Crusade with Me

What if following Jesus isn't about learning the perfect recipe for being a Christian?

Forty years ago, Kat asked her mother, Betty, how to make her famous biscuits and gravy. Betty's instructions? No measurements. No written recipe. Just keep working at it until it looks right!

Today, Kat makes incredible biscuits and gravy without measuring a thing. And somewhere in that simple family story lies a beautiful truth about our relationship with Christ.

In this episode of Crusade With Me!, Dave and Kat share some laughs, family memories, and a conversation...

What if everything you've believed about earning your way into heaven has been backward?

Imagine standing before God and being asked one question: "Why should you be allowed into heaven?"

Would you point to your good deeds? Your church attendance? Your baptism? Your efforts to live a Christian life?

Now consider a dying criminal hanging on a cross beside Jesus. He had no opportunity to make things right, perform good works, or prove himself worthy. Yet Jesus made him an extraordinary promise: "Today you will be with Me in Paradise."

What happens when our pursuit of understanding God begins to interfere with simply trusting Him?

In this deeply personal episode of Crusade With Me!, Dave makes a confession. After reflecting on recent episodes, his spiritual journey, and decades spent studying theology, Scripture, Hebrew, and Greek, he's beginning to wonder whether his relentless search for answers has sometimes made faith more complicated than it needs to be.

Joined by Kat, Dave reflects on their journey through different Christian traditions, the Lutheran distinction between Law and Gospel, and a powerful illustration from Pastor Alistair Begg...

Walking Back to Eden — Part Two

What if humanity's first mistake wasn't simply eating forbidden fruit—but believing we knew better than God? And what if we're still making that same mistake today?

In the Garden of Eden, Adam and Eve had everything they needed. Purpose. Relationship. Communion with God.

Then came temptation, mistrust, and a choice that changed the human story.

And what happened next?

They hid. They covered themselves. And when God confronted them, Adam blamed his wife!

Sound familiar?

In this...

Walking Back to Eden — Part One

We have more knowledge, more technology, and more conveniences than any generation before us. So why do so many of us feel like something is missing?

What if the problem isn't that we need more? What if we've forgotten who we were created to be?

In this powerful opening episode of Walking Back to Eden, we explore a question that reaches into the very heart of the human experience: Have we forgotten how to be human?

Drawing from modern neuroscience, psychology, Scripture, the an...

We have more information at our fingertips than any generation in human history. So why does it sometimes feel like we know less about how to actually live?

Our grandparents knew how to fix things. Grow things. Preserve food. Stretch a dollar. Sit quietly. Help a neighbor. Endure hardship. And when something broke, their first instinct wasn’t always to throw it away.

That applied to more than tools.

It applied to marriages, families, communities—and sometimes themselves.

In Episode 190 of Crusade With Me!, we ask whether all of our...

If you really trust God to provide, why are there cans of food, stored water, and emergency supplies stacked in your house?

Is preparing for hard times an act of wisdom—or an admission that we don’t actually trust God?

In this episode of Crusade With Me!, we wrestle with the uncomfortable line between faith and fear, trust and responsibility, preparedness and obsession.

Scripture tells us not to worry about tomorrow. Jesus tells us to trust our Father for our daily bread. But the Bible also gives us Joseph storing grai...

What if the breath in your lungs isn’t really yours?

In Genesis, God forms Adam from the dust—but Adam doesn’t become a living being until God breathes into him the breath of life.

And then God gives him something to do.

That raises a question we rarely stop long enough to ask:

If God gave you life… what did He give it to you for?

In Episode 188 of Crusade With Me!, we follow the breath of God through Scripture—from the creation of Adam to the valley of...

Death is the one appointment none of us will miss. So why have we become so afraid to talk about it?

In Episode 187 of Crusade With Me!, Dave and Kat step into one of the most difficult—and strangely beautiful—parts of being human: death.

This isn't a conversation from a safe distance.

Dave was in the room when his mother died and arrived moments after his father's death, becoming the one who gently closed his father's eyes. Kat was driving her father to the hospital when he died. She pulled him from the...

Episode 186 — Would You Still Choose Me?

After forty years of marriage, there’s one question you probably shouldn’t ask unless you’re prepared for the answer.

So naturally, I asked Kat.

“Would you still choose me?”

Her answer?

“No.”

And that's where this episode begins.

Forty years ago, two very young people stood in front of God and promised themselves to one another. Those two people don't exist anymore. Life changed them. Children changed them. Success and failure changed them. Age, sex, faith, disappointment, laughter, loss a...

Episode 185 — What If the Person You Love Isn’t the Person You Married?

The person you married is going to disappear. And so are you.

That sounds terrifying—until you realize it may be exactly what marriage was supposed to be.

This Sunday, Kat and I celebrate 40 years of marriage. And after four decades together, I can say with certainty that I'm not married to the same woman I married in 1986. She's changed.

So, have I.

Children change us. Success and failure change us. Death changes us. Our bodies change...

Episode 184 — What If the Worst Thing That Happened to You… Wasn’t the Worst Thing?

What if the thing you’re begging God to change today is something you’ll understand completely differently five years from now?

We’ve all had moments that felt like disasters. A door slammed shut. A relationship changed. A plan fell apart. Something happened that left us wondering what the hell God was doing.

But time has a strange way of changing what we can see.

In Episode 184 of Crusade With Me!, Dave explores impatience...

Have you ever had someone treat you like absolute crap, disappear for a few days… and then come back acting like nothing ever happened?

No apology. No acknowledgment. No accountability.

Just, “Hey, how’s it going?”

And you’re standing there thinking: Are we seriously going to pretend that didn’t happen?

In Episode 183 of Crusade With Me!, Dave and Kat wrestle with what may really be happening when people refuse to acknowledge the hurt they’ve caused.

What if they’re not just trying to fool you?

What if they’r...

What is the one thing about yourself you hope nobody ever discovers?

We want to be known. We want to be understood. We want to be loved for who we really are—and then we spend enormous amounts of energy making sure nobody ever sees the whole person. We hide behind careers, success, toughness, religion, sexuality, reputation, and carefully constructed versions of ourselves.

In Episode 182 of Crusade With Me!, Dave follows a question that began with Adam and Eve: Why are we still hiding?

From the fig leaves of Genesis to the masks we...

What happens when you take away everything we normally use to hide?

For their anniversary, Dave and Kat did something completely outside their normal world: they spent their Arizona trip at a clothing-optional resort.

They expected awkwardness. They expected vulnerability. They definitely expected a story.

What they didn’t expect was what the experience would reveal about shame, judgment, aging, body image, intimacy, marriage—and the masks we wear every day.

In this special Crusade After Dark, Dave and Kat tell the Arizona story and wrestle with one of the Bible’s most...

Christians have been given plenty of rules about sex.

But which of those rules actually came from God—and which came from culture, tradition, fear, or our interpretation of Scripture?

In Episode 180 of Crusade With Me!, we ask a question that may make some people uncomfortable: Did God actually put limits on sex?

We dig into what the Bible really says, including the often-used Greek word porneia, and wrestle with the difference between sexual desire, sexual immorality, wisdom, commitment, harm, and judgment.

This isn't an argument that anything goes. An...

We’ve been taught that strong desires can be dangerous—that maturity means controlling them, resisting them, or sometimes pretending they aren’t there.

But what if desire itself isn’t the enemy?

In this episode of Crusade With Me!, we explore where desire comes from, what it may be trying to tell us, and the difference between suppression, indulgence, and formation.

Maybe self-control doesn’t mean killing the fire inside us. Maybe it means understanding that fire well enough to direct it toward something good.

What if the better que...

Episode 178 — Why Did God Make Sex Feel So Good?

If sex were only about reproduction, why did God make it pleasurable?

Why did He create desire, attraction, intimacy, and bodies capable of experiencing such powerful pleasure?

For centuries, Christians have sometimes talked about sexuality primarily in terms of temptation, rules, and restraint. But what happens when we begin with a different question:

Why did God design it this way in the first place?

In Episode 178 of Crusade With Me, Dave and Kat step into a conversation about sex, pleasure, ma...

What is that fire inside you?

The drive to build. The urge to create. The desire to achieve. The anger that demands action. The attraction that pulls you toward another person. The sexual energy that can feel almost impossible to ignore.

Where does it all come from—and what is it for?

In Episode 177 of Crusade With Me, we explore the powerful energies woven into human life: ambition, creativity, anger, attraction, desire, and eros. Are these forces something we should fear and suppress? Something we should simply indulge? Or were they gi...

If you could create God, what would He be like?

Would He agree with your politics? Approve of your choices? Dislike the same people you dislike? Would He ever look at something you deeply believe and tell you, “You’re wrong”?

For thousands of years, human beings have tried to understand the divine—from Zeus and Odin to the gods and philosophies of the ancient world. But maybe we never stopped creating gods. We simply gave them new names: money, success, politics, pleasure, identity…and ourselves.

In this episode of Crusade With Me, we follow...

What does it really mean when someone says, “I’m spiritual, but not religious”?

In Episode 175 of Crusade With Me, Dave and Kat explore one of the fastest-growing ways people describe their relationship with faith—and ask whether spirituality without something outside ourselves to define truth can eventually become a spirituality of our own making.

This isn't an argument for religious labels or institutions. It's a conversation about truth, authority, community, surrender, and the difference between seeking God and creating a god who agrees with us.

Can we be spiritual without being religious? Can reli...

What if the biggest obstacle standing between you and the truth… is you?

We all like to believe we're open-minded. But once a belief becomes part of our identity, changing our mind can feel like losing part of ourselves. Our brains defend what we already believe. Our tribes reward agreement. And sometimes questioning the accepted story can cost us relationships, reputation, or belonging.

So what happens when the evidence points somewhere we don't want to go?

In Episode 174 of Crusade With Me, we explore confirmation bias, the power of first impressions, cancel culture, tr...

Is Something True Even If Nobody Believes It?

If everyone believed something false, would that make it true? And if nobody believed something true, would it suddenly become false?

In Episode 173, Dave and Kat wrestle with the difference between belief and Truth—and the uncomfortable possibility that reality doesn't need our agreement.

Are good and evil real? Does reality have an order? Why are we so good at seeing other people's deception while missing our own?

And perhaps the hardest question of all:

Do we really want the Truth if...

Episode 172 – Reality Always Sends the Bill

Every choice has a consequence—even the ones we think no one will ever see.

In this episode of Crusade With Me!, we explore one of life's simplest and most challenging truths: reality always keeps the score. Our habits, relationships, character, and faith are all shaped by the small decisions we make every day.

Why do some choices lead to peace while others lead to regret? What if God's commands aren't arbitrary rules, but the way reality itself was designed to work? And where does grace fit when...

What if accountability isn't punishment...

What if it's freedom?

This week, Dave and Kathy returned home from a week at the Jasper County Fair expecting to remember horses, ribbons, and competition. Instead, they found themselves watching something far more revealing—human nature.

Children accepted responsibility with remarkable humility. Adults often searched for someone else to blame.

Why is it so difficult to simply say, "I was wrong?"

In this episode of Crusade With Me!, we explore why accountability has become one of the rarest virtues in modern life, and wh...

For six episodes we've been asking difficult questions.

Why do we feel like there has to be more than this?

Why can't we sit still?

Why has wonder faded?

Why are we more connected than ever, yet increasingly alone?

Why won't our minds ever stop talking?

What did ancient wisdom know that we've forgotten?

Now we arrive where King Solomon finally arrived after chasing pleasure, success, wealth, wisdom, work, and every earthly pursuit imaginable.

"The conclusion, when everything has been heard, is this...

For centuries, humanity searched for wisdom not because life was easy—but because it wasn't.

Today we have more information than any generation in history, yet anxiety, distraction, loneliness, and exhaustion continue to rise. We know more... but are we actually becoming wiser?

In this episode of Crusade With Me!, we step away from the endless noise of modern life and listen to voices that have endured for thousands of years. From King Solomon and Ecclesiastes to the wisdom of the early Church, we explore truths that technology cannot replace and progress cannot improve.

...

Have you ever noticed that your mind almost never becomes quiet?

It replays yesterday. It worries about tomorrow. It imagines conversations that never happen. And somehow, in all that noise, we mistake every thought for the truth.

In this episode of Crusade With Me!, we journey inward to explore one of life's greatest battles—the conversation happening inside our own minds.

Together we'll explore:

• Why our thoughts seem to run endlessly. • Why attention follows whatever we repeatedly think about. • What ancient wisdom teaches about stillness, silence, and clarity. • How to stop be...

We have thousands of followers, hundreds of contacts, and endless ways to communicate. Yet loneliness has quietly become one of the defining struggles of our time.

How did we become so connected... and so alone?

In this episode of Crusade With Me!, we explore the difference between communication and genuine relationship. Technology has made it easier than ever to reach one another, but true connection requires something far more valuable—our attention.

Together we'll ask:

• Have we mistaken contact for connection? • Why does presence matter more than proximity? • What can ancient wisdom t...

When was the last time something truly left you speechless?

We carry supercomputers in our pockets, watch rockets land themselves, and can speak with someone on the other side of the world in an instant. Yet somehow, we've become harder to amaze than ever before.

Maybe the world hasn't become less extraordinary.

Maybe we've simply stopped paying attention.

In this episode of Crusade With Me!, Dave explores why wonder quietly disappears—not all at once, but beneath layers of busyness, distraction, certainty, and constant noise. Together we'll ask whether our loss of...

Why is silence so uncomfortable?

Why do we instinctively reach for our phones, turn on the television, scroll social media, or fill every empty moment with noise?

Maybe the problem isn't that we've forgotten how to rest.

Maybe we're afraid of what we'll discover when everything finally becomes quiet.

In Part Two of the Attention series, we explore one of the defining struggles of modern life: our inability to simply be still. From endless distractions to relentless busyness, we've become experts at avoiding silence—even though silence has always been the pl...

Have you ever looked around at your life—even a good life—and quietly thought, there has to be more than this.

You're not alone.

In Part 1 of our new seven-part series, Attention, we begin exploring one of the most important questions of our time: What is capturing our attention, and where is it leading us?

We chase success, entertainment, possessions, relationships, accomplishments, and endless distractions, hoping they'll satisfy the restless longing inside us. Yet no matter how much we consume, the feeling remains: there has to be more.

What if that...

As America celebrated its 250th birthday, it's worth asking a deeper question: What does true freedom really look like?

In this special episode of Crusade With Me!, Dave and Kat reflect on the blessings of living in America, the sacrifices that have preserved our liberties, and the legacy we hope to leave for future generations. Together, they explore one of the most powerful chapters in Scripture—Romans 8—where the Apostle Paul reminds us that the greatest freedom isn't political or national, but spiritual.

America can protect many freedoms, but only Christ can set us free from...

What does a lifetime of faithful ministry look like?

In this special episode of Crusade With Me!, I sit down with Rev. Schumacher, a pastor whose life has been marked by humble service, deep theological conviction, and a genuine love for people.

Our conversation spans decades of ministry—from serving as a missionary in Africa with his family, to his pioneering work with the deaf community through the Lutheran Church—Missouri Synod, where he helped develop sign language for use in the Church's liturgy. We discuss the importance of communicating the Gospel so that everyone can...

What if the greatest obstacle between you and God isn't your past—but your belief that you've gone too far?

In this episode of Crusade With Me!, we explore two powerful passages of Scripture that reveal the very heart of God. In First Timothy 1:12–17, the Apostle Paul calls himself the "foremost of sinners," yet boldly proclaims the immeasurable grace of Christ. Then, in Gospel of Luke 1–10, Jesus tells the parables of the lost sheep and the lost coin, reminding us that God is not waiting for the lost to find Him—He is actively seeking them.

Togeth...

The older I get, the less certain I become about many things.

Twenty years ago, I thought I had most of life's answers figured out. Today, I realize that certainty is often easier than wisdom, and arrogance is far easier than humility.

In this episode, I share why Crusade With Me! exists in the first place. This podcast was never created because I believed I had all the answers. It was created because I need the questions.

Together, we'll explore what it means to "connect the dots" in life. Sometimes we connect dots...

Most people don't reject God because they hate him.

They reject Him because they're busy.

Busy building careers.

Busy chasing dreams.

Busy paying bills.

Busy scrolling phones.

Busy entertaining themselves.

And before long, the important gets crowded out by the urgent.

Jesus tells the story about that. Luke3:13-18

John tells us what happens when we let God's love shape our lives. I John 14:16-24

Together these readings challenge us to examine where our priorities truly are.

In this powerful and deeply personal episode of Crusade With Me! Dave sits down with a lifelong friend — Pastor Mike Hesterman — to revisit a 30‑year friendship and a 50‑year faith journey.

Pastor Mike opens up about his early life as a self‑described scoundrel, his years of rebellion, his time in the Army during a racially tense and dangerous season, and the night in 1975 when he was forced to confront the question: “If I died tonight… where would I go?”

What follows is a raw, honest, and moving conversation about:

In a world fighting for your attention, Jesus asks a deeper question: What are you really looking at?

In Episode 157, we explore how focus shapes formation — and how the things we continually behold begin to shape who we become. Drawing from Matthew 6:22–33 and Romans 5:1–10, this episode dives into:

You’ll walk away with clarity, conviction, and a practica...

We all think we know how life is supposed to work.

We make plans. We form opinions. We create expectations about what God should do, how He should do it, and when He should do it.

But what happens when God's plans are different from ours?

In this episode of Crusade with Me! Dave and Kathy explore the gap between what we think we know and the reality God reveals through Scripture.

Abram thought he understood his future. He had a plan, a timeline, and a logical conclusion about...