From Striving to Grace: Hope, Healing & Heaven with Tony Stoltzfus

Have you ever tried so hard to be a “good Christian” that your soul went numb? In this powerful episode of Hope Unlocked, Tony Stoltzfus shares how burnout, grief, and loss shattered striving and led him back to the grace and love of God. We unpack what real coaching is, why powerful questions create breakthrough, and the truth that grace is often learned when merit is lost. Tony also shares two life-changing prayers, fresh insight on heaven and eternity, and a moving retelling of the woman with the issue of blood that will change how you read Scripture.

Tony's contact info:

Email - tony@meta-formation.com

Websites - 

www.heavenexperience.net

www.likeahumanbeing.com

YouTube

Tony's books: 

store.meta-formation.com

🎙️Hope Unlocked Listener Exclusive! Feeling stirred but not sure what to do next? Book a 45-minute Holy Spirit-led 1:1 coaching session w/ Hope Unlocked host Kristin Kurtz, founder of New Wings Coaching. This powerful conversation will help you move from stirred to activated—with peace, clarity, & a Spirit-led next step. Book your call HERE now–special pricing to listeners!

Transcript

SPEAKER_03 0:16

Welcome to the Hope Unlocked Podcast. I'm your host, Kristen Kurtz, and I'm also the founder of New Wings Coaching. I help and empower wild-hearted and adventurous women of faith feeling caged and stuck, unlock their true purpose and potential, break free from limitations, and thrive with confidence, courage, and hope. If you're curious to learn more about coaching with me, head to NewWinkscoaching.net and be sure to explore the show notes for ways to connect with me further. Get ready to dive in as we uncover empowering keys and insights in this episode. So tune in and let's unlock hope together. Welcome to the Hope Unlocked podcast. I'm Kristen Kurtz, your host. I pray this episode is like a holy IV of hope for your soul. Please help me welcome Tony Stolesfoos to the show. I am very excited to have him here today. Um, when I saw a request come through to have him on the show, I was actually like, wait a second, I know him. And it took me a moment. So this is kind of a full circle um experience for me today. Uh, during coaching school, I was um recommended a book. Um, and he actually wrote this book called Uh Coaching Questions, a coach's guide to powerful asking skills. And it actually was really instrumental in in part of my walk in in coaching and and all that goodness. So, Tony, thank you so much for everything that you've done in your life. And I would love for you to just share a little bit about yourself before we get into your story and and what you're led to share here today.

SPEAKER_00 1:43

Okay. Thanks for the intro. Yeah. Um, yeah, I'm Tony Stolzfus. I'm 65 this year, so sliding into retirement. Um, I was in Israel last year, about this time, and uh God spoke to me one day and said, Next week is your 64th birthday, and I want you to retire. And I was like, but what does that mean?

SPEAKER_02 2:08

Right. I was just gonna ask, what does that mean?

SPEAKER_00 2:11

Yeah, when you've been a self-employed author for 25 years, um there's no hard stop like a lot of people have. So I've just been trying to figure it out. You know, how much do I work? Is am I resting enough? Am I finally God said, Tony, you know, retirement is whatever you want it to be. That helped me relax.

SPEAKER_01 2:33

That's beautiful.

Retirement As A Spiritual Shift

SPEAKER_00 2:34

So I'm working some at a slower pace, trying to to work at the speed of retirement.

SPEAKER_02 2:40

The speed of retirement.

SPEAKER_00 2:42

All my coaching now is free. Oh, which is kind of fun. Uh my latest book, we got some people together and purchased 2,000 copies to give away.

SPEAKER_02 2:54

Oh, that's amazing.

SPEAKER_00 2:56

Yeah, it's the book is called Heaven Experience the Extraordinary. But it's it's an immersion in heaven. So I'm hoping that we can get copies to people who are grieving. There's a bunch of copies have gone into the California prison system.

SPEAKER_06 3:12

Wow.

SPEAKER_00 3:13

Um, but if you read the book and you like it, there's a forum on the website, and you can just sign up and we'll send you copies to give away for free.

SPEAKER_01 3:22

Really?

SPEAKER_00 3:23

Yeah, because we want to so beautiful. Instead of giving to whatever rando we meet on the internet, yeah, um, for people to actually benefit from the book, it's much more likely they'll read it if a friend that they trust is the one that's giving it to them.

SPEAKER_03 3:40

Oh man, that is so beautiful. Have you had have you had a lot of people fill out that form since they've received their book?

SPEAKER_00 3:48

We've had, how do I say? The book has gone slow so far. I mean, we've given away about a quarter of the uh we published it last fall, so we've given away about a quarter of our stash. Um but things like this can take a while to absolutely get going.

SPEAKER_03 4:08

Well, tell us the name of the book again. Um, and then where is it available anywhere?

SPEAKER_00 4:13

It's called Haven Experience the Extraordinary. It's on Amazon, Kindle, you know, um that kind of thing. I have my own bookstore at meta-formation.com.

SPEAKER_06 4:28

Okay.

What Coaching Really Means

SPEAKER_00 4:29

Um with a whole bunch of other yeah, back back to a little bit of bio. So I was uh coached and trained coaches for 25 years. I started multiple coaching organizations. Leadership metaformation is the main one that's ongoing. I also had a hand in launching an organization called Coaching Mission that uh provides coaching to missionaries on the field in Asia. So they've provided like a hundred thousand hours of coaching to missionaries. Um so before that I ran an internship program in the mountains of Virginia. And before that, I was a furniture designer.

SPEAKER_03 5:15

Okay. So furniture designer to inter okay, to coaching. How did how did you how did you get led to coaching? Okay, well, you know, people maybe you could even just talk a little bit first about that, but then explain to people what coaching is. As a coach, I'm a coach, I know what coaching is, but I think there's a lot of coaching out there, but I don't know that people actually know what coaching is, and you've been doing this a long time.

SPEAKER_00 5:45

Yeah. So um, yeah, lots of people put coach on their title because it's a buzzword, but it is. It's coaching is helping people grow without telling them what to do, and there's a whole methodology and strategies and tools and whatever that go with it. So you can call yourself a quote-unquote counselor in a colloquial sense if you never went through a program to become one. But we all know the difference between a professional counselor and the counselor at your church, the lay counselor. Um, there are professional coaches who've gone through a certification program. So, anyway, that's the difference. But when I'm coaching, the person sets the agenda, they decide what they want to talk about, and it's my job to help them think farther, to process it in ways they can't on their own. And then they set a series of action steps that they're gonna do, and I help them be definite about that and get those accomplished.

SPEAKER_06 6:54

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 6:54

So the difference between coaching and mentoring is mannering is a senior person imparting wisdom, insight, connections, whatever to a junior person. Coaching is a peer relationship where I'm helping you do the thinking yourself.

SPEAKER_03 7:13

Yes, yes. That's so good. What a great explanation. So, how did you get into coaching? Because coaching, I mean, how long has coaching technically been around?

Writing With Authority Through Lived Life

SPEAKER_00 7:25

Well, I got into it. Yeah, I got into it pretty close to the start of the Christian side. Um, it had been going on for I mean, it started in the sports world and then ported over to the business world, but um I started around 99, 2000. Um, actually, furniture design was where I learned to coach.

SPEAKER_02 7:54

Tell us more about that. Do you see how I'm using it? Tell us more.

SPEAKER_00 7:58

So I was, you know, young and full of faith and full of the Holy Spirit and full of myself in my 20s. Yeah. And I got this job at a furniture company. And it was a great, I was working part-time, and so I could fit all my ministry activities around it. But as I got married and had kids and it became full-time, I started like, this is not what I want to do with my life, is design furniture for rich people who don't really need it. Um, so I started asking God to, you know, take me out of this into the thing that you have prepared for me. And every year I'd pray this, and every year he said no. But my job was people would come in and they had a dream of, you know, I want something to fill this space in my home. And they have they'd have a dream about maybe what it would look like or what it would do, but they didn't have the technical language to flesh flesh out their dream, or sure they didn't know Chip and Dale from Queen Anne from whatever. Right. And so my job was to ask them questions and draw out of them what their dream was and put it on paper.

SPEAKER_06 9:14

Wow.

SPEAKER_00 9:14

And so that was a really great training for learning how to coach. Yeah. Um, so I did that for 15 years, and then we moved across the country to be mentored by this guy. My wife was going to work for him, and I was going to travel with him. He was a church consultant. And um I started running this internship program where people would come for eight months and live. We were at a retreat center, okay, and we did inner healing and destiny discovery and spiritual disciplines and you know, every kind of basic Christian work that you could do with people. And in the course of that, I ran into a guy from a seminary who wanted to start a coaching program, and he recruited me to create and run the program. So I sort of started with a bunch of basic propositions about what coaching was and created a training program.

SPEAKER_02 10:20

Wow.

SPEAKER_00 10:21

Because I think there were only one or two others in existence at that time.

SPEAKER_03 10:25

Okay. It's incredible. So I I just want to like stop for a moment. You did furniture design. Now, prior to that, were you were you writing curriculum? Were you, you know, were you a writer? Were you an author?

SPEAKER_00 10:39

Prior to that, I was in college.

SPEAKER_03 10:40

Okay. So did you know that this was like even in you? Did somebody draw this out of you? Like what did that look like?

SPEAKER_00 10:48

Well, I you know, when I was in in college and and after, I was in a band and wrote music, and that was my initial writing experience. I'm not any kind of a a great musician. Um, but what what has remained after that was writing music was a way to write that connected with people's emotions, um, and performing it connected with them too. And so that idea of writing things that that connect with the emotional self has sort of run through everything that I do. Okay. But I didn't write my first book until 2006 when I was 45. Okay. Um, because I can remember talking to somebody probably in my 30s and saying, I want to be a writer, but I don't feel like I have anything to write about yet.

SPEAKER_02 11:47

Oh my gosh.

SPEAKER_00 11:49

I mean, not that I knew nothing, but I had this idea that there should be a I should incarnate something before I write about it, as opposed to just picking a topic.

SPEAKER_03 12:02

So yeah. Would you would you speak a little bit more to that maybe? Somebody is listening today. I mean, I've you know, I've had clients even or or people I've talked to, and it seems like it seems like a lot of I like to call it, you know, people are like pregnant with book babies. They have babies, they have book babies, but they just they just don't know what to do. They don't think they're good enough, they don't think they can write. Um, did you have some of those limiting beliefs come through as well?

SPEAKER_00 13:06

Um, mildly. I mean, I had been a designer for 15 years, so I was very used to creating something and getting immediate feedback. You know, they bought it or they didn't buy it.

SPEAKER_06 13:18

Sure.

SPEAKER_00 13:19

Um, I had written a fair amount of advertising copy and things like that too. So um I didn't find it hard to write. I think my advice to to writers would be um first off, live a life worth writing about. Not that you're gonna write your autobiography, but anybody can dig wells in Africa. What's the difference when a Christian does it versus a someone who's not? And I think there's an incarnation that comes out through what you do that, and that's what impacts people. So when I talk about suffering, for instance, it's all rooted in my own suffering and my own experiences of meeting God there and being transformed. And so there's power there and authority there to speak because I've been through it. So if you want to write things that impact people that make a difference in their lives, you have to embody that thing. Um, and you can just write stories and people can have fun with them, you know, if you want to write novels, but if you want to write stuff that that changes people, you have to be changed first. Um there's tons of resources out there about overcoming writer's block and all that kind of stuff, but that's my that's really that's that's that's a huge about the suffering that you'd walk through.

Losing Merit To Learn Grace

SPEAKER_03 14:53

Um, you know, one of the things that I feel like this podcast has um it's been a place for people to share, you know, some of the fires that they've walked through, you know, some of that suffering and then coming out on the other side with with keys for other people, right? Would you be open maybe to sharing, you know, something that you've walked through that um you came out and you're like, okay. I call it kind of being like a pit puller. So you might have been in the pit for a little bit, and then you're able to go back and and speak to that person because of what you've walked through.

SPEAKER_00 15:29

Yeah, I've had all kinds of um house burned down, mental health challenges in our family, um, undiagnosed chronic low-level depression for 15 years, betrayal by my best my my ministry partner. Um, I'll start with an early one. Uh so in my 20s, I'm in this church where we're growing and doing amazing things, and most of the people there were young. And one of my consistent prayers was for grace to understand grace, because I was kind of a what do you call it, Christian jerk.

SPEAKER_03 16:12

Um you gotta tell us what is a Christian jerk.

SPEAKER_00 16:18

I had my yearly goals and my monthly goals, and my Bible study plan, and my hour of power, and I prayed with somebody else for an hour three times a week, and I fasted twice a week. And if you weren't doing all these things, you weren't a serious Christian, and God couldn't measure you. You don't measure up, yeah, yeah. Yeah, and so there was this moment when it was like God turned off the spigot, and the the energy that drove all those things was no longer there. Wow, and I just couldn't do it. I'd sit down to pray and I'd get so frustrated that you know, in five minutes I'd leave. Because I I just yeah, I developed a lot of guilt and whatever and negative stuff. And this went on for a year or two, and just you know, my church around me is growing, and people are getting saved and they're doing great things, and I'm um a wreck. And I finally got to the point where I was just like, I felt like I was hanging onto a grease rope in the dark, and I'm sliding down and down, and finally I get to the knot at the bottom. And if I yes, if I let go of the knot, I can't see a thing below me. What's gonna happen?

SPEAKER_06 17:36

Oh wow.

SPEAKER_00 17:37

And the knot was trying, you know, what what holds me together is trying to do what I think the Christian life means. And if I stop trying, what will become of me?

SPEAKER_06 17:51

Wow.

SPEAKER_00 17:51

And I finally just said, God, I can't live the Christian life, I can't do this. Um, I'm gonna be like one of those people who gets to heaven with the clothes burn off their back, smelling of smoke. Um, so if you can do anything with my life, you do it, but I'm done. And I let go of the knot.

SPEAKER_06 18:12

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 18:13

And then God started speaking to me that He loved me. Oh my god. And I hadn't heard him speak to me for a while. But for the first six weeks, I rebuked that voice. That was not God. Right, right. Oh my goodness. God couldn't love me in this state of giving up, right?

SPEAKER_02 18:30

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 18:31

Um, until it finally started to penetrate my thick skull that God loved me because he loved me.

SPEAKER_02 18:37

Yes.

SPEAKER_00 18:38

And later I realized, you know, grace is unmerited favor. So if you want to learn grace, first you have to lose your merit.

SPEAKER_02 18:48

There's there's your key.

SPEAKER_00 18:51

So so that insight, that insight helped me. I understood what God was doing in the midst of the difficulty. And that was sort of a key. I think I have grown much more in life, not from devotions, but from meeting God in the difficulties of everyday life and being transformed. That's been the biggest source of growth in my life.

SPEAKER_03 19:20

Could you say that again? I think that's worthy of repeating.

SPEAKER_00 19:24

Yeah, I have not, my growth has not been so much from spiritual disciplines as it's been from things happen, and I'm very attentive to okay, God, what are you doing in this? What's going on? What part of me does this touch? How do you want to change me? And I've developed this process that I call leaning in, where what happens to us most of the time is God starts a process in our life. Um, change is hard. And so often that process involves making it painful to stay where I am.

SPEAKER_03 20:02

Yes, it seems to be, doesn't it?

SPEAKER_00 20:04

Yes. And so God works on us for a year or two or 10 to bring us to the place where we realize that we have a problem and we're willing to change. But what we do at that point, you know, God has done everything by himself with no help from us up to that point. And the moment where we figure out what the change agenda is supposed to be, we say, Okay, God, I got it. See ya. And we try to fix it ourselves. And so realizing it's changed the way I pray, for instance. So I come to one of those points and I'm like, Okay, Jesus, I do not have the power to change this. So do in me the things that I can't do for myself. Or I'll pray dangerous prayers like, God, send me the circumstances that I need to get this.

SPEAKER_03 20:58

Oh, Tony.

Leaning In And Dangerous Prayers

SPEAKER_00 21:00

And most Christians panic when they hear that.

SPEAKER_03 21:03

Yeah. I mean, yeah.

SPEAKER_00 21:06

Because we expect that if we let God be in charge of our circumstances, He's gonna hurt us. That's lodged deep in our hearts. Um but God is really good to me when I pray that prayer. And so, like a recent one Can you give us an example?

SPEAKER_03 21:26

Yeah, are you going with that? Yeah, yeah. Just helping somebody to to see kind of this progression.

SPEAKER_00 21:34

God can be trusted with your heart. Yeah, and and you can say to him, Okay, Jesus, send me the circumstances I need, but I'm scared. So could you give me an easy one for starters?

SPEAKER_02 21:47

Yeah, like level one out of ten.

SPEAKER_00 21:50

Yeah, yeah. He's gentle and kind, and his yoke is easy. So a good example was I went through this season where this is not that long ago. Um, our son was really depressed and not in a good place. My wife was starting to show bipolar symptoms, which kicked off a whole several year season of that. Um, I had just had the conversation with my daughter where your child tells you everything that you did wrong.

SPEAKER_02 22:26

And oh my gosh.

SPEAKER_00 22:30

And so that happens in Indiana, and and I fly back and the next day I have. A mandatory evacuation notice, and we got out of our house with a suitcase of dirty clothes each, and our pets and our computers, and then our house burned to the ground.

SPEAKER_02 22:47

Oh my gosh.

SPEAKER_00 22:48

Um, and I just it it's so overwhelmed my coping ability. I've got good coping skills after years of working on this, but yeah, I got to the place where I was working like a day a week because that's all I could do.

unknown 23:06

Wow.

SPEAKER_00 23:06

And then we got in a new house, and our new house flooded twice. And my best friend after? Yes. My best friend died on the one-year anniversary of the fire on the way to his funeral. My wife's mother died, so we just went right from that funeral to the other one. Um, it was just insane.

SPEAKER_02 23:26

Oh how many years ago was this?

SPEAKER_00 23:30

Uh, like six.

SPEAKER_03 23:31

Okay, this was right before COVID out in your area. I remember I can't remember the name of the fire.

SPEAKER_00 23:38

Car fire, yeah.

SPEAKER_03 23:39

Yeah, okay.

SPEAKER_00 23:40

So, anyway, fast forward to several years later, and you know, it took two, three years to recover from that, but I I realized one of the lingering effects is I just don't want to be around people. I felt very let down by the people around me in that um, that I've been present for so many people, and people were not largely not present for me. And I just yeah, and and I was like, Okay, Jesus, I know I've got this thing where I don't want to be around folks, and I don't know what to do about it. So doing me the things that I can't do for myself, send me the circumstances I need to get over this. Wow, and a couple months later, a good friend of ours, who's actually a counselor that we worked with through some of this stuff, came to town and her husband had died, and she was gonna have a memorial service there because she had lived in Reading for a while. Okay, and she invited me to this service, and all my old friends that I hadn't talked to for a year or two were gonna be there. Oh wow, and at first I was like, I don't want to go. Um and then I I realized, hang on a second, I realized maybe God was in this, and I said, Okay, um I will go and had some good conversations, and you know, driving up to the place was awkward, but when I got in the room, it was like these are people I've invested in, these are people that I know deeply, these are people that I've walked with, and and it got me over that barrier in one night. And I don't know how I would have engineered that by myself.

SPEAKER_03 25:51

Yeah, exactly. Yeah, and and I don't know, it it's like you can't make this stuff up, right?

SPEAKER_00 25:57

Yeah, and it was a beautiful thing, it wasn't like oh God stripped me down and taught me patience and all the things that we fear, yeah. Um wow, that's an amazing my philosophy of all this is God does not bring pain into your life. Yeah. I was three weeks before the house burned down, I was outside in the yard and I said, God, could I really live without all this stuff? Oh gosh. Yeah. God did not burn my house down to answer. That is not who God is.

SPEAKER_03 26:32

On on the flip side of that, what is your answer to that?

SPEAKER_00 26:36

Well, I got an answer to that question really quickly. Yes, I can live without all this stuff. Yeah, it's inconvenient and it's frustrating, and yeah, but it's just stuff.

SPEAKER_03 26:45

Right. Has it has it shifted kind of your mindset, even like about um, you know, like having a home and cars and you know all the things, right? Um, what what did he show you through that experience? I I can't even imagine. I'm so sorry that you went through that. Um like I literally can't even imagine. Yeah. But was there a shift in you and your family walking through that?

SPEAKER_00 27:12

Yeah, there's a big shift in me in terms of it it forced me and my wife to deal with some things personally and in our relationship. But but the bigger outcome that that took a number of years after to unfold was I'll give a little backstory. So I I recorded a series about Job in front of the shell of our house.

SPEAKER_02 27:37

Oh, you did.

Fire Loss And Letdown By People

SPEAKER_00 27:38

Um But Job, I don't think people, I think people fundamentally misunderstand the book of Job. Job is a guy who's who loves God, but he's scared of him. He offers sacrifices constantly for his kids, not because they did something wrong, but just in case they did something wrong. And for Job, his main defense mechanism is his integrity. And so he's hugely protective of his integrity because that's what allows him to feel right with God. And his wife knows what the problem is. She's like, Why do you still hold fast to your integrity? Just curse God and die. And and because of the curse God and die line, everybody writes her off, but it's the exasperation of a spouse that's lived with this for decades, and it's like, dude, don't you see what's happening?

SPEAKER_03 28:34

Yeah, I love how you say that.

SPEAKER_00 28:36

And Job is, you know, I would rather die than lose my integrity. Well, at the end of the story, he does lose his integrity.

SPEAKER_01 28:43

Yes.

SPEAKER_00 28:44

And and what he finds is that God is for him even when he messes up.

SPEAKER_06 28:52

Yes.

SPEAKER_00 28:52

And the desire of Job's heart, I think, as an integrity person, was peace with God to know I'm all right outside of my behavior. And so the story of Job is God giving Job the one thing that he most longed for in life but could never attain. And it came through suffering. And that same thing happened for me is you know, I'm a naturally my personality type sees the problems first. And I can be very self-critical and guilty. And but there's been a peace with God that's come through this that I've never had before. And I would, in the year or two afterward, I would go to God and say, you know, God, I know I can talk to you whenever I want. And I know that you'll talk back because He does. Yes, but I just don't feel like talking to you right now.

SPEAKER_01 29:51

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 29:51

And and He would say, It's cool, trust the process.

SPEAKER_03 29:56

I love it. It's cool. Trust the process.

SPEAKER_00 29:58

Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 29:59

Somebody needs to write that on a post-it now.

SPEAKER_00 30:01

Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 30:02

Right?

SPEAKER_00 30:04

So for me to just to be okay in that place. I mean, I had to work at it at first, but it's just so valuable to me to just know that me and him are good, and there's nothing that can shake that.

SPEAKER_06 30:20

Yes.

SPEAKER_00 30:22

I know that in a way that I never knew it before.

SPEAKER_03 30:24

And thank you. Thank you for sharing with us. Um, and I know, you know, listeners, you know, we're we're all walking through different different things, right? Um, so I I believe that your testimony and and what you've walked through and how you've walked through it um will translate to them. Um can you just repeat again, you know, those two questions or prompts that you go to the Lord with um often?

SPEAKER_00 30:54

Oh, doing me the things I can't do for myself. And then if you're feeling risky, you know, send me the circumstances I need to change this. And for me, the faith of that comes from working with hundreds of people and seeing God active in their circumstances to change them and being good about it. So I'm not scared when I pray that prayer. Um and try it on a small thing.

SPEAKER_06 31:23

Yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_00 31:25

Start with a small annoyance, but faith comes by experiencing God's faith comes by hearing the Rhema, the experiential word of God. So when you experience God doing that in small things, you'll start to believe for bigger things.

SPEAKER_03 31:41

Absolutely. Well, it's it's leading me to to just even kind of jump into um, I'm just imagining Indiana Jones right now. Do you know that scene where he has to like, you know, he's crossing over the chasm, but there's there's no way to get across. But when he puts his foot out, the stone appears. Do you have a time in your life that um you've really walked that out? Like literally, like you feel like you're jumping off a cliff, and he's like, I got you. Check out what we're gonna do to get you to the other side.

SPEAKER_00 32:12

Yeah, well, a number of times. Um when I left that first coaching place, I sort of got ejected and lost my network and lost access to everything I'd written to that point and had to start over again. And so um, God I was trying to decide if I should get investors or raise money or whatever. And and I was stopped on Princess Ann Boulevard in Virginia Beach, which is a six-lane road in front of Walmart, waiting for the light to change.

SPEAKER_06 32:48

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 32:49

And God said, if you don't believe in yourself enough to invest in yourself, you'll never do what you're capable of doing. And I knew in that moment that we needed to take money out of our house to start our business. So we took out 50 grand and I gave myself two years to succeed because and and if it didn't work, I was gonna I wasn't qualified to do anything. I have a bachelor's degree in math.

SPEAKER_03 33:19

Okay. So you you were seeing yourself as like uh there's this is plan A, there's no plan B.

SPEAKER_00 33:25

Right, exactly. And uh we get all the way down to the end of the two years, and I have my second book ready, which is coaching questions, the one that you have.

SPEAKER_02 33:37

Yeah, it's right.

SPEAKER_00 33:38

But at that time, we had to buy 500 copies. You know, the print on demand thing wasn't happening yet.

SPEAKER_06 33:46

Right.

SPEAKER_00 33:46

And so there was kind of a moment of panic because it was gonna take all the rest of the money that we had.

SPEAKER_02 33:53

Oh my gosh.

SPEAKER_00 33:55

And uh, but we decided this is what God told us to do, so we're gonna do it. So we took the rest of our money and invested it in that book, and it paid for the first printing in six weeks, and that book has sold something like 200,000 copies. Stop it, and because it's self-published, um I make a really nice cut.

SPEAKER_02 34:23

Oh my gosh.

SPEAKER_00 34:25

Um so that book has has largely provided for us for 15 years.

SPEAKER_03 34:32

Wow. And is it still like are you still seeing copies like monthly, weekly, daily, like even on the daily?

SPEAKER_00 34:41

We sell what hundreds a month of that.

SPEAKER_03 34:45

Really?

SPEAKER_00 34:46

Um, yeah.

SPEAKER_02 34:47

Oh my gosh.

SPEAKER_03 34:49

So you you you see this happen, like what what's going on in your head at this point?

SPEAKER_00 34:56

Well, I'm grateful.

SPEAKER_03 34:57

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 34:58

Um, you know, it it unfolds over a period of time, so it's not like, oh, I I gave everything and God gave us a million dollars. You know, it didn't happen like that.

SPEAKER_01 35:10

Right.

Job Reframed As Peace With God

SPEAKER_00 35:12

But you know, another moment like that was we were doing these workshops with like 30 people, and I made this audacious, I I told everybody who was coming that I was going to interview them for an hour about their most painful story in life, and I was gonna rewrite their story from heaven's perspective. Oh, that's give it to them at the workshop. And I'd never done this before. Wow, so it was a total leap of faith to say, I can I can rewrite your story as it looks to Jesus from heaven. And um, in the six weeks it took me to do those interviews and write, I got in this mode where I felt like I could ask Jesus any question about heaven I could think of.

SPEAKER_06 35:57

Oh my god.

SPEAKER_00 35:58

And I ended up with 80 pages of notes. And the book I released this year about heaven largely comes from that. It does. And since then, I've trained a team and we've written rewritten hundreds of stories like this. Um and the process is you do the interview and you get some ideas about what God might be doing, and then you sit down and you just start writing and let Jesus meet you in the process.

SPEAKER_03 36:27

Yeah. So are you like can you're like almost like can journaling? You're not typing it out.

SPEAKER_00 36:32

I'm typing it, yeah. Oh, you're typing okay. I'm free writing. I'm just you start and you write um for an hour and then you take 15 minutes to clean it up at the end. But okay, but God speaks to you in the process of you're in a place of faith of saying, I'm gonna start this with the rough idea of what's gonna happen, and God is gonna meet me in it.

SPEAKER_06 36:58

Yes.

SPEAKER_00 36:59

So, for instance, I'm I remember at one point writing the story of a woman who had left her physically abusive husband, and she was just ridden with guilt about God hates divorce and divorce is wrong, and um you know, what God has joined together, let no man put asunder. And so I'm writing through this story and I get to that last scripture. Yeah, and it was like Jesus spoke to me and and said, you know, what I've joined together, it says, what I've joined together, let not man put asunder. It doesn't say I can't, which was a big revelation to me. I'd never thought of that before.

SPEAKER_06 37:43

Wow.

SPEAKER_00 37:43

Um but it came in the middle of the story, and I think God reserves the right to take a marriage where a person is being harmed and say, I dissolved this.

SPEAKER_06 37:55

Yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_00 37:58

And I don't say that lightly, you know, it doesn't mean everybody should just go around and get divorced whenever they feel like it, but right, right.

SPEAKER_03 38:09

Yeah. Wow. When I I want to capture like just a couple of things you said. Um, these are more post-it note writings to put on your wall. Like God will meet me in it. And the middle of the story, um I I just want to share something really quick to kind of bounce off that a little bit with you. Um, I used to call it the messy middle. And just this last year, similar to you, I I was kind of rewriting my own story and from his perspective. Um, and rather than it being called the messy middle, he was showing me it was the middle of a miracle. And I thought, oh, that is so much better than the messy middle, right? Wouldn't you say?

SPEAKER_04 38:54

Yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_03 38:56

But I want to just like thank you for doing this for so many people. I would love to hear, like, when you rewrote these stories, and I like to call it flip the script. Like, what was the reaction of the people that you did this for? Maybe a testimonial or a couple that you were able to experience?

SPEAKER_00 39:14

People keep them and read them over and over again. And yeah. Um I I have a book filled with these stories. It's called Heaven's Perspective. But it includes, you know, the story as they told it in the interview, the Heaven story, and then there's a page of their reaction and what they got out of the Heaven story. Oh, if you're interested in this kind of stuff, get Heaven's Perspective. Okay. Um But like one example was this gal who um had a her first child was severely mentally disabled. And she went from dreams of ministry and all this kind of stuff to I'm in full-time care for this person for the rest of my life.

SPEAKER_06 40:02

Yeah.

Leaps Of Faith In Business

SPEAKER_00 40:03

And shortly after the child, you know, they realized the child had problems, um, God said to her, This is my best for you. And she struggled with that, you know, how can this be your best? And finally came to peace with it. Um but the story that I wrote for her was um, you know, you're her, we always ask people, what's what's your biggest unanswered question? If Jesus walked into the room and you could ask him one question about this story, what would you ask? And hers was, will I ever hear my child say mommy? Um, because after 20 some years at that point, she had never spoken. And the heaven story was, you know, your your child's physical brain is not functioning correctly, but her spirit is, and her spirit remembers everything. And when you get to heaven, you're gonna be able to go back and relive every moment on earth and say all the things that that could have been said and should have been said and weren't, and you're gonna be able to enjoy every moment. And this tragedy has drawn such a love out of you and such a devotion that your bond in heaven is gonna be incredible.

SPEAKER_06 41:32

Oh my gosh.

SPEAKER_00 41:33

And she's in my heaven book, um, that story of the autistic child. And um the title of that chapter is The Great Ones. The Great Ones Because you are great in heaven, not because you did great things, but because you loved greatly.

SPEAKER_03 41:59

I'm like totally getting the chills here. Tony, you have I I just want to like if you guys are hearing his heart, you have such a like his heart is just pouring out of you. Like you have such a big heart, and I know you've walked through so much. And the just being the conduit to to like almost like a fire hose of love to other people. Thank you.

SPEAKER_00 42:26

Yeah. This is what I mean by live a life worth writing about.

SPEAKER_02 42:31

Yeah, it's it's this.

unknown 42:34

Wow.

SPEAKER_02 42:35

Oh my gosh.

SPEAKER_03 42:36

Well, tell us a little bit about your your new book. Um, how did how did you come into writing um this newest book? Having experienced the extraordinary, is that correct? Experience extraordinary.

SPEAKER_00 42:50

Um, I had a dream in my 20s where I went to heaven, short dream.

SPEAKER_06 42:54

Okay.

SPEAKER_00 42:55

I'm walking down the hall of my elementary school in my dream, and all of a sudden the hall comes to an end, and there's this cliff, and down below me is heaven. And I'm like, can I jump off? So I picked up a stone and I tossed it over the edge to see what would happen, and it turned into a butterfly and flew away.

SPEAKER_06 43:15

Really?

SPEAKER_00 43:16

So I jumped off the edge and I just floated down, and at the bottom was this huge, endless green lawn going off into the distance, and there was one oak tree, big oak, and underneath it was a picnic table.

SPEAKER_06 43:30

Wow.

SPEAKER_00 43:30

And there were a group of guys just chatting there. And I sat down and they welcomed me. And the thing about the dream that was so compelling was the sense of timelessness. It was like I had nowhere I needed to be, there was nothing I needed to do. Um, I could sit there for a hundred years and nothing would be lost or wasted. Um, I had all the time, literally all the time in the world. And uh I ended up writing a song about that, which helped me to remember the dream. Um but ever since then, one of the thoughts I had after that was I'd like to make a movie about heaven. Because if people could just experience heaven for 90 minutes, they'd give anything to go. And so this book is sort of the culmination of that. Okay. Over the years, I've done a lot of thinking about heaven. Every workshop we do had a heaven room in it where it was sort of our heaven simulator. We had actors and staging and lighting and original music and for people to experience heaven. And so this book is not the entire book takes place in heaven. The protagonist is a female physicist who's lost both of her parents in childhood. And what I want is for people to get so immersed in what it's like to live in heaven that it becomes real to them. So she, you know, in heaven on earth, the physical laws are absolute and the moral laws are optional. So I have to obey gravity. I have no choice. But I don't have to love people. I can be a jerk. Sure. In heaven, it's the opposite. The moral laws are absolute. There's no choices that you can make in heaven that are wrong. It's physically impossible to hate someone or to diss someone or to the laws of that universe don't allow it to happen. But the physical laws are optional. So you can fly.

SPEAKER_03 45:53

That would be amazing.

SPEAKER_00 45:54

Yes, you can just rise off the ground. There's a skydiving scene in the book where she just goes up to 3,000 feet and drops. And then right before she gets to the ground, Jesus catches her.

SPEAKER_02 46:09

Oh my gosh.

SPEAKER_03 46:11

I need to read your book. Yeah. So and I'm seeing the movie playing out as you're talking.

SPEAKER_00 46:17

Yeah, yeah. In heaven, when John describes heaven in Revelation, he's clearly describing something he doesn't have words for because he keeps saying it was like this and it was like that. But one of the key characteristics of the heaven he describes is everything is bright and transparent. So the streets of the city are pure gold, transparent as glass, the shining crystal sea, the water of the river of life, bright and pure. So I think in heaven, there's this great reversal. On earth, when you meet someone, you see the color of their hair and their skin and what they're wearing. You see the externals. But the only way you can get to know the inner person is through the physical. They have to talk or act or something like that. But you can't touch their heart. In heaven, the physical is transparent to your heart. So who you are literally shines out through the transparent shell of your body. So when you meet someone in heaven, you immediately know them, you know their story, you you feel their emotions. You um there's not this communication barrier between you and the person. And it's the same with God. On earth, he's hidden, and there's this communication barrier, but in heaven, the barrier is removed.

SPEAKER_06 47:45

Wow.

SPEAKER_00 47:46

So in heaven, if you want to talk to Jesus, you just say, Hey Jesus, like you would say, Hey Siri, and he shows up.

SPEAKER_03 47:55

I love that. I I think we need to rename Siri, and we could just try to bypass.

SPEAKER_00 48:04

And uh heaven is in a different heaven, has more dimensions than Earth, I believe. And so heaven's time system is different than Earth. And if you we only have one time dimension, so we can only be in one place at a time, and we only get one moment after another. If you have two time dimensions, you have an infinite number of moments inside of each moment, which is how how omnipresence works. Um, God has time to listen to every prayer individually at the same time because he has an infinite number of moments inside each moment to pay attention to us. So there's no line in heaven to get to talk to Jesus. Yeah, you don't get an hour with him and then have to wait a billion years until you get your next hour. Yeah. Um, because he has an infinite number of moments in each moment to share with everyone.

SPEAKER_03 49:03

It's kind of mind-blowing, isn't it?

SPEAKER_00 49:05

Yeah. Yeah.

Rewriting Painful Stories From Heaven

SPEAKER_03 49:06

Like it, it's it's so beyond, like, you know, it makes me think of like Ephesians 3.20, like beyond. It's above and beyond, in essence. Um more than you can ask or imagine. Like you can't even like I'm trying to imagine this and I can see it, but I can't, like, I I want it now. Please. Thank you. Um can you just share a little bit? Um, because I was literally just, you know, in that verse about seated in heavenly places this morning. And could you, I don't know, if you'd be led to go there, but like, how does that translate to our reality here as we're here? Um, when you hear that verse, somebody, you know, might be like, hmm, I I just am always wondering.

SPEAKER_00 49:56

Right.

SPEAKER_03 49:57

Would you speak to that a little bit?

SPEAKER_00 49:59

Yeah. So when you die, you pass out of the time system of earth into the time system of heaven. Um, you go from temporal reality bound by the arrow of time into the timeless. Um, I think it's easiest to visualize heaven as an eternal now. Um, everything happens in the now, and there's no past and there's no future, although, yeah. Anyway, so the seated in the heavenly places thing, from Earth's perspective, your death and resurrection and meeting with Jesus are still off in the future. But from Jesus' perspective in heaven, in the eternal now, you are already seated with him with Christ. And so you pray to Jesus and you say, Oh, Jesus, you know, I'm so bad. I'm sorry I did this. How can you still love me? And Jesus is up in heaven and he looks to his right, and there you are sitting right next to him, glorified. Um, because in heaven's time it's already happened. And he says, What are you talking about? You're right here with me, and you don't look like that at all.

SPEAKER_02 51:14

Yeah. Oh, I love that.

SPEAKER_00 51:16

So I think there's a you understand a verse like that through the filter of two time systems, like free will and predestination. Um, we have free will on Earth. If you look from Earth's perspective, we get to choose. From Heaven's perspective, in the eternal now, the choice has been made and consummated, and you're here. So, from heaven's perspective, you can say that we were predestined. So the paradox is resolved by the two different time systems and where your point of view is from.

SPEAKER_03 51:50

Yes. Yes. Thank you. That's so good. I loved uh again, you're you're bringing visuals to me. So um as you're talking, it's beautiful. Uh when is this movie coming out in relation to the book?

unknown 52:05

I am.

SPEAKER_03 52:06

I just want to say, Tony, um, I say this to my my clients in their 60s. You know, the world says it's time to retire, but I just say it's time to refire. Um, so what what might that look like for you? I know like the Lord called you to retire, so of course we we um but it looks different, right? It looks different than maybe like a corporate environment would tell you, okay, you're done. See you later. Um yeah, when is this movie coming out? I'm I'm on the edge of my seat, quite literally.

SPEAKER_00 52:40

I have no idea. I have no power to make that happen.

SPEAKER_03 52:44

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 52:45

Um, as far as the retirement thing, for me, I was on in Maui, our son lives there, and I'm walking on Thompson Road, which is where Oprah has a house. Gorgeous view, you know, down over the island from about 3,000 feet up and the sea and the nice. And God spoke to me and said, You've been living for significance, and there's a whole nother life you can have if you're willing to try. And it was an invitation, and I was like, Okay, I have no idea what you mean. Yeah, but what God has been unfolding for me over the last couple years is I I was a very goal-oriented person, still in but there's a lot of things in life I sacrifice to be significant. And so, for instance, a year or so ago, one day I realized I'm taking my daily walk and I'm going up and down a concrete sidewalk next to a busy road because I can walk two minutes out my door and be on this road, and there's a nice hill there, and I can get my workout and take the minimum amount of time away from my significant productive things to do my exercise. And I just thought, five minutes down the road is a beautiful walk in nature, but I never go there because that extra two minutes each way. Sure. And so I've sacrificed beauty and joy for significance.

SPEAKER_06 54:20

Wow.

SPEAKER_00 54:20

And what God is saying to me is, no, we're gonna put those things back. Um, so I'm finding all these different ways that I've, you know, like another part of this journey is I spent three years full time working on this how to read the Bible like a human being book about visualizing scenes in the New Testament. Yeah. And at the beginning, God said, From here on, your job is just to write it and leave the promotion to others. And I'm like, Great, I hate the promotional part anyway.

SPEAKER_02 54:52

Oh, that's awesome. I love that.

SPEAKER_00 54:54

The whole time I'm I'm writing for three years, I'm thinking God is gonna drop some great promotional plan on me. And I get right to the end of the process and I still have nothing.

SPEAKER_06 55:04

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 55:05

And then God says, I don't want you to promote this. And I'm like, Oh, I just spent three years of my life on this. And I don't know if I've sold more than a hundred copies of that book. Okay, um, because I haven't promoted it. Um, it's great material. I have Bible studies that have been going on for like five years with the same people. Really? Or two-thirds of the way through Mark.

SPEAKER_03 55:33

Well, you guys listening in today, just rem remind us of the name of the book, this this other book that you're talking about.

SPEAKER_00 55:39

How to read the Bible Like a Human Being. There's a website. Yeah, tell us about that.

SPEAKER_03 55:43

Like I love the title.

SPEAKER_00 55:45

The website's like a human being.com. And if you want to join a Bible study, you can just go there and shoot me an email and I'll get you hooked up because they're free.

SPEAKER_03 55:55

Okay. Okay. And are you leading these Bible studies or is it other people as well?

SPEAKER_00 56:00

Okay. Um, other people are doing them, but I'm leading the online ones.

SPEAKER_03 56:04

Yeah. Um how did that how did that book come to be? You spent three years. Like, tell us a little bit about just even stepping into that space and and where that idea came from.

SPEAKER_00 56:17

Yeah. Well, it was in the years I was recovering from the fire and everything. Okay. It was great to be able to just go out to the porch and spend four or five hours researching and letting it take me wherever it took me. Um, I've built two bookcases to contain the books that I bought for this project.

SPEAKER_06 56:39

Are you doing it? Really?

SPEAKER_00 56:40

Spent four months in Israel. Um, but where it came from is my career in coaching is focused on the emotional brain. Because I realized if it's just, you know, you want to get the garage cleaned up. If it's just a practical matter of making the decision and doing it, people would have done it already. If they come to me as a coach, it's because something is stopping them, a hurt or a belief or whatever. So the problem is always in the emotional brain, it's not in the rational brain. It's very rare that anyone comes to me and they just need a plan. Almost always, it's yeah, something on the emotional side. So for the last 25 years, I've focused on that emotional brain side. And at one point I realized we read scripture with our heads, we read it to know what to believe and how to behave. Um, we don't read it to visualize it. So most people cannot picture the scenes in the Bible in any detail.

SPEAKER_03 57:53

Um that fascinates me.

SPEAKER_00 57:55

Yeah. And because we can't picture it, your emotional brain speaks the language of image and experience. So it doesn't touch our emotional brain. So here's a for instance, uh, if if we got time for me to give you a story.

SPEAKER_03 58:12

Absolutely. Please, please share.

SPEAKER_00 58:14

So um the uh woman with the flow of blood. So most people, when I ask them how they picture that, it's just she's out on a road somewhere, she's in a field. There's there's nothing, the background is blank. There's no concept of where this happened or what's going on. But after researching, here's what I think it looks like. So this poor woman, she's bleeding constantly. So she's anemic, she's weak, she's unclean, and uncleanness is not sin. What it meant in that culture was unfit to live in community. You violated the community rule. So she would have been banished from the community. So she's living in a cave, she's living with other unclean people, she's not welcome in the synagogue, she's not welcome in the market, she's not supposed to touch anybody. So after 12 years of isolation, she probably has mental issues.

SPEAKER_03 59:22

I mean, you can only imagine, yeah, right.

SPEAKER_00 59:25

She's weak, she's thin, she's dirty. So that day, Jesus arrives on the waterfront in Capernaum. He's come across from from the other side of the sea, and a crowd gathers, and the ruler of the synagogue comes and says, Come and heal my daughter. Well, I think the ruler of the synagogue is the ruler of the Capernaum synagogue because there's no time to run three miles to the nearest city and bring him back, and then for Jesus to walk all the way to that city.

SPEAKER_01 59:59

Right.

SPEAKER_00 1:00:00

So it's almost certainly the ruler of the Capernaum synagogue, and that means the whole story happens in Capernaum. It also means Gyrus knows Jesus. Jesus casts a demon out of a crazy man in his synagogue. Um, so these two guys have some kind of a relationship. So Gyrus comes and says, Heal my daughter. They set off, they've got a crowd in tow of people who want to see the spectacle, and they're heading down. The streets in Capernaum are like six or eight feet wide.

SPEAKER_06 1:00:35

Okay.

SPEAKER_00 1:00:36

And very narrow. Yes, and there's no yards in a first century village. The houses come right up to the edge of that six or eight-foot wide street, and a house is called an insulae. It's it's a big wall around a courtyard, and then there are rooms built around the edges of it. So you've you've got a six or eight-foot wide street with 10-foot black stone walls on either side.

SPEAKER_03 1:01:00

Sounds very constricting.

SPEAKER_00 1:01:02

Yes. So Jesus is going down the street, Gyrus is next to him. There's a crowd following. This woman, I think, kind of was lying in wait and came out of a corner because I don't see how she could have wormed her way up through the crowd.

SPEAKER_02 1:01:18

Right.

SPEAKER_00 1:01:18

But she comes behind Jesus and touches the hem of his robe. And the hemation, the kind of robe they had, the hem would have been the tassel would have been in the small of your back. So she's not down on the ground, like all the art says. She's really touches the small of his back. And the Greek word for touch here is not heavy touch. So I think she got jostled and she touched Jesus harder than she wanted to because she's trying to do this incognito. She's not supposed to be there, she's not supposed to be in the village, she's not supposed to be touching anybody. And she touches Jesus and she feels something, it happened, and Jesus turns around and says, Who touched me? And what happens when a moving crowd is following, you know, Kanye or Michael Jackson and they suddenly stop? Well, the crowd sort of accordions up into Jesus and pushes this woman up against him. So Jesus is saying, Who touched me? and she's trapped by the compressed crowd, and she looks next to Jesus and there's Gyrus. And Gyrus, as the Archus synagogus, enforces the purity rules in the synagogue. So this is essentially the chief of police. Wow. So she has just broken the law in the same way that you know driving in a hundred in the 35 zone is breaking the law.

SPEAKER_01 1:02:49

Right.

SPEAKER_00 1:02:50

And she's Jesus discovers that someone touched him, and right next to him is the chief of police. And there's a very interesting detail in the story. Gyrus's daughter is 12 years old, and the woman's had the flow of blood for 12 years.

SPEAKER_02 1:03:06

Yes. Yeah, I always look at that. I'm like, wow.

SPEAKER_00 1:03:10

Why did they include that deal? Well, if Gyrus had been the ruler of the synagogue for that time, he would have been the guy who pronounced her unclean and unfit to come to the synagogue. So here is the guy who ruined my life and represents authority next to Jesus. And the woman has a panic attack. She's literally shaking, you know, fear and trembling.

SPEAKER_06 1:03:35

Yeah.

Heaven Time And Seated With Christ

SPEAKER_00 1:03:36

And she falls down in front of Jesus and tells him the whole story. And Jesus does something really interesting. First, he says to her, daughter, and this is the only place in the New Testament where Jesus calls a specific person daughter. And here's a daughter who, you know, if this happened when she was 13 when she was first menstruating, this daughter was cast out of her home into isolation, and Jesus calls her daughter. There's an emotional healing happened there.

SPEAKER_02 1:04:10

Wow, I've never thought of that before.

SPEAKER_00 1:04:13

And Jesus says, Your faith has made you well, which is a social healing. He's saying to the gathered people of the village, this person was good enough that Yahweh healed her, therefore she is clean, and she you should accept her back into the community. And so there's a social healing and an emotional healing that goes with the physical healing. And then let's so this is what happens to the woman. Now let's go back to poor gyrus. His daughter's dying, they're on the way there. Jesus stops at a 7-Eleven to chat up with her, you know, and witness to her. And Gyrus is looking at his watch, going, Come on, come on, come on. And this woman comes up, and it doesn't say this, but that 12-year thing is really significant. What if Gyrus recognizes her and Jesus heals her? And at that moment they come and tell him his daughter died. And Gyrus is thinking, Oh my god, my sin has come back on my own head. I cast this girl out 12 years ago, and now she got healed instead of my daughter, and my daughter has died.

SPEAKER_02 1:05:33

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 1:05:33

And Jesus says, Don't fear, come with me.

SPEAKER_02 1:05:37

Yes.

SPEAKER_00 1:05:38

Um, so if you don't get into the setting and who the people are and what their roles are, you you miss all these nuances of the story that make it come alive.

SPEAKER_03 1:05:52

Yes.

SPEAKER_00 1:05:53

So how does that impact you?

SPEAKER_03 1:05:55

I am buying the book today. You know, one of the things I don't know if you watch The Chosen, but I was so like thrilled to to see it come to the screen, to watch it, because I am such a like I literally am, we were talking about this before we got started. Like I'm literally seeing scenes play out. And just even the way that you're describing things, you're pulling out, you're pulling out so much that I've never, you know, I'm I'm I feel like I'm kind of a dot connector code cracker, but you're pulling out some some pretty significant um impactful code cracking gear. You know what I'm saying? Yeah. Um, wow, you guys gotta get this book. Tell us the name about it. Tell us the name again.

SPEAKER_00 1:06:42

It's how to read the Bible like a human being.

SPEAKER_03 1:06:45

Okay.

SPEAKER_00 1:06:46

There's a book, and then there's four workbooks and study guides for doing uh your own study with it.

SPEAKER_03 1:06:53

So could you like have you ever had people um kind of walk people through maybe a group together? I I know you've done the Bible studies, but you know, my brain's kind of thinking out loud here.

SPEAKER_00 1:07:04

Um Yeah, the workbooks and the study guides are designed so that you could do a Bible study in your church.

SPEAKER_03 1:07:10

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 1:07:10

And there's a a video that goes with each lesson that's shot in Israel that shows the setting where it happened. And yeah.

SPEAKER_03 1:07:18

How do you access the videos? Is that something that you access through getting the book?

SPEAKER_00 1:07:23

We're at the website um likeahumanbeing.com.

SPEAKER_03 1:07:27

Like a human being. Okay. Wow, you are just so full of so much wisdom and gifts. And you know, obviously the Lord's put this in you to release to the world. Um, as you are re-firing, I'm calling you re firing. What what's something that's really uh stretchy coming up for you maybe in the next year that um is beyond what you you could even ask or imagine?

SPEAKER_00 1:07:56

What's stretching me? Um I'm not I'm not looking for things to do.

SPEAKER_03 1:08:04

Um it doesn't have to be something that you do.

SPEAKER_00 1:08:08

Yeah, I'm learning. I mean, the stretching thing is learning how to get old.

SPEAKER_02 1:08:15

Okay.

SPEAKER_00 1:08:16

You know, I have serious back issues right now.

SPEAKER_02 1:08:20

Okay.

SPEAKER_00 1:08:21

Um my pastor says, yeah, it only hurts when you age.

SPEAKER_02 1:08:25

It only hurts when you're age.

SPEAKER_03 1:08:28

Well, I must be aging too then. I think we're all aging. Oh gosh.

SPEAKER_00 1:08:33

I think there's a you know, I always thought that I'd work as hard as I could as long as I could. Um, and Jesus said no. And so I think there's something important in um how do I say this? I'm coaching this gal, and she's done great things in her life, um, and is well known, but it's it's like some of the things she were doing got shut down, no fault of her own. And she's like, What do I do with this? And I'm talking to her, and I said, You know, what if God, if instead of you working hard for the rest of your life, what if God is saying, I so appreciate all that you've done for me and what you've contributed, and I want to take the rest of your life to bless you. But there's a God who is like that, and if we don't allow him to be like that, we're we're squelching a revelation of who God is. And I think there's a a thing for people, not everybody, but I think there's a thing that we have to model in in our later years about the goodness of God and who he really is.

SPEAKER_02 1:10:09

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 1:10:10

That that's my challenge right now is to understand that and learn that and incarnate that.

SPEAKER_03 1:10:16

It's beautiful. Thank you for sharing that. Um, I had one more question, if you don't mind me asking. So you I I went through a journey of of learning how to walk again because my life until about 17, 2017, I actually, when I finished coaching school, my dad passed away. And one of the last things my dad said to me was, Don't work so hard, it'll end up like me. And I really took that to heart. I ended up getting shingles. But the Lord started taking me out into nature and going for walks, different places. So it was similar to kind of what you're talking about. Um, and he would bench me, literally, like sit me on the bench, and he would just start speaking to me about different things. And then I just started noticing more. I noticed eagles, like I see eagles all the time and butterflies and you know, different aspects of his creation. So I was curious when you expanded out to going beyond your um, you know, stepping out of your house, what what things did you see or hear going, you know, expanding out of territory? Was there anything special that he showed you?

SPEAKER_00 1:11:31

Stepping out of my house, meaning Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 1:11:33

When you you you did your normal, you know, daily walk, but then he was like, hey, there's more out here. There's there's like there's beauty out here beyond. What this is, I know it sounds like kind of a random question, but I just have to know. Was he showing you more in that space? Did he sh like say more to you? Did you see more? Um, like what was the beauty that you saw and experienced?

Retiring From Significance Into Joy

SPEAKER_00 1:11:57

I think for me, it was more about the uh an internal shift that I'm not in a hurry to complete this activity so that I can go back and do something meaningful.

SPEAKER_01 1:12:12

Okay.

SPEAKER_00 1:12:13

That I'm gonna be there in this, that that I'm gonna intentionally do the joyful thing that takes longer. Um I started going to the gym for the first time in my life because exercise was one of those things that wasn't significant.

SPEAKER_04 1:12:31

Sure. Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 1:12:33

And I'm I mean, it's not like it's the I look forward to it. It's not like it's the funnest thing in the world.

SPEAKER_02 1:12:40

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 1:12:40

But it's like I'm doing things not for significance. I'm I'm living, I'm being alive and not being a legacy. Um and that's what it's about for me.

SPEAKER_03 1:12:56

That's beautiful. Wow. Well, you are incredible. Uh, we'll have to have you back on when your movie comes out. Just saying. We're just prophesying here a little bit. Um, well, I would love for you to share um as we close out today. Um, I I I do this um seed cast for the one. So if you could just get in mind this one that's listening in today, if you have any other um words of encouragement or uh you know words of wisdom or knowledge that you'd want to share over this one, and then would you pray us out today?

SPEAKER_00 1:13:29

Sure. Yeah, I'll just say my life message, which is there's nothing that can happen to you that God won't make something beautiful out of. He doesn't cause it. Um, he gave the world to us, the steward, and we don't often do a good job of stewarding it or each other, but he's constantly working to redeem.

SPEAKER_06 1:13:52

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 1:13:52

Um, so Romans 8 28, all things work together for good.

SPEAKER_06 1:13:57

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 1:13:57

And there's two conditions for those who love the Lord and are called according to his purpose. And the purpose is explained in the next verse to conform you to the image of Christ. So your circumstances can be something bad that happens to you, or it can be the thing that God uses to bring you the desire of your heart, to make you like Jesus, to take the long-term pain out of your life. And it all depends on whether you're willing to come to Jesus and stop saying, get me out of this pain, which is the natural human response. But say, What are you doing in this pain? And if this is what I need, keep doing it. Um, but I am here, I trust you in my pain to be good to me. Um so yeah.

SPEAKER_02 1:14:56

So good. Thank you.

SPEAKER_00 1:14:57

So praying, Jesus. Um yeah. So for these folks, um, doing them the things that they can't do for themselves. And I know that you will be gentle and kind, and we look back on those things, and it's not a pain, it's a miracle. Um yeah, bless them and lead them on into the beautiful thing that you have for them.

unknown 1:15:34

Yes.

SPEAKER_00 1:15:35

Amen.

SPEAKER_03 1:15:36

Amen. Well, thank you, Tony. Um, what is the best way for people to get in touch with you? I'll be sure to add this in the show notes as well.

SPEAKER_00 1:15:44

You can um, I mean, my email address is Tony at meta-formation.com. Okay. If you're interested in the Bible studies, there's the form on the like a human being site. Um the Heaven Book has HeavenExperience.net. There's videos there about heaven that are free. Um you can sign up to get free books sent to you if you've read the book and loved it.

SPEAKER_06 1:16:13

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 1:16:14

Um, so that's all there. Um Likeahumanbeing.com has the Bible study stuff. So those are some of the perfect.

Reading The Bible With Imagination

SPEAKER_03 1:16:27

Well, I'll be sure to add to the show notes. Please um grab his books. Um, I just love your heart. Just even, you know, somebody who gets a book, there's a form you can fill out, and then you can um, you know, buy for yourself, but give give them away. That is so generous and beautiful. That is so from the heart of the father, right? Um, and and a good idea from him, I'm I'm imagining. So well, thank you so much for being a brave voice who's setting money free. And I will be back with another episode next week. Actually, I almost forgot. I need to close with my anchoring verse for this podcast. It's may the God of hope fill you with all joy and peace in believing so that by the power of the Holy Spirit you may abound in hope. And that's Romans 15, 13. So thank you, listeners. Have a great day. Bye bye.