Episode 2

The podcast hosts discuss their experiences from the past week and reflect on the success of their previous episode. They also talk about the importance of relying on God rather than themselves in battling sin and temptation. They mention a book called "The Screwtape Letters" that explores the ways in which the devil tempts individuals. They discuss the dangers of becoming complacent and falling into routines that make one vulnerable to temptation. They also share a quote about the importance of preparation in achieving success, both in sports and in spiritual battles. Ladies and gentlemen, welcome back, I'm Nazario Pangallo, Cole Bissett, and this is the Lost Seat Podcast. We hope you enjoyed episode one, we're back for episode two, and you know Cole, it's been a whole week since we filmed that last one, you know, what experiences have you gotten from this past week that you'd like to share with the audience? Actually, it's just kind of been a wild ride seeing the results of what we've done, I really enjoyed going back and looking at the clips and kind of realizing, oh wow, we actually did a decent job, our conversation was pretty interesting, if y'all don't know, we kind of at the end of it, we were freaking out, and so we were like high-fiving each other, like dang, that actually went pretty well, so that probably was my favorite part of last week, kind of just getting that end result and looking back at it and being, oh wow, that actually turned out pretty well, and so it kind of gave me hope for the future, and I'm really looking forward to that. Now, likewise, I'd like to turn around and ask that question to you as well, what's kind of been your favorite experience about last week, it doesn't have to be related toward the podcast in general, but what's something that's kind of connected to your heart? You know, I think I want to get a little bit more into it during the podcast about the podcast and the journey that we've made, and you know, the work that really comes into doing all of this, you know, yes, the film part, recording it, it's about, it takes us like 45 minutes to record, but there's probably a multitude of hours before and after that that really goes into the whole thing that's really encapsulates the whole experience, and it's really, it's awesome because we get to spend it together, and we get to, you know, grow in different ways with it, and you know, sometimes there may be moments when we get frustrated, you know, thinking what template do we want to use for a video, and different stuff like that, but you know, at the end of the day, it's something awesome that we get to do together, and you know, we're doing it for the Lord, so it's awesome, but, you know, experience from this week that I want to, you know, bring to the attention here to really get us going in this discussion today is, Wednesday morning, I was able to go to confession, and if you're not a Catholic or don't know what that is, basically, we as Catholics believe that we should go to our priest to confess our sins, and we believe that God, through our priest, gives them the power to, you know, absolve us of our sins, and whether you believe that or not is not what this is about, this is about the message that I received from the priest that I thought would be very important for us to discuss, and I think it's a great message for all of us, and it can go in a multitude of ways, but I'm going to start with this, and what Fr. Mugabe was trying to tell me is that the devil attacks when we're vulnerable, he knows, like, the hardest times for us in our lives, and he knows exactly what he wants to attack to make us fall into sin, whether that be any type of sin that comes up in our lives, he knows when the right time is, and another part of it is we can get complacent with ourselves and our battle with sin, which we'll talk about later, and we always, what Fr. Mugabe was trying to tell me is, we are always weak, you know, we are never able to defeat our sin and defeat our temptations, but that means that we always need God to help us with it, and at times we can think that we are becoming stronger and we are the reason that we are defeating our sin, and in reality, you know, one, that's wrong, and another, that makes our pridefulness and our mindset change a lot, and it really, eventually will lead to us falling into sin more because we rely too much on ourselves, and this is what he was trying to tell me, and it made me just reshape my focus about it, and to readjust and say, okay, that just needs, I need to put my trust more into God and not rely as much on myself, and to always remember that when it's tough, and when the temptations are coming, I was always not relying on myself and always asking God for help in that time because that's how we get through it. And I'd like to add a little bit on top of that. Nazari and I are both reading a book right now, or I read it last year, and he's reading it currently. The book is called The Screwtape Letters by T.S. Lewis, and for those of you that haven't read it, it is a phenomenal book. Basically, it goes through the mindset of a demon kind of looking towards how he tempts this one individual throughout the entire of the book, and how the different ways the devil can attack you, and what I find really fascinating about that book, and kind of relating to what you're saying about when you're vulnerable, the devil is going to use a chance to attack you. And almost, it relates towards last week, where I talked about comfortability and how sometimes it's not safe to be comfortable. Like, you always gotta be on your toes, you always gotta be ready. And T.S. Lewis, he talks about, especially through the demon's eyes, the demon talks about how this human has gotten into this routine and he's starting to look pretty good, and that's exactly what he fell into. He fell into a routine, and he did not stay on his toes, and the demon used that as a way and a guideline to tempt him into sin. And so, on top of what you're saying, yes, this really is important. Even when you're out of time and you're comfortable in your life, you're actually pretty vulnerable, and that's huge for us to realize as humans, and acknowledge it because being vulnerable can be good. It's obviously important to be vulnerable with others, because sometimes when you bundle things up, it's hard to express yourself. But it also is important to not be too vulnerable to open yourself towards temptation. So, I'll just carry on top of that. Yeah, and I'd like to add a little bit more of what you're talking about with the routine to fully clarify that message. And I think what you're saying is, when you become so comfortable with your routine, that when something hits you, that gets you out of your routine, it freaks you out so much and puts you so much in that place of vulnerability that you don't even know how to react, and you don't know what to do. I think that's what you're trying to say. Yeah, exactly. Yeah, so that's what he's discussing. Routines are, in a way, they're good, and that's what helps us and helps us stay on track with a lot of different things. But yeah, like you're saying, if we get too much in with our routines and then something happens when we're out of it, it just changes the whole thing. It's all about staying on your toes, which is a message that our quote of the day, the person who did our quote of the day, would tell his players back in the day. For those of you who are probably upset with us for doing football again for another episode, we're about to disappoint you even more. So today, our quote is going to be from the famous Coach Paul Bear Bryant of the University of Alabama. And the University of Kentucky. And the University of Kentucky. He's got to get it out there. He's from Kentucky. So sorry. I hate to disappoint you by not saying that. But the quote says, it's not the will to win that matters. Everyone has that. It's the will to prepare to win that matters. And I'm just going to kind of let that resonate for a second, and we'll talk about it. So what's your initial thoughts? Like when you read that, what jumps to your mind? I want to begin with the first part of the quote. And he says that it's not the will to win that matters. Everyone has that. And I'm going to relate this to athletes at first, because he is that person that talks about athletes. And everyone has that competitive spirit and that want to win. That's why so many people are involved in sports. But if you look at it, and you see the percentage of athletes that get to that top level, the dudes that get to college, top level of college, dudes get to the professional leagues. There's such a little percentage of that. And did all those people who played up that day? Did they have the will to win? Did they have the will to be that good? Of course they did. Everybody did. I had the dream. You know, you probably had the dream. We all have that. Every guy has a dream to be an athlete. Everyone has that dream. But there's something that sets apart those people that make it to the professional leagues and take it to that top level. And then if you're going to take it even farther, those dudes that are the greatest of all time, those dudes are just, if you listen to them, they're complete psychopaths. Their will to do it is absolutely absurd. And it comes down to what the second part of the quote says. The will to prepare to win. That matters. Those guys that take the preparation, the works in the gym, the workouts, the film studies, take that to just a whole other level. Some people do it at the basic level. Some people do it at the advanced level. And there's the dudes that do it at just the extreme level in athletics. And that's what gets you to be Tom Brady, Michael Jordan, the stud that gets talked about forever. It's the will to prepare. And then obviously, we're going to throw this over to Christianity, because that's what this podcast is about. You have to be able to prepare yourself to win the battles in life. And we already talked about it in our intro, which led into it perfectly, about spiritual warfare. And that's what I think about, and that's the battle that we face in our lives every single day, is a spiritual battle. And we have to be able to win those battles. But everyone wants to win those battles. You hear them say, everyone's going to say, yeah, I don't want to fall into temptation. I don't want to sin. I don't want to go against what God says. Because it's easy to say that. Exactly. It's easy to say that. Everyone has that in them. But do they have the will to prepare to do that? Yeah, exactly. It boils down to two simple words, which I hear all the time from my coaches in high school. The bigger of the two that I heard more often was perseverance. Perseverance, perseverance, perseverance. I was a cross country runner in high school, and cross country is all about perseverance, right? You get through that first mile, what's next? Another mile, another mile, another mile. That's how cross country works. And it's all about the perseverance, the will to do better, the will to get faster, the will to push yourself towards God, the will to turn away from sin. And like you said, it always boils down to your conscience. Again, it's a spiritual warfare, and it's such a neat idea, such a neat topic, because it all comes down to the person. It's your choice, right? God gave us free will, and it's our choice what to do with that. Do we want to sin? Do we not want to sin? Obviously, we all strive towards good. Now, what I find in today's society is goodness is always, oftenly misconstrued. It can be misconstrued in many ways. A common one is sex. A lot of people will view, oh, sex is good, which it is, but in the concept of marriage. Goodness can be misconstrued just in day-to-day life, sweets. It looks good. It tastes good. It's not good for your body. There are different aspects you can connect it to, and I think that's all what spiritual warfare and your conscience boils down to. You have to be able to separate this misconstrued idea of good and put it towards the goodness that God gave us to understand, right? And as humans, we have the desire to do good. That's why sometimes we can fall into that misconstrued good so easily, and I think that's really, really important, and I know that's kind of far-fetched for this quote, but I think in the end, it kind of connects back to the dedication aspect, right? You have to have the dedication, the perseverance to look at it and be like, oh, that's really not actually that good for me. Maybe I shouldn't be doing it. Maybe I should do better, and I think you also left out one of the main athletes that I'd like to really quickly jump to, Leo Messi. Sorry, we move on. What I'd like to say is that drive that those athletes have, that drive that the saints have is on a different level. Some people might even say superhuman. They're crazy. It's awesome. All of us should strive towards that, but we're human. We're imperfect, and I think that it boils down to ourselves, and I think that's really the biggest part about grace and getting to heaven. What do you have to say on that? Anything else? Two things to think about when you're standing right now. I'm going to go to Leo Messi at first, because I think it's a great example. You're looking at a 5'7 guy that is widely known as the greatest soccer player to ever walk the pitch. Biggest underdog story, I think, in history, honestly. And it really, we as Christians, we're all underdogs, you know what I mean? We are in a world that is run by the devil. If you're going to take yourself as a 5'7 player and go to the soccer field, you are in a world that is not owned by you. There are youth that are consistently over six foot, they're way bigger, and everything like that. And in the world of spiritual warfare, we are fighting against spirits, evil spirits that are more powerful than we are, and that is just the facts of it. But we must put on the preparation level that is what superhuman people do. And you know, the thing is, we are aided by something that is even greater than that, and that's God. He is the greatest of all, and he gives us the aid to do that. And he gives people these drives, these passions in sports to do that as well, but he also gives us that in our faith. And he gives us the armor of God, like it says in Ephesians 6, so that you can take your stand against the devil's schemes. These schemes that we were talking about from the screw tape letters, and then he gives us the armor that we need to go out and prepare ourselves. And there's so many different ways to prepare ourselves in our spiritual warfare. I'm going to relate it to what you talked about with food. There's like our whole body, our temple of the Holy Spirit. So there's so many different ways that you can teach yourself to prepare yourself for the will to win. I think athletics are a great way to do that, and they're a great way to learn at a young age about how to grow, and to keep going back at something, and keep practicing something, and not giving up, and then leading to something really good. If you're lucky enough to play on teams that are successful and win games, that's one way. If you're able to see yourself progress as a player, and then physically as in lifting weights or conditioning in either sports or cross-country like we were talking about, you see growth in yourself. You see how preparation and doing things leads to something. And that's why sports are such a great learner for us. And then in food, we have to be able to make little decisions to make our bodies better. And at the end of the day, in all these different things that we do, when you make that choice later in the day, it makes you feel better. I was watching a reel of someone talking about a guy that woke up at 5 a.m. every day to get his day started. And he talked about, I think, did you send me this? Do you know what I'm talking about? I can't remember if you said it. I probably did. I send you so much, it's hard to even remember now. But he said when he gets up at 5 in the morning, his mindset on why he makes himself get up is, how am I going to feel at 11 o'clock in the morning? Maybe I did send you this. Yeah. I think I sent you this. And the thing is, if you get up at 5 in the morning, you've already had six days or six hours of your day by 11 a.m. You're going to look back and be like, wow, I had the determination and the discipline to get up. And then if you sleep longer, you'd be like, dang, I was lazy. I didn't feel good. Like our bodies, our souls are made to be like that. They're made to make decisions and be self-controlled and have self-mastery over ourselves. Now, I'd like to kind of go back to self-mastery idea. One of my favorite Christian speakers, her name is Sarah Swofford, likes to use this simple word, this simple quote. It's striving, striving, striving, striving. What are we striving towards? We're striving towards God. We're striving towards excellence. We're striving towards perfection. Obviously, we can only reach those when we get to heaven. Now, that's why the word striving. It's not completing, striving. So what do we do on the surf? We strive. Now, I'd like to give you a two-step breakdown on a way to avoid sin. Now, it's not going to work. It's not foolproof. I'm human. I'm imperfect. I fall towards sin. I admit it. Everybody does. Now, I mean, it's really important to have these things. And I'm going to go back to what you said about armor. The two steps are, first off, build yourself in the armor of God. Use God as your armor. Use God as your protection. You find yourself thinking about sinning, go to God. Pray. Do something. Run. Think about God. Listen to a podcast about God. Anything. Arm yourself with God. Yeah, listen to our podcast. It's really, it's a huge and vitally important thing for you to do because you can't defend it yourself. We can't. We're not strong enough to. We're human. Now, but it's important because God can. He gives us that responsibility, that effort, that extra drive that comes from God. And we have to do that by reaching out towards him. And it's not like he won't reach out back towards us. And it may not be in the way you expect it. It's not always in the way we expect it because God's a mystery. It's one of his cool qualities. But the next step I want to touch on is friendships. I think friendships are important. If you have somebody you can talk to, a friend you can truly trust and you build a support like a friend group, honestly, when you have a bunch of people that you can be like, those are my boys. I'm just going to go hang out and talk with them today. I'm just going to do it. And instead of thinking about sin when you do, you're around people who are striving towards the opposite. Now I'm going to do two quotes on this. I think they're both really important. One is the extreme and one is not. So we can go two directions. I'll explain the extreme one so y'all can understand where I'm going. The first one is John 15, verse 13. Greater love has no one than this to lay down one's life for one's friend. I'm going to ask all you guys today. I honestly can't say to myself that I'm prepared to do this, but I find that the saints that impress me the most are the martyrs, the people that are willing to lay down their life for their ultimate friend, their greatest friend, God. If you're not prepared to lay your life down for God, then you're not ready. You have to be prepared. And it's all about that prepare to win. It goes back to that quote, because if you can prepare yourself to win, prepare yourself for the end, and you want to win, if you really want to win, then you should be ready to die for that purpose. You should be ready to die and say, the Lord God is my savior, and I'm going to heaven. That is what martyrdom is, and I think it's really important, and everyone should have that mindset, right? In life, you should be preparing yourself if you happen to meet that fate. Yep, I love God. I don't care what happens. I love God. He's my savior. I believe in him. Faith, hope, love. I want you all to be able to repeat that to yourself. Me too. I have a lot of growing in that. I'm imperfect. I'm not ready. I need to be, so I need to prepare to win. Now, the second quote I want to go is 1 Thessalonians 5, verse 11. Therefore, encourage one another and build one another up, just as you are doing. It's just as equally important that while you're going through this own battle, you're helping others go through theirs, right? Now, it's important to keep yourself and know that you need to prepare yourself as well, but it's also equally important to help other people. I would love to help Nazario grow in his faith. His soul really matters to me because he's one of my best friends, and I really appreciate him, and I genuinely would love to see him in heaven. That would be really cool. Now, my goal is to be as encouraging to him as I can. I don't want to downgrade you. You don't deserve that. You deserve an upgrade. You deserve the compliments. That's what you deserve because you're my friend. Now, I expect, and I expect myself to be held to those regards as well. I want to be held to that standard. I need to constantly be able to lift other people up, not deplete people. And those are my two main points. Surround yourself with people you know. Surround yourself with people you love. And secondly, use God as your armor and your shield, and you will be safe. Now, I want to turn it back to you because I know you have comments on it. I saw you writing on your paper, so go ahead. Yeah, I'm trying to really try to figure out where I want to go with this because there's so many different ways that you could go with this. And since we've been talking about athletics, I'm going to continue on that. And later in the podcast, I'm going to go to my other idea that I'm thinking of. But what do, we talked about it already, but what do athletes do that is so important to their growth in their sport? And that's studying film. That's looking back on your own performance and seeing what you need to do, but also looking at your opponent's performance and seeing what they do and figuring out how to counter each other. It's a big counterattack in sports. So a big thing with your preparation is reflection. You have to be able to look back on your previous games, your previous match, your previous battles, understand what you did good, understand what you did bad, understand what your opponent did, understand what your future opponent is going to do. It's a huge part of it. It's an absolutely massive part of it. And you also, what is somebody that is there when you're studying film? You're not always studying film by yourself. You're studying film with your coaches around. Well, our coach in life can be a multitude of people. It can either be pastors, friends, as you talked about, priests, people that have studied the Bible, theologians, or God, the number one coach that we have. They're all trying to guide us on this path. And it's okay to admit that somebody did something better than you. Look up to that. Grow from that. Learn from them. Film. I like this. I taught this topic. Talk about, you know, someone who looked up to somebody on how to get better. Kobe Bryant. Kobe Bryant followed Michael Jordan like Peter followed Jesus. Yeah, like seriously. Literally, guy was a disciple, followed his ways, and figured out how to be one of the top five greatest players of all time, arguably. But preparation, studying film, to quickly go through it so I don't bore you guys with the topic. Reflect, know what your opponent is going to do. Study. One of the studyings of film is the Bible. It gives you plenty of ways to understand your opponent, the devil. There's plenty of attacks of the devil in the Bible. We learn how the devil is going to try to attack us. And number, mainly, you can see from Jesus, when he was tempted by the devil, how to fight that. And how does Jesus fight that? Most importantly, he uses scripture. So we can use scripture as well to fight the devil. And we must have and study what our game plan is in our mind so that we can execute it when we get to the game. I agree. It's totally important to lay out steps. Lay out goals for the week. What do you want to do? Strive towards those goals. It's really important because as humans, we often don't learn until we write it down, until we can visualize it. Me especially. I'm very much a visual learner. A lot of people aren't, but I have to see things written down. I was just talking to him earlier. I'm an engineer, but I can't do math in my head. We were playing a board game the other day, and I couldn't add 14 plus 32 in my head fast. Eventually, I got it, but he nudged me towards the right direction really quickly. I promise I'm not dumb. I can do it, but it's just a little slower. So it's very important to visualize it. And laying down those steps, set goals, and strive towards those goals throughout your entire week and everything that you do, just how we should strive towards God. And you're laying yourself a foundation and a path towards heaven. And that's extremely, extremely important. Absolutely. Absolutely. All right. I think it's time to jump into our shepherd of the week, our second shepherd of the week. And sticking with the Alabama football coach scene that we've going on, we're going to go with the great Nick Saban. He just retired last Wednesday, and we thought we'd give him a quick little shout out. But a lot of what Nick Saban did and what his players have talked about is not just what he did for them when they were playing on the field, but the things that he did in preparing them to play on that field led to things that they now do in life and not just on the field. And how they've developed his players to become better men. You don't see players just thanking Nick Saban. They see him thanking Nick Saban and his wife as well. So we know that their impact as a couple, and him as a coach, was not just about the game of football. It had so much more to do with that. And to go with that, we are locally at the University of Alabama, and we have seen something even greater that Nick Saban has done with his time and with his money, and that is invest into the Alabama Catholic community and the Catholic center that we have on campus where a lot of us are able to go hang out, have Bible studies, talk to Biblical missionaries, talk to other people, other Catholics, just become a community, a Catholic community, what's donated from the one and only Nick Saban. And he even comes to church here. So that's pretty awesome. And to just see somebody that has that high standard and that high leadership level around and has that well-known-ness around the world going to church every Sunday. And that's what we hear. Nick Saban is there every Sunday. It doesn't matter when the game is, where the game is. He's always there. To have that from somebody like him is a great role model. And for those of you that really don't understand the legendary part of Nick Saban, he's considered by many to be the greatest coach of all time for college football and has left a legacy and a connection towards his players that no other coach has. And I think it's very important looking back at his career, especially this season. You saw with this team a lot, the culture, the connection the players had with each other was all built from him. It all comes back to him. He centralized his team on a unit rather than on an individual player. There weren't really, if we look back at all, there weren't really any singled-out stars. There was a couple that stuck out a little more than others. Like you have Kool-Aid, because his name is Kool-Aid. But you just had people like that that were kind of leaders for the team, and he was really able to build a connection that's really never before been seen in an Alabama football team and ended up taking a team that, at the beginning of the season, everybody thought was like, what the heck? We just lost to Texas, and it's only the third game of the season. And then, what the heck? We almost lost to USF. And then, what the heck? We beat Arkansas by three. And now, what happens? Whoa. We're in the playoffs. How did this happen? And honestly, it's all about the culture Nick Saban brought. Nick Saban really liked to reach out to the community as well, like you said. Something I saw on Instagram was that he had all the players over and had Thanksgiving dinner with a good bit, not all the players, a good bit of the players that weren't able to have the Thanksgiving dinner they had with their family. And he built a relationship towards them on more of a personal level. And I really respect that because he's able to not only just be a coach, he's able to kind of be like a father figure for these guys. Because a lot of them don't have role models like that in their life. It's really, really cool to see that in somebody and to, in a sense, kind of humble himself down to that level and be like, yep, I can take care of y'all. Y'all are my guys. I think that's just so respectable. And I really strive for that in my future because I really appreciate it. I think one thing that Nick Saban has done for not only the Alabama football players, but for the staff, the whole university, and for everyone that follows Alabama, is he has set up this idea of striving for something always. Always a hunger for something and a preparation level that is almost unmatched. And this is two of his quotes that I'll talk about real quick. Process guarantees success. A good process produces good results. Now, there's not always going to be times when we are always successful. I saw Alabama fell short in the college football playoff. But their process was still the same. Another thing he says is there are two pains in life. The pain of discipline and the pain of disappointment. If you can handle the pain of discipline, then you will never have to deal with the pain of disappointment. I love that one. Absolutely beautiful. Are there going to be disappointments in your life no matter what happens? Definitely. Absolutely. But if you prepare on a certain level and you keep your discipline on that level, you're not going to be disappointed in the way that you prepared for it. There are people that are lazy, that didn't strive as much as they should have, and they look back and they say, man, I'm disappointed because I didn't prepare like I should have. But if you prepare like you should have and you go in there and you fight and the result doesn't end up your way, you're not going to look back and say, you know, I didn't prepare. I didn't give everything that I had. And that's really what he brings to football, what he brings to the program, the university. And people all around can look at that message and say, OK, I can prepare and I can strive and I can work through this process to the best of my ability to become something greater every single day. So there you all go. That's our Shepherd of the Week. And there's so much more we could say about him. But he's just left such a kind of impact on our lives, even though we really don't have a personal connection with him, is really, I've grown up with him. I've been an Alabama fan since I was young and I've always respected him as a coach. And I know many others have, as you can see from the hundreds of letters and stuff people left on his statue. It was almost like he died, but he didn't. So it's just people really respect him as a coach. And he has met every single expectation and quality that he needs to fit into our Shepherd of the Week. So Coach Nick Saban is our second Shepherd of the Week. And we will now move on to our fourth and final segment of this episode. Now, before we really get into this one, I want to kind of talk about it and give you all a breakdown of what it's supposed to be. Not right now, because, well, I will talk about it right now, but it's not what it's supposed to be right now. So we want, our goal is to make this segment kind of more personal to you guys. We're going to put our email somewhere. It'll be in our Instagram. If y'all haven't found us on Instagram, it's just the Lost Sheep Podcast. And it should be in the bio. And our email will be in there. And our goal for this segment is for y'all to send in questions, and we will answer your questions if you prefer to be left unknown, right unknown in the answer or in your email. And we will answer your questions in this segment. Now, in the meantime, we'll be asking each other questions because we have nothing else to do. So we will be filling time with this. And I think it's cool because we like to interview each other and talk a lot. So why not? But we ask that you guys, if you have any sort of questions about what we talked about in the last podcast, in this podcast, what we're going to talk about in the future, a question, or just even if you come out and be like, y'all, I don't like what you said about this. Go for it. We'll talk about it. We are totally open towards criticism. So seriously, reach out to us about anything, and we'll try to get back to you either in the form of podcast or just an email. I mean, this is your chance to participate in the podcast and make it, be a part of it. And maybe you'll be sitting there and say, we'll be talking and we'll be like, this is a question from you right there. Boom. You're a part of the podcast. It feels great to be a part of it. You know, you're part of this journey and you're part of spreading the message of God that we're trying to spread through this podcast. And if anybody, uh, you know, or yourself would like to be an actual part of the podcast, our goal is within the next two months, five, five to seven weeks, we're going to say, we're going to try to start featuring a couple of people. It won't be every episode because we'd like to kind of still do episodes between us too, but we'd like to feature some people and bring them in and talk to them, kind of ask them questions, relate the quote towards them, have them bring in the quote. We really, really want to make this a personal podcast and not just towards us, but towards you guys. So we really are asking you guys to be open and we promise we don't buy it. So please reach out to us. Now we'll go right ahead into this one because this really has been a really good episode. I feel like I really have enjoyed this talk so far. What had, what's a word that you kind of can relate to this quote? What's a word that you use that you can prepare yourself to win by? What is something that you can model that like, how would you answer that quote in a single word? Well, how would you prepare yourself to win? Trying to think of a word that I haven't used yet. Yep. That's hard. I know. Okay. I think a great model for preparation is conversation. Dope. So we've talked about it in different types of ways, conversations with so many people can help you to be prepared. And we talked about being vulnerable as in the fact of, you know, being vulnerable at a time when it's hard to not fall into temptation. But I think I'm talking about being vulnerable as being open with people and having those conversations about whatever it may be, because we all go through a lot of similar things. We talked about some of the things that we've gone through, talk about with so many different people, similar things that we've gone through. And I said, I guess what the devil tries to do is make us feel isolated and absolutely the opposite because we are all humans. We all are going through the same thing. Whether your struggle may be with greed and money, whether it be pridefulness in any type of way, whether it be lust in any type of way, we're all going through different similar things that we can all relate to in different types of ways. Conversations are a huge way to prepare ourselves because we all think in our own types of ways, but there are so many different types of ways to think that can help us in all different types of ways. So just having different conversations with people to improve our preparation. I agree. I'm going to answer it myself. My word is very... What's the word? 2023? The more Gen Z era. I'm going to say one of our words. Locked in. I don't mean tunnel vision. I don't mean not focused around you. I don't mean only focusing on yourself. I mean locked in the life, locked in the God, locked in, being ready, being prepared, being locked in, being ready to do whatever is asked of you. That's being locked in for me. Now, a lot of people, like I just referred to, view locked in as like you're locked in, you're only focused on one thing and there's this little tunnel and you don't really see anything else besides what's right in front of you. I think for me, locked in is the exact opposite. I think it's seeing everything that's in front of you and going right through the middle of it and getting to that end goal by using all of your surroundings and your people that are there as your friends and God in everything. I think that's exactly what locked in is for me. Now, I'm going to turn it over to you. You have a question for me? Well, quick thing I want to say about that real quick is what I'm thinking of what he's saying is it's a continuous thing. You're not talking about taking breaks really at any time. And it relates to this retreat we went on in the fall and when the missionaries was talking, somebody asked a missionary, you know, when do we get to rest? When do we get to be a break from this? And he's like, never. And it's like part of your life. So it's like you're consistently locked on and you know what you want and you're on this journey and it's a consistent thing. You're not getting any breaks from it. Yes, there's times for rest, but there's not time to say, oh, this is time to not be locked in on my faith. I'm just going to do whatever I want and not be, no, focus all the time on it. Knowing what you want, knowing what God's will is, because that's what we need to connect ourselves with. So, and for those of you that list in the last week's episode, life is a series of commas, not periods. Absolutely. All right. So my question for you, what do you need to prepare for to win in your life right now? What are you fighting right now that you need to prepare for? Something that I need to prepare for. Okay. I'm not going to, I could generalize this for myself. The future. What do I need to prepare for? The future. But how do I prepare for that? By living in the present. A lot of people I've found are locked in, in the wrong way, towards the future. This means, what am I going to do next week? What am I going to do in a month? What am I going to be doing at 12 a.m. in three days? Thinking about your future when rather they're avoiding the problems that are in front of them in the present. And I find that facing your challenges head on by rather than avoiding it is way, way better, like a way better way of doing it. And so by preparing for the future, I want to live in the present. And so how am I going to do that? I think our main goal as students, he's done a way better job than I have because he has a little slightly more open class schedules than I have, slightly. But I have, our goal has been kind of to go to daily mass whenever we have the opportunity. And by praying, we have a book that we read every night. We're doing this for you guys. It's called While We're Catholic. And again, we're generalizing this towards a Christian audience. But since we're Catholic, we want to speak clearly as Catholics. And so we're reading it and we're using it as a way to get ourselves out and speak clear. Now, we're doing this to prepare for the future. But how are we doing it in the present? By living in the present, because every day matters to get to that point in the future. And so that's something that I'm facing right now. I find myself very often looking into the future, very often. When either I really need to stay locked in the present. So how am I going to do that? I'm going to centralize the present towards God, because what better way to do it? I mean, I don't think there is a better way. If you centralize your life towards God, then that's exactly what you need to be doing. That's my goal. What about you? I'm going to flip it. You know, I'm going to relate this to not athletics, not anything like that, but true warfare and ready for that daily warfare, as you talked about relating to not being looking into the future. If you're in war, you've got to be focused on today. And in reality, we are in war. We are in war our entire life, because it is that constant struggle between heaven and hell to win that war. Obviously, at the end of the day, God has already won the war, and we'll always win that war. But our souls are at war until that end day. And so it's a constant warfare and being prepared for that warfare and fighting it right now, not fighting it in the future. Not saying, oh, I'm going to wait one more day to do this. I'm going to wait one more week, and then I'll do whatever type of warfare like that. Another way I want to relate to it is, what are some of the hardest things about real warfare? There's something I wrote down that I really thought would resonate. And it is, when you're fighting, what do people like to do? They like to know their enemy so they can know their move. It's hard to fight an enemy that you don't know. And one of the things that happens in our culture is people try to act like the devil is not real. That's exactly what he wants. That's exactly what he wants. You can do whatever he wants if you don't know he's there. That's one of the things we have to be able to realize in ourselves, in our mind, and with our actions is, is this something that we should be doing? Is this something from the devil? And how to relate that, and how to be able to fight that in those ways. And another way I think about it is, what's one thing that's hard about warfare? Fighting someone that you don't even know they're fighting against you. When someone is disguised. So, whether that be your own thoughts, thinking to yourself, this thought is good. But no, it's disguised in a way, strictly, as you talked about being screwed earlier, that's one way to think about it. Or, people in your lives that are disguised that you think are good for you, when in reality, they're not. This is where you have to really learn trust, and really dive into that with somebody. You have to develop a deep connection with somebody as a friend, in any relationship, whether it be girlfriend, family, and just regular friends. It's really important to be able to fully trust somebody. Because it's so, so hard in today's culture. You see so many videos, so many reels of husbands that are cheating on their wives constantly, or friends that are betraying another friend and gossiping about them behind their back. And it's just kind of, it's just disgusting. And it's really turning everybody away from this aspect of trust, right? And you have friends kind of not having the connections that they used to have in the past. Like, I bet you if I talked to some of my parents, I bet you they said they would have friendships back then that were really strong, and they really felt like they could trust this person. I could say that that is a little less common today. Because people have learned not to trust, because what has gone away with not having to trust somebody, vulnerability has gone away. If you can't be vulnerable, where's the trust? It all links together. And I think trust is huge. Trust is very important in a friendship, in a relationship today. I could go off on that for a long, long time. But I think I'm going to end it right there with that. Trusting in God, trusting in people. We are all in this battle together. So let's lock in, and let's focus on our preparation. We'll see y'all next week. Have a good one. God bless. Fire! That was fire. That was a good podcast. I think that conversation was great. Yeah. Thank you.