E868 | Crushing Chaos - with Manny Arango

In 2026, you want to know what's almost more powerful than fasting from food?

It's fasting from these dang devices that are bartering for your time and your focus and your attention.

We will settle for counterfeit peace.

Scrolling is not bringing you peace.

And so what happens is we're so addicted to peace.

We'll settle for anxiety packages peace.

And at some point, I hope and pray that God helps us to find true peace.

Like the kind of peace that only he can provide.

Friends, welcome back to the Wild at Heart Podcast.

You're going to enjoy this week's guest.

He's just a really beautiful guy with a really rich heart and a really deep, deep love of scripture as well.

We're going to be talking about chaos and order.

But before we go there, speaking of chaos,

this is part of why we do this every week.

Because we know the world is chaotic.

We know it's trying to get chaos in in all the time, whether like in us or in our world.

And so the pause.

One of our, you know, hacks of like the quick out of that to realign reconnect like with your own soul.

And with God and his presence, the presence of Jesus living within us.

Okay, so let's take our pause.

And we pray, Father, Jesus Holy Spirit.

And again, folks, just settle into that like you don't want to rush prayer or rush connection with God.

Just take your time.

Father, Jesus Holy Spirit.

I'm turning my attention to you right now.

And I love you.

I love you God.

I love you Lord Jesus.

I love you Holy Spirit.

I'm turning my heart towards you.

And as I do, I take the practice of 1 Peter 5, 7.

I cast all of my cares upon you.

I give everyone and everything.

Everyone, everything.

I'm going to give you some silence to do that.

But it's helpful to just continue to sit in that.

I just give you everyone.

I give you everything.

And then get specific.

If you need to keep going, just hit pause.

Father, Jesus Holy Spirit.

As I'm releasing these things, I'm trying to find you.

I'm trying to come back into our love.

Into our union and communion.

Draw me back, Holy Spirit.

Center me.

Back in my union.

With you God.

Breathe into me now.

Life and love.

Union and communion.

And speak to me in this week's podcast.

Amen.

So, Manny Orango, welcome to the Wild at Heart Podcast.

Yeah, we just just delighted that you're here

and looking forward to the conversation.

Oh, I'm pumped.

I'm pumped.

Okay, so we want you to let you get to know Manny.

We want to hear a little bit of his backstory

and what he's doing.

Now, planning a church in urban Houston.

But can we just enjoy?

Can we enjoy the irony of chaos?

Are you?

Are you just planning a church, bro?

It's almost like Papa said,

Oh, really, Manny?

Really?

You want to do this chaos thing?

Okay, man.

Talk about the most organized chaos I've ever been a part of.

So we moved to Houston with the goal of planting a church.

That's why we moved here.

Me and my wife originally from Boston, Massachusetts

got to Houston in faith,

like believing that the Lord told us to plant a church here.

And two Sundays ago, February 1st,

1,874 people showed up to church for the very first Sunday.

Wow.

That's a big start, man.

It's a solid start.

It is a solid start.

So I've been a senior pastor for two weeks

and lots of people to disciple.

And Manny, the church is in a house of blues, right?

Yes, yes, yes.

So a crazy, fun, awesome story.

Obviously we moved here to plant a church.

And so one day we went in toward the house of blues.

Now, it's a concert venue, you know, like on most Saturday evenings,

you know, there are country artists, rap artists,

you know, artists that have concerts at the house of blues.

So there, there have been, you know, a handful of Sundays

where we go to set up church.

And it smells like strong marijuana and alcohol.

I mean, it's, it's the house of blues, you know,

it's, it's a letter.

Clean that place out every Sunday morning.

Oh, oh, oh, oh.

Oh, yeah.

Oh, yeah.

You know, every way.

Oh, in every way, like we just implemented a,

like we, you know, we, we debriefed service after this past Sunday.

And I said, hey, I know the prayer team, like, you know,

prays over every chair.

I know the prayer team is like in the sanctuary before the doors open.

We need someone on the microphone.

Like after the band in the worship team does soundcheck,

we need a like, hey, we need to pray.

We need a clear moment.

I mean, a corporate prayer to, you know,

we don't know what happened in here.

We can guess what happened here last night.

Yeah, totally.

So, so we're doing church in the wild.

This is not suburban church plant at a high school.

This is, this is, you know, pioneering in the wild.

This is, but I am the most alive.

I think I've been in a long time.

I'm having a blast.

It's crazy, right?

It's the same way I would describe when we first had my son,

like I am exhausted.

Yeah.

But this is the most exhilarating thing in the world.

So.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Some will.

It takes all my energy and gives me energy at the same time.

I don't know how that works.

But that's what's happening.

Yeah.

Yeah.

What an honor to be on the podcast, by the way.

My gosh.

Looks like thanks for the opportunity.

What a joy to have you here.

Yeah.

So many part of your story is you first encountered the book

wild at heart when you were in college.

Is that right?

Oh, yeah.

Oh, yeah.

Oh, yeah.

I will actually never forget how I encountered wild at heart.

And there's an Easter egg for it in crushing chaos.

So there's a chapter of this book where I talk about darkness.

And, um, and how darkness is, uh, is a form of chaos.

Well, I went to Gordon College as, as my undergraduate, you know, from my undergraduate

studies.

And there was a prerequisite that we had to do a 10-day wilderness excursion.

Really?

I had a Rondack mountains of New Hampshire.

I am a urban city boy like police sirens don't freak me out.

You know, I got dropped after Gordon College, which has got ranked like one of the safest

campuses in America.

And I heard there were like coyotes and like, and I mean, I asked the police, so campus

police to escort me from my parking lot to my dorm.

You know what I mean?

Like now, like inner city hood, like people selling drugs, not nervous out in the wilderness.

Animals.

Oh, oh, this brother is, this brother is, is out.

And so our required reading, my freshman year for us to do our 10-day excursion in

the Adirondack Mountains was wild at heart.

Come on.

Come on.

And so my first time reading wild at heart, I'm a freshman at Gordon College.

And I'm sitting there and I'm thinking to myself, man, God better really talk to me

out here in, in, in, in these woods.

Okay.

Oh, man.

But when I tell you me reading wild at heart was probably the biggest, like not a theological

clash, but a culture clash.

Like we're taking this inner city, you know, Cuban, black kid, you know, I'm on a college

campus for the first time and I'm about to go on a 10-day trip.

And wild at heart and the, and the, we weren't allowed to bring any kind of music out there

with us.

But I, I had contraband, I snuck a disc man, this, oh, I feel old.

I snuck a Sony disc man onto my 10-day, you know, because two of those days was a solo.

Oh, yeah.

We were completely silent and, you know, you know, yards away from anybody else.

And it was a, you know, you fasted and it was a solo.

I just out in the woods.

And wild at heart and my Fred Ham and CDs that I snuck onto the trip got me through

that 10 days.

So thank you.

That's a cool story.

And that's my, that's my first encounter with wild at heart.

This is just crazy because when this comes across my desk, so Alan's actually followed

you.

Yes.

For years.

Yeah.

And what was the book that you were really enjoying of his?

Yeah.

So before crushing chaos, which just came out recently, this book called Brainwashed came

out and I didn't know many.

I was trying to find out more about what does it mean to have the mind of Christ because

we hear that phrase a lot in its inscripture.

And so I was searching on Amazon.

The cover looked cool.

It's called Brainwashed, how to overcome toxic thoughts through, you know, the mind

of Christ.

And I was like, I'm intrigued.

And when I bought it, it's the kind of book that literally I was showing you, John,

every other sentence is highlighted, underlying, starred.

It just resonated so deeply that I felt like I had met a brother I hadn't known yet.

Come on.

Yeah.

He's a bit of a groupie, man.

This thing is all marked up and he showed me and that is just mind boggling and surreal.

You know, I remember the season I was in when I wrote that.

That book Brainwashed and we were in a season.

I was in youth ministry at that point.

And I would say 99, 95% of the young people that I was pastoring were dealing with issues

in their mind.

So whether that's anxiety or depression or suicidal ideations or insecurities or toxic

or traumatic memories, I mean, every young person I talked to, it was almost like, oh

my God, there's a mindset issue, there's a mindset issue, there's a mindset issue.

Even, you know, the rampant increase of pornography consumption, the sexual desires that a lot

of these young people would even confess to me.

So what happened is I was walking through the mall one day with a, like a 15 year old boy

who's like, well, you know, is it normal to want to do X, Y and Z?

And I just thought to myself, there's no way a 15 year old should even know about that.

And I said, Hey, you need your brainwashed.

I said, you need your mind cleanse.

Like, you need to be, you need, you need your mind washed with the water of the word.

Like, I wish I could take your brain out of your head and just wash it, put it back.

Come on.

And as soon as we're walking through the mall.

Like, I remember it as clear as day, we're walking through the mall.

And the Holy Spirit said, yeah, that's that you, you can do that.

That is actually the promise of scripture.

You can help him to, to overcome.

And at the time, doctors were telling my wife and I that we were never good pregnant.

And it was almost like that diagnosis of infertility is almost like, I'd wake up thinking

about it.

I'd go to sleep thinking about it is all I thought about.

And I remember the Lord just convicting me like, you know, you're, you're trying to

help young people and their parents overcome toxic thought patterns, but, but you have yet

to believe like in your mind that you guys are going to be parents that, that, that your

identity is more important than a diagnosis, you know, like you have to disciple your mind.

You've got to be transformed by the renewing of your mind.

You have to let the mind of Adam go and, and you have to take on this mind of Christ.

And so what happened is God gave me a promise.

So in the middle of me complaining about wanting children, remember one day I'm in Tulsa,

Oklahoma.

And, and this is just like the Lord, you know, I'm getting ready to preach.

I'm like probably five minutes away from getting up to the platform of preach.

And I'm praying and the Holy Spirit says, Hey, have you prayed for your grandchildren?

And I, I'm almost offended.

I'm like, pray for my grandchildren, doctors are saying we can't have children.

Like Lord, I need you to focus like, like God, reign in your, like, come on, like grandchildren,

you know?

And I remember the Lord saying, you know, at this season, it's probably like 2017, 2018.

And I remember the Lord saying, I'm not in 2018 with you.

Like I, I'm speaking from your future.

And you, and you should be glad that I am present with you, but also I am outside of

time at the same time.

And I'm telling you to pray for your grandchildren.

And so at that point, I feel like the Lord made me a promise.

He said, if your, your, your first book will pay for your children to get to college.

And so I sat down to write brainwashed.

I went to a coffee shop every week for years.

I had no Instagram followers.

I had no TikTok followers.

I had no YouTube channel.

I had no platform.

I had no speaking engagements.

I had no church.

I had nothing.

And I wrote that book.

And, but in the Lord gave me a promise.

If I would be faithful to help that young kid renew his mind.

And if I would apply biblical principles to our infertility journey, that that book

would pay for my children to get through college.

And five years later, I'm randomly on a Zoom call with a publisher.

And I was trying to pitch them on a different idea.

And at the last minute, the publisher said, you got anything else?

I mean, almost like as a pity, like as a pity, as like, you, you come on.

Anything else?

Come on.

And, and I, the Holy Spirit reminded me, you have an old laptop upstairs in your house

with brainwashed on it.

I said, hey, give me a second.

If I can put up this old laptop, I've got 60,000 words from a book idea that I just

wrote, like years ago, I said, give me a second.

I hop off the Zoom call.

My agent is sitting there on the Zoom call with the publisher.

I leave, I run, I mean, I dart up the stairs, I go to an old bedroom, I get in the closet,

I grab an old laptop that I have not used in years.

I find the charger for it, I boot the thing up and I said, hey, if I can have a manuscript

to you guys, you know, within 30 minutes, you know, what do you guys think?

And they said, what's the title of the book?

I said brainwashed.

It's how to go for the mind of Adam to the mind of Christ.

They said, we want it.

And yeah, that, that thing is paid for my son's college tuition and some more.

Yeah, yeah, it's nuts.

Nuts, the story behind that book is crazy that I wrote that book years before a publishing

deal was ever on the table.

And yeah, it's funny, so the fact that that book is even, oh, yeah, out of obedience.

And then the way that we got to chaos is that that book, you know, I, I focus a lot

on anxiety, the mind of Christ, like, like what are the issues that people are dealing

with in their mind?

Whether that be doubt, whether that be insecurity, whether that be self-loathing, whether that

be suicide, whatever, like your thoughts.

And then I remember really kind of focusing on anxiety, and I remember the one little

key that the Lord gave me was peace is not the solution to anxiety order is a solution

to anxiety because people don't have an anxiety problem.

They have a chaos problem, okay, okay, okay, okay, here's where we're going.

This is where we're at.

This is where, and here's what's wild, man, I told you folks, you're going to, you're

going to really enjoy this guy.

What's wild is Alan wrote a book on chaos, like five years ago, five years ago, it was

coming through the pandemic and then after, right after COVID.

And I was struggling with how is all of the outside chaos preventable from coming within

me?

Because at the time I was, we were all at home, right, and we weren't able to come into

work.

Didn't know what the future was, people were going, you know, it was just a crazy time.

And I realized there's got to be a way to not have the external chaos out there, come

in me.

I know there's a way, but I was like, God, why don't you make that more obvious?

And I was sitting in my desk at home, and I just remember God saying, Alan, open the

Bible to the first two sentences of the first book in the Bible.

And he brought me to Genesis 1, 1 and 1, 2 where, you know, in 1, 2, it's talking about

the spirit hovered over the chaos, right, and from that life and order and beauty came.

So that was, that was the first journey I had into, we don't have to live with chaos.

The book is chaos, can't, but yeah, that was something that was a lifesaver for me.

Okay.

So this has been on our radar.

God gives me a vision, gosh, it's a couple of years ago now, and in the friend of mine

had the exact same vision, and he's in England, and we talk once in a while, but not often,

we get on the phone, he's like, hey, you're not completely what I saw, he and I saw this.

And I was looking out over the horizon in this, in this, you know, time with Jesus in

prayer, and I see what looks like a dust storm, you know, like the kind of things you might

see in the Sahara or something like that, like this huge cloud of dust coming, and I could

see it coming like to the world, over the world, and I asked Papa, I'm like, what is this?

And he said, this is the chaos storm, and it's about to come over the world.

Wow, wow.

And then, I mean, folks, you just go ahead and pick up the news, you know, it's, it's chaos

and medicine and chaos and education.

It's chaos and politics and, yeah, I mean, it's everywhere now.

So when, when you're, you know, Alan's brought your book into me and says, hey, I think

we ought to have Manny on here.

We'd already been riffing on chaos.

Our audiences heard us talk about it for a while.

So I just think that's really beautiful of the Holy Spirit to be working in his people,

and then here you are, you know, writing a book on it.

So we're going to get into that in just a minute, but I want to go a little bit into

your story because there's a, you know, for all of us, right, we're, we're coming from

a story that just so deeply informs what God chooses to do with our life, right?

Yeah.

Yeah.

So you're coming out of a chaotic home, like take us back into the story a little bit

and your dad and how he did and didn't handle the chaos.

Oh, man, I feel like I've got enough chaos for like five families, my, my family background.

It's funny because there are times where I sit down with my therapist and my therapist

just looks at me and says, you being functional would be a miracle.

The fact that you're a Christian would be a double miracle.

You being a pastor is just not even like it's hard to believe.

So, so, so my father immigrated to the United States of America from Cuba after serving

18 years in prison.

Now you may have seen the movie Scarface, the very beginning of the movie, okay, Fidel

Castro, empties out all of his prisons, sends prisoners to Miami, okay, that is historically

accurate.

That's not just an opening to, you know, this famous Al Pacino movie.

That's actually historically accurate.

And my father was released from prison, put on a boat and sent to Miami, okay?

So, so my dad served in 18 year prison sentence comes United States of America.

He's got an uncle in Boston, Massachusetts.

He comes to Boston, he starts selling drugs for that uncle, starts experimenting with

drugs, gets hooked on crack cocaine.

My dad takes me to a crack house for the first time and I'm five years old.

Not the last time, not the only time, but that first time was memorable because it was

the night before my parents got married.

I'll never forget it.

And the only reason that my mom even let my dad be alone with me is because her bridesmaids

were throwing her like a bridal party the night before she got married, okay?

So the reason that my parents were getting married is because they, my mother had children

outside of the relationship between her and my father from a previous marriage.

But her and my dad had not been able to have children.

My mother, who was not a Christian, okay, prays the Lord God.

But if you give me a son, I'll give him back to you.

Well she gets pregnant with me and she doesn't know what to do to fulfill this vow.

So she starts dropping me off at church.

She's scared to go in because she's superstitious.

She's not a believer.

She's just like, no, no, no, if I don't fulfill this vow, God's going to strike me with

lightning and kill me.

If I go into church, God's going to strike me with lightning and kill me.

So I just started getting dropped off at church, okay?

My Sunday school teacher is, I remember asking my Sunday school teacher, why does me and

my dad, me and my dad have one last name.

My mom has a different last name.

My Sunday school teacher, this is an old school black church.

My Sunday school teacher looked at me and was like, ciao, cuz your parents had you

on a wedlock, okay?

So my mom's black, my dad's Cuban, okay?

And this Sunday school teacher is just like, cuz your parents ain't married, okay?

I go home that day and I tell my parents, you guys need to get married because you're

living in sin.

Five years old.

Come on.

So my parents first time coming to church was to get married because they were living

in sin.

The night before they got married, my dad takes me to a crack house for the first time.

You're in the crack house.

Yeah.

Oh yeah.

So the backstory for my mother is, you know, my mom gets pregnant, you know, with my

older sister at 12, gave birth at 13, gave pregnant again at 14 with my older brother,

gave birth at 15, and my, she, she's got five brothers.

All of them are alcoholics, all of them are drug addicts.

Both of my aunts are prostitutes.

I've met all of my cousins through glass because they were incarcerated when I met them.

I mean, you know, I had the kind of grandmother on my mother's side of the family who had custody

of all of her grandchildren.

So all of my cousins, but none of them live with my grandmother because my grandmother just

wanted to collect a check based on them being in her custody.

I mean, just the most, and I'm sorry if this is too hood for your podcast, but just the

most hood, like inner city, like, like situation, you know, so my mom's one of eight children

in complete poverty, living in the project, and does not know the Lord, okay, doesn't know,

does not know God.

The fact that my mom, and the reason that she's pregnant at 11, sorry, at 12 is because

her brother, her older brother, allowed his best friend to sexually assault my mother

at 12 years old and sexually abuse her.

So she gets pregnant.

My grandmother, the grandmother who got custody of all my cousins says, well, you've brought

shame on our family by getting pregnant, even though she's been sexually assaulted and

she says, now you have to marry the man that has abused you and she now stays in an abusive

a physically and sexually and an emotionally abusive relationship with the heroin addict

for the next 15 years of her life.

Has another kid with him is trapped in this marital relationship that is totally toxic.

So I'm born, okay.

Those are alcoholics, my two answer prostitutes, all my cousins are in prison.

My grandmother's committing welfare fraud.

I mean, everybody lives in the projects.

My dad's taking me to a crack house.

My Cuban side of the family is totally dysfunctional.

My blacks out of the family is completely dysfunctional.

Everybody, everybody in my neighborhood, everybody in my life, everybody is completely dysfunctional.

When I started going, so when they dropped me off at church at five years old and

my mom put me, just get this, get more chaos, okay.

My mom doesn't know how to fulfill this vow that she's made to the Lord, okay.

So she enrolls me in a Catholic school because she's just like, yeah, they do the Jesus thing, okay.

So my kindergarten teacher is a nun, okay.

She brings me to an African Methodist Episcopal Church for Sunday service and

then drops me off at a Pentecostal youth group on Friday nights for youth group.

And to her, she's just kind of like, it's all Jesus.

Like it's Jesus, it's Jesus stuff, you know.

I got to fulfill this vow that I made to the Lord.

Now, what's crazy is that my mother essentially prayed Hannah's prayer.

She gave me a son, I'll get back to you.

My mother could not tell you who Hannah is.

She could tell you who Moses is.

She couldn't tell you who Abraham is.

She couldn't tell you.

So anyone who says that God didn't speak to non-believers, I'm like,

I don't know, man, God speaks.

I think God speaking everybody.

And so my, the testimony of my life is that I get deeply involved in church.

I start preaching by the time I'm 12.

I know that I'm called a full-time ministry by the time I'm 15.

I go to Gordon College, do a biblical studies major.

You know, my freshman year, I'm 17 years old.

I'm a biblical studies major.

I graduate at 21 years old.

I commit my life, not just to ministry, but to missions at a, or band a conference.

And in by the time I'm 21 years old, I got ordained at 22.

I'm with Y-Wam doing international missions by the time I'm 22 years old.

And I'm fully ordained at a church.

And the, the testimony of my life is God taking that, which is chaotic.

I mean, fully chaotic and brainwashed in chaos and beginning to order my life, order my

habits, order my heart, order my affections, order my mind, begin to bring, I mean, what

felt like radical order into my life because everything I knew was chaos.

The first, and, and, you know, this will become evident.

I'm a big church guy.

I'm like, big on church because church became the place where I, I found Jesus, I found

God, but I found order like, I just went to a church right in the middle of the inner

city in Bishop Thompson, you know, I remember the first time that, that our youth pastor

came into youth group and was like, Hey, how, you know, our church, I used to lie in

and say our church was predominantly black.

The Holy Spirit convinced, convicted me like, no, this is not predominantly black.

It's dominantly black.

There's only black people in here.

Okay.

I used to lie.

I say it's predominantly black.

I'm like, what am I?

It is not predominantly black.

Okay.

There's, there's one white brother over there.

Okay.

One out of like 1500 people in here.

Okay.

So I remember, you know, our pastor came in one day and he's like, he split up girls and

boys for youth ministry on Friday night.

He said, Hey, how many of you know what?

Alamonia is 80% of our hands go up in this church in the inner city, 80% of our hands

go up.

It's black and brown neighborhood.

Okay.

How many of your dad's missed child support, 80% of our hands go up?

How many of your moms are upset that your dad's missed child support, our hands go up?

He's like, how many of your dads have children with multiple women?

How many of your moms are upset at other baby mamas are hands up and he goes, all right.

So here's the issue.

Right now you are behaving in ways that your father was behaving when he was your age.

And if you continue on this trajectory, you're going to be paying child support.

You're going to have multiple baby mamas.

And so I'm, I'm telling you right now, there's a reason why all of your fathers are stuck

in poverty because if you have four children, my, my youth pastor, my pastor taught me this

and I was 13 years old, said, if you have four children and you have four children by

four different baby mamas, now you got to buy a chicken for every household.

So but if you got four children from one woman, you buy one chicken and bring it to one

house.

And the man who has four kids with one woman is always going to be wealthier than the

man who has four children with four women.

And he said, how many of you want to escape the trap of poverty?

All of our hands go up.

And he said, all right.

If you want to not be broke, I need you to keep your bleep in your pants.

Do you understand?

So we're going to do an absinence challenge.

We're going to an absinence challenge because if you can't learn how to control the members

of your body, it's going to cost you period.

And I learned how to escape a generational curse of poverty by learning holiness and learning

order.

And that day as a 13 year old, I was like, I'll do the absinence.

It's a challenge.

And my pastor was smart.

He was like, I don't think that the majority of you are going to do an absinence challenge

because you love God.

I don't know that you can conceptualize loving God.

He's like, but you can conceptualize being broke.

So if you want to be broke, you can keep, you know, you can, you can, you can have sex

with girls in middle school in high school if you want to.

You can, you can be sexually mischievous if you want to.

You can do all kinds of, but that leads to poverty or, or, and, and he believed that,

you know, everyone focuses on Timothy 3, 16, which is all scriptures, God breath.

But if you keep reading, it tells you that the scriptures are there to make you wise

unto salvation, wise unto salvation.

And man, what my church was offering was an on ramp to salvation.

And that on ramp was wisdom, wisdom, order your life and find wisdom.

And I guess, you know, obviously I grew up and, and I began to interact with believers

and non-believers, people from all kinds of backgrounds and became very, very aware

that if you say to somebody, hey, there's sin in your life.

There's an immediate defense mechanism.

But people will admit on their own, whether they're Christians or not, there's chaos in

my life.

Yeah.

And the moment I begin to hear, oh, there's chaos in your life, I begin to help people

to understand, well, chaos will kill you too.

Just because it's not chaos actually is the very thing that the serpent wanted to, to, to,

to flood the ordered garden that God had created.

And the choice that Adam and Eve are making is not just a choice between good and evil

or between right and wrong.

It is a choice between chaos and order.

It was the choice that my pastor said before me, hey, here's life, here's death.

He just framed it as here's chaos.

Here's what your uncles and your father and everyone around you has taught you as normal.

I'm telling you, it's completely chaotic.

It leads to bondage, it leads to poverty, it leads to dysfunction, it leads to generational

curses.

But here's order.

And order is hard.

Order requires discipline.

Order requires that you have enough validation in yourself that you don't need some young

woman to validate you.

It means that you have found your identity in Christ.

It, here's order.

You could have order, but it is going to cost you something.

And man, that journey for me, the choice between chaos and order started at probably 12,

13 years old when I, when, when, when my parents were dropping me off of church and not attending.

And man, I'm, I'm forever indebted to a church that did not allow.

They did not cater to my chaos.

The church that I was raised in, my pastor literally said, I am the braces for your

crooked teeth.

He said, I am not going to pander or cater.

I don't care what kind of family you came from.

Your family doesn't define you.

If you were born again, then that means that the maniorengo that got taken to a crack

house died.

And when, when I put you in the waters of baptism, that kid died.

And I'm not going to treat you like you're some statistic for the rest of your life.

I'm going to have a standard of holiness for you.

And it changed my life.

I'm forever grateful.

Yeah.

Two, two things right now.

I'm so filled again with the love of God.

Like, thank you God.

Thank you that you do this.

You do this.

You rescue us.

Thank you.

And God bless that church, man.

God bless those people.

Okay.

So, like the first idea in crushing chaos, the new book, I think it's going to help people

a ton because you're taking Genesis, you're going right where you were, and you come

out and you say, look, folks, the answer to your chaos is not peace.

Well, that's, that's kind of a shock, right?

That's kind of a duty.

No, looking for peace.

But what you're talking about is that what God does is order.

So many describes himself as a Bible nerd.

In this book, this book is so filled with really cool, biblical insights.

I feel like you've been hanging out with Michael Heiser and the Bible project guys from

Tim McEy and stuff.

Oh, yeah.

100%.

100%.

Okay.

Come on.

We love those guys.

So I want you to riff on the presence of chaos in Genesis one.

Yep.

And how that's a model then for Adam and Eve, right?

Yep.

Okay.

Easy.

So, so in our Western, you know, modern American kind of framework, and I got taught

this.

I had an unlearness.

What is standard theological, theological truth is that God made something from nothing.

Okay.

We all heard it.

Yes.

We've all heard it.

Okay.

God created something from nothing now.

Are there other places in scripture that will tell you?

Yes.

God made everything that is visible and invisible.

Absolutely.

Yep.

Here we go.

Is Genesis telling that story?

No.

Genesis one is not proclaiming that this is a God who made something from nothing.

It's actually telling the way more a cooler story, if you ask me, which is that God made

order out of chaos.

So his spirit is hovering over the deep.

Okay.

What is the deep?

Okay.

Okay.

Okay.

So there's darkness.

There's the deep.

His spirit is hovering over the waters.

Okay.

There's something there like verse two of Genesis is not nothing.

It's either nothing or the deep waters and dark.

It's like, ah, there's some raw material here.

Okay.

So over the course of seven days, what does God do?

He takes that, which is chaotic, that which is tohuvavohu, okay, the NIV translates

that as formless and empty.

The moment you translate that as empty, you could come to the conclusion, no, empty means

nothing.

However, that same word tohuvavohu, when used throughout Jeremiah and Isaiah, don't get

translated by the NIV as formless and empty or formless and void, but chaotic and desolate

or chaotic and confusing, which well done waste exactly, exactly.

So the original audience of Genesis, which are freed slaves coming out of an Egyptian

system, would not have understood God made something from nothing.

That would even have been in their theological framework.

Every creation story in the ancient world involved a God who conquered chaos and then started

creating.

Now here's where Genesis is different than all of those.

It's different in that God doesn't have to conquer anything in order to start creating.

He doesn't have to kill a chaos dragon.

He does.

And in Job, Leviathan is a pet, you know what I mean?

This Leviathan creature that is the big villain of every other ancient and E reason story,

whether it's Babylonian or Mesopotamian or Syrian is not even a threat.

Actually, Genesis says God made it.

It's a part of the created order.

So in seven days, what does God do?

He brings a creation from uninhabitable, chaotic, welter and waste, desolate, confusing,

to ordered.

What's order?

Identity, definition, boundaries, light, clarity, okay?

He creates order.

Now here's the interesting thing.

He does not get rid of all chaos.

This is huge folks.

This is huge.

This is huge.

This is huge.

Okay.

God does not eliminate every Iota of chaos in the cosmos or can I just want to do?

Go ahead.

I know.

Or what the heck are you creating your image bearers to do, right?

They're going to sit around and twirl their thumbs for the rest of it.

What's the deal here?

Okay?

Boom, boom, boom.

There's so many good biblical things in here.

I'm going to let you riff again here in a minute.

But so Eden, folks need to understand that Eden was not the whole earth, Eden, and then

the garden within Eden, right, the mountain temple of the Lord.

Why?

Well, because Adam and Eve humanity has the raw faculties, right?

To do what God does in Genesis 1, right, then we get the mandate to carry on, folks.

So this is huge, Manny.

This is a great place for me to tell you the name of our church that we just planted two

weeks ago.

The name of the church is called the Garden.

Come on.

It's because if you ask me, Adam and Eve's job is to grow the garden to overtake the

wilderness that surrounds it.

That is the goal.

The goal is that every year there should have been more garden, less wilderness.

So there are three domains of order and chaos that we find in the in the creation narrative

right there in Genesis.

The first is darkness and light.

So does God take away all darkness?

No, he doesn't.

He says darkness, you now have a boundary and you have a governing body that is the

sun, the moon, and the stars.

They're going to bring light and so what does he do?

He doesn't dispel chaos.

He gives chaos a boundary.

Yeah.

This was this was imperative for me to learn because my mother is quite the chaotic person.

And when I got married, I could not just cut her off as if she did not pray Hannah's

prayer for me to be born.

I had to create a boundary for dysfunctional chaotic person.

And guess what's easy?

Extremes are easy.

Guess what else is easy to keep all this content nerdy and theological and it never

find practical application in life.

So our job as believers is not just to get smarter.

It's to get wiser so that we can take what we're learning theologically and apply it to

our in-laws, apply it to our parents, okay?

So yeah.

So the darkness doesn't get exactly.

I need a boundary, okay?

What's easy is I'm going to let your chaos turn me into a dysfunctional person or I'm

never going to talk to you again and I'm going to disown you.

Those are extreme and those are both easy.

Guess what requires the Holy Spirit?

Guess what requires discernment?

Guess what requires wisdom?

I'm neither going to cut you off or allow your chaos to ruin my life.

I'm going to create a boundary and that boundary has to change every year.

That boundary has that boundary requires that I operate with grace and not legalism.

That's it's a boundary.

It's a living moving thing.

So now and we have a promise.

So God doesn't dispel the darkness.

He doesn't eliminate it.

He doesn't eradicate it.

He gives it a boundary.

What promise do we have in a revelation?

When John gets a vision of revelation, now there is no more darkness, okay, great.

So we are looking forward to a new creation one day where there is no darkness and what

is John the revelator teaching that there is no chaos, okay?

But that's not the world we live in today.

The world that God made in Genesis and the world that we have today is a world where there

is chaos.

Now, what's the second realm of chaos?

The second realm of chaos is the chaotic waters versus the dry ground.

And what does God do?

He doesn't eradicate all the water.

He doesn't eradicate the seas.

He gives it a boundary.

What do we find in the book of Revelation?

John looks.

And what does it say?

There was no longer any sea.

So the fact that there is no darkness and no sea means that John is communicating that

there will be a day where there won't just be a lack of sin or tears or mourning but

no chaos.

That's just not the world we live in right now, okay?

And then what's the third delineation?

The third delineation is between the wilderness and the garden, okay?

There's wild land and the Bible is going to tell us that the beast of the field, man,

there in the wilderness, there's something out there in the wilderness.

It's not evil.

Here's the other thing.

The chaotic waters, not evil, the darkness, not evil, the wilderness, not evil.

All of these things actually have a great redemptive purpose when ordered humanity is in

them.

So as long as ordered humans are on the sea, Jesus has the ability to walk on the sea.

As long as ordered humans are traveling through the wilderness, God will provide mana.

As long as ordered humans are in the darkness, what does David say?

Or with me, even though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death.

So when ordered humans are in darkness or out at sea or in the wilderness, as long as

we are ordered, we're fine.

But the moment we are chaotic, it's almost like a boat.

As long as a boat doesn't have holes in it, you're good.

But if you put a hole in the boat, now the water that was outside of you is in you and

now you drown, okay?

So humans are designed to live in chaos and do what the New Testament says.

Be in the world, but not of the world.

So I can be in chaos, but not of chaos.

And as long as Adam and Eve were ambassadors for God's order, they would grow the garden.

The only problem is that they chose to partner with chaos instead of partner with God's

order.

So many, I have a question for you.

This is so good and helpful.

So you're talking about creation.

And then in the book, you talk about the seventh day and how we as Americans are just

in current culture kind of miss the importance of what that means.

But will you talk for a minute on how there's a truer meaning behind on the seventh day

God rested?

That date, that word rest is everything, okay?

Which context is that in every single ancient worldview, gods or deities only rested in

temple spaces.

That's the only place where they rested.

And temples were synonymous with order, okay?

A temple was ordered space.

So the fact that what we have in the beginning of Genesis is the spirit of the Lord is hovering.

And then by day seven, he's resting.

He's essentially saying, this is ordered enough for me to now abide with you.

That's the goal.

The way that I typically teach this is sometimes we have this expectation that God's going

to rest in the middle of our chaos.

But God does not rest in mess.

He hovers.

And what does he do when he hovers?

He'll speak.

He'll talk.

He'll begin to command your life to take shape.

And if we refuse to repent and bring our life into God's order, then we can't have an

expectation that we're going to have the resting presence of God.

And we have not actually done the work to create a temple of the Holy Spirit that's

an ordered space for him to dwell.

And to me, the sad reality of our world right now is that everyone wants peace.

I mean, it's almost like if you could guarantee people peace, churches would be full.

I mean, like people want peace.

The only problem is the enemy has gotten us to desire peace, but hate the thing that

creates it, which is order.

So we currently live in a world where everyone wants peace.

No one wants order, which is essentially, you know, seedless watermelon.

It's like everyone wants fruit, no one wants seed, no one, no one likes to farm, no

one wants soil, no, we just want, we want genetically modified watermelon.

We want, and now, and I'll say this last little tidbit, we will settle for counterfeit

peace.

So I was at this church recently, I won't say what church and I won't say where it

may have been Mississippi, but that's not a here nor there.

So I was at this church and this pastor was telling his congregation, I was just a guest

speaker, you know, in the pastor's telling his congregation, we're going to do what's

called a seek week.

And I want everyone for the next seven days to delete gaming apps off your phone, delete

Amazon off your phone, delete Twitter, delete TikTok, delete Instagram, like, hey, you

in 2026, you want to know what's almost more powerful than than fasting from food.

It's fasting from these dang devices that are, are, are bartering for your time and

your focus and your attention.

And so I'm in the lobby, I'm literally signing copies of crushing chaos, meeting people,

hugging people, and a guy bought a copy of the book and I said, hey, man, are you excited

for a seek week?

And he said, I can't do that.

I said, what do you mean?

And he goes, I have anxiety and the only thing that makes it go away is scrolling.

And I said, I'm here to tell you, sir, that scrolling is not bringing you peace.

And so what happens is we're so addicted to peace.

We'll settle for peace, packaged, we'll actually settle for anxiety, packages, peace.

And it's like, so, so you're, so essentially, smoking is going to bring more chaos into

your life, but it brings you peace.

So you're opt for counterfeit peace because really you care more about peace than you care

about order.

And it's the sad state of affairs in our life.

And at some point, I hope and pray that God helps us to find true peace, like the kind

of peace that only he can provide.

And that peace is found in the person of Jesus and, and I've watched, I just watched

people constantly create their own peace.

And, ah, okay, last little dirty nugget, there's, there's this moment where Jesus calms

the storm for, you know, the disciples wake him up, they're like, we're going to die.

And this is a situation that a lot of us are in.

They don't acknowledge him as God until he calms the storm, which actually means they're

not impressed by him until he deals with the thing that makes him the most anxious.

And that's many of us.

We will not worship God.

We have conditions on, on whether or not we have all allegiance to him.

We don't have allegiance until he can calm our storm.

And I actually think that full discipleship is saying, whether you calm the storm or

not, you're God.

And there is no prerequisite for my worship of you.

And that to me is saying, I care more about you as the prince of peace than I care about

the scenarios in my life being peaceful or not.

Yeah.

I hope I answered the question.

I don't know.

Okay.

Yeah.

For, first off, you, you are a beautiful guy.

Yeah.

I love you.

You, you are, man.

You're a beautiful guy.

And folks, I got to tell you, we are literally in chapter one, like, we are 50 minutes

into this conversation and we are in chapter one.

So I'm going to, I'm going to summarize and then we're going to put your book in the

show notes and, and your church and where you are and what you're doing.

So the, the idea that's so cool about reframing Genesis one, you know, the garden wasn't

everything.

Eden wasn't everywhere.

God puts his, his agents, his partners in the world to bring order where there's chaos.

Like that, that's so much dignity to that.

And it's like, you got a role to play.

You have a part in the story, everybody.

Okay.

So I'm going to jump to the end here.

So, you know, last chapter, Jesus, the chaos, crusher, right?

That discipleship to Jesus, coming into alignment with what he's up to and how he does things

is how we begin to subdue, you know, you were talking the bidding, how do I get this chaos

out of me?

Yes.

Right.

Come on.

Come on out of my house, out of my work, out of, you know, out of my relationships,

like you're expanding Eden, yes, right?

Right.

That's just so filled with hope for people and dignity and promise.

Like, there's a way out, folks, and it's not scrolling.

And so that's the imitation.

I also just got to say, there are so many freaking cool biblical insights in this book that

I knew you were hanging out with some of the people that we just really dig like Tim

Mackie and Heiser and stuff.

Oh, yeah.

Yeah, there's a resonance there.

Um, Manny, God bless you, man.

God bless your work.

God bless the garden.

I pray God flourishes it.

I know he will.

That means you're a good world to me.

That means that was the world to me.

Oh, thank you.

Thank you.

Thank you.

I'm a bobbin nerd on fire.

Yeah, right on.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Thanks for being with us.

Oh my gosh.

I love being with you guys.

This is great.

Okay.

Such a beautiful guy.

Yes.

Oh my gosh.

And we could it.

We could have gone on.

Yeah, for hours.

Um, but I do want to, I want to add a couple more things that I think will be helpful

to our listeners because we have been on sort of riffing on this theme for a while.

Um, first off, we are going to come back in the spring and we're going to do a series

on ordering your realm order, how to bring order into your kingdom.

What, you know, thy kingdom come, thy will be done here now on earth as it is always

done in heaven.

How do you do that?

Um, so we'll be back.

I don't want to just leave people hanging going, what, you know, um, the other thing I

want to say is this, Alan, like we've done a lot of prayer on this as a staff and we

find ourselves needing to pray about the chaos a lot because, um, yes, God allows a certain

measure of chaos to grow us up and to train us to rule and subdue, okay?

But the enemy is also all over this as well.

And when I saw that dust cloud and I saw that chaos storm, that was not from God.

That chaos storm was the kingdom of darkness trying to just rule chaos through the world

because when it, when it's so over the top, people can't manage it, right?

And it, and it does great harm.

So as we were, as we've been reflecting on how do you just pray, like can I just give

you something to pray as we go, um, is that I will, I will pray the breath and glory

of the living God, bringing order there in Genesis 1 against the chaos storm.

So the authority and the breath and the creation glory, it's right.

Breath and glory is just the way I summarize it.

Of the living God against all chaos and chaos agents that are trying to get into me or mess

with my mind, my emotions, or get into relationships, yeah, cars, I mean, you've been in a whole

chaos thing with vehicles and all that, um, your kingdom, your domain.

This is really important in this hour.

I just couldn't just kind of close the show with, hey, it's about discipleship to Jesus.

Right.

This is about that.

It is about discipleship to Jesus.

But there is a chaos storm rolling through the world right now, just rolling over it.

And the, you can command it out of your kingdom, the dark agents, no way, like the authority

of the Lord God Almighty and the Lord Jesus Christ, the breath and glory of God, which we see

active in Genesis 1 against all chaos and the chaos storm.

I just call it the chaos storm, trying to get into my kingdom and domain.

That's really important, folks, um, and I just couldn't, I just couldn't close the show

with that.

Thank you for saying that.

Yeah.

Okay.

And then we'll be back in the spring.

Right.

Right.

We'll be more on.

Yes.

Ordering your realm.

Maybe a month or so.

But we'll be back with that.

Yeah.

Not too long.

Right.

Not too long from now.

Okay.

Goodbye, everybody.

Hey, friends.

This is Alan.

Thanks for being part of this week's podcast.

And before you rush off into what's next, we invite you to spend some time reflecting

with God on what you've heard and on where he's leading.