 Boom welcome back to the Patriot Convention 2022 of Orlando, Florida being helped with the fourth year in a row at 21 summit in Orlando Celebrating 16 years 21 studios and 21 convention events Our next speaker is a very good friend of mine, and I'm extremely proud to call him a friend We have some fundamentally different beliefs about life, but by far we share very deeply common values between me and him He's someone I've gotten to know over the past couple years of the events And he's done an amazing job helping the flow and function and design of this event Of the Patriot event for fathers and patriarchs men who want to lead their families I also call him the man of spheres favorite pastor man of spheres number one pastor Him and Brian saw a buddy as he brought this year They're both highly controversial The great men and honestly and sincerely one of the best men that I know best men have ever met and Super proud to have met the event. So without further ado, please help me welcome to the Patriot Convention stage pastor Michael Foster Well, I got this picture last night Right before we had dinner So this is my family. It's my wife Emily and our seven children when I got this picture I immediately thought what am I doing here? Like why am I in our why am I in Orlando? Why am I at this? event again at this conference again You know, what's what's wrong with me? They're out there doing the pumpkin patch thing and You know, you only get that about once or so a year and and I'm here And I it was a honest thought that ran through my mind like what am I doing here? I've been to a lot of trade shows this year for my day job I've done several Christian conferences and and then this is it for my travel this year I'm not traveling for a few more months, but this picture made me think about Why I'm here. I don't have a YouTube channel that's monetized. I don't have a program for you I Have a book you can go buy it, but I don't really push my book. I just let that's what a publisher is for I let them do that for me And I don't push my book to to my church. I wrote it and I'm glad that God's used it, but I Don't get paid to do this, you know I don't care if you subscribe to me or not. It doesn't know that matters to me and so I was thinking through it and I was out by the pool last night with Ian Smith and Tony Tony Bruno and Just some of the guys out there listening them talk the fight that what it's done to their family Guys just kind of like sharing strategies and everything and I thought This is it. I I am here for this I catch a lot of grief publicly for coming to this event and then of course I'll like and introduce somebody or sit around a panel and people will say things like oh my goodness That's gonna be a clip. I'm gonna see somewhere, but the reason I'm here is is the movement is Is I'm a patriarch. I'm a father. I'm a husband. I have a family No one's gonna leave us alone. No one's gonna leave me alone I have to fight back, but I can't do it alone and I'm trying to wake up the churches, but I want to be part of this broader conversation this broader dialogue and and see it go a More biblical direction ultimately there steps along the way You know two plus two equals four But two plus, you know three equaling five is closer to the truth than I guess You know two times a million equals zero or something right like the math is all screwed up In the ways I hear people explain their worldview, but I'm trying to move things Towards a more biblical worldview to a right way of thinking I want to be part of that So I've been glad to be part of it, but I think what we have to be careful in the red pill in the manasphere Not to forget is what are you fighting for right? What are you fighting for? That's that's my first question for you. What are you fighting for right? War has a purpose peace Right fighting has a purpose the end of conflict. That's why you do it. You're trying to end conflict not by ignoring reality You know a lot of people don't want peace. They want quiet and there's a distinction there, okay? Right, I've been at quiet tables with people that are upset at each other And those are the least peaceful church our tables to ever sit out, okay? And so you have to keep in mind what we're trying to correct a lot of times You come to these sessions and hear about how everything's so bad how women are so bad how the courts are so bad How our country screwed up and all those things are true in various degrees But okay Is it just a pity party right are we gonna do something about it? Where are we going? What are you gonna do? So I want to tell you a little bit about about myself Because what I found valuable here over the last couple years is getting to know people knowing who's got skin in the game Who's not just Another one these guys that are recycling all these online programs, you know You got these Twitter accounts that blow up every once in a while It's always got some Greek statue or some nonsense like this this guy dropping wisdom and then it turns out that you know He's an alcoholic. He's not married. He's got like messed up relationships like okay You're really just a really talented copywriter that knows how to do pithy phrases or whatever I've been blessed to get to know Elliot Hulse what I like about Elliot is how genuine of a guy. He is he's very very real His he loves his wife his wife loves them. They've been together for years Then I've met his daughters and they're like look at this. They're lovely. These are lovely young ladies they they have poise they have confidence they have everything you'd want to see in a young a young woman and And that makes me believe Elliot and trust them more, but people have this they believe Instagram, right? They believe like I have these people to say hey you have a wonderful marriage and I do but I also want to tell them Like how do you know that? You don't know me You don't know if it's real. I mean so much of this stuff is is fake I could I guess I could be faking this but I I'm I want to be a little more open and vulnerable with you Why I'm in this fight and I want to ask you to to write down today Why why you care about this? Why are you here? Is it some short-term thing or is there a bigger picture? Okay? Alright, this is where I grew up. That's my home Downstairs are two efficiency apartments next to each other upstairs was apartment Believe it or not. It didn't look much different when I lived there over there to the to your right is a bar So this is my room right here. This is Lawrenceburg, Indiana It was very we grew up very poor and it was a rough place my My dad is an ex-con. He went to jail for as I recall Grand Theft Auto and when he was on probation He met my mom at a disco, okay? So they conceived me out of wedlock, but like people used to do back then they actually got married It was a rough marriage My dad wasn't abusive at all, but they just fought a lot and a lot of like it was intense. It's hard for me to remember Very many calm evenings family vacations were terrible Everyone just argued the whole way wherever we want mom and dad up front was it was a miserable Experience my dad was fairly masculine in some sort of like surface-level ways, and he always loved me He always told me how proud he was of me. He only had a eighth grade education and In his own father my grandfather was a terrible man He beat my father when he was a child my grandfather molested some of my cousins my grandfather Wrote a cultic evil book. You can go find it on on Amazon Fred Foster so That was the man that my dad grew up underneath very terrible man man that had multiple Marriages divorced my paternal grandmother and so my dad had him as a dad and Considering that my dad gave me what he had it just wasn't a whole lot Okay, he just didn't know how to be a dad how to be a father But he loved me and he did his best to provide but he didn't really provide very much our front This is our front yard. So that's seagrams whiskey plant Those are the train tracks that there's like glass bottles all over here so we used to go to see grooms when we were kids and on one occasion you can't really tell but there's barrels of whiskey over There we stole one we cut a hole and rolled it over into the levy to the other side and try to drink it We're like 14. It did not it probably wasn't fully cured or whatever So we gave it to the to the hobo that lived in the woods over there I we may have killed him who knows it was a lot of well whiskey So I grew up there. I grew up a non-Christian. I didn't grow up in church at all I went on a few occasions. I was separated from my parents and sent to live with my my grandmother Who had my maternal grandmother who is an immigrant from Germany? survivor of the battle of Königsberg of the bombing of Dresden and of the Holocaust but she was a secular in a religious persuasions but culturally very Jewish in other ways and She had married a retired correctional officer Paul Pete's and he was older and he was a man's man's man A very few words toughest guy. I've ever known my entire life So I went from KCMO Kansas City, Missouri in the city out to the country and out there I was disciplined not in a harsh way, but in a firm way and Life had order like very intense order So you would you would eat dinner you would sit at the dinner and let all the adults talk You keep your hands in your lap you would wait to everyone was done Then you'd be excused then the adults would go to another room and then me and my uncle Who's just a few years older than me? We would go do the dishes and then you do your homework and if you're lucky you could stay up some nights and watch Johnny Carson Right, that's that's the way it was a very ordered life and you're not playing a major role in the difference between me and my siblings namely that I Had a structure for several years when I was under the care of my grandmother that they never fully experienced Nonetheless, I did rebel when I got into my mid teens. I became a really aggressive atheist I had previously just kind of been agnostic and not cared But then I got into Carl Sagan I got an Arthur C. Clark Think thankfully there weren't the internet wasn't really a thing quite yet and using it to research I had to go to the library. I had to use card catalogs. That's like crazy. How how quick time moves anyhow So then I end up becoming a Christian though. I went to a basketball tournament. It was a Beton switch middle middle of the basketball tournament. Some guy comes out preaches the gospel. I'm like, it's one of these things I got tricked but I heard the gospel the Holy Spirit convicted me of my sin. I believe the gospel. I got converted. That's it Right, everyone wants some like what was the thing that pushed you over? What do you do with about evolution? What about what about the problem of evil? Yeah, I'm just gonna tell you the truth I heard the gospel and the Holy Spirit quickened my heart and I was a believer that Friday when I left school I was an obnoxious atheist that went after equally obnoxious Nominal Christians. Okay. It was like you guys like I know I know guys and girls I were like sleeping around and doing terrible things and then talked to me about how I should be a Christian. I'm like, look If Jesus was real, he wouldn't want you to be his PR person. So you should just you know, stop Okay, but that came back Monday and I was a real believer and I started reading the Bible and I started studying books I stopped watching Television and movie. I stopped listening to all music other than 90.9, which was the classic station. I just read it's red I the hunger wouldn't go away. I started being a better student. I was always smart, but lazy I started going to Bible studies and then I met this guy and we traveled all around the sort of tri-state area Kentucky, Ohio, Indiana and He taught a Bible study down in the east side of Cincinnati So about 45 minutes from Lawrenceburg, Indiana and he fell in love with some girl and asked if I would you know fill in for him And then he just never came back. So the Bible study became my Bible study and at that Bible study. I Well, hang on me back up before I get to the Bible study. These are my me and my three brothers I've not been smiling in pictures for the majority of my life. So the middle one here is Wayne And this is Alex Sometimes goes by Justin. I'll come back to them. So at the Bible study. I met this girl in the middle That is Emily Kathleen Mayer, right? There was all sorts of girls at these Bible studies and when you're a teacher At a study like that you kind of have status But I I had been immoral prior to my conversion and I wasn't interested in dating at all I was just trying to grow in holiness get to know God to understand these things, but this girl Snuck her way Into my heart and we started writing letters to each other. I was too poor. We didn't have a phone Like so we actually write letters at me Emily and I have about 500 letters We wrote back and forth and what I would do for some reason you could call from a pay phone for a quarter from Kentucky to Ohio But not from Indiana to Ohio. So I'd hop in my truck drive across the Ohio River to Kentucky and sit at this Gas station and hope it doesn't rain and call my wife with the quarter and talk to her I mean my girlfriend at the time. What do you mean? I don't think we're officially girlfriends It was like a big deal at a court back then in the Christian world. So we just didn't put a label on it but one thing led to another and We we definitely started to fall in love and have deep interests I've been with Emily since she was a freshman in high school as a senior coming up on 20 years of marriage And yeah, so Yeah, we got married. It was a big day every time. I think someone's too young to marry I go and look at my my wedding pictures. I'm like, who's that guy? Emily doesn't seem to age So I do though So anyway M and I Early on in our marriage We had marriage problems and they all came down to I think us delaying having kids and I told her that I wanted to have lots of kids eventually but You know, let's let's get out of student loan debt. Let's finish your degree yada yada yada, right? And she agreed and then every once a while though, she'd say what do you want to start having kids? I'm like, yeah, yeah, let's do it. But you know if you don't want to I was never decisive, right? I would never actually take leadership in it, but We started to have a to kind of income a to career household and she was a nurse Anyone have a nurse as a wife? No, the thing about nursing that's very difficult is that their schedules are six week schedules Not four weeks. They tend to have those sort of rotations and they'll work something like, you know 410s or 312s and they'll say you have all that time off But everyone else in the world works Monday through Friday Roughly, you know, seven to five or eight to five. So yeah, you'll have all that time off, but your spouse won't right? so we kind of started to lose focus on the purpose of our household and And then we realized that was Key, we weren't having children, right? We're just getting sucked into this sort of Roommates living together. I mean in scripture one of the main purposes of marriage Is by the providence of God is to propagate a godly seed or to have children to have children that will carry on the image Of God in the world and carry on your faith and you raise them up in the admonition and fear the Lord and And generally they walk in that way not always sometimes you have an easel that walks away But often they do so that it's a major part of marriage and and I would say I'll talk about this in 21 but where we started to lose the battle on homosexual marriage is when we said that children aren't part of marriage anymore, right? So marriage started to lose that purpose. There's multiple purposes in marriage companionship help against sexual immorality and having children There's the three main ones that's been taught in Christian tradition now for a long long time. So but we started having kids, right? I remember Emma scared we got her off birth control and she was scared to have a baby That was the first month. We didn't get pregnant and then she was scared. She couldn't have babies and And I was like, whoa, it's only been two months It's actually it takes a little while to get pregnant in many cases But we decided we were gonna have a way to name our children I don't know why we did this but we decided we name all our boys after a figure in church history Not in the Bible, but in church history that had influenced us both the first and middle name for our boys for our girls We decided if we had any in my family, there's almost all all of my cousins except for two are our boys And there's a lot of us There's just not a lot of I guess foster swimmers are generally boy swimmers, okay? But we decided we'd name them after a place that was significant in Scripture or in the history of the church, okay? Names are very powerful names are a weird thing My mom named me Michael because she wanted me to be a messenger of God It's crazy though. Like she wasn't faithful to church for a long time and then I was a bad kid Like right up to I became a Christian, you know, one of my best friends says I'm so glad you got saved because we Would have actually done real time in jail I got arrested but it was for small small charges But we were planning. We're playing some intense stuff. We were just bored. It's Indiana man Like there's nothing to do you get into crime because there's nothing to do and we're playing to break into this place We had gone to the library and got Blueprints of how this place was laid out. We've been watching too much too many movies. Anyway names This is Hudson Taylor Foster. This is my firstborn When Emily was pregnant with him we decided we're going to do a home birth and I was not so sure that home birth was the right way to go And I remember I went to a Bradley class and they had to sit in this room and watch these Amazonian women Give birth like standing up and they like this pulled the baby out, right? And with no emotion on their face and me and all these guys in a room with our wives We're watching it and this guy had just got back from Afghanistan and the instructor finished because we're like Are we is this porn like we're watching a naked woman give birth? This feels not right, right because all of us are like sinking down into our our chair covered in our face after a while we're very uncomfortable and Then the Bradley instructor says what do you guys think about this which any feedback and the guy I just got back from Afghanistan said, you know I Have watched one of my friends get hit with a round and evaporate into a mist of blood and just little pieces of flesh And this is still the worst thing I've ever seen my entire life, right? so she brought me into the being you know in the tub I was in the tub when Hudson was born and It was a it was a hard labor is 40 hours He he almost died in the middle of it We had to run to the hospital do some things then we had to sign up against medical advice to go back home And have him at home But he's a typical Firstborn son type a He's got my my looks his mom's personality We named him after Hudson Taylor who was a missionary to China one of my study areas of study in my undergrad was Mandarin so I took two years of Mandarin and I had thought about going over to China to be a missionary But I named him Hudson because I wanted him to be a leader of men that loved men and preached the gospel to him And I told him that from very early age son I want you to be someone that brings the gospel to people that folks don't care about and he's very sensitive and he's He's not as outspoken as I am, but he has a way with people. He's like it's it's cool to see him become his name This is Athanasius Clive Foster he will rule probably the United States of Fosteria with iron rod, I think he's He's like a typical second-born to trying to keep this kid alive has been been a challenge at times Like I remember once I looked down in a pool. We're vacationing. I said, I didn't know how to get swim And then was like he can't swim like ran in and grab this kid and He's he's kind of like what the man is for your people would call it chat. He's just like a natural He's ripped and he doesn't care and and girls have an interest in him right away because it's just kind of how he is and He'll say things he'll like neg girls and not even know he's doing it and it's like you got strange-looking eyes Like son, you cannot talk to women like that. All right. This is not the way you interact with people This is you know, so I'm trying to socialize him He was a challenge. He's a He and I share a lot of things in common. We're both dyslexic Disgraphic, so this graphic is where the process of writing or typing You can't tell the difference between what you're writing So some of my tweets if they're if they seem like there's some secret message in it No, I'm just a little retarded. Okay. That's all that's going on He and I both have sensory processing disorder, which I didn't know was a thing back then This is where things that hit your senses light sound Effect you very intensely and so it can lead to weird behaviors that sometimes Misdiagnosis being autistic or whatever So we've had to work with him through that but to watch him grow into the man. He he's becoming I mean he's He doesn't like to read like his brother does quite Hudson Hudson's read the Wheel of Time. Do you guys know that series? He's read the Wheel of Time like twice He's read Harry Potter like three times a kid reads about a book or so a week at least he's just on it Athens not like that. He's good with his hands. He's a very attack tile sort of person This is Cademan Knox. Oh, hang on Athanasius Athanasius is a it's not Tupac against the world. It's Athanasius against the world Athanasius Stood for the orthodoxy when no one else would they he was exiled five times So he was Athanasius Alexandria and he was a powerful fearless man Athen my son thought he was like some sort of like barbarian like warrior I was like, he's a great warrior for the Lord son And so I didn't thought he was gonna grow up to be like, you know Coming in the barbarian, but I said no be a warrior for the Lord, right? Be someone that's willing to stand for truth no matter what and I his middle name Clive is after C.S. Lewis Clive staples Lewis the great Apologists of the last century This is Cademan Knox He is he's a funny guy Cademan is an Irish poet. It's where the word Middle Earth comes from he he was a really him writers what he was and He's the first appearance of what we would call modern English really that's where you see him using that develop in it and Knox is the founder of the Scottish Presbyterian Church and I Raised up Cademan to to be to be expressive to be artistic To communicate truth and it's funny. He's becoming that person. Athen is very confrontational Athanasius we shorted it to Athen. This did not be too cruel, but um Athanasius is very confrontational willing to speak the truth Cademan though is he loves to read and write and create and tell stories It's crazy He's not the churchman. I wanted to be at but he's just a boy. So he's a funny guy Then something happened that was unexpected we got pregnant with a girl and We didn't think we would have girls, you know, we had three boys back to back and and suddenly We got pregnant at that with Cademan. I was scared of having more kids I was like, man, this is expensive and I'm feeling like in over my head we went from zero to three and under five years and Then I did a study on the church's position on birth control, which was really inconvenient to what I was looking for And so we said, all right fine. What what does trust the Lord and we got pregnant? We got pregnant with a girl and Emily was ecstatic, right? And I was ecstatic, too and so it was a Normal pregnancy nothing went wrong for the whole time until the last day to the day she was due to be born her heart stopped for some reason and so then we had to Go to the hospital and Emily had to give live birth to a dead body She came out covered in blood But what was most? truly disturbing Was how perfect she looked otherwise how much she looked like her mother? It was a crushing Event in our life a change in event My wife was in a deep dark depression for six to nine months as a man You kind of cry and then you get tough, right? And you someone's got to keep the family together And so a lot of times with the way we process grief as men is it's very delayed and it kind of comes out of nowhere Right, you'll you'll you'll see some sort of commercial that triggers it or I remember I started crying like out of nowhere in a Coals when I was just trying to buy a dress shirt have no clue what a trigger. It was very embarrassing I'm not given to crying almost at all But it's part of the grief process So yes, Nicae Leon Foster Nicae is where the council of Nicae was Ratified it's a very important document and that's what we named her after Leanne is a special rule here Leanne's my grandmother and she she meant the world to me so But she's in Ellisville Presbyterian cemetery Until I get her her body moved back to Ohio with us where she belongs. It was very difficult These things they They affect you in ways you can't predict For your kids someone snapped this picture and I grabbed it. This is Athanasius looking down on his sister's little coffin and it definitely It changed me as a man made me more sensitive Right, I grew up in that that house you saw above a bar and I wasn't really protected from things There's there's women that would like local probably prostitutes of some sort sleeping with men outside of my window for for pay Right servicing their John's Even though my dad, you know mom loved me I was exposed to really rough media that kids didn't I remember seeing one of the nightmares on Elm Street when I was like six and It was very bloody. It was a topless woman. It was not good at all And when you're a sensitive person that situation one way you either develop a lot of anxious disorders Or you actually get really tough and distant from your emotions, which is not good I don't think men should be crying all the time, but we definitely have emotions It's a big part of who we are and God used the death of Nicaea to awaken new things to me I always told people was like having my my eyes Dilated when you go in like suddenly you see all the light suddenly I could feel all the motion I stopped watching movies. I realized that movies a lot of times were guys that can't feel anymore They go to this they go to feel emotions again the music the height and all that But I didn't need to feel I couldn't stop feeling right so it changed our whole family and You would think it would make you not want to have kids anymore But it's opposite was the truth with us. We realized that we had taken them for granted We thought we're just gonna have kid after kid after kid It's gonna be 15 kids everywhere and then and then Nicaea dies and why did she die? Don't know we don't know But something happened something happened quick and One year and I see I was born and then 11 months later. Galilee was born Galilee Was a constellation children aren't goldfish. You can't replace them There is no replacing the death of someone in your your life. That's close to you Okay, but there are things that are a comfort to you We named Galilee Galilee Because Jesus was in a boat on the Sea of Galilee And it was sinking during the storm and all these guys were freaking out like Jesus Do you not care and he stands up? He rebukes the wind and And it all stops the storm stops and he tells them to have faith and Galilee was God Reminding us that he's in control that he's good that he'll bring us through the storms of life So we named her Galilee alleluia alleluia because we're praising God again very very sweet girl I always call her blonde Emily. She's just like a little version of my wife. She loves This is one of our many chickens that we have so But having Galilee has been awesome girl boys are great. I love little boys But girls are so sweet. There's such a gift Then To our shock we somehow had another girl. This is Cedar Libri So Cedar Libri is like kind of like a human cartoon. She doesn't walk anywhere She skips their sassage and one day I said Cedar introduce yourself and she said I'm Cedar Libri I love unicorns and rainbows You heard the girl and she does she likes unicorns and she wears like crowns Galilee's kind of Tom girlish, but Cedars always got like her her little ballerina outfit on or whatever and She's very they're both prissy in their own way, but she's a very typical Girl Cedar is the wood that the temples made out of the Cedar of Lebanon and we we call her to To be a whisper to help to facilitate worship, right? Libri it means the shelter it's Francis Schaefer was an apologist and a man who Back during kind of the hippie movement He had this place out in the Alps and he would let people who had big questions All right, they're asking like what is the meaning of life? What is the purpose of man and Schaefer let them come through Libri the shelter and would have these conversations with them So that's why we named her that This is a an intense little boy This is Cyprian Ryle Emily Emily almost died with Cyprian we came within 15 minutes of her dying She started to hemorrhage a little bit So I said look let me get the kids settled. Let's just be safe. You drive to the hospital. Let's let's get it checked out Okay, so she goes there and they're trying to stop it, but it won't stop for some reason So then a friend of mine comes over to watch my kids I go over to the hospital and we were planning to have a home birth And the midwife and I are consulting with the doctor there and the doctor says we really need to Do a Cyprian a lot of times you don't need to do a Cyprian They just want to push you that direction But sometimes it is I always tell people the best Delivery the best Labor is the one that's the most natural and healthy given the circumstances and sometimes the best way is a cesarean So we came within 15 minutes of Emily bleeding to death basically what happens the blood There's you there's such a loss of blood that you can't replace it quick enough And so she we this guy was born. He was premature He was a little like no fat on him. He's a pathetic looking kid there for a while But these days he's a he's intense. He's a normal little boy. He's hilarious He loves fire trucks and wants to be a cowboy runs around with his boots, you know He just does everything little boys do Cyprian is Cyprian of Carthage. He wrote a lot on the unity of the church and I wanted Cyprian to be a churchman, but JC Ryle he was a Anglican minister who hated dead formalism churches that have all the structure all the ecclesiology But none of the heart so I wanted Cyprian loved the church, but don't hate this fake stuff That's just the out outer stuff. We'll see how that plays out Oh, that's we have a German shepherd and we thought it was funny to name him Luther So Luther as in Martin Luther the German Shepherd this I think is The Omega the last this is Cyrene She snuck into our life if there is a mud puddle she will find it Cyrene Aralea is her name named after Simon of Cyrene who carried the cross to Jesus Christ Aralea means golden. I like to say it's because of the golden mouth of Christos them who is a church father and So for her we just again want her to be the sort of person that ministers to the saints like Simon of Cyrene ministered to Jesus She's definitely added gray to my beard. So she's wonderful Let me talk to you about regrets Let me talk to you about this Few years ago. I had a power a powerful recurring dream that shaped the way I think about regrets I was 37 at the time I had a dream probably four times in the span of six weeks in the dream I awake in my 19 year old self. It was a good time. I think I had some Yeah, yeah, I am twice the man. I used to be I Awake in my 19 year old self. It was a good time. I was in excellent shape I had no debt I was teaching Bible studies and dated my now wife Emily But I had all the knowledge of my 30 year old self I knew all my mistakes Cumulating student debt delaying children putting off seminary aligning myself the wrong churches not buying that stock Wasting money on dumb stuff letting my health slip and now I could avoid all of it for my family and give us an even brighter future Or could I? In my dream, I realized I could do it for a family, but not the family I have now just realized sorry about that Jose Anyway, I realized that I could do it for a family, but not the family I had now if we got married sooner and immediately had kids It wouldn't be the kids that I have now a different sperm would find its way to a different ovum and a different child would be conceived No doubt we would love that child But it wouldn't be our firstborn Hudson or Athanasius or Cayden and I see a etc. etc To have them I'd have to perfectly recreate my life and that's where this dream became a nightmare Every little decision every little word spoken every step taken every little and big mistake every win and loss I would have to recreate them all to have the family that I now love the people. I just showed you To have the life I have now that I love At this point fear would overwhelm me in my dream And I'd usually wake up next to the woman I love into the life I love that dream freed me from the tyranny of regrets many mistakes were made many sins were Committed and I do regret things in my past. I can't stand people that say I have no regrets then you're an idiot I do you have I do regret things, but I've repented of those sins Crisis forgiven me and somehow he's worked through all those things both good and bad to give me the blessed life That I have now I can't change the past if I could I'd still screw up things. There'd be new mistakes So I simply repent of sin and trust in God's perfect providence Providence is the way that God orders the events of history everything It's a it's good too because the good old days can rob you of a future Nostalgia can be a killer. I know because nostalgias who killed my brother I'm the oldest of three brothers. It's me Justin or Alex and My brother Wayne Let me explain what I mean by nostalgia being a killer Nostalgia is a sentimental longing or wistful affection for the past Typically for a period or place with happy personal associations Those who are ruled by regret can get stuck in the past They long for some happy time before they made all their mistakes and this can happen because they either first or excuse me One they refuse to actually address their regrets or two have come to believe there is no recovery from their mistakes So they want to dress their regrets or they don't think they could ever recover from the things they did wrong The end result is that they come to believe that their best days are behind them in some supposed good old days It's always good to get together with old friends and describe how things went down and you realize like man I have a very selective memory. Apparently it didn't go down the way I thought They they have a tendency to mentally time travel out of their present to a happy past and in doing so they Sacrificed their future. That's what happened to my brother Wayne He and I were very close once upon a time. I was his wrestling coach in middle school He and I would go to the movies together twice a month for years He caught my love of boxing. It was a huge sugar shame Mosley fan He stayed with me at my dorm at Northern Kentucky University on weekends He attended Bible studies with me in high school college and when I planted a church He was he was there the first day. He lived with me and my wife for a time He looked up to me and I looked out for him or at least I tried But he got involved in drugs first started with things like marijuana and alcohol as the late teen in his 20s It led to heavier drugs psychedelics cocaine He ended up stealing from everyone he ever knew or loved to feed his addiction I had to kick him out of my house when he was living with me. It was really bad. It was hard I paid for him to go to rehab two or three times out of my own pocket But it never took you never would stick through the program He'd always he had always a bounce amount. He ended up homeless on the street for years at a time He eventually caught a B&E charge and to his credit He eventually turned himself in and and did prison time in Colorado When he came up for probation, I begged the officials not to release him He wasn't clean yet. I knew he'd have easier access to drugs on the outside. I didn't get drugs in the inside I know that but it's it's not as easy as it would be and he would Didn't have the access to our family members that he was harassing and trying to get money from so they didn't listen I remember telling the probation officer, you know You need to keep him. He'll be dead within a couple years and maybe bring someone else with them if if you release him But it was Colorado and their jails are kind of overwhelmed and and it was not a violent crime that he had so they released him In the years that followed the repeated overdoses damaged Wayne's brain. He became meaner He was always a very personal sweet guy But he started to become cruel to my my parents But he wanted nothing more than to have access to his nieces and nephews He hadn't had any kids of his own. He had never had a very serious relationship And he was always married to the drugs, you know, but he loved my kids I mean, he sincerely loved them and I mean they met they meant the world to him and he This thought he would always call and say how how are they doing? You know, let me talk to him And so he had a few he had a couple. I don't know about a year or so where he was clean and And he saw in them a future and he sincerely loved them But he kept getting messed up and I couldn't let him in into their lives anymore. He was a wreck So I had a very simple rules with Wayne You got to be sober for six months and you got to hold down a job for six months to be a part-time job That's all I'm looking for six months of sobriety Six months of employment and then they won't do something but he was never never able to do it for you know, eight or nine years I never cut him off fully. I take calls from him from time to time. They're always the same You talk about the good old days and we did have an uncommonly exciting childhood We're stealing whiskey barrels were right on the back of trains jumping off train bridges It was like like the goonies almost, you know, but um, he loved to talk about the movies We saw together but how many times can you have the exact same conversation if you ever, you know Someone that's has a long-term drug addiction. They get stuck in loops and he would just keep talking about it over and over again He started to get very aggressive and the man that I knew He was dead and it was like his ghosts Kept texting me and calling me. It was really hard in the last weeks of his life three months ago He had moved back to since the Cincinnati area even though I told him not to so you cannot come to my church You cannot get into the you can't see my family six months over six months employed Okay, I have to have boundaries when you come from a broken family like managing those boundaries are hard They're always trying to pull you back in He was dead set on seeing my kids and it kept pressuring me to get together for the 4th of July He talked about how awesome the foster extended family how it holiday parties could be we used to have huge firework wars It was like you got 45 year old men chasing 12 year olds around with rum and candles. It was awesome It was a great family man. It was fun I don't know that it was wise, but it was enjoyable when I was little But I could always tell when he was still drinking and he was so I refused and told him that I had Left that in the past and was billed and something new He said, you know that those that foster family is gone I haven't been part of that family for the majority of my life is certainly since becoming a Christian and he get really mad and I just warned him to get his life straight and I told him like life We're passing away and the day he died the day he died Hours before he died. He said I ain't I'm alive His third from last text message was I care nothing more Than for your kids and for your kids not making the horrible mistakes we made And I didn't respond. I didn't know what to say For hours later. He died in the corner of a homeless shelter all by himself in Covington, Kentucky Across the river from Cincinnati Substance abuse didn't kill my brother. It was just a symptom. It was regret and nostalgia that killed him He was stuck in the past. He kept trying to get back there I just listened to his last voicemail the other day and it was a strange moment of Clarity and perhaps even sobriety and he said hey Since he sent me a meme that he thought was funny the first time he had almost ever done that Just thinking about you. Love you man. Talk to you later and That was his last voicemail to me Think of the after-effects of a traumatic event as a dark Valley It would seem to make sense that those who themselves have been in that Valley should be helpful guides out of the Valley This of course assumes that they found their way out. I found those who talk Most about the Valley and its darkness are those who have been camped out there ever since first entering They make poor counselors and guides they can only tell you about life in the dark Valley They can't tell you about the way out or even the life after the dark Valley. They've never left it. It's their new home They kindly make room for you to camp with them In the dark Valley they indulge your desires to commiserate For they have the same desire and therein lies the rub you don't camp in those dark places You walk through them you set your eye in the faint light Breaking over the horizon in the distance and you stumble forward. It's been said when you're going through hell Keep going. It's a journey through the Valley that potentially makes someone into a helpful guide Those who've never been in the Valley, but understand its topography are more helpful than those who have set up camp there After the death of our daughter an older woman took an immediate interest in my wife That woman too had lost a child under very tragic circumstances They talked on the phone a few times and as I recall met once or twice in person However became clear to us that both that Both of us that this woman was stewing in her pain. So the child had her child had died I believe four months for three or three or four months before Nicaea died And was clear to us that she was still in that Valley. I mean, which is fine like three months. It's pretty fresh. Okay But she had set up camp in the dark Valley and we had every intention of pushing through to the other side She didn't not yet. I don't know if she ever did But she also didn't want to be alone Right misery loves company grief loves company and if you're processing grief, you're going through it together That's a good thing. But if you're setting up camp if you put it out anchor, it's not a good thing So we did something was really hard. We had to cut her off Someone got mad that I said that I mentioned that this the story like why'd you cut her off? I'm like our daughter just died It was a white body covered in blood like we're she needs to deal with her grief We're trying to deal with ours, but it's just people will see negativity wherever So we had to we needed light back in our life. We were trying to process through Nicaea's death She was not there yet. We couldn't be her counselors. We were in the darkness. So we had to keep moving We had other children and we wanted to have a future Nostalgia exists back in the world before the dark Valley It's the world before that decision that event that thing that changed everything It's the world before the pain. It's the world before the regret before the sadness But there is no such thing as a time machine There is no going back. You can sit you can stew you can look backwards or you can move forward You may walk you may run you may just crawl but you have to move forward Even if it's inches and that's what I would tell you guys don't camp out in the pain Don't set up camp in the valley and avoid those that do and they are many in this space Many they know that people that are in misery suffering want to suffer with somebody else And they're willing to often for a price They have little help and they're probably counterproductive. Were you abused? Did your dad beat you? Someone touch you in an improper way Were you deceived have you been lied to manipulated you had a business go the wrong way? Did your wife wrongly divorce you? Did you lose access to your kid? Did you waste years on drugs or video games or porn or just worthless pursuits? Do you have regrets? Are you staring longingly backwards at the good old days or sideways at some soothing distraction? Are you sitting down when you should be walking forward? This is the questions you must ask yourself David said even though I walked through the valley of the shadow of death I will fear no evil for you are with me Amen, but David walks through escaping the valley The valleys is hard because sometimes people refuse to come with you. You can hear their voices screaming calling you back to the valley Back to depression to self-loathing addiction for an occasion laziness and you feel guilty for getting to the other side for surviving You're up the way. I do Broken dysfunctional family you want your family to come with you. You love them, right? Even in a messed-up family even bad dads bad moms weird brothers yet. You love them. It's very confusing But they won't leave they won't leave. They're still staying in that way of life They're staying stuck in the the past and I pled with Wayne for 14 years to change his ways I tried to help him I wanted him in my life and there was a time the words of Kate Bush I would have asked God to swap out our places, but he wouldn't listen and I couldn't stay So I left him there Do I feel guilty? Sure a little he's my little brother. I am the firstborn He in some sense was my responsibility. You have responsibility to our siblings and you feel that more according to birth order I asked my wife a good wife She's rubies. She's gems. I trust her more than anyone. I asked her did I do all I could for him? You know, I want to know did I do what I could? you know because our last conversation was him telling me to f off and She assured me I did and it's still hard to believe But I'm just a man. I'm not the God man. I'm not Christ. I can't save my family I can only preach the gospel be an example Help them as the Lord provides Survivors guilt is a real thing, but our first allegiance is to Christ and Luke 14 Jesus says if anyone comes to me and does not hate his own father and mother and wife and children and brothers and sisters Yes, even his own life. He cannot be my disciple Whoever does not bear his own cross and come after me cannot be my disciple You have to leave the past behind you you can't help carrying someone's burdens But you can't bear someone's cross you can help carrying someone's burdens But you can't bear someone's cross if father and mother and wife and children and brothers and sisters won't come You can't stay you must love Christ above all so much so that comparatively speaking it is as if you hate others He's using strong language, right? It doesn't really truly mean hate But in comparison of your devotion to him to them is as if it's hatred So you have to look forward. I won't lie. I'm a Christian pastor. I want everyone to convert I straight up with Anthony. I want him to repent and believe the gospel of Jesus Christ I don't think there's any hope for any of you apart from that. I'm not here to moralize I'm not here to make you better people in a limited surface level sense The reason I'm different from my brothers in part. There was better shape in influences with my grandparents I can admit that but ultimately the thing that separated us the fork in the path was when I got when I became a Christian was born again You got to climb out of the valley by God's grace You got to head towards Zion that the city that God has made for us that believe in him these days I mostly enjoy the present. I dream about the future and so What I want to ask you about oh here. Let me tell you first. So here's the question. What are what are you at fighting for? Here's what I'm fighting for Fighting for them cost of the day foster the house of foster, right? This is what I'm building My my old family heritage of hell sexual abuse Anger drug abuse Brokenness this is my kids don't know anything about that my kids have been catechized They've been taught theology from a very young age Emily and I don't fight in front of them One of the best gifts you can give your kids is a low conflict Household where people love and talk things through or if there's gonna be a fight It's not gonna be in front of those kids and the kids are not gonna be used Right they they've been in church their entire life. They all been baptized It's they're the future when I'm dead. They'll still be here Lord willing. They're my wealth I mean, I like that you actually have to have kids to be here You know, that's the future is patriarchy futures fatherhood So for them, but not just them These I love this is a church by God's grace. I started two years ago with a couple other elders Batavia Ohio God's added to our number, but there's there's people out there that want the same things that I want They want to walk with God. They want intact families. You come to places like this sometimes and it's like the whole world's Mad Max You're hanging out in the valley, man You're hanging out with the wrong people It's not like that everywhere Well, it's not like that where I'm at then move Then move or build something but stop whining about it and don't act like it doesn't exist because I know it does exist I have it. Is it more difficult now to get married than when I got married? Yeah But you were born for this time This is where you're at. It's where God's put you. This is your challenge. We all have different challenges This is what I'm fighting for starting churches that teach the Bible that will call women to repent for their sin and Men right both will do both, you know, I had one of my mother's day sermon was called Christian women sin It was it was fun And but you know what the women in our church, they're feminine and sweet and godly and competent It's amazing when men are men It creates space for women to be women Makes women feel safe. It makes them do do what they do cultivate and add. This is what I'm fighting for What are you fighting for? I think the future is fatherhood There's no hope without new fathers. There's no hope without marriage. I I mean, I get it I get the whole migtail thing. I get it but Are you in the valley? Are you staying there? Is that where you live? Do you have a future? What is your future? We're going my ultimate future is this I belong to the household of God I'll be resurrected and live forever belong to God's family Believe that Jesus could have victory on this earth in the long term that changes the way I think about things I'm a very positive person in very dark times But also God in the here and now can work amazing things From people who have real pain in their past real trauma whether it's a daughter dying divorce Brother telling you to f off and then dine in a corner somewhere Like God can still work in and through those people you can work in and through you So my exhortations is this repent and believe the gospel. Okay, and then what is what is God calling you to build? The best thing to build is a family as a household. So thank you for your time. God bless