Brian Sumner Testimony | Pro Skateboarder, Marriage, Evangelist, & Author | Part 1 ~ Ep. 29

[Music] hey guys thanks so much for joining us on another episode of calvary conversations my name is mariah and like always i'm with my amazing podcast host and dad pastor craig roders how you doing so today we're very very excited because we have brian sumner with us he is a professional skater or he was but he still skates and he has an amazing testimony which we'll be going over today he has a book called never fails which we encourage everyone to go by and he also has a podcast called the foolishness podcast he has been on um the i am second the white chair films and he's also been on tbn and 700 club what else ryan reese amazing thing so he's awesome he's with us today this was such a great conversation that we put it into a one and two part so next week you can watch our part two so now here is brian sumner brian thanks so much for joining us today how you guys doing well awesome i'm stoked um i just got through a podcast i'm sitting in this chair i'm sweating up a storm but not quite like you guys in arizona so thanks for joining us yeah it's good yes and so we just want to let everyone know that we are so thankful to obviously have brian on but this is a conversation this is calvary conversation so he'll be sharing his testimony we're gonna probably jump in and say some things so don't get mad if we interrupt him you know he gets it he's also a podcast host so we encourage everyone to go check out the foolishness podcast go to briansumner.net i think you can find it there so we'll be talking about his testimony and then we'll be talking about his book never fails so stay tuned for that so before we start um dad do you want to pray for us okay yep ma'am father god just thank you so much for brian and just for his life i thank you lord that even though i don't know him i've watched him on podcast but lord i just thank you for the radical transformation i was just talking sunday about you jesus saying we must be born again to nicodemus and how i i loved it one commentator said that we a lot of times want reformation to reshape our dad bods but you do recreation you regeneration you change us uh as it says in galatians 4 19 that christ might be forming you that metamorpho metamorphosis where you ch actually change us the old man's gone behold all things are new and so god i just thank you for that in brian's life i thank you for the radical testimony thank you you took him out he snatched him out of the miry pit even though he was successful as he would say probably totally empty he had everything but had nothing because he didn't know you the author of life yet and so god thank you that you are so radical that you did that you just gave him a hope and a future and i just pray that you would bless this podcast we pray that you'd use it we pray that you'd speak to people and as he i believe struggle with suicide i struggle with suicide there's a suicide is almost higher than covid and we just pray that you will speak life through him and speak life through his podcast and you would encourage people like himself or like how i was that didn't know the truth that had everything outwardly but inside were dying inside and so lord i just asked we just commit this we dedicate to you bless it lord in jesus mighty name amen amen all right amen for those who don't know you we would like to share first we'll start with where were you born i was born in liverpool england which is why all you yanks keep telling me yeah home of the beatles you know um so yeah that's awesome 41 moons whatever you'd say 41 years ago 41 years ago they don't fight in liverpool right that's all they do after new york i know i i know it's like old school so were you raised up in the church were you do you have a christian family what did that look like growing up honestly and sometimes people will word stuff to better suit their testimony but if i am just like what did i know about church i mean these beautiful red brick buildings or this big gray you know building and i just remember one of my parents said they were catholic and once that they were christian but that never meant anything and i joke but i never in all the years in england i never met one christian i knew a mormon i knew a bunch of muslims a jehovah witness just one they would come by the house hang out with my mom they were great people but i never knew anything but i lived five doors down from a humongous catholic church where we went i mean every day you know the football and the skateboards playing with your toys you've seen the priest i never went to one service so to me i was as english as you can get i i believe in evolution you know we call it evolution there and when i say it people think i'm trying to say the word evil because it is but yeah yeah believe in evolution and just believe we're basically a primordial soup you know who are we we don't know it's crazy about england how i don't know i might have stat a little wrong but in like the early 1900s england was sending out 75 percent of the world's missionaries and now it's less than three to four percent church i mean it's like there's mosque right churches are mosques now yeah bookstores strip clubs i mean it's crazy when you went to england it's like you can't believe in and you really see how yeah the the the progressives are trying to make america like that and you know i don't know about you i i know but but we gotta fight to not let america become england because it it's we could get that ghost town thing too and assume like oh we're a christian nation it can easily be forgotten yeah all you know about church growing up is you know there's a friar took guy in robin hood and i'm not i'm not saying this to be funny friar took was a guy who worked in the church and apparently you won a booze um i never heard of charles spurgeon you know wesley edwards all these guys never had about this reformation or this great awakening or anything it's just it's the church and there's someone called mary and i guess god and they want your money and some bad things about children and that was the extent yeah until i was you know i mean living over here so yeah it's crazy it's crazy how darwood is in westminster abbey he's buried in the church here's one of the guys the most destructive force ii christianity and he's buried in the church i'm thinking wow no one even knows where his grave is i mean one of the greatest preachers from england j.c reil is from liverpool i didn't hear about it i was like 35. so it's it's sad but you know god knows what he's doing i mean um you know the nietzsche influence in europe and i wouldn't even view it as progressives back then i just was like oh this is just culture this is what it's like but now to your point just to catch we're seeing this pushed even more into america where you know calvary chapel brian broderson the crew is doing a great job of sending the church as far as god's people back into england to minister so hopefully they wake up because where's hope there yeah it's not in the government or not that yeah and then so growing up um i've heard a little bit of your testimony of how you didn't get into as bad of things because you started skating so we want to hear about when you started skateboarding you know and to picture going to secondary school you're 11 12 13. and i don't know why you know your dad right here you just mentioned to me your influence is bruce lee i grew up loving bruce lee you know doing the working out and push-ups and listening to all that music doing karate so i never seen bruce really with the exception of a few films you know drinking or getting high on drugs or doing whatever so for me 11 12 13 my friends in school starting you know take acid go to raves do it i watch police academy four you know which you guys will remember the skateboarding in it i thought it was all a stunt i didn't know it was real i thought it was a hollywood we had those toy skateboards but not the real skateboards with steel wheels we hit a rock yeah they're stealing clay i've only heard of them i've seen them pretty cool that's real skateboard that was before urethane yeah but that was the thing so i got um i was on vacation in new jersey at 13 literally my 13th birthday first time in america you know i i'm a cornball for stuff like i go to 7-eleven i'm watching ninja turtles i'm watching the simpsons i'm loving wwf i get barbecue lace caramelo you know big gulp and then i go out to the surf shop my sister's with me a guy comes by on a skateboard i've seen it in police academy i've done a few tricks on the plastic skateboards why don't i get you this for your birthday go in the shop pick up a skateboard and back home in two weeks and that was all i did and it was like skating was gonna keep me out of the drugs and the craziness that my friends were into in school and i just i didn't really care for soccer you know football too much and then skating just became my life from 13 on so that's cool yeah yeah it's so weird skating when i was a kid i got i remember i don't know if you've heard of fiber flex board fiberflex and i had the benson trucks and the power paw wheels and i remember attacking that's just so weird that's how old i am 58 but it's like i would tack and people were like what is tacking man it's like that was the cool thing we could go back and forth used to do the you know flip around used to through this 360s i tried that at 47 as a pastor i was on a long board i did three 360s and the kids were so impressed so i said do it again and i flipped her out and boom hit my elbow i go okay like clint eastwood a man's got to know his limitations last time yeah skateboarding yeah you can't do all things through christ once you get to like our age you know we're like exactly yeah i'm not as limber as i used to be so yeah you probably got some elbow and wrist things right from all the skateboarding i was in the doctor yesterday with my knee i'm all good now but yeah so so that started at yeah 13 and um no god and skateboarding that was direct to my path and that was about as much as i knew wow did you just you picked it up right away i mean you just were a natural kind of whether it's that or i was compulsive it's just i couldn't put it down so you know once you see someone ollie which is like jumping like i'm basically levitating the board that was it i was hooked and so i would skate two to six hours a day i was 10 minutes from the city so i'd be in there all time you know every day and the next two years i just that's it progressed and got noticed i've been in some videos and some contests and skating was beginning to grow around the world so it was fortunate yeah so then you actually joined birdhouse with tony hawk and got involved that so how did you get involved with that and is that how you ended up coming to america yeah you know there's a guy from liverpool who's a good friend of mine and still talk to him this day one of the most famous skaters ever jeff rowley he was a good four or five years ahead of me writing for flip he's moved to america at the time he's saying well who's back in england oh well there's this booktube kid brian let's get him some product so i get some boards come to america go back and while i was home some of the sponsors here said man you know this kid's doing really well he's killing it he shot some photos and they decided tony's company let's go put four amateurs in a home in huntington beach we'll pay for it and brian's 15 has finished school and he finished school alien england finished school went to art school i'm 15. i move into an apartment i can't drive i don't have a bank account i'm getting about 450 bucks a month they pay for everything else and so my life is you know literally waking up at one and taco bell subway going in the jacuzzi skating for hours filming shooting tricks yeah but and you know it's when you tell people sometimes i think okay that's the amount of money you're making but when all you want to do is skate absolutely now it accelerates and now you're making you know a couple of thousand a month sometimes ten twenty thirty thousand dollars a month you get these spot and people listen to might not realize but i'm a pro skater right then you're getting four or five books every skateboard sold you're getting four or five bucks every pair of shoes sold there's things like video games tech decks trucks you have you have sponsors from all so now you're 19 you're going around the world you're in the magazines because i wrote for tony hawk's company you know when i was 160 with black hair and a liverpool accent so basically you stand out real quick jeff kind of pioneered the way with some of the guys like tom penny and the rest and now i'm you know living in an apartment making all this money and no gods gaining the whole world losing my soul literally living the american dream so you're making me yeah i heard you say one video you're making up to 130 a year or was it about easily i mean you're making you know because remember one sh one shoe that was out at the end of the year oh yeah this is your royalty so the checks 120 000. then when you're getting five grand off the shoe company a month you know five six seven off the clothing three four five off the board and and i don't need anything i wasn't this guy who's wearing jewelry and flamboyant i was just putting the money in the bank but yeah i just skated i was i mean maybe it was the whole bruce lee you know ryu street fighter thing i don't want anything just give me my art yeah that was the whole thing i mean and realistically without god that's the extent that you know you know from england you're very eclectic as far as the influences of buddhism hinduism i mean we talked about darwin and evolution i didn't have a clue i would have listened to you guys today and said like what this guy is a pastor i mean what's that sign say one nation under god i mean oh whatever yeah so yeah i was i was catholic like you know that's what i was kind of raised in we went christmas and easter but i was so messed up i even went to class i got kicked out of catholic school my my my my first grade i grabbed a nun's habit yanked it off and so out oh but so it kind of saved me i think but i was so clueless i didn't hear about god like you even america until i was like a senior in high school this guy shared with me a two-time national champion wrestler like you i liked all fighters and he was the best wrestler in our town so god used that but anyways i remember just going i thought jesus wanted to be in new york and see the gaunt jesus on the cross i thought he maybe got uppity with his father and god put him back i didn't have a clue it was for me i thought what'd he do man he must have done something he got his dad mad or you know but i had no idea about the gospel and this guy goes hey uh do you know what i wore my mom's crucifix because she died when i was six and he goes do you know what jesus did on that i go no uh i don't know and he goes do you want me to tell you it was kind of like there's used to be a book in my day called everything you want to know about sex was afraid to ask i was like that was jesus i was like a drug dealer i go okay come back in the back room you know in the wrestling room and i said i want to tell you about these jesus but i you know i didn't want anyone hearing me so yeah so i relate to that even in america i had no idea what jesus did and i like i said like you i thought it was some bruce lee some kind of you know monk thing some easter and snapped the pebble i just didn't think it's g i remember just going jesus you're the answer are you serious this is i mean because you know he's introduced to america as the white jesus you have all these jewish and white people in it hollywood so you pull these films out and we see curly blonde hair jesus and not to that you've got this whole race issue now but it's got nothing to do with that it was just people that said these are the people who are acting right now that's what you and i seen and he was yeah yeah exactly and then uh 19 years old is that when you met your wife and so yeah i am i mean i'm literally two streets away from where we really met and prior to that and she would joke about this and kind of shame me but prior to that not being believers she's a few years older than me and she brought one of her friends over to hang out with me when i was 16 17 so i actually met her because she was dropping off one of her other friends that i apparently was getting set up with she had a boyfriend then you fast forward you know a few years and i began to see her at this restaurant my friend jeff was dating her her girlfriend so we were all connecting and now at 19 i'm about to go back to england just for a few months and like i said there's great money coming in you're in the magazines life's perfect and then we just connected in a real serious way where for four months we were together every day and told her not to go to work just stay over you know she missed most days and we were just madly in love and the reality is we were really in love we wanted it to work we made the effort and so much so that when i was about to go back to england i asked her to marry me you know in lifeguard tower she said i do she drove out to vegas the next day at 95 miles an hour and got and got a ticket and the cop must have thrown it away because we said we were getting married we were married you know right next to new york new york and the little white chapel and then we were pregnant and then you're on top of the world you've got a skate career a beautiful american wife you've got your your son on the way and uh it's great right so that was it i always say you know not to steal your thunder but i always said i like i said i got married younger you got married a lot yeah i got married older i mean i was 32 and i said i thought i was a great guy until i got married and then i realized man i'm a jerk myself i realized morgan your son then you start realizing how selfish you are so what then happened after that when you know it's really important when i'm sharing this with even the church to say you know we loved each other like we did we we watched the disney movies we seen the great romances we read the books you know i mean over our life and said we want this we were committed and and so loved each other the way we looked the way we hung out before five months in now you're married five six months into that your son's coming along you know ten months we begin to fight those issues and because we were such as a skateboarder perfectionist i'm like wait a minute this isn't working maybe this isn't the right person here with some kind of a catholic background but she never really exercised it wait why are we fighting and there were so many other people around us of so many other opportunities i thought we chased them but i thought this muslim be the one this must be the soul mate now you fast forward a year to we fought like crazy i've punched holes in the walls you know i've said things i wish i'd never said and we both thought well surely someone else is better for us than this person and so for us ultimately within two and a half years we were divorced i was angry and this is just anyone listening you know you go into these things like you buy a car i'm gonna take care of it i get a a house i'm gonna take care of it you aim to but life's kiss there's sin the struggle things fall apart life happens that is it and so life happened to us and you put two sinners together who think they're self-righteous think they have it all figured out and that's the difference of not being a christian things begin to explode you don't know why you don't get your fallen creatures so you're blaming each other and we wanted it to work but it was a love-hate relationship now i'm divorced now i'm angry and i remember looking up and it must have been one of those days you know i was on a bike ride was i sent a jacuzzi and i said god and i don't know why i said it i had never thought about god outside of his big foot reel you know it's the ghost yeah that's just it like who's and because you're from the east coast it's very the same mindset as england maybe there's a god i just believe in the higher blah blah and i said god i'm gonna prove you're not real because if i can prove you're not real and i don't even know why i thought it nothing matters if you're not real meaning i wasn't created then i'm roadkill i'm mush who cares if i take my life or not and if you are let's go yeah exactly that's what i was i was like i was like okay so you strive you work hard you make money and then you die you become worm food like why don't i just cut it out just die early because i've had everything i want i'm still empty life stinks so it's like why why go through this to your 80 and die of cancer just just go out while you're young you know it's like like you said don't you don't want to be over 30 you know don't trust me whenever 30. so i was like you know i'm just going to cut it off i'm just going to stop it and then you realize right i told you off camera that i realized wait there's something more than just you know come back as a lion or you know basically gone there is reincarnation you are an eternal being and and you're not gonna like the outcome of blowing your head off so yeah yeah so when did you find out when were you at the end of yourself and then how did you you know find christmas what did that look like well i knew it was always wrong you know i mean the idea of taking your life just because of loved ones and everything else but then you have this romance you know in this world of like you know the whether it's people overdosing which i was never like heavy in the drugs i mean i would drink i mean if i drank a three pack of bud light three i'd be pretty much tipsy you know i was a guy who drink like a jack and coke because i like the flavor of the coke i never cared about it i never really got stoned and i did mushrooms a couple of times and that was more just because to see what would happen but so for me it was like i knew taking my life would be wrong i wasn't around guns because coming from england why do you even have them you know it's always to kill someone it's not about hunting and so as i began to just get depressed and angry saying i want this to work this shouldn't be this hard how hard is it for two people to make this happen and i just began to look at all the different faiths and it's funny i got in a fight i got in community service so i had to go to a christian thrift store that's where my communities i mean you probably heard before but down the list for me the last thing was christian community service in a thrift store i didn't know what christians really were other than they were some kind of church folk so as i picked that i went there because i like you know lumberjack shits and slacks and whatever it was that silly i didn't want to be on the freeways and get killed doing caltrans so as i go in there you know it's funny but i went in there and they had hank williams playing i saw the lights one of the first things the guy said is if you read this book you'll get extra points for community service it was the purpose driven life by lee strobel i go in there i'm doing that i'm trying to disprove the bible i was going online watching every youtube i was ordering dvds from discovery channel history channel i was emailing rabbis and priests i was looking at the greek and the hebrew i didn't want god to be real and it would and think about how self-destructive that is it's almost like you just said pastor like okay i don't want to be around after 30. you know live fast die young that wasn't my mentality but when i hit that one wall when that one thing happened it's almost like elijah elijah had all these victories i mean i'm the man look at who i just wiped out cold down fire and one witch says i'm gonna kill you this time tomorrow and he can't deal with it talk about a control issue you know what i mean sorry a lot i mean still alive when's he gonna show up but i'm saying there was this one thing in my life and yes it's marriage and yes it's to do with your kid and yes it's it's it's the most significant relationship outside of christ so i just began to challenge and the crazy part was to answer your point when did god begin to really deal with me when i opened the first you know book on the bio first page let us make man in our image and that was amazing but kind of rude like wait a minute why did you make me then you made me to live here where you know we're all aging and no one dies a natural death our bodies fail us and there's cancer and someone's getting molested right now and there's a presidential debate tonight and who knows what's happening and you know gun sales are up 400 percent this is a great god why did you make me and then you go a few more p and this this is real life this is you're talking about the rhema word yeah it's written but god begins to really impart it to you i'm two or three pages in like wait a minute you put our uh and i wasn't going with adam and eve yet i was just going with those first humans you're not selling me on this adam and eve stuff yeah you know this could be just fiction but right there in the garden apparently those guys did something that wasn't good and god said don't eat of it and what what did she go do adam didn't cover her she went a nativist and i look and it was but the word was speaking god didn't say i'll kill you he said in the day you choose to disobey me in the day you don't listen to my sermon in the day you go eat of this adam you will die and it's okay god you told me i'm made in your image but you told me i'm spiritually dead now because of these folks back in the day so that's the answer to molestation that's the answer to cancer that's the answer okay and as i began to read and you might have heard me say it but it's funny i was vegan back then i don't think they even have those in it is that because your wife did you do it to kind of win your work wasn't my wife oh yeah yeah i was just going to do that it was like oh she's eating like this i'm eating like that and a lot of meat now though yeah yeah and you know act 10 and cornelius's house thank you lord but so as we're saying this as i'm going through this and i was just over it and god begins to speak and you begin to hear about okay are these hebrews really the center of it all what about all the other ethnicities you know back to even bruce lee and these chinese dynasties and all the rest we hear and all the supernatural new agey god's saying he spoke to a people for thousands of years they recorded history for us and god interceded in man's life and the reason i bring up being vegan picture being a vegan and every year they shred this little lamb of pieces my wife was doing it to protect the animals as well oh you're ripping this innocent lamb to pieces you shed their blood i mean you wipe it on the doorpost i mean yeah this is crazy and then you get to the new testament and here comes john the baptist the lamb of god he says of jesus who takes away this oh wait a minute are you saying all of these sacrifices are pointing to jesus are you saying jesus is the scapegoat this was becoming scientific i couldn't prove it but it's right there if i wrote something today and your ancestors wrote it in 400 years it's not going to line up unless it's very intentional people just aren't that brilliant they're made in god's image but we're not there's holes everywhere you say that because i you know calorie we teach ex business show we teach right through the book and people go how did you do that sermon it spoke right to me i go hey i hate that smart that was god i think of how cool i said so here i am i'm not picking the text the text is picked you know i have a text but god's speaking through it he wrote it 2000 years ago that i'm speaking in the new testament and yet it's speaking to you and that's how powerful as you know the word of god is living active i mean it's like only god and his word can do that where it speaks it's just as relevant today as the day was written so it's cool it's yeah and that person probably asked you you're like i don't even know you were in the church that day yeah i had no idea so yeah so god began to shape that and here's the thing you know you guys will relate to so i was beginning to know about god and you'll know as an old school calvary pastor as well that famous song many know him well others just by name so i've known the name jesus i heard the name but i heard the name buddha what's going to become real about this book well i'd never understood that the holy spirit is also a person i didn't know anything about this holy ghost stuff god's in heaven jesus was sent to earth the holy spirit is who does the ministry and work too was to the soul wait a minute god what you're telling me while i'm still doing community service while i'm fighting with this woman while i don't really want to live you know what i mean i i don't have any clue and here's a sad thing even doing jiu jitsu now you go to jiu jitsu you're all in the match with your friends they go to sleep in eight seconds six seconds if i hadn't known that back then i could have just thought man i could just tie a rope around my neck and you don't even feel it that's how crazy it could have been but i was afraid to do anything you know what i mean i was like and then what does it do for my son you know it's crazy they say 80 percent of the kids of the people who take their lives there's a good possibility their kids 80 percent of them will go one follow suit the guy the guy we talked that mariah was talking to you about off camera who just committed suicide his dad had committed suicide so there it is your stats wow so whether you say it's the family curse or it's you begin to circle it around in your head so to me as i'm reading this my point was i really didn't understand that wait a minute christianity isn't just a belief like you know we talked about then you'll become a lion at the end of your life there's no evidence for that christianity is a belief that when you hear the truth that you're a sinner that you come to faith that something supernatural happens right then that means either something supernatural happened in my life at 24 and it's happened in both of your lives or it's not and we're all just crazy and so but i hadn't had this encounter yet so as i'm reading this i'm saying wait a minute jesus begins to minister he performs science miracles and wonders nicodemus comes to him by night even as you mentioned in the prayer prior and he comes to jesus and confronts and jesus says no nicodemus and we always read it nice you know you can't be born again he's like no you can't even see it you don't even get this you must be born again this this podcast isn't making sense to you if you're not a believer it's foolishness that's why flesh flesh's flesh spirit we told peter so i'm realizing wait a minute people today will say how do you become a christian well you have to hear the word of god not the spirit's conviction however god does that to you but the holy spirit has to open your eyes i cannot do it only god can do it like you said flesh did not reveal this to you but my father in heaven so my point is to throw a bit of theology in there just for our sake now i'm i'm fighting with this woman like crazy and we're looking at buying a house sadly i thought i'm just going to be alive at least till my kids five six seven if life's crazy i'll i'll deal with it then and buying this house finishing up community service coming home one night getting in a huge fight because i'd said to him let's just try and make it work until at least he's five or six till i go do whatever without really saying that to her i came home that night and realized wait a minute the holy spirit i'd gone to a church where the pastor preached on galatians 5 and the sin of the flesh and the fruit of the spirit i've been reading matthew 7 21 many will call me lord so many people will look at you as jesus but they don't know you as lord they might even say their lord yeah but you don't walk with them and so coming home that night what's crazy is i was going to god to fix my life get me back on track you know i thought i idolized life but i didn't pursue god and so my wife come to bed after a big fight my ex-wife i'd gone in the room and i'm looking at now the other end of the house and i'd gone just and listen i was saying yahweh i was saying the tetragrammaton in hebrew i was beating in the greek i mean i was crazy i was about it right and this is what's funny is i got on my knees i said i'm done with this i was mad and i looked up and said yahweh you know god of a and i said god of abraham isaac and jacob and god's like okay bro i get it you know and i said i'm done and i began to just get mad and frustrated it was like god said you never dealt with the sin what about he just brought my he just brought my mind to sin and i was going to him for me and my motives but there was a massive gap between me and the lord and it was sin and so right then i knew god was dealing with me it was a 20 30 40 minute time in that room god my life's upside down and i don't i mean i don't not go into this stuff but i don't really talk about it on stage because i'm gonna waste someone's time but for you guys i'm sitting right there going god i've came to america i've got this life i love it i don't need a lot i'm married to this woman now i'm divorced i'm fighting it's crazy why didn't it work out blah blah blah blah and he's just dealing with the sin issue and i'm like lord and i am like i give you my life i lay it down i give you my sin i'll get baptized i remember saying i'll even remarry this woman because not because of her sake because it was the worst thing in my life it was the hardest thing in my life when you get divorced your house changes your address where your kids go go change this where your money goes who you're around and for us it was so crazy and it was just like this and this is for all those people who have issues with it who theologically want to put in a box it was like i was on my knees next to the bed that was in the office and it was like the lord just pushed his presence into the room was there a big train was there this flowy thing no but i just knew he was it was almost like it just opened up and i knew don't look for that experience he's just like there it was the lord revealed to me and i sat on that bed laughing and crying saying i can't believe i know he's real i had a real encounter i was born again for if like the next 20 30 minutes i'm doing the same thing why didn't no one tell me this why about my family and then listen this is what's good about where we set up i didn't mean to do this i came in this room my wife's asleep right there right there ex-wife passed out doesn't talk half as much as i do sits up like a zombie i'm just laying down i don't say a thing and she says you know what we should really try and work on this we should do this we should do that and she literally verbatim went through what i said in 40 minutes in prayer right there my son is asleep right here next to us four or five and i literally didn't say a thing the issue is i wake up the next day i go out thinking like okay i'm gonna live this christian life and she's like you're crazy you're not a catholic you're not baptized you don't know she has no idea she ever said it to me the next three weeks i begin to witness to her she comes to church she's got a major problem with it because everyone's recovery and ex this next that head to toe tattoos i mean overdose five times criminals and she's like these kind of people need jesus you need jesus brian but i don't i'm this is italian french native american she goes i don't need it god began to deal with her and she was in church actually jealous saying what has happened to brian i won't go down to an altar god you need to speak to me and they played that song i can only imagine and she literally said i don't know what i can imagine but i know i want you and it was like one of those things of i know i need forgiveness it was all it was all about the sin it was like when we and that was all i'd said to her trey it's not this baby it's not this it's about sin we're dead in sin that was already the evangelist in me so to anyone listen and that's the gospel you know he lived that resurrected we're forgiven only because of jesus because of his shed blood yeah can you speak i mean i'm i'm digging it i'm not gonna cut you off i just want to say but this is something i experienced brian i want to see what you could say to this because i find people but it's like a lot of people are religious a lot of people like jesus is just cool he's my savior but it sounds like with you like me it's like i this guy dan hicks a two-time national champion wrestler share christ with me told me what the cross meant so i said because i loved him right they say a lot of times you fall in love with somebody shares with you before they fall in love with jesus so i love digging hanging around him he was this big famous guy and all of a sudden he said so i love jesus savior but i wasn't ready to give up drug dealing women partying you know i was everything you said you were i did the lsd i was doing so i was like making money hand over fist selling cocaine yeah so i'm like going he said well you need to yield your life and i'm like whoa whoa whoa i didn't slide up for that i like the savior but your lordship and so then dan this tough guy he says to me he goes i want to pray that god breaks you and shows you that you need him more than this is how old the old school lady was and i go what and if i could have beat him up like you i would have punched him in the face but i was smart enough to know i don't want to get killed and so i just said dude how can you call yourself a christian and pray for god to break me are you just kidding and then all of a sudden i heard god's voice first time he said craig if i'm real don't you want to know me and if i'm not nothing's going to happen so he kind of called me out tough guy come on i prayed the prayer and i went all right pray the prayer well right after that dealing cocaine going through the roof i got a job right at high school doing seismograph doing oil uh looking for oil making 34 000 a year back in 1981 that's a good money now for a kid out of high school so i'm going if this is breaking break me all day god freak but then i said the lord's dan gave me a bible he said at least take this and uh so then i'm looking at i got arrested cocaine looking at nine years of prison struck struck an officer there you guys fighting and um looking eight two months from 18th birthday i'm looking at nine years of prison and anyway and that was like six months after i really said okay god i hate my life i've ruined my life but if you can change it it's yours can you speak to that because i really think that's something missing is lordship i mean every 80 percent of america at least the old stats said they're christian well we know look at our country i mean we're the divided states of america but it's like um what how can you speak to the lordship and i don't you know what i mean i'm not lord ship theology i don't want to get weird but you know what i mean where you really say i'm done it's yours i'll do what you say there's no bartering if you do this you heal my marriage i might serve you it's just hey you know what i've messed it up you know can you can you make that sound cool since i'm old no it sounds cool i mean it's all the gospel you know but it's true it's almost like and john piper would say you know it's almost like i'm paul washer and those guys who are very serious gospel focus it's almost like we have this this ticket in our back pocket and we get to heaven and we're like god's like oh yeah you know how you guys doing like oh we got the ticket like that's not the gospel but it is that you're forgiven in christ and so the problem is even with coronavirus i just wonder what half the people in america are watching right now if for the past decade even two decades the sunday morning services is that god has a plan for your life it's wonderful and has nothing to do with the bible the actual picture of the bible is that god spoke through israel through his people they were scribes who recorded it religiously they said they had three people someone would say what it was someone recall what it was they would repeat what it was and the third person would affirm that's what it was this isn't just like written up so all this happens up to jesus's day jesus was a rabbi he called peter james and john they're his three who go on to be leaders of the church you know i mean obviously and then paul would be out to the gentiles he trained them for three and a half years and this is when we go well you guys are getting religious no he said take on my yoke this is his yoke of teaching yes he set us free he begins to lead them for three and a half years he says i'm doing what i see the father doing his first words of follow me i'll make you fishers of men we're following rabbi jesus he teaches us as a rabbi and that famous saying may you be covered in the dust of your rabbi even when he says i'm a fisher of men that is a term for a rabbi a good teacher why did we go watch you know ravi zacharias or maybe it's apologetics you're into or maybe it's more an evangelist or whatever it is because of what that person's carrying that's what a rabbi would do i'm making the point that jesus will begin to show them he would take them he would operate and then as he leaves dies and resurrects he says now i want you to go in all the world and make disciples jesus came preaching were sent preaching here's the point he doesn't make there's you selling cocaine doing all this stuff and your brother that you know your friend dan's calling for you to be broken god's like all right here we go you're living this out until that moment of surrender and it's not religion it's not i'm now gonna do this so god does this i had a personal encounter with christ not in the flesh i didn't hear his voice audibly but i heard his voice impressed in my heart whether it's scripture or whatever but that call is to then follow him and the extent that we follow him is going to change our marriages if my wife and i are focused on the great commission we're going to have a better marriage because i haven't got time for affairs or embezzling money or hating everyone and this is just across the board so whether it's we'll go into the marriage book in a minute whether it's whatever my point is when you talk about lordship jesus is our high priest he's king he's lord he's brought us into relationship with the father we have the holy spirit's seal we're adopted in and now to you both you my brother and sister he's our lord he's purchased us it is servant but the words you know you know john mcarthur is preaching on this the duel asks that were slaves to him back in the day 2000 years ago you could have a bad slave master but if you were blessed with a good slave master most those slaves didn't even leave when they were retired and servants would be taken servants so to me to become a doulas you'd say at 24 i now want to serve jesus why so my marriage is better so our podcast is better i mean with you guys today so i raised my kids better a lot of america is not even thinking about anything but the ticket they have god because they just don't want to go to hell but to really walk with him is different that's the point so to be submitted to crisis to say lord i don't want to forgive that neighbor who's driving me nuts i know it's best i'm not just doing it because you say it i am doing it for that reason but i trust and know it's best god i'm not gonna go do this right now are you gonna slip up yes so to me when you say what's lordship he's everything i didn't plan on raising full-time support having a podcast writing a marriage book and sitting here doing two podcasts i would have been out skating i would have been a surfing those things aren't bad but my call is an evangelist under his lordship is this so he needs to be lord of your life and you wrestle with that you're going to wrestle with it financially you're going to with your time you're not going to do it perfect but you need to know as a believer if you're really his the bible says a good tree will bear good fruit a battery won't and that means while you still struggle with sin but you're going to be bent towards even for yourself well dad let's go do the podcast i know it's honoring the lord hey let's preach the sermons as close as we can to the bible which i'm sure calvary chapel you're right there as unto our lord and not for religion well because you want to honor him like i want to offer my dad or the way you're honoring you know your own parents you're talking about him it's lordship but it's that relationship but the term like jesus said if you love me obey my commandments and i think it's like what you were saying especially with your wife you know when you're kind of a bad person you were i guess you weren't really really bad but i knew i was a sinner there was no question i wasn't like your wife but when you're forgiven much and you realize how could god love a jerk like me then you're just overwhelmed and so you're like of course i've got to give my all to god because he gave his all for me and so that's i think a lot of times people don't really like your wife it was harder for her to realize okay you need it brian uh all those drug addicts need it but not me but it's like what i say that's how the pharisees could miss it right like you're kind of alluding to you you search the scriptures you're religious but yeah you don't realize the scriptures reveal me you're missing that relationship you're missing the reason why you do it you're talking about mary and martha and one of your sermons but the relationship we're serving but we're not doing it out of love and and i think too i don't mean to preach your sermon here but but like i think too is you know god is love and like you were saying you were sincere before christ you wanted to love your wife you want to be a good dad but without love without knowing the author of love god how can you love your wife but i love the saying you know the triangle that god's atop of marriage and when you draw closer to god you draw close to each other because god is love you can't love god and not love your wife and it's cool because like for me it i'm very different than my dad in the way of my testimony because i'm a lot more like your wife now and a lot more like your wife in the sense that i was more religious thinking i didn't do anything wrong like i didn't do a lot of stuff growing up because i would just hear my dad's testimony and like i don't want to do that but then i thought i was a good person and that's what you were saying matthew seven it doesn't matter that's when it really hit me it's like depart for me i never knew you and that word no is like in greek god intimacy like we're gonna talk about with your book like a man knowing his wife that's how intimate we need to be with god and i didn't have that i had a form of godliness but i denied the power that could change me and so that's where like i would be telling people there's a lot of people out there saying none of this relates to me like i didn't do anything bad you know i'm a christian i go to church and all this stuff but if christ isn't like actually convicting you speaking to you showing that you are just as sinful as that person out there that's a drug dealer in you know womanizing and that that's what we all need to realize the wages of sin is death that we're all sinful and so that's my prayer with everyone is that it doesn't matter if you're the worst sinner or if you don't do a lot of stuff we all fall short like james you break one area yeah fail one and so that's where i want to talk about i want to get into that the book that you wrote never fails because right we know that that you had a divorce that a lot of people and i also want to get into that a little bit because yeah because i was reading and it was crazy because i was like trying to prepare for the podcast and then it's not pulling up but mark 10 when it talks about divorce and so i would like you to share a little bit about that yeah thank you for joining our part one conversation with brian sumner if you haven't already please make sure to like subscribe and share this video if you like to listen to us wherever you get your podcast just type in calvary conversations also make sure to follow us on instagram at calvary conversations thanks so much and god bless

Channel: Calvary Oro Valley

Views: 364

Rating: 5 out of 5

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Id: 7mZtxBaVKMA

Length: 46min 10sec (2770 seconds)

Published: Tue Nov 10 2020