How Spiritual Gifts Manifest in Everyday Life | Mike Patz, Matthew Thayer

How do your spiritual gifts manifest in everyday life, and what spiritual gifts do you even have? Well, I recently had the opportunity to host the Tamara Scott Show on Lindell TV, and one of my guests talked about this in our interview. We talked about apostles, prophets, evangelists, shepherds and teachers. We all have one or more of these giftings. Understanding how God has wired you and these spiritual gifts in your own life will do more to give you an understanding of yourself and what God has called you to do than any personality test that you have ever seen. And I believe this interview can be a launching point to take you to a new level in what God has created you and called you to do and prepared you to do. We dive deep into these gifts so that you can see how they show up in your life and how you can advance God's kingdom, whether you're at work, at home, in the culture or at church. And the second guest I have on the program talks with us about big tech, censorship and what they are doing to fight back.

This is an incredible episode. You're not gonna wanna miss any of it. Let's get into it right now.

This is Cutting Edge Faith the show that brings you the truth behind the headlines and equips you to live out your faith. In the cultural chaos of today, God is on the move right now through people just like you you were created for influence and impact. Let's take your faith to the next level. Learn more at RyanSHowardcom. And now here's your host, Dr Ryan S Howard.

Welcome to the Tamara Scott Show. I am Ryan Howard and for Tamara Scott today, we have got a very powerful show for you. I think you're really gonna enjoy it. We got a couple of high-powered guests. It's gonna be an incredible show today and we're gonna be talking about your calling and your assignment, and we're also gonna be talking about the free exchange of ideas, and we all know that censorship has been a big theme in our culture in America and around the world really over the last few years, and so we're gonna tie all of this together so that you can see the part that you are to play in what God is doing today, and that is in the culture, in the marketplace, in the church, in the home, all around. And we are called to be an influence to advance the kingdom, no matter what we're doing, and that includes every sphere of society. Now I'm gonna talk with two guests today and I'm gonna introduce them here in just a little bit. One is a pastor from Florida and the other is a filmmaker from down in Tennessee. Now, before we get into that, before we get into the show, I wanna say a quick word about our sponsors. The first is MyPillow and we have a promo code Tamara for a great savings at mypillowcom, mystore or mycoffeeproducts. When you support MyPillow, using promo code Tamera, that's T-A-M-A-R-A, you can save up to 80% on great products that bless you, your home and your family. But you also help us share truth across the globe. The Tamara Scott Show works hard to bring you great guests and present truth in ways that you may not find other places, and it's an honor to have you use promo code Tamera. Now. The second sponsor we wanna thank is Bella Grace Elixir. Bella Grace Elixir offers three key ingredients to help bring health from the inside out. In 2022, Bella Grace Elixir won an award for helping with cognitive function, and in 2023, Bella Grace was awarded as a startup star in athletics for outstanding new ingredients, formats and benefits shaping the sports and active nutrition industry. This is a product for both men and women, so you can use the QR code on the screen to save 10%, or you can use the link to merabellagraceglobalcom and you can get that free and just pay the cost of shipping. So it's a lot of great products here that you wanna make sure you go ahead and take advantage of.

Now back to the idea of calling and assignment. Now we all have callings and assignments, and first of all we're called to know Christ, to have a relationship with God through Jesus Christ, and after that we have what I call secondary callings, and they're not less important, but they're only important after the first calling is fulfilled, after you know Christ, and then you can step into the assignments and the callings that God has for you, and we have this all throughout the Bible, whether it's simple activities or whether it's some big, lofty accomplishment that God wants you to go after. But I remember when I was out, I gave my life to Christ in 2004 and I kind of thought well, I have to become a pastor because I'm serious about Jesus now. And it was some years later, when I was in my work, that God showed me I don't have to feel guilty for enjoying my work Now. Of course, we needed to be doing righteous work and we need to be doing work that honors God. But I saw that he actually had a calling for me in business and I saw this book called Anointed for Business and I thought those two words don't go together. But I ended up finding out they do. They go together very well and many of us have those kinds of anointings and callings, and I ended up doing my PhD in biblical studies and I did my dissertation on how God uses work of Christians to advance his kingdom. And that can be in the culture, that can be in the marketplace, it can be at home, it can be taking care of kids, it can be in education, it can even be in politics. I know that may be tough for some to believe, but praise God that he calls some of us to do that, and so I could see how God wanted to use me right where I was, and that really helped me to lean into. Now. God may be using you where you are, he wants to use you where you are and he may be taking you somewhere as well. But knowing that truth can help you really lean into the calling and the gifts God has for you.

And there's two key Bible verses that I wanna sort of set the stage with here, and the first is 1 Timothy 14,. It says it says do not neglect the gift you have. Now this is, of course, Paul writing to Timothy. But the question is what gift do you have? Well, we're gonna talk about that first on this episode.

And the second verse I wanna bring to you is 2 Timothy 1-6,. It says and again, Paul, writing to Timothy, says for this reason, I remind you to fan into flame the gift of God. Well, what does that mean? Well, if you have a little campfire and it's starting to die out, you gotta do something. You gotta put kindling on the fire, you gotta ruffle it up a little bit, you gotta get the flame going. And that's what we need to do.

So often we sit there and wonder why God's not speaking to us, but our Bible's collecting dust on the shelf and we're not actually seeking him. We're not spending time in solitude, and what we need to do is get that Bible off the shelf. And we need to see that God wants you to be engaged and have him engaged in every detail of your life. And that is just the incredible blessing that we have to serve God. And so that brings me to our first guest, Mike Pats.

Now we're gonna talk about how God gives us these callings and how those callings can manifest themselves in the workplace. They can manifest themselves in the marketplace and in church as well, but it's not only in church. And so, Mike, if we wanna bring him on, Mike is the pastor at Greenhouse Church in Gainesville, Florida, and he has a heart for discipleship, and that's one of the things I just really love about Mike. He's a good friend of mine, and do we have Mike on the line here? Yeah, hey, Mike, welcome.

Ryan, what's up? Great to see you. Yeah, thanks for joining us on the Tamara Scott Show on Lindell TV. It's great to have you on, and I was just mentioning how I just love your heart for discipleship and you lead a very large church down in Florida, in Gainesville Florida, a greenhouse church, and one of the things I love is that you're replicating, you are at, you have such a heart for discipleship and you're planting micro churches and really the boots on the ground. It's really where. That's where the boot, where the rubber meets the road, and so give us we want to talk about A-Past this idea of these apostles, prophets, evangelists, shepherds and teachers. These are gifts that people often associate with church, and some of them are more obvious than others and more straightforward. But what we want to talk about here is to give a little introduction to this, and then we want to show how these can show up in our everyday lives, and it's not only at church. So give us a quick introduction to this and we can go from there.

For sure. By the way, it's great to see you, ryan. Last time I saw Ryan we were playing some pickleball together. He's quite the athlete running around, so that was fun. But I'll say this I keep hearing people seeming to be very interested in finding themselves. You know, I'll meet people on the street. Everyone's trying to find themselves. It seems like every year there's a new personality profile book or something like that that comes up where everyone's trying to figure out what was I wired to be or who am I that kind of a question and so there's a lot of talk on like right now, a lot of people are into the Enneagram. They want to find out the Enneagram or the Myers Briggs, or people take disc tests. There's all sorts of personality profiles and tests that people take.

I've just been really intrigued in Scripture that Ephesians 4 tells us that God has he's wired into humanity these, these really I don't know what you would I don't know if you want to use the word calling, or it's a gift, or almost positions on a field is how I think God does these. But when you've got the apostle, the prophet, the evangelist, the shepherd and the teacher, I think it is not just positions in a church or in religion. I believe these are part of how God has wired us and I, if I were a business leader, I would be wrapping my business personnel around how God did things. So this is not just religious. This is, this is human, like, this is a human kind of thing. So a lot of people I know have really tried to get into like the Enneagram, which would be like this ancient idea of nine personality types and they'll tell me I'm a challenger which is like type eight, type three's are achievers, there's all these different things and there's Myers, briggs and you've got the different things that people do to try to figure out what they are.

What I find interesting about God is that I believe that from creation, like hardwired into humanity, he's put, he's coded us with apostolic tendencies, prophetic tendencies, evangelistic tendencies, teaching tendencies and shepherding I'm sorry, shepherding and teaching tendencies, and I've just watched it work, you know. So, yes, we do this at our church. We even regularly have meetings where we try to make sure every one of these five voices has been heard, because people will tend to make the best decisions when they've, when the full A-Past is coming out and again, I'm just using A-Past for apostle, prophet, evangelist, shepherd and teacher APEST but it's not just religious. Like this is very much, I think, applicable. And if I was a marketer, if I was running a department, if I was a teacher at a school or even in my house, if you've got children, your children have probably already been. They probably already are the signs of what their A-Past giftings are. And I've just watched people come alive when they use their gifts and I've watched people not come alive when they're trying to do someone else's gift.

Well, that's a great introduction and I think that it's one of the things. That is, there's two things. One, what gift do we have and how do we know that? And we'll talk a little bit about what stands out to that. But what I really like was you brought this idea. I remember we were just sitting at this mastermind we were at and you started talking about how these can be out of balance. You can have maybe two or three without the other two, and it's not going to grow, or it's going to grow in the wrong way, or it's going to be.

It's just not going to be deep and how you have to have all these together. And what really threw me for a loop and I said, man, I gotta go deep, we gotta talk about this was when you said, and I believe that's not only for church planting and church growth and discipleship, but in business and in education and all these other areas and I thought, well, that's interesting. And then you started talking about how these gifts manifest in these different areas and I thought, well, I have that, I have that, I know this person has that and, oh, that. And then when you, when you shed that light on there, I think, well, jeez, there's these three projects in this business initiative we started up and that's why that didn't work and that's why this one worked and that, and you can just you can see, so give us a glimpse into, kind of how these gifts manifest themselves and how do they show up well, I, I mean, maybe starting with defining some terms is going to be helpful.

You know so, apostles even in church world there's a lot of debate about things like hey, are there modern-day apostles? And if, if by apostle we mean someone, that's all jesus raised from the dead? No, like we don't have that. But the word apostle like the latin word for possibly, was like the word missio. You know so, like, when we use a word like, we say things like missionaries. So a lot of church denominations will say things like the only apostles these days are missionaries and what they mean by that is that a missionary is someone that's been sent, it's, it's a missio. This is where we get the word missile. So, like a missile is a clearly sent object that's being sent somewhere. Well, that's what apostolic people are. They are on a mission. Apostolic people, these I I think they prime the pump for entrepreneurship. I think they develop capacities for taking risks and going to new places and breaking new ground and things that are like that. So that's what apostles do. Apostolic church people they go become missionaries and they go become church planters and things like that.

Prophets are a little bit different. Prophets are, of course, the word prophecy in scripture just means someone that's speaking forth and specifically speaking forth a message from god not just a foreteller, but a foreteller, but what I've found like a prophet when they're in a meeting or in the boardroom or something like that prophets they tend to give self-critical insight to an organization, to their employees hey, how are we doing as a church? Or they've got insights hey, this department, what do, what do we need to hear right now? They, they safeguard from missional drift and things like that. Evangelists and it might be helpful if I use my in my hands for this I I tend to think of apostles like the thumb. You really need apostles to found things and start things. Prophets are like a pointer finger. They tend to point us hey, this is what I think god is saying, or this is what we need to hear in this organization. And again, even if you were an atheist listening to this right now, I think you could detect the genius of how we believe god has set things up. They point things out. Evangelists and I won't do that finger alone, but evangelists are like the middle finger. They tend to draw a lot of attention. They, uh, they're, they're like the marketers. They, they naturally develop an invitational and a welcoming culture. Um, they develop the stickiness, the simplicity to the message of whatever that organization is. You know. So, if, if it is something that is like a uh, if it's a church, they're inviting people to that church. But these are, they're gonna naturally like, recruit people to the cause or to the product or whatever that is.

Shepherds, I believe they're almost like the ring finger. They're very, they're very humanizing. They're like the ring finger, you know, they're just, they're very faithful they, they, they make I don't know the the human element get very real. They're about relationships. They, they're looking out for the marginalized, not just in the world, but also in in a church, but in an organization. These are the human resources people like when human resources is done, well, that's a very shepherding, very much a shepherding kind of function, ensuring that um, properties, uh, the, the rights, I should say like the rights of the employees, are being taken care of. That I don't know. That's the shepherd. They care for the people.

And then teachers, they're like I, I compare them to like the, the little finger.

They're small enough to get in your ear, that when they talk they're like oh, I, I get it, I understand it now and and I can really see what's going on. But these are the people. They develop resources, they get policies going, they get programs for continued learning. They're very committed to knowledge transfer in an organization. So obviously in Ephesians 4, when paul says, god provides the apes for the building up of the body of christ, so that the body of christ can become fully mature, that does apply to the church. I would just submit to you this also applies to other organizations. This, this also applies to whatever business that you're in and what any room I go into I'm often interested to figure out right off the bat. One of my first questions is where are the apostles, where are the prophets, where are the evangelists, where the shepherds, where the teachers? And in an organization? I want to know that all of these voices are being heard. I don't know if that makes sense yeah, absolutely, and I think it.

I think it's incredible to just see how these gifts show up, because certainly everybody watching this can see themselves in one of the fingers, one of the apes that you mentioned, the apostle, prophet, evangelist, shepherd and teacher. And I think that you know what about people who maybe see a little bit of, maybe a couple of them stick out to them is can there be overlap? Could you talk a little bit about that, or is it nope?

pick one totally, stop talking about the others yeah, you know, I mean, now this is a little more observational, you know. So I don't have a bible verse that says, you know, thou shalt identify the two positions for each person, but I, I like to use, I'll use letters regularly and I'll use a, uh, a capital letter, and then I'll use a lowercase letter. So I'll actually do both of those. And, for example, I, I lead a, I have a, I lead a church, but I also planted a micro church and so we've just got like a church that meets in my house, um, which is, you know, another kind of conversation. But we try to go plant things and we try to reproduce things, we try to multiply these things. Well, one of the first things I I do when we kind of launch something like that is we go around our group, our our little church, and find out. So, my micro church, we've got about 20 or 25 people. I want to know what everyone's apest giftings are, so that I know how to do this thing. You know, so in our micro church, uh, I'll, we, we have three or four people. They are apostolic, in fact, a couple that there's. There's two ceo's that are in my group. They are capital a apostles. You know, now I'd buy that. I don't again I'm. We don't use this on a title, we don't put this, just use the word apostolic, okay, because people really freak out. We don't identify, we don't walk around asking and demanding anyone give you a title, um, but they are. They are like one of the guys. He's a capital, a apostle, and I would call him like a lowercase t teacher, like he's an apostle teacher, right. Another guy's like an apostle shepherd, like he's just got such a sweet shepherds to him, but but he's also a, he's an apostolic. You know, I have known people.

I believe the apostle paul was clear. He obviously he was an apostle. He was also a teacher. He called himself a teacher to the Gentiles. He was an clearly an evangelist he was. He was evangelizing the calls of christ more than anyone else in his day. He obviously had a shepherd's heart, you know. So, uh, I think he probably was.

It seems like he was prophetic. I mean, you know, paul might have had all five of these going on, you know, um, but I but I look at people. There's one guy I have in mind. I had a conversation with a guy today. As far as I could tell, he's straight up teacher. I don't know that he has anything but teacher.

There's other people I've met that have some combination of all of these, but I have often found helpful to tell me I'll ask people hey, what's your top two, what's your capital, what's your lowercase? And again, that's just, that's just a mic path's philosophy, that's just how I handle things. But if I'm in a meeting like, I'll just tell you how it breaks down to meetings I'm regularly in meetings where I've heard the prophet speak. The prophet spoke, the prophet, this prophet, that prophet, that prophet spoke. I'm like, okay, we need to hear an evangelist now. Like, now, we need the evangelist to speak.

Uh, and and I could break this down in a lot of different settings I lead a church, so like, as an example, on a sunday morning church service, uh, a lot of times the prophetic people, they just want the presence of the lord. They're like they, they're interested in heaven and they're thinking about heaven and the presence of god and they want and they, these are the people during worship. They'll let it go super long and let it get really juicy and all this, but then the evangelist will be the voice of like, hey, what the heck man, we've got people in here that have never heard the gospel. Uh, they look all uncomfortable. They're about to go walk out before the the message even comes, and I'm interested when it comes to looking at a sunday service.

I want both my evangelist and my prophet to speak yeah, and I think I mean this brings into sort of having these imbalance and and the detriment that can come when, when they're not in balance, that you really need all five of these.

And I think you know we've had other conversations and I've seen some different resources that I think you've put out that talk about how you can identify sort of where it might be varying and how you can kind of make sure you have the balance that you need. And if somebody see, I mean I started out with a verse about fanning into flame these gifts, and so if somebody you know people watching this are thinking, okay, wow, this is, this is new for me. Or maybe they're thinking, oh, they're being reminded of this and okay, yes, I need to, I need to do something with this. So what should people be doing? What's like a next step? To sort of put gas on the fire or fan it into flame and and to stop neglecting this gift that they have well, for one thing, I think you go and and you think about it.

You, you actually ask yourself the question hey, I wonder what gifts I have. And if you are in community, I think you ask other people hey, what gifts do you see in me? Uh, one of the biggest flames I've seen is when people see those gifts in other people. There's a guy in our micro church that uh, multiple of us. When he's an evangelist, shepherd, he might be equally both of those, but we told him that you know, and he's like oh no, I'm not a shepherd. And everyone's like bro, you are a shepherd. You know shepherds, they're very protective and they're strong and they care about people and they and and they just watch out for people. They, these are like the you know, the mama bear kind of people you know and and it took other people pointing that out to him bro, you are a shepherd, we need you using that gift. So so one of the things that happens is when, when we at least even you have this common language that we can use I think we ask people about that. You can read on it, you can read things. You can just literally google search hey, what are, what are apostolic people like. What are prophetic people like? And maybe you use words like innovators and entrepreneurs for apostles and and uh, evangelists and marketers and sales people and I think, like you said, you fan into flame that gift. If someone's a singer, they don't just take it for granted, they're a singer, they work on it. If you are a salesman, you go to sales trainings and you work on that.

The bummer to me is when I watch people that have a gift of teaching and they don't work on their gift of teaching. Or they've got a gift of of shepherding and they don't work on their gift. If you're a christian, you pray about this. You say things like god, I feel like you've called me to be a shepherd kind of person or a teacher, an apostolic person. Lord, I ask you to show me, lead me in paths of righteousness. What does that look like?

Ask other people find books that are on the subject. There's a guy, an author, named alan herche that writes a lot about this. There's a book that's called five q, which talks about really kind of like there's iq. He would say five q like the five fold. You know where are you at with these five fold, but I just want to emphasize you also need all five of these in your life.

The danger I have seen is prophets tend to hang out. Prophets and evangelists tend to hang out. Evangelists and apostles tend to hang out. Apostles and church if you go to a church, the american church is almost exclusively shepherds and teachers only and has not had the rest of the apes in action. A lot of mega churches have an evangelist that's preaching, but other than that, scripture makes it clear when you're exposed to all five you're going to come most alive. So I would even ask you are you being exposed to all five of these in your life? Because if you're not, you can go read books. I mean, even right now you know beth more. She's a teacher. You know if you, if you're reading this person they are, you can, you can tell what authors are. You start to look at people like that and make sure that you're getting all five of those exposed.

You're so exposed to all five well, that's good advice and I think that I like how you talk about not only on the larger scale, with what we're seeing we want to do and move forward with, but also on a personal scale, and that's something that's new, that I think there's even people speaking into your life and making sure that you're understanding from all those different perspectives. And I think you talked about equipping and maturing and that sort of thing, and I think there's so much separation maybe it's unconscious for a lot of people of spiritual and non-spiritual things, and one of the things that I talk about on my podcast a lot is that there is no separation. I mean that's not biblical. In the Bible it was all one thing and even wars that they went to and even whatever it was whether it was the church exploding and spreading or the Holy Spirit coming, or whether it was New Testament, old Testament, everything there was no separation. And that's sort of a modern day thing and it's kind of come and gone throughout history.

But I mean we know these teachers and these sorts of things are to build people up for the work of their ministry and I think that so many people when they hear the word ministry, they think of whatever they're doing at the church but in the four walls of the church, and for sure that includes leading small groups or planning churches and that sort of thing. But it includes creating, making coffee or being on the welcome team or worship team, but it doesn't only include those things. So could you talk about how sort of maybe you help equip people for the work of their ministry that might happen outside of Sunday and outside the four walls of the church?

Well, I'll give you an example. One of the guys that's in my microchurch. He is apostolic, he just is. He's the CEO of a company that does extremely well. I mean, the guy is just killing it. Everything he touches goes very well, but he never. You know, like where do apostolic people go when you go to church and they're signing people up and like, hey, can you help us pass up bulletins or collect the offering? But this guy, he's an innovator, he's an entrepreneur and he starts things and he takes new ground and does all these kind of things. Well, it turns out like we've just asked him to start praying, like what are you supposed to do with your business? He's actually using his business to plant, work, play, like really plant churches in his business. By that I don't mean four walls and I don't mean calling it first Baptist or first whatever. I'm saying. He is doing his business, but he is making disciples where he is and planting the church in his realm, like that is what he's doing. So we try, and one of the things I feel called to do, is to help people figure out what their call is.

How do you use your apostolic gift or your teaching gift or your shepherding gift or your prophetic gift, right there, where you are. How do you faithfully live that out? Because that's going to manifest God's kingdom wherever you are. If you're like a Daniel, shadrach, Meshach or a Bednego who, in their realm that they lived, were excellent and they were being a blessing wherever they went, a blessing with excellence, bringing fruit, being productive and fruitful, and that was to the glory of God, and they were ministering for the Lord. But you would not have called them in ministry. They were in politics or they were in the public sphere, but God used them there. So, wherever you are, you need to pray and ask God. Lord, how do you want to use me?

I absolutely love that. I think that we so often have, like we talked about that separation and for me, I remember this epiphany. I mean I remember where I was sitting. I was actually sitting at this desk and when it's God opened my eyes, like you didn't miss it, like you're where I want you, so like lean into what you're doing now and just invite me into it more and partner with me. And God gave me solutions. God gave Joseph solutions to tough problems that other people couldn't solve, and he's given me solutions to problems to fix relationships in the workplace or to move projects forward that were stuck that 10 hours on.

Google didn't help me and it had to come directly from the Lord, and I even did an episode called Ask God More Often Than you Ask Google, and so there's a place for that, to get more information. But then there's a time where it's like you got enough. You just need to spend time with the Lord and seek God. So let's bring it home with seeking God. That is a staple that when I think, mike Pat's, I think you need to be serious about seeking the Lord and it's like your thing. You know a past and seeking the Lord that and so talk us, tell us a little bit about that here and give an encouragement for people and how they can do that and the power.

And again, this is another non-religious thing. But the theme verse of my life is 2 Chronicles 265, about King Uzziah. So King Uzziah was not a priest, he was a king. You know, he was just in, you know doing his thing. But it says about him as long as he sought the Lord, god made him prosper.

And I've just seen that happen again and again and again, that when people seek the Lord I mean if you're in business and you said, hey, what's your first piece of advice? I'd say seek the Lord. As long as you seek the Lord, you're going to notice things you did not notice and you'll see things you didn't see. You'll have peace when others are striving. You'll sleep better at night. You're going to have ideas pop into your head. As long as he sought the Lord, god made him prosper.

So I mean I played that at our church, any pastor on our church. They have to pray two hours a day or I'd let them go. You know, like every member of our staff, even if you're a secretary, you've got to spend an hour a day with the Lord. We're like you're going to seek the Lord and I'll pay them to do it. But I mean you're going to seek the Lord. But I tell people do the same thing and I've literally watched people that were struggling depression, you name it. They begin to seek the Lord, spend time. You just can't spend time with the good shepherd and not be changed. So if you'll seek the Lord, god's going to make your hands do prosper.

Well, yeah, absolutely, and I it's kind of like for me it's like if I don't do, if I don't prioritize it, and like if I'm feeling a little dry and I'm sitting there and I can't come up with things and I just seem stuck, and I seem and it's like I don't know what I'm going to talk about on the podcast or I don't know who I need. How do I get this project going forward? And it's frustrating. And it's like, all right, you know what? I'm just going to go pray and do a little worship and spend some time in the Word. And then it's like, after I kind of do that, seek the Lord, as you say, and then it just sort of everything else just becomes clear. It's like I just had I know which direction to go, I know which path to take, I know who to call. It's just like I see, it's like it lets the dust settle and I can see which direction to go, and I just have that kind of clarity.

And it's like otherwise, it's like trying to pour out of an empty cup. You know, you got to fill the cup up if you're going to pour it into someone else's cup and we're sitting here not even filling our own cup, and so I've just noticed so much more direction when I do prioritize that and it's like, like you said, a couple hours I mean, and that flies by and you want more of that time when you, when you're getting into, whether it's prayer, conversational prayer or listening prayer, that's something that a lot of people neglect. It's like a couple in a car driving down the road, one's talking, and then they're done talking, they stop and get out and it's like well, the other one, you get a kind of a chance to talk, and so many of us treat our prayer life like that, where it's just us kind of talking, and then we check the box and go do the thing. So what, as we wrap up here, what other encouragement or what else do you want to share that that you think is important for our viewers to know?

Well, my passion is Jesus, you know. So I saw the opening. So this is a faith based kind of show. I believe you know, and I will just say you know, speed, the whole APAS. I mean I love APAS, but the reality is the great, the fulfillment of all of this is Jesus.

You know who is the apostle that left heaven on a mission. That was Jesus, you know. And who is the prophet that speaks the truth and predicts everything and speaks. It's Jesus who is the great evangelist, the good shepherd that saves the lost sheep and goes out, leaves the 99 to go for the ones. It's Jesus who is the ultimate shepherd, you know, that's protective of the sheep. That's Jesus who is the great teacher that speaks the sermon on the mountain. I mean, the reality is everything. The essence of everything we want is Jesus. You know, like, the closer we are, the better we draw near to him, the more life is just going to be alive If we'll stay in him, remain in him. It's just going to be incredible. So my appeal would be, even if you disregarded everything I said about the APAS or whatever, if there would just be passion for Jesus, what he's done, how he has done what he's done and who he is. He's the secret to everything.

Well said. I saw on a truck in Brazil many years ago. It said Jesus is the answer. And I thought, well, that's interesting. And the more I sought God about that, the more I understood it. And then, when you actually realized, the Bible is a picture book and it's a picture of Jesus in every single letter on the page and every single story we have. So, pastor Maegan, has been great to have you on the show. We got your website on there. Is that the best place to follow you and what you're doing? Or anywhere else?

that they should go. For me personally probably Instagram, it's just Michael Patz, or at our church website, greenhousechurchorg Fantastic.

Well, mike, it has been great to have you on. Thank you so much for joining us. See you later, all right? Wow, what a powerful discussion with Pastor Mike from Gainesville, florida. He has got an incredible church, a thriving church that is growing and is reaching the students down there in Gainesville. It's just powerful what they're doing and his heart to reach all of Florida, planting churches all over the place, and so you can see he's got an incredible heart for discipleship and to help you grow and deepen your faith, and so I would highly encourage you to seek the Lord and make sure that you fill up your cup.

Now we're going to get into, before we get into, our next guest. We're going to take this and talk about some censorship and some of the different things that are going on there, but I want to give another word to our sponsors. The first is MyPillow promo code TAMERA for great savings on MyPillowcom, mystore or MyCoffeeProducts, and when you support MyPillow using promo code TAMERA, you can save up to 80% on great products that bless you, your home and your family, but also help us share the truth across the globe. So the Tamara Scott Show works hard to bring you great guests and to present truth in ways that you will not find elsewhere. So it's an honor to have you support the show and MyPillow with promo code TAMERA. Our next sponsor, bellagraze Elixir. Bellagraze Elixir offers three key ingredients to help you bring health from the inside out. In 2022, bellagraze Elixir won an award for helping with cognitive function, and in 2023, bellagraze was awarded as a startup star in athletics for outstanding new ingredients, formats and benefits shaping the sports and active nutrition industry. Now, don't forget, these products are for both men and women, and you can find the QR code on the screen there or visit tamerabellagrazeglobalcom.

Now, our next guest I want to talk about. We're going to talk about, like I mentioned, big tech censorship. We're going to talk about how we have competing narratives between what the mainstream media is saying and I know that the viewers of this show are no stranger to the fact of censorship and to have the importance of getting us. We're going around that censorship today, and our guest is going to talk to us about how he experienced censorship with a film that he produced. Now it's Matthew Thayer. He is the director of the Trump I Know, and this is a film that came out in 2020. And we're going to talk a little bit about how this film was put on the back burner right before the election and wouldn't you know it? After the election, it you were able to access it and get it. And the thing is we're gonna talk about how One, this sentient took place and what they're doing to combat that. And then, secondly, we're gonna talk about also how you can participate in an event that's coming up soon. But the thing is, you know, mad I've been, I've had math you there on my podcast, which is called cutting edge faith, and if you want to find more about me, you can go to ryan s howard dot com.

I've got a newsletter there that you can. You can get on, and I've got a podcast where we talk about the truth behind the headlines. We talk about what's going on in the world from a biblical perspective, current events, all those sorts of things. And I say to help equip your faith so that you can navigate the cultural chaos of today. And we started out this show talking about how your faith is not a separate thing. In fact, faith was foundational even in the found a foundation of america and this nation, and so it's just incredible to Continue to go that direction. That's what we want to do. That's what we want to have is to keep our faith strong and to keep that as the foundation and to seek the lord and everything that we're doing. And so we're gonna be talking about how the censorship led to some of the difficulties and how we need to make sure that we are set up to not have that censorship taking over.

And the film I'll talk just a little bit about that while we get ready to have Matthew on. No, the film, the trump I know if you haven't seen it. I mean it really tells the story of who donald trump is from the viewpoint of the women who surround him. Now the mainstream wants to paint a picture of trump as is a very negative and very anti women, and well, what we see and this this video shows, this film shows it's a, it's a bigger than trump. It's about more than just Trump, because it's showing that the mainstream narrative is not the way to go, and I think the viewers of the show are all critical thinkers and you are smart enough to know that and so we know. But this is incredible gives you a new lens to see to where you can compare what the truth, what about some of the situations and circumstances that came up and what the mainstream narrative is saying, and you have a new lens to see, and not only in this little, this big example, really, of trump, but you can see that lens will apply to everywhere else In life today where you can see what's coming from the mainstream narrative versus what is the truth.

And so, thank god, we have eyes to see and ears to hear, and we have men and women of god who are standing up and being bold, just like so many of those who are our examples in the bible. And we see shadrach, mishak, nabinago they didn't, they wouldn't bow to the image. We see daniel who would not stop praying. We see all of them taking a stand and, whether civil disobedience or whether it was just telling the truth, speaking the truth of power in their time, it, this is nothing new, this is the biblical approach to things, and we do all of it in love.

Of course, you know the, the, the church, is the pillar and foundation of truth and that's, I believe, first time, the three fifteen. And if you, if a building falls down and you, what do you do? Assuming there wasn't an explosion or something, you investigate the foundation and the structure of that building. And so, if truth is being trampled in the streets and the church is the pillar and foundation of the truth, what do we do? Well, what has been happening to the church? What has been going on? Well, we need to investigate that and we see that the church hasn't done its job. The church has let culture Go forth and sort of gone to the wolves, so to speak, and, as pastor Mike talked about, we have a lot of shepherds and teachers in the US church, but we need more of the apostles, prophets and evangelists and we need to have that balance there and thank God that it is coming in.

We've had a lot of prophets and other people talking about how there is a shift taking place and they're going to have these true men and women of God that are going to be coming to the forefront, that are going to be telling the truth about what's going on and that are going to be not afraid Of it costing them something, not afraid to have it be something that's going to make a change in their life. And God gives us things and we hold them with an open hand, and so we've got, doesn't have to pry our fingers out, whether it's a job or relationship or some hobby or whatever it might be. We hold it with an open hand because God can then remove it and put something else. And there are so many times in my life when I look back and I just see the patterns. I keep a journal almost every day. I write, I've got a stack of journals and I keep track of things that God is doing and connections that he's made and prayers that have been answered and even prayers that haven't have yet to be answered, and I can just see this pattern developing when I go back and look through these and I see how God is shaping something. And so God is shaping you. He's always preparing you, just like he did with Joseph.

You know, in Psalm 105 we all we know the story of Joseph, who was betrayed by his brothers. He was sold into slavery, he was wrongly accused and thrown into prison and then he was in. He honored God through all of that and Psalm 105 says that that entire time he was being tested. He was being tested. Think about that Now. It was developing his character, not in the sense of he had a character flaw that needed to be worked out, but in the sense of sharpening and honing and hardening and preparing and getting Joseph ready so that he could be the man that God could rely on once he was in that position.

And then he so he didn't wait until he was in that position to be close to the Lord. So, seek the Lord, seek the Lord, seek the Lord that is just spending that time carved out in solitude. Now, matt, I know, matt. We got our guests ready to come on now so that we can bring him on and talk about his film the Trump, I Know, and some of this censorship that we have. So let's get Matt on up here and we can go ahead and get started diving into this. So hey, matt, welcome to the show.

Hey, buddy, good to see you again.

That's great to have you on. You know Matt's another good friend of mine and we're in another mastermind together and it's just awesome to see you know we've talked about there's mega shifts changing in Hollywood and in Christian media and we see some attempts from the mainstream media and the mainstream elites to backlash against this and your film, the Trump, I Know was a foul prey to that, but there is. You're not going to let that stand and you're taking an approach to that. So give us a little bit. I mean so, you're a Matt's and an award winning filmmaker. He's got some other films as well. The reawakening series with Clay Clark is just absolutely incredible. I highly recommend that and but give us a little flavor of the story of the Trump, I Know, and and sort of what happened there with in 2020.

Well, the interesting thing about this is that this film was actually originated because of censorship and, if people remember the film, unplanned I was a behind the scenes director on that my wife, it was an associate producer and actually had a small role in the film. And when the film came out on March 29, 2017, the Twitter account for the film was taken down as a glitch, and this was back before anybody really even knew that censorship was a thing, and so it kind of caused a stir. People remember that and a bunch of the filmmakers got called up to Capitol Hill and one of those filmmakers was Joe Knopp, and Joe was a producer on unplanned and he threw a series of contacts, made friends with Laura Trump, and so he was invited up to Trump Tower, met Eric, hung out with Laura and they were just swapping stories and Joe's got this amazing you know, just all American story of growing up literally in the gutters of Philadelphia as an orphan, was never had a family and ended up becoming, you know, a film producer Right. So it's just all this amazing great American story. Laura loved that, she shared her stories of growing up in middle America and then, you know, meeting Eric Trump one night on a whim, going out with her friends and ends up, you know, becoming a part of the Trump family. And so so Laura.

So you know, joe, of course, you know is listening to these stories, not just about Laura, but about the Trump family. And he's going how is it that I don't know these stories as an American? I mean, why do I know more about the royal family than I do the first family? And so he approached Laura and said would you be interested in us doing a documentary? And they were like. She was like absolutely, that would be amazing. I'll open the doors, you know, and and so, other than that the Trumps weren't involved with this at all. They didn't pay us, they didn't, they don't get any money out of this. It was all independently financed and funded. Joe rounded up some investors, we rounded up some investors and we set out to Washington DC and New York to film Laura, and then also some other, some other people that she opened up the doors for. And then we whipped it around. I mean, we turned it around in 90 days.

We thought it was going to be ready for the 2020 election and, lo and behold, more censorship happened, as a lot of people are aware of now, in October of 2020, and our film was marginalized, was slow, rolled through the process and consequently, the film wasn't even available for people to watch until well after the election. And so really, what this is is that people don't understand it. But it's election interference, and people don't understand the breadth of what election interference means. But election interference isn't just keeping people from the voting booth. It's not just what you would think. When you think of election interference, people conjure up what images of that would look like. Now we're seeing it with these indictments that are happening with Trump. We saw it with the Hunter Biden laptop and sometimes with election interference, you actually don't know that something happened until years afterwards.

And so our film, the suppression of that, was sad, because many of the people that shared the stories that they did in our film some of the most authentic stories that you'll ever hear about President Trump, just extraordinary stories they were all shared with reporters from the New York Times, with reporters from the Washington Post, and what would happen? The article would come out. They would say, ah, we talked to 19 women and two of them this is kind of what they said, and they'd spin it and make Donald Trump look like a complete a-hole and the women would just shake their heads. And so when they actually saw our film and the way that we presented it, they came up to me with tears in their eyes, saying thank you so much for finally allowing our story to get out there. Now, the fact that this has taken a beating and the fact that all we're doing is just sharing stories about the President we're not attacking anybody and this film can't even get out there this should enrage the American people.

That's a great point. I think it's not just oh yeah, wow, I'm glad I know that I can go watch the film and get the truth. It's like, like I said, it's bigger. I mean it's like you should be slamming your fist on the table like are you kidding me? And people who said they literally wouldn't have voted the way they did if they knew about the Biden laptop, which means they had the wrong sources for the news anyway, which is mistake number one. But I mean, I think all of us knew about it, you know, and so you know. But, praise God, I think the people are waking up and they're saying, wow, I can't trust these people, I can't trust this mainstream media, and I mean so you have come around. I mean this I'm glad you mentioned Unplanned, because that's another big film.

That was just an incredible film that you worked on and but the Trump, I know now you're re-releasing this. Tell us about what's going on. I mean, we know the censorship and this audience is very familiar with that and we know what happened. You've sort of mentioned that. But what are you doing now to re-release this and sort of and get this out now?

Yeah, well, so, like I said, I mean our social accounts were taken down and you know, when you're doing business, I mean that's what it is. I mean I'm in the filmmaking business, right, I'm a filmmaker, I'm a storyteller and this is what I do. And so when I go to people with a project and I say, hey, invest in our project, you know we have come with a plan, we have a plan of attack, and part of it is engaging in social media and marketing and getting it out there. And when, all of a sudden, you can't execute on the plan that you put in front of your investors, I mean that really sucks, you know, because it's like I can't even do what I promised to do, because now I'm being stonewalled to get this out there and that shouldn't happen in America. It just shouldn't happen.

And so we decided that we're just going to rein everything in. We're going to rein everything in and we're going to push everybody towards this event and where it's going to be in October and we're going to have basically a fight back against censorship and election interference kind of event. We're going to show the film, we're going to have Laura Trump there, devin Nunes, some of these other key people that are in this fight against this censorship and keeping this type of content out from there. So people go to ttikfilmcom to find out more information. We're still working on a firm date at this moment. We should have the land on that here in the next couple of hours, but we are working on the. We're working on a couple of the guests you know their schedules and things like that just making sure that we get everything aligned.

It's going to be explosive because we're pushing back against the tech platforms and we're pushing it out to people directly. So it's going to be at a live studio. It's going to be kind of where they did 2000. Mules is actually where we're going to hold it and people can pipe in. It's not going to be able to be censored. People can actually interact live. There's an opportunity for people to ask questions. So it's going to have kind of a virtual town hall kind of thing. So we're calling it a hybrid event because it feels live but people can pipe it into their living room but still interact.

It's really really amazing technology and I think one of the things that I'm so excited about is not just for us but it's for people that are in our situation. You know, I want to be a pioneer, you know, to push this kind of technology out there in front of people, and maybe other filmmakers or other people whose stories are being similarly suppressed, you know, can go, wow, we could do that too. You know, we could actually maybe do it that way. And because, like we just heard that the Robertsons I mean the Duck Dynasty, I mean these guys, you know Duck Dynasty like they can't even get a distributor for their film because it's Christian and that's why Christians need to wake up.

This isn't about politics. This is not about politics. This is about them silencing anybody that does not fit their narrative. And all of a sudden, you're calling a you know a he, a he, because he's really a he. All of a sudden, now you're being stricken from the record, you don't exist, and the sad thing is is that when people have the power to be able to do that, the people that would do something about it don't know about it, because they never even heard about it, because it's basically, it's almost like wiping out a human being, it's a digitally, it's digital homicide, it's digital genocide.

That is what we're dealing with and we need to stand up and we need to have opportunities like this studio and opportunities like this event, you know, like Sound of Freedom, right, sound of Freedom. You know, eight years it took to get them out there and finally nobody would touch it. Disney buried it and finally, all of a sudden, disney Angel Studios. Thank God for Angel Studios, you know, for getting it out there, because now it's just gone all over the world and it's like wildfire, right, and so you know, this type of a project, more of a political leaning documentary, doesn't fit on their platform, so we're looking for other methods of distribution to bypass these gatekeepers. This just have consolidated way too much power.

Yeah, and I think this is I mean, and I love I mean. This is even a biblical approach, because when the apostle Paul, a Roman citizen, was beaten and he was thrown into prison and then they found out he was a Roman citizen and that's illegal, and so they tried to let him go quietly, and he said, nope, you're not going to let me go quietly, you need to take me out to the town square yourself. And so he knew his rights. And so, for us, we don't just, when this happens, sit back. I mean, to a degree, yes, we should expect suffering. Jesus said we're going to suffer for the truth and his name and that sort of thing and places like Iran. Christianity is exploding thanks to and that's happening in the midst of suffering, and so that's something that we are taking a stand, we're fighting back and doing these sorts of things, and so maybe so you told us where we can get in touch with that.

Maybe what do you see coming, you know, in the future? I mean, what do you see coming in media? We talked about on an episode on my podcast, the future of Hollywood and Christian media and some of the shifts taking place, where you have the instead of it being an agenda. Now it's. The Christians are getting that. It needs to be a story with an underpainting like the chosen, and Hollywood is going the other way, where they're making it more about an agenda, and who cares about the story? So what do you see coming as overall here? We've got a few minutes left as we wrap up.

Well, I mean, the encouraging thing biblically is the fact that God has set up the world, the universe, so that once you take him out of the center, it creates a literal black hole that everything just kind of gets sucked into and eventually nothing exists. And so, oh, I'm getting a note right now that we have October 26 confirmed, 100% confirmed. October 26 is when this event is happening. So go to TTIKfilmcom and you can get more information on that. So, october 26, it's going to be explosive, it's going to be awesome.

Okay so, but so, anyway, going back to the whole black hole thing, god has actually created the universe so that when you take him out of the center, everything comes to nothing. You can see it in philosophy, you can see it in art, you can see it in I can point to a bunch of different examples. And so Hollywood. I'm not surprised, because they've taken God out of the center, they've taken the God out of the center of education, they've taken God out of the center of government. Look at what happens. And so what's really exciting is that, like you pointed to the chosen, I think some of the things that Angel Studios is doing is extraordinary and people are gravitating to it because eternity resonates inside of the hearts of men, because, even though you can take God out of the center of things, and even though you may not believe in him, you still have a conscience and there's something in there, there's a God-shaped hole there, right, that we've talked about that cries out to him in some form or fashion, and so when we see that kind of void out there, we are repulsed by it, naturally, because that's the way God created the universe, and we are drawn towards authenticity.

We are drawn towards story, we are drawn towards things that make sense, because that's the other thing is that we're problem solvers, naturally, and so when things don't make sense, we're looking for answers, because we are royalty, we are the heart of the king. Search out of the matter, right, and so the heart of the audience will always search out of matter and go, wait a minute, hold on a second. Things don't make sense here, and so now I think there's an opportunity for people like me, people like Dallas Jenkins, some of the other you know, the Souther Freedom team, to begin to and a bunch of other people that we know that are creating some extraordinary content that I mean they're writing right now, and there's, people are there's, it's going to be a renaissance and it's going to. And they're making it easy on us because the garbage that they've been creating is creating such a stark contrast that when all of a sudden we push this stuff out there, people are going to go wow, that's legit.

Yeah, well said well, matt, it's been great to have you on and thank you for all these insights and let us know about this event and you heard it here hot off the press October 26th, so make sure you go and get your tickets so that you can participate. So, matthew, it's been awesome having you on. Thank you so much for joining the Tamara Scott Show.

Thank you, buddy TTIKcom, be there, We'll see you there.

Well to our listeners. Thank you so much for joining. You're listening to the Tamara Scott Show and I am Ryan Howard in for Tamara Scott. You can find more about me at ryanshowercom and you can get my podcast Cutting Edge Faith on YouTube, rumble and all the podcast apps. So thank you so much again. I'm Ryan Howard in for Tamara Scott. God bless and we'll see you next time.

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