Best of the Program | Guest: Jonathon Seidl | 10/24/25

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Stu says, we're headed for civil war and we're all about to die.

Now, I thought that was a little bit hasty.

I didn't say that.

Well,

you have to listen yourself and you decide.

Did he say it or not?

Also, exercise your faith in God.

He is not neutral in the affairs of men.

A phone call that I took today, you really have to hear because I think a lot of people feel the way this caller did.

Also, John Seidel joins us to discuss his new book, Confessions of a Christian Alcoholic.

All of that and so much more on today's broadcast.

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You're listening to the best of the Blenbeck program.

Let me ask you something.

You go to work, you're working with somebody you've worked with for 30 years, and they say to you,

You know,

if you've ever really seriously considered alternative citizenship,

you should really consider it right now.

How do you take that?

What is that friend trying to say to you?

Stew?

I mean, it could be that I have information that I'm going to give to the government about your illegal poker games.

What the hell is that?

Well, I mean, I was thinking about it a little bit.

Uh-huh.

This is what he said to me in the break.

He just, we were talking about other things.

We were like, okay, we got to talk about this.

We got to talk about this.

And by the way, Glenn, if you've ever really considered alternative citizenship, now is probably the time to do it.

I'm like, excuse me, what?

Well, 10 seconds.

Wait a minute.

What?

My thought process

was,

you know,

there was a truce of sorts in our country

where you didn't go after your political enemies with the force of law.

Democrats decided, if you remember recently, I do, that they were going to break that truce and just dissolve all of the traditions that we had in that area by trying to throw Donald Trump in prison over and over and over again.

Now, you may have noted that

we are having a situation where I think this is going to be the norm going forward.

And when

the next Democrat gets in office,

I'm not saying you're at the top of the list to get thrown into a gulag, but you're not at the bottom of it.

Right.

And you're just going to skate.

You're just fine.

Oh,

I turn state's evidence immediately on you.

The easiest thing in the world for me, because I can just go in there and be like, oh, let me tell you all the stuff I know about Clinton.

And

I'm free.

I think I'm pretty sure that's how it works.

But I do think, you know,

Donald Trump's not going to be president forever.

What country...

Well, imagine if

AOC is the president of the United States.

Do you think there's going to be, by the way, not completely outlandish.

She's right in the, I would say, middle of the pack right now in the Democratic primary if she were to run.

And you never know what's going to happen.

There's a bunch of different things.

That could never happen.

By the way, Mom Dummy looks like there's absolutely no way of stopping him from being

mayor of New York.

But anyway, go ahead.

What was your point?

So my point is, someone like that gets into office

office?

It is.

I mean, if they're going to come after anyone

who's ever said anything about low taxes.

If anybody thinks,

I mean, we must win the midterms and we must win 2028.

I mean, because he has come after, you know, when he starts saying you're a terrorist organization, and which I believe, you know, Antifa is a terrorist organization.

When you say, I'm coming after George Soros, Bill Gates, and the Ford Foundation, all of these things,

you have declared war.

And they are not, when they have the opportunity to punch back, they are going to punch back.

God help us.

God help us.

He's either got to wipe it out

or

we're screwed.

We're screwed.

And look, we can all

you hope for the best and prepare for the worst.

So what country is going to be the country?

First of all, I would never shut up.

So

I go to Antarctica.

I'm organizing the penguins.

You know what I mean?

I'm like, look at, we got to go back into America and free America.

So, I mean, where do you go where the United States, remember how they were uniting people, you know, Biden under Biden, they were, I mean, they, they were trying to get Elon Musk,

you know, destroy him in like four different countries.

So where do you go?

You go nowhere.

Well, first of all, someone who's known you for 30 years, it's true you never shut up, including at movie movie theaters and concerts

and funerals.

Concerts.

So

yes, and so that's number one.

I do agree with you on that part of it.

I think like your goal in a situation like that, and you've probably put more thought into this than I have, but like your goal into a situation where a government has become weaponized to come after you is to move your name down the list.

And one of the ways you do that is just add barriers.

Like if you're not, if you're you're at your house in texas they just show up if you're in another country they got to make a few phone calls i mean just add barriers there's a lot of people they're going to target make yourself lower on the list yeah you're in another country you know what comes to mind two words red mist

That's what comes to mind.

And if they're back in charge with big food and big pharma, they're like, red mist, put it on the fruit loops.

Yeah,

it's very inexpensive artificial food calls.

very good it's very good all right let me take some phone calls tammy in virginia welcome to the glenbeck program

hi hi tammy

nice to be here thank you it's your turn now's the time we have not done this in a while apparently it's more difficult now's your turn

now's your time i got it okay go ahead

okay

what i was taught I was thinking when a civil war, if a civil war came to the country,

it would be between the people on the streets.

Never did I ever dream that it would be government officials like in Illinois and California

not listening to the laws, not listening to the administration.

And I'm wondering, where does this lead?

Well, you know, let me just say this, Tammy.

It's a little like

I'm an alcoholic, and for several years, before I admitted I was an alcoholic, I would ask myself every day,

am I an alcoholic?

When you're asking the question,

pretty good shot, you're deeply down that road.

Okay.

So if you're asking,

is this going to develop into a civil war?

I've never asked that before up until recently.

You know what I mean?

I've lived for 62 years.

I've lived in America, never had that, never had that thought.

Are we going to go into a civil war?

Never had that thought.

Okay.

Now you kind of ask yourself

every day, if they're doing this and they are blocking the feds from actually doing constitutionally what they're supposed to do, and that

then triggers the Constitution on an insurrection,

which would mean the government then has to has the right and the power to go into those states and put down an insurrection.

Yeah, I don't think we need to ask ourselves, where is that leading?

We know where that's leading, and it's no place good.

But there is a difference.

You know, are we in a civil war?

Again, I go back to the alcoholic thing.

You don't need to ask that question.

You know.

You know, when it comes, you know.

So, wait, you're saying we are in a civil war because you're asking the question or you're saying that we're saying, I'm saying that the

likelihood of going into a civil war is higher than any other time in my lifetime because we're all asking that question of, is this going to lead to a civil war?

I mean, what happens?

Yeah, so we're all asking this question because we all have the same feeling.

I can't find the way out of this because

they're using police to go against federal police.

So

you've got that conflict.

That's bad.

That's not civil war.

No, no, no.

I know.

I said.

It's more likely to happen because we're seeing these things.

When you go into a a civil war, no one's going to ask, is this a civil war?

Because civil wars are quite obvious.

It's not like, oh, it's a police action.

No, civil war will destroy everything.

It's how we turn into Haiti.

You don't want a civil war.

You want to do everything you can to avoid a civil war.

So is it like, you know,

Michael Moore

walks into a restaurant.

Yes.

First of all, the chefs are terrified,

walks into a restaurant and sits down.

The owner is very happy.

Right.

He's just like, we're going to run out of food.

Somebody go out and get more.

So Michael Moore walks into a restaurant, sits down at a table, looks across the restaurant, and across the restaurant, on the other side of the restaurant, is Jennifer Aniston.

Now, don't know where you're going with this, but it's an interesting scenario so far.

He eats Jennifer Aniston.

No.

So

walking into the restaurant, the chances of Michael Moore having a fling with Jennifer Anison were incredibly low, like almost zero.

Right.

Now that they're in the same location,

the odds are increased.

However, still, it's very unlikely.

Don't you say that's where we are with Steve?

So if he's mixing her drinks,

the odds go up.

Now, who's mixing our drinks?

You know what I'm saying?

Right.

So you're saying it's not necessarily a high probability event of a similar thing.

No, but it is becoming more it is becoming more and more likely it it doesn't mean that it's you know high i i think we're at

15 now 15

you think it's that high for a civil war yeah maybe 20.

holy crap that's that's depressing i mean

this is what i'm saying about citizenship i know war

war game this you you have people who are intentionally funding a a color revolution But you've been talking about this for 20 years.

Right.

And notice things are starting to happen and come true.

When I was talking about it, remember, that's when everybody's like, that's crazy.

Yes, yeah.

And we're going to have, we're going to watch TV on our phones, too.

Okay.

Right.

Now all this stuff is happening, and everything that I told you was like, these people are all going to work together to do this, and it's going to be a color revolution.

We now have proof that they are doing a color revolution here in America, and they're funding it to $300 million for the No Kings weekend.

We know what their intent is.

So

we also know that, you know, did you see this stuff on Snap?

Look at this.

So they're now saying that we're going to run out of money for Snap.

Right.

Some states are starting to get to that point.

Right.

You look at X and you'll see person after person after person.

Americans, you got to get ready to loot after Snap is going to get canceled.

And Snap's the food stamps.

Food stamps.

The new name for food stamps.

You know, we can't get a job.

We won't have any food.

And there's people that are seriously now saying we should riot.

And lots of influence from foreign governments

might own particular apps that you're on.

Correct.

So it's, I mean, it doesn't matter.

It doesn't matter what's real.

It's

there was this book called

Positioning, the Battleground of Your Mind.

It was what started and explained the cola wars, okay?

Pepsi versus Coke.

Came out in the early 80s.

That's the kind of Civil War I like, by the way.

Me too.

And

what it talked about was perception is reality.

And, you know, when you perceive something one way and the society perceives it one way, then it becomes reality.

The perception here for a lot of people on the left is the only way to solve this is through violence.

That's becoming more, I would say that that's,

I'm hopeful that it's less than 5% of our population believes that violence is the answer.

But that number is growing.

And the apathy toward violence, political violence, is growing probably faster than the actual people that would commit the violence, right?

Yeah.

And I do think, you know, when you talk about social media, perception is an interesting part of that, right?

Like, so it's why they say in relationships in your marriage, like, don't talk about divorce, like, don't threaten divorce when you don't mean it, because it becomes closer and closer to reality.

So I can see what you're saying from that standpoint.

I think a lot of people have this idea,

maybe it's because some spend their weekends for free reenacting the civil war that it might not be that bad?

It would be very bad.

Very bad.

It's not something that you want to keep

bringing to the forefront of our political conversation.

No.

I will say that.

I know you're warning against it for sure.

I'm not advocating, honestly.

I am warning, that's my job, is to warn for anybody who has eyes and ears, listen up.

This is the plan from the left.

The government has now recognized that and is trying to curb that, but they're dead serious about color revolution.

And so when you know that that is happening,

you have to put in gear the opposite direction.

We have to go the opposite direction and try at all costs to hold things together, keep people peaceful as long as possible to hopefully turn this corner because a corner is being turned.

But as the light grows stronger, would you agree with me that the light since charlie's death the light has grown stronger okay i believe it has good has is is starting to wake up but at the same time the darkness is growing darker can you disagree with that in the last five weeks have you not seen real darkness of course that's the way it always works it's a race to the finish line let's stay on the right side of the light Let me tell you about Relief Factor.

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This is the best of the Glenn Beck program.

Let me go to Alan in Maine.

Hello, Alan.

Hello, Glenn.

How you doing?

So I am just thrilled to talk to you and Stu.

I just, you guys are America's watchmen.

And

as soon as you said I'm going to take a few calls,

something in my head triggered to me to actually give that man a call right now because I just see a few canaries in the coal mine, Glenn, and I know you guys do too.

If you guys see what's going on in Virginia, the AG race, I mean, it's just, you got Mon Dummy there in New York.

I mean, the Virginia race, I mean, what was said, that the evilness behind it, it just goes along with what's going on up here in Maine.

We have a Senate race going on up here.

Everybody knows Senator Susan Collins.

She's not a friend to conservatives by any means.

We are being pushed in a corner up here because

nobody is in our corner for us, really.

She's the only one we have up here.

It's getting really, really blue.

And we have a man right now running for the Senate who's an actual Nazi.

I'm saying that because the things he said on the stump is really disturbing.

As a Christian,

as a Jewish Christian, I am very upset the things he said.

And the tattoo that just came out, and he just supposedly covered it up.

It's not just an ordinary tattoo, Glenn.

This is an SS soldier tattoo.

It's the worst of the worst.

And what scares me the most is the new poll that just came out, the New Hampshire poll.

It puts him almost doubled over Jeanette Mills.

She's

the Democrat from

establishing the Democrats.

Hang on just a second.

It scares me that people will just vote for

an AG in Virginia who's like, hey, just let the blood flow in the streets and a Nazi in Maine.

But do you think in the general he would win over Susan Collins?

You know, you know, Glenn, I've been thinking about it lately, and

the same push that made me call you

is ringing in my head right now.

And it's just bringing up a quote that you brought up in a book that you wrote.

And it was a quote that Hitler made, and it talks about how the spirit becomes almost like magic.

You know, and that's what's coming right now.

If you look at the youth right now, they're being fed.

I mean, they're pushed against the corner, too.

You know, guys, it's expensive out there.

Just hamburger alone is very expensive.

And if you see what these people are saying on the stump speeches,

like Rush used used to say, their skull is full of mush, and they are.

They're absolute mush, and they're absorbing this stuff like sponges.

And this man's out on the stump saying the things that they want to hear.

You know, Lamont Dami's not doing anything different than no one else has ever done, but he's giving these people hope, you know, and that's what they're grabbing on to.

They don't mean it.

You know, just like the Islamists, they'll lie to their adversaries.

And I believe these people are lying to our faces, and we know that for a fact.

And I know, Glenn, for the years I've been listening to you and reading your books, these people are serious.

I mean, if you took what they did during COVID, I mean, we haven't even got to the bottom of that yet.

Thousands of people lost their jobs.

And this man's out there saying things that just, his rallies are bringing in the youth.

The rallies are packing in people, and I'm a little worried.

You know, this might be the actual,

in the grand election, this could be the end for Senator Susan Collins, and it's not going to go the way we think.

I mean,

we have no one up here in New England.

And if you really think about it, New England is where all of us really came.

You know, the Mayflower, I mean, a lot of our history, Boston, Maine, and we, we, Massachusetts, we are rich in history.

The first Fort Knox up here, we just, God, you know it.

These people, we have,

they've forgotten the history, and it upsets me so much because we're so rich in history up here.

And this guy's going out there saying things that just, it's disgusting.

And I don't know.

Do you really think Senator Sue, I mean, I don't see her grabbing on to Trump.

I mean, I don't,

she's going to try to grab on to Democratic votes.

I don't think it's going to work.

He's going to take them.

He's going to take the votes for her.

And then what?

The conservatives are going to.

I mean, I know no one, we don't really love Susan Collins, but if we lose her, people,

that's a heavy voice and a heavy hand that we need right now.

It's just not looking good.

I'm afraid, Glenn, that these youth are buying what these Islamists and what these Marxists, like you said, they're working together and they're grabbing onto it, and they're chewing it up, and they're swallowing it.

And it upsets me because I wish Trump would come up here and do a speech and just do a rally because we're just, I mean,

you know what's going on with our Grove rep.

I mean, from China taking over.

I mean,

it's getting to a point where.

Alan.

Alan.

Yes, sir.

I can hear it in your voice, and I

feel what you're feeling.

And I just, I want you to know.

Texas is a wonderful place to live.

Florida is a wonderful place to live.

I know nobody wants to give up on their areas, but there are places that,

you know, I think Minnesota, I think,

you know, some parts of Michigan and may lose all of Michigan at some point,

that are just, they are...

They're being fed to the wolves, and

they are being fed to the wolves by the Democrats.

The Democrats made

this deal with the devil to get into bed

with the leftist and the Islamists, and they thought they could control them.

Well, Chuck Schumer is terrified.

The Democrats, the old Democrats that made this deal and played footse with them are all terrified that they are going to be eaten by their own leftist crazies.

And you're seeing it now, you you know, where you have a, uh, you know, a, an okay Democrat, you know, as far as that goes, in Maine running against a Nazi, and the Nazi is winning.

This is, um,

we, we are in extraordinarily difficult times, and I know that.

And I want you to know that you're not alone in feeling that, but you're also not alone in praying and

trying to do the right thing.

So let me give you this

piece of advice.

Just do the next right thing.

Exercise your faith in God that God has control and he is not neutral in the affairs of men.

That requires us, if we want the blessings, it requires us to do all of the hard work.

We cannot sit on the sidelines.

We cannot give up.

We must do all that we can do and then let it go.

Whatever happens, it's his will and he will work it out.

We don't deserve the blessings that we have already received.

We don't.

We don't deserve.

Look at how we questioned 2020.

And now look at how if we all know

if 2020, if Donald Trump would have won then, we would not be in the place we're in right now on the good side because Donald Trump changed.

God saved him.

He found God, I really believe, in Butler.

He educated himself over the last four years.

What he and his family went through in those four years changed him.

And now we have this version of Donald Trump, not the 2020 version of Donald Trump.

And yet I was on the air going, this is really bad.

There's no way out of this.

We could be doomed by 2024.

And we might have been, but look at the miracles that happened in the summer of 2024 that led up to Donald Trump winning.

We've got to let our version of what has to happen go.

We have to just do the next right thing and the Lord will work it out.

We cannot value our second citizenship, our passport in the United States of America.

We cannot value that higher than our first citizenship in the kingdom.

He is the king.

No king but Christ.

He is the one we answer to.

He is the one we put our faith in.

He is the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob.

And if anyone can save it,

it is him,

not us.

We are dealing with true evil, unlike anything I've ever seen in my lifetime.

We are dealing with, as I said in 2008, 9, 10, 11, 12, 13, 14, 15,

said almost every day,

We are going to see the evil that we have not seen since the 1930s.

We're going to see it on our own streets here in America.

Well, it is here.

And there's no way for man to defeat evil

without God.

But I have great faith.

Why is God?

Is God a taunting God?

Is he a God that just plays with us?

Why would he save Donald Trump at that moment?

Why would he save and preserve his life?

He's not toying with us.

Why would he let Charlie Kirk go?

Because Charlie Kirk lived his life every second, doing exactly what God told him to do.

And look at the miracle that has happened since the death of Charlie Kirk.

The number of people that watch that memorial

is estimated to be over 1.2 billion people watch that memorial.

We just received a Bible from

an auction that we bought, and it's one of the first Bibles printed here in America.

And in it, back in the old days, you know, Bibles and books were just very expensive.

And so you went to leaders

and, you know, influencers, if you will, and very wealthy people.

And you said, hey, we want to print this book or this library, and we would like you to be a funder of it and help.

you know, endorse this.

We just bought this Bible, one of the first printed in America, and the funders

and the ones who attached their name to the testimony

of the truth of the gospel.

First funder was George Washington, President of the United States.

Second one, John Jay, Supreme Court Chief Justice.

Third one, Secretary of War Alexander Hamilton.

We believe, and we're still doing our homework on this, we believe that is the last time that cabinet and those kinds of people testified publicly of Jesus Christ

until the miracle of the memorial at Charlie Kirk,

where you had the president, the vice president, the secretary of state, the secretary of war, health and human services, and everybody else openly testify, not saying I love God, not even saying I love Jesus, saying Jesus Christ is the Lord and Savior of the world.

That does not

happen.

Now, our job is to take that seed

that Charlie planted in his own life and then

in the harvest,

the Lord took

and started just

planting seeds and showing us how ripe the fields are all over the world.

It's our job now, not just to go back to church.

That's a revival.

We don't need a revival.

We've had revivals over and over and over again.

You know when the biggest revivals were happening in America in the last hundred years?

We had a revival in 1900, 1920, 1930.

We kept having revivals.

Did anything in America change?

No.

Those are the times when eugenics started growing out of control, when we started changing our country towards this progressive nightmare where we made our God government.

We don't need a revival because that puts people in the pews.

What we need is an awakening.

And that means you get out of the pew if they're not talking about it.

And you tell your pastor, I cannot come here anymore because you won't talk about applying these principles to everything we do every day.

The awakenings happen outside of the church.

The church is the last one.

When there's an awakening, there is a reformation.

not just of the churches, but also of government and our own private families and institutions.

Because the leadership of those families, institutions, companies, government, they all have been to to church, they heard the word, but they're awake and they now say, I'm applying this in my own life.

I'm awake.

It's why I'm talking like I'm talking to you right now.

Because the time to just say, we need God is over.

The time to say, we must obey the true king and savior of the universe, Jesus Christ, and live the way he taught us to live and apply those things in everything we do, every conversation we have.

We must elect people who understand

who their king is.

No king but Christ.

Who is your king?

Who do you serve?

Who do you answer to?

You find those people and we elect those people.

We live our lives in a way

that we might in some way

be worthy of 5%

of the mercy

he has shown us.

Don't fear

all the things that you see around you, your life, your success, your failures, whatever, it's all an illusion.

None of it matters.

Your family, your soul, and eternity matters.

If you're not doing what you're doing right now, if it doesn't involve the eternities, if it doesn't have eternal consequences, stop doing it and do something that does have eternal consequences.

You're listening to the best of the Glenn Beck program.

John Seitel is with us now.

John worked with me.

Gosh, John,

how many years did we work together?

We went from 2010 when we started this whole thing to 2015.

Yeah.

And

you left in 2015, and I had no idea about the struggles that you were going through and where that would lead you and why you're on the program now.

Your book is Confessions of a Christian Alcoholic.

Tell me the story.

Well, here's the funny thing, Glenn.

I think I didn't realize the struggles that I was having when you and I were working together.

And I think what's ironic, right, is I heard your story for how many years, right?

That you, you know, what that looked like and

what that did to you and family and Kanya saying, you got to, you got, something's got to change, right?

Yeah.

And yet, you know, and I think this is the truth about addiction is we can know something and want to do something and still fall prey to it.

And so, you know, 2021, I had

another book come out, became a top 100 book on all of Amazon called Finding Rest.

It was about faith and mental health.

And, you know, a mutual friend of ours, Billy Halliwell, called me up and Billy said, John, you have to be careful.

And I said, what?

He said, you're going to publish a book.

And you know this as well, Glenn.

He said, you're going to publish a book.

And you kind of get this period after you publish it where you fall into this like lull, right?

And,

you know, I kind of joke that it's like, it's like Talladega Knights, like Ricky Bobby.

He's like, what do I do with my hands?

You know?

Yes.

And

so I just kind of said, well, thanks, Billy, you know, but I'll be fine, you know?

And sure enough, like I published that book and you just realize you have.

certain expectations that it's going to do this and that and the other thing and it doesn't.

And

you fast forward, I had my own business at the time.

I lost my biggest client.

And then my son was diagnosed with a tumor in his shin.

He was four years old at the time.

And, well, by the grace of God, that ended up being benign.

All of those things stacking up.

And here's what I did, Glenn.

I just slowly started drinking more and more

and more.

And it wasn't this overnight thing.

And I don't think for a lot of people it is, right?

But all of a sudden, I wake up in 2023 and I realize, oh my gosh, I am a full-grown alcoholic.

And I have this rock bottom moment on an anniversary trip in Miami with my wife where, you know, she says, hey, I'm going to have the night in.

Why don't you go do whatever you want?

I said, I'm just going to go down to the hotel bar, have a few drinks and appetizers.

And she goes, don't get drunk.

And I say, I'm not going to get drunk.

And I can say, you know, with 100% certainty that my goal was not to get drunk that night.

And yet, by the end of the night,

which is the beginning of the morning, I am on South Beach, Miami, by myself, wading in the ocean, going to the bathroom, drunk.

And I'm like, what has my life become?

And my wife, much like Tanya, you know, said, hey, listen, I don't care if you never drink again.

What you have to do is get to the root of why you're drinking this way.

You have to find something greater.

You have to return to something greater.

You have to dig that stuff out because otherwise it's just going to be something else.

And I said, can we just go back to the non-drinking part?

Like that would be easier, you know, like than actually doing the soul searching and the, you know, the surgery that it requires.

You know, and it's weird that you think that.

I mean, you know,

I got up early today and I read good portions of the book and it's very well done.

And

I have to tell you that there's a couple of things that I think we all go through.

First of all, I'm not really an alcoholic.

I'm not an alcoholic because alcoholics, I love the section where you're talking about, you know, what does an alcoholic look like?

We just have this image in our mind of this is what an alcoholic is like.

And I'm not that.

You know, I'm not a whino.

And so you go through that.

You go through, you know, asking yourself and then trying to stop and you can't stop and you really try and you promise yourself every day and it gets worse and worse and worse every day where you're like,

I'm a loser.

I cannot stop myself.

I promised myself I wasn't going to drink today.

I promised myself I was not going to get drunk when I went down to the bar, you know, at the hotel.

And you violate it every day and your self-esteem just gets getting worse and worse and worse because you can't stop and you have every

intention of stopping, but you'll always find an excuse.

And then when you finally realize you have to, then you don't want to do the work of what's causing you to drink because you're terrified of it.

You're terrified of looking into it.

And at least I was terrified that that's all that existed in me, that there wasn't actually anything good in me.

It was just this collection of

things that I had gathered my whole life.

Does that make sense to you?

Do you feel that way at all?

Absolutely.

You know, that's why it's like I would rather, and this is what I tell people, Glenn, and some people don't like it, but I'm like, listen, my goal,

my ultimate goal for people when I'm talking to them, the ultimate goal for myself is not sobriety, right?

Because I want a better life than just not drinking, right?

I want a better, more fulfilled, flourishing life.

That's why I am like, man, I shot for Jesus and I got sobriety thrown in, right?

Now,

I'm all okay with programs.

I'm all okay with steps and doing what you need to do, right?

And community and talking about it.

You need that, right?

But man, if you when because when you do look into yourself, Glenn, and you see what is truly there, right?

There's no way that you can personally fix all that.

No.

And now some people can white knuckle it for a long time, but ultimately they're not as fulfilled as they would be if they actually dug in and invited someone in to fix those things.

I don't know if you can white knuckle it.

I really don't.

I mean,

I really, you know, an AA doesn't expect you to white knuckle it.

AA, the first thing is you're not in charge here.

You got to admit that there's something much bigger than you.

Whatever God is to you, there's God.

And

you have to surrender to him.

And that, you know, the surrender part is part of it.

But I will tell you that until I got into the waters of baptism after all my alcoholism and everything and white-knuckling it for several years, until I got into the water, I could not hold it.

You can't.

You can't carry that burden.

You know,

people who, I feel bad for people who don't need the atonement

as badly as I did, because I don't know if you can really truly appreciate it.

It is when you cannot go anymore, when this decision is, I can't live with myself anymore,

it's suicide or something else.

And I've tried everything else, so I'm going to give this a try.

And you truly surrender and accept that forgiveness and then say, I don't want this anymore.

I don't want to think about this anymore.

It's all yours.

Take it.

It's a miracle.

It's a miracle.

Absolutely.

And I think what, you know, part of my message to Glenn is for people, listen, I was a Christian.

I kind of say, like, I'm not the, I'm the Christian that became an alcoholic, not the other way around, right?

And listen, it's okay.

Like, I love the stories of the other way around, right?

But I also want to encourage people that, listen, some of these things that are festering inside of you, you can, you can love God, you can love Jesus and want to pursue him and have all that stuff.

And yet, you still have these things inside of you that fester and that you need to work on.

And that was true for me, right?

And so my hope is that people listening to this, like, if you are not, you know, a person of faith and you want to find, you know, sobriety in Jesus, let's talk.

But also, if you are a person of faith who's like, I am so messed up, jacked up.

I'm drinking X, Y, and Z away.

I'm cheating on my wife, whatever.

I'm like, there is still hope for you because there was hope for me.

Yeah, I have to tell you, I think that

I feel bad for people who are

deep in faith because I've seen too many say,

no, I know who God is and I screwed up and there's no going back for me.

There's just no going back.

You know, I'm beyond.

the redemption because I knew everything.

It's not the way God works.

That's your sick head telling you that.

Go ahead.

Go ahead.

Well, I think there's parts of ourselves, Glenn, right?

There are, we have these, we have these whole healed, you know, parts that we've given over to God, right?

And that's great.

And for me, like, that whole healed, those parts wrote a best-selling book on faith and mental health, right?

But then when I hit the hardest part of my life, what happened is I realized, oh my gosh, there's stuff in here that A, I had either stuck or didn't know existed.

And I'm like, I don't want to look at that, let alone do I want to give that over to God, right?

And I think what we have to realize is, man, we all have these rooms in our soul, these rooms in our heart that we have blocked off.

And in fact, I think for some of us, there's like secret passageways, right?

Like there's a bookcase, and we're looking at that, and we don't realize that there's a door behind there.

And in that door is a bunch of rotten stuff.

And that's what we need to do to get that over.

It's amazing, too, that you, for me,

I honestly said my whole life.

My mother kid committed suicide.

I'm 13 years old.

My mom commits suicide.

You know, we were very, very close.

I mean, my whole life changed.

And

I said my whole life until I sobered up, I'm fine.

I'm fine.

I'm totally fine with that.

I got it.

I dealt with it.

I didn't deal with it at all,

but I actually believed I was fine because I had created

this little bunker inside of me that could keep that sealed.

But that

rot,

even though you don't realize it, that that you can't seal that bunker off it.

It's like it has nuclear waste in it.

It seeps into everything.

My wife says this line, and she's a very wise woman.

And she goes, you know what, John?

You have to get to the root to get to the rot.

And I was like, oh,

yes, absolutely.

And so that's what I've been doing.

It's two and a half years, been sober for two and a half years now.

And I'm still, Glenn, finding rot down there.

Oh, yeah.

I'm like, I'm like, oh my gosh, that cellar, like, there's some potatoes that were in the corner that are like, look like mutant now, you know?

And I'm like, well, all right, here we go.

We're going to dig those out as well.

I'm 30 years.

I'm 30 years into it.

And I'm still finding rocks.

So, I mean, you know, you're, you're, you know, you're still like, wait, this root, I thought I pulled this out.

It is a never-ending process, but I'm so happy for you.

I'm really, really happy for you because your life, I mean, you're two years into it.

Let me just tell you, John, it just gets better and better and better.

It really does.

And it is so worth the journey.

It doesn't feel like it at first.

And I know you, you, you know it.

You wrote about it.

Doesn't feel like it at first, but it is so worth it.

And

happen,

it is your future should you choose it and it's very very bright so very happy for you john well thanks glenn and and i think thank you for you know you never know when you're telling your story this is what i say is you telling your story that wasn't if there's 20 steps to finding sobriety for someone finding jesus if you will Like you never know whether your story is step one, five, or 19, right?

Your story wasn't step 19 for me, right?

But because you've like when you talk about it, it's like I remember those things, right?

And so I appreciate it.

And I tell people, listen, I didn't get the easiest life possible because I'm sober, but I've gotten the best life possible.

And best is better than easiest.

Yes.

Yes.

You can't have best if it's easy.

I don't think.

Yeah.

Jonathan, thank you so much.

Jonathan Seidled, the name of the book is Confessions of a Christian Alcoholic.

If you're asking yourself, am I an alcoholic?

Probably are.

If you're asking, you probably have a problem with it at some point.

But again, Christian alcoholics, it's a whole different world because, as he points out really well in the book,

it's not what alcoholics aren't what you think they are.

You know, I remember the first AA meeting,

this woman who was 80 had a sweater set and a pearl necklace on.

And I said, I don't know if I meant alcoholic, but I'm really confused now because I didn't think alcoholics looked like you.

And she didn't even turn around, and she was just this beautiful, beautiful older woman, just so prim and proper.

And she just said, Oh, honey, we're all drunks in here.

And I realized you don't have to look like that.

You don't have to lose everything.

You don't have to, you know,

be a wino in an alley to be an alcoholic.

That is a cartoon character of it.

And he points it out really well, really well-written book: Jonathan Seidel, Confessions of a Christian Alcoholic.

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