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 Shelly Hankins.
Today we have with us a special guest, and he is, I guess you could say he was instrumental
in this podcast because it was conversation I had with him the day before I got this idea,
and it was just downloaded by the Holy Spirit.
But the conversation with him the day before was asking like, what am I good at?
What do I like to do?
And the Holy Spirit the next morning, he was like, hey, you like to talk to people, so
why don't you talk to others about me and share it with the world?
So it's only fitting that I have Ian Wreeth with us today, and he's going to open us
with a little prayer, and then we'll get things going.
Thank you so much, Shelly, for being here.
It's really cool to see this idea come to life as well.
It's really special, and I just, I pray that your listeners would be blessed.
I pray that God would be glorified in this conversation.
That's kind of my heart for the prayer as well.
Father, Heavenly Father, I just, I dedicate this time to you, Lord, may every word that
is spoken only reflect your truth and your heart.
If you're listening to this, I pray that if you don't currently know Jesus has yet to
break into your heart, I pray that you would open your ears and open your heart and still
your mind and just listen because he is knocking at the door, and if you will open yourself
to him, he will reveal himself to you.
And that's what's so beautiful about our faith is it's a revealed faith.
It is the truth revealed by the person of Christ.
So I just say thank you.
Shelly, I thank you, Josh.
I thank you to be a part of the God's Goodness podcast, and I pray that many miracles will
be revealed on this show.
So thank you.
Amen.
Thank you.
So we'll let you start things off.
Yeah.
I should start by saying why I'm here and why I exist, and it's truly to speak the truth
and love so that all might come to discover and know the God who created them, Jesus Christ,
his Son, whom he sent, and themselves in the process.
And it's, that's kind of the through line of my life.
I guess I'd just start by giving some background.
I mean, I, you know, I said, grew up, my mom was married twice, divorced twice on the oldest
of three brothers.
So I carry that burden and that bag of being the oldest.
You know, I just always want to lead them well, always want to be an example for them
to follow.
But you know what?
Even since very young, being brought up in a Catholic-ish environment, we were kind of
nominally Catholic.
You know, we went to service, we attended during holidays and things like that.
I went through catechism, went through, I assume education, some classes and things,
and Holy Communion was never confirmed, the irony.
So it's been an interesting ride.
But I remember being in my first grade classroom and the teacher was like, okay, everybody get
a sheet of paper, get a pencil.
We're going to write about what we're going to be when we grow up and everybody's all
excited and I hear people being celebrated for, oh, you know, Lisa's going to be a doctor
and Jeremy wants to be a police officer.
And I just, I was kind of just taking it all in.
And I just remember thinking to myself, you know, I don't really resonate with any of
the molds, you know, any of these, any of these kind of standard issue career paths
and becoming paths.
And I took my sheet of paper and very matter of fact that I wrote, you know, I want to
discover the truth in all things and achieve balance in my life.
And I just set my pencil down.
And that was the first grader.
As a first grader.
Yeah.
So, you know, teachers coming around and picking up our sheets of paper and reading them and
celebrating and then she comes to me and she picks it up.
And when the very odd look on her face, she kind of reads it silently to herself, looks
at me with the look of concern and goes, oh, okay.
And you know, wow, that's really interesting.
And set it down and that was it.
It was weird because I thought, wow, I mean, I thought that sounded pretty good, you know,
and that was just speaking from the heart at that moment and it wasn't received very
well.
And so kind of foreshadowing because I felt misunderstood.
I felt odd most of my life.
I really had a hard time kind of finding my way.
And I think it had a lot to do with God just kind of leading me his way.
So growing up, there was some turbulence in the household, you could say.
And it was, it was kind of a tough time growing up.
And there was a significant age gap between myself and my brothers.
So I got a couple of years of kind of undivided, you know, mom and stepdad time and, and then
my biological father kind of satellite in my life, you know, still he isn't really, really
very involved.
We don't have as well developed a relationship.
I was, so I would love to have some prayers for that.
I appreciate that.
But you know what?
I had a really hard time coming up through school.
Didn't have many friends, didn't really have a strong sense of purpose or community in
my life.
And so I was deeply depressed, deeply sad.
In and out of therapy, on and off medication, I just remember from age nine to 11, it was
just a lot of turbulence in the household, things not going well.
And by the time I was 13, I was pretty sure I didn't want to live anymore.
I was pretty much done with life up until that point.
And so, you know, nothing seemed to help.
I wanted to find a way.
You know, I wanted a sense of hope and I held out hope for hope, but nothing seemed to help.
Nothing seemed to work.
And my mom will testify to this because, you know, she was there with me the whole time.
And you know, I grew up praying.
I grew up saying what we say and what we say.
And I said to our father, you know, there's a picture of me as a little boy kind of in
the pew in the Catholic church.
It looks great.
It looks like, wow, this kid's going to grow up to be so faithful in the Lord.
And I just wasn't, you know, it wasn't really there.
The connection wasn't there.
The relationship wasn't there yet.
But I remember one night, one fateful night, I discovered sincere prayer for the first
time in my life.
And it wasn't about head knowledge.
It wasn't about saying certain words in a certain order.
I just broke my heart open to God.
I said, God, please, if you are real, now would be the time to show me something because
I can't see tomorrow.
I don't know what's going to happen.
And I firmly believe that if I don't find a reason to live, I'm going to take myself
out.
And I don't want to do that because I know that ultimately it's only got to hurt those
around me.
I knew it was incredibly selfish to think that way and self-centered.
And I just knew there had to be a better way.
I just didn't know what that was.
So yeah, it's about 1030 at night, 13 years old.
I break my heart open to God as a God.
Show me something.
And immediately like snap your finger immediately this peace and warmth washed over me like
a weighted blanket.
And it just stilled me and just it calmed me.
It was a sense of peace.
And all I wanted, shall we, Josh, was just a break in the suffering, just a moment for
it to stop.
And it did.
I got what I had asked for, right?
I was excited.
I wanted to jump out of bed and celebrate, but I quickly realized I couldn't move my
body.
I was paralyzed head to toe.
And before I had too much time to panic, my eyes involuntarily rolled into the back of
my head and I left my body.
I went somewhere.
I had a vision and I was in this white nothingness as far as the eye can see.
Almost like if you're waiting at the doctor's office, but there's no ceiling tiles or check
in window.
It's just blank.
And as quickly as I close my eyes and open them again.
Jesus was standing there 20 feet in front of me and I ran to him in this rush of emotion,
this relief and reverence and awe and a little bit of fear.
I just ran and I threw my arms around him and I said, Lord, Lord, you came for me.
You came for me.
And I never even spoke like that.
That language just came from the depths of my soul.
And I knew it was Jesus.
I knew it was him.
I could barely see him because he was so luminous, so radiant.
And he felt like he was seven feet tall and I was like just this little kid and he looked
at me with compassion and he never spoke with his words, but I could hear his thoughts and
he said, I want to show you something.
So he put his hand on my shoulder and just like that we went to hell and use your imagination.
Guys, I saw it.
Okay.
It was like this clearly finite, but very vast hit.
The sky was black.
It was void.
It was like nothingness.
If you're a Lord of the Rings fan, it was like being in Mountain Dew.
I mean, it was horrific.
It was awful.
The landscape was just like Yellowstone volcano meets the Sahara Desert meets the Grand Canyon.
And I'm seeing these rows and rows and rows of jail cells, but really they were like torture
chambers, because inside of these jail cells were people, souls, like you and I naked and
ashamed, being tortured endlessly by demons.
I was watching these creatures, all shapes and sizes walking around.
The heat is so intense that it feels like you could just melt, but it didn't.
I was trying to breathe.
My lungs collapsed.
There was no air.
I was trying to cry.
There was no tears.
There was no moisture.
The smell was so putrid.
I could vomit, but nothing came up.
I noticed outside of these torture chambers, there was a plaque for everyone.
And on the plaque was inscription.
It was writing.
I couldn't see it.
It was almost too far away.
I learned over a decade later that Jesus's last words on the cross where it is finished,
right?
In Greek, it's to telesteye is the word, which means paid in full, almost like you pay someone's
debt, pay off their note, pay off their help, right?
You get that note in the mail.
It says you own it, right?
It's paid for.
And it hit me.
Those plaques listed the sins that were never paid for by the blood of Christ.
And I saw the lake of fire and I saw souls being tossed into the lake of fire like animals.
Just burning, but never consumed.
I saw the throne of hell behind the lake of fire.
I saw Satan on the throne and it was like the moment that I saw him, he saw me and it
was like somebody grabbed me and pulled me right up into his face.
And I watched this crooked grin creep across his face.
Cause in that moment I was in his world, you know, and he was winning down here and he
was winning on the surface too.
And I was probably there for like 20 seconds.
Realistically, it felt like two hours.
I beg God, please, please get me out of here.
Right?
I saw myself on all fours next to Jesus again, gasping for air.
He places his hand on my shoulder and just like that, we went to heaven.
Polar opposite experience.
I'm floating there and there's this central source of light that is just emanating and
penetrating everything.
There is this beautiful, harmonious music and singing.
So wonderful.
It's almost like the molecules were dancing along with it in the air.
There is this deep sense of peace and love and warmth.
Imagine like the most intimate moment of your life, the most connected, most sacred moment
of your life and magnify it by a thousand.
That was every passing millisecond in heaven.
It's like getting a hug from God and never let's go.
And I am looking at it and I'm taking it all in and it's, it, heaven resembled earth.
It was very much like earth.
There was buildings and there was greenery and there were people and it just, it's somehow
here and yet not here.
It's somehow, it's like a different dimension.
It's hard to put into words.
I'm doing the best I can, but I asked God.
I said, God, can I stay here?
And he said, no.
I said, so I have to go back.
And he said, yes.
I thought, oh, so before I realized it, we were back in the white nothingness.
And I resent the fact that I was in hell twice as long as I was in heaven, but I didn't need
pretty much.
But I'm sitting there and the whole scene is starting to recede from once it came and
the whites were turning to gray and then charcoal and then black, but Jesus was clearly silhouetted.
And he, he extends his arms on both sides, almost like he's on the cross.
And I see a snapshot in the heaven and a snapshot of hell on either side of him.
And I feel myself start to come back into my body and my whole body is vibrating.
And I can't quite open my eyes yet, but I can, I can feel the texture of, of my comforter
of my fingers and, and I can, I could feel that I'm in my body.
It's almost like somebody held a gong by my head and just hit it as hard as they could.
And the words you choose just rang throughout my whole body.
So you can imagine being a 13 year old kid, just having had this experience.
I shot up in bed and I did what any irrational person would do.
I started to explain away everything that just happened.
Oh, it's just a dream.
Relax, calm down.
The doctors said this might happen.
Maybe this is what they call a psychotic break.
You know, maybe it was the medications, you know, calm down, come back to reality, right?
Feeling my sheets.
I'm trying to get grounded in where I am.
And as much as I could call myself, I couldn't help but notice the time it was still 1030
p.m. which is when I started to have this experience.
So I thought that was very disorienting, very odd, you know, I start to get this sick feeling
in my stomach, like what's going on?
I hear the garage door.
My mom's coming home.
My mom's a nurse, she's been a nurse, she always reminds me of her nurse, the longer
that you've been alive, it's always going to be true because she's still a nurse.
And the mom's coming home, I noticed a little bit early.
I thought, hmm, mom's usually not open until 11, 1130.
What's going on?
I hear her running through the house, running through the hall and she kicks the door in
and the wood still split from where she kicked it in and she said, Ian, are you okay?
Are you okay?
And I'm thinking, you know, mom, you were with me in the therapist's office, what are
you talking about?
Right?
You know I'm not well, but what do you mean?
And she said, I was at work, was watching over a woman in a coma.
This woman came out of her coma, she grabbed my arm with both hands, looked me in the eyes
and said, I'm praying for your son.
And then she went back under.
And for the first time in my life, I heard the still small voice speak and he said, see,
I knew you would doubt.
So I put an insurance policy in place so that you wouldn't.
And I was done.
I was cooked.
I mean, it was like Charlie Brown.
You know, the volume came way down, my ears are ringing, my mom's getting bigger and more
frantic and I can see her mouthing the words, did someone hurt you?
Is it drugs?
What's going on?
And you know, like any concerned mom, any concerned parent, and I just was dumbfounded.
My jaw just hung open there.
And the rest of that's kind of a blur.
But fast forward to 17, a girl I happen to be dating is a Christian, non-denominational
church kind of brings me into the fold and up being baptized in a small community church
in Bethel Park.
And you know what?
I remember her telling me about her experience of being baptized.
She's like, oh, Ian, it was so great.
It was like, it was like being in heaven, even just for a moment.
And I thought, oh, if I could just go home, even for a moment, I'll do anything, you know,
whatever it takes, right?
So my experience of being baptized was like being drafted for war.
Pastor dunked me in the water, brought me up, completely disoriented, completely just
out of my mind.
He's like, Ian, are you all right?
Are you okay?
There's that question again.
Are you okay?
And I'm like, I don't know.
This is something.
And it's been a battle ever since.
Ever since that experience when I was 13, almost every day, maybe not quite every day, it's
like I've had a target on my back, spiritually speaking.
You know, I was haunted and tormented by demons for years.
In my waking experience, I'd be walking around and I could just see them.
They'd be in my dreams.
They'd be in my room at night.
They would just find any way to kind of distract me, derail me, scare me.
You know, my 30th birthday, I had a dream, again, kind of a demonic presence.
And this demon kind of unfolds this scroll and listed on the scroll is every way that
I'm going to be tortured in my lifetime because of what I've seen, because of what I've been
blessed with in a sense.
And I'm like, you know, I'm not buying it.
I think this is just a tool for fear, you know, to try to work its way into my mind.
And I do my best to bring that to the Lord and just let him deal with that.
But you know, it's been a wild ride.
It's been a very interesting journey.
And a lot of the things I've been wrestling with lately is kind of what it has God called
me to do exactly.
And what's interesting is, again, post-vision experience, I was blessed with wisdom about
life that I couldn't have known otherwise.
I was blessed with knowledge about people that I had no access to.
I can't tell you how many times someone would say to me, how do you know that about me?
Or how could you tell that?
Or the opposite, somebody would bring a concern to me.
And I'm struggling with this, almost as if I had, assuming that I had the answer to their
problem or Ian, you know, I really need to tell you something.
I need to confide in you something.
Or another one is, you know, I've never told anybody this, but and then, you know, I know
things that people's spouses don't know about them.
I know things that nobody knows about them.
And it's just, I've tried to, to the best of my ability to steward that with a sense
of trust, a sense of integrity, a sense of love and compassion, because what I get is
that God has me guiding people.
I can attest to that.
Thank you.
And please, chime in anytime.
Yeah.
When I reflect on the work I do now, it's really about helping people discover their
purpose and life, their identity in God, in Christ, you know, who they were created to
be, why they're here.
Because I think if you know that, you know, many great philosophers and many great theologians
will say, you know, discovering your, your purpose is essential to your success because
the fulfillment of your purpose is success in this lifetime and in the next, right?
It's, if you know why you're here and you live in alignment with that, you cannot help
but to prosper.
You cannot help but to serve others.
You cannot help but to be a blessing to others.
And one of my mentors says that he quotes Abraham Lincoln.
He says, Abraham Lincoln once said, and if you piece up, I'll prepare myself and perhaps
my time will come.
And when my mentor said, well, I say, I'm going to prepare myself so that when my time
comes, it will either reveal me or it will expose me.
I say that if you prepare yourself one day, you will be a blessing.
You can make of yourself a blessing to others, whether your time comes or not, whether you
think it did or not, because that's kind of the essence of the responsibility, the stewardship
and the power that we have as followers of Christ, you know, that you can make an impact.
You will make a difference.
The question is how big of a difference do you want to make?
How far do you want to go?
How hard do you want to hit?
How big do you want to be?
As long as he's getting the glory, as long as he's honored every step of the way, you
can't help but to be successful.
And so that's kind of at the heart of what I'm up to these days.
One of the things I've learned through doing this podcast and building my relationship
with others at the church is God wants us to have that relationship with others, because
then our connections can lead us to, you know, the resources that we'll need or the support
that can get us through what we're going through.
And you know, he'll use your test and turn it into a testimony, your mess into a message.
And it's just, you know, just great because you don't, it doesn't have to be something
big to help somebody.
Just being there for a conversation, letting them speak to you.
It might be just exactly what they need, that relationship.
Yeah, I agree.
We are definitely built for a relationship.
God created us for a relationship with him.
And then he tells us to love each other as we love ourselves.
So clearly that relationship extends to each and every one of us.
And so I firmly believe that each other is one of God's greatest gifts that he's given
us, not just himself, not just Jesus, not just the Holy Spirit, but each one of us as
well is one of the greatest gifts that God has given us.
And we need to really learn on how to harness that gift to its fullest, you know, in acts.
We see what it looked like when they had good relationship skills, when they broke bread
together, when they prayed together, when they were one mind.
It didn't mean they all agreed that the color taupe was the color they wanted for their
rug, right?
It didn't mean they all agreed that, hey, I like sunny days and I like rainy days.
None of that really mattered.
It was, they were all in agreeance on the Lord.
And that's the unity that we need to find in our relationships with each other as well.
Well said, Josh.
Thank you.
So also interesting, you know, your account of when Jesus pulled you from your relaxing,
like he gave you this calm, and then he shows you himself.
And the first thing he does is he takes you to a place that you would never want to be.
He reminds me of that book, 23 Minutes in Hell.
Have you heard of that?
I've heard of it.
Forget who the author is.
So he's there with me, but thank you.
Yes, that is it.
Absolutely.
And it's oddly reminiscent of that experience.
And you know, if you ever watch life after death shows and such, there are many people
that account similar tales.
And it makes me wonder though why Jesus would be so loving and then take you to a place
that's such a horrible place that he knows you're suffering just by witnessing.
That you're suffering there personally, but just by seeing it, smelling it, feeling it,
right?
That this is some place that he clearly knows you don't want to be and it's a harmful place
that he must love you so much to show you such a thing to help kind of gear you in the
right direction, right?
Because when you woke up, you're trying to dismiss it, we all do this, right?
Jesus said so in the word that we'll explain it away when he's talking about Lazarus going
down in hell and, hey, tell my brother not to do that.
He's not going to believe it.
No one's going to believe it, right?
And so he basically explains that people will find a way to explain away some of our experiences
and a love that your mom rushed home because she also had an experience and that upon sharing
it with you, you gain this knowledge that, hey, this is the real deal.
Right?
This is the path.
This is the choice.
There is a choice and, you know, like it or not, death consummates that choice.
As soon as we die, there's no more choices to be made.
The last choice you made was the last choice that's ever going to be for you.
And I think that's a powerful way to discover the love of Jesus.
And you were also even talking about how you didn't spend as much time in heaven as you
did in hell.
And I think maybe you did, right?
Maybe you gave you more time because, you know, in times we forget.
Well, like with the times we lose track of it, but when we're in a bad moment, we hold
on to that time like tick by tick by tick.
And I think if he was to show you that, that was on purpose as well.
So that, you know, if you're going to the one place, it's going to seem like it's forever
longer than forever.
Right?
Whereas you go to the other place, forever is going to pass by quick at the same time,
never go away.
That's a pretty profound way to, at least that's how I interpret it because it's how
my brain works.
But when he put, when he shows it to you that way, it seems like the choice is obvious,
which you would want to take.
Like who would want to decide, oh, I want to go to hell or, you know, be away from Jesus
like forever.
No one wants that.
So a couple of things I want to speak to, but what both of you just shared.
So Josh, yeah, it's interesting because I didn't tell a soul about that experience including
my own mother for four years.
And then after that four years, I realized, okay, I was willing to tell my mom about this.
Maybe I'll tell my girlfriend about this.
Maybe I'll tell other people about this.
And I wasn't until I turned 28 that I actually went public with it and started sharing my
testimony publicly.
So part of what I got about the experiences, because initially I thought, yeah, right,
I was thinking just along the lines of what Shelly said, it's like, who would, who would
choose otherwise?
Right?
But that's just it.
That's the whole thing.
And that's where it started with me was this is about my choice.
My choice was already made.
Scripture tells me that that moment that I broke my heart up into God, that moment that
I invited God into my life, I confessed with my mouth that I believed, I believed in my
heart because Jesus convicted my heart.
And in our conversion follows our conviction.
And that's that's in business as well as in our spiritual life, as well as in our relationships.
Right?
And we often have to be shown and we have to often have to experience the consequence,
the perceived loss, the perceived death, real or actual, before we will give our attention
to what is critical, what is a priori most important.
And sometimes in the wake of tragedy, sometimes in the wake of, you know, our hardest times,
we're closest to God in that time.
And we also prioritize our lives accordingly to what's most important, first him and then
everything after him.
And so speaking on suffering and pain, our purpose is linked to that.
And I believe comes from that.
Like earlier you said, test becomes our testimony, right?
My buddy reminds me of that all the time.
But you know what?
Suffering, like the Buddhists say, well, life is suffering.
So get used to it.
Or maybe that's a stoic.
I don't know.
And there's an essence, there's a nugget of truth in there to a degree.
But when the light of Christ shines in our hurt spots, in our moments of suffering, in
our moments of excruciating pain, he transforms that into a reason.
That day, you know, God gave me a reason for being.
He said so much.
And so a few words just by his presence.
He said, I love you.
I love you enough to be here to save you.
I love you enough to put you back on your feet and send you out.
I love you enough to say that I'll always be with you.
I'll never forsake you.
God was pursuing me my whole life up to that point.
I just wasn't conscious of it.
So when we talk about choice, who would choose such a thing?
Who would choose not heaven?
Who would choose not Christ?
No sane person rejects Christ.
The person, the teaching, the philosophy, the religion, the relationship, no sane person
does that.
Only an unconsciously insane person would do that because they're holding on to the wound.
They're identifying with their moment that was supposed to refine them, not define them.
We all have those moments, right?
But Christ's presence and the love of Jesus transforms those things and makes them redeeming,
makes them beneficial, turns that into a gift.
And there's no better example than Christ and the work he did on the cross.
His passion wasn't just what he was excited about.
Oh, I'm so excited to do the work my father sent me to do.
It was also the extent that he was willing to go, the pain that he was willing to endure,
the sacrifice he was willing to make that made that work possible.
I find that very convicting, very interesting.
And Carl Jung, I studied psychology and behavioral science for about eight years.
And Carl Jung once said that until the unconscious is made conscious in your life, it will control
your life and you will call it fate.
And so to make a conscious choice requires that our mind needs to be opened up.
Our mind needs to be illuminated by the truth.
Because if I don't have the light in me, truth will never be revealed to me.
If I don't understand the agency, the responsibility I have to be a good steward of the choices
I make, the decisions that follow and the actions that take place after that, I will
always be a slave.
I will always be a slave to sin.
I'll be a slave to darkness.
I'll be a slave to ignorance.
I'll be a slave to disempowerment.
I'll be a slave to addiction.
I'll be a slave to whatever the source of my addiction is, whatever hurt and whatever
pain that comes from.
I like to say we're not broken people that need fixing.
We're hurt people that need healing.
And so until that wound is healed, that pattern will continue.
Until our mind is filled with the light and the truth and the love of Christ, we won't
be able to consciously choose for ourselves to make the best choice that we have available.
That's good.
So tell us, you mentioned earlier that you were going to do something with all of this
information, such as...
Yes, so right.
So first of the year, this year, the Lord woke me up out of sleep and I could hear
audibly in the room as if he's hanging out with me.
And wake up, I'm like, what is it, Lord?
What's going on?
It's like, I want you to write a book.
I'm like, a book?
Me?
Why?
For what?
And he said, I want you to tell your story.
I'm like, my story.
I'm like, okay.
I mean, who would read that?
Right?
Just because I don't think it's so special.
I don't know.
It seems unnormal.
It's just my life.
It's just, we all have one.
We all have a story.
That's how I see it.
He goes, no, people will read your story and they'll read themselves into your story.
And I thought, oh, I get it.
Okay.
Yeah.
So I'm working on a book.
It's called Getting to Know God.
And it's based on this idea that we are created for relationship.
You know, Josh hinted at that earlier and went right for that.
I mean, really, truly, that's the gift that God gives us in himself, with himself, but
also with each other.
So that book is going to unpack, you know, kind of how I came to know God.
It wasn't just like, I woke up one day and like, I've got this thriving relationship
with the Lord and I'm reading scripture all the time and I'm praising him and I'm worshiping
and I'm being community.
It's like, that happened gradually over time.
And so I wanted to kind of document that story, but also to get that story in the hands of
people who want a set of footsteps to follow so that they can see that, you know, these
kind of supernatural, extra ordinary things happen to very ordinary people every single
day.
And people have often said to me, oh my gosh, I wish I could have had experience like yours.
And I'm like, no, no, no, no, like you came to faith without seeing.
I had to see to believe, right?
Because at any point, my heart could have been convicted at any moment.
I could have opened my eyes and seen and perceived and not just observed, right?
At any moment, you know, God could have broken in my life if I was willing to let him in.
But it was almost like I had to stop being God for myself to make way for God to come
into my life.
That's very important.
You mentioned the same issue that Didimus had, doubting Thomas.
He believes because he saw.
Blessed be those who believe without seeing.
And you know, I think, honestly, you'd keyed up on it before about having experience with
Jesus, right?
You need to have an experience before you really get fully locked in with him, that
you can go to church, that you can be on the ministry team.
You can be a greeter.
You can be in the pews every Sunday.
You can have your Bible open every day and you can seek and knock all day long.
But until you have that experience with Jesus, it's really hard to have that cautious belief,
right?
You may unconsciously believe and you may be saved because you believe and you want to
believe and you want a relationship with him.
However, things are transformed in your life once you have that experience with Jesus.
And I don't know if everyone knows that that's the requirement.
I don't know if everyone has an experience that is a believer or if they are consciously
aware that they had that experience.
But I do know that he will be faithful to give every single person an experience with
him.
And sometimes it takes more than one shot because we're not real bright.
We're comparing ourselves to God and he knows exactly how to speak to us, but we can be
very stubborn.
He's made us very stubborn people.
All the creation were the only thing that can tell him no.
Nothing else can tell him no.
He allows us the opportunity to come to him on our own, which is a mind blowing.
And then when we realize that we can't come to him on our own, he chooses us.
Hey, I chose you.
Don't worry about it.
I loved you before you could love me.
I loved you first.
And we still struggle.
So he says, I'm going to give you a little message.
I didn't get it.
I'm dense.
I'm going to give you another little message and another little message.
And then 20 years down the line, you find even rejecting him for 20 years before you
finally get a message that hits home.
And his timing is always perfect.
So it's not that you rejected him to the point.
He could have knocked you out of your socks the moment you were born, but he chooses not
to because he's a loving father.
And he wants you to have the experiences that he's leading you through in those moments
to the point where you finally see, believe and give with your whole heart that at that
moment you have the tools necessary for this part of your life because you would not have
had it.
If you would have had that experience or realized you had that experience 10 years before, you
weren't the same person.
You didn't have the same trials.
You didn't have the same tribulation.
You didn't have the same testing.
Right?
We look at the refiner's fire, right?
In Malachi 3-3.
And I think that's where it is.
Yeah.
And the silversmith is working the silver.
He has to watch it the whole time to burn off the bad stuff and slough off the slurry.
And he has to watch it continually because he can overdo it and ruin it.
And he knows it's done when he can see his reflection in it.
And that's, I think, what a lot of people don't understand because not a lot of us are
silversmiths.
That's a perfect story that God has given us in that story.
And so, yeah, we go through that.
We're in the fire.
And there's a lot of crap that comes up in the service that needs to get taken off.
And he's attentive and he'll do it.
And sometimes we get impatient and we're like, no, I need you to do it now.
But he can ruin the process if he does.
But eventually we're ready.
We're out of this refiner's fire when he can see himself in the silver and where we
need to be, which is not where we started, not in the middle, but right at the point
where we need to be.
And we always think that, hey, what kind of a better husband would I be?
What kind of a better father would I have been?
What kind of a better brother?
What kind of a better son would I have been if I had had these tenants earlier?
If I'd had this belief, this conviction sooner?
And he's like, don't worry about that.
You have it when you need it.
And I think that's something we need to hold on to is you have it when you need it.
And it isn't for everybody.
The direct communication that he gives us, audibly saying, hey, wake up.
I got a story for you.
Get up and you're like, hey, what's up?
Right?
Not everybody experiences that.
Right?
Praise God that you do.
And I don't want to discourage anybody thinking like, well, I haven't heard God, you know,
audibly in my living room, but I bet you've heard him.
I bet you've heard him in someone else's lips.
I bet you've heard him by reading something.
I bet you heard him in a passing movie because he gave you a message in a movie that was
playing somewhere else that was exactly the phrase that you need to hear.
Yeah.
Right?
He's always talking to us.
And you mentioned that still small voice after your mom gave you that revelation from the
woman in a coma.
And sometimes it's that.
And that's really a hard one to hear if you're not tuned into him, especially in this busy
world.
Oh my.
And that's another reason I want to plug fasting.
Right?
Fasting is a wonderful tool for helping to diminish the strength of your flesh, which
is at war with your spirit, so that your spirit can receive from God more effectively.
Or so you can receive from the spirit because they're always talking.
Yeah.
There's nothing you can do to slow the spirit down from talking to the father, but so that
you can receive from the spirit who's in tune with the father.
Yes.
So that you are better off in this warfare that we're in.
I know I've experienced it.
Hey, Matt.
And you know what?
And we do need, and I think we all consciously or not, we crave that experience.
We crave that intimacy.
I think that there comes a time when you, your heart's convicted and you come to believe.
And you believe, or you have a really, really strong thought about your faith that becomes
true for you.
Right?
And then there you reach a point where you know there's this intimate knowledge in your
heart, in your, the depths of your soul.
On your worst day when the chips are down, you still can stake your whole life on this,
I believe this kind of knowing, you know?
And I think that God is always reaching out to us through the people that we meet, the
books we read, the music we hear, the media that we consume.
I mean, in between the lines, in the lines, in and around those relationships and those
conversations, he's always speaking to us.
I've had revelations come through other people from God, right?
That hit me in a particular moment of my life.
Actually more often than not, they came from people who didn't know him, which is interesting.
Very interesting.
He'll use anybody.
Everybody.
And one thing I've noticed through these podcasts is when people were ready and said, all right,
God reveal yourself.
He did.
He showed up.
And it's different for everybody.
It's just what they need, you know?
And a lot of people, another theme I've noticed is a lot of us didn't have a lot of friends
growing up, a lot of connections until we were seeking and asking the Lord like, hey,
I could use little friendship here.
It's getting a little lonely.
And then God shows up with the people he surrounds us with and puts in our lives.
And he's just willing if we just ask.
And have not, because you've asked not.
So just ask.
Ask and you shall receive.
That's my favorite verse of my lifetime.
And you've been living that out?
This year, Matthew 7, 7, 8.
Yep.
Critical.
Yes.
Critical.
That's what I'm needing.
Yes, not me at all.
I'm 100% just content.
And I drag him along for the ride.
I'm not craving extra things to do.
I'm not seeking self-improvement.
I'm so content with who I am.
I'm so content with where I am.
I'm just content.
And I know that comes from him.
And I'm full of joy in places where I shouldn't be.
I work EMS.
And I have a partner.
He's my permanent partner of paramedic I work with and 3 o'clock in the morning and we're
in a hospital and he's getting reports from a nurse and I'm making jokes and they're dad
jokes.
You know, they're not.
They're not quality jokes.
Right.
But they make me laugh.
And that's all I care about.
And he just groans.
So shake his head and groan.
And he's like a six foot one bald guy with a beard.
He's like a Viking.
Right.
He's he works out and he's just a massive human being.
And I love making jokes to him because it just makes my night.
Sometimes I get into a smirk and he won't admit it.
But you'll get nurses commenting and I'll happy allies.
A local police officer that that describes me as the happy guy with glasses.
And she's only ever seen me in the middle of the night.
And everybody at work knows who it is when they describe me.
Everybody.
You know, I think of Barnabas, the son of encouragement, I think his name means right.
He's striking me as a Barnabas like the Lord has blessed you with such peace and contentment
in whatever scenario situation you happen to be in.
And you have to be in that state to encourage others.
So I think it's probably one of the blessings that you impart to your coworkers and pass
your bys and connections.
That's really cool.
I was given a prophetic word.
Oh, man, a decade ago at my church two churches ago.
And it was a peace that I would be a bringer of peace.
And I don't I didn't see it.
I don't see it sometimes because sometimes, you know, I get angry, you know, I'm not,
I'm human.
My flesh is very weak.
My spirit fights with it all the time.
And sometimes I'm introverted, right?
I can only have so many conversations with somebody before I'm tapped out.
Like I got to go before I start getting fussy.
And so I was like, I don't know about that.
And then I see it, you know, at three o'clock in the morning when I'm consoling some lady
and she's upset and her husband's on our gurney and she's crying.
I'm like, look, it's okay.
And I'll just or this other lady, her daughter got burned in a fire, a flash fire from a
can of Pam that was left on the stove and exploded.
And she gets a pretty significant third and second-degree burns.
Thankfully, no first-degree burns.
So there's no tissue damage or permanent tissue damage.
And the mom is up front with me and she was in the back with my medic because she needed
to push pain med for her.
And she's crying and she got on the phone and she's talking to her father or trying
to get hold of her father.
She couldn't because she wanted to pray.
And then she got on the phone and said, Hey, I'm not your dad, but I'll pray with you.
And so I prayed with her right in the mirror and her way to the hospital.
And I don't know if it helped during that moment, but I felt better asking.
Yeah.
I mean, so it's interesting that you highlight that, Josh, because every day in some small
way, we have an opportunity to make an impact in somebody's life, to make an impression,
to point the way.
And oftentimes we don't realize that that moment could have an eternal impact on that
person's life on their soul.
Right.
I mean, it's, it doesn't take much.
It's oftentimes in the simplest, subtlest gesture, a word of encouragement, a moment
to pray, the ministry of presence, just sitting with someone.
Like, yeah, there's been many times I've been trying to console someone and it's like everything
I say doesn't really help.
So I just sit there and just be present and listen if they want to say something.
And oftentimes nothing's really said and they'll just say, thank you.
Really?
Not just being there.
I have had that thought impressed on me recently, not about sitting and being quiet.
That's not my forte.
I mean, I can, I have the wherewithal.
But I had a conversation with God and I said, you know, I don't really, I can't think of
anything outstanding that I've done.
I can't think of anything that when you come to judge, not me, because Jesus is clothing,
means righteousness, but to judge my merits on earth, to see that, hey, look, you said
this bad word, you said this filth, you said, I can think of a lot of things you're going
to pick on me about.
Right.
And I was like, I don't know who I all help.
Like, I don't know like what I did.
And the thought occurred because it's how he usually gives me these good ideas is that
I won't know nearly all of them because of the people I talk to, the people that I've
blessed without knowing that I've done it.
Somebody that I held a door open for, somebody who I said, hey, are you, are you doing okay?
And then they weren't.
And you know, just that somebody noticed them, you know, things that I am oblivious to, right?
I just see it.
I comment on it.
I think I'm going to be something, encourage someone, I move on.
I had no idea the lasting impact it had on that person.
And so it was impressed on me that those are also going to be a lot of what's going to
be summed up in it.
It's not just the things that I think of, but a lot of the things I don't even remember,
the things I don't consider that he saw and said, no, no, we're considering it.
Wow.
Well said.
I think we look for that impact.
We look for those opportunities.
We almost like hold our stuff up to the light to see like, is there any merit in this?
Is there any value in this?
Is there any worth in this?
And I think it's because we all are creatures that hunger for meaning in our lives.
And without that meaning, without hope, we go down the tubes very quickly.
We go down that downward spiral, sometimes in a moment, sometimes in a couple of days,
a few hours, it doesn't take long.
Human beings do not live very long without hope.
We lose our sense of hope or sense of meaning.
You know, if we're not on the brink of not wanting to be alive anymore, we're cut off
from the vines, so to speak, right?
That life, blood isn't flowing through us quite the same way with the spirit and not
to get all super spiritual because we might be killing ourselves super slowly with things
like drugs and alcohol or cigarettes or whatever it is, right?
That happens to be the our thorn in our flesh.
And so when we are on course in an alignment with why God put us here, Josh, like God had
something very specific in mind when he made you, Shelly, same thing.
God had something very specific in mind when he made you.
We all have a purpose.
We were born with it.
We were born into it.
And it's always demonstrable of kind of who God created us to be, right?
And when you're living and acting and moving in accord with that of one mind, with that
of, you know, your heart is convicted in that.
What's cool is God sort of set us up for success because we all have gifts that are consistent
with that calling, that are consistent with that purpose, right?
That it allows us to build up the body.
It allows us to serve.
I highly encourage you if you're listening to this to look up the spiritual gifts in
the Bible, sit with it, figure out which gifts do you have that can empower your service,
that can empower your profession, that can empower your relationships, that can empower
your health, that can empower you to empower others, maybe, to help them reach their potential.
Because God gave us the equipment that we needed already.
We already have everything we need right now to make a difference right where we are, to
make an impact right where you are, right now.
And I think that's an encouraging word because oftentimes we can see our ultimate place.
I'd love to be there.
You know, I'd love to create that.
I would love to be at this point in my life or at that point in my life or maybe it's
regret, maybe it's, there's a gap there.
Oh, I wish I could have, should have done this thing, right?
But right now we have all that we need, truly.
Yeah, just have to step out and bathe, do something with it.
Sometimes that's scary, right?
Sometimes it's hard to take that faith and you know, praise God that he saw that ahead
of time as well too and said, I didn't make you timid beings.
I gave you a spirit of boldness and of power and strength, right?
So praise God that he thought of all the angles, all those things that we try to weasel out
of like, oh no, it's not my forte.
It's like too bad.
I empowered you, you have this.
And the more that you assume the mantle of the Christhood that when what he's done for
you, the easier it is to step out in that faith, the easier it is to just say, and just
walk right off, you know, and I've had many an experience where I could have held my tongue
through fear or this is not going to be taken well.
And I'm like, here it goes.
Because I don't care if it's taken well.
I don't care if it's received well.
I can judge by, I'm a pretty good judge of facial expressions that see if it hit home
or not.
I'm tailored after that point to drive it into where it needs to go.
But it's not going anywhere.
If I don't put it out there.
And so I've had many a conversation and I like to startle people with conversation.
I like to say something shocking to people because I find for me gets in the listen.
And then once you're listening, I can hit it home and explain exactly what I mean.
And sometimes I've offended some people and it's not my intent to leave them offended.
But sometimes it's my event to start them off that way, you know, to just really rile
them up a little bit so that I love conflict.
God has really built me for that.
Instead of using it for evil, I use it for his goodness.
You know, when someone says something like, oh, I don't believe in Jesus or a Christmas
is so Michael really a lot of minute, let's go.
Let's talk.
I'm ready.
So the same thing is I'll rile someone up just to get them wanting to speak.
I want to know what your opinion actually is.
And then when I know it, I can actually fight those reservations.
I'll know what it is.
I'm fighting.
I'm holding back on when I know what you're being reserved about.
And then I've never, never left a conversation with somebody mad at me that I've talked
into about Jesus.
I've even had a person with gender dysmorphia in the back of my ambulance transferring for
suicidal ideations.
And at the end of the conversation, this person told me it's the longest conversation they
had ever had with a Christian before and that they, they enjoyed the conversation.
And I did the best I could to validate that they were people and validate that the feelings
they felt were real, though not necessarily based on truth.
And it morphed into talking about Jesus and talking about his kingdom.
And it was a really pleasant conversation with this person who was really excited to know
a little bit more who would not have done it any other way.
If I hadn't approached things the way I approach things.
Well, we also talked about gifts of the spirit and episode for, for those of you who have
never even heard it, go back and listen.
We talk about the gift of healing that Josh seems to have because I was healed over a
decade of pain.
Nathan was healed from things and it's just, I think it's a good episode.
And you work in EMS.
Isn't that crazy?
So, you know, it's interesting because Shelly, I think I might have shared this with you
before kind of the idea of the podcast came along.
It was like, like it's proverbs 18, 16, I believe, but a person's gift makes a way for
them.
A person's read it, a person's gift will bring them before kings, right?
Because it's, it's what is that stroke of excellence about what we do.
And I think it's overlooked often because people don't realize that they have it.
If it's truly a gift, then you, you kind of do it and use it unconsciously.
And enjoy it.
And enjoy it, right?
There's joy in it.
It's oftentimes it'll bear fruit.
It has an effect.
It has a, a lasting result that comes from it.
I'm hoping that for this.
Oh yeah.
Well, I mean, just by virtue of the fact and, and, you know, early on, of course I wanted
to encourage you to keep going, right?
But when I realize this thing has a momentum of its own, it just is going, right?
And that's because you're in your gifts with it and you're blessing others with it.
And God will prosper that, right?
It doesn't have to come from solely from your effort.
Requires your participation.
Wires us to work together, right, to make it happen, to deliver, you know, to drive it
where it needs to go, right?
As Josh said earlier, but it's hardly 50-50.
I mean, it's something more like 90 God 10 us, you know, really, truly.
It's like he can bless every step, every act, every word, every gesture with what we do.
Thank goodness for that.
I want to thank you so much for being a part of this today.
And for the first time I get to meet you, I've heard about you a lot.
You speak very highly of you, so it's finally nice to see a face to go along with the hype.
Yeah, well, I don't know about hype, but thank you.
No, no, it's from her.
It's hype.
Yeah, it's moving.
She's the hype girl.
No, I'm really grateful to be a part of this with you.
It's an honor.
And it's really cool.
I mean, a few things bring me as much joy in life to see an idea come to fruition.
And I think because everybody has at least one great idea locked up inside of them, right?
And so much of the work that I do is aimed at, like, how can it be?
How can you draw that out?
You know, Proverbs 20 verse five says a different translations read differently, but the one
I like is purposes or the purpose lies deep in the mind.
It's like deep water, right?
But a person of understanding will draw it out.
So I try to help people to unlock their mind so they can really unleash their faith.
And I'm in the business world, so in the marketplace.
But whether it's in the marketplace or whether it's in your church community or whether it's,
you know, serving underserved communities, whatever it is that the Lord is putting on
your heart to do, you've been equipped for it, right?
So drawing out that purpose, drawing out that direction and igniting their passion to get
them going, right, is what I love to do.
So seeing that the podcast has come to life, you know, seeing that it's got momentum, it's
so, so meaningful and so wonderful to see.
So thank you for having me.
Thank you for being a part of it and joining us today.
And if this episode has been a blessing to you, we pray that you pass it on to others
so it can be a blessing.
And also we have a fundraising campaign to help with the expenses of audio editing.
And if you look up gifsango.com, you can look up God's Goodness Podcast and you can donate
there and we appreciate that and we'll talk to you next time.