Simplifying the Bible and Strengthening the Family w/ Zach Windahl

Aaron Smith (01:13.795)
Hey everybody. Welcome back. I’m here with Zach Windall. Zach, welcome to the show,

Zach (01:18.86)
Yeah, for sure.

Cool. Yep.

Yeah.

Zach (01:34.328)
Thank you so much for having me on. It’s an honor to be here. I’m excited for this.

Aaron Smith (01:38.005)
Yeah, I love your setup. looks like you do play guitar.

Zach (01:40.398)
I you know a little bit I played a guitar growing up and so it just travels with me more than anything now But I wish I played more often Yeah

Aaron Smith (01:49.441)
I love it. have a very similar setup. Yours is like the lighter color and mine’s the darker color. You have those wood down panels behind you. It’s great.

Zach (01:53.194)
Yes, I was thinking that it really vibes well. huh. Yup. I’m, I’m about it. Yes. And you got the little, bookshelf down there too, that looks similar. Man, whoever your designer is, it should link up with my designer. Maybe we have the same one. Yeah, it was me. Yeah. We need to collab on something ASAP. Yeah. Yeah. For sure.

Aaron Smith (02:01.411)
Yeah.

Aaron Smith (02:07.369)
We have similar. Yeah, was it you? It was me too. I love that.

Let’s do it. Let’s have an episode. Let’s talk about the Bible. Zach, man, I appreciate you giving me your time. But I just, I don’t know if my audience knows you. To be honest, I bet my audience knows you more than they know me. I was just looking you up and you have a massive TikTok following. I didn’t realize that, which is awesome. Good for you. It it encourages me because it just shows me that there’s a need for just devotionals and prayer and biblical sound doctrine and encouragement and.

Zach (02:29.666)
Ha ha ha ha ha

thank you.

Zach (02:41.571)
Yeah.

Zach (02:46.126)
Totally. Yeah.

Aaron Smith (02:47.491)
Um, it’s actually convicted me. It’s making me like, I need to be getting on Tik TOK and doing some short little 30 second encouragements. So.

Zach (02:52.099)
Yeah.

For sure, you need to. I would subscribe to that first. I would subscribe to it right now if you had that account. Okay. Well, I’m done. Yeah, perfect. I’m subscribing right when we end this call.

Aaron Smith (03:00.323)
Well, I do have a TikTok account. I just am currently not doing little short things like that. So, but I want to. It’s just marriage after God on TikTok. Yeah. Awesome. Well, stoked that you’re doing that. But why don’t we, for those that don’t know you, why don’t you just share who you are, a little bit of your background.

Zach (03:16.557)
Yeah.

Yeah. Yeah. Zach Wendall from Minneapolis, Minnesota grew up there. starting early on, my mom was diagnosed with stage four ovarian cancer when I was four years old. And so that kind of threw my entire family for a loop. not knowing if she was going to make it, she was sent home with a 5 % chance to live. She ended up being healed from that. And then she had a tumor around her sciatic nerve and was healed from that. Then she had colon cancer.

Aaron Smith (03:42.957)
No, crazy hat.

Aaron Smith (03:47.511)
What? That’s crazy.

Zach (03:49.452)
with three quarters of her colon removed and was healed from that. And then when I was 15, she had breast cancer with a double mastectomy and was healed from that. So literally from the age of four to 15, I’m seeing my mom in and out of the hospital, chemo, radiation, her hair would fall out and then it would grow back a different color. And it was just like, okay, this is life for us. But the entire time that it was happening, my mom would always say, Zach, life could be so much worse.

I could not be here today, but I am. So you need to treat every day like the gift that it is and try to find God in the midst of this, even when it’s tough. And so that really shifted my understanding and my life growing up, always trying to find, okay, where is God in this? I know that he’s good and I don’t want to disregard all the bad that’s happening around us, but I also want to look for him in the midst of it and know that that

things are gonna work out the way that they should. And so that was kind of my big upbringing. I also grew up as an entrepreneur and a creative, so I was always had my hands in jewelry and clothing and trying to make something for myself. Was always in the church and knew the Bible stories well and I would memorize a lot of verses, because I would get paid to memorize them.

Aaron Smith (05:06.188)
and

Zach (05:16.78)
Like here’s 10 bucks, memorize a Bible verse. And you know, which was awesome at the time. I had this, yeah, exactly. Right, right. So I had this, this knowledge of scripture, but it wasn’t super personal. And I didn’t understand how all the stories necessarily connected with each other. And I think a lot of people deal with that where it’s like, you grow up going to church, you know, Jonah and Noah and Jesus, and how do they work together?

Aaron Smith (05:17.474)
Yep.

Aaron Smith (05:22.369)
your first job. Sweet.

Aaron Smith (05:46.028)
Yeah.

Zach (05:46.252)
And so that was really me. And so when I hit college, I fell away from my faith for years and began kind of questioning everything. I was surrounded by a lot of people that were Christians that weren’t living out a Christian lifestyle really. And then I was surrounded by a lot of other people that weren’t believers and they were so kind and loving and I was conflicted. And in 2014, I hit this spot where I said, God, I’m going to give two years to this.

prove that you’re real, otherwise I’m done. And do you remember that program P90X? Did you do, you did it? Let’s go, come on. So it’s like, yeah, work out for 90 days and it’s like full life transformation. I never did it, clearly. Clearly you did it and I didn’t. But there was a, there was a church doing something called B90X and I was like,

Aaron Smith (06:22.064)
yeah, my wife and I did it. We still have the DVD.

Aaron Smith (06:30.647)
Yeah.

We didn’t get through the whole thing.

Zach (06:42.018)
this is perfect, I’m gonna go through the entire Bible over the course of 90 days. And in doing so, my entire understanding of scripture shifted and I was like, this is way different than I originally thought it was. And I really developed a passion for wanting to go deeper. And at that point, I wanted to go into some sort of program that I could go learn for a year or so. And I found this one in Australia.

And granted, I was living in Minnesota at the time. So of course, Australia surfing and studying the Bible was like a dream for me. So I moved across the world to this program where we studied the Bible for 12 hours a day, six days a week. so say that it was Genesis week, we would read Genesis five times through during the week and then develop our own commentary on it. And Genesis is like a four hour read. So this was, we did that through the entire Bible.

And by the time we were done with this program, I had 20 or 30 pages of notes on each book of the Bible. And I was like, I need to, I need to share this with people. And so, we can get into the, yeah.

Aaron Smith (07:47.011)
Wow.

Aaron Smith (07:52.803)
Okay, real quick, wanna, yeah, by the way, I love the idea of the book that we’re gonna talk about, your new book, coming out on July 1st, By the time this is airing, it’s probably gonna be live already, But I just wanna go back real quick, is your mother still with you? Like, my gosh, that’s a…

Zach (07:58.764)
Yeah, thank you. Thank you. Yes, sir.

Zach (08:09.624)
She is, yes, and her and my dad, they just moved down here. So we live in Orlando now, and they just moved down in the last year to be with us. So, so pumped to have them down here. yeah, especially in the winter. We miss a lot of things. Yeah, yeah, yeah, for sure, 100%. Although I do miss snowboarding and hockey up there, and a lot of restaurants. I love Minnesota, but I like Florida more, I think.

Aaron Smith (08:19.075)
Way better than Minnesota. Way better surfing than that.

Aaron Smith (08:29.123)
Yeah.

Aaron Smith (08:37.825)
Yeah, Florida, from when I was there, it seems like it’s 20 or 30 years behind the rest of the country, just in general, like a lot of different things. That’s actually kind of nice, because a lot of us want to go back 20 years. So that’s awesome to hear, just the miracle that God did in your mom’s life. And I’m sure that played a role in your life, seeing these things take place and the suffering, but her perspective on it. But I always ask whenever I hear a story of someone

Zach (08:44.142)
Yeah, for sure. Yes. 100%.

Zach (08:56.13)
Yeah.

Aaron Smith (09:07.299)
going to college and then walking away from God and then having a journey back. I just have to ask how much of your college experience played a role in you questioning your faith and drawing you away. Like you said, I just think of that scripture that says, bad company corrupts good morals. You had believers that were not being Christian, claimed to be Christian. And then you had unbelievers who were kind and compassionate and were inviting you in. And just how much of your college experience

Zach (09:09.954)
Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

Zach (09:16.75)
Hmm.

Zach (09:21.25)
Yeah. Yeah, for sure.

Zach (09:26.604)
Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah.

Zach (09:32.013)
Yeah.

Aaron Smith (09:36.643)
played a role in that, you know, pulling you away from your faith.

Zach (09:40.16)
pretty critical of college at this point, because most of what I use and yeah, okay, okay, just wanted to clear that. So I would say a big part of it for sure. And I think when I went to a Christian university is where I fell away the most actually. Yeah, so I went to four different schools, chasing different, different programs.

Aaron Smith (09:44.471)
Me too. Just a little note, yeah.

Aaron Smith (09:58.689)
That was my next question. Was it a Christian university? Yeah.

Zach (10:07.654)
And the final one, the last two years was at a Christian university. And for sure, that was the time when I was questioning things the most. And I was like, why, why am I here first? And why, why am I spending so much money to be here? And then it’s only doing more harm, I think. And I see that with a lot of people, especially like my cousin right now, he’s about to go to college in the next two years and just talking through that with him. Like, is it, is it worth it?

And what type of school do you go to if you do decide to go to? Cause you can learn so much on your own now, just online and through books and yeah, you got to really wrestle with that.

Aaron Smith (10:42.146)
Yeah.

Aaron Smith (10:46.379)
Yeah. Well, there’s very few careers paths that absolutely necessarily need a proper education. So I got my bachelor’s degree. went to like a, it was a vocational school that turned accredited. So I actually got my bachelor’s degree, but it was so compressed. I didn’t like live on campus. just traveled. I was there every day, like five days a week. And I was, I was there all day and I got my bachelor’s degree in two and a half years. And I was like, perfect for me because I can’t.

Zach (10:51.095)
Yeah.

Zach (10:55.062)
Yeah, for sure. What did you study?

Zach (11:08.108)
Yeah. Got it. Yeah. Awesome.

Zach (11:14.574)
Jeez.

Aaron Smith (11:16.035)
Four years is just too much. I’m like, will put two and a half years in and that’s it. So I had a much different experience. was very little philosophy, very little anything that would make me question anything. But also I had a very solid foundation faith-wise before I went to college. But I feel like the biggest problem I’ve seen, and there’s a lot of Christian organizations that are actually trying to combat this is,

Zach (11:17.612)
Yeah, for sure.

Yeah. Yup. Understandable.

Yeah. Yeah. Sure. That makes sense.

Zach (11:36.268)
Yeah, awesome.

Aaron Smith (11:45.923)
Normal school, like what we all, what most people have gone through, the public school system, don’t teach you how to think. They just teach you what to think. And then you go to college and then you start getting asked the hard questions on things that you just grew up being told you believe. And you never learned how to think about them. And then the questions come and you’re like, actually, don’t even know what the answer is to that. I actually don’t know how to, you know, what I believe about that. And yeah, it’s just backwards versus

Zach (11:55.692)
Yeah, for sure. Yeah.

Zach (12:03.746)
Totally.

Yeah, yeah,

Zach (12:10.348)
Right. How to process that, yeah.

Aaron Smith (12:15.287)
being taught how to think and then go learn the things that are out there. So you can process those through how to think and something I’m trying to teach my kids and.

Zach (12:15.918)
for sure.

Zach (12:22.134)
Right, especially like for entrepreneurs, it definitely sets them up for failure a lot of the time, I think, because instead of being taught how to think for themselves and make their own businesses and their own jobs, it’s just filling roles a lot of the time.

Aaron Smith (12:37.379)
Yeah. Well, in school in general is not built to build entrepreneurs. know, this is a whole other conversation. I am pretty critical of school in general. We homeschool our kids and try and do that. And I try not to be super anti-college with my kids because they may want to go. They may like just absolutely like, no, I have to go to this college. But I’m definitely not pushing them in that direction.

Zach (12:42.838)
Yeah, right, right, yeah. Yeah.

Zach (12:51.8)
Cool. Yeah.

Yeah. Sure. For sure. Yeah.

Yeah. How, how has homeschool been? I’m a, we’re, we’re talking about that a lot right now. We have our firstborn son on the way in about five weeks here. So we’re talking about, thank you. Thank you so much. We’re just figuring out all that stuff right now. Like, do we homeschool? Do we do a hybrid? Do we? Yeah. I don’t know.

Aaron Smith (13:12.247)
Congratulations, that’s so awesome.

Aaron Smith (13:21.251)
All I know is there’s so many more options in the world now than when I was growing up. I know that the options have existed, I personally will, you know, I never want to say never because you never know what God might do. But at the same time, just from what my convictions will never put my kids in public school, I know what my experience was. I know many kids experiences. And one, just the way the world’s gone.

Zach (13:25.614)
Hmm. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

Zach (13:36.79)
Yeah, for sure.

Zach (13:43.416)
Got it.

Yeah. my goodness. It’s insane.

Aaron Smith (13:51.299)
has gotten even worse than it used to be. And also, don’t see, like, our kids do the amount of work that they get done in like two to three hours. Like, there’s no reason to be having to sit for six to eight hours a day. So they’re very smart. They’re good readers. love all their subjects. And then we get to be with them. So I just see so much value in the homeschooling process. But we have lots of friends that do

Zach (13:51.392)
Yeah, for sure.

Zach (14:02.392)
Yeah.

Zach (14:05.816)
Totally right.

Zach (14:12.226)
Yup. How cool.

Absolutely.

Aaron Smith (14:18.999)
kind of like hybrids, do co-ops, do all, there’s so many different options. Yeah, so it’s a good thing. There’s a lot of things to look into. My wife, there’s so much curriculum out there these days and you can just, there’s so much. My wife and I just went to a homeschool conference in Tennessee and it was so awesome. There was like all these speakers to listen to and just looking at all these different curriculum companies and so it.

Zach (14:23.33)
Yeah.

Zach (14:27.48)
for sure.

Zach (14:31.894)
Yeah, right. That’s what I’ve seen. Man.

Zach (14:41.656)
come on. And then you can really like figure out what you what direction you want to go with it and, and exactly what you want to teach them. I saw this school that’s coming to Orlando where you the kids go for two hours and study but then they the rest of the day is spent like helping them build businesses. And these kids are like nine years old. It’s it was really cool just thinking about how different even my childhood would have been if I would have had that growing up. Very cool.

Aaron Smith (14:48.487)
yeah, it’s so fun.

Aaron Smith (15:02.275)
That’s so cool.

Aaron Smith (15:10.251)
Yeah, it would have been so much different. I, you know, I, I became an entrepreneur. didn’t necessarily have that in my mind to be one. So like, was like, I just want to start a business. but for sure I’m teaching my kids. like one of the things that we do, my wife and I have self published, eight books, 10 books. And, so one of the, one of the products we have the kids do is, and this is like when they’re, what is it?

Zach (15:18.006)
Yeah. Yeah.

Zach (15:25.42)
Yeah. Awesome.

Aaron Smith (15:34.851)
fourth grade? can’t. I don’t know all the grades. You would think I would. But we have them publish a book. So they do an alphabet book. Yeah, they do the art for it. And then they write out a short sentence about the art about what they drew. And they’ll do it on like a theme. like my son did a, what was it? It was a food alphabet. No, not food. was it? Animal. So he drew an animal and then wrote about the animal with the letter A. then, and it’s like a simple sentence. we literally, I do the

Zach (15:40.462)
No way. Yup.

Zach (15:49.496)
Yup.

Zach (16:00.139)
Wow.

Aaron Smith (16:03.853)
publishing process, but they write the book and then I publish it and then we get a printed copy and then they’re literally a published author by fourth grade.

Zach (16:05.314)
Yup. Yeah, yeah.

Zach (16:11.034)
my goodness, think of like having that for the rest of your life and even just like what they’re learning from that. For instance, when I was a kid, my mom would have me and all of the neighborhood kids come together and we would make like arts and crafts. So we would make different jewelry and cards and things like that. And then we would have a store at our house and we would sell everything that we made throughout the summer. And we make like quite a bit.

Aaron Smith (16:24.481)
Yeah.

Aaron Smith (16:30.551)
Yeah.

Zach (16:39.694)
as just a group of kids. And then we would go down to this shelter down in Minneapolis and we would donate it all and it would help a bunch of people. And we were probably nine years old at the time. And that stuck with me for so many years. And so, yeah, just thinking about like you with your kids, I mean, at fourth grade, like thinking about me raising my kid at fourth grade, I really want to have all of these things implanted into

Aaron Smith (16:48.545)
that’s so cool.

Aaron Smith (16:54.029)
Mm-hmm.

Zach (17:09.41)
their day-to-day schedule and things that we do, just because I think it’s going to impact them so much in the future.

Aaron Smith (17:12.023)
Yeah.

Aaron Smith (17:15.455)
Yeah, and that’s what we love about it is that we can help them with things that like whether they’re going to be public, they want to be authors or not, doesn’t matter. The fact is, I want them to know that they can do it if they wanted to. There’s nothing stopping them from doing these things and it’s just a really cool thing. yeah, if after all of this we do and they want to go to college still, I will help them navigate that.

Zach (17:23.36)
Yeah, for sure. At all.

Yeah, 100%. Absolutely. Yeah. For sure.

Zach (17:41.131)
Yeah.

Totally. Yeah, but it’s like, it’s having an idea and that they actually can put some legs on and make happen. When I was nine, we would come down to Naples, Florida for like two or three weeks every single year. And I would find shark teeth at this shell store. And then I would walk, yeah, I would walk up and down the beach and I would find shells and I would poke holes in them and I would make necklaces.

Aaron Smith (18:02.608)
you are an entrepreneur.

Zach (18:10.898)
And as a nine year old, I would walk up and down the beach with an arm, like a sleeve basically just full of these necklaces that I was selling, sell them for 10 bucks a pop and making just tons of money as a nine year old. And by doing that and having parents that believed in me and encouraged me in it, it always made me think, okay, if I want to make a t-shirt company, I can do it.

Aaron Smith (18:19.906)
Yeah.

Aaron Smith (18:25.72)
Yep.

Zach (18:37.516)
The resources are there, like we can figure it out, especially today with technology. It’s so much easier to launch a business and really get into these things. You could do print on demand if you wanted one version of something, but just being able to actually put some legs to our ideas as young people is like, that’s, that’s how I want to be as a dad, encouraging that from such a young age, because I think that will really impact them later.

Aaron Smith (18:37.581)
Yeah.

Aaron Smith (18:50.478)
yeah.

Aaron Smith (19:05.514)
Yeah. And then some of the other benefits is we get to incorporate essentially the Bible into everything we do. And yes, we have like, we can do morning Bible times and all the curriculum we choose on some level has biblical stuff in it and getting them really familiar with the Bible. And one thing that I love about, so my son started a can collecting business where he, we recycle cans here in Oregon. You can make it pretty penny because it’s like 10 cents per can you turn in where it

Zach (19:11.074)
How cool.

Zach (19:15.116)
Yeah.

Zach (19:19.192)
For sure. Yeah.

Yup.

Zach (19:28.129)
Yeah.

Yeah, for sure.

No way. Wow. Yeah. Yeah.

Aaron Smith (19:34.699)
Yeah, it’s, I mean, that’s good for a little kid. It’s bad in other senses politically, but, but it’s, just, it’s one of the policies we have. And so he’ll, he’ll collect cans, turns them in, gets tensed into can, saves his money. But some of the, some of the process that we get to do is, you know, when I look back at school, I think no one, no one taught me about investing. No one taught me about spending. No one taught me about P &Ls. No one taught me about.

Zach (19:45.613)
Yeah.

Zach (19:49.613)
Yep.

Zach (20:00.738)
Yeah.

Zach (20:04.174)
Yeah.

Aaron Smith (20:04.449)
Balancing books. No one taught me nothing like you didn’t get any of that stuff and so I Drive him to drop off the cans and make a good bud like you made 20 bucks. That’s awesome You got to give me three and he’s like why I’m like, well, I I drove you here was my guess He’s like but they’re my kids. I’m like, that’s I get it, but you didn’t drive here. And so teaching him He’s been learning about like margins. He’s been learning about you know loss and costs of things and

Zach (20:06.828)
Right. Totally. At all.

Zach (20:19.052)
Yeah.

Yeah.

Zach (20:25.954)
That’s reality, right?

Zach (20:30.476)
Wow. Yeah. Man.

Aaron Smith (20:35.075)
And so it’s less about him making 20 bucks, you know? And then also like going to the neighbors, drops off a note with some cookies. Hey, here’s some cookies. I’m collecting cans if you ever have cans. And then we get text messages from neighbors. Hey, Ellie, you can come pick up some cans. And we just go pick up cans for him. So it’s, yeah, all these little things you get to do and you have the time to do in homeschooling. at the end of the day, I just, want my son to know God and feel

Zach (20:38.497)
Of course. Yeah.

Zach (20:47.927)
Awesome.

Zach (20:52.354)
So sweet.

Zach (20:58.316)
Yeah. Yeah.

Aaron Smith (21:04.163)
I want all my kids to know God and feel confident that they can do anything they want. Not just told they can do anything they want, but like literally feel capable of doing anything they want. Whether that go to college or start a business or anything, invent something. Trying, we’re trying, yeah. Trying to see if I have, I don’t have one of my kids books here.

Zach (21:06.124)
Yeah. Yeah. Amazing. Yeah.

For sure. Awesome.

Yeah, yeah, for sure. And you’re doing it. That’s so inspiring for me because it’s like just seeing somebody else that’s, when I see people that are actually doing it, it’s like, okay, it’s possible. now I like, yeah, that pumps me up. Thanks for sharing that.

Aaron Smith (21:37.027)
Yeah, and that’s so cool. So you got your first coming on the way. How long you been married? Awesome. That’s about the timing that my wife and I had our first. Yeah. Yeah.

Zach (21:41.452)
We’ve been married for five years now.

Really? Awesome. We said, we said the first three years we weren’t even going to really talk about kids. And then every year on our anniversary, we were going to sit down at dinner and say, is this the year that we’ll stop preventing? And first three years said no. And then fourth year, we said, okay, we’re going to Japan in October. So this last October, and we were like, we want to for sure do that. And we don’t want to do that pregnant. So if

We can stop preventing then great. And so we did, and we got home from our trip and my wife was like super jet lagged for a week. And then it was the second week and then it was the third week. And we were like, no, you’re already pregnant. We thought it was going to take us like two years because we have so many friends that it’s just taken quite a while to get pregnant. And we were already pregnant out of the gate. So our, our baby.

Aaron Smith (22:31.767)
pregnant.

Aaron Smith (22:44.215)
Wow. Well, congratulations.

Zach (22:46.53)
Thank you, our baby, made in Japan. We’re gonna have to get that fake tattooed on his foot when he comes out. Yeah, exactly.

Aaron Smith (22:53.987)
Yeah, fake. Right on the bottom of his foot.

That’s awesome. So, I’m married five years. How much of… So, the book we’re going to talk about is called The Bible Simplified. I love the concept of it. I was skimming through a bunch of it. I’m waiting for your publisher to send me a copy of it, so I’ll get one of those. And I think it’s so necessary, what you’re doing, because you have a quote on there about 80 % of Christians have not read the whole Bible.

Zach (23:08.014)
Thank you. Yeah. Yes, 100%. It’s coming next week, promise.

Zach (23:26.168)
Yeah. Yeah. Isn’t that amazing?

Aaron Smith (23:28.267)
Which is, I tell my son this all the time. My son, he’s 12, turning 13, last year, read through the entire Bible in like six months. Yeah. The only book I told him not to read was Song of Solomon. I was, I’m basing that off of old Hebrew ideology of like not letting the kids before their men read that. So I was like, he’s like, why? was like, well, it just, it it mainly talks about love. And so you could just skip over that one for right now.

Zach (23:36.714)
No way. What? Wow.

Zach (23:42.954)
Yeah.

Yeah, for sure. Totally. Yup. Yup.

Zach (23:55.084)
Yeah. Yup.

Aaron Smith (23:57.707)
And he read the whole thing and I told him, was like, as a Gelliot, said, you, you’ve done something that most Christians have never done. He’s like, really? I’m like, yeah, most Christians have never read the Bible, the whole Bible. Maybe they’ve read maybe they read half of it, but they’ve never read the whole thing. And I’m always telling people, you know, as as a pastor and just someone we’ve been in, you know, influencing online for years is, is how can you know what you believe if you’ve never read the whole thing that tells you what you believe, you know,

Zach (24:05.11)
Absolutely.

Zach (24:08.866)
Which is interesting, right? Is… Yeah.

Zach (24:24.68)
Exactly. That’s what I’ve been trying to say for so long. And then people get offended by it. But it’s like, you literally say that you, you have your entire life dedicated to something that you’ve never read. That’s like, that’s pretty wild.

Aaron Smith (24:38.2)
Yeah.

Aaron Smith (24:41.909)
It is, Now, I would argue, and this is why probably it’s the case is you don’t have to have read the whole Bible to be saved. Correct? Okay. But if you’re going to, mean, Paul tells us over and over again, he’s like, you know, grow in the knowledge of God as you grow and as you’re sanctified, like that we would grow in our knowledge of him. And the only way to grow in the knowledge of God is to read what God said. All of it.

Zach (24:50.798)
100 % absolutely, yeah.

Zach (25:00.983)
Yeah, right.

Yeah, for sure.

Zach (25:10.272)
Absolutely. Yeah. But so many people are just overwhelmed or make excuses and they’re like, well, I tried and I stopped or I got to the second half of Exodus and Leviticus and then I gave up and then I just skipped forward or like a lot of people only have read the New Testament. But I think everything Jesus did and said was a fulfillment of something in the Old Testament. So I don’t think we can truly understand what he did.

Aaron Smith (25:11.49)
You know.

Zach (25:38.55)
if we don’t get the Old Testament. And so, yeah, man, it shocks me a lot of the time.

Aaron Smith (25:44.995)
Yeah, and I want to be an encourager to those who haven’t done it yet because we all have excuses. I mean, I’ve been a Christian for a long time and I have a hard time opening the Word of God sometimes and I feel like it’s a drudgery. feel like it’s hard to… Like there’s things I’m like, gosh, what is this even saying right now? Why are there 500 names in a row right now? It makes sense, but that’s kind of what you’re trying to combat with this book is to get rid of some of those barriers that fill…

Zach (25:48.407)
Of course.

Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

Zach (26:00.43)
Totally. Yeah, right.

Aaron Smith (26:14.487)
too hard to overcome so that Christians will feel more comfortable and more excited about getting to the Word of God. this book, where did the idea of this book come from in the first place? Because I know you’ve been thinking about it years, but did it stem anywhere in your marriage at all? Is this something that you guys dealt with in your marriage? Is this something that came from somewhere else?

Zach (26:14.796)
Yeah, 100%.

Zach (26:25.228)
Yeah. Yeah.

Zach (26:33.11)
Yeah, for sure. So I talked to a lot of people on social media and talked to my wife. And we, when we first got married, we were like, okay, let’s start reading the Bible together over the course of a year, as a lot of people do. And lo and behold, we got into about the second half of Exodus and my wife was like, I don’t really want to keep reading this at this point. And so she skipped some books and, just continued on in more of the stories than anything.

Aaron Smith (26:55.469)
Yeah.

Zach (27:02.838)
And that always like sticks with me because I’m like, man, why don’t more people actually want to dive into it? And so I started throwing this idea around, okay, what if I created a foundational understanding of everything, not to replace the Bible by any means, but if I have the, if I zoom out and understand the Bible from a big picture story and provide that foundation for people, I really believe that they’re going to fall in love with

studying the Bible and just reading it for the rest of their life. So now when they’re in church on Sunday and the pastor’s talking about Hosea, they know what’s going on in the storyline. And I think for me at least, when I was first learning everything, I had this big timeline on my wall that just laid out everything that happened in scripture and when it was happening.

And so then as I’m reading through, can always look at that and see, okay, this is what’s going on at the time. And now it’s going to bring a lot more context to what I’m actually reading. And so that’s what I’m trying to do with this. And I think it’s, it’s already helping so many people just kind of holding their hand through that process instead of, letting them be stuck in the overwhelm, but giving them like a confidence in their faith and, what they actually believe. Cause I think a lot of us have.

a lot of questions about scripture that we’re maybe afraid to ask or, or we just don’t understand. And so I want to, I want to nip that as much as I can and provide historical context and just simplify the major things. We don’t obviously dive into everything in it, but simplify all the major things to, really help it make sense.

Aaron Smith (28:48.227)
You know, there’s something we would do with my kids and you do this in some of the first chapters of your book is giving this big overarching like geographical, I don’t want to say geographical, I call it the geography of the Bible. Like where things are, what are they, how are they written? And it’s something that we try and do with our kids because we did something you could do with your kids. You know, parents are often, they’re I don’t know how to teach the Bible to my kids because they’re so intimidated by the Bible.

Zach (29:02.476)
Yeah, yeah, for sure. Yup. Totally.

Yeah. Yeah, for sure.

Zach (29:15.382)
Yeah, totally.

Aaron Smith (29:17.205)
I was like, to be honest, like much of our kids learning the Bible is just understanding what it is, where things are, what’s the Old Testament, what’s the New Testament, what, what, why are these books called what they’re called, where, you know, and so just teaching my kids where things are at. I’d be like, so what part of the Bible then? Are we in the New Testament or the Old Testament? The Old Testament’s in the front of the Bible, New Testament’s in the back of the Bible. You know, where, where does, you know, just generally

Zach (29:23.816)
Mm. Yup. For sure.

Yup. It’s huge. Yeah. Yeah. Right.

Yeah.

Aaron Smith (29:44.745)
When did this take place? it in the Old Testament? When did, you know, and so those are big, like we don’t, it’s hard, like you, you’ve been studying this and you spent 12 hours a day for, you know, however many, however many months you were doing that. but a lot of people don’t realize that those, those little things that we think we should have learned in Sunday school are so important. Just understanding where things are at in the Bible and why they’re where they’re at, you know, and you do that.

Zach (29:49.336)
I love that.

Zach (29:55.906)
Yeah. Yeah.

Zach (30:02.348)
Yeah. Right. Huge.

Zach (30:10.476)
Absolutely. Yeah. And a lot of adults don’t understand that right now. So they could go through everything that you’re talking about as well, because it’s, it’s huge and it will help so much.

Aaron Smith (30:21.283)
Yeah. And then another thing I loved about what you have in the Bible is, or in your book is showing the different writing styles, know, poetry versus, you know, historical, you know, what they are. Yep. All those different things. As I was growing up over last 10, 15 years, realizing the importance of understanding those things, because it helps you understand how to read the Bible.

Zach (30:29.262)
Yeah.

Yeah.

Yeah, story discourse. Yeah.

Zach (30:44.803)
Yeah.

Aaron Smith (30:51.331)
And it also, it protects against, and this is probably something that you’ve seen and it’s good that you’ve written a book like this, is there’s a lot of doctrinal beliefs that many Christians have that come out of, it’s well-intentioned, but out of context scripture.

Zach (30:51.373)
Absolutely.

Zach (31:05.603)
Mm-hmm.

Zach (31:11.82)
Sure. Yeah, for sure.

Aaron Smith (31:14.059)
Like the majority of nominal Christians be just people that don’t have really deep walks with God that just they’re Christians they go to church, but they’re not really in the Word of God. They’re not really walking out the disciplines of faith and they they just regurgitate things that they think are in the Bible and they’re not or they or they are in the Bible, but they’re totally taken out of context. And when we have when we do that, we actually are missing out on what’s being said to us. We’re missing out what you know.

Zach (31:30.188)
Yes.

for sure.

Zach (31:39.788)
Yeah. Yeah.

Aaron Smith (31:42.881)
We take things in scripture and we apply it to ourselves when that thing was specifically written to someone else. We can draw a principle from, but it’s not written to me.

Zach (31:49.878)
Right, yes, literally. Yeah, yeah, which I don’t think a lot of people understand that it was written from an actual person to a specific people group that were dealing with specific issues in their timeline. And us today, yeah, we can for sure learn from it, but it wasn’t written to us. It was written for us still.

but not to us. And I think understanding that and understanding the way that the original author would think about things is so important. Like it was written to a Hebrew Eastern audience and us in the West, we have a Greek understanding of everything. So we’re looking at it at the Bible from the perspective of like data and analytics and facts. And we want to know how exactly God created everything in six days.

But then for the original audience, they’re Eastern and they see things in stories and symbols and poems and discourse, teaching you how God feels about certain things and how we’re supposed to live in that regard. So instead of us being like, well, how is God a shepherd? They’re like, God is a shepherd and it’s a beautiful image of him.

And I think just that understanding is so helpful for a lot of people.

Aaron Smith (33:15.819)
Have you ever read a book called The Word of God in English? No? What’s the author’s name?

Zach (33:18.902)
No, I haven’t.

Zach (33:25.87)
I need to need to grab this. Yeah.

Aaron Smith (33:26.563)
I’m going to Google it real quick. I’m going Google it. It was this book, Leland Reichen. There you go. So it was this book. He’s not a biblical scholar. He’s a literary English literature teacher. So he teaches literary theory. And so he writes this whole book on how the Bible was written and why it’s beautiful and the different types of translation theories.

Zach (33:34.091)
Leyland Reichen.

Zach (33:43.704)
wow.

Zach (33:51.064)
Wow.

Zach (33:56.054)
Yeah, so cool.

Aaron Smith (33:56.493)
essentially literal versus dynamic equivalence. And he goes through why one school of thought on translation is better than the other. He also goes through, he does a lot of the New King James, not, he’s not a New King James like only person, but he, writes from the perspective of like how beautiful and poetic the style is of the writing. But I just, that’s one of the things that his, his book was one of the reasons why I just.

Zach (34:05.133)
Yeah.

Zach (34:09.89)
Yo. Yeah, yeah.

Zach (34:15.672)
Sure. Yeah, 100%.

Aaron Smith (34:24.419)
started just reading the Bible to read it as it is. And that’s something that’s really powerful that think Christians miss out on a lot is we read the Bible and we’re like, I’m not getting anything out of it or I don’t know how to study this, which both of those things are good things and we should learn to study the Bible and learn how it applies to us, learn how to use the Word of God in our life. But a part of it, and he makes a case for this, he’s like, just reading it, just like you would read any other

Zach (34:27.543)
Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

Zach (34:36.268)
Right. Yeah.

Zach (34:41.368)
For sure. Yup.

Yeah. Yeah. Yup.

Aaron Smith (34:54.147)
really good book for the beauty of the writing and the story and to just absorb it. And so I’ve loved that book and it kind of goes to what you’ve written about it is just this idea of understanding and not being afraid of it, reading it, but then also knowing why it’s written the way it’s written, how it was written, who it was written to. Those are really good things for us to know and it does take away a lot of the mystery of the Bible.

Zach (34:56.694)
Yeah, for sure. Yeah.

Zach (35:03.04)
Awesome, I need to check it out.

Zach (35:09.079)
Yeah.

Yeah. Yeah.

Zach (35:20.608)
Yeah. mean, think of like going to the bookstore today and going into the like relationship section and buying a book and then going and getting a poetry book and then going to the history section and getting a book and going home and reading them all the same way. You wouldn’t do that today. And so why do we do that with the Bible? It doesn’t even make sense to us when you really break it down like that. But

Aaron Smith (35:40.717)
No, you’re right.

Zach (35:47.724)
Yeah, that’s, that’s really interesting. was thinking, what translation did your son use when he went through? Yes. Man as a 12 year old, that’s insane.

Aaron Smith (35:53.085)
ESV is the yeah, we

Well, what’s funny is he just started, he asked me for a KJV, which we don’t ever read out of, I’m not, I’m not afraid of it, but he’s like, just want to read through it again, but I want to use the KJV this time. like, all right. Yeah.

Zach (36:02.19)
Yeah.

Yup. Yeah.

Zach (36:09.482)
Okay, cool. Yeah, I was I was expecting like, nlt or something because it’s such like a readable version.

Aaron Smith (36:15.157)
No. Yeah, we avoid any of the, for the most part, we use them sometimes, but for the most part we avoid the dynamic equivalent translations. so ESV will do New King James Version, NASB rarely. I was just actually teaching out of that the other day because the words it used was more family friendly for church because we have all our kids in church.

Zach (36:22.104)
Yeah.

Zach (36:26.05)
Sure. Yup. That makes sense.

Zach (36:31.372)
Yeah.

Yup. Yup, yup.

Zach (36:42.04)
Got it. Sure. Yeah. Yeah. Have you seen a lot of kids love the action Bible?

Aaron Smith (36:47.855)
We have the action bibles and I think those are in ESV. I think it is. I might be wrong on that, but so don’t quote me on. I’m looking it up right

Zach (36:49.686)
Yeah. Is it ESV? Okay. I wasn’t sure. My nephew just went through. Okay. Yeah. My nephew loved it. He went through it in like, like just a few weeks and was so excited about it.

Aaron Smith (37:06.443)
Yeah, well, cool about it. The art is awesome.

Zach (37:09.174)
Yeah, absolutely. And then have you heard of street lights before? So it’s like an audio Bible, with like a lo-fi beat in the background. And it goes through the entire Bible and they have…

Aaron Smith (37:10.657)
I can’t tell what it is.

Aaron Smith (37:16.931)
streetlights. No, I’ve not heard of that.

Aaron Smith (37:28.163)
Does the beat help with memorization? Is that what the reason for the beat is?

Zach (37:31.712)
I think, I think it’s just so that it’s like not monotone. If you’re like just listening to the Bible app. And so for the Psalms, for instance, when you’re driving and they’re like reading through the Psalms with the beat in the background, it’s awesome. I feel like your kids would enjoy that. No, exactly. Not at all. Like, no, no, it’s not, it’s not. Cause I understand some lo-fi is, but this is.

Aaron Smith (37:48.683)
It doesn’t make you want to fall asleep. It’s not like hypnotizing because I… Okay.

Aaron Smith (37:59.777)
Yeah.

Zach (38:00.982)
It’s sweet. I’ve been talking about it a lot lately because just seeing how it’s impacting the people around me. Street lights. Yeah. Yeah. Lights with an S.

Aaron Smith (38:06.531)
called street lights, street lights or light.

Zach (38:14.87)
Yeah. I have a lot of people just kind of in my circle that are younger and older. So like my nephew, for instance, he’s reading through my new book right now and getting a ton from it. He just finished the action Bible and he’s loving straight lights. And then like my mother-in-law has read the Bible 20 times probably. And she’s also reading through this book and getting a ton from it. And then I have like a bunch of friends that are like all in between that.

Aaron Smith (38:16.643)
streetlight.

Zach (38:44.386)
whether they’re just reading the Bible for the first time or faith is totally new for them or they’re more into scholarly works. And so I’m always fascinated by all these different resources that are available and what’s out there to help people because thinking back to it, if I would have had these when I was younger, I know my life and my faith would be so different today. So I’m always trying to yell about them from the rooftop because I think they’d help a ton of people, especially families.

Aaron Smith (39:04.119)
Yes.

Aaron Smith (39:13.603)
Speaking about that, you said your mom was always telling you like life can be so much worse and it can be better. a gift. Are your parents believers? Yeah.

Zach (39:20.47)
Yeah, yeah. They are, they are now. They weren’t really when, when I was like, until I was four. And then when she was diagnosed with stage four ovarian, that’s when I, that’s when they became believers and accepted the Lord and our whole family changed at that point. Yeah.

Aaron Smith (39:41.943)
Wow. they, so my parents were, they always called themselves first generation Christians. So my.

Zach (39:48.438)
Yeah, I mean, my parents grew up in like the Lutheran church and they just didn’t, they weren’t taught more of like personal relationship and like reading the Bible was never a thing that their family did. And it was more just like, yeah, yep, exactly. And it was like, go to like CEO, like Christian Easter only. And yeah, so then they were like, when she got diagnosed then,

Aaron Smith (39:52.844)
Okay.

Aaron Smith (40:03.427)
was like Christian name only. was not necessarily a…

Zach (40:18.428)
one of her friends, dad’s, name is Papa Don. He showed up there at their house once and just started like praying over them and reading scripture to them and just being there for them all the time and loving on them as best as he could. And that’s what transitioned our whole family into something different.

Aaron Smith (40:29.09)
you

Aaron Smith (40:40.323)
That’s awesome. there’s something really powerful about what you were just talking about, how that gentleman was coming over and just reading scripture to them. then you were getting scripture as you were growing up when they came to Christ. I think about that. I’m looking at Isaiah 55, 11. I’m going read it.

Zach (40:48.119)
Yeah.

Zach (40:52.48)
Yeah, for sure.

Zach (41:01.187)
Yeah.

Aaron Smith (41:04.387)
ESV. So shall my word be that goes out from my mouth, it shall not return to me empty, but it shall accomplish that which I purpose, and shall succeed in the things for which I sent it.” And I think about the Word of God. I’ve had many conversations of people that are like, oh, I just found God out of nowhere. And I’m like, well, tell me, like, had you had opportunity to hear the Word? And they’re like, well, yeah, like I had gone to church a few times or someone had, you know, preached to me or I had read it a few times and

Zach (41:11.341)
Hmm.

Zach (41:26.776)
Yeah.

Aaron Smith (41:33.197)
Just understanding the power of the Word of God as it stands, regardless of what we think we’re getting out of it, regardless of what we know of it historically, regardless of all of the scholarly things that we could increase our knowledge on and grow in. I just, tell parents all the time, just like, if you don’t know what it’s saying, read the Word of God out loud to your kids. Because like,

Zach (41:38.861)
Yeah.

Zach (41:46.648)
Yup. Yup.

Zach (41:56.758)
Yeah, for sure. A hundred percent.

Aaron Smith (42:02.239)
We’re not in control of the salvation of anyone, but for sure we’re control of the raising our children the way they should go. Right? And so reading the Word of God, what we’re doing is we are participating with the Spirit of God is in the world doing, convicting of righteousness and in judgment. And the Spirit of God uses the Word of God to do that. And that’s how… So he…

Zach (42:09.654)
Absolutely. Yeah.

Zach (42:25.42)
Yeah, for sure.

Aaron Smith (42:30.019)
If you have a child that might be walking away from the Lord or is questioning, our job is to share the Word of God with them. And the Holy Spirit’s job is to teach them and to convict them and to reveal what the Word of God is saying to them. And it’s the revelation of God through His Word. It’s the mode by which God chose to reveal himself to the world with the written Word of God. And like, what a cool thing.

Zach (42:33.219)
Yeah.

Zach (42:36.672)
and speak it out. Yeah.

For sure.

Zach (42:55.596)
Yeah, right. Yeah. And it’s so interesting like for us today because it’s so easy to have just like a devotional time based around one or two verses. But back in the day, you would go to synagogue and they would read large chunks of scripture at once or a whole book at one time.

Aaron Smith (42:59.469)
that we actually have this document.

Aaron Smith (43:14.787)
Yeah, whole book. Was it, who was it? was not Nehemiah. What was the other? So Nehemiah built the walls. Ezra, yeah, when they finished, he stands up and he, from morning till night, the law of God.

Zach (43:25.504)
Ezra. Yes.

read yes, literally, right, yeah. And even like the New Testament, most of these were letters written to specific churches that were read aloud from the front of the congregation or whatever and read, they would read the entire letter. Because if you think about it, Philippians takes what, 14 minutes to read all the way through, but we’re here stuck on one verse and we’re like, ooh, okay, that’s enough for today.

Aaron Smith (43:46.019)
And they read the whole lot.

Zach (43:57.762)
But man, if we learn to fall in love with large chunks of scripture at once, and even just taking like one day a week to read in bigger chunks than just one verse. So it’s like, okay, every Saturday morning, I’m going to read one book of the Bible from front to back. if you read it out loud, I think that’s like something really special happens within you. When I was in my program in Australia, we would have to, the first time going through the Bible,

or the, book of the Bible every week, we would have to read it out loud. So I would have to sit there and read Genesis in four hours out loud and get a cup of coffee on the side and, a big bottle of water and you go through the entire thing. But something happens when we speak it out loud and just hitting different senses. And I think something happens in the atmosphere too. And so, yeah, I’m, I’m definitely taking that into the way that I raised my kid and, and just.

reading scripture from his nursing chair and over him in his room and directing him in that way.

Aaron Smith (45:00.919)
Yeah.

I don’t want to get into weird like there’s a lot of Christians now that are getting into like frequencies and all these other things, but there’s something like what you said, there’s something very powerful about praying out loud, singing out loud, like the worship that God commands us to do and give him, the praise that comes out of our mouths, the words that come out of our mouths. And so you’re absolutely right, reading out loud and

Zach (45:11.01)
Yeah.

Zach (45:17.656)
Yeah.

Totally. Yes.

Zach (45:26.22)
Right. Yeah.

Aaron Smith (45:30.403)
I always try encourage people, especially if someone’s going to teach something, like teach from the Word of God. Read through the book of the Bible several times before you even sit down and start teaching it. Because you got to get that whole picture. What’s the context of this whole letter?

Zach (45:30.68)
Yeah.

Zach (45:34.274)
Yeah. Yep.

Zach (45:38.734)
Yeah.

Absolutely.

Yeah. Right. If we don’t know context, it’s not going to make sense to us at all. But we take one verse and we create a doctrine around it. And it’s like, well, that, doesn’t even line up with other parts of scripture. Like, what are we doing here? You have to read it from beginning to end to know what’s going on before the verse and then after as well.

Aaron Smith (45:52.29)
Yeah.

Aaron Smith (46:07.831)
Do you go to a church that teaches verse by verse?

Zach (46:12.214)
I don’t right now. I do not. No.

Aaron Smith (46:13.697)
No, not right now. It’s one of the reasons I’m, not that there’s not a place and a time for topical teachings. There’s absolutely necessity for that, that should not be the, in my opinion, that shouldn’t be the main way we learn the Bible. Like there’s something powerful about going verse by verse and not saying things. Yeah.

Zach (46:21.44)
Yeah, for sure. Yeah.

Zach (46:28.14)
Yeah, yep, right. 100%, I’m extremely critical of a lot of churches that I’ve been a part of in the past and I wish there was more of that around, like going first by verse.

Aaron Smith (46:42.635)
Yeah, I feel like it’s happening more and more because I think culturally as the church, the Spirit of God that’s in us longs for what God longs for. after a while, we’re not going to be satisfied with the milk, you know, we’re not going to be satisfied with it. And so like some will, but I think the church in general is like, hey, where is the truth at?

Zach (46:46.68)
Yeah.

Zach (46:52.14)
Yeah.

Absolutely.

Zach (47:03.328)
Right, at all. Give me some meat.

Aaron Smith (47:11.907)
because I’m tired of all the things that seem like truth or pseudo truths or kind of truth and mixed in with all this other weird stuff that I don’t know how to decipher.

Zach (47:12.173)
Yeah.

For sure. Yeah. Yeah.

Zach (47:21.102)
Totally. And which is probably why Bible sales are up so much right now. They were up what 22 % last year? Huh. Huh.

Aaron Smith (47:25.603)
They’re up massively. Do you know what else is up massively? was talking to my agent is not just Bibles, but theology books. Bibles, like books on like your type of book, study books. Yeah. Our number one books right now that are selling are devotionals. There’s husband and wife of the God devotionals. And they used to not be our best selling books, but all of a sudden it’s like everyone’s looking for devotionals. They’re looking for, I think people are, trying to figure out how to know

Zach (47:35.08)
Interesting.

Yeah, praise God. Great.

Yeah. Awesome. Come on.

Zach (47:52.823)
Yeah.

Aaron Smith (47:55.447)
God more. Not get more good feeling and they’re trying to do them both. Yeah.

Zach (47:56.78)
and they’re trying to do it themselves. Yeah, that’s so fascinating to me. But I get it, I’m there with them. I wanna learn more. All I want is like deep teaching.

Aaron Smith (48:07.138)
What?

I think it’s a spiritual response to we have access to more information now than ever in history and we can’t trust any of it. So it’s like, what do I trust? Like, do I trust these ex-posts about, you what’s going on in the Middle East or about the president? I, am I going to just get all these headlines? I think we’re like, as a Christian culture, like, where do I find like the

Zach (48:18.67)
Yeah.

Zach (48:22.336)
Yeah, that’s so true.

Yeah.

Right. Yeah.

Right? Yeah.

Aaron Smith (48:38.839)
real truth because all of this other stuff that’s bombarding me, I can’t handle it all. So I think I think that’s genuinely what’s happening.

Zach (48:40.288)
Right. Yeah. Yeah, for sure.

Man, couldn’t agree more. I’m hoping that we see a big shift in our culture and the Christian space around our country because I think people are hungry for it. And if there are resources out there that are going to bring them deeper, then man, we could really see some pretty cool revival in our lifetime.

Aaron Smith (49:05.397)
I absolutely believe that. Tell me some, just one or two of your favorite parts of this book you got. The Bible Simplified. Is it The Bible Simplified, right? Yeah.

Zach (49:12.59)
Yeah, the yeah, yep, I would say hmm, so my big focus on a lot of it is breaking down the historical context of everything so that it comes to light for us. And so a lot of the stuff having to do with like Jesus being raised in a Jewish culture and being Jewish himself is just fascinating for me and for a lot of people. And so I tried to include a lot of that in it.

And it’s been really helpful for everybody that’s read it so far. So I want, I want people to understand that, this Jesus didn’t come like preaching peace, love and hippie like mindset on things and just creating a new, religion out of nothing. This is the extension of an old religion. And when you understand that and learn to unlock the old Testament, it’ll bring just so much more life and understanding into the new Testament.

So that’s what I try to really pull with this. Yeah.

Aaron Smith (50:11.935)
Amen. I totally agree with that. I use this picture a lot with my kids. In the Old Testament, the priests would make the showbread and they had to make 12 loaves and they were to make them fresh and then they sat for the whole week from Sabbath to Sabbath. And then after the seven days, then they would be required to eat it.

Zach (50:22.732)
Yeah.

Aaron Smith (50:38.325)
And the two things that would take place is they had to all of it. They couldn’t leave any behind. And it would be fresh still. It was miraculous. And I bring it up to the kids on time. That’s the word of God. Like we’re to eat it all, every bit of it, every crumb, and it’s always fresh. it’s actually the bread that David and his men ate when they went to the temple. So you’re right. It’s like you need both. And there’s a lot of churches these days that are

Zach (50:42.53)
Yup. Yup.

Wow, that’s amazing. Yeah. Yeah. Wow. Yes.

So good.

Zach (51:00.61)
Yeah, yeah, yeah, Right. Man, so cool.

Aaron Smith (51:08.755)
I wouldn’t say a lot. are churches these days that essentially kind of throw out the Old Testament. They’re like, all we need is the Gospels and the New Testament. But you’re right, you can’t understand what’s happening in the New Testament without understanding what happened in the Old Testament.

Zach (51:15.958)
Yeah. Yeah.

Zach (51:21.9)
No. Nope, not at all. That’s what I’m trying to do with this, trying to teach people from beginning to end, it is one unified story and there’s a through line with all of it and we’re a part of that story and we have a job to do here and God wants to partner with us today and that’s a huge deal. If we believe like the God of the universe wants to partner with you and I and everybody listening to bring his kingdom to

our surrounding areas and he has a plan for us. That’s amazing. So we need to learn our history and where we’ve come from in order to know where we’re going.

Aaron Smith (51:58.787)
Yep. It’s the most amazing thing, to be honest, that the creative, the the universe’s desires to involve us in things that we don’t need to be involved in. You know, if he, if he wanted to, he doesn’t need any of us, but he’s like, that’s part of his plan. He chooses to incorporate just Gentiles into this, this story, you know, making one new man, which is so beautiful. Something I love what you just said about, um,

Zach (52:02.466)
Hmm. Yeah, it is. Couldn’t agree more.

Zach (52:08.534)
Yeah. Yeah, for sure. Yeah, right. But he chooses to

Yeah.

for sure.

Man, thank God.

Aaron Smith (52:29.045)
understanding the culture, okay? Jesus was raised Jewish. He was Jewish. His parents were Jewish. He’s from the line of all of the Jews from the Old Testament. Like when we think about things like going to the cross, like we hear the story of the Last Supper and him saying, you know, this is my body broken for you. And you’re like, cool, this is beautiful. This is where communion comes from. you’re like, but actually this is just a small piece of the Passover dinner that he would have

Zach (52:31.404)
Yeah. Yeah.

Yeah. Yeah, yeah, Right.

Zach (52:45.666)
Hmm. Yeah.

Zach (52:54.136)
Right.

Aaron Smith (52:58.253)
participated in since he was born. And he also, this is conjecture because there’s no way to fully to actually know, but could have potentially known that that was about him and his death the whole time. Every year of his life up until 33, he would have been aware of what it meant. And he’s just sitting there praying and doing all of this. But you you miss that if you don’t realize that he was raised as a Jew under Rabbi

Zach (53:00.255)
his whole life.

Zach (53:12.182)
Absolutely. Right.

Zach (53:16.746)
Right. Yeah. Wow.

Zach (53:26.446)
For sure. Absolutely. Yeah. Yeah.

Aaron Smith (53:27.211)
in a Jewish home, having the Passover every year, going through all these festivals that are about him, seeing the lamb be sacrificed, and he’s like, that’s me. Like, it just adds.

Zach (53:33.42)
Right? Yeah. That’s gonna be me. Yeah. Man, and he would have had he would have had scripture memorized from such a young age. He would have had the entire Old Testament. Yeah. And first five books, by the time he’s 12 or 13, and then probably the rest of the Hebrew Bible as well. Like, that’s insane for us. And we can’t even sit down and read a book front to back a lot of the times, you know, but

Aaron Smith (53:43.165)
yeah, the whole first five, old first five books, yeah.

Aaron Smith (54:00.272)
I do struggle with that, I’ll be honest.

Zach (54:01.654)
Yeah, of course we all do for sure. But I think it should like, we should do whatever we can to make it more of a common thing in our life. But yeah, he knew scripture better than anything else. So we should know the scripture that he grew up falling in love with.

Aaron Smith (54:17.643)
Yeah, and then the last thing I just want to point out, you said he knew scripture when he was tempted by the devil. Just before starting his ministry for 40 days, he’s tempted with scripture. This is something that we need to be, as Christians, very aware of is the devil came to Jesus and didn’t tempt him with things that he didn’t know. He tempted him with the Word of God out of context. And Jesus responds in context with the Word of God.

Zach (54:22.913)
Yeah.

Zach (54:26.562)
Yep. Exactly.

Zach (54:32.44)
Yeah.

Zach (54:37.782)
Right? Yup. Yes. Yes.

Zach (54:45.522)
Right? So hardcore. Yeah, I love it. Like, like Satan knows the Bible more than we do. So we need to like, exactly. So we need to dive into it and, and play our part here.

Aaron Smith (54:46.861)
to combat the temptation that he’s coming with. It’s crazy.

Aaron Smith (54:54.595)
He’s been around since it’s been written.

Aaron Smith (55:01.667)
Yeah, praise God that we have the Holy Spirit living in us to help us. So, do you want to encourage my audience with? have husbands and wives that are listening and they’re thinking about homeschool. They’re thinking about the Word of God. They’re thinking like, how do we do this? How can you encourage them?

Zach (55:04.448)
Exactly. Amen.

Zach (55:10.989)
Yeah.

Yeah, for sure. I think the biggest thing is making a habit out of our time every single day to spend time in the word and spend time in prayer. Reading the Bible with your spouse, reading the Bible over your kids, praying for your spouse, praying for your kids. And even if you need to like put it on your to-do list in order to develop that habit originally, that’s totally fine and normal to do.

Aaron Smith (55:41.677)
Yeah.

Zach (55:42.69)
But by learning to do that and consistently doing that over decades to come, it’s going to really transform your family, I think, as it has mine.

Aaron Smith (55:54.116)
think you’re absolutely right, Zach. It’s the thing that changes us. What’s that scripture being? We’re renewed by the transforming of our minds. And the way we transform is the word of God. It comes in and it rewires everything. Makes us think differently. Zach, praise God for you, man. Thank you for this book. It comes out July 1st. By the time this episode is live, it’s probably already live. So go check it out. I’ll have the link in my show notes to your book on Amazon.

Zach (56:04.212)
Exactly.

Yep. For sure. Yes.

Thank you.

Yeah. Yup.

Awesome.

Aaron Smith (56:22.901)
Any last words before we sign off?

Zach (56:25.154)
I’m just so grateful to be on here, man. Thank you for all you’re doing. You’re inspiring a lot of us. Continue to raise your kids so well so that we can follow in your footsteps.

Aaron Smith (56:34.179)
Praise God, man, I hope. I’m trying. We’re trying. We messed up a lot, we’re trying. Thanks, man. God bless.

Zach (56:37.134)
Yeah, Thank you.