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Dec. 17, 2024 - Stay Free - Russel Brand
22:53
BREAK BREAD EP. 9 - BRANDON LAKE
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Brandon Lake is Brandon Lake.
And you know who Brandon Lake is.
He's an American Christian, worship singer, songwriter, guitarist, big star, five-time Grammy Award winner.
He's a pastor.
He's here.
His hair looks fresh and well-oiled.
Brandon, thanks for joining us.
Such an honor to be on.
I've been praying for this day, looking forward to this day for a long time.
Everyone in my friend group knows that you are in my top five of like, if I could hang out with anybody for the day, you have been that for many, many years.
I'm so happy, Brandon, because now we're going to pilot that idea of a hangout for one hour, and we're going to see how it would go and how it will go, because I'm fully down to come.
I want to come to your church.
I want to spend time with you.
But first, can we break bread together, you and I? And I wonder, can you tell me which...
Verse we should read.
You know, sometimes people read something from the back end of one of the Gospels, but I've had friends read stuff from Corinthians as a supplement and a support before we read.
And then I want to talk about even breaking bread and some of the challenges around that.
Yeah, I'm already open to 1 Corinthians 11, 23, if we want to do that.
Yeah, yeah.
Will you read it?
Okay.
For I received from the Lord what I also passed on to you.
The Lord Jesus, on the night he was betrayed, took bread.
When he had given thanks, he broke it and said, This is my body, which is for you.
Do this in remembrance of me.
In the same way, after supper, he took the cup, saying, This cup is the new covenant in my blood.
Do this whenever you drink it in remembrance of me.
For whenever you eat this bread and drink this cup, you proclaim the Lord's death until he comes.
I'm going to get on my knees for it.
I've got one of these.
I don't know about you, Brandon, but I take Christianity pretty seriously and I've got one of those special little ones.
That's professional communion right there.
Well, if you're doing that, I've got to get on my knees as well.
I have freshly milled This is good for you.
Gluten-free.
I got the gluten-free body of Christ right here.
Oh, amazing.
Now, I know that a lot of people, even the process of communion, I've got a lot of friends who are hardcore Catholic.
A lot of friends who are hardcore Catholic.
And I've got friends who are, like, Eastern Orthodox, and, like, some of them are like, we're, like, I'm not the, like, when they've come on the show, a couple of them have come on, and, like, well, I'm not doing that there.
We have to do it ceremoniously.
It has to be in the lineage, the apostolic lineage of Peter.
Like, Peter says, feed my sheep, and Christ says, feed my sheep to Peter, and, like, if it's not in that line.
But, like, and a lot of people, like, symbol or reality.
But I'm totally, like, I just...
I'm very, very serious about Jesus, Brandon.
Like, as I know you are, I'm like...
I'm new, you know, so I've got that special zeal of the newly converted.
And...
I just want to, while we do this together, like, I don't think there's nothing wrong with being humorous and light, and I think we are as the Lord made us.
But I just want to say, Heavenly Father, Lord God, that as we do this, I believe that we are partaking in transubstantiation, that the literal body of Christ moves through all reality.
You, Lord Jesus, are atemporal and aspacial by your nature, that you were there in the beginning at the creation with the Father and the Holy Spirit as one component of the triune God that you came to earth.
And died for me and for Brandon and everyone participating in this, that we may be redeemed of our sins.
And I thank you, Lord, that your body was broken like this bread.
Your body is broken and is this bread.
Thank you, Father.
Thank you, Father, for your broken body.
Thank you, Jesus Christ, for your broken body.
I remember you.
Thank you for your sacrifice.
Thank you for your blood.
Thank you for your blood.
It was broken.
And thank you for your Jesus.
Thank you for the night in Gethsemane where you're in agony and you sweated blood.
Thank you for the scourging at the pillar where you took that pain and beating, Lord.
And so that when I'm in pain and when I'm beating, I know that you know what it's like, Lord.
And thank you that you were humiliated, the crown of thorns.
Thank you for the drawing of the lots.
So you know it's like when I'm humiliated and when Brandon's humiliated and when anyone listens to this, you know humiliation.
And thank you that you carried the cross so that when I'm carrying my cross, I know that you've been there more than I will ever go there.
And thank you, Lord, that you were nailed to the cross.
And thank you for your blood and the covenant of blood that covers me and Brandon and everyone that partakes in this.
This is your blood.
I remember you, Jesus.
Amen.
Lord, we thank you for Russell as well.
We thank you for his family, and as we take this communion, Lord, I'm just reminded I have a friend that takes communion every single day, and as he does, he prays for those that he loves, and he prays great health.
And prosperity over their families.
And Lord, we just release a blessing over Russell and his family, grand family.
And God, I pray that you would take what he's doing now.
And Lord, I pray that you just multiply it.
Lord, that millions and millions would come to know who you are and how much you...
Just desperately love them and that you have a plan for their life, Lord.
I pray that you would just pour out such a fresh anointing on him and his family, Lord.
And Lord, that this is just the beginning, Lord, that they would be able to, even in just a year from now, stand back and just be utterly astounded at what you've done through their ministry.
Lord, thank you for this first love fire.
And I pray that thank you for a zeal.
And Lord, I thank you, Lord, that it's going to catch up so many people on fire for you, Lord.
I pray that it would just increase.
And Lord, thank you that he is teaching the world right now what it looks like to genuinely love you, follow after you, but also how to carry peace, your peace.
And through a crazy, chaotic world, Lord, we thank you that you do.
You give us peace and you give us joy.
And Lord, you give us life that's more abundant.
And so, Lord, we thank you for him and his family and bless him in Jesus' name.
Amen.
Amen.
Thanks for doing that.
Goodness.
Oh!
My knees aren't so great.
I need to do some jiu-jitsu.
Well, actually, jiu-jitsu can be quite bad for the knees, depending on who you do it with.
I spend so much time on my knees now, thankfully.
Thankfully, Brandon.
And...
So before we get into this, but when you moved into that very gracious, humble, simple and open prayer, I thought, ah, this is who I'm dealing with.
This is who I'm dealing with.
Because I know that you're a very successful person and I know that you've been right inside the labyrinth and enclaves of dark fame.
But I know that you are a...
Pastor and a worship leader.
And I saw that side of you, and I felt it, actually.
I felt it then.
I felt humbled and held by your prayer.
Thank you for that.
Thank you for that.
I just heard on the way in that a friend of mine...
I'm going to say his name because I want to...
Honour it as we commend him into the arms of God.
A friend of mine, Ross, is dead now, and I don't know the details because I've just been given the information, but I'm going to guess that he participated in his own death is my guess.
I've just heard from his family, you know?
And I feel like, yeah, we commend Ross into your arms, Father.
I also know that you've been depressed yourself, because it's public, and the way it's reported, at least, is that fame somehow was a component in that.
And I suppose the bottom line of male depression, it's female depression, I guess, as well, but when you look at statistics...
Men, and I don't know this for sure about my friends yet, so let me make that clear.
You know, you might have got hit by a bus, I don't know.
But, like, I've only just, literally just got the information.
So, new subject.
Men take their own lives, like, a lot.
Like, you know, I think for teenage men, suicide is the, I feel like it might be the biggest cause of death.
Men, like, getting around my age, start killing themselves all over again.
What do you think's going on?
What's going on with that?
And have you ever felt it and thought about it?
Well, yeah.
I mean, I think the enemy's greatest tactic and what he wants to do is...
The minute that you isolate yourself, he gets giddy because he knows that he can just have a field day.
What happened with me was...
Um, you know, it's funny.
I've been a Christian for a long time.
You know, I asked Jesus to come to my heart at like age five, but I'm still learning the same lessons that I was learning very early on.
And I'll get to kind of the whole point of what kind of has cured me and healed me.
But, um, mine didn't come about because I had a really dark moment.
Um, mine actually came about because I went from, I've just always been a And then I signed to a record label as I was writing songs and people found out, you know, thought these songs were great.
They're like, hey, we want you to be our next artist.
They threw me on tour within a few weeks of signing to a record label.
I wrote with all of my heroes within a span of a few months.
And I went on this tour and when I came home, I think God uses multiple things.
I came home from this tour and I went straight to Disney World on a vacation, which people think is heaven.
I think Disney is hell.
It was not great for my mental state.
I had no time to kind of decompress.
And I was on this mountain.
All of my adrenaline had been completely just expended.
And so I'm depleted of all my adrenaline, which there's a real, I think, chemical thing that happens that you're more prone to getting sick, having a mental attack, an emotional attack.
So I come home and I just all of a sudden had the darkest thoughts.
It was really scary.
I'd never experienced depression or anxiety or a panic attack.
I had a full-blown panic attack.
Like fetal position, bawling my eyes out.
What actually snapped me out of it was a friend of mine called me and I was too prideful to answer the phone.
Hence the isolation.
The enemy loved it.
So I'm still getting more and more just attacked.
I'm like, I don't recognize these thoughts.
I thought crazy things were happening that I had no reason to think like, is my wife cheating on me?
Crazy stuff.
And everything was great, but I'm freaking out.
And then he sent me a voice.
He just recorded a prayer.
So I'm sitting in bed, and I just start praying.
I just start press play on the prayer.
And all of a sudden, kind of like how David played for Saul in the Bible, where he's being attacked by this, being tormented by this evil spirit.
And it was like in that moment as his prayer was just released over me, it was like, boom, it broke.
And I just started bawling.
And I wasn't even telling my wife what was going on.
So you've got to tell somebody when you keep it on the inside.
I mean, community is such a beautiful healing tool.
And I believe that God brings the right people around you.
And in this moment, I needed my friends.
I needed to be honest with my wife.
So it broke.
But here's the thing.
Sorry I'm talking a whole lot.
You let me know.
You interject.
But here's the lesson that I had to learn.
Even being a professional Christian, surrounded in nights of worship, and people are getting healed and set free and saved.
And I love the Lord, but I was still trying to, when I came home, chase that adrenaline and chase that feeling of significance.
And I was craving this intimate mountaintop experience moment.
And I was trying to fill it with even intimacy with my wife.
So we can even take good things and make them bad.
It's not bad that I wanted intimacy with my wife, but I was going to Brittany first.
And through this whole season, I just had to relearn the reason why, one, I let the enemy attack me by not being honest and not reaching out to my community and keeping it to myself.
I'm not strong enough to defeat that.
But I was trying to fill this void with everything, even good things, except for time with God.
And so my counselor, I met with him and he was like, Brandon, you're still, he described to me what I was doing.
And he's like, you've got to remember that you've got to go to God first and most.
First and most.
And that's really the only thing besides that and community that has kind of healed me.
Those moments, those...
And I still have it.
I'll go on a tour and I'll come home, but now I have tools and I have things to kind of get me back to reality and kind of curve the bend of this mountaintop Like, tour is not reality.
You can't live that way for forever.
I'm sure you've experienced this doing all, like, film and all that.
There's these crazy moments, but then you come home and then you're like...
So, I've had to realize, like, it's super elementary, but the only thing that'll keep me right and keep me who I'm supposed to be is by going to God first and most.
This is my favorite quote I heard from my dad.
He said, our primary call...
Isn't to ministry.
It's to intimacy.
Ministry flows out of a place of intimacy.
And I've had to realize, still after all these years, I have to recognize I'm not putting God first and I'm not going to Him most.
Instead of a last resort, I want Him to be my first response.
This is nothing but word and wisdom, Brandon Lake, that you're conveying.
I got so much from that just then, and this is how I want to relay what I've just been taught and what I'm understanding.
When you said, like, you sort of describe elevated states, like, going on tour, it's stimulating and overwhelming.
Like, I feel like I've done what you described, I've done the other way around.
Like, because I feel, and I don't mean this in any way as an assault on my parents, right, because I love Barbara Brand and I love Ron Brand very, very much.
But the cultural message that I received had, I would say, no God in it.
Like, none.
I'm reading at the suggestion of Jordan Peterson at the moment a book called The Sacred and the Profane.
And in The Sacred and the Profane, this sort of anthropological, psychological text describes how there was a time where everyone would have lived in sacredness, like early mankind.
If you want to take a biblical perspective, Adam and Eve walk in the garden with God, the triune God right there.
If you want to take a historical, anthropological perspective...
You know, like early tribes, like indigenous tribes that you can still look at now that have not been intersected by a civilization.
Like, they see everything as sacred.
The act of making love is sacred.
The act of eating is sacred.
There's rituals probably for defecation, that everything is connected to God.
Now, nothing is.
Everything is profane.
Sex is for fun.
Food is for pleasure.
Yet the culture still recognizes there's something very important about sex.
That's what pornography is.
People are trying to, like, whoa, there's power in this.
You know, why are people taking pictures of food on Instagram the whole time?
It's sacred.
It's sacred.
It's important.
This is your life.
This is your life.
But they've somehow, we somehow...
I've extracted God out of it.
Me, I got hit with the idea that self is God.
This is not the fault of my parents.
My parents are just one generation back in the same cultural spew that regurgitated me out of Satan's belly.
And the culture sort of tells you that yourself and what you want plus yourself and what you don't want is the whole of the law.
There ain't anything else except the avoidance of fear and the fulfilment of desire.
So what you described there, going straight from tour to Disney World, I've lived that.
That's my whole life.
Like, and I see, like, addiction, Brandon, as an attempt, and this is the best word I've come up with, is an attempt to defibrillate continually, a stimulating state that we might call divine down here on this plane.
Now, you said, you said, first, what did you say?
Put God first and God most.
Was that it?
Yeah.
First and foremost, yes sir.
I was in this last week, someone told me, Jeff Cavins, who's a Catholic scholar, former pastor, who returned to his native Catholicism, said, obviously spotting that I'm a person with an inclination towards and a tendency towards intellectualism and endless neurological Pirouettes.
He said, like, the main things are the plain things.
Like, when looking at the Word and looking at Scripture, the main things are the plain things and the plain things are the main things.
Like, you know, so I don't, you know, and like, so for me, I'm hit hard with something like, like, love one another as I've loved you and love God with all your heart.
Like, I'll get it, go and be loving, go and be loving.
So every time I get caught up in, now what do we do about homosexuals?
You know, like, or...
You know, it's like, you know...
And even when I asked John Rich...
John Rich, who I like, I figured I was like, you know, he's there with a cowboy hat and a handle by a mustache.
You know, he's a straight-up country singer.
I'm like, this guy's going to say, gay people are going to hell!
He's like, you know, he's like, I'm not judging nobody.
I've got, um, there's no separate compartments in hell.
I'm not judging nobody.
I'm dealing with my thing.
I'm dealing with me, right?
Yeah.
So, and I love that because, you know, we live in the complexity of Scripture, of judging people and the legalese of Scripture.
So...
What I want to say, now what I want to get to is what seems to be your main point, or your father's point that you've conveyed kindly to me, is this intimacy with God.
This intimacy that's required.
Because as a person that's spent their whole life trying to find God through self, trying to find reverence, divinity, connection through self, as I begin to know intimacy with Jesus Christ, I recognise...
It was there all along in him that it's the only solution available.
The thing I resisted, and with me, luckily it's obvious, luckily it's obvious, I believed in Jesus always.
That's been there ages, that tattoo of Jesus on my forearm.
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