relentlesspursuitofChrist

About relentlesspursuitofChrist

If Christ is in relentless pursuit of us, then we ought to be in relentless pursuit of Him. relentlesspursuitofchrist.substack.com (https://relentlesspursuitofchrist.substack.com?utm_medium=podcast)

Publisher

relentlesspursuitofChrist

Category

education · religion & spirituality

Language

en

Explicit

No

First episode

9 Jun 2026

Latest episode

26 Oct 2026

Latest episodes

8 episodes in the feed.

1. 

   26 Oct 2026

   Compounding

   It has been quite a time since my last recording. I just checked — the last one was July 17th. I would like to be the first person to say that just because I have not recorded a voice memo does not mean that my pursuit of Christ has been any less relentless. If anything, it’s become more relentless. Which is part of the reason why I haven’t made the time to record — I’ve just been so focused on taking action. But that’s also somewhat of an excuse. Around the time I posted my last recording, I had a call with a friend and mentor, someone who I respect a lot. I was trying to figure out what to do with my life career-wise — how to be self-reliant and have the kind of money to provide for a family. I was struggling with the idea that if I was going to be a business owner as my way of pursuing financial stability, I needed to go all in with such intense focus and prioritize it above almost anything else. Very much an all-or-nothing mentality. And my friend — he’s a business owner, does well for himself, but you wouldn’t be able to tell just by looking at him that it was anything out of the ordinary. That is by design. He told me this parable. He said there are plenty of people who love playing baseball just for the love of the game, and they don’t feel like they’re not enough because they can’t hit a 100-mile-an-hour fastball 500 feet. They just play because it’s what they want to do and what they love. And I realized that’s how I feel about business. Being an entrepreneur, being a business owner, creating financial stability for my family in a way that leaves me more independent than a job would — that’s something I want to do and love to do. The myriad of different problems I get to solve as a business owner on any given day make me excited. And so that story helped teach me that just because I don’t want to grow a huge company or scale nationwide doesn’t mean I can’t be a successful entrepreneur and live a fulfilled life. Since then, I’ve had the opportunity to purchase a business. And I have. It’s a service-based business with a really good business model. It’s not the best type of business to be in right now — the best type would be some kind of AI software business with infinite leverage attached to it. And frankly, this business doesn’t have that. And that’s okay. Because it’s still allowing me to utilize my skills in a way that I feel fulfilled doing, and it will help me create the kind of financial future I want for me and my family, while keeping independence and control at the forefront — and a relentless pursuit of Christ as my number one priority. I want to touch more on that point. Over these last couple of months, I’ve realized that having financial stability significantly increases my ability to consistently focus on Jesus Christ at the level I want to. The last three years or so, my financial life has been a pretty cyclical pattern — Max makes a lot of money, then lives purely off savings for the next four to six months without a single paycheck, spending down until money becomes the only thing he can think about. Where am I going to get more money? How am I going to do it in the way that Christ wants me to? All of those questions, because I need the money to survive, become paramount. And as a result, they significantly decrease my ability to focus on my pursuit of Christ. Christ would usually become number two. My habits — I’d keep doing the things I needed to do for my spirituality. Which is awesome, and I’m happy with those efforts because they helped me maintain the level of my relationship with Christ that I have. But I was constantly killing that compounding and restarting and restarting and restarting. Compounding. Ladies and gentlemen, compounding. Momentum compounds. Spiritual momentum compounds. Relationship momentum compounds. Financial momentum compounds. And what I’ve been missing in my pursuit of Christ these last few years is consistency of momentum. I would kill my spiritual momentum every six months or so — give or take — because I had to figure out finances, and it would put my brain into a state of fight-or-flight panic mode. So I’m here now with the idea that I am starting to compound. And I’m not going to interrupt it. I’ve looked at the way I want to approach building this business through the lens of that story — doing it for the love of the game, doing it so I can also compound in my spiritual momentum. So my relentless pursuit of Christ can be much more truly relentless than it has been previously. I’ve made a lot of really good strides. I’m in a place with my relationship with Christ that I’m quite happy with, and I’m excited to keep pushing forward. Just for a little context since July — I’ve moved twice, had every career door and opportunity closed on me besides buying this business, went to Ecuador for almost three weeks on a humanitarian trip, had to relocate multiple times and build an entirely new income stream, figure out all the ropes, receive training, figure out how I was going to approach building the business, and actually take massive action on it and create something I feel comfortable with — something that’s going to be sustainable enough to free up my mental capabilities to think about something else. A.k.a. Jesus. I’ve finally gotten into enough of a routine that I’ve alleviated some of that financial stress. I’ve chosen a way to make money that I wouldn’t say I’m necessarily obsessed with, but I am obsessed with the profit margins. And that’s good enough for me for now, because of how much it’ll allow me to focus on Jesus instead. Keep the change. And keep changing, y’all. Love you. Bye. #rpoc #relentless #pursuit #christ Get full access to relentlesspursuitofChrist at relentlesspursuitofchrist.substack.com/subscribe (https://relentlesspursuitofchrist.substack.com/subscribe?utm_medium=podcast&utm_campaign=CTA_4)

2. 

   18 Jul 2026

   Loneliness and the Horizon

   Something pretty interesting has been happening to me over these last couple of weeks. As I’ve become more focused on this pursuit of Christ and reaffirmed it as a large part of my identity once more, I’ve felt an increase in opposition, I guess is what I could label it as. I’ve felt more lonely. A little bit more on my own. I think maybe the right word is isolated. It’s been interesting to experience, one, because I don’t really give it much heed, and two, because the reoccurring thought I’ve had in contrast to those feelings is that I keep getting the sense that God is using this period to shape me for something incredible. I don’t know what that is. But I find the feeling comforting. There’s something on the — who knows how distant — horizon that this period of patience and perseverance is preparing me for. I just felt the urge to chronicle these feelings as part of my relentless pursuit of Christ. To document that there are plenty of periods of loneliness. I think despite the fact that the Savior was very often surrounded by people — everyone trying to see him, touch him, talk to him, be with him, learn from him — I think Jesus was the loneliest person to ever walk the face of the earth, from a human perspective. No one understands what he went through. Which is just so interesting. Because he understands everything I’m going through. I know I’m never alone because of that. But no human in the flesh understood what he was going through. He did have the fully constant guidance of the Spirit, which is important and comforting. But I think he faced loneliness just like we all do. That’s what I’ve been thinking about these last couple of weeks as I’ve started making Christ this more ever-present focus. And it’s working. I feel more focused on him. I feel like I’m doing what I’m supposed to be doing the vast majority of the time. Not perfect. Getting there. But I feel more aligned. And I feel at peace with the fact that God is preparing me to do something incredible with my life. I don’t think he takes the level of focus and dedication and willingness and submission that I am giving to him lightly. I think it’s just going to take some time and some shaping and some molding before I’m ready to really be put into play on the chessboard, so to speak. And if I’m being very transparent, I feel like I’ve had a lot of that already. And I have. But that doesn’t necessarily mean I’m all the way where God needs me to be. I know I have an eternity of shaping left to do. Cheers to that. Get full access to relentlesspursuitofChrist at relentlesspursuitofchrist.substack.com/subscribe (https://relentlesspursuitofchrist.substack.com/subscribe?utm_medium=podcast&utm_campaign=CTA_4)

3. 

   13 Jul 2026

   Figuring Things Out

   So I’ve been doing my habit. I took my Forge activity last Sunday, and it’s been a week — I’ve done my habit every single day. I’ve had good success with it. I’ve learned some good things, been pushed out of my comfort zone, met some great people. It’s been awesome. Just as a recap — the attribute I found myself weakest in for this month was charity and love. The specific point within that was that I didn’t really feel a sincere desire for the eternal welfare and happiness of others. It’s not that I don’t have that desire. It’s just that I wasn’t really feeling it a whole lot in my day-to-day life. And I want to. So that’s the weakness I’ve chosen to play to for the month of July. The habit I developed with the Triple S Method was talking to a new, random person every day — really trying to find a level of commonality with them, get to know them so that I can see them as a person and have that sincere desire for their welfare and happiness. I’ve also made some updates and changes to The Forge — added push notifications, some extra clarifications, a lot of great things. But this whole documentation journey, process, whatever you want to call it — this portion has been a challenge for me to consistently do. I’m not really sure why exactly. I think a large part of it is probably just that I don’t want to document the fact that I’m becoming. I want to become. That’s what I want. And I don’t necessarily want to document it, outside of what I’m already doing in tracking inside The Forge itself — using the tracker, adding notes periodically, taking the attribute activity every month. I don’t really see a need to do more than that. So it’s lower on my priority list than the actual act of becoming itself. But I also don’t really know another way to disseminate these ideas, this information, or The Forge as a resource if I’m not doing something like this. I love suggestions. I love feedback and advice and people helping me solve problems. I think I really need to be part of a team — even just one other person on a project with me who’s invested in it the way I am, who can keep me accountable. Someone I could have a conversation with on a daily basis who checks in and says, hey, how did this thing go today? That real person keeping tabs on me would be highly, highly effective for getting me to do this thing that I don’t intrinsically want to do. I want to do the becoming part. I want the relentless pursuit of Christ. I don’t innately want to document it. So having someone to report to in that way would be a very effective tool. We could just record the conversations we’re having. Maybe someone who was willing to join in that pursuit. Then the question becomes where to find said person. There are really only a handful of people I’ve met who are relatively as obsessed with change and becoming like Christ as I am, who are trying to live as intentionally and as focused as I am. And I want to be very clear — this doesn’t make me any better or worse than anyone. The only person I’m competing against is the past version of myself. It’s just my individual journey. But a project like this, because it doesn’t really come with any worldly accolades or financial incentive or fame or fortune, just isn’t going to be appealing to most people unless they’re already super interested in living with that kind of intentional focus toward becoming like Christ. So that’s option one — find an accountability partner. Someone to push me. Part two is I probably have too many plates spinning right now. Between my internship, training for a marathon, going on a ton of dates, this project, options trading, going to the gym, eating and sleeping, wanting to listen to a Brandon Sanderson audiobook, reading my scriptures, going to institute — there are just so many different things competing for my time. Welcome to life, I guess. I don’t think there’s any real way I could just quit everything else and go all in on chasing this relentless pursuit of Christ dream. There’s no guarantee that putting this content out would be generating enough revenue by the end of six months to keep me from needing a job. Plus I actually really love my internship and would love to work there — I feel like I’m surrounding myself with people who are helping me become more like Christ. What more can you want from that? Shout out HXP. So for now, I’m probably just going to record these whenever I get the inspiration to record. Whenever I have something where it’s like, oh, I want to talk about this in my pursuit of Christ. Right now I’m honestly just out here talking because I’m trying to figure things out. I’m confused about where this is all supposed to head and what I’m supposed to do with these things that I’m building, this obsession that I have — besides benefit me and then teach it to people within my sphere of influence, without really using it to grow my sphere of influence so I can teach it to more people. I keep being reminded of this feeling that I need to be the best at something — maybe not necessarily in the world, but in my geographical area. Be so good at something that I just become the de facto person people go to for that specific thing. And in some ways I’ve started to see that — people have started coming to me and reaching out. But Jesus is just such an interesting thing to try to monetize. Because all the secrets are there, you know? All the secrets are in the Bible. You can get a copy for free from the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. The secrets aren’t gatekept at all. The only gatekeeping is done by the amount of time an individual is or is not willing to spend finding out the mysteries of heaven for themselves. So I have a hard time wanting to charge money for that, or figuring out a way to charge money for that. But at the same time, I don’t have anything else I’m obsessed with. So I keep looking in other areas — maybe it’s being a race car driver, or the nonprofit sector, or public speaking, yada yada — something that’s not really on the mark of what my obsession actually is. I just love change. I want to be all in on change. And I don’t know where the career is that’s all about change. Maybe I’ll go ask Claude. I think this has been helpful for me — just to voice some things and try to figure out more precisely where I need to head. I want to find an accountability buddy for this project, at the very least. All I know is that in the grand scheme of things, Romans 8:28 applies — everything will always work out for my good because I love God. See you in the next one. Whenever it is. Cheers. Get full access to relentlesspursuitofChrist at relentlesspursuitofchrist.substack.com/subscribe (https://relentlesspursuitofchrist.substack.com/subscribe?utm_medium=podcast&utm_campaign=CTA_4)

4. 

   4 Jul 2026

   The Forge

   I’ve had this idea recently that I want to record what a day in the life looks like for someone who is relentlessly pursuing Christ. And I realized I didn’t feel entirely able to do that right at this instant. I was wondering why that was. And it was because I wasn’t as focused as I had been previously — probably the last couple weeks or so. So I was trying to figure out: what can I do to regain that level of focus? What am I missing? What do I need to change in order to get back to that mindset and that mentality? Kobe Bryant has a quote: when you know what you’re aiming for, the world becomes your library. And I realized that I had an overarching aim — I want to change to become the most like Jesus Christ that I possibly can be, and I’m going to relentlessly pursue him. But as with all goals that we set, a goal without a plan is just a dream. And if we’re being honest with ourselves, how often do dreams come true? Not very often. They totally can, but what usually makes a dream come true is when there is a very specific and dedicated plan that is thought through, put forth, and followed very consistently. So I’ve been thinking about how I can apply that. And I’m going to introduce a tool that I built called The Forge. I am a member of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. If you know much about the church, one of the things they do is send missionaries out everywhere. I had the awesome opportunity to serve a mission. I spent about 10 weeks in the Philippines before I got sent home because of COVID — that was March 2020 — and then I spent about a year and a half in the New Mexico Farmington mission, mostly serving on the Navajo and Hopi reservations. Absolutely loved it. And that was really where my initial desire to follow Christ and become more like him took off. One of the resources the church has put out is a manual called Preach My Gospel — a guidebook for missionaries that teaches them what they’re supposed to teach, helps them figure out their missionary purpose, who they’re supposed to become, how to teach better, how to find people to teach. Super, super helpful. One of the chapters — chapter 6 — is about developing Christlike attributes. That chapter has always been my favorite. I’ve just always been obsessed with it ever since I learned it was a thing. At the end of chapter 6, there’s an activity where you can rank yourself on a scale of one to five across somewhere between 11 and 14 different Christlike attributes, with different statements about each one — as to how well or poorly you think you’re doing in that area. I remember taking it for the first time when I was in the missionary training center in Provo, Utah. I was scoring myself a one — basically never — on almost everything. I was sitting in a chair at a table right next to a big bay window that overlooked the mountains, and it was raining that day. I remember scoring so low on almost everything and thinking, holy crap. I am really far from Jesus, as far as my character goes. And in that moment, the Spirit really bore witness to me of the reality that that was what I needed to pursue. That fire to change and to develop Christlike attributes has stayed with me ever since. Six and a half, seven years now. I took that attribute activity many times on my mission. It helped incredibly — to refocus my efforts, become more self-aware, identify my weaknesses, and then make plans to play to those weaknesses and work on turning them into strengths, obviously with the help of the atonement of Jesus Christ. I’ve been home about four and a half years now, and I was thinking about it this week — I think I’ve only taken that attribute activity a handful of times since I’ve been back. The last time was probably a year and a half, two years ago. I haven’t taken it since. So I created The Forge with that idea in mind — and with the idea that Kobe implemented as a teenager. From around ages 13 to 17, during the summers when they played lots of games but didn’t have lots of time to practice, Kobe would play to his weaknesses during the games. He wasn’t as good dribbling with his left hand as his right, so he’d dribble with his left hand during games. He’d pull up for jumpers more, even if that wasn’t his strongest shot. He gave himself the time and the reps to turn those weaknesses into strengths. At the end of four years of doing that — when almost no one else was doing that, because as a teenager you do what you’re good at — his game became a lot more well-rounded than most of his peers. Now, becoming more like Jesus Christ isn’t a competition between me and my peers. It’s between me and my past self. I can think for the long term. I can try to beat who I am today with who I am tomorrow — two years from now, five years, ten years, twenty years, and on my deathbed. So The Forge is a web app I designed and built that takes you through the questions on the Christlike attribute activity at the end of chapter 6 in Preach My Gospel. I haven’t changed any of the questions. Full credit to the Church of Jesus Christ for creating that activity — I just adapted it to a mobile version. Once you answer all those questions, The Forge tells you your average score for each Christlike attribute, because some attributes have more questions than others. It highlights the attribute you scored the lowest on. The point is to help you identify and become self-aware of your weaknesses so that you can craft a habit to work on for the next month — like Kobe, play to those weaknesses, and use the atonement and the enabling power of Jesus Christ to turn them into strengths. Not only will it highlight the attribute you averaged the lowest score on, it will also tell you which specific question within that attribute you scored yourself lowest on. So if your average score on patience was like a 2.5, and the statement you answered a one on was something like “I am patient with those around me” — then you know exactly what to work on. The Forge will ask if you want to work on that. It also gives you the option to follow the Spirit and use your own discretion if you feel like you should be working on a different aspect or a different attribute altogether. But it highlights the weaknesses, because that’s usually what we need to work on and what God wants us to work on. Once you’ve selected a specific point to work on, you’ll build a habit that the goal is to implement daily for the next month — in a format I created myself called the Triple S Method. The Triple S Method starts by making your habit specific. You do that by assigning your habit a what, a when, and a where. The goal is to make it so specific that you can visualize it like you’re watching a movie in your head. This creates what’s called neural resonance in your brain — when you attach an action with a location and a time, it helps your brain remember it much better, and thereby gives you a better chance of actually doing it on a day-to-day basis. So if we use the example of reading the scriptures, instead of saying “I’m going to read the scriptures every day,” you’d say: I’m going to read the Book of Mormon for 15 minutes every day from 7 to 7:15 AM while I’m sitting at the desk in my bedroom with the light on, reading my paper scriptures, with my phone on do not disturb in the other room. The goal is to make it so specific that you can visualize it like you’re watching a movie in your head. And that will — as John 14:26 talks about — help the Spirit to bring that thing to your remembrance, because you have a much more tangible thing to bring to remembrance in the first place. Once you have the specificity identified, the next step is to make sure your habit is simple enough. You do that by asking yourself: do I feel 100% confident in my ability to stick with this habit every single day for the rest of my life? If the answer is no — which initially is totally fine — you go back to the specific stage and change some aspect of your what, when, and where until you have that level of confidence. So let’s say you looked at your 15-minute scripture study habit and thought, I don’t actually remember the last time I sat down and read the scriptures for 15 minutes straight. I don’t know if I’ll be able to do that. Okay — maybe we start with 5 minutes. And your confidence increases: yeah, 5 minutes, I could do that any day of the week in any shape I’m in. The reason we do this is twofold. One, most people when they set a habit with that level of specificity tend to feel pretty confident about it. But pretty confident frankly just isn’t going to cut it when it comes to the rigors of life, because life is going to put some challenges in your way. If your habits aren’t designed to help you overcome those challenges, they are going to fall. And once a ball drops, it is a lot harder to pick back up. By asking yourself that question — do I feel 100% confident? — instead of breezing past it with “yeah, I got this,” you’re now thinking: when are all the times I might miss this? You’re planning around the failures before they happen, rather than failing to plan and planning to fail. Two, because we’re making the habit so simple, it makes it a lot easier to get back on the train in the event that we do drop it. The classic example is the January 1st person who says, I’m going to go to the gym five times a week for an hour and a half each time. The statistics are something like 80% of all New Year’s resolutions are given up by Valentine’s Day. Because going from nothing to an hour and a half five times a week is a massive commitment. We want to start more gradually. Hit the 5-minute goal, build trust in yourself, and then down the line — maybe after a few months of consistency — ramp it up to 10 minutes. Start with something you absolutely know you can handle. Then the last S in the Triple S Method is to seal your habit with some type of one-second celebration. I say one second — it doesn’t actually have to be one second. It’s exaggerated on purpose to convey how important it is that this celebration does not add any friction to the actual completion of your habit. Like, instead of saying “after I go to the gym I’m going to get a protein shake” — well, the protein shake place is five minutes away, adds time to your drive, there’s a line, you’re spending more money. Those are all things that increase friction. And there are going to be days where you’re running long on time and you think, well, if I go to the gym I won’t have time to get my protein shake after. So I guess I just shouldn’t go. Wrong. We want a celebration that doesn’t add friction. Something like walking out of the gym and just plastering a big smile on your face and saying, let’s go. Hyping yourself up. My mom has a phrase that she says — that has inspired a lot of people — it’s just: I did what I said I was going to do. I have integrity. For her, identifying that she has that character of integrity is huge. She doesn’t even say it out loud — I think she just says it in her head or reads it on a post-it note. Something that simple, that doesn’t add anything to the difficulty of the habit itself. The reason we do this goes back to a famous psychologist, B.F. Skinner, who did a bunch of studies training rats. What he found is that what gets rewarded gets repeated. We want to attach whatever habit or action we’re trying to work on with some type of reward, so our brain starts to link those two things together — links that good feeling with the actual habit we’re trying to build — and thereby increases our desire to stay consistent with it. So that’s a big part of what The Forge is. Once you’ve put your habit in, The Forge stores it, and then there’s a tracker portion. The tracker records on a day-to-day level whether you did your habit or not, keeps a streak tally, and keeps an overall tally of how many times you’ve done the habit total. And the thing I’m most interested in for myself is that it tracks all of your average answers for each attribute, month after month after month, and graphs those in a line graph. So you can see your progress — or lack thereof — on a more macro scale, which allows further introspection and self-awareness as you start to notice trends over time. The goal is to take the Christlike attribute activity once a month — the first Sunday of every month. In the Church of Jesus Christ, we practice fasting on a monthly basis to show God that we are willing to submit to him and be obedient, and that we really want what we’re fasting for. You always fast with a purpose in mind, or else you’re just starving yourself. So I wanted to correlate those things — fast the next month for the weakness I identified in myself, and fast for the habit I’m going to start implementing to play to that weakness and round out my game. The Forge is currently free. I honestly don’t know exactly what I’m going to do with it yet besides use it myself and share it with some friends to test out. But I want to make the Christlike attribute activity — and The Forge — the focal point of this Relentless Pursuit of Christ platform. With the idea that it will be a tool that a lot of other people choose to adopt and that will help them become more Christlike. Not just better. Because trying to be more like Jesus will always give me a better return than trying to be a better me. The link is the-forge-rpoc.netlify.app. It’s also accessible through our official website at relentlesspursuitofchrist.netlify.app, and I think it’s also linked on the Substack page. I invite anyone listening to go test it out — see if it helps you identify some of the weaknesses in your game when it comes to becoming like Christ, and ideally use it to help streamline your focus in turning those weaknesses into strengths, with Christ and by Christ and through Christ. That’s one of the things I think I’ve been missing recently. I have this widespread desire — yes, I want to become more like Christ — but I haven’t been as focused the last couple weeks on this specific thing that I’m working on right now to do that. And this will give me that focus back. I’m excited to try it myself. I’m excited to try it with you guys. Today’s the 4th of July. Happy 250th birthday, America. I can think of nothing more American than choosing to change yourself to make your life better than what it once was. Cheers. Jesus is the Christ. Peace. Get full access to relentlesspursuitofChrist at relentlesspursuitofchrist.substack.com/subscribe (https://relentlesspursuitofchrist.substack.com/subscribe?utm_medium=podcast&utm_campaign=CTA_4)

5. 

   18 Jun 2026

   How Marriage will Lead me closer to Christ.

   The Pursuit Experiment I am currently single. And I would like to be married. I’ve been going on lots of dates, and I’ve been going on lots of good dates. But rarely am I asking girls out who I think are so good that I’m actually scared or nervous to ask them out. And I think that I’ve been making a mistake. Because if I am going to relentlessly pursue Christ for the rest of my life — which I am, regardless of how this plays out — it would be much more helpful for me to have someone who I feel like is equally yoked with me in that pursuit. Which means I need to look for a girl who is really, really, really, really good. And I use the word good like when God says it is good in Genesis. So I am going to start asking girls out who are way out of my league. Because they’re not, actually. I just maybe feel like they are. My test for that is this: if I find a girl physically attractive — because that’s not the most important thing, but it is important — and I’m interested enough in her, and I think she is good enough from getting to know her, that I’m nervous to ask her out, then that is my sign that I need to ask her out. That will, one, help to widen my comfort zone, which is always good when it comes to pursuing Christ — the wider your comfort zone, the better in that regard. And two, I can find someone good enough that if they are as good as they seem, that will be a big help in my relentless pursuit of Christ. Because outside of choosing to follow Christ, choosing who to marry is the most important choice I will ever make. That is the experiment I’m going to run. I have a person in mind to ask out already. And I will do that this Friday. Let’s go. Get full access to relentlesspursuitofChrist at relentlesspursuitofchrist.substack.com/subscribe (https://relentlesspursuitofchrist.substack.com/subscribe?utm_medium=podcast&utm_campaign=CTA_4)

6. 

   17 Jun 2026

   Building a Character of Integrity

   Building a Character of Integrity From my observation, my experience, and my study — building a character of integrity is absolutely essential to each individual’s relentless pursuit of Christ. To me, integrity is defined as simply doing what you say you are going to do. Which also, by extension, requires you to say what you mean and mean what you say. Maintaining a character of integrity is challenging for a lot of people, because a lot of people like to speak without thinking extensively about what they’re doing or saying. And you’ll notice that in Christ’s perfect life, he never said or did anything out of turn. So integrity requires us to put a much more conscious effort into the things that we’re saying and the things that we’re doing. That pause and space is something a lot of us need to get used to. It’s difficult in part because the vast majority of us have spent our entire lives saying we are going to do things and then not doing them. And in doing that, we’ve built a litmus test of proof — in the negative — that we can’t trust ourselves. Our body and our mind know. Each of you listening can sense that there are a lot of times where you say you’re going to do something and in your head, you already know you’re not going to do it. And that manifests itself in the specific words you say. “Oh yeah, I think I can get that done.” That’s already a no. “Oh yeah, maybe.” That’s already a no. “I’ll try to get that done tonight.” Already a no. So there are a lot of different things that will need to get fixed if we are to have characters of integrity. And I think the easiest place to start is probably with our words. Just saying what we mean and meaning what we say. We have to rewrite our mental narratives. We have to start small and start to rebuild our characters of integrity, start to fill all of these holes that we’ve shot through ourselves — through our metaphorical ship, so to speak — and prove to ourselves that we are trustworthy again. That’s what it means to have integrity. To be someone who is trustworthy. Someone who can rely on themselves, and someone others can also rely on. You’ll notice Christ was perfect in this. And the other nice thing is that Jesus, being a man of his word completely, can’t lie — I guess won’t lie. And so we know that when we make promises with God, he will always keep his end of the bargain. Even if we fall short, and we do every day. Understanding that you can rely on him in that way is critical. When it comes to integrity, there are a few specific steps you can undergo. The first one — and this should be the first step you undergo when you’re trying to change anything to be more like Jesus — is just to pray and ask God to help you. To be a man or woman of your word. Ask him to help you speak more carefully and think more before you speak. A specific practice that’s been helpful for me — an experiment I’ve run a few different times throughout my life — is that I initiated a policy with myself where I would have to wait three seconds before I said something to start or respond to a conversation. That proved to be very effective. It just forced me to slow down. I would count in my head — one, two, three — and then respond. And the vast majority of the time, I caught myself about to say something that was either just not necessary, or was a negative rather than a positive. A mantra that I think is helpful when considering this: your words should always be bringing everyone up and never bringing anyone down. So a good rule of thumb is that in those three seconds, your brain has some extra time to process what you’re about to say. If you find that it’s going to bring someone down, don’t say it. If it’s going to lift someone up, say it. Now, where this ties into integrity — you might say, well, if I tell someone I’m going to do something they want me to do, that’s going to bring them up. And it may, for a moment. But if you don’t actually mean what you say and follow through, then in the long run it is going to bring that person down. And that is still a negative. You have to follow through. You can’t just say you’re going to do something and then not do it and expect that to be a positive interaction with that person. People are going to stop trusting you very quickly. As I have worked to rebuild my character of integrity — to build a litmus test of proof for myself in the positive, that I am just someone who does what they say they’re going to do — my capacity to change, to be more like Christ, has increased dramatically. Because I have become someone who, when I say I am going to do something, I know it will actually happen. I trust myself to do whatever needs to be done to make that change. I’m not perfect, and that litmus test of proof in the positive is still something I’m building and will continue to build every day for the rest of my life. But it helps bring that confidence back — that you can change, that you have the power to be more like him. That all those problems or issues you’ve had your entire life, that you’ve said time and time and time again you’re going to change but still haven’t — it starts with the small things. Your words. Your small, everyday actions. Just doing the tiniest things and letting that momentum compound, letting it snowball, until you become someone who simply does what they say they’re going to do. And then you can approach those bigger, more systemic changes that need to be made in your life and say — okay. I’ve remade myself. I’ve rebuilt my character of integrity. I feel much more confident, and I am much more capable of saying I’m going to tackle this challenge, to change, to be more like Christ, and actually doing it. Go rebuild your character of integrity. And you will give yourself the confidence and the capability to change anything you want to about yourself to be more like Jesus Christ — in your relentless pursuit of him. Get full access to relentlesspursuitofChrist at relentlesspursuitofchrist.substack.com/subscribe (https://relentlesspursuitofchrist.substack.com/subscribe?utm_medium=podcast&utm_campaign=CTA_4)

7. 

   16 Jun 2026

   Focus Is Everything.

   Focus Is Everything One of the things I have thought the most about and ran the most experiments with, especially over the last two years or so, when it comes to pursuing change and pursuing Christ, is focus. And the more I study and experiment, the more I realize that focus is everything. You become what you focus on. It’s just everything. The phrase “you are what you eat” is very true. What you put into yourself will be what you give out — whether that’s food, water, media, the people you surround yourself with, the activities that you find yourself doing on a day-to-day basis. You become what you focus on. And by extension, your actions express your priorities. A lot of people may think, or maybe even feel, like they’re focusing on the areas that they want to be. But when they take an honest look at their calendar on a day-to-day basis, they might find that they’re spending a lot less time doing the things they say are their number one, two, three priorities — and a lot more time doing things that they probably don’t even think should be priorities. Because that’s part of human nature, and part of the world we live in, especially now. It’s been re-engineered to distract us from what matters most and keep us focused on things that make other people money, rather than things that might truly matter to us. Focus is so important. There are a couple quotes I think about when it comes to focus. One is Steve Jobs — “focus is just saying no.” I think it’s a little more complex than that, but I think Steve was on the right track. I think focus has a lot more to do with overall simplicity. And I think focus is just doing something with the maximum level of intentionality that you can, for an usually extended period of time. The intentionality is the real key, in my opinion. Because it’s easy — well, maybe not easy — but there are a lot of people who can do something good for a long time. But to relentlessly pursue anything requires a lot more intention in your thoughts and your focus. You have to be mentally engaged if you are going to relentlessly pursue something. Almost the entire time. You can’t have passive action. It has to be intentional action. There’s a podcast called the Founders Podcast — phenomenal podcast on entrepreneurship by David Senra. He did an interview with Chris Williamson a while back where he said if he could sum everything up — everything he’s read, over 400 biographies, over 100,000 pages of words and ideas and life experiences of ultra-successful entrepreneurs — into one word, it would be focus. And to couple that with a quote from Edwin Land, the founder of Polaroid: “My entire life has been spent trying to teach people that uninterrupted, intense concentration for hour after hour will bring out results in people they didn’t know they had.” There’s also one from Charlie Munger — Warren Buffett’s right hand man — “Find a simple idea and take it seriously.” And one from Dan Martell: “Simple scales, complex fails.” A lot of those phrases originated from a business or entrepreneurial context, but I know they apply to life as a whole. For me, what focus has looked like recently is being able to narrow my scope of what I’m doing and why I’m doing it into one sentence apiece. One simple sentence. So I can sit here and honestly say, when people ask me what I want from an overall life standpoint — I want to change to become more like Jesus Christ. I am obsessed with changing to become more like Jesus Christ. And when people ask the career question — I get paid to serve people and help bring them closer to Jesus Christ. Those are simple sentences that encapsulate what I’m doing and who I am. Those took me about two years of constant introspection, experimentation, and retooling of how I defined what I wanted in life. To give you an example, an experiment you can run — of how you could potentially go about finding that focus for yourself. Because you can’t reach a destination you don’t know the location of. If you don’t know what you want, how are you supposed to know where you need to go to get it? When I realized I had no clue what I wanted, I was working at a roofing company in Arizona. I took myself off my salary position and went back to being all commissioned so I had more control over my time. I would do all my roofing work in the morning, and then I would go back to my house, change back into my pajamas, lay down in my bed, and think. What do I want? What does God want me to do? Who does Jesus want me to be? How does God want me to change? What improvements can I make? I had a notebook on my bedside table with a pen, and every time I felt like I had an answer worth writing down, I’d write it down. Then go back to thinking. Write more stuff down. Go back to thinking. Repeat that for hours a day sometimes. At the time, I thought I wanted to be an entrepreneur — more in the sense of how Steve Jobs or Alex Hormozi is an entrepreneur. So I was trying a lot of different business ideas, finding the most fiscally efficient way to test each one. But in hindsight, through the introspective analysis that those experiments yielded, I realized that everything I was trying to do was just to give myself a way to get paid to serve people and help them become more like Jesus. That was the crux of all of it. And I noticed that pattern over time. I would encourage each of you to do something like that. To find out what you want, what God wants for you, and what you feel like you should focus on. I promise you, it is worth the time. It is worth the effort to remove the distractions from your life. Delete your social media — you don’t have to delete the accounts, just delete it off your phones. Spend the time with yourself. Honest introspection is one of the most powerful tools to learn your identity as a son or daughter of God, to feel that identity. A lot of people are either scared to spend time with themselves — in their own head, their own thoughts — or they just let themselves get distracted by the things of the world, because it really is so easy. There’s an infinite number of distractions for anyone at this point in society. I’ve really enjoyed the movie F1, the new one with Brad Pitt. His character has a line — he’s talking about the media and the press coverage and everything, and he tells the other racer: “It’s all just noise. It’s all just noise.” And that’s what the vast majority of the things around us in life are. It’s just noise. All the news is just noise. Most of your friends’ Instagram story updates. It’s just noise. Your favorite YouTube creator dropping a new video. It’s just noise. The list goes on and on. Remove the noise. Remove the distractions. Simplify — as my good old buddy Henry David Thoreau said — simplify, simplify, simplify. And that will bring the focus that your life deserves. You should be far more aggressive in simplification and seeking focus than you currently are. Everyone should be. It is such a powerful tool. And I just want to remind everyone of the Edwin Land quote, because I think it’s so powerful. We don’t understand our own capacity. We don’t know ourselves well enough to know what we are actually capable of. Edwin Land is the founder of Polaroid. He was Steve Jobs’ idol. He has the third most patents of anyone in U.S. history. This guy could literally invent things on demand. The military called him up and said, hey, we need a fix for this problem. And he said, okay, I’ll be by tomorrow. The military leader asked, so you’ve already got a solution in mind? And he said, no, but I’ll have one by the time I get there. And he did. This guy knew what focus was and knew how to utilize it. The kind of person who is dropping this truth bomb — it’s not just something he said, it’s something he practiced and lived. He gleaned this truth from a life of focus. “My entire life has been spent trying to teach people that uninterrupted, intense concentration for hour after hour will bring out results in people they didn’t know they had.” That is the relentless pursuit of Christ. Uninterrupted, intense concentration — hour after hour — figuring out what you can do to be more like him. Trying to be more like him. Thinking about changes that need to be made to be more like him. Making the changes. Over and over and over again. Focus is utter simplicity. Get full access to relentlesspursuitofChrist at relentlesspursuitofchrist.substack.com/subscribe (https://relentlesspursuitofchrist.substack.com/subscribe?utm_medium=podcast&utm_campaign=CTA_4)

8. 

   9 Jun 2026

   The Kobe Bryant of Becoming Like Christ

   My name is Max Baldauf. And I believe that if Jesus Christ is in relentless pursuit of me, that I — and we all — ought to be in relentless pursuit of him. I stumbled across this because I was listening to interviews with NBA players talking about Kobe Bryant. One specific interview stood out to me. The player said that if you looked at Kobe on paper, as far as his physical prowess, there was absolutely nothing remarkable about him. He was like 6’6” or 6’7”. Average vertical, 38 inches. Normal size hands. Nothing stood out about him physically. But what did stand out about Kobe is his work ethic. His attention to detail and humble desire to master his craft above all else. That’s awesome, but I’m not in pursuit of mastering the craft of basketball. I’m in pursuit of becoming like Christ. And there’s nothing more important to me than that. My relationship with him. So I decided today that I am the Kobe Bryant of becoming like Jesus Christ. What I mean by that is that I am in relentless pursuit of Christ — of obtaining his attributes, changing to become more like him, adopting his characteristics as my own in every way possible. This is what I’m obsessed with. It’s my number one passion, priority, obsession, everything. It has been since I was 19. I’m 25, almost 26 — I turn 26 later this month. So about six or seven years. Almost seven years is what we’ll go with. I wanted a way to keep track of my thoughts and my efforts to pursue him. And I think this is the method. I don’t know exactly what this is going to turn into yet. But I’m going to make these voice recordings, run the transcripts through an AI that cleans them up, post them on a website, and maybe turn those into posts that go on social media as well. This is, in one sense, a selfish endeavor — because every time I record something like this, I give myself an opportunity for introspection. To look at the changes that I’m making from as honestly self-aware a standpoint as I can, and then make improvements from that. And in sharing verbally the efforts that I’m taking to change, it’s going to force my brain to think about things more. Give me more time to actually make the changes I want to make to become more like him. I know that the power of the internet is great in that people pay for passion. So maybe eventually I can literally just get paid for my passion. But if that never happens, that’s fine — because I want to take advantage of the opportunity this would be to reflect in a way that works for me. I don’t want to record videos. I don’t care about looking good or sounding good in front of a camera or writing some type of script. I just want to record my genuine thoughts and efforts in conversation, in regards to my relentless pursuit of Christ. For me. And also share it in hopes that it will benefit someone, anyone. Even just one person is fine. That is my endeavor. Welcome to the Relentless Pursuit of Christ. Get full access to relentlesspursuitofChrist at relentlesspursuitofchrist.substack.com/subscribe (https://relentlesspursuitofchrist.substack.com/subscribe?utm_medium=podcast&utm_campaign=CTA_4)

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