Faith That Holds In The Dark

We share Michael Perkins’ family story of walking through 11 years of breast cancer, brain metastasis, and the grief of losing his wife Denise, while choosing steady trust in Jesus the whole way. We also talk about how God uses hard seasons to shape purpose, and how faith can move into the marketplace through work, business, and mentorship.

• What “suffer well” looks like when the outcome is unknown
• Brain metastasis, long-term treatment, and learning to rely on God daily
• Hospice, final moments, and the peace their family experiences in the room
• Perspective, loneliness, and waiting on the Lord after loss
• Why Christian entrepreneurs need teams, coaches, prayer, and community
• Physical therapy as a relationship-based career and a natural space for ministry
• Seeing work as worship, excellence as witness, and purpose as obedience
• Contagious Hope podcast and how legacy grows through planted seeds

Transcript

Welcome To North Star Narrative

Stephanie Shafer 0:02

Hi, this is Stephanie Schaefer, and you're listening to the North Star Narrative, a podcast from North Star Academy. I want to thank you for joining us. I hope you're encouraged, challenged, and motivated by what you learned today. Enjoy the story. Hi, everyone, thanks for joining us today. I'm so excited to introduce to you a new friend, Michael Perkins, who has a story that reflects deep faith, perseverance, and a life lived with purpose. He's a Christian, loves Jesus, a physical therapist, and a clinic owner who truly sees his work as a ministry. He's also a father of four, a father-in-law, and soon to welcome another son-in-law into the family. He walked alongside his wife through an 11-year journey with breast cancer that later spread to her brain. And after her passing in October 2024, the Lord led him to begin a hundred times soil. This work is centered on equipping and supporting others to build, lead, and multiply their impact for God's kingdom. He's also passionate about investing in men, about raising children in Christ, and about sharing hope through his podcast, Contagious Hope. I'm really grateful for this conversation. I think you're going to be encouraged today by what he shares.

Denise’s Diagnosis And Family Shock

Stephanie Shafer 1:18

Thank you, Michael, so much for joining us.

SPEAKER_00 1:20

Thank you. Thank you for having me.

Stephanie Shafer 1:22

So I've had the privilege to connect with you and hear a little bit of your journey, but I would love for you to share with our listeners what it's been like, you know, over these past few years, walking alongside your wife, your family, um, and how I just love that you so uh kept embracing Jesus and listening and then moving in to the next season that he has for you.

SPEAKER_00 1:44

Thank you so much. Thanks for having me. This is a it's humbling, it's a it's a joy. I I am super grateful um to tell really the story that God has written for our family. Um, you know, we say that anybody can have faith when the balloons are blown up and the pot lunch is set and everything's going well, it's the sunshiny day. Um, but the truth is the faith that uh moves the needle for the kingdom is is faith when we don't understand, Lord, why did this have to happen this way? You know, and I think if you look at every Bible character, my wife Denise would say this, every Bible character that really made a difference, every single one of them would do something really difficult and really kind of sh that would shake their faith, and they just had to decide to set their jaw and let Satan know, which I did with my kids, hey, we're gonna trust Jesus. We just are. We're just gonna we're gonna be stubborn enough to trust our God. So yeah, in 2013, Denise walks in and she says, Michael, I have this little kind of lump in my breast that makes me a little bit nervous. Um, and and fill this and see what you think. And I said, Yeah, that that makes me nervous too. You need to go see the doctor. And a couple days later, she goes to see the doctor. We didn't know it was anything that was, you know, a big deal necessarily, and so I went on to work and she goes on to the doctor. Well, she calls me, and we had just started Inspire Physical Therapy, our our family business that we said God owns, he just lets us run it. But we do have a little uh family practice, inspire physical therapy, orthopedic therapy practice. Anyway, she calls me and I walk out back behind the clinic and I take that call, and she says, Michael, they the doctor said he feels like it would be extremely surprising if this wasn't breast cancer. And I just, you know, crumble, honestly. And I stumble up to the front until our front desk gal, I've got to go home. And I don't even know if I told her why. But I walk into the door of the house, into the into our room, I should say, or into our bedroom, and see her holding my little nine-year-old daughter's face. Because we had an 11-year-old, a nine-year-old, a seven-year-old, and a five-year-old at the time, a business that was only four months old on the index of stressors, you know, four children, a brand new business, and now a new cancer diagnosis. Like, oh Lord, we need you to show up all those, you know, all those devotional talks and all those sermons and all those hymns and all these praise songs we've sang. We like actually need them to like matter right now. Our faith has to carry us here. But anyway, I walk in and I see her holding Phoebe's face and saying, This I have cancer, and this is gonna be hard. Um, she didn't beat around the bush. It's gonna be hard. But God is good and his plan for us is perfect. And I see her saying that. I'm supposed to be the spiritual leader of my family, my knees are knocking. And I continued then for 11 years to watch Denise live that out. Steady faith. She said, You can't get too high, because if you get too high when you have a bad skin, it's too far of a fall. You can't get too low, because if you get too low, you don't have enough hope to fight with. And so she just in a steady way, she never shook her fist at God. I mean, God's big enough to handle that if she did, but she never did. Um, she did ask why me and why this and why now, and what's why would this happen to our family and whatever, as we, you know, those are natural questions that we ask. Um, but just faithful, upon faithful, upon faithful for year after year after year. And so she went through the breast cancer treatment, she lost her hair, she turned, you know, pale as a white as a sheet type deal, which is interesting because she was a nutritional sciences major at Texas AM. And so she ate right, she didn't drink, she didn't smoke. I mean, cancer is no respecter of persons, and and to Denise, certainly so faithful, then he must have a really big reason, a really, you know, good, big, important, eternal reason for that to have happened. And so we look at stories like Job, just a faithful man, and something really hard happened to him, but we're still talking about him thousands of years later because of his faithfulness. And so, and Denise was that same way. And so she got through those cancer treatments, she her hair fell out, she like say was just a shell of herself, but she got through it by God's grace. In 2015, she walks in and similarly says, Michael, I have something that's concerning to me. I said, Yeah, babe, what's up? And she said, When I put my head, like put my head down and turn my head side to side, I feel this kind of exquisite pain in the kind of base of my skull

Steady Faith Through Treatment Years

SPEAKER_00 6:12

on the left side. And I said, Okay, you need to go see the doctor for that. And this time I did go with her to the doctor, I learned my lesson. And so we we went to the doctor and uh we see a neurosurgeon, and he says that we have an an MRI, and we go see a neurosurgeon. He said, Y'all, we this is a three and a half centimeter tumor that we're gonna need to take out. And so the next morning at you know, 6, 6 30 a.m., we're reporting to the hospital. It's on my birthday. I'll never forget it's on my birthday. Today's her birthday, actually, so a lot of birthday um yeah, happy sad. But um, anyway, so it was on my birthday, and we when she when we took a three and a half centimeter tumor out, and I remember Dr. Hoover coming out, he was a friend of mine and says, Michael, I'm so sorry. I said, Yeah, what's up? He said, This is this is breast tissue, which means it didn't metastasize, and obviously the stakes get much, much higher. You know, we never googled it, so to speak, because God is bigger than the statistics, he's bigger than the medical journals. What I found out later is that when it goes from your breast to your brain, most people don't even live a year. Denise lived nine more years. So that's it's it's God just God doing God things, you know. He he spared us like the Hezekiah miracle in the Bible where Hezekiah he tells um the prophet Isaiah, hey, go tell Hezekiah that this sickness is gonna end in death. So Isaiah gives him that news. Hezekiah falls against the wall and says, Lord, you've seen my faithfulness, Lord. Um and and and God gave him 15 more years. Well, then with Denise, we got almost another decade. And so I remember when she had that uh she was being won back to have that brain tumor taken out. And I just remember kind of falling to my knees on the corridor in the hallway, like, God, I got nothing. You know, like I I I this is so much bigger than me. Um, it was just overwhelming in kind of a good way. That's actually a healthy place to be to fall on your knees and say, God, you've got to show up. Uh and he did. And so she had that tumor resected. We found some treatments that were effective for her. Um, and we had to, you know, she had to have lumbar punctures to introduce this medication. That it would the molecule size was too big to cross, it's kind of nerdy, but the molecule size was too big to cross the blood brain barrier, this barrier that God has given our brain to protect itself. And so we had to do lumbar punctures to introduce this drug that would then get in her um cerebrospinal fluid and it would circulate up to her brain and wash her brain. And so, um, and lumbar punctures are not comfortable. Like if you've had one of those, some of the folks that have had one of those kind of gives you the hebie jeebies to think of it. Um, she had to have like 50, 53 of those or something like that over the years. So bless her heart, just such a warrior, such a warrior. But anyway, uh in October of 2024, Denise was such a fighter that even when we went to the oncologist, um, I think maybe she stepped out of the room to use the restroom or something and I asked the oncologist, hey, would you shoot straight with me? I'm in medicine, I'm a physical therapist. I was like, would you just shoot straight with me? Like, what are we looking at? And she looked at me, said, You we need to call in hospice. Like it's getting serious enough to where um we need to, you know, talk about at some point in the near future calling in hospice. I I guess she probably didn't step out to use the restroom because I would have needed to help her. By that time, she went from a walker, I'm sorry, from a cane to a walker to a wheelchair. At the end of her life, she just kind of needed help with just about everything because she was her uh eyesight was failing, her hearing had basically gone. Um, but anyway, Dr. Fleener, our oncologist, said we're pretty soon we're gonna need to call and uh hospices is getting obviously very seriously and serious, and Denise was starting to slur her speech and that sort of thing. So um anyway, she gave me that message, and and I'm like, how am I gonna tell her that? Because she's such a fighter. She's talking about fighting for another, you know, 30 years. She's not talking about like we never planned her funeral. We she never said a word about that sort of thing. So um, but she went to sleep on a Tuesday afternoon as she kind of stumbled into the bed, helped herself. I was usually helping her with all those things, but I look in there and she had kind of gotten herself into bed. And I was like, oh, okay, she did that by herself. That's pretty impressive. And she just conked out, and so we just pulled the covers over her, and and that was about five o'clock on a Tuesday. She didn't wake up till Thursday at about 10 a.m. And so what that allowed us to do though is on the Wednesday in between to call in hospice and they did an exam on this sweet, wonderful, compassionate hospice worker who they're so good at what they do. But she she said, Michael, we we may have a week with her still on this earth. And and she was she was right. It was about a week later. Um, she went to go be with Jesus. But a sweet story is that same little Phoebe, whose nine-year-old face she held and said, God's plan is perfect. Felt like the Holy Spirit wanted her to pray over her mother on that last day, uh, because we were all in and out. She was gasping for breath. There's a certain way that people breathe when they need to go to heaven. And Denise was doing that, so we knew the time was close. And so Phoebe goes into the room, starts to pray over her mother, and prays, Lord, this mom was right, this has been hard, but we still believe that your plan is perfect. And with that, Denise took her last breath and went to heaven. It was faithfulness, mother to daughter, sandwiched with faithfulness, daughter to mother. So Phoebe crawls over her mom and she's crying these tears, and tears are falling on her mom's now deceased face and cheering her into heaven. Mom, you did it. Mom, you did it. Well done, mama. You receive your reward mom. She's just praying, and these tears are falling uh on her mom's face, and she's cheering her. Denise is hearing from the heaven side, well done, good and faithful servant, and from the earth side, well done, good and faithful mama. And so we all we all gather uh onto the bed, me and my four kids, and they all express peace and relief because she needed to go home. Uh, and that is otherworldly, that is that will stand up to the scientific method, so to speak. Uh people say, I don't know about if there's a God or not. I'm telling you, in that room, the peace of the Holy Spirit that passes understanding when four children, this is crazy. Four children are sitting holding their deceased mother's hand, saying, We feel peace. Like that's either that's ludicrous or it's real. Uh and it was real by the feeling of restfulness and relief in that room that Denise had received her reward, was in the presence of Jesus. Uh, that's a piece that's hard to understand unless you've ever, unless you felt it.

Brain Metastasis And Unexpected Time

SPEAKER_00 12:36

And not everybody, thankfully, has had to feel a piece like that, but we were grateful and are grateful for it. So um uh that's a bit about our story. I'll I'll talk about 100 times a little in a minute that God had me do, but I wanted to make sure that you don't have any questions about that.

Stephanie Shafer 12:51

Wow. I mean, no questions, but so much flowing through my heart and mind. Happy birthday, Denise, and what um you know, you want to say what a legacy, but it that doesn't even seem enough.

SPEAKER_00 13:08

Yeah. Yeah, it's funny for uh Lynn, what a hero of faith. I it's just set at her feet and learned from her really for eleven years about how to suffer. Well, the qu the we're all gonna suffer. The question is, will we suffer well? And when we suffer well, it speaks the gospel because it says, Hey, there's a hope that's beyond this world. Yeah, like life is really tough, circumstances are really crummy, um, but we can have hope, we can have peace, we can have our we f you know, fix our eyes on the unseen, and that's very mysterious to a world that uh looks for instant gratification, and um, I want the thing that I want and I want it now, and that sort of thing. And this is is not only not getting what we hoped for, and we prayed. I mean, I prayed like I know I'm sitting here. We prayed in faith, knowing that God could heal her if he wanted to. And then people along the way would say things like, Hey, I think this sickness is not gonna end in death, and I think Denise is gonna live to be 84, these different faithful people, people that love the Lord. And uh they were saying those types of things, and in front of I'm like, Thank you for saying that, and it gives me some hope. But in front of my eyes, Denise is getting sicker and sicker and sicker. And so you just have to trust, you know, if you just have to trust God is good and that God's for you and that his good plan is going to prevail. And if you know those things, then all the other stuff, uh, even though it doesn't make sense and you're scratching your head, um, you can get through it. You can get if you know God is for you, you know he's good, and you know his good plan is ultimately gonna prevail. And those were the first words out of her mouth, like I say, when she got first diagnosed, and she never wavered from that uh until the last day. And so, and now she she's received her reward. She's having a much better birthday than any of us will have, that's for sure. So, and as much as I love her, as lonely as I am, I would not bring her back. It thrills my soul that she's with Jesus. It thrills and my son, who's wise but young, said that she's where she's always wanted to be. You know, she's she's where she's always wanted, and where we should all want to be. If we don't want to be there, then we've got to rethink our priorities. I'm like, son, you're right. That's a wise thing for her to come out of an 18-year-old's mouth. But yeah, so we're grateful. Sad, but grateful. Yeah.

Stephanie Shafer 15:10

Yeah. That true eternal mindset.

SPEAKER_00 15:13

Yeah.

Stephanie Shafer 15:14

All right. What did God shape in you during those years? Um past couple years that you do not think could have been formed in any other way.

SPEAKER_00 15:23

Hmm, so good. You know, there's perspective, you know. Um, and really this is for our whole family. I was talking just last night with my son, and he was talking about how one of his uh friends was struggling and worried about something, and he said, Dad, it's the thing they're worrying about, it's not that big of a deal. I'm like, buddy, remember, because your mom's situation, you have perspective about what's important, what's not important, what carries more weight, what carries less weight. Um, but you have to show grace and mercy to others around you that are your age that have never had to kind of endure that. And so you have deep, rich, you're a deep well, you have deep faith, deep, deep perspective, which is very helpful because we don't kind of get upset about things on this earth like a lot of people do because you know what you know what's worth getting upset about and what's not. Um so perspective has has been extremely helpful. And um, you know, what one thing, Stephanie, that that I'm dealing with right now is that um uh my heart is kind of slowly coming out of this fog. Um, and so I start thinking about, you know, what would companionship look like for me at some point? Or you start to start to start to kind of think about those things. I don't know if I'm ready for that even or not, but I you start to kind of think about those things. Uh but if you let yourself think about those things too much, you're like, wait a second, like what the thing in the treasure box is not a companion, actually. The thing in the treasure box is not a less lonely version of me. The thing in the treasure box is Jesus. And so if my eyes are on him and that the glory and the beauty, and I'm just enamored by him. That's why heaven is never gonna get boring because we're gonna be enamored with every facet of our Lord forevermore. He's that awesome. Um, so I just have had to remember, like Peter, when his eyes were on Jesus, he walked on water, he did amazing things. He was doing just fine. And as soon as he took his eyes off Jesus, as soon as he did, he sank. And it's one or the other. And so I've just got to keep in perspective, keep my eyes on Christ and keep being faithful for the day. I don't need to worry about tomorrow. I actually need to just trust for the day and waiting of I'm having to wait on the Lord for kind of what the next phase of my life will look like. But there's so much faith grown in the waiting. In fact, most of the, again, I just keep pointing back to the Bible because that's our pattern. And most people uh in the in the word had to wait for a time. We had to wait on Canaan land. We had to wait on, you know, Joseph had to wait to get out of jail to be uh second in command of all the land of Egypt. David had to wait. He got anointed in 1 Samuel 16, but he had to wait a few chapters, so to speak. And we treat that like it was five minutes, but it was uh it was a little while. He had to wait uh days, weeks, months, years, whatever before he actually became king. So this, but in the waiting, in the waiting, um, the Bible says that those who wait upon the Lord will renew their strength, they will mount on wings like eagles, they will run and not grow weary, they will walk and not be faint. I mean, so this waiting in the season of waiting, what it leads you to is desperation, it leads you to trust, uh, it leads you to um, you know, like a faith that that says, Lord, I don't know what you're doing, I don't know when you're gonna do it, but I just trust that you're gonna do it. And and that's again, that's an affront to the kingdom of darkness. That that kind of faith actually moves the needle. And so I'm in a season of waiting, and God's teaching me it's not always easy, and the loneliness and that sort of thing's not always easy, but I have great friends and four wonderful child children, and and again, better perspective, and so he's really taught me a lot about waiting on him, being desperate for him, relying on him. Yeah.

Stephanie Shafer 18:57

That's a whole different life of the desperation, yeah, the independence, the eternity than most people like you said, get to experience the perspective. That's amazing. Okay, so when in all of this did you know God was prepping you for something new? Okay.

SPEAKER_00 19:19

Of course. Yeah.

Stephanie Shafer 19:21

What God did in your heart to get that up. Of course.

A Midnight Vision For 100x Soil

SPEAKER_00 19:24

Of course. Okay, so but actually before Denise passed, we went on one final hurrah, a Alaskan cruise, and this is just due to the faithfulness of God. We actually won a cruise. We was just some little thing we bit on, some nonprofit thing, and we just bid on it to support them. We weren't thinking we were gonna actually win anything. Well, we won an Alaskan cruise. What's sweet about that? God in his kindness, he knew that in October he was gonna take her home. And so this was the cruise, I think it was in June or July, and so it before she passed, just a few months before she passed. And so we go to Alaska, but while I will that sweet young lady all around in that wheelchair uh when we would get off at those ports. But um while we were on the see, since we don't really gamble or drink or anything, we're not big partiers or anything at night, we would go back to the room and watch a Disney movie or watch, you know, Shark Tank or something like that. And we were watching Shark Tank, and I went to sleep, didn't think anything about it. I'd seen Shark Tank before. It's a fun little show. And I wake up in the middle of the night and I sit straight up. And it's one of those things where the Holy Spirit's just doing this in you, inside of you. I grab my phone and I start taking notes on what if we did a Christian Shark Tank? Like if we're doing a Shark Tank, which is just real intriguing, everybody likes Shark Tank, but if we're doing Shark Tanks for like

Hospice Week And A Daughter’s Prayer

SPEAKER_00 20:30

a toy on the toy store shelf, what about doing a shark tank for something that really matters, like kingdom things? And so I started taking all these notes on my phone and that sort of thing. And I got back to um our hometown and I started just talking to people about it. And it's it's really neat how God, if he wants to do something, not only does he bring that to life in your emotions and your passions and in your heart, but he starts raising up people. He starts raising up people to get excited along with you. And so everybody I talked to is like, Michael, you gotta do this. Michael, this this feels like it's from the Lord, whatever. Um, and and Denise, like I say, she I'm I'm busy taking care of her, so I don't immediately do much with it. I take care of her and lovingly send her uh uh into Jesus' arms. And then afterwards, I'm like, I start asking all these big questions. All right, Lord, what's the best use of me? Kind of those big kind of what did you make me for? Why am I here? What's next? kind of questions, which are really good, deep big questions. Uh and and I feel like that the 100 times soil uh is is a part of his answer. There's more of his answer, Lord willing, but part of it is uh, you know, in Matthew 13, Jesus said there's four kinds of soils, and three of them are not very good, but the fourth one, you'll see 30, 60, or 100 times what was sown. And so I started thinking, again, another big question what would it look like to live a hundred times life where God could like wring out every drop out of our gifting that He's put inside of us? And that gets me super excited. And so um I started thinking, what if we did that in the marketplace? And then all those kind of Christian shark tank thoughts. Started coming to mind. And so and so we named it 100 times soil based off

Marketplace Ministry Through Business

SPEAKER_00 22:05

of that parable. And even the website is 100xsoil.com. If anybody wanted to look to see what this is all about. But but we started thinking, what would it look like in the marketplace if we used the marketplace to promote the gospel and the Great Commission? Because I think we've done a good job behind the podium. I think preachers need to keep preaching. I think we've done a good job in the nonprofit space. And this actually is a nonprofit at the end of the day, but in the nonprofit space, in the sense of we need to keep drilling clean water wells. We need to keep doing that in Africa. We need to go drill wells. But what about if we did that in the marketplace where we saw business as the next great wave of the gospel? The great, next great wave of the gospel could come through our businesses. So that everything we did, like the story of Joseph, it says everything he did he put his hand to uh basically turned to gold because he was so faithful. What if we treated our business like that? By the way, they're not our businesses, they're his businesses in and through us. Our life is not even our own. We're bondservants. And so all of a sudden, all of this, the Holy Spirit's just bringing all this momentum. And he's bringing people that are dear friends of mine, but they have tangible skills, like attorneys and accountants, and people who are AI gurus and all this kind of stuff. He starts just sending me all these people that are also getting excited about that, all these business owners. And for months and months now, I've met with all of our local, a lot of our local business owners here in this town that I live in, uh, and they're all getting excited about it. And they're like, we got to do this. And so anyway, so what we've done is we've established this nonprofit 100-time soil that the whole point is to raise up entrepreneurs that would launch businesses that drip with Jesus, is what I like to say. I want them to drip with Jesus so that someone when someone walks in that door of that business, they know who the Lord of that place is. And so, and and you know, inspire physical therapy, our physical therapy clinic is not the only way to do it, but it is one example of maybe some ways to do it because we when people come in for their first day on their on our intake questionnaire, there is a question that says, Do you mind if we ask a Christian prayer of blessing uh over your therapy? And you know what? We live down in Texas and we're kind of the belt buckle of the Bible belt in some ways. And so I don't know, 75, 80% of the people say yes. I I would like that, actually. I'd like a prayer. And we don't force it on them if they check no, we just pray to ourselves. And um, but but they the people that say yes, they know from the very first day we know where our help comes from. God is the healer. We're not claiming that. We're just stewards, we're just servants, we're just conduits through which that can come. And we have Christian music playing over our speakers out in the gym. We have uh scripture hanging on our walls. So to God be the glory, you know, and and God sends me people to to our therapy clinic, for example, and this is how businesses mission can matter, uh, that may never darken the door of a church, or they haven't in years and years maybe, um, but they're coming to therapy because they need therapy for their back or their knee or their shoulder or whatever. And we're we want to give them excellent therapy, by the way. We don't want to give them subpar therapy because we're we're conflicted and we're trying to do ministry without doing any therapy. No, we want to do both. We want to do great therapy, actually, the best ever, like the best clinic in the whole world. This is what I tell my staff. Not because we're neat or we're cool, um, but because God is working through us. Why would we settle, right? So we want to give them great, um, a great product as far as the marketplace goes, but also, but also tell them about the healer. Tell them, like, like I say, where our help comes from. And we understand that we give all God all the credit for that. And so here's just an example of something that happened recently.

Learning To Suffer Well

SPEAKER_00 25:40

I had a young lady come in and she would tell you, if she was sitting here today, man, I've lived a wild life. I lived in Hollywood, I have lived a wild life. And she came in and she came in for therapy or for a joint, and I wanted to give her, and Lord willing, we are giving her great therapy for that joint that we're seeing. Um, but by the end of our evaluation, she did let me pray for her. By the end of our evaluation, the Holy Spirit had just sparked her. She was asking questions about Jesus. I had given her a one-year Bible, we had prayed together, um, and she started coming to my intergenerational Bible study that I host at my house. Uh, and she even now is talking about being baptized. She's even come to church. She said, Man, I didn't was not comfortable at all coming to church, but now she's even come to church once. She's talking about being baptized, and God sent her to me. So God sent her to this place of business. She wasn't and still is a little nervous about actually walking in a church building, but business is mission. Okay, now we're talking. So, so she she came to see us for uh therapy, and we're able to give her life, giving therapy, just like Jesus the woman with the woman at the well, says, Hey, I have this living water. We have this living therapy, so to speak, uh, that we can give you. And so it's been beautiful to see. And that's just one example of just it just happened real recently of why God wants us to do this 100 times soil uh retemptive entrepreneurship. And that's not new, that's going on all over. And the reason why is because the Holy Spirit's doing it, it's not just in our little town. So anyway, it's very exciting. It's been life-giving for me in a season of life where I needed life to be given to me. Because in every way, shape, and form, part of me wants to crawl up in a ball and get in the fetal position and suck my thumb and think about how sad I am. But but instead, I'm trying to just again put my eyes on Jesus, be faithful. So I'm grateful for this life-giving uh assignment God's given us.

Stephanie Shafer 27:28

So thankful. Thankful for that you are stepping into it and blessing so many others, and you're building something way beyond yourself.

SPEAKER_00 27:38

Amen.

Stephanie Shafer 27:39

Thank you for the kingdom. And then leading others to do it that way. So important. And you're involving the mentorship and people to come alongside these young entrepreneurs or business. So why is it so important for people not to build alone?

Why Entrepreneurs Should Not Build Alone

SPEAKER_00 27:55

So this is good. We have a just just what God's led us to. We have a uh because we you can't do it alone. You you need God's help, but you also need people, and and everyone, even Jesus, had his inner group, but then he had his 12, and then he had beyond that his disciple uh leadership group beyond that. Um so so God's led us to a prayer team. We have a prayer team, we have a board, uh, we have a kind of website development team, uh, we have business coaches, and and if you're an entrepreneur that wants to go through this program, we make a meet with our two business coaches. We have a um guy that helps us helps them develop a slide deck as if they were presenting their business idea to a venture capital group. Uh, we have a small business development center in town that we will link them uh with Lisa over there and she will get them going on a um business plan. And so there's this whole group of people, yes, that have kind of come together, kind of like a church comes together, to support this greater mission and to support this individual or husband and wife, whoever it is, to so that they not only have help starting and launching a business, but help really for a few years until they get all the way up on their feet, people to ask questions of, people to that are rooting for them and cheering for them and praying for them and uh connecting with them and helping them along when they run into some roadblocks, which inevitably they will. We know that, you know, 50% of businesses fail within the first five years. We know that. And so we're asking God for to help us with discernment, choosing the right people, doing this the right way, doing it his way, continuing to put it on the altar so that our people don't become one of those statistics. But yes, this, you know, I'm mindful of David, because I just am such a fan of David in the Bible, that God sent him in the beginning kind of a motley crew of guys, a bunch of troublemakers and people that were in debt and whatever. And if God can can create a king from a bunch of misfits, and aren't we all misfits with our sin, right? The sin that we have, we're kind of all misfits, we all need grace. Uh, what can he do uh with faithful believers? So it's been really fun to watch the team that God has assembled.

Stephanie Shafer 30:00

I love it. And I love that you stated a while ago that yeah, when God's doing something, that passion he puts in you, but the people that come alongside almost feels like you're you're just getting to watch it and not really orchestrating it because he is watching but participating, and and the fact that I just hear in you so many good gifts from the Lord that he is so good, and so yeah, just the gifts of people and community and fellowship and heaven-like-mindedness, and yeah, I love that so so much.

Physical Therapy As Calling And Ministry

Stephanie Shafer 30:36

A couple different directions um we could go for maybe new students that are listening. Physical therapy, how do you love it? How does a student know, hey, is this a path for me? Um or if someone's leaning towards starting a business or a calling that might be a little scary, they feel like some life, what what would you say to them? How do you begin to prepare or you know, jump in? What do you think God's leading you more to talk about right now?

SPEAKER_00 31:05

Yeah, so good. Let's talk about physical therapy because I'm passionate about it. So the physical therapy is

Waiting On God After Loss

SPEAKER_00 31:10

a great job that a lot of young people are looking into, and I would highly recommend it. Um, when I went to volunteer to physical therapy, I didn't know, I didn't know what it was. I just went to volunteer because my mom said, Hey, you should go volunteer to PT Client because I was a sophomore in college and was just a general studies major. I didn't know what I wanted to do. So, anyway, I go and it is kind of the confluence where all these beautiful things come together. It's ministry, it's uh for me it was sports medicine, it's uh loving and caring for people, it is uh active. I couldn't just for me, couldn't imagine sitting behind the computer in a cubicle all day. Um it's all these beautiful things that all it's medicine. I mean, my brother was a physician uh and my other brother was also in medicine. So uh so all of these beautiful things all at once. Um, and and you really get to establish a relationship with your patients. You know, if you're a primary care doctor, you just get to see the patient for a moment. Now they've already seen your nurse practitioner, your PA or whatever, but you just see get to see your patient for a moment and then they're back out the door. In physical therapy, our patients spend an hour with us, two, maybe three times a week for sometimes two, three, four months, depending on the surgery they had or the issue that they're fighting through and trying to get back on the field for. And so our relationships, boy, can you build relationships in physical therapy? So it's to me the sweet spot in medicine because we get to um help people feel better and their lives are changed for the better. And they they walk out kind of uh metamorphosis, they walk in on crutches and not even putting their foot on the ground if they had a knee surgery, uh, and they, you know, months later jump are running and jumping, literally jumping rope and ringing on the treadmill and and running out of the clinic with a big smile on their face. So it's it's extremely rewarding uh and in an easy spot to do ministry. Uh just a real sweet, sweet, easy spot to do ministry because people are when they come, they're nervous and hurting and vulnerable and scared, and and when they leave, they're more reassured and and they feel better and have hope.

Work As Witness And Purpose

Stephanie Shafer 33:05

That's so good. What would it look like if more people truly saw their work, their influence, and what they're building as an extension of their faith?

SPEAKER_00 33:16

Uh I think it would it would change things. Uh it would be an absolute uh tectonic shift on the earth if people really understood uh that God has placed them in very specific places at this exact time to live out their gifting. Like there's something that you can do, and I'll say when I say you, everybody that's listening, there's something that God made you to do better than anybody else on the earth. And you may be sitting there like, What? Are you are you sure? You know, I can do I can juggle, but there's a lot of people who can juggle. No, there's something that God made you to be able to do that's unique. So yeah, I think if people understood that there's something that that God made you to do better than anybody else, I had a uh preacher friend of mine years ago who said, Michael, you need to be doing what only you can do. And so if people saw that they're uh wherever they are, they've got to remember that the Holy Spirit of the Lord God Almighty is inside of them. They're like the same power that rose Jesus from the grave. So I tell my young uh people that I disciple, um, because I disciple a decent amount of college guys, I'm like, hey, when you show up to the interview, guess what? God shows up with you. So they're not, you're they're not just interviewing you, you're interviewing them in the sense of, Lord, is this where you want me to work and love and serve? Right? So when you show up to the party, Jesus shows up with you. So the light brightens in that place. So if we understand at work that that's the case, that the Holy Spirit of the Lord God Almighty shows up with you to work, man, watch out. Oh my goodness, because God is gonna touch lives, God is gonna change hearts, uh, and it's not because you're neat or great. It's not that. It's it's only God. John 15 says we cannot do anything unless we're inside the vine. But when you're in the vine, you're gonna start growing fruit, and the fruit is gorgeous, the fruit of the spirit, love and joy and peace and patience, kindness, goodness, you know, gentleness, faithfulness, self-control. When you show up, all of those things kind of in a good way invade that space. And so uh unashamedly, unabashedly, uh, you love talking about your king. And so you're gonna do great work. Don't get me wrong. Whatever, if you're a plumber, man, you need to fix every leak in the whole world the best you can. If you're a roofer, put on a roof that never is gonna leak. But while you're doing it, while you're doing it, uh point them to Jesus, point the client to Jesus, point your coworkers to Jesus. You're gonna have this goofy smile on your face and this joy in your heart, and they're gonna be like, what in the world makes you tick? Why are you always smiling like that? Say, man, can I tell you about my king? Can I tell you about grace? And it's available for you too. And so, man, that would change it would frankly, I think, change everything in our workplaces if we really honestly believed it and lived it in faith.

Stephanie Shafer 36:09

Does I was flying home the other night, late flight, and there was a steward um on the airplane, and he was just smiling and so kind, like just stood out. And I'm like, I said, How are you doing? What's going on? He goes, Man, I'm happy. And I said, Well, why? What makes you happy? And he's just like, God, and I was like, Yeah, Jesus. And so you can tell people notice. I was hoping that's what he was gonna say, but it was, and just to watch him, because you don't always run into that on an airplane um these days, but yeah, he was smiling, it it was just really so that's so true. What a gift it is to be able to give that to others, and then for yourself, yeah. Because of that being so contagious, it is um it's a blessing and a joy for us to do it. Um, one of the things we care deeply about at North Star is helping students understand that their lives have purpose what they are building can reflect Christ. So I love your story. It's just a powerful reminder that God uses often the hardest seasons to prepare us for the most meaningful impact. So much for sharing your story and for getting up every day, because yeah, it is hard. And being so in your story, you're so authentic and real because it is it is hard, even in so much joy and so much fun that God has around us. Um, yeah, we can still we struggle because we're humans. So I love that you tell you know, you're human that God is the one empowering you and your family is just incredible. I don't know them, but it feels like I do just talking, you know, talking to you the these two times. And so I love it.

Contagious Hope And Denise’s Legacy

Stephanie Shafer 37:50

You are inspiring, you are contagious. You do have a courageous hope podcast, so tell uh tell the listeners um a little bit about that.

SPEAKER_00 37:58

Um Yeah, so the the can Yeah, the Contagious Hope podcast is really it's what God put on my heart and partially to share our grief journey and how we're turning to the Lord as the only one really that can kind of make us take another step, put another foot in front of the other, um, and have joy in our hearts despite circumstances that are really hard and really sad, and it just is that way. I mean, it's you have to hold these two things in your hand. So, uh, and I've talked to the Lord a lot about this. I'm like, okay, Lord, you say in your word that all good, you know, that everything works together for the good, for those who love the Lord and are called according to your purposes. And with that said, the choice you made for us has left me heartbroken with Denise's what feels like early passing, and those are a number of her days were ordained that were it was the perfect number of days. But I've got to hold those same two things, I've got to hold those two things in the same two hands. That everything works out for the good, and in this moment, this doesn't feel good at all. This doesn't feel like I say, the choice that you made for, we didn't choose cancer, the choice you made for us has left me heartbroken. How can those two coexist and what the Holy Spirit is is just teaching me? It's just he he is just so so kind, um, is that uh, you know, not only that the Isaiah passes that his ways are higher than our ways and his thoughts are higher than our thoughts, um, but but you know, the Bible verse about lest the seed falls to the ground and dies, you know, like Denise's ministry and her legacy and her, um, just the phrase that she used, God's plan is perfect. And, you know, that's straight out of the Bible as well, by the way. Um, the seeds that were planted that have been planted, then the stories that I'm hearing about people, because she said, she said, uh, if one person is in heaven because of my story, this will have all been worth it. And there's a lot more people, Stephanie, I think, that are gonna at least be impacted on their path to heaven. They're in heaven because of Jesus, because of his grace and his blood. But but Denise is a part of a whole lot of people's story. And it gives that was uh, you know, almost a year and a half ago, and I'm still hearing stories. I'm still hearing stories about how Denise has impacted people's lives and helped their faith be stronger, and they turn back to the Lord. And in midst of all this, you know, God does that. He brings beauty from ashes, he turns crucifixions into resurrections. He loves redemption stories. That's what the gospel is. And so this is a redemption story in our little family. So we're we're thankful that he would choose us to let us live it out. Just we just still require prayers though, because we're stumbling and bumbling and you know, forward as we continue to look towards him for strength.

Stephanie Shafer 40:40

Yeah. Amen. Well, it has been an incredible time and um yeah, inspiring. You inspire me. Thank you. Keep going every moment interesting and yeah, and to really pray for others. Um, that's right.

SPEAKER_00 41:01

We all have something. We're all dealing with something, that's right. Yeah, thank you for that encouragement. It just it makes my heart you know, feel encouraged that you're encouraged, right? That our story is bringing help and help to people. That's that really is helpful for me.

Stephanie Shafer 41:18

Well, thank you so much. I look forward to just continuing the conversation with you.

SPEAKER_00 41:22

Yeah, thank you. Thanks for having me.

Listener Contact And Subscribe

Stephanie Shafer 41:26

Thank you so much for listening today. If you have any questions for our guest or like information about North Star, please email us at podcast at nsa.school. We love having guests on our show and getting to hear their stories. If you have anyone in mind that you think would be a great guest to feature, please email us and let us know. And don't forget to subscribe so you don't miss out on upcoming stories.