Uniting Around What We Are For Vs. What We Are Against ~ Peter Martin Ep. 63

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Transcript

Ep 63 Uniting Around What We Are For Vs. What We Are Against...

SUMMARY KEYWORDS

people, flesh, church, trauma, community, relationships, fear, god, instilling, capital c church, anxiety, spirit, problem, life, body, rallying, happening, biblical counselor, world, other words

SPEAKERS

Peter Martin, Denisha Workizer

 Transcript is auto-generated

Denisha Workizer  00:00

When we think of the word unity, what do we think of? What do we think about people in situations and schools of thought coming together in a unified way? That's what we're going to talk about today with Peter Martin here on the podcast. We are having a fantastic conversation that you are going to want to hang on all the way through because he really dropped some big time wisdom for us. As we learn a little bit more about how do we unify spiritual issues, and psychological issues? How do we unify as the capital C church right now for community and connection? I hope you enjoyed this conversation with Peter today. Welcome to Living the Reclaim life Podcast. I'm Tanisha. We're glad you're here for conversations that revive hope, inspire healing, and encourage you to live a vibrant life with Christ. So grab a cup of coffee as we chat with today's guest. I'm excited to have back with us today, Peter Martin, if you did not listen to last week's episode, I want to really encourage you to go back and listen to that. Peter shares some of his own experience coming out of the military, his experience with trauma, and just how God walked him through that through that process in his life. And he gives some really practical tips of things that we can employ in our own lives, to deal with our trauma and kind of start unpacking our past and God's faithfulness. Peter, I just really that's something I saw in your story was just God's faithfulness to be with us, in the midst of it all. So I just want to welcome back, Peter, we're excited you're here with us. Again, he is a published author, he published the fellowship of suffering, which is a book you can find on Amazon. And he is also a pastor and a biblical counselor here in Tucson, Arizona with Calvary Christian Fellowship. So I'm glad to have you back again today.

Peter Martin  01:52

Glad to be back.

Denisha Workizer  01:55

So I thought it would be interesting, I loved our conversation on the last episode about trauma and just how it affects how it affects us how, you know, the ways that we try to cope, and the things that we do to cope, right and our bodies. There's so many times I look at trauma, and I think God is magnificent with how he created our bodies to protect ourselves. And I know when when I was serving at my church as a pastor, we I would encounter a lot of people that came into my office with trauma that I didn't always understand at the time, before I really took a deep dive into learning more about the world of trauma, I'd love to hear a little bit just about what you're experiencing, you know, as a pastor and a biblical counselor and post COVID. You know, we have these routines of going to church each week with our family and, you know, having fellowship with people that we're comfortable with that we know that know, our stories, and then that all sort of got disrupted during COVID. So how have you seen that play out with the people that you serve?

Peter Martin  02:53

No. Yeah, very deep question. Interesting one, for sure. So let's start with the first thing you mentioned when it came to like counseling and how the church views psychology and how the church views different forms of counseling. So the church in again, when I'm saying church, I'm saying capital C church, you know, the Universal Church around the world, especially in the West. For the purposes of our conversation right now. We've had a very difficult struggle when it comes to balancing the spiritual and the flesh. The reason why is because early on those you guys don't know this, I'm going to be using some interesting church history here, you might want to check out but it does have a lot to say to you. Nowadays. Early on in the church, what happened is a lot of philosophers from Greece began to be converted to Christianity. So a lot of what we call the early church fathers, the early converts to Christianity after the apostles died. These guys were from the Greek philosophical world. And one of the biggest minds that came from this time was a guy named St. Augustine, from hippo, very bright guy, very intelligent dude. And he shaved a lot of Christian doctrine moving forward after the apostolic age. He's one of the first great theological minds that we have after the death of Paul and John and goes like this. And St. Augustine, he was a mannequin he came from Greek philosophical thought. Now, when you go through Greek philosophical thought, they get a lot, right, but they get a lot very wrong. One of the big things they got wrong, was the idea of the duality of man. Now, what they believed is that man is not essentially flesh, but we are essentially spirit. And they saw the spirit and the flesh as being in conflict with one another, and therefore not cohabitating well, and the goal of life is to actually be away from the flesh. So they denigrated the flesh, they didn't think it mattered. They didn't talk a lot about the things happening in the flesh and they thought the best way for you to become Holy is actually denial of the flesh. So they would you know, whip themselves, they would starve themselves, they would avoid all types of sexual encounters, because they saw that as being grotesque, and something that goes away from God. And we see these ideas pop up in the New Testament, you see Paul, attack them in various books, especially first 10, I'm sorry. Colossians is a big one where he really goes at it. First Timothy, chapter four, he really goes out of it as well. And it was, again, this idea that the spirit and the flesh are not really cohabitating. Well, they're almost at odds with one another. We also call it like Cartesian duality. Decart, who's a Christian philosopher, he thought this way. And he came up with a phrase, the ghost in the machine, this idea that you you're just like this body that's kind of being automated by your Spirit, but they're not really one. And because of that, we've dragged this ideology into the realm of psychology, because psychology deals with the brain or the mind, and that is a natural part of the world. So the church reduces everything to a spiritual problem. So when someone is struggling with something psychological, the church will say, we need to pray more, you need to fast you need to read your Bible, and they spiritualize everything and deny the existence of the flesh and the needs of the flesh. And we have to understand biblically, that's just a completely anti biblical view. When you have the creation of Adam and Eve in the garden, what do you have, you have God formed the flesh, and then breathe spirit into it. And Adam doesn't become alive, until both halves are united. So when the body is just there, he's not Adam. And when the spirits there, he's not Adam, it's only when the Spirit indwells the body, that he becomes a living being. Jesus, who is Spirit is incarnate, it is the marriage of flesh and spirit, the spirit becomes flesh, and remains flesh, Jesus has a resurrected body and stays a resurrected man for eternity, that's really key to Christian dogma. And then I could go on and on. But the idea is that the Bible sees this, this marriage of flesh and spirit, they're both important to such an extent where Paul says, in Second Corinthians five, we don't want to be naked. In other words, we actually don't want to be immaterial spirit, which is what the Greeks were teaching, we want to be more clothed. In other words, it's not that we don't like clothing, it's like we want better clothing. So it's not that we don't like our bodies, we just want better bodies. That's that's the message of the resurrection, we want more perfect bodies, we want bodies that don't get sick, or diseased or anything like that. But we still want to be flesh, we still want a bodily existence. And that is the promise in the hope of the resurrection, we are going to be raised in our bodies. It's a very important part of Christian doctrine. So when it comes to looking at psychology, I cannot say the spirit is all that matters. So when someone comes to me and says, like, Hey, I'm struggling with past trauma and stuff like that, I can't just be like, You need to read your Bible, you need to pray more. You know, this is a lack of faith and your life really for you to for you to be struggling with this, you know, maybe you don't trust God enough, you know, maybe you're not confessing all known sin. If I over spiritualize, someone like that, and deny their flesh. This would be as foolish, as James puts it, in James, chapter two of me going up to a homeless person say, be warm and filled. Yes, but give him nothing. You know, like, obviously, I need to actually get him food, shelter, if I want to do anything beneficial for him. To put into that,

Denisha Workizer  08:38

I just want to say like, literally I just clapped for Peter, during this. Because I think that's a lot of when we don't know what to do with the flesh part. We do go to the spirit piece, you know, because I can quote Bible scripture, you're having a hard time well, the joy of the Lord is your strength. Peter, come on, you can do this, you know, and I just you're just speaking to my heart in the in the kind of the dumb things that maybe we need to stop saying in capital C church, but yes, that you're just speaking to my heart with that. And and I've seen that, I've seen a lot of ones created out of well intended people saying things that only addressed the spirit and didn't really bring people hope. And that was one of the things when I stepped out of my role as a pastor and got involved, really in the trenches, you know, with people and really end to the stepping into the pit of what they were truly going through. And not just what they would bring to me on a Sunday morning. But when I really got out there, I realized quickly I had to understand the flesh more and understand more about trauma and how it worked, you know, with with all of just how our minds and our bodies because God did create both of them so you're just you're like speaking to like something in me that's like yes, I cannot cheer you on. Keep going.

Peter Martin  09:53

Awesome. So yeah, when we as Christians forget about the flesh, we forget About a huge component now the problem with the world. So, unfortunately, a lot of people are looking at the church and they're saying, I'm not getting the healing I need from the church. And so what happens is they completely materialize their problems. In other words, they think it's only a problem of the mind. And they go to secular counselors. And I have a very interesting relationship with secular counseling, where I've known secular counselors before I've sat in on secular counseling. And there are some that I respect, there are some that I look at, I'm like, yeah, they share a lot of my values in my worldview. But the problem is, and you have to understand this psychotherapy developed by Sigmund Freud was a materialist worldview, it was a worldview, that all of your problems are actually generated from your body and nothing else. And in fact, it was Freud's attempt to do away with the spiritual nature of man. And to say, I don't have to explain to you what evil is or what sin is, or what Original Sin is, because all the things that are wrong with you are totally explainable from your psyche. That was Freud's belief. So if you send someone to a psychologist, you have to understand, that's the way they're going to be looking at it. And some Christians go the total opposite way. And they're like, Well, yeah, I'm a biblical counselor. But I'm, like a biblical counselor, like someone is like a Christian doctor, you know, where it doesn't inform a lot of what I tell people to do. But it is my faith system, and I'll point people to God every now and then, you know, that's the idea. And so what you're getting from this biblical counselor, quote, unquote, is no different than what you'd be getting from someone who doesn't have a relationship with God, other than the fact they might pray with you afterwards, which is great. But that's all you're gonna get from the spiritual side. Once again, you have to be able to balance the spirit with the flesh, that someone if they're having psychological problems, and they're having outbursts of wrath, and things like that, I can definitely reduce those down in part, to psychological problems, which are manifested in the flesh, but there's also a spiritual element to what's going on in them. And this is something that really stuck out to me in Psalm 51, where David, after doing something pretty horrific, right, he murders a woman's husband, so he could take her as her own. And by the way, he had sex with her before then. So you have this really grave sin in his life. And David can easily be like, Man, you know, why do I behave this way, and you could have gone back to a lot of fleshly reasonings, and a lot of won't be valid, you'd be like, Okay, I was the youngest in my family. And I was always overlooked by my brothers. And so I had an insecurity in me that I found in women. And that can be true. And you know, maybe he's like, and I was introduced to war at a very young age. And maybe it was because he became massively popular overnight. And so his inferiority complex turned into a superiority complex. And so he felt entitled to things you know, and I could, I could psychologize, David, all I want, and a lot of these insights would probably be valid. However, when David looks at his life, he says, in iniquity, I was brought forth. So in other words, David recognizes that there is a spiritual component to his behavior that actually was given to him at birth is the doctrine of what we call Original Sin, there is something inherently bent within us. And if I took away all of trauma and things like that, I would still be a mess. Now, this is actually a hopeful thing. Because some people have gone through traumatic pasts since we live in this culture. And it doesn't have a lot of trauma within it, you can feel very much just like, there's something the matter with me, but nobody else, right, these broken people over here, they need counseling, but everyone else is good. And I'm kind of deadweight in my relationships, and I'm bringing everyone down, and those thoughts can go through your head of everyone would be better off without me. They're not ready to deal with someone like me, you know, the stuff I bring up in church, I feel awkward, no one can relate to it. And it could really alienate you from your community. The doctrine of original sin is incredibly awesome, because it tells you that all of us experience a massive trauma, the greatest trauma in the universe is your separation from God. That's the greatest trauma in the universe. And everyone has experienced that and everyone has different pathologies and different issues as a result of that spiritual trauma. And you can add on to that, though, you could add on to that spiritual trauma and magnify it, utilizing these physical traumas, but they didn't create your problems, they magnified existing ones. And therefore, if you're not approaching it, from both a psychological and a spiritual component, you're leaving off one half of what's going to make you whole.

Denisha Workizer  14:44

That's a great point. And that's how God created us, you know, for both for our body, our brains to protect our flesh and our flesh to protect our minds and just all all of it works together. In your experience, you know, in biblical counseling, how is COVID and isolation and the change and just the shift in the world. I mean, there's so much it feels like things that we used to be able to know, as facts. Suddenly there's like, what is the true? I mean, there's just so many things that we used to be able to hold tightly to, that we can't anymore. Or maybe we couldn't the whole time, actually. But yeah, what is your experience? What has been your experience in, you know, counseling people? And what issues have you seen come out of COVID, and just the disruption in our lives this last couple of years.

Peter Martin  15:30

So the biggest one I'll give you, I'll give you the biggest one that I see. And then I'll give you some subsequent ones that kind of grow out of that I talked about a little bit last time in our previous podcast, the idea that not only does humanity seek after community and connection, but we live in a culture that devalues community, and connection, and the Coronavirus in the way that our culture has responded to it is evidence of that, that we have so easily discarded something that is absolutely necessary to human existence and flourishing. And that's, that's terrifying to me, that's very scary that we so casually do that. And we believe that things like social media and online relationships are a sufficient enough substitute and they're not, they're a supplement, there are beneficial, I don't, I'm not going to discard them, I'm thankful for them. I'm thankful that people can listen to you and me have this conversation right now without having to physically be in this room. But they are not a substitute for human connection and relationships. They are simply a supplement, they help you, but they don't replace unfortune, unfortunately, our culture does look at it as a replacement as something that you can just do away with. And because of that, there's this idea of I'm going to value safety and pleasure over human connection. And therefore people are not actually dealing with their problems. Because again, in a normal society, and a normal community, I actually have to work on my issues in order for me to relate to you. But in a society that's primarily online, I get to promote the self that I want to be not the self that I am. So I can airbrush myself, I could make my speech sound a little bit more eloquent a little bit more kind, I could become the me that I want to be with all that without all that nasty, actual sanctification work of the Holy Spirit, you know, I could just present myself as I want to be. And church is also enabled people to do that, because you're only seeing people in bite sized moments as opposed to ongoing relationships, where people see the good and the bad, and you 20 minutes after service is not a relationship. That's just you know, the same amount of community you have with someone that you go to the movie theater with. You're not You're not best friends with those people, you're just you've just had an experience with them. And that's great, but it's not a relationship, you got to go deeper than that. So COVID, I think is just exacerbated and brought out this problem more deeply. And here's the big problem. Because people crave community so much, they will take it however they can get it. So a pastor put it this way once and it always stuck with me. The reason why people are susceptible to poison is because we need to eat to survive. So in other words, our need to eat if we're being starved, can be exploited by someone who wants to hurt us and feed us something toxic. And our need for community is the same thing. If we're not getting it in a healthy way, someone will present a toxic alternative to us. What's the toxic alternative that's taking the world by storm right now? negativity. So normally community is associated with positivity, there are things that you and I like and enjoy together. And therefore we're forming a union we're forming a relationship based on the things that we like together based on the things that we enjoy together. Nowadays because people don't have community. What we have is instead relationships that are formed on what we oppose. We're against this. So you have the reason why the divisiveness in our country is growing so exponentially as you have no matter what side you fall on. You have people that you are associating with and growing and community with based solely on what you oppose, based solely on the fact that you think these people are out to ruin our country, whoever they may be. And the the venom and the vitriol that's growing in our our nations. It's across the West. ubiquitously, right? It's not just relegated to the United States. The reason why it's growing like that is because we feel so alone. And these people, these leaders are rallying us but again, they're not rallying us on positivity. They're rallying us on negativity on having a common enemy, as opposed to a common vision. What do we want our culture to look like as opposed to what we don't want our culture to look like? Those are two very different ideas. And once again, negativity can't actually produce something. It's so interesting to me that Satan in the Bible that the word Satan is actually a title It means adversary. So it means Satan's identity is not through what he sees the world becoming. His identity is literally the opposite of God. He just wants to oppose God. He wants to be adversarial. That's why Jesus says, The thief does not come accepted to steal, kill and destroy. If you set up your identity as an opposition, as opposed to something that's pro, you can't build anything, all you can do is tear things down. And that's why again, if you look at our culture, you can say a lot of things about it right now. But how many people have seen positive progress happen? In the past two years, in any major way, in any of the major countries, things are getting done. But there's no positive progress. There's no momentum, no goods, no goods, no services, no genuine innovation is being developed right now, in any of these western countries. There's a lot of infighting. There's a lot of vitriol. But there's no amount of positive progress because again, we're rallying against what we're against, as opposed to rallying for what we are pro what we're trying to do, and accomplish. Now, I'm not saying that's everybody, but I am saying that the middle, the median within the country is being emptied out. And people are becoming more and more divisive. And it's either you're with us or you're against us that kind of very polarized type thinking. And the church is not immune to this. So what you have in the church is you have a lot of infighting right now of some Christians, and both sides are well meaning, you know, both sides are well, meaning one side would say like, Hey, as Christians, we're supposed to promote health and well being. So maybe we should promote vaccination, and maybe we should promote masks and things like that, to help out the health and well being of our community. The other side would say, Well, no, as Christians, we need to stand for liberty and God, and we need to trust the Lord. And we need to risk things in order to love and to care for our neighbor. So in order to do that, we can't force these things upon people, we need to have liberty. And so we need to allow people to make their own mistakes. And we need to allow people to have the freedom to do that. Now, these points that I'm making are not being articulated that way, though, the way they're being articulated is if you do not support these types of mandates, it is because you are for the death of the elderly, or the destruction of our children or locked down forever you are you are for the continuation of the destruction of this disease. And on the other side, they would say if you support these things is because you don't care about liberty, you don't care about freedom, you're going to allow these different bureaucrats and different types of dictators to take away all of our freedoms, and you don't care about that, you're just wanting to do what's good for you. In other words, we're ascribing malice to the people that ultimately want the same thing, which is a better society. Now we could debate about what is actually going to produce a better society. But we can't do that if we ultimately see each other only as enemies. So the church again, not immune to this, there's a lot of infighting in the church. And because that community in the church is weak. And it's so interesting to me that when I go to church, now, most people want to talk to me about these hot button topics. They don't want to talk to me about what's going on their own life, they don't want to talk about what's happening in their own community, or what they're trying to do. It's usually just about let's just talk about politics. And let let me hear your your thoughts on this. And I got a lot of thoughts on it. But ultimately, that's not what's most important. And I shouldn't be coming to church just to complain about stuff or to tear people down. I think that these are relevant conversations, I think we can move forward. But there's a difference between again, building a relationship around these things, and having an existing relationship where you talk about these things. Those are two very different principles. And the church needs to be aware of that for sure.

Denisha Workizer  23:50

Well, it's such a good point, even in the way that you presented those two things. One was a vision, like you said, for a better society a better you know, what we're dealing with right now. And one was in opposition. And where I feel like we used to rally around our faith, like we come into a room with all different backgrounds, experiences, cultures, all the things, but then we would rally around the fact that we all love Jesus, right? And that we were there to grow closer to Him. And now it is it there is such divisiveness. And it makes me sad, you know, some of the things you see on social, you know, we're real brave behind our keyboards, but some of the things that you see on social that you just wouldn't expect from the body of Christ. And I think we've fallen into somewhat of that distraction from something that unite us to something that divided us. What would you say to just in general for the body to the body of Christ, capital C right to to consider it in these times, like going forward the next year? What would you maybe really fallen into that distraction? Maybe we fallen into that, that opposition, you know, towards our fellow brothers and sisters, what are your thoughts on that?

Peter Martin  24:55

Yeah, I think the number one thing that we can do first thing is you Get off the social media as much as you can. Because those are just toxic breeding grounds. And one of the main reasons is because you're not interacting with the person, you're interacting with your screen. And that's why you don't feel bad about saying these really ugly things about these people. So if you are going to respond to that, and say, Well, I would say to their face, too, then you're just a jerk. So you know, like, either either

Denisha Workizer  25:21

A, you're dealing Yeah,

Peter Martin  25:24

so either a you're dehumanizing the person that you're talking to, which is bad. And you would never say that to their face, which at best makes you a coward, and at worst, makes you something that wants to spread dissension within the body. Or you are the kind of individual that would say these things to to another individual without considering their feelings and without considering how these words are going to impact them or what it's going to do to your community as a whole, which, again, makes you a sower of discord. And it makes you a divisive person, a contentious person, which the Bible speaks strenuously about throughout the Proverbs, as well as certain of the epistles of Paul. So be careful about what you're trying to do. Like I said, What's your vision, cohesion of the body or tearing it down? Now, there are reasons, by the way, for the church to divide, there are good reasons and they've happened historically. And I think we need to take stances on certain things. You know, for instance, when the church had a divide about slavery, which happened, right there were there were some Christians who were abolitionist, and there were some Christians who were like, No, like slavery is totally biblical. That was a good reason for a church divide. When there was topics about more importantly, heresies, biblical controversies, issues where it was salvation, or who is God. Those are reasons to divide fellowship, this is not. And so one of the big things that I would encourage people to do, whatever views you have, find someone who has the opposing view and try to have a relationship with them, just try to have a conversation with them. And see where you can find common ground and try to work through some of these things. Because again, like you said, we used to unite about we love Jesus, but what we're doing is we're like, if you support this, you don't love Jesus, right? We literally throw out someone salvation based on the secondary issues, which is, again, it's crazy, it's crazy that we would have been thinking that way.

Denisha Workizer  27:13

Yeah. And when you talked about Satan being the adversary, you know, that's we're letting him win when we allow those things to come into the body of Christ. So yeah,

Peter Martin  27:23

and another thing that I would, I would point out, and again, this comes from this, if I look at relationships, as a liability and a risk, as opposed to a benefit, and something to be actively avoided, which again, I think is a byproduct of what's happening now. For adults, I feel like it's happening less, but we again, we really need to think about kids. So regardless of where you stand on, again, the mass and the vaccines and stuff like that, let me just point this out, when kids are developing when children are developing their social cues, they're looking to their parents. And traditionally what they used to think, as they used to think kids are reckless, and the number one thing I need to do for my kid to make sure he doesn't kill himself is to instill in him fear, good fear, I need to teach them what to be afraid of. And therefore he will be able to avoid things that are going to kill them. What they found out is that that was totally wrong. Kids are actually reckless, not because they need fear, but because they need to understand courage and the balance of discipline. So in other words, what's actually unnatural to someone is courage. Fear is very natural. So there are plenty of things that my daughter I wish she had a little bit more caution about. But when I find something she is afraid of, she will not do it. She has no capacity to overcome that fear unless I push her as a parent. That is what my job is, as a parent. It's not to instill fear in her her life will naturally do that. It is to instead instill courage, not what should you be afraid of, but what is worth fighting fear. That's what I need to teach my daughter. That's what's very important. When kids are brought up in a community in a society where all they're being told is what to fear. They become anxiety prone. Anxiety is one of the biggest problems with the next generation right now. A vast majority of them I don't know the stock the stat off top my head, but a vast majority of kids report feeling anxious all the time. Right, not just a little bit but severely anxious. anxiety medication is the number one type of medication being circulated the United States right now, and anxiety related depression and anxiety related suicide is on a huge incline in our country. And again, the church is not immune to this. The reason why is because again, we're not instilling in our our kids courage, we're instilling in them fear be afraid of these things. They don't have the mental capacity to be able to overcome things and understand this is a small fear versus a large fear. How afraid should I be of this They don't know how to do that yet, you need to teach them and simply telling them, You need to wear this, you need to do this, all you're instilling in them is over abundance of caution and anxiety, the world is a scary place, be very afraid of it. And whenever you feel fear, do something that makes you feel less afraid. So pathologies of anxiety are developed very quickly, not through actual fear, but through remedies. So in other words, when I feel afraid, if I do something that immediately diminishes my fear, that becomes a solution to me. And when it becomes a solution to me, it becomes an obsessive behavior. And once the obsessive behavior grows, my anxiety grows right along with it. So a good example is imagine somebody has a terrifying fear of burning their house down. So every day before they leave, they go to the oven, and they just double check the stove, make sure everything's off. Is that a good practice? Yeah, nothing wrong with that. But then let's say they go there, and they're still they go to the stove, and they look at it. And there's still this little fear in the back of their head, what if it's on, but it's reading, like it's off. And so they just add a little step to it, they touch all the knobs, just to be sure, right? Now, what's going to happen if you extrapolate this process, over time, over a couple of years, you're gonna have this person double check, triple check, quadruple check, having to touch it, and it becomes a compulsive behavior, and their anxiety is not going down, it's going up. And it's going up at a rapid rate. The reason why is because they're not instilling in themselves courage, or confidence. They're instilling within themselves a dependence on these different avenues of emotional, basically dampening. So they've found a way to dampen their fears utilizing these external processes, but they're not learning how to internally produce confidence and courage. And that's the great divide. Because guess what, relationships are scary. They just are. They're terrifying. Relationships are scary when you the more you let people in, the more power you give them to hurt you that, yeah, and so if you're scared, if you're teaching your kids, hey, relationships are scary, people are scary. They're going to latch on to that. And they're not going to develop the relationships necessary to get them through their life, because they're not getting confident. They're becoming more anxious. So yeah, I know, it's a lot. But I hope it makes sense.

Denisha Workizer  32:25

That's so good, though. And I think fear leads to so much at the divisiveness that we're seeing too, right? Is that fear of fear of the unknown? What if I don't do this? What if I do this? You know, how do I protect the people I love? And so I think we definitely see that great conversation. Peter, thank you so much. Thank you. And if, you know, as we wrap up today, if people wanted to grab your book, where would they find your book, which is the fellowship of suffering?

Peter Martin  32:50

Yeah. So if you want a copy of the book, you can go on Amazon. It's available there in both Kindle and hardcopy format. And if you live locally in Tucson, you could always just drop by the church and pick up a copy there. Just call ahead, make sure I'm available. But yeah, I'd be happy to give you a copy in person.

Denisha Workizer  33:06

Awesome. And that's at Calvary Christian Fellowship in Tucson. Awesome. Well, Peter, thank you so much for coming on today. You have given us a lot to think about. I really appreciate how you articulated the issues that we're dealing with today. This is real, and I thank you for being real about that. Thanks for listening. I pray you found hope in today's conversation, and maybe even feel a little less alone in your story. Stay connected with us on Facebook and Instagram at reclaimed story. Want to learn more about living a reclaimed life and how you can be a part of our growing community ever claimers? Check out our website at reclaimed story.com. All of those links and more will be in the show notes. And if you enjoy this inspirational podcast Be sure to subscribe rate and review. Not only will you be the first one to know when new content comes out, but it is also a huge help and helping us reach more people to live the reclaimed life.