Why Were You Born?

This is Sam from the Masking Journey Podcast and our goal with the podcast has helped you to try to find your way in this difficult world. Your chosen Truth Network Podcast is starting in just seconds. Enjoy it, share it, but most of all, thank you for listening and choosing the Truth Podcast Network. This is the Truth Network. . Kingdom Pursuits, where you hear from ordinary people instilled with an extraordinary passion. Together we explore the stories of men and women who take what they love and let God turn their passion into kingdom pursuits. Now live from the Truth Booth, your host, Robbie Dilmore. . Well, this is a treat today as we are celebrating the 4th of July freedom to have with us author David L. Johnston, and he is the author of Why You Were Born, but he's also the author of Every Soldier There's a Time to Kill and A Time to Heal.

It's so great to have you with us this morning, Donald. David. David, that's good enough.

I would call worse than that, Robbie. So yeah, it's David L. Johnston. And I always, it's interesting when I interviewed you at the NRB, I kept calling you Johnson. I listened to the interview and I was like, man, it is Johnston with a T. And I don't, I sometimes don't even get the T in there, but the T sort of reminds us of cross, doesn't it? Oh, that's good. I like that.

That Johnston with a T like the cross. And let me just tell the audience that, oh my goodness, you're in for such a joy today. I had a chance to talk with David at the NRB. I wish I could have talked to him for 20 hours. The more I talked to him, the deeper I saw his understanding of Scripture and some things, some concept that really, really helped me connect a whole lot of dots. And so I think they're going to help you connect some dots.

His first book, we're going to talk about, we're going to get to Every Soldier, There's a Time to Heal, which has everything to do with the 4th of July, but we're also going to talk about his book, Why You Were Born. So, you know, it's Kingdom Pursuit, so we got to do our riddles. And so speaking of born, there you go. You didn't know we did this, Dave. So I have to tell my jokes, and your job is to laugh a lot, okay? So you didn't know this, Sean, but I was born by C-section. You were?

Ah, it turned out fine, of course, but whenever I park my car, I have a tendency to climb out through the sunroof. That's how C-section works, isn't it? Sort of. You didn't know this, but in China, I just found this out recently. In China, in China, if you were born before your due date, the most popular name is Suddenly. Hey, that one was a good one.

How was it? See, you're good at laughing. I can see that, David. And so the last of my actual jokes are, Where Are French Fries Born? Sean, do you know that one? I would say France, but I have a feeling that's not the answer. It seems like it, but actually, I think they were born in Greece. Ah, there you go. Yeah, that's a natural. So you knew at the end of the actual jokes, we would get to our Bible riddle today. So our Bible riddle is, Who in the Bible was the first baby born with a thread of evidence? If you know that one, wow. Who was the first baby born with a thread of evidence in the Bible?

866-348-7884. If you can guess that, you're going to win your choice of the books while you were born. For every soldier, there is a time to kill. And Sean, there's one other book, so you tell them what to win. All right, so the other book that we have is also David Johnston's book.

It's How You See Yourself. It says, The Source to Your Struggles and How to Conquer It. So very important book by our guest, David. David Johnston, right. So you got your choice of three books. Why You Were Born, a blueprint for discovering your life potential, or For Every Soldier, There is a Time to Kill, a Time to Heal, or the one that, How You See Yourself.

Isn't that right? The last book, David? That is the last book.

Well, I hope it's not the last book, but it's the last of the three. Well, one of the ways that David just—I mean, he flipped my switch at the NRB, and I have been—my mind has been running 20,000 miles an hour ever since, and at connecting dots. And the word that he used to flip that switch is a word that I really had never spent that much time with, but a word that I think David has an understanding of that I really, really hope our listeners will—that are just—can begin to dig into this word like you have, David, and the word is, iniquity. Iniquity. It's the ancient and Bible word for narcissism.

And it's the big issue of our day. It's the reason nations are against nations and people are against people and competition exists and people don't even like themselves anymore, because they can only feel good about themselves if they can outdo somebody else. Narcissism.

Not very nice. But it's what made Lucifer a good angel into the devil. Of him, it was said, that was perfect in all thy ways until iniquity was found in him.

He turned narcissistic. The evidence of that, of course, is that he said, I will ascend into heaven. I will set my throne above the throne of God.

I'll exalt my stars above the stars of God. He wanted to take over God's position. And that's the essential issue of narcissism. Replacing God with an ego that's out of control. And of course, that's not very sustainable, because the ego can never be satisfied.

It just keeps grabbing and clutching and grasping. And so, unfortunately, so many people spend their lives just going through the routines of trying to get and never, like, it flips through their fingers, you know, like water. And that's the vanity of iniquity and of narcissism. Right. And I love the Isaiah Scripture that you quoted in the interview we did before, you know, where it says, each of us has turned to our own way. And we don't know where to go. And so that's such a big part of this book, Why You Were Born, is since we don't have that, we begin to write our own stories, which is a tough situation. Yeah, and we lack the wisdom to do that, don't we?

Yeah. Like, we think we're smarter than God. We think the created is smarter than the creator.

How wrong can a person be about any subject, you know? So to really find out why we were born, we've got to find out the one who put us here. And an unknown, at least an unrealized truth, is the fact that God is our Father. The Fatherhood, we're here because we're fathered by God. We are God-created beings.

It's true. A man and a woman got together and there was going to be a baby coming. But people don't make people, they make babies. But God puts the person inside the baby. That's why Psalm 100 says, it is He that has made us and not we ourselves.

We are His people and the sheep of His pasture. And one of the wonderful things that people miss out on is that when God makes a creation, He doesn't make any junk. I mean, everybody is made in the image of God and embedded with great riches. And if people learn what they themselves were, they wouldn't have to try to compete. They wouldn't even want to compete with anybody else because they would be so happy because God made no mistake when He made them.

All right. Because your glory, so to speak, the way that you reflect God, is absolutely unique. And nobody can compete with you in that. But by the same token, you can't compete with anybody else in the way that they actually reflect God, right?

True. And you know, if we are always trying to, we tend to create a caricature ourselves, and we do it based on what we admire in other people, and what we'd like to be like somebody else. Well, if we're trying to be somebody else, who will ever be us? That's the question.

And so the real us lives in this, as you suggest, without glory and a vanity that because we're trying to duplicate other people instead of, instead of having a deep, settled, confident, clear, concise understanding that we really are somebody, and we don't have to try to be somebody else. As you can, I hope you're sensing what a treasure we have today on Kingdom Pursuits as we dig into this whole concept of why you were born and discovering yourself, how we can take our iniquity and actually allow Jesus to take that upon us. So we've got so much more coming with David Johnston.

And don't forget our riddle. You can call in and tell us what you're listening to. You're listening to The Truth Network and truthnetwork.com. Welcome back to Kingdom Pursuits, where we hear how God takes your passion, not turns, He takes your passion and uses it to build the Kingdom.

We're so blessed to have with us today, David L. Johnston, author of Why You Were Born and For Every Soldier There Is a Time to Heal. I should tell you that at KingdomPursuits.com. If you go there, you can find those books. But also you can see the link to David's website, which is Nothing But the Truth Ministries, which you can hear from him. He obviously talks that way.

NothingButtheTruthMinistries.com. And again, that's all linked there at ChristianCarguy.com. So, you know, very interesting. I had this opportunity to talk with David at the NRB and talk about why you were born. And so immediately I was just fascinated by this word iniquity, which, you know, for me, I always thought the root of the word was unequal. And so we talked about that for a minute. And how we think we're equal to God or even above God is part of, you know, and even recalled back to my Scientology days when I thought I was God, and how God brought me out of that iniquity. It was just absolutely beautiful. So I went back to the hotel room that night, and I naturally had to study the word in Hebrew.

Even those people who know me know I would naturally do that. And I found it more than interesting. The first time you—which usually is where you find the word the first time in the Bible, sort of an index to its meaning. And the first place that you find the word iniquity that I found it was there where Abraham is getting the outline of what his covenant's going to be, and he tells him that his people are going to have to stay in Egypt for 400 years until the time of the Amorites' iniquity is full. So what a clue that really, really is that cultures take this iniquity and begin to compare each other so much, all this comparison stuff, right, David? That the next thing you know, it's just like entitlement and cancel culture, and all these things come out of the same concept of iniquity. It's all born.

You're right. It's born out of that. And the big danger right now in America is what you've just talked about, Robbie, and that is that the iniquity is filling up and filling up and filling up, and when it gets full, unless there is a really remarkable revival and turning back to the truth—which I love the name of the network—unless there's a turning back to the truth, it is the end of the world. Because when iniquity is full, there will be nothing but wars and rumors of wars, and nation against nation, person against person, company against company, business against business, parents against children, children against parents, and on and on the tragedies would go.

So it's our number one enemy, number one enemy. Yeah, and think about that verse is, oh my goodness. I mean, if you had a chance to meet David and his beautiful wife, you'd go, wow, this man reflects God in some really, really cool ways.

I'm really, really glad that he has taken on that, apparently been a pastor for many, many years, and God has been teaching him and admiring God in other people rather than thinking, you know, I need to compete with that. It's like, oh, well, God, where do I reflect you? Well, so interestingly is that I studied the word more.

David, I have to tell you, because I couldn't tell you this at the NRB, we crossed each other's paths, but I didn't get a chance to do it. So when you look at the word iniquity in Hebrew, it actually probably is pronounced anon, or almost like avon, you know, like almost that word. And the idea is that there is—it starts with a letter called aion, which is your eyes in Hebrew, because Hebrew's a picture language, so it really shows us a picture of something. And so when you think about your eyes, well, you're looking for something, right? And so in iniquity, you're looking for something, okay? And the next letter is actually avav, which kind of means heaven. And so as I was thinking about this, like, wow. So you're kind of looking for heaven, but then the interesting last letter is this word—is this letter and word nun, which is like the seed of faith or the seed to serve.

And so when I really began to process that, I went, oh, that's kind of like I'm looking for heaven to serve me. Boy, isn't that an insight. And by the way, Robbie, it was a joy for me to meet you, too. Let me tell you something. Of all the people in that NRB, what I appreciated so much about you was this thing called ameekness.

You are a meek man, and narcissism and meekness don't go together. So you were kind of a really living evidence to me of not someone trying to be unequal. Because, you know, back to your point about being unequal, and that's an accurate description that's properly placed in context. People trying to be unequal to themselves.

Oh, wow. They're trying to be something they're not. That is the unequalness of it. And most of it's because they don't realize how wonderful they are.

I decided a long time ago, I was going to tell people the truth no matter how wonderful it was. Well, the fascinating thing about what you just said—I mean, this blows my mind when I—because the further I studied it, I realized that President Kennedy had, or at least he quoted, from what I understand, another president, on the phenomenal insight, because the word meek in Hebrew is spelled almost identically to the word iniquity. Really? Only the letters are in a different order. So if you take the same anav that you're looking, right, the same an, and then the second letter, if you're talking about anav, that means you're looking to serve. And then the vav is at the end, and so you're looking to serve God versus looking for God to serve you.

So ask not what God can do for you. Good one. And so anav and anon, they're almost like they're comprised of the same thing, and if you think about it, they have the same gematry where, you know, with the Jews, they count up all these things, and so they have a similar potential for bad or good. I think it's time for you to write the book.

No, no, no, I was just—I was like, look how cool this is as I began to dig into this. I could see it just literally everywhere that, oh my goodness, I am just totally saying it's not fair. It's not fair.

It's not. Which—and it's the source of all sin. Why do we sin? Because we're trying to fulfill iniquity, you know. We're trying to fulfill our narcissism, and so we think sin is the way to do it. Behind every sin is iniquity.

The scripture even says that. So this is our big deal. This is not only the big deal in America. It is that. It's a big deal in the world.

It is that. But it's the big deal in everybody's individual life. The lack of genuine self-acceptance comes out of this narcissism that we learn at a young age.

From the time we get into grade school and we start competing with others, whether it's for grades or for sports or whatever it is, and we're always comparing ourselves with one another, and most people have lost track if they ever even knew what they really were to begin with. Marvelous in the design of God. And there's nothing in a person's life that we might see it as a negative, but if it's a negative, it's there for a positive reason. And so, like, God was so meticulous. He said that—I even have the hairs of your head numbered—every aspect of a person, spirit, soul, and body has been approved and got the seal of approval from God. And things that we think are negative, he doesn't see in that way at all.

He sees them as serving some positive solution. I love your emphasis on serving God. And that's why we go through problems. You know, that Corinthian passage says, Blessed be God, the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, the God of all mercies, the God of all comfort, who comforts us in our tribulation so that we could comfort others with the comfort we got from God. Basically, God allows us to go through stuff. And because we learn, and because we learned how to deal with it, now we meet somebody else who's going through something similar. We've got the goods to give them.

We are able to serve them because we went through and passed our own negative issue. Darrell Bock Yeah, and, you know, it's fascinating, David. Through my wife, my wife pressed me into starting teaching in a special ministries class years ago. And so I teach adults with Down syndrome and autism and those kind of things. And a lot of the world would look at these and say, well, you know, comparing, this isn't good.

Oh, oh, oh, I would beg. Like, if you want to see some really neat people who have not, by the way, they're not trying to remake themselves, okay? They are exactly the way God designed them to be.

And if they feel like hugging you, you better be ready to be hugged. You see what I'm talking about? Like, you can't teach these people meekness because they're inherently this way. But oh, they are so remarkable. And oh, that so many of us could see what God sees when he looks at them.

Like, if you want some joy, just come to my Sunday school class tomorrow. David Zucchino I would like to do that. At NRBA, did you meet Nick? I did not meet Nick. He was born with no hands, no arms, no legs. Oh, I know about Nick.

Yeah, Nick did the movie A Butterfly Circus. And oh, he is the perfect example of 2 Corinthians chapter one, if there ever was one. Like, oh my goodness.

That is so cool. I wish I had met him. But we got a lot more coming with David. We're going to switch gears to his book, For Every Soldier There's a Time to Kill, that's coming up on the other side, as well as Amy Cabo.

So stay tuned. You're listening to the Truth Network and truthnetwork.com. Darrell Bock Welcome back to Kingdom Pursuits, where we hear how God takes your passion and uses it to build a kingdom. We're so blessed to have with us today, David L. Johnston. He's the author of Why You Were Born, and the tagline to that one is a blueprint for discovering your life potential, as well as for every soldier there is a time to kill and a time to heal.

His ministry is Nothing But the Truth Ministries. You can find it all at kingdompursuits.com. Order those books.

Go report back on Amazon how wonderful they are and continue to support him. But also with me right now, I've got my good friend, Amy Cabo, her show at one o'clock today, The Cure, with her wonderful co-host Boris, who I never want to forget. Your show today is on trauma recovery, right? Talk about The Cure. You're going to be working with people who've had trauma through hypnosis curing, right?

Yes, I'm super excited about today's show. He teaches it, actually, and it's what you call clinical hypnotherapist. He's the fastest hypnosis with rapid interventions for, you know, crises, trauma, alcohol and drug addiction, low self-worth, eating disorders, I mean, you name it, and he's got an amazing testimony. He survived terminal illnesses.

His wife is a rare survivor, survived terminal illnesses three times. He's still fascinated with the mindset, the emotions, and beliefs, and their outcomes, and from his personal experiences, it's compelled him to turn from atheist to Christian. That's so awesome. And again, this is a live show, so you've got questions about those kind of things, like hypnosis, Christian, really? What's that about? Well, that's why it's a live show, so we can talk about it. You can call them at 866-348-7884.

Again, that's one o'clock Eastern, you know, if you happen to be in Des Moines or you're in Salt Lake City or something, it's Eastern time, one o'clock on The Truth Network. Thank you, Amy. Thank you, and God bless. And say hi to Boris.

That wouldn't be my day without being able to talk to Boris. Thank you, Amy. Bye-bye. All right, so we wanted to change gears a little bit. David Johnston, not only the author of Why You Were Born, and we had a chance to do that, but this second book is for such a time as today, right?

We're celebrating the freedom that was given to us by so many soldiers, and your book, For Every Soldier, There's a Time to Kill and a Time to Heal, this too has a really significant deep meaning, right, David? Yeah, and of course, anything that's true comes out of the Bible, right? I mean, that's why I love The Truth Network. I love The Truth. And by the way, our website is actually nothingbutthetruth.org.

I don't know if we got that right or not, but nothingbutthetruth.org. Truth is really vital. And in the book of Ecclesiastes chapter 3, everybody knows the beginning, to everything there is a purpose, a season to everything in heaven, under heaven, time to be born and a time to die, and then there's a list of 24 of these things, and the next on the list is a time to kill and a time to heal. So the book opens with, when is it ever right to kill? When is it ever justified?

Because the Bible gives us five situations in which it's justifiable. But anybody who has to kill legitimately has to recover. Can you imagine with me the trauma of these, our soldiers? Our soldiers, veterans, men who gave their lives for our freedom, and they had to stand in front of somebody, and they had to shoot them.

And then they had to follow protocol, which was to search their bodies, and they would pull out a picture of their wife, of the man's children that he carried so close to his heart. And that soldier has that memory the rest of his life, times the number of occurrences when that took place. And so soldiers today have to recover. There has to be a time to heal. And so, and by the way, healing can never come too quick. And the tragedy is... Can I jump in just for a second here?

Because I... Of course, of course. You know, for whatever reason, because I love Jewish culture, I do Jewish satyrs. And part of a Jewish satyr, if you do it the old-fashioned way, is you have to harvest a sheep.

And the idea of that was you had to do that without breaking any bones and all that stuff. So a friend of mine and I, the first time we were gonna go do this, we went and got this sheep, and it was a beautiful thing to watch the shepherd call out for his baby, and here comes his sheep. And it was a beautiful... And just like they say a sheep...

They like crazy until you hang them upside down, which is the way that you go about processing this. I'm not gonna go into a lot of detail, but I will tell you this. Like when you have your hand on that knife, you have an understanding that Abraham... Like if you're the one who did it, and I was, like what Abraham felt when he had his own son, and he'd obviously processed a lot of sheep in his day.

And all those priests, they did a whole lot of killing. And yes, it's gotta be unbelievably horrible comparatively with a human being. I have no concept of that and no doubt the healing that needs to take place. But let me just tell you that when you actually take the life of an animal, you need to heal from that.

I had to drop the knife in horror and just stand there and watch the result of what I'd done. And I've never forgotten it. And so... And that's what a soldier has to do. Right? Can you imagine?

Can you imagine? And so... And that's why the suicide is so rate high... The rate is so high among veterans.

And I think right now it's like 22 every day, every single day, because they can't deal with having to have killed. Others go to medication, and so many of them are being medicated. When will we ever learn that there's no chemical cure for a spiritual problem?

I mean, that just doesn't even make any sense. But God is careful to give us an outline of how the soldier can heal. And that's what the book is about, how to heal. And of course, we know the name of the healer, don't we?

Yeah, we do. So I know everybody's like me, and you're gonna say, well, read the book, Ravi, read the book. I have the book from here. But I know that we gotta give that listeners a little something to say, or this outline of... Can you give us a little more information? On the healing process?

Yes. Well, it begins with realizing that the guilt you feel may not be authentic. There are two kinds of guilt, pseudo-guilt and real guilt. If a person is taught, if a boy is taught that kicking a can down the street is a wrong thing to do every time he kicks a can, he'll feel guilty. Because conscience is only infallible as the information fed to it is infallible. So if he had to kill legitimately, he can feel guilt over that. Even though it met the criteria, which is outlined at the beginning of the book, the five times when it is a just thing to kill, he will still feel guilty. And the essence of recovery is dealing with guilt, whether real or... Right, sort of like getting at the truth.

Yeah. Pseudo-guilt is as devastating as real guilt, because he feels exactly the same, right? So how do we get rid of... How does a soldier get rid of the guilt? And there is only one way.

We can try all kinds of mechanisms, we'll try to do good, we'll try to make up for it somehow, but without the shedding of blood, there is no remission. So it took the blood of Jesus to provide three things. Well, we're gonna have to go on the other side of the break before we get those three things, but we also have Genesis Walker has got the answer to our riddle. We don't want to miss that about this baby that was born with the threat of evidence. So you're gonna find out all that stuff.

Stay tuned. Welcome back to Kingdom Pursuits, where we hear how God takes your passion and uses it to build the kingdom today. We're so blessed to have with us just an amazing man of God, author, speaker, certainly Pastor David L. Johnston. His books, Why Were You Born?

And For Every Soldier, There Is a Time to Heal. But also we have with us Genesis Earl Walker, who has got an answer to this question, who in the Bible was the first baby born with a threat of evidence? Genesis, thank you for calling.

I love your name. Well, actually, the first name is Joseph. Okay, well, Joseph was in Genesis.

It was just a bad connection there. We're thinking that the answer to the question would be Esau. Esau.

Now that's cool. Esau. See, Esau and Jacob, they had a battle in the womb, there's no doubt about that. And there was certainly some evidence because he was hairy, right? Right. He really was. And it was red hair.

However, so we're gonna give you the book, no doubt, because you're exactly right. There's a threat of evidence in all that hairiness of Esau. However, there actually was a baby that had a red thread that was wrapped around his leg.

Do you know that one? That was his brother. Esau's brother was Jacob. In this case, Perez. Perez's brother is the one we were shooting for, but that's okay. Oh, okay.

You remember that? Two more twins, also in the book of Genesis. So you didn't know this, but maybe your new name when you get to heaven is gonna be Genesis because everything we've talked about so far. Oh, that's wonderful. Thank you, Joseph. I appreciate you calling so much today and for taking part in Kingdom Pursuits. God bless. You're welcome. Thank you very much. Thank you. Bye-bye.

All right. So getting back to when we left our soldier that was being healed, you were talking about why we needed the remission of sin through the shedding of blood, which that's absolutely beautiful. And wow, that's really pictured also in Genesis, isn't it?

It surely is. The issue with the soldier is primarily called PTSD, or the post-traumatic stress disorder, which is basically a condition in which the soldier relives those bad events, the memories, the flashbacks, the nightmares. And they bring him, I mean, he wakes up in the middle of the night with a cold sweat, you know, and nausea. And so the soldier will tend to avoid anybody or anything that reminds him of those events. So he lives pretty lonely.

He doesn't share with anybody. And he suffers extreme anxiety, you know, and sleep disorders and jumpiness, and of course, substance abuse. And so that's his predicament. And the truth is that there is no drug, there's no chemical, there's no rational ization, there's no reaction formation, no sublimation, no disassociation, no nothing that can remove the stains from his heart. Nothing but the blood of Jesus. And so here is this marvelous provision of God, the giving of his Son.

And of course, the scripture says that without the shedding of blood, there's no remission of sin. So we have to come to Jesus. The soldier needs to get to Jesus. Because when he gets to Jesus, some really wonderful things happen. Jesus, that's why we call him the Savior. This is why we call him the Lord. There's nothing broke he can't fix.

There's no damage he cannot repair. There's no sin he can't forgive. There's no group of sins, no matter how many, no matter how terrible they are. There is nothing that the blood of Jesus cannot change. So, so the soldier comes to the blood of Jesus Christ, and this is what he gets. Number one, forgiveness.

Oh, what wonderful that is. That is like somebody writing off, paying the check for something you think you owe, and it's not there anymore. But he doesn't, it's not just enough to be forgiven. The soldier has to be cleansed, and that's what Jesus does. He doesn't just forgive us our sins. He does that.

Thank God he does that. But he cleanses us. And I'm telling you that there's no psychiatrist, no psychology.

There's no therapy that can cleanse the heart of a person, because nothing else can reach there. It's like, you know, in Shakespeare's Macbeth. Lady Macbeth in the middle of the night is screaming. She and her husband had plotted and taken Duncan's life, and now they were heirs to the throne.

She's in the castle, and she's screaming, out damned spot, out damned spot! And she couldn't get rid of the stain. The blood of Jesus doesn't just forgive. It cleanses.

Yes, it does. And this book, I need to tell you, For Every Soldier There Is a Time to Kill, A Time to Heal, is an absolutely beautiful hardback book. What a gift for that soldier, you may know, that might be experiencing this, and a chance to really get that cleansing. You know, this book, For Every Soldier There Is a Time to Kill, is available again.

You can go to KingdomPursuits.com or to his website, Nothing But the Truth. We've got so much truth coming at you. Thank you so much for listening today. Thank you, David. What an awesome time. And a pleasure. We can do so much more. This is the Truth Network.