Dungeons & Disciples

Tony Benda 0:19
Hello everyone, and welcome back to dungeons and disciples. It is awesome to be back in here. And I don't know if Josh just scalded his mouth or if he just ate a roach or something. He's making a very odd face right now. Too bad this isn't a visual podcast. Maybe down the road, we can get there. But like, that tea was so hot. Okay, that's what it was, I figured, as much. Oh, the face he made look like he just bit into a lemon raw. But also, like, I don't know, it's

Josh Shaw 0:52
like a satisfying burn.

Tony Benda 0:54
Ever burn yourself so bad you feel it for the next two days, you know I have it's probably what's gonna happen. Fortunately, not tonight. I didn't do that. I'm gonna take another step. Oh man. Well, like I said, everyone, welcome back to dungeons and disciples. This is episode 18. My name is Tony Benda,

Josh Shaw 1:13
and I'm Joshua Shaw, and if you're here for the first time, welcome. That's really good to have you here. Welcome indeed. And I feel like we have to say that now, because we're getting to the point now where we're publishing more episodes. And, you know, even though we're still very young, people can go to the beginning of it, but I feel like the more we go, we're gonna have to start introducing and just saying welcome, because it's, I mean, we're just keep going. The Lord is just moving. The Lord is doing great things in the podcast. Oh, yeah, and it's, it's been incredible for those and actually just did this, and I'm starting to do this a little bit more. I'm getting better at it, folks, I promise. For those that don't know, we just hit officially 2000 downloads a couple of days ago. Yeah, buddy. I it was such an awesome achievement. And I actually had a friend tell me this one time when we were early on and I was getting, we were getting some downloads, and I was kind of more focused on that, until the heart, kind of until he helped me kind of change my heart on it. I was like, man, Amy, yeah, we got these downloads, but I sure to think about it. And he was like, think about it this way. If you and Tony were sitting in a room with 1000 people doing with what you were doing goodness, you would think differently about the number of 1000 and so just to put that philosophy into 2000 blows my mind. So in all seriousness, thank you. Thank you. Thank you for everything you've guys have done, and we just encourage you to keep praying for this ministry, to keep sharing this. Just share. We just ask. If you listen this episode, share it with one person that you know needs to hear it. Just one that's all, that's all it takes is just share it with one person, and then keep reaching out to us. We provide our email and our socials right at the end of it, we actually have a quite a few people that email us. And pretty cool, if you want to get these exclusive updates in real time, the second you send me an email, I promise that email is saved to Gmail, and I can just, I literally just kind of go through the keyboard and press every letter, and I just pick everyone that's emailed us. So if you want to get live updates or things of that nature, yeah, you just shoot us an email. We'll, we'll do our best to email you back as soon as we can. But then, in the future, when we push out emails for fun, exciting things or even announcements, yep, you know, you'll be able to be able to hear about it first, rather than waiting till we record. You know, we can send out any name, email, not to, you know, flip the last half of the episode of the first half. But

Tony Benda 3:45
yeah, we're not looking to do a bunch of like marketing emails. I, I, for 1am, not a huge fan of like marketing emails, no emails that come in. This is going to be like, what we're talking about doing is going to be very beneficial, and just, I don't know, hopefully encouraging and uplifting.

Josh Shaw 4:06
Yeah, I feel the same way. It's when things get big, they can tend to get very spammy, yeah, and honestly, I mean, where I feel like the Lord is taking this anyway, that's not how we're going to get. We want to be personal. We want to continue to reach out in a personal way. So the the email that you'll get at the end of the episode is not just a spam email that we put on some auto generated thing that pops out something correct. It is our heartfelt responses to you, people, to people, not random mailbox generator and sends it your way. It is people to people. That's a beautiful thing about it, and that's what we want to keep going forever.

Tony Benda 4:47
This is our public pledge to you that we will not use and abuse emails with our

Josh Shaw 4:54
peoples Amen, because I don't want to get that unsubscribe unsubscribe thing. I literally have

Tony Benda 4:59
just unsubscribed. To like 12 different emails this past week because I'm going through my I don't like them all coming in. It's crazy, and the frequency of emails needs to be a lot fewer. It's a tool. It's not a text message. I agree.

Josh Shaw 5:13
But before we get started, Tony, I've been getting used to this, and maybe, I guess, you can consider like an icebreaker kind of thing. But honestly, it's just fun for D and D stuff, because it's fun to be this way. And folks, usually I just kind of get inspired, like, in the middle of the day for things like this. And typically, I don't really ever tell Tony the context of them. Yeah,

Tony Benda 5:32
it's true. I'm sitting here, like, very unsure about, like, as to what's about to happen. Don't be unsure. It's gonna be fun. I know it's gonna be fun, but I'm like,

Josh Shaw 5:45
All he knows is that I've got a note view of the unknown all the contacts you have gotten is put your DM hat on, and I have a notepad in front of me and then a microphone angled down to a dice tray with a single D 20 in

Tony Benda 5:57
it. Ironically, I did take my hat off so I could put the headphones on, but like, metaphorically, my DM hat is on, well, it's gonna have to be because a 12 gallon cowboy hat, DM hat,

Josh Shaw 6:07
it's gonna have to be because this is what we're doing today, folks. So I get a little inspiration from time to time, but I don't really know how to phrase it when I get this kind of inspiration. And lately, our good friend chat GPT has helped me with this. So this is the thoughts. And again, they're probably not perfect thoughts when they come out, but they just kind of spell out. So this is the prompt I put into chat GPT today, and we're going to make this work. Tony be ready. This is what I told chat GPT. We're recording our podcast tonight, and I want to do a funny skit. The goal is to respond as if we were a DM to a player. I want you to generate a small story about a scenario that happens from a one shot campaign, whatever and the player role for whatever check you generate, you can make up what the role was, and then is up to us on how we would respond as DMS to the role on the check that was made for the situation. Try to make them applicable and funny. In layman's terms, Tony chat, GPT has beautifully fabricated a couple of scenarios that would happen in game. Okay, you're going to pretend that you're the DM, okay, and I'm going to read out these scenarios about what's exactly going to happen. Okay, I it already auto generated a DM response, a DM No, a roll response. Oh, Mercy. So basically, I'm going to read this scenario, and there's going to be a check involved in it. I'm then going to use our trusty D 20 to roll the check, and as the DM, you're going to respond to what would happen to this player based on the check. Okay, I think you can do it. I think so too. Let's just, well, I would say you have a choice, but I don't think you do. Let's just roll with it. It's gonna be

Tony Benda 8:04
great. I was the worst fake laugh. Get it like roll with it. Oh,

Josh Shaw 8:14
I actually, anyway, actually, I actually, actually missed that very heavily. Anyway. Oh, listeners,

Tony Benda 8:21
here we go.

Josh Shaw 8:24
Here we go. Scenario number one, the goblin Tollbooth. Your party is traveling down a well worn dirt road when you come upon an unexpected site, a crudely built toll booth made of scrap wood and tied together bones behind the counter stands a goblin in an oversized guard helmet, peering over the edge of the serious expression, he slams a rusty spoon on the counter. Halt this here be a proper troll road pay up five gold already got to pass the goblin trial. As he says this, a second goblin wearing a burlap sack like a wizard robe, Wiggles her fingers menacingly, yes, yes, the goblin trial. The party has a few options, pay the toll, fight the goblins, or participate in the goblin trial. A brave adventurer, probably the bard confidently declares, I will take the goblin trial. The goblin wizard crackles, good. Now you must perform the most difficult of all tasks, a bat flip. The DM asks the player to roll an acrobatics check, and he rolls 813, so

Tony Benda 9:35
this is where I take this is where you take over. I see. Okay. So this is the bard doing. This was

Josh Shaw 9:40
an acrobatics check 13. Would

Tony Benda 9:44
there be any modifiers, or were you using flat rolls? Flat rolls? Okay, so a 13 is rolled. I think the Bard is pretty athletic. However, in so doing this back flip, he gets semi distracted by the silly voice of the. Character that he kind of doesn't stick the landing all the way. What he does is he lands on his knees instead, I'd say he did a back flip, but didn't end very gracefully. Okay, so it's like a gymnast. You see the end, the finish is not quite steady, but gets to do the 360 degree backwards. Turn. Very

Josh Shaw 10:24
good. Okay, good opener, good opener. Next one. Let me clarify. These are not rollover stories. These are all individual stories.

Tony Benda 10:33
And I will say when I when I DM for players, I'm usually pretty generous with, like, some of the things that they could do like, I don't know. I've seen some pretty odd characters in my life, like in reality, be able to do like a back flip. So for them to beat a 10, I think it's like

Josh Shaw 10:52
you're better than average. You're not a you're not a 19 or 20 gymnast. That's a good thing to note, though, but I think with a 13, an average person might be able to accomplish something with the faulty landing. I agree. I like that. That's my logic. Story number two, a party finds themselves needing a quick escape from a town after an unfortunate misunderstanding, quote, unquote, involving a pie eating contest and a very, very angry mare spotting a stable, the fighter of the party rushes in to commandeer a horse. Unfortunately, the only available mount is a rather stubborn old mule named Gerald. The Fighter, undeterred attempts to mount this mule and make a dramatic gateway. The DM asks player to use an animal handling check and rolls a 16. Okay,

Tony Benda 11:43
so it's a mule. Mules have some weird temperaments, not quite as Donkey irritating, but like a mule nonetheless. So I think with the 16, the the fighter is able to grab hold of the animal be able to mount the animal and mostly steer it in the general direction he's trying to go. Okay. There's a little bit of probably delay from the mule, you know, you got to kick its sides or whatever, to really kind of get it going. It's a little bit hesitant, but still probably makes it out. Okay, good, good. We're

Josh Shaw 12:18
getting some good rolls tonight. These are decent roles after a long and arduous journey. If I said that word right, the party arrives at a sacred temple where the paladin has been promised a divine steed blessed by the gods themselves. The Temple priests lead the paladin to a stable, speaking in reverent tongues. Behold, noble warrior, one priest proclaims your celestial mount chosen by the heavens. The paladin, brimming with excitement, steps forward to meet their glorious new companion. They envision a radiant war horse with a flowing mane, perhaps even a Pegasus. Instead standing in the stall chewing loudly on some hay, is Sir nibbles the world's most unimpressive donkey, determined to forge a bomb with their holy steed. The paladin kneels and gently extends ahead and says, Fear not sir. Nibbles, we shall ride into battle together. Players asked to roll an animal handling check again and rolls of three.

Tony Benda 13:26
I think sir nibbles, also undeterred by this Paladin speech, looks up, still keeps chewing the hay, looks back down, ooh, and ignores said Paladin

Josh Shaw 13:41
rough.

Paws and nibbles, yeah, one day, him and the paladin will ride into battles,

Tony Benda 13:49
at least he gets to eat all the hay he wants. That's

Josh Shaw 13:52
true. Very stubborn, okay, all right, a party stops at the tipsy Griffin a rowdy tavern known for its strong ale and even stronger egos. As the night goes on, the fighter has one too many drinks and Lolly boasts. I could take on anyone in this bar. The room goes quiet, then from the shadows, a figure steps forward. It's old man Percival, a hunched, wiry fellow with a long gray beard and an eye patch, he cracks his knuckles and motors back in my day, we settled these things real way arm wrestling, unless you're too scared, you whip her snapper. The Fighter, grinning with confidence, slams our elbow on the table. Bring it on, old man. A crowd gathers. Bets are placed. The bartender wipes the counters in size if he's seen this 100 times before. Fighter rolls a strength check against the old man. 16. I.

Tony Benda 15:01
Let me roll something now. I'm gonna roll against I'm gonna be the old man.

Josh Shaw 15:05
Roll away. Contested strength. Contested strength checks.

Tony Benda 15:14
The old man grasps the fighter's hand firmly. They're pretty evenly matched for the majority of this battle, but you see the crowd cheering the old man because they've seen it before. Just pumps him up so much that he just winks at the fighter, and just with a burst of strength and a 17 on the die, forces the fighters hand into submission, oh, slamming it on the table. One above a contested string. Crowd roars and excitement. Money is exchanged. I love it, and that fighter is never seen in the tipsy Griffin again.

Josh Shaw 15:59
Is that the place? Yeah, that was exciting. I like that one. I like that one. All right,

Tony Benda 16:04
you're really challenging me. I have nothing to go off of. You're doing great.

Josh Shaw 16:08
It's called growing, okay? This one's a little different from the last one. The party finds themselves in the gilded Griffin, an extravagant casino run by the infamous tiefling crime lord, madam vayra, the rogue, feeling extra confident and probably slightly tipsy, sits down at the dragon's Gambit table, a high stakes card game with a massive pile of gold on the line. They slide in their last few coins and smirk at the intimidating half orc dealer. The game reaches its climax, the Rogue is down in their final hand, beads of sweat on their forehead as they stare into the cards, absolute garbage cards, their only option, bluff. The rogue leans back and smirks confident, says, Huh, looks like I win. The dealer narrows his eyes. The crowd watches in anticipation. Madam vira sips her wine. The rogue rolls for a deception. Check 17.

Tony Benda 17:18
I would say that these players are pretty experienced, and they've seen this type before.

I would say, because people are I would almost ask the rogue to roll with disadvantage. Ooh,

Josh Shaw 17:35
ooh,

we shall roll with disadvantage. I I got a NAT 20.

Tony Benda 17:49
I, being a rogue, typically, would have a modifier for deception, which would put it over, probably a dirty 20 based on a level. Man, you got me here. I

The rogue

doing so well in the past with his previous disguises and charismatic personality, somehow, even with this measly hand, manages to just barely hold his sweat intact. Doesn't quite feel his brow glistening like he thought he would. Through his nervousness, maintains his steady breathing and says three jacks and raises the bed. Oh, with that, meta virus says, Too rich for my blood laser cards down and pushes them in and chooses not to meet the bet. Ooh. And with that, the rogue succeeds at this deception. Check.

Josh Shaw 19:04
Oh, I liked that. I liked that. That was

Tony Benda 19:08
fun. I'm not a cards player, so the terminology in this case, it happens

Josh Shaw 19:14
game of maybe, All right, last one, last one, a party is invited to an exclusive noble banquet at the mansion of the Lord and Lady Ashford. The setting is luxurious, gold plated cutlery, crystal chandeliers and small orchestra playing in the corner. Unfortunately, one party member, most likely the barbarian or the warlock raised by wolves, has absolutely no idea how fancy dining works. As the first course is served, the butler presents a delicate bowl of bisque with this, I said, a bisque with an biscuit. Bisque, bisque, okay, with an elegant swirl of cream. Can the confused adventurer picks up the finger bowl, a small dish meant for raising, for rinsing. Hand and confidently chugs it like a shot. The room goes silent. The noble guests stare in horror. Lord Ashford drops his fork, the butler's eye twitches. The character rolls a performance or etiquette check, rolling a 14.

Tony Benda 20:25
I don't know how they do it in this Ashford house, but where I'm from, we shoot our drink first, and then we eat our bisque, and continues to eat the bisque, slurping the bowl down. How

Josh Shaw 20:41
does the rest of the room respond?

Tony Benda 20:45
The rest of the room probably just looks awkwardly at the barbarian and just continues on their meal with a little bit of tension in the air. Who

Josh Shaw 20:58
I liked that that's good. That was fun. It's interesting.

We can do one more. Do one more. The party stops at Big Barry's bountiful buffet, a legendary inn famous for its ultimate feast challenge, eat 10 pounds of food in 30 minutes, and you dine for free. Fail and you pay double. The Barbarian never want to back down from a challenge, slams their fists on the table, blows I accept your challenge. Barry, a halfling waiter rushes out, struggling to carry an obscene amount of food, a whole roast boar, five loaves of bread, an entire wheel of cheese and a soup served in the helmet, the barbarian picks up a turkey leg and takes their first massive bite. The DM asks the barbarian to roll a constitution check. Rolls a natural one.

Tony Benda 22:00
All right, the barbarian goes in for this turkey leg, grasping this turkey leg, thinking he can just go to town. I almost said, Go to ham on this turkey leg, grabs it by the drumstick, takes that very first bite, but bites down on the very wrong spot of the bone, chips three teeth in the process and needs immediate dental work. Unfortunately, the barbarian tries to push through continuing this process blood just feeling his mouth, and he's choking on blood and Turkey and boar and soup, and only manages to get down two pounds of food through this pain, takes 10 points of damage in the process, and has to roll one more constitution check to not throw up at the end of this,

Josh Shaw 22:51
rolls of 10,

Tony Benda 22:54
I think he's able to stomach it for just a moment, having an iron stomach of a barbarian, He's okay for the moment, but still needs some serious dental work and ends up paying double the price. Oh,

Josh Shaw 23:07
that was fun. That was good. That's interesting. I loved that.

A little fun thing to get us. Interesting

for those who want to hire a DM, Tony is available at all hours.

Tony Benda 23:22
That too much to say, Eastern

Standard Time.

Josh Shaw 23:28
Well, folks, after our fun little banter, we welcome you to our episode. We're gonna be talking about clerics, and today's episode is promptly titled sacred spells and spiritual fire. I'm excited for this episode. It's good when it was when the Holy Spirit dropped its content. It is going to be good, but we are going to waste no time getting into it here. Tony. Let's talk about clerics for a little bit. Let's read the definition of clerics and just kind of do what we've been doing, for those that are first joining us, where I've been started, this journey on going through the main character classes, and we're basically just going through alphabetical order, but we're over here on clerics, and we're just going to go over the primary points of a cleric, and then we're only going to go up to describing level five. If you want to investigate the character more, beyond the level five, you're more than welcome to it just kind of keeps for ease of those who are trying to build for the first time. The goal is just to introduce exactly what the character is we talk about a little bit, and then see, kind of just where we feel spiritually with these characters. But Tony, why don't you go ahead and read the definition of a cleric,

Tony Benda 24:40
all right, and these are found in the players handbook, 2024 or the basic rules 2024 as well. That's we're using the newer edition, just for longevity of this episode and for people to just listen coming in fresh so clerics draw power from the realms of the gods lower G but. And harness it to work miracles blessed by a deity, a pantheon or another immortal entity, a cleric can reach out to the Divine magic of the outer planes or Gods dwell and channel it to bolster people in battle foes, because their power is a divine gift. Clerics typically associate themselves with temples dedicated to the deity or other immortal force that unlock their magic. Harnessing divine magic doesn't rely on specific training, yet, clerics might learn prayers and rites that help them draw on power from the outer planes. Not every member of a temple or shrine is a cleric. Some priests are called to a simple life of temple service, carrying out their devotion through prayer and rituals, not through magic. Many mortals claim to speak for the gods, but few can marshal the power of those gods the way a cleric can. That's good.

Josh Shaw 25:53
So Tony, we're building a cleric, right? Yes, and we're rolling for all of our ability Ability Points, yeah, or ability scores, right? What are you putting most of your your

Tony Benda 26:08
higher scores to proficiencies are typically wisdom and charisma for a cleric. So wisdom, I believe, is the modifier that in which they can cast their magic. So you'd want to boost your wisdom when rolling for character abilities. That's one thing

Josh Shaw 26:27
I feel like we haven't mentioned in a couple episodes, and we're going to start doing that. Because one thing is, as we begin to talk about these characters, and you start to say, I want to build a cleric, yeah, we want to also inform you about where you should be putting these scores to maximize your character. Yep. And

Tony Benda 26:43
I think maximizing wisdom for cleric specifically, will benefit your magic down the road

Josh Shaw 26:48
Exactly. So as we keep um scrolling through here, level one, you begin to, like most magic wielders, you begin to go have level one spell casting. It says you have learned to cast spells through prayer and meditation. See chapter seven for the rules on the spell casting which they do provide the rules there the information below details how you can use these rules with cleric spells, which appear on the cleric spell list later in the description. And you know, when you go into the rule book at this point, it'll go over specific can trips and prepared spells specifically for a cleric, you know three can trips of your choice from the spell either guidance, sacred flame or thaumaturgy, thaumaturgy, thaumaturgy, I did say that right, very good. It says, When you gain a cleric level, you can replace one of your cantrips with another cantrip of your choice from the cleric spell list. When you reach cleric levels four and 10, you learn another can trip of your choice from the cleric spell list, as shown in the cantrips column of the cleric features table, which can be found in the books. I was

Tony Benda 27:49
gonna say, like most magic users, you have certain amount of spell slots that you use. At the end of a long rest, you regain those spells.

Josh Shaw 27:58
Oh, good. I forgot about that. I did forget about that? Yep.

Tony Benda 28:01
And then, starting with level one, you can dedicate yourself to a specific sacred role of your choice within the divine order. You can go either the route of protector or thaumaturge. So protector train for battle. You gain proficiency with martial weapons and training with heavy armor and thaumaturge, you know, one extra crayon trip from the cleric spell list. In addition, your mystical connection to the divine gives you a bonus to your intelligence Arcana or religion checks. That bonus equals your wisdom modifier minimum of plus one. Starting at level two, you can do what's called channel divinity. You can channel divine energy directly from the outer planes to fuel magic effects. You start with two such effects, divine spark and turn undead, each of which is described in the books. And each time you use this class as channel divinity, choose which channel divinity effect from this class to create. You gain additional effect options at higher cleric levels. And

Josh Shaw 28:58
you can use this class as channel divinity twice, and you agree in one of its expended uses when you finish a short rest, and you regain all expanded uses when you finished a long rest. Very important as you play. I would also like to add as you build a character, or as you build a cleric, they do also have what's called a spell casting focus. You can even use a holy symbol as a spell casting focus for your character spells. It's actually kind of a cool thing that you can also use as a part of the character and transition to story too. So you can really incorporate that as your character's player. Also. When you get into level two, as we talk about channel divinity, you also gain something called Divine Spark as a magic action. You point your holy symbol like we were just talking about, and another creature you can see within 30 feet of yourself and focus divine energy on it. Roll one d8 and add your wisdom modifier. You either restore hit points to the creature equal to that or force the creature to make a constitution saving throw. On a failed save, the creature takes necrotic or radiant damage, your choice really equal to that total on the successful save, the creature. Takes half as much damage, and you would round down with that damage. Or you can use when we as we're talking about the divine spark or turn undead, we'll talk about turn undead here as a magic action, you present your holy symbol and censure undead creatures. Each undead of your choice, within 30 feet of you must make a wisdom saving throw. If the creature fails, it's saved. It has has the frightened and incapacity conditions for one minute. Note the and not or because they're both two effects. For that duration, it tries to move as far from you as it can on its turn. This effect ends early on the creature if it takes any damage, if you have the incapacity condition, or if you die. So right out the gate, even a level two cleric already has a lot you can work with. Oh yeah, which is a really cool character. Spellcasters, if you do it right and you build them right, can be absolute tanks. And

Tony Benda 30:54
I think clerics are one of those spellcasters, specifically that you could really have a beefy spellcaster and still do some of the magic things you want to do, like when you're playing a wizard. People used to say, well, people still say that wizards are a little squishy when it comes to toughness and HP. Sure you're not always getting the highest in terms of health points. However it is. It's fun. The things you can do, yes, spells. As a wizard, I was actually you're sacrificing the toughness for magic capabilities in some sense, which

Josh Shaw 31:30
essentially at that point as a as a cleric, sorcerer, wizard, like, that's more so like, if your jam is about being more on the front lines, like a barbarian, take that pick. But if you want to try to go outside of your norms, wizards, sorcerers, clerics, they're gonna, they're gonna try to be more behind the lines. Yeah? For me, if I'm just staying up top my head, if I built, if I build a clear like this, and I really want to stay behind the lines or maximize effectiveness, I would be an air Cocker. Yeah? Dude, I would fly all day long.

Tony Benda 31:59
Yeah? I will say, though, I listen to a lot of NAD pod. So for those of you who don't know what NAD pod is, it's not another D and D podcast. Na EDD pod. Don't sing it. Just kidding. That's an inside joke. So I listened to a lot of NAD pod and on the Eric Cocker topic, Brian Murphy absolutely hates Eric cochra. Really, absolutely hates them, especially as a DM, because of the fly capability, and like you have your flying speed, it's just like it can be a broken thing if it's used and abused too much. So that's up to DM discretion to allow the air Cocker, but I think it is a cool character. Oh, to allow to play. Oh, almost like never allows an air. Cocker, really, it's true. You'll have to listen to some of their short rests and stuff like that, because they talk about it in depth. He's like, I hate Eric Hawker. And I'm like, This is great. Well, it's

Josh Shaw 32:55
because it's so hard to come out against. You have a ground you have ground combat. Eric Hawker flies. He's not gonna do you're not gonna do any damage to it, correct? Now I'm making me second guess playing Eric conquer, no,

Tony Benda 33:07
it would be cool. It's all game dependent. It's all DM dependent too. So like, if you at your table, be like, Yeah, we could use this, and it's a fun thing, and go for it. Otherwise, there are certain DMS, like Brian Murphy, like Murph, will never have good for him, unless there's certain conditions met, because it can be overused. Like I the reason I say that is because I listen to they do a thing called D and D court, where they take listener submitted questions and be like so this happened at my table. I feel like it was an unjust ruling by my DM or the player stepped out of line or whatever. So they get the they get the panel's decision as to their take on the situation that happened at this table. And there's so many episodes out there, but like, you get quite a few Eric akra references. And people are like, Yeah, I was so I was playing an Eric Cora and Murph just like, that's the problem. That's the problem. Immediately calls it out, no, but Eric Cockers are cool. I might play one someday, too.

Josh Shaw 34:06
I mean, at that point, though, as a DM, I would say, if you're trying to take like bird like let's just use a bird as an example. A bird is going to gather their endurance in their flight and their strength based off the currents of wind, right? If you have a human, humanoid flying creature, I would say as a DM, that you have a limited amount of time you can use to fly. Because, as an even though you have wings and you're a bird, you still have a humanoid body, still weighing excessive amounts, I would say as a DM, I'll let you play an air conqueror. However, you can only fly for a certain period of time, and you can only carry X amount of weight, correct, only, you can only do certain things. Because the more you try to do as an air conquer, I'm gonna say you would take, I'd almost roll for, like, I don't even know what the role would be, if I think about it, but like, almost roll for, like, endurance, like an endurance check, yeah,

Tony Benda 34:59
it's all tabled. Pennant, yeah, it's all kind of what you make it to be, right?

Josh Shaw 35:04
Moving on from that side. Rancho Veracruz, if we triggered you, I'm sorry. Um, sub classes begin at level three, like most characters, right? You gain a character sub class of your choice, life domain, light domain, trickery domain and war domain. Sub classes are detailed after the classes description, and we'll kind of go over those here in just a moment. Of those level four, obviously we hit that ability score improvement again. Focus more so on the wisdom traits if you want to increase the power of your spells, but if you just kind of want to increase traits for character development, you can also do that too, or even constitution, if you want to become beefy and strong kind of dependent on you. And then level five, you gain what's called SEER undead. Whenever you use turn undead, you can roll a number of D eights equal to your wisdom modifier, which is a minimum of one d8 and add the rolls together. Each undead that fails at saving throw against that use of turn undead takes radiant damage equal to the rolls total. This damage doesn't end the turn effect.

Tony Benda 36:06
Not bad, I don't know, got a lot

Josh Shaw 36:09
of undead stuff. Yeah, clerics are fun. They are kind of fun. I didn't realize that so many undead stuff, which is actually kind of cool. Yeah. And as you scroll down to the books here, we talked about spells a little bit. It does outline your can trips, level one, spells, 23456, it levels, all these spells that come out there. So as you build your character, personally, for me, I like to look ahead to my levels that I want to be, especially if I'm doing, like a long campaign. You know, I tend to ask my DM Steven most of the time, like, hey, what level we starting at? What level you think we're going to go to? Because if I to? Because if I'm going to build a character, I'm thinking about the short term and the long term longevity of things that I can do. And then Tony, let's touch base on the cleric sub classes, starting with life domain.

Tony Benda 36:59
Yeah. Okay, so for life domain, the life domain focuses on the positive energy that helps sustain all life in the multiverse. Clerics who tap into this domain are masters of healing, using that life force to cure many hurts. Existence itself relies on the positive energy associated with this domain. So cleric of almost any religious tradition might choose it. This domain is particularly associated with agricultural deities, Gods of healing and endurance and gods of home and community. Religious orders of healing also seek the magic of this domain.

Josh Shaw 37:33
And funny enough, as we continue to scroll down it at level three, when you gain this you almost instantaneously gain three, three abilities, yep, which is actually kind of cool. The downside of that is you don't gain your next ability until level six. But that's okay. That is okay. You got healing. That's okay. We got a couple of them here. Disciple of life, it says when a spell you cast with the spell slot restores hit points to a creature, that creature regains additional hit points on their turn you cast the spell, the additional hit points equals two plus the spells slot level. Ain't bad at all, short term healing, yep. Life domain. Life domain spells, your connection to this divine domain ensures you always have certain spells ready. Very beneficial. When you reach a cleric level specified in the life domain spells table, you therefore always have the listed spell prepared, and then level three preserve life as a magic action, it's important to note, as a magic action, you present your holy symbol and expand use of your channel divinity to invoke healing that can restore a number of hit points equal to five times your cleric level. That's pretty cool. Choose bloodied creatures within 30 feet of yourself, which can include you and divide those hit points amongst them. This feature can restore a creature to no more than half of its hit point maximum. Mentions a important segue I want to hit here Tony define the term bloodied for those that may not know

Tony Benda 39:02
a creature is bloodied while it has half its hit points or fewer remaining. So you become bloodied when you hit half. So say my hit point maximum is 50. If I hit 25 HP or less, I become bloodied.

Josh Shaw 39:20
Note to DMS too. When your players are fighting a hefty boy and they ask, what's their HP? Or like, what are they looking? How they looking? That's the term, how they looking, and the DM says they're looking pretty bloody. Yeah, that can be an indicator. Yep, at least 50% or less are we? We're teaching players how to juke their DMS out of getting meta knowledge. But hey, don't tell Don't. Don't

Tony Benda 39:46
when you're fighting that dragon that has that 300 HP and he finally starts looking bloody at 150 HP left. It's a good feeling. It

Josh Shaw 39:53
is a good feeling, I tell you. Next is light domain. Yep, the light domain emphasizes the. Divine power to bring about blazing fire and revelation. Clerics who wield this power are enlightened souls infused with radiance and the power of their deities, discerning vision, charged with chasing lies away and burning away darkness. Sounds like a Pentecostal

Tony Benda 40:17
man, Yes, amen.

Josh Shaw 40:19
Laid him, hands light em hands slamming. I'm sorry if you're Pentecostal. I love you. Hey, I grew up Pentecostal. I think grew up Nazarene,

Tony Benda 40:27
but I grew up in a Nazarene. How does that went to? That's a whole nother. Started a Nazarene church, went to an ag church after that. Lord, it was great. That's

Josh Shaw 40:35
that's a topic for another time. The light domain is associated with Gods of truth, vigilance, beauty, insight and renewal. Some of these gods are identified with the sun or as chariots who guide the sun across the skies. Others are sentinels who Pierce deception. Some are deities of beauty and artistry, who teach that art is a vehicle for the soul's improvement.

Tony Benda 40:59
Yep, and like the life domain, you also get three more things that unlock for the cleric when you hit level

Josh Shaw 41:10
three. I think it's a pretty common theme that I'm seeing in clerics. As we continue to look on, you

Tony Benda 41:14
have your light domain spells, which your connection to this divine domain ensures you always have certain spells ready. So same kind of thing as the previous for this, it's things like burning hands, fairy fire, scorching Ray level three, and see invisibility. You also get something called radiance of the dawn, as a magic action, you present your holy symbol and expend a use of your channel divinity to emit a flash of light in a 30 foot emanation, or originating from yourself. Wow, I can't read any magical darkness, such as that created by the darkness spell in that area is dispelled. Ooh, that's cool. Which is really cool in certain areas. Try playing that in curse of Strad. Additionally, each creature of your choice in that area must finish it. That's true. Sorry, oh man. Additionally, each creature of your choice in the area must make a constitution saving throw taking radiant damage equal to 2d 10 plus your cleric level on a failed save, or half as much damage on a successful one. And then the finally, you also get wording flare when a creature that you see within 30 feet of yourself makes an attack roll, you can take a reaction to impose disadvantage on the attack roll, causing light to flare before it hits or misses. That's cool. Yeah, you can use this feature a number of times, equal to your wisdom modifier, minimum of once you regain all expanded uses when you finish a long rest.

Josh Shaw 42:37
Here's a here's an

interesting one, as we go with this the trickery domain. The trickery domain offers magic of deception, illusion and stealth. Clergs, who wield this magic are a disruptive force in the world, puncturing pride, mocking tyrants, freeing captives and and flouting hollow traditions. They prefer, they prefer subterfuge and pranks to direct confrontation. That would kind of be a fun character. Gods of trickery are Mischief Makers and instigators, who stand as a constant challenge to the accepted order among both gods and mortals. They embody the forces of change and social upheaval, and they're patrons of thieves, scoundrels, gamblers, rebels and liberators, religious orders that operate in secret, especially those that seek to undermine oppressive governments or hierarchies, also draw on the power of the trickery domain. We'll just get this out of the way. The first level three spell is the trickery domain spells. The trickery domain spells are the same things as just that new inclusive spells that are particular to your actual subclass, but you also get blessing of the trickster, which is as a magic action, you can choose yourself or a willing creature within 30 feet of yourself to have advantage on dexterity stealth checks. This blessing lasts until you finish a long rest or you use this feature again. This little bit longer one here, it says, invoke duplicity as a bonus action. You can expend one use of your channel divinity to create a perfect visual illusion of yourself in an unoccupied space. You can see within 30 feet of yourself. That's cool. The illusion is intangible and doesn't occupy the space. It lasts for one minute, but it ends early if you dismiss it, which has which does not take an action or have the incapacitated condition, the illusion is animated and mimics your expressions and gestures. While it persists, you gain the following benefits. You can cast spells as though you were in the illusion space, but you must use your own senses. When both you and your illusion are within five feet of the creature that you that you can see in the illusion, you have advantage on attack rolls, and as a bonus action, you can move the illusion up to 30 feet to an unoccupied space. You can see that it's within 120 feet of your physical self. And then finally, Tony guide us through war domain.

Tony Benda 44:54
The war domain,

more has many manifestations. It. Make heroes of ordinary people. It can be desperate and horrific, with acts of cruelty and cowardice eclipsing instances of excellence and courage. Clerics who tap into the magic of the war domain excel in battle, inspiring others to fight the good fight, or offering acts of violence as prayers. Gods of the war domain watch over warriors and reward them for their great deeds. They include champions of honor and chivalry, as well as Gods of destruction and pillage, other WAR GODS take a more neutral stance, promoting war in all its manifestations and supporting warriors in any circumstance. It sounds a lot like Sparta,

Josh Shaw 45:37
yeah, it actually

Tony Benda 45:38
does. There's, here's

No kidding, this is dungeons and disciples,

Josh Shaw 45:44
amen.

Tony Benda 45:47
So for this same kind of pattern, we have the three different level, three editions. We have guided strike. We have war domain spells and war priests. So the guided strike, when you or a creature within 30 feet of you misses with an attack roll, you can expend one use of your channel divinity and give that role a plus 10 bonus, potentially causing it to hit. That is huge, as some might say, that's huge when you use this feature to benefit another creature's attack roll, you must take a reaction to do so. So this guided strike doesn't just work on yourself. It seems when you or a creature within 30 feet of you misses so any of your party, anyone that's not at your party, that you still want to land a hit. But maybe

Josh Shaw 46:31
the important thing to notice that that's a reaction, yes, that you can do so you do not hide doesn't have to be on your turn. Somebody in your party can miss an attack, and as a reaction to it, you can add the plus 10. That's vital. Yeah, vital.

Tony Benda 46:44
Yeah, that's super cool. The war domain spells. Here's a few of them, a level three guiding bolt, magic weapon, shield of faith and spiritual weapons. So take a look at those. And then the war priest. As a bonus action, you can make one attack with a weapon or an unarmed strike. You can use this bonus action as a number of times equal to your wisdom modifier, minimum of one, so you regain all expected uses and you finish a short or long rest. So that one you regain all expended uses with a short or long rest, emphasizing either one of those or both. And

Josh Shaw 47:17
it does say is a you can use this bonus action as a number of times equal to your wisdom modifier. So, yeah, don't play the rules and try to say you have two attacks, and you say, I used my action and my bonus action repeatedly. Okay, you will get

Tony Benda 47:32
caught. They're limited. You will

Josh Shaw 47:33
get caught. It's true. We will catch you. You will be brought to justice, and you will burn with conviction, not actually catch on anyway. Speaking of burn,

one thing that

we Tony and I actually talked about with this, because we take a look, and Tony said it, prefacing it, the episode where it came to clerics, is they talk often about gods. And he said importance, when we say gods in that context, we obviously know it's little g right? Dungeons and disciples did not, does not support what is it? Polytheism. Polytheism, polytheism. We are a monotheistic. Yes, we do not, we do not support that any kind of way. Just wanted to throw that out there, folks. But Tony and I did ask this, because we've seen this debate a couple of times, yeah, um, in various forums about followers of Jesus who play D and D, and they particularly take, you know, let's say clerics. I think Paladins can also do it too. But, and the question is this, would you ever use Jesus as your deity in the game.

Tony Benda 48:44
For me, I am an adamant No. First of all, I don't think it's, I don't know it's a weird, weird, weird one. It is because it could borderline sac religion, or being sacrilegious, in my opinion, like bringing our omnipresent, omniscient Yahweh into Yes, a made up make believe fantasy game created by Gary Gygax Back in the whatever 70s. And I think that diminishes his deity. Yeah, and, but also, like, another argument I was thinking of, like, when we were first having this discussion, was like, say, I'm a Paladin, and I'm going about my day, and I want to, you know, bend the knee and pray to Jesus every night before bed. I think that takes away. I mean, sure we as Christians should be praying daily, great as a Paladin of Jesus Christ in the real world, whatever we are, the soldiers of Jesus's army anyway. I just think it's like,

Josh Shaw 49:57
like, physically using, using Jesus. This in the game,

Tony Benda 50:00
yeah, if, if, if, Jesus, Yahweh, Holy Spirit, Trinity is your deity while playing a D and D game, I think that takes away from the fantasy escapism aspect of this TTRPG, primarily because, like, people use this game to, like I said, escape reality. They want to leave their jobs, they want to leave their whatever behind and out the door so they escape to a fantasy world, a Tolkien esque sort of thing. Yeah, in there you have Sauron and, you know, you have Gandalf and the hobbits and all of these things. And Jesus ain't anywhere near that, right? I mean, there's good release religious themes through Tolkien's work and, you know, even CS Lewis, but I just don't think that like Jesus in my game is, is I'm not saying Jesus is not welcome at my table. That's a different thing. The Lord is the Holy Spirit is welcome at the table. But I think in game, praying to Jesus my character takes me away from that fantasy feeling.

Josh Shaw 51:10
So I also hold a part some of the same philosophy as you. I think I would use it in my game in a different, unique way. You brought up CS Lewis, like the like Chronicles and artia, for example, like, obviously, the themes of Jesus inside of a fantasy, like work, you know, calling them as, calling him as land instead of Jesus, right? So, and, you know, so it's kind of the same thing is that saying that that's sacrilegious, no, because it's going through the story of a gospel in the fantasy way. Yes, you know, it was never CS Lewis was not meaning to, um, hide anything. He very much intentionally had the story of the gospel embedded into the chronicles of Naria. But he was also trying to apply in a way of, like, look what I'm gonna present it in this way. He's, he's presenting this, he was presenting the story of Jesus in such a way that could appeal to people who also wanted to escape that reality. Yeah, right. Um, he's just not using a Middle Eastern 2000 plus years ago. Person, right, like, you know, he's re skinning the gospel Exactly, exactly. He's reskin the gospel. And in my, in my opinion, with when it came to Chronicles in narga, he did a beautiful job to it. And if you look directly into it, it, it does the it does the job, and it does the work. And I also do agree with Tony in the sense of, I wouldn't say, as a paladin or a cleric, I would say, All right, the god I'm choosing to serve in this game is Jesus. The reason I'm not is because I play with people that were not members of the Church, that didn't want to be. And, like you said, escape from that reality. And if I come and saying, Yeah, I'm gonna bring you know I'm a Paladin, and Jesus Christ is the only Savior that I serve in this game, and I'm gonna do everything in him. And you start to spin that, is it wrong to do that out of the posture of your heart because you want to serve Him? Absolutely not. Let me go and say that, if, like, if that's what you want to do. And because your conviction perfect for me. I feel the way that I could reach people easier is if I do exactly what C S Lewis did. If I want to stay to that conviction, and I want to say I'm actually going to create this God that I serve in the game is going to reflect the character of Jesus in this game, and I, as a player in the game, am also going to reflect how a disciple should act, right? So you're trying to imbue, you're trying to embody the fruit of the Spirit in the game, embody the fruit of the spirit out of the game. And that could lead to more positive conversation about the Holy Spirit of you know, let's say you do that. Let's say you take the CS Lewis method, and I guess that's what I guess I'll call it. And you say you do it. You do it very well. And someone says, Wow, you created an awesome like, deity care, like, this is a tremendous backstory. Like, how did you, where did you get this from? What a gateway conversation, or you can do like one of our, one of our listeners, has done, and create an entire campaign based on the gospel of Jesus. Trey, I've read through it, dude, it's awesome. It's pretty great. It's shout out to you. It's incredible. But, you know, that's, it's kind of those things. Is you're we can take an approach where it's not sacrilegious, but we can also include other people. Um, I really do. I really do think it has to be, you have to be sensitive to the people that are at the table. Absolutely, there are people that are church hurt, and there. People that really struggle with that and this, let's just be honest, folks, this is a community where people are going to escape or going to partake in things that are trying to get away from that. And our goal, especially with this podcast, and, you know, helping you, you as listeners, even into the gospel, as well as being able to give, give you the tools to go out into the TT RPG community and bear fruit, yeah, not convict and condemn, but to bear fruit. And part of this as well is showing us how can we play characters that that imbue the that embody the fruit as well. But you know, if that's a, if this is a conversation that you've had with other people, we hope that this is um, that that has been enlightening as well, and that's our episode. Thanks. I'm kidding. I'm getting actually, we have a really cool topic to talk about, Tony, yep. What are we talking about tonight as a result of learning about this quick character class. Well,

Tony Benda 56:02
we are talking about the Bible and Jesus. Okay, okay,

Josh Shaw 56:07
this is where people's turn it off and sub heard enough that

Tony Benda 56:12
sacred spells and spiritual fire. But what that means? This is where we start talking about the cleric in like, what it means to equate it to our Christian walk, and like, what is the Holy Spirit? And I think we should start there. We

Josh Shaw 56:27
should and the reason we start there is because you take a look at the character class, you begin to see a cleric as a person who is very devoted to their work, very devoted to the God that they serve in in their world, right? And the first thing that came to my mind when really pondering this is the Holy Spirit. The reason the Holy Spirit is so prominent is because when God in the Old Testament, God in the Old Testament was alluding to the entire time of the personhood of Jesus coming into the New Testament, yeah, but spread throughout the the intricacies of the Old Testament was the Holy Spirit. And you would, you would see the Holy Spirit come upon certain people in the Old Testament, giving them strength. A keynote I love to just remember, is David. I mean, in the Psalms, David was so infatuated by the presence of the Holy Spirit that's something that he really didn't even understand. But only then to call him the spirit. So Jesus, in this Holy Spirit, is the final piece of the trinity of God, God the Father, God the Son, God the Holy Spirit. And as Jesus came into this world, Jesus alluded, through His entire ministry, that not only his death, but the coming of the Holy Spirit after his death and resurrection. And if we become followers of Jesus, if you have accept Jesus as your Lord and Savior into your heart and confessed with your mouth, you are filled with that promise Holy Spirit, and we call it spiritual fire, because Jesus alludes to the baptism by water and baptism by fire, as well as a very theological topic, we can message more about that later, okay, but when we are called to walk as Christ walked, we are unable to do so without becoming divinely in tune with the power that lives inside. I want to show you a conversation from John chapter 14, Jesus to his disciples. Says, And I will ask the Father, and He will give you another Helper. This is from the Amplified Version. I just love the words it uses. It says, I will give you a helper or a comforter, advocate, intercessor, counselor, strengthener, standby, to be with you forever the Spirit of Truth, whom the world cannot receive and take it to its heart because it does not see Him or know Him, but you know him because he the Holy Spirit remains with you continually and will be in you. Jesus says, I will not leave you as orphans, comfortless, bereaved and helpless, I will come back to you. The presence of the Holy Spirit in your walk should be vital, because even though Jesus is fit in physical form, departed to be with the Father, He left with us a spirit that gives us a direct connection to who Jesus is, and through Jesus's sacrifice, give us direct communion with God, the Lamb of God sacrificed for us. And as the disciples continue to ask more questions about their confusion, Jesus makes it even more clear, Continuing in verse 23 through 26 of John says, Jesus answered and said to him, If anyone loves Me, he will keep my word, and My Father will love him, and we will come to him and make Our home with him. Notice the personal verbiage my father, we will come make our. Home in Him, He who does not love me, does not keep my words, and the word which you hear is not mine, but the fathers who sent me that's powerful, these things I have spoken to you while being present with you. But again, he says, The Helper, the Holy Spirit, whom the Father will send in My name, He will teach you all things and bring to your remembrance of all things that I have said to you. You can't do this life without the Holy Spirit. You can't walk a relationship with Jesus without recognizing the power of the Holy Spirit in your life. For Paul declares in First Corinthians three, verse nine, we are God's fellow workers. You are God's field. You are God's building. Tony, I want to chat with you a little bit about this, about what this means. What does it mean? What like let's first start with this. What does it mean to be God's building?

Tony Benda 1:01:10
Well, we spend so much time trying to gather in the building, in the church building, rather than being the building, the Bible says that we are the temple of the Holy Spirit, so we being the church. A lot of the times focus more on the building of the church than actually doing the work that Christ has called us to do as the church. And you've

Josh Shaw 1:01:42
experienced that

Tony Benda 1:01:46
too all too frequently. Unfortunately, I do you

Josh Shaw 1:01:51
think we limit the move of the Spirit to a building.

Tony Benda 1:01:54
I think the Western Church as a whole, well, there's a lot of exceptions. Sure, not everyone in the Western Church does that, but I think in the Western churches, a good chunk of people do, unfortunately, limit God to a building when we're called to be outside of this building doing the work. How can we be the hands and feet of Jesus and go and do and fulfilled, or the Great Commission, I should say, like, go and make disciples. If we're stuck in a building we can't go and do if we're not getting up and going and leaving the place that we're comfortable in, that's good. God is our comforter for a reason like he he doesn't make ourselves comfortable in a building. He's our comforter that goes with us to these places. And

Josh Shaw 1:02:44
I think that's the problem. I think people are so unconfident of the Spirit that lives in them that they keep coming to the building to building to say, this is where my confidence is going to come from. Yeah,

Tony Benda 1:02:54
and I'm struggling with this right now, with certain people in in my life, like there are people who find their identity so far wrapped up in in the the things that they're doing in the building, who, whether it is, I'm a door greeter, this is what I'm going to do. I've been doing it for 19 years. I'm going to do it for the rest of my life. This is what I feel is my ministry in this church. I have been singing on this platform for the last 10 years. I feel like, if I don't have a microphone on my hand, I'm either worthless or invalid in this church. Or what other identity crisis are you having? Like, what is driving that person to that place? I feel like, for you to wrap your identity so far up in a service in a building means that you are not identifying yourself, first and foremost, as a child of God, and that you are loved and accepted beyond the works that you're trying to accomplish in a building so and this is, this is something I've been sitting in recently, Psalm 91

Josh Shaw 1:04:03
did I talk to you about this? I don't know if I have talking to me. No, I will, but I'm just, I don't remember if I talk to you. No, this one, folks, folks, let me just say this is when we talk about these things, and we're, we're on with you. I want you to know that this is not just I've said it before. Yes, we have notes that we're looking at in front of us, and we have bullet points, but like, this is also real life that we deal with true. This is this, is this is this is what we deal with. This is who we are, and we're not perfect people, and we've made mistakes, but these are our thoughts. So yes, please share them with me.

Tony Benda 1:04:33
So I've been, I've been sitting in Psalm 91 for the last like month. Some of you guys I know personally that are listening, but also, like, there's a lot of people out there that don't know, like my nine to five I work in a church. I work in a church where my role is one thing, but I've been serving in another area. I've been serving in the worship ministry for probably two and a half years. In this interim period where we've been without a worship leader, I have done so for again this, this whole period felt music is my calling, my passion, my all of these things. And I've always served in ministry in some capacity since I've been like 10 years old, like since I was in youth group, being able to reach the soundboard, they showed me how to mix when I was 10. So like, I've always been involved in ministry in some aspect, and I eventually made my way to the platform and started leading worship, and in high school in our student band, and then eventually I've led it a few different churches now. So I I love leading, and I feel like that's part of my calling in, you know my my ministry, that that the Lord has called me to so for someone to say, then that I am not capable of leading worship, or someone says, I don't have the capacity to lead The congregation, I, I struggled with that for this short season, because when I was asked to step away from the music ministry, I didn't take it as a as like an attack on my talent, or attack on all these things, because I, I mean, the Lord has given me a gift, and it's not to boast, but it's to Use for His glory. So I'm confident in my music abilities and in the giftings that he's given me to again, use it for the kingdom. So like when someone says that you're not capable to lead a team, or you're not capable to lead a congregation, I think I took it personally at first, primarily because the person that was saying these things, I just I almost felt disappointed that they were saying it, primarily because of not what they're saying about me, but because what other people are saying to this person about me. So people are going around whispering things in this person's ears and not giving the full picture of what's happening in the body of this church, or what's happened over the last 20 years in this church's history. I work in a broken church. I will tell you that there is no perfect church in this country. There's no perfect church in this world. I work in a broken church, and when brokenness is perpetuated and not addressed and not healed. People live in in this broken place, and we can never move on. So when I felt called to, you know, continue to lead, and someone said, No, I'm like, Okay, I submit to the authority. And yeah, it hurts and it sucks, because music is my again, what I feel called to do in ministry. So going back to that psalm 91 I had to kind of like, I think the Lord put this on my heart, because he specifically said, He who dwells in the shelter of the Most High will abide in the shadow of the Almighty, I will say to the Lord, my refuge and my fortress, my God in whom I trust, for He will deliver you from the snare of the fowler and from the deadly pestilence. He will cover you with his pinions and under his wings. Will you find refuge. His faithfulness is a shield and buckler. You will not fear the terror of the night, nor the arrow that flies by day, nor the pestilence that stalks in darkness, nor the destruction that wastes at noon day. 1000 may fall at your side, 10,000 at your right hand, but it will not come near you. You will only look with your eyes and see the recompense of the wicked because you have made the Lord your dwelling place, the Most High, who is my refuge. No evil shall be allowed to befall you. No plague come near your tent, For he will command his angels concerning you to guard you in all your ways. On their hands. They will bear you up lest you strike your foot against a stone you will tread on the lion and the adder and the young lion and the serpent you will trample underfoot, because he holds fast to me in love, I will deliver him. I will protect him, because he knows my name. When he calls to me, I will answer him. I will be with him in trouble. I will rescue him and honor him with long life. I will satisfy him and show him my salvation. So all of that to say, the reason I'm in Psalm 21 is because the the thing that really stuck out to me was, am I dwelling in the shelter of the Most High am I? Am I choosing to put myself under his protection? And the reason I say protection is because when I was told to step out of the worship team or to step out of leading that team, it was said. It was for my protection, so I'm not so when it all implodes because of people's arrogance and people's musicians, get used to it. We're all divas. Some of us work through it. Some of us stay as a diva for the rest of our lives. But all musicians, to an extent, are a diva it. If you're stuck in that performance based mentality, or you're not walking in humility when you're on that platform, or when you're looking to make a show out of what the worship is, and not truly worshiping and getting out of the way, minimizing distraction so people can look up instead of forward at you. I I think, I think that's where a lot of this issue came, especially in this church, unfortunately, and so they said that I was being protected. So when it finally implodes upon itself, I'm not the one to blame for its downfall. How twisted does that sound like? Why are we allowing things to perpetuate in brokenness and not call things out to account when we're supposed to, in love, speak truth and and Con and confront even even though it may hurt someone's feelings, I think we're so afraid of hurting each other's feelings that we're not going to speak truth. Speak truth to each other. So and that's all like side rants to say that they said that they were protecting me by removing me from that team. So my thought on that is, if I'm dwelling in the shelter of the Most High, I'll abide in the shadow of the Almighty, I will say to the Lord, my refuges and my fortress, my God in whom I trust. So I don't, I don't need man's protection, and so I don't know that's that's why I'm working through this whole thing. I don't need the protection of man when, when God is my fortress and my strength. And it says in in verse 14, because he holds fast to me in love, I will deliver him. I'll protect him, because he knows my name. When he calls to me, I will answer him. I will be with him in trouble. I will rescue him and honor him. So I want to know the Lord's name, so that when I call out to Him, He will be with me in trouble, not leadership in a church, not lay leaders and worship people, not any of those folks. I don't need them to protect me. I'm here to do ministry with them and to love them and shepherd them, but God is my shelter. He's my fortress. He's my protection. I don't know where that rant was coming from, but all of that to say,

Josh Shaw 1:12:32
Yeah, I it's hard, you know, because we're just being real and authentic. I mean, I spent a lot of time wanting to be in church. I wanted to be I'm on the opposite end. I was like, why am I not in ministry? God? Why am I here? Why am I why do I keep doing this work that that I know is not and this how I used to think. I put careful emphasis on that is how I used to think, like, why am I doing this work? It's not aiding to the ministry that I'm going to go into. Like, I'm supposed if I'm called to be a church in a church and be a pastor, like, why am I why am I doing

Tony Benda 1:13:11
this? Why am I grinding a nine to five somewhere else outside of a church, right? Why?

Josh Shaw 1:13:14
What fruit is this bearing for me? And the Lord had to really come to me and say, like, Josh, this is exactly where you need to be. You know, I work with very complicated people, and they have complicated lives outside of the church building. And I'm learning that every day that the ministry is there, that if I'm ever going to shepherd a flock like this, is the perfect flock I should learn to shepherd. And I learned that, and I love that psalm because a translation I believe in the King James, or New King James, or one of them is He who dwells in the secret place of the most high Jesus talks about that secret place is when you pray, don't do it on the streets the best in front of everybody, but to go back, to go into your room and close the door and pray to your Father, whose secret place, who is in secret, yeah. And that's why Jesus looked at the disciples and said, this temple that you think is so beautiful is going to be ripped down and believe the night was ripped down by the Romans because God was trying to say, Jesus is trying to say, it's not you. I love that you like to spend time in fellowship in Hebrews, chapter 10, verse 25 do not cease to gather. Right? We're not, I'm not saying don't gather, God. I'm just, I'm just gonna preach this real quick. Go for it. If God, if you think that God ever tells you to not gather with fellow believers, it's not God speaking. Let me just throw that out there. God will never tell you no, do not gather with your brothers and sisters. And it doesn't have to be confined to a church that's that's a lie, that's a lie. The enemy, right? The church is where people are gathered in unity, because the group of believers is the building. Now, if it's in a physical church building. That's beautiful. We need to continue to gather in the church building. But what we're trying to say is that the church building should just merely be a location for the body that that makes up the building. We we need to learn to not be so building, physical building bound, but spiritual building bound, do not take our message as saying, Don't go find a local body. Please don't broken people will only hurt broken people. Yep, you need to find a body of believers that you mesh with, you confide with, that becomes your circle of people that you can confide in and confess your sins and continue to go into fellowship, because a spirit filled church with a spirit filled Pastor will lead you into the way of righteousness. But if a church doesn't have that, and unfortunately, there are places in the Western Church that do have that, that's not the place you should be. And that will kind of hit deep a little bit for me, because I've been there. I've been in places I've had church hurts that say, you know that hindsight 2020 I could have done better, and I received personal conviction, even in this moment, to repent for my own sins, but without the mercy of the Holy Spirit and of Jesus on my life without the reassurance that he is my protector, that I am the building, the place in which he chooses to dwell. I do not want to be found, as James puts it, in opposition to God, because of my own unrighteousness or my quenching of His Spirit, you should be infatuated with the fact that God desires to dwell within you. That's the purpose of being God's building. And I feel like I'm just I'm feeling led to say that the purpose of being God's building is because he desires and chooses that he wants to dwell with the within you. It's not an obligation that he has to do, and it's because of it's because of a choice. When you choose Him as your Lord and Savior, He chooses to dwell within you. He leads you to a body. He leads you to these things, broken people that are not chasing after God do not resemble the truth of who God actually is. Because, folks, I there's people that are not chasing after God that are dwelling in churches. And let me tell you that for those that are listening that are on the fence of their faith, for those that are listening that are have been struggling for a long time, someone that talked to you or approached you that did not act in the fruit of the Spirit is not the true resemblance of who God actually is. The sad part about people who want to hear truth is that they come into the church and get lied to by people who are supposed to profess truth, and then they're lied to. And the Christians, you need to hear this too. I need to hear it too, is that people desire truth.

We keep saying you're living in falsehoods, but all they're saying is then show me the truth, but by condemning people, you're not showing them the truth. You're only pushing them away. If we are God's building, then our we should bear fruit that draws people to it. And y'all, this is just, this is just real. This is just where we are. Tony man, we can, we can do a whole not alone. But

Tony Benda 1:19:32
there were some weeds we have to crawl back out of. There are,

Josh Shaw 1:19:35
and this is just real life, folks, you know, like I said, i i We're nothing but raw people, and this is just who we are, and we're not perfect. We've been through hurt. We still we're still recovering from hurts. That's

Tony Benda 1:19:54
another topic That'll preach everyone needs recovery.

Josh Shaw 1:19:58
I see everyone. I still to this day, have things that do hurt me, but I don't let that steal my joy. I don't let that take me down. I'm not broken. I'm redeemed. Yeah, I'm redeemed by Jesus. He has healed me. He has saved me, He has redeemed me. I'm not going to continue to live in a broken mindset. I choose to live my fasting by the first thing that Isaiah 58 talks about, and God says, Is this not the fast that I've chosen for you? The very first thing he says to loose the bonds of wickedness. It's a humbling thing when you walk before the presence of the Lord and say, Lord, sift me like wheat and burn the chaff that's inside of me. Because when you ask God to do that in your life, he's gonna burn the chaff inside of you, and you're gonna realize the iniquities that have lived in your heart, that have kept you from the Lord. Why would the Lord reveal his mysterious will to you when you're not living in His revealed will to you through His Word. Flee from sexual immoralities, adulteries, drunkenness, fits of anger, slander, if you're living in these kinds of things. God that is the God that's God's revealed word to you. God, show me the way God. Show me this got me. Show me show me that God's like, I'm not going to show you nothing until you do what I tell you to do in my word. Why would I show you the secret things when you're not dwelling? Oh, why would I show you secret things if you're not dealing in the secret place?

Why would I show you that

this is not coming from a place where I'm mad at anybody, but convicted of the very things that have happened to me in my life. And actually is a great transition to the second half of the key verse. We are God's fellow workers, God's co laborers and CO heirs. This life is not to be done apart from him. In fact, he never wanted it that way, but Adam and Eve said, I think I'll take it that way. God said, where are you? They said, I'm hiding. If you think that God wanted to ever do this life without you, I need to introduce you to Jesus, because Jesus came to this world to show you it was never meant to be done without you. God wants to do it with you. God wants to show you the paths of righteousness. We are the medium in which his work will be accomplished. I'm worthless. No, you're not. I don't got anything to provide. Yes, you do. God can't use me. Yes, he can. God used a stutterer to free a people. God used a shepherd to slay a giant. God used a murderer to write three quarters of the New Testament. God can use you, and he wants to use you. And

what does it mean by we are God's field. You see, I believe there are seasons for all things, and we need to be available to be worked on. Let me say that again. I believe there are seasons for all things, and we, our hearts, our bodies, our minds, need to be available to be worked on by His Holy Spirit.

If your heart is hardened, you're Oh, if your heart is hardened, you're no better than Pharaoh. What else? How will Tony? How should I say that? Like, no, it's pretty nailed on the head. Like, if your heart's hardened, you're no better than Pharaoh.

Let My People Go,

and the only thing you're holding captivity is God's true potential for your life. When you harden your heart, you're becoming the pharaoh of God's work in your life. God's saying, Let it all go, and you're saying, Nope, I'm gonna keep it No. Thank you. God keeps asking you to say, let it go, and in fact, I'm gonna be sensitive with this one. God keeps allowing things to happen. Into your life, allowing you to experience things you experience so that he can draw you closer. He doesn't want you to suffer. He doesn't want you to hurt. He's not causing your grandmother's death. He's not causing your brother's death. He's not causing that murder. He's not causing that addiction. He's not causing that. God is not a God of evil. God is not a God of confusion. The world is wicked. I'm sorry to tell you, but God is not causing that. God does allow it, but keeps providing the way out of Egypt. In your life, God spoke to Pharaoh and said through Moses and said, Let my people go. And Pharaoh said, No, Jesus keeps reaching to the heart of the thing that you're not letting go. And keep saying, Son, Daughter, come, let it go and give it to me. And when you keep saying, No,

God wants to do so much through you. God wants to do so much in you, and the answer that you keep getting of or, Why is God not answering me? He's simply saying, why are you not letting it go? Why are you not giving it to me or the spirit of Oh, where the Spirit of the Lord is, there is freedom. If you're filled with the Holy Spirit, there is freedom. Stop living like you're in prison. You're not at any moment in time, right here, right now. You can pause this and say,

Lord, I'm a sinner,

and there's something I need to talk to you about. There's something I need to let go. I give it to you because I'm done. Holding on. Please forgive me.

Please help me. I recently started doing, am I very real with you? I recently started doing it. I had been living, I thought I was living everything for the Lord. And then one time I just, I just finally had enough. And I started fasting, and I had a very bad perception of what fasting is, which we're going to talk about soon. That's an episode, trust me,

I just

I had a point in my life where I was I

I didn't realize I had so much inside of me until the Lord said, why don't we start loosening some bonds of wickedness? And I did, and the freedom that I had was indescribable. I didn't need the Goosebumps to say that all this is the Lord. I just started walking in a way that the Lord, I just knew he was there. Even on my worst days, like today, I straight up, straight up. I had a I had a rough day today, but I knew he was there all the same. That's the joy of the Lord, allow, allow yourself to be God's field. He can work on you. And guess what? A yoke. Putting on God's yoke means that you co labor with God to till the field of your life, because a yoke belonged to two cows, and on the right side the cow was the strongest. On the left side, the cow was the weakest, and the left cow was supposed to learn from the right cow to become strong. And when both cows became equally strong, they were pray. They replaced the one on the right with the one the left, and the one on the left would take the place of the one on the right, and they would replace the weaker cow spot with another weak cow, so that they can continue this endless cycle of learning. Christ is the. One on the right. See whole seat at the right hand of God. He's the one on the dude. That's a sermon. He's the one on the right. Take note. Write this down. He's the one on the right. Jesus is the one on the right in your life. Till the field with them, learn from him. Jesus says, Come to me all you labor and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest. Take my yoke upon you and learn from me, for I am gentle and lowly in heart, and you will find rest for your souls, for my yoke is easy and my burden is light. Cast your cares on the Lord, because He cares for you. Let him work your field. So Tony, I think we got three points that we need to go through three essential

Tony Benda 1:31:02
points after that sermon, let's keep going.

Josh Shaw 1:31:06
I tell you, we can end every so I feel like we've hit points of this episode. We can just end it like every two seconds, yep. So

we have, um,

man, I almost started crying through all that. I tell you, I know we understand who he is now and why he isn't important. And I'll tell you folks, we prayed before this episode, and we said we're just going to do some stuff here. And wow, he's been moving so but what then we've learned all this? What then we need to move an understanding of what he's trying to do and access what is there to move in accordance with His will? Okay, we're going to teach you now, for those who are new, we've taught you what the Holy Spirit is. We've shared our personal experiences. For those that have Jesus in their hearts and you're trying to access this Holy Spirit that lives inside of you, there's a couple of things we need to understand. The first one is, we need to understand this power that lives inside of us. Right? Paul says something powerful in Ephesians, chapter three, verses 14 through 20, and I'm going to read it, because something we have to understand. He says, When I think of all this, I fall to my knees and pray to the Father, the Creator of everything in heaven and earth. I pray that from his glorious, unlimited resources, he will empower you with inner strength through His Spirit, then Christ will make y'all. Then Christ will make his home in your hearts as you trust him, See that you got you guys catch that this is the power that lives inside us, but it's not going to make us he's not going to make us home until you release. Your roots will grow down. Look at this. Your roots, when you trust Him, your roots will grow down into God's love and keep you strong and may you have the power to understand as all God's people should he says, How wide, how long, how high and how deep His love is. May you experience the love of Christ, though it is too great to understand fully, then you will be made complete with all the fullness of life and power that comes from God. He is saying you can't understand the fullness of this power of what He has for you until you trust in Him and allow the roots of life to grow deep into your heart and love. The end of it says, now, now all the glory to God, who is able, through his mighty power at work within us, to accomplish infinitely more than we ask or we think.

Paul prayed this

with the hope that we begin to access to the power that lives inside of us. Paul prayed this prayer so that we may not only be made aware of this power, but be continuously revealed and understand the power that lives inside of us. I don't need the rest of that and that notes there. Tony, what do you think about this? What do you when you hear this? What is you? What is your What are you thinking?

Tony Benda 1:34:23
Well, when I think of all this, I fall to my knees and I pray to the Father, Amen, brother, I was ready to reread it now. The closing portion of that is, is what strikes me now, all glory to God, who is able, through his mighty power at work within us to accomplish infinitely more than we might ask or think. And some people say, and imagine that we ask think, and imagine some some scripture translations, we have to keep giving glory to God at the end of the day. Because Paul says, When I think of all this, I fall to my knees and pray to the Father, the Creator. For Everything in heaven and on earth. So at the beginning we fall and we we fall and pray, and at the end of it, we we still sing praises and sing glory to God. I don't know, my brain just went to exaltation and glorifying in that portion of that scripture. I mean, the meat in the middle is fantastic and

Josh Shaw 1:35:25
but Tony has the worshipers mind. I do. It keeps coming back to Gloria. Glory be to God. Well, it also, it also plays in the fact that when you give glory to God, it's, it's early on, it's teaching humility, yeah, right, because here, here's the truth, and honestly, you can agree, you can disagree, whatever. I believe this. To My Heart, through His Spirit, we have the ability to heal the sick. Declare that the lame should walk, cast out demons and manifest various gifts of the Holy Spirit. I believe that the gifts of the Holy Spirit are alive and active today. Yeah, and those that say they're not. The reason my my firm belief is this, the reason they're not is because the believers are quenching the Holy Spirit. For Paul says, Do not quench the Holy Spirit. But it is more than just the physical things we're able to do. Everyone, everyone focuses on the physical manifestations of things, but it is also by His power and only his power that we have the ability to forgive others and ourselves. It is only by his power that we can walk through faith, and not by walk by faith and not by feelings. It is only by faith that we can break chains of bondage that hold us captive. It is only by faith we can choose to be patient over anger. It is only by faith we can choose to repent and release, rather than to hold on and to be made hollow. But when those things start to happen, and it doesn't make sense, if you develop a style of prayer and praise and glory to God, you'll be able to say, this was not done by me, but by God, which brings up kind of the second point, right? Let me also add as a sidebar, if you say, Well, I don't have these gifts of the Spirit. I don't have this. I don't have that. I believe we're all gifted. But here's the thing, if you want somebody healed, You have not because you ask, not. If you want somebody healed or something to happen, you have not because he asked, not. Yep. And if it don't happen, then here's the thing, Jesus didn't want to go to the cross. He said, If it's possible, take this cup from it. But he said, but if it is your will, let it be done. Yep. So even if you ask for healing, the heal the the lack of presence of healing should not deter your faith, but it should only make it arise. As saying, Lord, it is your will that it needed to happen. The question is, how can I continue to move as your disciple? The problem is, is when God doesn't deliver healing, people's faith diminishes. Why? Because their faith was not founded on the rock to begin with.

Tony Benda 1:38:08
I'll even say this, there's been a time where I'll use a family example. My nephew, Odin, he was two and a half years old when he passed from stage four hepato blastoma, which is a rare liver cancer in kids under, I think, three. He was diagnosed at 18 months and had his whole cancer journey. You best believe that there are people praying for him, that that whole concept, if you have not, because you ask not, we were praying for total and complete healing along that whole journey. And there are people that will do that same thing in different situations, not just even a sickness, but for those who are faithful and praying for those who are faithful and asking, we also have to remember that God answers in different ways. Yeah, that's another side of it too, that I that I'm thinking about that's good. And sometimes God will do the miraculous and totally remove the sickness or the cancer, or he'll, he'll do a financial miracle where there wasn't one before, whatever the thing is. And we have little victories with my nephew to where he's had a liver resection surgery to where they took out, like, I don't know, 85% of his liver, or 90% of his liver. So they didn't have to get a new liver, because he would have been on meds his whole life. So they did a resection, which then after that was able to the liver started growing back. By the time he died, like he was. He was already getting the majority of the previous liver grown back in a healthy way. Wow. He had two lung surgeries. One was in Cincinnati, at the children's hospital there in Cincinnati that my brother and I met them from Chicago, or they were down here and went up to. Cincinnati, when my brother and I drove from Chicago to go meet him and be there during that surgery, and it was cool, because at the end of the second lung surgery, they said that, well, this isn't the cool part. There were, there were still many tumors left over, and some of them were so small they couldn't operate and remove them. But by the time he died, based on some of the treatment he was getting, there were, I think, no tumors left in his lungs. So in that sense, he was healed in his lungs. But also, like from the overarching concept that we were praying for healing this whole time. There's these little victories along the way, yes, but then also he's healed in in eternity, yeah. And that was, you know, it sucks here on Earth still, and there's definite days that we miss him more than other days. And what's really, really cool about it is like, even though he wasn't healed physically. He was healed spiritually and eternally, and he's running streets of gold like, yeah, that is the best healing that we could have ever prayed for and asked for. Well.

Josh Shaw 1:41:11
And you know, this brings to my heart, too, a couple things with that you have not because you ask not. Does not apply to saying, God, I have not a Lamborghini. So I want a Lamborghini. Yeah, it is not prosperity gospel, not by any means. It's not by any means. When it says you have, not because you ask not. It's because the God desires a heart transformation, not a physical transformation, not a monetary transformation. He told the rich to say, sell your possessions and then follow me, and they've refused to. He looked at people that the of of the Pharisees, and said, It's because of your heart, and they refuse to flee from him. When you transfer to a place of you have not because you ask not you need to get to a place spiritual. You say, I don't. I'm not where I'm at because I'm not asking God to take me there. And the second thing I need to address is that is doubt, because I just, I hear it in my head from maybe put some listeners, they say, Josh, I hear what you're saying. But in those particular circumstances, what happens if I doubt? All the disciples doubted, even the one whom there is no deceit. God meets you in the middle of your doubt and grabs your hand when you're sinking in the water and pulls you out when Jesus responds to Peter and says, Oh, you of little faith. Why did you doubt. I don't believe that he was addressing him in a angry way. I believe he was dressing Peter in a way of saying, Son, I'm here. I've got you. Why did you ever doubt me that I wasn't going to pull you out? God will meet you in your doubt. God will meet you in that place as you wait for his power to work. Don't be so closed off by the thing you're waiting for to happen that you miss of the work that he's going to do in you. Pray for healing, pray for deliverance, seek Him, and you will find him, knock and the door shall be open to you, ask and you shall receive. But don't miss the work he's going to do in you too. CO labors, yep. Fields. The next one that Tony really addressed is the power of understanding, the power of prayer and praise. Right? He gave a beautiful story about giving glory to God. But I also want to address this from the book of Acts Paul in Acts 16, Paul and Silas were being were beaten and bloodied and thrown in prison. What was the determining factor, though their prayers and their praises ignited the power that lived within them that shook prison walls and broke chains these dudes, dude, if you whip a bandit off of me, I'm crippled for like 24 hours. I'm gonna go find my place on the recliner and say, lights out, dude, I'm done. Woe is me. Woe is me, brother. But like, but these dudes were in worship. I couldn't even imagine they were just sitting singing,

Tony Benda 1:44:34
yeah, man, there's

Josh Shaw 1:44:36
a song in my head. I just can't get the words out of it.

Tony Benda 1:44:40
Holy. Holy. Holy is the Lord God Almighty was in his to come. I

Josh Shaw 1:44:51
just, I picture these dude just bloodied and battered and broken, and I know that song wasn't around, but like, that's, that's just what I envisioned them singing. And all sudden, you just hear these things and they it shakes inside. It's breaking prison walls and convicting people because of the power that is moving in behalf of the prison, because of their prayers and praises of the faithful. A Centurion in this entire family got saved because they refused to let their circumstance hinder their praise. It says in James 516, and this is powerful too. Confess your sins to each other and pray for each other so that you may be healed. The earnest prayer of a righteous person has great power and produces wonderful results we talked earlier. Give it back to God. Why should this? Is this scripture is exactly why you shouldn't keep you shouldn't be the pharaoh of your own heart and keep things captive and not giving them, letting them go into the promise keeper. Because when you do, you're not letting power and wonderful results work through you. You see it is more about being with him rather than what he should give you. Yep, we can't live in this mindset where, God, give me this. We can't. We've got to get to this mindset that God, I need you to give me. Give me. Give me. Give me. Give me.

Tony Benda 1:46:23
I think he's already given it all. What I mean? Honestly, what more can he give us? He's given us. His son, died on the cross, rose again and promises us eternity. What more can we ask for someone said

Josh Shaw 1:46:43
one time to me, they said, Josh, if God, if the only thing God ever did for you in your life was die for your sins, would that be enough for you?

And I was like, whoa.

Tony Benda 1:46:56
The thing is, like we as a consumerist humanity, work in them, like our brains work off of transactional things we were. We go to a nine to five. We expect a salary or a wage, but the Bible says, but the wages of Synod is death. Is death, but the gift of God is eternal life through Jesus Christ, correct? So that's out of Romans, 623, and is that transaction that was done on the cross enough for us, or do we have to keep asking for more and more, like some people are praying for financial miracles, and I and I don't, there's nothing wrong with that. I don't discredit any of that, but we can't live in this consumerist like, God, give me more more of the things I don't want more the things I want more of him. And

Josh Shaw 1:47:53
see, I've learned personally through that, because when I was as a veteran, when I was trying to fight for more disability, I the reason I believe it took so long, and because the reason I knew it is because when I got denied the first time, the day before that, Jayla said, looked at me, and I believe the Spirit spoke through her so heavy. And she said, Josh, where is your treasure? Because I was, I was so Oh, I was hell bent on thinking about what the money could do for me, not what Jesus Christ is already doing in my life. Yeah, that's good. There is nothing wrong with asking for more. There is nothing wrong with asking God, Lord, I need you to give me this clarity, direction, understanding, wisdom. God looked right at Solomon and said, I will give you whatever you want, name it. And Solomon said, I want wisdom and understanding for who can lead this people better than you, and because he asked for something that was pure and holy in the sight of the Lord, but also received everything that could have been worldly. Now, Solomon didn't do did bad things with that. Don't get me wrong. Again, imperfect people spread throughout the Bible, but we are called to decrease and he increased. Those are the words from John the Baptist. We are called to pray without ceasing, allowing His Holy Spirit to work and our faith arise. We walk by faith that he will do it, not by the side of if he will do it correct. You need to just believe God's gonna do something. But don't set your mind on what he should be doing, because then you start to make him your who. Then you start to make God your slave. And God is not going to do it. What the way you want it. To do it, he will not do it your way. He looked at the this story blew my mind. I think it was Exodus 18. Dude, the Holy Spirit is giving me this. So this is crazy. I believe it's Exodus 18, or somewhere around there, Pharaoh finally let his people go, and the Israelites were like, we're going this way, straight into the promised land. But God. Said to them, if you go that way, you're gonna hit everything that you're not supposed to encounter right now, and you'll die. He literally told those people, yep, that's the easy way. You go that way, you're gonna get murdered by the people that Joshua was supposed to kill, by the way. But God said, I'm gonna lead you through the Red Sea, even though they thought their way was blocked, the reason he led them to the sea was that he could not only show them the miracle of his power, but shut behind them the past that they suffered for. Paul says, I look not to the things that are behind me, but strain forward to what lies ahead. Prayer may not change your situation that you're in, but it should change you. Chad beach says that in his book, I believe it's titled, worried about everything because I pray about nothing. He says, prayer may not change your situation, but prayer should change you. Listen, if you go into prayer in $100,000 of debt and you come out of prayer, you're most likely gonna, no, there's a guarantee you're still gonna be $100,000 worth into debt. But what it should change is, okay, gone. I'm in debt. How can I handle this? With you? In fact, I'm, in fact, I'm writing a book about being with God. Spoiler, that I am writing a book. It's very difficult, but it is very fun. And the last one Tony, we need to talk about is understanding the power of servanthood. Yes, this one doesn't have a lot of notes, because it has to be open ended. But folks, if you want to unlock the power of the Holy Spirit in your life, servanthood should be your number should be at the top priority. Jesus washed feet as the ultimate sign of servanthood. It says, For the Son of Man came not to serve, but to be served. In fact, I define, I felt the Spirit speak this to me about servanthood is. Servanthood is an outward flow of the Spirit that lives in us. Serving you should serve your wife and your kids before yourself. You should serve others before yourself, even though we just talked about God being the building. Guess what? You should serve in the local church, but be careful, serving the local church is not the pinnacle of success. There is no pinnacle of success. Another story for another time. But Tony, share with me your thoughts about the power of servanthood, as how does the power of servanthood unlock the Holy Spirit that lives in us?

Tony Benda 1:52:39
Well, you've already said some of the good ones about the wife and the kids. No, I think the Holy Spirit is just another third of the Trinity. So Jesus, in His example of washing feet, is also represented in the Holy Spirit, and that same spirit that lives in us should be able to produce the fruit that even Jesus himself produced. So if Jesus is there washing feet, why are we not also washing feet? Why are we not serving in the ways that Jesus served, especially if we're that temple of the Holy Spirit, and that, you know, dwelling place for him, for him and his spirit like we should be doing the same thing that Jesus was doing. We should be striving daily to be more Christ, like we should be, yeah, John three in verse 30, where it says He must increase, but I must decrease. Yeah. And you said that that was John the Baptist saying that that is like, that is the example that we should be living, humility, servitude. These are, these are huge things that we as a church, should just be daily living like we should be acting out this on a every day. Let me ask every way.

Josh Shaw 1:54:02
Let me ask this question, what stops servanthood?

Tony Benda 1:54:06
Pride? Wow. That

Josh Shaw 1:54:08
was right. Amen. That was quick.

Tony Benda 1:54:10
Yeah. Like ourselves, we get in the way of being able to fulfill what we should be doing on a regular basis, because we get in the way, like we ourselves as humanity. Humanity sucks, people. Oh,

Josh Shaw 1:54:25
preach. It's very much about what we want. Yes, serving myself before I serve others. That's the mentality of life. It's like, it's saying, it's like the McDonald's mentality, like, I'm gonna go grab myself a cheeseburger. Nothing wrong with that, pure thoughts, right? But Jesus also says, Why are you not feeding the poor if they're hungry? I'm not saying go feed every homeless person on the street. But like, if someone's having a. Had day, and they talk about some fries, like, Man, I just, you know, fries make me feel better. Remind me of this that, why are you not buying them some fries? If you're in the break room with your co workers and you've already had three slices of pizza, and you know that somebody else hasn't had any slice and there's one slice left, are you gonna take that slice of pizza? I'm preaching from a personal standpoint. But like those jokes aside, like that's the purpose of it. Though Jesus's personal time was with the Father. It's coming to my spirit now, Jesus spent so much time serving others, so that when he withdrew, he spent all the personal all of his time that he wanted was with the Father. We Why do I feel like we've taken being in the presence of God as like a chore, like, it's this quote, unquote requirement of like, let me back that up. I'm not. That's not heretical. I'm not trying to be heretical. I'm using in this context, being in the presence Lord is required in order to grow with him a relationship. That's what I'm trying to say. I'm getting ahead of myself. What I'm getting at the context of that statement is we view it as this, like I have to do it like, oh my god, I gotta do it today, Dear Heavenly Father, like we view it as this chore. When Jesus withdrew to be with the Father, because he's like, man, I've been serving and serving and serving and pouring out. I want to be with the Father. Now he literally thought about it, but a mindset of like, it's not something I have to do, it's something I get to do. This is something I get to do. My personal time is with Jesus, me and Jayla. Personal time is playing Borderlands. But man, if I viewed being with God as my playing with Borderlands, with Jayla dude, you know my you know where my relationship with him would be. Pick the thing you like doing with somebody the most, AX, throwing, reading a book, holding hands, going on a date. If you viewed your relationship like that, of your desire to be like that with God every day, you would grow so much. And here's the thing, the more you spend the father, the more you're going to desire and burn to serve other people. And it doesn't have to look like buying them things I love. This is one thing I thought I've done in my life. If somebody asks for a drink of water at my work, I will get up and grab them a drink. If somebody wants to go make a cup of coffee, I go and offer and make it for them, because I that's one thing I get to do that I enjoy doing for people is serving. Man, it really a cup of coffee. I can use her now, yeah, you want me to go to the back and make you a cup, because it's not about them. Well, it is about them. It's not about whether they are asking out of the blue for because they're too lazy. It doesn't matter. I want to do it because I want to serve people, because my Lord and Savior served others, and that when you begin to serve others, you unlock the power of the Holy Spirit. It's been a long episode. Tony, oh, by the way, you owe me a pizza. Inside joke. Tony said, if we go over two hours, I'll buy you a pizza. And then,

Tony Benda 1:58:28
when I said, two hours or less, or your next pizza is free. No, he did

Josh Shaw 1:58:31
not word it like that. Did not word it like that. But we'll end it with this, folks, and I'll, I'll wrap this up quickly. Usually we end with a moment of encouragement. But today, today's episode is not today's is a moment of warning. I know, not trying to kill the mood of discouragement. No, it's not that. But here's this quick warning to us as believers, and it should encourage, encourage others. One don't quench the spirit. Don't quench the Holy Spirit in your life. Let him work through you. Two, don't cease your prayer and praise life. The enemy is going to try to shut your mouth, to steal, to kill and destroy your joy and your peace and your prayer life. The key to success and being with the Holy Spirit is through that three do not cease from your gifts or assignments. You are filled with purpose. You are loved and you are seen, and God desires you and has a plan and a purpose according to the goodwill that is within him. And you use a gifts and assignments to serve Him and to serve others. And finally, religious versus relationship mentality. We are God's building. Be a part of your local body, but don't get into this mindset of going to church out of religious routine. 18 go to church because you get to dwell as a unity of brothers and sisters in fellowship with Christ. And when you walk into that building, know that the presence of the Lord is there, and walk in being with him, not worried about anybody else. Walk into your services being with him. And walk out of that building, knowing that you're not leaving the Holy Spirit in the building, but you're going to carry the Holy Spirit inside of you outside of the building. Being a cleric in life means serving Him with all your heart, with all your soul, with all your mind and understanding. The reason this is a warning is because if you quench the Spirit in your life, it's going to be that much harder, and we don't want it to be for you. We're not perfect. I don't even know what a D 20 was until I had to get into D and D and the D, the D 20 of the Bible. I'm still learning how to roll every day, but know that we love you, we cherish you. We're here for you, and we also struggle, and we haven't perfected this walk, but what we want to do is walk it with you know that listeners Tony, why don't you close this out with our socials and a time of prayer? I'm preaching tonight, bro,

Tony Benda 2:01:38
it's good stuff.

Um, we could keep going with this. My goodness, these topics are endless, and I just pray that you guys are encouraged today. If any of this stuff relates to you or you guys have questions about anything we talked about, feel free to reach us on Facebook and Instagram using our handle at dungeons and disciples, that's the word and spelled out, dungeons and disciples. And you guys can also email us at dungeons disciples@gmail.com Please email us. Please email us. We will definitely respond back. We do, and Josh has been better about it than I have. Again, our Gmail is dungeons disciples@gmail.com without the end of that one message, us, rate us. Review us. If you like the show, leave us some five stars. If you could, it helps us get seen and heard. With that, let's, let's do some praying out and yeah, yeah. Let's pray. Let's pray, Dear Lord, thank you again for just wrapping this episode so neatly in a in a biblical package. Lord, yes, we just thank you for the opportunity that we have to, first of all talk about D and D and do so in a religious slash relational slash godly setting. It's not about religion, Lord, it's about the relationship with you. Yes, and I pray that through our game tables, we continue to develop relationships with others that we can then share our personal faith, Lord and in the truth that is Jesus Christ. I thank you again for these listeners, for their willingness to hold on for so long and so faithfully, both to this episode and to You, Lord. And for those that don't know You, Lord, just continue to plant seeds in their hearts. We just, we just ask you to put people in their life, to continue to till the soil, plant more seeds, and for that little seed to grow, Lord, yes, water. With your faithfulness and your goodness as only you. Can we thank you again for this episode, and we just thank You, Lord soli, DEO, Gloria, glory be to God in Jesus name Amen.

Josh Shaw 2:03:50
Who can you invite to the game table?