Crusade with Me

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 vehicle and performed CPR until help arrived.

They've held death in their hands.

Together, they ask whether modern culture has become so focused on avoiding death that we've forgotten how to face it. What did earlier generations understand that we've lost? Why does death frighten us so deeply? And what changes when we stop treating death only as an enemy and begin seeing it as part of the mystery of life?

Dave also admits something that may sound strange:

He thinks there can be something beautiful about death.

Not because death doesn't hurt. Not because grief isn't real. But because perhaps death isn't simply an ending.

Maybe learning how to die is actually part of learning how to live.

Crusade With Me! — Episode 187 Have We Forgotten How to Die?

The Truth Is Worth Seeking.

Let's keep walking.

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 and forty years of living together changed them.

So, what does it mean to choose each other now?

In Episode 186 of Crusade With Me, Kat joins me for a very candid conversation about marriage, growing together, and the roles we've played along the way. We wrestle with masculinity and femininity—not as stereotypes or rigid job descriptions, but as we've actually experienced them through four decades of being husband and wife.

We also challenge some of the messages modern culture gives us about relationships:

Protect your peace. Never change for someone else. You shouldn't need anybody. If you're unhappy, maybe you're with the wrong person.

There can be truth in some of those ideas. But what happens to a marriage if ME always outranks US?

Because marriage isn't 50/50 every day.

Sometimes it's 80/20.

Sometimes one person carries almost everything.

Sometimes you adore each other.

And sometimes you choose someone you don't particularly like at that moment.

Maybe that's the part nobody tells you when you're standing at the altar.

Marriage isn't one enormous choice made on your wedding day.

It's thousands of smaller choices made afterward.

Stay. Listen. Forgive. Apologize. Laugh. Touch. Carry each other. Change. Grow. And when necessary, choose each other again.

So, after forty years...

Would we still choose each other?

You'll have to listen to find out.

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. Sex changes. Faith changes. The things we fear change. Even the things we once believed with absolute certainty can change.

But what happens when two people don't change at the same speed—or even in the same direction?

In Episode 185 of Crusade With Me, I wrestle with what it means to love a person who is continually becoming someone new. Maybe the goal of marriage isn't to keep your spouse exactly as they were when you said, “I do.” Maybe it's remaining curious enough to keep discovering who they're becoming.

Because after forty years, maybe forever isn't simply a measure of time.

Maybe forever is a decision made thousands of times:

Stay. Listen. Forgive. Apologize. Touch. Laugh. Try again. Ask the uncomfortable question.

And sometimes look at the person beside you and say:

“Tell me who you are now.”

Maybe marriage isn't spending your entire life loving the person you married.

Maybe it's spending your entire life meeting them again.

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, perspective, suffering, faith—and our tendency to demand that today explain itself before tomorrow has even had a chance to arrive.

We’ll look back at COVID and ask whether time has changed not necessarily what we believe, but how we see the way we treated one another because of those beliefs.

We’ll wrestle with the old saying that “time heals all wounds,” the closed doors that become unexpected forks in the road, and Christianity’s audacious claim that something can be genuinely painful without pain getting the final word.

And then there’s the dash—that tiny line between the year you were born and the year you die.

An entire life represented by one little mark.

How much of that dash are we spending regretting yesterday, worrying about tomorrow, or waiting for life to finally begin?

Maybe the worst thing that happened to you wasn't secretly good.

Maybe you simply couldn't see the whole story while you were standing inside it.

And maybe the bigger lesson isn't learning how to control time.

It's learning how to live the time we've actually been given.

Don’t demand that today explain itself before tomorrow has had a chance to arrive.

Live the dash.

The Truth Is Worth Seeking.

Let’s keep picking them up and putting them down.

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’re trying to fool themselves?

Why is “I was wrong” so damn hard to say? Can we repeat our version of events until we actually believe it? Can you forgive someone who never apologizes? And does forgiveness mean allowing that person back into your life as though nothing happened?

Then comes the uncomfortable question:

What if WE are the ones doing it?

This conversation explores self-deception, pride, apology, repentance, forgiveness, boundaries, reconciliation, and the freedom that comes from finally telling the truth—even when the truth is about ourselves.

Because time passing isn't the same thing as healing.

Silence isn't reconciliation.

And pretending nothing happened doesn't make it disappear.

The Truth Is Worth Seeking.

Let's keep walking.

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 wear today, we explore shame, fear, vulnerability, control, Taoist ideas about forcing and simplicity, and the exhausting work of becoming who we think everyone expects us to be.

But Christianity makes an extraordinary claim: while humanity hides, God comes looking.

What if confession isn't giving God information He doesn't already have? What if it's finally stepping out from behind the tree and answering His question—“Where are you?”—with three simple words:

Here I am.

No résumé. No reputation. No performance. No hiding.

Crusade With Me! — Episode 182: Why Are We Still Hiding?

The Truth Is Worth Seeking.

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 fascinating descriptions of humanity:

“And the man and his wife were both naked and were not ashamed.” — Genesis 2:25

Maybe “naked and not ashamed” isn’t really about taking your clothes off.

Maybe it’s about reaching a place where you no longer need to pretend.

After nearly forty years of marriage, Dave and Kat ask what it means to be completely known by another person—and still loved.

Episode 181 — Crusade After Dark: Naked and Not Ashamed — Our Arizona Story.

The clothes came off.

The bigger surprise was what else disappeared with them.

The Truth Is Worth Seeking.

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. And it isn't another list of religious rules.

It's an attempt to ask the harder question:

If sexuality is part of God's creation, what was it actually created for—and where, if anywhere, did God draw the lines?

No condemnation. No easy answers. Just an honest search for Truth.

The Truth Is Worth Seeking.

Let’s keep walking.

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 question isn’t, “How do I stop wanting this?”

What if it’s, “What is this desire actually pointing me toward?”

The Truth Is Worth Seeking.

Let’s keep walking.

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, marriage, desire, intimacy, and the goodness of the human body. We explore Scripture, human physiology, psychology, and ancient wisdom while asking whether sexual pleasure might reveal something about God's intentions for intimacy rather than merely presenting another temptation to overcome.

Maybe the question isn't simply, “Where are the boundaries?”

Maybe we first need to ask, “What was this created for?”

This is a mature conversation about something deeply human—and something Christians shouldn't be afraid to talk about.

The Truth Is Worth Seeking.