I definitely know what it's like to be cloaked in shame and almost feel like you're suffocating. Shame is about what other people are thinking about you. It's external. There is such thing as healthy guilt where you realize I'm wrong and I feel terrible about it. It's going forward. I had to really find that avenue quick because shame takes you backwards. And conviction is I was wrong, and this is what I'm going to do to make amends. Carl Lentz was once one of the most popular preachers in America.

Carl Lentz is the celebrity pastor.

Whose recent downfall has triggered a wave of scandals for the church. Carl Lentz. I lied to a lot of people. I've had to stomach that and will for the rest of my life. People often ask, How did it get so bad? Before you lie to anybody else, you lie to yourself. There's a lot of people watching that have had a bad chapter, maybe even a bad book. Greatest news on Earth. At any time, you can change your story. Only you control that. Over half of marriages end due to infidelity. When I would get close to her for the first two or three months, the body would shake.

She would feel safe physically with you.

That's a horrible place to put your life. You can talk about shame. She just forgave me last year, and I asked her to pray for me. Man, I haven't talked about this. I should have saved this for my own podcast.

Hey, everyone. This is Lewis Howes, and I am so excited to invite you to the Summit of Greatness 2024 happening at the iconic Shrine Auditorium in Los Angeles, California. This is more than just an event. It's a powerful experience designed to ignite your passion, boost your growth, and connect you with a community of other inspiring achievers. Join us Friday, September 13th, and Saturday, September 14th, for two days packed with inspiration and transformation from some of the most incredible speakers on the planet. Don't miss out on this chance to elevate your life, unlock your potential, and be part of something truly special. Make sure to get your tickets right now and step into greatness with us at the Summit of Greatness 2024. Head over to luishouse. Com/tickets and get your tickets today, and I will see you there. Welcome back, everyone, to the School of Greatness. Excited about our guest, we have Carl Lentz in the house. Carl, first off, I want to say I'm glad you're alive. Thank you. Because I know that there was a season of life where you wanted to commit suicide, and we're in a place of ending it all because of the massive breakdown that happened.

You've talked about this on your own podcast that you started to talk about. A lot of secrets, scandal, a lot of pain and suffering that you experience and that others experience with your life. My first question is, first off, I'm grateful you are alive and you're here.Thank.

You, brother. Thank you.

My first question is, with the secrets, the scandal, the suffering that you've talked about, what was the biggest shame that you lived with? What is the shame that you still have today, if there is any?

I'm completely healed. It's a good thing, bro. Great question. I think the biggest shame, I think, would have been for sure, lying to my wife. It was so bad where I look back now after I've done a lot of work as you have, so you learn a lot of ways to track your own patterns and behaviors. And towards the end of our time in New York, I had a really tough time being in proximity to her. I now know it because I couldn't look her in the eye. I just hated the lies I was caught up in. I just didn't know what to do. I think the shame of that took me a really long time to get through. And as you know, with shame, it's not like it's something that goes away forever. But for me, I've learned I can be on top of it better than other times. So for me, I've moved away from the shame of a lot of it, but I remember it, and I treat it with reverence in such a way where I'm never going to Oh, it didn't happen. No, it happened. And God's been faithful, and he's been kind, and he's been gracious.

And thankfully, that shame doesn't have to have a hold on me. And there's a lot of people, as you know, that deal with shame. So now, when I When you talk to people, they're not doubting whether I get it or not. Maybe before, if someone were to sit down with a pastor, I don't know if you can relate. I definitely know what it's like to be cloaked in shame and almost feel like you're suffocating. And I don't know if you've ever heard this a differential, but someone told me shame is discouragement about what other people are thinking about you. It's external. That's one definition of it. And once you can get over that. And guilt, there is such thing as healthy guilt, where you realize I'm wrong and I feel terrible about it, and it's going forward. I had to really find that avenue quick because shame takes you backwards, and it suffocates. Conviction is I was wrong. This is what I did, and this is what I'm going to do to make amends. There's power in that. I've done that dance for years and doing my best to stay on this side of the tracks where I'm convicted to be a better man.

Sure.

That's cool, man. For those that don't know who you are, who maybe aren't in the Christian communities or in the church world, can you give a brief context of who you were then before the massive scandal and breakdown and fallout of you being a pastor in a church and what happened? Again, you don't have to go into massive details, but a brief context of what happened. And to where you are now.

If you're not familiar with the church world, we were a nondenominational church that had a global reach. Our music at Hillsong Church has been world-renowned, really It was awesome. And in many respects, Hillsong gave people a different way to do church. You're never going to walk into a Hillsong church and be like, This is boring or this is weird. It was something that made sense to the regular person. That's why I fell in love with it. And in New York, we took that to a very New York place because I had a boss, his name was Brian Houston, who gave me the right to paint our own canvas. He was like, I'm not going to tell you what to do there. I don't live in New York. You do. So take the spirit of this house in Australia and build a church. And we did that, and it was cool. I think that we made a big impact in New York, and it included the people who nobody knows and some people that everybody knows. And those people got all the press. It was never a big deal. It's a big deal with the media.

They're like, People are Christians? Yeah, they are tabloy. It happens. Our church became really high profile.

How big was the church at that time?

How big did it get? Hillsong Church all over, it would be like 100,000 people. In Sydney, probably it was like 40, 50,000 at one time. Ours, probably over 10, anywhere between 10 and beyond. But it was a big church, and it was a really incredible time. I had some issues in my life that I never addressed. And when you have a life that's smaller, you can get away with more. And not even get away with it, you don't have to address stuff. But as you know, if you're running from yourself, yourself is going to catch yourself. And you can't outrun yourself. You can't do it. I did for a long time. I was like an Olympic runner from myself. Gold medal winner from running from myself. But eventually, it doesn't work. And it was found out that I had cheated on my wife. And that led to a whole unraveling of scandals that included the Greater Hillsong Church. Other people had some lies that were wrapped up. And my part to play in that was I lied to a lot of people. I've had to stomach that in will for the rest of my life, and I'm not proud of it.

I'm grateful that I get an opportunity to live a new life that's honest. The fallout was severe. We were a high-profile church, so it was like one of the most covered church scandals ever. It was hard for my family, hard for my wife, and we have done our best just to walk through it as my wife has been brave, my kids have been brave, and I don't get any credit for my role in this. The fact that my family still is open to me is a miracle in and of itself. But that's what happened. So there were documentaries made about it. There was countless narratives out there floating around, most of which weren't true. And we had to deal with a lot of that. It was my fault. So even when it comes to lies and narrative and accusation, even as mad as I wanted to be at some of it, it's like I could never get beyond the fact that I did this. I put my family in a vulnerable place for somebody to lie about us. I remember making a dedication, I will never do this again. I will never give other people the power to control or hurt my life and my family.

That's what you do when you lie. You are giving up your agency because someone else now has the right to confront, and then you have no ground to stand on. So when you get caught lying like I did-And then people don't know what is the truth.

What else is a lie? Yeah, well, you lied about this. Maybe you lied about everything else. And it's really honest about this. It's like they can now judge and pick up everything.

Yes.

Okay, maybe you're telling the truth here, but can I trust you that you're telling the truth?

And you have no ground to stand on because you're like, That's true, but that isn't. Well, how do I know? Because if that lie is real, if you were lying as a preacher and a pastor, that goes pretty deep. So how do I know everything you're saying isn't tinged with a lie? And you learn quickly when you're in my shoes, I cannot I control that. All I can control is the real truth, the real story. And by the grace of God, if somebody else ever understands, great. I have to live a different life, and I have to convince my wife and my kids that I'm worthy of a second chance. So if anybody else ever believes me again, that would just be an awesome blessing. But I'm not living for that because those people have the right to judge however they want to judge. I can't force you to believe I'm honest. I can't do it. Honesty in truth is about investment. It's I'm going to give you equity, almost, because I don't know you, and I'm going to go trust that you're a good person. And so for me, I have given up that task early.

I used to think, how am I going to get people to trust me again? Now, my only thought is I live honest.Wow..

I live honest. Because I can only imagine when all this is unraveling, and I've listened to your podcast and talked to you about this privately, but I can only imagine the ego in wants to defend, try to repair quickly, try to get people to understand you, what you were going through, create the full context. People don't know the full truth. Okay, maybe there's some stuff I did that was really bad or that was wrong or whatever. But it doesn't mean I'm all bad. I'm sure you wanted to defend and reply and make statements. I'm sure the ego wants to protect. How did you navigate the unraveling of everyone questioning you, some of your closest friends leaving you and not speaking to you again, feeling betrayed by people, even though you betrayed people as well, how did you navigate your ego and your heart and also trust in God? Yeah.

That's such a good freaking question. I've thought a lot at you here. Let me try to trace some of that back. I think I got a piece of advice from a very dear friend who said, You can't save your ass and your life at the same time. Something got to give, and you got to make a choice. And what he meant by the other one is just reputation, image, your narrative, your story, or your life. And if you choose this, you have to choose it all. There's no Instagram post. There's no one interview. It's, I am foregoing the right to explain myself and defend myself because that doesn't matter more than my family does. I cannot do both. I was in such a dark place in my own life that if I would have spent any time trying to do that, I don't think I'd be sitting here because it took every ounce of focus and desire to be able to go confront my own demons. I couldn't do that with the pressure of trying to... It was just something we had to let go. Me and Laura stuck by my friend's quote. He said, Carl, you got to let the rain fall.

If you can let the rain fall, there's going to be some stuff that's going to grow, but you can't get in the way of the rain. Let it go. Let it rain on you.

It might take years of raining.

Man, it was years.

It might be floods.

There might be some drizzling clouds for the rest of my life. That's my consequence. Interesting. But we have become really strong and focused and united, where we're ready for storms now. We don't run from storms. In that regard, we're like Buffalo, the only animals that run directly into it. So as a family, it's like, man, we have been through so much that you don't know what we're made of. There's always going to be cruel people in your comment thread or whatever. You're a giant public figure, so you know that. You have the best podcast in the world. There's that one guy with three followers who's like, You're terrible, and it's like, That hurts. But at the same time, nobody can call me anything worse than I've called myself. So that's off the table. So it's like, You can insult me all you want. Trust me, I'm a worst critic of myself I was than you are. So go for your life. If it makes you feel better to insult me, do it. If it makes you feel better to get on and send a comment, do what you have to do. It's not going to work.

But That's part of the journey, is getting yourself to a place where you're able to stand in that storm.

Man, I've experienced an immense amount of shame throughout my life. Decades of shame. I've lied, cheated, stolen, I've been unfaithful in the past in relationships. I've done all these things that I'm ashamed of or was ashamed of before I started to repair and start moment by moment, day by day, shifting my identity and my behaviors and living in a different way. The more you stack up those moments of integrity, of high values, of honesty, of sharing the things that you're ashamed of, even when I don't want to tell this person, but I'm going to tell them anyways because I know it's my truth.

Bingo.

Hopefully, they accept me, but maybe they don't. Yeah, that's the risk. The more you do that, the more you can drop the masks like we talked about before we started recording. You can start to reveal yourself to yourself and to others, and start building and repairing with self and others who want to be in that relationship with you. But it starts with the relationship with self and the wounded self. You and I both experience sexual abuse, sexual stuff that happened to us younger. I heard you talk about this when you went to rehab and therapy, that the brain, the chemistry in the brain, really gets messed up. When someone has been sexually abused at any age, something like fractures in the brain where you think a certain way about the world, you have trust in the world, and then you no longer have that thought or trust Something that's fractured, especially at a younger age. Then there's a lot of shame about what is wrong about me.

Why am I doing this? What's wrong with me?

What's wrong with me? Why did this happen to me? That shame and that doubt can creep into anything until you address it, mend it, heal it, and repair it. For me, it took 25 years until I started that process, and I'm assuming it took about 25, 30 years for you, too.

I'm 45.

It took some time until you addressed it, started healing and working on that journey, which is a journey. Then there typically are behaviors that come up for you, it was certain addictive behaviors, for For me, it was other addictive behaviors. Everyone has their vice. We all have the vice that creates...

Some are more judgy than others. Some vices are more, are tougher to stomach than others, but their vice is nonetheless.

They are. Some are drugs, sexual stuff, porn, masturbation, whatever it might be, you lean into something that creates a sense of comfort or something that you can avoid a feeling.Yeah.And that causes more shame.Or.

To get a feeling.

Something else, some other feeling. To avoid the feeling of pain and suffering and shame. I think that's where a lot of addiction can stem from, is this shame or this feeling of, I don't want to address the wound because it is so painful. People. When we do something out of integrity, it doesn't excuse those things, the behaviors, the actions, and the pain that is caused on others when those do that. So I'm curious about how you've dealt with the suffering yourself of that insecurity or shame of like, I'm supposed to be this preacher, right? Yeah. Is the thought. I'm preaching to people. It's 10,000 people coming every week. Celebrities are coming to me, leaning on me for wisdom and spiritual counsel. Yet I know I'm living a mask in some ways. However much judgment you want to create for that, the levels of judgment. How have you been able to repair that relationship with yourself about those years where you were suffering and feeling the pain? Because I can have empathy for you. Yeah. But also the tens of thousands of people that might have been thinking, Gosh, was everything aligned? He was doing all these other things but telling us to do something else.

Could we trust or believe anything? Also, does that mean my relationship to God is not real? How have you navigated all of that? The pain that you've suffered, but also the pain that others have suffered.

Yeah. That's the top three question premises I've ever been given. Thank you. Golly. I think, okay, let me try to go from... So people often ask, how did it get so bad? How did you get there? Before you lie to anybody else, you lie to yourself. So at the end of my rope here, I had lied to myself for so long that I was lost completely. And that's the only way you can survive. Unless you're just a horrible, evil person, you are not designed to live with lies. You're not. Can't survive. But I had found a way to run from something I didn't understand. And it just was... I remember when I got to my rehab, a counselor asked me, Why did you let it go so long? And I was like, Well, I didn't want to hurt people. She goes, Oh, so you're the hero. Oh, you're the hero in story, you were hurting people the entire time. And that was the beginning of the end for me with my façade, because I realized... Because up until then, I still had excuses. And I'm glad what you said, what you said. It doesn't matter how many times we say this, people are going to hear what they want to hear.

When you give reasons for why you hurt people or made mistakes, they are not excuses. They're just ways so people don't have to do the same thing. There is no excuse for my behavior. There was no excuse. None. I was wrong. I wanted to change my life, so I had to go backwards. I've been doing this for a long time. I'll do it for the rest of my life. But I went all the way back to my sexual abuse, which I didn't start acknowledging until I was about 30. And I was praying for people at church who were sexually abused. I had flashes in my own mind, and it just freaked me out. I tried to tell my parents a little. My parents are incredible. They are my heroes. I was abused by a house guest. And as a parent, it's your worst nightmare. It's like the one time you turn your back situation.

For me, it was the babysitter that I would go to, the son, like a teenage son of a babysitter that they would send to after school, which is like a nightmare because you send it to someone that you want to trust, like a babysitter.

Yeah. I had to dealing with that because as I got older, those were more prominent. I started to realize how bad that moment was of abuse and what happened in my life. And then so as I'm going all the way back, it starts to make sense. I learned about brain chemistry. What happens when you're a little kid and you get sexually twisted. I was never faithful to a woman my entire life. I had two girlfriends in the sixth grade. Why would I do that? Even back then, I couldn't understand why would I... I always had a penchant to do something in secret and in private, even if I was perfectly happy.

With every girlfriend?

I'd have an amazing girlfriend that I was totally okay with. This is great. And then I would make a bad decision in private, and I would hate myself for it. And I don't know why I loved it. I don't know what is that that I loved. And it took some of this deep work to understand. In my brain, I associated that day, sex with hidden, private, quiet. And as a kid, maybe something felt good, even We learn that in abuse circles, that sometimes your body reacts to stuff that your brain has no idea about. So as I grew as a pastor, I ran out of places where I could feel anything because my adrenal glands We're in trouble already. We had such a big life that was an impacting life on the outside that nothing really impacted me anymore. I would always feel the weight of it, but it's not like speaking in front of crowds would be awesome. It's like what you live for. It was just part of my job. I used to find these escape valves that were hidden sin, and they would get worse and worse and worse. Then it gets so bad, you don't know what to do, and then you just start living with it.

You're like, Well, if I... I mean, it's so far gone now. Louis, what am I going to do? If I'm honest about this, it's all everybody that's tied to me. Every job, every employee, every parishioner, everybody now is in this because of me. So what am I going to do now? And that self-loathing was a horrible suicidal place to be. Really? Yeah.

Did you ever feel suicidal as a preacher before this started to unravel, or was it more one Once everyone hears about what I've done or my behaviors or my actions, or even the lies that they're making up as well?

It is.

Now I'm suicidal.

Yeah, I never had a suicidal thought, before that chapter. Really? And they were big.

Afterwards, they were big. How close were you to wanting to end it?

There's obviously suicidal ideation is the beginning of some of that picture, and that was constant. It got probably to a place where I had envisioned, this is what I'm going to do. Really? If I do this, this is what I'm going to do. We're on the doorstep. I am grateful to God that in that moment, I just realized, I've been so selfish. The ultimate selfish top card would be to now bail on my family and my children. So not only was your dad, he lied and he embarrassed you, and then he left, and I thought, I don't know if I'm ready to do that because I don't find any worth in myself, but I don't want those.

Gosh.

I I want these babies to have a dad on top of this that left the Earth because he couldn't handle his own music that he pressed play on. And so I can only give that credit to God because I don't have that strength. I don't have that confidence or wherewithal to go, I'm going to try to own some of this. And so I'm so grateful that that didn't take place. I'm grateful that I found a way out. And I don't look at what happened me as I got caught and God was mad at me. I look at what happened as God loves me so much that he allowed some of this to happen so I could somehow salvage the rest of this beautiful life we have in front of us. There's an old scripture that everybody knows, even if you're not a Christian. It's Psalm 23, the Lord is my shepherd. There's a part in there where it says, He makes me lie down in green pastures, and he restores my soul. Makes me. In the image is a shepherd pushing sheep down who wouldn't lay down.

Forces.

Forces. I see that now. I wanted the restores my soul without the force to lay down. God is too good for that. I sit there and I go, I wasn't going to sit down. I had been running forever. And that situation was my, he makes you lie down in green pastures. He restores your soul. He restores your soul. You can't have the restoration without the lying down. I'm going to try to help as many people as I can avoid that in that way. Everyone is going to have a makes you lie down moment, everybody. But there's a different way to go about it than lies, scandals, heartache, pain. But that's been my story. Psalm 23 is where I stay right now, spiritually. I read it a lot. I think about it a lot. I meditate on it a lot. Because it resonates with me in a different way. The very first thing, the Lord is my shepherd. Well, it means I'm not alone right away. I have a shepherd. I have a boss. I have a protector. I have a redeemer. I have someone who cares about me. So I'm not alone. The Lord is my shepherd.

One verse of this beautiful song is enough for me to think about every day and go, All right, I'm not alone here. I'm cared for. I'm counted. I'm known. I'm seen. And that's a hard place to be. It's a hard revelation to have when you haven't wanted people to see who you are.

You've been hiding these parts of yourself. I lived for a long time not wanting to reveal all the shameful parts of me. Like you said, it just keeps building. You keep hiding it until you get found out. Something gets found out. Something gets revealed, or you go through a very sick time. The universe creates a near-death experience, a physical breakdown, a spiritual breakdown, a relational breakdown, something if you're not that path. It causes you to wake up however you want to interpret it.

It's like, and this was your wake up. What are you going to do when you wake up?

Are you going to wake up or are you not?

What are you going to do with it?

How much more pain do you want to experience? How have you navigated It sounds like that's how you've been able to navigate your suffering and your pain and your journey, but how have you navigated-Suffering of the people. How have you navigated the suffering of the people that looked up to you or they looked up to church culture, pastors that they put their faith in? And also, how have you responded to people, either privately, publicly, those that you were close with, those that maybe felt you violated trust with them in certain ways, privately or publicly, that you never met? How have you navigated that?

Very hard. Very great question. I think you have to come to terms and make peace with the fact that in this twelve-step plan, when you make amends, it has to be where it's appropriate and safe for the other person. And there are, for me, and then if you're a public figure, which is a terrible term, if you have a life that's in public, the desire to make amends, personally, is not realistic. So you have to find a way to make peace with that. And the way I've done that is I've decided to try to use the rest of my life to make a living amends in that we could go off into hiding. And people have asked, why would you guys do this? And I'm like, good question.

You can go move to another country.

It's the lazy answer. It's lazy. I think for me, it was a selfish choice for me to live a life in public fall. And then the thought of now just keeping this to myself, this healing, the I don't know if you have experienced this, but I have access to help that not a lot of people have, and it's not fair. I remember going to rehab going, How much is this? Oh, it's no wonder. No, but who could afford this? I had people send me there.

Hate me to go. And you go for a month. Who has the time to go for that long?

Who can do that? I feel like part of my living amends is to let people know about what's helping me. I'm not an expert. I'm not a guru, but I am somebody you can probably relate to. Unfortunately, Laura and I are now like, Well, for the 98% of marriages out there that are broken and rough, we're with you. Let's talk. We can't help you. If you're in that 2% where everything is great-If you're perfect, yeah. We're not for you, but we got to use what hand I dealt us. That means right now to make living amends. In my estimation, I'm allowed to narrate that as I want. That's what I'm going to do every single day. If there's a reception for it, cool. If people want it, great. If they don't, I get that, too. But I'm going to try. Then if that doesn't work, I'll try something else. Personally, when I see someone, it's a joy. It's an honor to be able to look someone in their eye and say, I'm so sorry as your leader for misleading you, for lying to you, for breaking your trust, for mishandling your beautiful investment of trust that you gave me.

My prayer is that, and I know God is so good, he's not going to let this be something that stops you from a relationship with him. I know I did that well as a preacher. I never pointed to myself, ever. So one of the few things I did right was be able to teach people that the grace of God goes through somebody. So when you see somebody preaching, don't get caught up in the preacher. They are just as fallible as you. You might not know it, but they have their own issues. I am an example of God using a broken thing to help produce beautiful things in people's lives. And God can do the same thing for you. So I have heard from people that have been disappointed and hurt, and they say, But you taught us right. You taught us to look over the human because you're just a preacher, just a communicator. It's a pastor. You're not a deity. And then there's some people that are probably still mad, will be mad forever. I get that, too. My heart goes out to them. I pray for them. And when I'm able, I make amends.

But that's the life that I have to choose to live, and I have embraced it.

Wow. You've seen people face to face that-I have. What was that like when they look at you maybe with a little judgment or frustration?

Never one bad experience. Really? Not one. Normally, it's tears on both sides right away. Really? Yeah.

That's beautiful. Have someone come up to you and just been like, I can't believe I trusted you, and I was in your church for this many years. Like I said, I don't care what you say to me. I'm never going to forgive you. Have Have you had an experience like that?

I've read experiences like that. But never when I see people in airports or on the street. Normally, it's unbelievably encouraging to me, and I feel overwhelmed that God is that kind, where someone who has the right to say whatever they want to say, chooses that route of, yeah, disappointed, hurt. But sometimes people will say, You gave grace to me, and you prayed for me.

When I was going through my stuff. Yeah. Interesting.

Yeah. That's not owed, but my gosh, it's appreciated.

Yeah, of course. I mean, this brings up the concept of there are a percentage of people in the world in all types of churches who have experienced pain from their priest, preacher, church leader, or someone in the church. You hear a lot of cases about sexual trauma, psychological trauma, just different types of abuses that people hear about. It's probably not... It's there, but it's loud. It's not every preacher is doing this. It's not every church is doing this. But there are people who have horrible experiences that are just like, lose faith and trust in religion, priests, preachers, church leaders, because of what they've experienced. My question is, I'm friends with a lot of spiritual leaders in different religions, preachers in the Christian faith, but also in Buddhist leaders, friends with a lot of people that I believe are doing their best to bring spirituality to the world. I also know that human beings are flawed. You know what I mean? Yeah. Human beings are flawed. I grew up in a very, I would consider, humble religion, a Christian religion called Christian science. I don't know if I mentioned this to you before. A little bit, you've mentioned a little bit.

You've mentioned a little bit, yeah.

The thing, there's judgmental people in every religion. I found people that were judgmental in this religion growing up as well.

How would you sum up the baseline of Christian science?

Christian science, for me, is founded by a woman in the late 1800s who learned to heal herself by reading the Bible. She was experiencing a lot of a physical pain, and she wrote another book called Science and Health, which is the key to the scriptures. It's the spiritual and scientific interpretation of the Bible, which can be confusing for a lot of people. What does this What does it mean? And what is the scientific spiritual interpretation of this? But growing up in this religion, it was all about we are spiritual human beings. There is no matter. There is no physical human. Now, We live in a world of physicality, but it is our duty to rise above it and be spiritual. Be mind with a capital M, conscious with a capital C, love with a capital L. How can we stay in that space of spirituality as frequently as possible? Now, as a child growing up and having sexual desires and be like, Well, I'm injured. What do you mean? I'm not a physical being. But it was all about, okay, if you feel an ailment, if you feel sick, how can you heal it with your mind, with prayer, and with knowing the truth that we are spiritual beings, and therefore, you cannot be harmed in the Kingdom of God, right?

So there's a lot of beautiful lessons, but the thing that I wanted to to speak about in this religion is that there's no preachers, there's no priests, there's no leader of a church who could feel like they have a lot of power in this church. Yeah. And in In some ways, it's boring to go to church because there's no fancy music, there's no lights, there's no charismatic leader on stage, storytelling. You go, and there are two people who are appointed to read the exact lesson of that week from the Bible and the science and health. They read what is the words here. They are appointed by the community of the church for, I think, one or two years, and then two other people read.

Interesting.

They read and they don't say anything else. It's not about them at all. In a sense, I appreciate that it was never about a leader having any power with their community. It was the community appointing people and then reappointing new people every year or two. It was always changing. You followed the script of what the Bible lesson was that week. But in some ways, it's boring.

It's a give and take.

It's like, okay, you sit there and you have to really be present. You have to really be like, this is a silent, almost meditation, prayer, and I'm listening, and It's peaceful. We sing hymns, but they're old. It's not like these cool fancy like, Oh, we're like hip hop. This is not like, Oh, we're like dancing and feeling the Holy spirit up in here. But there's also almost a protective sense to it that it's safe.

Okay.

What is your thoughts on preacher culture, people having massive personal brands and almost having this authority to Fantastic question. Charismatically, because they're great communicators, they're great storytellers, they might be great spiritual human beings, too. But really captivate and move audiences in, and bring people in, and make sure that... How are people protected from that power, that energy, that force, the community that is also into that energy? I'm not saying it's bad or wrong.

No, no, no.

But to also be aware of... The pitfalls of it. This is a human being. They are not God. They're preaching a word that hopefully is inspired through them. And to not let the message and the messenger get too mixed up.

Get mixed up.

I don't know if this is making sense.

I'm trying to-It is. It's freaking making a lot of sense. Your layered questions are unbelievable. I've seen it from my phone, but to actually sit here and have to field that question, it's like, Lord Jesus. It has to be said that I think it's 100 to one faithful pastors and priests to the ones who end up on the front page for living lives, me. A hundred to one, if not a thousand to one. That's what's hard about situations like mine, because that's going to get the press. The guy that's faithfully serving his church, loves his wife, takes care of his kids, preaches faithfully about Jesus, that no one wants to talk to that guy. But it's awesome to have a moment like this to be able to tell everybody, You know what? Most of the pastors and the preachers that you're going to be around, they're awesome people. They're incredible. The trade-off of a super charismatic gift is that it's going to go bad. It's going to always go bad. Not every time. But as long as that's in the picture, there's no answer for this because humans are going to human, like we say.

There's no such thing as a perfect church, because if there were, nobody could go. So there's always going to be preachers that fall. But I feel like that's life. I don't want to trade somebody's beautiful gift because of the fear of. To me, that's a robbery. And I'd rather take my chances that God's going to be so faithful where stories like mine will set preachers up behind us, safer, better, and he can use a disaster like I went through to be able to... Maybe we can see in the future, less preachers end up on the front page for the wrong reasons because of the lessons that are passed out. I get the criticism of it, the personality-driven churches. I'm always like, there's a funny wordplay. People are like, you're not supposed to entertain. You guys are entertainers. Well, do you know what the word entertain means? To captivate for a long period of time. That's true. If that is true, you know who the greatest entertainer of all time was? Jesus. So captivating that people would follow him through deserts, that they would risk their lives to get up in a tree just to get a glimpse of him.

So I always push back on the church is too entertaining. To who? First of all, get out more. People used to come to our church and be like, Oh, it's like a rock show. A rock show? Have you been to Madison Square Garden? Have you seen You Two in the bubble? If this is a rock show, you need to expand your world. So to your point, I think I have hope for a brighter day. I think mistakes like I made, sin like I had, hidden. I can go back to when I could have helped myself. And I was about... I didn't know. I didn't know what I needed to execute. I didn't know. And I don't know why that's my path, Louis. I really don't. I often I have that conversation with God on some dark days. You couldn't have shook me awake and forced me to go tell somebody, Hey, I got sexual issues. I got habits. I got inclinations. I got desires. I don't know what to do with them. Up until now, I just pushed them down and run, but they don't go anywhere. If someone could have sat across from me and said, Let's talk.

Let's talk about sexual abuse. Let's talk about pornography's effect. Let's talk about what it means to have multiple sexual partners. Let's talk about what it does to your brain. Let's talk about how... Just because you a Christian, that stuff is not going to vanish, which is sometimes what we... If I just will follow God hard enough, this stuff is going to dissipate. That's some people's story. I've never known it. I've never met one person that has a story where just because you made a choice to serve God in a different capacity, all of a sudden, every single thing you've ever done loses its power. It loses its eternal power. You're forgiven. But the consequences of sin, they don't just evaporate. I feel like we have an opportunity. That's why I'm doing this. I would love to continue to do what I was doing for the first two years, which is nothing. Taking care of myself, taking care of my kids, taking care of my wife. And everybody else can sort it out. God bless you. I'm going to make money and I'm going to do something that is better for us. That would be the option I would choose.

But this life isn't about us. So you're going to hear me talking about my humiliating moments for the rest of my life because that's the only way I can redeem it. And I'm okay with that. I've come to peace with it. So yeah, that's the guy who... Yeah, I'm that guy. I'm definitely that guy. But tell the rest of the story. I am the guy that had a great church. I am the guy that was known for this, and then it became known for this, but I feel like I'm known for this now. So please tell the whole story. And I like that seat because there's a lot of people watching that have had a bad chapter, maybe even a bad book. Greatest news on Earth. At any time, you can change your story. You can change your chapter. You can change your narrative. Only you control that. As much as we want to believe it's somebody else, no, it's not true. God can forgive you. He can pick you up. You can write a new chapter. And there's a lot of us on that road with some scars and some ugly stories. But my gosh, we got smiles again.

It's possible to smile again. I didn't think that was going to be possible, but I don't think I've ever been more comfortable in my own skin than I sit here with you, post-scandal, with everybody knowing the worst of you, I'm okay.

Why do you feel good? Or okay, you're not good. Why do you feel okay about you, post-scandal, post all these things that have happened? And everyone knowing or thinking and assuming all sorts of stuff.

I'm honest. My wife knows me. My kids know me. My friends know me. I've got nothing to hide. I've got nothing to prove. That's a dangerous place to be in the best way. I look at myself as a positively dangerous human being because I got nothing to hide over here. And I did pretty well hiding. I was functioning on 40% health, and we had a huge impact. So if I can just get to 45%, heaven forbid, 80, 90, maybe we can really make a difference in this world. But I'm comfortable. I'm at peace. I'm okay with people thinking what they want to think. I was never okay with that before.

You weren't okay with people what? No.

I had a deep desire to be understood, and it robbed me of a lot of joy. I wouldn't do something because I didn't want someone to perceive it a way. I wouldn't do this. I wouldn't do that. I would worry about this. I'd lose sleep over that. I look back at it now, it's like all those people I was trying to appease, they're terrible. Then, they're not going to be here now. Why would I ever live like that? So it's been a fun journey of just being comfortable, waking up like, there's nothing over my shoulder coming. I didn't really enjoy a lot, Louis, before, because no matter how big the wind was, I got something back here that could come back to bite me. So everybody else could be celebrating a win. We took some ground, did something great. But in my heart, it was never like a full celebration because I felt I'm a liar.

Because from my understanding, you were probably the most famous preacher, pastor that there was at the time. For a number of years, you were building a movement. You had a lot of press and awareness because they were celebrity, the celebrities that were involved in your church that you were working with. So there was a massive audience staring at you all the time. From my understanding, you're one of the biggest... Yes. In the Christian world, you were one of the biggest leaders for a number of years, but you weren't able to appreciate or enjoy it because you knew you were living this lie. Yeah.

I rationalized it and compartmentalized it. Everybody, to a degree, you're going to have some things that people aren't going to know about. It's not even their right to. Yeah, they don't need to.

That's not what I'm talking about.

You don't need to say everything about your life. I'm not saying every preacher in the has to be like, Hey, that's not what we're talking about. That's not real vulnerability necessarily. But yes, the stuff that I hid and buried, I said to somebody, I thought I was burying lies. I was really digging my own grave. Every day you live with a lie and you think you got away with it, you didn't get away with anything. Nobody ever gets away with a lie. Even if nobody finds out, you robbed yourself your whole life. That's true. The moment you live with a lie, your heart is being taken up. Space is being taken up with a lie that was meant for love.

Oh, man.

If you start piling up those lies like I did, there's no space for anything else. My arms were filled. I can't have any joy. I can't have any presence. I can't have any peace because I got to carry all these. You let those things go. All of a sudden, why do you feel so free? Why do you feel so light? Because I got room. I got space. Right. You make the decision when you lie to take up space in your soul for something that was supposed be healthy and beautiful and lovely and kind and explosively joyful, you choose the lie. And I have empathy for people that are doing that because I did it for so freaking long. All the way. Because I never told anybody about that abuse. No way. I was buried. Never told anybody about my private life in high school. No way. My parents found out I had sex when I was 14, and I began lying immediately. I remember the day I lied about it, and that was the beginning of this cycle that landed on some big news cycles decades later. So there is joy and freedom, though, in discovery.

There is. And it's one thing to get caught and be upset that you got caught and change some of your behavior so you can just keep on living. Someone was like, Would you have stopped if you didn't get caught? I'm like, Thank God I'll never have to know that dumb hypothetical. I don't know. And God's so gracious, I haven't had find out I did get caught, and I didn't turn myself in. I got turned in. I didn't valiantly come to somebody and say, Here's what I'm doing. That's not my story. My story is embarrassing. It's humiliating. And it still led to me having a discovery about who I really am, and I got to stay in on that.

Wow, man. Yeah. It's almost like you could continue to have all this outwardly success but suffer inside for decades and never really be able to enjoy your life and your marriage and your kids because you know I'm living a lie or I'm a liar or I am a lie. Even though everyone's praising me, I know something is off and I haven't addressed it with me or the people closest to me. So you're going to suffer. Unless you're a sociopath and have no emotion, you're going to suffer. You're going to suffer. And you're probably to create cancer, disease, some type of pain that will manifest.

Have you heard Somebody say, If you don't heal what hurt you and cut you, you will bleed on those who didn't hurt you or cut you. I resonated with that when I heard that. I was like, Oh, my gosh, because I didn't. And the effect isn't even the people... I never got back at the guy who abused me. Never wanted to, by the way. I mean, I made peace with that, wrote him a letter in rehab, and that never went anywhere. But I was done. To do what he did to me, he must have had I don't even know what happened to somebody like that. But I feel like that is such a huge part of recovery is getting to that place where it's like, I'm hurting the wrong people. My kids are suffering. They suffered during that scandal because I didn't heal. I will never do that again. I'm going to be in the middle of the road for anybody else who might have some questions. Hey, I got some stuff. Cool, man. I'm your guy. I can just show you what happened. You messed up? I'm here for you. I got you. I'm not ashamed of you.

I'm not embarrassed about you at all.

It's like you have an opportunity. I don't know if you watch that movie, Catch Me If You Can. Yes. It's like the guy who-Brother Leo, yeah.wrote all the bad checks and stole money or whatever from everyone, and then went to prison, but then, I guess, got out. His life became about helping the government catch people and create better systems and like, Okay, now I need to serve and pay my debt almost and just be of service.

It's called the grace reversal. The very thing that was killing you and you were using to kill becomes the very thing that gives you life and you help others find life through it. Only the grace of God can do that. Really? Yeah, we can't. I can't do that. Nobody else can make that happen. But if you have lied as a public figure, and somehow God gives you an opportunity to tell the truth again. That's a beautiful thing. It's like someone who commits a crime, and then they go into prison, and the whole prison gets help because they're there. Whatever it is, whatever your situation is, if you're willing to put your hand up and say, I can't do this on my own, my invitation is that God can help you turn that thing around. You're in control of that. That's comforting.

I listened to the podcast that you and your wife, Laura, have done. There's three episodes out right now at the time of recording this that are extremely powerful. You're going to more detail about specific events, what happened, what didn't happen. We don't have to go into all of that because people can go listen to that and hear more and make their own judgments and listen whatever might be there. But Laura has been one of the people that you've bled on from all this, from the pain, the sadness, the suffering, the lies. Man, meeting her last year and to hear how she has responded and how she has taken her power back and started to go to healing using her voice, creating boundaries, creating a powerful relationship with herself first so that she can see if she wanted to stay with you. It's fascinating to hear her talk about this. Even her say, I told myself growing up, If someone ever did this to me, there's no way I would stay. I'm out. I would leave. If they ever cheated, if they ever lied, I would never be with this. I would never put up with this.

And then she says, and then you're in the middle of it, and you have to think about things differently. It is amazing to hear her journey of also being shamed on by lots of women, messaging her, telling her, You're an idiot for staying in this relationship. Once a cheater, always a cheater. He's going to do this again. I can't believe you're not leaving and standing up for yourself. All these different things that women have said to her, right?

Yeah.

But to her to make a choice to stay with you, why did she choose to stay with you? And how is your marriage different now? 2.0 version. Yeah.

My She's a hero to me, to my kids. She's unbelievable. You've met her. She's explosively Australian. Our love is really deep. I think that that can get lost sometimes when you read about people you don't know and you see stories. It's like, no, we're regular people just like you. We've been in love for a very long time.

How long have you been married now?

21 years. 21 years, yeah. Yeah. It's been a long time. We dated for a couple of years before that. So most of my adult life has been eye to eye with this woman, and I think she's going to continue to speak for herself. I think what I love about watching her do that is she did take the harder road, but it wasn't what people think. It wasn't like, I forgive you. She just forgave me last year. Last year. Three years in. It was the first time, and I asked her to pray for me. Man, I haven't talked about this. I should have saved this for my own podcast, Louis. No. I said, Will you pray for me? And she said, I can't.

I can't.

I said, Why? She was like, Because I haven't forgiven you yet. And she sobbed. This is in church. It's a quiet moment in church. And then she said, I'm going to choose to forgive you. I forgive you. And it was such a pivotal thing because I never expected her or had a condition that she forgives me, ever. It was just, I'm just happy to be here, happy to be here, happy to be here. And if it ever comes back around, cool. But I don't expect that. So she had really clear conditions. She had a support system of people. She had a bank account set up. She had a divorce lawyer ready. We were going to separate, but it was the logistics of that time were just a nightmare. Had it been more normal, she probably would have left. But yeah, she gave me an opportunity to back up the words that I say, because when you're in the situation, words are words.

I'm not going to do this again. Yeah, I don't believe you.

Who's not going to say that? And so we had very, very clear boundaries. Really? And my job is to... I get my orders every day. That's what I feel like. I feel like I'm an employee. Like, Hey, what do you need for me today? Let's go. Let me look at this. Okay. And I've learned to relate to that in such a beautiful way because it's a joy. I don't get defensive. If she's like, Hey, I was triggered yesterday. Why? Because I don't know why. Maybe early on it was like, I can't do any more than I'm doing. And then you mature and you grow through that.

You would do that? Absolutely. I'm trying to do everything. I'm telling you where I'm at.

I'm frustrated sometimes. I'm like, What more do you want? I was normally good, but there were moments where it would be like, What more do you want?

You're like, I'm checking in every hour with you. You have access to every password. You have bank accounts, this, that. You know everything I'm doing at every moment.

Everything I'm doing.

You know where I'm at. You've got a GPS on me.

I've got an ankle bracelet. I've got a monitor. I've got a heartbeat checker. You know how many steps I've taken to it. I think then you have to get to a place as a man, the one who broke the trust, where you realize, Hey, guess what? This isn't ever going to be about me. Ever. And you do what you need to do. So now it's, Hey, I feel triggered. I don't need a reason. My response is, What can I do? What can I do? It doesn't have to make sense. It really doesn't, because what I did, sure, didn't make sense.

Right, right, right.

Why am I looking for answers for you? And we've gotten to a really cool rhythm, beautiful rhythm. And there's always going to be moments where she's going to question me. That's my consequence. I'm up for it. I'm not running from that. I'm just going to try to give as much evidence as I can that I'm worthy of the opportunity she's given me. And I don't have another shot. It's not like there's...

You can slip a little bit and be...

And rightfully so. There's not like a... And having said that, she's been gracious in my recovery because I haven't done it all right. I have fallen on my face since During your recovery?

Yes. In what ways?

I had a relapse early on, and it hit me by surprise in such a way where I was able to tell her, This is what happened. I feel like I feel like I know the pattern that I didn't see coming, and she agreed. So it was a pretty specific situation. But all that to say, it's not like I've had to live on this perfect tight rope. She's not like that. And I could sit here all day and talk about Laura, but she's the light of my life, and I'm grateful that God gave me a chance to redeem some of this. We ended our first marriage. We're on our marriage number two, and it's a beautiful one.

The first marriage has to die.Oh.

My gosh. It has to. Have you ever seen somebody try to make an old beat-up car? They put rims on it and you're like, Bro, why didn't you just save that extra five grand and go towards just a better vehicle? Now you've got that old car with some shiny rims. I think sometimes trying to repair brokenness can be like that where it's like, You know what? Let's just give this chapter to God. It's over. Marriage number two.

When did that start? Was there a ritual you guys had? Was there a moment where you said, This marriage is no longer ours? I'm not in this marriage anymore. If we're going to do this, we need to create a new marriage, new vows. I don't know. What was the process or ritual like?

I heard a woman named Esther Pirel.

Yeah, I've had her on many times.

Have you? She's great. You got to throw it out like A hero of mine, she's your friend. Got it. No, she has a lot to say. I heard her talk about that concept at work in her podcast.

She's got a podcast that talks about how to repair relationships that have gone through infidelity.

Yes, she is a beast in the most respectful way that you use that word. I came back, I told Laura, This is what I heard. Let's do that. That's a shake on it. It's been real. First marriage. Really? Marriage number two. Boom. It was like for both of us, just fresh air because that marriage is done. It's the second marriage. We both get to know each other again. It's beautiful. You're on the precipice of one of the best things in life, which is marrying the woman you love. And you don't know who you are when you get married. You have advantages because you're a little bit more accomplished in life. But when you're 20 something years old and you're sitting there taking marriage vows, you're a baby star. Oh, my gosh. You're not the same person the next day. You I don't know who you're committing to. I look back at Laura staring in my eyes. Early 20s going, I give you my life. I trust you. We didn't know who we were. So now at 45, we're both 45. We feel better than we've ever felt, more honest than we've ever been, more authentic.

We have more fun, we have better intimacy, we have a better rapport. I'm able to be who I always envisioned I could be for her. Really? Yeah, because there was this big blockage called the Lies and the fake me that was between my wife and I, and that's not there. So she's able to see more of me, and I'm able to see all of her, and I'm just overjoyed with it. If we can do it, I think there's a lot of people that can have hope that they can do it, too.

And it doesn't mean if someone has betrayed you or lied to you or cheated on you or whatever it might be, that you need to stay with them.

If Laura was here, she'd say eight out of 10 should go. Eight out of 10. So this isn't like a condemnation of people that left, leave marriages when they're dangerous and they're in trouble. Or Laura would say that it's the man's responsibility to do the work. If he does the work and he shows up for it, then you have reason to maybe consider. But this blanket, I'm going to stay married because that's God's will, number one, wrong. That's not right, firstly. Secondly, you have the right to protect yourself. You have the right to walk away biblically, especially if somebody has broken their vows and you feel threatened in any way.

That's right a lot. Because there's so many people that say, once you get married, that you're set for life. That's what the church or the religion has either told them or influenced them. How can someone who is a religious person or who believes in marriage to one person forever, thinking and believing that's God's will, way, desires, or the church's desires, and if I get divorced or separate, then God won't love me, the church will disown me, people will judge me. How does someone navigate that?

Well, right away, if someone thinks that, there's a fundamental flaw in their prism about who God is, because in their mind, their salvation still has something to do with their performance. In their mind, they're thinking, I did stuff so God would love me, and if I don't do those things, God won't love me. They haven't necessarily been shown what the grace of God is, which is mercy and favor and love that you don't deserve, but you get it anyway. You don't deserve this. God gave it to us. So I didn't earn it, therefore I can't lose that. So that's the first thing people understand. God's not going to... He's not a conditional parole officer where it's like, Louis, you were great in February. My gosh, gold star, my guy. Now, March, you're on the fence. We don't know who you are. I don't know. We're going to see, how many times can you go to church this month? And then me and the angels will have a look at helping you out. A lot of people, that's actually their framework, and it's very sad and it's painful to watch. When things go wrong, it's not God's plan that was the problem.

It's humanity. So it's not like the institution of marriage that God set up is wrong. I don't know about that. Why? Because someone broke the pattern and broke the plan. So I think removing that, and Laura would have something to say on that because she did struggle with her relationship with God for a little bit. Really? Because she did everything right. She was faithful. She was resolute, disciplined, faithful, and did all the right things. She was put in this horrible position. It's fair to go, Is any of this real? I mean, it's easier for me because I made all these mistakes, so it's easier for me to come to grips with it. But for her to do nothing wrong, nothing, and have to carry the weight of that, that was a big thing. She got through it, and she's in a beautiful place with that, but it was definitely a challenge.

And not to get too personal here, but you mentioned intimacy being great between you guys. How does a woman who has been affected, and maybe only Laura can speak to this, but what she's told you-I can relay.what she said on the podcast that you guys have talked about, what has she shared on how she's been able to allow herself in intimate sexual moments with to feel safe again. How has she been able... What has she shared so far?

It's a lot of work. I think that it's been a-Because she said to go through her own healing journey on her own.

That's what she talks about in your guys' podcast.

Yeah, she does. I think hers was... She's a fighter, though. There's two ways to handle triggers, run away from them or freaking go at them. She's that type of person. We just left New York, and some people are like, Did New York trigger you? She's like, I'm not going to let my husband's old bad decisions rob me of the greatest city in the world.Wow, that's interesting.But that's her framework. That's interesting. She thought about that with the bedroom. She thought about that with holding hands. It's like, she could let this trigger her the rest of her life because that represents my husband's infidelity, sexual, emotional, physical, or I can go confront that thing. And she chose that. And there were some really hard moments. I've shared when I would get close to her for the first two or three months, her body would shake and she wouldn't know. That's hard to deal with.

She would feel safe physically with you.

Her brain is here. She's trying to talk to me, but her body is shaking. And that's a very, very, very horrible place to put your wife. And that's, you're talking about shame.

Yeah, it doesn't feel good.

No, those are the tough ones. Those are the hardest moments. Nothing to do with public thinking, anything like that. No one sees that. Hails in comparison to trying to hold your wife's hand, and she's heard her body petrified of you. And that was part of my journey, my consequence. So, yeah, it has intimacy, we found out, is much, obviously, deeper than sex. Sex can be sometimes a part of intimacy, but we're intimate with our conversation and our proximity and are outside of just sex. It's much deeper for us.

You can look each other in the eyes with consideration, care, thoughtfulness.

I could be across a room, she's across the room, and I know that somebody in that room sees me. That's cool. It's a good feeling. Running on. Yeah.

What would you say the three biggest lessons your wife has taught you in the last four years after all of this scandals have come out?

The three biggest that she's taught me, either through her words or through Or behavior? It's beautiful. I think she's taught me to be kind to myself. And coming from the person who I harm the most, that's an interesting messenger. She's taught me to be kind to myself. She's taught me to be present and enjoy the blessing. Because I go from being sad and sorry to I always got to do something. The guilt that I fight daily is a part of my process because it doesn't matter how good it is. It could be like we lost everything. So I I always felt like I was on this climb to, I know this is good, but I got to do more. I got to do more. I'm so sorry. We're in this spot. I'm so sorry. Even with my kids, I had to work through some of that guilt because anything they do wrong, I'd be like, it's probably because I did all that. It's not even on them. I had to really stepped through that. So she taught me how to be present, and she taught me to love again. Wow. That's what my wife has shown me.

That's amazing.

Be kind to myself, enjoy the blessing, and love again.

It's interesting. A few relationships ago that I was in, it didn't end well. No need to go into it all, but I was out of integrity in some of the things, and we were off and on, and it just didn't end well. She wanted to go public with all of her thoughts and feelings about it on social media. During that time, I felt like, what do I do? I was like a mini, very mini moment compared to what you had. It was like, People are thinking things. They don't know the whole story. All these things, right? I remember feeling a lot of sadness For people that I'd known for years that wouldn't even just reach out and be like, Hey, what is going on? Can I hear from you what's going on? I know that pain. Even if you did something out of integrity in the relationship, can I at least hear from you and just get context or whatever it might be? Yeah. Then it happened. So it was hurtful, right? We talked about this before we started recording how when this happened for you, some of your closest friends just disowned you and just said, I don't want to have anything to do with you.

And obviously, that's their own feelings. And I remember feeling like, shoot, I don't know who's on my side, who trusts me, who doesn't trust me. What's going on here? This is happening. And it just felt like, what do we do? Now, it wasn't to the extent that you had, but it was a mini feeling I was interviewing a guy at the time. I kept interviewing, which I don't know how I did it because I was all over the place. A guy named Robin Sharma, I told him, This is what's happening, this is what happened, and this is what I'm dealing with. He's probably in his 60s, maybe later 60s, I think. And he goes, Yeah, I've had a few of these things in my life. And he sold, I don't know, 10, 20 million copies of his books, and he's very successful and accomplished. He just said, I've had these things in life where you go through breakdowns, where you go through breakups, and then there's like, sadness, and there's this, and there's hurt, and I've hurt people, and they've hurt me, and it's like, and you don't know who your friends are in these different seasons of life.

And as a public figure, you're going to have more of that. In terms of it's going to feel bigger. And he said, A bad day for the ego is a great day for the soul. And for whatever reason that stuck with me in that moment.

I love that.

And something unlocked inside of me because I remember I was thinking about all the challenges that I faced, the pain and the suffering that I faced growing up. Things that happened to me, things that I did wrong that caused me to learn lessons as well as a kid growing up. Breakups, breakdowns, injuries, all these things that were bad, bad for my ego or myself. And for whatever reason in that moment, I was like, Oh, every bad thing that's happened has turned me into who I am now and has gotten me this place. And so this bad situation is going to unlock a different level of, hopefully, lessons, blessings, abundance, peace.

So good, bro.

Healing, forgiveness, all these different things. If I choose to dive in and own it all and do the healing journey, it will unlock. Yes. And I remember thinking like, Yeah, there's nothing I would change in the past from injuries and this and breakups and pain. Because the lesson And people say, Hindsight is 2020. And so in that moment, I was like, I'm stepping into future hindsight. I'm stepping into two years in the future, 10 years in the future, 20 years in the future. I'm going to look back at this like I looked back 10 years ago from being injured and how I thought my life was over from a dream, but it actually set me down a new course that can impact more lives, that can impact me and people around me better. And I go, this is only going to benefit me if I I choose to believe it and do whatever I need to learn in this process. If you could go 10 years in the future, it's been about four now, and your healing journey has evolved, and you feel a lot more peace four years later, and it's going to be ups and downs, I'm assuming, for many years, if you could have future hindsight, 10 years out, what is the meaning you think you'll give yourself in 10 years for why this has happened?

Gosh, out of all the layered questions today, that's a heavy one. My goodness. Why won't you even think about politics? That's what I don't understand. There's a lane for you. Okay, first thing, just a quick... You said ego, and I don't know if you ever heard someone explain it as Ego stands for edging God out. I love that because that is a healthy part of our that we're not talking about, but there is something about eliminating anything that is self-generated. You just go, God, have your way. That's the first thing.

When you said that, I was like-That is me generated, not God through me. Yes.

I can't do this on my own. With God's help, I can do this. I think I would look back. I think the meaning of our lives is to always point to how good God is, no matter what it is. I wouldn't have chosen this path. I mean, if we're sitting as 20-year-olds, Hey, write what you want to be doing. When you're 45 years old, I would not have said this, but I have changed the way I relate to it as well. I've changed the way I relate to my sexual abuse, changed the way I related to my own infidelity. And now I look at that as something that has been... It's a crucible moment where you come out of the fire and you're just not the same. I think the purpose of my life is to always point people to a loving God that can change your life no matter what it is. So that hasn't changed. And I think that we're in a really broken world, Louis. It's getting darker and darker and darker. That's why we call this thing lights on, because we still have control over where we shine lights. And I want my life.

It might be a dingy light sometimes. It might be not as... But I'm going to try to keep my light on. And I want to tell other people that there's hope no matter how dark it is. We're going to keep the lights on over here. We're not going to turn them off. There's no way. And you can't turn yours off. There's people probably watching that have long time ago shut down the restaurant and the lights are off. You just need one person to just flick one light, and that's how it starts again.

Yeah. One of the things that I heard in your podcast, which, again, I want everyone to go listen to. It's fascinating to hear you and Laura talk about healing, trauma, dealing with the relationship, the mistrust, the betrayals, friends, family, having kids. It's just messy situation that you guys have navigated and you open up about how you've navigated, what you guys have learned, vice versa, what you're still learning. She talks about how... You talk about how she did nothing wrong. She was always faithful, loyal, trusting, honest. Whatever you wanted to do, she was there for it, supporting wife, mother, leader of the church, faithful, all these things. But she starts to say, You know what? I never had a voice. I never really owned my power. I don't know if she said, Blindly trusted, but that's what it felt like.

Maybe more apt would be copilot.

Yeah, I was codependent, she said. She said, Living a codependent relationship and lifestyle, and she didn't own her voice. And when she went to therapy and healing and had counseling, she talks about that in your guys' podcast, which is really interesting. It's interesting. I want to speak to the women, because we have a large feeble audience, to the women listening or watching, to give women tools on how they can own their voice and power better in relationships, whether everything is going great and perfect or they're unsure about stuff or they're somewhere between maybe in their first year of relationship or 20 years deep in a marriage, I want women to have tools tools to own their voice and own their power to get clarity on where they're at in the relationship, whether it's little white lies, bigger lies, whatever it might be, but to create better relationships with their partners. So good. Hearing Laura say, I never really had an opinion or a voice. I didn't know how to make decisions. Hopefully, I'm saying what she said correctly. Yeah, it's in a ballpark. She was like, I needed to learn how to get my power back.

That took time. I needed to learn how to practice it because it's something I've never done in 40 years. I needed to learn how to do it while healing, trying to forgive him, dealing with friends, being a mom, all these things, dealing with my own health. It's a lot for women. I think it's a lot for women to try to learn how to...

It It's whole is greater.The.

Toll is great. There's a pressure, there's an insecurity, there's judgments from other moms, all these different things. What do you think Laura would say or what she said to you about how women can own their voice better in any type of intimate relationship, whether there's some potential lies or stuff happening or not. But just to like, I'm going to deepen and strengthen my relationship to get clarity if this is the relationship I want to continue thriving into Or potentially, it's not the right relationship for me.

I think she would say, and we've had so many conversations about this, put the growth of yourself and your own healing, put that first, regardless. So When you get to rehab, they have this beautiful moment where they say, Hey, everybody, this is not a marriage restoration place. We don't give it about your marriage. That's not why you're here. The rehab. You're here to fix your life. Interesting. If you fix your life, your marriage will grow. Get your marriage out of your picture. We are not here to save your marriage. We're not here to help you with your wife. You're here to fix all the lies and the deceit and the crap that you've been doing your whole life that put you in this position. No one wants to hear about your marriage. Nobody. I was like, I wish you could make it clearer. And I got it, though, because I was like, Yeah, I'm not here to fix my marriage. My marriage is actually a product of my broken life. Therefore, if I'm healthy, it makes sense that my marriage I think it will be healthy. I think what happens, what Laura has told me with women, is they just sometimes can put so much emphasis on, I want to make this marriage work.

How can I make my husband understand? How can I support him? How can I make him better? All that stuff is huge and important and valid, but not at the expense of you growing and you thriving, and you getting the help that you need, and you getting someone to invest in you. And I think she would say, make yourself a priority. You have to. And that means doing separate things. It means getting your own help. It means having your own life. And when that is thriving, this life over here of your husband, there's this beautiful symmetry that can happen with two healthy people. But normally, there's this horrible thing where the wife is so awesome, and she's healthy, and she's trying, and this husband is a bum.

Broken.

He just refuses to change, and it's just so sad to see. And there's vice versa, where it's like you got to... Sometimes it's more rare, but you got a husband who's trying, the wife just has given up. Man, it's a dark road. But if both people Especially because in our household, I can't speak for any other household, but Laura's roles are immense. From mom to friend to wife to lover to provider at times. Where is she in all that? I think it's my job to help protect her ability to hear her voice, know her voice, feel it. That was just not really on my radar before, to be honest. I'm not proud of that, but I didn't know that concept like I know it now. I thought I did, but I thought, in my estimation, I was like a trailblazer going to make a path for my family that I love. I don't know. I don't know if that's not the way I live now at all.

What are the things that men in relationships with women or married men can say to their partners or wives on a consistent basis to make them feel seen, heard, and safe?

I will talk about what I do.

Yeah, what do you do with Laura to make her feel that way?

We have a really cool cadence of my question to her commonly is, How can I make you feel safe? Do you feel safe?

You say that all the time.

Probably every day. Yeah. How can I make you feel safer today? And it's gotten to the point now, where she's like, I feel safe. I feel freaking safe. I can't feel safer. But that is such a non-defensive, non-aggressive question. It's not loaded. It's, Hey, how can I make you feel safer today? Do you want my phone? Do we need to go have dinner? Do you want flowers? What can I do? And if that's a part of your routine, I think it's a really powerful thing to have because it has nothing What do I do with you. It's not like, Okay, tell me what you need just so I can get to this. Why don't you do this for me? Because sometimes I've talked to husbands a lot, especially these four years. It's like, I tried what you said, and it didn't work. I'm like, It wasn't an event, bro. Whatever I explained to you, let me re-explain it. It wasn't a, I'm going to do this, and it should produce this.It's.

A way of living.It's a way of being.

Yes. And being is different than doing. If you just go straight to the do, you might get the have, But you miss out on the B. And I work with some coaches at Novice Global. I don't know if you've heard of this firm. They're phenomenal. But they really go through a concept called be, do, have. Rather than, What do I need to have, what do I have to do? If I get around to who I'm being, now my whole life is flipped because of that concept. It's been really helpful for me. So who do I want to be today? I want to be faithful. I want to be loyal. I want to be comforting, and I want to be energetic. What does a man like that do? He does these seven things. And if you do those seven things, what do you have? Now we're talking. But it has to be in that order. It can't be, I need more money. What do I have to do? Well, you're still being a bad steward, so you never grow. So that concept is like, I want to have a wife that has a lot of intimacy.

Wrong. Who do I need to be to be the man that creates safety, that makes my wife want to let her guard down and feel free? These are two different conversations. Yeah, it's powerful. So that's what we're in the midst of, and we'll be in for the rest of our lives. We do not have it together. We are not marriage gurus. We are marriage survivors, and now marriage proponents, and marriage... I guess we're excited. We're in something that is... It's a new phase. It's a moving, living relationship, and it's a cool place to be.

How have you navigated? You mentioned money, and I think in one of your podcasts, she was an Uber Eats driver, and doing multiple jobs at one point, because essentially, you went From having money to not making an income. Yeah. When I wouldn't say you were kicked out of the church in a sense of a community of people and pushed to the side for a season of life for a lot of people, right? And not considered or not given opportunities, right? How did you make money these last four years? How have you Good question. Do people give you jobs? Did you give you a chance somewhere? Did you make your own money?

How do you-Yeah, I'm good at making money. I had to put my hand up and ask for some help. I had some friends that loved us enough to be able to help us because we had some money, but no one's prepared to blow up your entire life with no plan. I mean, it was just awful. And so very scary place to be. And by the grace of God, we made it out, and we needed help to get to a place where I could, in a healthy way, begin to start businesses and do things again. So for that first chapter, I had a job with an amazing company, a guy in Florida named Joe Johnson, who just hired me. I said, I need a job, and you have availability. I loved it. I did that for almost well over a year. Laura had two jobs at that time, and we just were like, This is where we're at. Let's go. Make it work. We're going to do it all again. And we have. And now our life is different, and it's a beautiful place to be. But yeah, money, we were in love without money. We learned how to love when we had money, and then we found out again, we're not about money because we still love each other, and now we're doing better than we were.

So I think it's definitely a cool story of God providing. And when people say the church kicked you out, yes and no. There were churches and pastors that definitely helped us out. Absolutely. Absolutely. Yeah, no fanfare. Nobody knows. So that's not a completely fair shot of like, Oh, the church turned their back on you. No, mine did. And that's actually okay because the way it was handled, a whole another combo. But there were faithful people that helped us out. So we are the products of really graceful, precious friends that were willing to stand with us in the fire, not just with words, with money, with help, with grace. And so I wouldn't be sitting here without them.

How has your relationship with God changed since all of this?

My relationship with God has been strong my whole life, even in the midst of my own sin and pain and lies. It's funny because I used to work with a lot of, it still do, a lot of drug addicts. In New York, you find there's this underbelly of functioning drug addicts, heroin, cocaine, meth, you name it. There's people who look like you, and they are dying. As addicts. That was it. I became one as well. But I remember talking to a guy who said, Man, I still hear God's voice when I'm high, and I know that's not right, but God never leaves me. I can hear him when I'm high, I can hear him when I'm drunk, I can hear him when I'm sober. I used to wonder, I don't know, maybe. I'm never going to tell somebody, No, you didn't. But I look back on my own life, and even while walking towards bad decisions, I can remember vividly feeling compelled to not do this, or there's a way out, and there's an option here. I've never been mad at God, except for the combo about how I even got there. But I had so many opportunities, Louis, to do this right, to own it, to get help.

I didn't take it. I was never like, Why God? I'm like, I know why. I'm dead without you, and I just haven't listened. I haven't obeyed, and this is the price. I feel like my relationship with God now I was much... I think there's a different type of pressure when you're a preacher, and it's not good, it's not bad, it's just different. I've really enjoyed this season of just being able to... Everything that I discover, I get to put it back in myself. Most of my life, I discover something, try to do something, and you try to help other people with it. That's a beautiful thing to do. I love that. I love preaching. It's awesome. But in this season, it's like, I'm going to preach with my life when I can, but our relationship God is just... I would use the word, I feel soft, feels kind, feels generous, feels graceful. That's beautiful. Those are words I would not have attributed before. I felt like I had an agreement with God before that I'm a lost cause, but I'm going to still work as hard as I can for you. I want to make God proud.

I want to let Jesus, who saved me, feel like this I was worthy of the sacrifice. I'm going to try to do what I can do.

You're going to try to perform, right?

Yeah, I want to. It wasn't like I knew. It was more like I knew that I was missing it in some areas, and I still wanted to be effective, and I still wanted to be helpful. I want to go back for a second to something I meant to ask you about your relationship with Laura, your wife.

Esther Pirel talks about this, and I've had a number of different therapists and experts come on and talk about this concept of gaslighting. I heard Laura say this in your podcast. She was like, I was gaslit by you for many years, right? And lots of term, narcissism, and all these other terms get caught up with gaslighting. But how did that affect you? Because, again, I think a lot of women have experienced that in some stage of their life, sometimes with their father, sometimes with their boyfriend, sometimes with whatever. When she said, Hey, you gaslit me for this many years, How did that impact you or how have you been able to navigate repairing that? And again, for the women watching or listening, how can they do their best to sniff out and speak up when they feel like they might be being gaslit by someone in their life so that it doesn't continue for years?

I think Laura would say on some of this, she should have gone with her gut and she should have taken it out from me and went to somebody else and said, This is what I think is going on.

Not just saying, Are you lying to me? And you say, No, I'm not lying to you. And then her be like, Okay, I'm just going to trust him.

She So there was a moment in our marriage where I did that gaslighting for a while. There was a moment where she had caught me in a lie that was tough for me to get out of. Really? She staring at me in the eyes and she said, Why don't you tell me the truth? And I said, I'm telling you the truth. And I remember we had this combo. And she said, I don't believe you. And that was the day that we were never the same as a married couple. I think in her mind, It was like this protection mechanism where... Because up until then, the way...

This is a pre-scandal.

Oh, yeah.

She looked you in your eyes and said... I don't believe you.

I don't believe what you're saying. And I'm not going crazy. I'm not proud of this. It's hard to talk about, but I think I was at times cruel with the way that I would present my own case. It was a way that was just overpowering. So it'd be like, I'm good with words as you are. There's a way you can manipulate language in the conversation and throw a bunch of stuff. I think what Laura and I have found out is if you're a wife, there's a line of weird paranoia. We're not talking about that. We're talking about if you feel something something's up, you probably need to get someone you trust to soundboard it a little bit. And I think as a husband, if there's mass defensiveness with aggression, you got serious problems. So I would, on the side of the amazing women that are avid listeners for you. It's a red flag for sure. It doesn't mean that there's something going on, but people who have nothing to hide, hide nothing. So if it's, Let me see your phone, no. Why? Because of the principle. The principle of it's easier to slide that thing over.

And then you can talk about where is this distress coming from? But it's after you have tried to validate how you feel. Validation doesn't always mean agreement. It just means I hear you. Okay, that's a thought. And if you want my perspective, here it is. But to shut it down with a direct denial in a fight, that typically leads to or is a symptom or a sign of some stuff going on. Something's just a reality. Over half of marriages end due to infidelity. So this isn't a rare thing. This is how you get caught up in lies. I don't think most men who set out the gaslight are trying to be evil manipulators. I think from my own experience, you just catch yourself in such a stupid position where your only hope is to just cause as much confusion as you can.

To get out of it.

To get out of it. Laura has talked to a lot of women, and sometimes now she'll ask me from my perspective as she's helping somebody. But I think she encourages women to go with your gut. Go with your gut and ask somebody about it and try to gage the reaction of the man in question. Is he open to it? Is he defensive? That defensiveness is a B word that Laura uses a lot. It's still something I have to continue to always work through. Because I'm still getting through that. From all the way back, when I was an abused little guy, when I didn't feel protected, that I've always been a fighter. I've always been a guy who's like, Tell me the rules so I can break it. Didn't know where that was from. Found out. Because my therapist asked me, she's like, Have you always gotten in trouble? I'm like, Oh, since kindergarten. She's like, If you're at a red light and nobody else is around, are you running that thing? All day. I'm like, Everyone doesn't do that? I'm like, Why? It doesn't make any sense. Logically, why would I stay? I mean, that law is stupid.

And she's like, Yeah, not everybody thinks like that. There's a lot of people who stay that red light. I'm like, Well, those people must be really fun at parties. But the concept of understanding where defensiveness comes from, everything has a root. And once I found out that root, I catch myself all the time now going, Why am I being defensive? I have nothing to hide. Please start that again. I had an interaction with my neighbor the exact same way. She's an older lady from Ukraine, and we were having a very mild neighborly conversation about where my dog leaves his... And it was going so bad, and I went, Ma'am, do you mind if we start over? And she goes, no. And I said, I'm Carl. You are whatever. I started this. This is on me. I can make sure my dog doesn't do this. We laughed, and But I had to consciously snap out of my fight first, defend first mechanism. So it's not something that I just have arrived at. So I think in general, defensiveness is typically something to look into.

What I'm hearing you say is if a woman is experiencing uncertainty in their gut, lean into it, confront the man they're with, and if they still feel uncertain, if that man hasn't made her feel safe to what she needs to feel safe, whether it's justified or not, but it's whatever she needs to feel safe, then maybe you need to find a therapist to talk to, a friend to talk to and say, Hey, am I going crazy here? I feel like I might be gaslit, but he's telling me he's saying the truth, but something still doesn't feel right, and start unpacking that and see how to take the next steps to create safety for yourself and clarity within the relationship.

We've been doing this for our whole life. We've been helping couples. And rarely, there is the type of marriage with the wife or the woman is super paranoid, and it's crazy. It's far between them. It's rare. Very few is where, Where did you go? Went to the gym? No, you didn't.

It's more of a probably wound they haven't healed.Correct.From someone else doing this.

That is a legitimate thing. So for the guy who's sitting home right now to be like, It's not me. I'm the other guy. It's like, Okay, it could be. But that's why it's always helpful to get another set of eyes in there to say, What's going on? Let me objectively look at your situation and just try to give you all some wisdom. It's crucial. If we would have done that, who knows?

Right. Man, this is powerful. I'm curious, how has How do you feel about the leader of the church who helped you, brought you up? What's your relationship with him? What's his name?

Brian Houston.

How do you feel about him? What is your relationship or lack of with him now, four years after this?

No relationship, zero communication. Talked. I think we had one email exchange after I was fired. We haven't talked since. Really? It's nobody's fault. It's just the way it is. I don't harbor any bitterness towards him. I think in that way, our relationship, I failed him as one of his leaders, and that's the reality.

And he failed you in certain ways, sure.

Absolutely. But I failed first, so that's what I get to focus on. And how he handled it afterwards, that's another discussion for other people. It doesn't do anything for me. So I have learned how to stay free of offense is to look at myself in the mirror. Where did I go wrong? What did I do? And then when I feel the temptation to point fingers or want to get mad, which is there, it can be sometimes often. Other times I don't think about it. There'll be some days where I'll just be consumed with anger or bitterness or whatever. I just try to give grace because I need it. I need people to give me grace. I know the measure that I give will be give it back to me. I think about that often when I want to judge anybody. I'm like, I don't want that judgment coming back at me.

Did you use to be more judgmental, pre-scandal? No.

I think subconsciously, I was way less judgmental because of the stuff that I was hiding and dealing with.

Because you knew that you had something. You're like, Oh, it's okay. I don't judge you because I know the back of my mind, I'm doing some of this.

It was a juggle because there are times where I would be hardcore, almost legalistic on some things, and other things, super gracious. So that was a confusion in my own mind for my own life. But with Brian, I focus on the good, too. Some people go through a lot of horrible situation, and they don't grieve properly. So all they remember is the pain. I got great help with grieving. So I grieved my relationship with one of my spiritual heroes. He was that. He's like, I have the greatest dad in the world. Brian was the next thing I had to a man that I really looked up to and trusted. He helped me, gave me a chance to do great things, and it went bad.

Yeah. What do you say to people that... Or how have you learned to express this and feel this, that when a man or woman does a bad behavior or hurt someone or does something that they shouldn't do, legally, morally, ethically, all the different things that you could do. But they're not always that way. And a lot of the times, they are also doing some good, or kind, or generous, or gracious, or all these different things, graceful. How do we navigate this the dynamics of, Okay, there's a person in my life who did something really bad to me. But they've also done a lot of good. Are they a bad person? Are they evil and wrong? Should I never speak to them again? It's like, how do you forgive? How do you navigate the mess of human beings when we make mistakes? I don't know how to answer this question, but I'm curious.

I'm not sure there is one answer to that. I actually think it depends on what's your outcome.Case.

By case, too.What are What do you want?

Do you want justice? Do you want accountability? Do you want peace? Do you want grace? I think everyone has to make that decision of what am I after? So my relationship with Brian, am I after justice? Am I after accountability? Some of that stuff might be required. I'm after peace in my soul. So that's my choice. How do I get peace in my soul? I forgive and I give grace, and I leave the other stuff to other people and God. That's my choice. If I wanted justice, maybe I'd have a response. I think what's your vision is a great question to ask people. When you're mad, what's the end of the road here? If you don't know it, you got to rethink it because then you're just wandering around, swinging it, stuff you don't even know. My goal for this situation here is to have a friendship again. So I'm going to navigate it a certain way. My goal here is peace, and I never want to talk to them again.

This is how I'm going to navigate it. I'm creating a boundary.

Yeah, both are healthy.

Do you think you could ever have a relationship with Brian again?

I don't I don't know. I don't know how to answer that. I think the short answer is God can do anything. Life is long. Yeah, sure. I'm good. I don't think we'd ever have a... I can't say that. I don't know. It's not on my radar. That's what you're thinking about. I got so many things I got to focus on that it's like, God bless you. I don't care. I don't care what you say, what you do. I hope the best for you because I know that they've walked through some horrible things as well. Sure.

If you could go If you could sit in front of your 20-year-old self right now, with the wisdom you have, the lessons you have, the experience you have, knowing how you were thinking back then, the stuff you were carrying, the lies you were holding on to within yourself, the shames, the insecurities back then. And you could give a personal sermon to yourself. Yeah. From this perspective.

Yeah.

What would you share? And if you had to completely eliminate your... Anything about you and your ego, and it only came from the best way possible, it came from God through you to this 20-year-old version of you.

Okay, love it.

What would you say?

What would I say? Okay, there are two answers here. One is, how much do I want to play this hypothetical game? Because there's a part of I've been a youth pastor as well, and I have a teenage son. My brain at 20 is not the same brain.

You're not thinking in a certain way.

I've preached messages to 20-year-olds.They're.

Not going to receive it.And.

They nod.They don't receive it. They can't. They don't have the function. So for me to sit down with my 20-year-old stuff and say, Hey, bro, you got sexual brokenness. That's not your fault. But my gosh, where that leads, so much pain and carnage. So here's what we're going to do. We're going to send you to this place, and you're going to talk about all the embarrassing things that you've done, and you'reThis 20-year-old would have been like, Dude, get the hell out of here. I'm not doing that. I'm good. I'm running. God's forgiving me. I'm saved. I'm filled with the Holy spirit. I'm doing good things in my life. I'm going to get through it. God is a God that brings freedom. I'm going to pray, and I'm going to get Boom. And some of those things are true. But to sit there with that 20-year-old and say, Hey, this stuff is deep, deep, deep, deep, deep. It takes a lot of work. Let's do it now.

Oh, Lord Jesus. I'm glad you said that because I can relate to that. People would tell me stuff when I was a teenager, be like, I'm just going to go after my dreams and do this, and don't tell me what to do. It's like, you may not be in a space to hear it, but let's imagine. If I was. So I'm glad you said that because I think people You need to be open to receive a message also. It builds regret.

What can we do about that? But if we go back and we do it, and it's possible.

And say you're a completely open soul.

Open 20-year-old.

Open mind, open heart, and you say, Whatever message I need to hear, not that this is going to change your life, but it's like, if you could just speak a message to your younger self.

What's funny about answering questions is you float in and out on your podcast of remembering you have millions of people listening and then nobody. It's very tricky. Because you feel totally free just talking. Oh, yeah, yeah. Let me just make sure that I'm answering this. So I think I would say to that guy, Let's start to feel all your feelings. What are they? I'm not going to judge them. I'm not going to put you down. You're not going to get in trouble. Let's talk about how you feel. I would lay out all these topics, and I'd say, How do you feel about sex? How do you feel about this? How do you feel about that? Let's just talk about it. That is the beginning of freedom. And there is some backwards Christian teaching that I probably was a propagator of, which is like, Hey, die to your flesh, die to your feelings, which is true to that, but I'm not sure everything's flesh. I'm not sure everything is about this murderous killing. I think there are things things in us as humans that we need to talk about. And I have a friend, his name is Steve.

He lives here in California, and he taught me this principle of, if you had all your feelings around a table, who gets to talk?Oh.

That's interesting.Who.

Gets to talk? All of them should be able to talk. It doesn't mean they get the chair, but it means that wounded 15-year-old, he gets to talk. The lawyer in you, he gets to talk. The guy that's bitter, he gets to talk. That's how you get to know who you are, who's in control, who's weighing in too much here. There's a part of me that really doesn't like people, man. Just going to say it. Now, I'm going to direct that guy where to go. I'm going to stay in control of it, but that's there. It's not right, it's not wrong. It's just how I feel. Oh, my gosh, Lewis. Even talking about it feels good. It's just beautiful. We are so quick to judge ourselves and to hurt ourselves and to try to kill the bad stuff in us. There's some beauty in that, and it's very dangerous because you might be killing something that's in the process of change.Oh, man, that is so true.Maybe you just hadn't evolved yet. That is so true. Maybe it's on the journey somewhere. Can you imagine? I have a 15-year-old son. You can't imagine shutting him down forever because he was working something out.

It doesn't make any sense. If someone tried to say that to my son, he has a feeling right now, and you shut them down, you kill them. I would obviously defend my son because he's growing. And there are parts of us, I think, that can use a little bit less judgment, a little bit more discovery. From there, let's go.

Let's talk.

This doesn't mean you're acquiescing to every feeling, and you're that part of the weird generation we live in that tells young people to go with what you feel, which is like, I appreciate the sentiment, but if you live a life according to how you feel, we know where that leads. There has to be more to life than going with how you feel. Our feelings are so important, though. So what do we do? The world that I came from, it was all or nothing. Really? It was like, feelings don't matter. Kill them, stand on top of them, be empowered, do what God God says to do. It's this very empowering version of life change. Okay. And then we used to judge everybody else. Really? The therapy people, the feelers, the inner child. What's wrong with these people? The inner child people. Oh, here we go with this guy again. I actually had someone tell me recently that when I use the word addict, I'm using victim language. Oh, yeah. And this guy's a smart dude. And I went, wow, man, that's really interesting. I remember I used to think like you. So I'm not mad. I'm not judging you.

But I'm going to keep using it, number Number one. Number two, I passionately disagree that by me admitting that I have addictions, that I'm using victim language. You're hearing what you want to hear. It's not an excuse because I had an addiction to something. It doesn't mean that it absolves my behavior. It just means I'm going to freaking fix it because I know exactly what it is. It's not just a bad day. It's not just a propensity. It was an addiction. So if that's victim language to somebody, God bless you. To me, it's overcoming language. When you can actually be strong enough to say stuff like that, man, some of the strongest men I've ever seen have been in a rehab for people that have blown up their lives. And they're not strong because of their possessions. They're strong because of what they're willing to change, what they're willing to talk about.

What was the biggest lesson from rehab that you learned that How you learned growing up in church dismantled certain things about your relationship to self or viewing other people who had been through challenges. What did that month long in rehab teach you?

My gosh, the longest month of my life. They call it Hugging the cactus, which is my favorite way to describe what rehab is like. It's like you got to do it, and it's horrible.It's painful.A hug is a hug. I think one of the things One of the things that I realized in rehab, especially by faith, is that I think I was cutting the power of God short by not understanding how many people could help. So I am a guy that believes in the power of prayer. I believe that God is a redeemer. He's a forgiver. That he can break the yoke, break the chains. That's the God I believe in 100%. The way he does that, though, can sometimes be through a doctor in a white jacket, can be through a counselor, it can be through someone who's not even a Christian, who believes what I believe. There's so many things. I think I was such a true blue believer that I'm going to willpower this. I didn't see it like that. I thought it was God power, and I was mistaken. Really, I was proud in my own ability, I'm going to get through this.

I'm going to overcome in this. And rehab, I left like this, I'm going to be all right. I'm not crazy. I'm not a bad person. I have some issues, and I'm going to break in and spend the rest of my life uprooting them, making sure they don't transfer into my kids. I'm going to tell as many people as I can that freedom is available. That's what I learned at rehab. And I got a lot of work ahead of me, and I'm going to embrace it. I'm not going to reject it. And I just can't trade that experience for anything. I mean, it was an awful, beautiful mess there. Wow.

It was a beautiful man. Do you ever see yourself wanting to lead a church again in some way?

No. And yes, I think that no, in that it's not on my heart. It's not on my mind. No plans. I do love reading silly articles about myself still. Still fun once in a while. We have this big rollout. We're going to do a podcast in a church. It's like, Hey, hate to break it to you. That's not us anymore. There's no rollout. We're not going to live that life anymore. We're doing a podcast because it's great and it's a venue in an avenue that's smart, and we're going to crush that. That's it. There's no church coming after this. But life is long, and I am open to whatever I feel compelled to do. If I were to ever do a church again, it would be completely different and it would be vetted, and I'd have everybody that I trust and love stand in front of me and agree that it's a good idea. But I can't fathom that being within the next 10, 15, 20 years of my life. I got so much I want to do, and the world is so big. I could do a lot of great things, and we're seeing that already.

So I feel like, especially because of the weight of what we went through, I think the appropriate thing to do is just continue to change my life and see where we end up. So I'm open to it. I have no plans, but I never would have thought I'd be sitting here talking to you in Los Angeles, California, talking about this. Far it for me to tell God what my plans are.

What's going to happen.

Yeah, exactly. Here's how this is going to go.

Yeah, here's my plan. He's going to say, No, that's not it. I want people to... A couple of final questions for you, but again, we're talking about a new podcast that you and your wife have launched called Lights On with Carl Lentz, and the first few episodes are fascinating. You learn a lot. You learn a lot about you guys. You learn a lot about human nature and challenges that people go through and how to navigate getting through them. Realizing that there is peace, there is forgiveness, there is freedom on the other side if you choose to go through it all the way.It's beautiful to watch, man.Thank you, man. I want people to check it out. Are you on social media right now as well? I am. I see you're posting a clips, but have you been posting other stuff, too? Carl Lentz on Instagram?

I'm going real slow into that for my own sobriety because I was out of it for so long, and I didn't miss it for a millisecond.

You weren't on social media for years, huh?

No, for years. I put two posts up in four years. That was it. Just because. Now I'm on Instagram and Facebook, but I have some people helping me with it, so I can keep it.At distance. Keep it off me, and I'm just using it for the delivery right now, not the interaction. Yeah, that's good. I'll answer five or six people just because I appreciate them being there on the comment thing, but I'm not waiting through it, going, Does this guy approve? Does this guy care? I've been through too much to do that. So I am back on social media in what I believe to be a healthy way.

What is the lesson you learned from being off social media for almost four years?

That it is very, very, very effective if you use it wisely. Very, very deadly if you don't. There's really no middle ground. So if you are prepared to handle social media in a responsible, diligent, intentional way, it's a beautiful thing. But if you let your guard down, it's going to be a doorway to images that you don't want to see, don't need to see. Voices that have no right to spend any time in your head. Social media is a conduit of that. Who on earth told us that we get to open this phone and let the opinions of many torment our lives? What are we doing? But we all do it. We all really do look at comments and approval. We know that it's stupid, and we all do it. I got some likes, got some comments, got some interactions. It's like, All right, we're going to play the game if we have to, but this is so stupid. That doesn't mean it was good. The fact that your podcast is huge and great, and yes, it has mass interaction, but that's not where your value is. It just happens to sometimes line up with legit things.

But I have a feeling you would still do what's on your heart to do, regardless of if it was filled with fanfare. I just have a feeling.Yeah..

And there's a lot of people like you. I started it with no one following and listening. Nothing. Nobody was listening. One person at a time. I just did it because I enjoyed it. I'm still doing it now because I'm fascinated by human beings and how we can all improve our lives. But that's interesting. I spent seven days recently without my phone on, and it's just freeing. To even just take a day or take hours where you're not on your phone is a freeing experience. It creates space. You can think.

All your brain is wired to not do that. Have you ever reflected on your life and been like, Man, I wish I was on social media more?

Never.

I never once.

The scary thing is to say, How many years have I been on social? There you go. How much time have I consumed? Just on my phone. Yeah.

I've never once been like, Man, when Roman was five and my girls were little baby girls, I wish I would have sat there and scrolled longer. It just never happened. So I want that to be a part of my decision making. I have gone, I wish I would have spent more time looking at my eyeballs.

Yeah.

Just enjoying some moments. So that means in this chapter, I'm not messing around. Yeah.

I mean, growing up in Christian science, Mary Baker-Eddie, who wrote in the book Science and Health, she said, Stand Porter at the Door of Thought. Because we need to be guarding our minds more. We need to be guarding our thoughts more and stand porter and make sure we say, Oh, I see that. I don't want anyone to be looking at that. Yeah. And man, have I been guilty of looking at the wrong stuff for most of my life? Same. Right? And Those images influence your brain, your thoughts, your mind, your dreams, influence your DNA. The more you are consuming things, listening, viewing, looking at, whatever it might be, and then fantasizing, thinking about, being angry about, whatever it is.

Ruminating.

Yeah. One of the things my dad did that I really appreciate as an adult when we were growing up is when they were commercial. We didn't watch the news because he didn't want us to watch It was fear-based entertainment. There was always bad stuff happening on the news. He's like, Why am I going to show this? We can read something and read this happened today. Okay, I'm informed on the news. I don't need to be entertained by fear to create a reaction of more fear in me. We didn't watch the news, but he was informed and read the paper. We never watched commercials when we were watching TV because the commercials were filled with prescription drugs. Here's what's wrong with people, and here's what you need to solve it, medication. Most of the commercials you watch today are about the medications based on a pain you have. True. He didn't want us to be influenced on the material part of our body. Interesting. Closer to that, that's good.needing medication to heal versus prayer, harmony, correct thinking to help heal. My dad was not perfect by any means. He had his own challenges and lies and problems that I had to deal with as well.

But those things were a great reminder of standing Porter at the door of our mind and our thoughts and protecting ourselves from images. Martha does a great job of reminding me. I think men can probably allow images to come in more frequently just in general. She's always like, We've got to make sure we're garder our minds from news content, from images, from whatever we're seeing. Our intention here at School of Greatness is to hopefully put out positivity, hopefully put out as much information that is good or that can help people. I'm grateful that you guys are putting out that information. As well on your show. Before I ask a couple of final questions, Carl, I want to acknowledge you for your journey, your healing journey, sharing with others that healing is possible, your healing journey privately with your wife and your family that most people will never know about what you guys have gone through. Obviously, you're sharing some of it. And I acknowledge you for just owning the things that you're ashamed of, that you aren't proud of, that you did to hurt yourself, that you did to hurt others, because it's really hard to do.

It's really hard to do. So I acknowledge you for owning these things and for saying, I'm going to figure out whatever the meaning is of this and make the most of it to serve, which it sounds like you're doing. I want to serve, whether five people listen, five million people, if it's working at a job, if it's doing this, if it's what it sounds like you're doing now. So I acknowledge you for the journey you're at right now. I'm excited to see how you continue to serve people and how you continue to live your life. And I'm just grateful that you were so open and honest here with everyone. I think it's really powerful.

So I appreciate you.You don't leave a lot of room. You don't leave a lot of room to take it. I say this with that standing porter. You say porter?

Stand porter at the door of thought.

There's an old writer, Paul, the apostle Paul. Take captive every single thought. That is, to me, where this keeps coming back to. It's like we have to really be careful that we don't take for granted that the stuff we're thinking is good or bad. We need to check it out. But to me, that's such a concept that it flows in so many different ways. But when I read that in the Bible, I'm just like, I need to take captive every thought. That to me, I've had to change my mind. I had to change what I say, and in turn, it's changed who I am. But it started for me changing my mind.Wow. That's beautiful, man.Yeah..

This is a question I ask everyone towards the end. It's called the three truths. Another hypothetical question. You've had many of them today. If you could imagine that you get to live as long as you want. You're very old and you live a life of service, and you see your kids grow, all the good things happen. But it's the last day on Earth for you. And for whatever reason, everything you've shared to the world, your podcast, this interview, books, anything you've ever put out there, we don't have access to. It's gone from this physical world. Got to go with you or somewhere else. But you get to leave behind three truths, and this is all the world would have of your content. It's like, what would be the three biggest lessons you would share if it was the last day of your life, and we don't have access to any other content that you have? What would those three truths be that you would leave behind? Wow.

Unbelievable question. Did you think of that? Yeah. Well, I have a feature on Lights On, where I end it with asking people the three truths. This, just on the spot. I think the first thing I would say is that God loves people, and he wants to have a relationship with you. So don't settle for distance when you can have intimacy with God Almighty, that Jesus saves. That to me is a beautiful thought that I would... That's the Barry, if I had to go today, I'd want people to, What did that guy say? He said that God loves us.

Wow.

I'd be happy with that. So the next two might be good. But man, that's the one that has been the most powerful for me when it went from religion to Jesus is real. I'm not crazy. The grace of God changed my life. That, to me, is something I would love people to think about. And then the second thing would be be kind. And then a period. Because to me, kindness is such a beautiful currency that the reason why we don't see it in our world a lot is because people don't see it in their own lives a lot. And we can't figure out why people are so nasty. Can you imagine people that are nasty to you? Can you imagine what their head must be like? Even going back in the social media, I see some of the comments people leave me and I'm like, Oh, my gosh. I'm not even mad. You must be brutal to yourself. So every day I try to remind myself, probably I have to end up getting a tattooed because I'm that slow, that thick-headed. Be kind today. What does that mean? I don't know. Let's go find out.

Everywhere.

Yeah. Yeah.

And then be present. Because I feel like I spend a lot of my life going to the next thing, going to the next thing. Going to the next thing and never enjoying what I actually had. And I never want to fall victim to that. Again, I look back at my life and I'm like, I never, ever really took good control of being present. A lot of it was my sin. A lot of it was my brain, a lot of it was my life, and someone who was just regular human pressure. Now I'm forcing myself, and I'm an ADHD, 45-year-old bro. I'm not designed to to be able to be the guy who meditates, but I have chosen to become a man that is willing to be present. And that means there are times where I need to sit down and I go, You know what? It's all going to be okay. It's all going to be okay, so let me be present. And it's changed my life.

Beautiful, man. One final question, but I want to make sure people check out the podcast.Lights On.Please. Carl Lentz and your wife, Laura, that shares so much. So again, if you're a woman watching or listening, check it out because you hear a lot from Laura sharing all of her thoughts, all of her feelings, what she's dealt with, how she's recovering, how she's learned to forgive herself, you, all the different things. It's a fascinating conversations.Thank you.Multiple series, multiple episodes in that series. You got your clips on social media, Carl Lentz on social media, Instagram, and everywhere else.

And then the B-side is the platform that my podcast is on. So it's a platform built around vulnerability. It's almost like a recovery thing in that the only thing that platform wanted to do was to build a place where you couldn't get canceled and you had to be honest. So we only have a couple of voices on there, of which I'm one, but I jumped at the chance to work with them because the team is epic. But the platform, hopefully, is going to be what the future looks like for every platform. So it's like from the founder to everybody on it, our one goal was, are we being honest? That is what the B-side is. So people can check out that app. It's a B-side app. Okay. It's just cool. It's stuff like... It's men like you. People who are changing what people think about vulnerable men. I doubt anybody would look at you and go, That's a weak dude. That day is over. People will look at you, this huge strong, charismatic, kind man and go, Oh, man, he's vulnerable. Man, imagine if our world acquitted men with being kind and vulnerable. What world will we have?

Absolutely, man. That's my mission, too, man. I mean, obviously, We're all in perfect in our own ways, but trying to become better every day is the goal.

Same.

Final question, what is your definition of greatness?

I think greatness is staying true to what you feel God has called you to do. That's great. It's the pursuit. It's not necessarily the outcome, because there are some things that look greater. Someone might have billions of dollars, but that wasn't great. And conversely, there's a man that's loved his wife, raised his kids, been faithful in his community, and That's what God called him to do, and he was faithful to it. So I feel like that, to me, greatness is... We're all going to get called to do different things, but how did you stay faithful to it? That's what a great man is.

I hope today's episode inspired you on your journey towards greatness. Make sure to check out the show notes in the description for a rundown of today's show with all the important links. And if you want weekly exclusive bonus episodes with me, as well as an ad-free listening experience, make sure to subscribe to our Greatness Plus channel on Apple podcast. If you enjoyed this, please share it with a friend over on social media or text a friend. Leave us a review over on Apple podcast and let me know what you learned over on our social media channels at luishouse. I really love hearing the feedback from you, and it helps us continue to make the show better. And if you want more inspiration from our world-class guests and content to learn how to improve the quality of your life, then make sure to sign up for the Greatness newsletter and get it delivered right to your inbox over at greatness. Com/newsletter. And if no one has told you today, I want to remind you that you are loved, you are worthy, and you matter. And now it's time to go out there and do something great.