Discovering Divinity in Diamonds and Design: Tim Gannaway

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https://justtalkingaboutjesus.com/

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In this episode of 'Just Talking About Jesus,' Jan Johnson interviews Tim Gannaway, exploring his miraculous birth story and journey from struggling with early disabilities to a fulfilling career in jewelry. 

Tim shares how his love for science and faith in God intersect uniquely in his work with precious metals. 

Tim explains the spiritual significance of metals like copper, silver, and gold found in the periodic table. 

The conversation concludes with an inspiring story of kindness when Tim helps a homeless woman using his store's electricity.

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Transcript

Jan: Welcome to Just Talking About Jesus. I'm Jan Johnson, a seasoned believer who loves relationships and, you know, just talking about Jesus.

Tim: I learned how to hear from the Lord,

but it wasn't something that happened overnight.

It was something that developed over period of time. And one of the things that really accelerated it was when I decided to study prayer in the Bible. And so I went from beginning to the end.

It took me a long time. By the time I got to the burning bush,

it was like one of those revelation. You know,

prayer is talking to God and listening to God both.

Jan: Welcome, everybody, to this episode of Just Talking About Jesus. I have Jim Gannaway with me.

Welcome, Jim.

So you had an interesting story about yours and your twin brother's births. Would you tell us a little bit about that?

Tim: Yeah. We're identical twins.

And this is what my mother told me. And she doesn't remember everything because they put her out for the birth and she had some medical condition. And I. I don't know what that is, but I was told.

But I don't remember the but.

So her doctor said, listen,

we're going to have to take these babies now or you're going to die.

And so I assume they induced the labor. My mother didn't tell me that, but I assume that's what they did. And when the doctor came out after we were born,

my mother tells me that the doctor told my father, well, your wife's not going to make it. Maybe we can save one of the twins.

And she's 94 years old now and doing well.

And both Jim and I lived, but they didn't take our weight because back in 1951, they didn't have all of the things. Yeah. To help the survival of someone who's born premature.

And it was a Catholic hospital that we're in, St. Joseph's in St. Paul, Minnesota. They put us in an incubator, and we stayed there for two and a half months.

And they estimated our birth weight at two and a half pounds.

And they basically just put it in there. And the nuns prayed and they fed us.

That's what they did. And here's what's amazing. The hospital bill, it was like $350.

Jan: Wow.

Tim: My. My times have changed, haven't they?

Jan: It sounds like God kind of wanted you to be in this world.

Tim: Well, you know, it was a different world back in 1951. Families tended to live in geographical area because mobility wasn't as available as it is today.

And so my mother came from a Lutheran background and my father Catholic background.

So we had both sides of the family living within just a few miles radius of us.

And they were all praying diligently too. And yeah, it's a miracle that we even lived. And the first six years of my life, I spent a lot of time in the hospital.

Jan: Yeah, I bet, I bet. But. And here you are. So you and your brother Jim had an interest in jewelry and gems. How'd that come about?

Tim: Well, when I was in college, I was counselor math.

And one of the reasons I was chemistry or math is because I didn't know how to read. And the reason I didn't know how to read is because of one of the disabilities that I got from being born so early.

When we were first born, until the time I was about five or six years old, I was looking with this, the other eye would go up in my head and if I was looking with this eye, this eye would go up in the head.

That's what kids do when they're young.

But so what happened is that during that time period,

that's the time that from the time that I had my surgeries to fix my eyes so that wouldn't happen,

they had to wait until the eye was fully grown. But during that time, what happens is your brain develops the ability to see close and far and it uses triangulation like this, and you got a more narrow angle, then it's farther away.

So I don't have depth perception and my wife won't let me drive. If she's in the car,

she can see that I'm nervous when I'm doing that because of that. But I'm very cautious.

Jan: Right.

Tim: Driver. Because of it as well. And so I haven't really gotten any accidents.

Jan: So how did you get started? What, what drew you into jewelry?

Tim: Well, well.

Jan: Or precious stones.

Tim: And my advisor when I was in college, he said you're going to have to start taking some of these humanities classes or you're not going to graduate. Which my opinion was the reason I hated the humanities is because you have to read.

And I didn't know how to read. I eventually learned how to read and I read a stack of books like this every year now. But I did that because of my training in science.

What do you do in science? You learn how to solve problems and I learned how to overcome it. The eye doctors couldn't tell me what to do. I discovered it myself and now I read a lot.

But at the time I had about a sixth grade reading level and certainly that had something to do with me gravitating and Having an interest in science and math.

Jan: So now you've got, you've studied Jim. Jim was telling me a little bit about the periodic table and some things that connect with the Bible. What would that be?

Tim: Well, when I got into jewelry,

because that was one of the humanities classes that I took, I had collected agates since I was 5 years old. And I had some cutting equipment and did some lapidary work by the time I was in high school.

And so I saw the jewelry class and I liked it. But I didn't quit loving science and I didn't quit loving chemistry.

And so I'm paying attention to things that most other goldsmiths that were coming up at that time were in the art department.

And I ended up in the art department full time.

Because what I did is my junior year I dropped all my chemistry and math because when I took the jewelry class, I liked it so much I decided to drop my chemistry and math and go into it full time.

But I didn't have money for tools. And so I took the jewelry class for a whole year because they opened up the jewelry lab and the tools are available for students to get their projects finished.

And so they opened it up at 8:30 in the morning,

kept it open till 5:30. And I just treated it like it was my job. I went there every single day and lived in the art department. And that was cultural clash for me and for them.

But when, when I was doing the jewelry after I,

shortly after I became a Christian.

And so I, I looked at it different than someone who, say, graduated from the art department, which is very self oriented. That's the way art is today. It's very self oriented.

And now that I was a Christian, I was moving away from being self oriented because the Holy Spirit showed me my selfishness and my pride. And I didn't think I had a problem with that.

But until the Holy Spirit said, selfishness and pride, what are you going to do with it?

And so it changed the way I looked at things. But I didn't quit loving science.

I still read a lot of science, a lot of science books. But when I was learning to do that, as I was reading through the Bible,

I would see things that theologians might not see,

but a chemist might. And so it influences every thing that we did.

And what I really wanted to do is become a sculptor.

And I made a few when I had the assistance and financial advantage of being able to take a sculpture class. But lacking one rich uncle, I was unable to make it a career.

And this is one that I did. And this was called man before the Fall. And what I wanted to do was I took a piece of rotting wood and the mold off of a living face and put them together to show how the universe was in the creation on earth.

Here was one. And so that's what I was trying to depict in something like this.

But I had to go with jewelry because we started having kids and I had to have a payday.

And it takes a long time to put together a one man show. And so it wasn't realistic. And so I made. I made jewelry. But every. When I studied the diamond, for example,

I found all sorts of things that you don't learn when you take the Gemological Institute of America's acrylic coursework to become a gemologist, because I was a Christian.

And it's the same way with all of the materials that we work with.

Yellow gold is made up primarily copper, silver and gold. And on the periodic chart,

the vertical rows have similar properties. Okay.

And copper,

silver, gold.

Okay. All the other metals are gray.

Some of them have a tinge of pinkishness, some of them have a tinge of blue. But see, gray is the. If you take all your color grands and you melt them.

So now, you know, I did that when I was young,

they end up gray.

And so this row is unique in that copper is the only red element. Metal and silver, it's so white that what I do, I will. When someone new comes to work for us and I'm casting silver before we.

I go and start finishing it and polishing and stuff, I bring it down and they're amazed because it's as white as a piece of paper, a piece of white paper, bleached white paper.

And it's white, white. And then that's. Then there's gold and that's the only yellow metal. And so that's what the kind of thing I would notice that, you know, probably most people in the art department wouldn't notice.

Jan: Yeah, yeah. And did you have a connection to some of those things, to things you found in the Bible, some of those elements?

Tim: Yeah. Here's a ring that we made.

I don't know if it shows up that well,

but the.

In the center,

it's a gold cross and that's pure gold.

And the middle of the ring is pure silver and the borders is pure copper.

Those three metals that we saw were in a vertical row. And the only ones that are colored metals in the metals of all the metals in the periodic chart of the elements.

Jan: Yeah.

Tim: And when you. It's called the Tabernacle ring because when you go into the courtyard, it says it's covered with bronze or brass. Those are translations,

and it's difficult to translate those kinds of things.

But when they say brass, it isn't like they were alloying brass like we do today. They were just melting copper down.

And it was copper. Did it have some other elements in it? Yes, because it came out of the ground and they were not purifying it any more than they needed to to make it malleable and useful to, in this case, cover the altar.

That's in the thing. 

On the altar had four horns. And the priest, once a year on the day of atonement, would put blood on his earlobe and his thumb and his big toe to purify himself so he could go into the holy of Holies and intercede for the sins of the people.

Isn't it interesting?

This is the only red metal. It was blood, the blood of Jesus that did just that, interceded for us.

But this is in the courtyard. This is in the world.

Now, when you go into the holy place in the tent,

the tent was set up, but it had to have standards so that it doesn't fall down. And the standard,

the bases that held up the holy place and holy of Holies were made out of silver. And in the Bible, silver is the medal of redemption. Joseph was thrown into the pit for dead, but he was then sold for 20 pieces of silver.

And isn't it interesting that as the high priest moves into the holy of holies after he's purified himself with the blood of the goat that he enters in, where salvation comes down to the earth.

Comes down to the earth,

and it's pure white. It's the only pure white metal. And it's holding up all the tent and his standards so that the priest could enter into the holy of Holies before the mercy seat of God,

and then he moves into the holy of Holies and everything is covered with gold.

And isn't it interesting that copper will corrode to the core?

Silver only on the surface.

But when you get into the holy of Holies, where there's gold,

gold doesn't corrupt at all, doesn't rust. It doesn't have any kind of tarnishing at all.

Jan: That is fascinating. Yeah. Who would put those things together?

That is a neat, neat situation. So with your business here,

what, your jewelry place, you were telling me a story about a homeless person that was camping outside of it. What happened there?

Tim: Well, yeah, there Was a woman in the van and she was using my electricity because I have a outlet on the side of the building to charge up something in her truck.

And I came in at six in the morning when this was in the winter, so it was pitch black and she was, she was so scared. And I said,

don't be frightened.

You've been here for a long time, you don't cause any trouble. You're a neighbor and so you can come and plug in anytime you want. And if you need anything other help, you can come into the store.

And so I went home and I was talking with my wife about what had happened earlier in the morning with this woman. And my wife said,

I think we should give her $300. What do you think? And I said,

well, that's interesting because that's what I was thinking, $300.

And so we said, well, this must be a word from the lord. And so she made up a nice little card, went to the bank and this is what she told me later.

She said, she said that she went to the bank and we only had like 500 and some dollars in, in the bank. And we had a couple weeks till our Social Security came.

And so she said to herself, well, maybe I should just give her 200.

And she said to herself, no, the Lord said 300.

And a week later the lady came in with a letter and it also had another piece of paper attached as well. And that was a invoice for work,

auto repair work from an auto repair shop. And she said in the letter how she,

her, her man died.

And so someone from another church that I go to or anything, it. They towed her to the, from the place where it broke down to the repair place.

But she said to the, in the letter she explained that she said to the mechanic that she wasn't going to get her Social Security check for a couple weeks and could she write a post dated check.

And he agreed.

And so guess what? The Invoice was for $325.

Thank you, Jesus.

Jan: Isn't that just something Hagga does that just like. Yeah, matches it all up. I think that's part of his sense of humor, right?

Tim: Well, you know,

I learned how to hear from the lord,

but it wasn't something that happened overnight.

It was something that developed over a period of time. And one of the things that really accelerated it was when I decided to study prayer in the Bible. And so I went from beginning to the end.

It took me a long time. By the time I got to the burning bush,

it was like One of those revelation, you know,

prayer is talking to God and listening to God both two way street.

And so now I'm reading through the Bible and seeing prayer in a new light.

And so I learned slowly but surely how to hear from the Lord. And one of the things I learned is just like what happened to my wife when she saw that we only had five hundred and some dollars in the bank is that doubts come and it's like, is this just me thinking or is this a word from the Lord?

So I learned how to extinguish those doubts,

realizing that if it is, if that's what's happening, he's still the King of kings and the Lord of Lords and the lover of my soul.

Jan: Right.

Tim: And so I learned to be a little bit more bold about it, recognizing that yes, I do make mistakes, but I also get to see the miracles that God wants to do through us.

Jan: Did he restore that money in that you gave?

Tim: You know,

I've never even thought about that. I've never even thought about that. Yeah, I mean, I guess it's because I'm in a constant state of God is it's going to take care of me.

Jan: Yeah, yeah.

Tim: And it's, it's not for me to decide how he's going to work. And I just got through the book of Acts yesterday and was reminded how the Lord works and the early church, they were boldly going forward with dangers on every side.

And that's what I see.

There's an older gentleman,

older than me by the way,

came into the store and I'm the chairman and one of the founders of the Story or rescue mission. And he knew that because I had some pamphlets on the counter.

And so he said,

hey, this guy was on the street today and I, I wonder,

should I give him money? He might abuse himself with it. And I said,

why are you asking me? I'm just a man like you. You need to go to the Lord. And he said, well, what do you mean? How do you do that?

And so I said, okay, let's go out in the parking lot so we don't get interrupted. I spent about a half hour to an hour telling him how I learned to hear from the Lord.

It wasn't something that just happened. I learned how to do it and I told him about my experiences. He comes into the store almost on his tippy toes, so excited, about a month later, and he says, why didn't somebody tell me this earlier?

Jan: Because God's timing is perfect, you know, I mean, yeah, but now he knows that he will spread that same message to somebody else. Right. You know, especially since he's excited about it.

You know, when he sees how God answers prayer. Can you think of a time when, you know, you helped provide for this woman? Can you think of a time when God provided for you in any special way?

Tim: Maybe, you know, I don't know. I don't even think like that.

Jan: Yeah.

Tim: Here.

I have this in my pocket, little wooden cross.

And this is a little angel thing given to me.

She didn't say, but probably Catholic,

because I was helping her husband who came in the store and he had fallen down because he had, I think, Parkinson's disease or something. And I was helping her get him up, and she gave me this.

And so I stuff him in my back pocket.

And every time I rob them, I say, thank you, Lord.

Thank you, Lord, for providing for me.

And so I don't think of it on a particular incident like you were talking about.

Jan: There was a time when, I mean, you knew Howard, my first husband, Right. And he had the brain tumor. And we had one time where we were.

Had to been in the summer because I wasn't working. Yeah, I closed the preschool during the summer. Whatever. But at one time, we had one can of beads in the cupboard.

It was like, okay, God, what are you gonna do? Because, you know, I had the three kids and Howard and I, you know, it's like, because we need to eat something besides this, probably.

But if that's all we have, you're going to make sure we're full. So I went out to do some errands, and I came back and somebody had brought two huge bags of groceries and had him sitting on the, you know, bread and milk, eggs, meat, you know, there was,

you know, a roast in there and all this stuff. It's just like.

It's just so.

Because he says he's Jehovah Jireh, our provider, so he does provide, you know, for us.

So, Tim, is there any final thing you'd like to say to our listeners just about who God is?

Tim: Yeah, there is something I would like to say, and that is this. Is that in our country,

in my lifetime,

I was saved in the Jesus movement of the mid-70s,

and our country has moved away from that slowly but surely.

And I've shared the gospel in. In my business all my life,

because that's where I live. It's. It's not about a program.

It's not about whether I have write pamphlet to hand them or something like that. It's just being open to the idea that the Lord is going to send someone who needs to be ministered to.

And I would say,

10 years ago,

you would talk to people about Jesus and they would say, well, where does he live? That's how bad it's gotten.

But in the last two or three years,

it's like, you know, that man I talked about about hearing about Jesus is an example. We have more opportunities to share the gospel and to see God working than the last 20 or 30.

And so I would encourage Christians to learn how to talk with the Lord. When I got done studying the Bible on prayer, my prayer life changed.

And now I know what Paul was talking about when he said, I pray on all occasions because I'm just talking to God, just like I'm talking to you right now, all day, every day.

And. But I have seen a change.

God has done revivals through history because the church has gone astray many times. And it's the Holy Spirit that convinces people of sin and righteousness and judgment, and it's the Holy Spirit that convinces people, a nation, a church of sin and righteousness and judgment and changes the world.

And so that's happening. And so be aware and bold.

Jan: Holy boldness. Right?

Tim: Yes.

Jan: Okay. Well, Tim, thank you for joining me today. This has been a pleasure and what a great words to share with everyone, so thank you.