"He Drew Me Back" by Sam Baer

And so, Sam, yeah, all yours. For the ones in the call here, Sam is from Calgary, Alberta. And he and I go back a long ways. I have two older brothers who married girls out of Alberta, Canada. So way back in the day, we went to Alberta for weddings and got to meet the Bear family. And they were a lot of fun to hang out with. Never a dull moment with the Bears.

And Sam and I have been friends for years. We kind of were out of contact for about 12 years when Sam left. But thank the Lord, for the last two years, we've been back in communication here. So or maybe a year and three quarter. I think it was in February of 2018 that you called me. Is that right, Sam? Yeah, that's about right. And good news. All right. All yours, brother. God bless you.

Thank you. I will correct you, though. I'm from Cochrane. There is a distinction there. I did live in Calgary for about seven years. Cochrane's only about 30 minutes away. But we Cochranites need to make that distinction. All right.

I've been looking forward to sharing this, but there is, as Brian had mentioned, there's two things that I feel in sharing the story or the journey that I've been on. And one of them is a lot of shame for the direction of travel that I chose for many years in walking away from God. But the other is a overwhelming sense of God's mercy.

To see the decisions I made and the path that I took and to see the hand of God at work in my life, drawing me back to Himself, God's mercy is incredible. I would like to read a few verses here in Ephesians 2 before we get started.

Starting in verse 1, "And you, He made alive, who were dead in trespasses and sin, in which you once walked according to the course of this world, according to the prince of the power of the air, the spirit who now works in the sons of disobedience, among whom also we all once conducted ourselves in the lust of our flesh, fulfilling the desires of the flesh and of the mind, and were by nature children of wrath, just as others. But God, who is rich in mercy, because of His great love with which He loved us, even when we were dead in trespasses, made us alive together with Christ. By grace, you have been saved, and raised us up together, and made us sit together in heavenly places in Christ Jesus, that in the ages to come, He might show the exceeding riches of His grace in His kindness toward us in Christ Jesus."

That is tremendously—I guess that's a picture of my life. Dead in trespasses, walking according to disobedience. But God, who is rich in mercy, because of His love, has made me alive again. And I hope that the name of Christ is lifted up this morning in sharing my story to show the absolute mercy of God. Now, I was raised in a Mennonite home. Some of you might actually know my dad, John Bear.

And he's a bishop in the Nationwide Fellowship. My grandfather was a bishop in the Nationwide Fellowship as well. I have eight siblings. I grew up pretty much a pretty typical Mennonite upbringing, I believe. I came to Christ when I was just after my 13th birthday and was baptized when I was 15 years old and was quite active in the church pretty much right from the start, having devotions, teaching Sunday school, having Wednesday night topics.

And then when I got older, 19 years old, I taught in the private school, the Mennonite private schools, for three and a half years and was quite involved that way. Went on a mission trip to China, smuggled Bibles in China. And by all accounts, I would say I was your pretty typical Christian Mennonite boy, I guess.

But then just before I turned 23 years old, I had a job driving truck. And there was a summer that everything went haywire, I guess. And if I look back on that, it's hard to even put a finger on what caused that falling away.

But by the end of that summer, going into the winter, I had lost my way. I moved out. I moved into town. And during that time, I tried attending some Protestant churches for a while and tried to put on the worldly Christian way of living. And that didn't last.

There wasn't any specific conflict or event that caused the leaving. There wasn't any bitterness and any driving factor other than just, I guess, the desires of the flesh.

And when people would ask, "Why did you leave? What happened?" Of course, my parents were heartbroken.

And they immediately blamed themselves. And so they would ask, "What have we done? What did we do to you to cause you to leave your way like this?" And I didn't really have an answer for them.

Looking back now, I guess it was as much a mystery to me because I was blinded to the choices that I was making.

And then

there wasn't anything significant in my rebellion. It was just a desire to live for the flesh. The world looked more appealing than the life that I was living. And I guess as a Mennonite then, I viewed the life I lived as just an option.

It was just a better way to live. And when you have a perspective of the Christian life that way, the world can look a lot more appealing than just a better option or a better way to live.

Now, the thing about when I left and during the time away, I did have a high view of myself. I also kind of thought I was exempt from—I was going to be able to live in sin and get away with it. And I thought that if I died, I would have a chance to make it right before I died. I'm not sure where that confidence came from, but it was misplaced, for sure. And the devil had definitely deceived me. And not long after starting down this path, I would say in the first year or two, rightfully so, I experienced a lot of darkness, depression.

I suffered with alcohol abuse. And of course, not long after that, drug use followed. And I remember one night, at a really low time, I was living alone. And I don't remember what the difficulty was that I was going through at that specific time, but I woke up or was awake, laying in bed, thinking about God and thinking about my life and where I was and the desperation, the sheer desperation in my heart. I climbed out of bed and turned the light on and started talking to God out loud and kind of begging Him to show Himself to me. And of course, there was just silence in an empty room. And I went back to bed.

And that empty, cold feeling of knowing that God probably heard me and He wasn't responding because of the state of my heart. And it was a lot of desperation.

But during this time, I also started to think of Christianity as a self-help program and as prayer, as a meditation. I was bringing it down to the level of people that meditate, make themselves feel better, organize their thoughts, think about positive things. And when I looked at Christianity, I tried to fit that into that mold. And I think part of it was I didn't have a proper view of Christianity at that point.

And of course, with time, it led to the eventual denial that God even existed. But regardless of my efforts to do away with God, because if you can do away with God, you're not responsible for the decisions you make, regardless of those efforts, I always had an underlying sense that God was real.

And my heart was numb to Him, even though I was afraid of not being right with Him. That's not a great place to be in, to recognize, to know in your heart of hearts that there is a God, there is a Creator, and yet your heart is numb and you're not willing to make the steps to be right with Him. It's a fearful place to be. In 2011, I lived most of this time in Grand Prairie. That's where my parents are now.

And in 2011, my brother and I and a friend of ours moved to Calgary. And that marked a turning point in my life. It wasn't a good turning point at first, but eventually, as you'll see, it was. God had a plan in bringing us down here. It was a whim. I believe it was November of 2011. My brother and I and my friend were sitting around and we said, "We're moving to Calgary." We didn't know anyone in Calgary at that point. It was just a whim. And by the end of December, we actually lived in Calgary.

And then it was the next May that I met Christina, who is now my wife. Now, Christina had no Christian upbringing at all. Her parents were divorced when she was young. Her parents would say they were Catholic. So her dad did read her some Bible stories when she was little. And so she had, as she put it, she had a remembrance of maybe some of the big stories like Christmas and Jonah and the flood and a few of those. But other than that, they were very adverse to any religion.

And even at the beginning of the relationship, I had a little sense that it probably wasn't a good idea. I mean, even in the state of my heart, it probably wasn't a good idea to have a relationship with a woman that didn't exist.

That it wasn't a good idea to have a relationship with someone who was very closed to any type of religion. But I plowed ahead anyway. And at the time, it was probably a mistake, but obviously, the hand of God was at work. After dating a couple of years, we moved in together. We lived pretty typical, selfish, worldly lives. We thought we were good people. And if you'd have asked me at that time, I bounced back and forth between saying God doesn't exist and to saying that I was a Christian. It depended on the person I was talking to, I guess.

So we thought we were good people, and we thought we were contributing to society on some level.

But there was no attention to Scripture or every once in a while, I would say a prayer, I guess, just out of when the guilt got to be too much or the night was too quiet. Christina dealt with depression, and I would try to respond and to help her. And of course, I had nothing to offer her, not any lasting help. And I would see her suffer with it. And I knew in my heart that I had the answer.

And that is a confession of total depravity, I guess, to see someone you love suffering and know in your heart that you have the answer to her needs. You could show her Scripture. You could show her Jesus Christ. And I would make vague comments about turning to the light and kind of new agey stuff like that to try to help her find some peace in her heart. Of course, it was to no avail.

I'm ashamed that I didn't actually point her to truth at that time, but I believe that the hand of God was at work there as well. So we got married in 2015. Our social circles weren't great, and we were in a rut of partying and drinking and just not living well. And it was starting to have an effect on our lives, and we didn't know how to break from it.

Some of those things can get a hold of you. And of course, the world's perspective of it, it's fun, but it's such a waste of time. And so when we were expecting our first child, that was the motivation we needed to start making some better choices. There's something about looking forward to being responsible for another soul that will make you reconsider the decisions that you make in life. And so in a choice to make a difference or to change something, Calgary is a big city, 1.2 million people, and it's not a super friendly place to live. You often didn't even know your neighbors.

So we decided to move to Cochran because it was a smaller town, and there was a lot—it's a lot more family-oriented. There's a lot more younger families that live here. It's about 35,000 people. So we moved to Cochran in spring of 2018. So the move and having our first child cut our friend group down to a fraction of the size. So there was a lot less influence from our peers than there had been up to this point, which was a good thing.

After living in Cochran for almost a year, we hadn't met a lot of people or made very few new friends. Our outlook on life was really dim. We were going through some financial difficulty at that time, and it was putting a strain on our marriage.

And of course, I knew in my heart I was in need. It really was starting to come close to home. And I felt a helplessness with the direction of travel. I mean, we should have been happy, excited people, a young couple.

First child was born. But when the things of the heart aren't right, it feels like you are on a crash course. Regardless of the well-laid plans you make for your future, regardless of what people are saying about your lives or anything like that, you know in your heart that this train is not headed in the right direction.

It seemed like things were very dark in our lives, and we didn't have a lot of hope. So I downloaded the YouVersion Bible app and started reading the verse of the day on the sly. And the reason I was hiding it was because of Christina's aversion to religion. And I was worried that if I mentioned it or pushed it or anything like that, it would close a door. Now, that was just a coward's way of not confronting her with truth. But in reading the Scriptures, it was like water on parched lips.

The Word of God was probably—I mean, I know that it was the Holy Spirit working through the Word of God, but the Word of God was probably the largest drawing card in bringing me back to faith. Something about my heart's response to reading even one small verse, it's like it touched a sensitive chord in my heart. And my hunger for truth and for the things that I remembered just grew exponentially over the next few months.

So we were trying to meet new people in our community. We were new to Cochran, so we were trying to meet new people. And I had mentioned in passing, I think it was toward the end of 2018, that, well, we could maybe swing by a church. Christina wasn't open to the idea the first time I mentioned it. But the second time, I said, "Well, we have a greater chance of meeting nice people because they're Christians." So even if all we did was met some nice people, that would be a benefit.

She agreed. And we made a list of the churches here in Cochran. There's quite a few. Cochran is a very conservative town. There are a lot of churches here. And the first one on the list was the Beau Valley Baptist Church.

And I had something to do with that. I wasn't interested in going to a Lutheran or Anglican or Catholic or something like that. So the first Sunday we attended, the pastor preached about God's love. I was extremely happy to be hearing the Word of God preached. And I learned later that it sparked something in Christina. And I was surprised that when the next weekend rolled around, she asked if we were going to go back to church.

Now, the second Sunday, they had a lady do a skit, and the skit was on John Newton's life, called Amazing Grace.

In hearing the life that he lived and the levels of sin that he sank to, and the fact that he was raised with a Christian mother and fell to such depths of sin, the realization dawned on me that if this man can be saved, I too can be saved.

If there's grace for him, then there's grace for me. And that realization awakened something in me that morning. And then at the end of the service, the pastor had got up and was leading in prayer. And I looked over, and Christina had tears rolling down her face. You'll have to forgive me if I get emotional talking about this. It is very fresh. That's okay, brother. And it is a beautiful thing to witness the power of God working in someone's life.

So we went home from church. We had lunch. It was a quiet drive. We had lunch after church. We put our children down for nap. We had a second one at the beginning of 2019. So this was the beginning of 2019.

Our little boy, Elliot, was born in 2016. And Autumn was born in the spring of 2019, or January, sorry, of 2019. So we put the children down for a nap, and we sat down at the table in silence. And I finally asked her, I said, "So what was going on? What happened?"

And she said that the pastor—she broke down and said that the pastor had prayed about true joy at the end of the service and that joy coming from the amazing grace that God offers.

And she said, "That's something that I've been looking for my entire life." So I explained to her what I knew about salvation, about finding that joy, about the grace of God. I believe I read her some Scriptures. And of course, this was quickening what had been happening in my heart up to this point.

So we prayed together. I prayed, she prayed, we wept, and we laughed, and we were filled with joy.

It was a tremendous experience. Amazing.

She later shared that when she was 14, her mom had asked her what she wanted for Christmas, and she said, "I just want to be happy." I think that says a lot about the life, the home that she grew up in. And that kicked off our kingdom journey.

Our home, the atmosphere changed completely.

We attended the Baptist Church faithfully. We started getting involved. We were volunteering. We were attending the small groups. I was the building and grounds leader. And we teamed up with the pastor and started something called the Movement Network, which was an organization to connect people and to mobilize supplies, funds, personnel in support of church planting.

If that seems like a strange task for new Christians, it probably was. But there was a fire lit in our hearts. And Christina was consuming truth and reading the Bible. It was all brand new to her. She had never read the Bible before in her life.

So the questions were pouring in. It was a wonderful time for me because I could dig into the things that I remembered and explain them the best I could remember.

After every Sunday message, we would get home, open our Bibles, discuss the message we had heard, and mind the truth and feed our souls. And it was a beautiful time in our lives, rediscovering the Word and prayer. And I had such a tremendous privilege of walking alongside her as she discovered the things of God for the first time.

Being able to do that with my wife was a tremendous blessing from God. We were both baptized in the summer of 2018. You might think it was strange that I was baptized again when the pastor first brought it up because I had been baptized at 15. When the pastor had first brought up the possibility of me being baptized with Christina, Christina was baptized as an infant since their family was Catholic. And so she felt the need to be baptized. And so he asked if I wanted to be baptized with her. And at first, I was adverse to the idea.

And then we don't need to get into the discussion of right or wrong baptism. But I ended up being baptized with her. It was a good experience to be baptized with her, and I was glad to have done it. I'm not sure if I would do it again if I was in that situation.

Now, I wanted so bad to believe that this was the life for us. We could see a future in this church. We could see opportunities of service. Like I said, we were involved with the Movement Network. We were meeting with the pastor pretty much every week to develop that, to build the website, to make the connections. And so we were building that right from the ground up. And we saw a place. And Christina, obviously, being new to the faith, didn't know any different than what she was seeing.

I did. I was going to say, she says, "I'm unmuted," but I am muted. And I tried to believe that, you know what, this is it. We've arrived. I can serve the Lord. I can do the will of God. You're okay. Now, push it on.

Hey, someone does not have mute on their phone. If you could just mute your phone. I'm muting people as we go. Okay. Thank you, Patrick. Appreciate it, brother. Back to you, Sam. Thank you. Yeah. I wanted to believe that this was it because it was amazing for the first few months, for the first half year. So it was incredible. But the problem that we were running into is after a Sunday morning, we'd go home, search the Scriptures, study it. And it didn't take very long to realize that the journey that we were on and the things that we were hearing at church didn't quite line up. The fire that was in our hearts and the leading of the Spirit in our hearts didn't quite have the same ring of truth to it.

Or what we were hearing at church didn't quite have the same ring of truth as what we were reading in the Scriptures. And part of that would have been because of my knowledge of Scriptures from before. But it kind of put a damper on our journey because we started realizing that, hey, these guys are preaching a partial gospel.

And our paths were starting to separate. And it didn't take very long until we felt like, you know what, we need to separate ways. We need to pull out of the programs that we're in. We need to go a separate way than the church that we were attending was headed. It was around this time, actually, it would have been before this time that I had been in contact with Brian.

And he had mentioned Followers of the Way. Now, we were listening to messages from Followers of the Way for a few months. And I think that contributed to the teaching of the kingdom of Christ, contributed to our realization that the Baptist Church wasn't quite preaching a full gospel.

So in search for sound teaching, we started watching these messages. We were growing in our faith. I was learning about the gospel of the kingdom in a different way than I had before. And for Christina, she was learning of the gospel of the kingdom for the first time. And it was wonderful to see the simplicity that she had when she read the Scriptures, to see a person that had never read the Bible before, reading the Scriptures, seeing the Spirit at work in her heart, and the simplicity of the faith that I saw in her. And it was showing me a proper view of truth, a proper view of the work of Christ. That probably should have been the other way around.

I probably should have been showing her a proper view, but the work that was going on in her and her simple faith and just taking the Bible for what it was, taking the teachings of Christ for what it was. And to the point where one day she asked me, she was reading the Sermon on the Mount, and she said, "Why are there some things that Christ taught that we take literal and other ones that we don't?" She says, "How do I know the difference? How do I know which ones I'm supposed to take literally?" And that made me pause and think, why was there that difference? Why was this? And it wasn't too long after that that she found the kingdom that turned the world upside down by David Russo and listened to it on Audible.

And I had been away working.

She called me and she said, "Sam, you have to read this book. This explains it. This explains all of it. The gospel of the kingdom." So God definitely had a plan in our lives to bring us to a proper understanding of the kingdom of God. And so we pulled out of the Baptist Church. We notified the pastor that we couldn't attend there anymore. We shared the things that concerned us. He didn't have a lot to say to us about it. And basically, that was it.

There wasn't a lot of pursuing or trying to discuss anything. I was hoping that we could discuss some things. I still had a little feeling that I knew in my heart that if I went after the kingdom, it was going to be it was going to take everything. So I guess there was a little bit of me that still wanted to believe that there might be a halfway when it comes to the kingdom. And obviously, there isn't.

So we were hoping that it would open up a discussion with him and that he would have some good explanations for some things. But that didn't happen. And I think it was the grace of God that it didn't because Christina, with her newness to it and my as ashamed as I am to share, kind of hoping that I could just park here somewhere and be comfortable. But that wasn't the case. And praise the Lord that we moved on from that and through the teachings of the Followers of the Way and what we read in The Kingdom That Turned the World Upside Down. Now, that book shook my view. I remember I left here at about 3 o'clock in the morning.

I was driving up to Grand Prairie to do something with my dad. And at about 6 o'clock in the morning, I was trying to think of who I could call or talk to because I was listening to this book in the car. And the Spirit of God was it shook my view of the kingdom. It shook my view of the Christian life. And I believe that for the first time at that point, I actually counted the cost of being a Christian. And I know that Jesus says that, that you don't start anything of any value without first sitting down and counting the cost. And I don't know that I had ever counted the cost of being a Christian before and looked it straight in the eyes and said, "Wow, this is going to cost me everything."

I mean, I've always known. I knew that, but it never hit home like it did driving down the highway at 6:00 in the morning. And my oldest brother, Art, he's in North Carolina. So I was like, "Well, it's later for him." I started texting him and sharing with him what I was experiencing. And he was praising the Lord. And I'm sure he was shouting hallelujah, but he was texting hallelujah.

He was pretty excited about the journey that I was on there. So God was faithful. And it caused an upheaval in our lives a little bit in our Christian walk. But we didn't know what to do at that point when we stopped going to Belle Valley. So we decided to stay home and listen to some messages just by ourselves.

COVID came along, and we got lonely. There was about six weeks where we didn't have much interaction with anybody other than a few phone calls and stuff. But as far as fellowship, didn't happen. We were home alone. Now, there was a South African family that we had met through the Belle Valley Baptist Church. And we knew that they weren't happy there. So we started doing Zoom calls with them. And eventually, we decided, you know what, come on over.

Let's start spending our Sundays together, and we can watch some messages together. They had some suggestions of people to watch, and we did. And we kind of shared it back and forth. And we started meeting at our house with them. And they're an older family. Their children are 22 and 15, I believe.

And so we did that for a while. And God has brought two other families into our lives as well, a young family that moved here from Texas about a year ago.

He has a kingdom vision, and they haven't come as regular as we would like because we enjoy their fellowship. So we've been just holding meetings here at our house every week.

Eventually, we got away from just watching or listening to messages.

And I've been sharing a word from the Scripture from time to time.

We had a sense that we need Christian fellowship. We need faithful people that have been walking in the truth. We tried moving away twice to a community with an established group, but those plans fell through both times and one of them in quite a significant way.

So we feel the call of God to be here at this time. We feel the need for fellowship with a faithful group, and we long for it, as Brian knows, from our bi-weekly complaining about our loneliness. But we continue to study. We continue to grow and hope that we are doing the will of God here as we meet with these families in our home and try to minister to them as the best we can.

So that's about what I have to share this morning.

Thank you, Sam. That was really touching to hear you share that journey. Thank you for doing that hard. Thank you for doing that hard work.

Wow. God is just not willing that any would perish, but that all would come to repentance. And he's so long-suffering. That's touching.

So I'm going to open it up here just for any questions for you, Sam, in just a little bit. I'm sorry. Yeah, from the group.

Any questions that you might have?

Yeah. I think someone has their phone unmuted. So if you could mute that, that'd be great. Yeah. So there was just a lot of things just going through my mind in that 10 years, was it, Sam, that you were really just walking away from God? Yeah.

One of the questions I had, so I hang my head in shame, Sam, as I think about that. I don't recall praying for you. I remember getting the news that you'd walked away and how shocking and just devastating that was. But I didn't remember if I called you, how much I prayed for you. And so I hang my head in shame for not doing the work that I should have been doing.

But my question for you is, was there anyone who reached out to you or in that 10 years who really pursued you and engaged you with the gospel in a way that you just had to reject it? Was there anyone?

Not necessarily. Shortly after I left, there was a student that called me that I had been that I taught in school. And that was very meaningful to me, even though I didn't want to hear what he has to say.

My family, I would say that they were faithful in trying to show me. And it was conversations or different things that they did to try to show me that, "Hey, you know you're not living right." But they

went from the basis that you have the knowledge. You know that what you're doing is wrong. But there were some points there. In my life, they were friction points because I didn't want to hear it. But other than that, I don't recall a lot of reaching out. And the thing is, for a while, that kind of stoked my reason for not my reason for leaving, but for staying away. Well, they don't care anyway. But in looking back in retrospect, I know that they had seen my life before. They had seen my activity, my following, my work in the church, and things like that. And to see me fall away, I don't hold them hard for not reaching out or to reaching out to talk to me any more than they did because I know that I had an understanding.

What were they going to say to me that I didn't already know or hear before? And also, life is busy. I mean, there's a lot of other people in our lives.

Who was I that they would come and spend some time talking to me? I'm sure everyone was busy. And yeah.

Wow.

Yes. Like I said, I opened it up here just in a moment. But maybe one more question I had for you. As you think about that time there, just walking away from God, and you talked about that night in your room where you turned the light on and you were crying out to God and it felt like you had an iron ceiling.

What could have somebody had said or done in that time? As you reflect on that, would there have been—so the reason I'm asking that is because there are many people that we know on this call. It's probably dozens of people who we know who walked away, who rejected truth. I think of a family just right across the bridge from us who have and next couple of streets up. And how do we reach out to those folks? Do you have any suggestions?

In looking back, I believe that my perspective of Christianity was wrong. And whether this would have helped or not, but my understanding of it now is to reach souls, there's relationship. And I can see in the time before I left that there was kind of—and I was doing it, whether I knew I was or not, but driving a wedge in between me and other people and drifting away and spending less time with people than with godly people than I should have been.

Part of it was the job I had. Some days, I was working 19 hours. And so there was a separation from individuals. And the individuals, I can't blame them for it because in all appearance, I was okay.

There may have been signs that things were going astray. My parents would probably say that they thought maybe my love was growing cold, but it was a pulling away from relationships. And knowing the proper view of the kingdom and what it costs, I look back now and I say, "Man, I wish I would have known then what I know now about what it costs, what it is to follow Christ and the blessing of it."

So a proper understanding of the kingdom of Christ and proper relationships would probably be two things that would go a long way in holding people to a relationship with Christ or bringing them to a relationship with Christ.

Thank you for sharing that. Okay. I'm going to open it up here. So let's be quick with our questions. Who has the first one? Sam, this is John Martin. I'm from your roots back here in Pinola, Pennsylvania. I knew your Uncle Nelson quite well.

I'm curious how you would describe the difference between a concept of the kingdom as the central message of the gospel and what you would have grown up with because all of us want somehow for people to understand a kingdom concept of the gospel. So could you in just a few moments, a few sentences, describe the difference between your understanding now and your previous understanding of the gospel?

So you got to bear in mind that there's some time lapse, and I'm going off of memories of my experience in where I was raised. But I've been thinking about that specific question quite a bit over the last couple of weeks or the idea and the different view I have of the kingdom than I had before. And the conclusion I've come to is, well, on a personal level, the way I lived was a better option.

And the way I see the kingdom now is it is the only option. And one of the things that has changed in my view of the kingdom is that there are two kingdoms. This is we are a part of a real kingdom established by God with Christ as our king. And I guess those truths never—I don't remember them being taught in that clarity or that distinction that this is a real thing. I mean, we knew it was real. I knew it was real. The spiritual life was real. But it didn't hit home that I was responsible to Christ as my king for the things that I do and the way that I live. I guess the clear vision of the kingdom of Christ and his teachings has changed my view of how I live out my life.

And so I guess I just wasn't taught it in that clarity or didn't hear it in that clear of terms before. We knew that there was—or I knew that there was the powers of darkness, and we were servants of God. But something about clarifying that as we're not just—we are citizens of another country living in occupied territory, and we serve our king, Jesus Christ. So that distinction makes a big difference in my life.

Well, let me bring my experience a little bit to the fore here, and you can compare it with yours. But I look back now, and what I heard was what I have sort of coined the term a saved-me gospel.

The focus was on me. The focus was on getting ready for death and making sure I was going to heaven. And people often ask me, "What's the difference between your concept of the gospel and the typical concept?" And my very short answer is the gospel that most people hear is focused on me getting to heaven.

The gospel that Jesus taught is about getting heaven to earth.

Does that resonate with you? I mean, most of what I heard was revival preaching, "You need to get saved or you'll go to hell." The focus was on me. It was all about me and getting—now, we talked about evangelism and all those things too. But the bottom line was in resolving any moral issue was, "Well, I go to hell if I do this."

That was the focus. The focus was on me. It wasn't on getting heaven to earth. It was on getting me to heaven. I can relate to that completely. And I remember how surprised I was when I started discovering the story from the beginning of creation that heaven was to come to earth, starting with the garden and then throughout with the tabernacle and the temple. And I remember I was actually listening to the Bible Project podcast, and he was explaining that. And I was driving down the road. I remember where I was in the road when I realized these truths.

And it had a lasting impact on my life to think about it that way. And another thing that shocked me was that me gospel, which I now recognize as more of a Protestant or evangelical view of the gospel where there's kind of this individualistic—there's not a strong group. Now I recognize there's not a strong group belief. We believe that we're supposed to be there for each other, but there wasn't that accountability to each other. When I talked about the relationship thing before, that driving a wedge between me and other people, being allowed to do that. I know people have the power of choice, but there wasn't a strong group where we're all in this together.

We're on the same side. So I recognize those things now as I'm learning that that was the perspective back then. And when I say that the Mennonite way of life was just a better choice for me, it wasn't—I didn't identify with it as the kingdom of Christ. It was just a better option. And I think in that was the breakdown of my faith in the direction of travel.

One more question, Sam. If you had heard a kingdom gospel growing up, do you think you probably would not have wandered away? Well, the short answer is no, I don't believe I would have, but that's hard to put out in that solid of an answer.

I believe I wouldn't have left because, like I said, that point on the road, listening to the kingdom that turned the world upside down and counting the cost and still being willing to pursue that. So if I was taught a proper kingdom view before, hypothetically, I would say that I would have counted the cost earlier, and I would have, I guess, stronger in my faith because of it. So I want to teach the kingdom to the people around me because of the blessing it's been to my life. And I believe that there's real staying power in the knowledge of it.

The reason I ask that is because, as a youth, we struggle with all kinds of passions and temptations and problems. And the thing that's supposed to capture our attention and keep us is this way out there in the future when we get old, we're going to die.

The kingdom gives us a present purpose for living. Where that other goal is too far in the future for most people. The demands of life are too immediate. You need an immediate goal. And the kingdom gives you that, the sense that you're part of an actual kingdom that's having an influence on the world. And it's very important to draw together with other Christians.

To me, the Mennonite way had this paradox in it. There was this tremendous emphasis on church. There was tremendous emphasis on community. And yet somehow it got disconnected from the kingdom. And so we were emphasizing community, but we were talking about getting to heaven rather than getting heaven to earth. And so to bring the teachings of Jesus together with what we actually experienced as Mennonites with an emphasis on community is just a wonderful way of finally getting the truth of the gospel connected with what we were brought up to believe.

Amen. I would say that now if I hear of young people that are leaving or things like that, the first thought that comes to mind is they haven't caught a vision of the kingdom. And I really wish there's been different times that I really wish that I could go back to 15-year-old me and say, "Listen, this is real.

This is—there was a detachment to the spiritual. You knew you were supposed to do it. And you can't read the scriptures and not be moved and touched by it." So even as 15-year-old me read the scriptures, it did move me. And people ask me, "Well, do you believe you were saved back then?" I had no reason to believe I wasn't. I mean, I was experiencing something. And the scriptures were moving me, but there was still a bit of a detachment to owning it and claiming it and being a part of it. And I say that knowing that that was my fault.

I look back. I look at it now and I say, "You can be a kingdom Christian in that church, specifically the one that I grew up in. I know that you can be a kingdom Christian there. And if you're not, then you're not studying your Bible."

But there is something to be said about the, for lack of a better word, the culture of it, that it doesn't foster that level of investment in the kingdom of Christ. That's the feeling I got that it doesn't foster that. And there isn't enough of a strong group mentality to call each other to that level of investment in the kingdom of Christ. And there is room to be detached from the spiritual reality.

Amen. Thank you. Two questions.