear from Josh. How do you manage your time?

Tips for time management. So I don't have a ton of wisdom about this, weirdly enough, because I'm so often struggling with it myself and trying to figure out the right rhythms. So like I shared about my month off this summer, that was an experiment. So I'm kind of learning about this myself. But if there's one thing I can say in case it is helpful, it's the simple principle of enjoy what you do. when you enjoy something, it doesn't feel like work.

And so sometimes when people ask about like, how did you do this thing so quickly or something like that, I will often struggle to understand, you know, I don't know, how did it, I didn't experience it as hard work. I didn't experience it as I was working. I had these rhythms and I had these intentional plans and I worked really hard to get it done. It was kind of like my novel this summer

where something just happens and it's just fun. Now, that's not all work, but to the extent that you can try to curb your work in the direction of what you genuinely enjoy, it doesn't even feel like work. And so you can be very productive without even realizing it. And a good metaphor would be, suppose you love playing tennis and you're out there and you just love. It's like that tennis is life, the rest is just details. Remember these old t-shirts?

Tennis is everything to you. And so you just, you know, you just find yourself. You're like, go out and play all day on Saturday. and then after dinner, you're like, I want to go play more. If someone asked you, how do you work so hard at tennis? You'd probably just say, it's not work. I just enjoy this. And I know we can't always enjoy our work, but I'm just saying to whatever extent we're able to orient our work onto the things we genuinely enjoy, that is a really great thing in life. And a lot of the stuff I do, I just genuinely enjoy. Let me conclude in a second here, but I'll just say this as the final thing.

thank you guys for watching my videos because it enables me to do what I really enjoy. What, you know, hopefully what I'm passionate about, and that's just I want to serve gospel assurance through theology. So I want to go deep in theology to the end of the experience of the enchantment of the gospel, the experience of being loved by Jesus. That's the running threat throughout all my videos. Hopefully that's the ethos of truth unites. Hopefully my videos are wonderfully predictable to always land back on the gospel and the experience of the gospel and the joy of the gospel. That's what I want things to be about. And I'm enabled to do what I love because you all watch and some of you support on the Truth United's website and that means the world to me. So thank you for that.

My point is it enables me to do what I love and that enables me to be more productive. I'll just finish with an anecdote from Winston Churchill on this point. I remember years ago reading Paul Johnson's biography of Winston Churchill. And one of the things he's, said is basically look at all that Churchill accomplished. He painted a ton. He wrote a ton. You know many books Winston Churchill wrote? It's crazy. And then, of course, his political career, which we associate with World War II, but there was a lot of other times, too. And he had some real disasters, too. But he did a ton in his life. And you know what Paul Johnson said was the key to his productivity? Paul Johnson said the reason that he was able to do so much is his powers of relaxation.

I'll never forget reading that. He could do Sabbath rest well. He could disengage and enjoy life. And he talked about how we'd even during World War II go to the countryside and paint. I thought that's fascinating. But I think that's right out of Genesis 1. We live in a world created by a God who himself rested. And so the ability to enjoy life, to laugh, to,

have fun, to build friendships, to take breaks. All of that is not a distraction from the work. All of that is going to help you work better. And the better we learn that, the more productive will be and the more we'll enjoy it along the way. Of course, there's also time for little tips. And so if you're looking for one tip on productivity, the one thing I do that really helps is get up early and drink coffee and don't check social media first, but just die right in from having sleep, coffee, write into it. Do your quiet time and write into it. If you can, if your schedule permits, and that's a simple thing that does help. All right, hopefully this was just a fun, refreshing video. Hopefully you've got something out of these answers. Let me know in the comments

if you think a video like this is of value. Thanks for watching all my stuff. I'm excited about some other videos that are coming up soon. So, keep, stay tuned. I'm going to do an interview with Scott Hahn this fall, Lord Willing. I'm really excited about that. I got some other topics on general and apologetics I'm excited about. So stay tuned and I'm just excited to keep plowing ahead now that my travels are a little bit less intense. All right, God bless everybody. Thanks for watching.