Jim Van Gelderen: Welcome to the Thee Generation Podcast. This is Jim Van Gelderen, podcasting from Canoga Park, California, where we just finished our War of Special Forces at Faith Baptist Schools. We thank the Lord for the wonderful week we had, and we thank the Lord for souls saved and young people whose hearts were tender and responded to God’s gracious working in their heart. A lot of good things happened, and we’re encouraged about it. We loved working with the staff and faculty here at Faith Baptist, and trusting that God will give them forward movement in the days ahead.

Well, the Thee Generation Youth Summit is about to start, it’s gonna be Wednesday, October 11th, through Friday night, October 13th at Falls Baptist Church in Menomonee Falls, Wisconsin. If you haven’t made plans to attend, there’s still time to get on board. It starts on Wednesday night through Friday night next week, October 11th to 13th at Falls Baptist Church, Menomonee Falls, Wisconsin. More information can be found at Thee Generation,  theegeneration.org, under the Youth Summit tab you can get more information about that. We’d love to see you there. If you can’t come, I would encourage you to listen to the messages afterward. They certainly are gonna be really aimed at young people who have a heart for God, and really wanna see their life be a life of victory now as a teenager and effectiveness and usefulness right now.

We’re excited to have Evangelist Caleb Reed, Evangelist Joe Mueller, Evangelist Bobby Bosler, and myself, who have all traveled on the War of Special Forces. Bob Bosler now leads his own team, and some of you may know that from being at the Cola Clash or The War. Joe and Caleb have started now in full-time evangelism, and we’re excited about their ministries. There will also be folks from Falls Baptist Church speaking that I know will be a blessing as well.

So, it’s a great lineup, and it’s exciting to have some of these guys who travel with me and are now heading into full-time ministry as an evangelist that’ll be speaking. That’s certainly something we’re excited about. So, I hope you can join us or at least listen to the recordings, and more will be said about that, I’m sure, if you continue to listen to the podcast.

Well, I would like to continue the series that I have been on, and I might bring it back from time to time as things come to mind, and it’s the series I have entitled My Journey. Today I’d like to talk about my journey with my first son-in-law. Why say first? Because he’s the only right now, but it looks like in May I’ll have a second son-in-law, Judson Schoultz, who is engaged right now to my daughter, Jana, so we’re excited about that. But that’s probably a story for another time.

I’d like to give my story about Ryan, and the reason is that he is going to be launching at the Youth Summit a new app called The Cord. And that comes out of Ecclesiastes chapter four; we’ll talk about that in a moment, but this particular app is really designed to help young men, and it could be young ladies, but struggling in the arena of moral impurity. If you’d like more information about that particular app, you can go to the website, thecord.app, okay, so T-H-E-C-O-R-D dot A-P-P. More information can be gotten there, and you can sign up if you want notifications when things are ready to go.

But anyway, that journey started, of course, years ago. I first intersected with my future son-in-law way back when his dad was pastoring in the state of Iowa. And I think we came there for revival meetings. I’m pretty sure I had seen him before because his older sister had come to Baptist College of Ministry where I served as vice president as well as my home church there, and so I’m pretty sure I’d seen him before that, but that was the first time we had been on location, the same place he lived, and so we’re there for a week and had a revival meeting with his father, and evidently in that week, I don’t know all the ins and outs of it, Ryan certainly could tell you.

But just in passing, he and my daughter just passed each other, and he looked into her eyes. I don’t know what happened, but something happened. Okay, he had not been a young man that was really thinking about marriage or who he’d marry at that point. But he began to come to confidence that Stephanie was the one he was one day gonna marry, which of course, now Stephanie is his wife. So that did happen. Now I kinda tease about it and say, “Something happened to him, but nothing happened to Stephanie.” Okay, she looked into his eyes. At that point, she didn’t have any inkling about the future, but he did.

And so for several years, his parents pushed him off and said, “You’re not quite ready,” and so he waited. And the day came, long story, I won’t go into all that. I’m sure Ryan would be glad to tell you about that journey because it certainly is a part of his journey. But the day came for him to sit down with my wife and I and explain why he believed that Stephanie was the one and that he wanted to start a relationship that he would trust would end in marriage. So we had a wonderful conversation with Ryan. My wife and I did, and then, of course, I dismissed my wife, and it came time to ask the tough questions.

And I know as a father of girls, if you are listening as a father of girls, the day will come when the suitor comes, you gotta ask the tough questions. It’s not easy, but I believe it is an important part of the process. And so we didn’t get into it very long, where I asked Ryan about his purity journey, where he was. I knew in the past that there had been a time where, particularly in his upper elementary and then into high school, that he had struggled with looking at things that were inappropriate. The word, of course, pornography is the word that’s used. And I knew that because he had given his testimony when he traveled with me in, I think it was 2016. And so I knew there was something there, so I was expecting that, but I was anticipating that victory had been won, there’d been years of sustained victory, and Ryan honestly told me that was not the case.

And although he had had times of sustained victory, there had been periodic failure, and one that had even been fairly recently. Well, obviously at that point, I was severely disappointed, but I did the only thing I felt I could do. I told him that it wasn’t gonna work, and that we would just have to go back like it was before he asked the first time. And Ryan could give you more of his side of it, but as I understand it, that of course was a very difficult thing to hear. And he obviously had to wrestle through that.

Now I will say to Ryan’s credit, from that point to this, he has never looked at pornography since that time, but obviously there was still a battle because of the mental images that are still there and those things in the mind. And he could tell you again more about it. He is very forthright, honest about his testimony, which I believe is one of the powers that God has given him to be in victory and to help others. The Bible says God gives grace to the humble. He gives grace to the honest. And there’s something about honesty that frees you. It’s putting light on that which is dark. So the darkness has to leave. And I appreciate Ryan’s honesty, and I’ve appreciated his journey and his honesty about the journey.

Well, I didn’t feel obviously as a potential father-in-law and a suitor that I would be the one to help Ryan at least at that initial point and he could tell you more about the journey. All I know is that for a while it was really a struggle until someone came to him that had a greater issue of defeat than he had had or he was having, and Ryan began accountability with him and a 24-hour accountability, and Ryan began to see a victory level he had never seen. And I remember about a year after I turned Ryan down, he lives across the street, so I see Ryan all the time. He’s traveled with me. He just sat down on my porch outside the house, and really I don’t know that this was in any way about Stephanie, it was just about his own journey because at that point he didn’t really see any light at the end of the tunnel, and I wasn’t sure either. I basically knew that we couldn’t pursue this, and the only hope was for him to become a different man.

But as he sat on that porch, he told me that he had had several months where he’d been tempted in the regard of wrong thoughts, but that he had taken the victory. And, of course, God is one that enables, but he’d been in victory about that. I could tell that God was doing something in his heart. Also, that was about the time COVID was coming in, and he had been down in Mexico at a wedding. He flew back to the United States and had to quarantine for a couple of weeks. He later told me that when you have a sin problem like that, sometimes we use the word addiction. I like besetting sin more; it’s a biblical term. But being alone is the worst thing you can think of.

So, Ryan, those mornings of quarantine went down to Lake Michigan, and he began to spend time with God. His relationship with God began to deepen in a way it had never deepened. He began to meet with God. I don’t know all the ins and outs of it, but it was a part of his recovery and his journey. Well, he continued that accountability and that summer I said, “Ryan, why don’t you travel with me?” Ryan traveled that fall, fall of 20; of course, it was still COVID. We had weeks canceled, we had to reschedule. So we did some War of Special Forces, some revival meetings, tent meetings. We were doing all kinds of things, and it really was a fun time, an exciting time just to see God lead us. We went all the way up to Thanksgiving. We even flew back from out west, that’s where our tour was scheduled, but because of California, many of the meetings had to cancel. So I think we got cheap tickets, flew back to the Midwest, did a couple of meetings in the Midwest, one of which was a tent meeting in Ohio.

I remember one night I came to Ryan and said, “Ryan, would you be willing to give your testimony about your journey in the regard of viewing pornography?” Without any hesitation, he agreed to do it. And that night, I don’t know how to explain it, when he gave that testimony, the power of God was there. That night, nobody responded except for one person. There was one person who left the tent sobbing, somebody I think in upper 20s, early 30s. The next day, that person sat in the pastor’s office with Ryan and myself, and I watched, literally almost my mouth open, as I watched Ryan with power, precision, and just biblical clarity help that man. And I thought to myself, “That young man is ready for full-time ministry, and he needs to be married.” That means I had to grapple with, “Is Stephanie the one?” I was seeing God change Ryan. He was becoming a different man, and for which I was just thrilled. A long story—my wife had spent time in the vehicle because we had long trips and had many conversations with Ryan, asking tough questions, talking to him about the journey, talking to him about her perspective, a woman’s perspective of that particular sin, some tough questions that were asked and some tough conversations. But Ryan, of course, would look her in the eye and answer those questions, and it was a very helpful time, just getting things out on the table appropriately.

There’s many more things I could say, but one day Ryan, we were in Arizona and had a day where Ryan could go off to a mountain. He decided to go off to a mountain to spend some time with the Lord. He took some booklets that my wife had compiled with different material on this particular issue, and I think the one was; “Devastated,” the woman’s response to this particular sin, particularly when people are married. Also, Ryan asked for a letter my wife had written when we turned him down that she had never given him. He took those two things to the mountain, and God did something in his heart on that mountain, helped him see a perspective he hadn’t seen. About a day later, God had ministered to my own daughter Stephanie, making it clear that actually Ryan was going to be her future husband. God did a work in her heart when he finally saw something, saw how the sin was affecting the female gender, and that is a big deal.

And so when that occurred, make a long story, basically Ryan’s parents again asked, would we reconsider? At that point, I had come to the conclusion that if they came back, I would tell them that I believe Ryan is ready for ministry, I believe God’s hand is on his life, and I believe Stephanie is the one. And that happened, and they began a relationship which ended in marriage pretty quickly, about six months later.

And Ryan has continued his journey. The thing I appreciate so much about Ryan is every day to several groups, he’s being accountable in these areas of purity. Thought life, not just what you look at, but thought life, the Cord app, gives accountability not just on what you’re looking at, which is not just the internet, it could be life, billboards, joggers, whatever. It deals with your life, your eyes. Also deals with your thought life and another personal issue I won’t go into right now, but you can go into the app and get all those things. But those three things are laid out every day in personal accountability to your accountability group. And Ryan does that every day, and has now for several years. Leading, of course, a purity group and purity ministry now with the Cord. So we’re excited about all that.

 And I say that because the Cord comes out of Ryan’s own journey and his desire to get into sustained victory. And the key, young man, if you’re struggling, you have to become a different man. And I will say one thing about my son-in-law, Ryan became a different man. And even Stephanie would testify of Ryan, what a good husband he is and how he’s unselfish. And these are very important things that have to be dealt with when a young man has had failure on this level.

And I’m certainly proud of Ryan, and I know God’s hand is on his life, I know though that he’s going to be in battles because anybody in ministry is, particularly in the purity arena. But I want you to be encouraged if this particular testimony touches your own heart. And I will say one final thing about this story. At Ryan’s wedding, he wanted his story to be told. And so his dad and my dad told Ryan’s story. And although we were very careful not to use words like pornography, pretty much most people knew what we were talking about as we talked about Ryan’s journey out of this sin into victory. And it’s a part of his story, and it will continue to be a part of his story.

And I appreciate Ryan’s willingness to tell his story over and over in an attempt to help young men, perhaps like some are listening right now, who are not in victory and are defeated. Because a story like that can give hope. And I would say I’ve heard multiple young men give testimony of getting into sustained victory. And the testimony is always powerful. And one thing I found about these young men, they’re not trying to hide it. They’re honest about their past failure because it no longer defines them. They are defined by the victory that Jesus Christ gives, the strength he gives, and the fact we’re in union with the one who is victorious.

Well, that’s a part of the coming Thee Generation Youth Summit. And I want you to at least listen to Ryan’s session if you’re not able to come. In particular, if you’re burdened about this area, maybe I’m talking to a youth pastor or assistants or whatever, this is a tool that can be a help in helping young men particularly, but I’m sure it can be used for young ladies, but helping young men get in sustained victory. We live in a wicked world and we need Bible truth.

Now, you’ll find out that the Cord app comes from a verse that is found in the book of Ecclesiastes. “Two are better than one,” this is Ecclesiastes 4.9, “because they have a good reward for their labor, for if they fall, the one will help up his fellow. But woe to him that is alone when he falleth, for he hath not another to help him up. Again, if two lie together, then they have heat, but how can one be warm alone? And if one prevail against him, two shall withstand him, and a threefold cord is not quickly broken.” And that’s the theme verse, that last phrase, for the Cord app, three fold cord. And you go there to thecord.app, see what it’s about, and tune in to the Thee Generation Youth Summit. If you’re not able to come, those will be posted later, probably a week or so from now. Or come if you can.

And I’m proud of Ryan and proud of Stephanie and the ministry God’s given them, and the frontline work. And I trust you’ll pray for Ryan, pray for the app. Pray for people to be touched and helped. And pray that God will do some very encouraging things even at the Youth Summit. And friends, let’s be encouraged that God’s on the move. There’s a purity movement afoot. And really in a certain sense, it’s a part of what the Thee Generation is all about. Because it’s a total surrender to the will of God, which involves purity. And a total dependence on Jesus, who is the Pure One, to enable us to be pure. Why? Because he is pure and we’re in the Pure One. God bless, have a good day.