From Work to Worship is a podcast where we explore how people’s calling becomes their calling card, how vocation fuels occupation, how “to work” can be to worship when we understand who we were made for.

From Work to Worship is a podcast where we explore how people’s calling becomes their calling card, how vocation fuels occupation, how “to work” can be to worship when we understand who we were made for.

From Work to Worship is a podcast where we explore how people’s calling becomes their calling card, how vocation fuels occupation, how “to work” can be to worship when we understand who we were made for.

Every Saturday we’ll be releasing a read only excerpt from this week’s episode. This will be one of many pieces of content exclusive to Substack. We’re also exploring what bonus content we’ll offer subscribers. We’ll post the video accompanying said excerpt on our YouTube Channel. Please subscribe and follow us on YouTube below, this would vastly help us out.

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Here is some of our interview with Nathanael Philip Abad Mosher.

Nathanael

So my name is Nathanael Philip Mosher.

Nehemiah

Take us back to your earliest memory in life. What was that like?

Nathanael

I actually went into a deep dive, trying to figure out what my earliest memory was, and it was an image.

It was a Mega Blocks castle at Tara Hills where I grew up in a condominium, and that's all I remembered. So I'm like, why do I remember this? And actually I had been going back to early childhood memories because I was tackling pornography addiction, and I thought, well, this wasn't always a part of who I was, but it had hit me at such an early age, like eight or nine years old that for me to go back to find out who I was before it, I had to go that far back.

So I thought of what are those things I was into? Like I was into yo yo and chess and Random hobbies and games and all these different things reading a lot. So I remembered that memory and I have been practicing stillness, like prolonged stillness and also tackling pornography addiction and reading this book called “Unwanted” by Jay Stringer.

So I kept trying to go back to that memory. And this is about two years ago now, uh, I was on medication for four years and I got off the medication and all of a sudden I'm in a deep, deep depression, just debilitating, crippling. I can't leave the bed and it's like three days. I can't leave the bed. It's on New Year's.

I cancel all my plans. My, uh, ex at the time was out of town, so I wasn't seeing her. Actually, I was living in Westchester, and I had left. So we're in the loft of my parents house –my house, I don't know, I’ll inherit it, so they're still here.

Nehemiah

What are you, the prodigal son? Trying to get your inheritance early?

Nathanael

100%. Oh, shoot.

Nehemiah

Watch out for this one.

Nathanael

Oh, wait. Uh, I'm not trying to get it early. I missed that.

So, I was living there and it was this big 18 by almost 20 feet garage that they had converted into a space and I thought, Oh, I'll take this studio and go there and have more space. And it was a bad deal because there was leaking in the foundation and then it rained the most it's ever rained in like five years in LA.

And so I'm in that studio and there's a couch there and I sort of had that space to myself so I could just be alone there in this house where I'm living with like five people. So I was just depressed. Just stay in there. Just. Couldn't get out of bed and, uh, praying and trying to get deep, you know, feeling a lot of pain and emotional or physical.

What you said last week about that, there's five layers, right? There's the spiritual underneath and the emotional, then the mental and the physical, then the material. So, I had sort of started to understand that these were started to get away from detaching myself from the emotional part and start to see that it's physical and then understanding through meditation and prayer and community and just different ways to weather the physical pain.

But there was a physcal uniquely physical part which is that my mental, my emotional and my physical were just completely disparately dissected and separate. So my mental says, get up. My emotional says, I don't know, I want to, I want physical relief from this pain. And then, and then my nervous system is just, I can't move.

So I'm like, get up. I want to get up. Nothing's happening.

So I'm sitting there. I'm, I'm down there. I can't get up. It's like two, three days. And, uh, I decided to, to binge, listen to Think and Grow rich because someone had talked about it. So I was taking that time to just sit there and finish that book. So I did, I did. But at the end of that, the Lord took me to that memory and I'm in that memory.

And, uh, I see the Mega Blocks castle and it starts to Zoom out and I see my Dad's over here. My mom's over speaking to him. And over here is my sister. And I start to cry. I look at my Mega Blocks castle. It's like broken or something. I'll look over there. My sister's crying. So I'm crying. I'm like, she's crying.

Wow. This is broken. What's happening? Uh, and then I look over and my parents are arguing and I'm crying. I'm crying. I'm crying. My Dad looks distraught. I told my mom, I said, did Dad lose a job? When I was like three, he's like, oh yeah, he was on thin ice. So they're stressed about stuff. They're stressed out.

They're talking and then all of a sudden they notice my sister's crying. So they're freaking out because she's crying. So they're tending to her and they don't recognize me. I'm crying crying and mind you I can feel Everything in this memory Like on a deep visceral level full body every level of experience.

I can feel it. I'm in it And, uh, I'm crying. I'm crying. I'm crying. And then all of a sudden, everything just goes dark. Everything shuts off. And I recognize that this isn't working. Like they don't know I'm here. It's not working. So, like, this is pointless. Like this castle stupid anyways, like starting to pick it back up and I realized that's what would happen when I would sink into depression.

It would be tremendous physical anxiety and pain and just like overwhelming sensation, crying, crying, crying, freaking out, fear, trembling. Shut off and then that shut off what happened, it severed what I wanted and what my physical like nervous system was like, we're off.

– Praise, praise Jesus. I pray that the tech in this room does not get overwhelmed and shut off while I'm saying this, by the way, we need to invest in a fire extinguisher ASAP –

So I realized that that was depression. Like that, that's exactly what would happen. And I had not seen that that was the physical manifestation and representation of this pattern that was happening throughout my life. And I was on mood stabilizing medication called Depakote. And I had been starting to do research about what it was doing.

And it shuts off neural activity. It has to do with salt and electrolysis and how, how, you know, the chemical, I don't know. Someone's going to comment, be like, you don't know nothing, whatever. Um, but I'll get back to that.

That's what was happening. So I'm in this memory, it shut off. I'm like, screw this castle. All of a sudden in the memory, I see a hand reach out. It says, take my hand and I go, okay. And he picks me up and I leaped out of bed and I went and wrote a song immediately at the piano. Yeah.

Nehemiah

And so it seems like you were able to go back on your earliest member memory and see that there was a lot of chaos. But you also had a helping hand.

Nathanael

Yea.

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You can listen to the full episode of part 4 here:

IN PURSUIT OF AWE

From Work to Worship is a podcast where we explore how people’s calling becomes their calling card, how vocation fuels occupation, how “to work” can be to worship when we understand who we were made for.

We’re going to be adapting our testimony into a live show featuring a blend of comedy, music, and poetry and showing how our respective stories coalesce. Hear how Nathanael met Christ through telling jokes, how Nehemiah encountered Him through song, and how the two of them came found out that their story together, was so much bigger than either of them could ever imagine.

It’s called “In Pursuit of Awe” because that’s what we’re after. Get your tickets here:

IN PURSUIT OF AWE

Oh yea, and we’re taping it, and posting it here. We can’t wait to see you there.

You can listen to the full episode here:

Don’t forget to get tickets to our next show on February 1, where the both of us perform our testimony within our chosen spoken word medium: Nehemiah through song, Nathanael through jokes, and the both of them through poetry and storytelling.

TICKETS TO IN PURSUIT OF AWE

Every Saturday we’ll be releasing a read only excerpt from this last week’s episode.

Check the other pieces/ episodes here:

FROM WORK TO WORSHIP

This will be one of many pieces of content exclusive to Substack. We’re also exploring what bonus content we’ll offer subscribers. We’ll post the video accompanying said excerpt on our YouTube Channel. Please subscribe and follow us on YouTube below, this would vastly help us out.

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Instead of an excerpt from the show, this week we present to you a reflection/ summary on some of the most important lessons/ takeaways from the testimony as whole.

• If you actively and consistently pursue the highest good then you will find God, because that’s who he is.

• God is: loving, all powerful, holds the world in the palm of his hands, knows you, created you, has a plan for you, and that plan is good.

• First comes accepting the call through obedience to the teaching, then comes the encounter with the Holy Spirit through worship. In between, the Enemy tries to intercept your incoming embrace of the Lord by introducing a warring spirit.

• Your faith walk and your artistic journey can be one and the same.

• Where you praise the loudest will oftentimes be the place the Enemy seeks to tempt you.

• If you don’t know you have the right to want anything, you will never know what to ask for.

• Pornography has the ability to shut everything else worthwhile in one’s life down and slowly but surely cause one to become stagnant, complacent, and apathetic towards everything that should be important. It can make you numb, unmotivated, unable to act on behalf of your better judgement and best interest. It can turn you into a drone or zombie and cast one into depression and demoralization.

• The addiction cycle follows from addictive behavior, to isolation, demoralization, then debilitation. One must live a life contrary to the addictive behavior and if one indulges haphazardly and falls prey to the temptation, the immediate solution is prevent oneself from isolation by finding accountability and community.

• All systems of evil will counterfeit the good and deceive you into believing the good was never real to begin with.

• You can’t outrun your demons because they know where you are. You must confront them.

• Seek first the kingdom of heaven and his righteousness and all things will be added unto you. Take your eyes off the kingdom and all things will be taken away from you. The good news is, if you seek again the kingdom of heaven, all things will be added unto you faster than they will be taken away. This is the grace of repentance.

• You cannot will yourself out of your biggest struggle.

• When your work becomes your worship, this is your calling.

• Your flesh will overtake you in isolation and if you think you won’t succumb to the flesh alone, then it is willful naivete.

• The Enemy seeks to deceive you by making you overvalue your sensitivity (your pain), and making you undervalue your gifts (the exceptional way God created you)

• One receives the call, then one is gifted with a blessing to be used for the calling, one steps into the calling, someone invests in the pursuit of the calling, then the Enemy attempts to deceive one by convincing them of their unworthiness, this is the exact moment when one must surrender to Christ, repent, and receive strength from the Lord to fight.

• A higher power can keep one sober, but the highest power (Christ) can set one free.

• The correct mindset for practice is critical, the correct for performance is exploratory. One must be playful and seek to experience as an audience member the gifts that God has allowed one to use for the spirit of joy and play.

• One must sacrifice the desires of the flesh in order to worship in Spirit and Truth.

• Pornography devalues everyone involved and only makes some people money.

• Your belief, your voice, your time, your energy, and your attention are all more valuable than money. Pornography decimates the integrity of all of these things and the ability to form integral relationships in general.

• Just because you’re in church doesn’t mean you’re not still struggling with sin. However, Jesus decimates all sin issues.

• There are 12 step programs to deal with pornography such as:

SPAA

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• There are 5 levels of being: your material (what you touch and own); your physical, your mental (the terminal or landing point between the physical and the spiritual: like an airport: like a power hub); your emotional; then the spiritual (the battery which powers the life)

  • All of them are layered upon each other starting with the spiritual.

• Exceptional gifting only comes with exceptional sensitivity.

• The path to the greatest treasure is by going through the darkest forest. (Carl Jung and Peterson echo this sentiment).

• Worship and sin are oil and water, they cannot mix.

• A career is the vehicle by which the calling can be explored to its highest point.

• Music can send people to a moment as if a compressed zip file with all 5 layers of experience.

• Meaning comes from assuming maximal responsibility.

• A story doesn’t end, it just gets remixed and layered onto the master story.

• If we got up that hill with a limp, then what more can you do with Jesus.

• There has always only been two options, life or death.

Share

You can listen to the full episode here:

Get tickets to our next show and see Nehemiah perform his testimony through song, Nathanael perform through comedy, and them together through verse and poetry. We might even see Nehemiah perform an original song on the piano. Stay tuned.

IN PURSUIT OF AWE

From Work to Worship is a podcast where we explore how people’s calling becomes their calling card, how vocation fuels occupation, how “to work” can be to worship when we understand who we were made for.

We enjoyed every second of this interview and learning his story and can’t wait for you to be gripped like we were.

We’re going to be adapting our testimony into a live show featuring a blend of comedy, music, and poetry and showing how our respective stories coalesce. Hear how Nathanael met Christ through telling jokes, how Nehemiah encountered Him through song, and how the two of them came found out that their story together, was so much bigger than either of them could ever imagine.

It’s called “In Pursuit of Awe” because that’s what we’re after. Get your tickets here:

IN PURSUIT OF AWE

Oh yea, and we’re taping it, and posting it here. We can’t wait to see you there.

Sincerely Yours,

The Paraprosdokianist

Subscribe now

Every Saturday we’ll be releasing a read only excerpt from this week’s episode. This will be one of many pieces of content exclusive to Substack. We’re also exploring what bonus content we’ll offer subscribers. We’ll post the video accompanying said excerpt on our YouTube Channel. Please subscribe and follow us on YouTube below, this would vastly help us out.

PPDK ON YOUTUBE

Here is some of our interview with Nehemiah Williams.

Nehemiah

I was looking for a career path, like a vehicle to that life, what was going to make it come.

Nathanael

And the word career comes from vehicle. Like the etymology of the word career literally means a vehicle.

Nehemiah

And I was driving a vehicle.

No. Um, so. Yeah, I was searching for that. So in a couple months after that first revelation, God spoke to me again, and he basically just suggested, Hey, what if you just gave everything to music? Would you just put, go, went all in with it? Um, and I was like, because I knew that this was the Lord speaking, that's a whole other conversation, but because I knew it, I was like, okay, God challenge accepted. That's how I received it as a challenge. So I was in Independence, Missouri, and I went to the nearest guitar center. I parked the truck, went to the guitar center. I bought musical instruments, amps, everything I needed to just play music. And so while I was driving the truck, I would just sing all day long.

And when I stopped the truck at the end of the day, I would just play music until I went to sleep. Woke up, repeated the process, and immediately I could feel in my emotions and in my spirit that, oh, all of the meaning in life is routed through music for me. There's no access to any kind of a meaningful life except through music.

And as I look back on my life, It only became more true because Music has been something that has stood out for me since I was literally a baby. I remember my mother telling me about the only thing that would shut me up when I was bawling as a baby was just turning on music. I was an easy child because she just needed to turn on the music and I would shut up, you know.

Nathanael

That podcast you sent me where the guy said, like, he sees angels. He said, the angels can't make new music. They can only sing what's already out there. So when people, humans make music, they're flocking to them because they're like, Oh, this is so beautiful. We can only sing what's already made. Right. So they want us. They're like, make some music.

Nehemiah

Interesting. Brings a whole new meaning to the term worship leader. But um, That being said, I started to understand that this is the meaning of my life. It's music. Deeply connected. So I'm going in this direction. There's no other career path. It's music. I have to figure out how to do music. So knowing that and fully accepting that, I need to understand what music was.

Why is music this significant thing? Why is it a universal language? Why do people, what influence does it have? You know? And so I started to write down every definition of music that I heard. Because music is actually really hard to define. What is music? Everybody's going to give you a different answer.

One thing that I, one definition that I really liked, is that music by nature is the sound of spirit, of the spirituality, of the spirit realm. You know what I'm saying? It's like, music by nature is spiritual. Which is why it has such a profound effect on your emotions. Because it gets underneath your emotion.

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It's also why if you want to, like, if you want people to sing a melody, all you do is have to sing it around them. And then they'll just start singing it naturally. You know, especially if they know the song and they like it too. It resonates with them. So they start singing it too. It's called an earworm.

What I learned is that if you want to implant a message or a seed, an idea in somebody's mind, just add some music to it. It's part of the reason why if you put a melody to any fact, you need to memorize it. You immediately memorize it way faster than you ever would have by repeating it over and over again, or whatever technique of memorization, just make music out of it.

Nathanael

The jingles are propaganda, which comes from propagate, to propagate an idea.

Nehemiah

And so one of the super powers of music is I can put anything inside your soul. If I just add good music to it, music that resonates with you, I can put any message in your soul. Because music doesn't speak to the mind. It doesn't speak to the heart alone.

It speaks to the spirit first before everything else. Which is why it resonates with your whole being. It's why whenever music is playing, you, you know, you, you attach notes to, to like, track people's brain signature or the colors, you know, what parts of their brains are being lit, lit up the whole thing.

It lights up your whole mind because music is so deeply spiritual that it resonates with people's whole being right away.

Nathanael

You can actually trigger people with Alzheimer's. To retrieve memories through music. So you literally put their long term memory back online by tying it to music. And so it's in our deepest recesses of our memory and the storytelling.

Nehemiah

And that's why movies are set to music. Music, yeah. Yeah. Yeah. That's why, literally, music almost controls time, as it, as it relates to you, because time is relative, right? Music literally controls time as it relates, as it is relative to you, because if you play a 20 second clip, no music. That 20 seconds is a long freaking time to you, but you put some music to it.

It doesn't even matter what it is. It takes 20 seconds and it literally minimizes it by probably 30, 40%. It seems like 12 seconds now because of the music, it just goes by. You're just so raptured in the scene with the music that it literally minimizes time. It shrinks time. Like. I saw Wicked the other day.

Wicked is a three hour, dang near a three hour movie. That movie went by in an instant because it's, there's music, there's songs all throughout. And this is true with almost every movie because every movie has like a backtracking and a soundtrack and everything.

Nathanael

It's almost like you can layer experience in all five levels with a song. Trigger it to package. Yeah, you can, it's like, oh my God. It's like, you simplify a moment. It's a compressed zip file of, of five layers, five different, compressed files, audio, visual, everything. It's compressed into a song, a three minute clip, send it to you. You watch it, you listen to it, bam, it unzips everything and you experience that moment in all real time.

Yeah. I wrote that Christmas song with my uncle. I don't, we collaborate on it. We sort of have ideas, but it's got many, many different stories layered on top of each other, set to music. I did not know that I was inserting my story, the prodigal son, Tom's story, other people's stories. It just, Float out of it and then you share that with someone they go, Oh, this, this is like my life.

Share

And it's so many, things just layered on top of each other. Yeah. I saw a movie it's being produced by exactly produced by Jo Koy and produced and written by Ariana Basco and the people from palms up academy and recess mic and it's brilliant. But it took an entire open mic set and all the songs and pieces from them and it layered them onto one person's story. And so each performer is like entering into the story of this person's life and playing different characters using their storytelling and their pieces on top of it And it's exactly what it feels like when you're listening to different people's things because you insert your story onto there you map it onto theirs. It was, it was remarkable.

Nehemiah

Yeah, so music is a superpower. I'm convinced it's a superpower. Um, you can control culture with it, which is why the enemy loves music. Like people talk about, people talk about, you know, Satan's original mission and how deeply musical it was, and how Satan used music to corrupt a third of the angels.

Then they became fallen along with him. Um, you know, it was music that he used to warp them, to warp those spiritual beings and turn them into his puppets, you know. And so, this is the power of music. But, there's a lot of music in the world. There's a lot of music in the world. And so all that being said, I started to understand the significance of my gifting and I started to see it from a different perspective.

You can listen to the full episode of part 3 here:

Get tickets to our next show and see Nehemiah perform his testimony through song, Nathanael perform through comedy, and them together through verse and poetry. We might even see Nehemiah perform an original song on the piano. Stay tuned.

IN PURSUIT OF AWE

From Work to Worship is a podcast where we explore how people’s calling becomes their calling card, how vocation fuels occupation, how “to work” can be to worship when we understand who we were made for.

We enjoyed every second of this interview and learning his story and can’t wait for you to be gripped like we were.

We’re going to be adapting our testimony into a live show featuring a blend of comedy, music, and poetry and showing how our respective stories coalesce. Hear how Nathanael met Christ through telling jokes, how Nehemiah encountered Him through song, and how the two of them came found out that their story together, was so much bigger than either of them could ever imagine.

It’s called “In Pursuit of Awe” because that’s what we’re after. Get your tickets here:

IN PURSUIT OF AWE

Oh yea, and we’re taping it, and posting it here. We can’t wait to see you there.

Sincerely Yours,

The Paraprosdokianist

Subscribe now

Every Saturday we’ll be releasing a read only excerpt from this week’s episode. This will be one of many pieces of content exclusive to Substack. We’re also exploring what bonus content we’ll offer subscribers.

Here is some of our interview with Nehemiah Williams.

Nehemiah

Some people have the ability to look at pornography and it doesn't really affect them that much. Even though it does, but whatever. It doesn't overtake their life. That's not true with me.

Pornography has the ability to shut everything else worthwhile in my life down and then slowly but surely cause me to become stagnant, complacent, and apathetic towards everything that should be important to me and is, but it just makes me nb to all of that. And, not just unmotivated, but dang near unable to act, you know, on behalf of my better judgment, my best interest.

And, like it just turns me into a drone or a zombie, like it cuts, it literally cuts my energy levels at the torso. And cast me into depression, demoralization, you know, all the negative emotion, D words. I had a pornography issue all throughout my teenage years.

And honestly, let me go back here. So. When I was, when I was eight years old, I got saved at that Bible camp. I came back, it was during the summer and then the school year started. And at the very beginning of the school year, like September, , I was doing my homework in fourth grade and I went into my father's office and on his computer screen was just a pop up of pornography. Because this was the old days of the internet where you can get pop ups at any time. And there's a pop up there. And I knew in that moment, like, something in me was like, you gotta get out of here. And it's always like this. Something in me is like, you gotta get out of here.

But then, there's your carnal side, you know, it's like, Oh, I just felt drawn towards it, the flesh. And so, of course I didn't have what it took to overcome the flesh in that moment. That was my first encounter, and slowly, but surely ever since then, I started to seek out pornography and it was all secret.

But the thing is because it was such a secret and I didn't have access to my own technology, yeah, like it was a very cornered bad habit. But in college when I had my own laptop and I had my own access to everything, it just became basically an addiction, you know, like it was the only thing I pursued.

And like I said, the effect that it has on me, I don't want to sound like I'm not taking responsibility, but it's always been that it literally cuts me off at the torso. You know, like it, it takes me under par. Like if you need a certain amount of energy just to be yourself, it puts you under par, you know, so two things, three things.

Nathanael

Number one, I would not be doing this with you. We built this studio. We're doing this, like this is surreal, but the pornography thing would have, well, if it happens, it will destroy all of this for me. This would not be possible if I was continuing in that and in the name of Jesus, I’m free. Number two you said about how it cuts you off at the torso and brings you down.

There's, I was listening to, Andrew Huberman. If you're listening, Andrew Huberman, one day find us, be saved by Jesus, and do experiments on us and tell us how to be great. But he said that pornography drops your dopamine levels below baseline, but it peaks them past baseline. You're capable so because of that you have to keep hitting higher and higher and higher and higher so you're seeking out more novelty, but after you orgasm, Bam, below baseline and your baseline gets lower and lower and lower and lower. So there was this pattern with me overworking, jamming coffee, pushing myself, which also spikes dopamine, seeking out riskier and riskier behavior. Whether it's relationships, or getting on stag, more more more more, studying, coffee coffee coffee.

Oh, I can't sleep. Then, pornography, Bam, fall asleep, you wake up and you want to die. And you need more and you need more pornography. Well, you need more Dopamine, achievement, achievement, achievement, achievement, achievement, high, high, high, high, high. Oh, I can't come back down. Pornography, lower.

So I need more achievement. I need more risk. I need more. And so it is incredibly destructive and if there are people that can watch this and not get hooked well, it means that they have something better, but if we don't have that and what's so remarkable is that You encounter the Lord in understanding and choice, but not spirit. It's a year later. You encounter him in feeling and spirit in that time in between. Let's do this to him. Let's get him here so that this arc of him trying to finally encounter the spirit. Let's throw this other spirit in there real quick. Yeah. Yeah. Because, because, the house divided amongst itself cannot stand.

So let's throw this other thing, this other idol, this other spirit, this other demon. Bam! Oh, it's okay, he has Jesus, but he also has this. So we can still pit the two against each other. The enemy, you know, I read the screw tape letters, you know? Now we have some leverage. So that he's not fully, we still have a chance if we have this one thing, we still have a chance for him to turn away one day.

Yeah. And it's on your Dad's, it's a pop up. It's not even, it's not even your dad stumbling into sin. It's so evil. Yeah. It's interesting how the timing of all that.

Nehemiah

This world of evil, like, so in the scripture, it describes it as the world, like, like there is a heavenly system and then there's a worldly system and the worldly sister system can only produce evil fruit, right? It's interesting how in my life, as soon as I got encountered with the divine, the worldly system also encountered me.

And they say that, you know, that the system, the systems of evil will always counterfeit. The things that are good, like they can't really come up with anything Innovative that is evil. It can only corrupt the things that are good and then repackage them to make it seem like you know that's what you really want, but it always ends with just not good. That's the only way to describe the outcome.

Nathanael

Satan is a clout chaser. He's hopping on trends, but he's not original. Yeah. The enemy is not original. So you go to Berkeley.

Nehemiah

I go to Berkeley. And so this wonderful, wonderful opportunity turns into a nightmare. Turns into a nightmare. And there are good things about it.

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Nehemiah

I made some awesome friends. And my social life, it was the thing I liked about it most. I made three friends that I really, really loved. It taught me a lot about myself, just relating with them. But my ability to be a student was, once again, cut off at the torso. I was a terrible student. And it's funny, because high school, Straight A's.

Like, I was an excellent student in high school and it fully flipped. I was just telling you, I only seem to operate at both extremes.

Like, my whole life is trying to find balance to where I can be, you know, just regular. Because I'm always operating at both extremes. Either awesome or just not good. Yeah, like, the type of, the way it looked was I would start off going to class, you know, getting involved, doing the things, but then I would, because of the trouble of school, I would use the coping mechanism of pornography, which would bring me into this like zombie, like basically this nb mental state where nothing matters, basically nihilism.

And so the best closest thing in order to fill up my time was just different entertainment forms. So I watched a lot of movies. I just use my laptop. The first time I had a laptop to just pass the time with different forms of entertainment. And then as soon as I got sick of doing that, or I got hungry, I would go out and eat junk food, just junk food.

And then I'll go back and probably queue up some more pornography and then just repeat the cycle, but I would not go to class. Sometimes if I could just manage to pull myself, it was like pulling teeth, you know I'm trying to get myself to go to class. I went to class and I was disappointing all my instructors. I would at midterms and finals ask them please, give me a chance. I'll go to their office and they're open, you know, whatever. I would, sometimes, I'd pull it through. I cheated in order to get by.

Nathanael

How do you cheat on music? Like its theory.

Nehemiah

You can like, yeah, there's a lot of music programs where you can just put something to like, kind of do something really simple.

You're like, you're not putting your real creativity in. You're just doing enough to get by, but then using the tech to actually make it sound presentable. And then just turning it in, just doing enough to get your marks on the assignment. That's the thing. All artistic assignments are hard to judge.

It's like it's hard to find a way to grade them. But, uh, You can complete the assignment without putting any heart or soul into it. And so that's what I would do. And I would just do it as fast as possible. And, let's get by. Or, dude, I took somebody else's assignment and turned it in. He had a totally different teacher, totally different instructor, same class.

Nathanael

You're like, and that guy is John Mayer.

Nehemiah

I took other people's assignments, turned them in. Yeah. I was just doing whatever and I would just do enough to pass different tests. Like it was, I was a terrible student and man. So, Yeah, college, but that, it was torturous though, because, like you said, there was two parts of me, the part of me that wanted to be, the part of, the true part of me that wanted to take this opportunity, run with it, just like put my whole self into it, but because of what I was doing, I couldn't, and so there's just that part of me that was just just acting in this way that was fully against all my values and it was just like I was torn between what I really wanted and who I was what I was doing. There was no connection between who I wanted to be and what I was doing. There was a full disconnect.

Nathanael

Like Paul talking about yeah, I want to do this, but my flesh wants to do that. Wow. So did you finish? Did you graduate?

Nehemiah

No, because I left after two years.

Nathanael

You know what that means? You're going to be famous.

Nehemiah

Yeah, it's so true. So many people who went to Berkeley, but never finished actually made a name for themselves.

You're supposed to drop out. That's the whole point of going to Berkeley. Yeah, yeah. It's kind of true for so many reasons, but yeah, John Mayer, Imagine Dragons, a lot of them went but didn't finish. You know, so, anyway. Left after two years. And when I got back home, I was running away from that torturous cycle.

But you, you learn that. Well, somebody put it like this, you can't run from your demons because they always know where you are, wherever you go, so do they, you know, they're with you, you know? I just repeated the same cycle at home, but I had no, nothing to work towards, you know, I had no purpose.

And that was its own form of a horrible lifestyle. I just started working in order to figure it out and I also started seeking help. I also started seeking help from different Church programs that they had at my church at the time. If you have anything akin to an addiction or an actual addiction if you're ready to admit that because you have to acknowledge , then there's a certain way to be so that you can live contrary to that. They tell you the second you start living a lifestyle that is not conducive to getting away from your addiction or keeping you away from your addiction then you'll just go right back.

Nathanael

I've come to despise the temptation and that's sort of new. But yeah, I mean, I can't even hear the music.

Oh, it was Christmas, some random Spotify Christmas playlist. Sabrina Carpenter, I'll shout it out. I don't care. It's evil. Some Christmas song. It's all sexual innuendo about Christmas.

Yeah, I'm not trying to have sex with Santa. I'm trying to celebrate the birth of Jesus. Right. I'm not trying to celebrate Christmas and hear about you trying to bed Mr. Claus. He's got a wife. He's married. I, I jest, but, I'm, I'm out. I leave. Get me away from this in the name of Jesus.

I rebuke this, you know, get me away from this because I know if I even just let it in just a little bit, everything will be wiped out. I cannot take that risk anymore.

Nehemiah

Yeah. That's true. It's true. It's true. And that's when true in my war, all out war against the flesh. Against the fact that, honestly, college was a rock bottom for me.

And when I left, it was a rock bottom moment. Like, look at the desolation of my own actions. And so, I have ever since then been trying, it's been a long journey, to live against that stigma. That way of thinking, that way of being, and you learn that, like, even a little bit. eventually will grow into you just going right back to the same behaviors.

That cycle is too strong. It's like a black hole. It sucks you in and get, you have to achieve some sort of miraculous, you know, what do they call it? Escape velocity in order to get out of that cycle. But once you're out, if you don't actively live contrary to that cycle and you indulge even a small piece of that cycle, it sucks you back in, you know.

Nathanael

I think that when Jesus says, seek ye the kingdom of heaven and all things will be added unto you and his righteousness. I think it goes in reverse. Take your eyes off the kingdom and all things will be taken away from you at lightning speed, the same speed that it gets added to you. It gets taken away.

Nehemiah

I would disagree with that. When you seek the kingdom of heaven, you break free faster than it takes to suck you in.

You can listen to the full episode of part 2 here:

Get tickets to our next show and see Nehemiah perform his testimony through song, Nathanael perform through comedy, and them together through verse and poetry. We might even see Nehemiah perform an original song on the piano. Stay tuned.

IN PURSUIT OF AWE

The date is tentative given the situation that is unfolding in L. A. Our hearts go out to those who have lost their homes or loved ones. PPDK is currently looking to get involved by helping out on the ground and listening to people's stories, offering prayer, documenting their loss, and willingness to overcome.

From Work to Worship is a podcast where we explore how people’s calling becomes their calling card, how vocation fuels occupation, how “to work” can be to worship when we understand who we were made for.

We enjoyed every second of this interview and learning his story and can’t wait for you to be gripped like we were.

We’re going to be adapting our testimony into a live show featuring a blend of comedy, music, and poetry and showing how our respective stories coalesce. Hear how Nathanael met Christ through telling jokes, how Nehemiah encountered Him through song, and how the two of them came found out that their story together, was so much bigger than either of them could ever imagine.

It’s called “In Pursuit of Awe” because that’s what we’re after. Get your tickets here:

IN PURSUIT OF AWE

Oh yea, and we’re taping it, and posting it here. We can’t wait to see you there.

Sincerely Yours,

The Paraprosdokianist

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Every Saturday we’ll be releasing a read only excerpt from this week’s episode. This will be one of many pieces of content exclusive to Substack. We’re also exploring what bonus content we’ll offer subscribers.

Here is some of my interview with Nehemiah Williams.

Nathanael

So, when did you first know God was real?

Nehemiah

I first knew beyond a shadow of a doubt that God was real when I was eight years old.

I was either eight or nine and I went to a summer camp, one of those Bible camps up in Big Bear and I was up there and there was a worship session and I did my best to get into it, try to get into the spirit of the moment and reach God. And I just felt his full presence and it moved me on the inside to where I was in tears.

Like I just knew that whatever reality was, it was bigger than me. It was significant and it was loving. Like it actually was true everything that they said about God and who he was: that he actually considers me specifically. And so yeah – I guess yeah – that was my first encounter with the divine.

Nathanael

So you said a few things: you said: everything they said about him was true. What were those things?

Nehemiah

So, I grew up with my mom reading Bible stories as bedtime stories to me, my mom and my dad. And they would teach me because they were urban missionaries, in the hood, they were teaching people about Jesus, especially in L. A. and they were both a part of this ministry that raised people up in that. And if they wanted, they could join the ministry and continue spreading the gospel through reaching out to children, creating groups for the neighborhood, whoever was willing to come.

And my mom joined that group, especially right after high school. My dad joined that group after he finished his military service and that's where they met. And so they were servants of the gospel for the better part of their young lives, probably their twenties until they got married. And then they had us and we were raised in that environment.

And the same teachings that they would hand out to them, they introduced to us because a lot of their ministry was dealing with kids, elementary age and youths, teenagers and all that. So they kind of knew what to do and they raised us up in it. And so you can say that I was raised in the church.

Common things I heard about God was that he's loving, he's all powerful. He holds the whole world in his hand. There's literally songs about that and, and that he knows you, he created you and that he has a plan for you. And that plan is good. And that's what I came to understand in that moment, that all of those things about God were true.

Nathanael:

A few minutes in, you're already almost making me cry. That's incredible. Okay. So two things that I want to highlight, which is that your parents met through this ministry that brought them together, but then also inculcated certain values within you, which led to you experiencing God through worship.

So those five things you said, loving, all powerful, he has a plan. What are the other two?

Nehemiah:

That, he created you, he created everything, and, I don't think I remember the last one. He holds you in the palm of his hand.

Nathanael:

So, okay, so you go to a summer camp in Big Bear, and you're doing a worship session.

Are you performing music?

Nehemiah:

I wasn't performing, no, but I was always enthralled by the musical aspect of, all religious, let's call it that for now, all religious engagements that I was a part of, and there were many, and I was always just like super into the musical aspects from young, like my parents literally tell me, even as a child, the thing that would grab my attention the most was music in general.

So whenever I would go to church or some religious thing, whenever the music was on, I was fully into it. And, So that moment had layers of significance for me because the music was happening, but I was also being invited into having this encounter experience with God. And when I, I guess I opened up myself to the possibility that I could have that encounter.

I was even desiring to have it like, wow, let me try this. And it fully like, the only way I can describe it is, yeah, I can describe, they say that you, part of being saved is just being fully convinced on a deep level that Jesus is Lord. And for me, that moment was like, the deep internal, like soul, all soul encompassing moment of just that inner knowing that, Oh, wow, this thing is real.God is real and what they say about them as well.

Nathanael

So, wow. So in that, in that worshipful moment, you just felt fully convinced and how old were you?

Nehemiah:

I was, I think I was nine years old. Yeah. I was nine years old. So a lot of some of the most significant spiritual encounters I've had were in my first 10 years of life, the formative years.

Yeah, I was the first, I got saved at a summer camp, the same one a year prior. And then that next year I went back to the same summer camp at nine years old and I encountered Jesus, with the spirit, whatever you want to say.

Nathanael:

So tell me about getting saved.

So that first year, I have to go a little further back to when I was maybe five or six.

So, I don't know how to describe this as anything else, but miraculous, but, like I said, I grew up in the church. And the protocol was, we go to church. And I was always into the musical aspect, which usually happens at the beginning. But once that was over, we would all sit down. The preacher would start preaching, and that's when I would just fall asleep.

I would just be lulled to sleep, and I would just take a nap. But as I grew older, obviously, I don't know, I think it was my parents who were encouraging me to try to pay attention to the pastor in church. Cause they did have a kids church, but it wasn't consistent. They didn't always have that available.

And if you got in trouble, you got sent back with your parents and stuff like that. So, In church, I decided at some point around five or six years old that I wanted to try and listen and understand the pastor during the service. And when I gave it a genuine try, I was able to follow the logic and understand the concepts and teachings of the preacher at my childhood church.

And I was very, very, like, I remember being thrilled to go to church from that point on because I was like, Oh, wow, I was proud of myself, but I was also super into what was being taught. I thought it was just good. Like it gave me energy to like, listen and understand, and so that was happening like every Sunday at my church.

And then when I went to the Bible camp in the summertime, there was an invitation to receive Christ and declare your salvation and all that. And I was, I was fully ready. I was just ready to give my life.

Nathanael

So you declared in that moment.

Nehemiah

Yeah. Yeah.

Nathanael

And then a year later, you're at the summer camp and then you're worshiping. So there was a inward declaration, verbal, outward, everything – this is real, I'm putting my life on this and then it took another year for you to actually have that personal encounter with Jesus, The Holy Spirit and understand and be fully convinced so it's like you made the the step and then now, Bang together, now it's real.

Nehemiah

Mm-hmm.

Nathanael

Wow. At nine years old.

Nehemiah

Nine years old.

Nathanael

Dang. Early for a lot of people. I mean, you were raised in it. Yes. So there's that.

Nehemiah

Yes. And I used to think that like the fact that I received Christ so early in that was a major influence in my life, makes me kind of like trivialize. My salvation and my faith walk, honestly, because it's like, oh, my whole life was bent towards this.

This was destiny, but I started to go away from those ideas because there's a scripture that talks about how Christ, he, he called, he goes into the pasture and calls his sheep and this and he knows them by name and the sheep The sheep that respond to his call, the sheep that belong to him will come, but the sheep that don't belong to him will not.

And so there's, when I really look back at my story, there was something that was calling me. The fact that I can understand the message at such an early age when every other child was being lulled to sleep or playing their video games, Game Boy at the time. And, Or just whatever being distracted um Yeah, like There was something that was calling, like tugging on my soul, and I simply responded to the call. Like, that's so, that's the best way to describe it, honestly. And, it got me at an early age, and I'm actually quite fortunate that that's the case, because I can think of a lot of things that I sidestepped because of it.A lot of trouble. Not to say that I haven't gotten myself into trouble a fair bit.

Nathanael

So, what do you, what do you do with that? So you have the personal encounter. You're fully convinced. It happens in worship, which music becomes a huge part of your life. That's what's drawing you in. What drew you in was the worship. But then you took a second to go, let me listen to the teaching.

Nehemiah

Yeah.

Nathanael

So, what do you do with that?

Nehemiah

So, So, I want to touch on that music point, because from an early age the clear Like, it's clear that there is something deeply rooted in me when it comes to music. Like, it's a part of who I am and not necessarily just something I'm interested in.

Yes, I'm interested in it, but on a deep level. And so I started playing the piano. So my mom was super involved in church. And so was my dad, but we would spend a lot of extra hours at church with my mom and there was a piano in the back of our church and so to pass that time where I would just be around while my mom was doing whatever I would play that piano and that is one of the joys of my early childhood years.

The ability to play the piano and like a lot of my early musicianship is just me figuring stuff on my own at the piano in the back of that church and like music has always been the pursuit of music. It's a pursuit, it's a journey and has always been deeply connected and been parallel to my stories with God because when I started, when I got saved, I really started to seek out others in order to learn how to play the piano better.

And people started showing me stuff here and there and I would take it and run with it and I got better. Nobody had to tell me, nobody had to encourage me to go figure it out, it was all me. I was after it and and so like all of the best, some of my most joyous moments when I figured out how to play certain things on the piano, and I don't even play the piano today.

You can listen to the full episode of part 1 here:

Get tickets to our next show and see Nehemiah perform his testimony through song, Nathanael perform through comedy, and them together through verse and poetry. We might even see Nehemiah perform an original song on the piano. Stay tuned.

IN PURSUIT OF AWE

From Work to Worship is a podcast where we explore how people’s calling becomes their calling card, how vocation fuels occupation, how “to work” can be to worship when we understand who we were made for.

I enjoyed every second of this interview and learning his story and I can’t wait for you to be gripped like I was.

We’re going to be adapting our testimony into a live show featuring a blend of comedy, music, and poetry and showing how our respective stories coalesce. Hear how Nathanael met Christ through telling jokes, how Nehemiah encountered Him through song, and how the two of them came found out that their story together, was so much bigger than either of them could ever imagine.

It’s called “In Pursuit of Awe” because that’s what we’re after. Get your tickets here:

IN PURSUIT OF AWE

Oh yea, and we’re taping it, and posting it here. We can’t wait to see you there.

We were brought together because of two things: exceptional gifts at the cost of exceptional sensitivity. I entered UCLA as a biomedical engineer with secret dreams of becoming a comedian. Nehemiah went his way to the renowned Berklee College of Music to pursue God through song. As we embarked on our respective hero’s journeys, we both hid a darkness lurking underneath. The once tiny monster relegated to the corners of our life grew and ran roughshod over their lives. We both spiraled into debilitating depression as pornography decimated the integrity of our relationships. Yet when we saw nothing but death, the Light of Truth appeared and we surrendered everything to Life itself.

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We’re starting with our stories because that’s what we know. We can’t tell you how to live, but we can tell you how we survived our own. Tomorrow I’ll be releasing Part 1 of my sit down interview with Nehemiah, where he goes in depth into his testimony. I can’t wait for you to hear it. It’s a thrilling, wonderful, beautiful ride that I got to sit in on just last week. Our goal to is to explore how people’s calling becomes their calling card, how vocation fuels occupation, how “to work” can be to worship when we understand who we were made for.

For the first episode of our first podcast series, “From Work To Worship”, I’m going to be sharing something I’ve been sitting on for a while: my testimony. I had the privilege of presenting it at a men’s retreat called Cornerstone and a brother in Christ said, “You should make it funny.”

It ended up being about my relationship with humor itself, and more importantly, the creator all things, and humor itself. It’s my favorite thing I’ve ever done and it’s also been the most freeing. On January 18, Nehemiah and I are going to be performing our respective testimonies through our respective storytelling forms, mine comedy, his music, and we’re going to show how our stories intersect and compound into a deep, deep well of light and life. Tickets will go live tomorrow with his podcast as well. Stay tuned and mark your calendars.

I’ll also be touring the set with a friend of mine, Sean Conrad, and we’re going to be turning our testimonies into stand-up sets. I’m thinking that I’ve created a new genre of stand-up comedy, “worship comedy”, or it’s just the oldest thing in the books, good old-fashioned, honest, authentic storytelling.

This is my testimony. It's the story of how I met God through pursuing stand up comedy. I cried a lot while writing it and that's how I know it's hilarious. It's an incredible story and I can confidently say that because I had absolutely nothing to do with it. I actively resisted going through every single part of it and I'm only alive to joke about it now because of grace. So I hope you enjoy it just about as much as I hated going through so many parts of it. And I hope above all, that you know there's someone out there who wants nothing more than to know you deeply, and to love you, so that you can be set free. I hope you enjoy it. Here it is.

This is the full transcript if you want to read/ share with someone later:

I cried a lot while writing this, which is how I know it's hilarious. I’ll explain.

See, growing up for me was easy, ‘cause I was better than everybody. At least, I thought I was. I had a superiority complex. If you don’t know what that is, you’re stupid. I was good at school, athletic, I could read at a collegiate level when I was only 6, I was good at Math too, not ‘cause I’m Asian, but because Math itself is racist and so is being good at anything at all. I entered UCLA with a perfect score on the math section of the ACT and then went on to major in English, ‘cause I’m a man who works on his weaknesses, ladies. It’s all men in this room, can we change that?

At my 10 year high school reunion, Alexa Madden, one of the “pretty” nerds, told me that everyone in 3rd grade thought I was a genius ‘cause every day I’d walk into school carrying the Bible in a Ziploc bag ‘cause Man does not live off of ham and cheese sandwiches made by his Mom alone but every Word from the Bread of Life Himself. Everyone was like, “Nathan is reading the biggest book I’ve ever seen in my life. That guy is going places!” I went from Genesis to Exodus to Leviticus and then never tried reading the Bible again until twenty years later. Leviticus was confusingly boring.

Faith to me was a game to be won. Every Friday we’d go to All Workmen are Not Ashamed, otherwise known as AWANA and we’d play games, memorize Bible Verses, do Bible trivia, AWANA games, AWANA Olympics, Bible verse reciting competitions, we’d get AWANA bucks, spend them at the AWANA store, it was like Chuck E. Cheese for Christians. It was Chuck E. Cheesus.

We’d do pinewood derby competitions and my Dad would replicate Hot Wheels using his carpentry, engineering, and physics knowledge to crush the competition, always winning my sister and I a 1st, 2nd, or 3rd in the design and speed category. We were winners in Christ, except occasionally to the Altobellis. Their Mom and Dad were both engineers.

What I’m trying to say is, I wanted to want to want you, Jesus, but most of the time, I wanted a toy nerf gun at the AWANA store more. What I wanted the most was to win. What I really wanted to win was the heart of my Father.

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When I was young, I was afraid to go to bed alone ‘cause I was too creeped out by this villain from Bible Man, the TV show. Bible Man was like Batman for Christians. He would fight villains with scripture, like “1st John 5:4 says through our faith comes victory,’” and the villain would be like, “Curse you Bible Man, if it wasn’t for your knowledge of scripture you’d be nothing, ahhhh.” He’d hit him with a lightsaber and the villain would explode. His sidekick would be like, “Perfect timing to end the wining,” and there was Bible Girl too. She was a white girl, cause they’re the holiest of all girls.

He would fight against villains like, “The Cheater” who would kidnap kids and give them answers to exams, which is like the most helpful pedophile ever.

“Are you gonna molest us?”

“No, but I will help you get into Harvard.”

There was the Fibbler, Master Misery, Dr. Fear, the Prince of Pride, and the worst of all, the Gossip Queen. She would get kids to gossip, singing, “Come a little closer, have I got news for you, a tiny morsel of gossip, it’s very juicy too, this harmless information flows from me just like a faucet, but what else can you do when you’re the Queen of Gossip?”

She was a blue-haired witch that looked like her makeup was done by a 5-year-old Play-Doh maestro with a budget of 5 dollars. She was frighteningly disgusting!

I would get nightmares and my Dad would tuck me in, staying with me until I fell asleep, and when I would get afraid he would remind me that I was his buddy. He’d whisper, “Buddy buddy. Buddy buddy”.

As I fell more and more asleep he’d whisper it ever so slightly, lightly aspirating like a heartbeat, “B-ddy B-ddy”.

I’d say it back like a satellite call, “B-ddy B-ddy. B-ddy B-ddy”. Next thing I knew, I was asleep and Gossip Queen would melt away like the wicked witch she was!

In sports, I became a star pitcher and my Dad would train me. We’d throw night and day wherever and whenever we could until when I was 12, as a closing All Star Level B-Team pitcher, I averaged 2.2 strikeouts an inning, until I threw out my arm and was never the same. Metaphorically and literally, my balls dropped.

My Mom, my sister, and my longtime haircutter, Priya, told me to get the Bieber-Sheckler-Beatles combo flippy haircut, and as my hair went to and fro, I got turned upside down by Lust.

My middle school best friend Jaimal and I were sitting in the backseat of his Mom’s car on the way to a math competition and I said, “Jaimal, don’t get a girlfriend. Focus on school. Women are a distraction.”

A few months later, his Mom said, “What’s up with Nathan?”

Jaimal said, “Nathan got a girlfriend. He’s not so into math anymore.”

Jaimal went on to Harvard. I went on to lose my virginity at age 16. He focused on hidden figures. I focused on curves. He was the loser. I was the winner.

I built a new identity as the kid in AP class who smoked weed on the weekends and partied, but still got solid A minuses, weighted of course. I made new friends with the kids of “Blanco Way”, a horseshoe-shaped street off of Sepulveda and Sawtelle that I still live on to this day and every weekend we’d get invited to anywhere from seven to eight different high school parties at different schools. My sophomore year there was even a little chart in the girl’s bathroom, titled “Cutest guys in 10th grade” and I was on that list. I was top 20 in grades, but more importantly I was top 10 in looks.

I met a girl one weekend at a quinceanera and we made out and the next week she came over and said, “I’m sorry we didn’t go all the way.” A few months later my friend Henry let me lose my virginity in his guest house while his parents were away and my heart walloped for two hours as I panicked about the shame and guilt I accrued by disobeying the principles I had learned growing up in a Christian household. I was disobeying my parents. I was going to Hell.

A few months later I found out she was cheating on me and I was devastated. For her, I had written poetry, with her I had felt close to whole and she betrayed me. Around that time there was a new youth pastor at my church, Demetrius. He began to court my suspicions about religion and God and hypocrisy asked me questions like, “Are you scared that maybe you might end up a bench player in life? What if God has a greater role for you to play?”

When I was 17 I got obsessed with stand-up comedy, delving down a deep YouTube rabbit hole and learning about one-liner comedians like Steven Wright, Mitch Hedberg, Zach Galifinakis, and Demetri Martin. I met Tyler who was a comedian at our church who specialized in one liners and offered to drive me to open mics and shows on school nights where I’d see a star-studded lineups of comedians I had Tivo'd the night before and I was in awe, because maybe here I could hit the strike zone once again.

We drove in his Mustang Convertible he had purchased as a result of his new cush TV writing job and my Mom called me crying, ‘cause she was afraid that I was out too late on a school night, not sure if I was safe. Tyler asked me what was wrong and I said, “My Mom is just being Mom.”

He said, “She should be happy that you found something you love.”

I said, “But that’s just how Moms are.”

He said, “I’m here to tell you, it doesn’t have to be that way.”

That night I took a shower and began to feel an ever increasing incremental distance from my Mom, realizing that I didn’t know the Woman from whom I had come from. And I began crying a deep wail I had not known since Birth.

I thought, “I don’t know my own Mother” and it grieved me deeply.

All of a sudden, it felt like a hand was coming around the back of my shoulder, and I felt a warm embrace. It felt like a deep hug, one I hadn’t known in years and I knew it was God, because I felt whole.

After that moment on, I knew God was real, but we only talked every few months.

I entered UCLA as a biomedical engineer and all I wanted to do was stand-up comedy. I was obsessed. I switched to English so I could do it as much as possible and started a comedy club with my friend Austin and went to open mics every night, running shows in lecture halls, parking lots, venues off campus, trying to figure out how to be funny, while simultaneously having as little fun as possible. I was serious about comedy because I needed to crush the competition in both speed and design and I was sure as Heck not gonna be a G-D- engineer.

I told my Mom I wanted to be an English Major. She said, “Is it ‘cause you want to do comedy? You’re not going to do comedy.”

So I did it as much as humanly possible and worked hard enough to get a manager at the same management company as Kevin Hart by my senior year. I took an internship in New York at a production company and I did it every single night, everywhere I could, snagging a semi-finalist spot in the NBC Stand-Up For Diversity Competition not because I was Asian but because stand-up comedy is racist and so is being good at anything at all.

I had a girlfriend named Giulia. She thought I was funny and sweet and kind and so was she. After we broke up, she said, “It felt like comedy was your girlfriend and I was always just there.”

I said, “You’re a hater anyway!”

And I did 5 minutes about our breakup onstage in front of 300 people and I was miserable. I wanted her to know how broken and alone I really was, but I didn’t know how to tell her. So I made fun of her and thought maybe she would see through the facade. She’s married now. I’m sure she’s a lot happier.

My friend Jonathan, who I met on the backline of a soccer field when I was eight years old, he was a goalie, I was a defender, he was my roommate freshman year. He had moved to Boston to work in ministry with his family and I’d tell him, “Comedy is going great. I have a girlfriend. I’m doing really well.”

He’d say, “But those are circumstantial things, how’s your relationship with God? Y’know, he’s always gonna be there when everything falls apart.”

And I’d say, “Well, you’re a hater anyway!” And I’d hang up the phone.

He was always right. Things always fell apart.

While I was out in New York a family member had a psychotic break where they revealed to me the acts of another which led to separation which still continues to this day. I began to have panic attacks while I tried to reconcile the reality of my now broken family. I focused on making my parents proud and making myself the greatest comedian I could be at a young age, as young guns around me began to be tapped up onto television. I was just waiting to shoot my shot. I was waiting throw that strike. I was gonna get on Stephen Colbert and make my Dad see me up there, proud of his Son.

I met a comedian out in San Francisco who wanted to know how I was able to do full-time college and full-time standup and we fell in love. As I drifted away from my family and my sister and fought with my parents, she was a friend who understood how I could love jokes and love her. I always had this fear that I was gonna become wildly successful, yet wildly alone. With her that felt impossible because we were gonna be successful together.

As things started to spiral upwards, the circumstances congealed into a picture perfect love story of two dreamers out there making it on their own and just like Jonathan predicted, things started to fall apart. A few months into moving in with her my psychiatrist said I had been doing well enough that I could get off my anxiety and depression meds and I spiraled right back down into cacophonous agony as I confronted once again the facts of failure, family, and freedom from any solid foundational purpose.

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When I was in the depths of my depression, I told my Dad I felt like a failure, and he said, “We’re all failures, but Jesus loves us anyways.”

I said, “Thanks Dad, now I really believe I can kill myself.”

I understand now what he meant. We all fall short of the glory of God, but the gift of God is eternal life. But I didn’t know what I was living for. I didn’t know Who I was living for anymore.

My dream since I was 17, watching Demetri Martin’s “If I” on Youtube, thinking about becoming a comedian despite my ambitions of medical school, was to do an autobiographical one man show at the Edinburgh Fringe Festival and finally two years ago, I got to do it.

I wrote a show about getting there. One that God had started writing all those years ago when he showed me the warm embrace of a Father who really cares. Who cares above all that I know him deeply and intimately the way a child in the womb knows even the heartbeat of their Mother. “B-ddy, B-ddy. B-ddy, B-ddy.”

I wrote about my experiences with suicidality, depression, anxiety, not knowing why I was who I was, a man with a potty mouth, a dirty heart, a pornograpy riddled search history, a soft, sensitive soul, who wanted above all, to be loved and understood, who wanted to be funny.

And as I shared my story people came up to me with tears streaming down their face telling me, your show was hilarious. I added songs and poetry, not that made people laugh, but which made people most definitely cry and I took the savings my Mom put aside for me to become a successful surgeon and I rented out a venue in Edinburgh and nobody showed up. Well, some people showed up, but proportionally, financially, mathematically, it was a disaster. I had a girlfriend though, and I wasn’t a virgin. Jaimal was still the loser.

While I did the show out in London, a comedian by the name of Jak Knight shot himself in a Tesla, knocking down the stars with him and showing me that all the success in the world isn’t worth throwing away your relationship with God. Years ago I remembered him on stage saying, “I want to believe in God, but God’ll be there when I’m 30.” He shot himself at 28. He was the starting 2 guard in the top 10 young guns of comedy. He was Next Up. I was a bench player, but Jesus saved my life for a much better role.

After I left Edinburgh I rewrote the show to account for the experience of losing the bastion par excellence that Jak Knight represented, and I took the advice of my then long-time girlfriend, Megan and told the truth of why I got on medication in the first place. I talked about my family with the permission of the parties involved and focused on forgiveness. The newfound evolution of the show won me the “Artistic Risk Award” at the Vancouver Fringe Festival for defying the boundaries of comedy and storytelling and for letting my Heart wring dry on stage.

As I sat there behind the dark curtains waiting to go up on the night, the executive director of the festival happened to be in the audience, I prayed to God to speak through me, and I got out of the way. Every joke hit, every song landed, every poem hit hearts home. I threw a perfect game for the second time in my life, and I had nothing to do with it.

When I came back, I had no job anymore and my relationship was on the rocks. I heard a voice say, “You’re gonna fast for three days.” And so I did. At the end of the fast I decided to get off the mood stabilizer I had now been on for the past four years and confront directly the pain I had been avoiding for so long. I talked with Tyler, the one-liner comedian from my old church, who took me into the place only stars would go all those years ago and he told me to stop running away from the pain because my feet were broken. He was a youth pastor now and Jak Knight was dead. I started hearing Jak’s voice say, “Nathan, you’re a comedian. Go be one.”

Now, he was a black dude, so I’d be lying if I didn’t tell you that “Nathan” was not the N-word he actually used, but I won’t say that word here, but I did hear him say it in my thoughts, so I thought it, but remember, stand-up comedy is racist, so it’s not ‘cause I’m Asian.

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I reached this place after getting off medication, where I felt like I was in just as much pain as when I would tie a belt around my neck and pull as hard as I could, but I knew now, I wanted to be alive. No matter how the Enemy spoke to me and told me that my Life didn’t matter, I knew I had a purpose and that God had spared mine for a reason.

I said to the Holy Spirit, “God, I’m helpless and I can’t make decisions anymore. Can you just tell me what to do?”

For the first time a voice spoke back, saying, “Give me 10 days, but you have to do everything I say. Trust me.”

And so I did, I started exercising, and fasting, and working a new job teaching chess to elementary school kids. I had left behind my work as a preschool substitute teacher to go on the road and I needed to be back around those who if we welcome in His Name, we welcome Him, and the Father who sent Him, the children. I started tackling my pornography addiction and looking into the child I was before I had encountered the Spirit of Lust at the tender age of 8. I started playing chess and learning about losing gracefully and putting the safety of the King and Kingdom above all. I told my girlfriend I wanted to give up premarital sex because the Holy Spirit told me to, and then I relapsed on pornography and said maybe, premarital sex isn’t so bad. We broke up. I’m celibate. Every time I thought Jesus would abandon me, he said, “My son, my beloved, I will never, ever leave you. I only want what is best for you.”

I finally read the Bible. I listened to Father Mike Schmidt and Jeff Cavins break down the Bible in the Great Adventure Timeline and finally found a way to make Leviticus and its surrounding context not so confusingly boring. And I couldn’t get enough. I listened to it on double speed as much as I could and I got through it as fast as possible in speed and design because I felt loved and understood. And Father Mike Schmit, oh gosh, golly gee, was funny.

I had a role to play. And this time Jesus in all his blinding light appeared right in front of me and picked me up off the bench and said, “I have chosen You for such a time as this.”

I said, “God, how do I know it’s you speaking to me?”

He said, “From now on, I will address you as my Son.”

When I was in the midst of confronting the pain I had numbed through the use of medication I came to the end of the Lord’s Prayer in Matthew where Jesus said, “For if you do not forgive others their sins, neither will your Father forgive yours in Heaven.”

And so I forgave the accusing family member, whether or not I know if they are telling the truth. And I forgave the accused, whether or not I knew they were either. Whoever or whatever happened, Jesus is enough to forgive and bring peace to all who lean and trust in Him.

I couldn’t. I can’t. You couldn’t. You can’t either. They couldn’t. They can’t. God can. God will. I’ll let him. You’ll let him. God willing, they will too. Jesus always can.

That’s the testimony of the chosen and beloved children of God.

My freshman year I quit baseball because I had befriended a man by the name of Jeremy Libenstein. He was cool, he had looks, he had silky smooth Bieber-Beatles-Sheckler hair, he was good at hockey in speed and design and women liked him a whole lot. And he bullied me. And I go into the specifics about it in my show in stark detail and so I’ll spare the gravity of how much I felt less than by what he did to me. But I’ll tell you this. I love him with all my heart because I know Jesus has the forgiveness I cannot always give.

Two weeks ago, I tried to find him online and I found an article showing that bail was set for him in a Missouri County Prison for 20,000 dollars ‘cause he was caught selling cocaine outside a Fair. And one day, God willing, I’m gonna find him, and I’m gonna give him a deep, deep hug and I’m gonna tell him Jesus loves you, Jeremy, and He wants nothing more than to know you and give you peace, because He gave it to me for free and we have much bigger Roles to play then 1st base, shortstop, and pitcher. We can forgive, we don’t have to forget, we don’t have to be afraid, cause we can remember the good things God has done for us. I love you, Jeremy, and I hope one day you see me telling this story and you fall down on your knees and worship the blinding light of the King of Glory because the Son set free is free indeed to win in both speed and design, to be loved and understood, by Jesus Christ who is real, here, and waiting for you to be his, “B-ddy, B-ddy, B-ddy, B-ddy”.

Road To Christmas is now available on all streaming platforms. Listen to it on Spotify here:

Press Play on Your Purpose,

The Paraprosdokianist