Ep1: This is LIFE or DEATH

Hey, what's up next gen? I'm Lenny Kuhn. This is episode one. This is life or death. So now before we start with this recording, I am going to pray for us going into this. Uh, I'm also going to explain a bit during the prayer what this episode is going to be about. Okay, let's get into it.

God, we come to you today, whoever is listening to this podcast, that they will hear you, God. And I pray that throughout this, that you show them which way is right in life and which way is not. And I hope that they change their lifestyles to more suit them getting to heaven. I pray that in Jesus name. Amen.

Well okay thanks for joining us here today and I am so glad that you are with us so what we're going to start doing is I'm going to talk a little bit about what we're going to get into. And what this episode is going to be.

about how heaven and hell works. How life and death work. How you have to change your lifestyles in your life to have life in the afterlife. Or you're going to have death in the afterlife if you don't change your styles. Death is upon you. Think about this. Think about it.

The average life in America, which I'm assuming most of you are living in, is 77.43 years. That's it. 77.43 years. But Jesus says this.

If you openly declare that Jesus is Lord and believe in your heart that God raised him from the dead, you will be saved. For it is by believing in your heart that you are made right with God, and it is by openly declaring your faith that you are saved. As the scriptures tell us, anyone who trusts in him will never be disgraced.

Romans chapter 10 verses 9 through 11 So what does that mean for us well If you declare with your mouth that Jesus is Lord and you believe in your heart that you are made right with God Basically what this verse is saying is you will go to heaven and you'll have everlasting life now think about that everlasting life

It's so hard. I can't wrap my head around it and most likely you can't wrap your head around it. Everlasting life. Your life will never stop in heaven. There's no sense and it is just crazy. It's crazy. And think about this again. The average life in America is 77.43 years. 77.43 years. And that's it. It is.

exponentially fractional to what everlasting life is. It's so hard to wrap your head around, and I get it, I can't wrap my head around it either. It's crazy. Everlasting life.

If you just say, Jesus is Lord, Jesus is Lord, and you believe with your heart that he was raised from the dead. If you say that, you will be going to heaven. If you believe it, you have to have faith. In life, there is a lot of hard things that go on.

And sometimes, especially as teenagers, we do stupid, stupid things. Drugs, alcohol, sex. It gets, it sometimes can get really, really bad. Really, really quickly, even for Christians. And a lot of Christians think that they just have the right away because they'll be forgiven. But really, is that how you want to live your life?

Is that what you want your reputation to be? Yeah, sure. You will be forgiven if you ask for it from anyone who asked for it from Jesus. But is that really how you want to live your life? I don't think so. So.

And you also have to think about this. This is one of the most famous verses of all time. For this is how God loved the world. He gave his one and only son so that everyone who believes in him will not perish but have eternal life. Everyone who believes in him will not perish but have eternal life.

eternal life again. However, on the flip side,

But cowards, unbelievers, the corrupt, murderers, the immoral, those who practice witchcraft, idol worshippers, and all liars, their fate is in the fiery lake of burning sulfur. This is the second death. Revelation, verse 21, sorry, chapter 21, verse 8.

How many of us are cowards? I'm sure a lot. Unbelievers? I'm sure a few of you are who are listening to this. Now, I really hope that none of you are practicing witchcraft, but you know, it could happen.

Idol worshippers? Do you worship anything? Do you worship parties? Do you think about parties more than Jesus? What do you think about more than Jesus? Because anything that is more than Jesus takes up most of your heart and most of your mind. And who has lied? I'm sure all of us have at one point or another. We have all lied.

I am going to show you guys a video. So who knows the YouTuber Ryan Trahan. He currently has 18.4 million subscribers on YouTube and he is a Christian.

I wanted to bring this audio clip from a fellow podcast. Take a listen. The most important thing to me. So tell me, I'm ready. Haley is Christian. And when we started dating, I was not. I was atheist, cynical atheist. Whenever I would talk to Christians, I was always very like questioning their beliefs. I started dating Haley and I would ask her questions like that, like very hard questions. And I wanted to really challenge her because I loved her so much. I didn't want her to have this false view of reality. Conversation after conversation, she was very gracious with me.

And she answered questions fairly logically. Like I would always like look up debates and like... You would try to debate her and you're like, I'm going to slam dunk on you. When I realized that was my heart yearned for an answer. Like I realized it all came from a place of like non-closure with my grandma. Like, I just really want to know. This basically culminated to this day, July 4th, 2020. This is when my YouTube channel was doing very well. I had almost 2 million subscribers. I was making more money than I ever dreamed of.

I was giving it all I had and I received everything I thought I wanted. And so on July 4th, 2020, I was with Haley. We were watching the fireworks and I started weeping. I started sobbing my eyes out. And I realized it's because I felt like I hadn't felt anything for like three weeks. This was my finish line. All my identity is in this and I feel nothing. Fireworks are representative of like celebration, you know? And it was like a crazy juxtaposition of like, I should be celebrating right now.

I love this girl that I'm with. I have everything I've ever wanted. Why do I feel empty?" And it was crazy, dude. And I realized, like, I need to go on, like, a spiritual pursuit. I started taking a lot less cynical approach towards asking questions. Just starting to pray and starting to ask myself, like, what do I believe? And ultimately I did land on

Jesus. And I started, you know, developing a relationship with God. I can't believe I'm saying that, bro, because I literally would have absolutely clowned on myself three years ago. Whenever I started looking at who Jesus was and like even the things he said, like the things he taught, it realized like, wow, this is so loving. And if I can potentially have a relationship with him, I'm just going to try. And now it is my source of joy. Like it is my source of love. It is my source of everything. Because I have that, I can go into the world and do onto others like what I feel like I already have. It's real. Like I can't lie about who I am. Yeah. And like I can't lie about where I get the source of joy and positivity. Yeah. It's actually such a disservice to, you know, people that watch.

What do you guys take from that? If you are on Spotify, put it in the comments for me. How can you change? How are you going to change?

to not take a cynical approach to Jesus, not take a approach to Jesus that is not good to get to him. Here's a few ways to grow your relationship with Jesus. Consistently spend time in his word or the Bible. Do that all the time. Pray in everything. Ask God to free you from sins. Serve others. Live in the spirit.

Now I'm going to go through every single one of those because those are the ones that I found on Rocky Mountain Conference of Seventh-day Adventist. That's just where I found it. And I think they give some really good points. So consistently spending time in his word. I would say

Most of you probably have a Bible, and if you don't, you probably have a phone. If you're a teenager listening to this, you probably have a phone. So the Bible is God's direct way of speaking to us. Direct way. And the best way to do that, in my opinion, is either to get a devotional or

find a Bible plan on an app, on the Bible app on, um, there's a few, there is tons and tons of apps out there where you can make a Bible plan and you can learn the New Testament, the Old Testament, the life of Jesus, the death of Jesus. Um, you can even find a book that you like in the Bible and research that and make a Bible plan out of it.

The second point, pray in everything. Pray in everything. So what does that mean for us? What it means for us is praying in everything means to kind of just what it says, really. You know, don't just pray at church. Pray in everything.

Pray during dinner, start doing it right before you go to bed. Start, you know, just praying for friends that, you know, are having a hard time just all the time. Because if we're not doing something for Jesus here on earth, then why does it matter in heaven? It doesn't. It doesn't matter. Ask God, this is the third point, ask God to free you from sin.

This can be hard for some of us to have enough humility to ask for forgiveness from someone who we can't even see. I personally have never had a direct encounter with Jesus. I don't really know if I've ever heard him. I might have. Sometimes it's hard for us to hear though.

But asking God to free you from your sins is a act of humility that will really help you find, you know, who you are. Our pastor at our church, we go to a pretty large church.

and they had a sermon and he talked about how he had one person come up to him and ask for physical healing. One person for the entire year of 2024. The entire year, one person asked for a physical healing. Our pastor prayed for him.

and he was healed. That is a 100% success rate. Now imagine if people had enough humility, more people to go up and ask him that. Would they be saved from their sins, from their physical downfalls, from their spiritual downfalls? Who knows?

Have enough humility to ask God to free you from your sins. It is extremely, extremely important. The fourth point, serve others. Serving others is again like an act of humility.

For teenagers, this is extremely important in my opinion. Think of it as tithing for us. We don't have money. We're not going to tithe. I'm sure some of us do, but I don't think many of us do to the church. And when I say serve others, that does not mean that you have to serve at a church.

I think it's great if you serve at a church. I do. I do it all the time. Almost every single week I am doing the tech for our church. And it brings me so much joy just being in that community behind the scenes. It's great because it's my way of bringing people closer to Jesus.

And you know what a simple act is to serve others if you want to is go pick up trash. Whether you like it or not, the world is overheating and trash is a big part of that. You could be saving people's lives from pollution, you know, an act of

going out there for half an hour and picking up trash on the sidewalk or the beach. If you live at the beach or what I'm trying to say is serve somehow. Serve others at your school. There is tons of clubs and stuff. Make a club. Do this. Talk about the Bible in that club. I'm considering it, doing it at my school.

Going on to the fifth point, live in the spirit. What does that mean for us? What does that mean for us living in the spirit? For me, what stands out is making yourself like Jesus.

At the end of the day, what Christians want to do is basically have Jesus. You want to model Jesus. You want to reflect on Jesus. You want to be the reflection of Jesus. You want to act like him. You want to try to act like him. Think about that as you make your decisions throughout this week. Would Jesus do this?

Would Jesus cheat on a math test? Really, truly, and I get it. I cheated on test two, but that was a sin. And at the end of the day, we want to be like Jesus. We do. Think about that as your decisions go into the week. So again, let me know.

how what you guys took from that Ryan Trahan clip, how you're going to use it this week, and if you're on Spotify, you can even put it in the comments. I'm going to end with a prayer. And yeah, thanks for listening. Dear God, I pray that this week that everyone listening to this

Podcast will go will grow through you Lord, and I pray that They will make right choices to better reflect on you Lord and to better Understand you And to grow in faith with you, I pray that they change their life So they don't have death

Because our life can either be life again after, or it can be two deaths. We could die once on earth here, then die in hell. I pray that

You will guide them to make the right choices and I pray that whoever is a non-believer of you who is listening or anyone of these people who are listening who are connected to a person, I pray that whoever is listening and has a friend like that, that they can go up to them and bring you to their kingdom so they can join you in heaven. I pray that in Jesus name,

Amen. Well, thanks for listening guys. Tune in next time to find out who your true friends are for our third, sorry, our second, our second episode. My link to my brand new website is in the description of this episode, as well as the podcast description. Make sure to check it out. You can find the transcripts.

of these episodes there as well as the semi-socked episode as you're hearing right now there. And thanks for listening and I hope you have a great day.