Transcription
One person was like, "This is YouTube. Atheists own YouTube. Go away, Christian."
It's very important, I think, especially for the charismatic church and for Christians in churches to deal with abuse, fraud, cover up.
We just want to thank Mike for protecting victims.
I was okay. Initially, this was a conviction I felt was from the Lord. There's a there's a chance, okay, there's a chance something could happen to me. You know, there are some things that are just like sick, horrible, worse than anything I've talked about that I'm pretty sure is true. And I can't do anything unless I
Lord Jesus, we come to you right now.
Bruce Lawn.
Hey, real quick before we jump into this video, you have to hear about this. Here is something that every follower of Jesus can lock arms on. Unborn babies should be protected and we can be a part of that protection. So, you have to hear about this. Seriously, don't skip over this video.
For $26, you can create a lifealtering, lifesaving moment for a mother and her beautiful baby. I didn't believe that was possible at first either. $26, that may sound small, but it may be the most important $26 you and I can spend today. That $26 reaches a woman before the abortion industry does, right? When she's scared, isolated, and searching for answers. And in that moment, you can become her lifeline. Not a building, not a billboard. You instead of being told she has no choice, she hears compassion. Instead of being rushed, she's met by someone who says, "We see you. We will help you. You are not alone."
Human Coalition has already helped over 35,000 women choose life. I've actually been privately giving to them for years because of their tech first approach, which connects women with long-term continued womb care, connecting the mother with ongoing support and resources after the baby is born. So, I was ecstatic when they decided to sponsor this video.
But here's the part that keeps me up at night. There are still more than a million mothers right now today who haven't been reached yet. And many of them, this is their only hope before the abortion industry gets to them first. Your $26 doesn't fund a program. It creates a lifesaving moment. A moment where a mother and her baby are given a second chance. If you've ever wondered whether one small action can actually save a life, this is that moment. Give $26 today. be her lifeline. You can hit the link in the pin comment or in the description. Make that donation today.
All right. Let's jump into this video.
All right. How you feeling?
Just feels really good to sit down.
Okay. Did you Did you think we were going to stand and talk for the whole time?
No, I just been standing the whole time. I wanted to see everybody, meet everybody. Yeah.
Yeah. You've been around meeting everybody, mingling. Um, so what what I love about your story, Mike, and and again, you don't really talk about this often, is how faithful you were in a role of ministry. I joked earlier about like when you when you're on fire for the Lord, you get saved, there's like three things you could do in a local church. Be go plant a church, which is horrifying. Go be a youth pastor or go be a worship pastor,
right? And often the most kind of forgot about thing uh thing in ministry is the youth pastor. and you faithfully serve for beyond a decade behind the scenes pastoring, shephering people, uh, young people way before YouTube took off for you.
Oh, yeah. Oh, yeah.
And so, I I want you to just share a little bit about that u and and the the the power of of of um for for faithfulness in the little things in a in a quiet in the things that are often not glamorized. Uh you were talking about how you know one of the first times you preached in front of adults you were shocked because they actually thanked you and youth ministry people don't don't don't
the youth don't they're not like thank you that was I was really blessed by that in in like years I would never hear that and I would teach in the sanctuary and be like this is weird they're thanking me.
Yeah. Yeah.
So so talk to me about that.
Well I mean I I started doing youth well ministry when I was like 19 and I still I hadn't even read the whole Bible. Like I was I was not raised in a Christian home. You know, my family was it was they thought they liked that I was Christian at first, but then they didn't like it because then I was like, I don't want to watch that show with you.
And so then it got awkward pretty quick. But
but uh but yeah, I I'd be like the only one going to church in my family, you know, on my own. Uh starting in junior high and the Lord just got a hold of my life. But 19, I started serving. I was doing youth ministry. I did janitorial work at the church.
Um did uh just volunteer type stuff. a lot of that. Eventually, I became like a youth pastor, but I was with youth ministry for years and years before that.
And then I became you pastor was for about 14 years. Um, and ours was not a big church. There's more people in this room than everyone that than we ever had in the room of our Sunday morning service. Um, and I was in the youth room, which would have been like much smaller, you know, group of people. Um, but I was I was content to do it. And I think that when I first started ministry, I like had this idea because I was Calvary Chapel, right? So, I had this idea of like I'm I'm kid you not. So, I'm in my 20s and I'm thinking I think if Chuck was to retire, I think I could do his his thing.
If Chuck Smith were to retire, you're like, I I could I could take this over.
Yeah. I was I was in my early 20s, right? But years of ministry service like beat that out of me so hard. In a good way.
In a good way. To the point where I wouldn't I wouldn't have wanted it if it had been offered. But also, I didn't have this these weird views of myself like that. I really thought it was worthwhile to study and teach a group of students and then do it again next week. And I thought that was that was awesome. It was incredible.
Um, totally worth doing. And
I I had like a real contentment in ministry in what would be considered, I think, a normal ministry, you know, just like a normal what most of you guys who are in ministry do. And I was very content with that. Um, and was very surprised when the online stuff like did did so much
and kept growing and growing and growing. And I remember thinking making a video and thinking
I got a 100red views
cuz I'm like, dude, I studied for 12 hours last week so I could teach like eight kids. I got a hundred views.
That was very motivating to me
in a good way. I mean I and I thought and like 11 of them watched to the end
which
which is more than you were preaching
at the youth ministry
and they couldn't leave if they wanted to.
So these people wanted to watch to the end. I was this amazing but but I I just uh I just served in any capacity I could in the local church and was very happy and content to do it and I just didn't really have any problem with that. And I think that that's incredibly valuable. And I think that people would maybe look at my my ministry and think like, so you did that faithfully and then you made it.
And I'd say, no, that's the opposite of what I'm saying.
Um, I'm saying I did that faithfully and that was more than enough service to the king and God the Lord opened another door. But if I was still just doing that, I would think this is absolutely I could, for all I'm concerned, I could be like a a garbage man and then I like do I'm an usher at the church and that would be worth it. I I think that, you know, life is ministry.
Yeah.
And um
and that's been really valuable for me to learn that lesson. I kind of learned it learned it the the slow way.
I love that. I I think Proverbs says that humility precedes honor. And we live in a society where so many people want to be seen and want to be known and want honor before they're willing to be humble and to serve. I also think there's there's a paradoxical nature to how often contentment and faithfulness right where you are is a spring launch to the next season and however that looks. And so, uh, you were faithful right where you were at, serving people right, serving young people right where you were at. And then slowly, it it wasn't overnight. You've been on YouTube for quite a while.
Yeah. Uh, it's got to be over a decade now.
Over a decade. Tell me how that started. Like how did you go from, okay, I'm I'm gonna teach these 10 folks to, oh, I got my first hundred views. Like, tell me that step. And by the way, some of you guys are in here, you get 100 views on a video and you want to quit,
right? Mike was pumped.
Right. But but I'm but I'm but I'm I'm trying to tease out something like I'm trying to tease out the type of heart posture that I believe the Lord breathes on. Right. So that that that moment from hey I'm teaching these 10 people to like I I'm I'm going to give this a shot and I'm going to upload this first video. What was that and what went into that?
Sure. Um well I was okay. Initially this was a conviction I felt was from the Lord which I rarely say this.
This is about to be Mike Winger with the God told me card.
Yes. I rarely, this is not something I norally say, but um I told my wife, I remember telling her, um, "Honey, I think the Lord's showing me that there's something I have to do in addition to all the ministry stuff I'm already doing. And if I don't figure out what it is, I'm really missing out on something important that the Lord's called me to do." And I didn't know what that was, but I was on I don't know if any of you guys know Yahoo Answers. Does anybody know Yahoo Answers?
That's a deep cut.
I would go on Yahoo Answers and I would be like debating people and nobody listened or cared. But I would be like typing. I'll be like, "That was a good answer. Nobody's giving me the the vote thing. They just voted up the atheist who was just made a joke." But anyway, so I'm not I'm not bitter. But but I I remember um I didn't want to quit doing my local ministry. I wasn't even trying to replace the ministry. I just thought there was something else I should do in addition. So I start um looking into it and I thought let me be strategic about this because if it's serious if this is something the Lord would have me do then let me be thoughtful. So, I started researching like different platforms and whether it was uh Instagram or Facebook or or YouTube or God tube and I'm like looking up and I God tube is I thought the worst option for me for the reason well for several reasons but not because it's bad or something like that but for a bunch of reasons but um but YouTube is the one where I thought this would be really hard. There was no Christian niche on YouTube at the time.
And I thought this would be really hard to break through, but if if you could break through, it's the the ability to reach people is insane.
It's free. Like go back 30 years. You're paying money to get anything in front of other people for them to see, whether it's ministry stuff or whatever. You're you have to pay money per person to get that stuff out there. And I thought this is free. Let me basically I decided YouTube was like probably the best opportunity. And then I first started making videos like just kind of like I make one a month later I'd make a video and I was just trying to experiment with stuff and YouTube really was really zany at the time.
So I was trying to like I made this like thing called the bathrobe blog and I Anybody ever seen the bathrobe blog? I apologize if you have.
Is this still up?
No way. I
You got to let them old videos rock. Oh, now there's I have some old ones out there, but my first video was me showing you how to get a guitar pick out of a guitar.
He's he's serving the people. I was seeing a theme here.
I would I was a full-time pastor, which means I also had a couple part-time jobs. So, I would teach guitar lessons to people.
So, uh but no, I I just wanted to see how YouTube worked. I was like, I've never uploaded a video. Let me just make a quick one and I'll So, um, yeah, I did weird zany things and they didn't really work that good and I wasn't really that great at it. And I was like really close to quitting and I made this video called like, "What do I say when Jehovah's Witnesses come to my door?"
And I was goofy. I like pulled out my guitar and I was like, "You don't have to hide when when the Jehovah's Witnesses come to your door, you know?" And I was kind of fun with it and I made it and it and uh it it did really well. And um anyways, I'll I'll skip to the long story short part which is where I eventually said, you know, I'm trying all these different things. The thing I'm good at is teaching. The thing I've spent years and years learning to do and developing and doing a lot of is just teaching. And I'll just I'm just going to teach. And my pastor would come up to me, said, "Do you want to do the sun a Sunday night service? We h we don't have one." And I said, "Yes, I'd love to." So, the first time we did the service, I taught um and then I uh I said, "Hey, if anybody here's willing to run the camera, I'll record this and I'll put it on YouTube." And a friend of mine, Cernin Aguular, he was like, "I'll do it." So, he runs the camera, this little handheld camcorder that's like super old and janky. And we start uploading those on YouTube and they're getting like, you know, it's like 60 views or 40 views and like 20 of them me checking to see how many views there are. Um, and there's like comments or like that's this is too long.
Someone said it's too long.
Oh, I've had lots of I still get those comments. Um, or other others were like one person was like, um, this is YouTube. Atheists own YouTube. Go away, Christian. And I was like, I don't know. I think maybe we own it now, but but the uh but it was like hardly any views and stuff like that, but still I'm thinking like, dude, if 80 people watched this video and even if only 10 of them really paid attention, I would have I would have studied all week to teach 10 people something from God's word, you know? Um, so we just start it starts trickling in a little bit and I'm teaching like on how to understand the Old Testament law and because now I feel like I've got this other audience and it's not just youth, I could share things that normally I would not make a whole thing for the youth ministry on and it just really really slowly over the years grew. I I don't remember how long it took to get to a thousand subscribers but it took a year to go from a,000 to 2500 for me. It was a year to go from that to 5,000 and it was a year from five to 10 and the next year it went from 10 to 40 and then I don't remember exactly the timeline after that but then it's it continued to grow
becomes exponential. Yeah, it was it was more plus I'm getting better at doing things because I taught like a pastor putting a video on YouTube instead of thinking like I'm going to create
a um a resource designed for an online community instead of just uploading what I would do because pastors don't have they have a captive audience like right now you guys it's very unlikely you're going to leave.
You can't click out of this video,
right? But if this was a YouTube video, I better be very intentional about the order of things I share and how it starts and things like that so that I can show you that it was worth your time. Um so I learned lessons. Yeah,
that that is so good because you know we think of like do nothing out of uh selfish ambition, vain conceit but count others right before you. And I think sometimes people particularly Christians will get on YouTube and what they'll do is they actually won't respect the platform or the person that's consuming it. So they'll they'll you have five subscribers and you're like, "Hey, welcome back everybody. How are you doing? uh we're going to talk about um we're going to talk about uh yeah and then they start rambling right and then they're like ah why can't I get any traction it's like because you act
hard truth you don't respect the audience
you don't respect people's time and you don't respect the platform what you do a great job of is in a 11 hour video in a 5 hour video now this This is this is important. You'll jump in and and and and some and some some some Christians may scoff at this like they might you'll jump in and you immediately give them what they came for.
Yeah. Yeah. You give value. Did I turn this off?
I think move your hand up a little bit.
Is it me?
Yeah.
There. Give value right away. Give them the the reason they the title and thumbnail stuff like you created an uh with the thumbnail you got their attention. With the title you got them to click.
Give them what they clicked for. This isn't this isn't rude. This is like I I pitch to you this could be worth your time and then I'm going to do it. So I don't for instance I'll do a live stream and what I don't do is go let me start the live stream and be like let's wait for more people to get here. Why would I do that?
Because if I click on a live stream and you go I'm going to wait for more people to go here and I'll be like well I'll come back some other time then because
because I because I've got look at all these other videos and there's this really funny one that I'm looking at so I'll click you know. But yeah, I just I think if you a Christian mentality towards YouTube is super helpful because if you view it as like I really care about the viewer. I want them to be blessed. I want them to be ministered to. I want them to be helped. All of those are actually good YouTube strategies.
They're really successful strategies
and they're Christian principles.
They're Christian principles.
Yeah.
And um and all you're doing is you're like, I'm just trying to help people. And then it it it produces this um momentum with your content. And you I mean you guys know if you see my content like you you might look at a video and be like that one's not for me. But there's got to be sometime you clicked on a video and thought this is an issue I desperately need help with and in my mind as I'm preparing it I'm thinking that person is who this is for
the hopefully from the moment they click on the video and um and then it ends up being fruitful and and then it's like it doesn't matter how many views it gets in a sense like obviously you want more but whoever did see it got help.
Mhm. you know, they didn't. It's not just a view that served me. It's a video that ministered to them. So, that's a great thing.
Yeah. That's good. Is this helpful?
Yeah. Because I think so many of us live in a in a false dichotomy, thinking that in order to do YouTube correctly that we shouldn't do the things that are best practices on YouTube. And then we'll we'll sprinkle Jesus on that. and and act like we're more spiritual. That that's actually not how it works. Another mistake people make is they'll start looking at people who are highly successful already on YouTube and start trying to create like them. So like Penguin Penguin Zero for example, right? I don't know if you guys know who that is. Um couple people know like no thumbnails. It's like yeah he has 15 million subscribers.
It's on it's on e easy mode, right? Joe Rogan. You're not Joe Rogan, dog.
Like you don't get to meander about like cold plunges and right like you like so when you're on you got to get to it. You got to get to it. So I I I love that you pointed that out. Now um I I want to talk about this and this might be a little dicey, but you you've had a hot take that I've appreciated and you've shared that Christians should be monetizing on YouTube.
Yeah. Yeah.
I think that's very wise. unpack that for me.
Okay. So, um imagine a world where where all the Christians on YouTube will not monetize their content. Okay. And then YouTube starts getting pressure from LGBT uh advocacy agencies. You need to shut down these bigots on your platform. And YouTube goes to their accounting department and they say, "Hey, if we were to shut down all the Christians on YouTube, how much money would we lose?" And they go, "Oh, none. Okay, now on the flip side, let's suppose that YouTube says, "How many Christians and Christian producers and stuff like that we have on YouTube?" And they go, "Oh, there's tons." And how much money are we making? Oh, we're making a significant amount of money. You give them their real motive for wanting to protect your freedoms. And and so for that reason, and I'm very serious about this. Yeah. Now, what you do with any money that comes in or how you moni now I I do minimal monetization, right? So, I I don't do midroll ads personally and I don't do certain things, but um but I think that we should in fact I it was it was um it was Living Waters Ray Comfort and I was like you guys should monetize I don't you could give the money away to random strangers just you should monetize your content. Um it's good for every Christian on the platform. Um because it's a it's a source of revenue for them and we want we want them to to like us and like us on the platform. So anyways, they did and it was a good thing that they did, I think. So now for my ministry, we I monetize my videos usually, not the coverup culture series because I knew I would be accused a thousand times of doing it for money. But even still, all the money goes into the 501c3. It doesn't go to my pocket and it doesn't affect my paycheck. Um, I'm not saying everyone else needs to do that. I don't care what you do. Um, I'm doing this as a pastor doing a ministry online. YouTube doesn't always have to be like a 501c3 organization. It can you can do whatever you want. But uh but I do think we should monetize. I think that is strategic and wise to monetize to be in those spaces and to have a reason for them, a motive for them to protect your freedoms of speech. That's good. It's good. We talked earlier, you weren't here for this, but we talked about how there's a spectrum when it comes to Christians in the marketplace. on one of the spe end of the spectrum, and I'm just using this as a placeholder, but we all understand what I'm saying. You have a Chick-fil-A, and a Chick-fil-A is Christian-owned. Uh I think some of the executives are still Christian. Uh and they have Christian principles and how they train up their staff and and how they, you know, pour into young people. Uh and so you got one end of the spectrum where they're 100% just Christians in the marketplace. And then you have on the other end of the spectrum a actual ministry model,
right? Uh, and then you you have everything in between, right? So like KB and A mean who you guys just saw. They they're kind of right in the middle. Like they're a for-profit business, but when you hear their heart, they're very ministrydriven, right? Similar to what we do. We are a for-profit ministry minded business, but we sell products and services and so on and so forth. And so there's a spectrum there. You're on the other end of the spectrum
where you're a fully nonprofit. um you all your information is publicly released, your 990s are released, like people can look all this stuff up. Um and so you're on the other end of the spectrum, which is a different model. It's a different monetization model, right? So tell me like how has that been? Cuz you really are dependent on whatever videos do perform that you do choose to monetize, which hasn't been a whole lot lately with the coverup culture stuff.
And you're dependent on your donors. and your donors are great and generous and they have equipped you to not just provide for yourself and your wife but also to provide for counseling and for legal fees and for other people and and and I know you also give away to other ministries, right? So tell me like that process of structuring what you do in a way that's purely a ministry,
right? Well, I did not have a plan.
Okay. I remember talking about uh this as as it was like hey you should this should be your full-time thing was the council I got and my pastor thought I should I he goes this will be bigger than what we're doing at the church and you should do it and prayed about it thought about it and said okay I'm going to try and do it but it has to be self- sustaining because the church doesn't have like extra funds for guy who's no longer serving 40 hours a week in the local ministry he's doing parurch stuff so um so I looked at options I like researched like how would I make money on YouTube if if I had to do this. Do I is this commercial dies now? Like what do I do? I want to do this ministry, but I don't I don't know. So, I just took a stab at it and I was like, let's just let's just say, hey guys, I want to give everything away for free and I'll I'll open the door for donations and we'll just see if it works. And the response was enough to within like six months to like replace my paycheck from church. And and it took over. And then um we got to the point now where for I don't know how long now, like two years or something like that, maybe longer. We've we've had a notice. If you go to the give spot on biblethinker.org, it says we're actually really well taken care of. Maybe you should give it to somebody else.
Which is what I wish every ministry would do to be honest. If if I mean maybe they really have plans they're still hoping to do, but but I respect I respect the donor's money. And I'm like, so it says, "If you'd still donate to us, we may actually be giving your donation to some other ministry we believe in because we we we don't we are getting more than we need. I don't want to chase away my all my support, but and then we're getting nothing." But um but so it just worked. Now, by God's grace, it worked because I'm not saying that would work if you did that. I'm amazed that it did. I remember telling someone who's been in ministry for many years doing multimedia ministry stuff, and I said, they were like, "You need to do this. You have to have products. Some stuff you sell, but you keep your best stuff back. Or some you give away for free, some stuff, but you keep your best stuff back and you sell that. Like, here's your course on women in ministry. That one you have to pay for, right? And I said, "Ah, I just don't want to do that." So, I remember telling her, um, and she knew her stuff and I said, "I honestly I just want to give everything away for free and just hope that enough donations come in." And she said, "Mike, that would be really nice, but that's not how it works." And I just said,"I think I'm going to try it anyways." Yeah. Yeah. I mean, it was it felt really crazy at the time. And it and it was and the thing is the reason why it works, not just because I'm so unique, but YouTube allows you to reach so many people that you only I only needed a fraction of them to say, "I want to support this." And then um I could I could continue. I don't need 900,000 supporters, not remotely. And then I can just give give stuff away for free. And I keep my ministry very small. So, like you have way more people on your team than I do, but that's intentionally. I wanted to keep it real small. So, we it's tight and we've only got like three employees, you know?
Um because I'm like, dude, if I can reach millions of people with like three employees, that's exciting to me.
Yeah. Yeah. Well, because there's a there's when you're lean, when you're lean, you could be flexible and you could also take care of your people.
Yeah.
Right. Which is another thing like on the other side now you have employees,
so you have to think about these things.
We've talked about this. This was sobering when when I was like trying to pick at health insurance and I was doing like I was just realizing like man we didn't have very good health insurance before. It's not that much more to get people good health insurance. I don't know why why doesn't people get good health insurance. So
but you're like you're like wanting to you you know I want to pay the employees for my ministry well. I think they should be play paid well. I want them to be able to like say for retirement
and not do ministry for 30 years and then be destitute and then be like well it was for Jesus. We're like, "Hey, look, I want to be willing to be destitute for Jesus. I don't want to make someone else destitute for Jesus." That's not that's not what I'm talking Yeah.
Come on. Well, I also think you you touched on this a little bit. I think often there's this um hey, these are the best practices, right? These are the hey, if you want montage on YouTube, these are the best practices. This is the industry standard. And a lot of that is hogwash.
Yeah.
A lot of that is just nonsense. There's there's so many different ways to generate uh funds to take care of people to pay people well. That's another kingdom principle. Like we want to pay people well. We want to go above and beyond. Give people the best health insurance, right? Give them options for retirement. And so I think that that's that's a kingdom principle. And as a responsibility as a boss, you have that, right? And so uh that's dope. Okay. Um last question. Last question. Um you've been doing a lot of the coverup culture stuff. uh long series that does not uh come without a price. How can we all here be praying for you and your wife?
Um I'll give you two prayer requests. It's going to sound weird, guys. I'm not trying to bait anything, but um so the first prayer request is just uh for wisdom, honestly. Well, okay. Safety. Yeah, there's there's a there's a chance. Okay, there's a chance something could happen to me, you know, but um but for uh wisdom because I feel like it's a knife's edge that I'm walking where it's like if I bring something that is exaggerated like that is an evil thing that I just did >> and I just leverage this rep this respect people have for me and ruin somebody's reputation and cause harm and that's an evil evil thing. And if I receive the testimony of all these victims and then I soft pedal exposing someone who's actually truly wicked, that is also evil because guess what I've done is I've empowered that person to hurt more people, you know. So I just feel like this is just a knife's edge.
Um so prayer for wisdom on that. Um the other thing is there are some things that I and it's not about anybody I've already recently discussed. Okay, this is not I'm not hinting about any of those guys. Um, there are some things that are just like uh the sick, horrible, worse than anything I've talked about that I'm pretty sure is true and I can't do anything unless I get witnesses. And um I'm praying that some people come forward and are like, "Mike, I'm willing to share and talk with you." But they're rightfully scared for their lives if they do. So God's will be done there. And I'm just being transparent. That's that's the situation. Um, and I'm and I don't want to do this for I don't want to do this forever. I want to finish this stuff up and and teach Hebrews and do other
I've been waiting on Hebrews, man.
I know. I'm the worst. I should never announce what I want to do ever. It's I'm always like in six months and then it's like eight years later. I'm finally I'm sorry.
Can we pray for you?
Yeah, that' be great.
How many pastors we have in a house? Can I get some of the pastors come up on stage? We're gonna pray for Mike.
You're a pastor here.
Thank you.
I'll stand.
We're not going to commission you to any weird apostolic ministry. Pastor Kyle, would you would you open us? Pastor Josh, would you open us? Lord Jesus, we come to you right now and we are just so thankful for the blessing of Mike. Lord, you have placed upon his heart something special, a worthy task, Lord, because we are all called to honor you in all that we do. And when that is not being done and work is being done under the guise of your kingdom work, when it's actually not your kingdom work, Lord, we are called to call it out. And Lord, I just pray for your safety and protection over Mike. I'm so thankful for who he is, Lord, and how you created him and the gifts that you've placed upon him. Lord, he is such a blessing to so many. And Lord, we thank you for the wisdom that you impart. That is a gift that you say, Lord, when we ask for your wisdom, you give beyond reproach. It's a prayer you will answer every time, Lord. And I pray that you would do that, Lord, in this case. And Father, we thank you for Mike's ministry, Lord. We thank you for how you used him. I I thank you for how you used them in my life, Father God. And so, right now, we just we just in the name of Jesus ask for wisdom. ask for guidance, Lord, uh your mind, Lord, on how to navigate these very tough terrains that he's navigating. Father, we pray for protection. We we we we believe that uh you have him covered, Lord, and you have him protected, Lord. Pray for uh his wife and and um his marriage and just blessings over that, Father. and uh all these all these witnesses that he's talking to that that are afraid to come forth and just all he's experiencing some of the darkest things that often happen and that you would give him shoulders uh that that are able to carry it Lord but you would also let him rest in you father so we just ask for rest and refreshment we thank you Lord we love you in Jesus name amen Amen.
Amen. Amen.