Julie Hilsen (00:05)
Thanks for joining us today on Life of Love. appreciate all your attention and I’m really excited to step into this space today with Dan Parr. The first thing I’m gonna do is set our intentions. So if you’re driving, don’t close your eyes, but this is how I like to start all of my podcasts. It helps me center and helps my audience know where I’m coming from. So I honor your time and attention.

Settling into my body and getting calm in my heart Thank you God for bringing us together on this time the sacred divinity and synchronization as this message is coming forth for the highest good at the divine timing that it’s meant to come forward I honor each ear I honor each spirit as we’re trying to remember and I’m

completely honored and ecstatic to be part of any part of remembering and anytime that I can spark that in someone else as I’m sparking it in myself, that is a true blessing. So I thank you God, I thank you Holy Spirit, all of my guides, all the angelics who help us whether we ask them or not at times, but more when we ask them, I thank them for being part of this.

And I thank Dan and his team for coming forward and saying yes. And so it is. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you.

Dan, welcome to Life of Love. I’m so happy to have you on this episode.

Dan Parr (01:35)
Thank you so much. It is such a pleasure to be here. I appreciate it.

Julie Hilsen (01:38)
Well, this community is all about curiosity and bringing forth, you know, this remembrance. So, you know, every day is a chance to live the life of your dream. So thank you for saying yes to that.

Dan Parr (01:48)
Yes.

absolutely. You know, if we can do anything to help people along in the journey, then I’m all for it.

Julie Hilsen (01:56)
And like I said in my intention, this is selfish for me because it forces me to be in this place. And then it’s like, okay, ripple effect, I say yes. So I am definitely not one of those people that has this imposer syndrome that I think that I know everything. I’m just digging through this and finding my way.

Dan Parr (02:07)
Yeah.

You know, I’m, I’m 57 now. just had a birthday last week and the older I get, it makes me realize how little I know. When I was 20, I knew so much, but now I’m, you know, close in, pushing 60, I realize I don’t know that much. Thank you.

Julie Hilsen (02:33)
Well, happy belated birthday.

I’m on my calendar in front of me. Awesome. Well, again, thanks for being on and Dan is just, he’s come forward with an offering for humanity to help people reconnect with sacred scripture. And so I was, I lit up when I saw his profile and we connected on pod match. Shout out to Alex and his team.

I’m so happy to be connected. I’m going to let Dan tell you what sparked this creation. Because I was like, whoa, I was intimidated to write Life of Love. I was like, who am I to write a book about spirituality and honoring your divinity? And then I was like, whoa, you must really have a calling to translate the Bible, to narrate it. And yeah, just share with us that spark.

Dan Parr (03:12)
Yeah.

Julie Hilsen (03:24)
what caused you to go down that path. Because it takes a lot of guts. ⁓

Dan Parr (03:29)
Yeah,

it’s, it’s been an interesting journey to be honest with you, Julie. it’s nothing that I had ever intended to do. If you would’ve told me five years ago that I’m going to be a published Bible narrator, Bible publisher, I would have thought you were crazy. That was the least thing on my mind. I had no idea to do that. I had no time, no space to do that. but yet here we are five years later and it’s done. ⁓ well, thank you.

Julie Hilsen (03:55)
Well, congratulations.

Dan Parr (03:58)
Let me go way back if I could because I think it’s kind of important to set the tone of the whole life story. When my mom was pregnant with me, she was in a very dark space in her life. She was suffering from migraine headaches and frequently. And the only relief she would get was by taking these strong drugs that her doctor prescribed to her. Well, during this time, she becomes pregnant and she is concerned because she’s on this heavy meds.

And so she goes to her doctor and says, what’s going to happen to my baby because of these medications? And he kind of shakes his head and says, it’s not good, Juanita. This is the heaviest medication that I can, strongest medication I can give you. It’s going to have an effect on your baby. There’s going to be some sort of physical, mental disability that you guys are going to have to deal with. I recommend you get an abortion. And she heard that and she was devastated. So she goes home.

talks to my dad and they wrestle with it a little bit but comes to the conclusion that if God allowed her to become pregnant then there is a reason for it, right? God doesn’t make mistakes. So if this child is gonna be born with special needs then that’s what God wanted, God ordained and they’re gonna trust God in the process to provide the help that they’re going to need in the years to come. So I come out.

A few months later and I have all my fingers on my toes. They watch me over the next several months and I’m developing normally, right? There’s no abnormality that they can find. And like I say, here we are 57 years later and I’m still going strong. But that’s just a testament to what God is able to do when we put our faith and trust in Him, right? Now, don’t get me wrong. If I had been born special needs, God would still be God and God would still be sovereign, right? He has a purpose for everyone.

But for me, it just drove home the message, the fact that he must have had a plan for my life, right? If he spared me having to go through that, spared them having to go through that, then there must be a reason for it. And for many years, excuse me, I did not know what that was, right? I was just living my life, typical California kid, right? Getting into trouble sometimes, but still, you know, just living life.

We had been going to church, but we quit going for a number of years. then something kind of interesting happened. We had a flood in our neighborhood and we got like over four feet of water in our house, had to be rescued by boat, the whole thing. And we had been at a church for a number of years at that point, but yet some people from our church came by with a generous financial blessing from my parents and just said, you know, we know you guys don’t have flood insurance because nobody did.

We just wanna be a blessing to you and help you through this difficult time. And that made an impact on me. I thought, why would they do that? We don’t go to that church anymore. They don’t owe us anything. Why would they do that? And the answer was just called by love led by the spirit. And I see now looking back how God used that event to further my life. So that left an impression on me. I was like, I don’t know, 13 years old, fast forward several years.

I’m still out of church, but I’m doing video work as a high schooler, right? I have a video camera and people are paying me to video gigs. So I get this one gig and it pays me a hundred bucks, which was good money, but I thought, I’m doing pretty good. 18 years old, don’t really have the need for this hundred dollars. You know what I’m gonna do? I’m gonna go to church, drop it in the offering plate when it comes by, just to say thank you for what they did for us several years ago. And then I’m gonna scoot out the back. So Sunday morning comes, I get dressed up.

and my sister sees me and she says, where are you going all dressed up? And I said, I’m gonna go to church and just give them a little bit of money. She’s like, huh, well, I’ll go with you, hang on. So I thought, no, I didn’t want that because now I can’t just leave after the offering plate comes by. That was my plan. So she gets dressed up, we go to church, we sit through the whole service, I give the money like I wanted to, and that was it. I was not planning on going back again. But when we got home,

our neighbors were over. And they said, well, we understand you guys went to church today. It’s like, yeah, it was nice. It was good. All the people were very friendly. hmm, well, we’ll go with you next week. I thought, goodness. Now I’m on the hook for another week. Right, right? I was just gonna leave after five minutes, but now I’m on the hook for two weeks. But that started the process. And I started going back week after week. And I started reading the Bible.

Julie Hilsen (08:04)
Yeah.

no good deed,

Dan Parr (08:19)
And that’s when the transformation took place in my life, Julie. I began to read the word of God for myself and learn what God had to say to me. He had told me that in the word, I was not living according to the way he prescribed, right? I had lied, I had cheated, I had stolen, you know, much like any teenager at that point had done. And I realized that there is a consequence to my actions. And he told me that the

way to be forgiven of all that is through Jesus Christ. And I wholeheartedly embrace that. Gave my life to Christ, asked him to forgive me of my sins. Because I didn’t want to go to the bad place, I wanted to be in heaven when all this life was over. I knew that we are more than just flesh and blood, we are spirit, right? And I know that even after this shell is gone, I’m still going to live on. So I wanted to make sure that

this next phase that’s coming was going to be as good as possible. And I found the way to that is through Jesus who says I’m the way, the truth and the life. So I wholeheartedly bought in and started reading my Bible on a regular basis and things began to change in my life, right? I didn’t want to cuss anymore because I felt like it was hurting him. He had died for my sins and for me to continue on in sin, I felt was just.

arrogant and disrespectful and not showing love. And I just felt so much overwhelming love from him because he had forgiven me of all my sins that I wanted to do good in the world and put good out in the world because of what he had done for me. So fast forward several years, I’m in church reading the Bible, serving, all that stuff. But then an interesting thing happened. I’m a voiceover artist by trade, worked in radio for a number of years, do voiceovers for a living. I thought,

man, it’d be kind of cool to read the Bible for people. And I had a guy in our community, our life group, we called him. He said, Dan, I always love it when you read the Bible. I love the way it sounds with your voice. And I thought, well, that’s very nice. So I thought one year, I’m just going to put up a little Facebook video about the resurrection of Jesus, put it out at Easter, let people listen to that, see what they think. So I did that, went to the Bible, found it in the book of Luke.

about the resurrection of Jesus. I thought, well, I’m just gonna tinker with this a little bit, kind of wordsmith it, make it easier to understand and easier to read. So I did that and put it on Facebook, got some good reviews. And then I thought, well, that was an enjoyable process. I’m gonna record the entire book of Luke. And for me, that was like a huge step, right? Recording an entire book of the Bible. So I…

Well, if I’m gonna do that, I might as well put it out on audible and Facebook or audible and Amazon as well So people can purchase it if they want Well, you can’t just pick up your Bible and read it and then sell it right because everything’s copyrighted trademark So I had to find something that I could do that work with So I found the world English Bible and it was in the public domain. So it was a good solid Translation that’s to start with but it still had some awkward phrases some terminology that was

I don’t know, challenging I thought, and I thought it might be a barrier for some people if I just read it as is. So I reworded it, and I didn’t wanna change the intent of the authors. I didn’t wanna change the meaning of the message, but I wanted to put it in a way where if somebody doesn’t know anything about Jesus, if they don’t know anything about God, never read the Bible before, they could pick this up or listen to it and go, well that makes sense, right? Spoken like the way we speak today, like we’re speaking today in the 2020s.

So I did the entire book of Luke and put it out there and I was happy that it was done. I enjoyed the process because it was like me working with God as we did this. I get frustrated and confused and say, God, I don’t know how to say this. What am I supposed to do here? And inevitably the Holy Spirit would come alongside me saying, calm down. I’m gonna help you through this. And he’d lead me to a source or a reference where I’d be able to say, now I get it. Now I know how to phrase this.

And that would happen time and time again. But got done with the book of Luke and I thought, I’m done. That was a lot of work. Good now. But yet the Holy Spirit seemed to be knocking on my heart saying, you know, the book of Acts is really a continuation of the book of Luke. People really need to hear the rest of the story. So I thought, okay, I’ll do the book of Acts. And it just kind of kept going that way. I got done with the entire New Testament.

And I was telling God the whole time, don’t need another version of the Bible, God. There’s already 900 versions out there. We don’t need one more. And yet, he kept prompting me to do it. I felt this burning desire to keep going, even though it was hard work. I didn’t want to do it. And then I was complaining to him. And I think at one point I got to the point where I sensed the Holy Spirit speaking to me, Dan, why don’t you let me decide what we need and what we don’t need? And you just do what I’ve asked you to do.

thought okay I’ll do it. So I did the entire New Testament then dove in did the Old Testament and four years later had it all done. So that’s a long answer to your question how I got started with all this.

Julie Hilsen (13:22)
I noticed how many volumes there were when I went on Audible. I was like, wow, you’ve been at this for a while. And yeah.

Dan Parr (13:29)
Yeah,

so as I would do a book, I would release it and that way if somebody doesn’t want to read or listen to the whole Bible, they don’t have to. If they just want to hear, you know, the Gospel of Luke or the Gospel of John or the Book of Romans, they can just get that portion of the Bible and listen to it and see if it’s for them. That way they’re not committed to the whole Bible. They just have a small piece where they can kind of sample it with.

Julie Hilsen (13:52)
Okay, as you were recording or did you write out what you were gonna say first? How did that work? Because it’s such a, so big of a material.

Dan Parr (14:01)
Yeah.

It really is. And that’s why it was so intimidating to me. I mean, it’s over 750,000 words, right? It’s almost a million words we’re talking about. So what I had to do is there’s no way I could record as I went. I had to take the time and it would take several weeks for every book, which is why it took four years. But I would have to have it all written out first. And then after I put it out there,

would read it and then record it and then go back and do all the editing and clean up and all that. But yeah, I had to do it in a written format first before I could even attempt to record it.

Julie Hilsen (14:38)
because now I remember you said you had to go to experts and say, hey, I’m struggling with this interpretation. Did you ever have parts where you’re like, it could have gone this way or this way. They might have meant this or that. Did you ever come to a crossroads where you’re like, I’m just going to offer both interpretations? Or how did you weave that out? Because there’s so many metaphors.

Dan Parr (14:57)
Yeah, so what I,

right, right, right, and you know, I’m not a Bible expert, I’m not a theologian, sure I’ve taken a few seminary classes, but I don’t consider myself, know, I’m not a PhD by any means in all this. So what I had to do is rely on how the text has been historically translated. And I would read commentaries and I would check different versions. And I would take all of that in and I thought, okay, now I get what it means.

how do I say it in a way that people are going to understand it in the language of today? So prayerfully, I would start writing it out and then as I write it out, I’d make sure that what I wrote was in line with how it has been historically interpreted by theologians and Bible scholars. Because I didn’t want to do anything that’s going to be putting words in God’s mouth, right? I think God’s word is sacred and.

last thing I want to do is anything blasphemous and say, well, God says this when God clearly didn’t say that. So I wanted to stay in the safe waters and make sure that I wasn’t just leaning on my own understanding, but I was leaning on the understanding of those who have gone before us for the past 2000 years and put their thoughts to paper and put it out there in commentaries and such for us.

Julie Hilsen (16:11)
I love that. And it’s very gutsy because you’re walking this line, like, history, you know, like, people who care about the history and the prestige of it, and then New Age interpretation, like, you’re walking this line where you might not have a lot of friends, you’re doing this just out of service that you’ve been called. Like, it tugs on your heart.

Those are the hardest things to say yes to.

Dan Parr (16:38)
Yeah, app.

Yeah, absolutely. I’m glad you pointed that out because really this whole thing is kind of like my love offering to God. It’s like, you’ve done so much for me. Let me show you some love back. This is, you know, he’s given me a gifting and an ability. Let me put that to work for you. Just as way to say thank you. And if people enjoy it in the process, fantastic.

Julie Hilsen (17:02)
I love how you took your paid occupation, being a professional voiceover producer, and used it to serve. It’s really precious. I love that. Thank you. You mentioned Holy Spirit, and I would love to hear your interpretation. I grew up in a Catholic household. We were very…

ritual-based as far as attending Mass, but it was more like a duty. wasn’t like, you know, we had time where we sat down and asked the Holy Spirit to come to us because we didn’t know where to go on vacation or something was going on with, you know, some kind of crisis. We’d pray. It was a private thing to pray to God, but it wasn’t like I was instructed. It was Father, Son, Holy Ghost, Holy Spirit, and the Catholic when I was brought up.

Dan Parr (17:53)
Mm-hmm.

Julie Hilsen (17:57)
And I was always like, I want to know more about this Holy Ghost, you know, but it was never, you know, it never we prayed to Mother Mary. and so I’m always curious about, you know, different people’s take on what the Holy Spirit is. And I just have been really fascinated. There’s this woman who is hiking up Stone Mountain, which is a huge exposed granite ⁓ mountain in

Dan Parr (18:00)
Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Yeah, down in Georgia,

outside of Atlanta. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Okay, cool.

Julie Hilsen (18:21)
outside Atlanta. Yeah, it’s like 45 minutes from my house. And it’s a sacred

feminine. goes deep into the earth. So to me, it’s a sacred feminine landmark. And they’ve placed masculine like, Grant and, you know, the Civil War, like carving on the side. And it’s so funny, because they were trying to balance out the feminine presence with this masculine carving, which that’s a whole nother rabbit hole. I love this place. But this woman, she’s trying to climb up and she’s just like,

Dan Parr (18:28)
Yeah.

Right, Yep.

Julie Hilsen (18:50)
Holy Spirit, help me get to the top of this. And I’ll never forget, was like, I never asked the Holy Spirit to help me with a workout. I love this. In the South, there’s a lot of people that call him the Holy Spirit, which I grew up in Ohio. So I love, I love to see these differences and cherish everything that comes together in this community.

So give us your take on the Holy Spirit and how it’s changed for you as you’ve worked with it or I’m just really interested on your insight on that.

Dan Parr (19:17)
Yeah, you know, the only thing I can do is point back to scripture, right? Because that’s the authority, not me. But scripture describes the Holy Spirit first off as holy, right? It’s not just a spirit, it’s the Holy Spirit. He is separate and distinct from all the other spirits that are out there because there are other spirits out there, right? ⁓ But there is one Holy Spirit that is part of the triune God, Father, Son and Holy Spirit or Holy Ghost. And Jesus describes him as a helper.

Julie Hilsen (19:34)
Mm-hmm.

Dan Parr (19:45)
a counselor, an advisor, one who brings things to remembrance, right? That’s the job of the Holy Spirit to bring to remembrance what God has said and where does God speak in his word. So when you are going through things, you know, a lot of times a scripture that you read will prompt up in your mind. You’ll think, well, where’d that come from? Well, that’s the Holy Spirit doing his job of reminding you of what Jesus said. And that’s what Jesus said he would do, right? He will come and remind you of the things that I’ve said, which is how

the disciples and Paul were able to write all these things that happened in the life of Jesus because they had the helping and the prompting of the Holy Spirit. So for me, the Holy Spirit, he is a helper guide advocate and essential to living a successful life. The lady asking for help from the Holy Spirit to climb up the mountain, I’m all for it, buddy. I think.

He’s a helper and if you can get help from the Holy Spirit to have power and strength, yeah, absolutely. If you’re not supposed to have something, he’s not going to give you something that’s bad for you. But yeah, he is there to be our helper and our guide. So yeah, that’s the role of the Holy Spirit to me as I see in scripture.

Julie Hilsen (20:58)
Wow. And then from your studies, I know they mentioned different angels in the Bible. Does the Holy Spirit work with the angels or what’s your take on that as being someone who’s really spent a lot of time with the Holy Scripture? And a lot of times people are curious about how the angels are interacting and helping and there’s different types of angels. But what could you go into that a little bit?

Dan Parr (21:22)
Yeah, absolutely. So I see the Holy Spirit as being separate and distinct from the angels, just like God and Jesus are separate and distinct from the angels. And the Holy Spirit is above the angels because God and Jesus are above the angels, right? The angels are ministering spirits that are sent here to assist us. And there’s been, you know, got a story with my mom who sees an angel when she was very young, but yeah, they’re ministering spirits, but they are below the Holy Spirit. So they are,

kind of like his workers, if you could put it that way, right? Spiritual beings that are sent to assist us with things here on earth. Now there’s good angels and there’s bad angels though, right? So we have to be careful about that. They’re all spirits, but they’re not the Holy Spirit. They would be under the triune God, under that.

Julie Hilsen (21:54)
Mm-hmm.

Mm-hmm.

Nice. I love that. And thank you for clarifying because I think that’s where some people get like, Whoa, I’m not even going into there because there are bad angels and there are good angels. I know that it’s all because it, I was seven years fighting, you know, communicating with my angels because I was like, what is going on with us, you know, and I know now that it’s your intent and it’s being in your heart and asking for the highest good.

Dan Parr (22:14)
Mm-hmm.

Mmm.

Julie Hilsen (22:38)
and then anything other than good and light and love isn’t a, it’s not signed up. It doesn’t match your frequency. So it just leaves. And I do believe that even as you connect with that heart in your highest good, that it weakens the lesser. I don’t want to say lesser. Everything’s important. Like things are there for a reason.

Dan Parr (22:39)
Yes.

Julie Hilsen (23:04)
We’re here for density. We’re here to see the good and the bad. But if you’re not interested in going that way, that is weakened in your field. And the more you subscribe to your light and love and your highest good and alignment with God, then, shoot, ask the Holy Spirit to protect you in anything that you’re doing because there’s lots of garbage floating around and you don’t need it in your field. So the more you align with that and where you want to be,

Dan Parr (23:25)
Absolutely. Right.

Julie Hilsen (23:31)
the less anything else has a chance to hang on. It’s beautiful and you’re empowered. And I love how it comes back to your intention, energy, spirit, the spirit’s frequency. We’re made of crystalline structures. The water turns to crystalline structures in our body. So we’re receptors of everything. So.

reminding yourself of your divinity that we’re all we all have this guard God’s spark in us. We’re all in a tune. It’s our choice to say yes. That’s empowering to me. That’s what keeps me going is that, you know, we we have these choices and we’re all we’re all here doing our best even though we get the door slammed in our face. We get discouraged. We feel terrible. We feel beat down. We feel alone and

And there’s some reason we keep getting up and going forward. And so your stories like yours helped me renew that. So thank you.

Dan Parr (24:29)
Yeah, absolutely. Yeah, I love what you say there, how it’s the frequency of what we put our thoughts on, right? The apostle Paul tells us, whatever is good, whatever is holy, whatever is admirable, think on these things and the peace of God will come to you, right? That’s in Philippians, Philippians four. So whenever we are going through difficult seasons of life, what’s the instruction? Think about what’s good, holy, admirable. And when you start,

changing your focus from to what’s bad to what’s good, God, Jesus, the universe He created, how things work. It changes our perspective on things and we’re able to see things more clearly as we recognize that God is sovereign. And if I just align myself with Him, put myself under His authority and think about these things, then I’m going to have more peace in my life. And that’s been very helpful to me as I’ve gone through the past several years of life.

Julie Hilsen (25:25)
I know it gets harder when you’re over 50. You’re talking about your birthday and it’s like, man, things just aren’t as easy. know, like getting going is not as easy as it once was. And you realize I only have so much energy for this day. How am I going to prioritize? And what’s my why for today? You have to be discerning in that as you get older. And then, like you said before, the older you get, the less you know. And that makes it.

Dan Parr (25:42)
Yeah.

Julie Hilsen (25:51)
Makes it sort of fun. You have to forgive yourself. And I love your message of surrender, just, you know, surrender to what’s coming forward. And then you can ride it. You can find the joy in that moment, even if it wouldn’t typically be something you chose, because it’s presented there for a reason. I know I’m always like, he never gives me more than I can handle. But yeah, show me how to handle. You can ask for help. me.

Dan Parr (25:56)
Mm.

That’s right.

All right.

Julie Hilsen (26:22)
man, this has been great. And I know that people can go and look at your content on Audible. It comes up really fast. It’s P-A-R-R, Dan Parr, which is, hey, did you play golf? Dan Parr. Too much pressure. ⁓

Dan Parr (26:34)
You know, I should be like the world’s greatest golfer, right? With a name like par. I can’t play

golf. You know, maybe miniature golf, I can get lucky sometimes and make it through the windmill, but on regular golf course, I’m terrible.

Julie Hilsen (26:50)
So Dan has offered to read from his narration.

Dan Parr (26:56)
Yeah, so I just wanted to talk a little bit about the Holy Spirit because I think even among Christians, right, it gets so confused and convoluted and people don’t understand. And like you said earlier, sometimes they just don’t wanna go there, right? Because they don’t get it. So I thought I would do a few samples of scriptures, if that’s okay, a few different verses, just to kind of frame what the Holy Spirit is and His role, if that’s okay with you. Okay.

Julie Hilsen (27:19)
Yes, please. Deleted.

Dan Parr (27:21)
So first off, the Holy Spirit is holy, right? That’s part of his title. He is separate and distinct. And I read earlier that over 90 times he’s called holy in the scriptures. But I wanted to start with Acts chapter 16, Acts of the Apostles, because there are other spirits out there. So I don’t want people to think that, a spirit spoke to me. Well, just because a spirit spoke to you doesn’t necessarily mean that’s a good thing. So in Acts 16,

The disciples are walking around and they have this girl who’s coming up behind them and just pestering them. So let me, that’s where I’ll start it and I’ll, Acts 16 verse 16. As we were going to prayer, a girl was having a spirit of fortune telling Metis. Metis, sorry. She made her masters much money by this spirit. Following Paul and us, she cried out, these men are servants of the most high God who are telling us the way of salvation.

She was doing this for many days, but Paul, becoming greatly annoyed, turned and said to the spirit, I command you in the name of Jesus Christ to come out of her. It came out that very hour. So here is a spirit who is actually, you know, just kind of pestering them and following them around, but they recognize that it’s not a spirit of God. So they cast it out. So there’s one thing. Now, in first John four, we’re told by the apostle.

Julie Hilsen (28:38)
Mm-hmm.

Dan Parr (28:43)
Loved ones, don’t believe every spirit, but test the spirits to verify if they are of God, because many false prophets have gone out into the world. By this you know the Spirit of God. Every spirit who confesses that Jesus Christ has come in the flesh is of God. And every spirit who does not confess that Jesus Christ has come in the flesh is not of God. And this is the spirit of the antichrist whom you have heard comes. Now that spirit is in the world already.

And then just in John 14, Jesus talking to his disciples says, you love me, keep my commandments. I will pray to the father and he will give you the Holy Spirit so that he may be with you forever. This is the spirit of truth who the world can’t receive for it doesn’t see him and doesn’t know him. You know him for he lives in you and will be in you. And then just one more, if you’ll humor me, Ephesians four.

where it talks about living with the Holy Spirit. We’re instructed, don’t grieve the Holy Spirit of God in whom you were sealed for the day of redemption. Let all bitterness, rage, anger, uproar and slander depart from you along with all hatred and be kind to one another. Show compassion, forgive each other just as God also forgave you through Christ. So that’s how we’re supposed to live, right? And we can only live that way with the Holy Spirit’s help.

Julie Hilsen (30:09)
Beautiful. That’s so nice.

Dan Parr (30:12)
Thank you.

Thank you. Yeah, the Holy Spirit is just such a wonderful friend, comforter, helper, that it’s a shame we don’t turn to him more for assistance because truly we can’t live a successful life in Christ without him.

Julie Hilsen (30:16)
Yeah.

I had trouble with the energy in the Catholic Church growing up. I used to get like actually nauseous.

Dan Parr (30:33)
Mm.

Julie Hilsen (30:36)
when I went to mass on regular occasions, just really some stuff. And there’s some stuff with some priests and I picked up on it as a child. Being, even in the Catholic school, I made my mom take me out. I was like, send me to the public school. Like I don’t want to be around this. And my listeners have heard me talk about this before, but it was really powerful.

Dan Parr (30:45)
Mm-hmm.

Mm.

Julie Hilsen (31:02)
I don’t know how many years ago, while I was writing my book, I was like, do I put Jesus in my book? Because I converted to Judaism, but that wasn’t really feeding my heart as much as I needed. And I knew there’s still something missing and I was going through different versions of my book and editing and working with a publisher and…

Dan Parr (31:19)
Mm-hmm.

Julie Hilsen (31:30)
I was just, got quiet and I just said, Jesus, I welcome you back into my heart.

and everything got lighter. I had shut him out of my heart. And I just remember that day. I remember that feeling. You know, it’s just like palpable. And I am not a religious person, but I am a spiritual person. I know the feeling of Jesus being in my heart. And I can share that. even, you know, if there’s lots of different religions that are beautiful.

Dan Parr (31:36)
Hmm. Hmm.

Mm-hmm.

Mm-hmm.

Julie Hilsen (31:59)
And there’s spirituality involved with all of them and there’s commonalities. So, you know, it’s nothing against any other religion or belief system, but the idea that Jesus was this ascended master, this powerful spiritual change maker that said, hey, you don’t have to rely on these prophets. You don’t have to rely on the scribes.

Dan Parr (32:20)
Mm-hmm.

Julie Hilsen (32:23)
God can be in you. You don’t have to be an expert. You don’t have to read Hebrew. You don’t have to go to the Torah and try to understand all these symbols that people didn’t understand back, you know, unless you spent years and years learning Torah, you wouldn’t be able to read from, you know, learn from it, the holy texts. And Jesus saw through the control structures that were in place.

Dan Parr (32:25)
Mm-hmm.

Mm.

Julie Hilsen (32:51)
And so he’s like, let’s make everything accessible. But I do believe that there’s things, there’s landmarks that have

opened humanity up to our divinity and Jesus is so important to that. And there’s no way you can deny that. If you look at history and humanity and the evolving of people having Christ consciousness, it’s just, it’s undeniable, the power of it. I’ve loved, loved, loved watching the Chosen series. I don’t know if you’ve…

Dan Parr (33:19)
my goodness, absolutely,

love it. Yeah, I think it’s probably one of the best religious series that’s been ever produced.

Julie Hilsen (33:21)
So good. So good.

ever. that, you know, the holy spirits all over that. ⁓ this has just been such a pleasure. And I hope that everyone can can listen and relisten to these gems that Dan has brought forward. I just really appreciate this collaboration today, Dan.

Dan Parr (33:31)
Yeah. Yeah.

so much joy on this side of the camera too. So thank you so much for allowing me just to come and talk about Jesus, talk about the Bible. What more could I ask for? It’s been a pleasure, thank you.

Julie Hilsen (33:59)
Thank you.