Episode 034 || Getting Out of the Pit

What's up, Pando family? We are back for another week of our Pando exclusive podcast. I'm excited to be here with you. If you're a first time listener, watcher, we're glad that you're here. My name is Derek. This is Brandon. He's part of our online team, and we have a guest with us this week. Tombo is part of our SC Recovery team here at Southeast. The thing that I love is that Tombo's not the only one that we've had part of the Recovery team so far. We've had several of his coworkers and teammates that have been on here as well. Each week, y'all, again, if it's your first time joining us, we talk about the sermon from the previous weekend and just try to apply it to our lives, to your lives, to help us all follow Jesus better. But, fellas, how are you doing? Hey, end of the summer, anything coming up that you guys are like, man, I'm really looking forward to doing this the rest of the summer? I know, Brandon, you go a lot to Hurricane Bay here in Louisville with the family. Oh, yeah, that's true. We go swimming a lot, yeah. Swimming a lot. You know, I'm just ready for it to not be... I mean, it's been storming a lot around here, so I am... Yeah, yeah, it has. It has. I am done with storms. Yeah. So every time I'm like, is our roof gonna leak? Like, what's gonna happen? Yeah, it's, you know...

But yeah, we go out swimming a lot. My kids are like probably part sea turtle, so they're always out there wanting to swim. So yeah, I mean, that's good for summer. Family time, summertime. Tombo, what about you, man? Any exciting things coming up? Well, so I just bought my first grill. Okay, there you go. I'm married, and I feel like, you know, I'm gonna have kids here soon. So I'm looking forward to really grilling out, you know, maybe once a weekend or so, kind of just seeing how that goes. I'm also looking forward to buying the dad sandals that go with the grill. Oh, yeah. Because apparently if you don't have those, it's not gonna be top tier. It adds flavor. It's part of the flavor. It's part of the perfect world. Yeah, I understand. They have the cargo shorts, too, with the pockets on the sides. Yeah. Yeah. So those are all of the things that I'm kind of looking forward to this summer. I love that, man. That is awesome. I've never thought about having, you know, grill sandals and sell grill shoes. Certified. Love that. Certified. You gotta not let, like, drip grease on your feet. That's all you gotta watch out for.

But they're perfect. Yeah. Well, I love that. And so, Tombo, I'd love to just jump right into your story. You know, tell us what you do here at Southeast, and then maybe jump into how you got to where we are right now today at this table. So right now at the church, I work as a connections associate in our recovery ministry. And pretty much what I do every day is I go out to different centers across the state, and we do discipleship classes at the centers. We also run Sunday services. Well, we run services at the center, our church service. And I'm particularly not saying Sunday, because what we do is we take our Thursday night service, and then we package it so that it can go out to the centers. And based on how the center is, they might play that on a Friday morning, Friday night, Saturday morning, Sunday morning, most of the time. But so our main goal in the center is just simply to get people closer to Jesus as part of their long-term recovery. And whatever that looks like. Sometimes it's just simply walking with them. Sometimes it's sponsoring them, mentorship, in whatever capacity. But it's just to be there with them as they get closer to Jesus. So that's basically it. That's the baseline of what I do, essentially. How did I get here? Man. You know, that kind of reminds me of when you watch those movies and you see a guy in a very precarious position, and he's like, my name is, and you're wondering how I got here. Exactly. But anyway, this is a good one.

So I was born and raised in Liberia, and my family moved to the States in 2003. And growing up, I was a preacher's kid. So we had to, essentially, I felt like I was forced to serve God. We had church, and then Bible study, Sunday school, prayer meeting, and I was just church, church, church. And my mom was crazy about praying. So we would pray in the morning. Imagine waking up as a kid at 5.30 in the morning, because you had to get ready for the bus, and then saying a 30-minute prayer. I mean, we had worship music and everything, day and night. So when I turned 18 and I went to the University of Louisville, as soon as I got to college, I was like, man, I'm on my own, I'm free, and I get to do what I want. And at that point, that was not serving God, because I felt like I was forced to serve God for so long. When I found this sense of freedom, I just kind of went crazy. In college, and for a long part of my life after that, my motto really was just anything that feels good, I'm going to do. So I never touched my first drink until I got to college and I would see my friends get drunk. And, you know, drunk people are really annoying when you're not one of them. You know? So I just got sick and tired of being the only person who was sober, so I took my first drink. But when I took that first drink, I felt this sense of boldness, like I felt like I could go talk to any girl and I was the man and, you know, and so I really enjoyed that feeling.

But what I didn't know was that I guess I had a sensitivity to alcohol because the problems immediately started in my life when I started drinking. So I took my first drink probably in 2007. And then in 2008, my first DUI happened. We were leaving a party with my then ex-girlfriend and we got pulled over right at the Taco Bell. That's right there by UofL's campus. And at that point, I went to jail for the first time, but it was just an overnight stay. And my buddies came, bailed me out. The very next day, we didn't even tell my parents. And I had to take these DUI classes. So I go to the classes then as this 19-year-old kid, and I see people in there, they're saying, oh, I lost my house and my wife left me. And I'm like, man, these people are screwed up, man. You know, I'm just a college kid, man. I just made a mistake. I'm in the wrong setting. Yeah, sure. Yeah, I don't belong here. Yeah, I don't belong here. So that was the first one. And as time progressed, I graduated college and then in 2012, I had another DUI. You know, this was my second one. And at that point, it was aggravated. Same girl, she and I, we should have told me,

you know, every time I got a DUI, she was somewhere in the picture. Common denominator. Common denominator. Not me, right? Yeah. We're leaving the nightclub once again, partying, and this tree just jumped out into the road and then hit me. So went to jail. I think at that point in time, I spent about a week or so in jail. So as you noticed, the consequences are getting a little bit more stern. And after that time, I lost my license for a year and lost my license for a year, had to take the bus, do all of those things, got my license back. But during this time too, I graduated college with an art degree. Don't do that. Okay. A lot of object lessons here. I've learned a lot of things. Noted. It was just really hard for me to find work. So I was working as a server and I saw this sign that says, actors, models, and talents for Christ. And I was like, you know what?

I should be an actor. Yeah. So I went to Indianapolis, I auditioned, and I went to the convention in Florida and I actually picked up an agent. Oh, wow. And I moved to LA in 2013 after that DUI was over. And I can talk about this now, but what I was doing was, I was trying to satisfy a faulty value system. So ever since I was a young kid, something always told me that if I'm not making an impact, if people are not talking about me, if I'm not being celebrated and I'm not worthy. So in my mind, fame was the way that I was going to get this worthiness because more people would talk about me. I would have movies or TV shows or whatever it was. So I went to LA in 2013. And in 2013, I think that's when I crossed what's called the invisible line. Because previously I would drink and party, but I would be able to stop when I wanted to. But in LA, I was so separated from my family. Everybody is 45 minutes away in LA. Even a Kroger is 45 minutes away in LA. You step out of your house, man, be ready for 45 minutes. Whatever it is you need to do out there. So being separated and isolated. And at the time I lived with this Hispanic family,

I was renting a room from them. We really couldn't communicate. So I started pouring alcohol in my coffee and that became a habit daily. And at that point is when I think I fully crossed over with my addiction. Obviously LA wasn't successful because now I'm drinking too much and I'm showing up to auditions. I'm not really preparing and it just wasn't very successful. And also too, the same girl, she and I were still dating and I wanted to marry her. And her parents said, she's not going to move with you unless you get married. So I moved back to Louisville at the end of 2013. She and I got married in 2014, but at this point the alcohol is ramping up. So once again, and because the alcohol is ramping up, I come back to Louisville, I'm pursuing. Acting it's kind of picking up not really working, but I'm like, well forget the acting thing. It's not working now I want to be a music producer. I Was just always chasing something. I tried acting modeling music production. I'm not tell people I'm just glad back then. We didn't have OnlyFans Try it as well. Yeah, it would have been some very bad. Yeah Yeah Tried it all so I want to be a music producer in 2017 I said I want to go out to Phoenix and and go to school for music production And she was afraid of just all of these rapid changes I was making and my mind said this lady is holding me back from my dream. So I want a divorce So I left her with the house and everything and I jetted out to Phoenix and in Phoenix the alcoholism got really bad

So I couldn't complete the program and while I was out there That was the first time in my life where I contemplated suicide I said maybe it's better if I'm just not here because just Life is not going how I wanted to go at this point. I'm about 30 31 years old I still haven't achieved anything in life and I feel like time is slipping out of my hands So when am I gonna be valuable? When am I gonna be doing something? When am I going to be worthy? and She came out there and we try to reconcile but she came back and long story short. We got divorced in 2018 I moved back to I moved back to Louisville gain in 2018 And once again, my alcohol use is it's getting more and I was in this stage where at first you don't want to quit And then you move to the stage of where you do want to quit But you don't know how and that was the stage that I was in so I would have these little these little Spans of sobriety three months six months, but I would always go back because I just didn't know how to quit Yeah, and in 2020 when kovat happened, you know, I was a server. So I got laid off I'm at home getting $800 a week for doing no work at all. And for an alcoholic that was That was not good. So in September of 20 of 2020 I was supposed to meet this girl downtown Louisville now for those of you wherever you're at just in terms of like Location I lived in Newburgh and Newburgh is about 15 minutes away from downtown Louisville heading north on I-65 And I was supposed to meet her there I got into my car while already drunk and I still had alcohol with me and I started heading Towards downtown Louisville. Well two hours later as I come to I'm down I-65 South Two hours away Yeah, and the only reason why I stopped was my car ran out of gas Of course, that would be the night where I had a full tank of gas, right? So that was my third DUI but by the grace of God ten years I've been in between the two of them So it was considered my second first. Okay, I picked up that DUI and then In January because it was three months. I lost my license for three months. Whatever deal in January

I Got everything back. I was done with the DUI and I said, let me go to Atlanta and celebrate Me being done with my DUI by drinking Crazy as it sounds I get to Atlanta Party, and at that point my my ex and I were divorced, but I was so cool with her family So I said, let me go see her. Let me go see her family in Clarksville Which was about an hour away and I'm and I have to share this story I'm outside the liquor store in Atlanta and it is it's about let's just say 1050 and the liquor store opens at 11 and I'm waiting for them to open so I can get me a bottle of alcohol and I think this is one of the only times in my life where I heard the The audible voice of the Holy Spirit if you go in there, you're gonna get arrested tonight And my older sister called me at that moment and said I'm so proud of you at that point They thought I was still sober. You haven't been drinking. We're excited for you to come back home So we can just celebrate with you I got off the phone with her liquor store opens and I go and get me another bottle and showing up that night. I Lost I got lost. I was supposed to it's like an hour-long trip from Clarksville I think no for I think it's like two hours. But anyway, it was eight hours later and I still wasn't there and It was stormy. I got lost long story short got arrested again And at that point I'm just weeping because I get let out of jail the very next day get me a hotel I have no idea where I'm at and I'm in the hotel crying and I remember I called my ex-wife and she was like God Was writing your story and I remember? we're saying, well, when do we get to the good part? You know, because I'm just sick and tired of all of this stuff. So when that DUI occurred, it was in Tennessee and in Tennessee, their laws are different. It was during COVID as well. So I didn't go to court until September,

just because of COVID, but then I got sentenced to 40 days in jail and doing those 40 days in jail, I'm like, well, you know, it's 40 days, we all know what 40 days means. I'm like, I'm sentenced for 40 days. And as I'm in jail, I encountered The Purpose Driven Life and that's a 40 day book. I'm like, oh man, God has given me all these signs. I start leading Bible study in jail and everything is good. And the day that I leave jail, I didn't know that I had practiced what's called jailhouse religion. When you're in jail, you have nothing else to do. You just cry out to God. As soon as I left, I got in my car, stopped at a liquor store on the way back to Louisville. Oh, and I left the Bible and the book that I had in jail. Thank you, Lord, for taking me out of this pit. I'll see you next time when I need you. And I got back to Louisville and my brother was there and he poured us both a drink, maybe two shots of whatever. And he drank a little bit of his, put it down and went to sleep. And I remember sitting there thinking, how can he do that? How can you start drinking and not finish at least a drink, let alone the bottle? And I finished that bottle and that turned into a three week binge that I was on. When I came out of that,

there were 16 pints of alcohol underneath my bed. And that's when I said, I need help. I walked out of the room in his apartment and I said, I need help. And my mother was, she's a member of our Southwest campus. So she reached out to the church and said, hey, my son is struggling with alcohol. Can we help him? Well, what I didn't know is while I was going through that, Matt Robertson, who I believe has also been on here. Who we've had on here before, right? Yeah, definitely a familiar voice. He had been a campus pastor, relapsed on staff and the church has said, hey, we wanna give you a chance to go to treatment and have paid. So in, I think March of 2021, he had started going to this campus in Springfield where our church where I partnered with a recovery ministry there and he was doing church. Well, when I called in November and said I needed help, he picked up the phone. He said, hey man, I don't know who you are, but if you need help, we'll help you. I stopped drinking on November 11th of 2021. I made the phone call on November 15th and they came and picked me up on November 17th. Wow, yeah. And I arrived at Crown Recovery Center in Springfield. I think it was, I remember it was a Friday and I met Matt on a Sunday.

And at that point, I remember one thing that I had said was like, God, I have been striving all of my life to make a name for myself. I've wanted to bring this value to this world. I wanna be somebody, but the mistake that I'm making is I'm not asking you for your permission or for your guidance. So God, I don't know what you have in store for me, but at this point I'm done trying to figure it out my way. Let's see what you got. Logically it said, I have a 50% chance here with God, but I know I have a 0% chance here. And that's called surrender. That was my place of surrender in November of 2021. And I started doing the same thing I did in jail. I started leading Bible study, but except this time my heart was different. And three months after, so I walked into the program and how long do you wanna stay here? I said, three months. And when the three months was coming up, old time would have said, okay, this is what I wanna do. And funnily enough, at that point, my acting career has started taking up a little bit. So my agent here in Louisville was calling me like, hey, they're wondering where you're at. They got some jobs for you, auditions. But I said, God, let me know what you want me to do. And I took a week and I fasted. And two weeks before I was supposed to leave,

the chaplain at Crown came up to me and said, hey, I've been praying about having somebody be my assistant and the Lord led me to ask you, but you would have to stay. And that to me was just Clare's day. So I stayed two more months. And then after that, once again, Lord, what would you like me to do? Well, there was this pastoral internship position that they were looking to create. Well, same guy walked up to me. and said, hey, would you help me write this program? And you will be the first. So I actually wrote my own job description and that's how God has been working in my life. Every time he's wanted to lead me to the next thing, it comes as an invitation of what it is he wants me to be. Old me always had to strive. I'm going to do this. I'm going to go to school here. I'm gonna do this. As opposed to God's way, my life has been an invitation. So once again, I stayed, did that internship for a long time and then after that, the church approached me and said, hey, we're looking for a connections associate. We're running this recovery ministry. We've seen what you've done here, man. We want to invest in you. We want you to join our team. Once again, I was invited to this and I started this in March of 2003.

So I've been on staff now for about three and a half years. And over the course of this time, the crazy thing is I was looking to be on stages and I find myself preaching on stages. I was looking to be impactful. I find myself being impactful. So everything I desired, God desired to give to me just in the way he wanted it. And it looks completely different, right? I love speaking into microphones. Well, look what I'm doing right now. Mm-hmm, yeah. And all I had to do was just surrender the how to the Lord. Yeah. And yeah, three and a half years later, here I am. I did get divorced, but ever since then, God brought a new lady into my life. So I have been remarried. I have a new home. I lost everything when I was in addiction. My family relationships have been restored. And the thing that I have today is this idea of peace, that no matter what happens, God's in control. Yeah. What a testimony, what a story. And I think that's so, I love that you shared that. And so thank you. I know that'll be so impactful to so many people watching this, but I love that, man, you spent so much of your life

trying to put yourself in a place where you can make your name known. And then God got ahold of you, right? You surrendered and now you're in a place where you're making his name known, which is so cool. And Brandon, as we kind of bring in the topic this week from scripture, I can't help but see it relating to Tomba's story, right? Talking about this idea of pits and finding ourself in these places where sometimes we put ourselves there and sometimes life kind of kicks us down. But Brandon, kind of introduce us to the story, remind us what we were talking about this past week, and then we'll jump into how we can apply all of this to our life. Yeah, so we started a new series this week called Meant for Good. We're gonna be talking through the story of Joseph. And Toma, when you were sharing, you had that phrase, like, when are we gonna get to the good part? And I feel like Joseph would have asked himself that a lot. Oh, no. Yes, yes. No, he had so many times in his life where it was like, what is going on here? I'm sure. And we're gonna be trekking through Joseph's life that is really, I mean, it is a roller coaster of events. Like, it is full of highs and lows and multiple pits as we saw through this past week's message.

So let me just set it up a little bit by backing up some, because we started, in our last series, we talked about Jacob's family. That was just a mess. And it was because Jacob had two wives, Rachel and Leah. And they were sisters. One was the wife that he loved, the other was the wife that he had. And so that led to competition in the home. And one of the ways that competition revealed itself was in having children. That for the longest time, Leah could have kids, but Rachel could not. And so they got into this very kind of twisted, almost game of, well, who can give Jacob more children? And they even would recruit their maidservants into it to be like, well, you can have children by them. And so it eventually kind of ends with Jacob having all these sons and one daughter, Dinah, I think is her name. And what we read in the midst of that is that after Jacob has all these kids, he has one who's favored. And that is because Rachel, after years of infertility, was finally able to have a child. And she gave birth to a son and his name was Joseph. And so he loved Joseph as he's the favorite son of his favorite wife, right? And it gets even more convoluted when you consider that Rachel would go on

to have a second son named Benjamin, but she would die in childbirth. So his favorite wife dies very young in childbirth with Benjamin. Joseph is probably about five or six, I think, about this time. And so I think that that just creates more of that atmosphere for Joseph. Joseph to become more favored. It's like every time he sees her, he's remembering Rachel, he's remembering this wife that he lost. And so it creates this unstable balance in their household where everybody sees that Joseph is the obviously favored child. And that reaches its pinnacle when Jacob gives Joseph what we call the coat of many colors, right? He gives him this very ornate kind of coat that symbolizes not only his status, but the fact that Jacob doesn't view him the way he views his other sons. I'm gonna send my other sons out to do the hard work and you can sit there comfortably in this jacket. This shows that you are something. And so in Genesis 37 is where we picked up. And that narrative begins, I don't quite remember how old Joseph is at this point in time. I think he's probably a teenager, I would imagine. But he has a couple of dreams that kind of set everything on edge. He dreams in one that there are bundles of grain that bow down. I think it's 11 bundles of grain that bow down to this one bundle. And so Joseph is telling his brothers, well, I'm the bundle that everybody's bowing down to. And they're like, okay, buddy, okay. Then the next day, he has another dream where he's talking about the sun, the moon, and 11 stars bowed before me. And again, it's very clear what he's going for there. Like, oh, you guys are all bowing down to me. And even Jacob calls him aside and is like, bro, no, you cannot. What do you think you're doing talking this way about me and your brothers that we're just gonna bow down to you? But then it says in verse 11, while his brothers were jealous of Joseph, his father wondered what these dreams meant. His dad is still kind of like, well, I mean, maybe, I guess, I don't know what's going on here. But then we fast forward a little bit where the brothers are out taking care of the flocks and Jacob sends Joseph out to send his brothers some food, give them some supplies while they're out there. And they see him coming and decided at that juncture, well, let's kill him. Like, this is not, I think Kyle

kind of made the joke, like, this is not like we're gonna give him a noogie or something like that. This is beyond brotherly pranks, right? Yeah, we're gonna kill him. We're gonna murder him. And finally, Reuben is the oldest of all of the kids. It's like, no, let's... Okay, guys, that's probably a little too far. And they decide, well, we're just gonna throw him in this pit. So they throw him in a cistern, they take his coat, and then some Midianite slave traders are coming through and they decide, well, you know what, instead of just killing him, let's sell him into slavery because at least we can make some money off of him. They sell him to some slave traders, they take his coat of many colors, they dip it into blood and they take that back to their father after selling their brother into slavery and say, a wild animal came along and killed Joseph. We couldn't do anything about it, dad. And it's interesting. We'll talk a little bit more about pits here in a minute. But when they go and tell Jacob this news about what has happened to his son, in Genesis 37, 35, it says, his family all tried to comfort him, but he refused to be comforted. I will go to my grave mourning to my son. The Hebrew there is, I will go down to Sheol, which is the place of the dead, which is often visualized as a pit, right? So they have thrown Joseph into a pit and then so by doing that have done the same thing to Jacob, is that Jacob is now in this place of doom and despair, because he's lost his favorite son in the middle of all of this. Yeah, and as we'll learn over the next couple of weeks in sermons, I think we have a guy named Trip Lee who's gonna be preaching this next weekend, which... Yeah, Trip is awesome. Yeah, if y'all haven't heard Trip preach yet, he is awesome. We're actually gonna have him a couple times over the course of this series. But Joseph, man, he ends up in several different pits, over the course of his life. Like, this may be a physical one, but there are gonna be many different types of pits over the course of his life that he falls into. And so Tomba, for you, as you read this story and this idea of pits in our life, how does that connect with you and your faith in walking with Christ? Yeah, so, well, one of the first connections I have with Joseph is, it's actually my middle name. Oh, okay. Yeah, there you go. Yeah. So whenever I read the story of Joseph... And for a long time, I went by Joseph until 2013,

because I felt like Tom Befoya was a better actor name. Okay, yeah. I can see that. Maybe I should go by Tom Cruise or something. Yeah, I like it. But yeah, just in terms of pits, I think like the story of Joseph, there's always multiple pits in our lives. And one of the things that Kyle said on Sunday that really just connected with me is that when you get into that pit, that pit can be the end of your story or it can be the turn of your story. And I think you are the one who get to decide what that's gonna be. This pit could be where you blame yourself. And I love those three examples he gave. It could be the pit of disappointment where, for example, in my life things were not going according to plan. You know, when I was younger, I was a pretty smart kid. So I was actually salutatorian in my school. And because I got a B in PE, I still need to find who that guy is. But I was never told you're not gonna be something. I was always told you're going to be something. And as I got older, that disappointment set in because now I'm not living up to these expectations. And it felt like a pit. That is why I always felt like I needed to strive. And you know how if you're placing bets and it's been a long time you haven't won, you get desperate. You start placing bigger bets. So I'm like, well, it's too late for me to be like an artist and I can't be a banker now. I need to be an actor. So that way, even if it's later in life, it's bigger. And it could be also this idea of self-pity. What he said, where what happens to you, that pit, what happened to you, what your dad did to you. And I see a lot of that in people who struggle with addiction. Meaning like what my dad did to me becomes my identity. Or this accident I was in. I knew a gentleman, he lost his best friend in an accident. And it's, I know, that's tragic. It's been about 15 years and that's the first thing he talks about when you meet him. It has become his identity. And I'm saying, well, at some point you need to let that go. And also to bitterness. Bitterness really creeps in. In my

own life, I was bitter for a very long time. I was bitter at God because I felt like, man, you made me smart and I felt like you gave me these promises but nothing's happening. I'm working as a server and the people I graduated with are coming in as doctors and lawyers and I'm waiting on them. And I'm like, this is not where I should be. So all these pits, we are experiencing them. And if you're listening, I'm pretty sure you have experienced in different types some form of disappointment, some level of self-pity, or some bitterness that you're carrying. And that could be where things end. You could sit in that or you could say, you know what, God? I want to turn this around and I don't know how. Well, that's the place where a real conversation can start. That's a good point. I love that. And so Brandon, for you as you think about this, how does this relate in your life? Where have you found yourself where you're like, man, I can identify with one of these three points. The pit of disappointment, the pit of self-pity, the pit of bitterness. How do you relate to one or all of those? Man, that's tough. I mean, it's tough in the sense, like, I don't know which one I want to talk about. I mean, that's what Kyle did. No, it feels too much. Yeah. You know, as you were talking, Tom, it just made me think about those three pits in a sense of how progressive they are, how they kind of spill into one another, you know? And I think I see that in my own life, that you start with that idea of disappointment. Like, this is not the way I thought it would be. I'm not the way I thought I would be. And then instead of that turning us towards actually improving things, we let it turn it inwards and just being like, oh, why does this always happen to me? Why is it always like this? I never get the opportunity, I never get this, and da-da-da. And then that eventually turns into bitterness. Once we have kind of crystallized that hatred and pity in ourselves, we turn it out towards other people. And it's like, oh, well, now I'm angry at you. I'm mad at you because I perceive that you've taken this from me. It's not just what I've done, it's what you've done. And I think that is so corrosive, it's so toxic, not only to our relationships, it's toxic to our own hearts, right? Kyle quoted that verse from Hebrews, but see no root of bitterness grows up.

And I think I can look back in my life, I can look back at the things that I'm disappointed at and say like, oh, yeah, that has turned into bitterness in a way that has... Instead of growing out of that, it gets you stuck in it, and you're just not able to move on beyond it. Yeah. And I think, unfortunately, for all of us, no matter who we are as humans, like we're just, we are going to fall into pits over the course of our life. And whether it's, again, ones that we put ourselves in, either on accident or on purpose, and we just continually make the wrong decision. or it's that life happens, right? Because so much of life is uncontrollable. So much of life is uncontrollable. And so there is this fact that like, that's one of the ways that we all can relate to Joseph and that, golly, like he... I mean, he's sharing these dreams and there's, like Kyle had mentioned, like maybe like his social awareness of when to share that wasn't the best, right? Like have a little bit more as an EQ talking about making sure we're saying the right things and recognizing who we're around when we're saying them. But at the same time, he's just living his life, right? And then his brothers come along, want to kill him, throw him into the pit and all of a sudden, in the blink of an eye, he ends up in Egypt, you know? And so there's the fact that we all end up in pits. And so when we end up in that pit and we got into it a little bit, what do we do? Like what do we do from there? So it's going back to this idea of end or turn, right? I think the number one thing, and also when we look at turn, it's also just the idea of repentance to turn, right? I always found it funny whenever Jason Kidd got drafted to the Nets way back in the day and it's like, we're going to turn this team around. We're going to do a complete 360. That was memorable. It's like, well, 360, you're going to be right back in the right direction. So we don't want to do a 360. We want to do a 180, right? When it's in terms of turning. And we're going to turn away from where we were headed to where God is trying to take us. And that process can only happen through surrender of saying, okay, this is where I was headed. And I know for a fact that doesn't work. Now, when I turn, I don't know where this is going to go. There's some research that shows that sometimes we are more comfortable with something that doesn't work than us changing and trying an unknown that could work. And that's how it is. It's like, I've been so used to being in control of my life and dictating how things are going to go,

especially as a man, I want to control. I want to manipulate how the outcome is going to be. And it gives me anxiety to surrender and say, okay, I don't know, but let me see what God has. But I think the trick in there is when we spend time in God's word and understand his character, it's easy for us to turn to him because I can, as a kid, I can trust my parents because I trust their character as opposed to a stranger. So when we spend time learning about who God's character is, we may not know what he wants to do, but we know who he is. And that is where that turn can start to happen. Yeah. That's a good word. And it reminds me of something Kyle had mentioned a couple weeks ago, and I think when we were talking about Jacob wrestling with God, and I'll probably butcher the way he had said this, but the point being that a lot of times, like forced surrender, right? It may produce compliance, but being willing to surrender creates transformation. And why do you guys think that is so impactful? Because it's true. Why is that true? I mean, I think I see this in my own kids, right? Is that it's not hard to get them to do the right thing. I can impose them doing the right thing, but there's an element of, like, I just don't want them to do the right thing. I want them to become the right kind of people, right? I want them to grow up and to be adults who treat people kindly, and who treat people well, and who are able to take care of themselves, and who make the right decisions. And as a parent, I can father my children very easily just to do the right thing, but getting them to actually become the right sort of person, that's the real trick. And I think that's kind of what God is doing in us, is like, He could very easily put guardrails on our lives to be like, hey, you guys have to do these things. But what He ultimately wants is not just us running along a set track, right? He wants us to become more and more like Jesus. And in order to do that, He has to allow us to choose that path of surrender on our own. Yeah. Thoughts on that? Yeah. I think for me, it goes back to love. In one of the curriculums that we teach at the Recovery Center, it's called Spiritual Pathways, and we talk about why there is evil in suffering in the world. And basically, the main message is that evil and suffering is in the world because we have choices. You're an idiot, you do stupid things that affect you and I, I'm an idiot, I do stupid things, and if both of us don't have an idiotic deity, we have an enemy. But mostly it's based around choices, and the reason why we have choice

is because we have the choice to love God. So if you take somebody and they're forced to get into a marriage, you will never know if they really love you or not. And because choice has to exist in order for love to be present and really known, God has given us just choice. So it's the same way how if he forces our surrender, we will never really know whether that love really exists. And because he wants our love to come from this place of just choice, I think that's why he wants us to choose this idea of surrender. Now, he still grabs a hold of us in those situations, but we still have the decision in the pit. So the pit is just a holding stop. You can decide to stay in that place and go back to the old ways, or you can decide to turn. And I think that's where that transformation and that peace comes in. Because God wants us to love him, I think that is why he gives us the choice to choose this idea of surrender. That's so good. I loved it about what you said, because they're like, yeah, if there is no choice, then there probably is not love there, right? And that's ultimately what God allows us to choose. He allows us to choose whether we choose him or not. And I think that the longer I follow Christ, the more that I see the difference in my life between the times that I choose him and the times that I don't. And it becomes very clear and black and white where it's like, oh, okay, yeah, so I decided to do things my way, and this is how it ended up. Yeah. It was not great. Right, right. But yet we forget. We do. But then there's also this part of this work becoming, right? The Brandon that you had mentioned, where I do think that God will, if we allow him to use them, he will not waste the pit, right? He will use the pit to help us become the person that he wants us to be. And we're going to see that with Joseph over the next several weeks, that golly, he falls in pits that he... Maybe it's brother's cause that he fell into that happened to him, and yet they're going to prepare him to be one of the most significant people in one of the most significant places, significant empires in all of the world, that will ultimately end up saving his family. Yeah. Well, and let me go back real quick to something Tamba said, because as soon as

you said it, I thought about Joseph. When you were talking about how you had wanted to be on stage, or you wanted to talk to people, or you wanted... But the dream came true in a different way than you thought. Yeah. It's exactly what happens to Joseph. These dreams that he has in Genesis 37, they do come true, but they do not come true the way Joseph would have ever thought they would have. Sure, yeah. I think there is a sense in which, hey, the dreams God has given to us, we can hold on to those, but at the same token, we gotta keep in mind, these may not come about the way I think they're going to. They may not come about in the season that I think they're going to, because Joseph goes through some pretty incredible and terrible seasons before he gets there. Yeah, yeah, right. But eventually, God going with him, God walking beside him, him learning how to trust in God along that way, those things do happen, just not the way he thought. You know what? Can I touch on something real quick? Yeah, go ahead. I wanna just speak to somebody out there. I think sometimes... Okay, I guess my message is let's try to avoid self-induced pits. And what that means is... Now, sometimes we can take Romans 8.28, for God works together for good, all for the people who love him, and all of these things. So what we'll do is, for example, I'll have a guy who'll be like, yeah, man, you know, I went and I robbed that liquor store, and they arrested me, I went to jail, but it was God's plan, because that was where I met this pastor who changed my life. I'm like, no, no, no, no, no. I don't think so. God is still gonna use it. So we need to have this distinction between how I'm causing these pits that God's using, and I'm causing unnecessary suffering. So what I've told in my life is life's gonna happen, but I'm going to do my best to avoid causing self-induced pits. Sickness is gonna happen, but that doesn't mean I get to just eat whatever I want. and live however I want to. I need to do the best to minimize that. A wreck could happen,

but I could do my best to make sure my car is serviced, my brakes are changed. So take action, be intentional about doing what you need to do in your life to avoid these self-induced pits. Yeah, that's a good word. That is a good word. And not only that, but I think that one of the kind of closing things I wanted us to talk about is this idea that word for word in Scripture that wherever he went, the Lord was with Joseph. Right? That wherever he went, the Lord was with Joseph. He was with him when his dad gave him that coat of many colors. He was with him when his brothers pushed him into a pit. He was with him, I'm sure, on whatever... if it's a cart that he's being drug in all across, or if he has a walk in the desert all the way to Egypt, whatever that looked like. He was there at Potiphar's house, he was there as he's being falsely accused, he's forgotten in a prison, and as he's exalted in Egypt, and as he's weeping, overseeing his brothers again, that the Lord was with Joseph. And that's the same for us, right? That when we have given, we have surrendered, and we've done that 180, right? Not 360, we've done that 180, and have given our life to Christ and have allowed Him to take that steering wheel of our life, that the Lord promises to be faithful to be with us. Promises to be faithful to be with us, and that's one of the things that we're going to learn in Joseph's story over the coming weeks. But Tamba, I know you just spoke into the camera, but man, I'd love to give you... we'd love to give you the final word, just for our Pando family, as just a source of encouragement as we head out today. So the source of encouragement actually comes from the sermon. One of the things that Kyle talks about was this idea of good intentions. We want change in our lives. Like I said, I went through the stages of addiction to where I was at a point at first I didn't want to change, then I wanted to change and I didn't know how, but then I wanted to change but I was unable to. But we can have good intentions about wanting to change, but those good intentions are not going to mean anything if they're not followed by you being intentional. So God's presence is always going to be with us, but a huge part of us getting out of the pit is us turning and making intentional or actually executing intentional actions to get out of there. So what do I need to do today to get to where it is that I want to be? And when he talked about that, it was this idea of bitterness. When you're bitter, you can say, why did this happen to me? Or you can say, what now? And that's where we go from this place of just having these good

intentions of what I want to do, because often our brains will reward us of just thinking good intentions. I want to do this. I want to do this. And we feel better because we've said we want to do it, but the action needs to follow that. And that is the word that I have. God is always going to be with you, but there is a part that you have to play. And the way that we say it is, you have to be a part of your own rescue. That is so good. That is so good. Yeah, there is growth in the action. There is growth in the action, not just the intention. Yes. That is so good. Well, Tama, thanks so much for being on here with us, man. I'm sure that we'll have you on here again. Brandon, so good as always. Pando family, we love you. We're so grateful that you not only watch service and worship with us every weekend, but that you join us for this podcast. I think it's every single Thursday this comes out. And know that with Pando, you can download it on your app, but so can your family. This is a great thing for maybe both of you to be able to watch at different times and talk about it, y'all. But we pray that the Lord blesses you this week, and that it's a good week, and you're having a good day. And we'll see you next time.