Fighting Your Battles with Jonathan Evans | The Sister Circle Podcast

John John. Y'all listen, he's been sitting here. He's been very patient with me. Microphones, cameras, wires, batteries.

You're doing it all. You're doing, you're trying to get it all done.

I'm trying to get it all done. And I'm doing it because, I mean, we could, I could have just called you. We could have just done this over the phone, but I'm, you're my brother. So I'm trying to give you my best.

You're trying to give me the best. I appreciate it. I'm trying to give you my best. I do appreciate it. I'll take it.

So Jonathan's with me, uh, first of all because he's my brother and he does a lot of amazing things. He's an amazing person, he's an amazing husband, an amazing father, an amazing preacher, he's an amazing brother.

I'll take it, keep it going.

All the things. He's also an amazing author, so he's here because his latest book, Fighting Your Battles: Every Christian's Playbook for Victory, is out and it's gorgeous. I guess I shouldn't say gorgeous. Yeah, it's good. It looks good. And so, um, first of all, I'm amazed you're here because writing a book is not one of the things I would have thought Jon Jon would have done with his life because you're my baby brother. Rumor has it I'm the oldest. Jonathan is the baby. And so when you have, when you have, um, siblings, of course there's going to be sibling rivalry, there's going to be competition, there's going to be friction, but we don't have a history of that really. It just was kind of easy. He was always baby John John.

I always did what she said.

I don't think that that's it.

I was obedient.

No, I don't think that that's it.

You spoke and I said, yes ma'am, and just kind of went along, and so I became your favorite sibling.

That makes it sound like I'm bossy. I don't think I'm bossy.

You don't think you're— No, you're great. You're great.

I have opinions, but I don't think I'm bossy. I'm willing to hear other, what other people think. And if it makes sense to me, we can do it.

And if it makes sense to me, we can do it.

Maybe you make sense. Maybe the other two don't make sense.

Okay, I'll take it. I'll take it.

Um, but because he's my baby brother, I'm like, oh my gosh, you're an author. But the other reason why it's like, oh my gosh, you're an author, is because reading books was not always your favorite thing to do. Okay, definitely writing was not your favorite thing to do. School, school in general was not your favorite thing to do. You would be staring out the window. What was it that you used to say?

Puff the Magic Dragon. Yeah, I'm thinking about Puff the Magic Dragon or some dreamland somewhere, and they're trying to get me to get my work done.

Yeah, he was the most animated, most hilarious. Like, if we had not had Jonathan Evans Jonathan Blake Evans as the fourth child in our family. I don't know where our funny stories would have come from. Anthony was always in a bad mood. Priscilla was always jumping over and cheering over everybody doing her thing, and I was reading a book. Jonathan is the one who made us laugh at the table, just in the corner, just doing Michael Jackson, doing the moonwalk. We would all be around the table, Dad be trying to have devotions, and you would start doing funny stuff. And because it was you, we wouldn't get in trouble if we started laughing. And then my mom would start laughing, and then we were really home free.

Yeah, we were really home free.

And Daddy would sit there and he would go, "Lois!" Yeah, "You're messing it up!" "I'm trying to have— I'm trying to do our family devotions!" So it's because of Jonathan we have most of our good family stories. But, um, you're not a traditional writer, if that's even such a thing. You don't get a yellow pad and a pen. You're not sitting down with a computer typing out your words. Okay.

I take the inspiration from when I'm preparing messages. When I'm preparing messages, when I'm doing Cowboys Chapels, and when I'm talking on a particular theme or series or something like that, then I'll compile all those messages, get them transcribed, and see if we can weave those together to make a masterpiece. That's the goal.

So are you weaving them together? Do you have assistance with that? Do you kind of go, "I think I have enough now"?

Both. Yeah, I weave them together because if I'm doing a series, I'm weaving it together. If I'm speaking a series, I'm weaving it together for understanding, but I'm doing that through personal stories through real things. You know, I like to be real and just say it like it is, be biblically true, but talk about the real experiences that I've had in my life that I know people can relate to, that people have had. And then once I weave those together, then we make a book out of it.

So why Fighting Your Battles? Why this book right now?

Well, because that's what we're all doing. We're all fighting battles. You know, Daddy always talks about you're either in a storm, on your way to a storm, or you just got out of one.

Yeah.

And we have come through a big storm as a family, and I was feeling that, speaking on it, and really wanted to give people perspective on not quitting. You know, Mommy told me while she was fighting her cancer that your greatest ministry will come out of your greatest misery. And so that's why you can't quit in life. People give up in life because they don't have the perspective of how God uses every experience that you have for where he's taking you. And so, you know, I really wanted to give people that perspective and, and talk, talk about it in the book.

So I know one of the things that, um, when you start talking about fighting your battles, sometimes you'll hear people say, uh, you have to fight from victory, or if you're not feeling victorious, you have to fake it till you make it. Um, is, is, is that true? In fighting your battles, do you have to fight from victory. Do you agree with that? And how do you do that? How do you do that when everything around you, it looks like it's not changing? I think that that's where people get hung up. Like, if you can see the end, like if you're running a race and you see a finish line, you know where you're going and you know when it's going to be over. You know that it's going to be over. When you're amidst, in the midst of a trial that doesn't ever seem to be ending, it can be very difficult to fight from victory because you don't know where the end is. You don't know what the finish line is. And it seems like, you know, you're in a never-ending battle of feeling frustrated and—

that's right—

and lacking joy. So how do you— do you agree with that, you have to fight from victory? And how do you do that when you don't know where the finish line is?

I definitely agree that you have to fight from victory because we know that that's the truth, that Christ has given us that victory. So that you start with the truth, but then how do you do that? You know, first of all, Mommy was the greatest testimony of that because she was the calmest She was the one who was going to all of her treatments. She was the one who was doing the steps that she literally needs to do, but she was not stressed out.

She wasn't stressed out. You're right.

She was not stressed at all. She was just doing her thing. She was still, when she had the dream—

I just have to do my part.

I just have to do my part. And see, that's how you do it. What we do is we don't understand that battles and struggles are also a stewardship role, not an ownership role. We only do stewardship with money or materialism or family. How do I steward this? You know, your battle, the Bible says, 2 Chronicles, it says that your battle is not yours, it's mine. God says it doesn't belong to you.

We don't quote it like that though. We quote it like it's God, so he got it, but he really— we have to let him have it, right?

That's literally all results and all, which is how you know you let him have it. If you are heavily burdened by it or you're still trying to manipulate its outcome, then you haven't given it to him. And that's the only way that you can really actualize what you believe. I believe I have victory, but if I believe I have victory, then why am I trying to control everything? If I believe I have victory and Jesus is the one who gives me victory, then why am I trying to manipulate the outcome? I have this wayward child. I've been trying to do surgery on him or her, put my brain inside their head so that they can just do right. You know what I mean? You're just trying to make sure you're structuring things in a certain way, putting them in a certain So you're driving yourself nuts. Meanwhile, they're not changing or whatever the circumstance is. And you have to get to a place where you don't let them go because you want them to fail. You let them go because you want it to succeed. It's called by prayer and supplication, just make your request known and then let the peace of God that surpasses understanding. So we're going to make a trade. I'm going to give God this battle. I'm going to say, you have to take care of the outcomes. And if I give it to you, the burden should be easier. The yoke should be lighter. Okay, that's what the Bible says. And then not only am I going to give it to him, but I'm also going to let him give me peace. That's the trade. So you take the battle, you give me the peace, and we'll make that trade based on your word. So it doesn't go away, it just means that I'm different in it. Even if it doesn't change, I'm changed. And so you can go about it a little differently.

You're talking like a grown man. I'm like, oh my gosh, it's a trade.

It's a trade. Yeah, I got to make that trade, otherwise you'll lose your mind. And you really know that you've stepped in God's territory when you're losing your mind, because you're not—

territory you're not supposed to be—

you're not supposed to be in there. That's why you're losing your mind, because now you've got into a divine territory and you're not that. So you start losing your mind. Trying to manipulate, trying to control, trying to change your own circumstances. And God is saying, well, I'll let you be God and I'll sit back and wait until you're ready for me to be God. Yeah, exactly right.

Okay, there is a— I always struggle with this because I tend to like to make sure that things are done well. Yeah, um, I will opt for that phrase instead of control. I like to make sure things are done well, but, uh, control is one swing of the pendulum, the other side of the pendulum is complacency. So you can say, I'm releasing, I'm releasing this to God and be totally complacent. So how do we know that in releasing something to God, in trying to be a good steward of only what we're supposed to steward and letting him handle the rest, shrinking back from control, how do we know we're not in complacency?

Well, because you see, our fight is not against flesh and blood, but but there is a spiritual battle going on. And so what Moses did in Exodus 17 is he went up to the top of the hill with Aaron and Hur by his side, and he held that rod up. In other words, he said, I'm gonna have accountability. I'm gonna operate based on truth. I'm gonna operate spiritually through prayer and supplication. I'm gonna do what I need to do to stay in contact with God and let him tell me what I need to do in the here and now, but I'm not gonna carry the burden or the outcome. See, there's a difference.

So you're doing something.

Yes, you're doing something because, you know, there's a lot of different things. I mean, when, when Mommy passed away and we had all these issues in our family, one thing we did have is each other.

It's true.

One thing, it's just sitting around, um, saying, okay God, you got it, and then going and sitting in your depression and not going to counseling and not going to therapy and not going to your accountability and not continuing to peddle in God's word and not praying and just sitting in a dark room, that's complacency because you're not doing what you need to do to continue to heal even though you're in a valley while you hold up the spiritual perspective on the mountain. See, Moses did two things. He told Joshua, you go down and take care of the war.

Okay.

I'm gonna go to the top of the hill. So both things were happening at the same time. There is responsibilities with children. There are responsibilities in a marriage. There are responsibilities at the job. There are responsibilities that I need to do to take care of my well-being. Okay, I'm responsible for those things, and I'm going to continue to depend on God as I tread through this trial, but I am not going to be the big ox in this scenario. In other words, when he says in Matthew 11:28, "Come to me, all ye who are weary and heavy laden, and I will give you rest," it's a picture of a big ox and a little ox. The little ox is still plowing the field, it's just not carrying the burden. The big ox is carrying the burden and teaching the little ox, this is how we plow this field. That's why it says, learn from me. So it's a, it's a burden transfer while you're still being responsible spiritually and naturally.

So one of the things, um, and I hear this a lot, uh, generationally, and I think because of COVID too, there's a weight issue where I see people talking about how hard life is. You hear people talking about— I mean, well, I'm talking about like adulting, like that kind of hard.

Yeah.

Where a generation after them are like, y'all got to get it together, right? So again, I'm thinking about this pendulum, and then I want to ask you a question about what this has looked like for you. You said you— complacency exists if you're not doing what you can, you're not taking the big burden, you're letting God lead, you're, you're not going into peace Um, outside of your peace, if you're going outside of your peace, then you may be entering the realm of trying to control the outcome, right? That's the signal that you're losing the peace because you don't have that trade. Okay. Talk to me though about losing peace and something being hard.

Okay. What do you mean when you say that?

Like, like, um, sometimes I run into people and because it's not easy, they're like, you know, that's mental health is important.

Yeah.

But you know what I'm talking about? It's again, it's that funny in-between where it's not about peace, it's about like, you need to finish, you need to be faithful, you need to stick with it.

Right, right.

So how do you now— again, the pendulum is swinging the other way, and I'm supposed to have peace. I don't have no peace about that. I'm not, I'm not doing that. You know, that's too hard. Yeah, I'm going home, I'm going to bed. Like, what— how do you measure that? Thinking about— just think about generationally. I mean, we, we normally have people that are from the age range, our bell curve is 25 to 55. So if you were talking to a 27-year-old who is like, oh yeah, no peace about that, I'm not doing that. You know, like, talk to me about that aspect of it.

Yeah, the idea. And of course I have 5 kids.

You do.

So I run into this all the time.

It's too hard with one of them in particular.

Yeah, with one of them.

I can't.

Well, they're all getting that way. I mean, this technology.

Oh, because it makes everything is just easy right there. Well, that's what I feel like life is right now. Life does not require us to do a whole lot.

Yeah.

And then we realize later that the work that is required of us, we're not willing to do because we don't know the difference between what our role is and the discomfort. That's a better word. We confuse discomfort with lack of peace.

Yeah. And we confuse it with whether God called me to it or not.

If it's— I'm not calling it.

Exactly.

If it's not my ministry, if it's easy, then God called me to it.

If it's hard or creates problems, then he must not have called me.

So what's the difference between my hard and discomfort versus the peace that I'm supposed to receive in the exchange?

Well, you have the peace that surpasses all understanding not because it's comfortable, but because you don't understand why you have it. A peace that surpasses all understanding, it's there because of the discomfort.

This should be hard, but I'm at peace.

That, but I'm at peace where I am, even though everything is difficult. Things are— it's a storm, right? And God called the disciples out on the, on the water. They were doing what Jesus told them to do, and they hit a storm. But in the storm, they got to experience God in a greater way. Peter walked on water. That's humanly impossible. And so people have to understand that, that God uses these trials to build perseverance, James 1 says. He uses these trials to let you know and to build you up for what you're going to be doing. I remember reading the story of Joseph, and it said he went into the pit, and then it says, "Now the pit is empty without any water in it." That little phrase, that little bitty phrase. I looked at that and I said, "Well, why would the Bible tell me that not only was he having a hard time, but he was experiencing a famine where he was?" Inside of the pit. Inside of the pit, because in the pit is evidence of the promise. He was over a famine. And so God will put you in these areas and in these places, and if you're, if you're not careful, you'll miss out on the evidences of your future promise while you're in there because you're only, you're only focused on yourself. You're only focused on how bad it is, what you're feeling. But most people are passionate about helping somebody else in the area where they failed, struggled, or were hurt.

I said that to Jesse just recently. I said, you know, there was a couple things I was like, I could just I could not do this, I could shut this off. I said, but you know what? I see a pattern here and I feel like this pattern is indicative of a training that I'm in need of. It's because it's the same, it's hitting me in the same place. So I feel like it's more about training and development than it is about release it. And knowing the difference is tough, but you can know it. Okay, so thinking about your battles, I know that this book, again, Fighting Your Battles, if you, Forgot about this. This is important. Go pick it up. Support the author. But, um, you talk about a lot of your personal struggles in here. Um, one in particular I know you allude to, may not go all the way in the depth to. I want to start with that. So you are the son of Dr. Tony Evans.

That's right. And you're the daughter.

I'm the daughter, but I'm not the son. If I was the son, that's a whole nother show for another day. But you are a son of Dr. Tony Evans, and so I think to a certain degree, the expectations and the pathways that are given to us as children in our family, in our church, in our culture, the expectations are set differently. So as the daughter of Tony Evans, there are expectations I will never have as the son, like you would as the son of Tony Evans. Okay. So talk to me about, um, pressure, if you felt pressure, uh, being the son of Dr. Tony Evans, and if that has created any battleground for you, like just in your life decisions, what you've had to choose, your purpose, your calling, all that.

Listen, definitely, definitely pressure. Definitely pressure. Because, and it's also the reason why I ran from ministry. Mostly I use sports.

Were you running from ministry?

Well, I was having a good time in sports.

It just seemed to me like you weren't doing ministry. You were just like, I'm doing sports. It wasn't running for you.

Well, but when I started feeling God's call, I was like, nah. Yeah, so because in college when God, you know, God will slowly piece things together, and coming from a ministry family, you know, we could kind of see when he's piecing something together. Like, I'd be in college and they'd be like, hey, can you come speak for FCA? I mean, why are you even asking me? You know what I mean? Like, Hey, can you come do chapel service? Hey, can you come? So I'm starting to speak a little bit in college and I'm like, okay, don't think that this is what I'm about to start doing because I'm Tony Evans' son. Because I don't want to be Michael Jordan's son trying out for the Bulls. That doesn't work out. When someone has built a legacy like this, I want to go my own way and I want to do something different. So when I went to the NFL, I really was using that as a pathway to create my own life for myself. Myself and be like, okay, this is what I'm gonna do. I'm not worried about it.

Did you know that then?

Yes, that was part of it.

You were like, I gotta do something else.

I gotta do something else. And I love sports, so boom, this is what— this is my pathway. This is what I'm going to create for myself. And so I was excited to do that because it helped me escape from that pressure. It helped me escape from that, you know, having to do anything that my mom and dad did. And, and, and come behind something that they built so big.

Who was— who did you feel the pressure from? Me. Okay, it wasn't external pressure.

No, it wasn't. Our parents, our parents never—

yeah, they didn't do that.

You know, Daddy wanted me to play football.

He sure did. That might have been more pressure than the ministry, right? Live out my dream, John John! Live out my dream!

Okay, so he wanted me to play football.

So as far as like other people outside of church, um, that's pretty normal. But it didn't make you feel. No, it was just inside.

No, it was just inside because I didn't feel like— see, it's a fear. And fear is looking at what you think you're called to do and only staring at your insufficiencies in light of it.

That's all.

That's all fear is. So I see what I'm called to do, but I see me inside of that calling, and I'm too insufficient to do it, so I'm not doing it. So we start trying to find ways to get out of it because we don't feel like we can do it. And so I fought that for a while, and then God said— I tore my Achilles tendon once, and I was on the field, and I was laughing and crying at the same time, and they were like, what are you laughing at?

You're like, I know what's happening here. Yeah, I know exactly what's happening.

I said, guys, he touched me like Jacob. So I'm literally— he's not going to let me walk in a direction he's not calling me. I was fighting it for a long time, so I limped into seminary. He said, oop.

I just want to say for the record You have your master's degree in what?

Christian leadership.

Okay. I have not finished.

That, well, that's because my baby brother, you're busy. You got 5 kids. You got, but still, I'm just saying, cameras.

You didn't just write the book, books. You've like gotten a master's degree.

Well, I think that one, one of the things about my ADD-ness mm-hmm.

Is, is that you hyperfocus.

Yes.

Yes.

Is that I hyperfocus on one thing at a time.

Right.

I can hyperfocus on one thing at a time, and so I was able to get that done. But when I ran away, and some of that's in the book, when I was fighting that battle of like life choices, when I finally decided to just say okay and surrender, God put me right back in the NFL.

Hmm.

So I became the chaplain of the Dallas Cowboys. 3 or 4 months, I got a call once I went in, and this is my 11th year I've been running out of the tunnel, and he was like, The NFL wasn't a problem. You were just not there the right way. So I was just waiting for you to stop fighting me, because some of our battles are just us fighting God's calling in our life because we fear what he's calling us to based on what we feel like we're too insufficient to do.

Okay, so we've talked a lot about you personally, um, ministry, football, God calling you. I mean, you're dropping gems every 5 seconds. But you're not a lone ranger. You are married. You and Nikaliks, Kanika, have been married for 16 years. 16 years. And you have 5— I know when you say it, I know, like, who are you talking about? So you've been married for 16 years. Y'all have 5 children from 13 to— money is 3. Um, so that's busy. You are still homeschooling. You've been homeschooling on and off a little bit. You travel. Not only are you involved in church and ministry here at our local church, Oak Cliff Bible Fellowship, You also travel in itinerant ministry and speak all over the place. That's kind of cool. I was like, he spoke for Chick-fil-A though. That was the coolest. In addition to that, you mentioned already being the chaplain for the Dallas Cowboys. You also are co-chaplain with the Dallas Mavericks. Here at our church, you've just become the pastor of NextGen. So children, youth, and young adults. You're still heading up men. You have a lot.

Why'd you talk them like this?

Yeah. And you write books. Oh wait, I forgot about Stories from the Storyteller.

Stories from the Storyteller.

You have a whole Cartoon Network episode situation. Yeah. That's on, um, Right Now Media.

Right Now Media.

So you, you, you, you, you, you talk about me.

I know.

You, you got things going on too. But I think, um, you know, a lot of the, the battles that people will experience if, if it, you know, once you move beyond your internal battles, are the battles that you experience because of external relationship, the—

Oh yeah.

If you have a bad situation in your marriage, but, or maybe you have a trouble situation that you and your spouse are going through together. And I know one of the things that you talk about in the book is just a series of miscarriages that you and Kanika had and kind of what that looked like for you all. So can you share just a little bit about that and maybe a couple of lessons that God taught you in the middle of that?

Yeah, definitely. And that's one of the unique things about this book is that we have QR codes in it.

Yeah, so you can go and watch the video of the story.

You can watch the video of the story.

So if you're not a reader, you get to break up the reading with some video stories. Cool.

With some video stories. And one of them is me and Kanika talking about our 4 miscarriages, which after having 2 kids, easy, we got to the place where we were like, okay, we're ready for the next one. You know what I mean? Like, okay, yeah, we prayed for the first 2. But we got to the third one and said, this is what we do, you know. And I think that, you know, we were taught in that, you know, that this, this battle is much higher than you think. Like, don't not include me just because I've given you some, some success. And so a lot of times you can have success and then that makes you more independent, and then it's like, oh no, this is a bit—

this is—

we gotta So that's lesson number one is that, no, this is much higher than you think. It's not something that you just get to say, this is what we're going to do, and start governing your life that way. But I do remember it, you know, Kanika especially being a mother, that maternal thing just kind of being like, what's wrong with me? What's going on? We didn't know that it was common because it's our first time, so we didn't know that there were a lot of other women who until afterwards. And so I just remember having to, you know, really be there for her. Not that it didn't hit me, but it didn't hit me the same. I don't know why. It just didn't hit me the same.

I think that sometimes for, you know, a woman will fall in love with the baby from the very beginning because she's cohabitating with this child. And when you— the baby's born, she's been enjoying the physical presence of that baby, and that it takes a father sometimes not that he doesn't love his child, but the connection doesn't happen as fast or at the same pace.

Something like that.

Something like that.

Yeah, something like that. Because I just felt like I wanted to be there to support her.

Her, right.

Yeah. And I'm like, but wait a minute, you— but it's just different. I don't know how it is, but it just is. And I remember us really having to— because that's a position where you don't have control for real.

Yeah.

You really have to rely on God. But we did what we were called to do, went to our doctor's appointments. She got on progesterone just to help facilitate all those things. And then we had Camden. We had 2 miscarriages, then we had Camden. Camden is a beast. So he's Spider-Man. He's Spider-Man.

He's you.

Yeah, running around, running around.

Where is he? Hold on to him. Get him.

Yeah, so that was just a time in our life where it was just, you know, God dependency, you know, feeling like failure, um, learning that, oh, this is not just on us. This is something we have to give to him. He said be fruitful and multiply. We're trying to be obedient, but he determines the timing. We don't. And so it goes back to that independence, dependency, giving it to the Lord, and really supporting each other. And I think a lot of marriages struggle and become battles because they're trying to garner support instead of just give it. If you have two givers in a marriage, everybody receives. You have two receivers, everybody just feels robbed. And so they just, they're just walking around as two robbed people trying to access what's been taken. So that's all they're doing the whole marriage. And so I think that that's what we learned is marriage support and we learned dependency. So you had two miscarriages and then you had Camden and then we had Camden. Kanika knows better. She knows all the time. So we had Camden, then two miscarriages, then Kyler and Bunny.

Okay.

Yeah, I think so. But go in there and look at this. Go, go in there and look at this.

Uh, you're not, you're not, you're not, you're not pro for the details.

Yeah. I know the general idea. But Kanika explains it. She does most of the talking on that episode because she went through it.

She, well, yeah. So we talked a lot about just knowing the difference between controlling, being controlling and being complacent, and how exchanging, making your request known to God, you exchange that for his peace. Really, that's a win-win for us. We've talked about how fighting your battles, it requires you to be dependent on God. What would you say another big lesson, just if we're trying to hit 3 things, another big lesson about fighting your battles for the person who's going through that, that they'll get as a takeaway from this book because of a lesson you've learned?

Yeah, put the truth to the test. And so one of the things that happens in a battle is that, you know, your vision becomes a little bit fogged, which is why accountability is so important, because it's objective. And the truth is important because it's objective, because the heart is the most deceitful of all and is desperately sick. Who can understand it? So your feelings leading the way is just gonna make the situation more fogged, okay? And so one of the things Peter said, I remember it was Matthew 14, they were on the boat and Jesus was coming, they got scared, it was a ghost. And the word ghost there means distorted reality. So the truth is coming to them and they're thinking the truth is a ghost. They're looking at the truth like it's a distortion. And a lot of people look at the truth like it's a, I don't wanna hear that. You know what I mean? Somebody said—

To Bob, it's not relevant. It meant that a few years ago. It's not current now.

It's not current. That's irrelevant to me. And when you feel like, ugh, I'm just— I don't need that right now. Jesus said one word. He just said, come. Okay, he didn't give a whole sermon. He didn't give a whole— he just told Peter to come. And Peter went from safe in the boat, in my own emotions, taking care of it myself, let me just figure it out, to faith, and he took that step. And when you take a step on the truth, when you start moving— yes, I'm going to pray, yes, I'm going to give it to the Lord, I'm not going to carry the burden, but I'm going to walk in the way that's right. I'm going to walk in the way that's right. Peter was able to do something and get an experience of God that nobody else in the boat got. They saw it, they saw somebody else's testimony, but it wasn't theirs. They didn't get to walk on top of the circumstances. They didn't get to approach, you know, the altar in the way that Peter was doing. And obviously the storm didn't change, right? Everything was still raging, but he was on top of it. Fix your eyes on Jesus. And so I think that a key ingredient is taking the sword, which is the only offensive weapon in the armor of God, and, and putting it to use so that you can see the truth help you do something that you couldn't have done without it. Whether that's overcome this emotional trauma, whether that's being able to forgive, whether that's being able to walk in your marriage even though it's still rocky and have peace, but still be the wife that you're called to be, or the husband that you're called to be, because you're carrying a different temperament based on truth. I'm going to step outside of this boat. I'm going to walk towards the truth, and I'm going to let the truth hold me up.

You know, I think people want to develop a big faith, right? And so they— we know that fighting battles is one of the ways that you do that. And we admire people, at least I do admire people who walk with God a really long time, and they seem to have like— they just— there's a settled, um, a settled confidence that people who have walked with God a long time have, you know, that they'll walk up to you and, "How are you doing?" And then you tell them all the things that are going wrong in your life, and then they say, "Well, you know, I'm going to pray about that. It's going to be okay." And I'm saying in my heart, no, it's not.

Absolutely not.

It's like, you know, but the settled confidence that comes from having a lifetime of faith comes from walking through these battles. Like, I, I think, you know, when you were talking about stepping out on the water, it— the first time you step out on the water, it's like the first time jumping off a diving board. You know, when little kids jump off the diving board, you look like you, you know, you're 20 feet up, and it just seems like It's a big decision to jump off and trust that whoever's down there will catch you. But as soon as they do it one time, they have more confidence the second time.

So you build your confidence.

You have more confidence to walk it out. So when you think about your life in closing and you think, okay, I've written this book about fighting your battles. I've littered this book in the best way with all these stories, my own stories of what it has looked like for me to fight battles and what I've learned through that. Some of the lessons we've talked about today. How do you think your strength, your faith has been strengthened by your battles? Like, do you feel it? Do you sense it? We've been raised in a household of faith, so we kind of know a lot of stuff, but then you have to work out your own salvation, right? You have to work it out. So if you had to describe like where you are now compared to maybe where you were 10 years ago, what are the changes you've seen in you? If we cycle the conversation back around to you, who were you? Who are you now? What were you doing? What are you doing?

Well, I tell you what, when Mommy passed away, I was angry. We and you were talking about this because— and that's where the eulogy came from, is that dialogue I had with God where I was like, I was just like, come on now, we did this, we did that, all of this. So I started to have doubt, anger, you know, just wrestling through that. And then, you know, when you really go there with God, it becomes a dialogue and not a monologue. And, uh, for me it did. And he just reminding me of my training. You know, don't leave your training because you're in a trial. Don't leave your training. He said, you know, y'all can watch the eulogy of my mom, but he said, I have given you victory and you're mad about it. And you ask for your mother to live, she lives eternally. You ask for her to be healed, she's healed eternally. I gave you what you asked for, greater than what you asked, but because because you're seeing this from a human perspective and you don't see where she is, how she's enjoying, how much health she has, how much life she has, the smile on her face, faith. And you're thinking about her death, but you're not thinking about my son's death so that she can live like she's living right now. And so he just, he took me back to my training. And I think when you go through those things and you're reminded of your training, um, you, you are also reminded that I don't need to change clothes just because the trial is different. I need to keep on the same uniform that I've been dressed in by the blood of Jesus Christ and, and walk through this. I like the statement Kobe said, um, Kobe Bryant. Yeah, I'll watch his little YouTube because that mama mentality is a beast now. So, and he would say, uh, when I get the ball at the end of the game, I don't get nervous. And they were like, why not? Because I've done this a thousand times in my training. I've done this a thousand times. And he said, what's one more time? And I said, that's what I'm talking about.

That's what I, you know, I, you know, I got hype.

But, um, you know, Jesus is not asking us to do anything that he hadn't done a thousand times. A thousand times. And he did. He had trauma his whole life. From the time he was born, they were trying to kill him. His own hometown, they tried to throw him off a cliff. They were trying to stone him. People were trying, people betraying him, cutting him, spitting on his whole life was trauma. While he's helping people. So it's not fair, but he still did God's will. And then it says, for this reason he's highly exalted. So it's seeing the end at the beginning, in the middle, and letting that help you continue to push through.

So if you know you need to work on your training because you are in a battle, um, you, like he said, you just came out of one, maybe you didn't do so hot in that one, so you want to train for the next one. Or, you know, maybe you are, you see the next trial coming. It's been building the whole time. One of the ways we train, obviously, is by reading the Word of God. It's by developing our relationship with Him. It is by learning the Scripture. Sometimes I'm amazed at, even as I was listening to you, the Scriptures just roll off your tongue. But you, you do that because you learn the Scriptures at some point, whether you were a child in a Christian home or you're an adult and you decide to study and memorize. You learn it, you internalize it, because when you are deep in trouble, that's what will bubble up out of you, what you have put in there. And one of the best ways after reading the word of God and having a relationship with God for yourself is taking advantage of resources that are available to you. You know, you go to your local church, your pastor is a resource. He is digesting the word of God and giving it to you. Or you listen to podcasts, or you read books, you watch podcasts like this. And so We want to resource you. I hope that this podcast has been encouraging you, and I hope you got some nuggets that made you do like I was doing as I was listening to Jonathan's, like, mm, that was good, that was good. But I hope you internalize the need for training. Our whole lives we are going from glory to glory, and so even if you did good on the last trial, you go back into training because the next game's not going to be the same, the next battle's not going to be the same. And so Jonathan's book, Fighting Your Battles, Um, this book right here, Fighting Your Battles: Every Christian's Playbook for Victory, is one of the resources that can help you train to get your mind right. Not just what's in the book again, but the QR codes that lead to videos. And if you don't know or hadn't heard about or are not following my brother elsewhere on social media, follow him right now. He's everywhere. He's on Instagram. You have your own YouTube channel. You have my son-in-law following you around with all his cameras to get all the behind the scenes. And he shows a lot of great things even for you. Um, in your family. He shows how his family does it. What does dinnertime look like? What does homeschooling look like? What do boundaries look like? What does getting your kids off of, uh, social media, uh, look like? And what it looks like in his family. So if you're looking even to watch the life of another, because that's often how we train, right? We train with people who have been in the game longer than us, right? Um, take advantage of everything that Jonathan is providing. And I'm so grateful, John John, John John, that you joined me. We did it, we did it, we did it. Thanks for joining me. Y'all go grab the book and get prepared to fight your battles well. God is for you, and if he's for you, who can be against you? We'll see you next time.