Unashamed with the Robertson Family - Ep 1183 | Mia Steals the Show for an Unforgettable Weekend & Jase Is a Cowboy Now??

Episode Date: October 9, 2025

Jase dons a wild getup in honor of the Mia Moo Foundation’s annual family weekend and recounts a gathering that moved him to tears more than once. Mia comes full circle, mentoring kids who share the health struggles she faced. An eerie blackout nearly derails the carefully laid plans, but even darkness cannot stop God from moving among these families. Al recalls moments when “coincidences” felt like dark forces resisting spiritual work, yet the Truth always wins. In this episode: Genesis 1, verse 1; John 1, verses 1–2; John 9, verses 1–41; John 16, verse 33; John 17, verse 24; John 18, verses 1–11; John 18, verses 33–38; John 19, verse 11; Romans 1, verse 16; Ephesians 6, verses 10–18 Chapters:  00:00-07:15 Why Is Jase Dressed Like A Cowboy?? 07:16-11:35 The Annual Mia Moo Weekend 11:36-17:08 Jase Outfits & Mans the Fishing Station 17:09-26:40 Learning to Dance in the Dark 26:41-37:41 Mia’s Journey From Kid to Mentor 37:42-47:08 Time, Force, Action, Space, Matter 47:09-55:57 Truth Will Always Triumph — Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

I am unashamed. What about you? Welcome back to Unashamed. I feel so strange, Zach, sitting here in the... See, man. You're up in the northern... Oh, my gosh. What in the world? What we got going on there? I hope you're watching today and not listening because Jays is... The Jays has gone rogue. He's got a cowboy hat on this, got some kind of markings on it. Jay's what are you doing Jay's what's happened saddle up partner get put your seatbelts on

oh you got the shirt on too that says saddle up saddle up Zach you with such a deep mind it's amazing the simplities of life sometimes takes you a while to process yeah oh I saw the hat the hat was jarring enough but he's got a cowboy hat on if you're not watching and you're listening and this t-shirt says saddle up and you know what's crazy I got my horse hooked up out here to the back in somebody's car. Okay. Okay. So that was a wild ride this morning.

I'm kidding. I don't have the horse. That was a joke. I don't know what's real anymore. I don't know what, yeah, I don't know. I know one thing. I leave town and boy, Jay's does a whole, he does a whole flip.

Yeah. Is this like a promotion of something? What is this? I mean, it's got to be something. It's a new look, Zach. It's a new look. Okay. No, we had this weekend, we had our, I don't know what annual, 11 annual, probably 11.

Oh, that's right, Mia Moo. We had Mia Moo. Okay. And this was my look. This was the theme. And if you can look, I don't know if you can see the verse, but it says Ephesian 611 right under saddle up. Does you wear like wranglers and cowboy boots? Well, I got some boots on here.

Oh, God. Oh, yeah. Oh, yeah. Well, not really cowboy boots. Yeah, and I got some true classic. They look like jeans, but oh, they're comfy. So I cheated a little bit on that. So, yeah, it was quite the weekend.

And the reason I did this is because it was spectacular. This is the links that you will go to, to, I believe, show the love of God in this world. And by doing that, in the theme of where we're at in the book of John, and Jesus says prayer so that the world may know that Jesus came to earth. I like it. There's your sermon for the day. I like it. And by the way, Ephesians 611 put on the full armor of God that you can take your stand

against the devil's schemes. Yeah. Armour up, saddle up. What's interesting about that verse is, you know, the next verse says for our struggle is not against flesh and blood. So we've helped 198 families with kids that have some kind of cleft lip and palate issue or craniofacial if you want to be specific. And so every year we invite all the families that we have supported financially.

And I don't know what we're going to do if they all show up because, you know, we couldn't hold them. but just the nature of these families, there's a lot of problems. So on average, we'll have about 30 show up every year, which is about as many as we can handle. Because it's not just the kid, it's their whole family. Right. So this year we had 48 volunteers, which was good. And just think 48 people just volunteered for a weekend to completely serve

and share the love of Jesus. to these families. So these families, you know, they have a tough journey because we went through this with Mia. She had 16 surgeries and major surgeries. Never went six weeks without seeing a doctor up until this past year. And for the first time, you know, she's a graduate of this process because she's now, once you stop growing, the problems cease.

You know, it is what it is. The problem with this condition is that as you grow, things get worse since it wasn't right when it started with. So when they come in and do surgeries, you're just kind of managing the problem, which is why this is real expensive for the families. And it's just real brutal for the kid. Just think about having 16 surgeries before you're 20 years old. So it's tough. And a lot of these kids, you know, have worse conditions than others. so. And we had two families this year that actually had two kids with some form of this.

So just imagine how difficult that is. So I was on a mission this year because what I basically do, you know, we greet everybody. I think we've told the story before. They come in on buses that we rent for them, the whole families. They all stay at a hotel together. We rent the whole hotel. And when they get out of those buses, it is. 48 volunteers and everyone in our family, it is cheering like they just won the Super Bowl of Life. So already, it kind of pulls on your heartstrings, especially the new families. We had two families who are new, and it's overwhelming for them. But you got to remember the spirit of this condition, the biggest struggle is loneliness, because you feel like the kid feels like other

kids don't have this problem and there's a sense of being alone. And these families who are dealing with these very complex conditions, most of them, medical world, don't even know the process that they're going through. And so it's really hard to get information, the right information. This is part medical and part artistic because all kids are different, all these conditions are different. So like in our case, Mia, they told her she was going to have four. four surgeries, you know, when we had the first meeting.

Well, they were off by 12, which is very frustrating. So basically what we've learned through what we do with our charity is we're connecting these people. And it becomes a family where they can lean on each. You're creating a community, Jay. So speaking of family, a little shout out, Zach, to our old friends at Family Research Council, amazing group of people. Tony Perkins has been a friend for many, many years.

I mean, it's trying to teach our culture generational faith, and they do it in the political hotbed of Washington, D.C., so they're amazing. Yeah. Where can people go, by the way, if they want to help them? You can go to FRC.org slash Unashamed to support these guys, and I highly recommend you do it. Great organization.

It's a community. And these little kids that have been there before, look, if you had some chariots of fire music going, they get off that bus and they start running toward our family. And I mean, it will break you down. I mean, they're running like big hugs. It is, you know, I'm telling you, it's very inspiration. How do you keep it together, days?

That'd be just squalling. Oh, no, you don't. You don't. It's a ball fest. It's like a roller. I'm tearing up just as you describing it. Oh, I wear sunglasses most of the time. But it's okay.

Look, we come there. we laugh, we cry, we share, and we have a thing with the parents for a couple of hours, just the parents, all the volunteers, and of course we have medical staff there who keep all their kids during this. And this year was the first year that we had Mia, this was her idea. She met with the parents and us, and they just asked her questions. Oh, wow. Because, you know, a lot of these kids are teenagers, and the first part of this process is most physical, but once they become a teenager, it becomes psychological.

It's kind of the equivalent to a military person being, you know, having PTSD, because they've had so much blood and trauma and loneliness, and it's very difficult when they get to their teenage years, all of a sudden they notice that people are staring at them. And it just with all the things that are going on, they truly other people don't understand, And, you know, so me, I shared a lot of things in that group setting that was a very powerful, you know, even just she's like when she first started noticing and people would ask her, you know, like as a teenager, what's wrong? And she said, I would come up with these crazy stories that I, you know, a shark tried to attack me and I fought my way out. So, I mean, it's kind of sad in a way that you have to do this, but you go through that process and it's very. powerful. So one of the things I do besides speak there, and what we do is Friday night's kind of a fun

thing for the families that our team, they lead that. And then we have all the volunteers at our house, and we cook them jumbulli, old gimbler cooks for them, and white beans. And we just do a worship. We just kind of prepare our hearts and pray that this weekend the Lord will work. and so then Saturday is the longest day of the year. It starts about 7.30. We meet the families at 8, and then it's supposed to end at 8. But this time we had some things happen out of our control, and so it kind of ended at 7.30, and I'll tell you that in a second.

But one of the things I do, like part of the day is they have stations where they go, like we divide them into four groups. And I manned the fishing station. So there's a pond at this camp that we fish. And the last two years, I think in the three hours, three and a half hours that with the four groups, we might have caught four fish. So I was like, you know what? This is embarrassing. I'm in charge of this.

Now, look, it was not completely my fault, but the tackle we were using was provided by the camp. But wrong kind of tackle. I mean, it had been obliterated, and I was just going along with it. So I told me, I was like, I'm fixed to fix this. I go down to our friends at the Honeyhole here, and I wear their shirts a lot of times on the podcast. And the only thing I can kind of give you an illustration of it is like the PG version of Caddyshack, if you remember that movie.

I watched it on the TV version. So when Rodney Dangerfield went into the golf pro shop and said, I want seven of those, 10 of those, well, that's basically what I did at the Honeyhole. And it was just a bewilder. And I was like, I want all live bait. I want 100 shiners, two buckets of crickets, 10 boxes of worms. I had 15. They don't sell cane poles anymore.

So I had these expensive, you fold them out, you know, and they brought me 10. And I said, no, I'm going to need five more of those. They rigged them all up. I mean, I was there two hours. I had boat paddles. I had pliers. I had every conceivable way to catch a fish. imaginable. And this pile of stuff is at the register. And I'm like, all right, what's that going to

set me back? I'll give you five minutes to tally all this up. And old Johnny D., who's a friend, and he does the Uncle Siah podcast. Yeah. What's it called? The duck call room. Thank you, what's it called? It's like right on the other side of the wall. All for me. Isn't that love junior podcast? Yeah. I said, okay,

give it to me. He said, zero. I was, so look, we hadn't even started the Mia Moo, and now I'm getting, I'm getting choked up in the honeyhole.

You know, I was like, no, no, seriously, because I literally wiped out a whole shelf of these brim poles. And he's like,

nope. He said, y'all are helping these, kids and this is just our donation you know to y'all so a big shout out to the honeyhole if you need and look they did not know that I was even going to bring them up but I just thought if you need any kind of outdoor gear look them up I'm sure they deliver in some capacity because I wipe them out so give them a week maybe before you order some stuff and so I that was my big thing and now I feel like grace and I mean incredible active service and I mean I just went crazy so we get down

there to the stations and I had a few assistants and one other fishing pro and I said look let's just go ahead and let me try this well believe it or not before the groups got down there I caught there was a there was a little dock and there was a I saw a brush top under the water and I caught three bass on my spinning reels in two minutes. And I thought, oh, we're good. But I didn't take the fish off because these are little kids. And I thought, I'm just going to give it a little line. We're fixed to catch three right off the bat.

And so first group gets there. I'm like, come out here and grab a pole all of a sudden, you know, there's already three bass on the poles. They didn't even realize it. They're like, you know, I was like, let out some line. They're like, well, I think I got one. And so boom. Well, look, as soon as I took those three bass off, we took pictures with them,

I put a shiner on all three of those spinning wheels, threw them back out, handing them to the next three kids. Bump, bump, bump, three more. And one of them was huge. I say, you know, it's three pounds. But, you know, I got a little five-pound test line here. And I mean, it was awesome. We hammered them.

and the highlight was on the second groups a kid and I say a kid it was one of the teenagers with a one of the poles not the spinning reel caught a bass that weighed over five pounds on a cricket

where the guy helping or the volunteer had to get down in the water and get the bag I mean we're talking about a five pound bass it makes me wonder if the because you know Willie run he's somehow involved in that camp I wonder if he's intentionally

sabotage the bait situation for his own personal he goes out there and probably wears him out because you go out there the right bait and all of a sudden it's it's game on oh exactly so it was fantastic and that was just my part but uh you know it was a success it was a success on all accounts and uh we had this uh and look there was a lot of sponsors i hate to start naming them But even Yeti, look, they sent the whole families, Yeti cups, no charge. I mean, just fantastic outpouring of, you know, gifts to these families, and it was awesome. But we had a guy who's a music director locally, and we've had him before. What is his name?

I wrote it down. Jared Richie. Have you ever met him? Yeah. This was our big thing with the cowboy hats. This was all this about. He taught everyone folk dancing. If you've never done that, it's like dancing with groups.

It's not like anything that you have a problem with dancing. This is not it. This is like big groups. We did the Sasha donut where you make two lines, you know. And so we all had our western. He came up to our marriage refresh a couple years ago, and we did that one night with all the couples. It was so much fun.

Oh, this guy, he should be a stand-up comedian. I mean, he's hilarious. And he can teach you how to do this in five minutes. You kind of go through the, you know, the little signs, the one, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight. And the next thing, you know, he plays the music. And it just, it happens. And it's all fantastic. So he was supposed to go to eight and at 7.30, a power line fell somewhere on the road out there at camp.

And all the lights went out. this guy turns his phone on and we go another 15 minutes in the dark we learned the waltz in the dark it was hilarious i mean and fantastic and it'll make it memorable but uh but i kind of use that as so the next day sunday morning we have church by the pool at their hotel and we just It's a voluntary thing. And I think most families, if not all, attended. And so we, you know, we got a couple hundred people out here by the pool. And that was the start.

I was like, you know, last night we had this all plan. Because Missy was disappointed. She was like, all the lights went. I mean, it was completely out of our control. But we're like, well, isn't this what happened to all of our families? Everything's rocking along. We're excited about having a baby, bringing a baby. into the earth, and then all of a sudden something completely out of our control happens,

and we're like, now what? And it just becomes the new normal. And so I started in John 9 there, and basically I share the gospel for 15 minutes. I revolved it around the highlights of my life, which was seeing my parents be transformed by hearing the story of Jesus. hearing the message myself, and that's kind of where I went through the gospel, which it was like, God became a man. He came to this earth. This Bible is about a living God who came to earth and died for our sins and redeemed us and liberated us. He rose from the dead to show that we can

live forever together. And I brought up the fishing analogy, you know, they're getting the fishers of men and catching the fish post-resurrection because everybody had such an awesome time fishing. I was like this is what we're going to get to do for eternity, to spend time with each other, and God will dwell with us. Then I talked about my wife saying, yes, these are highlights in my life, and talked about how, you know,

our marriages become foundations for our kids, especially during difficulty. And then the birth of my children, despite the difficulty with Mia, I wouldn't change it for the world. And then my last point was seeing people being born again. And that highlight just continues to be seen. People who give their life to Jesus and who are born again.

So we did that, and then Missy, Mia led about three worship songs. So then Missy asked one of our kids to come up, which I had no idea this was going to happen. But here's this six-year-old kid comes up, and Missy sang that song by Cody Carnes and Carrie Jobe the blessing. Yeah. And so after she sang that, she then told everyone that this little girl who's six, she was going to have her 15th surgery today,

which was tomorrow when we did this yesterday, Sunday. And so we all, you know, prayed for her. And of course, you know, a six-year-old that's fixed to have surgery, and had this incredible event for that. It just made it for a very powerful event and kind of showed what we're all about and what we do. And so it was very moving.

I wanted to share that just because, you know, it's a good way to show the love of God and to get involved in things that happen that are out of our control. I love the analogy. It's so good. I mean, because that's life, right? It's the things you don't plan on.

It's the power that goes out. We were doing an event a couple hours from here on Thursday night, and their sound guy, their AV person, had had to drop out, you know, which you know automatically that's probably going to be a problem, you know. So they're here. They're trying to raise money for a pregnancy center. And so there's poor little guys in charge of the stuff, but he doesn't like normally do that.

He's a preacher, and he just happened to probably be decent with computers. and so he kind of drew the job. But then it was just problems all night, you know. And so by the time we got up there to do our thing, you know, our thing is kind of like a script of pictures, you know, that we go through. And so I start into this, you know, like this little opening thing I do, kind of a joke, you know, with the labs.

And all of a sudden, the computer just goes crazy. And all my slides just keep going all the way through them, all the slides, a video starts playing, somebody that had an earlier thing. And so, you know, like the directors over there, you could tell they're just in panic mode about what to do and they're trying to fix it over here. Well, we just lean, you know, Lisa and I started laughing.

I started making jokes. And then, you know, and the audience is just laughing. It's improv. It's like, but if we had like just froze up or if we had just like got all stiff and like it would have been a disaster. But you lean in, you know, you just got to. You're good at the improv.

Oh, yeah. I was in my element. And then they finally got it all lined up, and we just went right back into our thing. And afterwards, you know, she was, I'm so sorry. And they said, hey, I knew you were going to have problems because the devil's in the computers, you know, that's what happens. Well, what was interesting in that moment, Al, is Jared, which he didn't know that before every meal, we sing that song, praise God, from whom all blessings flow. And we do that every year. So now all the families that have been coming, they all know it.

And it's really beautiful because we just a cappella sing it before every meal. It's like an old camp tradition for many, many years. So Jared, when it first happened, he said, well, I'm going to teach you a song while I try to figure out how we're going to do this in the dark. And he said, I'm going to teach you a song that's called Praise God from Whom All Blessing. Somebody hollered, we know it, do it. And so we just sang it all in the dark, which was very moving. And then after that, we went out and they did smores because, you know, the fire was providing the light. But it was just such a moving weekend.

And I will say if you want to, you know, help contribute to what we do, they have a lot of leftover shirts. They do this on purpose. And so you can go to miamu.org. But it'd be a good way so we can continue to help families. Well, you know, I hadn't thought about it about now Mia being a young adult. You know, she's not a kid anymore. I mean, she'll always be a kid to us. But her now being able to translate that to the adults, not just to the kid.

I mean, she's always been great for kids. But I hadn't even thought about that to you said that. That's very powerful. Yeah, next year. Just to generationally watch that happen, yeah. One of the parents asked her, they said, well, would next year, would you talk to our teenagers and and so we're going to do that and me it was like great idea because it is a different kind of struggle at that stage and uh of course you couldn't do all this without having this basis

you know the the bible and in the story of jesus is the things that we're conveying and whether they're believers or not when they come to us because we help people you know we don't make them fill out a questionnaire they they have this difficult situation and we help them. But we're also introducing them to the principles that God has put in our life. And we know that, you know, this truth that God portrayed

and revealed to us is what, you know, what you can use in your life to deal with this. And so that's kind of the hidden agenda that it's not very hidden when you do this because these people, there's a reason they keep coming back, you know.

Well, and that's all, part of that. We talk about it all the time about the power of your story and how things unfold, how God works in your life. That's what impacts other people. And so then even if you're not going through that, but you see that and it touches you because you know it's helping these kids or it's helping somebody else, it makes you want to be a part of that. It makes you want to join in. It's just a beautiful thing. It's great what you guys are doing. I related, you know, most of all, We've been studying in John 16, 17, and now 18. You know, I just couldn't help it because even in my first speech, I was like,

you know why we're doing this? And I told the story about Jesus telling his disciples, look, you're fixed to have trouble. You're fixed to have difficulty. And I said, he said that prayer, but he gets to the end of that prayer. And he's like, I want you to experience the love that me and the father had before the creation of the world. And so it's very moving. And for people, you know, just from wherever USA,

I think we had 12 different states represented yesterday. We went around and divided into groups of states for one of the games we played. I was shocked that there was 12 states represented here, you know. It's incredible. But you're right, Jay. That theme, that theme of love and unity, which is all throughout that prayer that Jesus was saying. You know, first he talked about he and the father,

then it was the 11, and then it was the whole world even. That whole idea comes out of love. And that's that unifying factor. So you guys totally out of love have this opportunity and you're unifying this particular group of people that grows and changes because people are added to it. And, you know, but they'll never forget that either. They take that with them where they go.

that's the beauty of this thing, which is exactly the point Jesus was making. And it's all through a difficulty, through something that's hard, through something that's difficult. I mean, like you described as a lifetime for a child through that, you know, first 18 years of their life,

it feels like a whole full life has already happened. And we have lots of conversations about pain and suffering and, you know, I mean, I use a lot of C.S. Lewis quotes and just kind of as the result of giving us choices, you know, pain came from that because, you know, you have the choice to love, but we also make bad choices. And, you know, just kind of going through the narrative of the Bible, even though we're not, I'm really not quoting scriptures the whole time, we're just dealing

with these issues because it does make you angry. I mean, even Missy and I, when we knew that this was coming from the womb, because they could see that there was a problem. You know, I I was angry for about three or four months because I'm like, well, why in the world does this happen? I mean, it's just a natural response, I think, from people who have flesh and are weak. We're just, we don't, this is not, it's out of our control on where we get angry about it. This is not, not what I want. But even hearing Mia yesterday, you know, going through her journey in front of the parents, which really was an act of courage. You think standing up and speaking in front of your peers is one thing or in front of little kids is another,

but to adults much older than you, just to, I was shocked. But at some point in her telling her story, she said, you know, I knew I had turned the corner when I looked back at everything that has happened to me and I was thankful. And I thought, oh, wow. Yeah. That's a moment. As a parent, don't you love that? I mean, don't you love to hear that, that you know that everything was, that she did get it?

You know, because, I mean, it's hard to raise teenagers if there's not any kind of maladies or difficult. And to get to that point where they can say those words, you know. Oh, I went head down, Chey's on for about 60 seconds. Yeah, it was an incredible weekend. Thanks for letting me share that because it was real close to my heart. and it was just really moving. It seems like it gets better and better every year. I'm not sure why,

but I think it's more just the volunteers are just all in, and the people just come there with open minds and hearts, and the kids love it. I mean, they enjoy that community where they feel like, oh, I'm with people like me. Just that one fact, and they love me. So, so good. That's good.

I love it. Well, and you're right. It's not easy to ever be in front of an audience yesterday. We were here. Lisa and I shared our story, our testimony at Zach's church here. And originally I was supposed to preach, but, man, we've been doing so much stuff. I just couldn't, I didn't have the bandwidth to pull another lesson together. And so we decided we'd just do kind of what we do on the road.

And Melissa was sitting next to us, and the church here is amazing. Just great atmosphere. Man, great work. worship, Grant, Zach's brother was leading worship and a lady with him. And it was really good, but they were doing an a cappella song. And I guess that's, you don't normally do that. That's the first time we've ever done that. Yeah. And so they were, not me. Yeah. Right, right. But Melissa was part of the little fourth, you know, they're doing harmony and everything. So they were going to get up on the stage. And so she's talking to me. And she just, she gags.

And I was like, what is? You step in something on the way? I mean, she was gagging. And I was like, and she said, oh, I'm just, I know y'all like the limelight, but she was gagging about going up front to sing. I was like, are you going to be able to do it? I mean, I thought you did, you get up there and wretch. I mean, you know, this song is going. But once she got up there, she did fine.

But I was like, I never seen anybody have a gag reflex when they're about to go sing. Oh, goodness. But Zach was up there, Zach and Maloney. I got nervous too. I don't like to do that. I can speak in front of people, but you asked me to sing. I'm like,

but it was beautiful. They did, what was the song? As the deer. Yeah, as the deer. You know, that kind of repeat song. And I love that song.

The harmonies on it are so pretty. It's really good. Well, I did my sermon. I did a little bit different because Ephesion 6 was our theme. But, you know, that's kind of a deep principle, especially if you don't, you know,

if you're not a believer. It's like, you know, our struggle was against the evil one. So we didn't do this by design, but we never really read the text until my sermon was over. And then Missy, I could, I look back at her because she was supposed to sing the song. And when she got up, there's a certain look that she has that I know being her husband for 35 years. I thought, I feel a sermon coming on. And was it the same look she had when Trump walked in? Same look.

Same look. I thought, okay, if she had a hat on, she would turn it around backwards. And because I think I had shared Jesus, but I did some things that I'd never done. I'd actually, when I was doing some research about the Charlie Kirk situation, a little sermonette popped up from, I believe it was John MacArthur. and, you know, these algorithms, they know what you're looking for or whatever. And there was a little blurb that I thought, I don't know where he got that from, but I thought, that was good. And I was like, I'm going to use that because I didn't know how many people in my audience were believers.

Yeah. And so what he did, I wrote this down before I finished the Ephesians Five thought. But I think this is what compelled Missy to do the sermon. because I started off with, you know, this beautiful prayer by Paul and Ephesians 3 where he talks about every family on earth derives its name from God. And then he prayed that you would grasp how wide and how deep and long. High and hot. Yeah, it's the love of God.

And it's that intimate. He's like, I pray that you'll be strengthened with his spirit in your inner being. You know, of course, you got to remember, they've seen. the display of the Holy Spirit, the love and joy, despite incredible difficult circumstances, and we're all families here. And so I mentioned that, but I did this illustration that I heard from MacArthur.

He said in 1903, there was a guy named Herbert Spencer that he came up with this groundbreaking idea that science basically built their model on of science and nature. And here was what he came up with. This is 1903.

He came up with the idea that everything and I have that in all caps. Everything. Everything that's knowable. Everything can fit into five knowable categories. Time,

which is number one, force number two, action, which is Number three, space and matter. And MacArthur said, somebody should have told Herbert Spencer to read Genesis 1-1. And so watch how this works. It's very powerful. That's why I did it. Genesis 1-1.

In the beginning, time. Time. God, the force, created action. the heavens space and the earth matter that would do it that covers it that not that isn't that something like groundbreaking everything can fit in these five categories you need somebody to raise your hand said yeah we got that on genesis 1-1 breaking news and then we throw in john one one and two in there as well and then you got the sun well well that's I did, Al. I went to, and then God became a man in the beginning was the word, because the next part of Genesis 1 is, and God said, and the word became flesh. He became a demonstration as a human to who God is and all these things. You know, heaven and earth coming together, the force, the power, the creation, and not only that, but a new creation, which is why I had the highlight about being born.

again. Yeah. And, uh, which is exactly where we're at now in the story because the purpose, you know, to, to get Jesus for him to come here is now about to happen. But nobody can understand why it has to happen. And so all this intrigue around and then the political stuff that we're about to get into and these, these trials of, you know, all these people trying to, you know, figure out how to deal with him.

the whole thing is already part in the works. I mean, the whole thing is about he came to die to then be resurrected to totally destroy the evil ones holdovers. I mean, it was just, it was amazing when you kind of go back into it and you just look at the details of it. Because I don't know about y'all, but like reading 18, 19, 20, like the, I got really angry for some reason this time. And I don't know, maybe it's the, maybe it's still the echo from what.

what happened to Charlie Kirk or something. I don't know, but the injustice of it really bothered me more than any other time I've studied this particular happening. Yeah. And, you know, I don't know. We had Dallas on, you know, talking about, you know, he's right here as well on the show. But it just, it made me so angry because they're so, they're so pious and petty and felt like they were in such control when, you know, it was the son of God standing there.

It offends me for Jesus. I mean, I realize it had to happen. If it didn't happen, I don't have hope for the resurrection, but it makes me angry that it happened. It's kind of interesting you think about those five categories you mentioned, Jace. There's another category that wasn't mentioned in there that I think is super important. And kind of the center category of what Jesus is rolling up against, which is why I think it made him so, the Pharisees so petty, is the category of just knowledge. Like, how do we know all these things? Like, how can you know about time, space, matter, the force, all that?

And when, so in John 1, what you just mentioned, the point that the Apostle John's making is that that the word, everything was God, in the beginning was with God, he was with God, he was with God, he was God, and then that that word actually became flesh. And so when you think about like this whole point that he's laying out in John, through John 17, is that not only is God creating or has he created the cosmos, he also speaks to us now. And he speaks to us through His Holy Spirit, through the incarnation of the Word in Jesus.

And so when the thing is getting up to this climax moment, the whole thing is coming to head when you see Pilot kind of identifies. We mentioned it in the previous podcast. It's like, who gets to determine what truth is? who gets to determine like what reality is. And that's why I think they get so petty. That's why they get so pious. That's why they get,

they get, what they're really angry about is that if Jesus is who he said he is, then they don't get to be the brokers of reality anymore. Right. And that is always the power dynamic. If you look at any issue when it comes to a power dynamic, it's always who gets to determine what the truth is. It's one of the reasons why during COVID, I was so adamant and scared about the, you know, the whole like critical theory, critical race theory, all that.

Because what's at the bottom of all that stuff is, is that people get, who gets to determine what truth does? Is truth revealed to us, or is it something that we determine based on our status, our position? And the Pharisees found out very quickly that truth is not determined by them and even their knowledge of the scripture. it was determined by the one that the scripture was about to the point that even when they killed him, they're going to find out really soon that they can't stop him. Right. You can't stop him. Right.

Well, that's what led Missy to read that whole section. Because all the contrasts that are in life, you know, good and evil, you know, God's new world in an old broken world, even the heaven and earth being displaced. Yeah. You know, she read this in Ephesion 6, and I'd like to read it because it echoes what you just said, but it was like, finally be strong in the Lord and in his mighty power, put on the full armor of God so that you can take your stand against the devil's schemes. For our struggle is not against flesh and blood, but against rulers, against the authorities, against the powers of this dark world in high places, and the spiritual forces of evil in high places. Therefore, put on the full armor of God

so that when the day of evil comes, you may be able to stand your ground. And after you have done everything to stand, stand firm then. And here's the truth. With the belt of truth buckled around your waist, with the breastplate of righteousness in place, with your feet fitted with the readiness

that comes from the gospel of peace, which I had just shared, you know, to them. in addition to all this take up the shield of faith in which you can extinguish all the flaming arrows of the evil and take the helmet of salvation and the sword of the spirit which is the word of God in which you know she echoed that that word became flesh his name was Jesus and pray in the spirit on all occasions with all kinds of prayers and requests with this in mind be alert and keep praying well that's why she then brought up the little, you know, girl and prayed for after hearing all that.

Yeah. And how about Jesus had rescued us from sin and death and given us all these, you know, tools to stand in this world despite, you know, difficulty and forces that are against us? It was really powerful. She did. Fantastic. No, and I think that that, and Zach is right, you think about the idea that we're more than just matter.

You know, matter. we're part of the earth, you know, we're part of creation, but we're more than that because when God made us, when he gets you continue down that list in Genesis 1, when it got to us, he made us in his image. And then he said, now that's very good. I mean, there's something special about humanity, so much so that, you know, Jesus could have come here in any form in any way. I've said this before, but he decided to come in a mother's womb and to be born and cared for. and nurtured and to learn discipline and, you know, to be told, here Jesus, don't do that. I mean, like, imagine the son of God growing up as a child.

You know, we don't have anything except the little 12-year-old story. We don't know anything about his childhood. But he went through whatever, what we all go through. And he did that as a man. Then he got to the age when he would now be a rabbi and he would now do all these things. And then that was it. then he said, now I've got to accomplish what I came here today. Well, I think that's the power of truth.

That's the power of revelation, probably is a better word for it. Because truth, if you think about truth, truth is when reality meets what your thought is. So I have a thought about something. And when that thought matches up with the way the world really is, then that relationship between the two is truth. And so faith becomes this idea of, and revelation, when God, has to speak to me, right? He speaks to me, but what he's revealing to me is he's revealing reality. So when my thought matches up with God's revelation, now we have arrived at this thing

called truth. And so you think, well, there's this threat against the kingdom of God in the form of, at least in the gospel of John, it came in the form of Pharisees. It came in the form of the Roman, the power of the Roman government, which was extremely powerful at that moment in history. We're talking about the world superpower taking on the kingdom of God and in partnership with kind of the place it was coming out of. So you had the inside threat and an outside threat all descending down on the kingdom of God to stamp it out. And think about, to your point, God's way of victory is we're going to put a baby in charge. We're going to put the whole thing is going to be contingent on a baby. and he's not going to be born into a palace,

he's going to be born in a manger. So it tells you the power of God's revelation, whatever power is in the gospel, you know, that's in Romans 1, whatever power that is, it's not the powers that we, how we typically think of power in the world. Whatever it is,

it's a different kind of power. It's a power that transcends. And I think what that power ultimately is, is that it's actually reality itself. is who is God, and nobody can stand against it. So when you get to that Episian 6 passage, Jace, I mean, look at all the things that are in there when it talks about like suiting up for the battle.

And all the armor, it has to do with this idea of how we respond against the devil's lies on one end. And then on the other end, it's how do we receive God's revelation in that? So it's faith, it's a belt of truth. It's sort of the truth. It's the, what is it here? It's the...

Yeah, the belt of truth. The sword of the spirit, sword of the spirit, which is the revelation from Christ. It's the shield of faith, which extinguishes all the flaming darts. So when the evil one throws lies at you, you got your shield of faith. That's not true. That's not true. I'm not going to receive that. The helmet of salvation.

It's all of this. And think about that, the helmet protecting the mind. I mean, it is that truth that you know. Yeah. And that protects it. Don't you think, I mean, I'm glad we had this discussion. because I think where we're going from here in the book of John, there seems to be in the religious world. I don't want to be negative, but there just seems to be a disconnect between the coming of the kingdom,

which all four Gospels are adamant about, even the conversation Jesus is fixed to have with the earthly powers concerning the kingdom. It's like a disconnect between that and what he did on the cross and the resurrection, and it shouldn't be a disconnect. because that was the defeat of the earthly powers and ultimately the evil power. That's why he keeps bringing up the evil one. And his time has come. And he's talking about right now. And I think we should view it as those things being synonymous that that's why Jesus prayed, your kingdom come on earth as it is in heaven.

Well, he's fixed to pull that off. Well, don't you, I mean, you see it even in this moment when he's in the garden. and the soldiers show up to arrest him because he's been betrayed by Judas. I mean, even in that moment, you see, what is the power of the kingdom? Jesus is like, the boys, don't worry about me getting arrested. Like, this ain't, you're missing what's going on here.

You're thinking too small. Put that sword away, Peter. Yeah, put that sword away. Let me grab the ear. Let me put that back on. No, we're going to kind of rewind all that. settle down. I'm in charge here. I'm sovereign. And they're thinking sovereign in charge. You're getting hauled off to the cross. What are you talking about? They don't understand that the way

that the power is actually going to overcome is through sacrificial love that Jesus embodies, which is kind of, that's kind of the thing, right? Which is the same, we're about our time, but the same moment we'll get into the irony to me as Herod, who is his father was the one Herod, the great, who tried to kill Jesus as a baby, remember, to stamp him out, just out of fear. And here's his son, you know, 30 years later, thinking he has control when he really doesn't. So, all right, we'll get into that next time. Jay's thanks for telling us about me and me.

That's awesome. So proud of you guys for what you guys do. See you next time on Unashame. Thanks for listening to the Unashamed podcast. Help us out by leaving a rating and review on Apple Podcast. And don't miss an episode by subscribe. on YouTube and be sure to click the little bell and choose all notifications to watch every episode.