Unashamed with the Robertson Family - Ep 966 | The Robertsons Get Trapped by Hurricane Helene & It’s Way Worse Than You Know

Episode Date: September 30, 2024

Al, Lisa, Zach, and their families get stranded by Hurricane Helene without power, water, or cell service, and the devastation is unimaginable. Phil and Jase are shocked by firsthand photos and scenes from Black Mountain and Swannanoa, North Carolina, and Phil prays for everyone who’s still dealing with the deadly storm’s fallout. Al and Zach spread the word on how to help the people affected by Helene get urgently needed supplies. In this episode: Acts 2, verses 42-47; Acts 4, verses 32-35; James 4, verses 13-17; Mark 6, verses 45-52; 2 Corinthians 1, verses 3-11 -- Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

I am unashamed. What about you? Welcome back to Unashamed. I guess we'd call this a special edition of Unashamed. We got Lisa in the house. It's always a pleasure, babe, to have you. Thank you. People love it when our wives are here. Today's episode is, you know, we've been talking about different things that happen in life. And so we just experienced this hurricane that barrel through Florida went up, basically all the way as high as Nashville, I suppose.

Did you hear from everybody? Yeah, a lot of rain, but not. Well, I mean, I hate to. Some of your house, didn't it? I hate to comment because it's, if you go to North Carolina and South Carolina, it's worse. And that's kind of the way we feel. So Lisa and I have a story to tell today because.

We went to North Carolina to do an event, and we were going to Raleigh, but we were staying in Black Mountain, which is where all the cousins are, which is where Zach lives. And so Zach was not there. He was in Louisiana and doing one of their guy behind bars events. And so it was kind of odd the way it worked out. And we were supposed to do a couple of podcasts, but this storm came through. And so Lisa and I got, usually I'm pretty good about watching, but we got caught flat-footed because what happened was in the air we were in the mountains before the hurricane comes through, which was a tropical storm by the time it reached North Carolina, we got about 20 plus inches of rain in two days.

Just two days of solid, at times heavy downpour, but never less than a pretty medium-sized rain. And so I don't know, I was getting a little nervous about it. The thing was coming. We weren't sure how bad it was going to be, you know, in terms of, you know, predictions on how bad the winds and stuff would be for us. But so there was just the perfect storm. And I say that in the negative way, the perfect storm. So it comes through.

Well, then you've got all this soft flooding conditions with a heavy tropical storm that would just took the brunt. And then so now all these trees are blowing down. I mean, the wind, Lisa and I, so it hit us about 5.30 in the morning. And I admit, I mean, I, I, I, I, We've rolled out a couple of storms here and down in Gulf Shores, but this one, this one had some, some bite to it. It was so loud.

Yeah, I mean. Extremely loud. I couldn't sleep. You know, I'm up pacing around. This thing is killing your neighbors. Oh, yeah, no doubt. I mean, and of course, we don't know what's happening. Over 100.

We're everywhere else, but we're there. I can hear trees hitting the ground, not close by, but close to know. you know, a big huge tree, these things are 200 foot tall. When they hit the ground, you hear it for a long way. And so I'm hearing all this go on. And, you know, first you're just praying that, you know, spare us. And then you start praying about the people down lower because you think of down the mountain, this isn't going to be good.

Lisa and I were staying at a little house kind of pretty much close to the top. I'm praying because I was worried about a mudslide. You know, you're getting these areas like this. Whenever the ground gives away, everything goes to the bottom. And so I was praying about that. And so it was a scary night and we got out the next morning to go try to check on the cousins. And it was like a war zone. I mean, what you guys had been seeing on television.

And we had three kids with us and they were asleep in the basement. Yeah. So all night trees were hitting, you know, all around us. So I'd get up two or three times during the night just to go check on them. Because, I mean, you know, we just didn't know, didn't know if, you know, it might. knock a window out. I mean, we just didn't know. And they were sleeping?

They were sleeping. Sound asleep, never woke up. Well, we found out later, you know, there's three teenage girls, you know, our granddaughter and then two of the cousins. And they were up till four, you know, just, you know, laughing and giggling, doing all that. So at the time, we were sleeping. So about the time they went to sleep was when the storm is. They had a better storm prep than you.

They really did. Just stay up until an hour before. And then they just slept right through the thing. But you are concerned about that kind of stuff for sure. So we get out. We start looking around. We're trying to get to different cousins, our cousin Grant, Melissa, these is Zach's brother and sister.

We knew Zach was out of town. He was due in that morning because we were supposed to do podcast. But we never did. No. And I actually was sitting right here at the-wonder where we were. At the scheduled appointed time because the text was vague because they were given all the details. and jealous conditions, but we were hunting. It was till season.

Oh, yeah. I looked down and thought, ooh, that's rough and kind of skimmed through the tech. We sent a couple of videos. You saw a couple of videos, didn't you? Yeah. I missed the word. We could get out, phone out, till about 8 o'clock that morning. And then all of a sudden, we just went dark.

And dad, it was like we were living your life. There was no cell phone, no internet. And then, of course, no power. No water. Yeah. And all that. Phil still has that. He still has that.

I missed the word rescheduled. I was sitting here and Dan the butler stuck his head in here and he said, you didn't get the memo. I was like, I did get the memo. And he's like, maybe you should read it again. They're not, they're not me. It's not happening. Yeah.

And poor Zach, so his kids, his Ruth is his little one and then his two boys, they were staying with Melissa while he was out of town. well then they couldn't get in. Melissa's his sister. Yeah, Melissa's sister. So, you know, they couldn't get in to their kids. So jill's freaking out, you know, because when you're in a disaster and you're not sure

how anybody is because you can't get any information, you know, they're frightened. They're seeing what they're seeing on the news like everybody else. And so it was a really scary situation for them trying to get in. And we couldn't get word out to anyone that we were okay. And once we went dark, that was it. I mean, because none of us had any kind of phones that worked. We did figure out on, was it Saturday morning when Ben was able to talk to Emily? Yeah, through the satellite.

His sister-in-law, yeah. Through the satellite phone. By the way, there's a new, for those of you, Dad, you can just zone out because you'll never get this. But there's the latest operating system, iOS 18. If you download that for your phone, now I don't like downloading the new stuff because it feels like it's too much. But in this case, we found out you have satellite texting capacity for a disaster just like this. And Ben had done it because Ben's like a, you know, IT whiz. So he had it on his phone.

And because he had it, we were able to get word out on Saturday that we couldn't make our event that we were going. And by the way, if you were there and you're listening up in the Raleigh air, we apologize. But, you know, based on what we're telling you, this is why we couldn't get to you to do the event. And we hate it. We've never missed an event. And what's bad days is, I guess maybe, I was thinking about the James 4 passage that says this in verse 13. Now listen, you who say today or tomorrow, we will go to this city or that place, we will spend a year there, carry on business, make money. Why, you do not even know what will happen tomorrow.

What is your life? You are a mist that appears for a little while and then vanishes. Instead, you ought to say, if it is the Lord's will, we will live and do this or that. as it is, you boast and brag, all such boasting is evil. Anyone then who knows the good he ought to do and does not do it sins, I wasn't boasting that, you know, necessarily, but I did make the statement that we had never missed an event this week, which was kind of bizarre. Two days before.

Two days before we're talking to our agent. So, you know, don't boast. Don't boast. I mean, I did say by God's will, I knocked on wood, I tried to do all the stuff, but just don't boast. You really don't know. I mean, what's going to happen tomorrow? You don't know. I missed a couple.

One was a storm, and one was the day COVID made everything shut down. Oh, you had an event that day. I was, I made it. You were there? Detroit, Michigan. And Michigan said no gatherings of over whatever, 30 people. We had about a thousand over that. So, of course, they asked me, and I was like,

I say we do it, the resurrection, but I let them make the call and they, so I just hung out in a little group. Well, so here was the deal. So we're still thinking we can get out. You know, at this point, we don't know any information. So imagine this in the today's age when you depend on your phone to give you GPS, guidance, it's your navigator, it's how you get around. nobody has a map anymore. You know, I got one of my truck, but my truck was in Louisiana, and I'm in a rental car.

Because a good map in a situation like this is the best thing you can ever have to look at it and know the road. It's the old school way. So we're stuck and we're trying to figure out what we're going to do. We're still a couple of days away from the event, so we're thinking we're going to be able to get out and go to the event. So we start going. First thing we try is east because that's the way our event was.

we make it about half a mile on i40 and mudslide you know trees on the road all this stuff can't go this way so then we're trying to find as there another way around up everything over there shut down so i said okay so then you start thinking what if we go south nope close there's river across the interstate all right what about north i don't know about north so we tank off north planning to get high enough up maybe above the worst damage to cut across and then go east. We get to Tennessee. We've been driving two couple hours. We get to Tennessee and interstate is collapsed.

Can't go 46 north. So now that's three directions out of the four and we're blocked. So we drove five hours that day trying to get to this event. So we come back to North Carolina and say, well, we'll wait one more day and if they clear that east, maybe we can still make the event. I'm still trying to go to the event in spite of everything that's going on there. And so I said, but if we can't go east, then the one thing I think we can do is go west and go home. Because from there, we'd come home. So we'd go east, still blocked.

We turn around and go west. I go about, what, maybe 45 minutes an hour, shut down. So at this moment, I mean, I realize we're a trap. We cannot leave this area. We have no phones. We have no electricity. At this point, we don't have a place to stay, but we do have family. And I'm thinking, I mean, there's a helplessness that comes over you in that moment because I got half a tank of gas.

And I'm thinking there's no gas stations. And there's a line along the interstates are cars who are from this area. And, you know, it was just, it was terrible. You realize these people aren't not from there and they're just in their cars. They have no family there. They have no way to get gas. They have no way to get supplies. So they're just sitting along the side of the interstate, just waiting on something to open up.

And if you're in an electric vehicle, you are doomed. There's no electricity for you to power your vehicle with. Yeah. And then, you know, the gasoline, all right, so you couldn't get gas. You're down to horses and. Yeah. Exactly. I saw a lot of four-wheelers.

Now, I will say this about the people I saw, Jay's. They were a lot like people from around here. They're mountain people, but they're kind of redneckish, you could tell. And, man, they're out. They got chainsaws. They got four-wheelers. And a lot of them had prepared. So they had some gasoline around so they could, you know, do generators.

And so I did. I've often said that that in crisis and disaster, that's when the redneck is the smartest guy. That's right. On the property. And we saw it. All around. So, Phil, take comfort in that. Because you got the equipment that can help you.

The problem is, if you didn't plan and have some gasoline and some stuff like that, it didn't do you a lot of good. And they helped other people. Like, they would go to their neighbors and, you know, we saw a whole truckload of people just going from place to place, you know, helping other people. The whole thing was deadly. Very deadly. Well, I still think as of right now, there's almost a thousand people missing.

Missing. it's going to wind up being devastating numbers for sure. Over 100 has lost their life. Right. Yeah, there'll be a lot more than that by the time. Which later in the podcast, as we kind of talk our way through this, we've got some scriptures we want to share with folks just, you know, they go through difficult times.

And also we want to have prayer and also some places where you can help these folks because it is a devastating thing. I think, Maddie, are we going to be able to get Zach on the line? All right, so we're going to try to. Oh, well. We're going to take a break in a minute. And then they have super spotty cell phone covers. But if we can get Zach on for a minute, he's back.

That was going to be my question. Have we got confirmation that Zach was actually? Zach made it out. Zach made it in the same way Lee's and I finally made it out, which is a story I'll tell you about that. That was interesting too. We'll do that on the other side of the break. So we're still waiting on Zach.

We think we're going to be able to get him the cell phones really spotty. But I do want to mention for you guys that are listening, swan. dot church is the church that Zach and Gordon and those guys are out there doing a lot of work there with the children's home and other people who are going to be helping. Our ministry, which has a relief ministry, Onekingdom.org. And then, of course, Samaritansperse.org, which is a great organization that the grams are in charge of. And they're based in North Carolina. So they're able to get a lot of stuff in there fast.

So these are just three that are connected to us. If you want to help out, send some money, they're going to be getting supplies into people. Zach? I don't have video. You want me to do video? I don't have video. Hey. No, no, no. We're glad to hear your voice. Oh, man. That's a war zone. Oh, it's bad. I was just telling them, Zach, the story. We finally got out going 26 South toward Greenville. Is that how you got in to the area? That's how I got in. So 40, the interstate south, 40 west and 40 east and 26 coming down.

So the only way into the area. And it's just, I mean, you know, know the town our church is in swananoa is completely devastated and we're just one of many towns but i mean the whole i mean the whole town downtown is swept away in the river i'm talking about the land that the buildings were on is gone not just the buildings but the land itself so yeah i don't know it's it's crazy and no water obviously no electricity i think the water line the main water line broke i just found out so they're saying they just informed the hospital of course you know a lot of rumors are flying around just heard that they informed the hospital. No water indefinitely.

So, yeah, it's a lot going on. So we're, we're down in, somewhere down near Charlotte. I'd load it up. And we went and got a bunch of, we're getting a much of fuel, a bunch of transfer fuel tanks and going back up and waters and food. Well, I was hoping somebody could get out to supply. And you have to go so far because even in Greenville, when Lisa and I went out, which is an hour and probably 10 or 15 minutes south of you guys,

they were still like there was intermittent electricity, but there were long lines, I mean, long lines. And they only take cash. So, yeah, so,

you know, we're, I just spent, you know, 1,500 bucks on fuel. So obviously cash has already run out. So we're having to find places that have, to take credit cards.

So, yeah, that's scary. The children's home that Jill serves out on the board, Black Mountain Home for Children. they're stranded. And so we're trying to get, you know, fuel and supplies and water and food into those guys.

So, yeah, it's a, there's a lot going on. It's really sad. I don't know how many people lost their lives, but I mean, I'm sure it's going to be. It's going to be a lot. Over a hundred now. Over a hundred officially, but it's going to, I think Jay said there were over 1,000 still missing.

Yeah, it's not good. One of the guys from our church. was out there because our church is kind of in the epicenter. We're actually our building standing, which is great. But it's in the epicenter of the damage, probably of one of the roughest areas. And one of our members was rescuing people out of the water. And he saw two people, including a five-year-old kid,

get swept down the river. So it's just heart-wrenching. So we're dealing with a lot of that trauma. And, you know, PTSD that people are starting to deal with. Yeah, it's really, really sad. Well, Zach, for the first time, I want to tell you this, you have no idea to know this. But I apologize because I felt like we were looting your house the night after the storm. We were looking for some candles.

Yeah. We were looking for something to put some water in to flush commodes. And so your house didn't have any damage, which was a blessing. And we could get to your house. So we went to your house, but we had these flashlight in our phones. We were looking around through your house, looking for different things we needed. And I said, you know, I feel like we're looting because Zach's not here. Yeah.

So I just want to apologize. If you have your neighbor said, there was somebody in your house, that was us. I actually got a phone call. So, yeah, when we were. Did you really? I did. Some of our attacks that kind of came through somehow. But because Verizon kind of works AT&T, which I have does not work.

But I will say one thing, you did. leave the door and lock. So, so, sorry. We had no way to lock it back. We didn't know where the key was. Remember, you were going to text us and tell us where the key was, but then our phones went out. Well, I'm glad you guys got out. And, yeah, I mean, just obviously keep praying for this area.

Yeah, there's a, if you want to help, you can give. Our church will be locally on the ground doing stuff. And I'm sure when this is settles, we're going to be mucking. people's homes and whatnot right now. It's just fuel, water, food, that kind of thing. You can give at swan.church, and that's with one end, sw-a-n.church. Or you can get, I don't know the website, but the Black Mountain Home for Children, if you just Google that, that is an incredible ministry serving kids in our area.

Jill's on the board there. They need all the help they can get. And then probably from like kind of a meta picture of, because we're just, one community of right of many i mean i heard boom got hammered burnsville yeah i mean i mean i'm hearing you know uh and uh and what the guy the grahams uh franklin and um yeah samaritan's purse yeah i mean so those are like you know uh great places to give i mean it's it's just yeah in prayer it's gonna be it's gonna be a while for you guys for sure before we let you go dad would you pray for um just the whole area and of course our family and for zach because they're gonna be doing

a lot of relief work for the next few days. So would you pray for... Yeah, and Adam and Brandon are coming y'all's way too. Okay, good. Father, many have been caught up in there and lost our life. We just pray, Father, that you'd have mercy on us all and let us know that being on planet Earth, there's a lot of baggage that comes with it, and a lot of it is not good. Help us, Father. Keep our faith in you and you.

your greatness. And we thank you for hearing our plea. That's right. So we love you. In spite of all of this, we know it's not your doing. It's just the way it is. So help us go through this, Father. Help us to love you and to love each other because this is a great test of whether we

love one another or not. We'll prove that because it's natural things happen that's sometimes very detrimental to our being on planet Earth alive. That's right. Be with us, Father. And thank you that we have eternal life writing on all this. We love you in the name of Jesus. Amen. Amen.

All right, Zach. We'll stay safe, brother. We're praying for us. Good to hear your voice. Tell all the family up there we said we love them as well. And to hang in there, it'll get better at some point. Love you guys too. And Unashamed Nation, love you guys.

And just want to thank y'all in advance. I know you guys are amazing and already praying for what's going on here. So I love the people that are in our community on the podcast. So thank you guys so much. I'll send you some money. But look, don't forget you got them goldbacks laying around in there somewhere. I was supposed to get the gobacks for days, but, you know, a storm. They may be gone.

I don't know about the gobacks. I didn't look at the office yet. No, I get them gobacks and take over. You're like, I got something better than cash. That's right. Amen. All right. Love you.

Love you. Love you. Bye. Well, that was literally a report from inside the zone, which was, again, it's a terrible situation. I will say that once they were able to clear that 26th South coming into Asheville, it has now opened the door for supplies, for, you know, the people that do that. Our life on planet Earth is sometimes detrimental to your health. Yeah, it's a dangerous place, Dan.

I mean, you know, the planet Earth is not a, you know, we talk about it all the time in terms of being this beautiful planet we live on, but there's a lot of violent, you know, things that happen, you know, we're human beings. We just have to live through so much of it. Well, that's why even in some religious circles, they don't believe in the bodily resurrection because their reasoning is if they believe in a bodily resurrection, as in your body can actually be raised from the dead, then they ask the question, well, how come God just doesn't fix all the physical things, you know, that go wrong?

And I only bring that up just to say that I do believe in the body resurrection. resurrection and I believe it symbolizes the new creation that God orchestrated, which does give us the ultimate hope in situations like this. You know, you have the Spirit of God. We're all going to die someday in some way. It's just horrifying, you know, to hear stories a while ago, you know, one of the producers said that, you know, some of these people there like there was a report. This woman was last seeing in her house as it was floating down the river, you know, holler and help me.

I mean, those are things that's hard to get your head around. And he mentions, I mentioned, some of the PTSD nature of it. And I'll admit, so when we came, we had tried to get out and couldn't that night. And we come back into town, it's black, dark, people on the side of the road. And so I started getting just this heavy weight, anxious feeling on my chest as we're heading toward, we did have a bed to sleep in because our house was still there. But the thought I was having of going to that dark house and not knowing what was going to happen, you know, the next day or the days after, it weighs on you.

I mean, like, you know, I'm a person of hope and faith. I never questioned God in this, but I will say I had a physical and mental feeling. And so that's when we went to Zach's house and got some candles, because even if I could just have a little bit of light in that darkness, I felt a little bit better, you know, secure. That's the reason Jesus is referred to as the light of the world. That's it. And that's the way I felt, Dad. And I have thought about that since. If there's from a spiritual perspective, in dark moments, you need some light.

I mean, you need, because in that moment, it just buoyed my spirit enough where I thought, okay, we get up tomorrow. It's daylight. We'll come up with another plan. know, and so then we wound up with family. I mean, that was another point I was going to make because, you know, I feel like, Jace, I've learned some lessons as I kind of sit down and reflected knowing that we were going to talk about this on the podcast today. And one of them I thought about was Acts 2, 42 through 47 and 4 32 through 35.

And you remember those were the text when the church had just started. And so you had this idea that everybody was together. And, you know, in this case, it was the brand new church. But this is it says they devoted themselves to the apostles teaching to fellowship, breaking of bread and prayer. Everyone is filled with all many wonders and miraculous signs. All the believers were together and had everything in common. They sold their possessions and their goods and they gave to everyone as he had need.

And you see something similar in Acts 4. And this was a totally different situation. It was not a joyful situation. But the idea that we had family, when Lisa and I went over to Ben and Melissa's house, and Ben's one of these camping, you know, prepper type people. I knew you'd have stuff and supplies. But we sat around. We were praying, of course.

We shared a meal together. And I thought, man, how do you do this without family? You know, whether it's a spiritual existence or in this case, a physical one. Because all those people out on the interstate were sitting in those cars just hoping they could get out of there. And I thought they don't have anybody. They're alone. They don't have any supplies. and of anybody they can go to.

And I kind of relayed that into our spiritual existence and thought, man, we got to have community in the worst times. And, babe, didn't you feel that way? It just, we felt buoyed when we were there. Absolutely. I mean, we drove up in Ben and Melissa's yard. And, of course, Ben's outside cutting trees and, you know. He had about six trees across the driveway. You know, just putting things back together as well as he can.

And then Melissa's in the house. there's, you know, they got water in their basement. So now there's towels hanging all across the front of the house on the line outside and anywhere they can, you know, just air dry this stuff. But we drive up and Ben hollers at Melissa and says, they're back. Because every time we kept launching out to leave, we couldn't get out. So we had a place to come back to. And so Melissa walks out on the porch.

and just says, well, all right, we were wondering if y'all made it out, but I guess we see you didn't. Come on, let's go eat something. So, I mean, it was just like that. You know, you had family that just welcomed you into their home. And you just felt a relief then. So we had an ice chest with some food in it, some ice and some other stuff from our, and then they had a girl living downstairs in their basement who's a college student. Well, she brings up her food. And so it's like, just like this text.

We put all our food together and say, okay, we got this, this, this, this and this. We got some waters. We got this. We had a half a case of waters. And it was just like this situation. We were just pulling together to survive, you know, which you rarely get that opportunity in, you know, in our life. But it was actually, I mean, you know, when we sat out in the chairs and just talked, so much time in life, you're just going from one thing to the next thing to the next thing. And you don't have time for those small conversations.

But, you know, those couple of days, we had time for those small conversations and just to, you know, talk about things that we used to do or, you know, talk about the Bible or, you know, just time that we could relax and just kind of, you know, breathe in because it was beautiful outside that we had blue skies. I mean, you know. It was devastation, but in its own beauty. That's right. We had the, Daniel, appreciate this, we had a crank radio. They had one of those where it's a dynamo and you crank it and you pick up a radio signal. That's how we found out the road opened up was just old-fashioned radio. So you think about all the different ways we communicate now.

Probably one of the older ways of communication in America and in the world is just radio signals. And that's how we found out how to get out there. Yeah, we're just sitting out back. Listen to the radio. I was like, can we turn that radio back on? And so they turned it on. we finally found a station that would come through. And there was a girl on there, and she said, you know, all interstates have been, you know, closed.

But we did today open up. Just got word. Yeah, just got word that 26 South, is that right? Yep. Was opened up. And so I went, ow, he's in the house. So I'm just hollering at him. We can leave.

We can get out at least. And we didn't know. I didn't want to get my hopes up too much, but we hit it and we got through. Yeah. and we were out. And, you know, I thought, man, then we started praying prayers a blessing because now supplies could get in. Yeah.

And that sounds like I can generate. But we also, it was a heavy thing to leave them there, too. Yeah. You know, to leave our family behind. And, you know, we were able to get out, but, you know, they still don't have power, water, food. I mean. It's almost like a survivor's guilt.

Yeah. We felt because we were getting out, which is tough. And sometimes when you go through that, that's what happens. I want to share a text for. from Mark chapter 6. I thought this was interesting. And we've talked about this on the podcast in the past with doing the Gospels. But in light of this storm, I thought this was interesting.

And this was just another one of those little lessons that I feel like I learned from this. And you remember the setting. Jesus had just fed the 5,000 earlier in Mark 6. And the disciples didn't really grasp what he was trying to accomplish and keep that in mind as I read this. In the verse 45, it says, immediately, Jesus made his disciples get into the boat and go ahead of him to Besseda while he dismissed the crowds. All that crowd that he fed is still on one side. Now the disciples are taking a boat to go across the other. After leaving them, he went up to on a mountain side to pray. When evening came, the boat was in the middle of the lake

and he was alone on land. He saw the disciples, he's up on the side of the mountain watching these guys. he saw the disciples straining at the oars because the wind was against them. About the fourth watch of the night, he went out to them walking on the lake. So it's a little squall that's come up, and the wind is there, and I'm assuming rain and everything to go with it. And so he just starts walking out there. He was about to pass by them, but when they saw him walking on the lake, they thought he was a ghost.

They cried out because they all saw him and were terrified. Immediately he spoke to them and said, courage. It is I. Don't be afraid. Then he climbed to the boat with them and the wind died down. They were completely amazed for they had not understood about the lows. Their hearts were hardened, which was interesting that, you know, Mark mentions that, you know, at the end of that. And I've always thought about that because, you know, we studied this before, me having gone through this now, I always thought this was almost like a, like a funny moment. Like Jesus is like, let me show you boy something, you know, and then he's going to like walk by him on the lake.

But now I feel a little bit differently. Because the whole situation, they were having a hard time grasping who he was, I almost think in this situation, what he did was go out there just to say, look, I'm the real deal. You know, you missed it on the lows, but you know what? I can do anything. Well, also, you know, a couple of chapters before. So this was in chapter 4 of Mark in verse 35.

It says that day when the evening came, he said to disciples, let's go over to the other side. Leaving the crowd behind, they took him along just as he was in the boat. There were also other boats with them. A furious squall came up and the waves broke over the boat so that it was nearly swan. Jesus was in the stern sleeping on a cushion, which was a lot like the three kids with y'all. Maybe that's why he said become like little children. So he's asleep. He's obviously not worried about it.

The disciples woke him and said, don't you care if we drown, which is an interesting statement. He got up, rebuked the wind and said to the way he's quiet, be still. Then the wind died down. And it was completely calm. and he said, why are you so afraid? You still have no faith. They were terrified and asked each other, who is this, even the wind and ways obeying?

My point is, then he does the feeding of the 5,000, along with casting out demons. Then he has another moment. At some point, you would think they would not be terrified over seeing a figure walking across that water. I would have thought, I think that must be the same guy who calmed the name.

storm who just you know it's jesus but just took uh what two fish and five loaves of bread and fed up the 5,000 people i think there's a point in here about maturity you know it took the disciples quite a while to kind of get this and even though they were seeing this happen you would think well if i saw a miracle that'd be enough for me but that's obviously not true because they were seeing them every day and we're still, when you see a storm, that's real. And you know that you're perishable. So I just think when you put all that together, it kind of helps us on our take of how we respond to stuff like this.

We're all so busy and so distracted and we have our cell phones or, you know, whatever. And then all of a sudden, something like this happens. And only the things that really matter are left. And there you are sitting around a campfire, having conversation. with people that seem weird because most people are distracted. Yeah. I'm wondering why this happened and what are we going to do. So you tapped into it, Jess.

That's exactly what I took from that. I'm glad you expanded it out to show it even more. So, I mean, Lisa and I, nobody's perfect and nobody's, but we're mature Christians. We've been around a long time. We love the Lord. But we just found ourselves in a setting where we made our plans like we always do. We were the fifth event in 10 days, and we're laying everything out.

And then all of a sudden, a storm of such, you know, ferocity hits us. They're like, you know, like I said, I even felt trapped. I mean, I felt like a physical, emotional. So I'm praying about it, but I still couldn't shake it. And so what I'm saying is we're all in those moments where we get challenged where it's like, okay, is it real or is it not? So I was having a hard time sleeping. I would spend a lot of time in prayer saying, okay, Lord, just I know you're here.

I know you're going to take care of things. But at the same time, it challenges every part of who you are when situations get bad enough. So the reason I wanted to tell you guys that out listening is because you may have family affected by this. You're probably not listening to us today, but you may listen to this later. And just you have to figure out what can I take from the Almighty when I go through something like this to make me stronger.

Yeah. And that's the way I feel now. I feel like I understand even more how difficult things are in life. But if you didn't have God, if you didn't have family, if you didn't have trust, what would you have? And also, but isn't that the way we are now? I mean, God does miracles in our lives all the time. I mean, he blesses us so much with different things. And it's like, I mean, you know, our thing we had in May, that kind of, that's,

kind of shut us down, you know, me having cancer. That shut us down. Well, that'll do it. That's exactly right. But then God blessed us. And, you know, my doctor said, this is just going to be a little bump in the road. That's all this is going to be is a bump in the road. And you know what?

In faith, that's exactly what it was. That was just a bump in the road. physically, I mean, I had to go through some stuff, but I mean, people go through stuff all the time. Yeah. So to me, we see these little things, and that was one of the things that somebody told me, don't miss the little blessings that God will give you each and every day, the little signs that he's there, that he's listening, and that he's with you. And, I mean, same thing with this, you know.

I feel the same way. When Melissa walked out on that porch, you know, and was smiling. Of course, it was also, you know, kind of funny because we had leave and come back, leave and come back. But when she walked out on that porch, it was almost like a confirmation of God saying, you have family. You're going to be okay. What more, you know, some of these people don't even have that. Everybody was grimy and dirty and covered in sawdust. and mud, and we weren't in our best in terms of how we looked and all that, but we were together.

That's right. While y'all were going through all that, my wife had an event here, and she invited 15 women, and they had to be in an age criteria, I think it was 22 to 29, to our old place that's a bed and breakfast, and a long town estate, I guess, we'll call it. And so, of course, they filled up real quick. The reason only 15 is because that's how many beds there are. So all these people were perfect strangers. And you're like, what's this got to do with the storm?

But I'm just going to share that life happens in various ways. And the idea was like a mentorship. Missy was going to, like, disciple these. And assuming these people are believers, because they follow our family, went to social media. So I think there were nine states represented. and 15 women. So it was a whole weekend.

So Missy give lessons. They did a little worship. So we get to the last night of it, which was Saturday night, which I guess that's the day the storm was hitting. Friday and Saturday. Yeah, Friday and Saturday. And so she invited them all to our house in Louisiana, and she cooked for them.

And she gave them a little, you know, Jesus sermon. Well, I'm back watching the LSU game. And she comes in and said, something weird to kind of happen. And I was like, what's that? She's like, well, two of these women are just in tears. And they're wanting to be baptized. And they're not taking no for an answer.

She said, not that I told them, no, I just said, y'all can wait for in the morning. And she's like, that really wasn't the goal. It was a discipleship thing. It was a mentorship. She said, but throughout this process, they've had clarity on who Jesus is. And they both have said in two different conversations,

we don't know Jesus. I mean, that's our problem. That's what they concluded. So I was like, she was like, so do you have some waiters? She goes, we have a pool. And I was like, well, my waiters are wet because I went tail hunting.

And the first thing that happened when I sat down was they filled up waiter. So I was like, I'll just go with what I got on here. So we baptized these. beautiful a lot of tears you know I changed clothes sit back down like 10 minutes later I'm back to watch the LSU game missy's like you're not gonna believe this there's another one and I was like I should have I should have asked or I went and changed clothes because now I was like I'm running out of clothes and she's like what you mean I was like I've been wet all day from the waiters having the one out

there and and uh this woman was was strange to me because she she had uh been studying she has a church she goes to and she requested that she wanted to be baptized for months and whoever the pastor was made her fill out a form on why she wanted to be baptized and and he basically said you didn't pass it and i was like which made me angry and i gave a little speech i was like look this is about jesus Jesus saves you. And he's, God is, this is for everyone. Yeah. Anytime.

So, because she was like, I mean, you can do this right here. We kind of got into the conversation. It doesn't matter who baptizes. But I mean, this woman, tears were just flowing down her face. And I baptized her. But I just thought in that moment with all, I was fully aware of the storms going on. Yeah. But I thought these individuals,

on this intimate level, which Missy had an idea of what was gonna happen here, but it was way beyond that. It was like this was a life-altering encounter that happened to them. And I think the storm functions in that same way. I mean, everyone has a storm as my point. Whether it, some of these women, you know,

had been victims of just poor parenting, and just all this baggage. And, but in the moment, They thought, oh, we're going to go down to the duck people and have a good time. And next thing you know, they're introduced to Jesus in a way that they had never experienced. And I just thought it was all kind of surreal that this spiritual battle that we talk about comes in various ways and points, whether it was blue skies and rainbows, as it was in my house, but a lot of trauma and turmoil or what you are in. It was funny, Jay's, if you had had one, more set of baptisms, you would have had to go Russell Brand style.

Russell Brand is a British comedian who at one time was an agnostic. Now he is a Christian. He's embraced Christ this year. And I saw a video on X of he and another guy baptizing some people. And they were both in their underwear, Russell Brand and the other guy doing the baptizing. And I guess they didn't have any clothes. So they just went to old school and they were baptized people.

So that was your next thing, was you'd have been down to your skivvies, I guess. Well, it was kind of funny because I had told Missy that story. But I was like, you know, I mean, we literally talked about the storm. And I said, I've been wet all day. And the storm is hundreds of miles from here. But it's just because that's human nature for us is like, if it's not happening to us, it just doesn't have the weight. That's right.

Yeah. But in the grand scheme of spiritual warfare. it was quite a weekend, you know, with that in mind. And it's like some of those women were from the states that were getting hammered, which they felt terrible because they were like, we can't even, we don't even know if we can get back in. But meanwhile, when we do get back in, we're really ready to serve now and to love. You got to get it right first.

I think it's important that we think about other people, and you never really know the storms that people are going through. you know, mentally. Because like you said, you know, just people suffer from bad parenting things that's happened to them. And they really don't know that they can forgive on one hand, but also that Jesus will forgive them. Oh, exactly. Which is the most important thing. That's what I was going to say.

I mean, last night, so I get a briefing. Another thing that happened this past weekend besides the storms was a buddy of mine, he he's part of a mission work in a third world country which is broken out into wars and there's gangs going around and there was a little group of kids in an orphanage that they were trying to protect and that my buddy was like trying to figure out what to do and he's like I got a guy I'm going to let him know and so he passed the information well this guy and my buddy was unaware of this even happened. He gets a team of ex-Navy seals and military guy,

and they go down to this country and protect that orphanage and wind up meeting the gang leader and sharing Jesus with him. And I listened to this debriefing for about an hour last night. And I thought, and I'm not giving the details just because I want to, you know, protect where they're at and what they're doing. But I just thought, man, we got some awesome decisions. of Jesus with all going on, they're like, yeah, we're in and we're going to go try to save these kids. And they did.

And I just, I can't stress enough that it's a spiritual war and whose side your own is very important. And you'll see those stories of relief flooding in. Let me read you one more passage before we wrap up this podcast. It's from 2nd Corinthians 1. Dad read it a few podcasts back. And it's my favorite passage in moments like this. I just want you to listen to this. If you've been affected or if you're trying to help other people,

just listen to these words that Paul writes. Praise be to the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Father of Compassion and the God of All Comfort, who comforts us in all our troubles so that we can comfort those in any trouble with the comfort we ourselves have received from God. That's what Jay just described in Lisa. For just as the sufferings of Christ flow over into our lives,

so also through Christ our comfort overflows. If we are distressed, it is for your comfort in salvation. If we are comforted, it is for your comfort, which produces in you patient endurance of the same sufferings that we suffer. And our hope for you is firm, because we know that just as you share in our suffering, so you also will share in our comfort. We don't want you to be uninformed, brothers, about the hardships we suffered in the province of Asia. We were under great pressure far beyond our ability to endure so that we

despaired even of life. Indeed, in our hearts, we felt the sentence of death. Man, and I can relate to that. But this happened that we might not rely on ourselves, but on God who raises the dead. He has delivered us from such a deadly peril, and he will deliver us. On him, we have set our hope that he will continue to deliver us as you help by your prayers. then many will give thanks on our behalf for the gracious favor granted us an answer to the prayers of many, which is why we pray for this situation earlier. Swan dot church, black mountain Christian home, Onekingdom.org, Samaritanspurst.org. If you guys can help out or if you're in the area, if you can actually go in and help folks,

it's a great time to help other people. So we pray for you guys. So sorry for those who have lost life and property, but just remember the resurrection. Thanks for listening to the Unashamed podcast. Help us out by rating us on iTunes. And don't miss an episode by subscribing on YouTube and be sure to click that little bell to get notified about new episodes. And for even more content that you won't get anywhere else,

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