Discernment, Patterns, Potential, and Paying Attention Before You Give Someone Access
We are often taught not to judge people too quickly.
There is wisdom in that. One moment does not necessarily define an entire person. People have difficult days. People make mistakes. People grow.
Yet there is another kind of wisdom we sometimes ignore:
Pay attention to the fruit.
In Matthew 7:16, Jesus says:
“You will know them by their fruits.”
It is a simple statement carrying an enormous lesson in discernment.
A tree does not have to announce what kind of tree it is forever. Eventually, something grows from it.
People are similar.
Someone can tell you who they are. They can explain their intentions. They can make promises. They can tell you what they believe, what they want, what they are becoming, and what they could be.
Eventually, however, there is fruit.
Their choices produce something.
Their habits produce something.
Their character produces something.
Their presence in your life produces something.
And sometimes we see that fruit long before we are willing to call it what it is.
We Sometimes Fall in Love With Potential
Potential is powerful because it allows us to see what could be.
You can see someone's intelligence, creativity, kindness, talent, spirituality, ambition, compassion, or capacity for growth and recognize something beautiful in them.
The danger comes when potential becomes evidence.
Potential tells you what someone could become.
Fruit tells you what they are currently producing.
Those are not the same thing.
A person may have tremendous potential to become emotionally mature while repeatedly behaving in emotionally immature ways.
Someone may have the potential to become a wonderful business partner while consistently failing to keep commitments.
Someone may speak beautifully about God while their treatment of people repeatedly contradicts the principles they profess.
Someone may genuinely want to change while continuing the same pattern.
Their potential does not have to be fake for their current fruit to be real.
That distinction matters.
Discernment Is Not Condemnation
Vetting someone does not require deciding that they are a bad person.
It asks a different question:
Is what this person is currently showing me compatible with what I am considering giving them access to?
That access might be to your heart.
Your home.
Your children.
Your finances.
Your business.
Your friendship.
Your organization.
Your audience.
Your spiritual space.
Your future.
Different levels of access should require different levels of discernment.
You can recognize goodness in someone without automatically giving them unrestricted access to your life.
You can believe someone has the ability to grow without building your decisions around growth that has not happened yet.
You can love someone and still accurately observe their fruit.
Sometimes the Warning Comes Before the Evidence We Want
There are moments when something simply does not sit right.
For a person of faith, that experience may be understood as the Holy Spirit prompting discernment.
Others may describe it as intuition, an internal warning, pattern recognition, or simply a feeling that something deserves closer attention.
The important part is what happens next.
Sometimes we investigate.
Sometimes we slow down.
And sometimes we override it.
We tell ourselves:
Maybe I'm overthinking.
They probably didn't mean it.
Everybody deserves another chance.
I can see who they really are underneath all of this.
Once they feel secure, they'll act differently.
Once we are together, things will change.
Once the business gets going, they'll become more responsible.
And slowly, we begin explaining away what we originally noticed.
Discernment does not always mean leave.
Sometimes discernment simply means:
Don't move faster than the information you have.
Watch Patterns, Not Performances
Anyone can make a good impression.
Vetting requires time because character becomes easier to see through repetition.
Pay attention to what happens when someone:
hears the word no
doesn't get what they want
is corrected
disagrees with you
has nothing to gain
makes a mistake
has power over someone
owes an apology
makes a commitment
encounters someone who cannot do anything for them
talks about people who are no longer present
experiences frustration, disappointment, jealousy, or inconvenience
Those moments can reveal information that charm cannot.
And one incident still may not establish a pattern.
Repetition matters.
Listen to How They Describe Every Former Relationship
Vetting also means listening carefully.
If every former friend betrayed someone, every former partner was crazy, every employer was terrible, every business partner cheated them, every family member mistreated them, and they were completely innocent in every story, that does not automatically prove anything.
It does give you information worth examining.
Healthy self-reflection usually includes some ability to say:
“Here is what happened, and here is what I learned about myself.”
Accountability is fruit.
So is the absence of it.
Look for Congruence
One of the strongest things to examine is whether different parts of someone's life agree with one another.
Do their words match their behavior?
Do their private actions resemble their public identity?
Do their promises resemble their follow-through?
Does the way they treat you resemble the way they treat people from whom they need nothing?
Do their values remain intact when those values become inconvenient?
This is congruence—alignment between what someone says and what someone repeatedly demonstrates.
Nobody achieves perfect alignment.
The question is whether there is a recognizable pattern.
Do Not Confuse Chemistry With Character
Connection can happen quickly.
Character takes longer to observe.
You can have an extraordinary conversation with someone and still know very little about how they handle responsibility.
You can experience attraction without knowing how they respond to boundaries.
You can share spiritual beliefs without knowing how they behave during conflict.
You can share a vision for a business without knowing whether they follow through.
Chemistry tells you there is connection.
Character tells you what that connection may have to live with.
That is why time can be such an important part of vetting.
Your Compassion Should Not Require You to Abandon Discernment
Understanding why someone behaves a certain way can create compassion.
Perhaps you understand their childhood.
Their losses.
Their fears.
Their previous relationships.
Their struggles.
Their circumstances.
Understanding the root can explain the fruit.
It does not change what the fruit is.
Compassion and discernment can exist together.
You do not have to dehumanize someone in order to recognize that what they are currently producing is unhealthy for you.
And Then Turn the Question Around
“Know them by their fruit” becomes much more powerful when we stop using it only as a tool for examining everybody else.
What fruit are we producing?
When someone encounters us, what grows from that experience?
Do our actions support the values we publicly claim?
When we hurt someone, can we take accountability?
When someone establishes a boundary, can we respect it?
Do we keep our word?
Can we receive correction?
Do we behave with integrity when nobody is watching?
Are we asking others to overlook patterns in us that we would recognize immediately in somebody else?
Discernment without self-examination can easily become judgment.
Discernment with self-examination becomes growth.
Believe the Fruit You Can Actually See
There is something beautiful about seeing potential in another human being.
There is also wisdom in refusing to substitute potential for evidence.
You don't have to decide someone's entire future.
You don't have to declare who they will always be.
You don't have to deny their ability to change.
You can simply recognize:
This is what is being produced right now.
And make your decisions from what is real rather than what you hope will eventually become real.
Perhaps that is one of the deepest lessons behind knowing people by their fruit:
Listen to words. Notice intentions. Leave room for growth. And pay attention to what repeatedly grows from the tree.
Continue the Conversation
On Thursday, October 15 at 8 PM EST, we're taking this conversation deeper onThe People's Podcast:
KNOW THEM BY THEIR FRUIT
How do we vet people without becoming judgmental? When does intuition deserve our attention? How much weight should we give potential? What do repeated patterns tell us? And are we willing to examine the fruit we're producing ourselves?
Sometimes life doesn't ask whether we're ready for change.
The life we recognize can shift. The plans we made can change. The things we once used to measure success, security, or even our own identity may no longer be there.
Then comes a different kind of question:
Who are you when you have to find yourself again?
On Tuesday, October 13, 2026, at 8 PM Eastern, Dean J. Vagnozzi joins The People’s Podcast for:
BE A LION: LOOKING FOR YOU IN THE JUNGLE
This conversation isn't simply about losing something and getting it back.
It's about what we can discover within ourselves when life requires us to begin again.
When Life Changes the Map
There are times when we know exactly where we're going.
We have plans. We have routines. We know what tomorrow is supposed to look like.
Then something changes.
Starting over can affect more than our circumstances. It can challenge our confidence, identity, mental health, relationships, and the way we see ourselves.
That's where this conversation begins.
Not with the question, “How do I get my old life back?”
With something deeper:
“Who am I becoming now?”
At The People’s Podcast, we talk about mental health, healing, growth, awareness, and the different ways our experiences can change how we see ourselves and the world around us. Sometimes growth comes through something we deliberately choose.
Sometimes growth begins because life changes and we have to learn how to move differently.
Meet Dean J. Vagnozzi
Dean grew up in Pennsylvania in a working family where he says he learned the value of work early. He attended Albright College, played football, worked while paying his tuition, and graduated with a degree in accounting. Dean Vagnozzi
He eventually built A Better Financial Plan, which grew over two decades. According to Dean's official biography, the business served more than 1,000 clients and raised more than $250 million as his work expanded into alternative investments. Dean Vagnozzi
Dean is also a speaker and three-time author.
Yet the part of his journey we're interested in Tuesday night isn't simply what he accomplished.
It's what happens to a person when accomplishments are no longer enough to tell you who you are.
What Does It Mean to “Be a Lion”?
Dean's newest book is:
Be a Lion: Get Up. Pay the Price. Then Roar Again!
The book centers on resilience, family, loss, perseverance, rebuilding, and finding the strength to get back up when life knocks you down. Dean describes that process as something that didn't happen in one dramatic moment. It happened gradually, through continuing to get back up. Dean Vagnozzi
That idea opens a conversation much larger than one person's story.
Strength doesn't always look like feeling strong.
Sometimes strength is getting through today.
Sometimes it's accepting help.
Sometimes it's recognizing that the way we've always done something no longer works.
Sometimes it's changing how we see what happened to us.
And sometimes strength is discovering that starting over doesn't necessarily mean starting from nothing.
We still carry what we've learned.
Looking For YOU In The Jungle
Why did we call this conversation Looking For YOU In The Jungle?
Because a jungle can represent that place where the familiar path disappears.
You may not know exactly where you're going.
You may not recognize the surroundings.
You may even question whether you have what it takes to find your way through.
Yet somewhere inside that experience is still you.
Not your job.
Not your bank account.
Not your title.
Not other people's opinions of you.
Not the version of yourself you used to be.
You.
And maybe one of the most important parts of growth is learning that finding yourself doesn't always mean returning to who you were.
Sometimes it means meeting who you've become.
Mental Health, Resilience and Starting Again
Dean speaks openly in his own biography about experiencing depression during one of the most difficult periods of his life. He also talks about family, friendship, asking for help, showing up, and finding reasons to continue moving forward. Dean Vagnozzi
Those are conversations that belong on The People's Podcast.
Mental health doesn't exist separately from the rest of our lives.
Loss can affect it.
Success can affect it.
Relationships can affect it.
Change can affect it.
Starting over can affect it.
And growth doesn't require us to pretend difficult experiences weren't difficult.
Growth can also mean learning to see ourselves, our experiences, and our possibilities from a different perspective.
That is where Dean's story meets the conversations we have every week.
Three Books, Different Parts of the Journey
Dean is the author of three books:
📖 Be a Lion: Get Up. Pay the Price. Then Roar Again! His newest book focuses on his personal journey through loss, perseverance, family, resilience, and rebuilding.
📖 A Better Financial Plan One of Dean's earlier books, connected to his years of experience in financial planning.
📖 Live Like Couple B Another of Dean's earlier works exploring his approach to building and enjoying wealth outside conventional Wall Street thinking. Dean Vagnozzi
Readers can learn more about Dean, his story, speaking work, and Be a Lion through his official website:
Is it scripture? Religion? Tradition? The church we grew up in? The people who taught us? Our culture and experiences? Or have some of us spent our lives understanding God through someone else’s interpretation of who God is?
On Thursday, October 8 at 8 PM EST, George K. Arkhurst joins us for a live conversation:
GOD ACCORDING TO YOU
This conversation opens the door to something deeply personal: examining where our understanding of God actually comes from.
Two people can read the same scripture and walk away with different interpretations. People can belong to the same faith and still understand certain teachings differently. Across the world, religious traditions hold doctrines that sometimes overlap and sometimes directly conflict, while each may understand itself as representing the truth.
So what happens when we begin asking questions?
Not necessarily because we've lost faith.
Sometimes questions are part of examining what we believe, why we believe it, where those beliefs originated, and what our own relationship with God looks like beyond what someone else told us.
Meet George K. Arkhurst
George K. Arkhurst was born in Freetown, Sierra Leone, and grew up in the village of Songo in Sierra Leone's Western Area. He later attended the West African Methodist Collegiate School.
His journey as a biblical educator stretches back more than four decades.
George began teaching Sunday School in the early 1980s at Glad Tidings Assembly of God Church in Freetown, Sierra Leone. Over the years, he has taught every level of Sunday School, from children to adults.
His dedication to Christian education earned him the Billie Davis Award for Excellence in Christian Education. In 2010, he was nominated for and won Best Sunday School Teacher for the New York District of the Assemblies of God.
George currently serves as a Gospel Minister and Presiding Elder for the English Branch of Ebenezer Assembly of God Church, under the leadership of Pastor Benjamin Boakye.
Throughout his teaching and ministry, George's focus has remained consistent: making the Word of God understandable and life-changing.
Author, Teacher & Biblical Educator
George is also an author whose work explores Christian faith, salvation, forgiveness, God, and sin.
His four books include:
Understanding the Concept and Benefits of Being Born Again
A work centered on understanding the Christian concept of being born again and what George identifies as its significance and benefits.
The Art of Forgiveness
George turns his attention to forgiveness—one of Christianity's most familiar teachings and, for many people, one of its most difficult principles to actually live.
Revealing God
Revealing God addresses a question closely connected to our upcoming conversation.
We live in a world containing many religious beliefs and doctrines. Some differ only slightly; others stand in direct opposition to one another. George's work examines what happens when different religious traditions each claim to represent God and explores the challenge of understanding God amid those competing representations.
The Deceitfulness of Sin: The Lies We Believed
In The Deceitfulness of Sin, George examines what he describes as the operation, influence, subtlety, and consequences of sin in human life.
The book is also available in audiobook form; current listings identify George K. Arkhurst as the author and list the audiobook as an unabridged 3.7-hour release from March 2026. Rakuten Kobo
La Tromperie du Péché: Les mensonges nous avons cru
George's work has also reached French-language readers through the French edition of The Deceitfulness of Sin. Published in 2026, the edition presents his examination of sin and its effects to a French-speaking audience. ThriftBooks
GOD ACCORDING TO YOU
George comes to this conversation with decades of biblical study, teaching, ministry, and writing.
And we're bringing questions.
Because there is a difference between being told what to believe and understanding why you believe it.
Many of us were introduced to ideas about God before we were old enough to examine those ideas for ourselves.
We inherited language.
We inherited traditions.
We inherited interpretations.
We inherited teachings about what God approves of, what God condemns, what faith is supposed to look like, and what having a relationship with God is supposed to mean.
Some people eventually question parts of those teachings.
Some become even more deeply rooted in them.
Some discover that their understanding of God has been influenced by family, denomination, culture, religious leadership, personal experiences, scripture, or some combination of all of them.
That gives us a question worth exploring:
How much of what you believe about God comes from your own understanding—and how much came from what someone told you?
That's where GOD ACCORDING TO YOU begins.
A Conversation, Not a Sermon
This isn't about requiring everyone watching to reach the same conclusion.
We're talking about God, scripture, interpretation, doctrine, sin, forgiveness, religious teaching, personal faith, and the questions people sometimes hesitate to ask out loud.
What happens when scripture and someone's lived understanding appear to conflict?
Can two people genuinely seek God and still interpret something differently?
How much influence does denomination have over the God a person comes to know?
When does questioning religious teaching strengthen faith rather than weaken it?
And how do we separate God according to scripture, God according to religious institutions, God according to other people, and God according to our own understanding?
Those are conversations worth having.
Because disagreement doesn't automatically make someone's voice worthless.
We can question an idea.
We can challenge one another.
We can examine what we've been taught.
And we can listen.
Connect With George K. Arkhurst
George continues sharing biblical teaching and his work through Facebook, Instagram, TikTok, and YouTube, along with his author website.
His website includes information about George, his books, upcoming events, newsletter signup, and a contact form for books, speaking engagements, and study resources.
Join us live as we talk about faith, truth, interpretation, scripture, and what happens when we examine not only what we believe, but where those beliefs came from.
Bring your perspective.
Bring your questions.
And bring your willingness to hear someone else's.
We're the ears that listen, where your opinion matters.
Go check out our website atUnseenTwistedTruths.com… we're the ears that listen… because you matter.
There are things people carry privately that no amount of public success can reveal.
Someone can be building a career, achieving goals, standing on stages, making money, creating a family, and appearing successful from the outside while simultaneously fighting something privately that very few people know exists.
For Emmanuel Guarino, Founder & CEO of Team Vulnerable, that private struggle was pornography.
Emmanuel has shared that his struggle with pornography lasted approximately 15 years. During those years, his professional life continued moving forward. He became successful in business, worked in the residential assisted-living industry, became a national speaker, and eventually reached the TEDx stage.
From the outside, there were plenty of markers people associate with success.
Inside his marriage, another story was unfolding.
When Success Doesn't Tell the Whole Story
Emmanuel and his wife, Bekah, have been married since 2017. Their own account of those years describes a striking contrast: professionally, things were going well, while pornography was creating significant problems within their relationship. Team Vulnerable
That contrast raises an important question:
What happens when the life everyone can see looks successful while the life behind closed doors is asking for healing?
For Emmanuel, professional achievement wasn't the answer to what he was carrying privately.
Neither was simply entering a marriage.
Eventually, secrecy had to become vulnerability.
And that vulnerability would change more than Emmanuel's own life.
Marriage Wasn't the Finish Line — It Became Part of the Work
One of the central ideas Emmanuel now speaks about is something many couples may never have considered:
Marriage itself doesn't automatically resolve what someone hasn't addressed within themselves.
Emmanuel and Bekah describe reaching a turning point together during the COVID era. Rather than continuing to treat Emmanuel's struggle as something he had to fight entirely by himself, Bekah became part of the recovery process. Team Vulnerable
That experience ultimately helped shape what would become Team Vulnerable.
Their approach places significant emphasis on vulnerability, communication, accountability, and involving a trusted loved one in the recovery process. For married participants, Team Vulnerable specifically teaches involving the spouse as a teammate rather than leaving one person to struggle entirely in secrecy. Team Vulnerable
It also introduces another distinction worth discussing:
Stopping a behavior and rebuilding trust are not necessarily the same job.
A person can change a behavior while a relationship is still carrying the consequences of what happened before that change.
Trust may need its own rebuilding process.
Communication may need rebuilding.
Intimacy may need rebuilding.
Safety within the relationship may need rebuilding.
And both people may have experienced the situation very differently.
Your Spouse Shouldn't Have to Become Your Police
Accountability can easily become confused with surveillance.
That's another conversation Emmanuel brings into this work.
There is a difference between having someone beside you while you take responsibility for changing your life and making that person responsible for preventing every possible mistake.
A spouse can be a teammate without becoming a police officer.
That distinction matters because recovery inside a relationship involves two human beings.
One may be confronting a long-standing behavior.
The other may be confronting hurt, mistrust, questions, anger, fear, or uncertainty created by that behavior.
Vulnerability creates room for both experiences to exist.
From Their Marriage to Team Vulnerable
In 2022, Emmanuel and Bekah decided to make helping others overcome pornography use their full-time work. Their mission expanded beyond married couples to include singles and teens as well. Team Vulnerable
Today, Team Vulnerable reports having worked with more than 850 people across 25+ countries through its programs. Team Vulnerable
Their work grew from something deeply personal.
They didn't begin with a theory about what another couple should do.
They began with their own marriage.
Their own mistakes.
Their own conversations.
Their own rebuilding.
And their belief that vulnerability with another person can interrupt the isolation that allows secrecy to continue.
Faith, Vulnerability, and Honesty
Faith is also part of Emmanuel and Bekah's personal story.
Team Vulnerable identifies them as Christians while explaining that its programs are intended to reach people regardless of religious affiliation or belief. Their faith appears throughout their work because it was part of their own journey. Team Vulnerable
That gives us another layer to explore when Emmanuel joins The People's Podcast:
What does honesty require when the truth may change how someone sees you?
What does accountability look like without turning another person into your monitor?
How do couples rebuild trust after secrecy?
What happens when professional success becomes a place to hide rather than evidence that everything is okay?
And what changes when someone finally becomes willing to be fully seen?
FROM SECRECY TO VULNERABILITY
On Tuesday, October 6 at 8 PM EST, Emmanuel Guarino joins The People's Podcast for a conversation about pornography, marriage, secrecy, faith, accountability, trust, recovery, and what it means to move from hiding something to confronting it openly.
This conversation isn't simply about pornography.
It's also about what secrecy can do inside a relationship.
It's about the difference between looking successful and actually being whole.
It's about what happens after the truth comes out.
It's about the person who is struggling.
It's about the person standing beside them.
And it's about whether vulnerability can become the place where something different begins.
Connect With Emmanuel Guarino & Team Vulnerable
Learn more about Emmanuel, Bekah, their programs, and Team Vulnerable at Team Vulnerable.
Instagram: @_emmanuel_guarino YouTube: Team Vulnerable
We hear conversations about mental health every day. We talk about healing, resilience, trauma, growth, and becoming stronger through the experiences that shape us. Yet there is another conversation worth having: What do we gain from everything we have survived, learned, questioned, and transformed?
On Thursday, October 1, 2026, at 8 PM EST, Kristie Farley joins The People’s Podcast for a special conversation about The Mental Wealth Anthology and what readers can expect from the upcoming book.
This conversation comes before the finished book reaches readers, giving our audience an opportunity to hear about the vision behind the anthology, the voices contributing to it, and why bringing different lived experiences together matters.
More Than One Story
An anthology creates something a single story cannot.
Each contributor enters the pages carrying their own experiences, perspective, lessons, and truth. Those stories do not have to look alike to belong beside one another.
The Mental Wealth Anthology brings together multiple voices, including Kristie Farley, Universe Badger, Kendall Cobb, Sis’Ale, and many more contributors, each adding another dimension to the larger conversation.
That is part of what makes this Thursday’s discussion important.
We are not simply introducing a book.
We are talking about the people inside it.
What Is Mental Wealth?
The phrase itself invites a question.
If wealth is something we build, develop, protect, and carry forward, what does it mean to think about our minds and lived experiences in the same way?
Mental wealth can open conversations about the knowledge we gain through experience, the boundaries we learn to establish, the perspectives that change as we grow, and the wisdom that sometimes comes from circumstances we never would have chosen for ourselves.
Growth does not erase what happened.
Sometimes growth changes what we are able to do with what happened.
And when people are willing to tell those stories, someone else may recognize a piece of themselves in the pages.
What Can Readers Expect?
Thursday night, we want to go behind the title.
Kristie Farley will join us to discuss the inspiration behind The Mental Wealth Anthology, how the project came together, what readers can expect from its contributors, and what she hopes people carry with them after reading these stories.
We’ll also explore what happens when people take experiences that once existed privately and choose to put them into words for someone else to read.
Because storytelling is not only about telling people where you have been.
Sometimes it is about showing them what you discovered while you were there.
Join the Conversation
Join Universe Badger, Golden Eagle, the Twisted Team, and Kristie Farley on Thursday, October 1, 2026, at 8 PM EST for:
Come hear about the book before its release, meet some of the thinking behind the pages, and discover why these individual stories were brought together in one anthology.
And while you’re at it, go check out our website at UnseenTwistedTruths.com. If you feel like you have a story you want to talk about, let us know. Because we’re the ears that listen, where your opinion matters — and so does your story, because you matter.
