Episode 037 || Your Failure is Your Gift

Well, what's up, Pando family? We are so excited to be back with you this week on our Pando exclusive podcast. We are a part of Southeast Christian Church in Louisville, Kentucky. If you are a returning watcher, viewer, listener, welcome back. If you're brand new, thank you for being here. We use this time every week to discuss the sermon, to bring in some special guests, to offer their perspective, all in the hopes that this helps you follow Christ in your day-to-day life. My name is Derek. This is Brandon, part of our online team, but we have a special guest today, Mr. Bill Weedman, part of our recovery ministry. And Bill, how are you doing? I'm doing very well. Thank you, Derek. Yeah. So what does summer look like in the Weedman household? You guys traveling? What does that look like? A lot of fishing. A lot of fishing? Yeah, buddy. We have a fishing boat, and it's one thing my wife and I like to do together. We've been married 47 years, and she does not like the outdoors unless she's in a boat with a line in the water. So we tailors her a lake. We have some lakes here that are fairly close, and we can be on our lake within an hour, so we do a lot of fishing in the summertime. Okay. I like that. Brandon, when's the last time you've been fishing?

I couldn't even tell you. It's been a few years for me, at least. Yeah. I've never been good at it, so even the times I've tried it, I just end up being more frustrated than anything. Yeah. You know what they say, a bad day fishing is bearing a good day working, so. That's fair. Yeah. I remember when I was a kid, we used to fish with like, we would take those like hot dog links out there, and we'd break them up and put the little hot dogs on the hook and throw them out in there, and we'd catch like bluegill and stuff like that in our pond. But Bill, for you, so what are some things that like for someone like us that maybe aren't expert fishermen, what are some things, like what are some beginner tips, like if we were just to go out and fish with something other than hot dogs? I mean, well, man, farm ponds, live bait, and just to catch fish, bluegill's the way to go. Okay. And worms. Okay. You get worms, put them on a hook and throw them in, you're probably not going to miss catching bluegill. Right. Yeah. So just look for some cover and look for trees in the water, bushes in the water, shade in the water, and you're probably going to have some fun. Okay. Yeah. What if I want to catch like a big bass, like am I going out to the lake here, what type of bait am I using?

Man, I tell you, I'm still a fan of live bait. I do a lot of artificial. Okay. But man, live's always better. Okay. And I go with shiner minnows a lot of times for bass, but I do fish a lot of artificial with bass. Depends on the weather. If the water's warmer and they're moving fast, crankbaits are always great. Okay. Depends on the depth they are. So you've got to really do your homework. Okay. Find out where the thermal incline is, where the structure is underneath the water, are they going to be on top water, are they going to be 10 feet down, are they going to be 15 feet down? You've got to know where they're going to be living at that time of year and you want to put a lure or your bait in front of their face there. Okay. Not the easiest thing in the world to do, but once you get used to your lake, you kind of start to figure it out. Okay. So you figured that out? Were you normally good? About halfway, yeah. Okay. What do you like to catch the most? Like what type of fish do you love going after? So recently now for just days out, bluegill, my wife likes that, crappie, that's a really good fish to eat.

If I want to have some fun, I like to go to Lake Cumberland and fish for striper. Okay. It's a fresher saltwater fish, it's introduced into Lake Cumberland is one of the better lakes in Kentucky for striper fishing. It's not an easy fish to catch, but when you put one on the line and you got a 30-pound striper on the line, it's a lot of fun. Yeah. Okay. I like that. Well, Bill, outside of being a fisherman and enjoying doing that, tell us a little bit about yourself, where you come from, and how you ended up doing recovery ministry here at Southeast. Wow. So I'm Louisville, Kentucky, Derby City, home of Muhammad Ali, the greatest. So I've been born and lived in Louisville my entire life. I never thought I would be sitting where I'm at right now. I'm a second career pastor. I've been a pastor for 16 years. I'm 71 years old. So I think I may be close to being one of the oldest pastors here at Southeast. Started out another career, worked for Jefferson County, worked in government. But I've been a member for Southeast for 41 years, didn't really become serious about my faith, and didn't even believe Jesus was a real person until I was 29 years of age, and wasn't baptized until I was 30. And there's a lot of story before that and after that. I wound up retiring, and just so happened we opened a campus in Indiana. I had some executive skills in management and budget, that's what I did, and they needed an executive pastor at the Indiana campus, and I was asked, would you mind being that person? My wife and I prayed about it, and I started there.

I was in Indiana campus for about 10 years, and six years ago, right at six years ago, when Matt had his issue with his addiction, and wound up going to recovery, wound up going to an addiction recovery center in Georgia, came back, started this ministry. I was asked to join this ministry, and to tell you the truth, one thing that I really worry about, I tell people this all the time when I'm speaking in recovery centers, or I'm on panel now, and I'm talking to you, I don't have your background. I've never been incarcerated. That doesn't mean I don't deserve to have been incarcerated, I just never got caught. And I do not have a chemical addiction background, but that doesn't mean I don't have some issues in my life and some things that I have to deal with on a daily basis. The one thing that really got me in the addiction recovery, I thought, wait a minute, your last name is Weed Man. And then I thought, that makes your initials Bill W. And then I thought about it more, I had an administrative assistant in Indiana, her last name was Roach. And I thought, this is God-ordained, man, I have to go to this, I'm fit for this ministry. So I said yes, and quite frankly, it's been the most rewarding job in ministry, it's not even a job. It's one of those things that, man, you just can't believe that you get paid to do what you're doing on a daily basis, and that's just helping people find a way out of what they thought was an inescapable prison, if you will, in physical and in emotional aspects. Yeah. Yeah. Man, that's awesome. That's so cool to see and hear, just how God has taken you through different seasons of life. And so I'm curious, Bill, doing ministry at the Indiana campus versus now, what are some of the big differences in, man, not even just the day-to-day things, but even in how you've had to do ministry now than you did back then, and what's changed, what's the same? Man, I'll say this at the expense of maybe alienating some church people. The biggest change is people in recovery that I see on a weekly basis are real.

They're broken, and they'll tell you they're broken. You see people in church, they're broken, and they'll just fake it and say they're not. They'll come in with their church face, I don't see that. I see people, I see men and women every week who, like, they know their way is broken, and they're trying to find a different way. That's the biggest difference. I think it's the authenticity of worship, and when we have worship in a recovery center, that worship is all in. And I'm not saying it's not in other churches. Sure, I hear what you're saying. I see the same in our Blankenbaker campus and other campuses I go to, I still see that same authenticity. But to be honest with you, across the board, it's not everybody. People come into church and they put their mask on, and I just don't see that. I see the real person, and that's what I love about it. Yeah, there's probably a real... It's probably a healthy thing for all of us to get to a place where it's like, you know, we're kind of done just being fake and done just trying to put on this facade and act like, you know, yeah, I'm fine, you know, things are fine, but really behind the scenes, we're all broken, there's all things that we're going through, and even spiritually, right? Like, Jesus came for the sick, not the healthy. And a lot of times, I think we like saying that we're sick, but we don't really want to believe that. We kind of just want to, you know, like, yeah, we're sick, but, you know, I'm doing better than the other person. And man, the 12 steps. Step one is that you admit that you're powerless over, and of course, in AA, it's you're powerless over alcohol. Yeah.

But anybody can... You fill in whatever it is, everybody's got that thing in their life that they're powerless over, and they have to realize, I cannot control that. I'm not in control of this, and if that's the case, then you need a power higher than yourself for you to get out of that dilemma. Amen. Yeah. Amen. And speaking about transitioning over to the sermon, talking about somebody that had to admit that they did not have power over something, it was Joseph, you know, back in the Old Testament. Yeah. I mean, talk about a guy that was set up for so much success, it seemed like, and yet, where there was his brothers that were selling him into slavery and throwing him in a pit, or, you know, trying to be seduced by Potiphar's wife and being thrown into prison. prison and even being forgotten about there, you know, Joseph had to trust that there was this... There had to have been this plan that was better than what he was seeing at the moment many times. Yeah, yeah. That's so good. One of the things that strikes me about the life of Joseph, even backtrack from what Dave talked about this weekend, before the culmination, when he sees, oh, I see what God was up to. Like all of this pain, all this suffering, man, I'm saving lives now. But what I love is when you go backwards in that, there are two times in Genesis that I see that it literally says, but God was with Joseph. And the first time he talks about it was when he was sold into slavery. He's in Potiphar's house, and you think about it, he just, he's had the daylights beaten out of him by his brothers, they're thrown into a well. It's a wonder that throwing into a dry well didn't kill him outright. Yeah, no kidding.

They didn't lower him in, so they threw him in there. And then they sold him into slavery, but God was with him. And the second time it said God was with him was when he was accused of attempted rape by Potiphar's wife. He winds up in a dungeon prison, and it says God was with him. And what I love, what I like to bring out to people, like when you're in circumstances like that you didn't ask for, and you don't deserve, or maybe you do deserve, when you're in life's really tough spot, that doesn't mean you're being punished by God, and that doesn't mean God isn't with you. He was with Joseph, and even these things still were happening, and he just trusted. God had a different perspective than he did. That's what I love about him. That is so good. Yeah. That is so good. I love that too. So Brandon, why don't you give us a little bit of the context for where we're at kind of in this biblical narrative, and, because we had a guy named Dave, Dave Stone, that was preaching for us this last weekend, our former senior pastor. He'll preach a few times a year back here with us, but Brandon, talk to us a little bit about the passage that Dave brought to us. Yeah, so Dave had a rather lengthy passage. He went 42 through 45 in Genesis, so there's a lot of story there to unpack, so we'll just try to do the CliffsNotes version. But to get there, like Bill, you're right, we do need to go back and think about the story a little bit, because at this point in Joseph's story, it has been 22 years since his brother sold him into slavery. Yeah. It's a long time. We are sitting here on June 13th of 2026, filming this.

Go back 22 years, we're looking at 2004, so you think about how much is different in our world, how much is different in your own life between now and then. So 22 years Joseph has been sitting on this, hasn't seen his brothers, has been in prison, has been out of prison. We're in the second year, I think, of the famine in Egypt that Pharaoh's dream foretold, and so it's after that 22-year period that his brothers come waltzing through the door. And like everywhere else, Canaan has been affected by this famine, and they need some food, and Egypt has it. So they come in, Joseph sees them, and I don't really know what his first reaction is. The Bible doesn't give us a glimpse into his mindset. If it was me, I'd be like, oh, it's these jokers, right? Not these guys. But they come in, they plead for grain. And Joseph, I don't know if he's testing them, if he's messing with them, but he decides he's gonna play a little game with his brothers. So he accuses them of being spies. And it's in this moment that we really get, I think, a glimpse of the brother's psychology there, because Ruben speaks up, Ruben, the brother who was trying to save Joseph when he was in the well, he says, guys, we're in trouble. This guy's accusing us because of what we did to Joseph. We are paying for our sin. And so you get this glimpse that the brothers themselves, after 22 years, can't let that go. They've thought about it and been like, man, what did we do when we did that? At any rate, Joseph accuses them of being spies. They say, no, we're just here for food. They give him money for food. He gives them... He loads them up with grain, but he makes them under... He gives them a condition to say, hey, to prove you guys aren't spies, you have to leave

one of your brothers here. He has to stay here in Egypt with us. And so it doesn't say how they choose. They choose Simeon. Simeon gets to stay behind the rest of the brothers, go home. But he tells them like, hey, if you guys come back, you had a brother left at home. You said your youngest brother was at home, bring him next time, because I want to meet him and I want to know that you guys have this family you say you have. So they go home without Simeon. They see Jacob and they tell Jacob the story. And Jacob's like, well, you guys can't go back because I don't want you to take Benjamin. And again, you see Jacob's haunted by what happened with Joseph is that 22 years later, Benjamin and Joseph were the only two children that Rachel had, who was Jacob's favorite wife. She died in childbirth with Benjamin. And so you see that even after 22 years, Jacob is like, I've lost Rachel, I've lost Joseph, you're not taking Benjamin. He can't go back, because I can't risk it. Well, the woman that Jacob loved. Yes, yeah. He worked 14 years to have her as his wife. So eventually, though, they run out of food and they have to do something. So they decide to go back and Jacob, I get all the names confused. It's like, who am I talking about here? Jacob gets, he says, you can't take Benjamin. And finally, Judah speaks up. Judah, the brother who drove selling Joseph into slavery. Judah speaks up and says, no, let us take Benjamin. I guarantee his safety. And if he's not safe, if I don't bring him back to you, then you can hold me responsible for the rest of my life. So they go back, and they take Benjamin with them. And Joseph, for the first time in 22 years now, sees Benjamin, his full brother. And it's the sight of Benjamin that really gets to him. Like he has to walk out of the room and he's crying and he's weeping. But he continues on, I guess, in this test with his brothers. He has dinner with them. He loads them up with grain. But he has his manager sneak his special silver cup into Benjamin's bag. And so as the brothers are leaving the next day to go back to Canaan, he sends his palace guard

out and says, hey, you guys, the cup is missing from Joseph's table. You guys stole it. You're gonna be under arrest. And they say, no, we don't have it. We don't know what you're talking about. And they open up all the bags and they find it in Benjamin's bag. And so the brothers plead and are like, no, just arrest us all. And Joseph is very insistent, like, no, it should be the brother who took it. And it's at this point that Judah, again, the brother who basically drove them to sell Joseph into slavery, he speaks up and says, no, you can't do this. Our father, he had this son through his beloved wife, and he's already lost the other son. We can't go back and tell him that he lost his son. You can lock me up instead. And that's the moment where Joseph kind of loses it. And he sees... He throws everyone out of the room except the brothers, and then he tells them, no, it's me, Joseph. And of all the scenes in Genesis, I think this is one that would just be the most interesting to see. How did the 12 brothers... How did they react to that in that moment? Is that really... No, it's not Joseph. But they all embrace, they all weep, and Joseph asks them, is it true what you said? Is our father still alive? And so he tells them, go back, go get Jacob, bring him here to Egypt, and you all can settle here now in the years of famine. I have more than enough to provide for you. Come and live in Egypt with me. You know, the interesting thing I think about there, you talk about that, what a scene when he reveals himself. But previously, it says that he'd been using an interpreter, so he was speaking Egyptian, which is why they didn't recognize him. He was clean shaven, Egyptians didn't like the beard and all that, and then he was dressed differently, and it had been 22 years. And my guess is, I'm thinking when he said, it's me, Joseph, I'll bet he shifted into Hebrew. Can you imagine like, everything we've been saying, he's understood, like, whoa. That had to be a scene. It had to have been a scene. And you know, it's one of the most like, maybe countercultural moments, even for people that may have some sort of like a Christian value in their life, because I think for a lot of people, I can say this for myself, is that, man, like when I have people that have wronged me, and I let that bitterness and I let that frustration build and build and build and build, and it's like, oh man, I just, I am just waiting for that shoe to drop in their life or for this thing to go wrong, and I can just, you know, just smile and have joy in their destruction. And yet we see here for Joseph, that wasn't the way he reacted. Right.

Right. So what are the takeaways from that for you guys in terms of just how you see Joseph react? Well, man, you know, I thought the same thing. I like the way Dave packaged it really well, that this was a test, and I believe that same thing. Because had that been me and my 10 brothers that threw me into a well show up, and I'm the second most powerful person in the most powerful government in the known world at that time, they're in trouble. Like, I'm not going to send them back. I'm going to own you. But he didn't do that. And I like the fact, I think he wanted to just find out, are you still the same brothers? Are you going to betray me? And I think that's where they're toying around with Benjamin. Are you going to abandon him like you abandoned me? And when they didn't, that's when he revealed himself. To me, the takeaway is how Joseph miraculously... did not have resentment. For addiction, I know Bill W. says in the big book that resentment is the number one thing. It's the number one offender. It's the number one character defect, and it will eat you up. I've heard it say it's like drinking poison and hoping that the other person dies. And he didn't do that. He didn't have resentment on his brothers. Whatever emotion he did, he didn't act out on it. And I just think that he was looking at it in his best he could, he was beginning to see it from God's perspective and not his perspective. Because when we see things from our perspective, we're wrapped up in our own little world. But if we look at it from a bigger perspective outside, I know it's kind of a corny illustration, but I've heard our perspective in God's kind of like needlepoint or tapestry. If you see the back side of a needlepoint, it's just a bunch of jumbled up thread, and it doesn't make any sense. But if you look at it from the artist's side, you see this panoramic view and this beautiful portrait, and it all makes sense to you. And that's kind of a very small way of trying to wrap your mind around God has this perspective we don't have, and as a matter, are we willing to trust his perspective or are we not? Yeah, that's so good. You know, I think it's just hard to put ourselves in Joseph's shoes in some sense, because I was thinking about this this weekend as I was kind of working on some discussion points for the message, like we really do respond to stories of forgiveness, right? Like we'll read these things or we'll... Like even Joseph's story, it's very emotional, like when you read through and kind of see how the emotion overtakes Joseph. We like stories of forgiveness, we like hearing... Like I'm thinking about that congregation in Charleston who forgave the church shooter there

and reached out. I remember like the Amish community that kind of did the same thing a decade ago or so. Like we really respond to stories of forgiveness, but there's a part of us, right, that we really do love stories of revenge, right? Like we like seeing like, okay, someone gets justice or someone gets even, and we really respond to that. But those sorts of stories, like they always cycle wrong, they always escalate, they always get out of hand. Whereas Joseph is really kind of bringing it in and bring restoration and reconciliation to this whole story, rather than spiraling out of control and revenge. Revenge might have felt good in the moment, I guess, but forgiveness is what ultimately makes an impact. Yeah. I thought what Dave... I thought he did such a good job with the message this past weekend. And I never looked at it... I was going into this story with Joseph's perspective. How did he not have anger against his brother? How did he package that? How did he manage to trust God that much when he's had all of this happen in his life? And Dave really took another turn on it. He also looked at it from the brother's perspective. What if you're the offender? What if that's you that caused this? And he really broke that down. He talked about conviction and repentance. And one thing that stood out to me in the story, they talked about that they were convicted when Judah said, it's because we did this to our brother all those years ago. This is why God's doing this to us. There was conviction. I'm not sure there was repentance there yet, because they leave... Joseph puts their grain and their money back, and they find it on the way back. Yeah. But instead of doing the right thing and taking the money back, they go on home. Yeah. And then they leave Simeon in jail for maybe a year or two while they're eating their grain, and they don't go back until they have to to get more grain. And I'm not sure... Because conviction means, yeah, I know I've done wrong. That's conviction. Repentance is, man, I wanna make that right, no matter what it cost. I wanna make that right. And I'm not sure the brothers were there right away, so that time... But I thought it was really interesting that Dave looked at it from that perspective. What if you're not the victim? What if you're the offender? Sure. And what does that look like? Yeah. Okay, so there's a difference between feeling convicted, feeling like, yeah, I probably did something wrong, or I did do something wrong, and there's a difference between repentance, right? And that word repentance, we probably hear that a lot here at church, but there may be

someone watching this right now, they're like, man, I've heard that all my life, and I don't quite know what that means. How would we explain that kind of biblically, and maybe even just in layman's terms? Yeah, so repentance is just... And Dave brought this out, I've heard this many times, it just means go the other way. Repentance literally means 180 degree turn. You're walking this way, you stop, you turn. You go, that would be the definition of repentance. I've been thinking this way. I've heard of it. Repentance is also a mental shift. Yeah, yeah. I've been living my life this way. I've been thinking this way. I've been thinking of only myself. I've been trying to better just for me. Repentance means I'm gonna do just the opposite. I'm gonna start thinking of other people. I'm gonna shift the way I'm thinking, and instead of going this direction in my thinking, I'm gonna go that direction in my thinking. Yeah, repentance takes on this religious, kind of a churchy feel to it. It does, yeah, yeah, yeah. Repent! But it just simply means I'm gonna quit living my life and thinking my way this way because this way is getting me nowhere. I'm gonna change that and go the other way, and that's simply what repentance means. Well, and yeah, exactly what, I love that, Bill,

because one of the ways that word could be used in the Greek language was as an about face, as in military term, like to turn back around and go the other way, and I think that's, when we think biblically, I mean, thinking about Genesis is the course of what we've read about. Like Genesis 3 is when we mark this moment of humanity is turned away from God and we're going our own way, and repentance is just saying, eh, this way's not working, and I gotta turn back the other way. I think one of the things we so often miss with repentance, and Bill, you did such a great job talking about this, is we so often just think of repentance in terms of a change of action, and it's deeper than that, right? It's that change of mind, it's that change of heart, and certainly, changing your mind and changing your heart is sometimes more difficult than changing your actions, but I think so often where we get ourselves tied up is that when we restrict repentance to only a change of action, we try to make ourselves better just by doing different things, and that never sticks, right? Like if we're just trying to do the right things because we think these are the things we're supposed to do, that's a hard hill to go up, but when we allow that repentance to permeate our hearts

and permeate our minds and say, like, no, I gotta think differently about this, like that's really important. That's what Paul talks about in Romans chapter 12, like you will be transformed by the renewing of your mind, and then you'll be able to know what God's will is, His perfect and pleasing will, that we gotta get into our heads and in our hearts and say, like, no, the way I'm thinking isn't right. Yeah, yeah, I remember about a month ago, Daily Devotion Out of the Redevery. It's a book for people in recovery. It's an AA devotion book. And short devotions, but I really like it. It's for everybody, not for people in addiction. And it talked about doing things because you want to, not because you have to. And the concept, I can't remember the exact verbiage of it, but it was too many times as a Christian, we do the right thing because we feel like that's our duty as a Christian, but really our heart's not in it, we're just doing it because we think we have to, or we think we have to please God. And the one thing that we've learned, that we should learn, is that there's nothing in your past that make God love you any less, and there's nothing you can do in your future to make Him love you any more.

He loves you, He just does. So it talks about doing the right thing, not because you should, but because you want to. And in recovery world, it's like you see the futility, and it's everybody's world. You see the futility of doing things your way, and realize, I don't wanna do that way anymore. And then that's where the real transformation comes, when you're acting out of this because you want to, not because you have to. Yeah, and I think about that too, you know, from how like the posture from which we should live our lives because of what Jesus did for us on the cross. That's what this reminds me of, that Jesus did not die for us so that we would be all of a sudden in even more debt to Him. Like that's not why He died on the cross for us, right? Like He died to pay our sin, right? In full, in total, for all the mistakes we've made, all the things we've done. He died for that, paid for all of that. And because of that, it's not just to like transfer one debt to like a different side of the table, to then say, oh, well now you really owe me, you know? But I do, I can recognize the times in my life, especially when, you know, I'm dealing with different, it may be like a physical type of sense, like, man, I'm trying not to do that,

or trying not to say that, or not do this, or whatever it may be. And it's those times when, man, I'm just trying to do the right thing that I really stumble, you know? But it's the times when I'm reminded myself that, like, man, like when I realize that I am walking each day out of this love for Christ, and this gratefulness of what He's done for me, it makes it a lot easier for me to say no in those moments. Not because it's like, oh, I... know I'm gonna do the right thing and I can check this box. But because it's like, no, man, I love Him, I don't wanna grieve Him, and I know that what He's filling me with right now is greater than something I'm gonna go after. And that's one of the things that I continually try to manage the tension of in my life, because I wish I could say that I always do the right thing, but I don't. But I don't. But I think it's that love of Christ that reminds us and compels us that like, hey, keep going. Like, I forgive you, let's repent and move forward. Let's repent and move forward. You know, but Bill, with that, like you mentioned a little bit, but how do you disciple someone through that in recovery, as they're walking through repentance and trying to figure out the right ways of living and walking through all of that? Man, that's, you know, it's really just a mindset of, well, first thing in recovery, it's a little bit different in that recovery is physical, spiritual, and emotional. The physical side of it, their brain has to recover. If within a chemical addiction, the part where the part of your brain that senses pleasure that does pleasurable things is just firing off red hot, and the upper level cortex of your brain that reasons, that knows right from wrong, begins to go dormant.

And that's from brain studies done on people in chemical addiction, that pleasure side. So you have to give yourself some time and let that heal and let that catch up. That's one thing. The biggest thing, man, I just was in a recovery center last night. There's an 18-year-old young man, man, I would like to say a boy, but to me, he's a kid. He's 18 years old, and God bless him, he's in a recovery center trying to break an addiction to alcohol and drugs. And he was wanting to bolt last week. We saw him last week, and he came up after our service, and he was crying. And he said, I miss my family. I just want to go home. I don't want to be here. And he wants to recover, but he just didn't want to be there. And the man that was with me, Robbie, and I were talking to him, and Robbie, and he's been in penitentiary most of his life. He's been in addiction most of his life, and he's been sober now for going on five years. He's now on staff with us. And he just smiled. He said, son, just sit still. Just be quiet and sit still. We saw him last night again, and I welcomed him. I said hi to him. His name's Isaiah. I said, man, I'm so glad that you're still here. And he said, I almost left yesterday, but I can remember you all saying, just sit still and be quiet. The biggest advice I can give anybody when you're wrestling with these emotions is like, I've got to do something. It's a hurry up. It's emotion.

I've got to get out of here. You want to run from it. You want to flee from it. Just sit still. Just be quiet. The Scripture says, Psalm says, be still and know that I'm God. And man, just be still and be quiet and sit in it for a while and let the Holy Spirit speak to you. I'm confident that He's going to. And ask God, God, what do you want me to do? The biggest mistake I see people, I read this from Richard Rohr, and it's really, to me, is really good stuff, is that when we are in situations we don't want to be in, our tendency is to ask God, why? Why is this happening to me, this medical diagnosis? Why is my spouse leaving me? Why are my kids, why am I in this place? Why is this happening to me? And He said, why is not a really good question? Because you're probably not going to find out from God's perspective. But the better question to ask is, what? And just, God, what is it you want me to learn? I'm here. This is happening. What is it you want me to do? And what is it that you want me to know? How are you trying to grow me? And then just sit still and listen. I love that because, you know, for Joseph, I would imagine it's the same thing. You know, it's the same thing where, you know, I just look over the course of his life, what the scripture tells us.

If I put myself in his shoes, there are many places where I would have just thrown up the white flag and said, you know what? Like God's forgotten me. They're like, this is ridiculous. You know, I've gotten this dream, but then I get sold into slavery. My brothers hate me. You know, who knows what my dad believes, you know? And you know, and then I get kind of this cool job in Egypt, but then this woman accuses me of raping her, and now I'm in prison. I interpret this dream, but then they forget about me. It's like, man, you've got to be kidding me. But then, you know, he gets exalted again to the second highest in Egypt and has an opportunity right here to, I mean, just lay down the hammer on the people that have hurt him. I mean, I don't know what he envisioned his life would be like, but I would imagine this probably wasn't it. And yet God worked all of this together, I think, not only for his good, but ultimately for his family, right? And would keep them all alive and would help them prosper, and it kind of continues the biblical narrative. But this idea of forgiveness here is so strong, and that's why I just get so impressed with Joseph is that, man, I don't know what I would have done in that situation. Yeah. My brother Matt, Matt Robinson, who many of you guys know, he has a phrase that I have adopted, and his phrase is, things are as they're supposed to be. He may have even said this on this podcast. I don't know. He may have told you that. You may have heard that. But what that means is when things are happening, when things are going wrong, things are as they're supposed to be, it's realizing you're not in control, and it's not that things are necessary. God didn't cause that, but you could realize that God can still redeem that and save that and get you through that. And you never know just why circumstances are happening. But I've learned to stop and take a deep breath and say, things are as they're supposed to be, which means God could have changed these circumstances, but for whatever reason, through other people's self-will or for my decisions, other people's decisions that negatively impacted me or the enemy that comes to kill, steal, and destroy, for whatever reason, I'm in this situation right now, and God is electing me

to sit in this situation. Everything is as it should be. And it's a relinquishing of control. God, I'm gonna give you control of this, give you a great example. And it can be really big. It can be really small. So I was going out of town yesterday. I'm gonna speak at a women's facility with 65 women. We're gonna have church there, and I'm gonna speak and talk to them. And I wanted to get some donuts and coffee for them. So I put in an order for donuts and coffee to be picked up seven o'clock in the morning at a local shop here. I'm gonna pick them up. It's over an hour drive. I had to be there by nine. I thought they'd give me time to set up. I go in to pick up my order, which is a big order. They haven't even started on it yet. And there's a couple of young girls at this restaurant or this donut place, and I'm getting seven crafts of coffee. They haven't even started making it yet. And I'm thinking, I'm not gonna make it. And it's like 20 after now, and it's 30 minutes late, and they're still brewing coffee one at a time. And I'm waiting for seven, and they're putting 96 donuts together, and they're taking their time. I'm thinking, yeah, I'm not gonna make it. And my go-to was like, man, I was angry. I was like, you incompetent. My mind was rolling. And then it's like, God said, and so what are you speaking about today? Because I was gonna talk to the ladies about, hey, when things like that happen, just step back and think, hey, things are as they're supposed to be. So I smiled at myself. I walked outside, took a deep breath. I looked up. I said, literally out loud, things are as they're supposed to be. And I walked back in. That gave me the power to leave those. They apologized over themselves. We were so sorry we didn't see this right away. And I was able to smile at them and say, hey, it's okay. They're not gonna not eat the donuts because they're late. We're good. But I was late. Mm-hmm. We came, I spoke, and a lady came up to me after the service. We started the service 20 minutes late. And there were more women in the service than normal. And I found out the reason there were, there was a small group that some women had to attend at nine o'clock. But because we were late, they were able to come in 30 minutes later and hear the message and hear me speak. That's awesome. And one woman came up to me and she said, hey, you were speaking to me. Thank you so much. And I'm so glad you all were late because if you hadn't been late, I wouldn't have been able to hear you speak. And it's just like, I'm not sure God had all that orchestrated there, but it's just weird. Man, I just encourage that one thing that I've learned, when things like that go wrong, just literally think to yourself, hey, things are as they're supposed to be. And just

take a deep breath. Hey, you're not in control. It's happening. Let's look at it from a different perspective. Yeah. And I would imagine there's a lot of people that are watching this right now, listening to this, that are like, you know, my life is probably as it should be. Things are as they should be. And I'm probably reason number one that things are the way that they are because of some decisions that I've made. But I think what we also see is that God has a unique ability to turn our wrong turns, and Kyle has said this before, he has a unique ability to turn our wrong turns in life into a detour, where he continues to get us back on the right track, and there's no one too far gone from being used by God. And so Bill, for you, I'd love to, as we wrap up here, to just give kind of a final word of encouragement for people that are watching this right now, all on those lines. Yeah, so we're on Pando, and I'm talking to men and women that are sitting in a prison, sitting in jail, you're watching this podcast, and you're thinking deep down in your heart, yeah, I know I deserve to be here, I'm here. Here's my encouragement to you, God can still, He still has a plan for your life. That does not disqualify you from ministry. I could tell you time after time, we didn't get into a lot of my life, but 41 years ago, what brought me to a church is that I lived a lifestyle that I won't get into all the details, I had literally broken every commandment there was to break. If you're toggling through those, the murder was I paid for an abortion of my girlfriend when she was 16,

I was 18 back in life. I had just committed adultery on my wife I'm married to now. And that turned out to be the greatest failure in my life became my biggest platform for ministry. Because now I have men coming to me that are struggling with pornography was in my history and struggling with infidelity with their marriage. Robbie, a man who is in our ministry and our connections minister here at church, spent many of his years at Eddyville at the Kentucky State Penitentiary in the state of Kentucky. Felony record, he was recently asked or told he could have his felonies expunged. And he said, I don't want them expunged because they are my greatest asset. And what became his greatest failure in life, now gives him his biggest platform to help other people because they see what God did in his life. And they say, maybe there's a chance God can do that in my life. Matt Robinson, who you all know and love, talks about it frequently. Six years ago on a park bench in second and central as a pastor for this church, passed out drunk, urinated all over himself, threw up all over himself. Guys, that's what qualified him to be in the ministry he's in now that so many of you have written into him and say, man, you have really helped me out. His greatest failure in life became his biggest platform for ministry.

So my encouragement to you is wherever you're sitting right now, that that you think is your greatest failure, God can turn into your greatest asset. Just trust him. Amen. Amen. Well, y'all, we are so grateful that you decided today, no matter which state you're in, no matter where you're at, that you decided to join this conversation with us. And maybe today is the start of what God would have for the rest of your life. That we're reminded that we can be used in no matter what we've done, no matter how far off we are, we're not too far off from God's love because he's offered us forgiveness, right? The Bible's very clear in that. God had every reason to bring judgment down on us, but instead he sent Jesus who would pay that penalty in full for you, for me, for all of us at this table. So Bill, thanks again for being with us. Looking forward to having you again. Brandon, great as always, but until next time, we hope that you guys have a blessed day and we'll see you next time.