Steve Deace argues that God's kingdom prioritizes motivations over outcomes, critiquing the political duopoly and the church's corporatization into customer-focused businesses. He recounts personal crises involving infidelity and a near-death experience where he heard, "Stephen, I need apostles, not assassins," urging believers to avoid gatekeeping and provocative behavior that lacks accountability. Ultimately, Deace asserts that true victory comes from pointing people to Christ rather than seeking personal approval or winning arguments, challenging listeners to finish their race for God's glory instead of becoming the very things they despise. [Automatically generated summary]
Transcriber: CohereLabs/cohere-transcribe-03-2026, WAV2VEC2_ASR_BASE_960H, sat-12l-sm, script v26.04.01, and large-v3-turbo
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Why We Win Every Time00:02:11
Leave us a five star review on your favorite podcast platform.
I get it.
It's annoying.
Everybody asks, but I'm going to tell you why.
When you give us a positive review, what that does is it triggers the algorithm so that our podcast shows up on more people's news feeds.
You and I both know that this ministry is willing to talk about things that most ministries aren't.
We need this content for the glory of God to reach more people's ears.
We are going to discuss We Win.
By winning.
Alright?
I like winning.
You guys maybe hear my oldest daughter, Anastasia, on the show.
Sometimes she could tell you stories about wiffle ball in the backyard.
I still live in the same house that she grew up in.
We would play wiffle ball in the backyard, and I'd hit every single one of her pitches over the fence every time.
And I'd make her go get it.
Every single one of them.
And she'd be, you know, tearing up.
Can we stop?
When you stop me, we will stop.
When you catch the ball, I'm out.
Right?
I mean, I didn't let our kids win ever at anything.
Not once.
We're about to say goodbye to our final kid.
Noah graduates here in about a month.
And Amy is starting to tell me, he's starting to remind me more and more of you as he gets older.
I think that is a compliment.
I'm going to take that as such.
Okay?
But show me a gracious loser, man, and I'll show you a loser every single time.
I like winning.
And one of my real addictions and vices is competition.
I will look to compete at anything: chutes and ladders, Candyland with the kids, it's a competition.
We might play board games in our home about once a year, all right?
Because this is going to end in a family feud, a divorce, estrangement.
All right, I mean, let's just say I set the moon in our home for a very competitive environment.
The Gracious Loser Myth00:14:46
And when I first started out in what God called me to do, I had to learn some lessons about what this means in the kingdom of God compared to what it means in the city of man.
And over the years, I made some mistakes, some costly ones, in fact.
One of them I alluded to on the panel earlier today.
And so, you know, I loved Kenny Rogers when I was a kid.
So, my talk here today is to quote the great prophet Kenny Rogers from his great hymn, Coward of the County.
All right.
Basically, what I'm going to do here for the next 40 minutes or so is urge you to promise me, son, not to do the things that I've done.
All right.
To learn from the mistakes, people like I that have gone down roads.
That many of you in this room are trying now to go down and to learn from the mistakes people like me made.
When there was never going to be conversations like this, there were never going to be conferences like this, or in Moscow or in Ogden, there were never going to be these sorts of conversations.
It was verboten.
And, you know, I proudly believe that.
We should support the nation of Israel.
If for no other reason, then it's a nice cudgel against Islam in the Middle East.
But there is something wrong with the fact that the last generation of believers were way more aware of what was going on with the Israeli Defense Force on a given day than in their own country.
All right?
And so, a lot of the redirection that you're trying to do, I'm in favor of it.
That's why I'm here.
That's why I met so many of you already that tune into our show, because you can sense the common themes and the common goals.
So, I want to state that up front.
Maybe you sense a but coming.
And you're right.
But I want to make sure that you can learn from my mistakes.
And then hold what I'm about to tell you up against the Word of God.
If you're a believer, you have the Holy Spirit inside of you.
I believe in the priesthood of every believer.
All right?
Chew the meat, spit out the bones.
Maybe some of this will be of some use to you.
Maybe all of it will be.
Maybe none of it will be.
But after a lot of prayer and consideration, I'm going to say for the next few minutes something that I truly believe God wants me to say to those of you in this room.
And in other rooms like this around the country, and I hope you receive it with the heart that it's intended.
That's why I gave you the disclaimer that I just did.
All right, because I want you to be successful.
But here's a truth I have learned in my life, and I did not want to learn this.
I can be stubborn, I can be petty, and that's on a good day.
All right, but the Lord finally taught me a lesson He always gets His way.
I don't.
And the Lord cares quite a bit about the way things are done.
And we've kind of had this political duopoly.
Some of you may have heard of it.
It's called the Uniparty.
And if you look at the American left, they like to be defined by their intentions.
Well, yes, it's true.
I completely bankrupted the next generation with a welfare state.
And all of the societal maladies and markers I claimed I was doing something about are now all way worse than they were before I got started.
But my intentions were good.
So don't judge me.
Of course, I get to judge you.
But then on the right, we like to be judged by results.
We made the trains run on time, we got things done.
The thing about the kingdom of God is his ways are not our ways, and his thoughts are not our thoughts.
I know we've heard that so often, it's a cliche, but have we really heard it?
As the great prophet Wesley Snipes once said, In White Men Can't Jump.
You can listen to Jimmy, but can you hear Jimmy?
We've heard that line a lot, but have we listened to it?
Because the kingdom of God is primarily judged by motivations.
Choose ye this day whom you will serve.
Whom do the people say that I am?
Why are we doing what we're doing?
More importantly, for whom are we doing it for?
And I think if the motivations are not right, the results on the outside for a while may seem like it is working.
And I come from a business where you get all kinds of instant incentives to see what seems to be working for now instant engagement, instant recognition, instant growth in a followership.
But those things can be good things, but they don't guarantee necessarily that you are displaying discipleship.
And so I think someone amongst us here has got to stand up and be the Colombo.
One more thing.
Remember that show from when I was a little kid?
And I figured I'm so used to being disliked, I'll just go ahead and nominate myself for the job.
All right?
Because I want us to be successful.
But I can promise you this.
If we do not attempt to advance the kingdom of God by the rules of his kingdom, we will not be.
We will not be.
And it won't matter how clever we are.
It won't matter how brave we are.
It won't matter how blunt or bold we are.
If we do not do this by the methods of God's kingdom and for his glory, he will not bless it.
Now, over the last generation of third way Big Eva scam religion, That usually meant, I can see some of you bristling, and I used to sit in seats where you are hearing speakers say this, and I would bristle too because I knew what was coming.
Out comes the sweater vests, out comes the Hawaiian shirts, and out comes the pleated khakis, and the unstated 11th commandment on the third tablet that God just forgot to give Moses, which is the most important commandment of them all.
Above all, thou must be nice at all times.
Nice.
Right?
That's not what I'm here for.
If you listen to our show, we're not very nice most of the time.
All right?
And maybe, you know, as Spock once said, only Nixon could go to China.
So maybe someone like me needs to be the one to bring this message.
Because I've been defying nice all along.
I remember the first time I ever spoke for my faith.
I'd just gotten converted.
I'm a fairly well known local sports talk radio host and one of the big mega churches in town.
Has me come and invites me to come speak to the men, and and I have no idea what to say i've been a Christian for about 15 minutes, and so I began a tradition that I just renewed here.
Before I came out to speak to you guys here this afternoon, I went and found the corner stall in the bathroom and just prayed fervently.
Lord, I don't know what i'm doing.
I'm going to open my mouth.
Please make it your words that come out.
And i've just done that now, ever since, and I another reason I do that is I get plausible deniability.
If you don't like it and you're offended, don't blame me.
All right?
I'm just the vessel in the vehicle here.
And I got done and I went out there and spoke, and I've had this happen so many times in my career.
I said things I don't even remember them.
And I have like a photographic memory.
I go back and read the book, A Nefarious Plot, sometimes, and I'm like, who wrote this?
This guy's way smarter than me.
And when I got done, the pastor who invited me, The men are cheering me, and the pastor who invited me comes up, and he puts his arm around me and says, you did a great job.
Very impressive.
And I got really bowed up.
Then he whispered something in my ear I have never forgotten.
He said, you remind me of one of those Old Testament prophets, he told me, but just remember what people like me did to all the prophets.
I've had that experience a lot.
Over the course of my career, I've had friends, enemies, enemies become friends.
Friends that became enemies, and then friends and enemies again.
Basically, relationships with me are like the transfer portal in college sports.
Okay?
There's one kid, he started at South Carolina, went and played at Ohio State, went back to South Carolina, went back to Ohio State, just announced yesterday he's going to South Carolina again.
My kids can tell you there's all kinds of people that have been in and out of our home.
They were friends with me for a while.
And then when what they wanted out of me didn't line up with what I thought God was calling me to do, suddenly we become enemies.
Any of this sound familiar to any of you guys at all?
This has been my life for the last 15, 20 years, trying to take the message of a narrow road to a broad audience.
And so it comes with its own pitfalls, even if you're even better at not stepping on rakes than I have proven to be.
So we have to check our motivations all of the time.
One day, my wife and I were in the airport getting ready to go do a speaking engagement in Atlanta, Georgia.
It was the first time I'd ever been invited to speak outside of Iowa.
And we're very excited, and I get a phone call, and it's One of the most important people in the history of American Christian media is on the phone.
And if you've ever worked or followed Christian media, it would be a name you would know.
And he says, hey, do you have a minute?
I'm like, for you, I've got, I'll miss the flight.
I'm thinking my ship has come in.
This is the moment.
This is the kind of call in my line of work you've been waiting for.
That's not what happened.
Over the next 10 minutes, he berated me.
I eventually just had to hold the phone away from my ear.
And he kept saying to me over and over again, You're too radical.
You'll drive yourself out of the mainstream.
You won't be successful.
You'll blow yourself up and you'll burn out before anybody knows who you are.
He said to me, I used to be like you.
Then I ran for office and found out you can't be successful and do what you're trying to do, he said to me.
And I'm really trying to be the young man, listen to my elder.
I'm thankful God had placed, I didn't grow up in the best home, didn't have a good father example.
Thankfully, God put strategically placed men, role models in my life right at the right time I needed them to stop me from blowing myself up and my family along with me.
So I'm thinking, at first, I'm thinking maybe this is one of those calls and I need to hear this.
But when he said that, that's when I knew that's not what this was.
That there's a difference between accountability and gatekeeping.
I used to be like you.
Translation, you now need to be like me.
That's not follow me as I follow Christ.
That's just follow me.
Jesus is the only one that gets to say, follow me.
We don't.
And then he said to me, can you think of anyone in the Bible?
Who says the things you say and is as provocative as you are?
And I, my mouth got the better of me.
And I, I, I want you to know the Lord is my witness.
I did try listening to this for a good 10 solid minutes, okay?
I did.
I did.
And I shot back.
John the Baptist stood in the street, told King Herod he was a whoremonger and called his wife a whore in front of the entire town.
And Jesus said, No man born of women is more blessed than he.
And it got real quiet on the other end of the phone.
And he said, What did you say?
I said, Nothing.
And I just let him go on.
Now, here's the thing.
Years later, that exact same man, I would not be where I'm at in my career and standing before you with the audience I have now if it were not for him.
Years later, he sponsored me.
Years later, he wrote a letter to his board of directors, personally recommending they create a time slot in their network for me.
And they did.
I think the example we want to follow here, and that at least I want to give to you, is the name that I just mentioned, John the Baptist.
Now, this is a provocative figure.
The bluntest of language, the plainest of rebuke.
Yet he baptizes our Lord.
Yet he is actually the first to recognize our Lord.
He does so in the womb.
He baptizes our Lord, gives his life for our Lord.
Which just goes to show faithfulness isn't a tone.
How You Say It Matters00:02:28
It can be.
But most of the time in our culture, when we say things like, it's not what you said, but how you say it, we don't really mean that.
We don't really mean that.
What we really mean is, there's no way you could say it.
That would be good.
For example, the Christian school my son now goes to.
Years ago, I came in and addressed the senior class.
And I decided I was going to make my whole talk about is it true that it's not what you say, but how you say it?
And so I had the boys of the senior class on one end of the gym and the girls on the other.
And I asked the whole senior class, I said, hey, who agrees with me that it's not what you say, but how you say it?
How many hands in the room went up, do you think?
All of them did.
And I said, all right, I'm going to test that theorem right now.
And I walked over to the girls and I said the following I said, hey, 10 years from now, One of you is going to be cooking dinner in a home with kids that you're overseeing.
Your husband's going to come home from work.
And he's going to say, Oh my goodness, you still fit in the same dress like it was when we were dating.
It's incredible.
You're still as beautiful as the day we got married.
And look, the kids, you've got them, I mean, they're minding, they're doing their homework, they're doing their chores.
Is that my favorite dinner I'm smelling?
What a blessed man I am.
Oh, by the way, you know that new receptionist I told you about at the office?
Man, we had quite the nooner this afternoon.
Anyway, what time is dinner?
As quiet as you all are right now is as quiet as it was in that gym.
And I said, Now let me ask you, the senior class here at Iowa's largest Christian school, let me ask you once more.
Are we sure it's not what you say, but how you say it?
Said it pretty nice.
Gave you all the requisite third way Christianity seldom magazine compliments and disclaimers.
Complimented your beauty, your grace, your domestic proclivities.
He got that all out of the way and then dropped the hammer on you.
And then he even did it in like this really polite, uplifting, and hope filled K love tone.
So we're good here, right?
We're good.
Issue is settled then.
No, it's not settled.
Because it can be not what you say, but how you say it.
But most of the time, it's just what you say.
Love Beyond Politeness00:07:47
People hate truth, particularly unregenerate ones.
I did.
I hated it.
I didn't want to hear it.
I've come to the conclusion really, the only people on earth that really don't get what they want are the Christians saved against their own will by the mighty grace of God.
Everybody else gets what they want front row, aisle seat in the eternal smoking section.
We want hell.
We desire it.
We crave it.
We want to go our own way.
And as the believers, we're the ones that don't get our way.
But here's the thing that extends beyond our salvation, guys.
And it extends to our sanctification and our justification as well, and to our witness as well.
I can promise you this.
Without accountability, you will become everything you hate.
Especially, I say this to the men.
Without accountability, you'll become everything you hate.
You'll become the distant father, too demanding, that finds the one B or C on your son's report card and fixates on that and ignores and bypasses all the A's.
You'll become that.
You'll become that.
You'll become the boss.
Widgets for widgets' sake, profit for profit's sake.
We have no higher mission here other than the business must make a profit.
You'll become that.
You'll just mix some Bible verses in.
I see it in the homeschooling community.
We're coming up on homeschool graduation season, otherwise known as take Jeremiah 29 11 completely out of context 10 million times every year season.
Listen, I'm a big believer in homeschooling.
We homeschooled.
Both of our daughters all the way through.
The only reason our son didn't get homeschooled all the way through is because it was very clear when he got to seventh grade, he needed a level of male competition that I just was not able to provide in the home unless he competed with me, and that was going to be bad.
That's why we put him in a Christian school, so he would have to compete with other boys and learn what that is like.
We are big advocates for it.
Longtime friend of mine, Michael Ferris, Patrick Henry College, HSLDA, big believers in it.
So it absolutely has its place.
But the thing we have to remember, too, though, is what are we equipping them for?
Do we want them to just live a lifestyle that looks like holiness?
Or do we want them to be able to be equipped to impact and advance the kingdom of God?
Are we going to set up our own standard of conformity?
Or are we going to use his standards?
Because again, his ways are not our ways.
His thoughts are not our thoughts.
And yet, even in the homeschool community, it's like the only verse the book of Jeremiah has is verse 11.
And so the homeschool community will have constantly on the graduation announcements for I know the plans I have for you.
Plans not to harm you, but to give you a hope in the future.
You ever read Jeremiah 29 10?
How about Jeremiah 29 12?
You ever read that?
In fact, have you read the entire rest of the book of Jeremiah?
It starts off with the Jews went down in the valley of Topit, that's a Hebrew word for hell, and they cast their babies into the fire to a demon.
It starts there.
It starts there.
For this, God sent Nebuchadnezzar to conquer the people.
Basically, Nebuchadnezzar was the buckle of dad's belt, and he took it off, and he spanked them harshly for the evil that they did.
And then he dispersed them for the next 70 years, their entire legacy way of life gone.
The temple gone, the ark gone.
For I know the plans I have for you plans not to harm you, but to give you a hope in the future.
We can't take the word of God out of context in either direction.
The great error of the last generation of the church, in my opinion, is that we took the second greatest commandment, love your neighbor as you love yourself, and we made it number one.
Not number two.
We made it number one.
And therefore, what ended up happening is we were perfectly fine offending God.
We just had to make sure we didn't offend people.
Well, God is love, although, by the way, the amount of times in the Bible it says God is love as opposed to talking about his holiness is something like 20 to 1, but I digress.
Well, God is love, but love is not God.
God gets to define what love is, not us.
And so, if we make it that the highest thing is, and the definition of loving our neighbor as ourselves is, whatever might offend and not accommodate our neighbor, we can't say.
We have appointed ourselves God's editors.
There's a word for people who think they can edit the Word of God.
Who knows what it is?
Heretic.
That's the word.
Everyone in hell has something in common.
You know what it is?
They all had an opinion.
And they went to hell with those opinions.
People are in heaven for truth.
People are in hell for their opinions.
And so, therefore, we had to play to a crowd.
What would draw a crowd?
Now, listen, Pentecost, 3,000 men, we don't even count the women and children, 3,000 men get saved.
That would be, by any definition today, a megachurch.
The amount of people in this room today would be called a megachurch.
Calvin preached to churches of thousands.
Maybe the greatest English speaking minister of all time, Charles Spurgeon, preached to churches that had thousands of people.
Megachurch isn't a population, it's a mindset.
It's where elders are replaced by boards of directors and creeds are replaced by mission statements.
And we corporatize the church.
We're no longer sinners in need of catechesis.
We're customers.
We're no longer believers in need of discipleship.
We're customers.
And in a business parlance, the customer is always right.
You don't want to hear that message anymore?
Well, just stop preaching it.
Uplifting and hope filled, that's all we do here.
But I just want to please Jesus.
What did Jesus preach?
The Word of God, the whole thing.
And back then it was just the Old Testament.
He was the New Testament coming to life before us.
We had none of Paul's letters yet.
So that means he's preaching imprecatory prayers, judgments, warfare, the kind of stuff that just isn't polite to preach today.
And the church growth consultants from Willow Creek and Saddleback told us won't bring in those soccer moms, see that as Karen.
That are the key to unlocking the suburbs.
That is, by the way, church growth consultants speak for you getting the level of funding you want to build the pottery barn church you desire.
Being Prophetically Provoking00:15:37
And it all came from this one lie that the greatest commandment now is to love your neighbor as you love yourself.
And somewhere down the line is number two love the Lord your God with all your heart, soul, strength, and mind.
The summary of the first tablet.
Love your neighbor as you love yourself, the summary of the second.
My concern, because I'm a student of history, and pendulums tend to swing violently in one direction or the other.
Because as a species, the one thing we're, well, two things.
The two things we're really good at as a species, we are all master idol makers.
Even my adorable little granddaughter Autumn, who I promise is cuter than all of your grandkids, and I'll fight you.
All right?
See me after.
Okay?
We went over to watch her a couple of weeks ago, and everything was going great until grandma said a magic little word.
What word do you think that was?
No.
Oh, yes.
And she's like this redhead with blue eyes.
Redheads always have green eyes.
Not that those aren't great, but she's a redhead with blue eyes.
She is the picture of adorable.
But when grandma said no, She was like, What you talking about, Willis?
I don't get told no.
So, yes, even the very picture of loveliness, in fact, that's my nickname for her loveliness.
That's what I call her.
The very picture of loveliness, Autumn Elizabeth, is already at the ripe old age of one, an absolute master idol maker.
As we get older, here's the other thing we become great at, too reactionaryism.
Now, sometimes reactionaryism is good.
Somebody breaks into your home, threatens your family.
Your instant reaction is to get up and harm them before they harm the ones you love.
That's a good reaction, right?
So, there's nothing wrong, inherently wrong, with reactionism, but like everything else, it has to be tethered to something.
The reason why that reaction is good is because that is a husband and a father fulfilling his God ordained role.
But without it being tethered to something, it's just a reaction.
It might even be the opposite reaction of what is bad, but in the kingdom of God, that does not make it good.
God's standards are not subjective.
He doesn't compare righteousness to what we understand is bad and therefore say, well, the opposite of what you think is bad is therefore good.
No.
Why do bad things happen to good people?
Wrong.
There aren't any good people.
Why does God use problematic people?
There's only problematic people.
The standard and ethics of the kingdom of God are not the same as ours.
He does not live a binary existence.
He is both immanent and transcendent.
And the challenge for us is to emulate that as best we can by the power of His Holy Spirit, the hope of glory Christ at work in us.
So, the reaction I fear I am starting to see, and I am worried about this, and I say this as someone that has made this mistake myself.
The reaction to the old heresy of we can offend God but never offend our neighbor is to go the other way now and just let's just take the second commandment out altogether.
Jesus said it's the second greatest commandment, folks.
I still think it's kind of important to love our neighbor as we love ourselves.
Some of you may have heard my interview recently with a young man who is very sympathetic to much of what's being said at this conference.
But I had seen some things on his ex account I was very troubled by.
So I asked him to come on, and he did.
And I gave him a chance to tell me what he thought.
If you listen to my reaction, over and over again, I kept saying to him, We have to love our neighbor as we love ourselves.
I'm sorry that a generation of church growth consultants hijacked that to mean stand for nothing, believe in nothing, do nothing, except create tithing units and fake converts and mega malls in the suburbs that sit open and do nothing but gather weeds to be mowed at 2 o'clock on a Tuesday while all literal hell is reeking and waving and breaking loose in the culture.
I'm sorry that that phrase got hijacked.
However, that doesn't mean God canceled it.
It is still here.
The goal of the believer is to not hear the jerkster called and they're all out of you.
That is not the goal.
Now, it may happen no matter what we do.
Because look what they did to the green tree.
And he healed his enemies.
On the cross, he said, Father, forgive them.
They know not what they do.
While we were his enemies, Christ died for us.
He healed his enemies.
He saved his enemies.
Did more for his enemies than we could ever possibly dream or hope to do.
They hung him nevertheless.
But if that happens to you, dear brother and sister, let it be because your righteousness, holiness, convicts them of their lack of their own.
Not because you fulfilled the stereotype of ourselves for them.
You created your own self fulfilling prophecy.
Listen, there is no nice way.
I communicate for a living.
I'm paid fairly well.
I get hired by companies and candidates to help them communicate.
Let me just tell you I looked, I've done the best I could.
Maybe someone else has come up with it.
I have no way to come up with a non offensive way to say you're a sinner.
You want hell.
You desire hell.
You deserve hell.
And hell is where you will go unless you believe in this one singular truth in all the cosmos manifested by the word made flesh.
And if you do not, And you deny that atonement and do not accept that grace and mercy, the hell you desire is where you will go no matter what else you do with the rest of your life.
There is no non offensive way for that message to be preached.
So don't try.
But don't try to automatically be as offensive as you can either.
The last generation of pastors, I want to speak specifically to pastors in this room.
The last generation of pastors was too cognizant of the crowd.
And so they catered their messages to the crowd.
And if you want real discipleship, if you really want to hear the Word of God, come back on Sunday night in your spare time again when your kids would rather have family movie night.
Come back again and then we'll actually do our jobs.
But Sunday services are for the unbelievers and the seekers.
No, they're not.
Church is a hospital for sinners, it's for the equipping of the saints.
There's a separate office for evangelists.
The pastor is to be the teacher, he is to disciple.
You're not to come, there's no Twinite doubleheaders in the church.
You don't come back later for the second game and then get the really good pitching.
No, do your job.
However, I think the challenge for the new generation that we're trying to raise up, and some of them are in this room, is that this thing right here, and man, I feel this tension too.
I feel this tension too.
The amount of notes I've gotten over the course of my career, you've discipled me more than my church has.
You've done more for me than my pastor has.
And I'm like, dude, I am so jacked up.
I don't even know what to do with that.
I never intended to teach as much theology on my show as I ended up having to do.
Now it's the most asked for content that we do.
I didn't join, I didn't become a pastor because I don't have the heart to go to your hospital room at 3 a.m.
I don't.
The standing up here and preaching is the easy part, it's the rest of the stuff that's really hard.
And I've had to accept in the last couple of years that I am in this role whether I want it or not.
But this beckons, this calls like a siren song, and the ability to reach way more people than I'd ever be able to get into one of my services.
So now I'm going to do maybe the opposite where the previous era of pastors watered down the messages for the crowd they could get that otherwise would not have come.
Because, of course, it was not the Holy Spirit bringing people to them, but they're unique, clever.
Methods.
God could only bake the cake himself.
He needed humans to give him the frosting.
Your slamming praise team is what actually did it.
God was like, oh snap, I wasn't sure how I was going to reach zip code 78115.
And then Seeker Friendly Church ABXXYZ came up with this really cool solo.
And look at the people there.
Thank you, God.
Thank you, humans.
That is literally the attitude many of our churches took the last quarter century or so.
But here's the thing the temptation of this thing now is, though, that I can now reach way more people with my ministry than I could ever hope to get into a room like this or on a Sunday.
And here's the thing just like the previous generation changed the message to keep people and get them in the doors, this thing encourages a different kind of communication to reach them in this arena.
And often it's not the kinds of things you'd ever say from a pulpit.
Because saying them are the kinds of things that probably would make you not the pastor that someone would call at 3 a.m. when they're sick, when their kid didn't come home last night and you don't know where they are, when their mom is dying and you don't know that she knows Christ.
The temptation here now is to ratchet it up.
And whoever's the biggest provocateur wins.
Rage baiting gets the clicks.
If we went to incentivizing nicer than God heresy in the last generation, this device right here and the allure of it will incentivize your anger and frustration and venting more than anything, any societal construct in human history.
It's called the algorithm.
This sounds hard.
It is.
It's why it's called a narrow road.
And I don't know the balance all the time between not falling into one fallacy or another.
That's why I need the Holy Spirit.
That's why I need accountability.
That's why I have a board.
The very men that gave the money for me to start my show and take it national.
I keep them around.
I'm blessed to have them, even though we're way profitable now, because they hold me accountable.
They say, Why, why, why?
Because without accountability, I will become exactly like what I got into this business to stop.
And so will we all.
And that brings me back to John the Baptist.
The same John the Baptist who looked at Herod and said, You are a whoremonger, and your wife is a whore, and you're vile, and what you're doing is unrighteous, and God will judge it.
That is the same John the Baptist who said, I must decrease so that he will increase.
If you want to know how you can tell if you are prophetically provoking people, and this is a culture, raise your hand if you don't think this culture needs prophetically provoked, because you're in the wrong room, all right?
This culture needs prophetically provoked every day 15 times on Sunday.
And again, back to what I said at the top I'm as competitive as they come, and I don't know about the rest of y'all.
But I like culture wars better when my side wins.
Can I get an amen on that?
That being said, what is the test with whether we're building our own brand, whether we have fallen into the trap of answering what this device wants and incentivizes?
Because let me tell you what this device does not want the Word of God to go out.
Because nothing in the trash world does.
The question is are we able to redeem something so the Word of God will go out?
Whether it wants it to or not, because God is sovereign over the trash world and Christ is king over all.
Now, how do we tell?
What's the fruit?
You know, there's no book of John the Baptist.
In fact, John the Baptist shows up as a key player in someone else's story.
He's a forerunner, he's a subplot, he's not the main event.
Even early on, when the Sanhedrin comes to him and says, Are you Elijah?
Are you the Christ?
I am a voice crying out in the wilderness Make a straight path for the Lord, and one will come whose sandals I'm not even worthy of tying.
I'm nobody.
Nobody.
You can tell if you're being prophetically provoking because you're pointing people to Christ.
When Christ confronts Saul on the road to Damascus, he does not say, Why are you persecuting my followers?
That's not what he says.
What does he say?
Why are you persecuting me?
You can tell if you're prophetically provoking a culture in desperate need of it if it forces them to look at Christ.
If you are the subplot, if you are just a voice crying out in the wilderness, if you are a forerunner, if you're the undercard, if you recognize I represent one whose sandals I'm not even worthy to tie, or if all they talk about is you, for a while it'll work.
Never Giving Up On Faith00:02:36
But in the end, if you make it about you, you'll fall.
And that is true for every man in this room, especially.
I mentioned earlier in the panel, I want to make sure I'm keeping on time.
My wife and I went through a very difficult time five years ago.
And like most men, I didn't recognize it until it was almost too late.
And the one thing I can, you know, there's only one thing I think I did right during that period of time.
And it was so ironic to me.
Todd and Aaron don't even know.
I'm telling nobody.
They found out when I admitted this to the audience.
Kids didn't know.
They found out when I admitted this to the audience.
I'm at the point that I am doing maybe the most important work I think I'll ever do the rest of my career.
I've run into a handful of you that have said, you may have saved my life or someone I care about's life for the work that you did during COVID.
I got up one morning early on.
I had questions.
Something seemed suspicious to me.
And I just woke up one morning with a conviction, a deep, unabiding conviction that the reason why a 14 year old girl at Des Moines Lincoln High School had sex with her high school senior boyfriend in the fall of 1972 and conceived me and everything I have gone through, the abuse I went through, everything else I went through, was so that I would be in this moment right here.
And I was to take all the credibility and everything that I've worked so hard for and built on.
And risk it all and go all in for this moment.
My reason for being the platform God gave me was this moment, go all in.
I just knew.
And I'm doing the most important work maybe I will ever do.
But I've neglected really what's supposed to be the most important work I will ever do.
And things are falling apart at home while I'm getting more accolades than ever at work.
And the only thing, as I look back on that time now and the miracle that God did in our marriage, The only thing I think I got right during that period of time is even though I'm deeply in sin and I'm contemplating going even deeper, I never gave up on my faith.
Humility And Accountability00:05:50
I didn't stop going to church.
There were nights where Amy would not share a bed with me and I'm sleeping alone.
I never tried to hide, I didn't act like God was not aware of what was going on.
I mean, God, I mean, I had out loud, long conversations deep into the night, one on one.
Literal wrestling with God kind of stuff at night.
And I think that's maybe what it means when God says David is a man after his own heart, even though he's an accomplice to murder, he's a serial adulterer, he's a terrible father.
One of his sons rapes his daughter, he has nothing to say, causes a revolution in his own kingdom.
But if you notice throughout the course of David's life, he falls a lot.
But he always recognizes that God is God and I am not.
And that humility is why God never runs out of grace for him.
And the line of the Messiah runs through him to this day.
Humility isn't a tone.
Humility isn't, I didn't offend you.
It's not a piety.
That's another form of ego.
Oh, woe is me.
I'm just so terrible.
That's the emotional equivalent of, please tell me that the jeans don't make my butt look big and how pretty I am.
That's called fishing for a compliment.
That's not humility.
Humility is God is God and I am not.
Humility is my life is not my own.
I was bought at a high price.
A man, a God became man and gave his own life for me.
I've been redeemed at a high cost, bought back, saved at a high cost.
I am to be a living sacrifice, holy and pleasing to God.
And only then, when I am performing that task, Do I truly know God's perfect and pleasing will for my life?
I am telling you right now, I don't care how many Bible verses you know, I don't care how based you are, and I don't care how much of a following you have.
If you do not live that life, you will not fulfill your mission in the kingdom of God.
God will not bless it, and you will fall.
Because you're really not that important.
None of us are.
I'm not, you're not.
None of us are fit to tie the sandals that He wears.
And the stones can cry out.
And the drapes here can speak at this conference next year.
The opposite of the mistakes of the last era is not taking one reaction to the other extreme.
The opposite is going back to the Word of God and the understanding that God is God and we are not.
So, my final accountability or my final suggestion for you is to seek that accountability.
Even at the end of his life, John the Baptist.
He has baptized the Lord.
He recognizes the Lord in utero.
And even at the end, after all he has seen, after all he has done, he sends one of his last remaining disciples back to Christ.
He is awaiting execution in Herod's prison.
And he sends one of his final disciples back to Christ.
And he says to his cousin, Are you, John just needs one last assurance, man?
Are you the one?
Jesus doesn't rebuke him, doesn't say to him, How could you possibly not know?
How could John still have any doubt at all after all he has seen and done?
Instead, Jesus looks at John's disciple and says, Go back, go back and tell John this.
The blind see, the deaf hear, the lame walk, and the good news is preached to the poor.
In other words, Jesus has reset the words of his very first earthly sermon when he quotes from Isaiah 61 as he comes out. of the wilderness in the 40 days of battle with the enemy.
Without accountability, we will not fulfill our mission in the kingdom of God.
Gatekeeping and accountability are not the same thing.
Just because something was done one way in another era does not mean it has to be done this way in this era.
Just because something is done in one part of the country a certain way doesn't mean it has to be done in another part of the country a certain way.
Gatekeeping is not accountability.
But you know, sometimes your gatekeepers become your good accountability partners.
Like that older man who was trying to gatekeep me early in my career.
But I didn't turn my back on him.
I didn't rebuke him.
I listened.
I held it up to what I was confident God was calling me to do.
I fulfilled that.
But where I thought he was right, I implemented it.
And then years later, he's now personally vouching for me.
Gatekeepers need accountability too, so they don't become gatekeepers.
You have to do this the way I did it.
No, I don't.
I have to do this the way God wants me to do it.
And so do you.
Without accountability, you will not be able to say what Paul says to his spiritual son Timothy at the end of his ministry.
Thank You For Joining The Battle00:05:07
And if there's nothing more, I want nothing more in life.
As God is my witness, I want nothing more in life than my children to stand up at my funeral and say these words about me one day.
The old man was not perfect.
We could tell you things you don't even know.
But over the long course of his life, here's what we can say with confidence.
He fought the good fight, he kept the faith, and he finished the race.
You will not finish the race without accountability.
You won't.
And you will just become a new generation's version of the previous generation you're trying to correct.
Give God the glory he deserves.
He needs apostles and not assassins.
In fact, I think I'm going to close there.
I was in an emergency room in upstate New York almost exactly two years ago.
The making of our movie Nefarious darn near killed me once.
And then the meds that they gave me ended up killing me a second time.
Amy had to call an ambulance.
I'm running a temperature over 104.
I'm delirious.
I'm coming in and out of consciousness.
They're telling me that maybe they didn't actually get rid of the MRSA.
It is in my bloodstream.
They might have to call the Centers for Disease Control.
I might have to be quarantined for an undetermined amount of time.
And then they're overrun at this hospital in Rochester, New York.
They found me a makeshift bed, but she can't stay with me because it's too crowded.
And I think I even tweeted out that night.
I could just sense it.
I tweeted out that night, right after she left it's going to be me, the enemy, and God.
We're doing battle in this room tonight.
And little did I know.
And I wake up in the middle of the night and I can't sleep anymore, and I'm in agony.
Everything hurts.
And I hear this voice in my head said, Rise up and walk.
And I grab the nurse and I say, Hey, can I just walk around for a bit?
They said, Hey, we're about to wake you up anyway.
We're concerned if you're laying down too long, muscle atrophy.
So, yes, but just for a little bit.
Just for a little bit.
The next thing I know, hours have gone by.
I have walked this C corridor in this hospital room for three hours.
I've walked five miles.
And it was like nothing else was happening in this world for me.
My family didn't exist.
This earth didn't exist.
There was just me and God in this moment.
And in my spirit, I heard something I will never forget, and it broke me.
I sobbed in that corridor because it's the kind of thing a loving father says to a son who needs correction.
And I heard, Stephen, I need apostles, not assassins.
And I say that to all of you.
The Lord needs apostles, not assassins.
This world has plenty of provocateurs.
Lord knows more than enough pundits.
You know, it doesn't have enough of priests, papas.
It needs that.
And I think if we take that to heart, we don't worry about the tone police.
We worry about it is this honoring and glorifying him?
If this is the last thing I say or do, and then that's it, I get called home, could I look my creator in the eye or am I have to shuffle my feet because I'm embarrassed how I ended this thing?
If we are mindful of that, then I do believe.
We will wake up in eternity, what Luther called the second baptism.
When we rise up in eternity and we hear, well done, good and faithful servant.
And that's what I want for all of you in this room and everyone within the sound of my voice.
Thank you for joining the battle.
Thank you for getting in the fight.
But never forget, ultimately, it's for his glory, not our own.
Ultimately, we must decrease so he will increase.
We are not fit to tie his sandals.
None of us has an amount of talent he could not replace, a platform he could not do without, a voice he could not find an alternative to.
You're not that important.
None of us are.
And that should free you up all the more to finish the race for him.