So would you mind maybe sharing with us how everything between you and Jesus got started that led you to where you are today?

Yeah, well, I had the benefit of being raised in a Christian home and I heard the gospel at a very young age.

I came to faith when I was six years old and was baptized shortly thereafter.

My dad is a pastor and my mom and my father were both just faithful at living the things that they said publicly.

They just, when they talked about loving the Lord, I saw that privately.

I saw it when nobody else was looking, when there was nobody in the pews and it wasn't perfect, but it was faithful.

And they seemed to have a real love and a fear for the Lord.

How big of a role has discipleship played in your own ministry?

I love that.

Just to keep riffing off of that, I mean, the, the organizing kind of motif of, of how I approach union with Christ in the title of the book is Home With God.

Uh, and, and I really see that as an organizing principle of the whole story of the Bible, of which union with Christ is the perfect fulfillment.

So you have home with God in the garden in Genesis 1 and 2, and then new heavens and new Earth in Revelation 21 and 22, but the perfect fulfillment of our home with God, of, of dwelling with God, is not just being around Him, but it's being in Him.

And so, uh, it's not the garden, nor is it the new heavens or the new Earth.

It's being in union with Christ, and the covenants are a foreshadowing of that before Christ.

You see with Abraham, and then with Moses, with Israel's whole worshiping life, they are brought into relationship with God by virtue of covenant love, not on the basis of any works they could do or any righteousness that they've performed, and that covenant love has a, a representative or a mediator, um, that there's somebody that they are in.

Well, can you all tell us, can you, um, a time that personally union with Christ really comforted you or, or strengthened you or sustained you in some way?