Welcome back to the Christianity and Business Podcast, an initiative of the RTW Dunham College of Business at Houston Christian University. I'm your host, Darren Shear, and this is a show that helps Christian business leaders to integrate biblical values into business. On today's episode, we're joined by Ed Rush. Ed is a fighter pilot, uh, I should say a top gun uh fighter pilot, card-carrying member of the Million Mistake Club. Um yeah, just what we want to hear about our our uh American fighter pilots is they're in the Million Mistake Club. Something tells me you've you've probably made fewer mistakes. But, anyways, despite failing kindergarten, Ed graduated from Top Gun. Um and despite typing like a chicken on uh amphetamines, he says, uh, he's written several best-selling books, including the one we're going to talk about today, God talks how to have a friendship with God, even if you've made a million mistakes. Um, as we were talking before, he's into fly fishing, which is just a great sport. And he's got a bearded dragon, something else that we have in common. And the bearded dragon's name is appropriately Smaug for those um uh Lord of the Rings and Hobbit fans. His superpower is showing entrepreneurs how to use their messages to change the world by creating more income and impact. And his mission is to connect you with God and let him do the rest because, frankly, you got this. Ed, welcome to the Christianity and business podcast.
SPEAKER_00What's up, Darren? Awesome to be here. Really appreciate the initiative and what you guys do. So, yeah, looking forward to the conversation. Let's let's have some fun and empower some folks to you know put the throttles in Afterburner and really accomplish your goals and dreams and missions and change the world because it needs changing.
SPEAKER_01Same here. Yeah, yeah. And you know, a lot of times what I do is I ask the questions that frankly I want to ask on this show. So the first one I'm gonna ask is how'd you get the call sign head?
SPEAKER_00Yeah. So uh so the first thing you should know about military call signs is unlike the movie Top Gun, uh, they say when you join the military as a pilot, they say the best you can do is break even with a call sign. So you're not gonna get Maverick or Goose or, you know, Iceman. Uh you're gonna get something like my my buddy uh in my last squadron, his name was his call sign was Torch, uh, which sounds amazing until you realize that he locked his brakes on the runway and they caught on fire. And that nickname makes fun of his biggest, dumbest uh mistake. I have another friend of mine named Skip. Uh Skip flew too low one day, almost crashed his airplane into the ground, bounced the tail of his airplane off the ground and flew back into the air. Uh, one of the only people I knew that actually survived hitting the ground. And of course, now his call sign is Skip, right? So it's never good. It's never good. And half of the call signs I can't even mention on this podcast, they're because frankly, they're vulgar. Uh, but uh my original call sign was big head. That's because I have a big head. It it requires a big helmet. You and I are on video. My helmet is actually sitting right behind me on the shelf uh as we're talking to each other. And that just got shortened to head, which conveniently connects to head rush, which you know is what happens when you lift weights too fast or you know, uh sit up too fast. And that's it. It's not even that interesting. That's why I don't really talk about it that much. But uh, I appreciate you asking the question. Keep asking questions no nobody else asks, because very few people ask me that one.
SPEAKER_01Yeah. So, well, one that I'm I'm always curious about when we bring guests on the show is uh is when did you first realize God wanted to be involved in your work in the marketplace?
SPEAKER_00Yeah, so it's it's interesting. We have this categorical system in the church. Uh and that that category system, by the way, doesn't exist in in the Bible. Like if you read the Bible and you have a category brain, like I know you're you're a graduate of seminary, uh, and I went to seminary for a full two credits of 120 credits, just so you know, Darren. So um which credits were those? I did a class on uh Jonathan Edwards, actually, and I wrote a wonderful paper on one of the early reformers. Uh, you know, Jonathan Edwards gets is the is the sinners in the hands of the angry God, uh, but really a wonderful grace-based preacher, he just got famous for that like one sermon. Right.
SPEAKER_01So that class was the straw that broke the camel's back. You're like, that's it.
SPEAKER_00That was, I was like, forget, forget this. But anyway, if if you're if you're trying to learn scripture from a categorical system, it's gonna blow your mind. I mean, the Bible moves from this some random stories in Joshua and Judges that frankly, some of them don't even make any sense to like another conclusion where you can't figure out why did that exactly happen. Well, stories work that way, and real life works that way. And frankly, I lived in an in a sphere where I thought, like, okay, the church stuff was over here, and the and I had actually written a Christian book at this time, and like the family stuff was over here, and the spirituality stuff was over here, and like way over here was like this business thing. I actually had a pastor once tell me that business was a necessary evil, um, which I thought was I I think is ironic now because he had a lot of money coming into the church from business people. I was like, You're taking money from evil? You know, wait a second, hold on now. Um, and then all of a sudden, I was sitting in my chair. I actually have this chair sitting in my office uh that's just a reclining chair. It's where I sit and pray and read and just talk to God. And I had this process at the time, this is about 10 years ago, of asking God questions and getting answers. And I had this very seamless, very simple approach towards having a conversation with God. And one day I was sitting in my chair and I said, I'm gonna, I'm gonna pray today for an hour. And Darren, I'm a marine, right? So I'm serious and disciplined and focused. And I'm like, I'm gonna do this for an hour. And much like you may have experienced, I sat down and prayed. And about 10 minutes into praying, my mind began to wander. And what was happening that day is later on that day, I had a very significant deal discussion that I had to have over the phone. That deal, by the way, was a it turned into a six-figure deal. Okay. So it was a very important conversation that was happening later that afternoon. And my mind was wandering to that very important discussion. And all of a sudden, I'm like, be disciplined. You're praying. And I brought my mind back to praying and I focused again on God, and then my mind began to wander. And I was getting frustrated. I'm like, come on, man, you were gonna pray for an hour. It's just an hour. Jesus said, Could you not tarry with me for an hour? Like I'm starting to be guilty now. And then all of a sudden, boom, like a lightning bolt, it dawned on me that it was God Himself who was bringing that business deal into our conversation together. What I realized at the time is because the business deal was important to me, it was important to God. And he was willing, in a sense, to partner with me on that discussion. And so now when I pray, like this morning, I went for about an hour and a half walk, and my walks are conversations with God, but they go from everything to family and life and just the walk and the trees to business to our conversation today. And and what you what I realize is that God is a wonderful friend and he is an extremely effective partner if you're willing to let him partner with you in your business. In the church, up until recently, the church is doing a lot better about business now than it used to, but in the church recently, uh up until recently, the only sermons about business were either about giving or not screwing it up. The message was like, Don't mess it up out there in this evil world. Well, the truth is, business is what changes things. You look at any historical problem, famine, uh, business problem, innovation issue challenge. God solved those challenges almost every time through a business or an entrepreneurial uh solution. You and I are looking at each other on Zoom. That's an entrepreneurial solution. I'm looking into a camera, speaking to a microphone, my iPhone sitting right here. Now, albeit a lot of those tools were created by people who don't know God, even so, God still partners with people to create innovation because he wants to see the world move forward. And so that pastor who said business is a necessary evil had no clue what he was talking about. What he should have said is business is necessary. The only reason why the world continues the way that it does is because great entrepreneurs and business owners. So, yeah, I'm passionate. I'm passionate about business. And by the way, I'm passionate about business because God is. God loves partnering uh with business owners and entrepreneurs. And frankly, it is the new horizon for the church, in my opinion.
SPEAKER_01Yeah. I mean, another way to say business is a necessary evil is to say life is a necessary evil. Yeah. You know, like that's where all the people are. I mean, that's where, at least in America, that's where 85% of us work in for-profit companies and around the world. It's a much higher percentage of the working population is working in business, you know.
SPEAKER_00And here's the beauty too of the of the economic transaction. So we live in a world where people are trained through high school and college that somehow our economy is built on evil principles. Okay. But I want you to think about this for a second. So I have people, I mean, I pray for people all over the world. We're going to talk in a little bit about this book, God Talks. I have the opportunity to hear thousands of stories and to hear people's prayer requests and some of their deepest, darkest secrets sometimes I don't even want to hear, but people share with share with me all the time things that are happening. And I will often have very well-meaning, very good, Bible-believing people who will come to me and say, Ed, will you pray that God would give me a supernatural release of my debt? And usually I say no. I will not pray for you for that. But what I do pray for them for is I pray that God would give them a natural release of their debt. And here's why. Let's say you're an entrepreneur or a business owner. If you create a product or a service or a podcast or you share a book or a message, you'll get financially remunerated for that message. So, like when I go speak as a public speaker, um I'll get paid $7,500, $10,000, $20,000 to go do a talk. I get paid for that. But the people who are receiving my talk, they get the benefit of my talk. So we both win, right? When I buy an iPhone, I get an iPhone, which is what I wanted. Apple gets what they wanted, and their designers get what they wanted, and their employees, employers get what they wanted. When I'm standing here on Zoom, I've got a subscription to Zoom just like you do. We're getting what we want. Zoom's getting what they want. None of us are complaining about the fact that Zoom charged us money. Why didn't Zoom make it free? We just used it because we made a sound financial transaction. And I will tell you, this is the way the world is blessed. So when God came to Abraham, he said to him, Abraham, you are blessed to be a blessing. There's a verse in scriptures that says, Cursed is him who withholds grain. And the next line said, Blessed is him who sells it. Now, the normal sermon would go like this: cursed is him who withholds grain, blessed is him who gives it. That's not what it says. It says, Blessed is him who sells it. You see, even in the verses like in Proverbs, it's saying that there is glory, there is beauty in this financial transaction. Listen, the moving of resources and the moving of money is honoring to God. And it helps create and build societies. It creates stability. I could go through, I could talk about this for hours. If you look at life in the 1300s, for example, people were interested in two things. Number one, safety because there were armies all over the place killing each other. And number two, food. There was no innovation. There was no moving forward of music. If you're a, if you're, for example, a music historian, you know that basically for about 800 years, nothing happened in music other than plain chant music over and over and over and over again until the Renaissance when all of a sudden things began to change. Well, the reason for that was because the governments had become so corrupt and so institutionalized that there was no creativity because everyone was worried about their safety. Well, listen, we live in a place where we've got this massive creativity. We've got a lot of freedom still at this very day to be able to create and to be able to sell and to be able to consume and to be able to buy the things that you want and create the things that you want. We live in an unbelievable world, and it's good for you, and it's good for me, and it's good for the economy, and it's all made possible by the blessing of God in business. That becomes a blessing.
SPEAKER_01Yeah. And Deuteronomy 818 is one of your favorite scriptures. Um, why don't you kind of expound on that and how that that ties in?
SPEAKER_00Yeah. So not only is it my favorite verse, I put it on my license plate. I bought this, I bought this collector's edition Corvette and I put it on my license plate. I used to have people honk and be like, great verse, you know, as they as I drove by with the top down, which I always thought was uh very funny. So uh Deuteronomy 8.18 says, You will remember the Lord your God, for it is he who gives you the power to get wealth. Okay, so let me just boldly say this is the reason why I don't pray and ask God for money. Okay, now don't turn the podcast off. Don't call me a heretic just yet. I'm gonna explain what I mean by this. But one of the things that God has shown me about the way money operates is it's very different than the way you think it operates. We think if we just pray hard enough and if we're just obedient enough and we're just good enough and we just give enough, God will then open up uh like his you know pocketbook and start doling out an allowance or something like that, like he's your you know dad. Here's the way money really works. And I'm gonna use this example, like for example, I've got I have two boys, I have four kids. Um I have a I have a 17-year-old, a 16-year-old, a 14-year-old, and a four-year-old. Uh, and I always tell people I do know what causes that. Um, so and it's the same wife, by the way. People always like, second wife, right? I'm like, nope, same wife, 18th marriage. So uh, so um anyway, for those of you who have been married for a while, you know that joke. Anyway, so I have two boys, uh, they're 16 and 14. They live in the same room. Uh, and you know, I love my boys. Like, we love hanging out. And one of the things that we like to do is play golf and eat sushi together uh on the same day. And so if my boys came to me and said, hey dad, can we go play golf and eat sushi this Saturday? Well, that's a request that's within my power to grant, right? So if so if I say yes, we're gonna do it, man. We're gonna roll, make this happen. And if I say, hey guys, no, I'm gonna be gone this weekend, well, then we're not. In other words, without me, they're not gonna play golf or eat sushi. So it's up to me to say yes or no. But what if my boys came to me and said, hey, dad, we we love you. And I said, Man, I love you guys too. And they said, Dad, you are a great father. And I'm like, I know, but you're great kids too. I love you too. And they're like, Dad, we just honor you. And I'm like, well, thank you for saying that. Well, now what do you want? And they go, Well, what we really want is our room to be clean. And I said, Well, guess what, guys? If you want that room to be clean, here's a mop, here's a dustpan, and some, you go, you go because it is within their power to grant the request that they just asked of me. And when it comes to money, a lot of people go to God and ask for money. And God says, I've given you the power to get wealth. That's what Deuteronomy says. So you're asking God, God, I would like the power to get wealth. He says, I've given you the power to get wealth. You say, but God, I want money. He says, I've given you the power to create money. He's given it to you. So I don't ask God to give me money or resources. I tell I ask God for the wisdom to be able to understand the conversations to have, the interactions to have, the strategic alliances to have the right team members to bring on board and the wrong team members to keep off board. I ask God about the events that I'm having and the books that I'm writing and the projects that I'm doing and the emails that I'm writing because he's given me the power to get wealth. Now I just want wisdom and execution. I want good consultants and advisors to come alongside of me and give me ideas that I can begin to implement. That's what I'm asking God for. It's based on the foundation that he's already given me the power to get wealth. My job then is to simply go out and get it. And remember, I said God's a partner, all those questions I just showed you that I'm asking. And essentially I teach business owners how to ask questions to God and get answers, right? And so all those questions, team member, promotional questions, website questions, I'm going to God to ask for wisdom and strategy on those questions. Not because I'm pleading with him for money, because he's already given me the power to get wealth, but because I'm partnering. He's my partner, right? He's like my business partner. Like with any other partner, I would go be like, hey man, what do you think about like doing an event in May? Oh, May, May's gonna be awesome. We should definitely do an event. Like that's the kind of partnership that I'm talking about. And it's a radical shift from the way that we approach almost anything uh in the church. And by the way, it requires a shift in how you see God the Father. If you, you know, Jesus says, My sheep hear my voice. Well, look, if you're looking at yourself like a sheep all the time, you're gonna act like a sheep. Jesus also said, uh, you're my servants. But if you act like a servant all the time, you're gonna only get servant kind of things. Jesus also said, I call you friends. God also considers you his partner. God also said you're his lover, which is super weird. If you're a guy, you know what I mean? Like there's a lot of things that are happening there. You're welcome to relate to God however you you desire because he's given you all these options. And a lot of times when it comes to business in life, I choose partnership and friendship, which is literally why the title, subtitle of the book is How to Have a Friendship with God.
SPEAKER_01Yeah.
SPEAKER_00Even if you've made a million mistakes.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, you know, and another great scriptural example of that is Solomon. You know, one of the greatest ex demonstrations of his wisdom is God says, Ask anything you want, you're gonna get it. And he says, I want wisdom. And I mean, that's exact uh he knew this scripture, you know, he knew that God wasn't gonna give the uh wasn't just gonna give the handout of here's everything on a platter for you, but here's the wisdom, here's the guidance on how to get where I want you to go.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, that's money right there, man. I love that.
SPEAKER_01So, what are the questions that we need to ask God regarding business?
SPEAKER_00Yeah. Okay, so all the ones that I just mentioned, so I I I'll just I'll just say it this way one of the best ways. Okay, so let's go back to my my son, my 16-year-old son. Well, my 16-year-old son is starting to move from sort of like doing whatever his dad says to sort of like asking his dad's advice. My daughter, who's about to turn 18, is is about to consider moving away to college. In that moment, I'll be less into the day-to-day involvement in her life. I'll and I'll be more of an advisor. And in fact, I'll be more of a friend in a lot of ways to my son or to my daughter as they mature. So maturity is the goal. Um, emotional, spiritual maturity is the goal. I have a four-year-old who who, you know, we tell her when to go to bed. I have an 18-year-old who goes to bed or 17-year-old who goes to bed kind of whenever she wants to, right? That's the difference in maturity. And maturity is the direction and the trajectory that God uh wants you to go in. So last summer, I was doing a God talk, which is basically my term for a conversation with God about your business. And during my God talk, I was preparing uh Darren for an event. So I had this big event uh that was happening up in Oregon. Maybe 300, 350 people were coming to an event that I call God Talks Live. And as I was preparing for this event, I sat down before the Lord and I said, God, this event is your event. And he said, I give it back. Which kind of surprised me because when I said, God, this event is your event, it sounded really spiritual. Like I was kind of patting myself on the back for being so spiritual as to, you know, it says, you know, offer yourself as a living sacrifice. I'm offering my event to God. I'm laying it before him, like I was taught to do. And I said, Lord, I'm I don't think you understand. I'm gonna give you this event. This is your event. I dedicate it to you. And he said, Well, I'm I'm gonna give it back. And I said, God, um, I'm giving you this event. You know how you always ask to like offerings and that sort of thing. And he he said, I give it back. And Darren, we did this for 20 minutes. I don't know if you ever had a conversation like that with God before, but we we went back and forth. And I was like, God, I don't think you understand, which is a dumb thing to say. You should never say, God, I don't think you understand, right? I'm like, God, I don't think you understand. This is your event. And finally, he broke through that conversation and he said, Ed, this isn't not my event, this is your event. This is your event to teach these people who are coming in to hear from me. And so therefore, it's also my event. But he said, it's also their event because Ed, if you don't show up, there's no event. And if I don't show up, there's no event. And if they don't show up, there's no event. And so what I saw was this like triangle. And it was actually this partnership. God showed me this event is not my event, this is not your event, this is not their event, it's our event. This is a strategic partnership between me and you and the attendees. We are doing this together. And let me tell you, the moment I saw that, my mind blew up in an understanding of what God does in the world. The book that we're going to talk about is called God Talks. That book was not my book. It wasn't God's book, it was our book. We're together, we're partners on this. And so the people that he's introducing me to and creating opening doors for, it's because he's interested in this book and it's because I'm interested in this book. See, we're partners on this together. And that's the way I view my business. I view my business like a partnership between God. So I ask God questions about hiring. I ask questions about dates. I ask God questions about the things of my day. There's a tool in the book I call downloading your instructions for the day. Part of my early morning routine is to sit with the Lord, even if it's five or 10 minutes, and simply download the instructions that he has for the day. By the way, if you're a to-do list person and you're stressed because you feel like you don't do enough, the antidote to that problem is downloading your instructions for the day. So the answer to what I asked God is it's like literally almost everything. And that's because I'm essentially in and out of a constant conversation with God. Paul said, pray without ceasing. I always thought that meant like be on your knees doing like our fathers and stuff. That sounds really hard. It sounds like why wouldn't why it doesn't even sound interesting. But what I understood now is Paul Paul was a partner with God in the work that he was doing, and he was constantly having this on. Ongoing conversation with God. Open door here, close door here, speak to this person here, heal that person here. And it was a partnership more than it was him just following a bunch of instructions. And it was a friendship. And here's the interesting thing: in a partnership and a friendship, you don't always have to do what the person says. You can have a conversation about that. That's also interesting, right? Sometimes God will say, uh, here's the direction. And I'll go, ah, but what about like this? And we'll have we'll start to change the strategy as we go. I don't understand how that works, by the way. But if you look biblically, Abraham did that with God. He had a conversation that began to change the things that God said. Look, I know God is perfect, his will's like how does that work? I don't know. God is happy to relate to us like a friend or a partner. That's that's the that like there's a hard theological question right there. But I'm just telling you the way it works.
SPEAKER_01Yeah. Well, it is a hard theological question, you know, because I think you could you could trace so many of the major points of disagreement throughout church history back to this one issue where and the way I think about it is basically what you're saying, where on one end you have extreme presumption, where if it's to be, it's up to me. And and there's a lot of gurus that kind of teach that, um, where God is just it is it's like a deist idea, if you're even you know believe in God, that God just sort of set everything in motion and then took off and left us to our own devices. Um, but then the the way other extreme is is fatalism, where and there's you know, certain church traditions that really hold to this this idea, this concept of God's sovereignty where we're essentially robots and everything is predestined, pre-programmed, so on. Uh, but you're talking about something that is it it almost sounds like sort of a hybrid.
SPEAKER_00Yeah. And let me just go right at it and just make a really bold statement. The argument, the historical church arguments were based in an image immature men, immature and small men having immature and small conversations about a really big God. Like, who do we think we are to be able to put God in this little circle over here, like so we can understand him? We're talking about the eternal, right? The best evidence I have for this is Paul, when he wrote Romans, which you know, Romans is like the theological treatise of the Bible, right? And Paul goes through this whole discussion in Romans 9 about uh essentially about election, predestination, and he talks about how Jacob was uh loved and Esau was hated, like super weird before they were born. Come on, like how does it even happen, you know? And he was and he was talking about Israel and how they were cut off, but how they're being chosen back in. And then the decisions they made, and Paul brings like free will into the conversation, and now everyone's confused because he was so over here in this category, which makes a lot of sense. And then he jumped over to the other guy's camp, and that made sense to the other people, but not to these people, and now they have nothing to argue about. And then at the end of Romans 11, Paul just like throws his hands up and goes, Oh, the depths and the riches of the wisdom of God, how unsearchable his judgments, his ways beyond finding out. It's almost like in that moment, Paul just ran out of words because there were no more words, because God is that big. Okay. And so the answer, there's two answers. Number one, it's both. And number two, it's God. So the idea that we're gonna be able to figure this out is unbelievable. That's why I say it's immature and small men. And I, and by the way, I don't mean to call like John Calvin and like and like uh, you know, John Huss and Martin Luther small men. Uh a lot of their followers were. But what I am saying is those are small discussions about a big God. Come on. So, so so so there is a there is a wonder and a mystery. And you know, like, are you married, Darren? Yeah, okay. So, like anyone who's been married knows you don't do like formulae, like the marriage books that are like formulaic, they might work in the first year or two of your marriage, but you throw that stuff out the window about like people change, you know, women change, you know, guys change, life changes, kids come into the picture. It's a very complicated thing that requires maturity, it requires clear thinking, and it requires a connection to God. And if you're for if you're really formulaic about this and you're like step by step about it, that's the kind of stuff like the the things what we call discipleship in the church, that thing where you meet on Tuesday morning at the diner and like talk about the sin you're not supposed to do, that's entry-level stuff, man. That's like first year kind of stuff. If you're still doing that 20 years into your Christian journey, you miss the miss the boat. If you're still doing formulaic step by step, again, nothing wrong with seminaries, but by nature, seminaries create systems that are step by step. There is a there is a um a whole class called systematic theology, which is by the way, is impossible. There's nothing systematic about theology, right? There's there's not, okay. You try, you just start with God and start there. And the moment you go, God is eternal, everlasting, all-knowing, all-powerful. You just broke the whole system. The system broke. How are you supposed to do that? You know, Marvel does a better job at this than the church does, you know. At least they're talking about multiverses. Anyway, I'm like way off the topic here. What was well, the question was like, I mean, yeah, I mean, you know, like so I'll just wrap it up there at Marvel.
SPEAKER_01Yes, it's all that just everything is clear now. Um, yeah, but it's it's this idea of we're co-laborers with Christ, and the and the Bible talks a lot about that too. So, you know, there's there's apart from me, you can do nothing. Um, but I think we can take that to mean we're supposed to be completely out of the yes, or we're crucified with Christ. Like it's nevertheless we live, we're alive in Christ, but there's still that um that co-laboring aspect. There's there's a a story I heard, I don't know if it's true or not, but I'm just gonna tell it anyway. But supposedly it was after a Stephen Curtis Chapman uh concert, and he was walking off the stage, and I guess it was the Usher or somebody said, he said, Oh man, that was that was incredible. And then Stephen Curtis Chapman goes, Oh, it was it was all God, brother. And he goes and this usher goes, Well, it wasn't that good. Wasn't that good, yeah. That's good. So, but that's the that's the extreme that we go to when we think about doing things for God or and with God. It's not just doing it for God, it's doing it with God, right? And so we're we're partnering, not where we just totally shut down, but where we uh where we're partnering with him, and that's the kind of friendship that he's looking for, right?
SPEAKER_00So there's a verse I was just looking for the actual reference. Um, Paul says, by doing good, seeking glory, honor, and immortality. I stood before a group, um, and by the way, they were believers. And I said, How many, how many of you agree that seeking glory is a good thing? You know, no one raised their hand. I said, What about honor? Uh, and a couple people raised their hand. I'm like, what about immortality? Like most people raise their hand. And I said, You know, Paul said, While doing good, seeking glory, honor, and immortality. He spoke as though that was that was a good, godly thing to do, to seek glory. You try that. You try that like in the Sunday uh sermon. And by the way, all the things I say about the church, they're not critical, they're just debriefing. Okay, as a fighter pilot, we always look at the things that we're doing great. I'm a member of the church, right? We look at the things we're doing great, we look at the things that we need to improve on, and these are some things that we can improve on. Not every church, there's some pastors that totally nail this, okay? But the idea is most people, and by the way, this is another topic altogether, but I mentioned small immature men and I mentioned small immature arguments. Most people read what Paul said in Romans 12, 3. Don't think of yourself more highly than you ought to think. And they read into that, think of myself really small and really lowly. But when Paul says seeking honor, glory, and immortality, what he meant, because I know the Greek, see what he meant was seek honor, glory, and immortality. Okay, I don't know the Greek, I'm just playing around. Um, the point there is the way that the Bible writes and speaks, like when when Samuel spoke to Saul, Samuel said, uh, even though you were small in your own eyes, the Lord has made you king over Israel. That was not a compliment. He wasn't complimenting Paul Saul on his humility. He was comp he was rebuking Saul because he didn't know who he was. He was the king of Israel before the Lord, the nation that was created to be to be blessed, to be a blessing. And he's the dude that's hiding behind the baggage or like screaming at people, like, you know, because he's his his ego is so big because he thinks of himself so small. Think about the juxtaposition of that uh in just a second. And the antidote, by the way, the antidote to that is to see yourself exactly as God sees you. And God sees you amazingly huge. Okay. You're a son or daughter of the king. For goodness sake, you are made in his image. You understand how amazing that is. Clearly, you don't. Neither do I. That's unfathomable, right? You are created with a purpose and a calling, and you're going to do it once you get connected to God. And literally, my entire mission right now is at the end of that bio that you just read, is to connect people to God in a conversation and let him do the rest because he's totally got this. And dude, I've seen first of all, I've seen miracles, legitimate miracles. But more than that, I've seen atheists and Buddhists and Hindus and skeptics and agnostics sit down at an event and start asking God questions and getting answers. A woman came to me one day with two pages of a notepad and she said, I'm an atheist. I have two pages of notes from God. How does that work? And I'm like, I don't know, you're the atheist. You tell me how that works. And by the way, I've had believers criticize me for that. They say, How could you teach atheists to listen to God? How could you teach agnostics to listen to God? And my answer is very simple: God loves them. And therefore, so do I. You know? And who am I to tell God who he can talk to? And he spoke through a donkey once for crying out loud. Like he can speak to whoever he wants to. I'm just the conduit to begin that conversation. And and the blessing of that, by the way, uh, Darren, which is beautiful, is like that atheist woman, she would have never gone to church. She was hurt deeply by the church, deeply hurt by the church. She asked me right after that, should I go to church? And I'm like, I don't know, maybe not for a little while. Like maybe just let God father you for a little while and just let him heal your heart. She was so broken by the church. There was no way she was going back to church, but she walked into my business event and had a conversation with God when he walked in the door. And it was beautiful. And I love being that conduit for people. So yeah, the message of God Talks is simply that. It's to show you how to have a friendship with God, whoever you are, by the way. And and how many mistakes she made. I mean, goodness gracious, like the number of stories I could tell you about dumb things I did on purpose, it would be like five more podcasts, man. And it would definitely ruin my chances of becoming president if I told you all the stories. But the point is, like, God knows all your stories. He loves you and thinks you're amazing. So why not get connected to him, get on mission, and change the world? Awesome.
SPEAKER_01I wanted to also ask you this question about what does it mean to make disciples in business?
SPEAKER_00Yeah. So we were talking about this before the show started. Uh, and um, you had seen, I did a talk at a church up in Oregon. You had seen some of the video on their way. I juxtaposed that. You know, Jesus said in Matthew uh 28, he says, go into the world, make disciples of the nations. We read that in the modern church and said, make disciples of individuals. And by the way, there's nothing wrong with teaching and training and discipling like it says to do in 2 Timothy 2.2, find and entrust faithful men who will be able to teach others also. That said, the idea of biblical discipleship is not actually based in that morning meeting at Applebee's. That biblical concept of discipleship is actually based in Genesis 1 and 2. God said to Adam and Eve, he said, Be fruitful and multiply, fill the earth and subdue it. In other words, be in charge. And so when we use the word ministry, like when we use the word ministry in the church in America, uh, it sounds like being a pastor or being like the youth pastor or being like the music leader, because we've been trained to think of ministry in the wrong context. When you use the word minister in Ethiopia, for example, my friend is the former prime minister of Ethiopia. When you use the word minister, even in Britain, um a prime minister or a minister of education. See, we we use secretary of education and we use secretary of labor here in the United States, but a min, a minister, definitionally, a minister is someone who's in charge. Okay. So when you say ministry and you think of the pastor, you're right, because the pastor technically is in charge of the church. But when you look at the president, the president is a minister too. The secretary of defense is a minister too. The house of the folks who are in Congress are ministers too. And if believers would begin to expand our understanding of ministry, we would understand discipleship, right? So let's look around the world. Our government is totally screwed up. I'm gonna be very transparent about that. Our leaders at the state level are completely screwed up, our education system is a disaster, our health system is a whole total disaster, our economy is about to fall like through the infinity portal. We're just gonna go back to Marvel. Um, we're we we have we have bad situations in almost every sphere of America right now. And the reason is that we have bad ministers, we have bad leaders. And the reason we have bad leaders is because God called good people, his people, into those places, and by and large, they said no, or they didn't even hear him call. My realization, like five or six years ago, I was so frustrated about this. I was complaining. You know how we complain about our country? I was complaining, and all of a sudden it dawned on me through just some time with God that even though it wasn't my fault, I said, you know what, it's gonna be my responsibility. I'll take this as my responsibility. Because as believers, we didn't get ourselves into the situation. Like, you know, I grew up while the situation was precipitating, but now I'm in the place where I'm like, let's solve this thing. So I have a movement that we're gonna try to take back Washington. I have a movement that hopefully will train really great teachers and send them into the school system. I have a movement that hopefully will train artists to be amazing artists and create art and music and movies, not that are like totally Christian movies, that are just great movies, that are just really good movies. We don't even have any good stories anymore. They're all corrupt simply because they're made by bad people, right? The idea in business to go into business and actually own companies. Like one of my goals is to put together a group of people and buy Disney. Another goal is to take a group of people and buy like New York Times and CNN. You know, you can do a lot, like Elon Musk taught us as believers. You can stand on the outside and cry and complain and nothing happens, or you can spend $44 billion and buy the company and a lot happens. Okay. Ownership is important. So back to Genesis 2. When God said fill the earth to do it, what he meant was be in charge. And so in Genesis 28, when he said disciple the nations, what he meant was be in charge. And by the way, that is a that is a not a just a paraphrase, that's a subset of discipling the nations. I'm not even saying it's all of it. I'm just saying one of the components of discipling the nations is being in charge. I'll just tell you this and then I'll pitch it back to you. One day I was reading Isaiah 60. Isaiah says, Nations will come to your light and kings to the brightness of your rising. And I said, Lord, I want that to be be about me. And then two years later, I said, Lord, I prayed that nations would come to my light and kings to the brightness of my rising. And I said, there's 196 nations and I haven't had a nation yet. Come to me. I prayed that two years ago, and I haven't had a nation come to me. What's up with that? And what God showed me is during that two years, check it out, crazy. During that two years, I met and began to help the former prime minister of Ethiopia who's now going back to Ethiopia to run as president. And I met and began training a man who is going back to his home country, Liberia, to run for president. That's two countries out of 196. My point is that you'll start to get answers to prayer requests like that if you start looking at the world as an opportunity for ministry, which also means leadership, which actually also means discipleship, which means creating arts and culture and business and great education systems and doing what God wants, letting commerce flow and allowing people to be free and make their own decisions and speak the truth and like, oh my goodness, we can change the world in about a year and a half if we did this right. And that's like my whole mission. So that's the mission of this book, man. That's why I'm so passionate about this book, God Talks, because my goal is to connect you to connect you to God, to connect you to true divine intelligence so that you can get your mission, so that you can go accomplish it, so that you can go change the world. And here's the other thing you accomplishing your mission is gonna make it a lot easier for me to accomplish mine. So I will bend over backwards and crawl over broken glass to get you on your mission because it's gonna help everyone else that I'm connected to um do theirs. So there.
SPEAKER_01It's beautiful. And godtalks.com is the website. Uh, and then of course the book people can get on Amazon and and anywhere else.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, so the books available everywhere, Amazon, Barnes Noble. By the way, when you go to that website, godtalks.com, I always tell people that's the easiest web type website to remember. godtalks.com. When you go there, there's a link that'll take you right to the uh where you can buy the book. And what you'll also get is I created a series of audios that essentially take you, guide you through the process. So my experience is that uh sometimes with a notepad and a journal, it can be challenging to like get through the filter system and like connect to God. So I created a series of audios that just guide you in the conversation, this little background music. They're really beautiful and they're my gift to you. And the other thing I'll give you, by the way, uh since you're listening to this podcast, because I know if you're listening to this podcast, you have a passionate passionate interest in business and spirituality, those two things together in the kingdom. And you got all the way to the end of the show, which is amazing. There's like another way to congratulate you. And you probably had to play it on one time speed because I talk so fast. Okay. And so you got all the way to the end. So here's what I'm gonna do. I'm gonna share this with you. Just don't pass it on to anyone else. Okay. I'm gonna give you my email address. My direct email is coaching C O A C H I N G. That's coaching C-O-A-C-H-I-N-G at edrush.com. So coaching at edrush.com. When you email me and just tell me you got the book, that's all you need to do. You don't even have to tell me anything. You can introduce yourself if you want. It comes right to me. It doesn't go to an assistant or anything like that. When you email me and just tell me you got the book, I will email you back and I will invite you to my next event and I'm gonna give you two free tickets. Okay, so you don't have to pay a dime. Uh, this is totally on me. I spend a lot of money on my events, so I'm gonna be spending money on you, but you don't have to spend a dime. It's my way to connect you to a community that is a life-giving community that will change the world. Okay. So uh so yeah, God talks to the website, and then there's my email address. And I don't know how long I'm gonna be giving that one out because I keep getting a lot of emails. But I just I have I really, whatever I can do, frankly, as you're listening to help for me to get you on your mission. Look, it's time, it's pastime. America needs you, the world needs you, and it's time to step up and be the man or woman that God called you to be, the big image of God that God called you to be. And so may it be, may it be. May God move you into the position and may you move yourself to where God has you because it's gonna be awesome.
SPEAKER_01Beautiful. Godtalks.com. And I hope you wrote down that email address because it's not we're not gonna put that in the show notes. That's yeah, thank you. That's just for people who got to the end of the episode. So uh give yourselves a pat on the back and send Ed an email uh after you get that book. Uh, it'll it'll change your life, no doubt. Um, Ed, thank you so much for spending time with our listeners today and um just equipping us for the the work of ministry in the marketplace. And we've got academics that listen to this that are discipling students and um people in a lot of different spheres of culture. But um, thank you for the work you're doing for the kingdom.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, thanks, Darren. I appreciate it. Really, really an honor to be on the show. So, yeah, let's do this thing, man. I appreciate it.
SPEAKER_01We hope you've enjoyed this episode. And if so, we would greatly appreciate it if you'd leave us a quick rating and review for the Christianity and Business podcast on iTunes. You can get more information about HCU's Center for Christianity and Business and sign up to receive free access to all issues of the Christian Business Review Journal by visiting our website at Christianityandbusiness.com. Thanks for listening, and remember to keep integrating biblical values into your business.