Are You Speaking Life or Death? || Victory Church [Cafe Convos #4]

What's up, man? What's up, buddy? Good to see you, dawg. How you feeling? Likewise, likewise. I'm good. Good. You're looking swole. Hey, man. You know, wear the shirt for the day. No, I'm just kidding. Yo, so I'm glad you were able to be here with me and just come hang out, dude. So thing I've been doing with my friends is I'm asking them to come have a conversation with me, right? Most of my friends are like coffee drinkers. I am not a coffee drinker. But I know that you are also not a coffee drinker. So I'm winning already, but I've been asking them to tell me what their favorite drink is and I'll try it because I'm in a space where I want to love, I want to like what you like. So since we're not drinking coffee, I was told that this is your joint. So what are we sipping on? So this is called strawberry herbal lemonade. Strawberry herbal lemonade. Let me be honest with you. Let me tell you something. I get this because I don't want to drink coffee. So I'm trying to like find everything I can to not drink coffee. I try anything on the on the menu that is not coffee. But is it like you don't drink coffee because it's like you don't like the taste, you don't

like the caffeine? No, it's it's deeper than that. It affects me emotionally. And I don't like that. You like start crying or something? No, I mean, hey, some days if it's a little tough, no, man, what I started figuring out was, you know, coffee just alters brain chemicals and I don't I don't need nothing altering up there. I feel you, you know. OK, so we got a strawberry herbal lemonade. I don't know what kind of herb it is, but we'll just leave it right there. Yeah, yeah, yeah. We at church. So hopefully some good herbs. Yeah. Yeah. All right. So yeah. All right. So I'm a I'm a stride up because that's how you drink it. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. You know, I'm bougie. So I got to put a straw. All right. So. All right. Oh, that's good. Oh, bro.

That made my TMJ. That's all right. Get used to it. You sink in right there. That's right. Grabbed my whole jaw. I got a sweet tooth. That was that was light work for me. OK. Maybe it's the lemon. Uh-huh. Uh-huh. That's that's a lot. Where are you from originally? I'm from South Bend, Indiana, home of the Fighting Irish. That's right. That's right. That's what we do. Wasn't there a movie that they based off of the. Somebody told me. Yes. Somebody told me. The little short guy. Rudy. Rudy. That's what it is. Rudy. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah. He's a guy who wants to like join the Notre Dame football team to fight an Irish and like

everybody in his life is like, you're too short, you're too small, you're not strong enough. And of course, in very much like Disney-esque like fashion at the end of it, he ends up getting the team and got his chance and like made it work. Right. That dude was told pretty much the whole movie that he wasn't good enough. Right. Like multiple people like you won't make it. You'll never do this. You'll never do that. But in a way or somehow, he had the strength to not believe that he had the strength to like fight for what he believed in himself and just totally dismiss those those words spoken over him. Yeah. Can you remember a time where like some words were spoken over you and have left like an impact, whether positive or negative, like we can go on the bright or the dark side? Yeah. I want to attribute all of this credit to my mom. I don't know why. I don't know how. Shout out to good mamas. Yeah. You know what I'm saying? Yeah. Shout out to good mamas. She made it a point to always let me know how gifted and talented I was. But it's just like literally like, do you remember any words that she actually said? One specific thing she always used to say, she was like, look at your hands and she would like lay my hands out. She was like, some doctor or somebody used to always tell her I had the hands of a businessman.

She would always say that. And I mean, I was young, eight, nine, ten, like my entire life she has always said. And then now since I'm older, she was like, you remember when I used to always tell you look at your hands. And so and that's something that always encouraged me that I can go and be whatever I want to be. I read this quote. I think it was Mother Teresa. And I'm going to butcher this quote, but it says something like, you know, kind words can be given often, but the echoes of the words that like really penetrate and have like long, long lasting impact. It's so crazy. My mother used to like tell me, like she used to pray over me, like whatever I put my hands to. I wonder what it is about our mommas hands, man. Yeah. She said like whatever she would pray, like whatever I put my hands to, that it would prosper. Yeah. Whatever I put my hands to that will prosper. Like being able to reflect over like my 44 years of life and the various things that God has allowed me to be able to do have prospered in some shape, form or fashion. And what I've learned is like, it's not even always like how like financially prosperous, but it's like helping other people to prosper or to grow or to develop or to be better. I have three daughters. I'm very careful. I try to be very careful about the words that I say to them because, man, our words, especially from father. Others, man, they carry a ton, a ton of weight. I remember once my daughter, she did something dumb.

Like she did something dumb. And sometimes as parents, you got a son, like, you know, some man, sometimes they make you want to blow, you know what I'm saying? Like, oh, and you, I mean, you reacting before you're responding, you know? And I remember she had done something so stupid, so stupid. And that was the word that came to my mind, stupid, right? And I was like, okay, in my brain, like as I'm talking to her and my brain is like firing up, I was like, okay, I can't call the girl stupid. Like, cause she's not stupid. Plus that would scar her for life, right? But I was like, baby, you are not dumb. You are uber smart. But sometimes we make dumb decisions. This is one of those times, you know? But I'm glad that I had the pause to think that, cause in my emotion, had I let that word come out, she could have taken that a whole totally different direction, which would follow her echo in her head for years to come. You know what I'm saying? So can you remember like any people in your life, like who intentionally like tried to kill you with their words? How did you fight that off? How did you not allow that to penetrate your heart,

your head or did it for a time? It did for a time. Okay. So I was previously married in my twenties and things didn't end well, obviously. But to paint the picture of what was happening, there was, I had to leave the home because of just a whole bunch of things that was going on. No craziness. I didn't step out, nothing like that. I had to leave the home for safety reasons. And while I was gone, a couple of friends, you know, called me, right? Well, I'm not, you know, and they are still great people. I just, I don't know if I would say a friend would do that to you, you know? So he definitely close friend, et cetera. So these may still be, you know, in that vein, but stands up or calls me. They are on, what do you call it? Three way we used to call it. And both of them are cussing me out and telling me, you know, you need to go back to your wife, man. You need to blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. And now the whole time God is telling me, don't tell them nothing about what she's done. Don't say nothing. And I'm like, listen. And I'm like, God, they are cussing me out.

And I'm like, they have no clue what has happened. And that hurt because one, I couldn't say anything. So I think in God's eyes, he was like, the power of your words. Don't say anything because this is a moment. This is not who her identity is. And so to say her identity, because God is our father. He's her father too. So he's like, hey, don't talk about my daughter. I know what's happening right now is not pleasurable. Don't put your words on my daughter and start passing around all this blame and do something to her that you don't want done to you right now. That takes a lot of maturity and a lot of self-control, man. Everybody ain't got that. Well, I would say even, I think it took surrender for me. Because I don't know, at that time, I didn't have the maturity or the self-control. I was ready to, and then God spoke. And I knew it was, and I said, ah. So at that point, I had to just submit, surrender. And I feel like I'm not always the best Christian. I'm not always the best anything. But I do hear God, and he will lead me and I'll follow. And that looks like maturity. If that looks like self-control, bless God. I just live a surrendered life, bro. I try to, at least. Man, as you were kind of talking,

I just kind of got this image of life and death power of the tongue, the words we choose to use. We can take a simple three-word sentence, like I blank you. Whatever we choose to put in that middle. I love you, I hate you, I adore you, I despise you. Like whatever word we decide to put in that middle can either kill somebody or bring them to life. You have adults in therapy right now because of something that was said to them when they were a kid. That's why I'm so careful about the words that I speak to not only my children, my wife, my friends, you know what I'm saying? Even when I gotta tell her something tough or I'm mad, just trying to, Holy Spirit, guide my tongue. That man, that's probably one of my best prayers right there, guide my tongue. When I'm going into a tough conversation, guide my tongue. Because I know whatever word I choose is gonna echo, like Mother Teresa said, it's gonna echo in that person's head. Either for the good or for the bad. I wanna be one who sows good words in the people. You know what I'm saying? I never want my children or friends in therapy 30 years from now because I said something crazy. Yeah, my dad said something to me like. Oh, boy.

Because I said something crazy, man. That's crazy. I appreciate you taking the time to just hang out, dude. I appreciate you. And whenever you want to invite me to the gym with you, I would love to join you. Well, first I'm going to show you where I bought this shirt at. Because it's really the shirt. It's the shirt. It's really the shirt right there. It saved me. Underneath. No, no. Yeah, that's why I wear big clothes. There you go. Nobody can see how skinny my eyes really are. That's great, man. It's a good time, man. This drink is dope. It's good. It is. It's fire. Thank you for being a part of Victory Church on the Pando app. We hope this content was a blessing to you. But we want you to know that you're not done yet. Because we want to hear from you. So send us a letter and tell us things like what God is doing in your life. How we can pray for you. Or even content that you would like to see us create in the future. We just want you to know that we see you. You're important to us.

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