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Before you begin
Pastor Josh Howerton of Lakepointe Church in Dallas sat down with Pastor Philip Anthony Mitchell of 2819 Church in Atlanta for almost two hours. They talked about the grace that pursued Mitchell and his call to preach, the Word and the Spirit, Islam, the return of Christ, public attack and anxiety. Some of it will move you. Some of it will make you uneasy. A few claims need checking. Scripture is the authority here, not the podcast, and not this study.
This track is for you alone, with a Bible, a pen and a notebook. There is no leader and no room to perform for. Each session ends with journal prompts, one thing to do this week, and a prayer. Write your answers by hand, and be more honest on the page than you would be out loud. Take one session a week, in three sittings, and let the memory verse travel with you in between.
Each session moves the same way. What Was Said summarizes that part of the episode with quotes, word for word. Into the Text sets out the passages in full with a short commentary and, where the Greek or Hebrew opens something up, a word study. Go Deeper gives cross-references, a Bible story, a moment from church history and a book. Hold It Carefully names the real tension and where faithful Christians disagree. Then Reflect: prompts for your journal, one thing to practice this week, and a prayer to pray.
A rhythm for one
| Day 1, 20 to 30 min | ListenOpen the episode at the session’s start time and listen to the whole range listed under Episode, not only the clip. Keep your notebook open. Write down the one line that stopped you, with its timestamp. |
|---|---|
| Day 1, 10 min | What was saidRead the summary and the quotes. Mark the quote you want to underline and the one you want to argue with. Write one sentence about each. |
| Day 2, 30 min | Into the textRead each passage aloud, slowly, with a pen in your hand. Circle every verb. Read the commentary and the word study after the passage, not before. When you finish each passage, write one sentence back to God. |
| Day 2, 5 min | Memory verseCopy the memory verse onto a card. Keep it where you eat, and read it at every meal until the next session. |
| Day 3, 15 min | Hold it carefullyRead it through. Where you disagree, write down why and name the verse you are standing on. Look up one cross-reference from Go Deeper. |
| Day 3, 20 min | ReflectAnswer the journal prompts by hand. If time is short, answer three. The prompt you want to skip is usually the one that matters. |
| Day 3, 5 min | Practice and prayRead the practice and put it on your calendar with a day and a time. Pray the session prayer aloud. Say the memory verse without looking. |
Notes on the text
Quotes
Every quote from Howerton or Mitchell matches the transcript word for word, including the stumbles people make when they talk. Timestamps read mm:ss under an hour and h:mm:ss after, and each one opens the video at that moment. The transcript comes from the video’s automatic captions.
Scripture
All Scripture is quoted from the ESV. When the speakers quote a verse from memory or from another translation, the study says so.
Checking claims
Statistics, laws and history mentioned in the episode were checked against primary sources, listed at the end. “Listening with Discernment” includes a table of the episode’s main factual claims and how each one holds up.
Session 01Top ↑
Kept Alive
A shotgun, a bottle, an unlocked door, and a bathroom floor where God showed up.
What was said
Mitchell grew up in Queens, New York, the son of believing parents from Trinidad who ran a small ministry in their home. The Scriptures “never registered.” He wanted community and went looking for it far from God. His mother moved him to North Carolina, and for years he ran his own life his own way. God never stopped pursuing him.
At twenty-four he had an apartment, a car, money in the bank and a girlfriend he loved. He was empty. One night he sat on the floor with a shotgun and a fifth of Hennessy, trying to get drunk enough to pull the trigger. His door was unlocked. The woman who did his hair walked in, sat beside him, took his hand, and said nothing. Six months later he was back in the same place. This time his girlfriend came home from a car crash, put on gospel music, and lifted her hands to thank God. He crawled into the bathroom and yelled at God: if you exist, meet me here. God did.
That night he felt conviction about sin for the first time and moved to the couch. Days later a stranger, a preacher, put a Bible in his hand. On April 14, 2004, reading Proverbs 3:5-6, he sensed a call to pastor. He ran from it for four years, served other men for eight, and planted his first church in October 2012.
“I had all of the trappings of worldly success, but I had no peace.”
“sometimes people don’t need our words, they just need a ministry of presence.”
“God met me in that bathroom on the floor over a toilet seat.”
Into the text
Psalm 40:1-3
Read the verbs in order: waited, inclined, heard, drew up, set, put. The one in the pit does one thing. He cries. God does the rest. Mitchell’s story follows the same order. He did not climb out of that apartment. He yelled from a bathroom floor and was lifted. Notice too how the rescue ends. A new song goes into his mouth, and then “many will see.” In Mitchell’s case the new song came first as someone else’s gospel music. Now millions hear his story. Rescue is never only for the one rescued.
Job 2:11-13
Job’s friends are remembered for their bad speeches, but they began well. For seven days they sat on the ground and said nothing. The trouble started in chapter 4, when they began to explain. The woman who did Mitchell’s hair never explained anything. She sat down on the floor next to a man with a shotgun and held his hand. “Sometimes people don’t need our words,” Mitchell says. The Bible agrees. Silence is not the absence of ministry. Sometimes it is the ministry.
John 5:24
Mitchell says he “knew I had passed from death to life,” and he uses Jesus’ phrase. Look at how he knew. It was not the feeling in the bathroom. It was what happened that night and the days after. For the first time he felt that sleeping with his girlfriend was wrong, and he moved to the couch. Then he wanted the Bible. New life shows up as new hatred of sin and new hunger for God’s word. Feelings come and go. Those two signs stay.
Proverbs 3:5-6
Mitchell quotes this from memory [09:55] in older wording, with God speaking in the first person (“I will direct your path”). It is the verse over his call. For a man who had spent years trusting his own understanding, “do not lean on your own understanding” was not a slogan. It meant letting someone else steer. The promise is not that the road will be easy. It is that God will make it straight, able to be walked. Mitchell then ran for four years. The verse waited for him.
Go deeper
- Cross-references
- Ephesians 2:1-10 (dead, then made alive); Luke 15:11-24 (the father runs to the son “while he was still a long way off”); 2 Corinthians 5:17; Psalm 18:16-19.
- A Bible story
- Jonah 2. A man at the bottom, “the deep surrounded me,” prays from the belly of a fish. He had run from his call too. God answers anyway.
- Church history
- In 386, Augustine of Hippo sat weeping in a garden in Milan, unable to break with his old life. He heard a child’s voice chanting “take up and read,” opened Paul’s letters to Romans 13:13-14, and was converted. He tells the story in Confessions, Book 8. Like Mitchell, he was the child of a praying parent (his mother, Monica) and a long way from home.
- A book
- David Wilkerson, The Cross and the Switchblade (1963). A country preacher goes to the young men of New York, and a young man named Nicky Cruz meets Christ. It is a story of the same pursuing grace Mitchell found, told sixty years earlier, a few miles from Queens.
Hold it carefully
A testimony is not a template
Mitchell felt a “strong presence” fill the room. Many believers never have a moment like that. Timothy knew the Scriptures “from childhood” (2 Timothy 3:15). Lydia’s heart was opened quietly by a river (Acts 16:14). Salvation is measured by trust in Christ and the fruit that follows, not by how loud the moment was. Tell dramatic stories. Do not make them the standard.
Presence helps, and it is not enough by itself
Mitchell is honest here. Of the woman who sat beside him, he says: “that kept me alive in that moment, but it didn’t sustain.” [08:11] Six months later he was back on the floor. A friend’s presence can carry someone through a night. Getting through the months after takes more: follow-up, community, and often a doctor or counselor. Christians have always used physicians. Luke was one (Colossians 4:14). Asking for professional help is not a failure of faith.
Speak about suicide with care
Mitchell’s story ends in rescue. Some stories do not. Scripture never names suicide as the unforgivable sin, and families who have lost someone need comfort, not verdicts. If someone in your group has lost a person this way, let them lead how much is said.
God used people who were still unfinished
The girlfriend whose worship broke him open was living with him. The woman who saved his life came by to do his hair. God does not wait for tidy people before he uses them. Neither should we.
Reflect
Write, don’t just think. A sentence is enough.
- Mitchell had “all of the trappings of worldly success” and “no peace” [06:54]. Write down what you reach for when you have no peace. Be exact: the app, the drink, the purchase, the person.
- In Psalm 40 the one in the pit does one thing. He cries. When did you last cry out to God instead of trying to climb out on your own? Write what you said, or what you wish you had said.
- Write the name of the person who sat with you on your worst night, or the name of the person you wish had. What did their presence do that words could not have done?
- Mitchell knew he had passed from death to life because sin started to feel wrong and he wanted the Bible. Name one thing God has made you hate that you used to love. If you cannot name one, write that down and tell God.
- Who in your life is sitting behind an unlocked door right now? Write their name. What would it cost you to walk in and sit down on the floor beside them?
Practice this week
Write your own Psalm 40 in four short lines: the pit, the cry, the rock, the song. Use real places and real dates, the way Mitchell remembers April 14, 2004. Keep it on the first page of your notebook. Then send one line of it to the person you named in the last prompt, and ask when you can come by.
Pray it
Lord, I waited for you, and you inclined to me and heard my cry. You drew me up out of the pit and set my feet on a rock. Where I am still in the miry bog, hear me again. Make me like the woman at the unlocked door, willing to sit on the floor and say nothing. Put a new song in my mouth, and let someone see it and trust you. Amen.
He crawled into a bathroom to yell at God. God was already there.
Session 03Top ↑
Word and Spirit
Preaching as a dying man to dying men, the gift of being unpolished, and a divorce the church needs to end.
What was said
Mitchell anchors his preaching in Colossians 1:28. He preaches as though each sermon could be his last, or the last one someone hears. Howerton quotes the Puritan Richard Baxter: “as a dying man to dying men.” Mitchell wears a bulletproof vest on tour because of threats. Before he preaches, he kneels at a chair and thanks God for finding him usable.
He confesses that he feels his preaching is “unpolished,” and he grieves that he never finished seminary. Howerton answers: “I hope you never become a polished preacher.” He tells how critics called Charles Spurgeon “vulgar” because he talked like a working man, and how Spurgeon said those people belonged to him.
Asked where his theology comes from, Mitchell says he has been shaped by two streams: Spirit-filled churches and churches serious about exegesis. Howerton explains the terms. Exegesis draws meaning out of the text. Eisegesis reads your own meaning into it. Howerton then reads R.T. Kendall’s line about “a great divorce in the church between word and spirit.” Mitchell explains why he wears only black: since Israel, it has been “a daily funeral” for his old self.
“I want to warn, I want to teach, and I want my preaching in the end to present as many people as possible mature before our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ.”
“I hope you never become a polished preacher.”
“I want to do my best to be an echo of what God has said and not put things in there that’s not there and not take things out of it.”
Into the text
Colossians 1:28-29
Paul’s preaching has one subject (“him”), two tools (“warning” and “teaching”), and one goal (“mature in Christ”). Warning without teaching turns into scolding. Teaching without warning turns into a lecture. Then verse 29 does something surprising. Paul toils and struggles, and the energy is God’s. That is Word and Spirit in one sentence: a man working hard at proclamation, powered by a strength that is not his. Mitchell quotes the goal slightly differently (“mature before our Lord”). Paul’s phrase is “mature in Christ.” Maturity is not graduating from Christ. It is growing further into him.
Nehemiah 8:8
Howerton cites this verse as he describes Mitchell’s style: “Line by line and he gave the sense” [15:01]. It is a classic picture of expository preaching. The exiles have come home. Ezra reads, the Levites explain, and the people understand. Read on to verses 9 to 12. The people weep. Then they are sent home to eat, drink and “make great rejoicing, because they had understood the words that were declared to them.” Clear teaching of God’s word does not leave people cold. It makes them cry and then it makes them glad.
1 Corinthians 2:1-5
Corinth loved polished speakers. Paul refused to be one. He came “in weakness and in fear and much trembling,” which sounds a lot like a preacher kneeling at a chair and wringing out his anxiety before he stands up. Paul’s reason is not that skill is bad. It is that faith built on a speaker’s skill is only as strong as the speaker. Faith built on the Spirit’s power holds. This is Howerton’s point to Mitchell, and it is good news for every nervous Sunday school teacher.
1 Thessalonians 1:5
Kendall’s “divorce” has an answer here. The gospel came “not only in word,” which means it did come in word, with content, truth and argument. It also came “in power and in the Holy Spirit.” Paul does not choose. He also adds a third thing that neither stream owns: “what kind of men we proved to be.” The messenger’s life is part of the message.
Go deeper
- Cross-references
- Ephesians 5:18-20 and Colossians 3:16-17 side by side. One says “be filled with the Spirit,” the other “let the word of Christ dwell in you richly.” Both produce the same fruit: singing, thanks, and mutual encouragement. Word and Spirit were never rivals.
- What the speakers were quoting
- Baxter’s line is from a poem in Poetical Fragments (1681): “I preach’d, as never sure to preach again, / And as a dying man to dying men!” Spurgeon’s real reply to a newspaper that called him “vulgar” reads: “I am perhaps vulgar, but it is not intentional, save that I must and will make the people listen. My firm conviction is that we have had quite enough polite preachers, and many require a change. God has owned me among the most degraded and off-casts. Let others serve their class; these are mine, and to them I must keep.” Kendall’s words, from Word & Spirit (2019): “When there is a divorce, sometimes the children stay with the mother, sometimes with the father. In the divorce between the Word and the Spirit, you have those on the Word side and those on the Spirit side.”
- Church history
- Martyn Lloyd-Jones, a physician turned preacher, defined preaching as “logic on fire.” He was a Word man who longed for revival and wrote often about the Spirit’s power. His book Preaching and Preachers (1971) remains one of the best on the subject.
- A book
- R.T. Kendall, Word & Spirit (Charisma House, 2019). A short book by a man who has lived in both camps.
Hold it carefully
Small corrections, offered in love
This guide tests what friends say too. Baxter lived from 1615 to 1691, so he was a 17th-century Puritan, not 16th. Spurgeon’s “vulgar” quote in the episode is a paraphrase. His real words are above, and the phrases “highways and byways” and “let me be vulgar” are not in them. Kendall did not directly follow Lloyd-Jones at Westminster Chapel (Glyn Owen served in between), and his background is Nazarene and Southern Baptist, not Presbyterian. Howerton also says Spurgeon “died early in his 50s.” He died at 57. None of this changes the point. It is a small practice of Acts 17:11.
“Unpolished” can become a costume
Plain speech is a gift. Careless preparation is not. Mitchell is a hard worker: he studies cultural context, background and original audience, and he uses Logos Bible Software. The problem with polish is not clarity or craft. It is performance that points to the preacher. Some preachers dress down to look authentic, which is its own kind of polish. The question is always: whom does this point to?
Word and Spirit people both have a case
Christians who put the Word first fear that claims of fresh revelation will drift from Scripture, and church history gives them good reason. Christians who put the Spirit first fear a church that knows about God and does not expect him to act, and church history gives them good reason too. Kendall’s hope is that each side learns from the other. A group that includes both is not a problem to manage. It is a gift.
Symbols are personal
Mitchell’s black clothing is a private reminder of Galatians 2:20, and he presents it that way. Outward symbols help some believers. They also can become badges. Jesus warns against “practicing your righteousness before other people in order to be seen by them” (Matthew 6:1). The inward reality matters more than the wardrobe.
Reflect
Write, don’t just think. A sentence is enough.
- Mitchell kneels at a chair before he preaches and thanks God for finding him usable. Where do you feel unpolished, untrained or not enough? Write it down, then write 1 Corinthians 2:3 underneath it.
- Colossians 1:28 names warning and teaching. Which one do you resist when it is aimed at you? Write down the last warning you ignored and who gave it.
- Howerton defines eisegesis at [37:42]: reading your own meaning into the text. Name one verse you have bent to say what you wanted. Then write what it actually says.
- Were you shaped more by the Word or by the Spirit? Write the name of the person who shaped your faith most, one thing they gave you, and one thing they missed.
- Mitchell wears black as “a daily funeral” [45:02] for his old self. What part of your old self keeps climbing out of the grave? Name it plainly.
Practice this week
Copy Colossians 1:28-29 by hand into your notebook every morning this week. Before you write, pray one sentence asking the Holy Spirit to open it. After you write, underline one word and write one line about what it asks of you today. By the seventh day, say verse 28 from memory without looking.
Pray it
Father, I want to be an echo of what you have said, adding nothing and taking nothing away. I come to you in weakness and in fear and much trembling, so let my faith rest on your power and not on anyone’s polish, including mine. Let the word of Christ dwell in me richly, and fill me with your Spirit. Where I have Scripture without fire, set me burning. Where I have fire without Scripture, anchor me. Work in me with your energy, the way you worked in Paul. Amen.
The Word and the Spirit were never meant to live apart.
Session 04Top ↑
Contend
Jude’s hard word, the laws that worry these pastors, and what happened to the churches of the East.
What was said
Mitchell’s new book is called Contend, from Jude 3. Howerton reads the verse, then reads Mitchell’s own promotion of the book, which names three threats and a deadline.
Mitchell explains the first threat. Some ideologies and “political streams,” left unchecked, will pass laws that “inadvertently muzzle the scriptures.” Faithful preaching will be called hate speech. Governments will threaten to remove churches’ 501(c)(3) tax exemption or shut them down, and preachers will have to choose between faithfulness and giving in. “we’re not there yet but we’re headed there” [48:32], he says, and he sees it happening in other countries already. Howerton adds “already happening” and one word: “Canada.”
The second threat is deception online: people mixing crystals, mystics and psychics with Jesus, and influencers and athletes speaking for God “who have never read the Bible.” [49:58] The third is hostility toward Christians worldwide.
Later, Howerton sums up his view: “if godly people won’t contend, godless people will.” [56:37] Mitchell reminds listeners that Christianity began in the East, not the West. He has walked through the ruins of the seven churches of Revelation in Turkey. Turkey was once Paul’s home base and is now almost entirely Muslim. What happened? Howerton answers: “A lack of contending.”
“policies that could eventually muzzle the scriptures, satanic delusions running rampant on social media, a growing hostility toward Christians globally.”
“They will pass legislation and laws I think that would inadvertently muzzle the scriptures”
“Christianity is not a western faith.”
Into the text
Jude 3-4
Jude wanted to write a warm letter about salvation. Love made him write a hard one. Look at verse 4, where the threat comes from. It is not Rome. It is not a law. It is people who “crept in unnoticed” to the church and turned grace into permission. Jude’s first battlefield is inside the church, among people who use Jesus’ name. That fits Mitchell’s second threat, the social-media teachers mixing Jesus with other spirituality, better than his first.
Jude 20-23
Here is how Jude says to contend. Build yourself up. Pray in the Spirit. Keep yourself in God’s love. Then have mercy on doubters, pull people out of the fire, and show mercy even to those whose sin you hate. The word “mercy” shows up three times in four verses. Jude’s contending is not a posture of anger. It is a firefighter’s work.
Acts 4:18-20
This is the scenario Mitchell fears: authorities order preachers to stop. The apostles do not riot or sneer. They answer calmly, put the question back to the council, and keep preaching. When they are beaten for it, they leave “rejoicing that they were counted worthy to suffer dishonor for the name” (Acts 5:41). The line between faithful and disobedient is drawn at one place: when obeying people means disobeying God.
Revelation 2:4-5
Jesus says this to Ephesus, a church famous for testing false teachers (2:2). They were good at contending and had lost their love. Mitchell names this pattern when he asks what happened in the East: “believers abandoned their first love.” The warning cuts both ways. A church can die from compromise. It can also die from orthodoxy with no love left in it.
Go deeper
- Cross-references
- 2 Timothy 2:24-26 (the Lord’s servant “must not be quarrelsome but kind to everyone”); 1 Peter 3:15-16 (“with gentleness and respect”); 1 Timothy 4:1 (Mitchell’s “doctrines of demons” and “seducing spirits” [49:00] echo its King James wording); Galatians 2:11-14 (Paul contends with Peter to his face).
- Church history
- Hagia Sophia in Istanbul was the greatest church in Christendom for nine centuries. It became a mosque after the Ottoman conquest in 1453, a museum in 1934, and a mosque again in 2020. John Chrysostom, whom Mitchell names, preached in the church that stood on that site before it, as Archbishop of Constantinople (398 to 404). He was exiled for confronting the empress. He contended, and it cost him.
- A book
- Philip Jenkins, The Lost History of Christianity (2008). A historian’s account of the thousand-year golden age of the church in the Middle East, Africa and Asia, and how it died.
- Another book
- J. Gresham Machen, Christianity and Liberalism (1923). A classic example of contending for the faith against a threat from inside the church, written with clarity and without cruelty.
Hold it carefully
Is the legal threat real?
Partly, and it depends on where you live. In Canada, the religious-text defence is gone. The law still requires “wilful” promotion of extreme hatred, and its supporters say that shields sincere preaching. Critics answer that removing the defence invites complaints, investigations and self-censorship, which can muzzle preachers even without a conviction. In Finland, member of Parliament Päivi Räsänen was acquitted twice over a Bible-verse post and a 2004 church pamphlet on marriage. In March 2026 the Supreme Court acquitted her on the post but convicted her, 3 to 2, over the pamphlet, and she has appealed to the European Court of Human Rights. In the United States, the First Amendment gives strong protection to religious speech. No law revokes tax exemption for preaching doctrine, and in 2025 the IRS itself proposed loosening the rules on sermons (a federal court dismissed that case in 2026 on procedural grounds, and it is on appeal). Mitchell’s “we’re not there yet” is accurate for America. His “we’re headed there” is a prediction. Faithful Christians weigh that prediction differently.
The strongest case on the other side
Supporters of hate-speech laws point to rising violence against Jews, Muslims and other minorities, and to the way words have prepared the ground for violence before. They argue that a religious label should not shield real incitement. Christians can grant that concern and still argue that the state should not judge the truth of doctrine. Making the strongest case for the other side is not a surrender. It is how Proverbs 18:17 says wise people listen.
What happened in the East is not one story
Howerton’s answer, “a lack of contending,” is part of the truth. Revelation 2 and 3 warn that lampstands can be removed. History adds more. There were the Arab conquests of the 7th century, centuries of special taxes and legal limits on Christians, the Mongol invasions, and the genocides of Armenian, Assyrian and Greek Christians from 1914 to 1923. Many of those believers contended to the death. Two of the seven churches, Smyrna and Philadelphia, received no rebuke at all from Jesus, and their cities are Muslim-majority today. Loss is not always proof of unfaithfulness. Sometimes it is the cost of faithfulness.
Contending is not the same as quarreling
The same apostle who fought the good fight wrote that the Lord’s servant “must not be quarrelsome but kind to everyone” (2 Timothy 2:24). Contending is aimed at error. Kindness is aimed at people. We need both.
Reflect
Write, don’t just think. A sentence is enough.
- Jude wanted to write a warm letter and love made him write a hard one. Name one person you need to say something hard to. Write the first sentence you would say, and make it kind.
- Jude’s threat crept in unnoticed. Mitchell describes people “merging crystals and mystics and psychic behavior” with the kingdom [49:17]. What has crept into your own faith without your noticing: a teacher, a habit, a feed?
- Revelation 2:4 was written to a church that was good at being right. Write the name of someone you won an argument with and lost. What would first love have done instead?
- Howerton says “if godly people won’t contend, godless people will” [56:37]. Where are you silent when you should speak? Where are you loud when you should be praying?
- Jude 22 says, “And have mercy on those who doubt.” Who in your life is doubting right now? Write their name and what mercy would look like to them this week.
Practice this week
Read the whole letter of Jude aloud once a day this week. It is 25 verses and takes about five minutes. Each morning, before you touch your phone, do the three things in Jude 20-21: build yourself up in the faith, pray in the Holy Spirit, and keep yourself in the love of God. By the end of the week, reach out to the doubter you named and ask a question before you say anything else.
Pray it
Lord Jesus, you are the faith once for all delivered to the saints, and I will not add to you or walk away from you. Build me up in my most holy faith, teach me to pray in the Holy Spirit, and keep me in the love of God. Give me mercy for those who doubt, and courage for the day when obeying people would mean disobeying you. Do not let me win arguments and lose my first love. Make me a firefighter, not a critic. Amen.
Jude tells us to contend. Then he tells us to have mercy. He does not let us choose one.
Session 05Top ↑
Clear Eyes, Open Hands
Violent extremism is real. Muslims are our neighbors. This session holds both and does not blur them.
What was said
Mitchell describes “another monotheism that is almost an antichrist monotheism.” [50:19] It is one of the fastest-growing faiths in the world, he says, and there are “fringes of that ideology that is radical and hostile towards Christianity.” [50:33] Howerton asks if he means Islam, and Mitchell answers, “I’m talking about radical Islam” [50:52]. He warns that, “for the sake of inclusion,” America keeps “giving away seats in office” until that ideology gains enough power to bring in Sharia law. Howerton points to “1,400 years of history.” Mitchell says the ideology “has conquered the east,” “most of North Africa,” is “conquering” Europe, and is “encroaching on our shores.” He tells about a pet python that sat still in the corner of its cage until the rat felt safe, then struck.
Later Howerton traces “one covenant, two boys,” Isaac and Ishmael. He reads John 16:2 as a prophecy that the final enemy will be religious, not atheist. Mitchell points to the beheaded martyrs of Revelation 20:4. Howerton applies Galatians 1:8 to Muhammad’s first revelation. They read Ezekiel 38 as a list of Muslim nations plus Russia. Mitchell reads a list of Islamic beliefs about the Mahdi, a figure in Islamic end-times teaching, and says it describes the biblical Antichrist. He concludes that “the persecution of the saints I think will come at the hand of Islam.”
“until that ideology has enough political power to introduce Sharia law in America”
“I just gently want to say I love you. You are wrong.”
“What religious belief takes delight in decapitating the heads of people?”
Into the text
John 16:1-3
Howerton’s point is sound: Jesus expected religious people, not only irreligious ones, to kill his followers and call it worship. Read the verse in its setting, though. “They will put you out of the synagogues” shows who Jesus meant first. The first people to fulfill this were zealous religious leaders of the disciples’ own day. The clearest example is Saul of Tarsus, who says he persecuted the church “violently” out of zeal for God (Galatians 1:13-14; Acts 26:9-11). Then Jesus met Saul on the road. The verse that warns about religious killers also contains the diagnosis: “they have not known the Father, nor me.” That diagnosis is the start of a mission, not the end of one.
Genesis 21:17-18
Howerton is right that the covenant runs through Isaac, not Ishmael (Genesis 17:19-21). Genesis 16:12 also says Ishmael will live “over against all his kinsmen.” But read the whole story. Ishmael’s name means “God hears” (yishmāʻēʼl), and the angel says it twice in one verse: God heard. God rescues the boy in the desert, blesses him, and promises him a nation (17:20). Whatever you conclude about the conflict between their descendants, the God of the Bible is not the enemy of Ishmael’s children. He hears them.
Galatians 1:8-9
Paul’s first target is Paul himself: “even if we.” He is not predicting one future religion. He is setting a test that applies to every message from every source: an apostle, an angel, a famous preacher, a podcast. Muhammad’s message, which denies that Jesus is the Son of God and that he died on the cross, fails that test. So do other messages that claim angelic origin. Galatians 1:8 is a warning for all time more than a prophecy about one man. Used that way, it protects us from more than one error.
Luke 10:25-29
Jesus answers with a story in which the hero is a Samaritan, a member of the religious group his hearers most distrusted (John 4:9). The lawyer wanted a category of people he did not have to love. Jesus gave him none. The Muslim family on your street, the Afghan driver, the Somali nurse, the Turkish shop owner: each is your neighbor. None of them is an ideology. Whatever we believe about Islam’s history and future, Jesus has already told us what to do with the person in front of us.
Go deeper
- Cross-references
- Matthew 5:43-45; Revelation 7:9-10 (a great multitude “from every nation, from all tribes and peoples and languages”); Acts 9:1-19 (a religious persecutor meets Jesus); Romans 12:17-21.
- The persecution is real
- Open Doors’ 2026 World Watch List counts 388 million Christians facing high levels of persecution and discrimination. It records 4,849 Christians killed for faith-related reasons between October 2024 and September 2025. Nigeria alone accounts for 3,490 of those deaths, much of it from Islamist militants and armed groups in the north and Middle Belt. North Korea, an atheist state, ranks first. Pray for these believers by name and by country.
- Church history
- In 1219, during the Fifth Crusade, Francis of Assisi crossed the battle lines at Damietta, Egypt, to speak about Christ with Sultan al-Kamil. He went unarmed. He came back alive. It remains one of the boldest acts of Christian witness to Muslims on record.
- A book
- Nabeel Qureshi, Seeking Allah, Finding Jesus (2014). A devout American Muslim tells how he came to faith in Christ through a patient Christian friend. It is honest about Islam and full of love for Muslims.
Hold it carefully
Two truths, kept separate
Violent jihadism is real. It has beheaded Christians on camera, burned churches, and killed thousands of believers, especially in Nigeria and the Sahel. Christians should say so plainly, pray for the persecuted, and support them. It is also true that about two billion Muslims live on earth, and most of them are not waging war on anyone. They are neighbors to love and people Christ died to save. Mitchell uses the words “radical” and “fringes.” As the conversation goes on, the qualifiers drop away and “that ideology” stands for all of Islam. Keep the qualifiers.
“Sharia law in America”
The Constitution forbids any “religious Test” for public office (Article VI) and bars the government from establishing a religion (First Amendment). No U.S. jurisdiction has adopted Sharia, and it could not lawfully do so. Pew estimates about 5.5 million Muslims in the U.S., under 2% of the population. The strongest case from the other side: Muslim Americans who run for office swear the same oath as everyone else. Christians who want religious freedom for churches must defend the same freedom for mosques, or they give it up for themselves. Fear about the future is not a reason to deny a neighbor’s rights today.
“Conquering Europe”
Muslims made up about 4.9% of Europe’s population in 2016. Pew projects 7.4% to 14% by 2050, depending on migration. Europe faces real questions about immigration and integration. “Conquering” is not an accurate description of those numbers. Islam’s rapid global growth (21% from 2010 to 2020, per Pew) comes mainly from births, not conversions or conquest.
The Mahdi and the Antichrist
Howerton says he got this material from John MacArthur. A 2011 MacArthur sermon does contain a nearly identical list. The idea is most associated with Joel Richardson’s The Islamic Antichrist (2009). Checked against Islamic sources, the list is mixed. Hadith do say the Mahdi will rule seven years. They describe a truce with the “Romans” (Byzantine Christians), not a treaty with the Jews. No canonical source puts him on a white horse. In Islamic teaching the “powerful prophet” at his side is Jesus (ʻĪsā), who kills the Dajjal, Islam’s own antichrist figure. Many evangelical scholars, including fellow premillennialists, reject the Islamic Antichrist view. Among their reasons: the Antichrist of 2 Thessalonians 2:4 claims to be God, which no Muslim would do. Hold this as one speculative reading, not as settled prophecy.
Other details
Abraham lived about 4,000 years ago, not 5,000. Most Muslims today are not Arab and do not descend from Ishmael even by tradition. Muslim sources date Muhammad’s first revelation to about 610 and do record his fear afterward. Khadijah reassured him, and her Christian cousin Waraqa identified the visitor as the angel sent to Moses. Ezekiel 38 does name peoples from lands that are now mostly Muslim. “Rosh” as Russia is disputed (the ESV reads “chief prince”), and China is not mentioned. Revelation 20:4’s word for beheading (pelekizō, “to behead with an axe”) described a Roman punishment. John’s first readers knew Rome as the power that beheaded Christians. Islamist groups behead Christians today. They are not the only ones in history who have.
Christians have a record too. The Crusaders massacred Jerusalem’s Muslims and Jews in 1099. Honesty about our own history does not weaken our witness. It makes it believable.
Reflect
Write, don’t just think. A sentence is enough.
- Mitchell starts with “radical Islam” [50:52] and ends with “that ideology.” Write down what you felt while you listened: fear, anger, agreement, discomfort. Be honest before you are careful.
- Write the name of one Muslim you know. What do you know about their family, their work, their faith? If the answer is almost nothing, write that down.
- Saul of Tarsus killed Christians and believed he was serving God, and then Jesus met him on the road. Is there anyone you have decided is beyond God’s reach? Write their name.
- Ishmael means “God hears,” and God heard the boy in the desert. Have you assumed God was on your side against someone else’s children? What does Genesis 21:17 say to that?
- Which claim in this part of the episode did you want to believe right away? Why that one? Write what it would take to check it.
Practice this week
Choose one country on the Open Doors World Watch List and write its name at the top of a page. Under it, write the name of one Muslim you know. Every day this week, pray for both: for the Christians of that country, and for your neighbor by name. Before the week ends, do one specific kindness for that neighbor: bring food, ask about their family, learn to say their name correctly. If you do not know a Muslim by name, go to a Muslim-owned shop or restaurant twice this week and learn the owner’s name the first time.
Pray it
Father, you heard the voice of the boy where he was, and you hear the Muslims I know by name; show them Jesus. Comfort my brothers and sisters who are killed for your name, and turn the hearts of those who kill them, as you turned Saul. Keep my eyes clear about the sword and my hands open to my neighbor. Teach me to love my enemies and pray for those who persecute, so that I look like my Father in heaven. Let me be the Samaritan before I am anything else. Amen.
Clear eyes about the sword. Open hands to the neighbor. Jesus asks for both.
Session 06Top ↑
While It Is Day
A countdown clock, leaves falling off a tree in Queens, and the difference between urgency and alarm.
What was said
Mitchell compares the church age to the countdown clock preachers see on Sunday morning. When Christ ascended and promised to return, “a clock was put on humanity.” [1:08:50] No one knows the day or the hour, but every day brings the return closer. So he preaches, prays, leads his staff, and talks to unbelievers “like a man running out of time.” He wants to “increase the number of virgins with oil,” a reference to Jesus’ parable in Matthew 25. At death, he says, everyone will agree about theology, and it will be too late for many. There is no purgatory and no praying people out of hell.
Asked for signs, he uses an image from New York: when the leaves fall, you buy boots, because winter is coming. His “leaves” are the rise of Islam, nations talking about a shared currency, the move away from cash, talk of a “10 nation confederacy,” and nations discussing an “identity chip” without which you could not buy or sell. He points to Noah, mocked until the rain came. Then he names the people who worry him most: not atheists, but churchgoers who think they know God and will hear, “I never knew you.” Echoing Ezekiel’s watchman, he says he does not want their blood on his hands.
“I preach like a man running out of time.”
“In death, we all will have perfect agreement around theology.”
“I’m concerned for the people that’s going to sit in your services on Sunday and mine with a false insecurity”
Into the text
Matthew 24:36-39
Mitchell reads this passage well [1:16:12]: people will be “going about their daily life.” Look at the list. Eating, drinking and marrying are not sins. The danger Jesus names is not wickedness here. It is being “unaware.” The flood generation was busy with good things and never looked up. Jesus opens by saying no one knows the day, and he means it. The right response is not calculation. It is attention.
Matthew 25:10-13
In the parable, all ten virgins fall asleep (25:5). The difference between the wise and the foolish is not who stayed awake. It is who brought oil. And oil cannot be borrowed at the last minute (25:9). That is Mitchell’s concern for churchgoers. You cannot live on someone else’s faith, your parents’, your pastor’s or your spouse’s, when the door closes. Readiness is not frantic watching of the news. It is a real, present relationship with the Bridegroom.
Ezekiel 33:6-7
This is the passage behind Mitchell’s “blood on my hands” [1:17:41]. Notice the limit on the watchman’s job in verse 7: “Whenever you hear a word from my mouth.” The watchman does not invent alarms. He passes on what God has said. That is a heavy responsibility, and a freeing one. Our job is to warn faithfully about what God has clearly said: judgment is coming, Christ is coming, repent and believe. We are not responsible to decode every headline.
Acts 1:6-8
The last question the disciples ask Jesus before he ascends is about the end-times calendar. He does not give them one. He gives them the Spirit and a mission. Every generation of believers is tempted to ask the disciples’ question. Jesus’ answer has not changed: that is the Father’s business, and yours is witness. Mitchell’s best instinct follows this answer: urgency that turns into evangelism.
Go deeper
- Cross-references
- 2 Peter 3:8-10 (delay is patience, “not wishing that any should perish”); 1 Thessalonians 5:1-6; John 9:4 (“night is coming, when no one can work”); Hebrews 9:27; Matthew 24:6 (“See that you are not alarmed”).
- A Bible story
- 2 Peter 2:5 calls Noah “a herald of righteousness.” Genesis does not say how long he preached or built. The “hundred years” Mitchell mentions is an old inference from Genesis 5:32 and 7:6. What Genesis does say is enough: “Noah did this; he did all that God commanded him” (6:22).
- Church history
- William Miller, a Baptist lay preacher, taught that Christ would return around 1843 or 1844, and his movement settled on October 22, 1844. Some followers left crops unharvested and gave away property. The next day became known as the Great Disappointment. In 2011 Harold Camping repeated the mistake with May 21. In 1970 Hal Lindsey’s The Late Great Planet Earth linked the ten horns of Daniel 7 to the European Common Market. That group reached ten members in 1981 and kept growing. Every generation has had sincere believers who read the leaves too precisely.
- A book
- Robert G. Clouse, ed., The Meaning of the Millennium: Four Views (1977). Four evangelical scholars make their case and answer one another.
Hold it carefully
Urgency is biblical. Date-setting is not
Mitchell does not set a date, and he says plainly, “The scripture says we do not know the day nor the hour.” [1:09:06] Living “like a man running out of time” fits John 9:4. It goes wrong when it turns into anxiety, or when it lets us neglect long obedience. Jesus told his servants to “engage in business until I come” (Luke 19:13). Plant churches. Raise children. Plant trees.
The millennium is a place where believers differ
Mitchell states that Jesus will return “to establish his millennial kingdom here on earth” as a fact. That is the premillennial view, held by many evangelicals. Many other Bible-believing Christians hold amillennial or postmillennial views and read Revelation 20 differently. That includes much of the Reformed tradition, Augustine, and many Lutherans and Anglicans. All three views confess that Christ will return bodily, raise the dead, judge the world and make all things new. Hold that center firmly. Hold the sequence humbly.
The signs, checked
Cash use is falling: about 14% of U.S. payments in late 2025 were made in cash (Federal Reserve). No nation requires an implanted chip. The UK announced a mandatory digital ID for right-to-work checks in September 2025 and dropped the mandatory part in January 2026. The EU’s new digital identity wallet is voluntary for citizens. BRICS has eleven members in 2026 and no common currency. We found no formal “10 nation confederacy” in the news.
Revelation 13 describes a mark tied to worship of the beast (“the name of the beast,” 13:17). Its first readers faced the Roman emperor cult and trade guilds that required pagan loyalty to do business. Many faithful Christians read it as also pointing to a future ruler. Either way, its center is allegiance, not technology. Watching tap-to-pay for the mark misses the point, and Jesus said, “See that you are not alarmed” (Matthew 24:6).
His deepest concern is his best one
The strongest part of this segment is not the signs. It is Mitchell’s fear for people in church who are not in Christ (Matthew 7:21-23). That warning is clear in Scripture, and it applies to every one of us before it applies to anyone else.
Reflect
Write, don’t just think. A sentence is enough.
- Mitchell says, “I preach like a man running out of time” [1:09:58]. If you knew Christ would return within a year, what would you start this week? What would you keep doing exactly as you are?
- In Matthew 25 the oil cannot be borrowed. Whose faith have you been living on: a parent’s, a pastor’s, a spouse’s? Write down what is actually yours.
- Mitchell fears for people in church with false security [1:17:01]. Read Matthew 7:21-23 and answer it in writing. Do you know Jesus, or do you know about him? How can you tell?
- Write the names of three people who do not know Jesus. Next to each, write what you would want them to hear from you if you had one conversation left.
- When you read the news, do you feel urgency or alarm? Write what each one does to your body, and what each one makes you do next.
Practice this week
Take a three-day news fast: no headlines, no end-times videos, no prophecy commentary. Each time you reach for your phone to check, pray instead for one of the three people you named, by name. On the fourth day, call or sit down with one of them, ask a real question about their life, and listen to the whole answer.
Pray it
Lord, I do not know the day or the hour, and I do not need to. Keep oil in my lamp, and let it be mine, not borrowed. Guard me from false security and from fear of the headlines. You have given me your Spirit and made me your witness, so send me while it is still day. Put the names of the people I love who do not know you on my lips every morning. Amen.
Night is coming. It is still day. Work.
Session 07Top ↑
When They Revile You
A hard Holy Week, a text from his daughters, a feast on a bad day, and the discipline of sorting criticism honestly.
What was said
Howerton asks how Mitchell handles public opposition. Mitchell says being a target for ridicule is new to him, only the last three years. Then he tells about his breaking point. In 2025 his church had just moved into a new building. He had not slept, and he was frustrated with the sound. Preaching on that stage for the first time, he told a story from his teenage years in New York. “I did not frame the story right and uh my words hurt a lot of people” [1:19:38]. It happened during Holy Week. The backlash was so heavy that he left his family for a few days and sat on the floor of a room with water, a legal pad and a Bible.
On Thursday his daughters sent a group text: “we know your heart and we know your character and we love you” [1:21:04]. It gave him strength to get off the floor. He realized that Jesus had heard “hosanna” and “crucify him” in the same week, and he thanked God for letting him share a little of that. He draws a line: if he is criticized for a mistake, he will apologize publicly. If he is persecuted for righteousness, he will rejoice and pray for his enemies.
Howerton tells of the day he woke up as an international negative trending topic. He came home to candles, his favorite meal, and his wife quoting Matthew 5:11-12, then saying, “So tonight we feast.” [1:26:26] Every man, he says, “marries a launchpad or a lid.” He goes to Psalm 86 in those moments. He suggests that God often grows a ministry after its leader is falsely accused. The talk turns to the “celebrity pastor” label. Howerton describes finding Mitchell praying alone before events. Mitchell says his ministry is “a cross that I carry,” and he wears two crosses as a reminder.
“within the span of seven days, he knew what it felt like to be loved by some and to be hated by others.”
“But if I’m persecuted for righteousness sake, I got to say, ‘Lord, thank you that you allow me to suffer for the name.’”
“Every man either marries a launchpad or a lid.”
Into the text
Matthew 5:10-12
Both men lean on this passage, and it is theirs to lean on. Read the conditions closely. The blessing is for evil spoken “falsely” and “on my account.” Criticism that is true is not persecution, even when it is harsh. Criticism that is about us, not Christ, is not persecution either. This is exactly the line Mitchell draws. Apologize for the mistake. Rejoice in the persecution. The hard part is that one storm often contains both.
1 Peter 4:12-16
Peter gives the same test with a sharper edge. Verse 15 lists ways Christians can suffer for their own wrongdoing, and the list ends with “meddler,” someone who oversteps. The question to ask in any storm is: am I suffering “as a Christian,” or for something I did? The honest answer is often “some of each.” Peter’s word for the first is rejoice. His word for the second is, in effect, repent.
Psalm 86:14-17
Howerton quotes this from memory and says he will “butcher” it [1:28:00]. His “vindicate your servant” is closer to Psalm 26:1 (“Vindicate me, O LORD”). The psalm is worth reading as it stands. Notice verse 15. David does not base his plea on his own innocence. He bases it on God’s character, quoting God’s self-description to Moses in Exodus 34:6. That is a safe place to stand when you are attacked. You do not have to be fully right to ask for help. You only need a God who is “merciful and gracious.”
Proverbs 12:4
Howerton’s two lines about marriage [1:26:53] sound like this proverb: “Steel in our spine.” “Not poison in our bones.” His wife’s feast and Mitchell’s daughters’ text did the same thing. They spoke to character, not to the controversy. They did not say “you were right.” They said “we know who you are.” Every believer under fire needs people like that. Every believer can be that for someone else.
Go deeper
- Cross-references
- Acts 5:40-42 (“counted worthy to suffer dishonor for the name”); Romans 12:14; 2 Kings 6:15-17 (“those who are with us are more than those who are with them”); Luke 9:23; Philippians 3:10.
- A Bible story
- 2 Samuel 16:5-14. As David flees Jerusalem, Shimei follows him, cursing and throwing stones. Abishai offers to cut off his head. David says, “Leave him alone, and let him curse.” He trusts God with the verdict. Some of what Shimei said was false, and some of it touched real guilt. David does not sort it in the moment. He lets God sort it.
- Church history
- In 1887 Charles Spurgeon warned that the Baptist Union was drifting from Scripture. The “Downgrade Controversy” followed. He left the Union, was censured by it in 1888, and lost friends. In 1891 he said, “This fight is killing me.” He died the next year at 57. Faithfulness under public attack is not new, and it is not free.
- A book
- Timothy Keller, The Freedom of Self-Forgetfulness (2012). A short book on 1 Corinthians 4:3-4: “It is the Lord who judges me,” which frees you from both the critics and the fans.
Hold it carefully
Not every critic is a persecutor
Mitchell’s own summary is honest. His words “hurt a lot of people,” and he apologized. The storm that followed contained fair criticism from people he had wounded and cruelty from people who wanted him gone. Most public storms are mixed like this. The discipline is to sort them honestly, with the help of people who love you enough to tell you the truth. The danger for any leader, famous or not, is to file all criticism under Matthew 5:11 and never under Proverbs 12:1 (“he who hates reproof is stupid”).
Does false accusation lead to growth?
Howerton suggests that God often grows a ministry after its leader is attacked, as a kind of vindication [1:28:10]. Scripture promises that God will vindicate his servants (Psalm 37:5-6; Isaiah 54:17). It does not promise the vindication will be visible growth in this life. Stephen was falsely accused and stoned (Acts 6 to 7). Hebrews 11 honors people who “did not receive what was promised.” Growth is not proof of God’s approval, and shrinking is not proof of his judgment.
Sharing Christ’s sufferings, carefully
Mitchell’s prayer, thanking God for letting him feel a little of Holy Week, is tender and biblical (Philippians 3:10; 1 Peter 4:13). It also needs one qualifier, which he supplies himself. Jesus was hated without cause (John 15:25). We never are, fully. Our sufferings always come mixed with our own faults. That is not a reason to refuse comfort. It is a reason to receive it humbly.
“A cross that I carry”
Mitchell insists that his platform is a burden, not a prize. That can be true, and he says God has also blessed him through it. Every believer with influence, however small, should ask how to carry it without self-pity and without self-promotion. Both are ways of making it about us.
Reflect
Write, don’t just think. A sentence is enough.
- Write down the last criticism that stung. Draw a line down the page. On one side write what was fair, on the other what was false. Do not skip the fair side.
- Mitchell sat on the floor of a room with water, a legal pad and a Bible after “my words hurt a lot of people” [1:19:38]. Where do you go when you are under fire, and what do you reach for there?
- His daughters wrote, “we know your heart and we know your character and we love you” [1:21:04]. Who has said something like that to you? Who is waiting for you to say it to them?
- Is there someone you hurt with your words and never apologized to? Write their name and the apology in one sentence, with no “but” in it.
- Howerton says every man marries “a launchpad or a lid” [1:26:45]. Set marriage aside. Are you a launchpad or a lid for the people closest to you? Ask God to show you one moment from this week.
Practice this week
Deliver the apology you wrote in the fourth prompt, in person, by phone or by handwritten letter. Name what you did, name the harm, and do not explain what you meant. Mitchell’s rule is the model: apologize plainly for the mistake. Before you do it, read Psalm 86:14-17 aloud and ask God for a heart that is not defending itself.
Pray it
Lord, you are a God merciful and gracious, slow to anger and abounding in steadfast love and faithfulness. When I am insulted for your name, let me rejoice, because your Spirit rests on me. When I am criticized for my own wrong, make me quick to repent and plain in my apology. Give me honesty to sort the two, and people who know my heart and will tell me the truth. You heard “hosanna” and “crucify him” in the same week; keep me close to you in both. Amen.
He heard “hosanna” and “crucify him” in the same week. He knows.
Session 08Top ↑
Jars of Clay
Two preachers admit their anxiety. Then one of them turns to the man in a prison cell and the mother at the sink.
What was said
Mitchell says he still struggles with insecurity and feelings of unworthiness. For years he saw God “like a boss” and a “taskmaster,” and he has to remind himself he is a son. Howerton says people often tell him they are praying for him to stay humble. He asks them instead to pray that he stays confident. Both men say they walk off stage most Sundays sure they “blew it.” Howerton names it: the agony between the sermon God gave you and the one that came out of your mouth.
Then the conversation gets more personal. Howerton says he had eight months of “very extreme” anxiety attacks around preaching in 2019, and a milder version has come back now. Mitchell says he dealt with preaching anxiety for all of 2025. He would lie on the floor of his prayer room and pray one word, “restore.” Howerton wonders if some of it is spiritual, and some of it is a soul trying to absorb “three lifetimes” of promotion in three years. He fears it could be a thorn in the flesh.
In his last question, Howerton asks what Mitchell would say to the listener in prison, in the military, or on a job site who thinks God could never use him. Mitchell’s answer ends the episode, before he prays over Howerton.
“in every great preacher, what they feel is the agony between the message God put in their heart and the one that came out of their mouth.”
“You can either let the things that you’ve done be a coffin that buries you or be a classroom that teaches you.”
“And your ministry is wherever God has your feet, that is your mission field.”
Into the text
2 Corinthians 12:7-10
Howerton reaches for this passage, and he says he does not want it to be the answer [1:42:15]. That is honest. Look at what Paul’s thorn does. It keeps him from pride after great revelations, and it comes through “a messenger of Satan.” It is spiritual and painful at the same time, and God uses it anyway. Paul prays three times for it to go. God says no, and gives him something better than relief: grace that is enough, and power that shows up in weakness. We do not know what Paul’s thorn was. That silence helps. Whatever yours is, the promise fits.
Romans 8:15
Mitchell’s confession is one many believers share: “I saw God as like a boss and it’s like a taskmaster.” [1:34:50] A man who came to God after years of running his own life learned to serve him like a good soldier. Paul names the problem exactly. A slave serves out of fear. A son serves out of belonging. “Abba” is the Aramaic word a child used for a father. Jesus prayed it in Gethsemane (Mark 14:36). The Spirit puts the same word in our mouths. Mitchell’s own conclusion is the right one: “I’m a son before anything else.” [1:34:58]
1 Kings 19:4-6
Elijah collapses right after the greatest public victory of his life, fire from heaven on Mount Carmel. That matches what Howerton describes: anxiety that came in stretches when, in his words, God “just did this.” Look at how God treats him. No lecture. Sleep, food, water, a touch. Then more sleep and more food, because the road ahead is too long for him (19:7). Only after that, at Horeb, does God speak. Sometimes the most spiritual thing a weary servant can do is eat, sleep, and let someone care for him. God is not embarrassed by our bodies. He made them.
Philippians 1:12-14
Mitchell tells the man behind bars that Paul has “seen the back of bars” too [1:44:38]. Here is Paul in chains, and the gospel is spreading through the soldiers assigned to guard him. Paul was jailed for preaching and Mitchell for crimes, but the principle holds for both. No place is outside the reach of the gospel, and no person there is useless to God. Mitchell’s list goes on: the office, the job site, the campus, and “the stay-at-home mom” praying at the sink. “I’m talking to you right as you’re cleaning the dishes and mopping the floor.” [1:45:34]
Go deeper
- Cross-references
- 2 Corinthians 4:7 (“we have this treasure in jars of clay”); Psalm 51:10-12 (“Restore to me the joy of your salvation,” the prayer behind Mitchell’s “restore”); Colossians 3:23-24; Jeremiah 29:7; 1 John 2:20, 27 (every believer has the anointing).
- What Howerton was quoting
- “This poor lisping, stammering tongue” [1:36:28] is not from a psalm. It is from William Cowper’s hymn “There Is a Fountain Filled with Blood” (1772): “Then in a nobler, sweeter song, / I’ll sing Thy power to save, / When this poor lisping, stammering tongue / Lies silent in the grave.” Cowper lived with severe depression most of his life and still wrote some of the church’s most trusted hymns. We found no source for the line about “agony” that Howerton thinks may have come from T.D. Jakes.
- Church history
- Spurgeon suffered deep depression for most of his ministry. He gave a lecture to his students called “The Minister’s Fainting Fits,” in Lectures to My Students. He told them plainly that the strongest preachers were not spared it.
- Two books
- Zack Eswine, Spurgeon’s Sorrows (2014), short and gentle, for anyone living with depression or loving someone who is. Brother Lawrence, The Practice of the Presence of God (17th century), the letters of a monastery cook who learned to pray among pots and pans.
Hold it carefully
Spiritual and physical, not either/or
Howerton suggests part of his anxiety is spiritual: people “bring their demons” to church, and preaching is warfare. Scripture agrees that there is a real spiritual battle (Ephesians 6:12). Anxiety also has causes in the body, the mind and life circumstances. Neither pastor mentions doctors or counselors in this segment. This guide will. Seeing a physician, a licensed counselor, or taking medication is not a failure of faith. Elijah needed sleep and food before he needed a word.
Be slow to name someone else’s thorn
Paul learned what his thorn was for after praying three times and hearing from the Lord. Job’s friends were quick to explain Job’s suffering and were rebuked for it (Job 42:7). Howerton applies the idea to himself, carefully. It is a humble way to hold your own pain. It is a harsh way to explain someone else’s.
Humility and confidence are not opposites
Howerton’s request, “would you please pray for me to stay confident that maybe that’s my bigger struggle” [1:34:21], is wise. Biblical humility is not thinking poorly of yourself. It is thinking rightly of God and receiving what he says about you. Paul could say “I am the least of the apostles” and, two sentences later, “I worked harder than any of them, though it was not I, but the grace of God” (1 Corinthians 15:9-10).
Every place is a mission field, and work itself matters
Mitchell tells people their ministry is wherever they are. That is true. It can also be heard to mean that work only counts when you are evangelizing or praying during it. Colossians 3:23 says the work itself, done “heartily, as for the Lord,” is service to Christ. Mopping the floor well is not just a backdrop for prayer. It is part of the offering.
Reflect
Write, don’t just think. A sentence is enough.
- Mitchell saw God “like a boss” and a “taskmaster” [1:34:50]. Write the one word that describes how you actually relate to God on a hard Monday. Then copy Romans 8:15 underneath it.
- “A coffin that buries you or a classroom that teaches you” [1:44:21]. Name one thing from your past you are still buried under. What would it look like to learn from it instead?
- Paul pleaded three times, and God said no. What have you asked God to take away that he has not? Write what his grace has looked like while you wait.
- Elijah needed sleep and food before he needed a word. How are you sleeping, eating and resting right now? Write the honest answer and one thing you will change this week.
- Who in your life is at the sink, on the job site or in a cell, sure God could never use them? Write their name and the one sentence you would say to them.
Practice this week
Set aside one hour alone this week with your Bible and your notebook. Read 2 Corinthians 12:7-10 slowly, three times. Write your thorn in one line. Then do what Mitchell did on the floor of his prayer room: pray one word, “restore,” and pray Psalm 51:12, “Restore to me the joy of your salvation.” Sit in silence for ten minutes. If anxiety or depression is heavy, use part of that hour to book an appointment with a doctor or counselor.
Pray it
Abba, Father, I am your child before I am your worker. Your grace is sufficient for me, and your power is made perfect in my weakness. Where I am worn out, feed me and let me sleep, as you did for Elijah under the broom tree. Restore to me the joy of your salvation. Do not let my past be a coffin; make it a classroom, and make wherever my feet are today a mission field. Amen.
The kitchen is a mission field. So is the cell block. So is the desk.
Appendix ATop ↑
Listening with Discernment
How to receive a sermon, a podcast, or this study without swallowing it whole or spitting it out.
Acts 17:11
The Bereans were listening to the apostle Paul. They still checked. Luke calls that noble, not suspicious. Notice the two halves: “all eagerness” and “examining.” They did not choose between openness and testing. They did both, and they did it “daily,” as a habit.
1 Thessalonians 5:19-22
Paul guards against two errors in one breath. Do not shut down what God may be saying. Do not believe everything either. Test it. Then keep the good, even when it came from a source you would not have picked, and drop the rest.
Proverbs 18:17
A podcast is one side stating its case, often well. That is not a flaw in podcasts. It is how they work. Wisdom waits to hear the other side before deciding, especially on political and religious questions where the stakes are high. Proverbs 18:13 adds a warning: “If one gives an answer before he hears, it is his folly and shame.”
Seven habits for listening well
- Separate testimony from claims
“God met me on a bathroom floor” is a testimony. Receive it with gratitude. “Islam is conquering Europe” is a claim. Check it.
- Read the verse in its chapter
Before you accept how a verse is used, read the whole chapter it comes from. Ask who wrote it, to whom, and why.
- Find the number at its source
Statistics travel far from where they started. Look for the original report: Pew, Open Doors, the Federal Reserve, the text of the law.
- Hear the best version of the other side
If you cannot state a view so that its holders would say “yes, that is what we think,” you are not ready to reject it.
- Sort what is clear from what is speculative
Christ will return: clear. Which nations make up Ezekiel 38 in 2026: speculative. Hold the first with both hands and the second with an open one.
- Watch the fruit, including your own
Does this teaching make you love God and neighbor more? Or does it make you more afraid, more angry, and less likely to share a meal with someone different from you? (Galatians 5:22-23.)
- Love the speaker while you test him
These are brothers in Christ who have given their lives to preaching. Testing what they say is not disrespect. It is what the Bereans did for Paul.
The episode’s claims, checked
Open Doors 2026: 388 million Christians face high persecution and discrimination. 4,849 killed for their faith (Oct 2024 to Sept 2025), 3,490 of them in Nigeria.
No law named. Canada’s Bill C-9 (2026) repealed the religious-text defence but protects religious statements that do not “wilfully promote hatred.” No U.S. law revokes tax exemption for preaching doctrine.
Pew (2025): fastest-growing major religion from 2010 to 2020, +21%, mainly through births.
Pew: 4.9% of Europe’s population in 2016; 7.4% to 14% projected by 2050.
No U.S. jurisdiction has adopted Sharia. Article VI bans religious tests for office. The First Amendment bars an established religion. About 5.5 million U.S. Muslims (Pew, 2026).
Smyrna and Philadelphia received no rebuke.
Abraham is usually dated about 2000 BC, so about 4,000 years.
Jihadist groups behead Christians today. Revelation 20:4’s word described a Roman punishment. Other regimes in history have beheaded Christians too.
Paul’s words are a test for every message, including his own, not a prediction of one man. Islam fails that test.
Bukhari 3 and Ibn Ishaq record his fear. Traditional date is 610.
Most named peoples map to Muslim-majority lands today. “Rosh” as Russia is disputed. China is not named.
The Muslim share is growing through births and migration. No census or Pew source confirms “fastest-growing.”
Some points match hadith (a seven-year rule). Others do not: the treaty is with the Romans, and no canonical source mentions a white horse. It is a minority reading among evangelicals.
About 14% of U.S. payments were in cash in late 2025 (Federal Reserve).
No nation mandates implanted chips. Digital ID programs exist. The UK dropped its mandatory plan in 2026, and the EU wallet is voluntary.
No such formal talks found. BRICS has eleven members and no shared currency.
A traditional inference. Genesis does not give the length.
Baxter lived from 1615 to 1691 (17th century). Spurgeon died at 57.
Seven died on October 19, 1856, after someone cried “Fire!” Contemporaries believed it was malicious. The people who did it were never identified.
Psalm 86:14-17 matches the rest. “Vindicate” is from Psalm 26:1 and 43:1.
Turn the same tools on this guide. If you find an error, tell the person who gave it to you. That is the Berean way too.
Appendix B
Memory Verses
One for each session. Write it on a card, put it where you will see it, and say it until it says itself.
- Session 1 · Psalm 40:2
He drew me up from the pit of destruction, out of the miry bog, and set my feet upon a rock, making my steps secure.
- Session 2 · 2 Timothy 4:7
I have fought the good fight, I have finished the race, I have kept the faith.
- Session 3 · Colossians 1:28
Him we proclaim, warning everyone and teaching everyone with all wisdom, that we may present everyone mature in Christ.
- Session 4 · Jude 3
Beloved, although I was very eager to write to you about our common salvation, I found it necessary to write appealing to you to contend for the faith that was once for all delivered to the saints.
- Session 5 · Matthew 5:44-45a
But I say to you, Love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you, so that you may be sons of your Father who is in heaven.
- Session 6 · Matthew 25:13
Watch therefore, for you know neither the day nor the hour.
- Session 7 · 1 Peter 4:14
If you are insulted for the name of Christ, you are blessed, because the Spirit of glory and of God rests upon you.
- Session 8 · 2 Corinthians 12:9a
But he said to me, “My grace is sufficient for you, for my power is made perfect in weakness.”
A prayer to close
Father, you heard a boy named Ishmael crying in the desert. You heard a young man yelling on a bathroom floor. You heard me in my own pit, and you drew me up and set my feet on a rock. Thank you.
Holy God, I have seen a little of your holiness and a lot of my own unclean lips. Wring the vanity and jealousy out of me. Keep me faithful in the small room where no one is watching, and let me land the plane.
Holy Spirit, end the divorce in me. Where I have Scripture without fire, set me burning. Where I have fire without Scripture, anchor me. Let the word of Christ dwell in me richly, and make me an echo of what you have said.
Lord Jesus, you are the faith once for all delivered to the saints. Keep me from adding to you and from leaving you. Teach me to contend without quarreling, to keep myself in the love of God, and to have mercy on those who doubt.
I pray for my brothers and sisters killed for your name, and for the families they left in Nigeria and in places I cannot name. I pray for the Muslims I know by name. Let me be the Samaritan to them before I ask them to believe anything. Show them Jesus.
When they revile me falsely, make me glad. When they criticize me truly, make me humble and quick to apologize. Give me the wisdom to know the difference, and people who know my heart and will tell me the truth.
Abba, Father, I am your child before I am your worker. Your grace is sufficient for me, and your power is made perfect in my weakness. Do not let my past be a coffin. Make my kitchen, my desk and my street a mission field.
Keep oil in my lamp, and let it be mine. Put the names of the people I love who do not know you on my lips every morning, and send me while it is still day. And when the Bridegroom comes, let me look first at his feet, then into his eyes, and lay down every crown I was ever given.
In the name of Jesus Christ, who is coming soon. Amen.
Sources
Sources and further reading
The episode
- “The Biggest THREAT to Christianity Is Happening RIGHT NOW (ft. Philip Anthony Mitchell) | Live Free.” Josh Howerton, Lakepointe Church. September 23, 2026. youtube.com/watch?v=zovqu2MINOA. Transcript from YouTube’s automatic English captions; see transcript_raw.txt and transcript_clean.md.
Law and policy
- Parliament of Canada. Bill C-9, An Act to amend the Criminal Code (Combatting Hate Act), 45th Parliament, 1st session. Royal Assent version, June 18, 2026. parl.ca/documentviewer/en/45-1/bill/C-9/royal-assent
- Department of Justice Canada. “Bill C-9: Combatting Hate Act.” justice.gc.ca/eng/csj-sjc/pl/c9
- Parliament of Canada. Bill C-4 (conversion therapy), Royal Assent December 8, 2021. parl.ca/DocumentViewer/en/44-1/bill/C-4/royal-assent
- 26 U.S.C. §501(c)(3) (including the 1954 “Johnson Amendment”).
- Bob Jones University v. United States, 461 U.S. 574 (1983).
- Obergefell v. Hodges, No. 14-556, oral argument transcript, April 28, 2015 (Solicitor General Verrilli’s answer to Justice Alito). supremecourt.gov
- National Religious Broadcasters v. Long, No. 6:24-cv-00311 (E.D. Tex.), proposed consent judgment July 2025, dismissed March 31, 2026; Congressional Research Service, LSB11447.
- ADF International, case page for Päivi Räsänen (Supreme Court of Finland ruling, March 26, 2026); Christianity Today, March 2026.
- U.S. Constitution, Article VI, clause 3; First Amendment.
Statistics
- Open Doors. World Watch List 2026 (reporting period October 1, 2024 to September 30, 2025). opendoors.org; opendoorsus.org
- Pew Research Center. “How the Global Religious Landscape Changed From 2010 to 2020.” June 9, 2025.
- Pew Research Center. “Europe’s Growing Muslim Population.” November 29, 2017.
- Pew Research Center. “25 Years After 9/11, a Portrait of Muslim Americans.” September 3, 2026.
- Federal Reserve Financial Services. “2026 Findings from the Diary of Consumer Payment Choice.” May 11, 2026.
- CIA World Factbook, Turkey (final edition, 2025).
- European Union. Regulation (EU) 2024/1183 (European Digital Identity Framework).
Islam
- Sahih al-Bukhari 3 (the beginning of revelation); Sunan Abu Dawud 4285, 4286, 4292; Sahih Muslim 2922, 2937. sunnah.com
- Ibn Ishaq, The Life of Muhammad, trans. A. Guillaume (Oxford, 1955).
- John MacArthur, “The Grim Reality of the Last Days,” sermon on Mark 13:1-13, March 20, 2011. gty.org/sermons/41-66
- Joel Richardson, The Islamic Antichrist (WND Books, 2009).
People and history
- Christianity Today, report on Mitchell’s apology for his race-and-policing sermon, April 2025. christianitytoday.com/2025/04/philip-anthony-mitchell-apologizes-race-and-policing
- Publishers Weekly, religion book deals, October 22, 2025 (Mitchell, Contend, W Publishing, 2026).
- Richard Baxter, Poetical Fragments (London, 1681), “Love Breathing Thanks and Praise.”
- “The Secrets of Spurgeon’s Preaching.” Christian History, issue 29 (the “vulgar” letter).
- Spurgeon Center, spurgeon.org; Christian History, “The Anguish and Agonies of Charles Spurgeon.”
- R.T. Kendall, Word & Spirit (Charisma House, 2019).
- William Cowper, “There Is a Fountain Filled with Blood,” Olney Hymns (1779).
Help
- 988 Suicide and Crisis Lifeline (U.S.): call or text 988, or chat at 988lifeline.org.
Recommended reading from this study
- Augustine, Confessions
- David Wilkerson, The Cross and the Switchblade (1963)
- Eugene Peterson, A Long Obedience in the Same Direction (1980)
- Martyn Lloyd-Jones, Preaching and Preachers (1971)
- R.T. Kendall, Word & Spirit (2019)
- Philip Jenkins, The Lost History of Christianity (2008)
- J. Gresham Machen, Christianity and Liberalism (1923)
- Nabeel Qureshi, Seeking Allah, Finding Jesus (2014)
- Robert G. Clouse, ed., The Meaning of the Millennium: Four Views (1977)
- Timothy Keller, The Freedom of Self-Forgetfulness (2012)
- Zack Eswine, Spurgeon’s Sorrows (2014)
- Brother Lawrence, The Practice of the Presence of God
- Charles Spurgeon, Lectures to My Students
Josh Howerton and Philip Anthony Mitchell and their ministries did not produce this study and have not reviewed it. It is written by Cross + Covenant for personal and small-group study.
Scripture quotations are from the ESV® Bible (The Holy Bible, English Standard Version®), © 2001 by Crossway, a publishing ministry of Good News Publishers. Used by permission. All rights reserved.
Quotations from the podcast are brief excerpts for the purpose of study and commentary. This guide is not affiliated with Lakepointe Church, 2819 Church or the Live Free podcast.
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