Welcome to the God's goodness podcast where our mission is to encourage and highlight God's
goodness and modern-day miracles. We are your hosts, Josh and Shelley Hankins. Today we have
with us a special guest. His name is Ben Hinton and I met him through Ian Wreath and if you
haven't listened to Ian's episodes you would be blessed if you do. So go check them out, choose
him, we'll serve with the first one and we just encourage you to listen to all those. But Ben is
here to share something very near and dear to his heart and he is hoping to encourage you with his
story and what the Holy Spirit laid on him. So have him open us up with an opening prayer and then
we'll get into it. Dear Lord, I pray that in the winter months that you give us your power of your
presence to help us to encourage us to equip us to move through the darkness and into the light.
These winter months tend to isolate us. It is not a time for isolation and hibernation but rather a
time for faith to rise up. So I just pray to have faith rise up in me and have us to encourage
others to encourage ourselves to love others as we love ourselves. So equip us and give us your
presence because there's power in your presence. There is lightness and darkness for those that go
through seasonal blues or just go through a hard time in the winter months or any other month or
season in their life. In Jesus' name, amen. Amen. Thank you. So where would you like to start Ben?
Yeah, first off, thanks for having me. And so yeah, I'm an author and a speaker, author of the book
Let Faith Grow, Running Through Diversity. And one of the things I've been thinking about recently,
you know, as I introduce myself as an author and speaker, I'm really trying to be conscientious
about, you know, how you state that. So I am a man of faith. I am a Christian first and a father
of Jesus. And I'm a runner. That's the title of my book, Running Through Diversity. But I want to
make sure I always start with I am, right? I am a man. I am a follower of Christ. I am a man,
a follower of Christ, a husband, a father who likes to run. So I think, you know, I really want to
emphasize in being Spirit-led today that our identity is in Christ. And that way, you know,
we have many titles, but let's limit our identity first. And let's let our titles be part of the
lightness to us. Right? So as a runner, that's part of my title. That's not who I am. And I want to
emphasize that for people today in the episode. Because my story as an author starts with the
worst day of my life, become the best day of my life. Speaking of darkness to lightness,
in 2013, on January 9th, I sustained a traumatic brain injury, falling down a flight of stairs,
home alone. I don't remember it. So, but 11 o'clock that day, I stopped texting my fiance,
who's now wife and others as well, around 11 o'clock. And then all communication stopped.
My fiance, when she came home at 430, found me in the basement. And I was alive and actually
sustained not just a brain injury, but multiple injuries, because at some point,
right, there's a verse that talks about fall down seven, get up eight. Well, I thought on a flight
of stairs and it wasn't just one fall. So I think the spirit within me, right, to get up, to fight,
to move, maybe get help, whatever it was, I fell multiple times. But I made it. I made it to the
couch and she found me and I was, you know, taken to the hospital, spent 18 days there. Now, when I
came home, this is where my story gets very interesting that I want to emphasize. In 2012,
I had signed up for a half marathon, because that was going to be something that I was going to
achieve in 2013. And I was in the summer or so, maybe the fall of 2012, I signed up for a race.
I committed to it. In 2013, I had a traumatic brain injury. Now, life's in the details and the
details is in God, because if I did not sign up for the race in 2012, prior to the brain injury,
I don't think I would have had an opportunity to overcome. Because I was not in the midst, you know,
mental state of mind or spirit after the brain injury. It's not like I had an aha moment.
Hey, I'm going to go run a half marathon. Right. Because I couldn't commit to anything. I was lost.
I felt broken, but there's a difference between right feeling broken. You know, one of your
guests, Ian, said something to me that as part of my transformation, he said, people aren't broken,
people need healed. And that can bring so much peace. And he also said, I would rather take the
long way than the wrong way in this life. So again, life's in the details and the details is in God.
Because I signed up for the half marathon in 2012, that preparation right was there for me
in 2013, because I decided to run the half marathon. Now, I will say I was told you can't run this
half marathon, right? I was told you were lucky to survive, you were lucky to live, right? And so
I signed up for this half marathon and they listening to the doctors, right, listening to others around
me, my inner circle, the doctor's family, I wasn't going to run the half marathon. So I made a phone
call. It was to the Pittsburgh half marathon and I called and not sure her name, this woman had
answered. And I said, you know what, I cannot participate in this race. I can't run in it.
You know, I don't, I didn't even say it a brain injury, but I said, hey, medically, you know,
I don't think I can, I can run this race. And then she said something that changed my life.
And she said, okay, well, if you want to defer your bib, you have a couple options. Option number one,
you can give your bib away or option number two, you can transfer it and you can sell it.
And that was my moment of running my race. That was my moment that I thought, this is defining
moment. I have to run this race. I'm not going to give this race away. And so it wasn't motivation,
it was inspiration. And I ran the half marathon eight weeks later, and I've been running on,
on a mission through my faith ever since. Wow. Incredible. Incredible.
I wouldn't even run a marathon, not with an injury. Like, that it takes a special person to be
committed to do that. And I read your audio, well, I listened to the audio book. And you just keep
at it. And it's amazing that it was, you just, you just keep going at it. And it's a special person.
Thank you. I appreciate it. I work as an EMT. And so I've come across many a person that's fallen
downstairs. Yeah, I've never met anybody that has not had to go to the hospital at one point,
and it's gone down any significant amount of stairs, let alone repeated attempts,
as they attempted to climb up the stairs and fell back down, which I'm sure there's a few of them.
But the injuries is sustained, muscular, skeletal, internal injuries, of course, the TBI.
I don't think people understand just how crippling a TBI can be, how life altering a traumatic brain
injury can be, and that you are sitting here speaking to us about running marathons is truly
a miracle. You are clearly favored by God. You clearly have a reason to be. You clearly have a
mission and a purpose on your heart. Yes, I love EMTs and what they do and the medical field,
there are so many people that are just, like you said, favorable for what they do in their work
for others. In fact, my best friend, his name is Dr. Paramba, who wrote the Ford of my book.
So my wife at the time, fiance, when she found him, she came home, the first call that she made
was to Dr. Paramba. And when she called him, they were talking because she said he's in here,
he's alive, he's talking, he's under where, which I don't know why I was in my underwear,
I was doing laundry or whatever. So, you know, he can talk, he's kind of coherent,
I'm asking what happened. Now, what she didn't see was apparently I was on the left side,
I was laying on my left side on the couch and there was blood coming from the brain bleed.
So she didn't see that. Now there was blood all over the place. She said, you know, in the past,
it looked like a scene from CSI, that kind of thing. So anyway, they're talking and he heard
me gagging and that was his sign of like, you got to get him now. So, but for her to call him first,
right, to have the trust in him as an EMT, as my best friend, and for him to be the one to say,
do this right now, I'll meet you there. Like, that's, I'm favorable, you know, God is favor,
is favors me, but there's so much more, right? And just that alone, I'm forever grateful for him
because there's so many backstories of just not that, just that moment, but then the moments
within the moment, like Dr. Paramban, how he became a doctor, how he became friends as kids and
growing up. And, but with, you know, the EMT part. So apparently when the EMTs got there,
I was competitive and I was in my underwear. So originally they thought it was like,
you know, alcohol or drugs, I was, you know, I was not right because I didn't want to get in
the post-ecal after a seizure or maybe diabetic and hypoglycemic and get a little, you know,
I wouldn't go to drugs immediately. Yeah. I mean, they also had all kinds of thoughts. So when I
was being combative, you know, of like not wanting to get a stretcher and that kind of stuff, they
didn't know what just happened, right? Who would? Because it's like, when you get another scene,
it's an EMT, like you're just seeing what you see. And I've had so many other medical complications
prior to that injury as well. But I'm blessed in the sense, and I say this, that that was the
worst day, became my best day. Because, you know, that's when I truly know new as times
go on. My life first, my pastor gave me as I was recovering. You know, he said, Second Timothy 1,
7, Second Timothy chapter one, verse seven, he said, it says, for God did not give us a spirit
of timidity, but rather a spirit of power, love and self control. And as you mentioned, brain
injuries, other things, strokes, things that happen to us, right? They're invisible injuries,
or the irony in that, or I'll say, you know, the details, because the license, the details,
the details is in God. For me, I love the fact that, okay, I have a brain injury, I have an
invisible injury. But guess what? I have faith, right? And faith is by vision, not by sight.
So I can fight it, right? But I don't have to fight it, God fights for me. So the process of
the choice, what he's saying there is for God did not give us a spirit of timidity,
that's a choice. And when you see that that's your choice for yourself, right, and he's given
you a spirit of power, love and self control, the blessing out of that is over time, what I learned,
and it was very hard, and a lot of wilderness in this journey, right, in isolation, in the transition
from isolation to the wilderness. But leader of one, leader of many, if I can't lead one, I can't
lead any. So the blessing is that this was the opportunity that God gave me to be a leader of
one, because we had been engaged for six months, we still ended up getting married, and we had plans,
right, plans for kids, plans for all of these things. So I had a lot of struggles, I was in
the wilderness for a while, but the blessing of it was that my kids see me as a leader now,
because I was forced for good reasons to be a leader of one first. And that's a huge thing for me
in the journey, but even now is being a leader in the household, right, being a leader as a man.
And I'm thankful that the opportunity was to be a leader of one, because I don't know when I was at
the age of 26, when I had it, I don't know if my life was in that trajectory, right. I think I had a
lot more setbacks or things that I wasn't even aware of, talking about eventual injuries. Well,
let's talk about the invisible things in our lives that we don't see, right, the invisible
paths that we're taking, you know, like before my brain injury in hindsight, I was trying to take
God where I wanted to go. And if I were to continue that path, and the brain injury didn't exist,
if I was taking God where I wanted to go, guess what I would do with my children, guess what I
do with my wife, right. So there's more blessings than there were adversities in my opinion.
But you would agree that the world would look at your adversity and think they would be insurmountable.
Yeah, the world looks at you broken, right. And I think that's kind of one of those kind of like,
I got you, right. And I just I was listening to a friend's podcast, he was talking about lumens,
he's talking about LED lights, and he was talking about with children and babies, they have like
20,000 lumens, 20,000 lights. And what happens over time, right, those lights, they get turned out,
they get burned out, taken away, right. And a lot of times the world, or the adults that they're with
their families, and their lights are burned out, right. And they don't know what they didn't,
they don't know. And so yeah, the world after my brain injury, especially as an adult, with
a brain injury, the world looked at me broken. And that's my one of my that was my biggest struggle
is having a brain injury as an adult. I never felt more broken, because I was an adult. And
you have a sex expectation when you're adult, like, I got to figure it out, or I have to,
I should know what I should know. And the broken part of it was that I literally, because I,
for the longest time, I didn't remember when I went to college, I didn't remember names. I didn't
remember my wife's birthday for the longest time. Things that I was struggling with that, guess what
I did? Well, I brushed him under the rug, right, I hid them, right, I tried to find out not coping
mechanisms, to find out a way that I'd have to like show my identity, right, because I was embarrassed
of not knowing things that I should know, and trying to figure out like, okay, what's a real
memory was not a real memory. So the, yeah, the world looked at me like I was broken. But it's
due to God and through my faith that I realized, right, that I'm not broken as Ezean said, that
we're not broken, we just need healed. And it just took a long time and the journey for that.
It's amazing, because most people would be sitting there recovering and mending to their wounds.
And you, I realized I'm going to train for the South Marathon. So their tenacity is inspiring,
because you didn't just sit there like a lot of people would hear like, I'm still going to
do what I said I'm going to do. And you trained and you've been going ever since.
You know, and the other thing too is I've said this, like for the last year, something that came
to me was I love to tell people, because here's the thing vulnerability, especially for men,
because men have a hard time with being vulnerable. But vulnerability went to men specifically,
when two men are vulnerable, it creates a bond that's unbreakable. And so vulnerability is
true strength. And so what happens with vulnerability, and it doesn't have to be men, but in general,
right, we look at vulnerability as a weakness. But here's the thing about that is when we're
vulnerable, what we're really doing is, okay, we're living in our problems, right? We're hiding
in our problems, hiding the darkness. And here's what I would say, your problems aren't unique,
but your gifts are. And sometimes, and I, someone asked me this months ago, they said,
Ben, you know, I was at church this weekend, and, you know, I noticed they talk a lot about the
Old Testament. Like, why is he always talking about the Old Testament? Why are the songs the
Old Testament? And I answered the individual then. And as time went on, I still think about this
question today. And it's helped me in my faith. Because I realized, well, here's why the Old
Testament is is still talked about, and it's still relevant, because the Old Testament is a New
Testament in vice versa. Because you have the prophet Isaiah, who prophesied for over 700 years.
And you hear things, and I forget the exact scripture. But there was a in the Psalms,
David said, why have you forsaken me? Okay, he's those are the exact words that he said.
And as Jesus was being crucified, he said, my God, my God, why have you forsaken me?
Okay, so we know there's power in your words, right? So when it comes to gifts,
like, I don't say I get timid and speaking of the word, like, verse timidity. But you know,
you hear people say things like, well, you're amazing, you're a miracle, all these things.
And those are great things, right? But we want to focus on, like, I share my story,
so you can see yourself in my story. Right? That's the Bible, that's Jesus Christ, right?
Because he died as a man, right? He tasted death for us to have victory. So when I think about
like the things I went through, right? Well, let's, let's go if you want to know your ending,
or if you want to know your ending, go back to the beginning. So if you want to know your revelations,
go back to the beginning to understand it. So for me, in my story, it goes further back than
just the brain injury, further back than just those eight weeks. Like that's, that's incredible,
that's inspirational. That's amazing. But let's go further back. I was born with meningitis and
cephalitis. At six weeks, I was diagnosed with it. Okay, it's, it's speaking of invisible injuries,
brain injury, invisible, guess what, meningitis and cephalitis, invisible. It's an, it's incurable.
I still have it to this day. Now, did it cause a brain injury? I don't know. And at this point in
my life, I don't care, because it's not, it's kind of irrelevant. Right? Just add it, add it to the
mix. Exactly. God's getting you through this. I'll get you through that too. Yeah. And so having a
medical diagnosis at six weeks old, right? Growing up with it, I had setbacks prior to January 9th.
And so here's what I didn't know what I didn't know. I had always been in fight or flight.
And even after my brain injury, and today sometime I'm still in flight, fight or flight. But when I
say that your, your problems aren't your gifts are, well, my gifts were right. That I lost sight in
my right eye when I was in seventh grade. Then I almost lost sight of my left eye when I was 16.
And every time I had all these setbacks, I was forced to fire and how I was handled it, right?
So that's why I ran eight weeks after my brain injury, not because of that situation, right?
Because of the things that happened for the way I handled it. Now I will say, as I said before,
I was always shaking, trying to take God where I wanted to go. So all the adversities that I
ever came growing up, I always gave myself the win as opposed to giving him the praise. So now
I'm so thankful. And that's why the worst days become my best day, because my biggest fear,
because we have to understand what our biggest fear is so we can put our fear in the Lord. My biggest
fear was when success comes my way, I'll take his praise away. So all of the adversities,
all the things I went through growing up, right? I didn't have my mom, a single mom. I didn't have
someone in my family that said, you know, the word of the God, right? I did go to church, but we
didn't have conversations. We didn't talk about it. Like my mom always would say, you're a miracle
child. And that put a chip in my shoulder. See, and that's why I tried to take God where I wanted
to go. Because I thought my assignment was that I have to fix this, that I have to be the man of
the house. And being the man of the house was I'm in the one, I'm the man, having an ego, all of these
things. And that's just not the case. And so over time, I was able to let faith grow and let fear go.
Because at the end of the day, having a chip in your shoulder, right? I wanted to be perfect.
And so eventually, like the tipping of the iceberg was all the adversities I had prior to the brain
injury. The brain injury was like, that was the tip of the iceberg, right? That was when I just
could not overcome. I could overcome all the other ones. So how did I overcome the brain injury?
He overcame the brain injury. And that's where the blessing was, you know, is to know that, okay,
he's the one in control. And now I could kind of see, you know, how I'm strong. And he's given me
so many gifts. He's given me so many gifts to be stubborn. He's given me so many gifts to be
headstrong and to want to work out all the time. And the other piece of it too, to be on a tangent,
but the other piece of it too, is what running eight weeks, or half a minute on eight weeks after
working out was always my safe space. I wanted to play in the back. I want to play in the NBA.
I wanted to be an athlete. And here's why. And mom, as I said, was a single mom, alcoholic, right?
I didn't have a safe space. My home wasn't safe space. Where was my safe space? The basketball
court. It got to the point as I got older. And again, here is life's new details and details
of God, thinking that I wanted to be in the NBA. We lived about three or four miles from the closest
gym. And where I used to live growing up, there was 100 acres of woods. And there was only three
houses. It was me, my mom's house, or my mom and I's house, my grandparents house and then a trailer.
Okay, there was no one else over the age of me. Okay, it was all elderly or my mom who was always
working. And I now have a safe space. So I'd always want to play basketball. And again, the basketball
court, the gym, the asium, that basically was my second home that I got made fun of a lot as a kid,
because that's where I was all the time. And everyone must have thought that was weird or odd.
But that was my safe space. That was God taking me to that place, right? And so as I got older,
and my grandpa couldn't take me, right, I would get I got hit getting older, I wanted to play so
bad, I want to go to the gym play with the older guys, why couldn't drive, right? So here's what I
would do, especially in the summertime, just to play basketball, which was what my focus was.
How did I get there? I'd have to run three or four miles to the gym, and three or four miles back.
God was in control. I can run now, because he had me running then, I just didn't know it.
But that was an aha moment of like, okay, God, you're in this all the time. It wasn't just about
basketball. It was bigger than that. And it always is. The other one I had was, I respected my grandfather
so much. If you ever want to know what my grandfather looked like, who's no longer with us,
just go to Google and put a Google search in for Clint Eastwood. The two could have been brothers.
Maybe they were, I don't know. Maybe I didn't hear, you know, necessarily didn't hear about,
but they looked exactly like and they they act exactly like I mean, who they were.
And so I respected my grandfather so much, who's my father figure. And one time, and my mom also
really did a good job of emphasizing respect to elders. So I respected my grandfather.
Anyway, so one time, I was maybe around a teenager, we kind of started gotten a little bit of an
argument. And it got to the point where I knew I a couldn't win this argument and B, there was no
point in just, you know, keep it going. And I was just going to let it go. So I got so frustrated
that instead of being defensive or instead of yelling at him or instead of whatever, I had a
moment and it almost like the injury, the brain injury of where that force got moment, right?
I just started running. Got so mad. But instead of taking that anger on an elderly, right, or my
father figure, I turned around and just started running. Next thing I know, I ran about eight
miles at least without even stopping without even hesitating. Now, this is the point where it's like
if people remember dial up phones, right, rotary phones, even, and there's no cell phones or no
nothing, right? And so I ran away from the situation, just like Moses did, right? When he killed two
men, he ran away. God knew he was going to run away. That's why God met him with the burning
bush. So I ran away. And next thing I know, I'm eight miles out. And I don't know what clip I was
running, but it was pretty fast. And then the ironic part was out of all because this argument
that I had with him, no phones, all that kind of stuff. When I finally stopped, I knew where I was,
but yet I didn't because I'm like, crap, how many at home? So the funny part was I had to go into
some random business and say, Hey, can I use your phone? And, and again, I respected my grandfather,
especially because he was disciplinary, you know, I thought, Oh man, he's gonna, I'm done.
You know, like, now he's gonna pick me up. Like, come on, I just ruined his day. We got an argument.
He did it with grace, with love. Right. And so that was my other aha moment of like my running
moment, like I can run down a good runner, because God always had me run. And the last part of it,
I'll say is I always get to where I'm going by walking away from where I've been.
In the Israelites, right, when they were in the desert, they had a moment of
love. We want to go back. But where were they going back to slavery? Where are they going back?
Right. You did you just mean? Come ability. Come ability. And where did you, what did you do?
You brought here just to die? They didn't understand. We get to, we get to read that and
understand what was ahead of them, right? As if the hardship in the wilderness was worse than
the hardship of being a slave. Right. And the hardship of the wilderness was, Hey,
the hardship now leads to the promised land. Right. We get to see that they didn't. Right.
So now I'm thinking about that in the scripture at all time in my life, because I held on to playing
basketball in the dream of playing basketball after my brain injury. I was coaching at the time.
So my plate was so full. I was a brain recovery. Right. I was a young adult. I was married. And then
I was still trying to play basketball and I was still holding on to that tightly, which is why I
say let faith grow, let fear go. Cause sometimes what happens is we have faith, right? In a dream,
hardship, right? We're in hardship and we want to go back to comfortability rather than being
hardship, right? Which is our faith and we have a dream. We have a goal. All of these external factors,
right? Are holding us back from letting faith grow. So what happens is, and this was me,
I was still trying to play basketball. So I was recovering from a brain injury. I wasn't married.
We wouldn't have kids. I was starting to get into running. I was coaching basketball. I was wanting
to play basketball on a higher level, right? And if you say yes to everything, you say no
to everything, right? You can't serve everyone. If you serve everyone, you serve no one.
So I wasn't serving God. I had all of these things going on. And so I was in a basketball game playing
on a weekend on a Saturday. And my walking away moment where I truly walked away from basketball
was I was in this pickup game with the older men and during the game, I had taken a shot and
I'm sorry, I didn't take the shot. Another individual on the team took a shot and it was an
in-of-i shot. Just wasn't a good shot. Fundamentally, all of these different things. Anyway, he takes
his shot, he misses it and I'm busting my butt to get this rebound. And I couldn't get the rebound
because of my balance system, you know, all of these things that I should have got it, but I didn't.
And when I didn't, going back down the court and this other adult male yells, he says,
grab the f-ing rebound. And I feel shattered. And I was mad because it was his fault for the
ill-of-i shot. And here I am trying to cover him up, right? Trying to get this ball, trying to
hustle. And he doesn't know what he doesn't know, right? He doesn't know I had a brain injury. He
doesn't know I'm broken, all these things that I'm dealing with. And that was my not breaking moment,
but in a way, my refining moment. So I go in the gym and it's not like I was all alone. I go in the
gym, I look in the mirror and I started crying. I was like, what am I doing? I can't play this game
anymore. I just can't do it. So that was my moment of I always get to where I'm going by walking away
from where I've been. And that's when I let running through adversity. And I committed to not running,
like I thought I was a runner. But again, to go back to the, if you want to know your ending,
go to the beginning. The beginning, I said, I did say I am a runner, but I am a child of God
first. Who likes to run? And I'm blessed to run. And that Saturday morning, I walked away from that.
And I've been running ever since. And I've been improving ever since. As you get older, right?
You get fresher when you don't improve. I started, my first marathon was five hours and 49 minutes.
I'm now realistically shooting for two hours and 49 minutes or less. But it's not because of the
running, right? It's because who's leading me. Incredible. That reminded me of your gifts. When
you were running, when you were younger and didn't have a purpose with it yet. It reminded me of,
back in the day, I was voted most talkative in my high school class. And now God's using that gift
in a broadcast to bring him glory and make him a star, something they'll always remember. So it's
just, and then we all have the same problems. It reminded me of Shayla Huber's episode, 10 Things I
Hate About My Husband. Nice. How God healed my heart and restored my marriage and set me free.
She has his book and she shares problems that she dealt with in her marriage. And there's so many
women that can be like, Oh my gosh, that's my marriage too. And it turns out I'm the problem.
But you know, so go listen to that episode. Don't take it on yourself.
Generally, I am the problem. But we work on your story. You're not alone.
Yeah, we all have a lot of the similar problems. So we're all in this together that and then if we
actually sat down with one another, we could have that emphasize or not emphasize, empathize with
one another. Like, yeah, because every couple has the spender and the saver, the person who leaves
the floor drove and they don't get it in the hamper because you're not ready to part with
that piece of clothing yet. And it's just every marriage has the same struggle, say.
And to me, it's so unique to see like you and my wife where you have been called to a younger age
to do something that you didn't know you were called to do it. It was just something you did.
And I've never experienced that. And I see it in you. I see it in my life. I've seen it in other
people. It's not everybody. It's not everybody's gift. Not everybody's calling. Not everybody's
not everything that God uses to call people. You know, I feel more like God's junk drawer.
You know, I'm not I'm not the most useful thing. But when you really, really, really need something,
it's in there. Yeah, you're the Swiss army knife in the junk drawer. Yeah, well, I mean, I honestly,
I believe I'm the whole junk drawer. Like whatever you can stuff in one is what God has equipped
me to be in those moments. And it's not great for fixing a car. But it's enough to get the car
down the hill. You know, it's thinking about, you know, gifts, and you said being talkative,
you know, like, when we think about like the devil, right, sometimes you give the devil too
much credit, you know, like, it's almost like I want to say it was in Job, right, where God and
the devil, God said, Here's what you can do. So the devil could test Job. But God's confidence was
like, it doesn't matter what test you give him. So the devil's only allowed that what lie, steal,
right, and distract. So one of the things I've always said, I said started saying this in the
beginning of January this year, was faith advances in fear infiltrates. The devil wants to infiltrate.
Right. Why does he want to infiltrate? Because he doesn't want faith advancing.
That's the inevitable that faith is going to advance. So when you were saying that, you know,
I went through things that God, you know, was there providing for me, I kind of think it's
God is such a sense of humor, because he's essentially like, look, I'm going to stand
aside, I'm going to stand in the back, which he was right. He's in front of you behind you,
left to your right, all of those things. But in those moments, those seasons where you don't see
him, and it's the devil's tempting you, the devil's distracting you like basketball is an idol, that
was my distraction. But God was using that against the devil, right. And that's why I think it's
hilarious. And that gives me even more power. He just wove all those details together, like you
want to go to basketball, but you have to run to get there. Right. He's like, just playing with that
little, you took that step. And you know, and I'm an analytical person. And that's why, you know,
with basketball, I love the game of basketball, right? I always had to pay attention to the game
of basketball, especially losing sight in my right eye, when I did want the first thing I
wanted to do. And here's the thing, though, I was young, right? So I had a brain injury when I was
older. The biggest test of my life was when I was older, right? And I had all the other little tests.
I'm not saying you weren't big, but they weren't as big as the brain injury. But having these little
tests when I'm younger, well, what do we have when kids are childlike faith, kids are resilient,
kids bounce back. So again, that's another advantage for me. It's not a disadvantage.
So I have all these things against me that I'm, you know, stacked up. And so the depth perception,
right? Which when I, when it comes to depth perception visually, which I had an issue with,
people like, how'd you overcome that? Well, I know it was God. But when you think about
depth perception, right? Someone said, how do you balance things out? A question was asked to a
friend of mine who's a wife, a mother, and a pod, I don't know if she's a podcaster, but she's all
these like ultra events, like ultra marathons, all these different things that she's not a
manure. How do you balance it all? She said, there's no such thing as balance. There's only
awareness. I like to think of it as spatial awareness, right? Depth perception. And so to wrap it up,
with perception and struggling and trying to become the best basketball player I could be,
I'd work extra harder. And that's my advantage because after, so I can't see out of my right eye,
after the brain injury, I can't hear my left ear to this day, and it still rings every day.
But my balance system was affected on my left side to my advantage, because now I can't see
my right eye. I can't see my left arm. I can't. My left side is shattered or broken. And if you
could maybe kind of understand us a little bit with EMT in the body, basically it's kind of
bouncing to their out. It's much better to be able to see out of my not in the weight on your
tire, if you get a rotated, so they're balanced. Yeah. So perfect. When I when I started running,
the funny thing is, I think it's funny. When I was training for this half marathon,
again, I was at risk to fall for six months because my balance system was shattered.
I not knowing this now, I had so much faith in God and just going out and running, right? And I
was always running. I'm running along like the neighborhood roads. And so it's like, I'm at risk
to fall. I was so extra careful, like mentally, when I was running, that I didn't fall, go to the
left just enough that I would get hit by a car, right? Or trip or fall. So I was putting so much
faith in God, right? To lead me. And that was another thing I'm thankful for. And again,
those details of when I was a kid, those things I had to focus on as extra,
this is my depth perception, to become the best basketball player it could be. Now,
it's, that's God's using me, right? Your adversities are others blessings. Like my adversities are
just to bless others. Just like you said, other people have problems, right? And they're just
maybe at different times in those problems, but they're all very, very similar. And so when we
hear other people's problems, that's part of the darkness of lightness. We see the lightness and
it's, we're, oh, we're curious. We start to come out a little bit more, right? And then you're like,
Oh my gosh, me too. And when you have that me too moment, that's fellowship. And then all of a sudden,
fellowship turns into community. It turns into, wow, I'm no longer in the darkness.
Oh, and you're no longer alone. Right. And you know, so now it's like isolation,
it's over, right? The hibernation. And the last thing I'll say this is too, is the wilderness.
I grew up fearing the wilderness, maybe, or I don't want to say my faith,
but I just had such a different outlook on the wilderness. Now, when I look at the wilderness,
I think that's what we're found. Because Matthew chapter four, he was led into the wilderness,
spirit led in the wilderness, right? He was tempted for 40 days and 40 nights.
And then after that is when is this like, or ministry was. So now when I look at the
wilderness, I think of like, that's my time of preparation. So I want to share my wilderness,
tell others in their wilderness. How interesting you phrased it that your time in the wilderness
was a time of preparation. It seems a lot like John the Baptist, whose time in the wilderness was a
time of preparation. Yeah. Just throw that one out there for you. I don't know if you've realized
that when you said it. Yeah. And all of the others that were led into the wilderness prior to that
as well. I want to say it was Elijah was led into the wilderness. And there's even a point where Elijah,
an angel gave him bread on a stone. And then what does Jesus say to the tempter? He uses the words
of God, not just the words of God, but we get to see where those words were used with man,
because Jesus was man who died right for us. But he the trenches, your your leadership is
born in trenches. Jesus was in the trenches. His trials have blazed trails for us. And that's
again, why our problems are unique. We have to share them because those will blaze trails for
others. That and every everything that you bring in the lightness will flee. Right. Darkness cannot
exist where there's light. Yes. Right. There's no such thing as darkness. There's no way for us
to gauge darkness. All we can gauge is the absence of light. And so I mean, it's the same as with
cold. We can't measure cold. We can only measure the absence of heat. Yes. And I love to throw this
one out there when they say that God created evil. I say he didn't. Right. All evil is is the absence
of good. Yeah. And so when you take God completely out of something, you were left with evil.
Period. Because that is what space without God is. And there's got only going to be one place
where there's not light. Right now, all we see is we think we might be dark. There's always light
there. There's only one place that there's not light. Sometimes we have to take a step back
from where we are just to see where God is in it, because he's too close. Yes. Yes. Right. When you
think I can't see him, I can't feel you. I feel smothered just because he's the one smothering you.
Right. It's not your problem. It's him. He's so close. He's so abundantly upon top of you that
you are completely encompassed by the will of God that sometimes you have to take a step back to
see that yes, in fact, he is cradling you in those moments. Yes. The Holy Spirit reminded me of this
post I saw recently, and that was going around that faith and fear are both believing in something
you can't see. So choose wisely. And that's so good. Also, and this is why faith is so
so connected. Right? So we have to have so much discernment. The other part of that too, to piggy
back off of that, because I love that faith and fear both have a future that is unknown.
So put your hope in the future just means that time hasn't cut off yet. Yeah. If you put your hope
in the future, now you're sweating with aggressive patience. So I love that. Doesn't make much sense
to put your hope in the fear. Right. No. No, that won't get you in the car. We do it all the time
now as people. Yeah. We do it all the time. Yes. Well, thank you so much for sharing all of this,
Ben. Thanks for having me. Do you have anything else on your heart that you wanted to share?
That was good. No, just, you know, the very last thing I'll say is
progress over perfection. We talk about fear a lot right now and in general, or we think about it
a lot. Right. So let's not be our own worst enemies. The longest relationship you're going
to have in your life is with yourself. That's why we want to be a leader of one. So in a way,
kind of maybe an ending prayer would be this, progress over perfection. Don't beat yourself up.
That's if we beat ourselves up, right? If you're infiltrates, right? If we beat ourselves up or
doing his work. So number one, progress over perfection. And number two, when I say LFG,
which is let faith grow, let fear go. I really want listeners to understand and take this home.
That I, and this is just to let you release and to let you be present. There's power in your
presence. Peace is an entryway, not an escape. So I would rather live a life of many failures
than one regret. And that's let faith grow. Because if we get to that old age where we're
asked questions, the majority of time, it's a regret. And if we hold on and hold on and hold
on and don't let go, don't let the seed plant, that seed becomes regret. We squeeze the life out of
it out of ourselves. And like you said, with the lightness, we're going to squeeze it out of everyone
else around us. So don't fear failure. Failure is fine. Life of failure rather than one regret,
which might be coming to Jesus. They teach you, America, fail fast. Fail a lot. Because the more
nose you get, the more yeses you'll encounter because you built that muscle of, you know,
doing your thing. So thank you so much. I appreciate being here. Thank you for being with us.
Yeah, what a unique story. Just another way that God has overcome. A TBI again is in every way
traumatic, just like the T and it stands for. And people don't normally get back to, they can,
but they don't normally get to have a life or something at somebody like
that your previous life would say would be a life or living. And thank God that he is able and
willing to do things in our lives, even through adversity. And I am so glad that you're learning
the lesson that he's trying to teach you since birth, where he's just completely like harming your
mind and things for a purpose that is so beyond our sight. And I say jokingly, I hope you learned
your lesson because what else do you want to endure? Right. Yeah. I don't want to be like Job's
friends and saying something that's not true. Yeah. Just wanted to be funny. It's really
unfathomable to think of your parents when they looked at you as a baby. And then, you know,
and then they see you're healed from this meningitis, right? This is something that does claim
lives. And then they think, Hey, you're a miracle. They put this on you. Right. Right. And now you
have to grow into this. Yeah. This isn't something God gave you. This is something that somebody
else gave you that you're trying to walk into and live into and try to live out. And that's a lot
of a burden for somebody to try to live up to being a miracle. Right. Right. And my parents never
called me one. So I had a low bar and it made things a lot easier for me. Right. Now once they
call me a miracle. And so I never thought that I never had, I never, I never had something. He
totally was. Yeah. But I told him, right. And it's exactly. He's the head of the septomy and then
he was born. Wow. So that's, that's a miracle right there. Right. And so, and, and, you know,
I had no idea, you know, as a baby and I wasn't raised as a child. God basically saying, I don't
need you like with that miracle. Right. He's like, no, I, this is what I will do. Like that year.
That's a miracle though, right there. Yeah. Wow. I know I've got. And he was born addicted to nothing
even though his mom was on a bunch of drugs when she was pregnant with him. So like he was totally
a miracle. Right. That's why we laughed. Well, no, that's, I'm, I'm so glad you said that though
because that it's all in the story, right. The likes and the details and the tales and God,
because here's the thing. I think it was today's verse. The day was Isaiah 111. I think is what
it was. Okay. Talking about the root. Okay. And then the root become the fruit. But you look into it's
the bad fruit becoming the good root. Okay. Which is Jesus, the perfect man. Right. His genealogy
was so imperfect. Oh yeah. That's the story right there. Like you were all three of us are living
the story in one way or the other. And when I say one way or the other, because we're all the hands
and feet of Jesus, we're all one part of what we're all one of the body. So that's an amazing
piece that you shared that like you are a miracle. And when you said real quickly about
my, my mom or just parents in general, my mom, but your, your mom and like my mom,
when I was born and my miracle child, right? I was just thinking about this too. And again,
it all comes down to like, I didn't know what I didn't know. So with myself, and I can, I'm kind
of for myself and how I feel and what I've been through all this stuff, right? And now that I'm
a father of two girls and things. When you said about coming out and your mom or for me, my mom
saying that I'm a miracle baby always sings. It just for some reason in my mind, it came to
projected versus protected. Right. Cause he's protected me. My mom projected on me. And she
didn't know what she didn't know. Right. Again, everything's so fine-lined. She didn't know that
she was setting me up. It wasn't her on purpose. Right. No, she knew that she would harm you.
Right. She'd never would have done it. No mother loving your children would ever do such a thing.
And then you, I can almost kind of forgive in a way, a lot of some of those things, right?
Cause my mom was an alcoholic now. And real quick, very, very ironic. I don't know if I
mentioned this. She had a brain injury in 2016. You did not mention that. Three years after I had
mine, hers, home alone as well, hers, stairs, hers, alcohol induced the day that I got her out of the
hospital. And I, cause when she was in the hospital, I fought for her as an advocate. I thought, again,
I kind of reverted back to, I can fix this because I'm the, I'm the, we get so caught up in being a
blessing versus being the blessing. We put too much pressure on ourselves. So I'm the blessing. Oh,
I survived the brain injury. Oh, I can fix this. Oh, I can help her. I let's get her home. I fought
for her to get home, take her home the very day that she came home. And you would know this for sure.
After a brain injury or so many other medical things, what do you not do? Drink, don't mix it.
Yeah, no. Yeah. Get her home the very first day after I fought days and days and days for
to come home, go to take her home. We have all these things that are going to be set up. Right.
I've tricked myself thinking life is going to be this. We go to a restaurant. First meal as we
get, she gets out of the hospital, what she do, orders alcohol. Didn't that night. I didn't think
it was a problem. And then I kind of set myself up. Right. But like, yeah, like you said, idol,
exactly. And it still is her idol. And I saw, I still struggle with that right now. But it's,
it's more than that though, with, with a dependency on a substance, right? It stops becoming an idol
as more as it becomes, you can't live without it. And, and, and instead of coming to it because
you're sad or happy or trying to try to make an excuse while you want it, you don't make an excuse
at that point. Once you're completely dependent upon it. You just don't care to make an excuse
anymore. Right. And that's actually not a bad place to be because you can find honesty in that.
Yeah. And that's a good place to start with her is knowing that she's at that place of honesty,
that she doesn't care where she's at. And that's a, honestly, it doesn't sound good. Yeah. But
it's, it's better than her denying. And then it becomes like me just accepting that's where she's
at, right? And not trying to fix, which it's not your job to fix. Right. Your job is to, is to tell
her about the glory of Jesus. Right. And, and, and it's his glorious burden to fix her. Yeah. He
said he will fix her. He said he will wipe away every tear. He didn't say that you're going to
wipe away every tear. He didn't call me to wipe away any tears. In fact, I'm pretty sure he's
going to be wiping some tears away because of things I've said to people in my past. So,
I know he's not going to ask me to do that if I'm the cause of some of those tears.
And so that's not your job. That's not your place. Your place is to pray for her. Your
place is to be there for her, but your place is not to fix her. That's his job. No. And he's,
he's really good at his job. He's, and that even that is there's so much peace in that
that knowing that like all you have to do, he's still doing more work than us.
You could say he's pulling the lion's share. Yeah. Because all we have to do is introduce.
So why are we making it harder than we have to? Well, the devils, why are we making it harder
than we have to, right? Guilt, shame, all of these things. So yeah, just, that's amazing.
Thanks for sharing that. I love that. We are all miracles. I love it. Well, I hope this, this has
blessed others listening to it. And I hope that it encourages you and inspires you to share it with
a friend or family member. And if this podcast in its entirety has been a blessing to you,
to you, we ask that you would help support the mission. We have some links in the about section
if you want to give. And then if you can rate this and Spotify or Apple podcast, that would be
wonderful. Cause then it'll tell the algorithm that people are liking it. And then it'll
share it with more people and then more people can be encouraged. And don't forget to like and
follow or in all the social medias and pray. I love praying. I love praying. It's my favorite part of
the whole thing is pray for us, pray for my wife, pray for me individually as a team for the podcast,
pray for our guests, pray for the people they put on their heart when you ever heard of the podcast
from them. Pray for those people as well. Pray for someone that you didn't even think you needed to
pray for, but the Lord called into your mind. Just do that. Put it on there. Thanks, Maverick.
That's my favorite part is to prayer. Amen. And with that, we'll talk to you next time.