You are welcome to the Ministry of Reconciliation podcast. Today we have a special guest, Jason. I hope that's how I pronounce the second name. Yes. Thank you. He's a creative director enemy people named the dots of their life. They are live stuff. So I think I need to be nice to help the ordinary listeners makes sense. But you don't have to do it. Before you do that, the Ministry of Conversation focuses much on helping people understand the need to be able to because I am with God. Because I am with people God has created if we have got any myself. And also learning to take care of the knowledge that God has given us. Create this opportunity. And as I have already told you, please help us, the ordinary listener, to understand exactly what you do.
SPEAKER_01Awesome. Thanks, Emmanuel. And it's an honor to be here with you. And one thing I always notice right away when I'm talking with people is where their accent is from. And as you hear, listener, there are two very distinct accents going on here. And mine happens to be from the rolling hills of Appalachian, Kentucky. I currently reside in Oklahoma with my wife and three kids on an 80-acre farm, but I grew up in the coal mine fields of Appalachian, Kentucky, the son of a coal miner. In fact, I'm the first man in my family not to be a coal miner in well over a hundred years. So this was a departure from the norm for me to jump outside of coal mining and to be a creative director and do advertising and photography. So that's what I do full-time is advertising and photography. And I do a little bit of real estate development on the side.
SPEAKER_00Thank you so much. Right now, in our conversation, we are going to focus on how God works through both the highs and the rows to guide people toward their true holy. Before you begin to tell us about this, many people think that God is unreactive when we are doing great, when we are over the heroes, when everybody can praise us. But when we are facing criticism, when we cannot understand everything, and when we feel like everything is fighting against us, we feel like God has gone to sleep. So it is a great opportunity today to have you speak to us. First of all, uh, maybe if you don't mind, how do highs and lows look like in the life of an ordinary person?
SPEAKER_01Sure. Thank you so much for that question. The way I look at highs and lows is really parallel to my own experience because that's how we relate to people through stories and our life experiences. And I come up with a little analogy of the way I look at these. And if we're plugging along and going along with God's purpose for our lives and his intent for us with our career and our family and our livelihoods, I tend to assign that as being along our gold thread. It's a little thread that God has woven all through your life. It connects all the dots when you were a child, as you're growing up, the people that influenced you and moved you in that positive direction. That's your gold thread, and that's when you're living according to your purpose. But as you know, if God is weaving this tapestry of opportunity for us and pleasant things and happy things that He can bring into our lives as blessings, then we have to understand that there's also an adversary who's trying to come and only kill, steal, and destroy that gold thread that God is weaving for us. And I look at those as black threads. And life gets hard sometimes. We get wrapped up with black threads that we impose on ourselves voluntarily. We reach for these black threads and we bring them into our lives voluntarily. These can be things that are unhealthy habits, addictions, things that we struggle with, or they can simply blindside us out of the clear blue. You could have a bad car wreck, lose a job, lose a loved one unexpectedly. You could encounter a really difficult medical diagnosis. You could be sick. And these things take us off the rails. But even when we're wrapped up with these black threads, don't think that God is absent. He is very much there with you. And he could be using these black threads of adversity to make us more resilient for the next chapter that he has in store for us.
SPEAKER_00Yes, I can see you by using uh your probably marketing language. Would you like to describe what uh uh black threads uh refer to?
SPEAKER_01Black threads could be sinful habits, they could be drugs, alcohol, pornography, other addictions, they could be black threads that you've inherited from a long family history of alcoholism or abuse or bad financial management. These are things that sometimes we don't realize we're even wrapped up with these till sometimes a really close, good friend who's honest with us will tell us, hey, you have a problem with this, you need to really work on this. It takes a good friend sometimes to bring these to your attention. But black threads could also be not self-imposed, sinful behaviors, but they could just be difficulties that come with being alive on this fallen world, in this post-sin and fall. Once we were ejected from the Garden of Eden, it's hard down here. We get black threads thrown on us, like heaped on our heads sometimes, and it feels very unfair from time to time when you compare your life with someone else. You look at them and think only gold threads and good things are happening. Under the surface, though, I guarantee there are some black threads that you just don't see, and you are focusing more on your own black threads because they're so close to home and you feel them every day.
SPEAKER_00In relation to black threads, you mentioned about God's purpose. So, what is God's purpose uh in if we uh wrapped up in these black threads? What good would God want to see happen to us?
SPEAKER_01For sure. A black thread can hide your true calling, and that's what I'm here to talk about today is how God has a purpose for all of us. We have a true calling, and I call this your gold thread. And there could be gold thread moments that sort of move the needle in a positive direction and open doors for you to really explore God's purpose for your life. And really, the way I would say you know if it's your purpose is that it can't just be self-serving. God's never going to give you a true calling that only serves you, to enrich you or to build up wealth for you. God's going to give you a purpose that is to bless and be a help and a kingdom worker for other people and for God. So if you're struggling to know what your true calling is, first look inward and see what your motivations are. Is this just purely for you to put you on the map, to make you successful, or is God working on your heart to bring you up into a purpose that serves others and serves him?
SPEAKER_00That's a very good mindset. How can we, yeah, I I like that part of putting on the heart of service, understanding that actually God wants to bless us, not for us, but in order to serve the others. How can we make sure we are following his purpose for us and not trying to enrich ourselves against the true service?
SPEAKER_01Sure. If you're working really hard, but you feel like you're spinning your wheels, chances are you're living outside of God's purpose for your life. I compare that to, if I may, a Kentucky analogy that I came up with with thoroughbred racehorses. I like to think of working outside of your true calling like a racehorse that's hooked to a plow and out working in a field pulling a heavy plow through the dirt. It's not that that horse can't pull the plow. It's plenty strong. It's a thoroughbred. But unless that horse is led to the racetrack, how will it know that it was born to run? And then likewise, if you take a big, beefy Clydesdale horse and you put that horse in the racetrack, it's also going to feel equally out of place and humiliated as the other horses are running circles around it because it's going to express God's purpose for it much more closely by pulling something big and heavy, like that plow or a carriage. So ask yourself, are you in some ways hooked to a plow that is outside of your path and your true calling? Because if you are, it's not that you're not able to do the job that you've chosen. But so many people like the sound of being that thoroughbred horse. They like the sound of being a doctor, a lawyer, an attorney, an engineer when God's purpose for them may not have those titles at the end of a business card. It may be something they don't even see coming. But give yourself permission and give God permission to reveal what is your true racetrack that you're supposed to run on. And when you find it, you're going to thrive and not just merely survive. You're going to run your race so beautifully because that's what God intended for you to do.
SPEAKER_00I want to emphasize you mentioned uh finding good friends. It was on the question how can we make sure we we actually break out of bondage. You mentioned the bondage as a thread and then you mentioned something really unique, uh full of wisdom. The gold threads. I was waiting for you to say that the gold threads are actually also uh we are wrapped in gold threads, but uh you did say that uh the expression used simply refers to uh making good use of the gold threads, so which which is wisdom on how to make good use of the gifts that God has uh given us. Today is your day. I don't want to speak uh really uh much, but I want to underscore also what you shared with us. That the blessings are used to be a good idea. Yeah, thank you that the blessings that God has given us are not just to enrich us but to make sure we are serving others. How can we evaluate ourselves that our service is very effective? One of the points information is avoiding overwork. Again, I find that full of wisdom, but of course, I'm re-emphasizing that. And did you know that you're also speaking to your host right now? So yeah. So back to the question. Obviously, you also mentioned about true calling, uh, and also you mentioned the identity with Christ. Yes, I want to take you back to the gold thread. How can we evaluate our effectiveness in using the gifts that God has given us?
SPEAKER_01I love this question because it's a fun exercise. A lot of times we allow ourselves to forget what God has put into our hearts. So, something that all of you out there should do is give yourself permission to look back. Take yourself back to when you were a child. Think of the things that stirred you, that made you come alive. If something came up on the TV, what was it that would stop you in your tracks and you would drop everything and suddenly sit there and watch closely? What books stirred your heart? What stories could you listen to or watch over and over and over again? Those are not just accidents. God has given us those as little gifts as a glimpse into your gold thread. And life gets busy, it gets heavy, we get wrapped up with commitments and debt that we have to cover. We try to raise families and pay for bills, and sometimes we can forget those deep things that God has put on our hearts. And I love going back and looking at those little dots and how they connect. You may have a hobby or a skill that you worked on when you were younger that you've let it go. What happened to that? Go back and dig some of those things up, and those will be clues for you on what is your true gold thread. And if you find it and you just grab a little piece of that gold thread and start tugging on it, God can use that to open doors. And if you follow your gold thread, God will blow through door after door after door and open them for you because that's the lane he has you on. And it's so exhilarating to watch how much easier things can happen for you. How seemingly at the perfect right time, God will put someone in your path that will take your gold thread to the next level. And sometimes even black threads and chapters of your lives where you feel like you've been tangled up with these black threads holding you back. God has the power and the grace to make those black threads suddenly turn to gold. He will use a rough patch of experience that you've had. You've just gone through a tough season, but now you're so much more ready to grab onto that gold thread from here and use that wisdom as he opens that next door for you because you needed that experience. And he was holding off sometimes on opening that last door until you had just enough experience from those black threads that he knows you can handle what's next.
SPEAKER_00Thank you so much. We are crossed to the end. Uh, just when I have a question, what if I have tested? By the way, before I ask you this question, uh since I started podcasting, you are the only one so far. The rest of you listening, don't be jealous. Who has brought in the concept of the golden thread? Yeah. So the gold thread. Uh I I like this concept. Um yeah, so I don't know. Do you have more writing on this book? Absolutely. I mean, yeah, excellent. You you'll talk about that later. I have a question. What if I have tested the gold thread and I don't want the black thread anymore? What would you say about that?
SPEAKER_01Well, a lot of it's on you because there's black threads that we allow into our lives too that are things that aren't necessarily sinful, but they're wasteful. Like I can think of one right here. This, it can be a tool, it can be something that's very useful, but it can also be a black thread if we allow it to be. So a lot of it is choosing to use this not as a black thread so that we're sitting here just doom scrolling and wasting time, but rather use it for a productive purpose in looking for avenues that we can extend our gold threads. So a lot of this is us being willingly mindful and alert to our own black threads. We have to be aware of our black threads before we can cut them away. And back to those friends. Sometimes black threads are like getting tangled up in a briar patch where you're going through the trail and all of a sudden you're stuck. And it takes a friend to be like, whoa, hold up, you've got this thorn bush right over your shoulder. Let me pull that off for you. Sometimes it takes friends to be able to help us see that perspective and get us untangled so that we can focus on those gold threads only. And wouldn't it be great if we only had gold threads down here? But I used to, one last thing, I used to build tree houses up in the woods when I was a kid. And I would take a little machete and a stick and I would clear that trail so that I had a clear path to get up to my tree house every single day. But there was one thing that I noticed is every single morning when I would try to walk up to my treehouse, the trail was covered with spider webs across the way. And if I just walked, I would get those spider webs crossing my body and going across my face. And our adversary, Satan, he sets traps for us every single day. Don't think that you're gonna wake up one single day of your life and not have to clear that trail because there's going to be black threads like those spider webs that are poised and ready to catch us up every single day.
SPEAKER_00Thank you so much. And uh, I am sure even the youth who are listening really are going to be hiding. What did I? I'm not saying that others are not going to. Um this time around, where everybody is going to pick something. The ending word I'm going to give to our guests today is for the youth. Uh, what is your message for the youth today?
SPEAKER_01Oh my goodness. I have a heart for the youth. I used to teach college, and I've been in the classroom with so many bright young minds. It's so consequential now to get your gold thread determined first before you go and declare a major, before you pick a career. Choose your calling. Uncover God's calling for your life before you declare a major. In other words, declare that calling before you declare a major. Get that right because then you'll avoid a midlife crisis down the road, and you'll be so much more effective for God and for your family and your legacy when you are following your true calling and your gold thread. So that would be my message to young youngsters out there, especially these recent graduates. Get it right. Take your time. You don't have to rush into declaring a major. The universities and the schools will try to get you to do that, but you don't. And God's never in a hurry. If you notice in the scriptures, he seems to always be patient. And now is the time to be patient and let God reveal the doors that he wants to open for you. You don't have to rush into declaring a major. Thank you. And if you need to uh find my book, Find Your Gold Thread is available at jasondward.com. And also there, there is a free quiz if you scroll down to the challenge. It's 12 questions. And back to those youngsters, this is a great exercise that will not only help you with ideas for your possible career, but it will shed some light on your spiritual gifting and show you what God may have in store for your true calling. And that's all available, including the book as well as the audiobook at jasondward.com.
SPEAKER_00Thank you. Do you mind saying the web address again? Spelling it.
SPEAKER_01Jason D S N Daniel W A R D dot com. Thank you so much. Thank you. It's been a pleasure.