Brian Tome Gets Personal: His Biggest Fear, Changing Beliefs & What's Next | Aggressive Life with Brian Tome

"Hey, I heard God tell me I need to say something to you." Most of us immediately clench our butt cheeks. - Don't go because we're expecting them to say, "Well, God told me that you're really doing XYZ wrong." God told me this, "What sick twist of you of God do we have that God first and foremost, hands out punishments and rebukes?" - Yeah, he first and foremost tells us who we are and gives us our identity. We need to be able to hear from other people and we need to use that as one of the ways to discern and understand the voice of God. (upbeat music) - Welcome to the aggressive life. This is a podcast for you to allow your life to be pushed, to stop being a victim, stop hoping it's all gonna work out, stop just assuming that someone's gonna save you from whatever it is that you have one life to live. One, it's your life and you have a responsibility to lead your life and I just wanna help you do that. And the process, I just wanna help you any way I can and we have a variety of people who have been, man, I'm curious about this, I'm curious about that. So I got my good buddy Windex back in the stew with me who's gonna ask me questions. I think it's your question, is that the plan here? - Yeah, well, so we put it out on Instagram like, "Hey, ask BT anything." And so we've got a whole bunch of questions.

You haven't seen these questions. - I have not seen these questions. - But I have. - You have, you've got them all highlighted. - Yeah, we got some stuff that's like some serious stuff, some light stuff, a little bit of everything in between. So we're just gonna pepper you with questions. About to get peppered. - Okay, here we go. - And there is a segment, a special new segment. - Have you ever been pepper sprayed? - No. - Have you? - I, not like in a, I accidentally bear sprayed myself one time. - How was that? - Oh, it was horrible. (laughing) - Horrible. - Ugh. - You wouldn't recommend it. Like just trying it. - You want me to tell you a story? - Yeah, yeah, let's do it. - All right, so it was-- - Hey, here's a question. - Okay, sorry, sorry. - Have you ever been, have you ever bear sprayed yourself? (laughing) - Yes, so a few years ago,

what we were going up to Alaska was a couple's camping over landing trip and we're in the middle of, I don't know what, the middle of nothing. They had this little rest stop there. Not like a rest stop you'd see on 75 or someplace else. Just a gravel thing and they had a little potty on the side and it was very barren. I'm going in and on the railing, going into this little potty thing is an unused can of bear spray. Someone said it there and then they forgot it. And I thought, and it's gone. There's nobody around. I like to come back. And I thought, this is good 'cause I've had bear spray before, but I'm never sure exactly how it's going to work, how it should work. I've read the directions, but like in a hot pressure situation. - You gotta know it. - Right, you gotta know and I'm also thinking, I don't want to waste, I can't bear spray, that I just bought and I'm gonna buy another one. So, wait, somebody else, right, perfect. So, I looked at the instructions. I know enough to know that the wind, you don't want the wind come back in your face, it's bad, bad, bad, bad, bad news. So, I checked the wind, wind was fine,

it was actually blowing out to the parking lot, it was about, oh, I don't know, 30 yards away, 30 yards away probably. Where my friends still were, 40 yards away, so I just did like a, I did like a (imitates swooshing) Oh, that's cool, maybe three short blats. Was like a, (imitates swooshing) three short blats I said, okay, I understand, I could, went in to do my business sitting down in there and all of a sudden I hear, (imitates swooshing) my friends are hacking up lungs from 30 yards away. - Wow. - And then, even though the wind was going to get, I'm inside, I'm on the right side of the wind and I'm inside, I spray it outside and I start hacking. Oh man, brutal. - Didn't make for a mess in the bathroom at all - No, I didn't throw up, it was very uncomfortable. Have you heard about the woman who didn't know what Bear Spray was? - Is that a real thing? - I believe it is. - Did that really happen? Okay, so tell that story. - Well, you should tell that story. - So apparently, a rumor has it that there's a woman who was going into similar kind of thing, like out in the American West somewhere, she got a can of Bear Spray and she thought that Bear Spray worked like bug spray. So she lined up all her kids, her whole family was like,

stand here, well you all get Bear Spray and then she was like (imitates swooshing) just destroyed her kids. I don't know if it's true, I sure hope it is. - Oh, that's great. - All right, let's ask you some questions. Let's start with an easy one. What's the last thing you asked Chad GPT? - I'll allow it. - I'll allow it. I don't remember. Actually, chat GBT doesn't keep, it keeps the history of you, do you pay for it? Or do you just use a free version? - I know, I pay for it, but it's surprising that it doesn't, it doesn't remember stuff very often. You know, it's got to go back and recreate stuff. - Yeah. - Last thing, chat GBT. The literal last thing was I asked it for all the verses in the New Testament that related to dying to self. - Oh, all right. How do you, okay, so using chat GBT for like Bible stuff, you know, 'cause like AI hallucinates and makes up some things like that, how much do you trust it? - Oh, this is really good. This is a really great question. I gotta tell, I've read the Bible who knows a lot of times,

I've got a seminary degree. I've got all the, I've got the full code year of seminary books and best in class languages and a lot, a lot, a lot, a lot, a lot. And I gotta tell you man, I started leaning into chat GBT as if it was a Bible study partner. - Okay. - And I'll just ask it like, wait, what's going on? Wait, what's going on in verse seven of yada, yada, yada, yada. And it comes back with unbelievable things. - Really? - Yeah. And so unbelievable, I might say unbelievable. I'm like, are you just pandering to me? 'Cause you know, I'm pretty conservative as far as the Bible thing is concerned. Are you just like, no, that I'm one of those guys? And I ask it, like, are you just trying to tell me what you know I'll agree with this? No, that's actually what the Bible says. And I just, I'm a large language model who's able to synthesize it also. And then I asked it, I asked it, I've got the most expensive exhaust of Bible software of the kind of the pastor's dream. It's called logos. - Yeah. - And I said, I find that I'm using you more than logos. I just ask, what's the Greek tense of this word here? And you give it to me and you explain it to me.

So I said, why would I not just use you instead of using logos? And I said, no, you don't want to use me that way. - Huh, really? - Yeah, I said, I'm perfect for, I'm perfect for giving you large scale answers in church history and large scale stuff and through the Bible. So I understand it all. But when you want to drill down on something, you want to use logos because that's the books you prefer and their AI draws from those. That's why I have that logo. So I have like 1,200 books on my digital library. And so the AI function that logos has now will actually answer and index against all my library. - Oh, wow. - I find chat GBT unbelievably helpful in everything. - It's amazing what it knows, you know? Like it diagnosed a problem on my truck when like the, suddenly the cruise control went out, like the remote start, all kinds of random stuff. And it was like, it's probably this and it turns out that's exactly what it was. So it's amazing, yeah. - All right, let's ask a question here. What's something you're afraid of that people would probably be surprised to hear? ,this is a new one. It's a new one.

I'm afraid of getting old. - I thought you were gonna say snakes. - No, I got over snakes. - You did? - I did, I got over snakes. - What'd you do? - I forced myself whenever there was a snake or there was a picture or there was a move or a snake. I forced myself to just look at it and watch it. - Exposure therapy and I literally call that? - I don't know what they call it but my theory is that our fear of snakes is one of two reasons. One, it's related to the curse and the garden in Genesis one. There's just something spiritually in us for most of us that snakes freak us out. I think it traces back to Satan in the garden. And number two is it moves more awkwardly than any other creature. It just moves so, if I watch it and get used to how it moves and get used to how it looks, I think it'll get over it and I've gotten over it. - Okay, so back to, you're scared of getting old. - Yeah, I'm not scared of getting older. I'm scared of like late, I'm not raised to that, I'm sick. I am shocking how frequently I think about end of life matters. - Oh, okay. - I just turned on October 1st, 61. I'm gonna be doing crazy shit for a long time. Alaska stuff and hunting and motorcycles.

I'm not backing off of that, but I've got people I know very well who I've seen the end of their life and dementia and what that looks like and, man, I am. I don't plan on that coming anytime soon, but I am, yeah, that's got my mind going down a lot of different rabbit holes on that. It's tough stuff. - Yeah. Do you see, is that a common thing? Amongst, like you have friends of all ages, but amongst the guys that are the same kind of age band. Do you see, is that a common thing that people are starting to ask that question? Or do you think you're early to it or late to it or what? - I think I'm, I think I'm in the media and I think I'm right in the middle. If you're, if you're my age and you waited to have kids until later, then here's the way my life went, right? I had kids fairly early. All my kids are late 20s, 30s, seven grandkids, a couple more in the way. And there's this unbelievably thing, you know, when you got kids, it's just, it's pedal to the metal. Like it's, it's, it's, that's your whole life, it's your whole world. - You think about tomorrow, not 10 decades from now. - Exactly, exactly. And then you become empty nesting and it, initially that can be just really freaky.

Like, oh, wow, life is never going to be the same again. Like the first one that went to college, Leena, I just boo-hooed my eyes out because that was the sign that my life is never going to be the same again. Our family's never going to be the same again. She ever can be around for everything and all that stuff. And then the other ones go to college like I find. I'm over this, I understand how this is. And then there's this sweet, sweet period of, "Hey, I have no responsibility." Or at least no responsibility that I'm not going to get paid for. You know, I don't, I don't have to go to a soccer game. I don't have to save money. I don't have to pay for a wedding. I don't have to, like that's handled. It's like, and life is freaking great. I mean, great, you're in your prime income earning years, and you have like no financial obligations. You still got mortgage and stuff like that. But you know, you're, and then all of a sudden, you've got aging parents. - Mm, yep. - And they, you know, you've got to care for them. - Your parenting on the other end of it. - Your parenting on the other end. You know, when you, when you, when you get passed, some of it's too much of a day, I agree with it. When you get passed, I think, I think the original, the original line came from Gordon McDonald, who was a well-known pastor and preacher and author.

I spent a little time with Gordon. I think he's, I think he's still around, but actually he was on a podcast when he said this, friend of mine carrying new off on his podcast. And he said, once you said something, once you get to a certain age, life is about ongoing momentum, death. Everything is dying. Everything. You're, you're the family structure you had starts to die. You, you're, you're no longer climbing the corporate ladder and you're, you're, your, your business life is dying. You had a certain level of freedom, but no, you don't, because now you've got to, you've got to, you've got to have a hip that's bad and you can't, and that's dying. You, you have aging parents who now they're, they're taking your time. You have to, and that's them. It's like life is the unrelenting process of dying, which those of you who are 25 are like, I'm, I'm stopping this podcast right now. - It sounds terrible. - This is, this sounds terrible, it's depressing, but you do get to a point in life where you understand that. So, yeah, that, that process, I am shocked at, at the things I, I think now that I never would have thought before, based on that. - Yeah, that's good.

Well, you talked about your kids. So, here, here's a question that came in. What's something your kids have taught you about yourself that you probably didn't want to learn? - I think they're, they're regularly trying to teach me this about my selfishness. They love teaching me about that. - They're so good at it, they're so good. - Yeah, I think they, they point that out, you know, could, could watch the grandkids more, could, could do this that. They're very, they're a great pleasure with kids, but they, they'll bring that out from time to time. They only say use those exact words, but, but I get it. And I think that's a good perspective. - Yeah, well, that's great. - Now, if you weren't a pastor, what do you think you'd be doing for a living? - As in, if I, like, I wasn't in the whole spiritual career realm at all. - If you weren't in official ministry or whatever, vocational ministry, whatever. - I would, I would start any business that could, that would make a lot of Jack and I can impact a lot of people. Wouldn't matter. the other day, I'm not going to let ... Some of them might take the idea, but yeah, I would do that because I could control my fate and destiny if one bankrupt would be on me and not the company, and I'd have a way to build into people and build into the kingdom and yeah, that would do that. Yeah, that's good.

I mean, to that point, entrepreneurship and AI and all that kind of stuff, people are building apps that don't know a single line of code. Right. If you're going to build an app, what would it be? Because you could probably do it in about a week, with a chat GBT. If I was going to do it, I think that the latest AI that meta came out with can do this. That's what I understand. I haven't dabbled with that one yet. I would create a life, I would create an app that holistically maximizes your life. We have ... I have GBT to answer questions I need. I've got an assistant that helps me with scheduling and all that kind of stuff. I've got another guy who will give me some coaching on workout stuff. It seems like those things need to come together, like some AI app, then holistically can coach you on all of life. How much did you be seeing your kids? Because your kids here knows my counters who was fitting in the goals of what the counters should be with the kids into my stated goals and the counter and the reading my emails and helping me filter things through my values and here you should put this and now here's what your week should look like. I could reject it, but a whole overarching AI app to help me live my life. That's what I would do. Great. Swinging completely away from computers and all that stuff. Here's a question some people asked about God. How do you actually know when it's God speaking versus your own voice? This is why reading the Bible is important because God never contradicts himself and we know the Bible is the word of God. Even though the Bible comes to us through different persons and different personalities in different communities and time periods, we know it as being God breathed 2 Timothy 3, 16 to 17.

All Scripture is God breathed, profitable for yadda yadda yadda. Those people writing things down, they were inspired in their own personality to write things God was putting on them. If we're not reading the word of God and have any understanding of it, we're not going to be able to discern there's things that God has definitely not going to tell us to do. You know, go over and punch your neighbor. No. God's never going to tell him. Go, you know, kill XYZ, you know, start a smear came about, whatever, because it will never contradict the Scripture. So that's the foundation. That's why the more you read the Bible, the more you understand it, the more confident you can. Not in having the rule book that tells you what to do, but in being able to discern, wait, that's a nudge. Is that God who just gave me that nudge? And when I get that nudge, I know God's spoken when I can say, that's a thought I wouldn't have had on my own. And that's a thought that Jesus would have had, therefore God just told me that and I need to do it. Yeah. That's one of the metrics that I use. What are all the ways you get those nudges? Like I've heard people say, like in a podcast, the dude was saying, like, I'm realizing how much God is speaking to me through different, all different kinds of things. Yeah. I don't know. How do you, how do you hear that? Mark one, Mark one says, it says, Jesus says, the time has come, repent and believe the good

news. The time there is the word, not, there's two couple words for, for time in Greek. One is cronos, which is where we get the word chronological, it's, you know, seconds become minutes, become days, become weeks, become months, becomes years, become, it's that measure time. And the other one is kyros, which is a, a moment, or as you would say, how would you say moment? Moment. A moment. That's how you say it. That's how you say it. Where did you get that? Where did you get it? I don't know. It's the shape of my mouth. That's the way it feels good to say it. And today you're going to go home. I don't know where you get that. I put a little L in there, you know. Yeah, I know. So God is always sending us these gamma rays. They're coming at us. And when we notice like, ooh, something, something just took place here, that's a powerful thing. As our listeners, you know, may know, I've tried to go undergo a job transition. I'm staying at Crossroads, the thing I started. But the bread and butter of necessities of the job just don't turn me on anymore. And I am staying on Crossroads doing some things, but I'm freeing up myself to do some other spiritually entrepreneurial apostolic endeavors and folks on things like camps and I'm still preaching at Crossroads. I'm still involved and engaged, but there's just, you know, so there's a transition,

talking about dying, right? So there's a death. Yeah. Okay. The thing I've done for 30 years, there's a death. And I was led to that through the lenses of that's what we do as far as of Christ. We pick up our Christ, pick up our cross and follow him daily. So as I was thinking about it, and it's not just the now, how do I grieve that death, even though I know God has asked me to do that and I'm doing that, there's still a grieving there. Death is painful. There's also simultaneously that going, how do I set up Kyle Ranson? This idea came up to me out of nowhere, like, bam, wow, okay, there it is. I texted Kyle and said, hey, I just had an idea for the transition. You, you know, you have a couple of seconds after the meeting today, so he said, yeah, yeah, I did. And I ran this idea by him that was, there was how to make this transition better, something I wanted to say about him and he said, yeah, yeah, absolutely. And I had to run that by him, not just because I wanted to concur that God had spoken because I wasn't, I wasn't sitting in the moment thinking, how can I make life easier for Kyle? I was thinking about something else and boom, this thing comes out of nowhere and like, oh, wow, that, that could be good. And I needed to make sure that he was good with that. I need to check off on it. So when God speaks to me, as best I can, I want to check off on it. So when I'm sensing God saying, hey, I've got a new frontier for you, a new place, time for you to leave the responsibilities and comforts of your old job, I didn't just declare them mountain. I mean, I was talking with close friends about that, you know, so read the Bible, if you're rushing on how to hear from her, read the Bible, be attention to the things that move

you that you think would move Jesus. And especially if you don't like it, then you know, God does speak to us. I think it's really sad when someone comes to us and says, hey, I think I heard God tell me, tell me I needed to say something to you. Most of us immediately clench our butt cheeks. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Cause you know, we're expecting them to say, well, God told me that you're really doing X, Y, Z wrong. Right. God told me this. What sick twisters you of God do we have that God first and foremost, hands out punishments and rebukes. Yeah. He first and foremost tells us who we are and gives us our identity. But we need to be able to, we need to be able to hear from other people and we need to use that as one of the ways to discern, understand the voice of God. Yeah. That's great. All right. Here's a, here's another faith question. What's something you believed about God 20 years ago that you don't believe anymore? I've got a number of those things actually. Yeah, I got a number of those things I would call these things born again experiences where something changed and you know, just, just opened my eyes. I do not believe any longer that the Holy spirit is limited in what he does and what he will do through people. I was brought up in a inter tradition where you didn't talk about the Holy spirit very often, you were quite frankly a little afraid of the Holy spirit.

He was a mysterious entity because he is, he is a mysterious entity, but I grew up running up a lot of people. So, and so therefore, you know, they'll get to a possible ship, the office of possible that's wrong. In Ephesians five, there's fivefold office of the, fivefold office of the church. There's people who are apostles. There's people who are prophets, people who are evangelists, people who are shepherds, and people who are teachers. And in seminary, I was thought, well, apostles, they're dead, they're dead. They're gone with the last of the apostles done in the original apostles. The prophets, they say, well, you can be a prophet if I can stone you because that That was, that was used to be the project. - That's what you were talking about, yeah. - Evangelist, maybe, I guess, Billy Graham, they would say, not sure to do with that. And then, Shepherd teacher, that's actually one. That's one and the same. Shepherd teacher. So it's basically the preachers you're saying, the only one that's left is the Shepherd teacher and they're one, and that's me. - Yeah, yeah, yeah. - And, you know, 20 years ago, I just started having more experience while I started seeing things in the Bible that didn't fit my previous thing, that once you go on a path, you also, you limit things like tongues. Tongues don't exist. You limit things like, you start praying,

when you pray for people, you pray these weenie stupid prayers, like, well, God, if it's your will, then heal them, like, 'cause I'm so afraid that I might move in power. Maybe you don't wanna heal people. Maybe this is this person's destiny. They were to have this sort of sickness. Like, everything, you just start getting really passive on all this stuff. And when I had a Holy Spirit re-awaken, I was like, "No, man, I'm a pray for healing." And also, there's an ongoing filling of the Holy Spirit, which used to intimidate me before that. - Mm. - That the whole, you get filled with the Holy Spirit when you come to know Jesus. Yes, you do. I don't believe in a second touch of the Holy Spirit that some people believe in the second touch. Unless we're gonna say, well, there's a baptism of the Holy Spirit, a second touch, a third, fourth, fifth, sixth, seventh. I'm on my 11,000th touch 'cause the Holy Spirit's constantly filling us for the work of ministry. So I would say it was an overhaul of my understanding of what the Bible teaches about the Holy Spirit and man. I'm only thankful for it. My life is turned as a result. - Yeah, like Jesus said, you'll do greater things than me.

And it's like, there's a lot of weird, crazy stuff in the Bible. Why would we get rid of that? - Why would it be gone? - Yes. - Totally, yeah. All right, shifting without a clutch. Let's ask a whole other question. What is the best meal you've ever eaten in the middle of nowhere? - Just 'cause most recent memory, and I think this is right, I would choose last month the moose that we ate after we hauled it up out of the woods. It wasn't a fancy meal. We had a Coleman stove. We had a Pelican case that operators are cutting board. And we took tenderloin and we had salt and pepper. That's all we had for it. We had a little bit of olive oil to put on the pan. And the oftener had dropped off raw cabbage, raw cabbage, tomato, and I think radishes or something like that. And we had no salad dressing. So we cut that up and then we did the tenderloin and we put it on that plate. And I'll tell you what, after eating dehydrated food in Mountain House for 10 days at all your meals to like crunch into a legitimate vegetable

that didn't have any dressing with a crunch into a legitimate vegetable and to actually have real meat that wasn't dehydrated. Oh my gosh, look out Loretta. - And you worked for it. So it tastes a little better, right? - Right, we worked for it and it's the process. Well, did you save all those veggies until you got the moose? - Yeah. - That's its own little level of discipline. - Yeah, we did, we did do that. You know, you asked early about dying to self. I've been thinking about this a lot. You know, hunting is the quote unquote circle of life, which I think it's as a cheesy saying of which Disney would stop making songs about it. - It's a good song, it's a great circle of life. - I don't know, it's just, for every reason, I don't like it. I think why I don't like it is because the way I normally hear that used in culture, it's sort of like the reincarnation we just keep coming back again. It's this like new age spiritual pop spirituality of trying to explain away bad things and I don't like it. But it is true that there is a circle of life and that thing died so that I could have life. I could get nutrients elsewhere but go out through there. Jesus dies on a cross so I can have life. So as I was eating that moose and those veggies, you know those veggies died.

In fact, the worms and frogs and snakes all died for that. You know, when you're a hardcore vegetarian, you're just not making, you're not making sense that you're just against cute looking animals being killed. Grubs and worms and snakes all the girls and rat, you know the rabbits are kind of cute Yeah, yeah killed them all so the things that we eat something died for that Mm-hmm, and that meal was was an example of it. Yeah, that's great. All right. Here's one a Relationship question Is it possible can you completely forgive someone and still decide you don't want them close to you anymore? I Have the next step. I'll rise. I'm a good friend. I'm good for buddy Windex. He was pretty smart as well What do you say to that question? I? Think it's possible. I think you could I think forgiveness is is more about you than the person and whatever it's like you releasing something and not carrying that you know that baggage around and harboring that bitterness like you let go of that and you're free from it there's also people that are just not helpful to be around you know and That's not to say that you could you might never be around him, but like a little bit of space is all right sometimes That's what I think yeah, I mean Yeah, you can totally forgive somebody and still say I just don't need some space Yeah, cuz this interaction this relationship is not healthy right now. Yeah, the Bible says let no root of bitterness grow up so when we have a root of Bitterness it weaves throughout our entire spiritual life and chokes out the things that God wants to do in us and say to us so Forgiveness is for me more than the other person. I mean I right I forgive so that I Feel cleansed so that I am moving on. I'm getting beyond it, which is why Jesus is on the cross And he says forgive them They know not what they do now Would Jesus have come if Jesus happened to live through the cross and it says sorry He lived a little Listen cross

Is he going to be in a? Tight friendship with the people who beat him and spat on him and would he would he have them in his inner circle? I don't I don't think so right if you forgive somebody Who was your CFO of the organization elite and they were they were embezzling money Yeah, you forgive them. Yeah, okay. Would you have them in the same role and risk them with all of your money? Right. No, no, no, no, you wouldn't do if you're if you're spouse cheated on somebody or cheat if you're spouse cheated on you and You and your spouse Happen and get things back together and the person who cheated with your spouse was a friend of yours Are you gonna forgive them? Yes, eventually you need to be able to forgive them. Are they gonna be your friend again? Probably not. Yeah, are they ever are you ever gonna have them around family fun? No, it'd be really stupid You know, so right we can operate forgiveness and be free and love somebody and be okay with them But not gain give them the same access to our life. That's right. There's a huge difference between forgiveness and consequences, right? You know like yeah Here's one this I like this one. This is a no question But thank you for having man camp it changed my husband's life. Oh Always like your nose. That's good. Yeah, it's a good one Here's another kind of man camp related one. You've spent years talking about the five marks of a man Which one of the five is still hardest for you personally? I'd make it a two-parter Which one's hardest and which one's easiest of the five marks of a man? Well right now Right now, I would say the hardest. This is not the way it is is it's been for me through my whole life, but right now for sure the hardest is Vision That's probably been the easiest for me, but right now. It's the hardest because my vision has been Crossroads centric I could always pivot crossroads that vision my vision been around that and You know and it was it's been a really it was a really tough, you know, seven eight months Whatever it was and when you're really having a hard time. You don't have I don't have time to dream anyway You're you're just thinking about how to survive how to process this how to you know how to make sense of everything You're not blue blue sky dreaming thing. So I haven't really been operating with vision

Over the past many months and now now it's starting to come back because now I've got runway and space And I've got stuff removed. So it's starting to come back. I can see it in your eyes right now. You can't absolutely Yeah, but it's interesting. I would have never thought I would never thought that I'd gone through a season where vision would be that We'll be the hardest But that's that's been that's been the hardest. Mm-hmm. I think the one And that probably traces not just my background in team sports, but also because there wasn't a lot of emotional warmth in my family. I got emotional warmth from my team and friends. And that was also one of the difficult things I got in my last year, so tough as like the team that I was a part of, I just was removed from them. So I'm a team guy, when I was, I like motorcycles, but when I was really big, that was my thing. I never wanted to go on trips by myself. A lot of motorcycle guys do, they love that. They have their introvert time, but no, I want to ride with people, I want to be with people and have a team set, and so. And you've been on many of those trips. - Right, and it is the weird thing. Like, we go on these trips, and then you come across a guy doing a similar thing, but he's by himself. I'm like, what is that hair? What a loser, what is he talking about at the campfire on that? Nothing. - You know what I mean? - Oh, it blows me away, anyway. - I'm sorry if you ride motorcycles by yourself. You're not a loser.

- It sounds great, yeah. - It sounds great, it's just not for me. - Good job. Just a couple more questions. What's one thing you're embarrassingly bad at? - Planning. - Oh. - Yeah, planning. My oldest daughter plans everything for the family I just pay for it. (laughing) - That sounds like team player to me, as well as-- - Yeah, yeah, you're right. My assistant, I have assistant and other people on me, 'cause man, I can get a vision, I can have a put together talk. When it comes to organizing an event, or a process, I'm really, really bad at it. So that's why budgets never worked. The only time a budget started working for me is when I earned enough money, I couldn't spend that much money, then it worked. (laughing) - How long did it take you to be self-aware of that? 'Cause that's a huge thing to, it's great to be like, you know what, I'm bad at this, 'cause then you can find-- - Oh, I was age 30, when I realized that. - Okay, gotcha. - That's why the very first full-time position we had at Crossroads was a full-time assistant for me. - Okay. - Which is really counterintuitive.

You want your worship person to be the first full-time person. You want your children's person, a student person, you wanna do something that's gonna get people in the doors. Those staff members, I said, "Well, what we really need "is to have somebody who helps me operate a peak efficiency." Yeah, so I've known her for a while. - Yeah, that's great. Okay, the last question, I mentioned the special segment we have, the phone of friends. So what we're gonna do with all of these is we're gonna connect you to somebody who you care about or who cares about you, and we have Libby, because the biggest question-- - She's pretty special. - Yeah, she's good. I would hope she's pretty high on your list, right? The single biggest question that came through here is, how's Libby doing? So here on the podcast, "Through the Magic of the Internet," we have Libby, how's it going? Can you hear us? - Hi, everybody, yeah, I can hear ya. - How you doin'? - I'm doin' great. - Good, so why don't you answer the question then, instead of me answering for ya? How are you doing? Not just like right now, you're doin' it. How are you doing? - Well, I'm doin' really well, actually.

I'm excited for this new run of yours, and I'm trusting that it's part of your story, and I think God is gonna use you mightily, so I'm excited. - That sounds like she's askin' how you're doing, but Libby, how are you actually doing? - Right, exactly. They're probably curious about, you know, cancer recovery, and, you know, I don't know what else. What else holistically with you? - Well, cancer recovery is good. I feel like I'm back to normal. Getting stronger, and that's kind of all very good and behind me, I feel like. So, I don't know what else more to ask, or more to say about that, but-- - And your hair's gettin' thicker and longer? - Well, it's dark and gray, but yeah, it is what it is. - It did come back thicker. People told us it would come back thicker. I concur it is thicker. You concur? - Yeah, I think so a little bit. - Yeah, you're-- - I don't have any dye in it. - Yeah, yeah, she's still bummed this on it long. That was one of the things like that, but she warriored through the chemo stuff really, really well, but I think it was just a big emotional thing for you. Like, oh gosh, it's gonna be a long time till I look like my preferred self with my hair and everything.

- Well Libby, I'll just say, you look great. The last time I saw you, you had a light in your eyes and it just feels like you're back to you and it's beautiful, it's beautiful to see that. - Well, thank you. I'm actually heading to my car right now for going to a workout. - Just going to work out. All right, hon. - All right, we'll see ya. - All right. - What else do you wanna know? - Oh, that's it. I think that's all we need to know. You're not doing on the, no, I know how you are with cars. No, let alone patent it. - I'm having a FaceTime thing on the car. No, well, that's the other episode for another day. All right, I love you sweetie, we'll talk to you later. - Oh, that's it. That was easy. Okay, bye everybody. - That was a, bye, love ya. - Love ya. - All right, cool. So what do you think of those questions? Good questions? - Very good questions. - Yeah, those people, they all came from,

those are from the internet. - Yeah, yeah, those are good questions. Yeah, how many, what percentage of those ones did you have? - 31%. - 31%. - I'm just gonna get the guess. - Yeah. - Yeah. - Well, thanks for being part of the aggressive life today. Hey, this podcast is about me. It's about you. I answered a lot of questions here. I didn't answer a lot of questions. I wanna hear myself talk. Answer a lot of questions because I wanna help you any way I can help you. So I hope these questions helped you not, not again just to have another mental process. Ooh, I have new knowledge. Again, it's called the aggressive life. So we take that knowledge and we put it into practice and we do it. So do that, live your life. We'll see you next time on the aggressive life. (upbeat music) - Thanks for joining us on this journey toward aggressive living. Find more resources, articles, past episodes, and more at brintome.com. My new book, A 60 Day Devotional Called, The Five Marks for Man, 60 Days to a Powerful Life,

along with all the other books in the Five Marks library, are open right now on Amazon. Be sure to leave us a rating and review wherever you listen to your podcast. Then send an email to [email protected] to get a free aggressive life sticker. Find more on Instagram @brintome. The aggressive life is a production of Crossroads Church Cincinnati, Ohio. (upbeat music) (upbeat music) [BLANK_AUDIO]