How To Move Through Painful Transitions With God

Betrayal, disaster, career loss, family crisis, the slow grind of grief, they all create the same gut-level question: why, and what do I do with this pain now? I sit down with Tony Stoltzfus, a veteran Christian coach and author who has spent decades helping leaders navigate painful transitions, to talk about why “try harder” and pure self-discipline often fail when the real struggle is happening in the emotional brain.

We dig into how Jesus uses stories and questions to reach the parts of us that logic can’t reach, including a powerful retelling of Judas through an honor-shame culture lens that makes the betrayal feel painfully human. From there we move into the heart of Christian inner healing: unmet desires. Tony explains how longings like peace, belonging, security, and significance drive behavior, and how sin is often an attempt to fill emptiness. When those desires get handed to circumstances, money, control, or people, we get stuck. When they get handed to Jesus first, real change becomes possible.

You’ll also hear a practical tool we try live on the mic: “praying your desire” using the Questions for Jesus method, plus insights from Job, valley seasons, and what Tony’s work on heaven suggests about a future where evil is no longer even an option. If you want Christian coaching insights, emotional health, and faith-based tools for healing after betrayal, this conversation is for you. Subscribe, share this with a friend who’s in a hard season, and leave a review with the one desire you’re ready to bring to Jesus first.

Chapter Markers

• 0:00
• Welcome To The Fight Within
• 0:33
• Why Painful Transitions Shake Us
• 1:53
• Retiring From The Need For Significance
• 3:12
• Reading Scripture With The Emotional Brain
• 5:42
• Judas And The Power Of Shame
• 13:43
• Desires That Drive Behavior And Sin
• 18:28
• Betrayal Healing And Shared Destinies
• 26:54
• Praying Your Desire With Jesus
• 39:07
• Job, The Fire, And Valley Seasons
• 46:51
• Heaven Where Evil Ends
• 51:41
• Tools, Free Books, And Closing Prayer

https://www.likeahumanbeing.com/

https://www.amazon.com/Questions-Jesus-Conversational-Deepest-Desires/dp/1492177350/ref=sr_1_1

https://www.heavenexperience.net/

https://www.youtube.com/@TonyStoltzfus

Visit www.thesavagepath.com for more on David, his book The Savage Path: A Memoir of Modern Masculinity, and the Savage Path Ministries Corp.

Transcript

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Welcome To The Fight Within

SPEAKER_00 0:00

Welcome to Wrestling with the Inner Man, because the first fight we face each and every day is a fight with our own flesh. Do we listen to our selfish, sinful nature or to our divine nature guided by the Holy Spirit? Your host, David Stevens, is a product of the West Texas desert and energy industry. His design is to inspire and help other men win spiritual warfare. We hope you're ready to rumble because wrestling with the inner man begins now.

Why Painful Transitions Shake Us

SPEAKER_00 0:33

Greetings, wrestlers!

SPEAKER_03 0:35

I've got a question for you listeners out there. Have you ever had to endure a painful transition? Perhaps a gut punching betrayal? Or maybe some catastrophic loss through a natural disaster? It's so difficult to let go of the hurt as we dwell on that single word. Why? Why did this happen to me? Why do these things happen? Well, my guest today, Tony Stoltzbus, has spent twenty-five years training Christian life coaches and coaching professionally, specializing in working with senior leaders in painful transitions. Along the way, he's been through losing his home and belongings in a forest fire, major betrayals, losing access to his network and his life's work, and learning how to meet God no matter what comes his way. His life message is there's nothing that can happen to you that God won't make something beautiful out of. And that's that's a great message. So Tony has launched multiple training organizations, written 21 books, that have sold over 300,000 copies, and has thousands of hours of public speaking experience in multiple countries. He and his wife have been married 39 years and currently living in Red, California. Tony, welcome to Wrestling with the Inner Man. Please uh tell our listeners just a little bit more about yourself.

Retiring From The Need For Significance

SPEAKER_02 1:53

Thanks. Glad to be here. Um more about me. Uh been married 40 years now.

SPEAKER_03 2:00

All right. Happy anniversary, I guess.

SPEAKER_02 2:02

Uh I'm sliding into retirement, trying to figure out. I've been self-employed for 25 years, so retiring is a different, you know, my office is still in my house, and yes. So my current challenge is learning how to live how to not live for significance. Um, two years ago I was in Maui um in this beautiful high road. It's Oprah has a house up there, so it looks down over the island and the sea and the volcano, and I'm walking along enjoying this, and Jesus said, You know, Tony, you live for significance, but there's a whole other life you could have if you are interested in trying. And I was like, Cool, I have no idea what you mean, but so I'm on this journey of learning what I what I sacrificed to for impact and legacy and stuff, and God giving me back some of those things and learning how to be content.

Reading Scripture With The Emotional Brain

SPEAKER_03 3:12

So Yeah, I th it's it's interesting because you know I was uh an energy executive. Uh you know, I'm an engineer by degree, and you know, I retired at the end of uh 2018 because my mom and my brother were both memory care facilities. My brother had alcoholic dementia, unfortunately. My mom was just you know aged. And so, you know, 31 years traveling all over the world and you know, negotiating big contracts with Exxon and Dow and Shell and everything, and it and then you know I decided to write this book and really you know lean into my faith. I've always been a strong Christian, but I just felt like the whole uh agenda that was kind of the humanist worldview, I'll say, instead of a Christian worldview, just there wasn't enough pushback. You know, there weren't enough courageous Christians who were saying, like, wait a minute, not so fast. Marriage has been around 2,000 years. You know, you're swimming in my lane now. And so uh as I undertook this journey, I've had a podcast for five years, and I've just been around some fantastic people like you, and I find it so enriching, and it's really hard, though, to basically daily say, okay, I'm waiting for my instructions, Lord, you know, not be in control when you're used to being kind of a type A, and I I created a nonprofit so that I would be forced to rely on others for the financial support to make it all work. And that's how God kind of confirms that he's behind it, or he might uh withhold, and then I don't. But uh so, you know, most most Bible studies focus on theology and application. You know, to put it simply, we study to know what to believe and how to behave. But when Jesus preached, he communicated with stories, a method directed at the emotional brain, not just the rational. And he was so good at it, and he used questions a lot. But, you know, our Western approach to the Bible makes us into half-brained Christians, renewing our rational brains with the word, but ignoring the emotional brain. And you've done a lot of work in this area. You said after decades of training leaders on how to work with their emotional brains, you began a full-time, three-year journey into how to read scripture visually, which is kind of interesting. It culminates in the book How to Read the Bible Like a Human Being in the Companion Four-Volume Study Curriculum. So why don't you tell us a story and illustrate or demonstrate, you know, what this uh emotional brain in the story kind of uh example, I think our audience would enjoy.

Judas And The Power Of Shame

SPEAKER_02 5:42

Okay. Well, we just did uh I have three online groups that I lead, and we just finished doing Judas's betrayal. So I'll give you an interesting picture of Judas leading up to this. So Judas, in all the lists of the disciples, he's always named last. He's the only Judean out of the twelve, all the rest of them are from Galilee. And so they come back to Judea, and right before his betrayal, the story in the synoptics is of the woman anointing Jesus, you know, and she pours a pound of perfume. So a Roman pound is 12 ounces. So think a Coke can full of perfume on Jesus. And perfumes today are alcohol-based, so they evaporate, but in those days they were oil-based. So think about somebody pouring a Coke can full of oil over top of your head and your feet. Oil would be everywhere. So I think for the whole of Passion Week, you know, when Jesus is standing before Pilate, he smells like a million bucks because he's still got this perfume on him. But anyway, so one of the disciples scolds this woman for doing this. It was a very, you know, women didn't usually come to formal meals at all like this. And this woman comes in and touches Jesus, and you know, women weren't supposed to, in those days, talk to unrelated men on the street. There was a lot of distance between the sexes. So this is really out of the ordinary. And Judas pipes up and he says, Um, you know, why wasn't this given to the poor? Why have you wasted this is a year's wages, you know, you you poured out fifty grand worth of perfume, and now it's gone. And I think Judas expected that Jesus would agree with him, and he doesn't. He says, Stop it. Um, and then he goes, She's done a beautiful thing for me. Wherever my story is told, her story will be remembered. And for the woman, you know, that's a great affirming statement. Think for a minute about how that sounds to Judas. Wherever my story is told, this story of the woman will be told with it. Who's Jesus or who's Judas in this story? He's the jerk. Right. He's the ones that has to get rebuked in public by his rabbi. And Judas is fatally embarrassed, and the next thing that it records that he does is go to the to the priests in the temple and take money for betraying Jesus. So the first century is an honor-shame culture in the Mediterranean. Your your goal in life is to die with the honor that you were born with. And to lose face, to lose honor is a huge thing. You know, think about Asian cultures today or Indian culture or something. That's what the environment was like. So Judas is shamed and goes to betray Jesus. And then fast forward to the Last Supper, there it's a formal dinner, so they're in a triclinium room. Triclinium means three couch room. So there's these three sort of we reenacted this once, and we put um single-bed mattresses in the floor in the U-shape, and we all reclined, you know. Um so they're reclining there, and Judas Judas dips in the dish with Jesus. They had common dishes in front of them for each couch. So Judas is probably close to Jesus, and some people think he's actually in the place of honor at Jesus' left, which would not have been the normal seating arrangement. And in those days, your job as host was to seat people by age and status, and if you didn't, people got really pissed off about it. This was a big deal.

SPEAKER_01 9:49

Right.

SPEAKER_02 9:49

So Judas is in the wrong place, John is in the wrong place, he's the youngest, but he's next on the other side of Jesus. And so a fight breaks out at the Last Supper about who's the greatest. And it's not just a random thing, it's because the seating order has been upset. And the people who are high status, like Peter, apparently is down at the bottom of the table because he has to motion to John across the the room to get his attention. So they're having an argument at the Last Supper about who's the greatest. And if Judas is in the seat of honor, he's the one, he's the brunt of the argument. All the other disciples are saying, What are you doing in the first place? You don't belong there. You should be down here at the bottom. You don't have this kind of status. And Judas is shamed again in that setting. And then Jesus pipes up and he says, Guys, we're not like the Gentile kings. We don't do this kind of stuff. Whoever wants to be great among you should be the servant of all, and whoever wants to be first should be last. Jesus is addressing everybody, but I can see Judas thinking that Jesus is addressing him personally, because he's the one who's up in the greatest place and should be last. And so Judas is shamed again in front of his family and his people, and he leaves and goes to betray Jesus. So Judas' story is this tragedy of he's he's shamed in in front of his public. He's in Judea when the anointing thing happens. He looks forward to a a life of shame in his movement, because this story's going to keep being retold of the woman. And then he's shamed by his brothers in that meeting, and that's I think why Jesus Judas went out and betrayed Jesus. And then he comes back after the betrayal to the priests, and he's hoping for acceptance with the authorities in in his area, Judea's his area, and they reject him and won't even receive the money back. And so Judas has lost his his people, his movement, he's lost with his his region, his country, he's lost with his family. And in those days, your identity was in your group. So if you were alone with no group, you didn't know who you were. And so he goes out and kills himself because he has no family and nowhere to go.

SPEAKER_03 12:30

Um pretty tragic story. But you know, the way that you tell it, and look, this think about it. Men, you go to marital counseling and they say, you know, what are what are the most important things to men? You know, it's like, well, I I gotta be respected. You know, the the wife wants to feel like security, the man wants to feel respected. And when you're disrespected, and then you're chafing about it, and then then it happens again and again, that that compounding, it's uh it is a sad, a sad story for someone who was so close to Jesus and was the disciple. And it does, you know, we were talking a little bit before we started recording about this show, The Chosen, and how they represent these uh situations, you know, where uh you know Thomas's uh betrothed gets killed. We don't know if that really happened or not, but man, I mean it really does. There was that threat, and there were these issues and these emotions, and like you say, it's the emotional brain, and that's what makes a story last. And so how have you used uh that emotional brain training and thinking to help people, you know, when let's say they're struggling with these painful transitions?

Desires That Drive Behavior And Sin

SPEAKER_02 13:43

Well, as a coach, one of the things that I learned fairly quickly is the problem is in the emotional brain. If someone comes to you, they've already tried the simple solution. If it were just a matter of discipline, they would have done it already. Um so they come to a coach when they can't get done what they want to do or they can't figure out what they want to figure out. So and and one of the things about your emotional brain is when you get emotional, you can't think straight. Your emotions interfere with your rational side. So what I learned to do as a coach, a lot of coaching is set a goal, do action steps, you know, it's a real practical thing, and that's good, but practic discipline doesn't work very well for the emotional brain. It's a rational brain tool. And when you use rational brain tools for emotional brain problems, you don't get good results. So our emotions are actually oh, how far should I go into this? So in your heart, you have your your outer person, your mind, your will, your emotions, you have your soul level, where your beliefs, your values, and then under that you have desires. Desires are for things like love, belonging, security, significance, and those are ultimately what drive your behavior. So when I coach someone over a long period of time, usually almost every behavior will come back to one of two or three desires. Everyone has a couple desires that are their big ones. And so what I learned to do is say, okay, the the behavior, the sin, is really a function of emptiness. You didn't get up in the morning and say, I'm gonna blow my life up today. Let me do something really stupid. You got up in the morning and filled this nagging void, and then you did something dumb to fill it. And the beauty of Christianity is that you can meet Jesus and He can fill your desire in your relationship with Him. So, for example, here's a good example. Um, young people who want to get married. Well, what do you think marriage would give your heart? Oh, belonging and someone would love me, and those are all desires that are unmet. So what happens is when we take responsibility for our desires, we go out and do dumb stuff to get them met. So we marry a jerk, we marry an alcoholic, we take the first warm body that comes along because there's this nagging void inside of us. And when you're when you try to fill your desire yourself, it actually turns around and bites you in the butt. So the way of the cross is to say, I have to let go of trying to get my own desires met, and I have to take them to Jesus. And when I do that, he can fill them, and then it's safe for him to give me something in life that could also fill them. But as long as I haven't made that lordship thing to say, my desire comes from you first, anything I do in that area is going to blow up in my face.

SPEAKER_03 17:14

Man, that's so true. You know, you reminded me of a great story I heard from my pastor uh Ed Young when I was at Second Baptist, and he said that, you know, as he got older, he didn't really want to perform weddings anymore because the young people didn't really want to do the premarital counseling, and you know, they had all these uh desires, you know. And so he would sit there and he would look at this couple and he would look at the bride, and she's like thinking in her face, you know, wow, you know, I'll never have to work again. He'll pay for everything, and you know, life's gonna be great. And then he looks at the at the groom and and he's over there and goes, Wow, you know, sex on demand, you know, all my meals cooked and everything else. And he said, You know what you call that? Two ticks and no dog. And I thought that was just a great way of putting it because that's what happens, you know, you're gonna you're gonna end up with disappointment. So so you've pioneered this new method then of personal transformation that relies on this desire-filling encounters with Jesus instead of the long and again often fruitless slog and of denial and you know, self-discipline, because we can't sustain that, you know. And this was hard won, you know, through some very difficult experiences of your own.

Betrayal Healing And Shared Destinies

SPEAKER_03 18:28

The one that feels most visceral to me is betrayal, because that's really the worst when you've really trusted somebody close, you know, like Judas in your example, your inner circle, and then they they betray you, you know, they know all your passwords on your computer, they know your bank account, you know, they know and uh so you had a situation like that where you uh you know were in ministry with someone and and you basically were betrayed from out of your life savings. And you know, can you kind of walk us through how you developed this or practiced it, you know, to try to uh overcome, you know, this painful transition, even without the reconciliation with that individual, you know, that you that you took that to Jesus and you know fulfilled that ministry as as you said on another podcast by taking on, you know, what the joint ministry was, you're just gonna complete it yourself. I thought that was a great way to look at it.

SPEAKER_02 19:26

Yeah, I'll uh I'll be brief about the betrayal itself. You know, we moved across the country to be part of a ministry with a guy we'd known for years, and and in the process early on there we loaned him our life savings, which was supposed to be for a few months, and ended up taking five years to get our money back and destroyed our relationship and destroyed some other things. And uh I saw a counselor for a year off and on, before I finally got to the bottom of I had this belief that my destiny was dependent on the favor of these big leaders that I worked for. And so the desire under that is significance. I want to do something significant with my life. I believed that that getting that need met was dependent on them. And so it was very hard for me to confront this thing. I did a really crappy job.

SPEAKER_03 20:28

Um as we all do, as we all do.

SPEAKER_02 20:30

Yeah, it was it was really hard and painful and conflicting to confront all this because I was losing if I did. You know, if if I stand up to him, I lose my destiny. And I didn't realize this at the time, but that was the equation that was going on in me. And so I had to come to the point of realizing that belief was there and being able to say, okay, Jesus, my destiny depends on you and me alone, and no one can take that from me. And and realizing the desire filled there is, okay, my future is in your hands. It's not in mine, it's not in somebody else's. And I'm gonna remove my my hope from this person or this situation, and I'm gonna move it over here and put it in you. And that's the the dying to self transaction. And we tend to have this thing where it's like, oh, you gotta die to self, but we don't put the second half of it on there. The second half is then Jesus gives you yourself back. Um, and we just want to die to self so we can die. And that's not attractive, and then it's not fun. But the idea is I am empty and I'm trying to fill myself, and I'm gonna let go of filling myself with false things, and I'm gonna accept being filled with. By him. And so that was the initial freedom that came. Um, it was something like ten years later, this was a long journey of healing. And uh one of the things we did in our ministry is we would interview people coming to a workshop about their worst experience in life, and then rewrite their story from heaven's perspective. So this counselor that I met with was coming to one of these workshops, and I wrote rewrote his story. And his was my father was a pastor, he had a moral failure, and the big question was, what happens to his destiny? Because he was in the middle of the restoration process and died suddenly. And so my friend is what happened to his calling? And the story that I wrote for him, which often God will meet you when you're writing these stories, was your dad was called to be influential in his community, and God took the unfulfilled parts of his destiny and gave a lot of it to you. And this man has traveled the world and helped pastors finish well by doing inner healing and helping them get whole in dozens of countries. So the story was when you get to heaven, you're going to be able to go to your dad and say, Dad, I know you failed and fell, but God gave the unfinished parts of your destiny to me, and I've finished them bigger than you ever dreamed. So here, share with me in the reward of your completed destiny. And I've come to believe that all destinies are shared destinies, and that's how God ensures that what He's given us to do gets done. So anyway, I thought this was a great story. Um few weeks later, I'm talking to this guy on the phone, and he asks, you know, where I'm at in my healing journey with this thing that happened ten years ago. And God just spoke to me and said, That story is for you. And if I had stayed there, if that betrayal hadn't happened, all my books would have this other guy's name on them too, and we would have done everything together. But we didn't. And so God has given a big chunk of what we were called to do to me, and I've finished it bigger than I ever dreamed at that time. And I'm gonna get to go to this guy in heaven and say, our relationship fell apart, but God gave this part of our destiny to me, and I finished it bigger than we ever dreamed. So here, share with me in the reward of our shared destiny. And in that moment, our relationship will be everything that God ever intended for it to be, because we'll be celebrating the completion of what we were given to do together in heaven. And every so often I'll be doing something, I'll think, I'm doing this for us. And it's really changed my whole posture toward that to say there is a good ending. There's an ending that makes everything well at the end of all this, and I can look forward to that.

SPEAKER_03 25:18

Man, that's a terrific story because I think that concept of all destinies are shared destinies, that that's really the key that that holds all that together. And you know, to think that in heaven, even though you didn't reconcile with that person, because you know, we've all dealt with uh people with addictions and stuff, you know, there there just have to be boundaries. And uh there you it's not gonna happen this side of heaven, but to hope for that or to imagine it can really give you peace while you're here, and that's really how we experience the presence of heaven here is through those kinds of uh ways of uh processing the pain. And you know, in my own my own life, I was betrayed, uh you know, I was by a divorce, uh I was completely surprised, and you know, and I was like, man, you know, I'm just I'm just never getting married again. I was really angry with women in general and everything. And I had to really look at myself because like you said, if you if you do the self-talk part and you say, okay, I had this, you know, desire to have a a family, children, a wife, a home, and uh, and then I would be the provider and the protector and presider. And but when that was all stripped away, you know, then I was like, man, never again. And then I I realized, well, uh my true desire could never be fulfilled if I just sat there. You're you are 100% stuck, you know, and and you're you're never gonna get out of that log jam if you don't find a way to process through it. So I'm glad that you've helped people, I'm glad that you've developed these tools.

Praying Your Desire With Jesus

SPEAKER_03 26:54

Uh, you know, one of the other tools that you mentioned uh, you know, in your about section was you know the questions for Jesus method, right? Where instead of asking people, you know, for things and outcomes in this world to fill our deepest desires, you know, we invite Jesus to fill them in instead, which is kind of along the same line. You know, any anything further about just how you've uh titled that the questions for Jesus method, is that uh Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 27:20

Yeah, or pray, we call it praying your desire. But that's that's one of my go-to tools for when we identify that you have this unmet desire, we need a method to go to Jesus and and have that touched. And your your emotional brain doesn't change through words and concepts, it changes through experiences. So you have to have an experience with God to fill that. You can't just have a theology of it. That that happens in your rational brain, but your emotional brain is like, eh, I don't believe that.

SPEAKER_01 27:54

Right.

SPEAKER_02 27:54

So what we'll do, you know, let's say somebody wants a car. Their car is old and unreliable, and so I'd be like, okay, imagine that you have that car. You're driving it down the road. What does it give you to have that car? For some people it might be security. I can get to work. Um, I don't have to worry about being stranded. For some people, it might be freedom. I can put the top down on my convertible and drive, you know, whatever. So we identify what the desire is, and then we ask Jesus a question that invites him to fill the desire. And so a question might be, Jesus, I'm thinking about this car and I realize that I'm longing for freedom. Tell me how I'm free in you. Or, Jesus, this car represents security in me, but whether I get it or not, tell me one way that you're my security. And so we invite Jesus to speak to us in the moment in an experiential way, and that touches the desire of your heart. And often, you know, if people have a big hole, they've got to do that over and over again.

SPEAKER_03 29:10

Right, right.

SPEAKER_02 29:12

I'm I'm having it I've experienced for years an empty void here. I need to have a bigger pile of experiences of Jesus touching that part of me. And it's it's terribly simple, and I can teach it to people in ten minutes, but it's incredibly powerful. And the key to it is we're not asking your desire prayers, you don't do anything. But one of the keys to this was realizing all my prayers were about doing. Jesus, what do you want me to do? What's your plan for me to do with my life? Oh, I did something wrong. I'm sorry. We talked about the business of being a Christian, but we never talked about the relationship. Jesus, what do you like about me? Here's something I like about you. Um and when I started praying that way, my percentage of answered prayer went up like, you know, a thousand percent.

SPEAKER_03 30:07

Right.

SPEAKER_02 30:08

And my learning was oh, this is what you want to talk about. All that doing stuff I hear from you sometimes, but when I talk to you about what you think of me and what I think of you, I get an answer every time. Um so it's completely changed the way I pray.

SPEAKER_03 30:27

Yeah, so we're human beings, not human doings. Right. And you know, he asks to be still and know that I am God. And so you made me think about a situation. Maybe you can help me with this. So my mother-in-law is 85 years old. We just had her birthday, and uh she lived with us for five years. She's on hospice, she's staged four C O P D. She's on oxygen all the time, and man, she wants a car bad because she feels that loss of uh independence, and and she's kind of just uh you know, she can't she can't get off of it, you know, and it's it's all she wants to talk about, and it's like you can't you can't drive. It's a it's an illusion, you know. And so if you're dealing with someone who's losing abilities and losing independence, you know, in an end-of-life situation, does that still apply? You know, can you can you ask Jesus? And and I've really debated this because I'm like, I don't know how you know lucid she is, you know, to have that kind of a conversation with her. But if she's got her oxygen on, she's got enough oxygen to go into her brain, she she does. And and a way of like, look, let's go to Jesus because you know what you really want is this, and yeah, you're not gonna find it in the car. I was just wondering if you had any thoughts or suggestions to help us with people, and I'm sure listeners out there who have aging parents are in similar situations.

SPEAKER_02 31:53

Well, I'm gonna one of the things in coaching is that's sort of a rule is you can only talk about the person that's in the room. Um so if I could ask you a little different question. Sure. When you see your mom in that place, what's the longing of your heart for you? Is it painful?

SPEAKER_03 32:15

Is it Yeah, it's more it's it's my mother-in-law because what I see is uh the they're both extremely emotional and they can't converse and they can't meet one another's needs, and so it makes my wife feel very heartbroken because then uh she's feeling tremendous guilt that her mother's heaping on her because she's not doing everything for her.

SPEAKER_02 32:40

Correct. Yeah. What happens inside you?

SPEAKER_03 32:43

Inside me, um I uh there's a frustration with the powerlessness of it.

unknown 32:48

Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 32:49

I can't I can't really do anything to change it. I kind of want to talk to her and try to reason her through the reality of her circumstances and try to get to a point of acceptance. Okay. And that, hey, we'll help you, but you know, you have to accept where you are.

SPEAKER_02 33:05

I'm coaching here. Sure, sure. Hey, man, I this so I want to pull you out of the rational side of analyzing the situation and into the emotional side of I feel powerless. Um if you had the power to fix the situation, what would it give your heart? What would change inside of your your emotional self?

SPEAKER_03 33:29

Well, I think there'd be some contentment in that my wife and my mother-in-law had a restored or healthy relationship where they enjoyed being with one another in the little time that they have left.

SPEAKER_02 33:41

Okay. Does it give you peace? Is that the thing that you're longing for in this situation?

SPEAKER_03 33:48

Yeah, because well, and that that my wife uh is upset and sad, and you know, so I mean, I guess she's more available for me. Maybe it's about me.

SPEAKER_02 34:00

Well, does it give you relationship, belonging, you know? You have to tune into what your heart is lacking.

SPEAKER_03 34:12

It's it's really more maybe I'm more codependent, you know, about my wife. I just really want my wife has had a lot of other disappointments, and you know, and I'm just like, gosh, you know, that guilt, she takes on guilt that she shouldn't bear.

SPEAKER_02 34:27

But we're not gonna talk about her, we're gonna talk about you.

SPEAKER_03 34:30

Okay, well, that's what bothers me. That's what bothers me, because I want to protect, I want to interject, I want to uh uh intervene and and say, no, you know, that's not how that's not how this is going down. So um maybe it's control. It's just I I don't have control. That's what I like.

SPEAKER_02 34:47

Right. And uh And control is a method of getting a desire.

SPEAKER_03 34:52

Right. Right.

SPEAKER_02 34:53

Um So let's just say for the sake of argument that it's peace. Okay. That what you long for is peace is in your heart as you look at your wife, you look at them. The the the guy thing would be to get the peace by fixing it. Right. But instead we can ask Jesus. So Jesus, the the prayer would be, and I'm gonna ask you to pray it. So I'll do it. I'll do it, man. Um so Jesus, I can't I want peace, and I can't get it by fixing this. So how are you my peace in this situation?

SPEAKER_03 35:30

Okay, dear Heavenly Father, I just want peace in a situation. I don't I know I have no power to control it. So how how can you give me the peace that I seek through the Holy Spirit? In Christ's name, amen.

SPEAKER_02 35:49

Okay, now you listen. I'll give you thirty seconds. Listen whatever comes into your heart or mind as you're listening from that prayer. Tell me.

SPEAKER_03 36:00

He just is saying, trust me. Trust me with it, you know, you gotta surrender, and this whole whole situation, you know, is uh part of what we all go through, and that we're gonna we're all gonna die. And you know, this is uh lover.

SPEAKER_02 36:18

So let me yeah, the the we all want to die is going back into your rational self.

SPEAKER_03 36:23

Well, that's I'm an engineer, man. You're a physicist.

SPEAKER_02 36:25

Come on, you're like, we're so oriented toward our rational selves. Right. So let me have you ask one other question. So, Jesus, if I trust you in this situation, how will that impact your heart? And we want to hear him actually say something to you in this moment.

SPEAKER_03 36:51

Jesus, if I trust you in this situation, and I am, how will this impact my heart?

SPEAKER_02 36:58

Your heart.

SPEAKER_03 36:59

My heart. My heart.

SPEAKER_02 37:00

Oh Jesus' heart.

SPEAKER_03 37:02

Oh, Jesus' heart. Um I think he would be pleased. If I trusted him.

SPEAKER_02 37:12

Okay. I got it. Can you put some more adjectives around that?

SPEAKER_03 37:17

Um You know, I don't pray like this very often, so I'm not I I don't I can't say that I have the experience, you know, for the words, but I I I have a close relationship with Christ. I mostly ask for prayers for others, and and I don't ask a lot for myself, so I'm not you know, I'm not used to uh, you know, expecting a response swiftly. And then uh but he would he would be pleased, he would be happy with me, he would be proud of me, he would be uh, yeah, way to go, man. Good job, David. You're finally uh you're finally getting it, and you surrender, and then I'm gonna I'm gonna fulfill your desires and just trust me with those and and I'll take care of your wife and and and your mother-in-law.

SPEAKER_02 38:08

Right. So then what happens for people if you can experience that pleasure of God, you can you can fix yourself in that place as opposed to the anxiety place of oh, what's going on? I can't make her get this. I I want this, I want that, and it helps root your emotional self.

SPEAKER_03 38:31

Yeah, I like it. So thanks. Hey, listeners, there you go. You can do it real time, man. I put myself out there.

SPEAKER_02 38:38

Yeah. So there's a uh mobile app called Questions for Jesus, and it takes every passage in the first half of Matthew where Jesus speaks to a desire, gives you a short meditation, and then there's five questions you can ask him. And it'll play soaking music while you ask, and then lets you journal what you heard. So it's called Questions for Jesus. It's a great tool if you want to try this.

SPEAKER_03 39:02

And it's a it's an app. I'll put it in the show notes. So Questions for Jesus. Okay.

SPEAKER_02 39:06

Yes.

Job, The Fire, And Valley Seasons

SPEAKER_03 39:07

Um going back to the Bible, then, you know, so you mentioned that in the book of Job, there was one thing that Job desperately wanted but couldn't attain, then how did God give it to him? So why don't why don't you give us an example there? Because he suffered a lot.

SPEAKER_02 39:23

Yeah, one of my favorite prayers is God doing me the things I can't do for myself. Um another version of it is, okay, Jesus, I can't change this, so send me the circumstances I need to get it done. Um if you're gonna pray that, you gotta believe that God is good. But Job, Job's problem is not that he's a really good man that bad things happen to you. Job's problem is he's afraid of God. He prays for his kids and offers sacrifices for them continually, is the word that it uses. Not because they did something wrong, but just in case they did something wrong. He's afraid that God is gonna punish him or punish his kids, and so he's constantly doing these ceremonies to make sure he's on God's good side. And I understand Job because my personality is sort of like this. Job is an integrity person, and he believes his integrity is the foundation of his relationship with God. So if he maintains integrity, good things will happen in his life. So suddenly there's this huge surprise, a whole bunch of bad things happen at once, and Job can't find the place where he violated his integrity, and so he's mystified. And then his dumb friends come and tell him he has a problem, and and Job's like, I don't have an integrity problem. I don't understand. Why how could God do this to me? God must be unfaithful, you know. And Job's wife knows what the problem is. She says, Why do you still hold on to your integrity? Curse God and die. And the second half of it is just pure frustration, but the first half of it is discernment. Because Job throughout the book is saying things like, I would rather die than let go of my integrity. And God's like, Well, let's see how close to death we can get before you let go of this thing. But what happens at the end of the book of Job is he comes to the place where he realizes he's totally blown it. You know, God shows up and gives his speech about where were you when I made the world, and Job is like, Oh my gosh. I didn't even realize how off I was. And and at that moment, when Job realizes he's totally blown it, God shows love and acceptance to him. Pray for your friends so that nothing bad happens to them. You're my agent, I'm with you. And Job gets the thing that he longed for but could never attain on his own, which is peace with God without resorting to his own integrity and righteousness. And for me, that's what happened through the season of the fire when we lost our home. That was the fourth most stressful thing in my life that year. Losing everything we owned was fourth. Um and it took a number of years to recover. But you know, it's six years in the past now, and I can say through that thing, God gave me the deepest desire of my heart that I longed for but could never attain, which came through, you know, after this thing, I'd be like, Okay, God, I know I can come to you whenever I want and talk to you, and I know you'll talk back, but I don't feel like talking to you right now. I don't feel like talking to anybody. I feel really betrayed and hurt, and I just want to be in my own little cave.

SPEAKER_03 43:07

Yeah, go to the cave, yeah.

SPEAKER_02 43:09

And Jesus would say, It's okay, trust the process. But walking through that season where I had absolutely nothing and it was okay, brought me to the point of just I know that me and God are good in a way that I've never known it before. We're okay. And it's just not dependent on what I do from day to day, and that has touched a really deep place in my heart. Um and I never would have got there without the tragedy.

SPEAKER_03 43:43

Well, that's fantastic for others to see because that's how they go, Man, I know what he experienced, you know. I want some of that because I want to be able to ride the waves like that. Uh, you know, I had uh another podcast guest on who was uh a pastor. Of a church in New Orleans when Katrina went through, and he not only lost his home completely to Katrina, but also his church and everything. And you know, and he he said, you know, as in fact, we did an episode, it was called Fires, Floods, and Freezes, because out there in California you guys had all those fires, and then we've had the hurricanes, and then in Texas we had the freezes, and it was like, well, in the United States here, we want to buy insurance for everything. You know, we think that we can protect ourselves from any loss or experience, and the rest of the world doesn't live like that. And actually, just with the expense of insurance, I've I've re-evaluated my whole risk envelope. You know, I was like, am I really am I being a faithful Christian, you know, if I'm trying to buy all this insurance or I'm going to trust God? So I think that's a great story.

SPEAKER_02 44:44

Well, we're kind of wrapping if I can toss in one more thing. Sure. If you find yourself in a season like that where everything is going wrong, um, or valley seasons are often kicked off. I wrote a whole book about this called The Calling Journey. Valley seasons are often kicked off by loss of favor and influence or longtime roles or tragedy. Tragedy happens to you. And the key thing about valley seasons is when you're in a productive season, you and God are co-laboring. When you're in a valley season, you are on the operating table and God is doing 98% of the work. So your assignment is not to try to get out of the place that you're in. Your assignment is to let go and to say, here I am, God. However long it takes, whatever you want to do, I trust you. Um I'm not gonna try to get frantic and remove all the pain and change my circumstances, because my circumstances are the thing you're using to shape me. So shape me.

unknown 45:49

Right.

SPEAKER_02 45:50

And if you can address it with that attitude, uh you win your ministry in your valley seasons because God does in you what he's gonna do through you, and your valley seasons are about inward formation. So if you truncate the valley, if you force yourself out of it, if you spend the whole time trying to get back to where you were, what'll happen is at the end of the valley season, you will you will continue to co-labor with God, but at exactly the same level that you went into the valley with. If you allow him to do the surgery, you can come out ten times more effective than you went in.

SPEAKER_03 46:27

Yeah, and that's like just Jesus being uh tempted in the wilderness, and there's I like that book uh by Max Lucato on the anvil, you know, and he says, you know, that's when you're getting you're getting beat on and you're getting put in the fire and uh quenched and you know pretty uncomfortable, but that's the only way you're gonna be this sharp, useful tool. Otherwise you're on the scrap heap and you know, of of no use. All

Heaven Where Evil Ends

SPEAKER_03 46:51

right, Tony. Well now uh, you know, you you've got this latest book, Heaven, Experience the Extraordinary. It's got this beautiful, uh colorful uh front cover, and you know, it it's what first connected is on PodMatch because I had a guest on that had had this afterlife experience and had an unbelievable description, you know, of what he saw, and then he had a second revelation later. And uh we're all very curious about you know what it's really like or what we learn or glean from afterlife stories, and then of course what we can from scripture and revelation. But I think you had a a dream twenty years ago. Why don't you tell us just uh you know what what made you want to try to take on a project like describing heaven? For those of us who are down here and uh I don't know that you have any credentials, you know, they can say, Well, I know what it's like, but I like I like the undertaking.

SPEAKER_02 47:45

Well, I mean I had this dream in my twenties, so forty years ago, and uh ever since I've sort of thought, I want to make a movie about heaven, because if people could just experience it for 90 minutes, they'd give anything to go. The the foundation of the book was that process of rewriting people's stories from heaven's perspective. So the first time I did it, I had 30 people coming to a workshop, and I told them all, I'm gonna interview you about the worst thing that happened to you in your life, and I'm gonna rewrite that story from heaven's perspective. And I've since trained a team and we've done hundreds of those stories. But that first time, I I did 30-hour interviews with people about their worst, the worst thing that had ever happened to them. And then rewrote those stories, and I got in this mode where I felt like I could ask Jesus any question I could think of about heaven and I'd get an answer. Um because I was in this place of faith, stretching myself out and saying, Okay, God, this is gonna fall flat if you don't do something that I can't do. Um but it's a combination of stories of what heaven does with hurt and betrayal and wounds, um, near-death experience stories like your friends, uh, and I was a physics major in college, so um I think that John in Revelation actually saw things that he didn't have words to describe, and I think that modern physics and NDE research and things like that give us words that John didn't have. So the book the whole book happens in heaven, but it's an attempt to say if heaven is more dimensions than earth, what could that look like? Um so I'll give you one for instance. A strange thing about Earth is the physical laws are absolute, but the moral laws are optional. So I can't disobey gravity. If I step off a cliff, I will plummet to the bottom. But I can choose to love or hate. I can be good or I can be a jerk, and it's totally a choice. That's kind of weird. In heaven, it's actually the reverse of that. The moral laws are absolutes, they're hardwired into heaven. So it's impossible to sin in heaven. I used to wonder when I was a kid, you know, if I get to heaven and I do something wrong, well, they kick me out. It's impossible to do anything wrong because there are no wrong choices available in that universe. But the physical laws are optional, so you can fly. Um you can rise up above the ground like Jesus did when he ascended to heaven, you can walk through walls like Jesus did on earth. So things are accessible to you that never were on earth. But one thing that's not accessible to you is evil. Because in the new heaven and the new earth, evil actually ends. Um, the description of it in Revelation is her gates will never be shut. And what that meant to an ancient person is at night you always shut the gates of your city to keep out the wild animals and the invaders and the marauders. If your gates are never shut, that means there's no external threat. There's nothing out here that could hurt us. So I think Revelation teaches us that evil actually comes to an end, and we will live in a heaven where there's no possibility of evil.

SPEAKER_03 51:34

Man, it sounds awful good, man. I'm ready to put your ticket, you know. So well uh I've really enjoyed

Tools, Free Books, And Closing Prayer

SPEAKER_03 51:41

our conversation. Tony, you know, where can folks go to to learn more about your new book? And uh, you know, you got a website or you know, and then we'll we'll also put in the show notes about the uh the app.

SPEAKER_02 51:51

Well, you can find all my books on Amazon. Just search for Tony Stahlspace.

SPEAKER_03 51:57

Spell that.

SPEAKER_02 51:58

Spell that uh S-T-O-L-T-Z-F-U-S.

SPEAKER_03 52:02

Okay.

SPEAKER_02 52:02

It means Proudfoot in German for some reason. I have no idea why. Um there's a website for the Heaven Book, HeavenExperience.net. Um, there are videos up there that go with the different chapters of the book that are free. Um The Heaven Book, we also purchased several thousand copies to give away to people who are spiritual seekers or are grieving loss. So if you read the book and you like it, you can fill out a little five-minute forum on the website and send it in, and we will send you free books to give away to people you know who are seekers or are suffering. So that's available to everybody. The only thing is you just have to read the book and you gotta agree you're gonna have a conversation with the person you give it to about it. Um there's a website called likeahumanbeing.com that has the Bible study stuff, and there's a ton of videos and things up there that you can access as well.

SPEAKER_03 53:04

Um Yeah, I think the reading reading the Bible like a human being would was really good. I think that to exercise that, you know, besides watching the chosen, you know, is is something that we all should strive to do and then to disengage, you know, so much from screens, you know, for everything else, and try to uh what I do is I, you know, I have a nice uh patio and a pool, and I love going out, you know, in the evening and uh you know, I have these wind chimes, and you know, depending on how windy it is, I hear basically a translation of moving air into a sound, an audible sound, and birds, and you know, to me, I really feel God's presence in nature, you know, and that's where he seems to talk to me. And so uh I just love what you're doing, uh your books. Uh thank you for giving me a little free coaching session here on my mother-in-law situation, and uh I'll uh I'll wrap us up in prayer. Dear Heavenly Father, we just thank you for Tony and for uh the glimpses you know that he's giving us into what heaven might really be like, you know, where there is no evil, where the gates are open. And uh we should we should dwell on that. That's in uh Philippians 4 8, where it's just whatever is lovely, whatever is beautiful, whatever is good, whatever is praiseworthy. Let's let's dwell on those things. And uh and I thank you for the books that Tony has written so that we can do more of that, because fear is a strong motivator and it is utilized at every corner and turn in our world today to try to get us to buy insurance or to do something. And so we just uh ask that we would surrender to you and uh utilize these tools. And we just thank you for Tony and bless him and the rest of his work in Christ's name. Amen.

SPEAKER_00 54:51

Thanks for listening to Wrestling with the Inner Man with David Savage. We believe the winners in this ring courageously follow God's word, loves and protects God's women, excels at God's work, and betters God's world with his children. For information, reach out to David at David at the SavagePath.com. That's David at the Savagepath.com, or visit his website, thesavagepath.com. Tune in next time as Wrestling with the Interman tackles more tough topics to train up a generation of better men.