Adoption, Love, and the Grace of God | Joshua Weigel, Bishop and Donna Martin | EP 461

It was my intention to get 100 children in the community, but because we didn't have no resources out there whatsoever—that the state cut us off—and we had got 76 children. I believe that God wanted to teach this nation what we are missing in the adoption Arena.

[Music]

Hello everybody, I'm here today talking to Bishop Martin, his wife Donna Martin, my wife Tammy Peterson, and Joshua Wiel, who's the director, producer, and writer with his wife Rebecca of the movie "The Sound of Hope," the story of Pawsome Trot. This is a story about a small community, Pawsome Trot, that decided to take matters into their own hands in a responsible way. Twenty-two families in the community adopted 76 children, pulling them out of the foster care system, and they decided to take the children whom no one wanted—that's older children in the foster care system.

The movie explores that difficult topic. It’s a hell of a thing to take it onto yourself to pull someone you don’t know, who’s been hurt, into your life to try to intercede in a positive manner. Joshua pointed out, for example, in the conversation that there are about 400,000 children in the foster care system in the US. If every Church did what the church community in Pawsome Trot did, there’d be no children at all in the foster care system. God only knows what positive results might emerge socially as a consequence of that.

So this is an investigation into the compelling story of the families of Pawsome Trot, as well as in this discussion, an analysis of the motives that the people in the community had for undertaking this venture and a discussion of the potential consequences on the psychological and social stage of adopting responsibility to take care of the least among these, so to speak.

So welcome to the conversation! All right, Joshua, let's start with you. Why don't you tell us two things: tell us the story of writing first, and then producing and directing "The Sound of Hope," and also maybe fill us in on the details of your association with Angel Studios.

Good, well I'm glad to be here, thank you guys so much. Yeah, thanks for coming, all of you. Thank you so much.

So, the story just, real quick, is about these two—Bishop Martin, now was Reverend Martin at the time, First Lady Donna Martin—spearheaded this amazing thing in this little corner of East Texas. They inspired 22 families to begin to adopt kids out of the foster system with them. This was in the sort of late 90s and ended up at the end of the day, the community adopted 77 kids between them. They asked for the kids that nobody wanted, so it was a really specific goal in that.

Rebecca and I wrote this and produced it. We heard about this story, and she was working in the child welfare space in Los Angeles, doing a lot of work with churches trying to get them more involved in caring for these kids. So she came across—you had a—I think she was looking for a speaker for Bishop Martin to join her, and they connected. Long story short, we just hit it off and felt like something about this story just gripped us. We felt like it needed to be made, so we sort of shifted away from some other things that were happening and began developing that.

So, what you mentioned, that there was something about the story that struck you, and it struck you hard enough to divert you from the path you were already on—what do you think it was? What did you pick up, do you think, you and your wife, that had that effect on you?

I mean, for me, it was hearing these kids' stories. I mean, I started reading about the actual kids and what they had gone through. Backing up just a little bit, you know, we had adopted two of our kids, so we had personal experience in this whole thing and cared a lot about it.

We also started to connect what was happening to these kids, the breakdown of the family crisis, and how it sort of impacts our communities. All of these things were coming together, but I remember reading about these kids, Terry, especially what she lived through, and I was like, we've got to tell people about this.

How old were your kids when you adopted them?

One was about six, almost six, and then almost two.

Okay, so you had some personal experience with this that was direct, and the stories themselves touched you, but you also felt that—I mean it's a difficult thing to understand why how a creative inspiration comes about, right? It is something like a bunch of things coming together—but you also said you thought that it struck to the heart in a personal way of one of the major problems that's facing our society, which is obvious: the breakdown of the family. And that's a catastrophe, and it's a catastrophe that particularly affects the poor, because the rich still are married and have intact families. So you could feel all of that coming together!

Sir, you started talking about this to your congregation a long time ago. How long ago now?

It was back in probably the 90s, late 90s, so it's been quite some time ago.

Okay, so tell us about the town that you're working in, and so that everybody has a sense of the place, but also maybe you could explain why this particular issue touched you and why you felt it was necessary to bring it to the—that could go to Donna too!

Absolutely, you're both welcome to chime in why you think that particular problem became the focus of your attention in your work in your church.

So, she do the first part and I do the second part. You can tell her why then.

I know. I tell her why was it happening—it was you.

Okay, well back in '97 from the 90s—yeah, 97—the loss of my mother. My mother passed away in February, and a couple of months after her death I began to, if you will, be depressed. You know, I call it a silent depression, because when I was around other people, I was happy and jolly, and you know, doing the work of the Lord and putting on the first lady face and just meeting everybody's needs. But as a pastor's wife, when I would be alone by myself at the house, my husband off to work—he was selling insurance at that time—through the service of my mother, we were in a really old church. This is the church that I grew up in as a child. The floor, it was that church—probably would seat maybe 175 people—so it was probably 500 folks packed in that church that day, and that many cars were lined up miles down the street that people were trying to get in.

But at the service, I heard a—I thought it was a pew, and it was actually the wall that came from the—you know the floor came from the wall. So he was in the process after that of, you know, trying to find people to help donate and build us a church. We only had $500 in the building fund, and he’s selling insurance, so he's busy. He's selling insurance, he’s got to make his routes, he's got to try to find some good Heavenly people who will help us restructure a building. He was just overwhelmed, and I was there at the house after getting my kids off to school, a couple of months of just crying out to the Lord silently. There was nights he would come in after work, I would share with him, and I would get so angry when he would tell me, "Donna, I understand how you feel." It would make me so angry! It’s like how can you understand how I feel? You know, he lost his mother when he was young, but I would get angry and just, after telling the Lord a couple of months, Lord, no child should lose a mother. I am 36 years old, but I'm saying to the Lord, no child should lose a mother.

So this particular day, I got the kids off to school, he's off to work, I'm doing my dishes, and that pain that I’ve had in my heart, in my chest, it was like a heart. The round was just burning fire, aching burning fire. And so I said, as I was beginning to do my dishes, I said, "Okay God, today is the day either you heal me or let me die." Literally, I thought I was going to—he was going to come home and find me right there on the floor.

Yeah, so you were experiencing physical pain as well associated?

It was all physical. It was grief. It was in every emotion of being, of my body, mind, spirit, soul. Again, now when I’m with the church and with God’s people, I am just, I’m on point, I’m on target! And that's why I said silent, you know it’s a silent pain.

So why do you think—I’m sure this is related in some manner—why do you think that you were angry with your husband for his presumption that he understood? Were you feeling particularly—I mean it sounds like most of the time you were feeling pain and isolation. So it would have been perhaps hard for him even to see that, but do you have any sense of why you were angry? Were you angry about the fact of your mother’s death, the fact that she was taken away? Did you feel that?

I was angry about the pain and the hurt. It’s like no one could connect to that, you know? I never felt the connection from anyone.

I see, so you’re feeling isolated.

Yes, yes if you will, yes.

Right, right, yes.

How do you think people should share their grief?

Definitely about talking about it, expressing it, you know, feeling the comfort. But as I look back over it, I just think that it was a preparation, there was a preparation for me personally to receive the assignment that God had in store. I feel that truly it really wasn’t about me, it was about what he was preparing me, us, the world, the church to do, and I do believe that through pain and suffering come victory. When you suffer through something and you receive that godly assignment, then you can associate that with what you went through to get to where you are, right that gives you some seriousness that gave the connection.

Yeah, that made the dots no matter what! So when I answered to the Lord and he said back to me, “Me, I hurt you, you give back,” what? Think about those children that’s out there!

Did this happen when you were doing the dishes?

You started—this happened.

This happened after I said to him, either heal me or let me die. Right then a calmness came over me. I don’t even remember going out but I was just moved. It was just the Holy Spirit just moved me from one place to the next, on my back porch.

So I wonder if that was a consequence of the way you formulated that. You know, it’s a situation where your pain is serious enough so that you’re willing to have death come as a relief. Maybe that's the time when people are more likely to be most serious about doing a new thing. I mean if you’re willing to give up your life and die, maybe you’re at that point willing to give up your life to do something new, you know?

Yeah, well it could be that you have to be taken down to the... So when Jonah, for example, when Jonah is called upon to speak, he doesn’t really agree to speak until after he’s thrown off the boat, that’s right, mostly drowned and then in hell for three days, right? That’s when he decides he’s going to do what he’s supposed to do. Yes, right, so it gives him grim seriousness of purpose!

Yeah, okay. So you’re doing the dishes and what do you realize?

As I was saying, I was just moved to the back porch, and when I went and stood on that back porch calmly, the Holy Spirit plainly spoke to me and said, “I’ve heard you, but think about those children who are out there that do not and did not have what you have had, their mother!” and grieved.

Right, so you were informed then that you were fortunate enough at least to have a mother to grieve!

Come on now, come on!

You were fortunate enough to have something called love, yeah, right! With 21 children raised with—watch this woman nurture every one of us individually, and at the same time never one time did Merlee Gisby Cartwright lose her cool. We were poorer than Lazarus, if you will, we didn’t have anything but each other, love, family, genuine love, unconditional love, and she kept it together!

So by—you know, we stepping out and the Holy Spirit says give back! Give back! Think about those that didn’t have what you had.

So my mother passed away two weeks ago, three weeks ago, sorry, and it was somewhat sudden. We were more worried about my father actually than my mother, and you never know how you’re going to react to that, hey! But I was in Las Vegas when I got the news, and I spent the day with memories, you know, and I haven’t got one negative memory of my mother!

Wow! So, you know, and I’ve interviewed a lot of people who have done well in their lives and asked them how their interests developed and why they had the confidence in themselves that they had, you know, and they’re almost invariably from two-parent families.

Yeah, and the developmental psychologists know this too, like the love of your mother gives you—it’s like an unshakable confidence in your own physical reality, right? And that’s sort of instantiated maybe even in infancy. It’s really embodied and really fundamental. Your father can be a figure of great encouragement, which is very nice, alignment with that acceptance and love, and so you were in—now you said that when you were on the porch that the Holy Spirit spoke to you. How exactly did you experience that; and why did you attribute that to the Divine? Like, what was—was it an actual voice? Was it a thought? Was it a feeling? Like how did that idea come to you?

It was just a calm sense of a voice. I could not have made this up; I would not have ever had a “funket” if you will. Yeah, I know without a doubt, and every time I think on it and speak on it, I know it greater, I know it greater! And I know through all the disappointment, all the pain that the children suffered from, all the hurt, the anxiety, the abuse, the neglect—I knew without a doubt—and sitting here even now, right this moment—I want that—it was nobody but God who allowed this! Who gave this commandment from heaven!

And how do you think you know that?

Because we didn’t give up!

I see! So no matter how hard it got you stuck with it!

We stuck with it!

Yeah! You know, you could tell that story about you and Julian, maybe?

Yeah, sure! Okay, so when I was, uh—2019, I was diagnosed with terminal cancer. I was told I had ten months to live, and Jordan and I were in the doctor’s office, and I thought, well, you know, my mom and her family all died fairly young, and I guess I'm one of those. And so I just kind of said, okay. And we went home, and my son lived nearby with his wife, and they came outside and I told my son, I said, so I told him that I was going to die in ten months. He looked at me, and I saw a boy losing his mother, and I thought, oh my goodness!

So that love that I had for my son, I saw that reflected back to me, which I had never felt before. And I felt the weight of the world lift off my shoulders, and I felt the Holy Spirit fill my body, and I said to my son, you know what? Those doctors, they have a medical opinion, but only God knows when I’m going to die, and we’re just going to go it day by day with gratitude.

Well, and Tammy, that’s been the story—Tammy’s told me two things about that first, you know, the first—and I’ve thought about it a lot when she was the mother of young children. One of the things that was quite remarkable watching her was that she responded to the kids, if they were in distress, pretty much immediately.

So when my daughter was born, Michaela, we lived in a little apartment in Montreal, in a poor neighborhood, and I built a bunk bed and I built a crib to go underneath it. And so that’s where Michaela slept. And at night, if Michaela so much as peeped, Tammy was down the ladder and taking care of her! So she never really woke up and cried, but she had that immediate response.

She also told me this—I thought was quite interesting—we took Michaela again up to this little cottage in Northern Saskatchewan that we go to. We’ve gone to every year for 20 years, and most of the people up there are old, you know, over 70. And we took our little kids up there, and it was just Michaela—it was just Michaela at that point; she only—she was Jolly Jumper age!

Yeah, and we’d have like ten old people in the living room of this little cottage, and they’d just be watching that baby like she was on fire, you know? And so—and I said to my husband, oh this is great—I said, all the attention’s on that little baby, and it has nothing to do with me, this is great! You know?

So that was a very striking.

“Are you sure these people want us?”

I know they do!

“You can call me Mama!”

“Oh Lord, no, no, no, no! If we can’t wrap our arms around the most vulnerable, then where do we add noise? And the children can’t take the noise anymore. This is something that we must—”

[Applause]

“Do! 22 families want to adopt? The whole town wants kids? No! Are you kidding?”

“That’s about right. What’s happening with Pawsome Trot could mean a huge change for the system.”

“We want the ones that nobody else wants.”

“Who hurt you, baby? I’m not giving up on you—you can’t give up on me either. What are we going to do? Everybody’s falling apart. I’m doing the best I can!”

“A real world hits hard!”

“I don’t want to be here—I can’t give him back! We gotta work on this together!”

[Applause]

“We’re your people now, and love never gives—”

[Music]

“It’s easy for people to think that their life should be about them and their status. I mean them, very narrowly and personally in that sort of narcissistic way. But one of the things that you come to understand—and I suspect this is more true for mothers than for fathers—is that your life should be centered on the needs of others. Your life should definitely not be about your narrow needs. Not least because that doesn’t work! It’s a very unsatisfactory solution. First of all, I don’t think that can ever be exhausted.

You know, I watch narcissistic celebrities who are constantly dissatisfied, no matter what they attain. It’s a void that can’t be filled, and I think the reason it can’t be filled is because the way you fill that void isn’t by getting what you want; it’s by giving!

You absolutely!

Yeah, yeah!

So, it was—and then see, the reason I wanted to tell Tammy to tell that story too, because there’s a bit of a parallel there because along with that experience when she saw her devotion to Julian reflected, that showed her that she was of more worth than she thought about herself, but it was also a time when she decided—or very close to the time when she decided that while you decided that you were going to turn your life, at least to some degree, in a new direction as well, you said that you were going to—for example, that you’d speak publicly.

Well, I had prayed and asked if God would spare me that I promised that I would, you know—I would speak! I would speak that voice!

And you kept up that resolve.

That’s right! That’s been definitely put into action!

She actually found out she was good at it too!

Well, I liked it anyway.

When He steps in, yeah, He gives you the ability—the ability to do what you could not do without Him!

So what have you found that you could do?

All things through Christ who gives me strength!

Yeah, very good!

So, be specific! What have you been engaged in because of the decisions that you’ve made that wouldn’t have come your way otherwise?

Just obedient, just—I mean sharing the message. I mean teaching the world or even myself how high important family is. And no matter what you do, do not erupt that; you know, you keep it together to whatever degree it takes!

So, how did you torture your husband into paying attention to you?

You had to say he figured out that God speaks to women also!

[Huh huh huh]

Well you did!

Thank you! Thank you!

So, okay, so maybe you could pick it up from there. What happened? What happened after now? You were working as an insurance salesman and a pastor, right? And you were working in this little church that needed some work to say the least!

I needed a church!

Yeah, okay! So pick up the story there. Tell us a bit of background about your work, and then your religious work—how did you come to be a pastor?

Well, uh, before all of this, before I even met her, I used to sing with my brothers. I got nine brothers and one sister, and we organized a group called “The Martin Brothers.” We was singing all over the country, and one particular Saturday night, we went to PM Trot, where her church is at. We had to be there that Saturday night, and that Sunday evening, that Sunday evening I saw—I walked through the door and I said, “That’s going to be mine right there!” I laid claim on her!

And then the Lord brought it together. I had no idea—if I would have known, the Lord would not allow me to know that because there would have been no, no, no, you know?

So, um, you know, when I started in the ministry, I wasn’t looking to do anything, but just, in fact, I didn’t want to preach. I didn’t want to do that at all! That wasn’t something I made choice of. He made choice of me! Then the Lord—I ended up pastoring the church that I got married in.

And when that came to me, when she came to me about the adoption part—and see, one thing that you all need to understand that my biological son, he was born with severe brain damage and that constituted where teaching us about patience.

And I think that God had a program in mind, something in mind all the time, because through my son with his problem that he had, we learned how to be patient. You gotta be very, very patient with him. You can’t take him fast; you gotta be real slow with him and you gotta do things over and over and over before he gets it. But once he gets it, he got it!

So, uh, when she came to me with the—at first, I didn’t want to do it because I was thinking about him, you know, and what I had to do with him and then all the rest of the responsibilities that I had. But then again, I began to feel that this is a movement of God.

So I joined in! I joined in; I went to some of the pride classes. Couldn’t go to all of them. In Texas, they got what they call Pride classes; that’s where CPS teaches you how to deal with children with multiple problems.

And when we got started in it, uh, and brought—got the first two, we got one boy who came in before we got our true—his name was Nino. Her sister got him, and after he came in, then we got Tyler and Mercedes. And when we got Tyler and Mercedes, then some of the members started asking, you know, how did y’all do that? What, what y’all do? How did y’all do all of that?

So what I done was they wanted to—they wanted to do it, but they didn’t want to do—see, we had to drive 120 miles round trip, you know, from our church to take the classes. And I went to the state and asked them about it, so they told me, said, well, if you can find eight families that was willing to adopt, we would teach you classes at the church.

Oh yeah! And then she said eight families, but I found 13 families the first time—13 families within your church, you know, that wanted to sign up and go through this process of learning about adoption.

And after we did them, I began to realize that adoption itself was not something that man came up with; it wasn’t a man-made—it was a God idea in the beginning because the only way we was able to get back to God was through adoption.

And if you read Ephesians one, I think, right—that fourth and fifth verse, it will explain that to you, that it was God’s good pleasure to bring us back to Him through His son, Jesus, through adoption. So that was the only way we were able to get back to God.

So adoption was something that—and then on top of that, adoption was something that started in the Bible years ago; under Moses was an adopted child because, Moses was not—he was Moses’ dead, and a no L.A., but he was raised in Pharaoh’s home. And a lot of people don’t agree with it, but I do, Jesus was an adopted child because if you look at it closely, uh, Joseph was not his biological father; he was one that he didn’t plant the seed for Jesus, because when the angel spoke to Joseph, he told him, said, “Joseph,” he said, “don’t be afraid to take Mary as your wife, for that which she is caring is only.” So she was already pregnant when she got married!

So he was—she was not—but he told Joseph to raise him, teach him and learn him. That’s why they related to Jesus as the carpenter’s son. And if you read in when Matthew, Mark—well it explains all that to you.

So once I began to let the church know the importance of adoption and why we should be doing this and why it’s a God thing that we do this, they began to really get involved.

We was not looking for no publicity; we were not looking for none of this. I mean, all of this was something we just done because I always figured that people take care of their children because anything—and a lot of us can say right now, “well, something happened to my mom, my grandmama raised me, my auntie raised me.” So always it was an adoption, but it’s not a formal adoption; it was an informal thing that when something happened to Mama, adoption was gone because Mama or your grandmama or your auntie or somebody would have came in! But once we learn and once we got it into existence now, it’s a more formal thing that you gotta go through all of this and go through that to adopt a child.

But for the most part, it was not something that man did—it was a God idea to get us back to Him! And I feel like this, that we all have been adopted; every one of us who is a child of God has been adopted.

So you said there’s a couple of things that you said in there that really struck me as worth delving into further. So you said that you already had a fairly heavy responsibility with your son, and so you were leery about taking on additional responsibility partly 'cause you knew how difficult it would be, and partly because you were already occupied.

Okay, so why did you decide to take on the additional responsibility, given that, and how did you come to that decision?

It came to a—and some way—and somehow when you are doing this for the Lord, and doing it in His will and obeying His commandment, God would drop stuff on you that you never dreamed—God would take somebody that you never heard of and He said, look, I just was thinking about you, and I just want to bless you with something.

This is the way God—this is where you were able to accomplish things, and look it ain’t nothing to be grinning and “oh man look who I am!” It ain’t nothing like that, but the thing of it is, stand in the process! I can’t get that word out of my mind—process! A process is something that you stay with!

If you get out of the process, you done messed up already! But if you stay in the process, especially when God has already opened up them channels for you to walk through, all we got to do is just stay with the process, obey His will, and understand that God got your back. I don’t care what happens!

See, that’s the same thing with Elijah. I mean, he went to this Widow’s house, and what happened? He said, look, I tell you what you do, he said, we just going to—I got a little oil and a little cake and me and my son, we going to eat and we going to drink, and we going to die. But look what God said! Look don’t do that! He said, give me mine first! She obeyed the man of God and the mandate that was on his life; she obeyed that!

What he did, and her meal barrel never ran out again! This is what happens when we obey God! This is the thing that happens when we stay in the process and do what He said do!

It ain't going to happen no way because we do have our adversary out there that fights us on every hand and doesn’t want to see us do this. And same thing you've done about this whole movie; he has fought us on two ends.

But let me tell you something—only thing I can say about that, but God! When you going through something and you know that the Lord is with you, you don’t even have to be—you don’t even have to be afraid of their faces! Don’t be afraid of that because God is going to work it out some way and somehow! God is going to work out!

When Israel got out there in the wilderness, and they needed some water, what God told him? To hit the rock, and more water! It’s just the way He does! We don’t always can define it, but we know that God is with us.

So, you know, one of the things that’s interesting about that Elijah story too is that it’s after Elijah has that encounter with the widow who is contrasted with Jezebel—who’s powerful. That’s when his conscience awakens within him, right? Because this is a very crucial story because Elijah, of course, is one of the prophets who appears with Jesus when he’s transfigured.

It’s Elijah, Moses, and Jesus. And Elijah is the first person in the biblical sequence of stories who formally identifies God with conscience, right? Because it’s Elijah who talks about the still small voice. He realizes that God’s not in the earthquake, not in the fire, not in the storm—these awe-inspiring elements of nature. That’s partly why he’s opposed to the nature worshippers, and what he does instead is take everything that people had misapprehended in the awesome of awesomeness of nature as indicative of God, and he places it in a very lowly place, in a way which is the voice of conscience, right?

Now, and part of the theme that we’ve been developing in this discussion is something like the awakening of conscience in the church! Okay, so now do you think there’s any particular significance in the fact that this is also something that happened in a predominantly black community?

No! It’s something that is happening!

Well, let me say it like this: What we did was in the black community, but what God did—what God is doing now, He’s exposing it to the world!

He wants everybody to know that we all got a part in this, and like I said earlier, everybody can’t adopt, but everybody can be a part of adoption! We can do something to help!

The sad part about it, if we don’t do absolutely nothing—that’s the sad part! But I do know one thing, if God be for us, I don’t care what happens! I don’t care what they can shake! The graveyard can dry bones to rise! It doesn’t matter if God be for us—we’re going to succeed!

This movie, if—if—I’ll just give you a short history of the hell, the problem of the situation and all the trouble and the trauma that we have to have just to get this far, and it still—the devil ain’t through yet, he’s still raising up his ugly head!

But here’s the thing of it is, God wants somebody who won’t say no, who won’t give up! And the lady told me the other day, she said these words: she said, whatever God say yes in your spirit, that’s what you do! God done said yes! And that’s what we doing!

We are not backing up! We are not taking down! We are not running away! Because you know why? We got the power over this—not the enemy!

But he wants to throw up this bluff and make us feel and try to intimidate us! But look, I’m too old a cat to be fooled by kid! I’m not going to let the enemy try to bring this stuff down on me!

And I know better because I already know what the Lord said: No weapon—I mean absolutely no weapon formed against us shall prosper! We are more than conquerors, and our stands on that!

I’ll say something—you’re pretty good at that!

There’s something about your community and even the black community at large, because of what, in our country, they’ve had to overcome historically and the bond that’s been created through community and family that they’ve thrived, you know, because of and survived because of.

It’s an example, I think, and a picture of what Christian family is supposed to be like! You know, and I don’t mean blood family, I just mean spiritual family as well.

So I think there is something that we noticed that that allowed for this to work and it’s an example that we want to follow.

I think we’ve lost, at least in the bigger cities, you know, I think there’s a lot of smaller communities that just kind of naturally have that, but it’s a— it was just being a black woman and proud of being, you know, black.

And well, I was thinking, well there’s a particular problem with the breakdown of family structures in the black community, and so the fact that you’re working within your marriage and then you’re working with this community to rectify some of the consequences of that seems to me to be significant in addition to the fact that you’re doing it with, well hypothetically with restricted resources. It’s like it’s not so obvious in a way that your community is poor because you actually have a community!

And if you’re rich and you don’t have a community, you’re poor!

Right! Well, it’s true! It’s true! You’re just rich and isolated and then that often just does you nothing but give you license to pursue your idiot habits!

And you know, that’s partly why Christ says to the rich man who’s in distress that he has to sell everything! You think you’re rich, but you’re not! You’re not rich at all! In fact, your wealth is an enemy!

That’s kind of the enemy that you made illusion to with regards to the church.

No! It’s the comfort! You could think of that comfor—Comfort is Abraham's worst enemy when he begins his adventure, right? It’s what he has to sacrifice immediately to go out into the world!

That’s what you said something that you brought up Abraham—notice what Abraham—know what he did! Abraham, when God said Abraham, get up!

Yeah! And go to a land that I show you! Did he ask God? Which direction? Did he question God? Why me? Did he question? What Abraham did was gather up his flock, gather up his stuff, and started!

Hit the road!

But hit the road! Now I’m sitting up here saying, how did Abraham know whether to go north, south, east, or west? The Lord’s with him!

And God was showing him within his own... "I'll show you the way!" He should go! And he went that way continually!

And you mentioned Lot a while ago—there came a time that God had to do something because him and... The Bible said how can two walk together except they agree? So Abraham and Lot had to separate, right?

Because God had a plan for Abraham! That’s why the separate, but the thing of it here? God blessed Lot, and he also blessed Abraham, but Abraham had to cut—I preach a message one Sunday: to get a lot, you got to give up a lot!

Yeah, and that’s what we don’t—you got to give up your lot to get a lot!

That’s what Abraham done! He gave up his lot!

That’s funny!

To get a lot!

And after he gave up his lot, look what God done!

Yeah! He said, Abraham, I’m going to make you rich! But he had to give up, yeah—his own nephew in order to get this rich from God!

Well, God offers Abraham four things, right? So he comes to Abraham and he says, “Leave what’s comfortable,” and he says, “This is what will happen! Your life will become a blessing to you,” right?

Your name will become known validly among your contemporaries. You will establish something permanent and of lasting value for Abraham—a dynasty of Nations!

And you’ll do that in a way that brings a blessing to everyone, right?

And so that call of adventurous responsibility—that’s what came to you on the porch.

Okay! So what has that done to your community? What have you seen happen as a consequence? First of all, to the people who adopted and the children, but what’s been the broader impact on the community?

The enlargement of love, family, stability, faith, sound of hope! You know, and passing down, stopping the generational curses, right? The breaking every bond and seeing that those children because they were gathered into love and impacted by change—that their children, my grandchildren, that I nurture, you know, that comes up to our home will never have to experience what their parents...

Yeah! You’re talking about gratitude and gratefulness, right?

So it’s a permanent change! It’s a permanent change; it’s an everlasting, just at the promise!

Yeah! Yeah!

That’s right!

Gave unto Abraham!

Well, so—well, that’s right! So what happens? So what happens to Abraham?

Is that God says to him, if you follow the voice of adventure and let it take you wherever it wants, then you’ll become the father of nations.

And so I’m thinking about that. Well, I think what it means, okay—see, there’s a mistake that evolutionary biologists make when they think about human reproduction. They think about reproduction as sex, but that’s foolish because our children require this kind of dedicated commitment that you mention, right? Once you take on a child, it’s like it’s a 40-year commitment, right?

And so sex just gets the ball rolling, you might say. There’s an immense sacrifice that has to be made after—made after that, and that’s the sacrifice that forces you to mature.

Well, what God points out to Abraham is that if he does that, right, he’ll establish a pattern of fatherhood that will then cascade down the generations and make his descendants successful!

Right! Because God promises him that his descendants will defeat the people of Cain, for example, and those are the resentful, bitter descendants of Cain! And so there is that—so you see that your community has adopted this responsibility that’s multigenerational, and do you think people are aware of that?

I mean, you laid it out very quickly!

I think so! I think so! I think that, you know, coming from the same community and having the same values and, you know, touched by the same love, it’s passed out!

You know, you can only give out what’s been given to you, and being in the same area and having the same, you know, form of life and expectancy before you, you gravitate to the environment that you’re in! So, yes!

Yeah!

I think so! There’s a—it seems to me too that there’s people in the modern world are searching for identity, right? They’re searching for dignity!

And maybe that’s more difficult—maybe that’s more difficult if you’re poor, although there’s plenty of undignified rich people, so it’s not that clear. But it is clear, I believe, that that dignity that people are searching for is accomplished by adopting responsibility.

'Cause you know, then like even if things come your way that, I don’t know, demean you, maybe that’s when socially—you—you, if you’ve taken on the proper responsibility, you know in your heart that—what you probably know in your heart—that God’s with you!

Look, that’s a—it went—a shadow of a doubt!

Yeah, Abraham where he was, and this is why we call him “the father of the faithful!” Abraham was faithful!

He messed up!

Yeah!

Absolutely!

But the thing of it is, God looked beyond his thoughts!

Yeah!

And 'cause see, God promised Abraham what He was going to do!

God is not going to go back on His promises! Now we go back on God because we go contrary to His will.

But He didn’t go back on His promise! He told Abraham what He was going to do, and He did just that!

And in the midst of all that, Abraham messed up bad!

But God had mercy!

I guess that's why we got mercy and grace today!

Yeah!

Because God keeps on giving us His mercy and His grace to help us to understand the beauty of who He is and what He wants to do in our lives!

Well, it also means—it also means what you were referring to earlier about how you struggled when you first adopted children— is that you didn’t know what you were doing to begin with, and that’s certainly the case for Abraham, and for Jacob, and for all the biblical heroes. They are very flawed people to begin with, and that’s a relief because everybody’s flawed to begin with!

So if there’s hope for them in their flawed circumstances, that also indicates perhaps that there’s hope for all of us who are flawed to begin with, and that that the proper sacrificial intent gets the ball rolling, right?

Okay!

When does the movie come out?

July 4th!

You can actually go July 3rd, with the official opening is July 4th. Nationwide! Over 2,000 screens!

We’ll see how it goes, and it will go beyond that!

But—and you mentioned that you have a first grand opening.

We have a premiere!

Yeah, tomorrow!

It’s premier tomorrow!

Yeah!

And that’s in Atlanta?

It’s in Atlanta!

Oh, it’s in Atlanta!

We filmed near Atlanta, so we’re going to gather with the crew and everybody down there to kick this off.

So, okay, and so maybe we could close this—what is it? There’s a call to action in all of this! So let’s make that practical!

What is it that you’re hoping will happen, you guys, and you—what are you hoping will happen?

And is there something concrete, other than going to see the movie that people— because people should be interested in the movie per se, but maybe there’s also something that it’s calling them to do beyond actually just watching the movie?

I think in a broad sense, it’s really working to resolve some of the problems around us in our communities, right? You think about this problem connects to things like the foster care system is like the feeder of all kinds of terrible things in our society!

You know, the majority of kids who are trafficked in America—70, 80, 90% of them have spent time in the foster system! You’ve got, right, 50% of the homeless population in the United States has spent time in the foster system.

The prison population, I think it’s 70% of the prison population has spent time in the foster system! The children aren’t being taken care of!

So this trauma and all the disruption that happens just leads to all these other things!

And so you really think this is a focal point?

Oh yeah!

Oh yeah!

And the things that we all get so brokenhearted about and disturbed by, but maybe don’t feel like we can—we can change! This is a way to change it!

We get involved in the foster crisis; we deal with the root cause of this!

So we want people to do—go, enjoy this movie! Go be moved by the movie! We made it so that you would enjoy it in and of itself! There’s a bigger purpose here, and that is that we take responsibility for some of these things around us!

So we want— we want to do that with the at the end of the movie you’ll have a way to continue spreading the news, creating awareness, buying tickets, pay it forward, is what Angel does!

And then there’s a website that you will be led to if you’re interested to get involved! We’re going to lead people in several ways to get involved!

We want to see thousands of churches emulate what Bennett Chapel did!

So you’re going to be able to get your church involved!

There’s people who may feel like they want to foster and adopt—we’re going to have a way for you to learn about that, and maybe even get help on the ground where you are!

And then also prevention!

We want to see this stop! We want to see these families that are in crisis helped!

So there’s going to be ways to connect through something called Care Portal which connects families in need to people who want to meet needs! It’s this amazing thing where we can cut off the flow of children into the system by doing things as simple as providing beds for families or refrigerators or really it’s relationship, ultimately!

The relationship is what we want!

So we want people to go beyond this and look at their communities, their neighborhoods, focus on that change we can see! Broadly speaking in our society a mounting fear of top-down tyranny!

Yes!

Right? And it’s fostering conspiracy theories and terror everywhere across the West, around the world! And at the same time, what’s accompanying that is a disintegration of community and a fractionation of people into atomized individual slaves!

So we have a tyranny and slavery problem that’s emerging, and the historical antidote to that is subsidiary responsibility, right? You look around you can do because then that’s what they’re doing!

You take a place like California—they’re in effect allowing 13-year-olds to be emancipated! You got little children who can be going into the car of a child trafficker, known trafficker, and a caregiver cannot stop that from happening!

Yeah!

They have to watch it happen. They could take a picture of this! I mean, so the insanity that results from people abdicating, going, “No, we let the government deal!” Someone else, not my problem!

Every responsibility you abdicate to the government invites tyranny, right?

Turns you into a slave!

And invites tyranny!

That’s exactly right!

And the antidote— it’s very interesting, you know! One of the things I’ve noticed in my lectures, and so the public lectures, has probably been 700 of them, something like that? The thing that strikes people most now is to draw a through line from responsibility to meaning!

Yeah!

Right!

Yeah!

Yeah!

Right!

Absolutely!

So conservatives always tell people this is what you should do, but they’re missing something. What they’re missing is that if you do what you should do, then you have the adventure of your life!

That’s what happens to Abraham, right? The greatest things that could possibly happen to him happened to him because he’s willing to take on responsibility!

Right!

That’s what happens to Christ, obviously, as well! So the the message there—the eternal message of the Divine—is that the adventure that redeems your life is to be found in the adoption of maximal responsibility!

I love that about you!

And that’s—it, to me, it goes from religion to relationship that way!

When you’re only acting out of obligation—yeah, very cold!

Cold!

That’s right!

But when it’s, I’m going to put within that purpose, and I’m actually going to make you become more like me—this is God speaking!—or the relationship between us is there! I’m allowing you to be a part of this!

And pureness is the adventure and the beauty of that involvement!

So yes, of course, we ought to do these things! Well, that’s the burning bush again, you know? Because Moses, by the time the burning bush appears to Moses, he’s actually a pretty well-established adult!

Right!

He’s a shepherd and doing a good job, and he’s a husband! And so he’s already grown up! But then that extra calling emerging and he pays attention to it and that transforms his life!

And then the world!

And that’s—that’s right! That’s an archetypal story that always happens!

In the end, the one you’re following is seen!

I mean, right? He wants to be known, but he’s also limited! All of this to faith!

And so it’s a lot of these questions like why, you know, and should we—and these kinds of things!

It’s like, well within all of that He wants to be seen and experienced and known! And there’s so much—there’s so much that happens!

And I want people to understand this isn’t just like begrudgingly go out and do good and like help kids!

Well, yeah! But there’s such power in this! And the experience is so deep!

And you’re missing so much if you just leave that to someone else!

That’s the invitation to the heavenly banquet, you know?

I want to—I want to point this out too, that adoption is the antidote to abortion!

Mhm!

Have the child! If you don’t, don’t kill a baby! That—that’s murder!

And you’re taking something you can’t give!

And my Bible tell me only God give and take away!

So have the baby! Somebody would take that baby if you just going on and have the baby!

So to me it’s an antidote! It’s just a solution!

Right!

An invitation!

An in—an in— and it will work!

Mhm!

And shouldn’t be like this!

No way!

It shouldn’t be like this!

Yeah!

The church is the only entity that God ordained to take care of the problems of this world!

When I was 14, 15 years old, we—to what you call a service station, some call them a filling station. You go to the service station or filling station, if you need air, somebody will be there to wait on you!

If you need a fix, a fat tire, about whatever you need right there, you can get it all fixed right there!

So the church is a one-stop solution that will fix all problems! Why? Because where the word of God is and where God is, there is liberty!

And there is freedom, and that will be when the people of God come together on one accord!

The presence of the Lord is there! And when the, wherever the presence of the Lord is, healing—I mean you got everything you need right there because it’s all in His presence!

So what do you say to that?

Amen!

Yes!

Yeah! Absolutely!

All right! Well, that's a good—that's a good—well we hope people hear the—I mean what shakes me inside is that there’s these children—the voice of the child is in God’s ears all the time!

He hears!

And I think right now we’re at a very unique—this isn’t just, you know, we threw a movie together!

No! There’s something going on in the world today!

And the child is at the center of that!

And it’s this—the most innocent, helpless thing that you know He’s done with us, just letting that happen without us coming and becoming involved in that and dealing with that!

So there’s a lot in this for all of us! But people need to understand these children!

Right now today, in America, it’s 100,000 children that need homes!

Yeah!

There’s 400,000 kids in the system!

And—and just one solution is there’s 400,000 churches in America!

So this is one child per church!

Yeah!

This is a really manageable problem!

You know, and so I’m hoping people hear the cry of these kids!

Now, as I was drawn in because of that, that there’s suffering children all around us!

There’s kids—they don’t have room for these kids!

They’re putting them in hotel rooms alone in some places in America!

They’re putting them in defunct hospital wards! They’re putting children in back—they don’t want welfare doesn’t want you to know about this!

Because it’s—who wants to be told, you know, we don’t know what to do about this problem?

It’s so big!

And it’s a—an emergency right now!

And part of this is, let’s look at this as people and go, we gotta do something here! Children are suffering!

It’s enough of this!

We—we can do more than just be Americans living with the American dream—or wherever you are, you know, making your goal comfort!

And well, this is the proper American dream!

This is it!

Yeah, definitely!

It’s also the dream for—it actually produces wealth, right, in the long run!

Amen!

It’s not natural resources!

It’s not economic activity!

It’s the proper covenant between the individual and God!

Yes!

Definitely!

Amen!

So all right! Good!

Well, thank you to everybody watching and listening! I’m going to continue this conversation for another half an hour on the Daily Wire side!

The Daily Wire, by the way, has been moving towards a practical relationship with Angel Studios, which I think would be good for both!

And so that’s a good thing to see! I’ve really liked working with the Daily Wire and I like what Angel Studios is doing!

And so the conjunction of that seems to be very good!

If you want to join us on the Daily Wire side, please feel free! Thank you very much for coming up here and for what you’ve done!

Best of luck with the movie and with your continued endeavors! God only knows what will happen as a consequence of this—I guess we’re going to find out!

It’s very exciting that this is all going to launch July 4th!

That’s a great time to have it happen!

This renewal!

So congratulations on your work!

And what an adventure to watch what happens!

Yeah!

Amen!

That’s for sure!

We appreciate you guys having us!

My pleasure!

My pleasure! Thank you very much!

It was—it was—I’m very grateful to be here and to met you!

It’s a wonderful story and I look forward to hearing how it goes for everyone!

Thank you!

Thank you!