Ron + Hope: Unfiltered - Strategies For Your Life

Foreign.

Hello, everybody. This is Ron and Hope. Unfiltered. And he's drinking his water. Why do you do it every podcast?

Trying to look informal.

Trying to look.

Trying to look informal. You know, running shows that just sit there and.

So you're not thirsty when you're going.

I really am thirsty, actually, but I'm informal. You got twisties in your hair.

No, I don't. I have braids. No, no, it's not.

This is normal braid. It's a braid that goes to a poof. You got a poof right back there in the back. But I like that. I told you this morning when you did it, I liked it. What made you try something different today on the podcast?

Baby, My hair was dirty. We had grandkids on Valentine's Morning. On Valentine's. Spending the night. Remy coughed all night.

Tell them who Remy is.

Remy is. Chase's our oldest son's daughter. Daughter. She's the baby of their family.

She didn't cough. It was something else. I think she was fighting Godzilla and King Kong in her sleep at the same time. She ran from something and hit.

She was not just coughing. This child was punching, she was crying, she was talking, she was screaming.

It was like watching a movie in her sleep.

I think I almost wanted to cast something out of her, because, really, I laid there at one point and prayed. I was like, God, remember last night.

In the middle of the night, I looked at you and said, do we do something? I've never heard such in my life.

I was tired this morning. Back to my hair. I didn't feel like doing it anyway.

Do we do something? We've been out of practice for a while.

Well, you said, do we do something? So I got up and went and laid down with her. And then here you come and tell me to get up.

But it didn't stop.

You're like, get up. You're not going to lay down here?

No. I said, I know you. You'll be. Be out with your back for two weeks. I said, we ain't laying on the floor. The joys of grandkids walking around with a walker next to it. Oh, my God. You went and laid on an air mattress. I'm like, I know where this is going. We're not doing that.

And that air mattress, when she was kicking and fighting, whatever she was fighting, you could hear it just boom, boom, squishing, squishing all night long.

So I laid there. When you went down, I thought to myself, if I let Hope stay on the floor, I'll be putting Salon paws on her back that big. Every day for about two weeks. I'm like, we're not doing that now. If you would have stopped. If your presence would have stopped what she's doing, but she was still running. She was like, if it ain't gonna make no difference. Come on, back up and get into bed.

You know, when it first started, I thought, well, she's having bad dream. And so she went all night long.

It was like a ninja. She was like a ninja.

She gets up and acts like nothing's wrong.

Hey, Gigi, did you slip her Ambien last night? Did you slip my granddaughter an Ambien?

No.

She didn't know what was going on all night long. No. Well, anyway, we got a great. Actually, we got a great podcast. I'm excited about doing it. And we talked about this topic a good bit even this morning, while me and you were having our coffee and trying to recuperate from our tumultuous night. And we want to talk about safeguards in our life. Safeguards from temptation. And it's amazing, this morning, even when I brought that up, we got discussing things that we know we've done. And, guys, this hits everybody. I'm not talking about safeguards in marriage. I'm not talking about. I'm talking about safeguards on your life. So don't dial us out and say, oh, they doing one of them marriage things. I'm not gonna watch that. This is putting safeguards in your life. I do have, as always, two or three scriptures that I would like to kind of lay the foundation spiritually, then move practically into things that you could do. So anything you want to add to the topic overall, first, while I get started, because I got three scriptures.

That's right. We'll go.

First of all, I don't know that people. We've had people in church too long, think there's a good God and there's a bad devil, and everything originates out of that. If it's bad, it originated from evil. If it's good, it originated out of God. But the fact is, the Bible talks more about our flesh than it does Satan. The fact that there are 26 works of the flesh. In other words, there are sins that my life that are just embedded. Embedded in my human nature.

Yeah.

And I don't need any help from any demon, no outside source. I don't need darkness. I don't. They are things that I have the capacity to do because I'm a man. Right, because you're a woman. Because you have a flesh suit. And so you go to Romans 7, that great thing I love to preach out of, where he talks, he talks about the contradiction in his life. Yeah. The war. He talks about I have this thing warring against my mind. He talks about his flesh warring against the mind. Yeah. I want to do the right thing, but I got this other thing shooting all these crazy thoughts and desires and it ends up winning. And so I wanted to start by saying that basically you have to safeguard against your flesh because I've always taught your spirit has been saved, your mind or your soul is being saved, but your flesh is not saved. So years ago I did teaching called.

Flesh and it won't be saved.

I did a teaching called flesh management. Remember that?

I do.

So you don't save it, you don't kill it.

You manage it.

You have to manage it. And then the Bible. Yeah, and then the Bible says that our reward is the fact that when we get to heaven, we will have a new body, a glorified body, in other words. What does that mean? Somehow it is a body that does not fight me because right now, spiritually, I want to live for God. I want to do the right thing. But I've got a body that's fighting me.

It's that little cartoon where you have the devil on one shoulder and you have the angel on the other shoulder and they're whispering in your. Do it, don't you?

I think it was the Bugs Bunny cartoons. They used to do that one on each shoulder, but. And Paul talks about that contradiction. So now that I've taken four minutes and established, you know, we have to safeguard against ourselves.

James says we're dragged away by our own evil lust desires.

He says, let no one say God is tempting me. Basically, let no one say any outside source has tempted me.

The devil did not make you right.

I'm tempted when by my own evil desires I'm dragged away and enticed. So in other words, temptation is not something that comes from the outside in. It's the enemy, really, trying to get ahold of what's already in you. And so long and short of it is, we've established. I got a safeguard against the flesh. We established that temptation comes from my own desires. So what does he say? Make no provision for the flesh. Okay. Provide. Do not provide flesh opportunities. Now, I'm going to tell you, I could flip the table and go nuts right here because I have so many people I talk to that play with fire and cannot understand why they burn. Burn?

Oh, they're burned. Yes. If you struggle with Alcoholism.

Get away from it. Get away from it.

Yes, go to the bar.

And we've had people in particular that struggle mightily and have lost almost everything with alcoholism. And when you call, I'm just gonna go hang out with my friends at the pool.

And you're like, oh, God, here we.

Go, here we go, here we go. You know? And so if you know that is a thing in your flesh that wants to destroy your life and everyone and.

Everything, you can't just have one.

No, you cannot go there, okay? If you know that pornography is a thing that you struggle mightily with, then you have got to shut off provisions. I don't know if it's filters, I don't know if it's accountability. I don't know if it's letting your wife see your phone all day. I don't know what it is, but you've got to cut off the provision. In other words, if I provide for you, I'm giving you something that you need.

Right?

The Bible says, don't give the flesh what it needs.

What it needs so good.

Don't go around life giving the flesh. There's certain things that it needs to stay alive and stay so strong. And for me, you know, we want to go down at the altar, you know, but the fact is, how do.

We want to go down the altar?

You know, like we're slinging bees off of us. You know what I'm talking about? What the main thing is, you know, it's something that I've got to do practically. And a lot of spiritual people don't see practical things as spiritual. When real spirituality plays out in the spiritual. Yeah.

The Bible says first the natural, then the spirit.

And faith without works is dead. So there's got to be something that my faith has put to work in my life to safeguard me.

Now, all of it boils down to discipline. Self control really is. And that's a fruit of the spirit. Of the spirit. That is evidence. That is fruit is evidence that you are intimate with the spirit. And if you are not intimate with the spirit, you cannot produce self control.

So if I don't provide for the flesh, I need to provide for the spirit. I need to provide opportunities.

What you sow, too, is going to be stronger.

When you turn on your radio, you have an opportunity, what you're going to provide. Yeah, I got stations on there. I got stuff in my phone.

I choose.

I'm making a choice. What am I going to feed? What am I going to provide for? When you turn on your tv, what am I going to provide for circles of people that you get in. There's some that bring out this in you. There's some that bring out that in you. What are you gonna provide for? All those things are not dependent on the Holy Spirit. They're dependent on you making a decision.

Right. And I can hear people right now listening to us that would say, well, goodness gracious, I should just lock myself in a closet. Then. There's bad everywhere I go. Yeah, yeah, there's bad everywhere you go. And I do believe, Ron, excuse me for a season. If, you know, you really struggle with something, you may have to set strong, strong boundaries that you don't go. You know, like we were talking about earlier, if you struggle with alcoholism, you can't even be around it. So you can't say, well, I'm just gonna have one. Because one always leads to more and more and more you don't make provision for. You give no place to the devil. So, yeah, it's not really lock yourself in a closet, but sometimes you do have to have a consecration, like a line of huge separation of people, places, and things.

You know, there was. There's been a lot of chatter online lately about how much Christian artists need to participate in a celebrity world, how much they need to participate in Grammys, and, you know, do we need to go and look for their, you know, validation and all this other stuff.

Yeah.

The fact is, a lot of people hope their argument is, well, I'm going to be a light in the darkness. I'm going to be a light. You can't be a light until you have filled your dark places with light. Okay. And a lot of times we say. And we say we going to change it, but you only give a little bit of time, and I can just look at the pictures, and I say, yeah, who's changing who? The fact is, there are times where God will isolate you and remove you from everything while he removes the darkness from your life.

And that happened to me.

Yeah. So that you can be a light and a lot of people, like, they get saved. I'm going to go back to the people I ran with, and I'm going to be a light. And what happens? You're running back with them real soon.

The Bible says, what fellowship?

Hath light with darkness?

Hath light with darkness?

There is no fellowship.

There is none.

The Bible talks about unequally yoked. The Bible talks about fellowship, light with darkness, and long and short of it. I thought I had my. Here.

Excuse me.

Yep.

This is real raw and relevant.

Real raw and relevant. I'm not trying to sit here and disprove things. Yes, we are the light of the world, period. We are city set on a hill. We're the salt of the earth. There's no way around that. But the fact is, I got to make sure I'm ready to be a light before I put myself in a dark environment. Can I change it? One of the great things about David, you know, I talk and I just think about more things from the Bible. One of the things that made David such a great leader and is when he was running from Saul, he went into a cave called the cave of Adullam. And the Bible says there were 200 men in that cave, and they were broke, busted, and disgruntled. Yeah. So. But 200 complaining men. Those same men ended up being David's mighty men because he didn't become like them. They became like him.

That's a great man.

Until. Until you're in a place where you can go and make it like you. You don't need to be in that environment. Now, having said that, let me move forward. So, you know, about 10, 12 years ago now, unfortunately, people got to view our public disarray and dismay, and we've apologized a million times for that. But basically we had to remove ourselves and just repair stuff. We were very honest. We didn't duck, dodge, die. We like, we're in a bad spot. Hang with us. We're gonna. We're gonna come out on top of this. But one of the things was not just to get healed from what we had done, but me and you hung onto the scriptures of restored. God said, I will restore what the locusts have eaten. The locust there being basically a symbolic and an analogy of life. I will restore unto you. And the Bible even said the years. And that was real big because we knew we lost some things. We knew we lost some time. And so that scripture was more to us than just something you quote to feel good. We hung on it. We. Yeah, we hung. We hung onto it like a last thread for dear life. And that word restore, for us to believe God, to restore. It's the same word for when Jesus went up and the guy had the withered hand. We don't know if it was an accident, an injury, or a birth defect, but Jesus walked up to him and said, stretch out your hand. The guy didn't ask for Jesus healing. He didn't call out to Jesus at all. Very unique because most people ask for help. He didn't ask for anything. And then he had A good hand and a bad hand. So Jesus didn't even differentiate which one to stretch out. But in the presence of Jesus, he stretched out his weakness.

Right.

That's what I love about Jesus. You can run to him with your weaknesses, not hide them. And he stretched out his hand. And the Bible said when he stretched out his hand, it was restored. It didn't say made whole or healed. Every other thing says they were made whole or it was instantly healed. This one is the only time it says restored. So when he stuck his hand out, evidently the members of his hand that were missing were put in place. And I looked at that word restored, and it means to create a new structure. True restoration does not come until new structures have been put in place in your life. Okay.

Yeah.

So we've come to this point, the halfway point in our thing where we got the spiritual part down. Now, I just want to talk about some practical safeguards we put in place to make sure that our lives do not succumb to the same temptations or any new temptations. I've been talking the whole time. I'll let you go first.

Well, I know for me, 10 years ago, it's hard to believe it's already been 10 years. That was 2013 in the rearview mirror. Thank God for that. But it was October 2013. My life just crashed. And I knew that I was going to have to incubate, ICU type, get into a very safe place to rebuild structures, to tear down old structures, and to rebuild new structures. And I didn't mind being alone. You know, some people hate being alone, but I was so thankful.

You probably were ready for it, to.

Be able to be alone so that I could, number one, hear God clearly, heal and have godly voices in my life who could say, hope, this is this. Hope this. This is that.

Hope is. They see objectively.

Yeah, they see objectively. When you're in the middle of trauma, you're in the middle of sin, you're in the middle of trouble, you don't see, you don't know what you don't know. And so they helped me to see objectively. Cause I would say no, but they're my friend. We were talking about friends. And so she would back me up and say, no, a real friend wouldn't let you do X, Y, Z, whatever it would be. So for me, time was very, very important to be able to pull back and incubate. Now I know everybody doesn't have, you know, time to. Or the luxury to X people out of your life. You might Work with the people who are pulling you down. You might be married to somebody who is not a good influence, but I was able to be very strategic and to let people speak into my life to say, here's some things you may not see. And I was able to implement those things. So I think, number one, voices in your life are so important when you are trying to put new structures in your life.

I think right now, number one goes hand in hand with number two. And I would have probably put your number two at number one, but you. You said it's number one. I think the. The most difficult. We started out with the hardest one first. The most difficult structure to put in place is new relationships.

Yeah.

Because I've always said, Mike Murdoch told me one time, and the few times I have with him by himself, he said, the way you recover from a failure is you first. Look who was with me when I failed.

Wow, that's huge.

You examine who. Your circle with the circle when it happened. And he said, most likely those people will have to be cut from your life if you're ever going to recover from that. So I would have said that's. I would have wanted to end there with the hardest one. So you started there. We'll start. You did. I watched you. You just. You're gone. You're gone. I mean, you didn't go to them and say that, but it stopped. And with that stops the influences that come with it, you want to speak to that.

And then you have to be so careful that you rebuild. You know, the Bible says, you know, once you've cast the darkness out of your life, if you don't rebuild and fill it with something good, you leave space for the enemy to come back in and it's going to be worse. So I had to be so careful what I filled my space with going forward. And I was very strategic and I was very careful. And for a very long time, it was only my family. It was you, it was my children, it was my parents.

That's still the main part.

It was. It was just. I was very strategic. And I had come to a place where I was so content and whole. Jesus had healed me so that I was content and whole to be with my family. And that was it. And even today, I do have friends. I have some great friends. I was very strategic in choosing good godly friends. Good godly friends.

You do.

But they're just kind of icing on the cake for me now, you know, that's not. I have to have them and I have to be with them, they're not. And so I think once you have identified those people in your life that you know that aren't good for you and you gotta X them out, then you gotta be very strategic on who you replace to put into your life.

You know, when Chase, our oldest, who we've chronicled many times, we're so proud of him for his, you know, the progress that he's made over the years. Cause it was so bad. But I would always tell Chase, you know, these guys, there was a certain amount of people that if he came walking in the house with them, I knew it was gonna be a bad night. Yeah, I mean, go ahead, get ready.

For the expiring gasket.

Yeah, go ahead and get ready for the call. At 2:30 in the morning, it was going to be a bad night. And so I would always tell Chase, in his sobriety, when he wasn't high, when he wasn't drunk, when I would have those few moments where his body and mind was not being influenced by something, I would say, son, if you can get away from them, you'll stop it. Because it is always connected to them.

Yeah, well, you know, aa, Alcoholics Anonymous, that's what they always trumpet. It's people a new group, places, and.

They'Ve given you a new, Giving you a new environment, and they're giving you a new group. That's one of the things that they're doing. It's not just the 12 steps. It's. They're giving you a different group. Yeah. And so I know a lot of y' all watching you may like, oh, no big deal. That's a huge deal. It is huge changing relationships. And some of them that may have been with you for years, and they won't understand and there may be malice and they won't be.

And people say, how do you. You just go up to them and say, well, I can't be in no cut off communication. You just stop communicating.

Cut off with me. Anything that you don't communicate with, you've heard me say it dies. So you don't go up and have this big meeting. The fact is, if you stop communicating, it's going to wither and combine. And then as you strategically feel like God is bringing really, really healthy people in your life, then you start feeding those relationships. I do want to say here, though. Even relationships tend to be magnetic by what's already in you.

Right.

People who've got something going on on the inside usually will invite people in their life that reinforce that behavior. Birds of a feather Flock together like spirits. Come on, like spirits. Attract birds of a feather. Flock. So if I'm predisposed towards some type of activity, the fact is I'm usually connecting with people that'll incubate it and ensure it's been sustained.

Yeah, it's funny, you know, Shyster'. Always find shysters. Liars. Always find liars.

I've always said in a church, you can. You can get a liar and then you give them six months, they'll find every liar in church.

It's not even church. It's period in life.

I don't care what meant. They will connect and they will find those people, no matter how big the group.

Like spirits.

It's crazy. If you want to gossip, they'll find all the gossipers. If you want to complain, they'll find all the complainers and they just hook up and connect. Let me give you one of my safeguards. My safeguards is I don't ever travel alone. And I always use this to emphasize. But period, there are no exceptions.

I travel with you now most of.

The time, and that's one of the main things. 60, 70% of my travel, you are with me now. But when I see men, men of God especially, and they're just out there running in a Hilton or running in a Marriott or a Hyatt Regency at a conference, and they don't have a soul with them.

Yeah, it's just not good.

The vulnerability that you're tired, you're not around anybody, your bodily hormones, your male hormones kicking in and running. Especially if there's deficiencies and need in your life and you're running on empty, giving out, giving out, giving out. Preaching, preaching. Laying on him. It's. Oh, vulnerability.

Well, the enemy looks for doors.

Opportunity, yeah, he looks for doors. And then another thing is, even if you have no deficiency and you're not vulnerable, if you have no witness, somebody can leave your presence and say anything they want to, and you have no defense. It's true. And I've told people, they're like, why you always got. Every time I see you got somebody with you, they asked me that and I said, because I've worked too hard and too long for some crazy lady to walk away from some hotel, say she was with me, and the whole world immediately believes it because of the Internet, and you're sitting here fighting for your life and you hadn't done a thing, right, Just somebody accused you, but because you had nobody there, right, you know, you have nothing against, you have no safeguards. So that's Just, you know, I implemented that a long time ago. And most of the time now it's you or my son who is traveling with me. I many times have a musician, depending on where I'm at, what I'm doing, that'll travel with me. But I just don't travel by myself.

You don't carry a stylist?

No.

You don't care if hairdresser.

When I've been with the people that only travel with a stylist, most of the time that didn't end well.

You don't have anybody toss your wig and do your makeup. Come on, Ron.

I figured I'd just blow dry my own hair a little bit. So anyway, another safeguard. Hope. This is like the people who say, well, I'm gonna go back to the crowd and win them. Okay. When I got saved, you know, pornography was a huge part of my life. And I've always told. When I told my testimony, man, I just did not want to be a hypocrite. It just. To me, there's nobody that discredits the gospel more than people that are just hypocritical. I'm not talking about people with problems.

Everybody's got problems.

Everybody's got problems. I'm talking about people with a willful, undercurrent lifestyle that they have no intention of ever bringing under the blood. It's intentional. That's what I'm talking about. I did not want that to be a part of my life anymore. But you talking about feeding a monster. And I had fed it big meals for a long time, and my Christian experience was brand new. And so immediately in hotels, even all the way back into college, I made these crazy calls because back then it was TVs and pay per view. There was no Internet. And I would tell them, take the TV out if it's a Holiday Inn or it didn't matter. I would call ahead and ask the management to take the TV out of the room. And they would always give me this. We don't take TVs out of room. And I'm like, okay. And I just, bottom line, I can't stay at your hotel. Well, okay, you know, you want us to move it out, we'll move. And I said, would you like to move tv? Move to cable box? Just get. Get my access to it, right?

Safeguards, safeguards.

Just safeguards. I've got to start starving this thing. I've got to make it even when I want to. There's no way I can get my hands on it today. That is much more Difficult with the rise of these things. So I feel for those who have gotten saved and having to fight that because it's just a click away. Back then it was not that readily available. But here again, I've had somebody come up and say, man, that was kind of disappointing hearing that. I would have thought you. And I'm like, well, I don't know.

You don't get saved and immediately glow in the dark. None of us glow in the dark.

You know, I don't know how delivered I am because I have no intentions of testing it.

Right. Well, but you do build up tolerance and you build up strength. The longer you stay away from something, the stronger you get.

And so those were, you know, two of the safeguards were. Were friends. Immediately after I got saved, I did have a meeting.

You did?

I did, yeah. Very hurtful meeting because they, they mocked me. And these were people I spent every waking day of my life with since elementary school. And I met them at a mall, told them I'd gotten saved. I got felt like God called me into ministry and they, they mocked me and they made fun of me. And it was very, very hurtful. But. And I went for a wild hope. Alone.

Yeah.

Because I didn't know how to have a Christian friend. It was weird to me to get in a car and somebody play Christian music.

Yeah.

I didn't know what to do. I didn't know how to go to church and raise my hands. I had, I've been saved, but I didn't know how to do the Christian stuff.

Right.

And so telling them by. There was a big gap between telling them, hey, yeah, and a gap where I was alone. When you're. When you were being healed, there's a big gap where you just kind of alone. And me, I wasn't isolated from other environments, but I was isolated from people. Now I was in that weird stage. I'm no longer that, but I'm not quite this. And so I was somewhere in the middle. Let's get a few more minutes, one more safeguard, and I'll give you one more safeguards.

Okay. So we talked about just things you've.

Implemented in your life. Said I don't cross this line.

Right. People, places.

I think the next thing that we.

Do would be this and things that would be things. So the places, there's just some places that we just don't participate in. I mean, not good. I mean, not being judgmental, not even going to name things, but there's just some places that you and I just don't participate. Just because we don't want to give a place to the enemy. I mean, you know, goodness gracious, don't let your good be evil spoken of. People talk, people speculate, people gossip, people judge. So there's just some places that we've chosen not to participate in.

And people say, well, shoot, I'm not going to live by everybody else's opinion. I agree and I preach that. So I'm not being hypocritical. However, the Bible says, live a life worthy of the calling you've received. Why? Because if I don't influence them, they won't follow.

Right.

So I've got to have a life where their opinion of me is somewhat favorable to earn their followship.

I mean, just to give. I mean, I'm sure people are at. Ron and I would never go to a nightclub. We just would not do that. You know, we've got some friends who think it's fun. They go with us. Yeah, they've invited us. They go with their spouse and they'll go to a nightclub out at the beach or Miami or wherever they are and dance, whatever. Ron and I just choose not to do that because we don't want to put ourself in that environment. There's a lot of drunk people there.

I've told you why I can't do it.

People looking for women.

It ain't that I'm worried about drinking and drugs. Those are not part of my life. What I don't want is some drunk guy coming up hitting on my wife and then all of a sudden I'm the one.

We ain't trying to go to jail today.

Yep. Phones always up?

Yep.

Always.

Same passcode.

Access them same passcodes. We had the exact same passcodes. Why? That is a safeguard. I think one of the biggest red flags is when a spouse will not give you access to a phone. I'm just going to tell you I don't care.

I mean, the bottom line is you can say you're not, but you're hiding something.

I don't care. Yes, sir. That is a huge red flag. And I don't care if I am starting a bunch of fights by everybody watching the podcast right now. The fact is, if I went to grab your cell phone now and you, it'd be a bad night. And same way with you. And so here again, people say this has not been a very spiritual podcast. We've helped people more than they know. Cause basically, people, environments and stuff, this is stuff. Places, nightclubs, people. We had to change.

And the bottom line is we're trying not to sin, right? We're trying to guard our flesh, to keep our life pure and to live a life worthy of the call. And the ultimate goal is to look like Jesus, to become more like him every single day of our life.

And I wouldn't call us fuddy duds at all. Me and you have a great time.

Yeah, we have a great time.

We go to nice places. We have a great time. And we love to be together. We love to sit around outside of nice restaurants and lounges and fire pits and stuff like that. But clubs, we don't do clubs. And so. But we love a nice night out. We can just sit out and talk to each other at a nice place. We love those things. So you're not looking at two prudes right here, but you're just. There are some things that we will do.

But I think too, you know, my boundaries are not going to be the same as what somebody's listening to me. Their boundaries would be, you have to know what's in you. You have to know what you can.

Do and what you can do and building safeguards accordingly.

Yes. And especially if you're married, those things need to be talked about. You need to sit down.

Gambling addiction, your safeguards need to be different. Yes, I'll lose about $20 at a casino and I'm done. $20, I'm done. I work too hard. On your way out, I told I would be a terrible gambler because I don't have the stomach to lose money. My money going down, I just don't have the stomach for it. And in gambling, they say you got to ride it out. It ebbs and flows. I'm like, okay, I don't have that ability.

Ron's like, I ain't willing.

No, I don't have that ability. I'll go see a show or go walk at the shops or something. I just don't want to do that. But like you said, depending on what your struggle is, safeguards need to be built in accordingly. And they will be different for all people, but they have to be there.

Because you cannot just trust your flesh, really. That's. We started this podcast out with. The flesh is the problem. It is not going to be new till we get to heaven. We're not going to have a new body. And the flesh is going to do what the flesh is going to do. And if you give it free rein, you put it in an atmosphere, it's going to act up. So if we are truly wanting to be more like Jesus, we got to know what our flesh does. We got to know what our triggers are, and we got to put up safeguards.

All righty.

That's it.

We kind of went over our time. But I like this one. This one was good. Hopefully it was informative. Because our goal is to be very informal. Our goal is me and Hope to do what we do. Go back and forth at each other, make fun, poke fun at each other, but also without preaching, throw some information out there that is really, really useful.

If this has been good, I hope you share it, hope you like it. Go to our YouTube channel. Yes, Ron, you tickle me. Tell em to go and follow us and download. So go to our YouTube page, subscribe like and share. Come on, y'. All. Follow us on Instagram, Facebook. We have an amazing church, Redemption Church. Two coast, the west coast, the east coast, Greenville, South Carolina.

We basically got three churches.

East Coast, West Coast, San Jose, California.

Are you kids virtually everywhere? So we love you guys and your time with us is hopefully time well spent. And until next time, blessings to you. We'll see you soon.