The Process

n this episode of A Cup of Friendship, Rhett Palmer and Mike Bagby sit down over coffee to talk about the journey of faith and the process God uses to shape our lives. From seasons of growth to moments of challenge, they explore how transformation doesn’t happen overnight—but through intentional steps guided by God’s Word.

With honest conversation and biblical insight, this episode encourages listeners to trust the process, remain patient, and recognize that God is at work in every stage of life. ☕

Transcript

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SPEAKER_00 0:00

He is the great I am. His first friend was Abraham. Surely said to Abraham, I am that I am. Hallelujah. Hallelujah. Nice song.

SPEAKER_01 0:17

Hallelujah. Hallelujah. Red, I just want to say that you wrote that song, right? Yeah. Yeah, that's a really a nice song. Thank you. Great way, great way to start off uh our uh time together.

SPEAKER_02 0:32

Well, the Lord gave that to me. Um, I don't know, maybe I just happened to be in my my room as about uh late afternoon, and then all of a sudden I hear this voice saying, Oh, I like that. I like that, you know, coming up with a melody. And uh I think it was a gift of the Lord, like everything else is. Sure. But yeah, he is the great I am. Anyway, the first friend of Abraham was uh I mean Abraham was his first friend, and anyway, blah, blah, blah. Good song. Yes, thank you. Yeah, melodically. Uh so anyway, words matter. We're gonna be talking about words today. Words matter. Him and that stupid bell. He just wants to hear him. I have no idea.

SPEAKER_01 1:14

That bell keeps us on track, right?

SPEAKER_02 1:16

Uh you know, I always know that people are stuck at a certain something. We all are. You know, I got a friend, maybe he's stuck at eight. I know I'm stuck at my father, was killed in an accident when I was five, so I'm kind of like I got a little stuck at five. I'm trying to figure out you, where you're stuck. Where am I seven? You were probably seven. Seven? Did something happen to you when you were seven?

SPEAKER_01 1:33

I got a bow and arrow and uh started shooting uh uh I remember when I was seven.

SPEAKER_02 1:39

Yeah? Nothing traumatic or anything. But if you were to say your inner voice, if you were to say what age because I know even though I'm seventy-two, you know, people don't realize when you get when you get older that you're still young, there's still the 19-year-old here, the 24. And probably if you could choose an age you wanted to be, I would say 34 was a pretty good time.

SPEAKER_01 2:01

Thirty-four was a good time for you?

SPEAKER_02 2:03

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 2:03

Yeah, 34. I had uh just gone. Yeah, I had just made my first trip to Honduras.

SPEAKER_02 2:11

Oh, so you were just starting your missionary work then?

SPEAKER_01 2:13

Yeah, I uh young, good for you. I was uh living comfortably in Maui. I was part of Hope Chapel. I was a photographer, I had a uh costume photography business dressing up tourist in uh Hawaiian uh attire and taking their pictures right on uh Front Street in Lahaina. Lahaina was a great place uh back in the early eighties to uh live and work because it still had that uh specialness that uh caused people to want to come there, you know, a very historical place. Of course, we had a fire a couple of years ago, burnt just entirely burned everything down. In fact, the only thing that was left standing on Front Street um was the old spring house, which is what our business rented. Yeah. Uh it's the oldest building on Maui. It was built in 1826 by the king because in 1824 some whaling ships that had come from Mexico rolled their uh barrels ashore to fill them full of water at the spring in Lahaina, and one of the barrels had some water in it and it had some mosquito larva. And they dumped it out in the spring and they filled their barrels, and within a year, all of a sudden these singing flies started uh being noticed, and the and these mosquitoes carried birdpox. So all of the native Hawaiian birds started dying. Oh so everything uh where did this bad water come from? It came from Mexico. So you know it ended up there? Well, in the in the early 1800s, uh in the middle of the Pacific Ocean was the Hawaiian Islands and whaling ships, especially whaling ships from New England that were going after that oil that uh is special in different kinds of whales.

SPEAKER_02 4:04

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 4:05

Um they used uh Lahaina as their place to restock and rewater and re- you know, uh it was their resting place. And Hawaiian Islands are the most i isolated islands in the world. They're uh 2900 uh 2600 miles from San Francisco.

SPEAKER_02 4:22

I was there, I was in Maui and Hawaii. Maui was my favorite. Is that where you lived on that island? That's where I lived. Why is that the favorite? It was my favorite, too, and I don't even really know why. Just something about it.

SPEAKER_01 4:31

Uh well, you have uh lots of uh open space. You have two mountain ranges. We've got one volcano that's over 10,000 feet uh that you can drive to the top, Haleakala, and then you have on the other side of the island um the West Maui Mountains that go up to six, seven thousand feet. And in between is this area where lots of sugarcane over the years and pineapples have been grown.

SPEAKER_02 4:56

Now that's the this used to be the number one uh provider, Bureau Beach, Florida, a provider of pineapples worldwide, and then Dole came here and then Dole moved to Hawaii. Now I didn't realize Dole. This is what I was told. Now I might be per perpetrating a lie here, but this is what I have that has been put in my ear.

SPEAKER_01 5:15

Well, Dole confirmed that. Dole Company does own the island of Lanae, which is right next to Maui, and that was a huge pineapple plantation until about twelve years ago, I think, and they uh turned it into an exclusive hotel uh island with a golf course or two. But yeah, at the age uh thirty-four, I was just uh had uh a guy had come to our church at Hope Chapel and told us about the war in Nicaragua and told us about the Sandinistas taking over the government and bringing their Cuban and Russian and Bulgarian uh friends in who uh turned that country into a Marxist state. And an indigenous group called the Mosquitoes that live up on the on the Atlantic coast resisted this atheistic uh Marxist teaching. I mean, I still have a somewhere a second grade math book that the Cubans brought, and they were teaching mosquito kids second grade math by using two pictures, uh picture two AK-47s plus three hand grenades equals. That's the way they were teaching second grade math kids.

SPEAKER_02 6:26

Are you the one that tells that story about uh they came in and uh they said uh uh uh Jesus is going to provide your your uh a snack today. I won't tell that story.

SPEAKER_01 6:37

Well, yeah, they would uh they would come to a church service and they would get the kids outside, disrupt the church service, and they would say, Pray to your God to give you candy.

SPEAKER_02 6:48

Close your eyes. They would say, Close your eyes, and they would say to open the eyes, there'd be no candy there. Then they would then they would come back now, uh pray to pray to uh Daniel Ortega was the president.

SPEAKER_01 7:00

So that's so what the the story as it was related to me was then the soldiers would throw out candy to the kids and now open your eyes.

SPEAKER_02 7:10

And they'd go, Oh, you see, Jesus doesn't give you candy but Ortega or or Castro does.

SPEAKER_01 7:15

Or uh right. So anyway, that was a good time.

SPEAKER_02 7:18

That was your 34. 34. I was in Israel, shot my music video, uh, the empty tomb, debuted on the 700 call. That was a big deal. Still living in the ghetto apartment at Troy, New York, as a struggling songwriter. Met the little love of my life, who uh two years later would break my heart, and uh you know, the one that got away. And uh God always uses that heartbreak, though, for positive things, you know. Uh uh He says, He who falls upon this rock shall be broken, but he who this rock falls upon shall be crushed into everlasting powder. For me, my take on that is that uh just like with it's kind of like uh baptism. If you fall back on the rock, which is Jesus, uh you will be broken in this life, you will have tribulation, and you will have suffering. And it is written that Jesus learned obedience by the things which he suffered, and he was a man well acquainted with sorrow. You learn later on in life these are gifts because we're in the process of becoming, I guess, uh better souls for for the Lord and then creation. But but but but if you abstain and say, No, I don't accept you as Lord and Savior, and you go through life impervious, maybe everything's hunky-dory, and maybe the bad guy gives you lots of money and isolates you from from the vicissitudes of life, and then all of a sudden you die, Jesus said, If the rock if you fall upon the rock, you shall be broken. But if this rock falls upon you, you shall be crushed into everlasting powder. Can you imagine? Can all the heartbreak you've been through in your life? Imagine if that just came in one moment. Well being spread out.

SPEAKER_01 9:03

One day we will uh all stand before the king and we will be judged if our name is in the Lamb's book of life or not, you know, and the book of life. And and I think there's going to be a lot of anguish and a lot of sorrow. And a lot of our friends will say, Why didn't you tell me?

SPEAKER_02 9:18

And that is a responsibility.

SPEAKER_01 9:20

And so uh that's I think is when that rock is going to crush them. Uh it would they will be crushed in their own sorrow for not receiving a free gift of spending eternity with the king.

SPEAKER_02 9:34

One thing I've learned to do in life now as an older guy is be faithful to tell your friends about Jesus if you possibly can, and also to tell them that I love you. But now I'm going through, I'll meet a friend, even like a guy friend, and I go, I just want you to know, I'm only gonna say this once, and then let's move on with the conversation. But I love you. Because guys are kind of like, we don't tell each other that we love each other, you know. But uh it's good. Uh it's it's it's good to say things now, and also what's worrisome is when you don't and you have been negligent in telling someone about what you know, you know, and you don't want to proselytize, you want to put like I have a friend of mine, he's a Jewish doctor, he's brilliant, and he's a big giver, and he's he's very successful in this community and actually in a worldwide in certain ways, which I won't go into. And you know, I just go, Are you gonna leave your friend? You know how do I what do I do about my friend? I g well, I guess I he knows, I'm sure, and you just I guess you pray because it's for some of us to plant seeds and some to harvest, and you know um it is a mysterious uh process, Rhett.

SPEAKER_01 10:36

You know, Jesus uh tells the parable of the farmer that goes out and throws a seed and and he doesn't know what what's happening, he just throws out a seed and soon he sees a little sprout coming up, and then the stalk comes up and then the fruit comes out and at the right time he comes in and harvests, okay? And Jesus is, I think, telling us that this is the process, that we all are um getting hints that God exists, we're getting hints that He really cares for us. We, through our own ineptitude and the mistakes and the consequences, we discover that our ways don't necessarily work out, but his ways uh always seem to work out because God created this universe with a fabric. I mean, the book of Proverbs, chapter eight, uh when uh is another description of the creation and and wisdom says I was there with him when he formed the earth, when he, you know, and the fabric that he built of this universe and the way things happen, when we go along with that fabric, then good things happen to us. But it's like aerodynamics. I was talking to a couple of my Swiss pilot friends that used to train here yesterday. You're a you're a former fighter pilot, so uh and they came by the cafe because they uh they they had a flight, uh, one of them was flying to Tampa and they just wanted to come over to Vero Beach. So we had a really nice talk. But you know, I was I was explaining to them about this fabric that God created. I said it's like an aerodynamics, you know. You guys know you pull the nose of the airplane up and you uh run out of power and you keep the nose of the airplane up, what's gonna happen? Is that wind across the uh wings is going to slow down, you're gonna get some turbulence. Suddenly one wing or the other is gonna fall off as you stall off, you're gonna roll and end up nose down into the ground. This is the laws of aerodynamics, right? If you don't obey those laws, you crash and people get hurt. And I think God has created our universe with his laws, so to speak, his ways that things work. And of course, we don't understand hardly any of those ways. Uh I have a friend that's a physics uh professor at the University in Milano, uh, Marco, he was uh on the island of Utilla where we have one of our Rio Coco cafes. And Marco said to me, he said, you know, we physicists, we only know about 10% of what's really going on in the world, as far as just how it's made and what's going on. And he said, half of that we call dark physics is this these are areas that we know exist, but we can't even explain them or understand them. So our knowledge of what God is doing. Well, I mean, what holds the planets in motion? When you see the sunrise and the sunset, the tolerances of us being in an ice cube or a uh a shish kebab uh planet being too close to the sun or too far away and all life either burning up or freezing, I mean the tolerances are so small.

SPEAKER_02 13:40

Have said now that the moon is placed in a perfect position for what it for keeping the waves on the ocean and being so close, but creating rap, whatever the deal is it does. And if it was moved this way or that way significantly uh just a wee little bit. So I mean the miracle of it, uh the miracle of so many things is just well, all of creation shouts out the glory of God. Yeah, there's little doubt about it. And I don't know how people can go through life not even looking at uh uh a butterfly or a ladybug uh uh or just the intricate working you okay, let's and then we'll get on with our show, but a shell. You're walking by the ocean and you see a shell. Now, I'm a I'm I'm a sort of a um a if I w my artwork is like a Picasso Money. I'm a free flyer, I don't do exactly, I'm not uh what do you call it uh traditional. But you know, you look at a shell and you go, gee uh geometry, is that what's called? Every little line in that shell is perfectly sp line spaced, line space. I go, I just marvel at that.

SPEAKER_01 14:45

Oh yeah, yeah, yeah. They they just notice even the structure of the plants right outside the window here, you know? I mean, here is a leaf structure that is a solar panel that turns sunlight into glucose and sucrose, sugar. And they're solar panels. I mean who designed that, right? I mean, how can you not look around uh at God's creation and not know that somebody is behind this? This all did not happen randomly. And see, Red, I I agree with you. I think we are given the opportunity to uh encourage people to observe and pay attention. You know, first Peter uh thirteen, I think it's uh chapter three, verse fifteen. Always be ready to give a defense of the f faith that we have when asked, and do it with reverence and gentleness. And gentleness and kindness.

SPEAKER_02 15:45

What does Jesus say? I am gentle and low and lowly and take my burden. What's that saying in there?

SPEAKER_01 15:50

Yeah, I am yes, it's uh Matthew chapter eleven, I am uh meek and lowly.

SPEAKER_02 15:56

And uh I was thinking when I heard that recently, and I've heard that for forty years. But I was thinking I I've got this new bent that I'm into right now. You know, you go through processes and you go through a little thing, and that is in Samuel it says, Thy gentleness hath made thee great. In the in the Psalms it says, Thy gentleness hath made thee great. And and and you know, you and Proverbs says it's kindness that's uh desired most of all. And it also says it's your kindness that leads us to repentance. Yes. You know, you can be all st stuck up in your sin, you know you've made mistakes, blah, blah, blah. And I don't know, maybe sunlight breaks through a ray of sun and goes, But you're still my son, and I forgive you. You do? And then you just want to go, okay, I'm just what can I do? I love you too. And you know, well, Jesus said, He who is forgiven much loves much, you know. Right. But um anyway, he says the hairs for somebody out there who might be hurting today. I want you to know this. The duh the father does say, Not a sparrow falls from the heaven without the father's permission. For the very hairs on your head are counted. And um do you not know that you're of greater value than many sparrows? And you know math you know mathematically. I mean, you know, uh uh I mean you you you're a former fighter pilot. And I remember up at JI, it's a wealthy community where we live, and we used to go for this men's Bible study, and there was one guy sat over, he was a former fighter pilot. He's like in his 90s now, but he was always the quiet one. And I've always learned look at the quiet one. Because the quietest guy generally at the table is probably the deepest one. Would you agree?

SPEAKER_01 17:32

Rhett, do you really want me to answer that question with you sitting across a loquacious in the Mr.

SPEAKER_00 17:40

Loquacious himself? Okay. And me sitting here with my butt, it's okay just to keep it up.

SPEAKER_02 17:48

No, I've already learned that I'm far more stupid than I ever thought I was. I'm a lot less than I ever thought I was. I it's I am I'm incorrigibly ignorant and lowly, but it's good for me because maybe once in a while he lets somebody who's, you know, he's chosen the foolish things of this world to be wise. Right. Oh you know, he's chosen the foolish things of this world to confound those that are wise in their own eyes. Right. You know, so uh, you know, uh just I was reading uh I was reading uh do you want me to answer the question? What's the question? What's the question? The guy at the table who speaks the least.

SPEAKER_01 18:25

Well, I uh have read uh over the last couple of years, I've read a lot about Benjamin Franklin. I've watched a uh I think a Ken Burns uh did a uh special on Benjamin Franklin. Uh and I've watched uh a couple of other things. And this uh movie, The Great Awakening, with uh has the it's about the relationship with George Whitfield and Benjamin Franklin, right?

SPEAKER_02 18:51

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 18:52

But um An unlikely friendship. Benjamin Franklin, if his time was the one of the most renowned celebrities in in Europe as well as North America. I mean, he was a printer. He printed uh Poor Richard's almanac, which he's known for his witticisms and his uh and of course he's experimented. Uh and you know he's uh he's a scientist that is uh discovers that uh lightning is electricity. On his trips back and forth to Europe, he's acquiring funds for us for the revolution from the French. Right. And uh but even before the war, when he went to London and other places, on the trips, he's watching the currents and he's throwing uh peanut shells or something overboard and watching and measuring how fast they go from uh where he threw them to the end of the ship. He's trying to he's trying to calculate what the currents are and keeping a time as far as how much time they're taking to make the crossing. And just these little experiments. I mean, his mind was always active and observing things. Well, he was known at gatherings uh where people were sitting around and eating and talking, that he was the man who pretty much said the least. He was the one yeah, he was the one that often was the big listener. Trevor Burrus, Jr.

SPEAKER_02 20:16

I didn't never heard that before.

SPEAKER_01 20:19

Yeah, and so I I read this and saw this, this is probably five or six years ago, and I realized I needed to become a good listener. And now that I'm uh in my uh friendship with you, I realize why God pressed me from I resemble that. But uh being a listener has helped me in my relationship with my wife and my children because I'm naturally have a gift of wanting to impart information to someone.

SPEAKER_02 20:56

And uh but are you too quick, maybe sometimes to let your wife finish a story? Well, I know uh fix it.

SPEAKER_01 21:02

I know what she's gonna say.

SPEAKER_02 21:03

So I've be arrogant, right?

SPEAKER_01 21:07

Well, uh yeah. Uh she's comes from a Japanese culture growing up in Hawaii, so the manner in which she talks and that culture talks, um she's not used to interruptions. And in my world, uh Oh, you have one of those too. In my world, uh when you come to a conclusion of what's being said, let's get on with the conversation. So I've learned to uh um not be that way and try to be a really good listener. And I think, Rhett, what we what we started off talking about is when people are noticing the God's creation, that's part of their process. And then they encounter us. And what are they gonna get from us? Are they gonna get someone that's actually listening to them? Because Peter says you know, give be ready to give a defense when And ask. Okay. And I think the most significant time that our words fall out on fertile ground is when somebody is asking us the question. So that plays out in my life with our cafe ministry. We just uh reopened our cafe in January in Utilha, and uh we were there until uh like the middle of March, and the rest of the team came back last week.

SPEAKER_02 22:30

Now they were going to build a church down there years ago, but the Lord said, no, don't build a church. People are reticent to go through the doorway of a church, but they will come to a coffee shop where you can be uh there to minister kindness and love of Christ.

SPEAKER_01 22:44

Right. And uh yeah, thank you for saying that. Um it's an island where many people come for scuba diving and free diving. We have uh I've met people literally read I've met people from every European country on this island.

SPEAKER_02 22:58

Is it a third world nation?

SPEAKER_01 22:59

Would you say Well Honduras is, but the Bay Islands used to be an English colony, and their level of uh life has uh always been a somewhat of a step above. Because of the organizational skills of the Brits. And yeah, and I just think the culture and being offshore from the rest of Honduras and at least in the eighties and nineties kept the Bay Islands free from a lot of the violence and drug trafficking.

SPEAKER_02 23:23

Is it humid?

SPEAKER_01 23:24

It's just like here.

unknown 23:25

Same.

SPEAKER_01 23:26

Just like Florida.

SPEAKER_02 23:27

So kind of humid in the summer. Is their summertime the same time ours is?

SPEAKER_01 23:30

Yeah. Oh yeah. Yeah, we're 15 degrees north latitude, so we're we're we're in the same season.

SPEAKER_02 23:35

Um but um You had a you you built a coffee shop down there, and uh that that helps support the mission in the middle.

SPEAKER_01 23:45

That was for me, okay.

SPEAKER_02 23:46

But um, I mean you didn't ring the bell for me.

SPEAKER_01 23:51

People coming in to the cafe, we serve them hopefully a good cup of coffee. What we're drinking today, Red, is a coffee that we just got last week from Rwanda. Rwanda. Rwanda. South Africa, right? Yeah, it's it's a delicious coffee. It's got um a slight lemon note in it. It's got some uh black tea notes, it's got some brown sugar notes.

SPEAKER_02 24:16

Uh it's a really uh Since you got into this coffee thing, would you say you cultivated a palate? Because I was just telling Barbara the other day, I said, you know, at first these coffees are kind of like I'm used to, you know, cheap Dunkin' Donuts or I I don't I don't like Starbucks coffee, but other places that serve coffee. And then all of a sudden I said, But you know, I think I'm starting to cultivate a palate.

SPEAKER_01 24:36

Well, it's it's a matter of first of all not putting any uh sugar or milk in the coffee, drinking it black, but then just letting kind of slurping it a little bit and letting some of those molecules get up into your nasal passages where your taste buds are.

SPEAKER_02 24:50

Like with wine, which you add water, where you add air to, they aerate wine to bring out the flavor.

SPEAKER_01 24:56

So back to back to So serving coffee and serving good food and engaging people. People love to talk about themselves. And if you get their name.

SPEAKER_02 25:15

If you can't Did I hear a grunt from the producer there? Uh-oh.

SPEAKER_01 25:23

I'll tell you what, Reddit's this is coming round and round and round.

SPEAKER_02 25:28

Your day of humbling is upon you, my son.

SPEAKER_01 25:31

Okay, so but just the fact that we're listening and the fact that we're we get to know them by name and we get to know the drink that they like. And we and on when people are traveling, they like to uh find out where you're from. I like to find out where they're from. It's amazing. Um I meet people and in my life, just my dad being in the military, living in Germany and Turkey, North Carolina, Texas, and uh Ohio and Kentucky, and then in my own naval uh time in California, in Nevada, in uh Washington state, uh in Pensacola, Florida, uh being in the Philippines, being on aircraft carriers in the Indian Ocean, I've covered a lot of ground, and when I meet people, it's very uncanny that either I've known from there or I've been there myself or lived there. It's it's amazing. So it's it's making a connection. And I think when you make a connection with people, Rhett, I think they get curious about who you are and why you're doing what you're doing. For me and my family, having uh gone to Honduras in November of '84 and working with the refugees and then being asked to start some schools and then starting a school project, uh, primary and secondary education that lasted 37 years, and funding that, and training teachers and building the buildings, and all with really no resources. It was really been a God thing. People often ask us, well, why are you guys doing that and how are you doing it? And of course, we get a chance to tell them our story of a girl growing up in a Buddhist culture in Hawaii that uh first heard about Jesus when she was 15 and me going to uh my parents taking me to Sunday school, but it's it was the right thing to do in the 50s and 60s. But once I got out of high school, I never went back. Uh, and then my experience uh with God in uh 81 that caused me to become a follower of Jesus, these are all testimonies that we have, and these are the seeds that we get to throw out, and each of us that are followers of Jesus have a story. And my view, Red, is that everybody that I meet is on a spiritual line. I think I've mentioned this to you before. It's either minus seven or plus seven. They're on this spiritual line. Minus seven is a Satan worshiper. Uh I've actually had coffee with people from San Francisco that I realized in the midst of the conversation, I think these guys are Satan worshippers.

SPEAKER_02 28:12

I could just I could just sense You also had a girlfriend before you knew the Lord that well, she was into sorcery.

SPEAKER_01 28:20

She was into sorcery, and yeah, that was one of the uh turning points in my life. But everybody's on this line. So when uh I meet somebody, yeah, I can discern where they're at on that line. And if like yesterday, I had a conversation with two of my Swiss uh uh Swiss Air pilots. Remember that they used to come for over 30 years, Swiss Air sent all their pilots to Vero Beach for training. They trained and trained here at flight safety, and about 14 of those classes came when we opened the Rio Coco Cafe from uh 2011 until they finally finished in 2019.

SPEAKER_02 29:02

You have another school right next to you, too.

SPEAKER_01 29:04

And right now there's another flight school. But I was talking to these uh Swiss guys yesterday, one's actually from Germany, the other's from Austria. And in just talking to them, I knew that they were from a Christian culture, but they weren't followers of Jesus. So I figured they were minus two or minus three. And we t I asked them questions about how do you guys feel about the migration, immigration things going on, and um are you seeing that in your communities? And so we talked a little bit about that. And uh one of my friends, uh Jacob, is from Austria, and I just read earlier this week that 41% of the students in the Austrian in the Vienna public schools are Muslim.

SPEAKER_02 29:50

And I asked 40 percent.

SPEAKER_01 29:52

41 percent. So high percent. No, in in Vienna. In Vienna, Austria. And so I asked him how he felt about this, and so we we we talked about that, and then um he I explained to him about the values of Islam are very different than the Judeo-Christian values. So we talked a little bit about that, and and I tried to um share my perspective historically of why Western culture took over the world, is because in the Reformation in the 15 and 1600s, people started reading the Bible, they understood it to be the Word of God, they accepted the authority of the Bible, and they started implementing the practices prescribed in the Bible, and so suddenly we became good business people. We started universities, we started hospitals, we Christians. We uh understood that God had given us uh certain rights as uh humans that didn't derive from a king, and as our founders of our republic said, they come from God Himself, uh life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. And so we in the Western culture developed medicine, we developed science, we developed education, we developed um a system of economics that had a huge emphasis on benevolence. And when you read Adam Smith's Wealth of Nation, which really describes the capitalistic system, uh Adam said in the Wealth of Nations that if you're gonna create wealth in the community, you better do it in a manner that is you're making the very best product at a very favorable price, that your employees love working for you because you're treating them so well, and your community loves having your business there because you're giving back to the community in charities and infrastructure and all of these things. And this is what the capitalistic system is supposed to be. Unfortunately, in our time, we have forgotten the benevolence aspect of capitalism, and we've become greedy and just uh taking money that should be distributed to employees and spread out in our communities, and we've built our second, third, and fourth homes and bought our yachts and paid ourselves exorbitant salaries, and it's uh that's why we have now in our culture a lot of people that are looking to socialism and communism as the solution to the problems of life.

SPEAKER_02 32:31

Trevor Burrus, Jr. Well, the the knee-jerk reaction is to think everybody should uh should share whether you're willing to work or not, but that is ungodly because in Thessalonians it says if a man does not work, neither shall he eat. And one of the greatest things to learn, I was a hippie-dippy-doodle guy with my older brother, I'm 16 years of age. And you know, we're thinking we're gonna take over the country and share everything, and you know, I was a member of Students for a Democratic Society. But there was this kid, uh handsome young guy, about 18 years of age. He had one of those Camaros that was white and and orange, a red little sports car, muscle car. And it was the end of a day, I remember, and he walked by my window at the apartment complex that his family owned, which my brother and I rented an apartment at. My brother was 19 or 20 at the time, I was 16. And he had paint all over, he'd been out painting, he had a painter's outfit on. And he had paint all over him. And he just he always spoke with such confidence, and he walked, his walk had confidence. And I immediately knew that I no longer wanted to hang out with the hippies, I wanted to be like him. I wanted to, I wanted to work, I wanted to have that feeling because you know the Bible says a man shall enjoy the fruit of his labor. You know, I you know, we've all been through situations maybe where somebody needed to bestow a little money upon our person. And it's nice to receive a gift, but I've learned throughout life it's much nicer to be the one giving the gift. Of course. If you earn, if you're sitting there on a Friday night and you're having a beautiful meal at a restaurant, to know you worked, you know, a man shall enjoy the fruit of his labor, you shall work by the sweat of your brow. There's just something so satisfying. And and what's the greatest thing that men like to do? We like to, we're we're hunters and gatherers. You know, I mean, I I go to the grocery store, and I I noticed it took me years to be on up to this, even to myself. But you come home with the groceries, you feel like, hey, look what I got. I got the goods. You know, I'm not sure.

SPEAKER_01 34:21

See, what you're describing is biblical culture, Rhett. This is this is all of these things are talked about in the Bible. You quoted uh the book of uh Thessalonians, first and second Thessalonians, you know, and yes, there's a work ethic there. At Colossians says, whatever you do, do uh unto the Lord, you know. And as far as uh business, you know, I'm as uh in our coffee business, I'm trying to roast these coffee beans in the very best way to bring out the optimum flavor, and God tells me to do it like I'm gonna serve him. I brought him to I I brought you coffee today, Lord. It is call me a Lord. I'm trying to, you know, I'm I'm doing it unto the Lord, you know.

SPEAKER_02 35:03

And so what cup of coffee would you give? What kind of food? For instance, recently somebody gave us a gift. There is somebody who consistently uh you know comes to your house and everything has an outdated expiration date on it. And you always have to look at it because it could be years. Yesterday I went to an event, uh Christian event, and uh the the salad dressing tasted putrid. And I looked at it, you know, it was a year and a half old and said, throw out after a couple of months.

SPEAKER_01 35:28

See, this is this is the issue that sometimes that we don't really embrace this level of excellence that God calls us to do. And so what happened, I believe, when people started reading the Bible in the 14 and 15 and 1600s, remember this movement was called the Reformation, and instead of following the traditions of the church, the cry was only scripture, solo scriptura, only we follow the Bible. And the Bible gives us great guidance in how to run our business and how to run our society, great guidance in our family, husband, wife that love each other, and and that as a book of Proverbs, Proverbs 5 is be exhilarated, be intoxicated in her love, you know. Uh let her breast satisfy you. Proverbs chapter 5. I love this passage because I'm supposed to look at my wife and just get intoxicated, meaning I act out of my norm when I'm around her because of the love and the allure that she has for me. And this is the model that the bottle that the Bible gives me. So for family relationships, I'm to have that sort of intimacy and affection with my wife. And my children are told to obey me, and not necess they don't necessarily have to agree with me, because young kids don't have all the understanding of why you shouldn't cross the road when traffic is coming. But uh obey, and and this family unit has been the uh the building block for human society, and there's no wonder that there's so much uh uh uh opposition to the traditional family unit now. But what I was trying to explain to my friends yesterday was that it was the Christian Judeo-Christian worldview, the Bible, that caused Western culture to uh arrive at levels of excellence in all these areas, and we basically took over the world. And now we have other cultures like Islam that don't share these values. Uh the way that women are treated, the lack of tolerance for any other thought other than what uh is written in the book, uh then their book. Uh just look at, for example, the Nobel uh prize winners uh since Albert Noble started his uh philanthropy. How many of them have come from the Islamic culture? And how many have come from the Judeo-Christian culture? I think there's only been three Muslims that have won Nobel Prizes.

SPEAKER_02 38:03

And why do you think that is?

SPEAKER_01 38:04

Because I think their worldview limits their exploration and limits their excellence and their focus is on completely different things.

SPEAKER_02 38:13

So as I'm never assured of salvation because they have to recklessly go through life scared walking on eggshells because they never know if they're actually gonna make it or not. Right, right. And and then and that and uh many religions require that you die for Allah, or you die for this, or you die for this. And Jesus is the only one that came and said, no, no, no, no, no.

SPEAKER_01 38:30

I'm gonna die for you.

SPEAKER_02 38:32

Yes.

SPEAKER_01 38:33

And that is totally inverted. That is the huge difference. So with my friends yesterday, I realized on that spiritual line that they're on. I figured they're a minus two, maybe a minus three, but I had some long conversation with them yesterday. I told them the story. No, no. My my uh Austrian and my German friend that they fly for Swiss Air.

SPEAKER_02 38:57

Forty percent of the children in school are Muslims.

SPEAKER_01 38:59

Yeah, Swiss Air. These are pilots for Swiss Air that trained in very.

SPEAKER_02 39:02

What would they say?

SPEAKER_01 39:03

Well, they hadn't thought about that. And uh because most people that grow up in Europe don't recognize that it's a Judeo-Christian worldview that made their culture the greatest in the world. They don't realize that.

SPEAKER_02 39:17

They don't understand.

SPEAKER_01 39:20

Of excellence in work, of treating your employees with fairness. I mean, you read the book of Colossians and you see in chapter three some very specific instructions of masters treat your employees uh or slaves, it's as he says. Now remember, in the Roman Empire, in some cities, uh 30 to 50 percent of the population were slaves, and they were very valued uh components of the society, held places of responsibility in businesses and in government. So treat your slaves with excellence.

SPEAKER_02 39:55

Well, you know, uh Hershey, Mr. Hershey from Hershey's Chocolates, this man was a great man. I mean, he he he built a little town with little houses for all his workers. He paid them well. Right, right. Uh the man who started the Greek Greek yogurt company up in upstate New York a few years ago when he reached billionaire status. He brought all the employees in, and so I'm giving each of you four hundred thousand dollars.

SPEAKER_01 40:17

Arthur Guinness was also another one that started uh brewery in uh Dublin in 1759. He was he was a giver? He was a Protestant that actually embraced the principles in the Bible.

SPEAKER_02 40:29

Rockefeller was due for an early death, and he was on his deathbed and he said, I might as well start spending this money, and he started to give, and if he gave, he got healthy, lived to be in his nineties. And so he's the one that was giving out dimes on the street corner. Okay, yeah, he was a tough guy, but uh he made the money and then gave it back. So not all of it, obviously.

SPEAKER_01 40:50

Everyone is to me on this spiritual line. Yeah. And yesterday in my conversation with my uh pilot, airline pilot friends who were trained here, I feel like I moved them. I feel like they got moved from a minus three to maybe a minus two or a minus one. Yeah, why? Uh because I they asked me, one of them uh said um Mac said to me.

SPEAKER_02 41:15

Were they Muslims? No, no, no, no, no, no.

SPEAKER_01 41:18

They're they're uh just white White Swiss guys. White Austrian, one's an Austrian, one's uh German.

SPEAKER_02 41:24

There are a lot of people of color that take uh learning to be pilotes. Right.

SPEAKER_01 41:28

These are what I would call native-born Europeans. Okay. And they grow up in the culture, they're not quite sure what it is that has made their culture great because they're not f walking with Jesus. Okay. Um they don't understand worldviews, they don't understand the value of a biblical worldview and how it in and history, how it impacted society. So uh these are my friends, they stopped by to see me. We we uh we had some great conversations, and so we got to this point where I thought, I'm gonna start asking them questions and listen. And so I asked them what they thought about the war in Iran, and and they were just clueless actually to the threat of nuclear weapons, because they were they were talking about all the other things, and I said, Well, how does it how do you feel about Iran having a nuclear weapon? And they said, Well, never really thought about that much. I said, Well, what did you think when they fired those missiles at Diego Garcia and they went double the distance of what anybody thought their missiles would go, and now we they have missiles that can reach uh Europe. What do you think about all you know I I started to think about that? I said, Well, one of my jobs in the Navy, I was a nuclear weapons delivery pilot. The aircraft that I flew, the A6 intruder.

SPEAKER_02 42:51

Wow.

SPEAKER_01 42:51

Uh, we delivered three different nuclear weapons, we practiced with them, and I'm fully aware of what they can do. Um so the idea that a apocalyptic Muslim regime in Iran, whose goal is to bring about chaos so that the I think they call him the thirteenth prophet can come in and take over the world, and their job is to create the chaos where he will come. These guys are true believers, and the moment they get a nuclear weapon, they're probably gonna fire it at Tel Aviv on the first target, and then who knows what they're gonna do with that. So I asked. So I I I I asked them about this and and what they thought about it, and they hadn't really thought that one through. Then as we continued talking, and this was a conversation that went on for almost an hour. Um, Max said, Well, I just hope that when I'm your age, I can be sitting there with with uh a family around me and just a successful. Life and I said, You know what my key to a successful life is? And they said, What? I said, I'm a follower of Jesus. And that gave me an opportunity after listening to them and asking them questions. Finally we came to a point where the ground was very fertile. And Max was in fact asked asking me to give him an account of my testimony. As 1 Peter chapter 3, verse 15. When asked to be ready to give an account.

SPEAKER_02 44:33

So what did you say?

SPEAKER_01 44:34

I said, Well, let me tell you how it happened to me. And I told him the story of going to Maui in 1981 to help a friend open an ice cream business. I told him about my cousins who were marijuana farmers and lived on the island for 12 years, who had become Christians since I had seen him last a few years before. I told him about my sorcerer girlfriend who was from Honolulu. Well, it's a story that would uh uh changed my life, and I f figure God gave me the story for a reason, so I should share it.

SPEAKER_02 45:09

Well, because a lot of people are um are are uh stuck in that. Can you give a short rendition of that again, just for because you know somebody's listening right now?

SPEAKER_01 45:18

Well, um uh yeah, when I went to Maui in 1981, I was a skier, uh skier, yeah. I I went to Vale, Colorado to ski. I worked in a uh hotel at night and I was a banquet waiter, then they made me restaurant manager, and then uh uh soon I was managing the bar, the disco.

SPEAKER_02 45:37

When I went to Maui, I was waiting for snow.

SPEAKER_01 45:41

But um my friend uh uh Bob uh went to Maui, opened an ice cream business, coerced me to come and help him in the off season in September when nothing was going on in Vale.

SPEAKER_00 45:53

Wow.

SPEAKER_01 45:54

My girlfriend who was from Honolulu, uh I met her, she was uh on our ski team at our hotel. She was a beautiful girl, uh very bubbly personality, great skier. But she was she was uh she could read your poem and she chanted a lot. And when I asked her, she told me she was uh a warlock, and I said, What's a warlock? She said, Well, it's like a good witch. So she's into sorcery.

SPEAKER_02 46:17

But at the time You didn't know anything about it.

SPEAKER_01 46:20

Uh I knew a little bit about it, but it was not that troubling to me. When I m got to Maui, my cousins invited me to come to their church, and that's when I heard the pastor, uh Craig Inglert, who became one of my dearest friends in life, say that the most important thing in this life that you can have is a personal relationship with Jesus. Well, I'd never heard that before. But I th I started thinking about that. A personal relationship. Because I thought Christianity was all about the rules. Then I Bonnie came over to uh uh help us with the ice cream uh store one Saturday, and she flew over from Honolulu and then afterwards went to my apartment and I asked her where her spiritual power came from because I'd been thinking about these things. And she said, Well, the spirit gives it to me. And I said, Well, is it a good spirit or is it a bad spirit? She says, Well, I don't know, but he gives me power. And I thought, Well, if it's an evil spirit, Bonnie, you need to let it go. And she said, No, he gave he gives me power. And I said, No, Bonnie, you need to let that go. And she said, No, and I said, I got very forceful, Bonnie. If it's an evil spirit, you need to let it go. Well, when I said that the third time, suddenly she sort of kind of set up, her gaze shifted to over my head. Her um she wasn't she was wasn't looking at me, she was kind of staring past me, and then a voice came out of her without her moving her lips or her jaw, and this voice came out and said, I will never leave this body. And I looked at her and she's sitting like a statue, not moving, and I said, What? And this voice said, I have become very accustomed to this body. And I thought, Wow, I have uh seen this somewhere before. Oh yeah, the movie The Exorcist. Oh yeah, yes, that's where I've seen this. The priest, the priest, what did he do? He used the name of Jesus. I was so I said, You spirit in the name of Jesus, leave her. And suddenly this voice came and she jumped, and this voice came out of her and said, No. But she's still gazing off in the distance, and she's not moving her lips or her jaw. And I said to her a second, in the name of Jesus, you spirit, be gone. I said it to her a third time. Finally she looked at me with consciousness, and I said, Bonnie, why did you say those things to me? And she said, What did I say? I said, You said this, you said this, and then you yelled at me. She didn't remember. That doesn't bother you, Bonnie? No. Well, it bothered me. And that night I'm laying in bed, and of course I'm kind of slided. I slid over into the I I'm there's a lot of distance between us. I realized I had seen in the spiritual world, and I'd seen good and I'd seen evil, and I'd seen that spirit jump when I used the name of Jesus. So that was my starting point to really discover if Jesus was who he said he was, or was he a lunatic that was delusional, or was he a deceiver that was lying to me? And when it comes to Well, there's no in-between.

SPEAKER_02 49:18

Was he a prophet? No, he wasn't a prophet, because he said, I'm the way, the truth, and the life. So either he's a liar or he's the truth. It's there ain't no in between.

SPEAKER_01 49:24

Right. So I believe that uh all people that we meet are on the spiritual line. And I believe my friends yesterday after I told them the story and the sincerity of my words and the aloha that we were feeling with one another and a lot of camaraderie. Yeah. Um I believe they got nudged to a minus one.

SPEAKER_02 49:49

Now this is the these are the Muslims, or no, no, the Swiss people you were talking to yesterday who go to uh a flight school here in Vero Beach.

SPEAKER_01 49:56

They are pilots, they can't they were pilots. They were here in 2019 and going to flight school. They've been flying for Swiss Air for the last five years. They had one of them had a flight uh to Tampa and they had a layover, so they drove over to see me.

SPEAKER_02 50:14

That's a three-hour just to see you. A three-hour.

SPEAKER_01 50:16

They came to Vero Beach. They just, and where they hoped to see us at the cafe, and they walked in and I saw these guys, Jacob and Max, and I went, I knew you guys. They go, Yeah, we were here in 2019. I go, Oh yeah, tell me your names again. Jacob, Max, okay, okay. Uh uh very delightful guys. Very, you know, it was so good to see. Well, they came to Vero Beach. They lived here for four months.

SPEAKER_02 50:43

What do you call it an alma mater? What do they call it? Were you studied school? I don't know what the term is. Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 50:48

But this uh Vero Beach has been a special place for the Swiss Air uh Company because for 34, 35 years they trained all their pilots here, and so it's something they all have in common. But but I think I'm hoping that uh now there will be other people that will follow up and play their part in Max and Jacob's life and really encourage them that God is real and that he desires to have a relationship with this is what happened to me. It's what happened to you. God is constantly tapping us on the shoulder. He's he's asking us, just turn around and look at me. Look, look at what I've created for you, look what I've done for you.

SPEAKER_02 51:28

But but I remember thinking that Jesus freaks were nuts. And I remember thinking Jesus was foolishness. Well, who's gonna send his son? You know, I wanted to believe in all this ethereal stuff and astral projection. From the age of 14, I read autobiography of a yogi and I was into Eastern religions, got inducted into meditation up in Boston, you know, all that stuff. But none of it rang true. But it wouldn't be till I was 29 that I actually had my encounter with the Lord.

SPEAKER_01 51:52

Right. And and Christianity is the true revolutionary manner of living in this world. It's so counter-culture, it's counterintuitive, it's serving others rather than serving yourself. And it's recognizing what Jesus Himself did for us. I mean, the uh the book of Colossians, which I've been reading a lot uh these last couple weeks, it describes Jesus as the creator, the one that holds things together. He's the exact image, he's the icon of God. Uh the icon, Plato says, when you look at a sun uh setting over the water, that reflection in the water is the icon of the sun. It's the exact image. Uh Paul's describing this. This is this is the creator, this is God Himself in a human body. Uh the next description, he's the prototocus, which is uh translated firstborn in our English Bibles. It's a legal term referring to the rights of the firstborn son who could sell own property, all of his father's uh rights and property were his and he could do with them what he wants. So the Bible's trying to tell us that Jesus is the exact image of Yahweh, he's the creator, and in a human form, he is uh the f the uh has all the rights and privileges and prerogatives of the creator. So uh it's such a uh a meditating moment to think that this guy came and rather than be a king that forced us to obey him, he uh paid the price for our separation so that we would understand his love for us and be compelled to follow him and compelled to obey him and compelled to live our lives for other people. And as you've discovered, Rhett, and I have, this is where true life actually exists, is in this realm of being about God's business, serving the King and taking care of the people around us.

SPEAKER_02 54:04

Well, you know what scripture I heard from my friend Bobby Vendetta before I knew Jesus, he had come become born a Christian, he said, Well, Jesus said, I wish above all things that thou were either hot or cold, because if you are if ye are lukewarm, I will spew thee out of my mouth. And I don't know why that particular one, but it went through my head and it and it wouldn't go away. You know, either you're hot or cold.

SPEAKER_01 54:24

What do you think Jesus was saying as he's speaking this? Remember, the context is the book of Revelation, chapter three. And the Jesus is speaking to the different churches in that area.

SPEAKER_02 54:35

No middle ground.

SPEAKER_01 54:36

And well, okay, let's let's look at the context for just a moment, okay? Laodicea is in the middle of a valley, a very uh rich valley in the Lycris and Meander River in southwestern Turkey. Yeah. And um at the north end of this valley is a hot springs, Heropolis, which for thousands of years people come to the this hot springs for healing. I was there in 2021. People are coming and sitting in the hot springs. I sat in the springs, okay? They come for healing. It's also a place in Turkey where uh they have balloon, hot air ballooning. And so we went for a balloon ride. Um right in the middle of the valley is Laodicea, which has been excavated and a lot of the ruins have been rebuilt. But to the south end of the valley, uh right at the base of a 5,200-foot mount Cadmus, uh, which has snow on it, is a spring or a river that comes out of the base of that mountain and is ice cold water that's very refreshing. Okay, you and I are living in Laodicea. The water in Laodicea has a little bit of magnesium and calcium in it from this, I think, hot springs, it's like four miles away. And the people in Laodicea were always having problems with their uh stomachs because the water they were drinking was upsetting. Now let's let's put ourselves in the room in the context. I wish that you were neither either hot or cold. If I live in Laodicea, I know that hot is referring to Heropolis, where the springs are healing. Cold is referring to colossi, where the water is very refreshing. Because you're neither healing or refreshing, I'm going to sp vomit you out of my mouth. As a lesson for the people of Laodicea, because as he says in Revelation chapter 3, you're a proud people. And the reality is in 44 there was a earthquake and Laodicea was destroyed, and the Roman Emperor offered them aid, financial aid to rebuild. But the people of Laodicea, you know what they said to the emperor? We don't need your stinking money. We have enough of our own. We don't need any help. And this was a proud people, but there was a congregation of Christians there. There was a congregation in Heropolis as well as Colossi. So you read the book of Colossae, Colossians, you see these communities mentioned, and Paul says, make sure you read this letter to them. And I'm sending a letter to Laodicea, make sure you guys read that one. All right. So in the context, and Rhett, we talked about geographical factors. This is a geographical factor that helps me understand that Jesus is telling me in your interaction with other people, either be refreshing or be healing. But because you're neither, your words are going to fall on the ground and people are going to think nothing of what you just said. And for Jesus, he wants us to be healing and refreshing to the people around us. If we're not, he's going to vomit us out of his mouth. Now back in my uh Navy days, I was uh we were in San Diego doing our workups for a deployment on the Kitty Hawk. My friends and I uh jumped in the car when we came ashore on Saturday. We went to the beach, we met our guy that sold us a bag of weed. We smoked up a little bit, we went to a Mexican restaurant, we ate uh some uh lots of tacos and drank lots of tequila. We went to San Diego State to watch the Jimmy Buffett concert that night. And about midnight, we're driving back to Coronado, and I'm driving, and uh Dong Barry is sitting behind beside me, and right behind me is Killer Whale. Uh uh that was his uh call sign, Killer, uh Dan Whale. And Tank Tingler was sitting next to him. And as we're driving, I hear uh I hear this voice say, and I said, What'd you say? I said, Okay, I'm okay. And so I started making my way over to the five lanes to get over to the uh right lane, and I said, Okay, and suddenly the cabin of that car erupted with noise, and I hear this gurgling sound, and I see this splatter hit the windshield in front of me. Except for a clear spot that matches the outline of my head. At the same time, I feel something warm hit the back of my ears and the back of my neck, and a pungent odor fills the cavity. I learned I turned around, I said, Killer, I'm pulling over, and he jumped out of the car, and the rest of those tacos were on the side of the road. Jesus said, I will vomit you out of my mouth.

SPEAKER_02 59:54

You didn't need that story for that.

SPEAKER_01 59:56

You are near the neither refreshing or healing to the people I place around you. This is a vivid lesson in us being effective with what you started this conversation with, is us being effective and being listeners and being salt and light to the people around us.

SPEAKER_02 1:00:15

All right, we're gonna take a break and do another show. If you're listening, uh viewing us on Facebook or wherever, stay tuned. Don't tune off. We'll keep the thing going here. We're gonna take a break, a potty break, and then we'll be back to do another hour. And what's our subject going to be when we get back?

SPEAKER_01 1:00:30

Well, it's gonna be that words matter.

SPEAKER_02 1:00:34

I'm read Palmer, and of course, we're talking with the biblical historian Michael Bagby, who's uh a missionary, full time missionary. Uh I was a part time missionary, and uh we're we live in Vero Beach, Florida, and um we'll be back.