 is about how do you develop a relationship with the Holy Spirit and we know that we've heard a wonderful message this morning, the five steps on to grow your relationship with the Holy Spirit. But right now, let's just ask one of the leaders, can you explain to us about the relationship with the Holy Spirit? How do you start it? What does it begin with? Well, I think it was a perfect setup this morning where Ilya shared the whole message about the Holy Spirit. I think what happens is you get super excited about this kind of message and you go home and you try to apply intensity. What I mean about intensity is you get excited. That means, if you didn't read Bible before, that means you just like start reading like 20 chapters a day, like I'm killing this, you know, you start praying like our day. And I think this is where we get it wrong. I think consistency has to be number one and out of consistency there comes intensity. What I mean that you have to make a decision that now one day will go by that I will leave my house without praying or reading the Bible. What happens is that intensity comes after consistency, like this year I made a goal that now one day will go by where I will leave my house without prayer in the Bible. And I think this is where it all begins. You have to make the conscience decision that every day I'm going to read the word and pray. And what happens is you do the small basic things as you develop the relationship with Holy Spirit. And what happens then Holy Spirit starts having a relationship with you. You start hearing His voice. So when's the best time to develop that? Can you give me some practical steps? What would you do? What would be the best time for you where you would develop their relationship with the Holy Spirit? Well, I think there's no such a thing as the best time. It has to be just the time. I think that's the first mistake we make is we look for the best time. Because you have to understand, anytime you pick up the Bible and read the prayer, Satan demons know and they will do anything in their power to stop you. That means that you're not going to have a best time. You know, I work, I go to work at four in the morning. That means that this year I decided I'll wake up at three o'clock in the morning. And I'll pray and I'll read the word and I'll go to work. That's commitment. Yeah, that's commitment. So I like, I like that what he said because you know how Pastor Ile was talking this morning is that when you wake up in the morning, your mind is a blank page. That means you can present it to Holy Spirit. So Holy Spirit can write on your mind, whatever you have. What happens is when throughout the day you go, you collect a bunch of the arguments, thoughts and mistakes and all that. So by the end of the day you become tired and when you present your tired mind to the Holy Spirit, it's very hard for him to speak to you because you know you get into the word which many people call the couch or the chair and they begin to fall asleep and things like that. But in the morning when you're fresh, you know, when you present it to Holy Spirit, Holy Spirit can give you a revelation, Holy Spirit can give you strength and encouragement to go throughout that day. Yeah, and you guys have to understand that praying man will always stop singing. Singing man will always stop praying. You meet person who's not consistent and has a consistency in their prayer life. You can always tell one thing about that person. He's struggling in certain areas if they're singing because you have to understand you always be consistent, consistent in one area. Either it's in God, prayer, word or it's a life of sin. So remember, it's not intensity, it's not how many chapters you're gonna read on Monday. It's about you picking up the Bible. Maybe it's a, you know, a chapter a day, but make a decision. Every day, you know, I'll read the word, I'll pray. Yeah, I think the morning is the best time. Okay, awesome, awesome. And I think also that when it comes to relationship with the Holy Spirit, it's important that in prayer, we have a certain time in prayer, for some people it's beginning at the end, where we actually acknowledge the person of the Holy Spirit and refer to him not as it, but as a person and we say things like, you know, Holy Spirit, I welcome you right now. You know, and some people say, well, I pray in tongues, so that's, I pray in the Holy Spirit. That's true, but the Holy Spirit is not tongues. When you take time during prayer, and with me, I've never done that until, it was about a few years ago, that the Holy Spirit in my mind, even when I would talk about it was it, I would refer to him as a cloud, but to actually take time during prayer, sometimes in the beginning or at the end, and I would just simply relax, not ask for anything, not pray in tongues, but just simply say the Holy Spirit, thank you for being here. And then with my thoughts, I would begin to get concentrated, my thoughts that he is here, I imagine him right now, sitting here, and that he loves me, he's like completely in love with me. Because before I was taught that he's very holy and I'm very dirty and he cannot stand the smell of me. And so like, because he's so holy and he's like, kill me if he comes close and so, but the idea that he loves me, he is here, and with my thoughts and with my words, five minutes, four minutes saying, Holy Spirit, I love you, Holy Spirit, help me, Holy Spirit, I yield to you, I'm going to speak today, and I ask you secretly, nobody knows about this, could you secretly heal people before I pray for them? When I pray for them, could you touch them? Could you help me? And this way, what you're doing by that, by talking to him, is you acknowledging already that you believe he is a person. People say, well, the Bible says Holy Spirit comes to talk about Jesus and only worship Jesus, and we shouldn't talk to the Holy Spirit. That is not true. The Bible says that there is a fellowship of the Holy Spirit that's supposed to stay with us. How can you have a fellowship with someone you refuse to talk to? And so you have to have a prayer time where you talk to the Holy Spirit and then you will hear him talk back to you. Okay Nazar, I want to have a question. Can you tell me a little bit more? I was talking about obeying a voice of Holy Spirit. Yeah, I think it's so good that anytime you see your prayer life is stagnant or your relationship is stagnant, you always have to look back that where you fail to obey Holy Spirit is this is where you become stagnant. And it happened to my life, this year where I decided, man, every day I'm going to pray, read the Word. What happens when you do that consistently? You start hearing Holy Spirit speak to you and you have to obey him. Before I thought it's going to be like this, Holy Spirit will come to me and say, go lay hands on the brother and pray for him and he's going to fall, shake and bake, and catch on the manda. Should have bought a handa. But it's not the first time what happened to me is I work and our work got a new system where you can clock in on your phone. Yeah, come on, glory to God. And I was Spirit-led, free, so I'll drive, work is five minutes away and I'll clock in, take a lunch here and there, forgot to clock in. And everybody does it, but in the prayer I started feeling Holy Spirit is like, you're stealing. And he's like, yeah, go to your boss and confess and say, hey, I'm jacking. Stealing time. Well, Holy Spirit, like, is that you? Like, first I started rebuking, I thought I was devil, but no, I was God definitely. So I went to my boss and like, hey, listen, you know, I'm not doing it on purpose, you know, whatever, but this is what it is. And boom, that was done. And we just, the way it went, it was amazing. You know, my boss, like, well, I didn't ever expect that. He's like, I know a couple of people in my job, they're doing that. He's like, I was about to talk to them, but he didn't even know that it was me. So me coming up and confessing what I've done, it was just build a stronger relationship and like, I got a raise, come on. But then like two weeks later, I'm back in the prayer and Holy Spirit is like, go to that guy and, you know, bless him like with some money and apologize for something, you know, because I really didn't think of him because he was always asking me for money for cigarettes. I was like, like, I'm not going to give you money for cigarettes. But then I was just like really thinking negative of him, kind of judging him, you know, and I felt like Holy Spirit was like, go and apologize, just say, hey, tell exactly what you were thinking, you know, and then Holy Spirit is like, hey, grab a 50 bucks and just bless him. But I'm like, God, he's going to use them cigarettes. But God's like, Holy Spirit is like, don't worry about it, what he's going to use, it's about you. So I did, and I went and apologized like, listen, man, I really kind of was judging you looking down upon you, and here's a 50 bucks, man, and he's like, wow, he's like, you have no idea, man, I'm really struggling. I had no money for gas. And we just kind of start talking about God and church. And so this is where it starts obeying Holy Spirit. And it's important. One more thing to add. Not everything that comes into your head is the Holy Spirit, because we also deal with people who, well, you know, God told me that to marry her, you know, she's an atheist who just came from rehab, but it was the Holy Spirit. I knew there was the Holy Spirit because it's just God just put it on my heart. You can't debate that. You always have to correct, not correct, but check with the word of God. And the Bible says we also have to correct, not only with the word of God, with the authorities. If the Bible gives a permission for the pastors to judge prophecy, the Bible says we're, let one prophesy, the rest of us judge. If we can judge a prophecy, I'm sure we can judge the voices that you're hearing in your head too. And so we always have to have people around us who, because if we create this idea, the Spirit told me, I just need to pray for it now, I'll just do this. And then we create this place where anything that comes into your head is the Holy Spirit, and nobody has the right to say anything against it, because we can't say anything against the Holy Spirit. Oh no, we love the Holy Spirit, but not everything that's circulating in your head is from Him. He does use our consciousness. He does use our intuition. He does put things on our heart and everything. And it's also important that never to use the Holy Spirit said as a bargaining ship to start relationships, romantic relationships, and as a bargaining ship to start doing things that you're trying to use God's name in vain instead of letting the Lord lead you. So just kind of a little side effect on that. So if you have any questions about that topic, please text us to that number. So we really want to help this forum does to grow in a relationship of Holy Spirit and grow as a church and as leaders. So any question that you have is no questions, a dumb question. So we please ask away. We have leaders who will be able to answer that. So next topic we want to go into is visions and dreams. And we want Pastor Vlad actually to talk about that. What are visions and dreams? How do we use them in our prayer life? And how do we apply it to our Christian life? So, Vladimir, can you? Well, shortly and briefly, those of you who walked in, and you saw in the lobby that we have a poster of 50 empty boxes, well, a little bit less than 50 now, and stuff. And the faces of people there, these are not the faces of the best-looking people in our church. Though I believe that all of our home group leaders are amazingly good-looking people. But we have a vision, and this vision is to see people saved. Now, the interesting part is everybody wants to see people saved. You will not walk into 150 churches and tri-cities where Pastor will say, we do not want to see people saved. We all do. I've heard a local church here, our fellow church, a Slavic church, that they said, well, if they want to come, let them come. We're not stopping them. And so we're not against people getting saved, people say. But if you don't have a vision for it, vision and a goal for it and expectation for it, then that vision will simply become just a daydream, and it won't be really a reality. And so what happens with us, a shift has started to take place in our personal lives and in our ministry life, where having a vision is very important to our prayer life. Otherwise, we begin to just pray for our needs instead of praying constantly for our visions. And I think we have to give honor to whom honor is due. The pastor of the largest church in the world, Dr. Yungi Cho, had a lot to do with influencing this way of thinking. And he said that the language of the Holy Spirit is visions and dreams. How God led him on the journey of growing to the largest church in the world, and a lot of healings and miracles is first giving him a vision, giving him that goal. And then he carried that inside like a baby. He carried that. He prayed for that constantly for hours and hours, and then that became a reality. And so it's something we encourage all of our leaders. Unlike a lot of times where we used to do where home groups get started with, my home group has 10 people, and Ilya, for example, is my helper. Let's divide five. I give you five. Give me five. And we have this division. We realize divisions only happen in churches. We in our home groups want to have multiplication, not division. So we even remove. It's not allowed to use word division when it comes to starting new home groups. If a leader comes out and says, I'm dividing my home group, we're like, in the name of Jesus, spirit of division, come out of you. Because we're only multiplication. Division is bad. Multiplication is good. But the way people start home groups is not by me putting people into your home group, but by first me putting a vision into your heart, where you have to have a vision. And so if somebody, before they start the home group, my question is, how many home groups do you want to release this year? The question is not even how many people you have in your home group. Some of you will be surprised that some of the people's faces on that board over there actually have nobody in their home group. You may say, why did you release them? Because I give them a vision. We give them a vision. For example, one person who started a home group a month and a half ago. And she had, you know, she was already a home group leader. She was reaching out to people. And we launched her with no one. So the goal now is that you have to find people. So when the new person walks in, she will be the one racing you to them to get them wide because she has a vision and she needs people for that vision. And the thing is, The interesting part is last Wednesday, this particular person... Sorry, I'm sorry, Pastor. Let me finish the testimony. Last Wednesday, this particular person had one person that got saved and they met with them on Thursday and they came and I remember this particular girl. She walks in and she's like, you know, finally I got one person, but she already carried not only a home group. She already, because we do home group support each week. So at the end, every single week, they have to write how many home groups they want to release. And so here she's believing God to send people into the home group, but she already in her visions way beyond having people into having home groups. Without this vision, you will always be like Dr. Yungcho says, you will be slave to time and space instead of being a king over your situation. And what happens when people come to our church and they get saved and altered? Our leaders are like, he's mine, you know? And then like we would fight for people seriously because our leaders have dreams and visions of that I'm going to see this year, I'm going to release five home groups. You know, when a new person comes in, you see people rushing to him, saying, I do want to get this number and right away reaching out. If I had one more question I have is, give me practical steps on how to apply visions and dreams into my own life. One of the very important things is to be careful not to transfer the burden of the vision on the billboard. Now what that means is this, the whole idea of having a vision and goal, it's everywhere, all the self-help talks. With us it's different. We don't, you don't just sit, stretch your hands like this and you say, whatever comes to my head, I want to release seven home groups. Scratch that, five. No, you spend time with the Holy Spirit and he puts an impression on your heart, something that will stretch your faith and then you carry that burden inside. The challenge we find is when people get their phones and they quickly put five home groups on their phones and what they do is they try to transfer the vision from their heart on the phone. So it means let the phone carry the vision and let my heart carry now something else. It's very dangerous because though we put the vision on the billboard and we have these billboards that you see in the lobby, there's three of them. All around the church, one in my office, one in the school of leaders room and one in that room. We take it out all the time when we pray. But the burden is constantly to carry the vision. If you're pregnant on inside, you cannot take three month baby pregnant and put it in your refrigerator. I said, well, let her finish on microwave. I'm gonna put it in the oven, let her finish cooking up there. If you don't carry that, but you transfer that to images or people say, well, you know, I wanna, God is blessing me with the house. I'm gonna have a house. And so they put an image of the house and it's completely fine to have an image. You look at it and praise God. But if you don't carry that vision inside and you want the paper to carry that vision, paper cannot produce a vision. God will use you to produce that vision with the help of the Holy Spirit. And so practically it's good to write it down. It's good to have an image. It's good to think about it when you pray, but it's important that it's constantly here that you are seeing people come to Jesus. You are seeing your home group grow. Some of our leaders had a practice of actually physically putting cups. They would invite people for the home group and nobody came. So they would put those, you know, six cups on a table and this may sound weird. Some of you may even accuse us of going into the dark side and stuff. So, but they would talk and pretend like there were six people and pour tea and drink all of their teas and stuff. But eventually they will have people come to their home group. You may call it absurd, but honestly, that's faith. Yeah, that's good. That's good. So again, I wanna let you know if you have questions about these topics, texting your questions and we'll do our best to answer them. I'll share something. The importance of having a vision is because it's very easy to settle down and settle in. I had a home group for a very long time. It was the original home group. It got closed down a couple of times, but the problem is, for example, last year when we really began to receive the revelation, you know, we would always have 10 people, then we mean my wife combined home groups and 10, 12 or sometimes 18 people. And you're like, oh, people came. That's awesome, you know. But when you don't have a, then when we really start praying and Pastor Vlad started challenges this year, we have to set a goal for ourselves and that we need to pray that Holy Spirit will give that impression of how many home groups we need to release. And, you know, as we've been praying with my wife that the number came to our heart and we kind of set our heart to release 10 home groups. And honestly, those of you that work with people, you know that to raise 10 home group leaders, we're not talking about just Christians, home group leaders in a year is next to impossible. I mean, you're talking about almost releasing a home group leader every single month. And so, but what, you know, and then you begin to pray about it and begin to, you know, you begin to stretch yourself. You see that you can't do it on your own. Then you begin to spend time in prayer. I cut down literally, I cut off most of the things that I was praying for myself because I started praying for division. And then you see, like, that's not enough. Then you go into sacrificing, giving cars away, sowing into ministers that this year, in the beginning of this year, I mean, my wife would decided as a person came that was missionary came and she has a very successful home group leader. She almost has her 12 in the G12 system and she almost has her 12 and she's really successful in the home group leader. We, my wife would pray it and we saw that for us it was a large sum of money into her so that she would pray for us that we will this year see 10 home groups. And that stretches you always every single time you pray, every time you come to look for souls and to kind of strive and to live out in faith. And even though I have a lot of tasks in church, I'm on a staffer church, I'm a worship leader, I do a lot of things, the responsibilities, the soon the altar call comes, I forget about all these things and I run to pick up a person as a, you are in my home group. Yesterday people got saved. I already have two people that are meeting with it on Monday and Tuesday because I have a goal and I have a vision to release 10 home groups this year. And so I'm happy. If people don't have a vision, people say, well, this is not important. They don't have motivation. Then you have to push people like this to meet with people. It's important to give them a vision, let their vision push them. Okay, another question to somebody texting and says, what is the best way for a leader to transfer the vision to others? First of all, let it possess you and once it owns you, it's gonna come out. You'll find a way. Okay, that was good. Okay, so we're going to a next topic and Bryson, I want you to answer that one is that, can a Christian be demonized and how can you be set free from it? Well, yes, a Christian can be demonized. A lot of times when it comes to this subject, this whole idea that Christians having demons, it's like super foreign to many believers, but this is, deliverance is actually meant for the believer when they get saved, God saves their lives and then he wants to begin, many times that person, even though they're saved, they still come into their relationship with God carrying baggage from their past life and God wants to deliver people from that. So what was the next part? And how can you be set free from that? Well, you know, I think there's a few ways. I mean, most importantly, it's first through God's word. It's by the renewing of your mind. Though the word of God, you know, the truth, knowing the truth, the truth will set you free. It's the knowledge of the truth. So first and foremost, it's the word of God, but also it's the spirit of God. It's the anointing that breaks that yolk. Many times, you know, we see in our church, many people get delivered and it's a common occurrence in our church. And there's an anointing, you know, that we pray under and we see people being delivered. Many times people come in with issues and they'll go to other churches, they'll go to other places and maybe they'll get prayed for, but you won't see deliverance. There's that same person get prayed for, for an area and see no results. But then another person can pray for them and then all of a sudden, they're confessing things and... Share a little bit about your story of deliverance. So for me, I had, I was struggling with a demon of pornography and masturbation. I was addicted to these things for many, many years. From the time I got saved, that was a struggle that I was having before I got saved. And... Pause for a second. Most of the people who need deliverance have issues that started before their salvation. Not all during their salvation. And those issues are usually not dealt with when the person is saved right away and they get prolonged after even their salvation. Yeah, and so for me, I was, you know, I was struggling with this sin. I thought maybe I was just, you know, all of us, we sin, you know, and, you know, I was just thinking this was just a thing I had to fight, get over, you know, I just need to work better, I need to work harder. But unfortunately, I found myself, you know, I put programs on my computers, you know, that I could have people watch me, make sure I wasn't doing anything. Still, that didn't stop me. I, you know, and I kept hiding it. I didn't really talk to anybody. This was very much a secret thing. And it plagued me for a good, well, from the time I got saved to I was about, I think it was 17 when I went, when I went to school, yeah. So a good five or six years. And every day, it just got worse and worse. You know, first it started out, it first started out small from when I was younger, when I was first exposed. And as time went by, it just turned into, you know, from once in a while to a month, to a week, to a day, to put multiple times. And I'm, you know, here I am, you know, struggling in my mind, I'm so lost. And here I am, you know, I'm a believer. I believe in Christ. I believe Jesus is my savior. But here I am struggling with this sin. And so I'm kind of going along. But when I, then I went to Skowen, I went to a ministry in Africa that we're connected with. And I knew that I needed, when I went there, I knew that there was something that was beyond my control. I realized that I was fighting a battle that was not against flesh and blood, but against principalities and powers. And I realized that my issue was not rooted in me being able to just fight against it. But it was me realizing that there was a spiritual thing holding me back. And when I went to that ministry, I actually received deliverance there. And when he says deliverance, like demons came out. Yes, quite a bit. Even though it doesn't always happens like that, some people can get delivered with, like last night we were praying for young lady in the room and just something just like, just came out. You could see that. And she, even physically, she said she saw actually a spider and a web come out of her mouth. And stuff sometimes happens like that or like there was a deliverance. There was going to another room last night also where an evil spirit was speaking to the person for almost 45 minutes. It was this intense battle. And so not always. Sometimes a person stays in God's Word and over time they get delivered. But the point is that the experience changes over there. And actually you're on that point real fast that can you be delivered? Well, let him finish from the beginning. So after that, after you received the deliverance. Yeah, you know, after I received that deliverance, you know, first and foremost, I felt free. I felt like there was something that was, that used to be in me that used to hold me down. I actually felt a physical relief. But from that point on, every time I faced temptation because many times also, you know, there's another side note is that when people receive deliverance, they think that they're never gonna have issues again. They're never gonna have temptations again. That's not true. You're still gonna have temptations. The difference is what you do in that moment. And what I came from was a point of not being able to ever say no. Every time a temptation came, boom, boom, boom, or just fall again and again and again. And I literally had no control. I had no say because this stronghold in my life, this spirit that was controlling my life was making decisions for me. But then when I received deliverance, when a temptation came, I was able to say, no, I don't want that. And I had the strength to overcome it. And then from that point on, when I realized, wow, you know, I can actually say no to this, then God began to begin to build me in my spirit in his word, as I began to build myself, feed myself with the word of God, more and more strength came to me day after day. And the question that somebody takes is, can you be delivered during your personal time of prayer? Self-deliverance, yes. Yeah, the Bible, even Jesus said in Lord's Prayer, what does the Lord's Prayer say? Lead me not into temptation, deliver me from evil one. And so we can all experience where the Lord brings the freedom into our life. In my life personally, there wasn't a particular prayer or even a manifestation, but I was aware completely, it was demonic, a similar issue, the issue of pornography. And when I've experienced the freedom, and it's probably nine or 10 years now, that God gave me that freedom. It was through prayer or through renouncing, but yes, you can experience freedom on your own. It helps, and it probably it's a lot faster when you have involvement of your pastors, and yeah. And now I just want to say a small little thing on that, is that, yes, you can be delivered through self-deliverance and through, by God's word and such things, but many times, at least from my experience, was that, when I was struggling with this sin, when I was sinning and I was filled with this sin, I couldn't get in the Word of God. I couldn't pray. It was actually stopping me from building my relationship with God. So in my case, it was very necessary for me. Yeah, okay, that's good. How do you know if somebody has a demon? Well, if they're asking, probably. Most likely you have a demon. No, no. Backtrack the number, please. Ha, ha, ha. See somebody's phone rings their walk out. Ha, ha, ha. No, you have a demon side. No, there's a lot of teachings where you can, one of them, the good ones is Derek Prince, where he gives a lot of, also he's very, very known on this area where they teach us certain areas, certain things that the person has. We usually try to say like this, when you're demonized, that means that Satan has a control in one area of your life. Where he has control in that area, this is usually how you know. It's the area you don't have control over. Could be the area of emotions, could be the area of certain things, and it doesn't have to be something bad. It could be something as innocent, as anxiety, fear, even nightmares. You don't have control over that, because usually someone else has control over that. Does that simply mean that you're demon-possessed? No, you can be demonized. A girl, a lady in the Bible was banned. She was completely, had good side, good ears, but in one area, her back was controlled by the devil. Now, was she demon-possessed? I don't think so, but she was under control of the enemy in that area, and Jesus didn't heal her. He cast out a spirit of infirmity, and he said about her healing that Satan bound her. That's in the Bible, and so we cannot kinda walk around, bury our head in a sand, saying, oh, these things don't happen because they do. Practical experience shows the otherwise. People are suffering, and they need help. Breslin, can you real fast explain the importance of maintaining your deliverance? Yeah, it's, I mean, when you receive a deliverance, like the Bible says, they cast out the demon, and then it was an empty house, and seven more came back. If you're not filling yourself with the word of God, if you're not filled with the word of God, you're gonna be filled with something, and it's just a matter of what you choose to fill yourself with, and when you receive that deliverance, you become a swept house, you become an empty house, and then it's your responsibility to make sure that you fill yourself with the word. Okay, that's awesome. Okay, so the next subject we want to go into is evangelism, and let's have Sylvia answer that question. How does evangelism start and some practical ways about it? First, I would say to get that thought away where you think that evangelism requires for you to be a prophet, a pastor, a priest, a leader, or someone educated. First, I think we need to remove that thought out of our minds, and it starts with just having a tiny ounce of leap of faith. Take that leap of faith that you want to go out and share what God did to your life, how he touched your life. You could be a non-believer and be touched one time and go on and witness. So I think the strategy would be witnessing, and I do use the word strategy because to witness, you have to be able to mold it within yourself, the characteristics that you have, and the things that make you who you are, because I don't think anyone can come in and tell you this is a way to witness and share your own personal testimony. So to have faith and share it, witnessing would be simple as going out and having coffee with someone and just simply sharing what God has done in your life. Many times we do, we're encouraged even like having Wednesdays, our Miracle Catch services where we're encouraged to bring people. So that pushes us outside of our comfort zone to where it exposes us to have, to reach out to people and talk to people. So... Give us some practical examples if you're in school, if you're in work place, you're in gym. How would you witness? How to witness. Whatever area, wherever you're at, you have a strong, you have something who makes you who you are, your characteristics. For example, like you said, gym. If you're at the gym, it's probably because you like the gym. So go out and start a conversation like, hey, what kind of workouts are you doing today? Or how much are you lifting? Whatever the question you want to go about, whatever you really want to know, because when you're in the gym, it's something of interest. So start off with that question and then bring it to how was your weekend? What did you do on Sunday or, you know, depending on the week where you're at and just share what God did to you. You came to service. That's good. That's good. And even actually on Sundays here, we play soccer a lot and Edder, the guys that you heard the testimony on Friday, he actually came. You can sit down, my friend. And he came because of soccer and it wasn't like, you know, we came, hey, you know, you gotta come to church. No, is you want to play soccer? And then from then on, he, we became friends. We invited him to a home group. From home group, he came to church and got saved. Many people in our church, they come from gym. Like she said, hey, how much did you lift? You start a conversation, you become friends. You exchange numbers. You invite them to a place of gathering. Little did they know they came to church and then a trap and the Vladimir gives a fiery sermon. They have nowhere to go. We lock the doors and they get saved. So, you know, it's one of those things. You have to understand that Satan is very tricky when it comes to getting you into drugs. It's very tricky. He never starts off with, it brings you part of, part of whatever you guys do. I don't know. And then he's like, you know, take it. You know, no, it's, he gives you a little by a little. That's why witnessing has to be smart. Sometimes we're back in the day when we did where we were leather coats, driving BMWs and pulling up people to corners. I gotta come to church or, you know, but you gotta be smart. If you're sitting with somebody, hey, how's your week was? Hey, man, watch this clip. This is very fun. That's why we come up with these videos. How not to invite people to church? It's a great witnessing tool. You guys, I'm telling you, you just toss somebody this clip, say, dude, look, this is funny. It's funny. Okay, come to church. Bam. It's, you're laughing, but it's as easy as that. And somebody's soul can be changed for eternity just because of that step. So it's really practical, very easy. It doesn't have to be 10 commandments, rain down, 10 commandments on them, simply as a how is your week? And then they come to church and they give their life to Jesus. Amen. Let's go to- Can I also add to that? I think mainly we have to also remember there's three things that I personally always keep in mind that it is like our mission statement to save souls and make disciples. So it's our task to bring people to church. It doesn't matter. However strategy you use, it's our task to bring them. In a sense, it is a strategy because depending on your likes, your interests, you can share it with people. Depending on if it is gym, you start with the gym conversation. If it's whatever it is, school, work related, that's our, we have to use that as a strategy just to bring them to church. Then our duties would be to pray for them. As our church, we strongly, we pray for people, like we've mentioned various times, that we have a list of people we pray for. So then that is our duty. This is where we actually have to, there is no buts and ifs, that this is our duty to pray for others. And then third is that God will do the rest. God will leave them to salvation and that is remember to do, to go out and witness as our task, our duty is prayer and see what God has in store for them. And I think before I say something, it's important that the church also has certain events that are scheduled to draw people to salvation. Those events are not to make evangelism an event. It's to spur witnessing as a lifestyle. How it started with us is we started to do the last Wednesday of the month. We do this thing called miracle catch. Some people think that it's kind of like where we pray for miracles. We do, but actually what happens there is that we do water baptisms and people during water baptism, some of you saw we show a little testimony before they get baptized over there. And this is the moment where we challenge them to bring all of their family and all of our leaders and people in our home groups for a whole month. Our aim is on that night to bring at least one person a month. The interesting part of this is if you work for that night, most likely that person is not gonna come on that night because the parable of the sword teaches us out of the four people that, one out of the four most likely will come. And so, but they'll come the Wednesday after that. And so each Wednesday we have new people and each Wednesday we have new people saved. Sometimes actually we have less people saved on the miracle catch than on a normal youth service. Why? Because that miracle catch is not for that miracle catch. It's for us to create a culture where people are constantly inviting people and where people are constantly bringing people and where we have new people all the time. And when we build that culture, there's also friendliness factor. Like it's very hard for us during the conference because we don't know who's from Trey cities and who's from outside. But during the Wednesday it's a little bit different because we know every person is here is from Trey cities. And so every person is a target. Kinda sounds bad, but it's a target. We treat them like this is our opportunity and so we go at them, we invite them, we, the only complaints we usually have in our church is that too many people shook my hands. I'm claustrophobic. I'm not gonna ever come there again. Too many people hugged me, too many people asked my name, too many people asked me where I am and too many people promised to take me to coffee. But I'll take the criticism. I can live with that. But I can't live with somebody saying I came in there, nobody noticed me, nobody found out I was there and I'm never coming again. That I won't live with. I think 80% of my witnessing happens like this. Somebody ask me, you always get this answer question. How was your week? And we usually, 90% of people, good, watch the football, hang out, my homies, cronies. But this is a perfect example because this is the question we always get. How was your weekend? And this is your example. You can always say, church, we have this amazing place where we go every Sunday. You always get that question. So 80% of people that I invite, I get from this question. You go to, even this morning, I was driving to get some coffee, drive through. The lady's like, what are you up to this morning? I could have said nothing, just chilling. No, I pulled out the car. I'm like, hey, we have a conference, come check it out. Boom, that's how easy. Don't make it complicated. And some people might say, well, but that's not witnessing. Samaritan woman met Jesus. She did not know from Book of Isaiah, Genesis and Exodus and Leviticus that he was the Messiah. The only thing she knew is that she was a very loose woman. He just revealed something to her and it's really touched her. She went and brought the whole city to Jesus. So she brought people to Jesus, but she didn't witness to them. Her witness was this. He told me everything I ever did. And so sometimes people say, well, but you didn't like explain to them the road of salvation. Well, that's when they come to church, when they get saved, we meet with them individually. And so not every person, we encourage people. If you can't debate, you can still invite. And if you can debate, stop. Because we had people who are good debaters and they love picking fights. You Catholic, but you guys worship icons, but you guys do this and they start picking fights with religion. Jesus didn't call us to be lawyers. They win an argument. He calls us to be witnesses. They win souls. And so we invite them and then God touches them. We explain everything else the rest. What if you, what if you're evangelizing and you bring a new person to your church and your church does not accept them? What if you're evangelizing in your church is not the church you want to invite them to? My bad. To be honest with you. Don't have past, so we don't have it on record. Vladimir's saying this. I finally got the mic for the good. Well, I guess it was a bet to say switch the church. I don't know. That's probably a terrible advice, but I think as a Christians, we still always have to take care of our duty, which is to win souls and make disciples. Now where we bring them, if you can't bring them to your church, start a church, start a home group, meaning maybe he now meet with them, encourage them maybe to go to a church that maybe I'm assuming the question is coming from Russian community. And maybe if you know like an American good church that you think is solid and send them there, but make sure not to neglect the people. If you get a chance, can you now meet with them? As a Christian, you still have to commit, you still have to do your duty regardless of what. Another thing that I'm gonna be very honest with you for a particular season of our ministry. Our ministry, though our services were in English, and I was the preacher on Wednesday night, but I would not invite some of the friends I would meet into our own Wednesday night. And so the goal wouldn't be to start the church. The goal is what could I do with our leaders? And this is not about that we had to kind of trim the prayers so that everybody will understand that we've realized one thing. People watch horror movies, paranormal activity. And paranormal activity does not, this will spook people out, they won't sleep in. I said, let's tone it down. I cranked the whole thing up. And people are drawn by that. I have never had people, I mean we had few people who walked out, they were like freaky. But then they came back next Wednesday and got saved. And so, or the joy when people got, I remember when we had one guy manifesting demons and 40 minutes went right here on the stage like baking, shaking right here. We thought, oh my goodness, next Wednesday nobody will show up. Turns out somebody showed a little video in high school. Half of his high school showed up to see the deliverance. Cause they're like, we wanna see this for real. The things we're afraid and we're hiding from the audience or from, oh what would they understand? What will they think? Trust me, they've seen worse and they liked it. They will actually love that. But culture we're talking about, we have to see what can you do to improve the culture in your youth group so that the friends you invite can come there. And with me that's the question I started to ask. We started to each one of us as leaders. So the goal is like, well my church sucks and people just don't like the source. No, no, no, no, your attitude sucks. You gotta change your perspective, change your attitude and see what you can do to change that and then you will see people come. Okay, so next topic we're going to is mentorship and discipleship. And Ilya, can you talk more about that? What is the importance of mentorship and what is the importance of discipleship and how to maintain it and how it begins? Well discipleship really starts, the first person has to get saved before they're gonna get discipled. Sometimes there's a pre-stage pre, before salvation where you are friends and you're just trying to maybe witness to a person or it's a workout body or somebody like we already talked about evangelism where you're trying to get them to church. That's different, that's more like a friend's basis. Once they get saved after salvation begins that's where comes the discipleship part. And in our church we have this little system that we, I don't know, we came up or borrowed but once a person gets saved within the next 48 to 72 hours your responsibility and make it work to meet with them. You have to do whatever it takes to meet with them so we usually do contact them a day after text message, a phone call or if you can to meet with them right away. The way I do it and how many of our own leaders do it is right there, even yesterday, schedule a meeting right there with them. So I talk to them, had any questions, if I had any prayers, prayer requests, hey how is your schedule looking like? When are you available to meet with the next couple of days? Okay, let's schedule the meeting. I pulled out my phone, he pulled out his phone, okay let's put it in Monday at lunch, this is good for you, okay let's do it. And so with the next couple days your responsibility is to really grab that person and meet with them and make it personal. A lot of times people make the decision to serve Jesus and then when the Bible talks about it when the sword went to sow a seed and then birds come and snatch it. So our responsibility as a leader, as Christians is to keep the birds away, to let the seed get its roots. And so first stage we'll meet with them right away, right afterwards. Then my kind of tradition, for first month or two I'll meet with them every week, stay in contact with them, I'll try to invite them to the events. If I go to work out, maybe I'll take them with them if they need to work out. If we go do some connectivity, I try to involve them, try to connect them to other people so they're not only connected to me. And then after that I kind of move into couple times a month, 72 weeks I make sure that once they stabilize every two weeks I meet with them, I meet with my leaders that I've released and I meet with each person to make sure that we're on the same page, how you're doing and when we do make discipleship, discipleship I usually ask four questions. How's your reading the Bible going? How's your prayer going? I encourage them to stay consistent. One of the disciples saw when he started, Luis, the one you see in the videos and he gave testimony yesterday, I told him to read the Bible, he started reading the Bible. First I didn't think about telling him what version of the Bible to read. He started reading King James' version. And so after a while I've been asking him, he's like, man, it's so tough to read it, I can't read it, man, I just don't understand it. And I was like, okay, you gotta read it, you gotta read it. Then I realized he's probably reading a bad version, not bad but difficult version. So I was like, hey, pick out something easy to read it. So he went and took a kid's Bible with pictures. He's like, that helps me understand. Okay, it sounds funny, but a person never read the Bible before. He doesn't even know basic stories, who Moses is, who Elijah is and things like that. So for a period of time, maybe six or seven months, he read the Bible, kid's Bible with stories. And then I encourage him to pick up like an easy version like NLT or something like that. He started reading and now occasionally he texts me, hey, what's this verse means about this? So that's the progress. So four questions that I usually ask when it comes to mentorship, how's your reading, how's your prayer, how's your purity, and how's your giving? How's your giving? That's four things we ask. We, right away, when it comes to purity, when it comes to guys, pornography, masturbation, other girls, messing, because a lot of times people come from the culture, like I was talking actually on Saturday, right before the person got saved on Wednesday and on Friday, right before the conference, we actually got a chance to meet. And I start talking to him, I asked him about purity, and he's like, he didn't even know that I was wrong, like literally like, because our society embraces a sexuality so much, and so I begin to share my testimony, I begin to share some of my guys' testimonies, like, you know what, I want you to pray for me in that area, I'm struggling in this area. And so that's how you start, and then we right away encourage people, we don't push, but we bring an argument of testimonies of people to be givers, start out with tidying, or maybe they're not up to tidying, maybe start giving something to church and then outside, and to become a titer, because we've seen that people need help in the area. So we keep them, when it comes to tidying, we keep them accountable also financially. Sometimes you have to, people, their finances are a mess, so you teach them how to be titers, and you teach them how to be disciplined. So these four questions that, indiscipleship and mentorship that we usually cover every time we meet, oh, and yeah, and right away, literally, just couple months into it, or sometimes even right away, depending on the person that you meet, you can't have to judge by the thing, you right away encourage, they say, hey, I have this issue, even like with the guy that just got saved Wednesday, he's like, I have this issue that I know, the period, she's like, I really wanna get better. And so right away I tell him, when you're gonna have a home group, you're gonna be helping guys with this issue and God's gonna set you free. He's just asking to be free from this issue. I'm already telling him that he's gonna be free from this issue and when he's gonna have a home group, he will be teaching how other people how to be set free. Can you touch on the issue of mentorship? It's important to have a mentor and how do you develop that, how do you maintain that? Well, if you want to be a mentor, meaning if you want to mentor other people, you also have to walk under authority. You can't walk in authority unless you have authority. So that means you have to have a person that you are accountable to, a person that asks you these questions or at least there is some kind of interaction going. And so in my life, it's a pastor of God and my pastor, the people that bring trim into our lives. You have to understand, we, pastor of God was talking about yesterday that we are the branches and we need to produce fruit, but sometimes branches to get, what are those things called? Shoots. It's those extra things that suck up juice, suck up your time, suck up your energy, suck up your, maybe it's TV shows, maybe it's going to the movies, not against it, but when it comes to, you know, it's taking up your time, maybe it's working out too much. We have guys that really like to work out on our church and they would spend like four hours in the gym. And so when you start disciplining them, bro, it's like, you know, I think four hours a little bit too much, you know? Gotta cut it down, maybe. Let's try three hours next week and take that hour to work on your relationship with God. And so, but coming back to the question is that you have to be mentored so that you have, as a leader, that you get those things cut occasionally, that you can be fruitful, that you can spend your time better, that you can become better person, better leader and better husband, better wife, whatever it is, and that you have the mentorship, the pastor that watches over you or leader that watches over you. Okay, so what if I have a mentor and I don't trust him? Our trust is earned. And so you have to build a relationship and you have to address the issues, you know, why you don't trust him. Maybe sometimes, okay, I know in my personal life, sometimes, you know, we would run into some issues, you know, being a team, that doesn't mean everything's gonna go smooth. You're gonna get offended, you're gonna, you know, and so sometimes even like, I said, me and Vlad, you know, we're the same age, we kinda started together by always respecting and saw him as a pastor over me and somebody to be accountable to, somebody to talk to, somebody to have prayer over me. And so, and sometimes we would, you know, we would have a disagreement issues. Sometimes something he would do that I feel like, oh, many times it happened. Oh, he has something against me. Oh, this or that. But in reality, what happens is sometimes you get a little offense or you have a bad day and Satan takes it and spins it into this whole thing and like, oh, I can't trust him, I can't go talk to him. What we do and many times, you sit down and say, hey, you know, I kinda really got offended by, you know, what's the set, is that what you mean? I mean, you know, I'm sorry, if I offended you, I'll, you know, I'll humble myself. When you come with the humble attitude and you confront that issue and most of the time, 99% of the time is like, no dude, I didn't mean that. Actually, that's not what I meant to say, you know, and so, you know, it's good to address that issue and build trust. It doesn't just, you know, it doesn't just, trust is not given, trust is earned. And so, yeah, just work it that way. What if a leadership does not have a mentor, like as a church, there is no pastor that pours into you? Well, you have to start pouring into the pastor. People don't realize, you have to honor your pastor. People, many people think they hear kinda like, how our pastor mentors us, you know, and some people hear the butchering stories and, you know, you hear the good stories, you also hear, you know, because we're really rebellious. You have to understand, teenagers, we may look spiritual to some of you, trust me, we're just rebellious people and Jesus is helping us. And, but the issue is this, is that if you don't have a proper attitude toward the pastor, okay? If your pastor is angel from heaven, no matter who he is, you're not gonna have a relationship. And if you come to him, because you're offended at every single time, you're right to go and tell him that you're offended, has to be maybe once a year. The other times is you're coming and apologizing. So even when Ilya mentioned that, you know, when a few times that this would happen, the whole that he got offended, this would happen once a year. Okay, so we don't do this whole thing that, you know, if we bump the heads and I said, no, that's not gonna be done like that. That's it, there's no question, there's gonna be no cause, hey, you hurt my feelings, now stuff like that. We mature enough, we get over it, we understand this is how it's done and that's it. And so, but when you're constantly offended, when you're constantly, or you need to suck pastor's life, you're like this emotional vampire, you suck life out of people, you need to meet with the pastor, you never do anything for the church, you're never helping with anything, but you need to have pastor's attention for two hours every single week. He will get rid of you like a, yeah. Because who needs another person who will waste your time? His time is precious, so you got, I always tell people when young people say, I want my pastor to mentor me. First of all, you have a youth pastor. Secondly, you have a home group leader. Well, my home group leader is not that anointed. It's not about that. Samuel grew up under Eli, and Eli was completely corrupt, but he had a proper attitude and proper honor. David grew up under Saul, Saul was demon-possessed, and David had a proper attitude. The authority got placed in you. If you have a proper attitude, you will be surprised how anointed they are, how wise they are, and how many blessings that they will do. And then let's say you say that you're in a home group, but you want to actually be honored by the pastor, you want to be mentored by the pastor. Make sure you excel in your way that will catch his attention, and make sure you begin to honor him. You know, some people don't realize, but when it comes to my relationship with my pastor, in my heart, I try to do that, make sure I honor him, not only verbally, but also financially. Where regularly, I want to bless him, and people say, well, why do you need to do that? Well, because that is the way we express honor. You may express honor differently, but I want to bless my pastor, and I want my pastor to speak highly of me, and bless me, and all the things that he has done. You don't just simply get up there and say, pastor, I'm new here, you need to mentor me. That's not gonna happen. Yeah, I think 90% of problems that we have with our leaders and pastors, I think actually it's God sending those up to work on the people. I think you can use the problems with your pastor to get better or better. I think it's like the knife, where you're gonna grab it by the handle, or the blade, you know? Hashtag deep, hashtag deep. I remember, I mean, perfect example, me and Vlad, I mean, I've been designing pastor's sermon graphics for the last, what, 10 years. I think I designed over a thousand backgrounds, and this guy likes to, he knows I work two jobs, and he will text me like two hours before a service. He's like, here's the sermon, can you design it? And I'm like drained, and that's a perfect, my situation. This is a perfect example where I can say, like pastor, seriously, can you send it like day before? But I know this is a perfect example where I can humble myself. And you know, I believe that God sees that and it betters me as a person. Because I know when I will have my disciples, the way I treat my pastor, it's exactly how they're gonna treat me. Okay, that was good. All right, so let's go move on to the next subject, is home groups. Brittany, can you talk about the how to run a home group, how does a home group start, and how to maintain it? So, first and foremost, home groups basically is the extension of the church. You know, what you see here on any regular service is just that service of people broken up into smaller groups and they meet together and we do it here once a week, and we come together and we fellowship. And that's kind of the basic, you know, basics of what a home group is in the most practical way. And in home groups basically, it's a place for people to come in the church, people who get newly saved, those people who've been coming to church for a while, and we come and we fellowship together. It's a place for accountability. It's a place for people to grow and a place for people to find their purpose. And I would say that the most important thing about home groups is that people have a place to go and to be with each other. What happens is when people get saved, you know, they come to church and a lot of these people that come and we've found this to be in our own experience, they have zero base knowledge of what church is, of, you know, what that looks like, what it looks like to have a relationship with the Holy Spirit. And they've never had friends and they've never had a community of people where, you know, they're all in the same vision and that's going in a good direction. Most of these people come and the community of people they're around are all going down a really windy road with drugs or, you know, other kinds of things. And so when they come to church and they get saved, from that point on, it's what do you do next? And so for us, you know, home groups, it's a place for those people to come. One thing that Vlad mentioned last night that is extremely important is that, you know, before people get saved and when they get saved, the most important thing is for people to belong, that you first have to belong. And home groups is the place for that to happen where those people who, you know, they come here and they get saved, they can go and have a place where they belong. You know, after they get saved, get connected to a home group, that's why we have, you know, like Ilya was talking about, you know, meeting with people, you've got this little window span of time to really draw those people in because, you know, what's gonna happen is, like the Bible talks about in Mark chapter four, that, you know, Satan will come like a bird to steal away the seed. And if you don't meet with those people, if they don't have a place to go, then the devourer can come and take that seed and that person's gonna go back to their group of friends, that, you know, smoke, drink, get high, all that kind of stuff. And that seed is gonna be taken away, but home group is a place where they can come, get connected with people who think in the same vision, who have the same heart, who will help them to stay accountable. You know, as you grow in your relationship with God, you need people to help you stay accountable. You know, when we talk about the subject of deliverance and things like that, you know, dealing with temptations and all of those sort of things. When you have people who are like-minded like you and they believe in the same vision, you have people to grow with, you know, you, it's much, much easier to resist that kind of temptation. And in home groups, we can do that. It's a place for you to grow and find your purpose. I know... Good, that's good. Sorry, I just heard your voice, so. Anyways, so that's the main part about what home groups are, why we do it. Our, one thing that we say in our church is that we are a home group church. You know, our church is not about Wednesday service. It's not about Sunday service. Our church literally is our home groups. That's the most important thing because the home groups is the extension of the church. It's where evangelism is done. It's where we grow in the Holy Spirit. You come to church and it's a, you know, Wednesday and Sunday and that's a twice a week meal that you get, but you need more than that. You need someone who's gonna pour into you. You know, you need people that are gonna constantly pour into your life and people that you can pour into their life. Have people who are your friends, you know, where you pour into each other. And it's just this like, this life-giving thing. You know, that's why a lot of places call them cell groups because it's literally the cells of your body that produces life with inside of you growth and purpose. So what if somebody does not go to, in your city, he comes to your church one time and then gets saved, how do you, can you still have a home group of somebody who's not in your city? Absolutely. So I actually have two home groups. I have a home group here in Tri-Cities and we meet every single Sunday and I have another home group that I facilitate through Skype. And so, yeah, actually- International. That's what's up. And so what's really awesome is that those two ladies are actually here today for the conference. You know, I've got one of my girls from California. Yes, who's been connected in this vision. She's been living in California for three or four years now and she's super connected into our vision and what we're doing here. I got another one of my girls who lives in Ellensburg and she's going off to school but, you know, but she wants to be connected in this vision. So we do our home group through Skype and I meet regularly with these girls, you know, through FaceTime or through Skype. We try to meet together sometimes, you know. And so, yeah, you can definitely have a home group through Skype and people from all around the United States or other countries even can be connected in this vision as well. Yeah, it's awesome. So that's good. And let's go to the last topic is romantic relationships. Pastor, can you take it away please? No, well, I think everybody who follows a little bit of our ministry and most people here, you follow our podcast, you probably heard a lot of teachings from different people but it's, I don't think the problem is that we don't know what to do right. The problem is that we still choose to do wrong no matter whether it's right or wrong, we just do what we want to do sometimes. We encourage people, first of all, to watch and to not to go see, our ministry is a little bit different because we're dealing with people who come straight from the culture and what's happening in the culture where we live in today and what happens in a lot of traditional cultures that people are in, like Russian culture, Hispanic culture might be different. And so we're dealing with people who are walking in who are most likely either living together, have kids together or people who they see dating as working out or drinking coffee. It's just something you need to have a girlfriend because it's part of life. And so our encouragement usually starts very basic is that if you're not ready for marriage you shouldn't be dating. Dating is not for fun, dating is not a sport and dating is not entertainment. If you're bored, get a cat. If you're still bored, get a dog. And if you're still bored, sign up to membership, you know, church membership or gym membership, I mean, get something, but dating should never be a hobby. Dating is supposed to be, and when I say word dating, now some people are offended by that. Whatever word helps you, feel better. Use courting, meeting, relating. So my word for dating is when a person meets somebody and it leads to marriage. This has to lead to marriage. And if you're not ready for marriage, you're not ready for a relationship. Now people say, well, I'll be ready for a relationship, for marriage in a year from now, awesome. In a year from now, you'll be ready for to start a relationship, to start dating. Another big thing that is going on, especially kind of within here, and I know this is happening right now, everywhere else with churches, is that when people begin to, at the right time, begin to find people who are not comparable to them in two main forms. One is spiritual, they're interested in somebody who professes to be a Christian. They go to church once in a while. They go to church, well, they go to that church. And for me, if one of our people comes in and they say, hey, you know, I'm just interested in this person, and they go to that church, I'm like, awesome. You know, who's their pastor? Or I ask them, say, who is the pastor? It starts with, let me check. And that's what I do the way I know that they're bluffing. They don't go to church. Even if they go there for four years, if they cannot tell me the name of the pastor, they're not going there. There may be body is going there on Sundays while they have a hangover, but they're not going there if they don't know the name of the pastor. And usually what I do is that if it's one, especially if one of our wannabe leaders, at the next moment when I stop talking to this person, I actually call that person and I say, hey, you have this person coming to your church? They're like, no. I'm like, well, they think they do. Who are they? And I would ask them because we want to involve pastors and accountability. You don't just simply find someone and you start a relationship with, you involve the leaders so that then you don't make the mistake. I mean, we had an interesting situation where one gentleman came from Seattle, was interested in one of our leaders and decides to meet with me. So I knew why he came to our event. He didn't know that I knew. And so I'm expecting, you know, we're talking about ministry and everything else. So I'm like, bro, so why are you really here? He's a coach, he's for Jesus, man. I looked at him, it was at my own house. I was like, okay, I'm not gonna go prophetic and you're like, awesome. Well, I hope you find Jesus. So, but he did not know that the whole deal that he was interested in this person, it just won't work for few different reasons. And instead of talking to me and finding that out, he took her on a date. Well, she kind of pretended to be all nice and everything and then he wanted to go on a date again and then she dropped the ball on him and he left all disappointed. I'm like, man, what a fool. If you would have just simply asked me, I would have protected you from the embarrassment. And sometimes we make those mistakes where we don't involve the pastors. We don't have to let the pastors make the decisions. We don't have to let the parents make the decision. But if you allow your feelings to make the decision, you will make a really, really big mistake. Another issue that needs to be involved in here is that when you find somebody that you like, you have to consider cultural differences. I know that we live in the generation and the culture today where there is no really, we go to work for Hispanics. We have people in our jobs who are of different cultures and everything, but in marriage, culture plays a big role. You can be a Christian and in our church, we have multicultural and I know that people will be marrying from different cultures. And even when they do, people have to understand there is challenges that are presented with different cultures, with the in-laws, with the kind of food they will eat, with the kind of things that they want, and every single thing, and we have to be conscious of that. Let's say that you found somebody and you liked them, your parents gave you a blessing. Everything is good with faith, and usually people say, what do I go next? You have to understand, you have to get to know the person, and it has to lead to marriage. You can't take a five-year engagement time or a marriage time. It has to lead to marriage. Not like my parents, where it has to lead next month or the month after that. Maybe a little bit longer, but it has to lead to marriage. We usually tell people, relationships have three stages. The first one is the spiritual. It's up to your engagement. The second one is the emotional, up to your wedding. And then at your wedding, the physical starts. The challenge happens is instead of starting the spiritual, aca, friendship, where you're building a friendship in the community of other people, people start physical right away. Hugs and kisses and holding hands and all of this stuff. And then when they get engaged, now they're busy working on their wedding, and when they get married, now they wanna find God, and now they wanna find emotions and everything. And it gets all messic and chaotic. You don't start building your house with the roof, always with the foundation. And the foundation of future marriage is friendship. And that friendship goes the emotional part. You don't go, I love you honey, hey babe. You just met her last weekend. What kind of babe you're talking about and stuff and so. All this stuff has to happen after engagement where emotions are involved. And then there comes the physical. People say, well, I wanna get really physical right away. Awesome, get married tomorrow and get all physical that you want. But we have to guard ourselves. The challenge that I've seen with our circles is when people know they shouldn't be in a relationship, but they use this thing called just talking. Hashtag that. Yeah, just talking. And what that means just talking is this means, what's going on with you guys? Just talking probably means dating, planning a family, committing sin, making out, all under the banner of just talking. And it's actually extremely dangerous because a person who does that, knowing it's wrong, developing a character where in marriage they will excuse an affair that's emotional under the banner of just talking. And so it's very, very important. You gotta protect your heart. If you know it's not the right time, kill that thing in the beginning and let God resurrect it if it hits will. If it's not, let the thing stay dead so God can give you something new. Okay, question came in is if you don't date then how do you find out what you want in your future spouse? Well, if you don't date, how do you find out what do you want? In your future spouse. Well, you don't need to date to find out. I don't need to buy every car in the world to know what kind of car I wanna drive. I mean, that is foolish. You need to know what you want. First of all, looking at yourself, looking at your relationship with God. Ask your mom what you want. She's the one that knows better. And ask other people. First of all, it's not what you want, but what we need. And it's a matter of a lot of things. We all need people to be faithful. We need people to be friends. And you don't need to date them to find that out. You can be in a group. Another thing when you date is people are phony. People are not really real in a dating relationship. The moment you pop the question and you simply say, would you go out with me? Hey, can I take you to lunch? A person turns from a demon to an angel. Every flaw disappears. Every cover comes in. You see the nicest part of them. If the guy never used the perfume on, was it Cologne's the guy used? Cologne, that's right. I still mix those things up. Or the girl never used the Cologne? Perfumes. You will see people smell nice. You will see people look good. You will see the car washed. You see the guy, he will never race through the streets. He won't give you a heart attack when you're in this car. He will cover the bill. He won't forget the wallet. I mean, everything is nice, but in reality, people are not that nice. You're not an idiot. You know people are not that nice. You're not that nice. I'm not that nice. And so you're not really getting to know the person. You're getting to know a facade. And you will be deeply disappointed when you find out that facade will disappear at the day of your wedding. And so it's better to get to know the real person by being distant from them, watch them, be in a longer circle. You just observe them from afar. The moment you give them signals, the moment you will pull the strings, next thing you know, they will act and you will fall for the prey. And then you get into a relationship. You're like, man, there's such a horrible person. Everybody saw that. Everybody knew that. And everybody told you that. But you had a cloud in your eyes through which you couldn't see the real colors because this cloud is called infatuation. Now what you called it was the voice of God. It was just a chemical imbalance.