An Honest Conversation About the Future of “The Overlap Life”

[0:00] I think it's time that you and I have a talk this has been a season of Major upheaval in my personal life the life of my family in our whole social context which means as things often are for Christians it's also been a time of intense spiritual growth intense inner thinking intense prayer and intense development of my own relationship with God and it's led to some changes not only in our personal life and the ways that we're managing ourselves and we'll get into details in a minute but also in sort of the content that I have been wanting to put out on this channel now I started this Channel a few years ago coinciding with the release of my book the overlap life which was all about learning how to live every second of our lives in light of what the bible really says about eternity and I'm absolutely still consumed by what the Bible says about eternity I think that the biggest lwh hanging fruit in terms of what would

[0:48] change the most about your average Rank and file Christian Life in terms of if they could get this doctrinal things straight is what they believe eternity is like it unlocks so much it changes so much about what we think and what we even value on a day-to-day basis and how we make our decisions at least if we live consistently with but what's happened is that as I studied that I took a hermeneutical approach to reading all of the different relevant passages that have something to say about the Eternal state which I probably should not have been surprised but it actually created a lot of upheaval in other areas of my doctrinal stances as well so in this video what I want to do is have a Frank and honest conversation with you guys about what I think the direction of the channel is going to become what my vision is for the ministry as a whole and some different ways that you can even help me to shape the direction that I'm going to go after all this channel isn't really about me it's about what

[1:35] the body of Christ needs and in order to know that more fully I need to hear from you what's helpful what's unhelpful what do you feel like you need more help with when it comes to reading and understanding your Bible but with all that said let's jump into the video some of you may know this but I came to saving faith in a roughly Southern Baptist style Independent Baptist Church it's very low church not very focused on a liturgy people dress really nice and it's still very theologically conservative the idea is that it followed pretty closely to what you would consider the traditional Baptist distinctives much of which is still really good and beautiful especially compared with some Alternatives that there are out there I have a great deal of gratitude for the Baptist Church but as I learned to study Hebrew and Greek as I learned to see the Bible in its original context who wrote what to who in what situation and on What occasion

[2:24] things just started to get unraveled not Christianity you understand but my Baptist dis Ives and so the very same hermeneutical approach that led me to understanding and really discovering on the pages of scripture what the new creation is all about that God's plan isn't just to Nuke this place and then airlift us all to heaven to sing to him forever in white robes once that image and that concept got dismantled for me the same methodology that led me to that conclusion has led me to changes in other areas and so if you've been paying attention to the channel for the past several months you've noticed that there have been some videos against the teachings of Calvinism that have come out videos espousing what we we call Dynamic omniscience or a certain view of open theism there's been a discussion on annihilationism or why hell isn't Eternal conscious torment the way that has been traditionally taught but why biblically speaking it makes more sense

[3:12] to say that those who are judged in the end are destroyed it's even led to some shifts in ecclesiology where I've proven from the scriptures that what the church is on the pages of the New Testament has nothing to do with a 501c3 nonprofit or denominational headquarters or any kind of organizational hierarchy but it's a more Oran organic expression where every member of the body of Christ is expected to participate and they're expected to live closely enough in each other's lives that you're not just driving to an event that you all attend at the same time for an hour every week staring at the back of another guy's head for the sermon but you're actually living life together so closely that you make mistakes and you have to forgive one another and bear one another's burdens and consider one another more important than yourself and serve one another in ways that aren't stacking up chairs and passing out bulletins now as you can understandably imagine this has made me a bit of a Gad fly or really viewed as

[4:01] sort of a dangerous person by some people in my current context in response some people in my current social context we've been attending a Spanish-speaking Baptist Church for years now have really taken it upon themselves to attack and and slander me as a false teacher calling my salvation into question twisting my words inventing things that me and my wife have never said in order to get us removed from teaching positions to be clear the vast majority of people in my social context have been very loving and very kind even in disagre agreement and they get an enormous amount of credit for that but there's a small contingent of people who since they can't refute me have really felt the need to try and silence me instead and ultimately it hasn't worked but it has taken a psychological toll but one thing that has consistently stood out to me in the past year or so in which this has been going on is I

[4:49] still am more grateful than ever for the fact that my eternal future is not going to involve this kind of conflict it's not going to involve these kind of backbiting back and forth contentious attitud ude it's going to be an eternal life in a remade world where everything that separated those of us who followed Christ in this life is gone and it won't be because we have correct doctrine of course we will it'll be because we have perfect character a glorified state of being in a completely healed and remade world and those distinctions that we used to try to separate ourselves from other brothers and sisters will fall away and it's at this moment that I recognize I should probably make 100% clear it's possible that I've come across that way on this very Channel because I disagree with Calvinism I've tried very hard to communicate in such a way that it's clear that I still love Calvinists in fact some of my closest friends are Calvinists some of my

[5:37] closest friends are still dispensational premillennialists and some of my closest friends are still Eternal conscious torment adherents and credit to them they have made the socially risky choice of still remaining friends with me even though I hold views that would be really dangerous if it got out in their context that they're associating with me it's like this whole guilt by association thing but it's been an enormous comfort for me and it has led to a renewed desire to really talk about the implications of the fact that our Eternal future isn't disembodied singing in heaven but is embodied glorified ruling and reigning over a remade World alongside God just the way it was supposed to be in Genesis 1:2 and I'm extremely passionate about that but in arriving there I've also developed an extreme passion for helping people see the original Hebrew and Greek and Aramaic of course there's not a whole

[6:25] lot of the Aramaic going on but the really seeing the original Hebrew and Greek and letting the Bible speak for itself on its own terms stripped of all of the layers and veneer of thousands of years of philosophical arguments that we've been having as Christ followers there is very little of what we call Christianity Today in the United States in the west really everywhere in the world it's the East too there's very little of what we call Christianity that I think the people that were before let's say Augustine or even before the the the Canon of scripture was finalized in the first 50 to 100 years after the resurrection of Jesus there's very little that we practice as Christianity that they would recognize as the faith that they walk out and live in every day and so I've also wanted to unpack that and what that's led me to is all kinds of amazing interesting discoveries about what this or that Greek word actually

[7:12] means in its context and how the interpretation that we have came from Augustine who was reading the Latin and he misinterpreted because he couldn't read Greek and all of these interesting things that I also want to expose to you people and show that the Bible is infinitely more interesting than we've been led to believe and really consistently Time After Time time after time every time I've made one of these discoveries it's also led me to the belief that God is more good than we have been led to believe that his plan is enormously more beautiful and for me these things are connected because I originally arrived at the idea of living in light of the new creation living in light of what the bible really says about eternity through this process of reading the Bible and letting it speak on its own terms and not importing the debates of today or 500 or a thousand years ago but really just letting what does John the Visionary in Revelation see and which Old Testament images is he using using to communicate what he's

[8:00] seeing and why does Paul so heavily emphasize physical bodily Resurrection in the communities of these people that he's writing these letters to all of this stuff so I'm at a bit of a Crossroads do I let's say stay in my Lane so to speak and focus entirely on living in light of the new creation let's really unpack will this line of work still exist in the new creation will we have blank in the new Earth will we be able to do blank in the new Earth those kinds of videos and then talking about living as that person in today's context do I do something like that or do I do that plus these other things where I'm using the same hermeneutical approach of keeping everything in a fullness of its context and really having a first century Jewish person in my brain when I'm reading the New Testament and the Old Testament the way that Michael Heiser talks about and really that's this is another question for me is I my biggest Inspirations in

[8:49] terms of scholarship are Michael Heiser NT Wright and Tim Mackey and I think that they have so much to say about the New Testament and the Old Testament in their world and fleshing out a biblically Faithful Way of being Christian that ignores the debates of everything that's been going on in the past 2,000 years like it doesn't really matter what Augustine thought human anthropology was like let's look at the Bible and find biblical texts to talk about what humans are and how they were made and what sort of a state they're in rather than referring to Plato or the gnostics or the stoics or the manans or any of these other different groups that have Arisen over the years or what do thomists say what do augustinian philosophers think what do the neoplatonists believe those things don't interest me I've used an illustration before actually it's a little bit like you're in a house that has been around for hundreds of years and the people who

[9:37] have been building and remodeling this house have done the worst job imaginable so you immediately walk into the living room and the floor in the living room is about 6 in off of the ground and you get under there and you look at it and it's because there's layer upon layer upon layer of new flooring just stacked on top of the old ones without ripping it off first so on the top level you have those like reclaimed wood or like Gray planks that are super popular today and that's just sort of the way that the floor looks but it's it's on top of this six 6 in thick pile of other flooring planks and stuff and you get below that and maybe you got like the light washed Woods of the late 2000s you or like the late 2010 area right and then as you're going through you start to get like checkered tiles and then you go further back and you start getting like some real wacky neon colored stuff from the '90s and then you get like the really dull Brown almost like tortoise shell

[10:27] style from the 80s and then you get like the Shag rugs and it just goes further and further and further back you know the first vinyl flooring from like the ' 50s is in there and lolium and it's just layer upon layer upon layer of this stuff and what our goal is is we want to get down to the beautiful like imagine it's just like the most beautiful imaginable Purple Heart gorgeous hardwood despite everything is still in incredible shape underneath all this floring and all these trends that came and gone over the course of several decades what NT Wright Michael Heiser Tim Mackey there are several others like them but those are really the three that have had the biggest impact on me their stated goal is really to clear away the Cru and to clear away those layers get to the hard wood and polish it for today put a shine on it for today and present it in a way that we can understand it today without seeing it through the lens

[11:14] of thousands of years of theological bickering and really trying to let it speak in its own context to the people To Whom It Was Written first and then for us to benefit and so like I said I see these things as related when I view living in light of Eternity that means for me understanding the nature of that eternity understanding the different images symbols Concepts hopes that are expressed on the pages of scripture that lead up and into that Eternal State and all that it entails and I really I really want to continue on in that project I want to contribute to that body of work in whatever meager way I can I'm not saying I have all the truth and I've got the corner on truth and I've got everything figured out that' be insane and all I can do is share from my point of view from my perspective what I believe I've stumbled upon as I've been studying and reading which really puts

[12:02] the onus on me to do my absolute best not to get carried away in one interpretation or another not to insist that this view that I've held for such a long time has to be the right one because if I don't it's core to my identity and it might throw my faith in Jesus out of whack I can't live that way I have to be willing to entertain ideas that are possible interpretations of the text that don't do violence to the rest of the context of the passage of what's happening right for example like the I think the the calvinist handling of Romans nine completely does away with the fact that you get to verses 30 and 31 and Paul straight up tells you the point of everything he was just saying is that hey the Gentiles have found righteousness but it's not the way the Jews thought it wasn't through lawke keeping and Good Deeds it's a law it's a righteousness that comes by faith so it's not you know sovereignly electing this guy and not this guy and who are you to argue with me I'm going to pick

[12:49] to save whoever I want and I'm sorry if this video is a little bit rambly I am really just trying to express myself as clearly as I can but there's another layer to this as well so that's the kind of content that I want to produce I'm deciding between do I want to focus on New Creation eternity focused stuff or do I want to focus on new creation and Eternity focused stuff and then how it cashes out in how we understand God's Providence how we understand the Community of Faith how we understand the end of the wicked and all of these other things that I have studied alongside using the similar hermeneutical approach of let's let the Bible speak for itself that's just the content question the other question and the other Focus for me is that I ultimately want this to be my life's work not just this YouTube channel not just my book not whatever but what I ultimately want to spend my time energy attention and soul pouring out into the things that matter most to

[13:38] me what I want to do with my time is this kind of thing I want to go spelunking and Cave Diving down into the very depths of God's word and bring up the gems that I find and share them with you people I want to have interviews with people who have gone down Into the Depths and done the same thing who have brought back other things to share that are a different side of this conversation from a different perspective I want to help people live this out because it's it's one thing to have all the right ideas and to have good Doctrine and all of those things and to have beliefs that fit with the story of the Bible but it's another thing to live that out this kind of goes back to the the the book that I read that probably impacted me the most so far this year which was practicing the way by John Mark comr it's one thing to have you know a bunch of correct answers on the Scantron so that you get a C+ or average higher grade when you get to heaven and God doesn't Mark you off and say you got a failing grade that's all

[14:25] well and good but if our practice and our choices and our actions don't line up with those beliefs then what good is it so ultimately I also want to find a way to coach people into living actively living in their work in their rest in their relationships in light of the story of the Bible in light of the fact that humans were created to be God's co-rulers over the world and that we are destined for it again in the new creation if we've placed our faith in Christ and that Paul and Jesus make it extremely clear that we are supposed to participate in that life now reigning in life as someone who is themselves a new creature a walking talking example of New Creation in process this has become sort of a nuts and bolts question because I've had other income generating opportunities and that's really been my the focus of my time and effort and

[15:13] energy and I love what I do especially right now what I'm doing is I'm coaching other you know Christian coaches Christian Consultants experts service providers agency owners course creators those people on how to quickly create offers and get clients using ethical marketing practices not the kind that makes them feel gross afterwards or that are super spamming and that's been really rewarding as well but what I know I want to do for the rest of my life is help people reink their lives in light of Eternity and in light of the the real story of the Bible from every facet and so that's already resulted in one book that's the overlap life which came out in 2021 you can actually grab a copy if you want by going to the overlap lifebook it's resulted in this YouTube channel where I'm putting out free content and I want to continue doing that but I also had an idea once uh quite a long time ago of doing something like a patreon or a membership Community

[16:02] where we are actively gathering together for a really I'm thinking you know 20 30 bucks a month a really small monthly amount to kind of keep the lights on where my focus would shift towards trying to build a teaching and discipleship Community around these ideas of living in light of the new creation of reimagining our lives and every decision that we make in light of the renewing Earth and God's plan to fix everything in the end looking for opportunities to make the world around us look a little bit more like the Garden in service to Jesus and so while I'm I'm talking about my vision for this channel in this video and my vision for this ministry what's really interesting is that I'm hold I'm holding it all with an open hand because the vision is still somewhat blurry it's coming into Focus what I want how I want to focus my time and attention but it's not all cut and dry and this is really where you come in

[16:51] because ultimately I could just find things that are interesting to me to talk about and make videos about all day and that would be fun as a little passion project but that's not the point of this the point of this is that I want to pour into you I want to know what interests you I want to know what you're looking for I want to know what kind of content you're looking to see I want to know if you would be interested in something like a membership Community where we get to really try to flesh this out and live this out I'm I'm wondering if you'd be interested in things like Live Events down the road I'm interested in if you'd like more books or if you'd like more audio books or if you'd like more interviews what sorts of things are are really important to you because ultimately what I want this channel to be is something that serves you in your personal walk with your savior so that in getting more acquainted with God's plan for eternity and the story that led us there that you'll be able to walk

[17:38] more closely with him and act and and change in your character and choices and motivations to be the kind of person who's living out in light of that story and I have my own ideas but I'd really like yours so what I've gone ahead and done is I've created a little survey that you can fill out you can get to it by going to the overlap. life/ survey it's only three questions in addition to your contact info it should take you 2 or 3 minutes to fill out at a maximum but it would help me a lot if you were to fill that out and it help me to see where would you see this going where do you want this to go what kind of material are you hoping that I'll put out what would be the most beneficial to you because ultimately I need your help to shape the vision of what this ministry will become because I want it to be focused on your needs and what's going to help you better grow in service to Jesus if I get enough responses I'll actually go ahead and share the results

[18:25] of the survey as well your stuff is anonymous I'm not going to share anybody info I don't do that I don't sell people's info that's just gross but I'm just genuinely curious where do you want this thing to go so thanks as always for even just willing being willing to lend your ear to me I really appreciate every one of you all 700 or so of my subscribers I'm so grateful for everyone who has contributed and supported said kind things and even said unkind things in the comment but still engaged in an actual good faith conversation I really appreciate you all and I'm grateful to God for what he has already done in and through this in this season of life that's been so full of upheaval and so full of change and there may be details forthcoming on that too my wife and I have a lot of decisions to make but we are nothing is a bigger concern to us nothing is a bigger goal for us than learning to live our lives as Faithfully as possible to God's plans God's Will and the story that God is telling so

[19:15] with all that said please feel free to fill out that survey I would love to hear from you guys drop comments below let me know what sounds beneficial to you uh I'm going to read every single response and I may even have a gift of some kind to give to some of you depending on might be a preview of a new book book or mightbe something like that I'll make sure there is a way to reward you people who have actually filled out this survey with something that's a token to my gratitude thanks in advance I would appreciate your prayers and God bless you all