Story Time with Josh

Dr. David Fraze: No, Josh, I'm a righty, so let's do this.
One of the greatest things that we have is the power of our testimony.
And I told Josh a few weeks ago, I said, hey, on Tuesday, we're going to play a game.
It's like asking me a question.
He's the dean of students, and I'm not so sure you know everything about him, and I do.
And it's impressive to see where you came from and where you are today and what you're doing,
and that you're alive, if I may say.
but I want you to get to know him better so we're going to play a little game I get to ask him a
question he gets to ask me too and then I get to ask him a final question all right so Josh
and I we're going to interrupt each other right yeah I'm good with that good so tell us how you
Josh Stephens: came to faith in Jesus um I mean I'll for the record like y'all don't care about my story um
I know that.
But I do think there's power in story.
They do care about your story.
Dr. David Fraze: Don't discredit it.
Josh Stephens: That's dumb.
They don't.
There is power.
Go ahead.
Dr. David Fraze: We will argue.
Josh Stephens: Yeah.
One of the neat things, like, so I've been, I think, a person of faith the majority of my life.
But in high school, you know, we would go to church about once a month, and they would always make fun of me for, like, oh, okay, it's Josh's time to show up for church.
And so in high school, my senior year of high school, I started, you know, sometimes when you're a senior, you're like, oh, I'm going to find this girl and like, you know, kick her to the curb, whatever.
I tried that.
That didn't work out really well for me in that moment.
But I started dating Angie.
And she broke up with me four times.
It is what it is.
Whatever.
Some people don't want to win the lottery.
That's okay.
Dr. David Fraze: Okay.
Before you go there, let's stop.
So the first time I met Josh Stevens, I was Angie's youth minister.
I'm sitting next to my wife.
And it was Angie, me, and Lisa.
And this guy walks up to me, this teenage guy, and he's just like, what are you doing?
He starts fronting me because I'm sitting next to his girlfriend.
And that was really awkward and odd.
Josh Stephens: I did have a mustache, so I probably looked very tough.
No, no, you look like you wouldn't be allowed within 500 feet of an elementary school.
Dr. David Fraze: That's right.
Now.
Josh Stephens: Now.
Dr. David Fraze: But that was our first meeting.
Josh Stephens: Yes.
Dr. David Fraze: So out of those four, here's in front of everyone, God and everyone, my wife and I convinced
Angie at least twice.
Josh Stephens: Yeah.
Dr. David Fraze: Out of the four times.
Josh Stephens: Yes.
Dr. David Fraze: That she needed to drop you to the curb.
Josh Stephens: Yeah.
Yeah.
It worked.
Anyways, we broke up.
She broke up, whatever technical term you want to use.
And I ended up going to another university and was kind of doing the...
Dr. David Fraze: You can say Texas Tech.
Josh Stephens: It's all right.
Dr. David Fraze: I love Texas Tech.
Josh Stephens: I went to Tech.
I was doing some fraternity stuff.
And then in the middle of, really in the middle of being hazed, I remember asking myself,
where is God in all of this?
And I kind of recognized that I felt the void not because of God, but because of me.
And so, and the truth is really acceptance, popularity, what other people thought of me, that was more my deity at the time than really following God.
And so I quit the fraternity.
There's a long story with that.
But Angie and I reconnected.
And then you play, you do play a part of this because I met, obviously Angie was still in high school.
But you and I talked, and I said, hey, I'm not going to bring my church doctrine to these conversations.
Don't bring your church doctrine.
Let's talk about who Jesus is, and let's talk about the Bible.
And six weeks later, I was baptized when I was 19 years old, which is really weird today.
I was thinking about that in February.
That'll be 30 years.
And so it's just kind of crazy.
But, and the rest is history.
I'd like to say I excelled academically at Tech.
I did not.
Turns out you have to go to class to do well.
And so, yeah, you feel me.
I was enrolled at Tech.
I didn't attend all that often.
And I dropped out to become a police officer.
And then my parents were like, listen, we want to help you go to school,
wherever you want to go to school.
And I looked at LCU because I knew Angie was going to come here and play basketball.
and really I think the Lord opened up those doors because just from an
involvement standpoint from a missional standpoint from professors I did I will
tell you when I came back to work at LCU after my undergraduate like I went
around to certain professors to apologize for the kind of undergraduate
student I was because I was in school for social reasons not really academic
reasons and they can attest to that but I had faculty and staff and people like
like you and others that, that poured into me to, to help me, uh, really on this journey,
Dr. David Fraze: we call faith. And I, I'm going to just add a little more color to it. Cause I remember
they were really hazing you. Oh yeah. You were, cause he came back over to the office. I mean,
it was, uh, for, you know, it's amazing. God takes you through pain because if identity and
I want to be the big guy, which they reached out to you when you were in high school. Yeah,
for sure. Cause they wanted you to be part of their group. And then you said you were in this
swimming pool yeah of crap basically fishing for someone's keys yeah and it's like your
Josh Stephens: slot pig moment literally and i was i was getting punched and going like i gotta get out of here
and so it was it was definitely hazing so yeah okay yeah whatever so um but i'm i'm proud that
Dr. David Fraze: you you came home yeah yeah that was amazing conversation i'm very proud of you doing that
that'd be hard to do most people would just take it so good job i appreciate that and it's neat to
Josh Stephens: If I imagine where my life would be had I not listened to the Spirit, I wouldn't be where I am.
Dr. David Fraze: And so sometimes when you have a dean of students who seems grouchy, it's because he's been there, got the T-shirt, and he's saying, there's another side to this you don't want.
And so I appreciate you use that.
Josh Stephens: Yeah, no.
Listen, there's sometimes I do suck.
I get that, okay?
Not as often as you think I do, but there's sometimes that I do.
I'm just kidding. But yeah, I mean, but that's the benefit of being older and walking paths. And even in my job as a dean of students, now there's grace there. Does grace mean void of consequence? No, not necessarily.
But listen, I'm a broken man that needs Jesus, just like I think you're broken people that need Jesus.
And so there's no stones here.
Just part of my job to hold people accountable to the standard in which LCU says this is what we expect of our student body.
And so.
Dr. David Fraze: Awesome.
Josh Stephens: Thank you.
Yeah.
Okay.
Dr. David Fraze: My question.
Josh Stephens: So y'all may not know.
The year after Dave graduated college, he lost his father.
And then in 1999, six days before Angie and I got married, Dave was involved.
He was driving a bus that was hit, and it was a very, very bad bus accident.
And so, Dave, during those dark moments, as a person of faith, because in an audience this full, there's people going through hard things.
So as a person of faith, how do you navigate those hard trials where sometimes you're even asking, like, God, where are you right now?
I need you.
Dr. David Fraze: Well, I realized very early on that most churches at the time, we had no voice of lament.
All of our songs were happy.
All of our songs were calling God out, saying, that's fine.
I'll take a little, you know, shack here, but I want a mansion that's gold and all this kind of stuff.
And I discovered the lament psalms, which I never really knew, that a third of the psalms are complaints to God.
in our classes when I talk about it.
I mean, that's a huge voice
because I was raised that
you just kind of kept all that to yourself
and it's impossible when you do six funerals in two days.
And all the stuff you go through
and not having a dad.
So, I mean, a lot of it is very honest conversations with God.
And for the second time in my life,
the first one was when my dad died,
but the second time,
to feel the peace that passes understanding
that Paul talks about in Philippians is real, but it takes a lot of honesty. There's people,
and somehow I see the reflection, we have very honest conversations, and I'm able to have those.
They're able to have it with me, and I will say friendships without gloss that I realize very soon
you can't defend God. He's big enough. You just got to let him have it. Real wild questions of
one guy in particular who was 12 at the time he's now a hospital administrator
he prayed before we got on the bus and I forgot it was him so 25 20 years later we had a little
bit of reunion and there was one girl who or Rachel who we knew instantly you know the the
kids who died and I got to triage all that we're in the middle of nowhere when people actually got
there before they got there rather one of the girls Rachel started waking up and I knew she
had a broken arm. Her neck was, was probably broken. Uh, but she started waking up and she
was gibberish. So all I could do all that first aid stuff clicks in. So I got her 14 year old
friend to sit on this bloody bus and I moved Rachel down and she held her head. And I just
said, I need you to say her name over and over again. She saved her friend's life.
And it was an amazing experience. We're telling that story 20 years later and this, and the rest
girl's story, the 14 year old, a few months later, she caught me after youth group and she's just
crying. She said, David, we prayed for a safe trip. Why didn't God answer our prayer?
No answer to that. So I've got very comfortable with the ambiguity. God's God. He says yes and
no. Well, this guy started crying and now he's a hospital administrator. I'm like, what's going on?
And he said, I need to have coffee with you the next morning. He said, Dave, do you remember who
you asked to pray? And I said, no, he goes, it was me. I was 12 years old and David Fraze asked
me to pray. And for 20 years, I've been thinking my prayers aren't enough. And that, that was rough.
So, I mean, there's some things that just don't have answers. And that's why we have
a third of our Psalms are laments. And I doubled down maybe a little too much when people,
you know, they're like, well, I'm going to give my life to Jesus. Everything's going to be fine.
the Bible doesn't teach that. It's not health and wealth. You can have all the faith in the world
and bad things can still happen. We've read the Bible as some kind of Western, God's in the genie
bottle. And if you say things just right, your life will be good. But I always go back to Jesus'
final illustration in the Sermon on the Mount. There's two houses and one stands and one falls,
but a storm hit both houses. And so I've really learned that Philippians 4, 13,
I can do all things through Christ has nothing to do with getting straight gray,
straight A's and all that kind of stuff. It has to do, I can survive. And there's some people
in this auditorium that have worse than that and they're surviving and they're here because of
Christ. And sometimes that's all we can do. And I've become very comfortable in that.
Josh Stephens: Yeah. And I, one thing, you know, we talk about community, which is really important,
Huge community.
One of my favorite things, not favorite sounds, that time of loss.
I don't know if you remember.
We're at your house, and we're on the second floor, and we could see outside the front door, and a car pulled up.
And Philip Nichols, Jason Ratliff, Steve Esquivel, and Raymond Schultz got out of the vehicle, flew from Dallas the next day.
And so it would have been that Monday, I guess.
And it was neat as kind of a mentor in my faith journey.
It was neat for me to see in that moment you weren't this teacher.
You were man hurting and your community came in to just wrap their arms around, not not fix it with words, but to be present with you.
Dr. David Fraze: Oh, and you were present. I mean, you were the you know, we worked the entire year when I was at Abilene Christian going back and forth.
And we worked through some hard stuff that year because one of the families, this is crazy.
Their daughter died in the bus wreck.
Mother-in-law died.
And then you drove to Abilene to our apartment and said that the daughter-in-law had killed the newborn baby.
And the family went through all that in one year.
And, again, when you're talking to that dad, there's no words.
But that idea of presence, man, you were part of that.
And I don't know what people do.
Lisa and I talk about this a lot.
How do people go through things without a community and without faith?
I don't understand.
I really don't.
But I will say one of the detriments if somebody goes, oh, my word, my dog died,
and I think I'm going to give up on Jesus,
you may get a double-barrel shot from me to go, are you losing your ever-loving mind?
It's a dog.
I mean, sometimes I've got to work on my empathy.
Yes.
Because people are like, I'm really horrible at that.
I'm just like, okay.
People are like, you know, I don't know what happened.
I got a used car and not a new car, and God hates me.
I'm like going, I just buried six kids.
I'm like, I don't want to hear about your car.
So it does kind of give you an edge and a passion.
And if you've had me for classes, I will say, dude, you need to hear this.
You need to wake up because I think the message of Jesus has become really a lot more important.
Josh Stephens: Amen.
A lot of times people view folks like you, our professors, our faculty, our staff, our administrators,
not as just real people that struggle in faith. Can, can you share a time or what it's like to,
to struggle sometimes during seasons of life? Oh my word. So, uh, I'm not a perfect husband.
Dr. David Fraze: Um, did Lisa say, um, you know, when you go through cancer, you know, Lisa, I've gone through
a lot. Um, she, you know, four surgeries in two years, she got a new knee replacement. I mean,
all kinds of stuff. And we both did what we'd ask everybody else to do is, Hey, go to counseling,
figure this stuff out. And I remember the first time I went to a counselor and after
over 30 years of marriage, I'm just talking to this lady and she goes, uh, Dr. Phrase.
And I'm like, yeah, she goes, so you said the two shall become one and you decided it was you.
And I'm like, it's going to get real up in here. Right. So, um, our marriage is better than it
has been because I did the hard work of listening. I'll say, I won't talk very much about it because
it's a, it's such an incredible intimacy. I'll just break down and cry. I love my wife
and it's, it's great to battle together and try to become better for each other,
but it's a journey for sure. And it's a lot of prayer and a lot of walk-in and a lot of
God, what's going on. And it's awesome. Okay. So I get to ask you, okay. Um, because it happened
here at encounter. There's one time that I said, did you say that? And I looked around, I looked
And Angie, I'm like, did that just happen?
There's some stuff in your life that got very real a few years ago about anxiety.
Josh Stephens: So explain that to us.
So I will preface this.
Like, I feel the emotion right now rising in me.
And so I'm going to take your perception of me as a heartless individual and try to push it down right now.
Because I don't want to cry.
Anxiety is real.
And people in the student life staff that walked with me during that time can attest to it.
If I'm going to be honest, one night I went and worked out, watched TV with the kids and Angie, had a few cookies,
and laid down and fell asleep on the floor of my living room and woke up and something was there.
I felt a weight.
And so I tucked the kids into bed.
I took a sleeping pill and I faked being asleep till Angie fell asleep. And then I paced around
the house praying to God, like something's happening, something's going on. I don't know,
you know, and I, and I will tell you, I thought, I thought of dumb decisions I made when I was in
high school and like, God, forgive me for this. Like it brought back everything. And, and I can
remember being in a meeting in the student life conference room thinking I'm about to have a panic
attack right now. And I walked around the campus, saw my wife dropping some kids off and just was
flooded with emotion. And I texted Randall Dement and I said, listen, I need a couple of days. I
don't know what's going on. And so I'm talking to doctors, I'm talking to a counselor. And one of
the neat things, and listen, guys, you've heard us promote this John Deloney event on Thursday.
John's a rock star. You need to go see him. He's super funny. He's super talented. He's very
engaging. When I say he's crazy, I mean that both in the fun sense and the literal sense.
But I'm in the middle of like trying to weather this storm. And I got a text from John Deloney
saying, $20, go do a cartwheel in the middle of your office. And I was like, I'm a grown man.
That's stupid, John. I said, I'm not going to do this, but I do need to talk to you about anxiety.
Because it had gotten dark.
Like there was one night, like I didn't see a future in that night.
And so I had to have very honest conversation with Angie and the kids.
And John said, I'll give you 24 hours to call me.
And I said, okay, I'll call you.
I did not call him because Deloney's stupid.
And 24 hours, John Deloney calls me.
And he said, tell me what's going on.
And so I threw up everything I was thinking, everything I was feeling.
because for you to say you have anxiety, cool. Millions of people do. For me to do, to have
anxiety, there was a pride issue there. And I felt like I was the guy that's supposed to have his
crap together. I can't deal. I'm not supposed to deal with this. That that's Satan. That's
arrogance. That's, that's crap. Okay. I think I can say that in chapel. I don't know. Uh, bleep
Dr. David Fraze: it out. We've said worse by this time. So that's good. But, uh, the, the best thing John Deloney
Josh Stephens: either called or texted me every day or every other day for the next four weeks to check on me.
And this is a guy that has a doctorate in higher ed. He has a doctorate in counseling.
But kind of what you talked about, just in my role as a dean of students, sometimes I'm good
at being a dean of students because I walk those same dumb paths. Thank goodness we didn't have
cell phones or social media. And I got to say this because John, I'm a little bit older.
Yeah, you are for sure older. Let's go on the record there. We are not contemporaries,
But there, go ahead.
John almost was kicked out of camp more than once by me.
Dr. David Fraze: Now, John, he has his own story.
And people are like, oh, my gosh, John Deloney.
When we laugh about it.
So, like, during an encounter, we're hiding out in spaces going, what are you doing?
This is awesome.
God used him.
And I think part of his deal and why he can walk into our worlds like he does and is so faithful is because people were faithful to him because he had his own walk, without a doubt.
And he would call people, the guy who's much more contemporary, Scott Jarvis, which I had no idea on stage.
He goes, Scott, do you remember when you drove and you drove me because I thought my wife was in my life?
My marriage was over and we were both like, I didn't even know that.
So I want to hear from people that have not only done the education, but they know how to talk in the world because they've lived through it.
Josh Stephens: They're on the other side.
And that's what he did for you, right?
Yeah, for sure.
And I do think, I'm not, you can call me charismatic, whatever you want.
I think there's spiritual warfare going on.
I think there's a spiritual battle.
I don't think it's an accident that John Deloney is going to be on our campus in two nights.
A lot of stuff going on.
I think there's stuff going on.
You guys are carrying stuff.
We're carrying stuff.
To have someone like John come on who's trained to have hard conversations, man, what a gift.
And so I'm excited to see him.
I'm a little nervous to hear what he has to say because we did some things in college that I don't think are really appropriate.
Dr. David Fraze: We need to hide somewhere because he likes to call people out that he knows.
Josh Stephens: So we'll just hide in corners.
Dr. David Fraze: Now, tell them what they want, Johnny.
Here's the cool part because we believe about it so much, and we've kind of been waiting to say this.
So this is what we had planned, and we forgot it was on top of John Deloney's deal.
So we talked about this.
Josh Stephens: Pretty awesome.
So Shirley's out back with some people.
Yeah, Shirley will be – Shirley Cope will be back there with some tickets.
It's first come, first served.
I think there's a couple – there's less than a couple hundred tickets.
Dr. David Fraze: So somebody, whoever bought them is like $25 a piece.
Josh Stephens: Yeah.
Dr. David Fraze: And somebody fit the bill for you all, and they want you to be here.
Josh Stephens: And that's –
Dr. David Fraze: And John wants students here.
Josh Stephens: And the cool part, like John will do his shtick, which will be funny and engaging.
But then it's answering those questions.
And we're going to have people out there where he may be like,
who wrote that question?
And that – he's going to want that person to stand up
because he's going to want to do the dialogue.
And so it's going to be like his live show.
Dr. David Fraze: And he won't say crap.
Josh Stephens: Oh, yeah.
You better have a ticker on things he says
that he may not supposed to say.
But yeah, it's going to be super rad.
Dr. David Fraze: Did you just say super rad?
Yeah.
We got to get out of here.
You're deteriorating.
Okay.
Josh Stephens: Oh, okay.
Do you want me to close?
You close the order.
Dr. David Fraze: One, two, three.
Pick a number.
Paper, scissors, or rocks.
Go.
Josh Stephens: One, two, three.
Oh.
You close. You're older. Respect your elders. Let's do that.
How old are you?
Dave, we're getting close to 60, right?
I'm not. Yes, close. Close.
Dr. David Fraze: Still whooped most of your tails, and the staff and faculty did beat you students.
It's true.
All right, here's what's going to happen.
We have chapel check-in, but out back, I'm going to just encourage you.
We got a little bit over 150 tickets.
Grab one for Thursday night. It's going to be awesome in here.
It's going to be healing.
As always, when we have a chapel like this, it's so deep.
Will all the faculty and staff stand up real quick?
Just faculty and staff.
Yeah, y'all aren't sitting with the students.
We're going to fix that.
Y'all start, except this one little kid.
Hey, would you talk with us?
We walk with you.
We walk with you.
All right?
Everyone in here, I can just look around.
We all have a story.
Like, we have a story.
We just found Jesus and we want you to be a part of that.
So you're dismissed.
See you Thursday.
Thank you.