Carl Lentz on Redemption, Unconditional Love, and Being a Better Man

00:00:00.720 | - What's up, y'all?

00:00:01.720 | It's Curious Mike, back with another episode.

00:00:03.380 | I am here with the man, the myth, the legend,

00:00:05.600 | a friend of mine for many years,

00:00:07.880 | and we are in his stomping grounds in New York City,

00:00:10.380 | so I appreciate you getting on the show, man.

00:00:12.400 | I'm honored.

00:00:13.240 | - Yes, sir.

00:00:14.080 | - My man, let's do it.

00:00:14.920 | - Let's go.

00:00:15.880 | - So, my man, I remember the first time I met you,

00:00:18.520 | it was, I think, after a game in Seattle.

00:00:22.200 | I think I played like a high school game in Nathan Hale,

00:00:24.560 | and you and Judah had pulled up,

00:00:27.000 | but that was the first time we really started

00:00:28.600 | to get to know each other a little bit.

00:00:29.880 | What do you remember about that time

00:00:31.440 | when we first started to get to know each other?

00:00:33.760 | - I kept hearing about this guy, this Michael Porter,

00:00:37.720 | and I was there to hang with Judah

00:00:40.160 | and see my guy, Ed Haskins, who was coaching Garfield.

00:00:43.280 | - Right.

00:00:44.120 | - And I was impressed.

00:00:46.800 | I had seen everybody play,

00:00:48.320 | and at a high school level, you wanna see,

00:00:51.080 | like, if a guy's getting touted like you were,

00:00:54.040 | you wanna see him, like, come through,

00:00:56.160 | and I was blown away, and I was like,

00:00:57.840 | "Man, this guy's special."

00:00:58.920 | But what I loved about it, though, was your attitude

00:01:01.160 | and your spirit.

00:01:01.800 | Like, you just handled it really well, but the game was wild.

00:01:04.800 | Brandon Roy was your coach, right?

00:01:05.920 | - Yeah.

00:01:06.760 | - Yeah, it was B-Roy, and then Ed's my guy.

00:01:09.000 | Shout out to Ed Haskins.

00:01:11.040 | But it was just cool.

00:01:11.920 | It was cool to see, you know, you at that stage,

00:01:14.680 | and then to watch you flourish through so many different stages,

00:01:20.560 | from coming back from injuries, defying odds, to being a champ.

00:01:25.480 | - Thank you, man.

00:01:26.480 | - And to, like, pursuing your faith, you know?

00:01:28.560 | It's been incredible to see, so I'm proud to be your friend,

00:01:32.160 | proud of what you've done, and excited you're in frickin' Brooklyn, bro.

00:01:35.560 | - I appreciate that.

00:01:36.800 | - It fits you, man.

00:01:37.800 | It does.

00:01:38.320 | - I appreciate that.

00:01:39.320 | Yeah, so going back to those days, so you, Ed was your guy,

00:01:42.880 | but they were getting smacked every game.

00:01:44.800 | Who were you, me and you became friends pretty quick,

00:01:46.880 | so who were you cheering for when you would pull up to the game?

00:01:48.800 | Did you come to the state championship?

00:01:49.800 | - Yeah, yeah.

00:01:50.800 | - You were there.

00:01:52.000 | - I'm always, to this day, though, I'm still, like, a player guy over a team guy.

00:01:57.400 | - Okay.

00:01:57.400 | - So I was able to, like, really, you know, enjoy watching you go to work

00:02:01.640 | and just support Ed, so it was a win-win for me.

00:02:04.680 | So I was divided loyalty-wise, for sure.

00:02:07.880 | - That was dope.

00:02:08.920 | Yeah, I remember kicking it with you a couple times at a couple different events

00:02:12.120 | with Judah, and we became really close.

00:02:14.680 | At that time, you were the pastor at Hillsong.

00:02:18.440 | Walk me through kind of that story.

00:02:20.680 | How did you become the pastor?

00:02:22.760 | What age were you?

00:02:23.880 | I just remember I was always watching your sermons, man.

00:02:26.120 | Like, I was watching you and a couple other pastors,

00:02:28.520 | but you were really the main one at that time that I would really tune into,

00:02:31.880 | just really because I liked your swag, and I liked your delivery,

00:02:34.200 | and I just liked your relatability.

00:02:36.040 | How did you become the pastor at Hillsong, and how was that process?

00:02:41.240 | - Yeah, well, I, you know, I'm a hooper myself.

00:02:44.040 | Don't get it twisted.

00:02:44.920 | I was getting buckets in college.

00:02:46.360 | No, I wasn't, but I played basketball in college.

00:02:48.840 | And then, like, midway through my time at NC State,

00:02:52.120 | I had a major encounter with God, rethought about my whole life,

00:02:56.520 | and left NC State to go back home and went to a Bible college.

00:03:00.200 | And then one thing led to another.

00:03:02.120 | I went to Australia because I wanted to study more about the Bible,

00:03:05.160 | and I found out about Hillsong.

00:03:07.080 | At that stage, it wasn't the Hillsong that everybody came to know,

00:03:09.880 | but it was a church that made sense to me.

00:03:11.320 | You know how you go to church sometimes, you're like, I could never come back.

00:03:14.440 | - Yeah, yeah.

00:03:15.080 | - These people are not what I want to be about.

00:03:18.040 | And I went to Hillsong, and I was like, I really understand this.

00:03:20.840 | I like this.

00:03:21.640 | This makes sense to me.

00:03:22.680 | And I went to Hillsong Bible College after that.

00:03:26.200 | And then, after years of doing youth ministry in Virginia Beach,

00:03:30.840 | came to New York.

00:03:31.800 | Me and my friend, Joel Houston, who is a songwriter, and his dad, Brian Houston,

00:03:37.000 | who ran Hillsong at the time, said, I want to do something in New York.

00:03:40.280 | And we were like, let's give it a shot.

00:03:42.520 | So we took on this challenge of this great city.

00:03:47.080 | And we were young, brother.

00:03:48.200 | We were young because me and Laura and our kids were little.

00:03:52.280 | And we just, you know, came to the city and did our best to serve people.

00:03:56.280 | And it was, you know, at times really incredible.

00:03:58.440 | - Yeah, I feel like you probably, that process is probably like a whirlwind

00:04:02.520 | in terms of how quickly you elevated to being like the lead pastor in a huge church.

00:04:06.360 | - Yeah.

00:04:06.680 | - Did that come with like unique pressures to,

00:04:11.400 | because, you know, it even speaks on this in the Bible, that like when you

00:04:14.440 | take on a leadership role, you've got to really make sure that, you know,

00:04:18.840 | you kind of held almost a different standard.

00:04:20.520 | But you were a young dude that, you know, like you said, had an encounter with God

00:04:23.880 | and decided you wanted to make this your life.

00:04:25.720 | But as you kind of elevated quickly, did you feel kind of the pressure of,

00:04:31.000 | you know, you're just a normal dude.

00:04:33.160 | You like to hoop and you're figuring out like everybody else.

00:04:34.920 | Did you feel that pressure?

00:04:35.960 | - Yeah, I did.

00:04:37.720 | I wanted it.

00:04:38.920 | I understood it.

00:04:40.040 | Like what you're speaking about, the Bible says that if you're a teacher,

00:04:43.160 | you're held to a higher standard.

00:04:44.600 | And that comes with the job.

00:04:46.120 | You know, it's like you being a star in Brooklyn.

00:04:47.800 | Like you can't complain, you know, if the newspaper says something bad,

00:04:51.160 | because, you know, next week they're going to say something good.

00:04:52.920 | That's part of the price.

00:04:54.840 | And to be a leader, it's the same thing.

00:04:56.760 | And when you're a young leader, you just don't know what you don't know.

00:05:00.120 | So, I mean, we had done ministry for, you know, years before that.

00:05:03.320 | But to take on that role, you know, the stakes are raised,

00:05:06.760 | the pressure gets greater, and who you are really starts to come to the forefront.

00:05:11.480 | And in a lot of ways, great stuff came out.

00:05:14.520 | And there was some other stuff in me that I had not really poured into.

00:05:18.280 | And even really, brother, known to look into.

00:05:22.040 | And eventually, the weight of a season can break you.

00:05:26.280 | If your character and your habits and all that stuff isn't where it needs to be,

00:05:30.840 | there's going to come a breaking point.

00:05:33.240 | And so, yeah, it was definitely, it wasn't the pressure that got me.

00:05:37.320 | It wasn't, the pressure was expected.

00:05:41.160 | It was an inside job.

00:05:43.080 | It was internal, some of the stuff that became challenging for me.

00:05:46.120 | But I didn't look at it as like, you know, I got to save the world.

00:05:51.240 | It was just, we're just going to do our job and love people, preach about Jesus,

00:05:56.360 | keep it simple, and try to make a difference.

00:05:59.160 | And sometimes when you keep it that simple, there's a lot of power in it.

00:06:02.120 | And that's what we did.

00:06:03.240 | Rob Markman: That's awesome.

00:06:04.520 | Yeah, I mean, I think a lot of people were probably in my shoes where they

00:06:07.400 | could relate a lot to you and your demeanor.

00:06:10.200 | The fact that you used to play sports, you know, you're a cool dude.

00:06:12.760 | You got, you know, the swag on.

00:06:14.520 | You didn't seem like the typical preacher type, which I felt like drew a lot of

00:06:19.800 | people in that, you know, also were in the culture, you know?

00:06:23.880 | Because a lot of pastors, they just seem like it's hard to relate to them.

00:06:26.600 | It's hard to, you know, want that life.

00:06:28.840 | But you were one of the first, quote unquote, cool pastors.

00:06:32.200 | And with that comes a lot of guys who are in the culture and still trying to figure out their faith,

00:06:37.880 | you know?

00:06:39.080 | And so you end up hanging out with a lot of hoopers, a lot of musicians, you know,

00:06:43.080 | a lot of celebrities, do you feel like you influencing them, that was the goal?

00:06:51.320 | But do you feel like being in that circle and that space was a negative influence on you as a younger pastor?

00:06:57.400 | Great question.

00:06:58.920 | Yes and no.

00:07:01.720 | I think for the most part, you know, who you are, you're able to build a life where

00:07:07.880 | you're protected and you're boundaried and that otherwise, who would we reach?

00:07:12.520 | Like if you could only reach people that were safe in that regard, I didn't want to live that life.

00:07:17.320 | I think there were definitely some things that over time, you know,

00:07:22.360 | being exposed to different worlds definitely expands your ability to have an opportunity

00:07:28.520 | and your ability to develop new bad patterns and bad, you know, habits.

00:07:34.120 | But for the most part, I feel like it wasn't outside influences that gave me pause or trouble.

00:07:43.640 | Like I said, it was just a perpetuation of patterns.

00:07:47.560 | And the bigger our world got, the bigger those patterns either helped me or hurt me.

00:07:52.920 | But yeah, I loved it, brother.

00:07:53.960 | I think, you know, one of the things you said about, you know, us being an era of cool pastors,

00:07:58.440 | one of our advantages was we didn't have to try to be anybody.

00:08:01.800 | There's a lot of people who try to be something to reach somebody where we were really kind of,

00:08:06.520 | it was almost like we're off the street and into the church and we just stayed who we always were.

00:08:10.840 | So it wasn't like we were trying to be anything.

00:08:13.400 | We just were ourselves.

00:08:14.600 | And we found out that made a huge difference because as you know, being in this world,

00:08:18.840 | if people find out you have faith or you're a Christian, they immediately want to feel like

00:08:23.240 | you're not going to get them or they're judging you or you're judging them.

00:08:26.600 | And then, but when you see somebody that just looks and talks and kind of feels like you,

00:08:29.800 | but there's a difference, it kind of brings you in.

00:08:32.200 | So I love that about our reach and still do.

00:08:35.640 | You still have it.

00:08:36.360 | I still have that.

00:08:37.400 | That doesn't ever leave you.

00:08:39.160 | But I like just to, you know, to clear out all this stuff and just be,

00:08:43.400 | you know, regular people with regular people.

00:08:45.480 | At the end of the day, we're all humans trying to figure it out.

00:08:47.560 | And I love that part about being in New York.

00:08:50.520 | People would always say that, like, you're a pastor.

00:08:52.520 | I'm like, yeah, man, I don't know what you think a pastor should look like.

00:08:55.400 | But, you know, it is what it is.

00:08:57.160 | So I love that.

00:08:58.200 | That was a fun part of the job.

00:09:00.120 | No, I feel that for sure.

00:09:01.560 | All right.

00:09:02.600 | So you're doing your pastoring thing and you're growing the church and everything's going well.

00:09:07.640 | And bring me into that moment when some of that private life stuff became super public.

00:09:16.520 | And bring me through the process of how that kind of happened and how you felt internally,

00:09:21.640 | like your initial reaction to some of that stuff that was secret turning public.

00:09:28.280 | Man, it's about as bad as you think it might be.

00:09:32.120 | Whatever you think in your head of the worst parts about you,

00:09:37.160 | you know, being thrown out in front of people, that's how it felt.

00:09:41.320 | It was it was embarrassing and humiliating.

00:09:44.040 | And I think my initially it was all about the damage to my family and the damage, the people that

00:09:51.240 | really trusted me and the role that I had.

00:09:53.720 | And it was hard to carry.

00:09:55.960 | Rather, it was like it was a it was a dark day.

00:09:58.200 | In some ways, I felt relieved because it was almost like, you know, I've been carrying this for a long

00:10:06.200 | time. And now that it's out, you know, it is what it is.

00:10:10.040 | I didn't know what I was going to do.

00:10:11.480 | But there was a mix between relief and just extraordinary pain.

00:10:14.760 | And and when you have a leadership role, especially if you're a pastor,

00:10:19.800 | it's so much deeper because the trust is all you have.

00:10:24.200 | So when you when you are with a leader that you trust, especially spiritually,

00:10:28.440 | there are just some assumptions you make right or wrong that this person is

00:10:31.400 | is living the kind of life that you think they should be living.

00:10:34.280 | And, you know, everybody's got a different standard with that.

00:10:38.120 | But the truth is, you know, I let people down.

00:10:40.440 | I disappointed them.

00:10:41.320 | And and that's fair.

00:10:42.600 | And and then I was faced with the what am I going to do with it?

00:10:46.440 | But the day, man, it was I'll never forget it.

00:10:49.480 | And I don't want to forget it either.

00:10:51.080 | You know, I don't know if you've ever had moments in your life where

00:10:53.480 | it's so painful that you want to push it away.

00:10:57.320 | But if you remember it and use it for good, it's a memory that to me now,

00:11:02.120 | I hold it in a very special place.

00:11:03.800 | I'll never forget the day where my wife had to find out that I betrayed her.

00:11:08.360 | I'll never forget the day I had to talk to my kids.

00:11:10.920 | And it makes me better every day.

00:11:13.560 | You know, 100 percent for me.

00:11:15.400 | I mean, some of the most traumatic experiences, whether it's, you know,

00:11:19.880 | whether it's even something as simple as a back injury or some of the worst things

00:11:24.360 | that happen in our life that feel like just throw our life completely in a different direction.

00:11:28.840 | When years go by and you get to look back on some of those things that at the time felt like your life was over.

00:11:35.080 | I mean, those are the things that God uses the most to kind of turn around your character,

00:11:40.920 | turn around your story and honestly turn your purpose from what you thought your purpose was to what it really is.

00:11:48.040 | And I feel like now because of you having been able to walk through what you've walked through,

00:11:54.440 | you're able to relate to people and help people in a way that would have been impossible if you didn't go through it yourself.

00:12:01.880 | And so like even our relationship now and some of the stuff that we're going to, you know, get into

00:12:08.280 | on a personal level is partly because you have walked through this and come out the other side.

00:12:16.280 | But I kind of want to go back a little bit because I want to figure out

00:12:19.720 | how this because it probably was a slow boil and then it probably, you know, eventually got worse.

00:12:27.960 | And the little things that used to be unacceptable became kind of just the norm.

00:12:31.400 | Walk me through kind of that slow boil.

00:12:33.320 | Was this a thing that was going on through the entirety of the marriage or did it kind of like slowly get there?

00:12:38.280 | Good question. Fair question.

00:12:39.880 | Kind of both.

00:12:41.320 | And I think when you really start digging into getting healthy, you look back and you realize, you know,

00:12:47.800 | if I was looking with the set of eyes I have now, I would have said, hey, this happened here.

00:12:53.320 | And then you find out, well, if you really do the work, if you have a life explosion,

00:12:58.120 | you could either try to clean it up really fast and start over or like almost like watching a bad game on film.

00:13:04.440 | The worst film sessions ever.

00:13:05.960 | Like I've sat in a couple of NBA film sessions and after bad, it's just, it's bad.

00:13:10.760 | But you got to watch it.

00:13:13.000 | And if you watch it, you're like, man, we lost by two.

00:13:16.120 | But in the first quarter, there was some stuff going wrong, you know, early.

00:13:20.120 | Yeah, early.

00:13:20.840 | And I look back at my life and, you know, from sexual abuse as a kid, which I never addressed to just

00:13:25.960 | what that does to your psyche, what that does to how you handle relationships and you watch how that unfolds.

00:13:31.400 | And then, yeah, in my marriage, I was faithful to Laura for a long time.

00:13:35.640 | And I look back now and I realize that what I would consider faithful then would be questionable

00:13:41.880 | to me now as far as the decisions that I made and just the proximity to people and just how I lived

00:13:48.680 | and the boundaries that I had.

00:13:49.800 | I would do, I do a lot of that differently now.

00:13:52.200 | But back then, I think if you, I don't know if you've ever had a stress fracture,

00:13:57.080 | but there are times where you can either gut it out and play through it or you can rest,

00:14:01.800 | get it fixed, takes longer.

00:14:04.360 | Nobody wants to sit out.

00:14:05.720 | But I look back at some of the things in my life as stress, stress fractures where I knew about it.

00:14:10.600 | But I was like, this will work itself out.

00:14:12.680 | Broken bones don't work themselves out.

00:14:14.920 | If anything, the rest of your body starts to refunction according to a break.

00:14:19.720 | And I think that's exactly what happened to me.

00:14:21.480 | There were a couple of things that that broke in me.

00:14:24.120 | And I started to, you know, in a weird dysfunctional way, respond to that.

00:14:28.440 | But there were red flags that I now know for sure.

00:14:32.200 | And they were internal.

00:14:33.560 | I feel like in my own personal life, like some of these like sin patterns and things,

00:14:39.400 | like I go through cycles and it's sometimes like I do well for a week.

00:14:43.720 | I do well for a month and then I'm tripping and I can go into a binge cycle where I'm tripping for a while.

00:14:48.440 | Yeah.

00:14:49.080 | Is that a little bit how your situation looked like?

00:14:51.400 | Because like putting myself in your shoes, I'm like, okay, this dude's getting up every Sunday and

00:14:56.040 | preaching the word.

00:14:57.000 | He's obviously in his word.

00:14:58.040 | He's reading the Bible.

00:14:58.920 | He has the Holy Spirit.

00:14:59.880 | He has this conviction.

00:15:01.400 | So even though you're behaving a certain way, I'm sure you were wrestling with some guilt that

00:15:07.320 | probably made you not act out at times.

00:15:11.240 | Do you feel like there was cycles?

00:15:12.840 | Yeah.

00:15:13.240 | Because that's what a lot of people don't understand is like you can get into just a bad

00:15:17.880 | cycle of life and then try to get out of it.

00:15:19.880 | Then it sucks you back in.

00:15:21.400 | Like, was that how that was?

00:15:23.000 | Yeah.

00:15:23.480 | Great question.

00:15:24.120 | I think I look back at it now and I'm like, man, it's a cycle of addiction is what it is.

00:15:31.160 | But to go back to your other question, I was lying to myself a lot.

00:15:36.440 | Like, I'm going to get over this.

00:15:37.880 | I'd always tell myself if I were to make a mistake or I were to sin or I were to break a boundary,

00:15:43.080 | I'd be like, I will never, ever do that again, ever.

00:15:46.440 | And I would pray more, work harder, stay more diligent, thinking that it was a willpower thing.

00:15:53.400 | It was a discipline thing, no idea about my brain, no idea about a neural pathway that I was building.

00:16:00.360 | Some of the stuff we talked, no idea that there's not enough prayer in the world

00:16:05.240 | that can battle a brain chemistry response that you've been building since you were 10.

00:16:10.280 | No, brother, this takes a different type of help and a different type of healing.

00:16:14.120 | And technically, if you really are praying, that's exactly where God will lead you.

00:16:17.960 | And that's exactly where God led me to a doctor who said, you need to step down today.

00:16:23.560 | To which I said, no, thank you.

00:16:25.640 | I got this.

00:16:26.520 | Yeah.

00:16:26.920 | Because I did a brain scan and this doctor was like, you got some serious issues here.

00:16:31.320 | Like your frontal, your cortex, it's not working correctly.

00:16:35.160 | So if you haven't made horrible decisions yet, you will.

00:16:38.600 | So step down, get some help, get some healing.

00:16:42.040 | And I was like, I got this.

00:16:43.000 | I know, I know what I'm doing.

00:16:44.360 | Who's the doctor?

00:16:45.320 | Dr. Daniel Amen.

00:16:46.440 | He got on the podcast.

00:16:49.560 | He's amazing.

00:16:50.280 | Dr. Amen.

00:16:51.000 | Yeah, he's the man.

00:16:51.720 | He did the brain scan on me.

00:16:53.080 | I had like hit my head back in the day.

00:16:56.120 | I had like bumped my head on a car and he saw that on the brain scan and saw like, if you

00:17:00.920 | don't get in the hyperbaric chamber, if you don't do this, do that, like there's going to

00:17:04.920 | be, there's going to be repercussions down the line.

00:17:07.480 | So you saw the brain scan, you kind of saw that there was some stuff going on, but you just

00:17:14.440 | still kind of believe that you could kind of fix some of this on your own.

00:17:17.960 | Yeah.

00:17:18.200 | So a lot of people, you know, will look at somebody in the public eye or a preacher like me, for instance,

00:17:25.880 | who there's, how can you do that?

00:17:28.120 | How can you preach and also have this area?

00:17:32.200 | And I'll be like, I don't know.

00:17:33.160 | How do you do it?

00:17:33.960 | Yeah.

00:17:34.680 | Because we all do it.

00:17:35.640 | Yeah.

00:17:36.200 | But it's different when you're a leader, because I would, you would rationalize wrongly, lie to yourself

00:17:42.600 | that, okay, I don't have to get honest about this because I'm going to do A, B and C about it.

00:17:47.000 | It's going to be okay.

00:17:48.040 | And I'm going to work it out.

00:17:49.240 | And this is the best thing to do for the church and my family.

00:17:52.120 | And you go through this big fake rational thing.

00:17:55.400 | It's just not real.

00:17:56.280 | The truth is I should have gotten honest quickly.

00:17:59.560 | And I should have told somebody exactly when I fell and face those consequences.

00:18:04.920 | I didn't know what I know now, which is how powerful that honesty can be.

00:18:09.800 | I didn't know how real it is when you get healthy, how powerful you can be.

00:18:15.480 | I didn't really think that way back then.

00:18:17.800 | And it feels like an eternity ago, but that's the truth.

00:18:22.120 | I mean, there, I had so many chances, brother.

00:18:24.360 | That's the great thing about, about God is these so graceful.

00:18:27.560 | It wasn't like all that just happened in a moment.

00:18:29.640 | Like God just was like, no, there were so many chances where I had an opportunity to make a change.

00:18:35.320 | And I did not.

00:18:37.080 | That is on me.

00:18:37.960 | I mean, people have asked me like, have you ever been mad at God?

00:18:40.360 | I'm like mad at God.

00:18:41.800 | Like I make my choices.

00:18:44.360 | I made poor choices.

00:18:46.120 | I lied about them.

00:18:47.480 | They compounded.

00:18:48.840 | And that always leads to destruction.

00:18:51.240 | It doesn't matter if you're a preacher, a hooper, a construction worker.

00:18:54.040 | If you make bad choices and you lie and you sit on them, it's not a matter of if you get away with it.

00:19:00.920 | The moment you hide, now you're living in prison.

00:19:03.960 | I think like what you said is so powerful because it says in the Bible, it says, you know, you want to confess your sins to God, but then you also want to confess them to other people so that you can be healed.

00:19:17.720 | And I feel like for me, yes, admitting my sins to God is one thing, but when I can go tell people close to me, yo, this is what I did, and be completely like an open book.

00:19:28.600 | I think that's why I'm so big on authenticity and showing up where I actually am and not putting on this facade because I felt the relief of when I decided to be honest with someone and tell them what's really going on.

00:19:41.480 | And that's true healing.

00:19:44.440 | Like confession doesn't just mean to God, it means to other humans.

00:19:49.880 | And I remember like even as recent as last year or two years ago, I decided to like join like an SLAA group and just tune in on the meetings and just listen to these guys.

00:20:01.320 | And they would get on there every day and just get on the camera and speak and talk about their addictions and their issues and their failures.

00:20:08.920 | And it was like, that's healing.

00:20:10.760 | And so like, I feel like so many people, the reason that they fall into not just sin because everyone sins, but the bad cycles, the binge cycles is because they're not getting back to baseline quick enough.

00:20:23.720 | And the way you do that is by talking to people, telling them what's going on.

00:20:27.320 | And so like as a pastor, do you feel like, because I feel like you should have those people in your circle.

00:20:34.760 | Yeah.

00:20:35.320 | Was it just more of a shame thing?

00:20:37.000 | You didn't want them to have a different view of you or what?

00:20:39.640 | Did you feel like they were going to tell your wife or like, what was it?

00:20:41.880 | I mean, I'm probably going to ask you to step down, huh?

00:20:44.520 | And you weren't trying to do that.

00:20:45.400 | Not necessarily.

00:20:46.280 | Like all humans have the same survival needs.

00:20:49.160 | We lie or we fight for our opinion so we can either look right, feel right, be in control and protect whatever image we have.

00:21:02.680 | Like there are these general needs that we all kind of share.

00:21:05.240 | And that's no different than ministry.

00:21:06.760 | But for me, it wasn't.

00:21:08.600 | It was I didn't have good people.

00:21:10.200 | That's often an assumption people will make when somebody falls like he didn't have good people in his life.

00:21:14.920 | It doesn't matter what kind of people you have in your life if you're not honest.

00:21:17.880 | Yeah.

00:21:18.440 | So if you deal with addiction like I have, you are lying to yourself first.

00:21:23.880 | So an addict lies to him.

00:21:25.080 | So if I'm lying to myself, why would I be honest with Michael?

00:21:29.080 | So if you ask me, Carl, how are you doing?

00:21:30.440 | I'm going to be like, I'm doing good.

00:21:31.560 | How's your thought life?

00:21:32.440 | Pretty good, man.

00:21:33.080 | Like it's not all dishonest, but it's not fully honest.

00:21:36.920 | And when you go down this train of what it means to be really honest, you start finding out actually omitting truth is just as dishonest as an outright lie.

00:21:46.360 | So I had good people, you know, some of my friends from that era, they're good people, but it wasn't on them.

00:21:53.240 | It was on me to bring like that's why people are like, who are you accountable to?

00:21:57.160 | Accountability is a waste of time if you are not honest.

00:22:00.120 | The better question is, are you honest with yourself?

00:22:02.680 | Are you honest before God?

00:22:04.040 | And if not, why?

00:22:06.120 | Why wouldn't you be honest?

00:22:07.720 | And so for me, it wasn't the fear of what the repercussions might be.

00:22:10.920 | It was pride.

00:22:11.800 | It was like, I'm going to figure this out.

00:22:13.240 | There's no reason to tell you because by the time I tell you, I got this.

00:22:16.920 | I struggle with the same thing in the fact that I'll be going through something and feel like no one can relate to me or no one can relate to why I'm doing them or the pressures I face or how hard my life is.

00:22:27.080 | So why even tell them?

00:22:28.040 | Because they're not going to relate.

00:22:29.000 | Their life is different than mine.

00:22:30.280 | You'll love this.

00:22:31.160 | At rehab, we're in this circle.

00:22:34.360 | And these are like, some people have a weird image of rehab, which is like guys who are always down and out.

00:22:39.000 | And there are those guys.

00:22:39.800 | But I was at a rehab.

00:22:40.760 | Everybody was on the up and up.

00:22:42.280 | Like, I mean, there was very successful dudes in there.

00:22:46.360 | But we all were not really that successful because we're all in the desert at a rehab.

00:22:51.160 | But they said, you know, who in here thinks that nobody relates to your situation?

00:22:56.040 | And before we knew the game, we were all like, oh.

00:22:58.280 | And then you start realizing they're setting you up.

00:23:00.280 | And they're like, it's called the disease of terminal uniqueness.

00:23:03.000 | You think nobody has it as bad as you.

00:23:06.120 | Nobody's going to get you.

00:23:07.720 | No one understands you.

00:23:09.080 | And it's all not true.

00:23:11.080 | And that is a revelation for people to get.

00:23:13.240 | Like, it's a lie you tell yourself.

00:23:14.520 | No one's going to understand.

00:23:15.880 | What do you mean no one's going to understand?

00:23:17.240 | Have you tried?

00:23:18.120 | Yeah.

00:23:18.520 | Like, you think your problems are that special?

00:23:20.680 | Yeah.

00:23:21.000 | I don't care what you went through.

00:23:22.360 | Somebody can relate.

00:23:23.320 | Somebody can.

00:23:24.280 | And just like, the fun question is, what if somebody can relate?

00:23:28.440 | That's so much better than what most people do when they live in cycles like I did, which

00:23:33.560 | is like, I don't really know who to turn to.

00:23:35.560 | And there were some unique pressures, bro.

00:23:37.160 | Like, at that level of ministry, it is a weird world to know who you can trust and who you can

00:23:43.720 | talk to.

00:23:44.200 | But that's not really, again, it came down to me learning how to lie to myself, which started

00:23:49.720 | way before I was a pastor.

00:23:50.840 | And the cycle is the life of a typical Christian man who doesn't understand brain chemistry.

00:23:58.440 | Purge.

00:23:59.640 | Months, maybe years of doing good.

00:24:02.200 | Purge.

00:24:03.400 | Cycle.

00:24:04.360 | But the problem is what people don't get, and you and I have talked about this, like,

00:24:07.640 | the cycle never stays the same size.

00:24:09.640 | It gets bigger, and the consequences get bigger.

00:24:13.080 | So whatever you're doing today in secret, maximize that by about five.

00:24:16.840 | In about five years, enjoy that fruit.

00:24:20.360 | It's never going to be the same.

00:24:21.640 | The impact is greater.

00:24:24.840 | The consequences are greater.

00:24:25.960 | It's exactly what happened to me.

00:24:27.240 | The same cycle, I would stop, and then it would come back bigger.

00:24:31.800 | It would stop, come back bigger, until you're on the front page of papers, humiliated.

00:24:38.280 | People are like, how did you get there?

00:24:39.480 | It's like, how did I get there?

00:24:40.440 | You think it started there?

00:24:41.480 | Yeah.

00:24:42.200 | Like somebody once said, like, there's no single raindrop responsible for the river

00:24:47.880 | out there.

00:24:48.200 | I understand.

00:24:48.760 | A whole lot of them.

00:24:49.720 | Well, walk me through the ... Okay, so you found out, or you found out that it went public.

00:24:56.040 | Like, that's its own whole discussion on how that even became such a public thing.

00:25:01.160 | But then like, okay, from there, what were the, what were the repercussions like the following?

00:25:08.520 | Because I'm sure, obviously, you cared probably mostly about the damage to the family.

00:25:13.480 | But obviously, there's the church.

00:25:14.920 | Obviously, it's figuring out what your job is.

00:25:17.480 | After, after being done at Hillsong, can you walk me through briefly in like one to two minutes?

00:25:24.040 | Yeah.

00:25:24.200 | Or take as long as you want.

00:25:25.640 | No, no, no.

00:25:26.600 | How was that?

00:25:27.240 | It is not, it's not spectacular.

00:25:30.120 | I mean, I got fired, as I should have.

00:25:33.000 | And within two or three days, man, my whole world shifted.

00:25:37.800 | It was, and you said like, why it was so public.

00:25:43.000 | I mean, our world loves to see people rise, and we love to see people fall.

00:25:49.640 | That's just the, that's the nature of humankind.

00:25:52.760 | So like, for me, our, our church was, was, was very influential.

00:25:57.240 | And so for that to happen, you know, people, people loved it.

00:26:00.360 | It was very salacious.

00:26:01.480 | And there's like, with any, anything that happens like that, there's, there's a lot of lies,

00:26:05.880 | a lot of speculation, a lot of whatever.

00:26:08.200 | And so it was just a, it was a mess.

00:26:10.280 | And it went on for a long time, you know?

00:26:12.120 | And, and, but we weren't going on like that for a long time.

00:26:16.200 | That's the difference.

00:26:17.320 | So the story and the impact and all the stuff that's going on, it's like, we didn't, we didn't

00:26:22.360 | want to stay in this thing.

00:26:24.040 | Like we had an opportunity to like, I had an opportunity to change my life.

00:26:28.280 | And I was like, I'm not wasting it sitting in here dealing with all of this.

00:26:33.000 | Like, I don't want to be a part of that anymore.

00:26:35.640 | And it was, it was a lonely time, man.

00:26:38.520 | There was a, there was some dark days, very dark days, but glimpses of hope.

00:26:43.880 | But you, by the way, it's, I just thought of this now, like you were one of the friends

00:26:47.960 | I had that did text in the worst times.

00:26:50.520 | And that's really cool.

00:26:52.040 | I don't know if I've ever thanked you for that.

00:26:53.320 | I don't, it was just really cool.

00:26:55.480 | And I look back on, on the date.

00:26:58.120 | There are some times when people will text me and I'll look back up and I'll see,

00:27:00.600 | because I didn't look at my phone.

00:27:01.560 | I got a new number.

00:27:02.280 | Yeah.

00:27:03.000 | And, uh, I remember seeing a text from you and, um, that happened often, man,

00:27:07.400 | where people who, who I, I thought, you know, loved me showed up and proved it.

00:27:12.920 | And there's some other stuff that broke your heart.

00:27:14.920 | Uh, but that time was filled with like that yin and yang of like, I think I'm going to make it.

00:27:20.520 | And then you hit a gut punch and then you get going again.

00:27:23.240 | And, um, but those are the consequences of, of choices that, you know, are wrong.

00:27:28.760 | And I didn't think it was, it would be as bad to be honest.

00:27:32.120 | But honestly sitting here with you, I'm like, I knew it'd be bad, but like the level of pain,

00:27:37.000 | it just, so it wasn't worth that.

00:27:40.520 | You know, any, any lie I told myself about why I would perpetuate patterns.

00:27:45.240 | It is, it's just, that's why I try to tell people now, I spend a lot of my life now trying to use

00:27:50.120 | that to say, Hey, if you, if you want to change your life now, please do.

00:27:54.760 | If you want some pain, like I'll share some of mine.

00:27:57.000 | You want, you want some bad stories?

00:27:58.360 | I got it.

00:27:58.840 | If you want to talk about breaking your kids' hearts,

00:28:01.000 | maybe save your kids' beautiful heart.

00:28:03.000 | Let me tell you about how I've had to repair my own children's trust.

00:28:06.440 | My own wife's trust.

00:28:07.480 | Like don't, this doesn't have to be your story.

00:28:09.800 | So yeah, but that, that whole time, um, it was a absolute nightmare at first.

00:28:16.520 | I mean, it makes me kind of emotional because like, you know, my brother Jonte went through something

00:28:23.000 | so public.

00:28:23.880 | My other brother Cohen went through something so public.

00:28:26.040 | You, a dear friend of mine, have gone through something so public.

00:28:29.480 | And like, I didn't know that, like, I texted you, but it sounds like, because I'm really glad that I did,

00:28:36.200 | because it shows my heart and the fact that one thing that I, I feel like I understand is you

00:28:43.560 | cannot judge anybody because everybody, life happens to everybody.

00:28:48.920 | And I have, you know, had really close friends to me, really close family members who have betrayed me in

00:28:56.600 | some way and, but I don't view those as like them.

00:29:00.920 | I view them as that's their sin nature.

00:29:03.640 | That's their addiction.

00:29:04.520 | That's their, that's their, you know, their vices or whatever.

00:29:08.200 | That's, that's not them.

00:29:10.600 | And I feel like in your situation, I was really hurt to see for you, some of the people that

00:29:17.400 | were supposed to love you the most and be the closest to you, kind of like abandon you in that

00:29:24.280 | time and be like, no, this is just Carl, because those things like weren't like you.

00:29:29.400 | And I feel like even, even though, you know, like I just said, like some, some very close friends of

00:29:34.760 | mine have stolen from me, have straight up lied to my face, have betrayed me, have, have done all

00:29:41.320 | these things. And yeah, that does taint me as an individual, but I've worked through some of these

00:29:45.880 | things with a lot of friends and we're back. Cool. Because I realized like that liar, that betrayal,

00:29:51.000 | yes, it hurts, but I've lied to people before. I've betrayed people. So who am I to come over here and

00:29:55.400 | say that you can't ever have a bad moment in your life or a bad season in your life and straight up

00:30:01.480 | lie to my face? Like that's like, and so many people in this day and age do that, where they like

00:30:06.920 | are willing to cut people off so quick because this person did them wrong.

00:30:10.600 | Okay. But have you ever done anyone wrong? Have you ever lied? And to me, like your situation and

00:30:16.280 | that, that to me, if I was in your shoes, that would be one of the hardest things because I feel

00:30:21.880 | like the people that truly, truly, truly, like I, like I, if I had messed up in a very public way,

00:30:30.840 | the people that stuck by me in that and, and even being associated with me could damage their reputation,

00:30:37.400 | but that would show me so much about who really got me. Because I know there's people in my life,

00:30:41.880 | I could do the worst thing in the world and it could be exposed to the world. And I know I got

00:30:46.200 | people in my life that they would walk through that with me. They would still be associated with me,

00:30:50.520 | even if it was embarrassing for them. And I felt like, I don't know, how was that for you? Did you have

00:30:56.200 | those people? And I feel like you, because I feel like that would be one of the hardest things in that

00:31:00.760 | situation. Yeah, brother, it is not easy. I think it was hard for a long time. And if you work at what's

00:31:08.600 | hard for a long time, you can't change the way you hold it. And so now I look at it with a lot of grace.

00:31:14.920 | I just, everybody made their decisions for their reasons. And, and if I look back on it, it's not

00:31:20.760 | like I, some of the guys didn't surprise me. Like they're, they admittedly were, were not dudes that

00:31:26.360 | were going to show up in a fight ever. So it's like, I had to check myself to think like, what was my

00:31:31.240 | expectation of some of these guys? Like I knew that, um, you know, in many ways, like it, it, it, it's

00:31:37.480 | still complicated, like to look back at that and go, you know, like who is using me, who, and you find out

00:31:42.600 | what somebody says, you know, you find out what you're worth to people when you can offer them nothing.

00:31:47.160 | That's a dangerous place to be. You know, you don't want to get there to have to realize who your

00:31:51.880 | friends are, but my situation was unique. And I, and I hold that with a lot of grace because it wasn't

00:31:57.080 | just like, I think a lot of guys wanted to, um, first of all, I had a lot of people stick by me,

00:32:02.760 | you know? I mean, you're, you're an example of, I mean, there's so many people I could name and, uh,

00:32:07.640 | but in those moments, it's not the number of people, it's who it's like, you might have 10 people stick,

00:32:12.280 | but the one that left and you don't get it. It's like, but I'll tell you what freed me

00:32:17.720 | trying to understand. I thought there would come a day when I was going to understand why

00:32:23.320 | somebody responded. Keep in mind, these are my decisions that put them in that spot,

00:32:27.160 | but I just could never understand it. And then I got to a point where I was like, I don't understand

00:32:31.880 | it anymore. I accept it. And it was freeing because I can't understand. And in the version of me that was

00:32:38.520 | their friend, I'm not that guy now anyway. So it's like, there's a way where you can look at people

00:32:44.440 | leaving your life as the biggest blessing, even if you're the cause of it, because it created space

00:32:49.080 | for something new. So I do friendships differently now, trust me, believe me. But, um, I, I think

00:32:55.480 | everybody has to do that. You got to live and learn. And, uh, for the most part, I had a lot of faithful

00:32:59.800 | people show up. I did have some, some people that, um, I expected to, to, to be there, but now I look

00:33:06.440 | back and I go, it's tough, man. When someone's lying about something big, it's fair to wonder what else

00:33:12.920 | they might be lying about. Uh, I lean towards you on that. My, my thing is I'm, I'm with you heart and

00:33:18.760 | soul, and I will, I'll figure it out on the go, but I'm not going to leave you. Not everybody's like that.

00:33:23.720 | And that's not even necessarily smart. That's just how we're wired. I'm wired to show up and fight.

00:33:28.360 | I don't care what you did. I'm, I'm fighting and we'll figure it out in private, but I'm not going to leave

00:33:32.680 | you. There's some people who just feel like the only thing they can do is cut people off. And

00:33:36.600 | I don't judge them. I just, I know how I want to operate and how I want to be a friend. And it was

00:33:41.480 | just a hard time, but I learned a lot about relationships then. And, um, it's serving me today.

00:33:46.680 | There's a lot of people that will say like, people don't change, right? You are someone who has

00:33:55.160 | done a radical change. There's so many characters in the Bible, radical change. So we know people do

00:34:01.160 | change. Saul went from persecuting Christians to writing half of the new Testament, right?

00:34:06.840 | Yeah.

00:34:07.080 | So like there's so many people that do change and you are someone who has went through that. What,

00:34:13.480 | I feel like there's very specific things you have to do to actually change. You touched on it a little

00:34:20.120 | bit earlier where some of these things and patterns people are stuck in, go back to the brain. You can

00:34:24.440 | pray it away all you want, but in the brain, those neural pathways are not going anywhere.

00:34:31.400 | How can you talk a little bit about how you can actually change as a person, your habits,

00:34:38.360 | all those things?

00:34:39.240 | Yeah. Yeah. You're so good at this.

00:34:41.240 | You're a great, uh, you're a great podcaster. You're prolific. And I just want to acknowledge

00:34:46.920 | the courage it takes for you to do what you've been doing.

00:34:50.120 | So many dudes are too cool, you know, to be honest. And it's cool to see somebody who's,

00:34:54.760 | uh, just, you just keeping it real. I love that. And, and people who are just new to this Michael

00:34:59.000 | Porter, it's like, that's Michael's always been honest. Um, I think change comes down to,

00:35:05.160 | you know, a vision of who you want to become. And, and if it's, if it's thrilling enough,

00:35:11.400 | you'll do anything to become that person. And most people won't change because they don't have a

00:35:15.640 | vision of who they want to be. And I, I got real clear on the kind of man I wanted to be. And, and

00:35:22.600 | we all are in process, man. That's, what's so funny about the people who would be like,

00:35:26.840 | somebody can't change. It's like, as long as you use that same measure back towards yourself, like

00:35:31.080 | everybody has the right to change, but to change, you got to get really honest. And that's the problem,

00:35:37.000 | honest with yourself. And if you get honest with yourself, you will take ownership of yourself.

00:35:42.120 | Now the world's your oyster without those two pieces, nothing can happen. So I had to get honest

00:35:47.640 | really quickly. And I had to own what I did and just focus on that, not focus on excuses or

00:35:55.960 | possible victim angles or whatever. I had to focus on me. And then that puts you in a humble place to

00:36:01.080 | listen to wisdom and guidance. And, and you start, if you follow that train of like, will you get honest?

00:36:07.000 | quickly? Will you take ownership? And then will you take instruction? And that's why people don't

00:36:13.000 | change. It's the last one, because then you got to have people tell you kind of what might be the

00:36:19.000 | wisest thing for you to do. And that's where your old neural pathways of like, I'll do it my way.

00:36:23.880 | Well, where did that lead you? Or I know better. Where did that lead you? Start going down the list and

00:36:29.720 | change. I've been searching for a shortcut. And I just can't find one. It just takes time. And it takes

00:36:37.320 | little steps every day. And that's why these guys use the podcast world so weird, bro. Like,

00:36:43.000 | it's funny to be in it. But you see these guys all these hot takes about these hacks. It's like,

00:36:47.400 | there's no hack for change. There's a choice for change. And that leads to another choice. You got

00:36:53.160 | to do it over and over again and get consistent. And you have no idea who you can become. But there

00:36:57.960 | is no shortcut to it. You got to work.

00:36:59.800 | Rob Markman: Yeah. So after going through that process, sitting here today, you're in a whole

00:37:09.080 | different brain than you used to be. How does that feel? Because people will talk about self-discipline

00:37:17.080 | and this and that. How does that feel to actually, your brain is now working for you more than against

00:37:22.760 | you? It, it, it, I'm a pretty positive guy. As you know, my temptation to be negative only is around

00:37:30.520 | regret. And I've learned how to spin that very quickly into positive force towards who I'm becoming.

00:37:37.800 | But there's sometimes you just go like, ah, I, if I would have known why I was making those decisions,

00:37:45.240 | I would have fixed it. Because those are usually the, the decisions are the symptoms of what's really

00:37:50.760 | going on. They're not the real issue a lot of times. A lot of the behaviors are like, there's

00:37:55.160 | something way deeper. And this is why you're doing these things. And this is why you're coping by

00:38:01.160 | doing this. And you probably had to explore all that, right? Every bit of it. Leave no stone unturned.

00:38:08.040 | Rob Markman: And what did you discover was like, what is the reason for some addictions and some

00:38:13.480 | seeking comfort in these things, seeking escape, whether it's through, you know, alcohol, drugs,

00:38:19.640 | sex, what is for you? What was the reason?

00:38:22.040 | Rob Markman: A lot of it is a inability to address the valid need. So a lot of guys in your world,

00:38:28.520 | they, they need escape. So they, and they do what NBA guys do. And, um, it, but to dig into why do you

00:38:38.680 | feel like you need to escape? That's not necessarily a bad thing. Let's dig into it. Find out what's a healthy

00:38:44.520 | way to do that. You need, you need to get space. You needed to get relief. The way you're doing,

00:38:50.360 | it's killing you. And so for me, I think the first step to some of that stuff is just to dig in there

00:38:55.000 | and go like, what, what was it about? Like, why, why did I, why did I need to date multiple girls in high

00:38:59.880 | school? What was that? Why did I cheat on my girlfriend in college? Why did I do that? Why

00:39:05.560 | did I expect suddenly to become a Christian, get married, become a pastor? And these things are

00:39:10.840 | going to vanish, like, because I'm praying more, because I know more about Jesus, because I'm

00:39:14.920 | leading people, cause I'm a preacher. No man, like these things have to work together. And now we know

00:39:20.680 | all this stuff. So I'm excited for the future of young, amazing men who have not made detrimental

00:39:26.280 | decisions. And even those who have, anybody can change, but you got to really get in there and

00:39:31.160 | figure out the why. And so to me, that's a huge part of it is to go, all right, what's,

00:39:35.960 | what's really going on? Like, why do you feel the need to lie? Where did you learn to do that?

00:39:40.680 | When was the first time you lied? Now you're cooking or why, why do you, why does sex, why,

00:39:46.520 | why is sex so secret for you? Why is everything you do so secretive, man? Why do you have 17 phones?

00:39:51.960 | Like, why do you have 19 accounts? Like that didn't just happen. And they're the person who knows nothing

00:39:58.520 | is like, oh, that person, that guy's a, he's a player and he just loves sex. It's like people get

00:40:03.320 | caught in sexual addictions. It's not about sex. That's where it leads, but it's about brokenness.

00:40:09.720 | It's about a lack of ability to get real intimacy. It's about an inability to get honest with yourself

00:40:14.840 | about what desires you have. And then it leads to this stuff. And so once you get honest about that

00:40:19.880 | stuff, man, it's, it's a freeing life. It just feels good to just get, get honest. And now you can

00:40:25.160 | build something healthy. Yeah. I always like one of the things that I love most in life is,

00:40:30.600 | is listening to watching, witnessing people change, right? One of my favorite people to watch is David

00:40:37.080 | Goggins. Cause it was that he was like super overweight, whatever with his radical change.

00:40:42.680 | Yeah. And now he's who he is today, David Goggins.

00:40:44.840 | And Gary, he's a friend of mine. He's a good friend of mine. He's a good friend of mine. And like

00:40:49.800 | to go through that radical of a change, like is really incredible to witness, but he always equates

00:40:57.240 | it back to, it's not about the physical work all the time. People like as athletes, especially,

00:41:02.840 | we're so good at the physical side of things. It's, it's, it's easy going to the gym. It's easy,

00:41:07.560 | lifting weights. It's easy to stay in shape. But these guys always talk about the mental side of

00:41:14.120 | things and putting a lot of emphasis on that. So David Goggins will say like, yeah, he's known for

00:41:20.280 | doing these crazy runs and these crazy, like, like athletic things. He's 50 years old and going on like

00:41:27.400 | a thousand mile runs and doing all these things. But he says every morning he clears out the cabinets

00:41:32.040 | of his mind. He goes in those dark places and he clears it out. He says, he does it,

00:41:37.320 | I think he, I don't know his exact method. He might do journaling. He might just sit in

00:41:41.880 | meditation and go deep in there. But all these people really prioritize that. They get really

00:41:47.560 | good at that. I think even the best athletes in the world, they get really good at that side of things.

00:41:52.280 | So like practically for me, there was a time when I, even when it comes to pain, like my back pain,

00:41:59.480 | I figured out had a lot to do with what was going on up here. Like the tightness I was holding in my body,

00:42:04.120 | which is a whole nother episode that I have recently recorded with this woman, Nicole Sacks,

00:42:09.960 | who really helped me empty out those fears and these things that kind of released the,

00:42:14.600 | the flight or fight thing in my nervous system. It's a whole deep dive, but the,

00:42:20.520 | the mind and the brain and the mental is where your superpower lies and you can get your brain to work for

00:42:26.600 | you or you can get it to kill you. But for you, how, like practically, what were the ways that you

00:42:32.120 | were able to, to, to change your, your brain and to go into those deep places?

00:42:36.680 | - One of the first steps, that's a great question. I mean, one of the first steps is to get really aware

00:42:42.520 | of your old neural pathway that is automatic. That's, then, then you get that aha moment.

00:42:50.280 | Like, so I have a thought and my body reacts this way and I go do this thing. That is a trained pattern.

00:42:56.520 | It's like, when you get up to shoot a free throw, you're no longer like, I got to make sure my Achilles

00:43:01.240 | clicks in my calf and my elbow goes here. And then I release here, like you've shot thousands and

00:43:07.240 | thousands of free throws, automatic. It's exactly what happens with our thoughts in other areas of

00:43:12.440 | our life. Like you saw a sexual image, your body told you to do this, your actions led to this,

00:43:18.120 | the shame cycle goes on, then you do it again. The moment you realize you have a choice here.

00:43:23.240 | Oh, wow. What do you do? You got to work really hard at building a new neural pathway.

00:43:29.160 | And that it's, there's just no easy way to say it, man. It's, it is a seven lane highway. The old,

00:43:37.080 | have you ever seen those, uh, highways in Tokyo or wherever it's just like 18 rows of cars going

00:43:41.720 | nowhere. That is our neural pathway. We built most of our life. When you start building new ones,

00:43:46.520 | it's like a dirt road in Tulsa, Oklahoma, and you go over it enough. It becomes a path that turns into a

00:43:53.160 | road and then it starts to get bigger. And eventually, hopefully someday it'll be better than that seven

00:43:57.880 | lane thing. But you have to start building it through. You hit it on the head. I don't know

00:44:02.280 | what David Goggins does, but he does something because it's all in the same wheelhouse. So there's,

00:44:07.480 | you know, just even doing affirmations every single day. These are evidence for your brain to go. That's

00:44:13.240 | a vote. Like every time you do, uh, an action that you have intended to do that's positive, that's a vote

00:44:19.720 | towards the, you you're becoming. Your brain's like, okay, we are, we are a man of integrity. We are a man of

00:44:25.000 | discipline. Every time you go the old way, that's, that's a vote for who you used to be.

00:44:29.400 | And dudes just get caught in there. This is what they do, man. I'm, I'm, I'm on the road. It's Portland.

00:44:34.440 | You know, we, we got a three day break. I'm going, I'm going out. And I, and you're, before you even

00:44:40.680 | know it, I don't know why I chose Portland, shout out to the Blazers. Like we have no beef with Portland,

00:44:45.000 | but that, and then you just think you're just doing it, but you don't realize you're in, you're, you're running,

00:44:50.440 | the, you're running a play. How do you, how do you run new plays? You got to, you got to enter them

00:44:55.720 | in the system and you got to practice those things. And then when you get scared, what do you normally

00:45:00.120 | do in an NBA game? You go to the two hitters that work. Like you're not trying the thing you try to put

00:45:04.520 | in and camp. Like you need a bucket. Let's go to the thing that works. Your brain's the same way.

00:45:09.960 | How much, okay. So early on in that process of developing the neural pathways, it probably,

00:45:17.080 | I mean, if you have a very traumatic experience, you can, you can kind of turn and do a complete 180.

00:45:21.480 | But for a lot of people, it's a slow process, you know, the next month they get a little bit better

00:45:26.280 | than the next month, a little bit better than that. Early on, you had a very public thing. So yours may

00:45:31.640 | have been a little different, but for most people that are, haven't had anything come out that,

00:45:36.600 | that completely makes them want to turn and do a 180, but they in themselves want to change.

00:45:42.520 | How do you feel like if you are trying to walk this new path, but you're

00:45:49.400 | making mistakes along that path, how do you feel like you can, you can, you can keep progressing?

00:45:56.680 | Even if it's slowly, do you feel like it's the honesty piece when you do mess up,

00:45:59.800 | you have to just admit it to someone or how do you, how do you do that for most people?

00:46:03.320 | Well, you have to already frame what a mess up is. Your relationship to failure has to

00:46:09.000 | radically change. What is a failure? Like for me, failures are formative. So what another guy says,

00:46:15.640 | Oh, you failed. I go, no, no, that formed something better in me. So that, so it wasn't a failure.

00:46:21.480 | And all that's new neural pathways. So somebody else is like, man, I tried and I failed. You tried what,

00:46:27.320 | you failed at what, or you thought there was a destination. Like to me, I'm becoming every day,

00:46:33.000 | a better version of a man of integrity. So on that road, it looks like this. So when I, not if,

00:46:39.240 | when I don't hit my marks here, what will I learn? What will that mean? What do they say about me?

00:46:45.560 | This is all going in one direction. Most of the guys that we talk to, especially they come from super

00:46:49.800 | Christian backgrounds. They're like, I only got five out of seven quiet times. You know,

00:46:54.760 | God hates me. You're like, Oh, okay, cool. So what would it make you if you got seven? That seems to me

00:47:00.680 | like a very faulty scoreboard. Like, forget about whether you're becoming better. If you got your

00:47:05.240 | seven quiet times, now you're closer to God. Like these are faulty ways to think. There's a different

00:47:10.360 | way to hold it. So you understand like, what is the version of you that you're trying to build?

00:47:15.400 | Is it thrilling enough for you to sacrifice everything it's going to take for you to become

00:47:21.000 | that? And then it's easy. Like you are a beautiful example of this. Like, you know,

00:47:26.600 | people would say, Michael Porter is resilient. Who doesn't want to be more resilient? Well,

00:47:31.640 | second question, who wants to face a lot of resistance? No hands go up for that one. They want

00:47:36.760 | the product, but they don't understand what it takes. Like you've trained yourself to look at a setback,

00:47:41.240 | like, all right, been here before. This is what Michael Porter does when someone gets in his way.

00:47:46.600 | You tell me you don't want to draft me, watch me win a championship. You tell me, you know,

00:47:50.440 | that's your brain. You trained yourself like that. So logically we would be able to do that with

00:47:55.320 | everything. Yeah. And so you're, you're starting to do that in every area of your life, but you kind

00:47:59.960 | of kept it in one lane for a while, but it's like, man, that same skill you have to be able to say,

00:48:04.280 | I got to wear a back brace. Watch me, watch me get paid to wear it. Watch it be the coolest back brace

00:48:08.920 | and watch me be the first player. You know, whatever it is, like, um, that's a gift in you,

00:48:14.120 | but the mechanism is the same. That's a choice. So you don't look at it. You don't look at a setback

00:48:19.080 | like everybody else. Where did that come from? You've had to walk through them, bro. Yeah. So

00:48:23.880 | you've got a lot to say on that, but technically that we should, we should be able to face things

00:48:27.480 | like that. But to me, that's, that's the essence of the question you asked is, um, is who's willing to work

00:48:33.880 | at it? Like what's it, is it, is it, is it, is a faithful marriage? Is it worth it? Is a sexual

00:48:39.320 | life you're proud of? Is it worth it? Is it having habits that you wouldn't care if it was on page six

00:48:45.480 | tomorrow? Um, is it worth it? If not, then don't waste your time. I like what you said about, um,

00:48:50.840 | you actually have to sit down and decide what's right and what's wrong to you. You have to actually

00:48:55.800 | figure out who you want to be, what decisions aren't okay and what decisions are okay. You have

00:49:01.240 | to actually like materialize that. Otherwise your brain one day is going to think that this is okay.

00:49:06.680 | You have to sit down in like a sober minded moment and come up with like, who do I want to be? What's

00:49:11.640 | right? What's wrong? I like that. Um, well think about this though. I mean, it's like, if you say like,

00:49:16.840 | I want God to be pleased with me and if I do these things, that will mean, okay, cool. Well, if you

00:49:24.680 | don't measure up, that now means he's not pleased with you. What if you started on the premise that

00:49:29.480 | God is already pleased with me? So as I build my life, what does it mean if I miss? Well, he's not

00:49:36.600 | pleased with me because I was knocking out all my goals. He's already pleased with me because he chose me.

00:49:41.320 | Now you get more of your goals done because you're in a place of peace. Most people are not like that.

00:49:46.280 | They're like, I'm, you know, I got to make sure I do this so that God will really think I'm worthy.

00:49:50.520 | So God will think you're worthy. Who fed you that lie? You'll never be worthy. God makes you worthy,

00:49:56.520 | which makes you worthy as you sit there. If that's true, how would you feel about your failure?

00:50:00.760 | That's a completely different mind frame. And like across religions that, that the mind frame that

00:50:07.800 | you stated previously, like that you have to earn his favor, earn his, that's, that's why I chose

00:50:15.720 | Christianity because, you know, and a lot of these other religions, it is based on performance,

00:50:19.560 | you know, and then they close their eyes when they die and they're hoping they did enough good things to,

00:50:23.160 | to make it to heaven. And in Christianity, we, we have the, but people even in the Christian faith

00:50:29.400 | still don't live like that with that freedom. And it's like,

00:50:31.960 | they don't, it's, it's, yeah, they, they don't. And I mean, I think we're all victim to it,

00:50:37.320 | even though you read in the New Testament that Jesus came and tried to eradicate that. He,

00:50:42.440 | the people that were trying to do all the, you know, the ritualistic type of Christianity,

00:50:49.080 | and you have to pray this many times, you have to memorize this much Bible. Those are the same people

00:50:53.320 | that we're saying we're trying to crucify Jesus. And so he was super against that. And that's not,

00:50:59.000 | that's not spoke about like enough. And people end up living a life out of fear rather than out of

00:51:05.960 | freedom. But that's how churches control people, brother. Like if you start getting this, I could be

00:51:12.040 | less significant in your life as a voice because unless, unless you live in fear, like, uh, I mean,

00:51:19.480 | I mean, what role do I have? So I got to make sure you feel a little bit of condemnation, man. You went

00:51:24.040 | to church a lot, but you didn't, you didn't go all the time. Okay. Yeah. You're right about that. I should

00:51:28.920 | go to church more. Okay. What kind of motivator is that? Like, and, and the other view of that is like,

00:51:34.360 | well, what if people don't take it seriously? They're not taking it seriously now. Number one,

00:51:39.000 | number two, what if they take it more seriously? Yeah. Like I don't take my marriage vows less

00:51:44.120 | seriously now that I really believe that God loves me and there's nothing I can do to change that.

00:51:49.160 | Like I'm going to work harder because I'm at peace. I work hard. I work better in peace and in

00:51:54.680 | joy than I do in pressure and in fear. That's just psychological fact. But yet there are churches

00:52:00.680 | that still will promote this and it's a way to control people. And it's sad. There's a better way.

00:52:06.120 | Yeah. Like with my back injuries, I became pretty much through walking through that. I became an

00:52:11.960 | expert on the back. Like I could go to a PT guy and tell him probably more than he knows on the back.

00:52:17.720 | Yeah. I also have started to learn a lot about the brain because I, I didn't fix my back through doing

00:52:24.520 | a bunch of physical things. I fixed it through, through releasing some of that tension I was holding.

00:52:30.520 | And you through your situation were forced to really learn a lot about the brain. So you've

00:52:34.840 | become an expert in that space. And honestly, even more than the spiritual teaching and the spiritual

00:52:42.680 | side of things, our relationship moving forward is going to be focused on a lot of the brain stuff.

00:52:47.640 | But obviously the spiritual side is very important still. So now that you've become very like well-equipped

00:52:55.240 | in this brain space, what does your spiritual life look like now?

00:52:59.000 | Well, I will, I'll give a caveat to that. Like when you start studying the brain,

00:53:02.680 | one of the best things you can say is, wow, I may, I may never understand all this. Like,

00:53:08.360 | so I feel like I'm an expert at knowing, um, I got to make sure I know the best experts.

00:53:12.600 | Dr. Daniel Amen expert. Me, I'm like, I know Dr. Amen makes me like a semi expert. Um,

00:53:20.360 | but I feel like, like there's so hand in hand, Michael, that to me, it's my greatest joy right

00:53:25.480 | now because it's the most under talked about part of our faith. And when you start looking at what goes

00:53:31.880 | into being who we want to be, the man we want to become, it has to be here and all the other stuff

00:53:38.040 | will take care of itself. And I think that's the beautiful part about this. If you get it right,

00:53:42.600 | um, you know, it's not like you stop, you lower your standards, you raise them. That's the difference.

00:53:48.040 | That's what people don't get. Like, it's not like, uh, fear doesn't, fear doesn't make you do things

00:53:53.160 | better. Yeah. It doesn't always work like that. I think peace sometimes makes you push

00:53:57.720 | in a whole new way. And that's what I love. That's what I, that's what I'm passionate about.

00:54:01.960 | So I'm really happy for you, man. Thank you. I, um, I want to get into a little bit of just some

00:54:07.960 | other like things that I feel like people would be curious on your perspective of now that you've

00:54:13.640 | walked through this, this life that you've walked through. Um, what is your thoughts? Having been in

00:54:21.240 | the shoes of like a, in a mega church and like a celebrity pastor, what is your thoughts on that

00:54:26.120 | now as a concept? I know you worked with Michael Todd for a while. Obviously you were close with Judah,

00:54:30.680 | but as a concept and you having been in those shoes, what do you think about that?

00:54:34.600 | I think a lot about it. I mean, I think there's, there's so many takes on it that I laugh at and

00:54:41.240 | there's other takes that are pretty astute. We, we put meaning on things. So like even the whole

00:54:47.320 | celebrity pastor thing is always such a funny concept to me because they're, they're only a

00:54:51.240 | celebrity if you say they are like every, there are, there is a old strain of dudes who, you know,

00:54:57.640 | when we were in the, in that, in that era, you could tell there were some guys who wanted that,

00:55:02.680 | but the guys who were considered that it's like, we were like anybody else. Like, um, I don't think KD,

00:55:08.040 | when he was growing up in this, in his, the area that he was growing up in, it wasn't like he's out

00:55:12.200 | there hooping with, no, he's just playing ball, right? Yeah. That's kind of what it's like when you

00:55:17.240 | are a preacher and your church grows. Um, people start treating you different. How you handle it

00:55:23.960 | dictates who you are. Yeah. So the guys that are in Judah, I can, I can't speak for, you know, a lot

00:55:29.480 | of guys, but I could definitely on this front speak for Judah. Like he's never once sat there and been

00:55:33.160 | like, I'm a celebrity pastor. It's so corny. Like it, it, that's, that's, I don't give it the same

00:55:38.520 | meaning you do. I can't stop you from calling me something, but I don't accept it. Never accepted it.

00:55:43.640 | Don't care. Well known. Sure. Um, do we have an influence? Yeah. But like,

00:55:48.440 | it was always said with a little bit of disdain from people and other people didn't mean it like

00:55:52.360 | that, but you could tell, like, it just sounded insecure and weak. The people who would be saying

00:55:56.760 | stuff like that. So to me, I feel like it's a dangerous game right now because there's a whole

00:56:01.560 | new era that's come up behind guys like me and some other dudes who they really are about that stuff.

00:56:07.960 | You can kind of see it a little bit because everything about them kind of points to it. And you're like,

00:56:11.960 | man, I don't know. I don't know if you want to go down this road. Um, I think it's, it's,

00:56:17.480 | it's totally a personal preference and opinion on what you think about church, the size, what your

00:56:24.120 | pastor should be doing. Like those conversations, bro, we could have for hours and there's so many

00:56:29.160 | things. So they're quick answers to a lot of these stupid combos that I see happening right now,

00:56:34.120 | but it's almost like, I don't want it. It's not even worth the time because sometimes people don't

00:56:37.720 | want to change their minds. They like the content. They like having these stupid discussions about,

00:56:41.960 | this is why this church is bad and this church is good. Well, you know what, man, good for you.

00:56:46.440 | I'm gonna be over here in the real world. That's the funny thing. You know that about social media,

00:56:50.440 | like there's a world, there's a Michael Porter Jr. online and there's a lot of chatter about him,

00:56:55.400 | but we haven't talked about that guy since we've been chilling. That world doesn't exist unless we want

00:56:59.800 | it to. Yeah. And that's the funny thing about social media. I tell my kids all the time,

00:57:03.400 | like there's only people hating if you allow them to show up on your phone. Yeah. Like turn your phone

00:57:09.160 | off. Like there's a real world. Like I've never once had a bad encounter in person with anybody.

00:57:13.960 | Never. I see people all the time and I have great connections with people, but I've never seen these

00:57:18.440 | people. You have to choose to allow that world to get you. No, you do. I've experienced that so many times.

00:57:23.240 | We did it. Hey, we did a good job in New York of not buying that stuff. We didn't. We really stayed,

00:57:29.640 | we stayed focused on who we were. We heard it all. And you know, some of it stung a little bit because

00:57:34.280 | you know, uh, misapplied criticism still hurts. If anybody says that, you know, maybe, maybe it doesn't

00:57:40.520 | hurt David Goggins. He's one of those guys who I might actually believe, but I'm a sensitive guy.

00:57:44.840 | I hear what people say. I learned how to hold it differently now. Uh, but back then we did our

00:57:49.560 | best to be like, man, we know what we're doing here. We're not about that stuff. If you want

00:57:53.080 | to call us celebrities, feel free, man. But I actually know real celebrities. This ain't that.

00:57:57.880 | This is, this is, this is not that, but okay. So it is what it is, man. People have to make their

00:58:03.000 | decisions on how they want to treat people, how they want to hold them. And, um, church right now

00:58:08.680 | is a mess though. There's a lot of, I could describe some of the things I see as a mess.

00:58:12.440 | What, what are a couple of those things that you see like as a whole that, that concern you about?

00:58:17.320 | Opinions, opinions, opinions, so many opinions and judgments and

00:58:22.920 | people get caught up in it. And it's like, man, it's like, we live a simple life.

00:58:27.000 | Isn't it strange that Christians are the most judgmental?

00:58:30.120 | Yeah. Like it's not strange to me, but I know what you mean.

00:58:32.920 | It's, it's a, it's a little strange in the fact that we're called to like,

00:58:38.040 | pride is the, one of the worst sins. I feel like judging people falls into that pride category

00:58:45.800 | because you're basically putting yourself on a high horse thing. And to me, the worst comments and the

00:58:52.760 | worst is, is from sometimes Christian people who expect you to live a little bit better,

00:58:58.040 | do a little bit more, this or that. I, I, um, that to me is one of the concerning things.

00:59:04.040 | Yeah. Somebody once said that Christianity has been plagued with a lot of low IQ people.

00:59:09.080 | And it's not a mean comment. It's true. Meaning there are people who will hear one thing

00:59:14.440 | and they're incapable of considering two truths, nuance, or even another view. So it's just a ocean

00:59:21.960 | of people launching sometimes these really thick headed things and they can't see that it's ridiculous.

00:59:29.000 | They just can't. And so who's the fool, them or the person arguing with a brick wall?

00:59:35.000 | That's a better question. Yeah. So it's like, I see some of the back and forth. Sometimes I'm very,

00:59:39.720 | I'm not on IG. Uh, I got a team that does that. Um, I look at my kids stuff here and there and I have

00:59:45.320 | a team that gives me comments so I can stay sometimes, you know, in the know with what's going on with my

00:59:49.880 | content. But like, I used to be a guy who would just for fun, kick back on some, on some people who I

00:59:55.720 | felt like were silly. Uh, but it just serves very little purpose. Like back in the day when IG was

01:00:01.640 | first a thing, you could, you know, win people, build relationship, bring understanding today.

01:00:07.800 | It's not about that. It's like, I can't believe that they're saying this. It's like, you've never

01:00:12.360 | considered that you might be wrong, but nobody ever thinks they're wrong when they're launching it.

01:00:17.240 | And recently, I think I went on your Instagram and you recently, I saw, um, you put out a video and you

01:00:25.000 | were speaking on the fact that man, like you were speaking on some of your concerns about these

01:00:30.040 | little sectors of Christianity and how, how judgmental they are and how they have like

01:00:35.000 | all these cause they're almost so much more focused on the negativity and on the conspiracies of things

01:00:42.280 | rather than just trying to be close with God, love other people. And you were specifically talking

01:00:47.400 | about the fact that you see all these people talking so negatively about Beyonce and what she has

01:00:51.640 | going on in her concerts and how demonic they are in these things. And then you said you went to the

01:00:56.520 | concert, you had a great time with your, with your wife or whatever it was. And I saw in the comments,

01:01:00.920 | people were just like all over the place in terms of opinions. And I saw you go back and forth with a

01:01:06.520 | couple or you respond to a couple, but what was that specific, um, instance you were, you were talking

01:01:12.280 | about it. So it wasn't me going back and forth. It was, uh, you know, the, the people that were on my,

01:01:18.040 | my team there doing that, which was, it was a funny conversation because I wouldn't have put that

01:01:22.680 | particular clip up. Um, I own it. I, we did it. I said it. It, my, my point was made though in the

01:01:29.240 | reaction. Like the, the greater conversation was about like, rather than listening to other people's

01:01:34.680 | experiences all the time, get your own. That was the big point. And I'm like, sometimes that can be

01:01:40.440 | a beautiful thing. Like if 10 people say a restaurant's terrible, I'm not going to go cool.

01:01:45.560 | And maybe I will, maybe I like the menu. And then I talked about Beyonce. I don't really

01:01:51.080 | necessarily listen to Beyonce. It wasn't about that. My daughter's a dancer. We're into production.

01:01:55.560 | We treated that the same way we would a Broadway show. People can have pushback. Like you don't

01:01:59.720 | have to go. My point was we didn't stay for the overt sexually explicit stuff. If that's how you see it,

01:02:06.520 | like it wasn't about that, but we went and we saw something different than you and people can't,

01:02:12.760 | they cannot consider that they might need to adjust theirs. I'm always open to adjust mine.

01:02:18.440 | But to me, it was a perfect case study of like, my gosh, okay, cool. Like, you know,

01:02:23.560 | and I'm not in the business of trying to be contentious. I don't have time for it. Like,

01:02:27.400 | I'm not just putting out stuff to like, you know, when I saw it, I was like, it's probably going to stir

01:02:31.880 | up some stuff. And it did. And, but it's case in point, like, let's move on. Like, okay. Me and my

01:02:37.640 | daughter went to see Beyonce. I think she's really talented. Her dances are awesome. I don't know all

01:02:42.680 | of her theology there. I'm totally okay with someone else feeling like that music isn't good

01:02:47.640 | for them. I feel like when you start coming over to my side of the tracks, trying to figure out my

01:02:52.840 | heart, my motives, the way I see it, you're dead wrong. And that's proven. And so that's the problem.

01:02:59.320 | People can't like to me, if somebody put up a post about something I disagreed with, I would just be

01:03:05.240 | like, I see it different. Keep it moving. But to sit on it and to attack the person who said it,

01:03:11.480 | that to me is antithetical to what we believe. But there are people here who they got doctrine

01:03:16.920 | that makes them feel brave. Like God's called me to bring truth. God's called me to, it's like,

01:03:21.960 | really? Like that's, that's, that's your, that's your theological ground for you to pretend that your,

01:03:27.640 | your opinion, it is yours. What's God's opinion. That's your opinion of God's word. Like even that,

01:03:33.400 | there's nuance there that I can easily crush you with. We had a two minute discussion. But brother,

01:03:40.280 | that's the world we live in right now. And I'm well aware of it. You're well aware of it. To me,

01:03:44.840 | I just, I just stay on the other side of the tracks. I'm not dealing with it, man. Like I,

01:03:48.520 | if I have that much time to give that many opinions about other people's life and what they're living,

01:03:55.240 | it's got to reflect on the fact that something's up with me.

01:03:58.600 | Yeah. And that's what I challenge my kids with a lot. Like,

01:04:01.560 | you know, as I push them to be as great as they can be, I'm like, be careful with people who have that much time.

01:04:07.560 | Like, what are you doing with your day? That you're obsessed with other people's lives.

01:04:12.120 | And they'll say, you know, they're, you know, Christians, they'll, they'll make it spiritual.

01:04:16.680 | Like God's called me to warn people, warn. Okay, cool. Like, do your thing. So I hold it with grace.

01:04:23.080 | I give people grace. I've been there. I've had, I've had really thick headed views on things and,

01:04:27.880 | and been proud about it. Um, and I regret, I regret those times. So now when I see people doing it back to me,

01:04:33.480 | it's like, we're good, man. We're, we're in Tulsa, Oklahoma. We're, we're okay. Like,

01:04:38.040 | we're going to go to, uh, whatever concert I have peace about going to and you can judge me all you

01:04:43.480 | want. Have fun with that. What would you say to the Christians that, um, their pushback would be that

01:04:49.720 | they don't believe that you should be entertained by anything that's like anti-God. Cause to some extent,

01:04:56.840 | whatever way you put it, a lot of the artists, I mean, I'm guilty of this. A lot of the artists I

01:05:01.080 | listen to, a lot of the things that I do entertain are pretty much anti what God is talking about.

01:05:07.480 | Like, you know, the, the rap music and the this and the that. So a lot of Christians will be like,

01:05:12.120 | man, like stay completely away from that. And I think when I was going through those comments,

01:05:16.600 | it was like people were pointing to the fact that Beyonce is obviously not Christian. I think she's,

01:05:21.240 | um, and that was what they were trying to point at for the reasoning of why you shouldn't be in

01:05:27.880 | attendance, which everybody can have their, their own opinion. But what would you say to the Christians

01:05:31.800 | that are like, I shouldn't watch this TV show on Netflix because it doesn't, it's, it's views are

01:05:37.880 | anti-biblical or I shouldn't listen to this artist. Cause I even personally have struggled going back

01:05:43.720 | and forth with that. Like if I am trying to nurture my spirit and nurture my relationship with God,

01:05:49.800 | how careful do I have to be about letting certain things into mine?

01:05:53.640 | I think there's a lot of beauty in it, man. Like that's the other thing. Like,

01:05:56.440 | I think there's a lot of beauty. There's a lot of, like, I have zero issue with someone saying to me,

01:06:01.240 | Carl, I don't go to watch Beyonce. That music affects me negatively. It gets my mind

01:06:07.160 | in a place that I don't want to be. You know what I say? God bless you. Like, that's amazing.

01:06:10.920 | The problem is when you somehow try to take that conviction, even if it's legitimate and godly,

01:06:17.400 | and then totally judge the crap out of somebody else's motives, heart, vision,

01:06:23.080 | like you don't know. Yeah. And even the pushback about Beyonce, I was always like,

01:06:27.080 | you don't know Beyonce. You don't. And you could point to some of the things that I'm not, I'm not a

01:06:32.840 | Beyonce stand or defender here. She's serving the principle here of like, I love the, if people tell me,

01:06:39.000 | Carl, I want to live a life that is integrous and filled with purity. And this is what leads me to

01:06:45.960 | become more of that. Do you brother? That's amazing. I don't push back. For me, I try to do that too.

01:06:52.040 | And so that would mean for me to be able to go to a Beyonce concert, that would mean that

01:06:57.640 | in the, in the greater scheme of my life and all the stuff that I'm doing and be in who I'm becoming

01:07:02.520 | as a man, I have accounted for this and I will take the evidence from it and I will learn from it.

01:07:09.160 | Did this impact me? Did this make me think differently? Did this make me want to go act

01:07:13.800 | out and do things I don't want to do? The awareness.

01:07:15.320 | The awareness. That's my journey, man. Like, and it's such faulty logic. This is where the low IQ

01:07:20.440 | Christian thrives. Because if I walk that, walk out that logic, is it consistent across your life,

01:07:26.600 | critic? Of course it isn't. Because if you're going to stay clean to that thought, that means every

01:07:31.800 | single thing you partake from, you have to theologically align with, that's unrealistic.

01:07:36.920 | It's not real. It's not even smart. So the point that they're coming from, the angle's wrong to even

01:07:42.760 | begin the journey to say that. So, but I say, not even a but, and everybody's got to make their own

01:07:48.920 | call. Just look at the fruit of your life. What you did that led to that, is it what you want? If it's

01:07:56.600 | not, don't do that. So if you listen to Beyonce 15 times and you make 15 bad decisions off the back of

01:08:03.000 | it and you want to draw the evidence that that music is cool, bro, that's for you. Great. Just make your call.

01:08:08.440 | be smart. Be logical. I think there's some scripture on that that don't, like what is sin for one person

01:08:14.840 | may not be a sin for another. What one person is convicted by may not be the same conviction for

01:08:20.920 | another Christian. And I think that Christians even try to bring that area over into, you know,

01:08:27.960 | drinking wine or going out and having a drink with some friends or smoking weed or whatever. Like, I'm not

01:08:34.200 | saying that everybody should be doing that. If you make bad decisions when you start drinking

01:08:38.360 | and you drink too much and get drunk and you do this, this and that, okay, maybe it's not for you.

01:08:42.680 | But don't try to put that conviction onto other Christians and judge them and be like,

01:08:48.040 | you're not living the right way because you like to go to dinner and have a couple of drinks with

01:08:52.600 | your friends. And I feel like that's, I mean, his first miracle was turning water into wine at a party

01:08:57.800 | where there was men and women and they were having a good time. And so like people that,

01:09:02.200 | I just feel like there's so many areas where Christians do that. And it really is truly like,

01:09:08.280 | it's about the self-awareness, what is bad for you and what's rotting your mind and what,

01:09:14.040 | and the fruit of, like you said, the fruit of your life. So I like that because that,

01:09:17.080 | that is something that kind of bothers me. And Michael Porter, we don't live in fear, bro.

01:09:20.760 | Like the Lentz family, we're not shaking in our boots at some perceived demonic presence at like,

01:09:27.880 | what kind of, what kind of family culture would we have? Like we're going to live wise and live smart,

01:09:31.720 | but at the end of the day, like we're living on our front foot here, not our back foot in the way that

01:09:37.160 | there's some, some people will try to logically stand on some of these stances. Man, you just want

01:09:42.840 | to look at them and say like, do you, are you, do you have any control over your choice here? So you fell

01:09:48.200 | because you listened to music, you fell because you watched Netflix. No, you fell because you made a

01:09:52.680 | choice. You made a choice. It's easy to say, I got led astray. Really? Netflix has more power than your

01:10:00.120 | choice. No, bro. It doesn't. So it's, it's also a very convenient, um, scapegoat and opt out. So I

01:10:06.440 | think the truth is somewhere in the middle that you got to figure out what's the fruit of your life.

01:10:10.280 | What do you want it to be? What's impacting it, but not everybody's going to live like you. And I mean,

01:10:15.000 | if we want to spin it and really get people thinking, I mean, if that logic is true,

01:10:18.360 | there's a lot of people who go to church and leave and they do sinful things.

01:10:25.000 | like who's at fault, the church. No, at some point people have to stand on their power of ownership

01:10:31.880 | and go, I, I am making decisions here. What would the healthy me do? What would the, what would the,

01:10:37.320 | what would the pure me do right now? And honestly, brother, like we, that's the, I haven't been to a

01:10:42.840 | Beyonce concert before that. Um, I don't know what the future holds, but I know that night with my

01:10:47.640 | daughter, who's very special to me. Um, so much so that it, it makes me emotional to think about how

01:10:54.360 | special she is, what she's been through as a young woman to be who she is, to watch her flourish as a

01:10:59.480 | dancer. We got an opportunity to go see a show and we learned and we had a great time. It's just what,

01:11:04.360 | like it didn't, we love Jesus. We're filled with the power of God. Like we're going to be okay.

01:11:09.240 | So I feel like that posture, um, it has to be, it has to be, uh, somehow brought to light for some

01:11:16.600 | people to kind of relax a little bit, like use your conviction, stand on it. Don't judge somebody

01:11:21.640 | else's. And I do the reverse. If someone else has a conviction against something that I do,

01:11:25.960 | cool. I'm not going to judge you, but those people often don't bring it back the same way.

01:11:31.160 | Yeah. I believe, I mean, me personally, where I stand is I think that boundaries

01:11:35.320 | are important in terms of creating the peaceful, fruitful life you want to live. But those are just

01:11:41.960 | boundaries. If you haven't done the internal work and you haven't become the person that you are trying

01:11:46.360 | to be, you can have all the boundaries in the world. You're going to figure out a way around them.

01:11:49.560 | And you're going to, so boundaries are important for me, but I, we still live in the real world.

01:11:54.120 | We're still going to, you know, so I agree with you. It's about creating order in your life and not

01:11:59.800 | judging others. And it's about, again, self-awareness. Um, yeah, I gotta, so you, so your family,

01:12:07.320 | you just talked a little bit about your daughter and how special she is to you and how that relationship is.

01:12:11.240 | obviously I think it is such a testament to God's grace, you and your wife, um, being in the place you

01:12:17.960 | guys are in on the podcast, openly talking about some of the issues that you have gone through and

01:12:24.040 | the kind of the redemption story there. Because a lot of people would say, man, once trust is broken,

01:12:28.840 | like, it is impossible to repair. And you're, I mean, you're a testament in so many ways that go

01:12:33.560 | against so much of this stereotypes of relationships. And it's, it's beautiful to see how were you able to,

01:12:40.520 | to do that? Not only with your wife, but your kids, like, how did you, how did you rebuild that?

01:12:46.040 | Yeah. I mean, thank you for saying that. It means a lot. I think that, you know, it takes two to tango.

01:12:50.680 | So when you see a marriage, uh, our trust was broken. We built new trust. We didn't try to repair

01:12:56.120 | that old trust. We let that sucker die. So we went on a journey of building new trust. That's possible.

01:13:01.800 | Like there's a lot of people who would try to like put together a car that blew up. That thing's going

01:13:06.600 | to run like a Hyundai. It might've been a Lamborghini at one point, but man, if it's falling apart,

01:13:11.640 | sometimes the best thing to do is rebuild. And so we build new trust. My wife is a hero. Like she's,

01:13:17.960 | uh, she's strong. She's amazing. But the difference bro, for us is that we both did our own work.

01:13:23.480 | We stopped trying to save our marriage, stop trying to fix what was broken and started to live as healthy

01:13:30.360 | human beings. What that creates is a really powerful life on that road is a beautiful marriage on that

01:13:37.800 | road. I didn't try to save my kids and rebuild trust with them. I wanted to be a healthy man that lives

01:13:44.280 | with integrity. If I do that, I will have a relationship with my kids. I will have, um,

01:13:50.600 | something that I'm proud of, but my focus wasn't that it was this, it was health. It was the vision

01:13:56.280 | that God has for me as a man. And that's a beautiful thing. That's it doesn't necessarily mean it's always

01:14:01.800 | going to lead to this beautiful picture. We have a beautiful picture. That's true. God's grace is,

01:14:07.240 | is abundant in our story. But the miracle is that we both, you know, are on a journey of health. And

01:14:13.080 | I think that's the difference. I think anybody who is going through something right now, they can take

01:14:18.760 | hope from that. And that's why we did all this. Like we, we wouldn't mind riding off into the sunset

01:14:22.920 | either, bro. Like that's a, that could be cool too. But to, to let people know like, Hey, there,

01:14:27.640 | there's hope after the worst moment of your life. Like it's only the worst moment. If you let it be

01:14:33.160 | that, why would you want to stop there? So our story is at least a testament to, um, you know,

01:14:39.320 | what can happen if you look at a back brace different, if you look at a hurdle different,

01:14:44.040 | if you look at a draft like, um, moment that you look at it as motivation rather than a miss,

01:14:50.680 | like, that's our story. And I'll tell anybody listening, like, if you want to make the choices

01:14:56.520 | to work, anything's possible, anything. And you got to let go of your expectation. Like me and Laura

01:15:02.040 | both shook hands. We were like, we're not going to try to save this marriage. You're going to get

01:15:05.320 | healthy. I'm going to get, we're going to try to stay married and make no mistake, but it's not going

01:15:09.480 | to be about the marriage needs to be about who we are as people, our own relationship with God,

01:15:15.000 | our own relationship with Jesus, our own passion, our own health together, two healthy people.

01:15:20.840 | I mean, you have a lot of fun as a married couple. Yeah. I love that a lot. But man, the other way,

01:15:25.160 | bro, people are still trying, God bless you. Like, I don't know that way. I help people on this, this

01:15:29.880 | side of the tracks here, because even in a marriage breakdown, either there's only two outcomes. If they

01:15:35.080 | both, if they both get healthy, either they get back together, beautiful, or they get out into something

01:15:41.480 | different. And maybe that didn't continue, but they're still healthy. They're still whole. And

01:15:46.280 | the rest of their life is in front of them. Where's the option that misses? And most of the time,

01:15:50.920 | it does end up in a marriage that can't come back together. You know, people want to work,

01:15:55.000 | but that's not the goal. The goal is to love God with all your heart and love people. Do that really

01:16:01.080 | well. See what happens to your marriage. See what happens to your relationship with your kids. And so

01:16:05.240 | that's our story, man. We are testaments. We are evidence that God's grace is still real,

01:16:10.120 | because there's no other way to explain, you know, me sitting here with you with,

01:16:14.120 | with, with, with any joy at all. There's no way to explain my,

01:16:17.720 | yeah.

01:16:21.640 | You know, I got to meet my son here today. We shouldn't have a relationship,

01:16:30.760 | you know, put, put him through a lot.

01:16:35.640 | But I, I, I can say I, I know that boy like my own soul. I don't know if that would have been the

01:16:40.360 | case had my life not changed. I don't know if I've been able to spend the time I've had with him. So

01:16:44.840 | there's, there's always hope. You know, the only thing you can't do is just quit. You cannot die. You

01:16:50.360 | cannot lay down. You know, you got to keep fighting. And that's why we do what we do now is just to remind

01:16:55.160 | people like, Hey, come on. I don't know what happened here, but I do know what might lie ahead. You know,

01:17:00.280 | if you want to get up and go. So, um, yeah, I'm grateful.

01:17:04.200 | Brother, I love you. I feel like,

01:17:06.840 | Thank you, man, man, you, you like you, the people that you can touch

01:17:11.560 | walking through what you've walked through and coming out the other side is

01:17:15.320 | a completely different group than you could have touched previous, you know, because there's real

01:17:21.400 | people that go through real things that have hit rock bottom and they don't know who to look to. They

01:17:26.120 | don't even want to look at their local church pastor because he seems too perfect. He seems unbroken.

01:17:31.160 | He seems like he hasn't gone through any trials, any tribulations, and they feel like they can't relate.

01:17:35.800 | And you are a testament, not just of God's grace, but like just of, of like hope. You know what I

01:17:43.000 | mean? And, and, and you came out the other side of your, your Carl, you're still Carl, but you're a

01:17:47.720 | better version of Carl. Your marriage came out the other side. It's, it's a better version of your

01:17:52.120 | marriage and you get to like walk through life now and be like you, you know, and you get to come as you

01:17:58.920 | are and people either accept you or they don't. And that's a beautiful thing to see. Like I had a

01:18:05.000 | guest on here about a week or two ago and they said one of the most beautiful things, they had been

01:18:10.920 | canceled in the past. There was social media calls canceled. And they said one of the most beautiful

01:18:15.240 | times of my life is when I was canceled because once I was canceled, I got to be free and I got to be

01:18:19.800 | me. And I thought that that was pretty powerful because it's like, it's true. A lot of people are walking

01:18:24.840 | around and they haven't gone through the public humiliation that, that, you know, you have, or

01:18:29.720 | even I have through, you know, thinking I was going to be a certain player and then not meeting my own

01:18:36.600 | expectations, not meeting the world's expectations like that comes with a lot of weight. But through

01:18:41.720 | a lot of this stuff, I have learned to come like authentically me and present myself to the world as,

01:18:48.840 | as real. And I feel like I couldn't exchange that for the world. I couldn't exchange that for being the best

01:18:52.760 | way in the NBA. So I look at some of those things now as blessings and I'm glad you can too.

01:18:59.240 | The sun's going down. I could, I could, I could have you here for a long time, but from my heart,

01:19:04.840 | man. Thank you. I could have you here for a long time. And we could talk about so many different

01:19:09.240 | things and so many, you know, I wish you had a better place, man. I feel like you came to Brooklyn

01:19:13.400 | and got the worst place. I wish your, your, your, your people could see, but it's been, it's been amazing.

01:19:18.840 | Thank you. Thank you for doing what you do, man. You're, you're in this city for a reason.

01:19:22.680 | You know, I'm excited. It's been an honor, man. This has been one of my favorite

01:19:25.240 | episodes and I appreciate you, brother. Love, brother. Appreciate you. Yes, sir, man. Curious Mike out, y'all.

Carl Lentz on Redemption, Unconditional Love, and Being a Better Man

Chapters