Unveiling Your True Self: A Conversation with John Selby

life's not over your mistakes your past doesn't really identify who you truly are in Christ you may feel bad at the moment yes get up and just keep moving forward mistakes are going to come no matter what we do the love of God is still there well man excited to sit down with you John it's been on couple months since you came to my studio and I was just like starting doing these podcasts and yeah all my stuff was a hot mess like I had to spend hours piecing together that video cuz everything just broke while you were there yeah it worked out when the video went up and it was still good man great story great testimony got some good feedback from that but it's it's nice to have my life together a little bit more now and be able to sit down and talk so yeah man how you been doing good just been been busy with work and getting ready to start up a youth group at at church and so how when work and that gets involved you can get timec consuming yeah and it just can take up a lot of your time and so I'm still trying to balance life work church and just me time too yeah at the same time yeah how's that going it's it's it's going you probably all may know some of you may be struggling with that as well but it's it's going but I think it's coming together yeah man it's coming together so tell me about the youth group man what are your dreams goal and in life I you can look up thousand different logos and try to figure out what the logo name is and what you want to call it instead of just calling a youth group so I found something that struck me after looking for a while and just acts 291 there's 28 chapters in acts right acts 291 the next chapter yeah and I feel that when I was younger you're always searching for something what I'm saying the next chapter of your life what that may look like are you going to go to school or you going to go to college you going to go into the workforce what's that next chapter in life I them to focus on the next chapter of their life yeah and Society I've asked my question that what or who is going to influence them yeah cuz something is going to influence them whether it's going to be a positive influence or a negative one something out there whether the culture is going to influence them something's going to influence them and that can impact their next chapter of their life and so I figured what a little bit of time we have because as you all know when you're doing a youth group you have a short time frame other than texting back and forth and keeping ey with them during the week but you only have a short time frame with them so the best we can do is make up that time frame and just instill the word of God in them to be able that way when they go out in life when they go out and making their decisions on what they want to do for their next chapter in life they have the word of God at least deep down in their heart that way society and culture can't determine what their next thing life is going to be what I'm saying can't really persuade them they try to stay rooted in the word of God and be able to help them make that better decision to be able to live for God the best way they can yeah and I imagine that's pretty important I think for you right knowing your backstory and some of the stuff that you shared in the last episode like your journey in life was it that was the season of life right where you on were pulled in by the world right and so now it's like so how are you maybe addressing some of that like seeing this and the teens that you're going to be ministering to and the people that God has called you to reach right in this season of life and like wraping some of your own experiences maybe some of the struggles and failures right of not to knock any particular church but where maybe the church was ineffective at reaching you and I think about that a lot in my Ministry experience know it's like I know the people around me did the best that they could but it didn't like it didn't stop me from going down that road and I think tonight if I remember you're talking about identity and Authority like your identity right in the Teen Challenge Chapel service and so you want to speak to that a little bit maybe and how God's speaking to you about addressing some of those issues in the teens because I feel that it's important for them to have an identity and we want that identity in Christ to be what God intended them to be and then when I was younger when we were a younger age you're just searching for that what's going to fill that void what's going to make me happy and like you said that the churches may have done the best they can but when you're out there searching for what am I going to do with my life then you have Society trying to pull you in and so the identity is I believe that as teenagers your identity can be what you see as in yourself you could quickly fall into that rabbit hole is I'm a failure I fail this let me try again or I'm not pleasing my parents the way I should be and I messed up in the past so that identity can roll in the back of your head and that and if you keep believing that then you almost can believe that what I'm saying you can believe that lie for so long and then it can almost be a negative part of you sense it starts to become Truth for us right because we walk that out and those negative words and those lies that have been spoken to us whether it's from somebody else speaking into our lives or just a lie of the enemy that we've held on to and then we begin to believe that about oursel and we begin to act accordingly and that stuff begins to affect our path so big I think a lot about identity man I remember during my teenage years showing up at church while I was trying to figure out who I was and man the church the church that we went to growing up I got fine memories I got some great memories but there was a season when I was really like running from the Lord and trying to figure out who I was and I started to play in like the skater world and like it was into all the bands and man I remember a specific scenario where I got tossed out of a Christian State skate night for a band t-shirt that I was wearing and I'll never forget like I understand that what the person did in that moment thought they were doing the right thing like trying to we don't want to glorify anything ungodly yeah but I don't know if in the moment they had no idea they had no way of knowing what I was going in going through and the individual that did that never took the time to build the relationship and find out the person that was wearing the T-shirt who they were oh yeah and I remember that experience specifically like I didn't go much back to church much after that until I got saved later on in life and so a culture man is just like there's so much influence and so how do we do that man how do we begin to address the needs and speak to the identity in teenagers but move Beyond like maybe being offended by what we see on the surface or we don't understand it because even now like I'm 37 38 37 somewhere in there I don't know but like dude like I'm not I haven't been a team for 20 years now anded things have changed a lot and so and what are your thoughts on that well like you said you never know what they're going through what I'm saying if they're having a identity issue regardless if they're struggling with something and then they may come to church he says come as you are right they may come to church wearing a shirt that maybe you might not think is right what I'm saying maybe that's not that time to approach that but just in life now when we were younger it was a whole lot different than it is now you have all these stuff that they're trying to teach and Ste all these identities all these pronouns all of this that is going out there yeah and I'm thinking in myself when I was younger if I was searching through and I had all that coming at me at the same time how much harder do they have it yeah my daughter's eight you looking at five or six years from now she be a teenager yeah how worse is it going to get yeah we call it Freedom letting people figure out who they are but it's like at the same time we're trying to tell them who they should be and throwing all the stuff on them like in the school systems and whatnot and man I can't imagine like I got a 14-year-old and a 12-year-old now we are separated from the world we're the weird homeschoolers but when you look at the numbers in the states all across the country we're not so weird anymore we're not the minority it's it's it's slowly growing now I want my kids to be able to figure out who they are but I also know that it's my responsibility to help shape that identity and breathe that identity into them and there's that balance right of speaking life speaking the character of the Lord in them and then letting the expression of who they are come out through that yeah but there's nothing outside of the Lord that's going to shape that like that's that's going to be healthy for them and yeah it's not really on who you are but whose you are what I'm saying ultimately it boils down to that word we're a child of God what I'm saying our children are God's children even though he's entrusted them in our care and it's our responsibility as Godly men Godly fathers to instill that identity you are loved by God you were a child of God and just instill the love of God around them and show them who God is whether it be when Addison gets a little older I can tell her my backstory about how God has done in my life and then maybe help her to throw some red flags up when she gets a little older hey if I go down this Rabbit Hole this might happen yeah and then all of this culture stuff is going around her as well she's she goes to public school what I'm saying all that is going around her and she's constantly absorbing that yeah whether we want to or not but it's there yeah it's there and then their brains are like they're soft her at this point because she's still in the learning stage of just in general life yeah what I'm saying so what or who is going to influence them yeah what I'm saying we control who she hangs out with and her friends that but when boils down to when she gets older I want to be able to instill the word of God in her yeah to where she doesn't turn away from that yeah what I'm saying and then she knows who her true identity is and not just her but the teenagers the youth group when they screw up life's not over right your mistakes your past doesn't really identify who you truly are in Christ yeah you may feel bad at the moment yes we all sin we all screw SC up we just learn from our mistakes yeah and then get help if needed but I want to be able to entrust that identity on Whose you are I'm saying you are a child of God no matter what we do no matter how much good we do in the world no matter how much bad we do the love of God is still there yeah he's automatically when we like the prodical son yeah he probably went to try to find his identity and try to find out what is there in life that can make me happy yeah that's good and then after a while you come to your senses like that's this is not working yeah so I need to run back home and he's always going to be there zakus in the Bible story he changed his identity once Jesus spoke to him one Jesus says come down from that tree so I can come hang out with you and pretty much have dinner with you and eat with you his identity changed he no longer saw himself as what other people saw him yeah if you go back to your hometown as a drug addict your identity from other people is probably still there as the way you left it took a long time though man if I remember my timeline like to be able to even though I knew I was a new creation like I was not using anymore but like there are moments like there were moments over those first I would say even 10 years of just like still like man I still feel like that old Justin on the inside and I know a lot of that was the LIE of the enemy but like man getting to that place where we're confident as sons of God like that I haven't done anything to blow it and the thought process like I make this mistake like here I am I'm going right down the the old rabbit the hole again and I'm starting from square one but that piece of identity man you talk about that knowing the father and the son and their relationship and the prodal being such a good story but like man hearing that part when we know like that we belong to the Lord and we really can get the revelation of that like you think about the safety the protection the encouragement the life that we get from a loving father and the confidence that instills in us to run harder and run faster like once I it's the thing about like watching and having faith for God to do something right like faith is the size of a mustard SE very tiny but man like I was told somebody this the other day on the phone conversation like I used illustration of an apple I said you plant the original Apple Seed takes a long time for the tree to grow but once that tree grows in the fruit is more seed that goes into the ground and like once we can get a hold of that God wants the best for our lives and God is crazy and passionate about us like we find that identity and that belonging and then it just exponentially multiplies and we get more and more confident in our god-given gifts and who we are in him and I want to as teenagers growing up or even now we make mistakes but before we were before I was saved make mistakes I really or I messed up went I and got high and all that I really didn't didn't really have much remorse but now that I'm clean and then I have a such a strong relationship with God when you mess up you don't feel I guess as a Christian when I came a Christian in 2007 Lord 17 years ago and then when you first mess up oh man I messed up you're you're you're I was less reluctant to god because you almost think you're not worthy of it right now that the longer you have that relationship with him we know that we're we're not that powerful right to mess that up we're not that powerful to screw up the calling that God has in our life we're we're not that powerful yeah that's good we can't control the path that he has for our life we can prolong it we can quench the Holy Spirit but we can't we're we're not that powerful so I just realized that it's easier to come to him knowing man I messed up yeah here I am again it took me a long time to realize that just because I have one apple that go sour and go bad doesn't mean I have to cut down the whole tree that another Apple's going to grow and I think that's some of the challenge especially both of us being from a recovery background like so much focus on counting days and I even do it still like right like I man it's been I've been like I I celebrate that sober birthday and it's a big accomplishment I don't want to take away from that yeah but like some of the struggle in on like when people read it's like I blew it I slipped up I fell now I got to go all the way back to the beginning and start over start and it's like brother no you don't have to cut down the whole tree like get up and just keep moving forward mistakes are going to come now unfortunately this is where the things get tricky right it's like I remember the brain on drugs commercials they cracked the eggs and I still went out and did drugs like they didn't really have an impact but like man thinking about trying to raise teenagers in this world with fentel and overdoses and how we either get that message across right because like the fear-based tactics never worked for me as a kid so like the answer and the antidote obviously is love and giving them something to live for that helps them to make those decisions to say not even once but have you had any conversations with any young people or teens man over the years like just in this area like in that regard no not as far as not as drugs and no unfortunately I never had to had that conversation yeah i' be a bummer on that one but I never had we've had a couple guys that want to come in the program he had one guy com in year and a half two years ago but he didn't didn't stay we tried to help him but we try to do the best we can to reach out to him right I even explained my whole story to him and he was the living homeless and he lasted maybe a night or two nights and then left yeah what I'm saying but as far as that and then thankfully the teens we got now grew up in church okay they're constantly in church and they but before that we had a children's church ministry running a bus Ministry and that was pretty challenging yeah because I knew God was working and that during that season we all have a season and during that season some of these kids 8 nine seven were getting themselves up and getting themselves dressed and getting themselves out the door when they knew the bus was coming yeah so we were able to during that season instill the love of God in them we tried to reach out to the parents seemed like that didn't work but we knew what we were doing was the right thing to do and some of these kids I still see that it's day yeah and then one of them's got a little girl she started coming to church wow if all that for for one I guess it's it was worth it during those years yeah when we had the bus ministry that's awesome man it was just and then be able to see the fruit of that yeah and then of course things happen got to a couple of them that were caught up into gun charges got one of them are on two murder charges on them now trying to reach out to them yeah man 20 22 years old yeah and he was in our ministry Yeah in our children's ministry and then he went to the youth group and then it just fell off so that's why I'm so big on identity and the next chapter of their life yeah and help him not even constantly on the goly perspective but help him out on try to make the right move in their life yeah what I'm saying not necessarily follow their heart cuz that can be a feel-good thing and not a God thing right but be able to help them in the next chapter of their life when they're get maybe from middle school to high school yeah what that may look like what I'm saying what challenges they may face being able to be there to be able to hear their struggles to let them vent yeah and to be able to just let it all out when they don't want to maybe say anything to their parents what I'm saying stuff they're so let me ask you a personal question if you don't mind and you can tell me no cuz this is going to be on the internet so but on you grew up at home with two Gran parents right and so did I like I grew up in the church as well and in the home like so where do you think your struggles with identity right when you ended up eventually falling into addiction and all that like where did that stem from have you done the like have you unpacked that over the years I'm sure you thought about it yeah I had it you I went to church and I had very fond memories of Sunday school and stuff like that but during that course I just I just thought them as Bible stories MH just to go to church I was able to walk to church cuz right down the straet from me I just thought them as Bible stories I really didn't and then we had a some of youth group not really I remember like just going out on outings but no really like youth class no really like youth Bible study yeah and I guess it's just a small Church in nature is hard to do that when you have volunteers and stuff like that but my identity is just I didn't know at that point okay I didn't know no one said hey you're a child of God you were loved just the zakus and the Bible story Jonah in the whale you just hear it just a hear the story and go home what I'm saying hear the story of a Sunday morning and go home yeah I really didn't have an identity my parents were great had great parents we didn't have any drugs alcohol nothing in our family M but then it come to the point where I stopped going to church yeah and then hanging out with the wrong people I want to be cool right hey I'm cool let's do this and then everybody else is doing it so let's let's try it so at that point and then I really didn't look at myself as just John and when I was working in the restaurant business John who has a job at a restaurant business I really didn't have a strong Foundation of an identity okay until I started doing drugs and then I labeled myself when I got too deep then well now I'm a drug addict if we don't know who we are in Jesus and we don't pick that up from the Bible and from our relationship with God the world is eager to tell us who we are yeah and there are so many labels being thrown at us constantly and man I the social media age like I am a huge fan of social obviously that's how this is going to be distributed but like there are so many influences telling us what we should and we shouldn't be and like in a lot of it more is just like making sure the heart is right I've even adjusted my social media habits here recently like I'm 38 years old now but like I figured it out I'm 38 I'm not 37 anyways confidence but no man like even knowing that like this is a tool God's given me to minister the gospel and but like even adjusting how much I'm personally how much I'm consuming and I know that sounds crazy cuz I'm hoping people will consume this podcast but like a lot of times like I don't think we really think about the impact of like even seeing everybody else's wins it's not even the negative stuff yeah because then it starts to put thoughts in us like I should be at that point in my life why don't I have that and they've the phrase in the past keeping up with the Joneses yeah and so then our identity becomes built off of pursuing something else and I think that's where Paul talks about godliness with contentment is a great game and that's the never- ending Pursuit I was talking to a friend about that earlier and he's he's doing pretty well for himself on in his career and he keeps moving the ladder and he was on the phone with me today and he said Justin when does it become enough he's like I thought about when I would eventually make six figures and he's like i' I've crushed that now and he's like I'm trying to hit the next Rong and he's like I just don't know he's like when does it become enough and that constant Pursuit of more it'll never feel it you'll never feel it and then it comes we didn't have Facebook when we were younger we didn't have you Myspace right well shoot they don't have Myspace now they probably don't even know what Myspace is but with the Facebook Instagram Tik Tok Snapchat all these X yeah all these influences when they're cuz a lot of them have an influencer they follow I follow a lot of smoking channels like smoking barbecue cigarettes Garcia man yeah but I follow a lot of YouTubers like camping and all that and then but a lot of these big influencers you only see the best part of their life you only see they only see their highs yeah but what are their lows what may what they may be struggling with yeah they're not going to blast that on the media they're not going to blast it on Facebook or YouTube and all that because that's going to drop their follow followers e even you got Pro Sports people for instance Robin Williams he's not Pro Sport sports right but he would made people laugh he was a great influencer but the whole time he was struggling with depression yeah I preached on that Sunday I talked about the challenge of the balance of pursuing fruit more than gifts cuz the realistically like sometimes like we can get a gift we can have a raw talent or even spiritual gifts man that God will give us and then not have the fruit to balance that out and I made a statement and I heard it from another preacher and so I borrowed it for my sermon and that like all good preachers do and I just said from the stage I said the challenge is that I can talk a lot better than I can walk oh yeah we can all do that everybody can do that and it's like if we're not intentional pursuing fruit which is goodness gness self-control love all that stuff that's in the fruits of the spirit like our gifts will end up ruining us and I think we've seen it in the church like so many big public failures and it's like man God keep my heart right even not even having a huge platform knowing that like and well don't put this pressure on you but that's the call of leadership is that people watch our lives closely and if we fall it's easy to say well you should just look to Jesus you I'm going to disappoint you but that can almost be a cop out as well because definitely because there is standards right to be in Ministry higher standard yeah I you're called to a higher standard you're called to more I'm sorry goad and cut no finish go ahead you're you have more responsibility a pastor has more responsibility than maybe a person in the sound booth yeah what I'm saying because the pastor's calling is higher not that they're better than that person but like you for instance you have a more higher standard now that you're a pastor of a church yeah it's the public nature of it we're in front of the same people every week and even you're ministering in the past like when it was youth groups or running Team it was youth groups or running Teen Challenge programs yeah and I would see guys that would we'd have a staff member full and it would wreck four or five guys in the program here we go like I'm learning from you and if you can't make it what it makes you what hope do I have that I can make it like you're supposed to be the teacher and dude I've been really reflecting on that a lot like really pausing like looking inward over the last couple months cuz I'm seeing all this stuff happen and I like know the human heart like the Bible talks about it being Wicked and like the Flesh and like really fighting against the spirit examining that like God what is it in my life that puts me at risk because I don't want to be the next story you I don't have millions of followers our church isn't huge like we're but I know even in that in the small community God's called me to lead and influence dude how I live and how I act it impacts everybody in my circle oh yeah definitely yeah and I think Pastor step fdick did something on this be careful what you copy yeah we're all going to copy something but be careful what you copy be careful with how you who you copy and what you copy yeah it can have a negative influence and it can have a positive influence but we're all going to copy something maybe but when you're up there worshiping when you're out here worshiping you see your kids at a young age they're they're they're looking around M they're looking around on maybe this isn't how you should worship but they're seeing it and you can almost be an example yeah of worshiping God yeah that's good knowing they may know your failures and your flaws at home yep my daughter knows my failures and flaws at home I'm trying to be better at it to just admit when I'm wrong yeah that can also help her out when she grows and when she matures and when she makes mistakes yeah she can realize that she is it's still the same person is not defined on who she is but she can copy that she can copy on how to what it looks like to worship God maybe she doesn't have to throw her hands up in the air but on how I worship God and in my personal life and also at church it can make a big influence be careful what you copy yeah that's what I'm saying it's just well that's two man where you think about like godliness with contentment cuz even Beyond just like copying in regards to the faith and what we do like or bad influen is like that carries over into what we pursue scripture talks about God gave some 30 60 and 100 he didn't say the 30 or the 100 was better like he didn't say the 100 was better he gave some and like man you are perfect we are perfectly equipped to do what God's called us to do and maybe God never called every preacher to have a huge platform and huge influence like cuz there is like small country churches and with social media dude we can reach Millions anytime but man if God's God's calling somebody to minister in those places and he's calling the people that he wants there to make the Maximum Impact and the ripple effect and I think that's the thing sometimes I have to think about a Ministry cuz I love growth and I can get very focused on it and I've been doing it for years and dude when the Teen Challenge program was taken off and we rode all the way up to 50 students and then even now our church is growing and it's like but I have to constantly keep myself like depth not width depth because width is easy oh yeah depth it takes time for the roots to grow deep and if I'm constantly looking at somebody else's calling if I'm looking at a guy that's been gifted with aund fold and I'm like not happy with my 30-fold then I try to pursue that and ultimately it'll wear us out oh yeah and then I think you'll get focused more on that than on what's right in front of us yeah on what God is calling us to do right not anybody else what God's calling us to do and we got to take it step by step yeah he started out with 12 yep started with 12 oh David Wilkerson could have stopped at Nikki Cruz oh yeah yep Nikki Cruz went on to reach millions and so we never think about the gener sometimes we don't think about the generational impact of pouring Our Lives into one other person's life yeah like he could have stopped there now God was gave him the platform gave him the influence and he was faithful with it but that's not always the case some people get those in that influence and they end up yeah they end up falling oh yeah you had Pride yeah PR yeah I've seen that a lot you could just came to me you could plant quickly plant 50 trees in a line just throw them boom what I'm saying just keep the stone in line just not taking the time to help it grow just planting them well if you're just doing that and just trying to plant a whole bunch of trees when the storms of life comes what's going to happen yeah when the storm com what's going to happen with those trees it's not going to they're they're not going to last but when you wholeheartedly the few you have focus on what you have here yeah what you have in your care what you have going to your church what you have maybe around you in a day-to-day life if you focus on them you can help them get rooted in yeah and then they do the same thing that way you're not trying to sit there for numbers that makes any sense yeah no that's good man it's that process like we love to plant the trees but staking them going out making sure they're growing straight and then forgetting that you planted them there and mowing over them like I have four or five times in my old house and so said look at how many people we got you don't have a connection with them you just got people coming and leaving they're not serving they're not they don't know maybe they don't know anything about the serving capacity they're just coming sitting down listening to it and then leing yeah what I'm saying yeah that's the con when you have that small community you're able to do that with Faithful Servants you're you're able to instill in those people and be able to pour out into those people and then those people can pour out into others yeah and it's just a ripple like you said ripple effect yeah that's good well John we're getting to close to the point of wrapping up man but U thank you for chatting and for those who are watching John's get ready to speak at TC Chapel it's going to be on the internet in the interweb so if you want to go check out the Teen Challenge Facebook page or YouTube and watch his message from tonight U this is going to publish after this evening so you'll be able to go back and find it a few days back but dude thanks for taking the time to chat man thank you for the opportunity appreciate it and also if you're here watching don't hit forget to hit the like button and subscribe and you can scroll back in the channel and find John's testimony where we Dove a little bit more into his past please bear with the quality we've gotten better but enjoy that story man he's got a powerful testimony thank you