Latest / Why I Believe / Will Robbins: Christ Is My Caddy
Transcript
- 0:01Hello and welcome back to Why I Believe.
- 0:04Today I have the honor of having Will Robbins with us.
- 0:06How are you doing today, Will?
- 0:08Amazing, yeah, great to be.
- 0:10Awesome, thank you for being here.
- 0:12Can you tell us a little bit about yourself?
- 0:14Oh, a little bit of myself.
- 0:16Originally from England, came out to the United States at 17 to play college golf and played two years in Pearl Beach, California, and then two years in West Palm Beach and
- 0:27then played professionally and then had a change in my career and ended up coaching the game and now spent the last 20 years coaching golf and helping other golf pros around the
- 0:41world to sort of shift from the real sort of standard in
- 0:45of lessons into more of a coaching model.
- 0:48Yeah, that's great.
- 0:49I love how you just kind of breezed over how to change your plans and started coaching.
- 0:53It wasn't just the change in plans.
- 0:55Like you had your life turned upside down.
- 0:57Yeah, for sure.
- 0:58It was the last day of our honeymoon.
- 1:00We were planning what to do for that day.
- 1:04you know, whether we're going to hang out by the pool, we were going to go to the beach.
- 1:08And the next day we were flying back to America to our new home, to our new puppy, to our new life.
- 1:14And then I was going to go to the Canadian Cue School to go and qualify for the Canadian Tour and start my journey towards playing professional golf for a living.
- 1:23And then everything changed.
- 1:25Everything changed.
- 1:26So why don't you tell us where you were on your honeymoon?
- 1:29So we're in Phuket, Thailand.
- 1:30We're on the island of Koh Phi Phi, Don, which is a little island off of Phuket.
- 1:36And we were just, yeah, hanging out on the beach, uh enjoying 10 days of just amazing time in Thailand.
- 1:44Yeah, and that was back in 2004, right?
- 1:462004, yeah, December 26th.
- 1:49Yes.
- 1:50Why don't you tell them what happened that week?
- 1:53From your perspective.
- 1:55Yeah, so that week was Christmas Day the day before.
- 1:58We just had an amazing time celebrating Christmas.
- 2:01Next morning woke up, which is Boxing Day for us in the UK.
- 2:05uh we're just what we're going to do for the day.
- 2:09We'll maybe hang out by the pool.
- 2:10Maybe we'll go on a boat.
- 2:13And we were just sitting in the hotel lobby, just hanging out, just enjoying ourselves.
- 2:18And then the next thing you know, everyone was screaming.
- 2:20Every direction we looked, everyone was screaming and running around.
- 2:23And I didn't really know what was going
- 2:24going on.
- 2:25To start with, thought maybe everyone was excited to be there and then very quickly realized that that wasn't the case.
- 2:30They were deathly afraid of something.
- 2:33And my brain went to terrorism.
- 2:36We just had the barley bombing.
- 2:37There'd been, you know, the 9-11 was just three years earlier.
- 2:41And so terrorism was now in our lives.
- 2:43And so my thought is, you you got to hide.
- 2:45You need to find a place to hide.
- 2:47Well, everybody jumped over the counter and ran out of the building.
- 2:49We jumped over the counter and hid in an office, uh not realizing that.
- 2:54you know, maybe several hundred yards away from us, the Sumatra earthquake had triggered the tsunami and there was a 30 to 40 foot high wave coming across the island, destroying
- 3:06everything.
- 3:06And we decided to go and hide in an office.
- 3:10And we got on the ground, started to pray and my wife looked at me and then there was just the largest explosion, you know, just the loudest noise I've ever heard and the room
- 3:20started to shake and just rumble and it was just the whole hotel collapsing on itself.
- 3:25And my wife yelled to me and looked me in the eyes and said, this is it.
- 3:28And I said, no, it's not.
- 3:29And the second I said that, the wall from my right went straight through me and I went straight through the wall.
- 3:34She went straight through the ceiling and we were underwater, tumbling underwater with no idea of what was happening.
- 3:41Didn't know it was a tsunami.
- 3:42Just knew that I was basically experiencing the end of my life, just tumbling inside of a hotel underwater as I experienced the pain and the fear and the overwhelm of, of
- 3:55realizing that this uh was the end of my life and yeah, it was a crazy, crazy journey.
- 4:03Yeah, so let's take that back a second.
- 4:04So you guys had no warning.
- 4:06There was no warning that that tsunami was coming.
- 4:11Do you know how long it was between the earthquake and then the tsunami happening?
- 4:15Yeah, it was about nine o'clock in the morning in Sumatra when it happened.
- 4:19So I think their time zone was actually a couple hours earlier.
- 4:22So we were probably about four, maybe three or four hours before.
- 4:26And then the sound wave moves about 700 miles an hour underground, under the earth, you know, and then that goes under the water.
- 4:33And then next thing you know, around about 10.30 in the morning, that's when I hit our island.
- 4:40Wow, that's terrifying.
- 4:43You we always think like, there's going to be some sort of warning before a major crisis, but there's not always that warning sign.
- 4:49No, no, there was nothing just people screaming and next thing you know, you're underwater and just this is the end of my life.
- 4:55I can't believe it.
- 4:56I can't believe it's the end of my life.
- 4:57um And then realizing accepting it was and just the end of my life was like, this is it.
- 5:04This is how I die.
- 5:05And my final words, won't repeat them exactly how I said it, but it was something to do with I'm going to die fighting.
- 5:11um It had a other word in there that I
- 5:15Yeah.
- 5:17Right.
- 5:18the second I said that I popped up in the middle of ocean and I was on the other complete other side of the island.
- 5:23I'd have gone the whole way across the island and several hundred yards out into the middle of ocean.
- 5:27And uh I looked to my right and my wife was about three feet away from me, alive, screaming in a lot of pain.
- 5:34She had a triple pelvic fracture and was really struggling, but we were both alive and we're out in the middle of ocean.
- 5:41Now what a miracle.
- 5:42First of all to A, survive this tsunami because there are hundreds of thousands of people who didn't.
- 5:49But then to pop up next to your wife.
- 5:52Yeah.
- 5:53It was a blessing, but not a blessing that I could really take in at that time because the next thing you know, the next wave is coming.
- 5:59So now we're getting dragged back over the island.
- 6:02So was, you know, multiple waves that come across.
- 6:04so it wasn't like we've made it.
- 6:07It was like, oh God, you know, now what's going to happen is we're getting pulled back onto the island inside of all the trash, all the houses and the hotels are all in the
- 6:16ocean.
- 6:16We're just getting crushed like a trash compactor and we're getting pulled back onto the island.
- 6:21so now it's, if we go under,
- 6:23because we'll never get back up.
- 6:25And thankfully there was a young man there by name of Marcus Melberg and he was standing on a little mini boat, little long tail boat they call them and we just yelled and
- 6:35screamed out to him to save us.
- 6:37And he gave up on looking for his whole family, his mom and dad, his brother and his, sorry, sister and his brother-in-law, threw a rope to us, tied it around my arm and then
- 6:46he dragged us up on top of the water which was really on top of all of the material and put us onto the boat.
- 6:53ah and then we spent about nine, ten, eleven hours out in middle of ocean just going from different boat to different boat watching the island get destroyed watching fighter planes
- 7:05fly over the top of us and starting to try and understand what had happened you know like what level of destruction had happened because you don't know if it's an atomic bomb you
- 7:14don't know if it's an earthquake there's no signal there's no communication there's no phones there's no internet there's nothing so you're stranded on an island in the middle
- 7:21of nowhere
- 7:23wondering how long will it be before you get saved.
- 7:25um
- 7:26and you know what's next while my wife is on the ground you know is unable to stand on a ends up on a wooden door being carried from boat to boat possibly paralyzed which thank
- 7:40god she wasn't but having no idea of what would happen that day but around about 10 o'clock at night that night uh a big fishing trawler took us all into all the injured
- 7:51really badly injured people into Phuket
- 7:54to the hospitals, which unfortunately were completely empty because, well, empty of drugs, they were full of people, but empty of any more, know, I think because it was too, you
- 8:02know, it had been 12, 14 hours since the tsunami.
- 8:06they'd used every resource they had, but they were just there to...
- 8:10to basically support us and do a little bit of some sewing my ear back and I got to like, my ear was lacerated and stuff like this.
- 8:20And so minor things that they could do were just moral support and put us on beds and.
- 8:26My wife and I spent about two days there.
- 8:29My wife had paracetamol for two days with a triple pelvic fracture.
- 8:33I had a few broken shoulder bone and short collarbone and a lot of lacerations and things going on, but compared to how everybody else was, I was doing fine.
- 8:44I was doing really good.
- 8:45uh But yeah, it was two days that we were there and we finally got medically evacuated by plane up to Phuket, out of Phuket up to Bangkok.
- 8:54And then I spent
- 8:5531 days in hospital and my wife spent about 40 days and then we uh got medically evacuated back to the United States and yeah had to restart life.
- 9:09Yeah, restart life in a totally different way.
- 9:12It wasn't just go back to what you thought it was gonna be.
- 9:15Life as you knew it had changed.
- 9:18Yeah, absolutely.
- 9:18Yeah.
- 9:19I mean, you know, I couldn't play golf and I was going back to play golf for living.
- 9:22My wife was a school teacher in California.
- 9:24She got laid off when she was unfortunate.
- 9:26um You know, that wasn't great.
- 9:30Our insurance company dropped us.
- 9:48You can still hear me though, yep, the sound's still over the other sound, still there.
- 9:51Shows that it's still counting on my end.
- 9:53It cut out just a little bit, but it still shows that it's still there.
- 10:04Are you there?
- 10:07Okay, I don't know what happened, but it looks like we're still recording.
- 10:10Yeah, it shows it's still recording.
- 10:12It's uploading as well.
- 10:14so I'll have to edit some of this but okay that's weird.
- 10:20Okay.
- 10:21Yeah.
- 10:21So yeah, so we got back to the States, unable to play golf.
- 10:25My wife got laid off as a school teacher just because the California, it wasn't anything to do with her.
- 10:31Just they were out of, didn't have enough students.
- 10:34And so yeah, it was a complete shift.
- 10:36know, we were on a lot of drugs and a lot of pain, lot of PTSD.
- 10:41lot of surgeries, a of just trips to the doctors every day and hospitals and stuff like that.
- 10:46And so, yeah, it was a tough way to start a marriage, but we were alive and 238,000 people weren't.
- 10:53And so we were definitely super just blessed and grateful.
- 10:59you know, coming back on a journey to sort of start to rebuild our lives.
- 11:03And that's kind of where the coaching part came in for me.
- 11:05So a friend offered, know, would you like to start teaching?
- 11:07My thought was no, I want to play golf, but I couldn't.
- 11:10So I started coaching and God had a different plan for me and I think he chose pretty well.
- 11:15Yeah.
- 11:16So how did you guys keep the faith through all of this?
- 11:18Knowing what you've been through and you know, I'm sure at some point you had to say, why me?
- 11:23Why did this happen to us?
- 11:25Right?
- 11:25And then also on the flip side, why did you survive it?
- 11:29Yeah, I never really asked that question.
- 11:31think never asked why me never asked why I survive.
- 11:36You know, I don't think it's a it just it's I suppose when it's so major when a quarter of a million people die and you don't like it's not it's not the same as like
- 11:44I would imagine a survivor's guilt of a car crash and the person next to you died, but you didn't.
- 11:49It's like, it's so random.
- 11:51Like, how did that happen?
- 11:52Whereas this was so catastrophic.
- 11:54was just like, was just never asked that question.
- 11:58Why me?
- 11:58I'm just blessed.
- 11:59I'm just blessed that God pulled me through.
- 12:02I'm no better than anybody else that died that day.
- 12:06I know there's nothing special about me.
- 12:09And people go, Oh my God, it's such a miracle.
- 12:10How amazing that you survived.
- 12:12And it's like, it's a miracle that God saved me.
- 12:14Why he
- 12:14saved me or, you know, that's just, that's out of my realm.
- 12:16So I've never really asked it.
- 12:18But as far as faith goes, you know, I wasn't actually a Christian at the time I was reading a FCA, no, it was a college gold fellowship Bible while I was on the island, my
- 12:28brother in law was a youth pastor.
- 12:30And he'd given me this, this Bible and I'd started to read the gospel and I was sitting there reading the gospel just thinking my goodness, like this, this Christ guy, like he,
- 12:40he, he, he gets it like, and here I was about to go and play professional golf.
- 12:44and I just heard everything in my mind was golf-centric, right?
- 12:48So was like, when I play, my thought was if I had him caddying for me, if Christ was alongside me, caddying for me, and he was saying to me, let my light shine, right?
- 12:56You don't have, you ye of little faith.
- 12:58All these things that he was, you know, if you want to gain the world, you've got to give it up.
- 13:02In golf, the harder you try, the worse you play, right?
- 13:04And so, so much of it was...
- 13:07making total sense to me um of just what he was talking about.
- 13:11So that's really like, you know, my ministry is Christ is my caddy.
- 13:14And that's kind of where it started the day before the tsunami, just sitting on the beach there and understanding like, who Christ was.
- 13:21I mean, I grew up in the church a little bit, you know, and I was christened back in England, Church of England and stuff.
- 13:27my mom and my dad read the Bible, the gospel, stumi and stuff like this.
- 13:32But then I just, you know, went off on my own track.
- 13:34And then I would say that for me, unfortunately,
- 13:37you know.
- 13:39God got us through all of that, but then bit by bit I just grabbed it all back because I was like, okay, God, thank you.
- 13:44Now I need to run a proper business.
- 13:46Thank you, God.
- 13:46Now I need to go ahead and play professional golf again.
- 13:48Thank you, God.
- 13:49Now I need to be responsible now.
- 13:51Thank you for all the help.
- 13:53can't rely on you because that would be irresponsible.
- 13:55I need to rely on me again.
- 13:57And so I just went back and grabbed my own life back.
- 13:59And within five or six years, my business was fantastic and I became a very successful coach and had a very successful business, but internally was absolutely destroyed.
- 14:09know, and someone who's gone through and lived through something like I would, they'd say, well, if I ever had cancer, if I ever lived through that, I would always be positive for
- 14:16the rest of my life.
- 14:17I'm like, no, that's just not how humans are.
- 14:19That's not how I am is that I can just be selfish any day of the week.
- 14:21And the minute I'm selfish, I get more self-centered, more selfish, more full of self-pity.
- 14:26And I got to a place of just being completely broken.
- 14:30Like I was just internally, externally had everything I wanted.
- 14:32Wonderful wife, wonderful house, played golf, know, coach golf, played golf, made great money.
- 14:38But on the inside, I
- 14:39was just in pain, so much pain, so much frustration, so much hurt.
- 14:43And for me, my out was always alcohol.
- 14:47was just like, have a drink and it will all be good.
- 14:50And then my way back to Christ was through AA.
- 14:55And AA, it's not a religious program.
- 14:57It's a spiritual program based on a understanding, God of your understanding.
- 15:02But when I went there and I uh went into a group because of my
- 15:09best friend went into it and I was like, what is he doing?
- 15:11Like if he's, he's not an alcoholic, because if he's an alcoholic, I'm definitely an alcoholic.
- 15:16And it was amazing because within, you know, two or three weeks, I realized I hadn't thought about drinking, had drunk in, in three weeks and had no thought.
- 15:25And I tried for, ever since the tsunami, I had to want to stop drinking.
- 15:28I was always in headaches, pain, and I didn't even enjoy it anymore.
- 15:31I hated doing it.
- 15:32Like it wasn't even fun.
- 15:34And I couldn't stop.
- 15:34And I tried everything.
- 15:36And here I was, no thought about
- 15:38alcohol.
- 15:39I never had that in my life.
- 15:41And very soon, you know, I started to ask myself, okay, well, if this God of my understanding, I just asked him to remove the desire for alcohol and it went like that,
- 15:53that's a miracle.
- 15:53And I'm not going to make up a name for this person or this thing.
- 15:57I want to know who that person is.
- 15:59And so that was where my journey started.
- 16:01was uh meeting with a pastor from a local church where I still meet with most Mondays and just asking tons of questions and like, seriously, this whole lot?
- 16:08this Jesus thing, this Bible thing, is this real?
- 16:11And bit by bit, just challenging every question I had, just challenging it and then coming back with like, whoa, that's amazing.
- 16:19I didn't know the answer to that.
- 16:20Wow, I didn't know that.
- 16:21And then completely changing my thinking, uh be transformed by the renewing of your mind.
- 16:27And next thing you know, I was like, okay, yeah, I trust that Christ is my savior, he's my Lord, and I want to surrender my life to him.
- 16:36And so, yeah, was all 16.
- 16:38which was my parents' wedding anniversary actually.
- 16:42Back 2016, I handed my life over to Christ and just one on that journey of messing up daily, know, continually, but really realizing that, you know, when I take my life back,
- 16:55I'm in real trouble.
- 16:56Even when I have the most success, I've been blessed with amazing success with my companies and the success I've had as coaching, but it's so easy to grab it back.
- 17:06you know, I heard the other day,
- 17:08I would have listened to my church with my kids and it was saying how Satan doesn't want to, Satan doesn't want you to follow him because you know you wouldn't, all he wants you
- 17:18to do is follow yourself so you don't follow God.
- 17:20So if you become an up on then I won't need And that's where end up in real trouble because then everything's a problem and everything's a worry because it's all my money and
- 17:30my house and my success and my business and my kids and my house.
- 17:34And it's like, well, how's that working for you?
- 17:36I'm miserable and I'm frustrated I'm angry.
- 17:38versus it's all his and I'm just trying to be a good steward and I'm not a good steward because half the time I forget to tidy up and I forget to look after it and stuff but he's
- 17:50not asking me to be perfect he's just asking me to give my heart to him and follow him and just fail daily but fail daily towards him so that's kind of like you the journey for me
- 18:00which has just been an absolute miracle which was going through so much but in the end of it you know being able to you know to know Christ
- 18:08and beyond that journey is the biggest blessing.
- 18:11Yeah, I gotta really say you guys have tested your vows a little bit, huh?
- 18:14For better and for worse, sickness and in health, right?
- 18:17Between the tsunami and then the alcoholism and...
- 18:22How has your family's faith played a role in any of this?
- 18:25So when you converted, were they already on board or did they come on board after?
- 18:30What does that story look like?
- 18:31all my in-laws are Christians.
- 18:34My parents are Christians.
- 18:36Actually, my dad gave his life to Christ.
- 18:38m
- 18:42Father's Day like, uh...
- 18:44What is that about three years ago, three or four years ago, it very emotional that day.
- 18:47was a crazy day.
- 18:48anyway, that was that was an amazing one.
- 18:52And again, I think my brothers know Christ, but yeah, just trying to lead from a position of just, you know, of just attraction, AA, they talk about attraction rather than
- 19:02promotion.
- 19:02And I think that's something that the church needs to do a better job of because you go to an AA meeting, you don't go in there and go, I got my shit together.
- 19:11No, you don't.
- 19:12You're absolute disaster.
- 19:14But I look at the people in the room and I want what they have.
- 19:17You know, they're calm, they're at peace, they're honest, they can accept themselves, they have a higher power, they're service for others.
- 19:25And I think that that's attractive.
- 19:26And so, you know, for my family, just trying to continue to attract them to, you know, there's so much with the Church of England and the Catholic Church and all this that you
- 19:36can find all the problems, but Christ came to break that.
- 19:41came to say the Pharisees were wrong and he came to say the Sadducees were wrong.
- 19:44And so we've done that again, you we get into religion, into the relationship.
- 19:48And, know, to me is helping them understand like what the gospel really is and what are we looking for is we're looking for mercy, we're looking for forgiveness.
- 19:57You know, I mean, like we're not looking to be righteous, we're not looking to earn our way.
- 20:02We can't do that.
- 20:03And so, so yeah, it's a blessing to get to share with them every Easter.
- 20:07I always do a sermon on Easter on Zoom and they're all back in the UK, you know, and get to share with them and just share, share.
- 20:14beliefs and my journey with Christ and just continue to see growth through them.
- 20:20Obviously my kids, you know, and my wife, and yeah, we enjoy our time together, church at the house, you know, just going through our Bible verses, and we go to our church as well,
- 20:31but yeah, just a lot of time in prayer, a lot of time and just...
- 20:35You know, honesty, you my kids know all about my journey.
- 20:37They know about all my craziness and all the stuff, because I want them to realize like, you know, the minute you take your own life back, you're to be a slave to something.
- 20:44You're going to be a slave to something.
- 20:45You can be a slave to Christ.
- 20:46You can be a slave to alcohol, drugs, money, whatever you want to choose.
- 20:50You can be a slave to it.
- 20:52um So, you know, to me, that's sort of, you know, the honesty that I want to bring to them is helping them to understand it's like, you know, there's, there's one that we can serve
- 21:03the right way.
- 21:03There's a lot of things we can serve the wrong way.
- 21:05Thank
- 21:06Absolutely.
- 21:07And I think one of the things that stuck out to me when you and I had the chance to meet uh back in New Orleans about a month ago, and I was telling you about the podcast and I
- 21:15was telling you what my plan was, and I said this one line and it stuck out at you.
- 21:22Do you remember what it was?
- 21:24I got my notes right.
- 21:26Yeah, okay.
- 21:27um
- 21:32said we're going to talk about.
- 21:36Good.
- 21:37So we're gonna talk about modern day miracles, faith in the middle of real life, which we've lived, Identity beyond achievements.
- 21:44Identity upon achievements.
- 21:45Yeah, I'm trying to find that.
- 21:47out of everything you said, Michelle, that was your best line.
- 21:49uh
- 21:51where is the identity of achievement exactly?
- 21:54And I think that is.
- 21:57That's like on a daily basis, what I help players with, right?
- 22:00Their struggle with, just want to prove it to everybody.
- 22:03I'm like, well, that's going to be tough.
- 22:05And then you can say, I want to prove it to Christ.
- 22:06And he never asked you to prove it to him.
- 22:08doesn't need you to play good golf.
- 22:11He doesn't need that.
- 22:12it is, is a real struggle for all of us, right?
- 22:15To not get into that achievement mode.
- 22:17And so yeah, I loved it when you said that.
- 22:19That was extremely powerful.
- 22:22And I think it's so true.
- 22:23think there's a lot of us that are high achievers that are really, that we tie our identity to our achievements instead of to our origin and to our roots where it really
- 22:32needs to be.
- 22:33And I think for me anyway, once I realized that's what I was doing and I really developed that relationship with Jesus and with God.
- 22:43And then that's when I found that peace that you were talking about that you were looking for, right?
- 22:47That's when you get that peace and serenity that everyone talks about once.
- 22:52But I think that is so important that you are doing that every day in your work as a coach.
- 22:57I'm doing that in my trainings as a burnout strategist.
- 23:00And that's part of the reason why we have all these problems is that we're burned out is because we keep tying our identity to our achievements, to earthly things.
- 23:09So, yeah.
- 23:11Yeah, there's one.
- 23:12I think I would do here in echo now.
- 23:17Let me see if installation.
- 23:21That's strange.
- 23:21It just.
- 23:23It just started to on my.
- 23:28I'll try to clean it up afterwards.
- 23:30Okay.
- 23:50Okay, let me try...
- 23:54I want to do this, see if it changes...
- 24:06m It's not letting me change my mic.
- 24:11Here we go, here we go.
- 24:13Okay, how's that?
- 24:14no, that's wrong now.
- 24:16No, no, that's wrong.
- 24:22Now you're on mute.
- 24:25Okay, well, let me change my microphone.
- 24:27Let me change.
- 24:28I was gonna go to my other mic here and see if this.
- 24:32Does sound better?
- 24:32don't?
- 24:39That's strange, don't know where the...
- 24:42not sure where the letter came from.
- 24:48Yeah.
- 24:51That's okay.
- 24:52So we were talking about identity beyond achievement and how you're using that every day when you're coaching.
- 24:57Yeah.
- 24:58Yeah, and I just think that is, that's the difficult part, right?
- 25:01Is just, you know, our identity is so tied up in that and in the world and then in the pace of things and how quick we have to go.
- 25:08And I think that's where a really, really good book a while back, we as a good friend of me gave it to me, it was The Ruthless Elimination of Hurry.
- 25:15And it sort of just talks about how the hurry is the devil.
- 25:19It's like, you just, the faster you go, I can just distract you.
- 25:22If you're distracted, I'm, we're set, right?
- 25:25Because you're just going to be too, too rushed to sit down and be calm and quiet and pray and read your Bible and things like that.
- 25:32So to me is, it's like, it definitely is one of those things of like, get in these worldly things and I got to prove and achieve and succeed and win and stuff like this.
- 25:40And there's nothing wrong with all of those, but those should be an outcome.
- 25:45byproducts, I should say, of just the process of...
- 25:49connecting with God, living out your gifts, letting your light shine, truly finding your gifts and expressing them, helping others, being of service.
- 25:58And then from that comes wealth and success and all those things.
- 26:01But so often we target success and wealth versus, what are you gifted at and what should you be doing and how do you impact people's lives?
- 26:09And if you do that, you'll probably have the outcome of success, worldly, which is money and freedom of time and freedom of money.
- 26:19Yeah.
- 26:20So what is one piece of advice that you give your students around staying true to them and to Jesus now that you've been through all of this?
- 26:33How do you tell them to keep stay grounded?
- 26:36Yeah, I would say.
- 26:39probably quite negative, but it's realistic.
- 26:41It's like you're either going to be going through a tsunami right now, you've got one coming or you just finished going through one.
- 26:46Like it's going to happen, like tragedies and difficulties and grieving and death and cancer and bankruptcy.
- 26:53And, know, and again, it can be small things.
- 26:56can be, but a huge to you.
- 26:58Do you know I'm saying?
- 26:59It might be, you know, like lots of a boyfriend at 13 years old feels just as tragic as some of the worst things you've ever experienced in your life.
- 27:07Right.
- 27:07And so to me,
- 27:09They're just challenges that shape us and we get a choice on how to shape us.
- 27:13Do we want to go ahead and go alone?
- 27:15we want to go ahead and fight the battle?
- 27:17Do we want to go ahead and prove it to ourselves?
- 27:19Or do we want to surrender and say, probably actually can't overcome this and God, need you.
- 27:24And I need you to help me through this because I can't change.
- 27:26I'm not able to change without you and the Holy Spirit making it happen.
- 27:30So I think just, I would say the lesson is that, you know, many of you are going through things that are very difficult right now and you don't see a way out and you don't see a
- 27:39light.
- 27:39uh But God's with you, the whole way, he's with you.
- 27:42And so it would be along the lines of just allow yourself to surrender.
- 27:48Like when I was underwater, I just surrendered.
- 27:50My life was over.
- 27:51I was like, that's it, I'm dead.
- 27:53I know I'm dying.
- 27:54The war is about to come in.
- 27:55And as I said that, I popped out of the water, but I'd fully surrendered.
- 27:59So it's this idea that Christ talks about, like, if you want your life, you have to give it up.
- 28:03Which now is really, it doesn't make any sense.
- 28:05It's a paradox of like, the more you hung on to the world and into life and
- 28:09hang on to success and money and pride and all these things, the further away you are from God, the more you surrender them, the more free you become, and you still have them, you
- 28:18still have that stuff in your life, you're just not owned by it, you're not a slave to it.
- 28:21So I would just say as those challenges come up, just be willing to surrender, and it's okay to drop to your knees and just say, I can't do this, because guess what, we can't.
- 28:31We can fake it and say that we can get through it, but we really can't.
- 28:35And that's where, when Christ comes into your life and really helps you through that, that's
- 28:39That's the biggest difference.
- 28:42That's great Will, thank you for sharing that.
- 28:44And I think that's true and I think that's something we can all relate to too, right?
- 28:47So we're all gonna go through something at some point in our life.
- 28:49And sometimes it's multiple things.
- 28:52And it's gonna be back to back and it's never gonna be easy.
- 28:55But there's a way, there's a choice.
- 28:57All right, well one of the questions I ask all my guests before I let them go is what is your favorite Bible verse that you're living through right now?
- 29:08Last year it was...
- 29:10definitely do not be anxious about anything within every situation by prayer and petition with Thanksgiving, present your request to God and the peace of God will transcend, the
- 29:18peace of God that transcends all understanding, God your heart and mind in Christ Jesus.
- 29:23That was definitely on my mind a lot, like through challenges.
- 29:27um Lately, I think I just read, I really enjoyed it.
- 29:32was in Psalm 56, three, and it said, so don't all your fears, know, cast
- 29:40your fears on me because I care for you.
- 29:43I think it's such a like a simple thing.
- 29:44It's like this idea of like, just my life is full of fear.
- 29:48What's gonna happen in the economy?
- 29:49What's gonna happen in Iran?
- 29:50What's gonna happen with the president?
- 29:52What's gonna happen with my money?
- 29:53Will I be able to retire?
- 29:56It's just all this.
- 29:57And it's just like, they're always gonna be there.
- 29:59That's never gonna go away.
- 30:01But I don't have to own them.
- 30:02I can just place them on crisis.
- 30:04Hey, you know, I'm really nervous about this right now.
- 30:06I'm afraid about this.
- 30:07It's just these forms of fear, because he cares for me.
- 30:10And he's like, I don't need you to hold that burden.
- 30:12Just like, if my son came to me and was like, Dad, are you going to pay the mortgage this month?
- 30:16I'm like, dude, just go and play soccer.
- 30:18I've got the mortgage.
- 30:19It's fine.
- 30:20It's good.
- 30:21Dad, can we get groceries?
- 30:23Buddy, it's going to be good.
- 30:24Just go and play the cross with your sister.
- 30:27And that's what God wants from us is like, these things, you're not in control of them anyway.
- 30:32So just hand them over to me.
- 30:34So I think that's right now, trying to really place me in the right place.
- 30:39which is again tied to not be interested about anything.
- 30:41So it's always been like another verse doing the same thing after you've got it.
- 30:46Awesome.
- 30:47Well, thank you all so much for being here today.
- 30:49I truly appreciate you sharing your story with everybody.
- 30:51It's a miraculous story at that for sure.
- 30:56So thank you.
- 30:57it.
- 30:57Thank you so much.
- 30:58Absolutely.