ALLEN JACKSON can't sing but he sure can preach! Find out why thousands are listening every week.

on this episode of the contagious influences of America podcast he's the pastor of a little Country Church well at least that's uh that's how he refers to it uh let me tell you there's some 15,000 people in his congregation Pastor Allan Jackson is in the house to be completely candid up until that point I thought good people did the right thing and good things happened to them and if you were bad people you did bad things and bad things happened to you you and then my life blew apart and I hadn't been intentionally doing bad [Music] things and welcome to CIA contagious influencers of America the podcast from the producers of keep the faith I'm David Sans and today my guest he is uh he's not the country Superstar but boy I'll tell you this guy is on fire and I can't wait for you to meet him I'm talking about Pastor Allan Jackson he's the pastor senior pastor of the World Outreach Church in Murphysboro Tennessee and uh he encourages some three million people every week through his Allen Jackson Ministries at his daily uh he has a daily devotional he has a podcast he's got a lot of great content on on his uh on his uh website you see him on TV and of course he had best-selling books so he's going to talk to us about uh uh how this little Country Church Grew From this to this but he's also going to talk about his life his childhood uh some of the some of the crazy stories of growing up and I'll tell you he is he is probably one of the best one of the finest storytellers that we've ever had here in the homestead uh Studio Theater and uh I can't wait to share them with you you're going to you're going to Be Inspired you're going to be uh he's got so much passion you're going to be fired up so uh enough enough with the introduction let's just get to my interview with Pastor Allan [Music] Jackson well welcome to the Homestead thank you it's good to be here here we are we finally are here I've been waning to get you over here for some time and I enjoy uh I enjoy your podcast I just uh recently saw the you do with Dave Ramsey and yes yeah Dave has an opinion several and they seem to be working out for him they do I think he may make it in this radio thing if he'll stay with it I I really wanted to have you over here because um we live in trying times and we also live in times where there's a lot of issues as they relate to uh uh being U caregivers and a lot of people are going through a lot of stuff right now especially anxiety and I know you're the uh caregiver so to speak to thousands of people I mean you really you have to Pastor a lot of people with a lot of issues going through a lot of things and a lot of turmoil right now in the country and I really wanted to speak into that because this next year on keep the faith uh one thing that we're really focused in on is um mental health and we're doing a lot of segments on on mental health so I want wanted you hear for that great so before we get into that let's just get to know you a little bit I want to start from from the beginning um where you from and tell me about your your story grown up all right I was born in Kansas City and my father when I was young he decided to go to veterinary school so we moved to Columbia Missouri and I was there for that journey through vet school and there was kind of a pivot point we were methodists we went to church every Sunday we weren't Christians we just went to church every Sunday then you can do that in any church but when my mom my mom gave birth to my youngest brother I have two brothers and the they diagnosed her with a malignancy and said she had 6 months to live the minister came to visit and he didn't believe in Heaven or Hell and so they wanted to do some pretty dramatic surgery the day after her delivery and my dad said no he said I wouldn't do that to an old cow to which my mom said I'm no cow but they flew to Mayo Clinic the next week and on the way she said a little prayer that if there wasn't a god he'd let her know the truth before she died so she could tell her boys whatever that was to be Jewish or Baptist or Catholic or well they got to Mayo Clinic and did a 4-day workup and the doctor came in a room late one night and said Miss Jackson you had cancer we have pictures of it then it's clear from your lab work but we can't find it go home and raise your babies so my dad graduated a couple weeks later and we moved to Miami he was an equin practitioner and he went to work on the Thor bread tracks in South Florida hiia and Gulfstream and my mom's washing dishes a few weeks later and a she heard a voice and methodists don't hear voices that said you ask to know the truth before you died and she said yes I did and he said I'm the way the truth and the life and she didn't know where it was but she thought it was in the Bible so she went and looked till she found John 14 my parents became Christians and it changed the temperature in our home so much that I walked in the kitchen one day a few weeks later and said what's happened to you all this is a different place and they told me and I knelt kitchen floor on 4811 Jackson Street in Hollywood Florida when I was 10 and I became a Christian and they decided they didn't want to raised three boys in that South Florida Urban environment and my dad liked the Tennessee walking horses so we moved to Middle Tennessee and we grew up here and they opened their home for a Bible study and it was like the Island of Misfit Toys Tennessee Middle Tennessee was different in the late 60s than it is today and so we had people from different countries and people that were different cult and um that was really the Genesis of the church that I've served all these years I've been there 40 years so it started with a home Bible study and helping people make a connection with God and see their lives transformed has been the Genesis of that so church ministry to me is more about recognizing we're broken and that God will help us than it is like a Hall of Fame of Faith so I grew up in Middle Tennessee cleaning stalls and living in a barn and it was a good way to grow up and and tell me about your dad tell me about his passion for uh animals well he had he had that since he was a boy and decided to go to vet school and so when we moved to Murphysboro he started his practice out of our home my bedroom was the drug room he took off the dog's leg on the kitchen table I thought everybody grew up that way and he had such a big heart for Animals if somebody didn't want to pay for the treatment he' just take the animals so he'd come home one day with a blind lamb or one day he came home and he had he'd been in a Horse bar and they had caught some baby skunks and he descended them all if he could have one so he came home and we got a new pet that day we had a desentedents gave us really gave us a good foundation and and when did you develop this passion for a Ministry well I did it reluctantly you know my spiritual formation didn't take place in a church I became a Christian in my parents' home I got baptized in the Atlantic Ocean in Fort Lauderdale in front of the Sheron and I didn't see church as a place that contributed to spiritual formation so I was on my way to medical school and really knew the life plan I had I wanted I would have been was willing to be a Christian but I I didn't want to get encumbered with ministers I knew wore long black robes and vestments and I I never remember seeing one smile and I knew if I got that job they'd fire me in two days MH and so God I really had that sense that God was inviting me to Ministry and I I couldn't imagine what that would look like so when I finished my undergraduate work I went to the Philippines for a summer with a group from the University where I had been and I I saw that your faith could make a difference without being a traditional preacher and that gave me enough of an imagination that I started kind of chasing that down and so here I am a few decades days later so so take take me more into that what did you see where you realized you did not have to fit in the Box well what was it it was I knew God had changed my life and that there was an authenticity to that that wasn't about sitting in a church service but I really didn't know how to communicate that or what that would mean and when I went to the Philippines there was a group of us there and they we took us out in the remote part of the Philippines and I'd get up in the morning and go play basketball with the University team and or we'd go visit the hospital or we'd go to the schools and just whatever we could do and by the end of a couple of months of doing that I saw the change starting to happen in those lives that had happened in mine and it wasn't because I was a the way I ex my exegesis of scripture or my hermeneutical Excellence because we were just doing life together and that gave me hope to come back here and and and to imagine Ministry in that context that it wasn't about preaching sermons or um pointing out people's weaknesses or failures that God really did change lives and so I said I'll I'll see what that looks like I had I had I had a problem I I kept saying with my mouth that my faith was the most important thing in my life but I was aware enough to know that my self- practice suggested something else I was trying to figure out how to make much however much money I wanted and the prestige I thought I needed and and I wanted to reconcile those two and so I really what I went to do was try to figure out a way to live in a way that supported what I said and that led me further into Ministry Ministry can be a u well I once uh I once had a pastor who I I'm a preacher kid and I I I sorry I I understand and uh I said you know I I just don't know if uh God wants me behind a Pulpit or not and he goes are you kidding he goes what you're doing is reaching more people because at that time I was in Hollywood and I had produced for example an infomercial called keep the faith a Christian contemporary Christian music compilation but didn't buy any Christian Media only bought lifetime Bravo Discovery and called to keep the faith the Quest for love happiness and purpose this is mid 90s and uh it ended up going double Platinum it ended up done incredibly well but the crazy thing is it aired over 16,000 times and it had an amazing reach because its number one market in the country was not Dallas not Atlanta not ntion it was San Francisco wow because of the way the story was told because we didn't even mention that it was a Christian music collection until I mean I think there was a little disclaimer someplace just so we we wouldn't have attorneys coming after us right about 10 minutes in CU I knew if they got the check they would cash it right right but uh this pastor told me my pastor told me because pulpits can be all kinds of different things and all kinds of different venues that's not what it's about you know Ministry can be defined so many different ways and and I know you spoke to this several times in regards to your uh your church at your church um I'd like for you to speak into that a little bit because I know there are a lot of people out there with big big hearts that want to make a difference that want to be a light but um they just don't know how to do it especially in this environment where everybody's telling you shut up don't speak out you don't have a voice you're going to get you know you're going to get thrown in prison whatever it is you know I mean because we live in a very weird time we do so what words of encouragement would you would you have for somebody right now that says you know what I have a heart for the Lord but I'm I'm scared I'm nervous well I think first of all I'd validate that instinct it's a frightening time and it's not your imagination and it doesn't mean you're cowardly we're there's a tremendous amount of change underway I mean really unprecedented I think In Our Lifetime cataclysmic in both the the speed at which it's taking place and the magnitude at which it's taking place it's disorienting and it's there's worldview shifts underway how we understand interaction with one another is being redefined I mean from the most fundamental layer how we how we define marriage and how we Define our sexuality and how we understand ourselves those are fundamental shifts in the world and how we interact with it and how we interact with one another and it's happening so quickly it's not being done logically or rationally and um so I think people are disoriented by that and some are frightened and I think the choice is how we choose to look at it we can be threatened by it and frightened by it or we can see the negative in it and be angry and resentful and bitter and filled with hate or we can see it as an opportunity you know when there's change of foot There's an opportunity to go to CH to change in a positive way to to strengthen us and to upgrade us and I don't think God has changed you know he told us he doesn't change but the kind of conflict we see is not new to our world our Bible's filled with that story and so for people of Faith to remember that there is such a thing as an objective truth it doesn't make us Wicked to believe there's a right and wrong there's a lot of history and a lot of civilization that that we can point to that underscores that notion and I I have to purposely give energy and thought to finding the good things I keep a good news list I keep a good news list about my own life things that are happening that are good and I keep a good news list about the world things that I see happening in the world that are good cuz most of the messaging that washes over us is negative you know it's the bad things that are happening the heinous things that are happening the problems the consistencies and it's overwhelming so I'll get at my good news list and I'll read it out loud because I need to hear it and be reminded that there's positive things so I'm not frightened I think there's an opportunity for our faith and our worldview to actually gain influence doesn't mean we have we're not going to yield the field but we're not going to be able to behave the way we've behaved for the last several decades so if you're a person who hates change uh your vote's been overruled your life's going to be defined by change anyway so once we've established that let's go we can make a good thing out of this so when you went from a uh basically a home Church where did you start out with 30 people or something yeah fewer than 30 so fewer than 30 handful when you went from 30 to thousands um tell me about a time where you had to deal with uh a uh an obstacle headon that you decided you had to take a certain direction in order to move the ball down the field but it was something that was kind of scary sure well I I think to grow in anything you have to continue to do that I mean I can walk you through a Litany of those places one of the first ones our the church I serve you I have friends who serve these churches and they said we planted a church we went from Z to 7,000 in 2 weeks that was not my story you know we started in a rented space and then we bought a piece of proper and put up a tent when you upgrade to a tent you started pretty close to the bottom of the pile they used to stand up in the middle of service and throw the can of insect repellent back and forth in the tent and and and really for 10 years the church was you know between 50 and 150 people mhm and it it just wasn't easy we didn't have carpet in the building for almost 10 years but we still believed God was real and so I've served a church of almost every size an economic place and and about 10 years into that it wasn't that long about four years into that I had a personal crisis you know I was young I went into Ministry when I was young and I went through a divorce and my life blew apart mhm and to be completely CED up until that point I thought good people did the right thing and good things happened to them and if you were bad people you did bad things and bad things happened to you and then my life blew apart and I hadn't been intentionally doing bad things and just about lost my faith because there weren't a lot of people around me with much grace and it's because I didn't have much I had been self-righteous and condescending and smug and young people tend to that I mean I don't think I was unique but I I certainly had my share of it but I realized that good people doing the best they know still face real crisis and that we need a hand up and in my life I have always wanted there to be a choir of people that were cheering for me m M and if you've ever run a 5k and they line the whole course with people who are cheering people you don't know are cheering for you telling you you're doing well even know your name and they're cheering for you well I always wanted life to be like that and my life's never been like that but God has always provided a voice there's always been someone standing there that would say you can make it and in in at the lowest part of my life there was a voice there and so it was a pivot point for me and I decided that I would spend my life helping broke broken people find out that there was hope for them M irrespective of how they got broken whether they created the circumstances or they were a victim of circumstances you don't have to stay in that broken place and so I began trying to put together a skill set and awareness that was filled with compassion not sloppy you know you if you're doing self-destructive things you're going to get destruction out of that M and and God isn't going to mitigate that you're going to have to walk it out so it's not that everything's okay God isn't you know we're not down to two Commandments in a 1% tithe we still have to honor God but having said that the church is not the Hall of Fame of Faith it's a hospital and so we have to be able to welcome people in all of their Brokenness and then invite them towards a better way and so that was certainly a pivot point for me MH and um it it changed how I perceived people mhm and I used to meet people and you kind of have an intuition when you meet somebody if you're going to be friends and other people you meet and you think it's it's never going to happen mhm and I was guilty of that and the Lord really convicted me that everybody that he put in front of me had value and so I decided that everybody that bumped into me I would treat them as if they were very significant in my journey whether I had a natural affinity for them or not and when I began to treat every person as if they mattered at least internally it changed the whole dynamic for me I found a joy in people they weren't annoying anymore they weren't a pain in the butt mhm they weren't somebody in my way way in traffic you know if somebody's sitting in front of me and I'm trying to vaporize them I just decided Well I'm going to thank God for them today CU maybe I needed a reason to slow down and most of the changes that came came inside of me and which helped me learn not to be as angry at the world around me and so you know and it's easy for me to tell it today it was painful it took years for me to work through it didn't happen overnight it happened layer at a time but if I was willing to continue to say yes to the Lord he was very faithful to continue to walk it forward and and from where I stand today I'm I'm I'm grateful I stayed the course but at the time I'd stand in the field at night and shake my fist at heaven and say if this is how you treat your friends I'm going to pray for your enemies you know I was not always a a willing disciple but God is faithful so we can pick up some other growth points if you want them but that that one was a game Cher for me yeah yeah you bring up broken people let's let's let's let's let's go to that because uh as I as I mentioned before uh mental health is on our radar big time um this it's it's our initiative over the next couple of years and uh we want to uh we want to help folks we want to not only give them hope and encouragement but also tools uh and that's that's that's that's a priority of ours and we live in a very um anxiety field uh fi filled world right now uh people are just uh pulling their hair out and uh just uh just literally losing it anxiety is the number one disorder right now and I'm sure that U you're dealing with that all the time with with folks so let's let's drill down on that okay why do we live in such a time as this it's a really good question and there's many ways I'm I'm obviously there's a lot of ways to answer it from my biblical worldview I come at it most things you know in that way um I'd add what how is it that we can be the Most Blessed people that have ever inhabited the planet we have more we have more opportunities more freedoms more Liberties more food our children have more medicine we have more and yet we have more anxiety so I don't think it can be completely understood in terms of things and I think that's one of the mistakes we all make we think if I could upgrade life would be better if I could upgrade the neighborhood I live in if I could upgrade my spouse if I could upgrade the schools that my kids go to something we we think our circumstances are what make us unhappy and I don't believe that's true um I I think an idea that helped me a lot was Susan nen when he did his Templeton address at Harvard some years ago he had spent decades he said studying Russia and all the things that had happened to the Russian people and he said the best answer he found had come from an old Russian grandmother he said people have forgotten God and I think in all of our muchness we have tended to set God aside and act like he was a little out ofd a little oldfashioned and we didn't really want to be encumbered with that we had the imagination that God wants something from us I don't think God needs anything from me he doesn't need my IQ he certainly my resources I'm the winner in the relationship I'm the one who gets the the benefit but in order to gain the benefits I have to yield to his authority and that's not really reinforced very many places these days in our culture so you have to be willing to be something of a contrarian to choose to be a person of Faith but I I think if we can acknowledge that more isn't going to make me better if it would there would be no suicide amongst the elites or the celebrities or the wealthy and there would be no addiction problems because they would have no needs for substances and and clearly all of those things are as prolific amongst people with a great deal of resources as they are amongst the impoverished so so resources and opportunities and celebrity are not going to bring contentment and yet we all strive for it you know we want our kids to become the next great athlete or to win the lottery or to whatever and I'm not opposed to those things I've had nothing and I've had more and it's better to have something but something doesn't make me more peaceful so so the answer has to be someplace else and so I began to say what it would if there is a God and he could be known what would that mean to know an all powerful all- knowing being that was willing to to make a journey with me in a very personal way and and I have found that to bring tremendous hope to me on a daily basis even if there are voices that rage against it you know even if I say okay I'm going to accept the biblical worldview that God created us in His image and that there is a Creator and well how do you explain that I can't but I can't explain how my iPhone works either but I'm not offended to use it I don't think it makes me intellectually deficient I can't recreate the car I drove over here in today but I climbed in it and turned it on and I didn't feel like I was being intellectually inconsistent and this notion that I have to explain everything about my faith in order to benefit from it I just don't accept it I can see the good it brings and I encourage other people people to walk a similar path and in 60 seconds my interview with Pastor Allan Jackson continues hi I'm Jackie Dorman are you longing for your soulmate and maybe you've tried everything and you feel like nothing's working you've done the online dating the singles Ministry possibly even the dreaded blind dates set up by well-meaning family and friends and you're starting to wonder where are the truly Christian men that want to seek me out for a committed loving relationship without the head game well I'm here to help I want you to join me for my free married and 12 months challenge where I am going to show you all the tools you need to step into the love story that God has already written about you I'm going to teach you about why now is your time why God wants you married even more than you want to be married what are the lies that are holding you back the Law of Attraction that's biblical and what are the tools to stepping into that bride that you want to become so join me at Lov stories.com for my free married and 12 months challenge where we'll get you out of the waiting room and into the love story that you've been dreaming of join me at L stories.com I hope to see you there so was there ever a time to tell me a story where uh anxiety uh overtook you and uh you had to remind yourself that U God is in control oh not just at time I think managing emotional wellbe is like a managing my health you know I like sweets and I don't like a little bit you know I think a half a gallon of ice cream and a package of Oreo d double stuffs is a starter set and I don't feel any I mean so I have to discipline myself because as I have birthdays my metabolism slows down which is terribly unfair when I talk to God that will be near the top of the list so I I have to have some dietary discipline in order to maintain my physical health and it isn't always about my preferences or what sounds good you know if you think broccoli tastes better than ice cream you need a program on Mental Health cuz there's something wrong you know and but I've learned to eat my vegetables because they're better for me well spiritual health isn't unlike that I can't afford to be sloppy with my thoughts or even my emotions you know God created us with emotions they're wonderful things they make our lives better they add texture and color and energy and but they're lousy guides because the weather affects my emotions traffic affects my emotions how you respond to me in an interview affects my emotions well I can't afford to to ride that roller coaster every day so I have to learn what it means to to have some discipline in my thoughts my emotions how I interact with people and that's no easier than it is to discipline my diet and it's not a decision I make one time I have to make that decision every day some days are great and things go my way and some days are awful some days you get bad news and some days people you care about are going through horrible things but I I can't afford to just crash any more than I can afford to completely throw away my physical health on the impulse of a moment and if I can accept that and begin to build some of that discipline and put people in my lives and habits in my life to help me with that it doesn't take the the bad things out of life life's difficult evil exists in the world and if you travel very far under the sun it's going to touch you MH and now we've got to make a decision are we going to capitulate to that are we going to be defined by that moment in time are we going to overcome it and I believe if we determine to live with faith and perseverance we can overcome almost anything I meet people all the time who have the most remarkable stories I mean just incredible stories of overcoming Injustice and unfairness and hatred and violence and and they're not defined by it m and then I meet people who are anchored to something that happened 30 years ago with resentment or bitterness or hatred or and it's unfortunate because we don't have to stay there MH but it does take some intentionality and some effort and some purpose on a daily basis I wish you could take make one decision and be free MH but I don't know how to do that mhm I have to make those decisions every day mhm loneliness we have a new pandemic of loneliness why is that well that's a good question I can give you an opinion you know I think we are probably we have more awareness of people than we've ever had through all of our devices and social media and screens and it's there's so many more ways to communicate but we're also far more aware of how other people live I think loneliness really grows out of dissatisfaction we all have access to people we can talk to people or interact with people or but I think it really grows more out of dissatisfaction we look at the lives other people are having and we think well ours is unsatisfactory and so we feel alone and isolated and we withdraw more so to for me I think to overcome loneliness I have to begin with my discontentment and if I can start to make some peace with where I am then I find that I can interact with people in a way that is not um where I'm not as easily offended that I'm willing to bring something into the relationship with a lower expectation you know I I think the world around us exerts enormous pressure on telling us what we should be or should be becoming and I'm not willing to accept that you know our lives are most of us don't have two and a half children a pet and a white picket fence our lives are some variation of that um our families have struggled so much and the families have been so broken for so long that all of us have been touched by rejection but you know I go back to my Bible Jesus had a borrowed dad I mean Jesus birth story is not perfect Mary had to leave the her hometown because there was so much gossip about her it wasn't a safe place for her to stay you know Joseph stepped in to fill a void but it wasn't his son there's a lot of emotions all the way around that story and and that's our savior well if that's true in the Jesus birth narrative it's almost Christmas time or then I think we've got to recognize that our life stories aren't going to be perfect and we can decide that that M makes us feel broken and alone and isolated or we could imagine that that makes us a part of God's Divine Purpose and I'm going to keep knocking on doors and meeting people until I understand what mine is MHM so we all feel lonely there's a voice in our head that tells us we're alone you can be alone in a crowd you can be alone in the midst of a peer group you can be alone loneliness isn't about the people around you loneliness starts with what's inside you you wrote a book uh called freedom from worry and anxi and anxiety yeah oh gosh wor trying to offload some of [Laughter] mine oh man I worry I I wish I could uh I'll tell you the hope in that Jesus said don't worry and if he said you don't have to worry then you don't have to he wouldn't give us an impossible assignment he addressed something that's real but he said you don't have to live under the weight of that but once I once I understood that then it's almost like a game for me okay how do I how do I get rid of this because anxiety and worry comes to all of us I mean if you're if you're paying any attention to the world we live in worry knocks on your heart every day mhm but I have to decide what I'm going to trust yeah the world's changing it's not going to be like it was a decade Co changed our world having said that I'm looking for something better there's so many good things that have come out of it we've learned to use technology in new ways we have learned we can't trust places we trust so now we listen better and we're better observers so rather than be angry about who we can't trust be grateful for the fact that we were awaken from the Sleep where we used to trust people who weren't trustworthy I'm not worried about that I'm happy that I've been awakened from that condition so I I think it really starts so much with how we choose to understand what's happening we're not special and we're not entitled if you'll say it to yourself every day yeah God loves you but that doesn't make you special he loves everybody M you know I think we're doing something damaging to our kids telling them they're so special and they're so unique and we don't ever want them to be bruised or hurt and I'm not special and I don't deserve something better God loves me but we got to go negotiate the rest mhm mhm and that helps me kind of offload that worry and and your book intentional Faith aligning your life with the heart of God how do you do that well the intentional part is really the the key to that you know most of us people say to me all the time you know I'll do whatever God wants me to do if I just know what he wants me to do or um but I don't really think we practice that and if you don't have the intent it's it's highly improbable it's going to happen I'd like to lose 10 pounds but if I don't have the intent to do it the fact that I'd like for it to happen it's not going to because I'll eat dessert at my next meal completely guilt-free M because I have no intention of engaging in the behaviors to change my condition and I I think most of us don't really have the intent that we we'd be okay if God invaded our world and transformed us and but the reality is we have to have the intent to do it so then the question is what are the behaviors that would help with that and it really isn't that complicated and I I mean I gave a list in the book but you could build your own list and yours wouldn't be more right than mine or more wrong than mine but as you start to do that in a very intentional purposeful way I find then that God meets us and helps us and I think what's absent most of us don't really intend to honor the Lord we don't want to go to hell if you live in America and you got a modest awareness of Christianity I think the bottom line I just don't want to go to hell mhm you know but I want to get as close to hell as I can CU it looks kind of fun mhm I want to raise a lot of hell I want to have friends that do I don't necessarily want to get photographed with them but I mean I think that's really kind of where we have emerged from and we don't really have the intent to honor God cuz that doesn't even look fun to us MH so I think if we could tell the truth about that and then to begin to kind of rethink what that means if there is a God knowing him shouldn't be bad it should be good so how could I get to know him what would that mean for me and so the book is really a list of things that you could you know I intend to honor God in my home if I don't have the intent is not going to happen the hardest place in all the world to be a person of faith is at home cuz they know you they've seen you kick the dog Across The Back Fence M and then they watch you go to church and the kids are looking at you going like what the heck's happening you know you scream at one another all the way to church you pull in the church parking lot you open the door and you smile at the people in the car next to you and your kids need therapy cuz they can't reconcile what they're watching and it isn't complicated but we have to come back and build the intent that I really would like to honor God and then you start to build some simple behaviors to go with that um I I love the way you tell these stories uh I I've read where you still consider yourself a a um um well first of all I I've read where you said you were raised in a barn and you still consider yourself to be a country preacher yeah I did grow up in a barn my job at home was cleaning the Stalls and feeding the horses and watering the horses and um you know I did that long enough that that shaped my so much of my imagination M and the discipline in my life and when I started in the church it was a little church and we were in the the church started in a with a tent in the middle of a cotton field in the country it was stupid if you're going to plant a church you wouldn't have planted it in Murphreesboro and you wouldn't have planted it outside the city limits I mean it we missed all the boxes but I wasn't smart enough to do any better and for 10 years I was the only employee I mowed the grass and cleaned the bathrooms and painted the sanctuary and preached the sermons and I was the if if you called the church and you had a problem I was the option you know if you called and your kids weren't behaving I would make up some discipline ideas if you called and your wasn't nursing I was the option but I wasn't much help on that I could tell them what to do when the calf wouldn't nurse but the new mom didn't want to hear what I had to say about that and so you know the church is larger today but it's still the same function it's about seeing lives changed and now I'm just help put together systems that do that I don't get to do it all myself anymore but you know if you ask me how I think about church it's all those lessons I learned back in the day and it hasn't people are the same and our faith is the same we get pretty you know full of ourselves and on my best day I can't heal a Nat swing I can't heal a broken heart I can't cause depression to go away I can point people towards some things that I believe will make a big difference but I know where the change comes from and it isn't me and as long as I keep that at the center I do okay um there's some important things in my life and most of them aren't me I'm I serve at the pleasure the king and I'm happy to serve his people and when the culture around me is changing we may have to change the delivery system a little bit the truth never changes but the containers in which we deliver the truth does you know my my nephew's wife is delivering a baby today and it's going to take its nourishment either from Mom or from a bottle but if you track that child for the next 3 4 years how it consumes its nourishment is going to change it'll start in a bottle it'll get a sippy cup they'll grab graduate to where they can hold their own cup you're still giving them nourishment well the truth doesn't change but the containers we receive it in does but we get really heated up about our containers the architecture of my church is better than yours or the style of My Worship is better or the translation of my Bible we got to get over ourselves a little bit and come back to helping people find Hope and Truth in life what was the message what was the sermon looking back over your career that um changed everything for you mhm I think the center of it was I finally um began to understand the cross you know it's the symbol of Christianity but for a first century world it was a symbol for torture Romans would come into a new Village and if they wanted to assert their Authority they'd crucify the first 10 men they met no reason just just to assert that there's a new sheriff in town and so the symbol of the Cross was not a comfortable that's why the fish was the symbol of Christianity in those early years but when I understood what happened on the cross that through that brutal ugly defeat which is really difficult I mean the the sinless perfect obedient Son of God died a horrific death beaten beyond recognition tortured to death in public naked mocked by his enemies and other than for the people of faith God never made any attempt to revisit that that's the image of Jesus then he raises him to life again so he exhausted the curse that I deserve for all my godlessness and rebellion and all the junk in me so that I could have the blessings that were due his perfect obedience when I understood the essence of that exchange then figuring out how to honor God with my life did not seem burden so many any longer because the benefits to me far out way I don't want to pay the price for my stupidness I paid enough stupid tax it's not fun and if there's some help in the accounting of that I'm all in for the help and once that that that exchange at the cross began to grow in me the rest of the Bible started to make a lot of sense you know that and I decided Genesis one1 was true in the beginning God created the heavens and the Earth if you'll believe that the rest of the book will open up if if you reject that the rest of the book seems kind of foolish mhm if there is a God and he's a Creator you should listen if there's not a God and he's not a Creator it's a lie don't read any further you don't have to read all the way through Leviticus to get to a decision point and um that doesn't violate my intellect I still learn and study and I like school I mean but I'm willing to believe there's a God so but that notion of the Cross changed everything for me and it helps me help people because it doesn't matter who we've been or how bad we've been or how broken we've been there's a price paid to help you to a better place or how stubborn or stupid or how gross the evil that has touched you there's a power that's available to deliver you from that you know the notion we use the language that God is Almighty it means he's all power there's nothing more powerful than him not economic power not political power not military power those are all real I'm not denying that but there's a greater power available to us so we're not trapped or stuck know I'm not a Christian because I like to sit in church and have Services because I really don't like church that much but I love having a relationship with an almighty God that changes lives that's worth pursuing from the beginning until today I'm still on a journey so let's go it's a lot of fun your book uh big trouble ahead a real plan for flourishing in a time of fear in deception uh wow so tell me the big plan on how to how how to how to how to meet that fear head on and uh deal with that deception that's out there because there's a lot of it well I put that together really with the Community of Faith where I live trying to walk out of Co you know we hear about a virus from Wuhan one day and they tell us millions of us are going to die and I didn't take it too seriously because we'd heard about the bird flew and the swine flew and I thought oh bother you know they're trying to get my trying to get their ratings up on the news mhm mhm and so we had a meeting in the office and they said are we having church this weekend I said heck yes they're playing basketball in Nashville they were having the SEC tournament and I said if they're playing basketball we're having Church well the next morning I got a call from somebody in metro PD that was a friend and they said we've closed Bridgestone and they're loading the buses and sending the teams home so I had a little Humble Pie and started to call some friends in the medical community and we live streamed church that weekend and we did it for 6 weeks and by the end of 6 weeks the The Narrative wasn't holding together anymore my background is in science I'm happy to follow the science but science doesn't change at the state line science isn't different in New Jersey and Tennessee and it became pretty clear we weren't following the science I wasn't sure what was happening so we started having church outside I live in the Nashville area and nobody was working all the artists were home so we put up an outdoor stage and called some friends and got a video truck and started calling our artist friends and we would do worship and have a little church and have a concert and we would put our chairs on the white lines in the parking lot so we could stay 10 ft apart right nobody was getting sick and we did that for months but it left me with a lot of questions CU now I didn't trust the CDC anymore and I didn't trust the FBI anymore and I didn't trust the justice department anymore and I didn't trust a lot of pulpits anymore and that's disorienting and so we begin to say well how do what what do we do how do we find Hope in this MH and that's really where the book came from is that when when trust is called into question really when you're the things that you put your trust in you realize weren't trustworthy and my breakthrough was it didn't happen in 2020 Co didn't make that happen it' been going on a long time they've been mutilating children at Vanderbilt minor children mutilating them at Vanderbilt long before 2020 I just didn't know and Co pulled the curtain back on a lot of things so I took it as a gift I had been asleep you know when you're asleep you're unconcerned uninvolved and it doesn't bother you you're okay it's not evil it's a natural part of life but it's not a productive part of life and I had been asleep so I feel like God gave us a gift he woke us up and he said you're trusting something that's not trustworthy so I began to reconstruct where I put my trust how I listen to the news where I take guidance from and it's been a gift in my life so rather than feel like you're a victim God woke us up from a place where we were incredibly vulnerable and put our feet on a path where we can accept responsibility for our well-being that's a gif mhh so I think there's far more disruptions in front of us I did an interview with Robert Kennedy a few weeks ago and there's a lot of things he and I would not agree on but he understands policy in a crazy way and he said a government will use any crisis to usurp Authority that's not theirs any government and once they usurp that Authority they will never give it back again he said Co was not a legitimate reason to overstep the Constitution but we did MH and he said once they've done that they'll reassert that they'll never give it back they just wait for the next excuse to get their new power out so I think we will see more disruptions not necessarily a virus from uhan but something else and I think God's just begun to help us get prepared for how to deal with it so that book was really the story of how we walk through that as a community of faith and how we help families find a way and navigate it you know the schools we weren't having school and we have a summer camp we used to do we decided to do the camp we just did it Outdoors we took some health precautions on how we prepared food we had several hundred kids and counselors and nobody got sick so we went and told the story to the schools and the schools started and I mean we were waiting for permissions from people who didn't really intend to make our lives better they just wanted to hold their permissions mhm mm and that's a I don't want to live that way mhm so again we don't have to live filled with fear and filled with anxiety and filled with Dread angry cuz people aren't being whatever let's go make life better we can do that together that's good um I we could go on forever and ever because uh we because I have a big mouth no we should have done this several times over the years but uh I just got to ask you the big question and that is um uh do people come to your Church expecting you to sing and they are very disappointed I tell you what's worse is when I make reservations around Middle Tennessee and I give them my name and I show up and they are it is not a pleasant thing that happens cuz they don't want to give me what they'd reserved for the other Allen Jackson So now I will not sing but I have disappointed a lot of people well thank you for stopping by this has been fun I really appreciate you and appreciate what you do and appreciate your message in your church well thank you I appreciate your note of hope that the effort and energy you spend in helping encourage people and give them a point of hope there's too little of that in our world and I'm very grateful for what you're doing it's an honor for me to be a part today thank you very [Music] [Applause] much and a big thank you Pastor Allan folks I encourage you to check out his website at alanjackson.com And subscribe to his Daily Devotional call today with Allan Jackson and so much more and do check out our website at contagious influencers decom I think we we are uh uh we have something like what almost 240 podcasts for you to watch or listen to there and uh uh you know uh it's been a great it's been a great ride and I just can't believe all all the greats that we've had in here and visiting with us so I want to share that with you so go to contagious influencers decom maybe when you're out walking uh it's a great time to listen to the podcast uh because uh that we truly do try to make them contagious so do share them with a friend uh please do rate and review us and give us five stars also uh we have a a wonderful new platform that you're going to want toh take a look at because there is all kinds of great content that will uh inspire you regardless of what you may be going through right now we've got something for you at keepthefaith decom that's right keepthefaith decom you're going to find all kinds of great video content audio content music storytelling inspiration uh you know we try to give you tools for your toolbox so do check all of that out at keep thefa.com I'm David Sams and I'm uh this week I just like to encourage you to go out there and live that life In Living Color because it sure is a heck of a lot more interesting than living in black and white see you next [Music] time

Channel: KeepTheFaith.com

Views: 26,863

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Id: ppb0J0SYZYM

Length: 51min 22sec (3082 seconds)

Published: Thu Apr 11 2024