The Mark Pizza Challenge (Part 2)

Summary

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The Wake-Up Call

Episode: The Mark Pizza Challenge (Part 2)
Host: John David Walt (with David Walt and David Walt’s Dad)
Date: July 10, 2026

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Episode Overview

This episode continues the "Mark Pizza Challenge," a communal journey through the Gospel of Mark with an emphasis on experiencing not just the letter, but the life of Jesus through the lens of the Holy Spirit. Host John David Walt reflects on the transformational nature of a Spirit-filled life, shares memorable stories, and ends with a time of worship alongside his father and grandfather, tying together biblical insight, personal history, and practical encouragement.

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Key Discussion Points & Insights

1. Mark Pizza Challenge & Spiritual Community

• Six-week Plan: The community is reading a chapter of Mark each day, with the playful rule: if you miss a chapter, you start back at the beginning. The culmination is a celebration involving pizza.
  • [00:50] “We’re reading together 16 chapters, a chapter a day... If you miss a chapter, you gotta go back to the beginning as part of the fun. We’re going to figure out some pizza at the end of it all...”

2. Consecration & Kingdom Presence

• Morning Prayer: The episode opens with a consecration prayer, emphasizing surrendering to Jesus and inviting the Trinity’s presence.
  • [01:16] “Jesus, I belong to you. I lift up my heart to you. I set my mind on you. I fix my eyes on you. I offer my body to you as a living sacrifice…”
• Experiencing God: Walt reflects on the tangible presence of the Father, Son, and Spirit in prayer.
  • [01:43] “I just feel the Father and the Son and the Spirit just kind of put show arms around each other's shoulders and just kind of enfold us all together in that circle... That’s the kingdom of on earth as it is in heaven.”

3. Scripture Reflection: Acts 10:36-38 & Mark 1:7-8

• Jesus’ Bio According to Acts: The passage is read as a “Jesus bio,” describing his Spirit-anointed ministry:
  • [03:02] “How God anointed Jesus of Nazareth with the Holy Spirit and power and how he went around doing good and healing all who were under the power of the devil because God was with him.”
• Connection to Mark’s Gospel: The Spirit’s role is foundational from the very beginning of Mark:
  • [03:47] “I baptize you with water, but he will baptize you with the Holy Spirit.”

4. The “Do the Stuff” Story: John Wimber & the Vineyard Movement

• Anecdote: Citing a story from Dan Wilt about John Wimber, Walt highlights the dissonance between biblical Christianity and routine religion.
  • [04:22] “So when do we do the stuff?... Like healing the sick and casting out demons. The stuff... Oh, replied the pastor, we don’t do the stuff. We believe they did it back in biblical days, but we don’t do it today.”
  • [05:07] "And I gave up drugs for this."

5. Mark’s Gospel as the “Gospel of the Holy Spirit”

• Approaching Mark for Spirit-Led Discipleship: Rather than looking first to Acts or Paul’s letters, Walt argues Mark’s portrait of Jesus is a curriculum for the Spirit-filled life.
  • [06:06] “We see what it looks like when the Holy Spirit perfectly and completely inhabits, possesses and empowers a human being...”
• Beholding vs. Behaving: Central thesis—discipleship is about transformation, not conformity.
  • [07:45] “A disciple of Jesus must become a student of Jesus in every conceivable fashion. Discipleship is not a life of believing and behaving. It is a life of beholding and becoming.”

6. Questioning Status Quo Religion & Seeking Awakening

• Challenge to Routine: Walt stirs listeners out of complacency, urging them to seek more than head knowledge.
  • [09:00] “Aren’t we tired of church as usual?... Aren’t we ready to do the stuff of awakening?”
• Seedbed Origins: He traces his ministry (Seedbed, New Room, The Wake-Up Call) back to students who taught him the possibilities of a Spirit-awakened church.
  • [09:43] “…the kids sowed the seeds of awakening in me. They showed me what was possible when a sleepy local church begins to shake off the shackles of domesticated religion…”

7. Prayer for Spirit-Filled Life

• Prayer: Listeners are invited to pray for openness to the Holy Spirit’s work.
  • [10:37] “Abba Father, thank you for introducing us to the gospel of the Holy Spirit through the life of your son Jesus... Would you teach and train us in the Spirit filled life?”

8. Personal Stories and Worship

• Family Heritage: Walt introduces his father (“a famous farmer,” Arkansas Agriculture Hall of Fame), and together they reflect on farming and faith.
  • [13:37] “I hope I deserved it because I got it.”
  • [13:54] “He farms without a hoe.”
• Spiritual Farming Metaphor: Jesus is described as one who “farms the soil of the human heart.”
• Song: “We Need a Rain About an Inch and a Half” — Lighthearted homage to both the material and spiritual need for rain.

9. Worship—Hymns of the Holy Spirit

• “Sweet, Sweet Spirit” (361 in the seabed hymnal)—A Worshipful Pause
  • [15:55] “There’s a sweet, sweet Spirit in this place…” (full verse sung together)
  • [17:06] “That’ll move you.” (David Walt)
• “Spirit of the Living God” (299)—Prayer for Fresh Filling
  • [17:49] “Fill me with the Holy Spirit.”
  • [18:17] “Spirit of the living God, fall afresh on me. Melt me, mold me, fill me…”

10. Final Encouragements & Call to Action

• Spiritual “Fieldwork”: Listeners are sent forth to “sow the seeds of love everywhere we go.”
  • [19:03] “We’re ready for the fields today. We’re ready to get out there. The love of God compelling us…”
• Weeding Out Evil: A bit of farming wisdom becomes a spiritual metaphor.
  • [19:21] “We’re taking a hoe to get the Johnson grass and the cucklebirds... That’s the work of the devil.”
  • [19:30] “Jesus came... to destroy the work of the devil. And guess what? If Jesus is in us, we’re doing that, too.”

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Notable Quotes & Memorable Moments

• “Discipleship is not a life of believing and behaving. It is a life of beholding and becoming.”
  John David Walt, 07:45
• “And I gave up drugs for this.”
  —John Wimber (as retold by J.D. Walt), 05:07
• “He farms without a hoe.”
  David Walt, 13:54
• “Aren’t we ready to do the stuff of awakening?”
  John David Walt, 09:00
• “Spirit of the living God, fall afresh on me...” (sung)
  David Walt’s Dad, 18:17

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Timestamps for Important Segments

• 00:50 – Introduction to the Mark Pizza Challenge
• 01:16 – Consecration prayer
• 03:02 – Acts 10:36-38, “bio” of Jesus
• 04:22 – John Wimber “do the stuff” story
• 06:06 – Mark’s Gospel as curriculum for the Spirit-filled life
• 09:00 – Challenge to religious complacency; call for awakening
• 10:37 – Prayer for living the Spirit-filled life
• 13:37 – Introducing J.D.’s dad and family farming stories
• 15:22 – Singing “Sweet, Sweet Spirit”
• 17:49 – Singing “Spirit of the Living God”
• 19:03 – Final encouragement and spiritual “fieldwork” metaphor

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Journal Prompts from the Episode

• Has it ever occurred to you to study the life of Jesus in order to learn about the Holy Spirit-filled life?
• Do you fully realize how God wants to give you the same relationship with the Holy Spirit as Jesus has?
• What are the implications of this bold claim?

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Tone and Atmosphere

Warm, reflective, deeply spiritual, and familial. There is a pastoral encouragement throughout, with a mixture of humor, storytelling, and earnest worship—modeling a life both serious about God and joyfully rooted in everyday life.

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For listeners and non-listeners alike, this episode is a practical, inspiring invitation to move past religious routine and step into the Spirit-filled “stuff” of faith, using the life of Jesus as the prime template.

Transcript

[David Walt]

Foreign.

[John David Walt]

Sower nation. It is Friday, July 10th, in the year of our Lord 2026. I'm John David Walt. This is your wake up call. I've got to remember this like kind of like riding a bike, you know, you just get back on it and wobble around a little bit and then you find your way. So happy. I'm just excited to be back. I appreciated the break. And let's go. I'm ready to roll. We're going to jump into, we're rolling through, I don't know, about six weeks here. Going to have a couple of special guests in here. I'm going to be rolling through first part of Mark's Gospel.

[David Walt]

We're going to be.

[John David Walt]

We're reading together 16 chapters a chapter a day, every day till we get all 16 done in a row. If you miss a chapter, you got to go back to the begin beginning as part of the fun. We're going to figure out some pizza at the end of it all. And then this fall, September 1st, we're picking up in Romans and we got books. I'm just pulling up one right here. This is, this is a, this is maybe the most significant thing I think I've ever written. And we're going to go verse by verse Romans this fall together, September 1st all the way to the first Sunday of Advent. And I'm looking forward to it. So you'll hear more about that as we go along. Let's begin today with consecration. You ready? Deep breath. Jesus is here. Wake up, sleeper. Rise from the dead and Christ will shine on you. Jesus, I belong to you. I lift up my heart to you. I set my mind on you. I fix my eyes on you. I offer my body to you as a living sacrifice. Jesus, we belong to you. And we're praying in the name of the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit. Amen. I love how when I, when I pray that prayer there at the end, I just feel the Father and the Son and the Spirit just kind of put show arms around each other's shoulders and just kind of enfold us all together in that circle. That's where we are. That's the kingdom of on earth as it is in heaven. It's the presence of God. And that's how we're going to get going today. We're winning the day. Aren't we already? So today's entry is entitled the Mark Pizza. I'm calling it the Mark Pizza Holy spirit challenge part two. And our text Acts chapter 10. We're going to read it again. This is I love Acts 10:36 to 38 because it's kind of like a post gospels look back big picture Description Bio I would call this Jesus bio. I'll point it out as we come to it. You know, hear now the word of the Lord. You know the message God sent to the people of Israel announcing the good news of peace through Jesus Christ, who is Lord of all. You know what has happened throughout the province of Judea beginning in Galilee after the baptism that John preached? How God anointed Jesus of Nazareth with the Holy Spirit and power and how he went around doing good and healing all who were under the power of the devil because God was with him. The word of the Lord. You see there's the bio right there at the end. How God anointed Jesus of Nazareth with the Holy Spirit and power and how he went around doing good and healing all who were under the power of the devil because God was with him. It's profound. Now consider this. We see this articulated in the opening verses of Mark's Gospel. The word of God had come to John in the wilderness, and this was his after me comes the one more powerful than I, the straps of whose sandals I am not worthy to stoop down and untie. I baptize you with water, but he will baptize you with water with the Holy Spirit. That's Mark, chapter one, verses seven and eight. Of course this reminds me of a now famous story, you heard it from Dan Wilt this summer, about the late John Wimber, founder of the Vineyard movement. He was an early member of the band the Righteous Brothers. Along the way he met Jesus, left his former way of life and began to immerse himself in the gospel accounts of Jesus life. Soon after his conversion he visited a church. And after the church service he approached the pastor with this question. So when do we do the stuff? The stuff? Said the pastor. What's the stuff? You know, John replied, the stuff in the Bible. Like healing the sick and casting out demons. The stuff. Oh, replied the pastor, we don't do the stuff. We believe they did it back in biblical days, but we don't do it today. With a rather confused look on his face, John could only say, and I gave up drugs for this. The word of God led us to Jesus and Jesus was leading us to the Holy Spirit. And the Holy Spirit was leading us into a life of doing the stuff. Talking about me and those kids back there in Arkansas and Fayetteville. It's why I have come to think of Mark's Gospel as the Gospel of the Holy Spirit Often when Christians want to learn more about the Holy Spirit, they turn to a text like the Acts of the Apostles. Or they dig into texts like 1 Corinthians 12 and 14 and other new Testament teachings. These are all deep wells of rich learning. For some reason, it seems less obvious to study the person and work of Jesus as a direct curriculum on the Spirit filled life. In the Gospels, we see what it looks like when the Holy Spirit perfectly and completely inhabits, possesses and empowers a human being. In the midst of the fallen, broken world in which we live, Jesus does some explicit teaching about the Holy Spirit. But far greater is the demonstration of the Spirit we witness through virtually every aspect of his life. We learn about the ways of the Spirit through his pattern paths of seeking out his Father in secret prayer. We learn about the workings of the Spirit in the tender ways he sees and approaches the humble and broken. A disciple of Jesus must become a student of Jesus in every conceivable fashion. Discipleship is not a life of believing and behaving. It is a life of beholding and becoming. As we behold the Son of God, we become the sons and daughters of God. As we're baptized into his death, we are raised into his life. As we are raised into his life, we are filled with His Spirit. And as we are filled with His Spirit, we learn to think after his thoughts and discern his mind to do the stuff of his work. As we read and meditate through this shortest gospel, at least about five, four, five weeks of it, we will ask one of the biggest questions. What might we learn about the person and the work of the Holy Spirit through a close examination of the person and work of Jesus of Nazareth, the Messiah? And how might we proceed accordingly? It's like saying, what can we learn about the third Person of the Trinity by studying the second Person of the Trinity? This is the stuff of Great Awakenings. Aren't we ready for more than the next Bible study or a cozier, quiet time with our morning coffee? Aren't we tired of church as usual? Aren't we more than a little bit weary of going through the religious motions? And aren't we ready for the great movement of the Gospel to once again rise up in our day? Aren't we ready to do the stuff of awakening? As I look back now, some three decades later, on that summer in Mark's Gospel, also known as the Mark Pizza Challenge, I see the germinal seeds of everything I have tried to be about ever since. In those days, the kids sowed the seeds of awakening in me. They showed me what was possible when a sleepy local church begins to shake off the shackles of domesticated religion and digs deep into the well of word and spirit, taking up the mantle of the apostolic faith of Jesus. And that's why I left everything else to follow Jesus. It's why we launched Seedbed and New Room and the wake up call and the great quest to sow for a great awakening. And it's why I dedicate this journey through the shortest gospel to them, those students. Let's pray. Abba. Father, thank you for introducing us to the gospel of the Holy Spirit. Through the life of your son Jesus and Lord Jesus. Would you teach and train us in the Spirit filled life? In the days ahead, we need look no further than you fill our lives as we fix our gaze on you. Come Holy Spirit. We're praying in Jesus name. Amen. Well, our journal prompts today. Has it ever occurred to you to study the life of Jesus in order to learn about the Holy Spirit filled life? Do you fully realize how God wants to give you the same relationship with the Holy Spirit as Jesus has? And what are the implications of this bold claim? Well, good news. I've got dad here with me today and we're going to sing again and we'll hand it over to him and call the hymn and sing together. All right, everybody, it's time to sing. And we got our favorite farmer here. Favorite worship leaders. I've told you guys about my dad. He's a famous farmer. He is in the Arkansas Agriculture hall of Fame. You believe that?

[David Walt]

I hope I deserved it because I got it.

[John David Walt]

He's a famous farmer. You know another famous farmer. We know Jesus.

[David Walt]

Amen. I don't come up to him.

[John David Walt]

He farms the soil of the human heart.

[David Walt]

He farms without a hoe.

[John David Walt]

He farms without a hoe. That's good, dad. He farms without a hoe. I like that. I've never even thought about that. You know, when we think about the Holy Spirit, you know how the Bible talks about the Holy Spirit like rain? Which reminds me of our song.

[David Walt's Dad]

We need a rain about an inch and a half. We need a rain about an inch and a half we need a rain about an inch and a half. Have faith. It will.

[John David Walt]

And you know right now these farmers around here are singing that song.

[David Walt]

I know it.

[John David Walt]

Because they need a rain. That corn is coming close to harvest and they're needing.

[David Walt]

Yeah, they need one more good rain.

[John David Walt]

Rain. They've gotten a lot of good rains this year. We hadn't missed a lot of rain.

[David Walt]

Well, the crops look pretty. They're just green and pretty. And corn's filled out good.

[David Walt's Dad]

Good.

[David Walt]

Beans are filled out.

[John David Walt]

And you know what you got on your farm this year? You haven't probably had it in 50 years. Was that cotton?

[David Walt]

We sure have.

[John David Walt]

You got some cotton on your farm?

[David Walt]

Yep, we've got cotton. Martin did that.

[John David Walt]

That's right.

[David Walt]

And Daddy loved cotton.

[John David Walt]

You did.

[David Walt]

Daddy had a gin most his life.

[John David Walt]

Yeah. Well, tell them what we're singing today.

[David Walt]

We're going to sing Sweet Sweet Spirit.

[John David Walt]

This is a Holy Spirit song. What's the number?

[David Walt]

361.

[John David Walt]

361. In our seabed hymnal, Our Great Redeemer's Praise. And this is another one of these Holy Spirit songs. And we're.

[David Walt]

We're.

[John David Walt]

We're learning about the Holy Spirit this summer, friends. This. This is. These are the days of Pentecost. These are the times to dig the well a little bit deeper and to learn. So let's. Let's sing. You ready?

[David Walt's Dad]

There's a sweet, sweet spirit in this place. And I know that it's the spirit of the Lord. There are sweet expressions on each face. And I know that feel the presence of the Lord. Sweet Holy Spirit Sweet heavenly dove Stay right here with us Fill us with your love and for the blessings we lift our hearts in praise Without a doubt we'll sow that we bend into his light when we shall leave this place

[David Walt]

oh, yeah, That'll move you.

[John David Walt]

That's a good one, isn't it?

[David Walt]

That'll move you, brother, won't you?

[John David Walt]

Flip back to 299 and why don't we just close out with one more reprise? Or maybe it's reprise. 299. We're going to sing Spirit of the Living God again. We sang it yesterday. You probably know it by heart. Yeah, but 299. It's just a prayer. And we just. You know, there's something about singing that connects the heart to God in prayer. And when you begin to pray prayers like this, these are prayers God is already answering. There you go. 299. We're inviting. We need to open up our lives

[David Walt's Dad]

and say, fill me with the Holy Spirit.

[John David Walt]

That's the prayer, isn't it, dad?

[David Walt]

Exactly.

[David Walt's Dad]

Fill us with the Holy Spirit.

[John David Walt]

And he's doing it and he will do it. And he wants us to become aware of it and moving with the Spirit together in this world.

[David Walt]

Right. Live by the Holy Spirit, by the Holy Spirit.

[John David Walt]

You see, this is how Jesus does his work. By the spirit of God in us.

[David Walt's Dad]

So spirit of the living God, fall afresh on me. Spirit of the living God, fall afresh on me. Melt me, mold me, fill me. You, me. Spirit of the living God, fall afresh on me.

[David Walt]

Amen.

[John David Walt]

All right, gang, we're ready for the fields today. We're ready to get out there. The love of God compelling us to go sow the seeds of love everywhere we go with everyone we meet.

[David Walt]

And we're taking a hoe to get the Johnson grass and the cucklebirds.

[John David Walt]

We're taking a hoe to get the Johnson grass and the cucklebirds. You know what that is? That's the work of the devil.

[David Walt]

That's right. And we're getting rid of him.

[John David Walt]

We're getting rid of him. Jesus came. John tells us to destroy the work of the devil. And guess what? If Jesus is in us, he's. We're doing that, too. So let's hit the fields for The Awakening. I'm J.D.

[David Walt's Dad]

walt.

[David Walt]

And I'm David Walt. We will see you on the field.

[John David Walt]

On the fields.