WHOA That's Good Podcast - It's Never Too Late To Reset & Turn Your Life Back to God | Sadie Robertson Huff & Craig Groeschel

Episode Date: September 7, 2022

Craig Groeschel, founder and lead pastor of Life Church, talks with Sadie about leadership, pursuing your spouse, how you can attract the right people to you wherever you are, and why he's hesitant to try Christian's cold-plunge tub. He also reminds us that we can't be part-time followers of Christ and that everyone connects with the Lord in different ways, so stop worrying about what everyone else does! And Sadie serves up a challenge: Are you talking ABOUT God as much as you talk TO God? - Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

This episode is brought to you by KPMG. At KPMG, innovation is the go-to state of mind. Their visionary thinkers and advanced technology help you see beyond the now, uncover new insights, and turn them into opportunities. KPMG can help you leverage the value of data and drive transformational outcomes through innovation. To explore their thinking, go to kpmg.us JLL believes you should expect more from your office space. So ask yourself, is your office space working as hard as you are? Does it foster collaboration,

fuel productivity, and help build culture? Is it designed with intent? Is it a place you want to be? Your office can be a powerful asset, so put your office to work with JLL, and see a brighter way. Learn more at jll.com slash Spotify. What's up friends? Welcome back to Whoa That's Good Wednesday. I hope everyone's having a great week so far, but it's about to get better this week is going to be awesome. We have an incredible guest on the podcast. He is the founder and pastor of Life Church.

He has a leadership podcast and he has a new book out called lead like it matters. I'm sure you know exactly who I'm talking about. We have Craig Groschell on the podcast. Welcome to the world. Let's go podcast. Hey, Sadie. I'm honored to be here. Loves having you on our podcast. People are still talking about it and our church loves you. My family loves you. So thanks for having me on your podcast. Hey, it was epic. And honestly, I got so many texts from friends about the podcast. I was on with you because I don't get to talk about leadership a lot. You know, I talk about ministry, of course, and my love for the Lord, type of relationships, but not a lot of people ask me about leadership. So that was a super cool perspective to get to talk about.

So thank you for that. Well, you did outstanding. You're a world-class leader and we enjoyed the time with you. And of course, the high point was kind of maybe working out with your husband that guy's a beast. Definitely a high point. Well he literally said he was like, Khrushchell is goals for me. That's one of you on his age. So the feeling was mutual. Well before we kick off the podcast I have to ask you the question that everyone gets asked on the world that's good podcast and that is, what is the best piece of advice that you have ever been given? Oh, best advice ever. Great question, Sadie. I would say I was probably around your age,

maybe a little bit older, and it was just before we started the church, and I was meeting with a mentor's name as Gary Walter, and he said to me, almost kind of prophetically the way he said it. It wasn't even so much advice as it was just kind of a directive statement, but he said, he said, you'll very likely overestimate what you're able to do in the short run. And you may even be disappointed with it, which was so true. Because in the early years, you know, we worked so hard and just didn't reach for many people. But he said, you're very likely overestimate what you can do in the short run.

And then he paused for a moment and he said, but you'll vastly underestimate what God can do through a lifetime of faithfulness. Wow. And when he said it, I didn't know how true it was. I believed it, but it's, you have to be someone, you know, kind of like my age and have several decades under your belt before you really start to see just how true that is, that so often, especially kind of in our, you know, social media, go viral

world, we want big impact fast, and we may be able to get, you know, big influence or viral post-fast or whatever, but to really have lasting ministry, we often were dissatisfied with, you know, I'm 23, I thought I'd be doing more, I'm 30, I thought I'd be married by now and I'm not or whatever, we're disappointed with the short term, but we really don't have any idea, let me vastly underestimate what guy can do through a lifetime of faithfulness and that's what we're blessed to be seeing after several decades in. So I would just say, you say, hopefully to your listeners,

especially a lot of younger spiritual leaders and younger Christians that when you serve Jesus faithfully, day in, day out over not just weeks, months, years, and decades, you can have a blessed family, blessed marriage, blessed ministry, blessed friendships, and you'll underestimate just how special it can be. That's so good, man.

That's great advice because it's so true. And I think so many people don't make it to that long. Life of faithfulness because the minute that it didn't work fast, they tapped out. You know, they're like, oh, right. It's not succeeding. Then this is probably not where I'm called. Or if it's not succeeding, this is probably not what I'm supposed to be doing. But just because something isn't successful,

by the way that you deem it being successful, it does not mean that God is not in it. And that's so true for us. I think people look at even what I'm doing, and they're like, oh, well, it's easy for you to say, you're 25 and you're doing something successful, but no, there have been so many different things that we've started that it actually took a while

to grow and we're continuing to grow, you know? Every time we start a new aspect of L.O. We're starting from the ground up, you know? And I'm like, man, this is awesome, but I hope I'm doing this at 50, you know? And so, yeah, that lifelong ministry, that's where so much fruit is. And it's incredible to see learning from you

because you do have a beautiful family in an incredible church. Thank you. Well, take us back to before all that. Before you know you're seeing you're in lead pastor of this incredible life church. And before you have a leadership podcast, all these books written, take us back to the college version

of Craig Grishel. Okay. Okay. I was probably the guy a lot of people hated in college. So I played tennis in college. I was a frat boy and just was wild like a lot of college athletes or fraternities for people and was pretty obnoxious. And so I was having a blast. You know, sin can be really fun until it's not, right?

It's just, and it was fun and then it wasn't. And I had a, I was president of fraternity and we had four guys commit grand larceny. And so the college was gonna kick us off campus, like get rid of our fraternity. And as a president, I decided to try to do something to save it. And I had what was kind of like a public relations move.

And honestly, say it was more of an undercover spiritual. I was seeking, but I couldn't let anybody know, because that would have been too uncool. So I said, hey, we're going to start a Bible study and try to start doing some service projects. And I really wanted to start a Bible study because I really wanted to actually know what was in there. And so I said that to our fraternity brothers

and they're like, the bleep we are, blah, blah, blah, blah. And I said, no, we're gonna do it. And so I had seven guys that actually came to our first Bible study. None of us were Christians, Sadie. We would just read the Bible, and then we would pray. And our prayers were like horrible. We'd pray, like, you know,, God like protect us as we party. And God, you know, we just asked that Mitch's girlfriend's not

pregnant, help her not be pregnant. God, we didn't know any better. And it was just reading Matthew, Martin, Luke, John, I read all the way to Ephesians chapter two and I read about the grace of Jesus that were saved, not by our good works, but by grace through faith. And that was just, that was when the good news became good news to me. Wow.

And I didn't, there wasn't like a preacher or there wasn't someone witnessing to me, there wasn't a song, it was just me and the Word of God. Wow. And I went out and knelt down and prayed the best kind of my own version of what we might call a sinner's prayer, just a submission to Jesus. Wow. my own version of what we might call a sinner's prayer, just a submission to Jesus. And I was really lost and not a moral person. And when I knelt down, I was one person. And when I stood up after that prayer,

when scripture says you're a new creation, like I was different, I was new. I wasn't perfect, holy, but I was different. Jesus saved me. And I said, I entered ministry that day. It wasn't like I was paid, it wasn't like I was different, Jesus saved me. And I said, I entered ministry that day. It wasn't like I was paid, it wasn't like I was a pastor, but day number one, because I was so transformed, ministry was my heart, and that's been my heart ever since.

That's incredible. So after you gave your life to Christ, I read that you tried to plug yourself into a church, but you didn't even know where to go to church. So you see this building on the outside, and you think must be a, tell us a little bit about that. Well, I grew up going to church some and we were part of a traditional denomination, which I still would typically love, but I just went to the closest gorgeous church down the street. And it was pretty on the outside, but there wasn't much going on on the inside.

And so I tried to find the presence of God in that church and didn't really find the presence of God in the church. And so some friends invited me to a different place and I went in and just really encountered what I'd call like the, just the presence and the power of God in a way that I hadn't before, where the word was alive, the worship was vibrant, and it was just, it's, into this day, I would just say, there's a lot of people that don't see a need for church, but the church is a bride of Christ,

and we need the body of Christ, and I thank God for being able to watch podcasts and watch sermons on YouTube, but nothing replaces the presence of God in community and church. That's when my faith started to grow. I actually started getting grounded because I had a lot of passion, but no real biblical roots. It was in the church that I started to learn who God is and who he is through us as part

of his family. It's awesome. That's so cool. So you go to church and you get plugged in, but now you lead a church and life church I know was literally voted like the number one place to work in the state. So that is that's just so cool. So for you just even cultivating a space for what church is. What are some of the things that are important for you and Amy as you lead a space for what church is. What are some of the things that are important for you and Amy as you lead a church and knowing what it feels like to walk into a church and try to find the presence of God?

Are there things that y'all put into place at y'all's own church that you're like, when people walk in here, this is how we want them to feel. 100%. So we started the church way back in 1996. And back at the time, churches then didn't look like a lot of churches looked today. And so there's I would say in many ways they're more accessible meaning a lot of times

when a pastoral explained theology, he or she whoever's preaching will do it in a way that's is accessible, understandable. But one of the things from the very beginning that we wanted to do, we kind of had a goal behind the scenes. We wanted people to feel needed and known. And so as a part of the body of Christ, we all have a role that we're needed. And we all should be known. If you think about it, just from a kind of a leadership perspective, in churches, if let's say there's a really small church

and there's a really big church, if someone is at the little small church and they both love Jesus, why do they stay at a little small church? They stay there because there's something for them to do, they're needed, they're valuable. And if they miss, they're known, someone says, where were you? They take a big church, why would people go to the big church for a million different reasons, because the worship, the ministry, the missions, the impact, the mother's day out program, the preaching, whatever. But why would they leave? Because they might not feel needed, because everything seems to be covered, or they might

not feel known. And so, no matter the size of the church, I think in the family of God, everybody's important. Everyone has a ministry. They should be needed. And then community matters so much. There's, it doesn't matter how big or how small the church is. It feels small when there's people that love you and you love them.

Yeah, it's so good. Man, I love that. That's awesome. J-L-L believes you should expect more from your office space. So ask yourself, is your office space working as hard as you are? Does it foster collaboration, fuel productivity, and help build culture? Is it designed with intent?

Is it a place you want to be? Your office can be a powerful asset, so put your office to work with JLL and see it right away. Learn more at jll.com slash Spotify. You talk a lot about the it factor. I love how even in the book it's lead like it matters. So talk to me about the it factor and what that looks like, what that means and what do you look for with the it factor when it comes to a church and how do you even cultivate that

in a space. So that wasn't something we started out to do. So we started in 1996, we started in a two car garage with 40 people borrowed green felt back chairs and an overhead projector, which you probably, most people probably don't know what that is and I'm glad you don't, okay. We had nothing at all, but we had the Bible and we had the presence of God and it was special.

It was crazy special. You could sense this presence. People were coming to faith and cries, lies were being God and it was special. It was crazy special. You could sense his presence. People were coming to faith in Christ. Lies were being changed. It was amazing. And we moved from a garage to an elementary school then to a bike factory, then built a building, then out through the building.

It was too, we were turning people away. And so we were one of the first churches to our knowledge back then to say, well, what if we met in another site? So this was like in the year 1999, and that hadn't been done before that we knew of. And so we started meeting in a movie theater. And then we ended up discovering by accident when Amy gave birth to one of our six kids right before church. We ran a video message, and that hadn't been done much to our knowledge before, and so we kind of discovered multi-size.

So we woke up Sadie and had like seven or eight locations, which was back then, we weren't the only church, but we were one of the first churches pioneering the multi-size movement, and here's what's crazy. They were in the same type of buildings, they had the same worship style, all the staff was hired under the same kind of training system, they had the same culture, they had the same was hired under the same kind of training system.

They had the same culture. They had the same messages and the results were phenomenally different. It was bizarre. Seven miles down the road. One place, tons of lives were changed. The other place seemed flat. The language we just started accidentally using was like, well, this place has it. This place doesn't have it.

What's it? I don't know. It's something. It's like faith. It's a buzz. It's an anticipation. It's a sense of the presence of God. What is it? I don't know.

And so we started to study it, and that was wrote a book in 2008 called It. That was the name of it. The new book, Lead Like It Matters, is a revised and expanded version of half of the content is new, and all version of about half of the content is new and all of it's updated. And so we started to just ask ourselves, what is it in the answer is we don't really know. It's the presence of God in a special way that we can't package, but we do know there are certain things that we do that contribute to it.

There are certain things we do that kill it. And so the book was kind of a study on that. So the goal isn't like to have it, the goals to be in the presence of God and see life's change, but it is kind of a descriptive term that we say, the kind of helps bring explanation and context for teaching spiritual leadership is what we're doing in the book. It's cool. It's so good. That's so neat it, honestly, because so many people want to lead well, but they don't know how to lead. And you provide that and you do that in your pie guest too

So I want to talk to you about the leader who's okay because there's a lot of people who are listening to this pie guest who are in college right now or maybe Getting their first job. So a lot of young young people probably in their 20s So for the person who doesn't have the title yet of leaders Yes, they're not big in the company that they just started there and not in the leadership position But yet they have this desire to help make the place of their app become better How do you lead when you're not titled a leader? Well, that's a fantastic question and the first thing I would do is just I would say that I hope that you see yourself as a leader And it's sad say didn't be how many people Really do have real influence, but don't see themselves as leaders. They say, well, I'm not a leader

yet because I'm not whatever. I'm too young. I don't have a degree. I don't have the title. And you know, leadership's not title. It's not power. It's not position. Leadership is all about influence. In its essence, that's what it is. And everyone has influence, right? You can be a freshman in college and you got influence with your friends. If you're a talented freshman in college, you can have influence with your professors, right? It's good, yeah.

You can have influence anywhere if you treat people in the right way. So I would say, don't wait for, don't wait until you have everything lined up. Everyone has their excuse. I'm too young, I don't have the degree, I'm not, I don't wait until you have everything lined up. Everyone has their excuse. I'm too young, I don't have a degree, I'm not, I don't have enough experience. And the bottom line is you never feel like you're completely ready.

I would say start leading now. And the question is, what are you leading to? And I read a headline about an article that just came out on you that said, lead your followers, right? Everybody's got a social media platform. I'm almost certain everybody listening to this. Lead your followers, point them towards something. How do you gain influence with people?

It's not when you get the title, it's when you treat them with respect, when you love them, when you honor them. And so use your relationships not for selfish gain, but to point them towards something that matters. And for those of us that are disciples of Jesus, there's no greater way to be a leader than to lead them to follow the one that leads us to eternal life.

So good. I love that. And I love that you really were doing that before you became a quote unquote leader in the way that you lead now in the sense of, you were leading people in the Bible before you became a pastor. Like you were sitting in a fraternity, not even knowing the Bible yourself being like,

hey, let's open the books because who you were was a leader. And so that's such a great piece of advice to recognize that you are a leader. Like you are a leading people one way or another. So acknowledging that leadership and acting on it. And I don't want to speak over you, but I do want everyone to know is that leadership doesn't look the same way every time. Meaning like you are Sadie, Robertson, Huff, powerhouse of visible influence, and that's leadership. The person who serves quietly behind the scenes and builds relational equity, that's leadership

too. And you can have empathetic leadership where you care about people. You can have a servant heart of leadership. You can have administrative leadership where you just really, really organize. You can have a prophetic leadership where you're speaking boldly. You can have kind of like a collective leadership where all you do is you're introducing people and networking them together. So the bottom line is, don't settle for or feel pressure to lead like others lead. Find your strengths, your gifts, and the great thing is for a lot of your audiences, they

don't know what's in them yet, meaning at 22, 25, I didn't have a clue that I'd be able to do what I'm doing right now. And so I would say experiment with it, that there's there's there's untapped spiritual and leadership potential in all of us. And just get down there and see what happens, love people, give generously. Don't try to make it about you ever, always make it about loving others

and pushing them towards something better. And it'll be really fun what you discover. I love that. There's a quote that you said in Evertodown. It says, you will never be a leader that others love to follow if you aren't a leader that loves people. Absolutely. That is so good because that is a lot of what leadership really looks like is loving

people well. And God, I mean, Jesus said like the most important thing you do is to love the Lord you got with all your heart, all your soul, all your mind with all your strength and to love your neighbor as yourself. So like the best leaders are going to do that right. Like love God and love people. 100%. And man, it's so good. And I love to, you said this to me when I was with you last, but you were like, whenever you are in your 30s

and you said it way, way better. I'm just saying this for the, just for the people on our family. You said, when you're in your 30s, that's when you're really gonna hit your stride. And you were meaning it so powerful into me. What it also brought me was such ease and such peace. Because I think sometimes I think, oh no, what if I already like did the big thing? You know, like what's the rest of my life gonna be? Because I think sometimes we think

like, you know, we're defined by the big thing that we did in the past or or the big thing we're going to do in the future but it was so cool because you were like no you're going to hate your stride and you're already doing great things but you're going to continue to do great things and how even you started this at the beginning about how you have a lifetime of faithfulness ahead of you like that's what the goal is and I think so many people in their 20s they graduate college and and they're like, okay, I have to do the thing now. And whether they do the thing now and think, oh, shoot, I just already did the thing or they don't do the thing and they think, oh, shoot, I'm this my moment. It's like there's so much pressure to like launch out of the gate and just do your thing. But I love how you're saying, you know what, it's not

just about doing one thing. It's about living life of faithfulness. And for you with live church, you know, you're done a lot of things. Like, a lot of people might not even realize, like, y'all did the Bible app. You all started the Bible app. Like, the Bible app is a huge thing. You have an incredible podcast. You have books that it's gonna, you've seen people save, week after week because of the church that you lead. You have jobs and it's a great place to wear all these things. But I love how you didn't stop with just one thing. So how do you keep believing after you succeed in one area?

How do you keep believing God for the more or for the what's next and not get stuck in where you've been? Yeah. So that's a great question. And I do think it is interesting, Sadie. I think it's harder to be in your 20s today than ever before. I mean, at least way harder than it was when I was there. There's so much external pressure

and everyone's highlight, reels are visible. And so you kind of think, everybody's got this better life. And people can do more earlier now in many ways. And so there's just way more pressure. And I would just, I would really hope, like with my kids, to take the pressure off of what I call like immediate visible success

and say, the goal is not when you succeed, whatever that means, when you succeed in the future, when you hit your target or your goal, or you get the blue check mark, or you get the, you know, six figure, or you get this, you know, book deal, whatever, whatever success is to you. The successes, when you hit the mark in the future, successes when you're faithful to Jesus today.

That's success. And just to be faithful today over an extended period of time, that's the goal. And what also, like you mentioned, how do you succeed after the last success? The other question is, how do you succeed after the last success? The other question is, how do you succeed after the last failure? That's right. That's where I was going next. Yeah, right? Well, I don't want to get ahead of you, but you version, which is, would be marked as one

of our biggest kind of like gifts to the world that our church funds it in, it's over a half of a billion devices that the Bible lap Well, it started out as a massive failure Say, he most people don't know it, but we tried to create the way back in the day We tried to create this just Bible engagement try to get people in the Bible So we created a website called uversion.com that was supposed to be like Combination between Facebook YouTube and the Bible where you bring content into the community around the Bible.

And it failed miserably. And it failed and we were killing it. And going away, embarrassment, tons of money lost, pie in the face, embarrassment. And then, right as we were pulling the plug on it, Apple announced that they're coming out with something called apps, which we were like, what's an app? This was back like what there was supposed to sing. And so we went to a 19-year-old kid on staff

and say, you think you can put this into a form of an app and he's like, how hard could it be? And you know, in like eight weeks, he built an app and we went to the first day apps release we were on there. And so what wasn't like, we were the best, we're just first. And because we were first, we could maybe become the best or one of the best in it. So that's a big part of it and you have to fail, you have to fail a lot. And then when you succeed, we don't want to be defined by our failures and our successes. I am not the best of what I did, I'm not the worst of what I did, I'm a child of God period.

And it's only in having that identity strongly rooted in Christ. I'm not the number of followers I have. I'm not the result of how good my last sermon was or how many people come to the church or how many books I sold or whatever the measurement is. It's I am a child of God. And if we can internalize that, that's our identity. And this is so difficult in a social media world, right?

Where you measure everything based on externals. If you can get that internal settled, then it gives you the confidence to try the external. And whether you're not afraid of failing, you'll try more. If you're not defined by your successes, you'll try more. Sometimes the greatest threat to future successes

past success, right? Yeah. You start to think you know everything, you stop being a student, and we have to future successes, past success, right? You start to think you know everything, you stop being a student, and we have to stay humble, we have to stay dependant, we have to stay rooted and grounded in Christ, and then, and that's one of my biggest compliments for you, for your husband, for your family, is just,

I know the tree's gonna grow tall because the roots are deep. Thank you, that's so good, man, that's so good. I love it. You covered exactly what I was going to ask you because I think people either struggle defining themselves by their success or they struggle defining themselves as their failures

and both are bad. You know, a lot of people don't think it would be a bad thing to define yourself as your success except for it is because your identity cannot be found on something like that because that is a shaky ground because when you go into the next thing or even in that season that doesn't do anything for your soul. I mean that's a great thing.

You accomplish something that's not who you are. And then when you define yourself as your failures, well then that can go the completely other way. And then you feel worthless and less than and now I can't do anything. And so both things are really crippling because both things leave you with a moment instead of actually letting you walk out what God has for you. And when I love this quote you had, failure is an event, never a person. Which that's just so good. Like that's something that happened to you, but that's not who you are. And same with success, right? Success is an event. It's not

a person. And the bottom line is say, you probably know this because you've had so much success, but you can't out-succeed your insecurities. Meaning there is no amount of external success that takes away any kind of internal insecurity. And it's taken me, obviously old enough to be your dad and probably then some. And it's really, really hard to find it. It was for me in my 20s and my 30s.

And then even in my 40s, it took a while before I started to recognize that what makes me special is not the size of the church, the size of the platform, not even the behavior of my kids or whatever, what makes me successful is a submitted heart to Jesus. And out of that, then comes the things that matters. It comes a marriage that's God honoring. And then out of a God honoring, Christ centered marriage,

hopefully, and in our case, thankfully, six kids that are love Jesus with their hearts and plugged into the church, and then there comes friendships and spiritual legacy. And the things that are love Jesus with their hearts and plugged into the church. And then there comes friendships and spiritual legacy. And the things that are really special now, it's kind of like that quote I gave you earlier on. It's like it's you overestimate what you can do in the short run. Like I'm not getting all the things done I want to, but you underestimate the blessings, the richness of a lifetime of faithfulness.

And that's where the real success is. It's not in the external things that they see. It's what's inside. It's what's inside your home. It see it's what's inside, it's what's inside your home, it's what's inside your heart, it's inside your marriage and your family, your friendships, that's where really the beauty and the success of a fully devoted life to Jesus falls. Come on, it's so good.

This is so good, this is so good. And just I encourage you listeners to go ahead and make that your anchor. Don't wait until you reach certain know, don't wait until you reach certain successes and don't wait until you reach certain failures to have to have that revelation. That man, God, who I am in Christ is my identity, who, what God has done for me is already enough to define me and my future and my past. And so. I think you wrote a pretty good book about that

subject, didn't you? I did. I did. So that's true. I have talked a lot about this. I think you wrote that book like right after you had a baby. I sure know, dude. Who are you following? This is so good. And so much of what you say and so much of what you preach is what I'm inspired by and how I want to live my life. I joke at the beginning that that your Christian's goals, but truly you and Amy have set such a great example to so many people on how to love well, how to lead well, how to serve well, how to be humble and leadership, so we're grateful for that. So with that being said, let's talk about marriage for a second. Yes, please. So take us to when you and Amy met, how did you meet and how did you pursue Amy? Okay, so I was, before when I was not a Christian,

I didn't live a God-honoring life, and I wasn't pure. And so when I became a Christian, I needed to redefine and learn how to treat a woman honorably. And so I stopped dating, Sadie. So I went from being party guy, from girl to girl to girl to girl. For two years, I didn't date.

And my friends thought I was crazy. They were making $100 bets back when that was more of the money than it is today. How long it'd be before I sleep with a woman. And all that kind of stuff. And so I took a Saturday night's was normally the big party night. And I called it my, it's just really cheesy.

I'm the bearer's assay, but I called it date nights with God. So I would, I would, I read books on marriage, I listened to this thing, they were called cassette tapes back in the day on marriage. And I took notes and I started writing love notes to my future wife. So I had a whole shoe box full of notes, handwritten notes to whoever my wife was going to be

about how I'd love her honor. And so I spent two years doing that. Well, I did great. I didn't date anybody. I wasn't impure. And then this girl who was not really a strong Christian was flirting with me. And I thought, what the heck?

I'm gonna go out with her. I hadn't for two years. And so 10 minutes into the date, it was obvious. She wasn't planning to honor God that night. And so I said, ah, sorry, I gotta call this a date off. I gotta take you home. And she's like, why? I'm like, I'm sorry, I'm a Christian.

And this didn't go in the right direction. And she laughed at me. She called me names, blah, blah, blah. Well, this same girl came up about two months later and she said to me, you're so weird. There's this girl who's equally weird for you. You're all overboard for God. You need to meet her. Her name is Amy.

No way. And that's how I met Amy. She told me that she was making fun of me, making fun of Amy, being weird for Jesus. And so this was back before social media, I'd never heard of, you know, I didn't have a way to look at her. Wow. And so I looked her up and called her

and had kind of a blind date with her and that's how it started. And now 31 years later, the love is still going, it's still flowing. That is awesome. I love that so much. I always tell people, like if you live your life loud for the things that matter to you

and you live your life with the convictions that you have loudly, then the right people will be attracted to you. Y'all will come together. Just say that out for friendships because people are, well, it's so hard to find friends, but then they're not actually being their authentic self and they're just, you know, going to whatever group

will, you know, take them or whatever person they can find. But when you live confident in who you are and the convictions, God brings the right people. And so I love that this girl's like, y'all are both so weird. Y'all are both talking about the same stuff. Y'all need to be together. That's just awesome.

This is cool. So a cool part of the story, say, two is that same girl who genuinely like was mad, offended, hurt, making fun and be. Years later, it came to faith in Christ. At our church was baptized. And yeah, so that's really, really cool. Wow.

It wraps around. Yeah, now she's like on fire, yeah. Come on, that is incredible. Yeah, follow your convictions. That's awesome. That wraps around. Yeah, now she's like on fire, yeah. Come on, that is incredible. Yeah, follow your convictions. That's awesome. That is so good. I think so many things in your life and Christians life are so parallel for a lot of people who listen to podcast

know Christians life. And he was also fraternity boy. He was living in crazy life. He was impure before we met. And then two years before we met, he started really following Jesus. God just radically saved him in college and he did not date for a couple years and he was listening to all of these books on relationships

and reading and studying and so it's just so cool. So man, there comes a time in your life where friends of your listening and your party and in your living a different life, it's never too late to stop and reset. Never too late to stop and repent and turn back to God and pursue things a new way and for Christian and I, that too late to stop and repent and turn back to God and pursue things a new way. And for Christian and I, that was stopping for us and saying, you know what, we've done it the world's way, we desire to do it God's way. So talk to me about how you still pursue Amy because the pursuit didn't stop in college. You still pursue her so well. What are some practical things that y'all do in your marriage to just stay close?

So I want to try to say this is humbly as I can and some people show the kind of the Instagram marriage and then they go home, it's not so good. Like we genuinely, honest to goodness, have a very, very special, amazing, intimate, strong Christ-centered marriage. And it didn't happen by accident. And I say that because I want people to know it's possible because so many people don't think it's possible. And so it's been, you know, in the early years,

like kind of what Christian did, you guys have a more class marriage is he was intentional going into it. So you don't have a great marriage by accident, it's only by intentionality. And the whole culture, the way everything is designed is basically the drift is toward a bad marriage, meaning you're gonna be busy, you're gonna be distracted, you're gonna be benched on Netflix,

you're gonna be looking at your social media, you're gonna have kids, and then suddenly center your lives around your kids and not around Christ or not around guarding your marriage. And so without intentionality, we will not have good marriages. And so we have to fight against everything. Another piece of good advice that we got years ago,

there was an advice piece in the news that said, neglect the rest of the world if you have to, but never neglect your marriage spouse. Your spouse. And so Amy and I, you know, back when you put stuff up on the refrigerator, we cut that out and put a magnet on it and put it on the refrigerator and try to live that so how do we pursue each other? Always all the time in all sorts of ways today. I sent her flirty texts. She sent me flirty text back Last night, you know at the when I came home

She just like ran up to me. It was kissing all over me for no apparent reason. You know, it's just, it's just, what happens is, and then it's not just like, in the ways people think, like I buy her flowers all the time, before I could buy her flowers, I'd pick her flowers, you know, it's not just those things, but it's listening, and it's talking, and it's understanding that one of the biggest ways I'll pursue

is just letting her talk about what she's going through and that's the form of pursuit. Other things she helped me learn is that especially when we had little kids like helping with little kid one of the most romantic things I could do is give a kid a bath, right? And that's right. I'm on the dishwasher and so it's just it's being others focus serving verbal expression really, really matters. If you think something good, say it every time. Always say it, set it free. If you think something special, do it.

Don't hold back. And it's kind of like financial investing. If you invest a little bit over time at compounds, the same is true in marriage. If you invest a little bit doing the right things, just little things over and over and over again at compounds. The intimacy grows. Next thing you know, you're kissing more, next thing you know, you're talking more, next thing you know, you have more babies, next thing you know, you're going on more trips and then you know, everything matters

say to you. It's being around the right friends. If you want a good marriage, let's find a few couples with good marriages. It's being involved in a church, it's community, it's worshiping together, it's praying together. I could go on and on and on, but it's having a Christ-centered life, dying to ourselves, laying down our lives to serve each other. And it's the most rewarding work I'll ever do, because it's rewarding. It's so good. I love that man. You were telling us so much good advice when we were there with y'all. You and Amy both. One of the things y'all told us is to go and walk together because it's

so good for a couple. Since then, Christian and I have literally, every day we've been home, we've gone on a walk together and it has been so awesome because that's like a time where honey's in the stroller. We're undestracted by honey. We're not chasing her all around, which she's a good distraction, but she's a distraction sometimes. So she's in the stroller and we're walking and we're talking and that's the time of our day where he gets to hear about my day

and I get to hear about his and like, it has just been so good for us. And so, yeah, making time for those specific things y'all do is awesome. And here's a few reasons why that works. And there's a lot of things that works, that's not the magic key, but being outside where there's no ceiling and under God's creation,

there's something about that, the vitamin D, all that stuff. Walking and exercising next to each other, you basically, your mind is releasing certain chemicals, feel good chemicals, and when you feel good with somebody else, you like them more. So that's just kind of a little bit of science behind it. And then most guys, not all guys, but most women like face to face communication, like

Amy likes to sit there and look at me and I get real uncomfortable. But when your side to side doing something, Minton to open up more. And so this the whole walking side by side, when else, we're not not gonna have a 45 minute face-to-face conversation because our phones are gonna ding, or it's gonna need something, or something's gonna happen, but when you're out walking for 45 minutes, it tends to let the conversations flow, and that is up on the top of the list of things for us.

It doesn't have to be walking, but it's an activity you do together, something you enjoy together, is creates an environment for that emotional intimacy. And physically you feel better when you walk and such. So there's a lot of benefits to it. That's so cool.

You've definitely seen that. It's been awesome for us. Okay, so lastly, I want to ask you about just pursuing God. You know, you obviously, everything you do is for God. But how do you continue to pursue God? Because I think, you know, sometimes even for me, like everything you do is for God. But how do you continue to pursue God? Because I think sometimes even for me, like everything I do is for God. You know, it's like I do this podcast

to bring people closer to Him. I preach sermons to bring people closer to Him. I do blogs and YouTube and Instagram all of a sudden. But it's like I still need to pursue God in that one-on-one relationship. What are ways that you've found that have helped you just pursue God through all these years and continue to walk in that faithfulness that you talked about?

So, like I said, I give you a choice. Do you want the preacher answer? Do you want the raw-true answer? I want the raw-truth. Yeah, I bet it, because I need you to say that, right? Absolutely, what the raw-truth. Okay, so the answer is, how do I pursue God? And the truth is sometimes better than others?

Yeah, it's good. And so to go to be real authentic with you, like I had a radical transformation, came to Jesus and it was amazing. And then I worked for five years at a church before starting a life church, and then I started a life church. And what happened, Sadie, is early on,

I let ministry actually replace my intimacy with God. And I started doing the work of God more than pursuing the heart of God. And I heard someone else say this quote one times, it's not original to me, but it was true to me. They said the way I was doing the work of God was destroying the work of God in me.

Wow. So what I did back then is I prayed more to be heard by people than I did to be heard by God. I studied the scripture to teach the word rather than to feed on the word. And the image that I felt like, I can count on one hand the times I felt like God spoke to me like, you know, or it wasn't audible,

but I just felt that overwhelming since it was God. So I felt like God said to me, like, you know, or it wasn't audible, but I just felt that overwhelming sense. It was God saying, I felt like God said to me, you become a full-time pastor and a part-time follower of Christ. Wow. And so I wasn't pursuing God. And I can only imagine, you know, right now someone listening might might say, I'm a part, I'm a full-time student and a part-time follower of Christ or I'm a full-time whatever, a part-time follower of Christ. And so I had to learn and I had this tremendous guilt because I could never really, I wasn't like a prayer warrior. I always felt like I was an ADD prayer, couldn't pray a long time. And so I'll tell you some things I've learned and here's how I do better today. Several things.

One is the word has to be a part of my life, not to preach, but to know. And so into internalize, to feed on. And so, I just committed to read through the Bible, year over, year over, year. And then I started doing it in different translations, just so I'd read it in a different way. So, I just wanted to, if I can spend, if I can work out every day, and certainly I can spend that much time reading the word, right? So, I'm going to spend that,, I'm gonna internalize the word. Second thing for me would be my prayer life.

I still can't pray for a long time, but I never go for a long time without praying. That's good. I would just say to people is you don't, don't try to force your spiritual life into some box. I'm more like a text prayer. Like I'll pray a lot of short bursts of prayers toward God. And that works for me.

If someone's a prayer where you pray, however it works for you. And then the other thing that's really, really big for me and for our marriage is that, I mean, I pray together. And here's the thing that I just want to say is we didn't for years. I mean, I was a pastor and we didn't occasionally,

but not regularly, because it just felt like work to me. I felt like a yell. This is like pastor work, whatever. And so we don't pray a lot and we don't pray long. But what we do is before I leave for work, we pray. And it's usually a relatively short prayer, but here's what's powerful about it is, it's the beginning of our day.

And you can't fight and pray together. That's good. You say you have to work through things. It's really hard to have like secret addictions and pray together. So there's something that you need to deal with. You kind of got to deal with it. And it's really hard to let your lives and marriage drift far from Christ if you start the day off and pray together. So for me it's consistency in the word. It's finding my own rhythms of a prayer life

that are different for everybody. And then it's praying with Amy. Of course, I really as a pastor and to someone who loves the body of Christ, I think church is obviously way up there. And then I would just say, I read a book years ago, I wish I could tell you the title of it, but basically it said there are seven different ways people connect with God.

It was really helpful. Some worship is a big connector. Some they see God in nature. Some is actually serving people. Some it's just in the word. And it's went through all these different things. It broadened my view of we don't have to connect with God in the same way. I've got six kids.

My oldest one likes to text. My other one likes to get together and cry and talk. My third daughter likes to face to face. My son talks, cries, yells, whatever. My youngest son, it's talking after a certain time. And my youngest daughter, she'll say, we connect in different ways, right? Yeah.

Because the father, I connect with my children in different ways. Our Heavenly Father connects with all of us in different ways. And so give yourself permission to connect with him in the way that's most intimate with you and then just do it. Keep doing it. It's so good. That is so good. There's so much freedom in that and you're really should with Christ because you're right, everyone's different. And I love the role of truth because I find myself in that sometimes too. I'm like, man, I better be talking to God as much as I'm talking about God. You know, I had that little conviction last year that I realized, man, I'm talking a lot about, yeah, but I'm not talking to him near as much. So I love that advice.

Craig, this is so helpful from leadership and in the church to marriage and family and even just owning where you're at in college and where you're at and in your first job where it is. You've given us so much good advice so thank you for that. Yeah truly thank you for everyone listening please continue to dive in to all of a stuff that Craig's putting out whether you're tuning in to live church or going there if you're in the area. Also his Craig yourself leadership podcast and don't forget to get his new book, Lead Like It Matters. So much good advice. Again, Craig, thank you so much for just being you and Amy both being such a good example.

It's our generation and just honestly everyone who's alive right now with all the stuff that y'all put out to the world is a gift to all of us. Well, thank you. Thanks for having me on and thanks again too for serving our church and our podcast community and we hope we an annual event to have you in your house and I got to get my little workout with them. He's trying to get me to get a cold plunge tub. Oh, yes. I'm all into the sauna, but when I saw him get into the cold plunge tub with his shirt off showing his Christian muscles that took it to a whole nother level. Listen, if I can do it, anyone can do it.

It actually is awesome. It's worth the hype. It's worth the hype. And he might have exaggerated just a little bit on it being 35 degrees. I don't think it's that exciting. Yeah, I thought he said 33. Maybe he does say 35.

I'm going, come on man, that's cold. That's cold. He's vanturatic. He's re-adreft I'm going, come on man, that's cool. That's cool. He's vanturatic, he's re-adreft. Oh hey, we love to make an annual thing, that'd be awesome. Thank you so much. It's so good. Thanks, good to be on with you. you