Welcome to the God's Goodness podcast, where our mission is to encourage as well as highlight
God's Goodness and modern-day miracles.
We are your hosts, Josh and Shelley Hankins.
Today, we'd like to welcome our second guest, and he's a very special person to us.
And his name is John Kent.
He's a pastor, and he's got some other qualifications, I'm sure, that go along with that, with all
the teachings you've learned.
So we're going to learn a little bit about how God has been good to him, and we're going
to ask him to lead us in the opening prayer.
Father in heaven, thank you so very much for the privilege of worshiping you, of following
you.
We're grateful for your call and invitation to follow you in all of our lives.
And tonight, I pray that you would simply bless this conversation.
May you be honored and glorified in it.
In the name of Jesus, we pray, amen.
Amen.
So one of the things that I have been led to do is, well, this podcast, but then the other
way was what direction to go with it.
And what I wanted to do is ask my guests to pray about what the Holy Spirit would lead
them to share, because, you know, they might know something.
Well, the Holy Spirit knows everything, but they might have a story that I don't know
about that they are destined to share at this point in time to help the most amount
of people.
And so we asked him to pray about it, and so he's going to share with us what he's been
led to.
Thank you very much, Josh and Shelley.
Thank you for inviting me to be on this podcast.
It's a tremendous honor.
Thanks for being with us.
Yeah.
So as I was pondering what to share tonight, I couldn't help but reflect on a moment in
the life of David.
When, you know, God made a covenant with him.
He called this young man to take the place of King Saul.
You know, he just works through David's life, and there comes a point when David goes in
before the Lord and he says this, Who am I?
Oh, Lord God, and what is my house that you have brought me thus far?
Can you say which verse that is?
And that is in Chronicles, 1 Chronicles 1716.
1 Chronicles 1716.
Thank you.
I read that years ago, and it just spoke very deeply to me then.
When I think about my own life and my own journey, I just can't help but say, Who am
I that you have brought me this far, given where I came from and what my background was.
It's just to me, it's an astounding thing to sit here with you today and even know that
this is happening.
I was thinking of this verse earlier this year, after I got the idea of the podcast,
like he thought of me to carry this out and carry messages from all of his followers,
you know, so they can speak into the lives of other people that are going through the
same challenges.
God is growing us, you know, we're masterpieces in the making.
I didn't know what it was at the time, but I remembered the verse and it brought me to
tears because it's so powerful to think like he cared enough to think like, That's what
I want you to do.
Right.
That somehow he looks across the span of eternity and sees me, you, any of us around the table
that he sees us and chooses us is an amazing thing.
For sure.
Yeah, I have a similar passage, which is who is man that you would be mindful of him.
And that's always resonated with me because I think oftentimes we like to reflect on our
inadequacies and our inability to produce good works without God.
And so he reminds us who we are to him through the sacrifice of his son, through his loving
compassion, through his continued support of us, even when we do some of the dumbest
things.
Yeah.
I'm very grateful to God for the journey that I'm on.
It's a wild ride.
That's for sure.
My journey or just in general.
Hours together.
Well, yeah, before and together, you know, I'll just kind of lean into the story and
it always amazes me again, reflecting back who am I?
You know, I was just raised in a condition of deep poverty in Western Pennsylvania.
We were not churchgoers.
We were basically unchurched people and my grandmother occasionally came and took us
to church now and then, but it wasn't anywhere near a part of our life.
My dad was a severe alcoholic and he smoked like a hundred cigarettes a day, three to
five packs a day.
He smoked.
It was just like crazy.
And I'll never forget, you know, in this out of this place of poverty and there was tremendous
amounts of abuse in my home, not so much toward us kids.
I was the oldest of six, but my, you know, my dad and mom just fought a lot, just tremendous
amounts of screaming and yelling and throwing things and blood and just, just messy.
It was just a messy, traumatic home to grow up in.
And, you know, I remember my dad, you know, he's smoking three to five packs a day.
He would sometimes stick his finger in my face and say, if I ever catch you smoking,
I'll beat you to within an inch of your life.
Right.
This is with a cigarette hanging out of his mouth.
And I'll never forget, you know, Josh and Shelley, that the greatest influence over our
lives are not words so much as the example of those around us.
I'll never forget a moment came.
I was 14 years old and my mom had actually become a Christian several, a couple of years
earlier.
But I was 14 years old and I asked my dad to take me camping to drop me off at the end
of the road.
He was on his way to work on a Sunday afternoon and he dropped me off and that night was the
first time I smoked.
Was also the very last time I ever saw my dad.
Wow.
The next day he was killed.
He was only 35.
I was 14, oldest of six, but he was killed.
I had a heart attack while driving a tractor trailer at age 35.
And if he wasn't dead from the heart attack, he was killed instantly from the load of steel
he was carrying when the truck wrecked.
My 14 year old brain did something that I think happens to many of us.
You know, it takes life events and interprets them and applies them to our lives.
And for me, that looked like this.
My 14 year old brain simply said, God killed my dad to punish me.
I really couldn't have even enunciated that lie, but it was just there.
It was just there in the background.
And you know, I ended up about a year later, I ended up going off out of this place of
deep poverty to a Christian boarding school.
And I went there and it was like the best thing on earth to me.
It was an escape from the pain and trauma of the life that we lived.
I loved the school, but I wanted nothing to do with God because I believe deeply that
he killed my dad to punish me.
And so I went through, you know, three years of this Christian high school, loved it, but
I wanted nothing to do with God after I was done with school.
I ended up hitchhiking the nation coast to coast, you know, just hitchhiking the nation,
trying to find meaning to life, you know, trying, searching for answers.
And I'll never forget three months later, I'm on the way back.
And I always knew I was coming back because I knew I needed to be there for my mom and
my brothers and sisters.
And on the way back, I just said, I'm going to give my mother's God a try.
When I landed back in Western PA, I got a job and I began working and supporting my
mom and brothers and sisters, helping them.
But every night I'd go to my room and I'd open up the Bible.
And I said this, I said, if God is God, and this is his word, then he should be able to
speak to me.
I didn't want anybody to study with me.
I just said, God is God.
This is his word.
He should be able to speak to me.
And so I have no overnight conversion experience.
There's just not a moment like that that I can recollect.
All our members one day after several months, I just woke up and knew I wanted to follow
Jesus.
You know, I knew that Jesus was his life, his ministry, everything about Jesus attracted
me.
And so I made that decision.
You know, I yielded my heart to Jesus and I began following him.
So at this time, did you still believe that God was punishing you for that cigarette?
In truth, yes.
So how hard was it to lean in to the scripture, to lean in to God, to trust your mother's
God, feeling that he had punished you in such a way that literally crippled you and traumatized
you emotionally and spiritually?
Yeah.
Great question, Josh.
You know, I think there's a disjuncture in all of our minds or in many of our minds.
You know, we can say God loves me, right?
We can say that intellectually, but not really believe it at the heart level.
And I think that's the issue.
I knew as I read, I wanted this God.
I knew this had to be Jesus was somebody that I wanted to be like and I wanted to follow
and I believed he had salvation for me.
But this lie, it just operated in the background.
And I was unfortunately mentored into a church.
And I think a lot of people have this background too, that was pretty works oriented, you know,
quite works oriented.
And so how did this look?
How do I describe this?
It just felt like I need to prove myself worthy of God's love, right?
That's the issue.
I had to prove to God that I was worthy to be loved.
So when I was growing up, I felt very conditionally loved by my father.
Did you ever feel conditionally loved by your father as if, you know, he didn't give you
the praise you needed every minute, but only when you performed at the level of his expectation?
I actually rarely, I don't know if I have any memories, maybe one of my father ever
affirming me.
Oh, OK.
That just didn't happen in our place.
We're more likely to be cursed at than affirmed.
So absolute conditional love.
Absolutely conditional love.
Yeah, I just, it was all conditional love.
And so in my journey, said I want to follow Jesus and yet this background lie operating
that God had killed my dad to punish me.
And again, I said, I don't know that I could have enunciated it at the time.
It wasn't like something that I consciously knew.
It was just operating in the background.
And so that led me into this life of ministry workaholism.
You know, I became part of a ministry.
I landed in New York City where I met Belinda and we spent eight years there, you know,
in service to God.
But it was also quite behaviorally oriented.
The words of grace were there, you know, were saved by grace, but the action, the pressure
to live or behave at a certain level was there all the time.
And so I threw myself into ministry, you know, to prove to God that I was worth being loved.
So eventually we spent eight years in New York City and then went to Papua New Guinea.
We were called as missionaries to Papua New Guinea.
I thought it was Papa New Guinea.
Yeah.
Yeah, Papua.
P-A-P-U-A.
Voice to text puts a papa.
Yeah, Papua New Guinea, you know, and it was just this incredible journey in God.
In the jungle.
Yeah, in the jungle.
I want to tell you, I mean, here's the astounding truth that even in our brokenness, God will
still use us, right?
He used us in New York City.
And then...
And how did he do that?
Oh, just in our ministry, you know, in reaching people and serving people and encouraging people
and speaking in churches.
And, you know, we had a street ministry to reach out to New Yorkers.
And, you know, there was...
There's a lot of stories there, Shelley.
I can't have been easy.
I've been to New York.
There's a lot of stories there too.
But, you know, a day came when we knew that we needed to leave New York.
And in truth be told, I actually lost my experience with God.
I just woke up one day and realized I didn't even know the God I was serving anymore.
This ministry was just demanding and in the process of it, I lost my experience with Jesus.
And that's when we realized, you know, man, something's got to change and I'm not going
to go down that rabbit trail, but there's an amazing story of God calling us to New
Guinea, right?
Out of a place of brokenness, out of a pain of feeling lost and hopeless and yet still
longing to honor God.
And so we landed in Papua New Guinea, you know?
And you know, we're living, we were called to work with this tribal group deep in the
jungle there, you know, 270 miles from the nearest town, 180 miles by log canoe, like,
you know, 270 miles from town first 90 and a mud road through the jungle, and then 180
miles in a log canoe to get to our tribal group and just remoteness and isolation and
immersion in this culture.
And no one speaks English with you?
No one spoke English.
And there were literally people there who remembered the taste of human flesh, who were
catabals, you know, in their day a few years before we got there.
But you know, just an incredible journey and God used us there.
And God began to alter, you know, there was success, there were moments of failure and
we felt the failure and prayed and sought God.
And he began to alter my view of himself and my place and my experience in relationship
with him.
But after eight years, some events transpired and we had to come home.
And there was no moral failure, nothing like that, nothing that we necessarily did wrong
except this.
As my ministry grew in New Guinea, the demands to be gone from New Guinea also grew.
I began to train missionaries and our organization began to ask me to leave the project to come
to back to the U.S. to train other missionaries.
And in that process, because of my performance driven nature, because I was trying to be
approved, I always had this deep insecurity about my acceptance with God, acceptance with
others.
And so every time the leader of our organization would ask me to come back to the U.S., I would
say yes.
And the first year it was a couple of weeks and then it would end up being three weeks
and four weeks and five and I'd be gone six weeks at a time.
Belinda is without me in the jungle, deep in the jungle with kids.
You know, we went there with a five, three and 18 month old and then had a daughter while
we were there.
How was her Papua New Guinea speaking skills compared to yours?
She could communicate fine.
Yeah, she could communicate.
I had a, because I spent a lot more time in the jungle with the people, I had probably
a greater level of fluency, but she could communicate fine.
You know, you're just asking, you know, to see what her mindset would have been closer
to be like, knowing that she was alone with kids and the speaker that was more attuned
to the language was not there.
Yeah, and it inevitably created resentment, you know, the amount of time that I ended
up being away because I couldn't say no, because to say no would risk disapproval, would risk,
you know, not getting opportunities maybe in the future.
You know, again, it was, I had to prove my worth.
And that led to us eventually needing to leave Papua New Guinea just for the family's
sake, because I couldn't say no.
And when we came home, during the years in New Guinea, I really felt as if God had created
me for the purpose of being there, that I was born to be there.
God gave me just skills that I had a unique ability to connect with people, even across
these cultures, you know, language.
And he just felt like I was crafted for that purpose.
And so when we ended up coming home, I actually went into a deep depression.
I really struggled.
And I'm not a depressive person.
I think you guys know that I'm not prone to depression.
But I really struggled when we came home.
And I came home to a significant position.
I came home to be the director of training for our mission agency.
And that led to a series of decisions that were really impactful because of my deep struggles.
I threw myself every year into missionary training.
Every summer we had a significant 12-week missionary training program that I developed.
And God, it was blessed.
Again, God uses.
It's amazing.
And then our mistakes, but in that space, every single summer I would neglect my family
because I was desperately trying to gain worth from the accolades I received from being one
of the best missionary trainers around.
And then all the subsequent speaking appointments that came with that, colleges, universities,
high schools, you know, speaking about missions.
And so every summer, often at the end of many summers, we'd be in some level of marital
counseling year after year after year.
And the time came, I was just lost.
I was tired.
I was weary.
I was ready to leave God, to leave our marriage, to leave ministry.
I was just at a point of, I just can't do this anymore.
It felt like I was trying to please a God who was never quite pleased enough.
I just, I could never quite reach the level that I felt like God was pleased.
I had mentioned something before with another group of people, but it's funny how we try
to impress God with the gifts he gives us.
And then when it falls short of impressing him because, you know, he's given us those
gifts, we often feel a certain kind of way depressed or sadness as if we don't meet his
approval.
And you are not alone in that.
Yes, I know that to be true.
And that's why I'm so excited about this last part of the story.
At the end of one particular summer, I went to see our counselor and she said this to
me, she was a Christian counselor.
And she said to me, John, she said, I realize as a Christian using the secular practices
of psychology that about the very best I can do is take miserable people and make them
unhappy.
And so, and she said, you know, I've been being mentored by a man in Ashland, Ohio, and
he has agreed to see you, would you be willing to go?
And I was at this desperate space of saying, I just, I said, yes.
So we set up a date and I believe it was about 20 years ago this month, I think.
20 years ago this month, I'll never forget getting up on a Monday morning and driving
four hours from Southwestern Michigan where we lived at the time to Ashland, Ohio, and
to the campus of Ashland Theological Seminary to meet a man by the name of Dr. Terry Wardle.
And I went into his office, tiny little office, and my counselor was there with Dr. Wardle
and we just chatted for a few moments.
And in those few moments, we connected over the realization that he was also from Western
Pennsylvania.
So a few minutes of chitter chatter and then he said, John, let's pray.
And so we closed our eyes and Dr. Wardle invited the Holy Spirit to come into the room.
And then there was a long period of silence, almost uncomfortable silence.
And then he said to me, John, here's what I want you to do.
He said, I'd like you to just imagine a safe place.
I want you to imagine a place where you could feel safe.
He said, it might be a place from your childhood or it might be a place in the woods or mountains
or it might be imaginary, but just ask Jesus to give you that picture.
And I struggled a little bit.
I'll be honest.
I said, what's this weirdness going on?
But eventually I calmed down and I was able to, all of a sudden the picture came to me
of my childhood on my grandfather's farm down along the West branch of the Susquehanna
River at Hemlocks and Rodedendron.
And it was a place I always felt so safe.
And I just could see myself there.
And then he said, I described that to him and he said, John, could you invite Jesus to
join you there?
And the truth is, Shelley and Josh, I couldn't because I was confident he wouldn't want to
be with me at the deepest level.
I knew that Jesus wouldn't want to be with me.
Like that original wound was still with you.
Still with me all these years later and having been used by God in some profound ways.
And I struggled and so with Dr. Wardle's gentle nurturing, I was finally able to ask Jesus
to join me, to make his presence known.
And after a moment I could see him in my mind.
I could see Jesus join me.
I was sitting by a little fire there in the midst of the Hemlock and Rodedendron and he
came and he joined me there.
So I described that I could see and sense Jesus.
And then Dr. Wardle said this.
He said, John, if you could ask Jesus anything, what would you ask him?
And I said immediately, I'd want to know if I was in the center of his will.
And Dr. Wardle leaned forward and said, what?
That's all you would want to know?
Is he sense that really the core of that question I'm wanting to know, do I measure up?
Right?
Have I measured up, Lord?
Am I doing the right thing at the right time in the right way?
Am I in the center of your will?
That question was rooted in my very wounding.
In the lie I'd carried all these years and he just said, try again.
You can ask me any question, just not that one.
And all of a sudden, from deep down at the pit of my stomach, the question arose.
And at the beginning, you guys, it may not feel that much different, but it's deeply
different to me.
And the question simply was, Jesus, what do you think about me?
What do you think about me?
I said that to Dr. Wardle.
Dr. Wardle said, ask him.
It's probably one of the most difficult things I've ever done in my life.
There in the presence of Jesus, in my mind's imagination, to turn to Jesus and say, Lord,
what do you think about me?
As I kind of stuttered those words out before they even got out, the words of God, Jesus'
voice spoke so deeply, so loudly to me that it was almost overwhelming.
And that voice, the voice of Jesus said this in that moment, John, you are my treasure.
I love you.
You are unbelievable to me.
And I broke down weeping and weeping and weeping and sobbing, and Dr. Wardle said, what did
he say?
And I said, he said, I'm his treasure, and he loves me, and I'm unbelievable to him.
And there was a moment of pause.
And then Dr. Wardle said this, John, what does a treasure do?
Nothing.
It does nothing.
It has value simply because somebody puts value on it.
And that moment, Josh and Shelley, broke 22 years of ministry workaholism when for the
first time in my Christian life, I knew that I was loved by God simply because I took in
air and space.
Right?
That I was loved by God.
No matter what, that moment broke 22 years of ministry workaholism.
You went from conditional love to immediate unconditional love.
Absolutely.
How freeing did that feel?
Oh, man.
It was like a 10-ton weight came off of my chest in that moment.
And how did that improve every other aspect from that moment forward?
Good question.
That's a long story, but I'll just tell you this, that on that day, my wife, Belinda,
almost committed suicide.
She was laying on the bathroom floor in our home ready to take pills because once again,
all the attention was on me.
I was getting help, and she was being left behind.
That's probably a story for another moment.
I think at that other moment, we should get that story from Belinda.
From Belinda, yeah.
But my life was altered, and when I came home, Belinda knew it.
I shared with her what had happened, and then God began to put pieces into place that would
eventually lead both she and I to go spend another weekend just a few weeks later with
Dr. Warhol.
And in those moments, God did the most transformational healing experience for both of us.
Another deeper level of personal healing for me, a brand new healing for Belinda, and a
healing and renewal of our marriage that was just astounding.
So you felt whole, and she felt seen.
That's incredible.
Yeah, good.
I really enjoy you.
I love you.
I appreciate you, and I'm so grateful that we met all those years ago.
And I just hope to see you again on this show.
I hope to hear from Belinda.
I know that you have a lot of stories, not just because you're venerable, but because
you just have a lot of stories.
And you've experienced a lot with God.
You've encountered a lot with God, and you're a great spokesman.
I enjoy you.
Yeah, thank you very much.
We enjoy you too.
You and Shelley both.
We've been a blessing, and back to the verse, who am I?
Who are we?
Yeah.
That God has seen us and has chosen us.
Chosen us.
And God descends to use us by His grace.
Yeah.
I would totally read your book when you write these stories down.
I'll illustrate it for you.
I'll buy one of the books in the presale.
That's a task on the stove.
So I do have a joke for you.
Uh-oh.
Did you know that when a canoe flips over, you can wear it as a hat because it's cap
size?
That's pretty good.
It reminded me when we were talking about the canoes going, Bopu Nogini in the rivers.
I wanted to say it then, but it wasn't the time.
Yeah, I will be honored to share anything I can in the future to encourage and bless
your group.
Oh my goodness.
Remember when Terri Ann had so much to share about how the podcast had helped her at one
moment?
I can't wait to see who you've helped with the affirmation that we're not alone, right?
You're not the only treasure that we're all a treasure.
And none of us can do anything to have that value or worth assigned to us except by the
person who sees us as the treasure.
And I hope that that enriches somebody and blesses them and that they come off feeling
a little bit more unconditionally loved than they did before.
I know with the way we are as people, it's very easy to come off as feeling unloved.
I've told Shelley before and sharing that, you know, God's commandments, the two most
important ones are love God with everything, above everything.
I'm summarizing.
And the second is love your neighbor as you love yourself.
And I think a lot of people struggle with loving their neighbor because they don't love
themselves.
And I think this will really help some people unlock the gears that have been frozen, you
know, WD-40 them, so to speak, so they can get the thought process back to going into
what God thinks of them.
And they might have a better self-esteem.
They might have better just God esteem that there is a Creator that made them for a purpose
of relationship with him and that he can't wait to spend eternity with them.
That just makes me so happy to think about that because that is a very freeing moment.
I know what it's like to have that moment where you just, it's just, it's wonderful.
Yeah.
Amen.
Josh and Shelley, thank you so much for inviting me.
Oh, yeah, anytime.
It was good.
And thank you all for listening.
And I'll just wrap up this episode reminding everyone that maybe you don't even know.
We have a Give, Send, Go campaign and if you look that up, givesango.com.
If you want to help us with the financial items that it takes to get this podcast going.
So if you look that up and then go to God's goodness podcast, you'll find it and then
be able to donate and we would greatly appreciate the gift and put it to good use.
And if this episode or any of the episodes have been a blessing to you, we would greatly
appreciate that you share them and be in encouragement to others.
Thanks so much and we'll talk to you next time.