[00:00] This episode is a little bit unique in that this is a sermon that I gave at my church in July of 2023. And if you are a person of faith, you’re going to love this. If you’re not, I encourage you to listen to just the first 10 minutes and you can, if you listen to it on double speed, it’s only five minutes, but give the first 10 minutes of this episode a listen.

[00:21] The message is on faith and failure. Here we go. Welcome to another episode of success through failure, the show for successful people. And for those who want to become. Successful, the only show that reveals the true nature of success. This is your host, Jim Harshaw, Jr. And today I’m bringing you a solo episode.

[00:41] This is, like I said, the sermon that I gave at my church and it’s on the topic of faith and failure. So there’s two parts to what I’m going to share with you today. Number one is my testimony. And this is a little bit unique. This is a different testimony than you’ve probably heard from most people. It’s actually based on sort of my science background and the thinking process that led me to this sort of a logical thinking process that led me to this.

[01:06] Just faith with kind of maybe flies in the face of just having pure faith or blind faith, but actually a process that I went through that logically helped me understand and actually come to believe in Christ. So that’s gonna be the first 10 minutes and the remainder, it will be the actual sermon on the message of faith and failure.

[01:25] So if you want to skip to just the sermon part, if you want to skip my testimony, which I don’t think you should, because it’s a pretty interesting story, I think, and pretty relevant and pretty helpful for a lot of you. Who, who may not be believers, or if you are a believer, how to share it with folks who are not believers.

[01:39] But you can look right down in the description, whether if you’re watching this on YouTube or listening on Spotify or iTunes or Apple podcasts or wherever else, just down in the, in the description, we’ll have a notation of when the actual sermon part of this starts. My testimony, I grew up in a family where we didn’t really go to church.

[01:58] My mom was a believer, but you know, church was not something that we did regularly. But I grew up wrestling was my thing. If you’ve been a Lister for any length of time, you know that wrestling was a big part of my life. And interestingly, over the years, there were a lot of people who I respected, who I just held in really high regard.

[02:19] They seemed like good people and had peace in their lives and just seemed to be living their lives right. There would always be this message of how they Went to church, they believed in Christ. They were a man of, or man or woman of faith. And it was just this seed that was planted many, many times over the years.

[02:38] And nobody’s beaten me over the head with the Bible or anything like that. And this continued from, you know, my youth wrestling through high school and into college where one of my coaches named John McGovern, who was an amazing coach. He was only my coach for one year, but he had a really huge outsized impact on my life.

[02:58] Just in that one year that he coached me, he’s actually the head wrestling coach at Dubuque University now, but that one year, you know, he really planted sort of some seeds of faith there, but I still wasn’t a believer. You know, I went to church now and then, you know, like prayed to God whenever I needed something, right?

[03:15] Kind of like a lot of people on the fence do and, you know, believe in God and don’t really go to church until you really need something. That was me. And it wasn’t until after I graduated, moved away from the Charlottesville, Virginia, which is where the university of Virginia is moved back to Charlottesville in 2004.

[03:32] And two years later, Steve Garland became the head wrestling coach at university of Virginia. He’s a great friend of mine. I was in his wedding. He was in mine. We were roommates and teammates and all that. We have all kinds of crazy stories and just, um, uh, a great background together as a great friend.

[03:47] And two years later in 2008, he became a believer. He accepted Christ. A friend of ours, a pastor at a local church here in Charlottesville, always talks about the fact that you can’t deny the radically changed life. And Steve’s life was radically changed. And when you see that happening, you can’t deny that something’s going on there.

[04:09] And I saw that and I saw that change happening in Steve’s life. And I kept hearing this message of you can’t deny a radically changed life. So I started checking it. I’m like, okay, I got to check this thing out, right? All these people who I’ve respected over the years, they’ve all been men or women of faith and, and, you know, my mom starting with my mom and now one of my best friends, maybe my best friend has become a man of faith and he’s, I’ve seen his life totally change.

[04:33] I got to check this thing out. But here’s the deal. I was a science major in college. I was a bio major transition to environmental science major. Like this has to make logical sense to me. I just can’t believe in something because people say it’s, it’s something to believe in. I’m not, that’s not for me.

[04:48] So this is the logical process I went through. As a science major, someone who loves science, loves nature, loves the outdoors, I’m fascinated by things, for example, like a cell, like a single cell, like within, uh, you and me, a plant, a cell is a tiny microscopic thing, right? And if it’s a single cell organism, it’s an entity, right?

[05:11] An organism, or if it’s just part of us, it’s still this, this thing that’s, that’s alive. It’s part of us. And inside of that cell, there are organelles, right? There’s the mitochondria and the ribosomes. If you remember from, you know, like middle school science and there’s all these things, but it’s microscopic and it has inside of it, all these organs, basically they’re keeping it alive and help it do different things.

[05:32] Like that is. Absolutely mind blowing to me, and that cell is made up of molecules and millions and millions of atoms. Like it’s just mind blowing that all of that happens on such a microscopic scale. Now let’s go to the other end of the spectrum, the universe. The universe is What 14 billion years old, and that was when I was in high school.

[05:55] So it’s even bigger now, but 14 billion years old, like that number is beyond comprehension. We can’t comprehend 1% of that. And so if you go, okay, well, what’s at the end of like 14 billion years, is there like a wall, is it like a brick wall? Somebody like what’s at the end of it. And so I don’t know about you, but what I think about that stuff, my mind just, it just implodes.

[06:15] And so you look at the two ends of those spectrums and you go, there’s gotta be something going on here. There’s gotta be a God. Like if you don’t believe in God, like there at least has to be something else going on. There’s, there’s some creator or something out there that is creating this. Right. And even to the extent of like, I went for a walk with one of my sons and one of my daughters recently, we were walking through the woods and my daughter pointed out this like.

[06:37] Feather on the ground next to the trail and I went back and I looked at it. I picked it up and it was this beautiful blue and white and black feather. It was just so beautiful. And you look at that feather, which anybody could just walk by and ignore. It’s just an everyday thing. And you look at the absolute.

[06:53] Beauty of this thing was so amazing and I held it up to her and I said, and people think that there’s not a God, there’s so much of this amazingness in nature for me. It’s an easy leap, logical leap to go. Okay. Yes, there’s a creator. There’s a God. So that was the first leap that I had to make. Yes, of course.

[07:10] No doubt. There’s a God. And then the next logical leap is, well, wait a second. Why would he send his son down and then let him die? Like this horrible, horrific. Death of being crucified. That doesn’t make any sense. So I thought about that too. And so why would he send his son down? Well, I could very logically think to myself, he could look down and see these, the human race, which he created and go, boy, you guys are really screwing this up, you know, I’m going to send a person down to walk among you and show you how it’s done, and that sounds pretty logical to me.

[07:41] Okay. God created us. There’s a creator. He’s going to send us down to actually show what real love is, how to love thy neighbor and all of the things that Jesus taught us as the perfect person. Right. Created by God. So that’s very, it’s pretty logical. Okay. We’re screwing it up. He’s going to be like, Hey guys, you’re screwing it up.

[08:00] Let me show you how it’s done. Let me send out down this guy, Jesus. And he’s just like, he’s awesome. Even if you’re not a believer, you can go. Pretty awesome dude, just loved everybody was just good at human as you could possibly imagine. Got it. Yes, that makes sense to me, but wait a second. Why would God actually have him die like a horrible, horrible death?

[08:17] Well, it makes logical sense to me that if God really wanted to show his love for us, that he would make the ultimate sacrifice. Like for me, I, I make a sacrifice if you want to call it that maybe for my kids, when, you know, we pay a lot of money for them to do activities, we drive them to sports or, or activities or, or do things for them.

[08:39] We invest in them, you know, sacrifice, right? And sometimes we really bend over backwards for our children and do bigger sacrifices and. It’s just because we love them and sometimes we do things to show like, Hey, listen, I really do love you. I want you to see this, you know, we don’t do it for that necessarily, but you could see why God would say, you know what, I’m going to make the ultimate sacrifice for you.

[08:59] I’m going to let my son die, have him sacrifice for you to pay for the screw ups that you do. Like, listen, we’re going to wash everything clean. I’m going to let you know, I love you pay for your sins through the ultimate sacrifice. Holy cow. That makes sense to me. And we’re not talking about a sacrifice on the scale of like just my family.

[09:18] We’re talking about like universe. So ultimate sacrifice. Okay. That makes sense. And then you go to the next level is like, why didn’t he have him show up on earth as like a King in the sense that we would really recognize a King. You know, rich money, you know, drives a Rolls Royce, all of that. And instead, Jesus rolls into Jerusalem in a Honda Civic, right?

[09:43] He rode on the back of a donkey. And guess what? We can relate to that. We can relate to that guy. I can’t relate to the guy who rolls in on a Rolls Royce. Like the Honda Civic. Yeah, man, I get it. That was my wife’s first car. You know, when we met, she had a Honda Civic and actually had a sunroof that leaked and the whole bit.

[09:59] I can relate to that. All right. So this stuff is starting to add up, but then it’s like, wait a second. Why doesn’t God make it easy for us? He can do this. He can make it easy for us. Well, first of all, how do we know that he hasn’t already made it way easier than it could have been, right? We don’t know that.

[10:16] So asking the question, why isn’t it easy? Well, maybe it is easy compared to what it would have been. But second of all. My parents didn’t make it easy on me. You know, we had to do hard things and we split a lot of wood. My, you know, my, my wrestling coaches never made it easy on me. So things weren’t necessarily easy for me.

[10:36] And God doesn’t say he’s going to make everything easy for us. He just says, trust, trust in me, you know, lean on me. And that all makes sense to me to the point where you say, well, what about pain? Like why, why so much pain in the world? And. To me, this is just a reminder that like, this is temporary, like this is a temporary thing.

[10:53] There’s something bigger and greater beyond if we have faith, if we believe all this stuff prior, then it logically makes sense that like, this is temporary. Like we’re going to go and be with God after this temporary life. So that explains. The pain to me, it still doesn’t make it palatable or anything.

[11:14] You’re like, just kind of like, Oh, okay. Shrug your shoulders at, but there’s a sense of an understanding there. And then there are things that are just beyond explanation. Things that I don’t understand. I’m a believer. I believe in Christ, but there are things that I just don’t understand. So I can’t explain, but here’s the deal.

[11:31] Imagine your frontline worker in a massive company with thousands and thousands of employees. And there’s a CEO at the top who’s making decisions and some decision comes down and you’re like, Oh, this is crap. This is terrible. Why would they make such a decision? This doesn’t make any sense. This is the stupidest thing ever.

[11:48] And then you hear the CEO speak about why he or she made that decision. And you go. Oh, okay. That makes sense. Now, like we don’t understand what the bigger plan that the CEO has for the company is a frontline worker. We would just not understand that. Well, imagine if you’re the CEO of like the freaking universe, you think you’re going to understand everything.

[12:10] You think you’re going to understand every plan. Do you think that we should be able to understand every little thing that the creator of the universe does and everything in his plan to me? No, it’s easy for me to go. Of course, I’m not going to understand everything. Shoot. We don’t even understand and go back to my science background.

[12:28] Like we don’t understand gravity. Like scientists cannot explain gravity. We understand it’s there. We don’t understand really where it comes from. Like we don’t understand gravity. Quick interruption. If you like what you’re hearing here and you want to learn how you can implement this into your life, just go to JimHarshawJr.com/apply to see how you can get a free one on one coaching session with me. That’s JimHarshawJr.com/apply now back to the show. There’s another phenomenon in nature called the Pemba effect. Google this. It’s fascinating. It’s this idea where you can take a pot of boiling water and a pot of cold water and out into sub freezing temperatures.

[13:11] And you throw all the water in the air, the pot of boiling water and the pot of boiling water will actually freeze first. It will, by the time it hits the ground, it will freeze. Before the cold water does, doesn’t make any sense, right? To you and me, it doesn’t make any sense. Check this out. There’s all kinds of research done on it over many, many, many years.

[13:30] And it’s well documented. Nobody understands it. We don’t understand how this freaking happens. We don’t understand that. Why do we think we should understand? Everything that the creator of the universe does in our own lives and in the lives around us. That is my testimony. When you go through these logical steps, you can go.

[13:49] Okay. I understand. There’s a God understand why he came down to show us how it’s done. Why God made the sacrifice of his son. And, you know, understand why it’s not easy and that pain is going to be there even, and that still doesn’t mean there doesn’t mean there’s not a God. It just means there’s pain there and there’s something better in the future.

[14:05] And listen, we don’t have to understand everything. I hope that resonates with you. All right. So I wanted to share that with that testimony with, with you, because that’s how I came to Christ since been baptized. And, you know, I like to share this message with anybody who’s not a believer. Hope that helps you.

[14:20] Or maybe you can share that message with somebody else. So share this podcast episode, tell them just to listen to the first, you know, 15 minutes or so of this, um, where I share that testimony. All right. So let’s skip to the next part of this. I want to share this message of faith and failure. Like what role does failure have in faith?

[14:36] All right. So let me start this message by sharing a little bit of my background. So grew up, as I mentioned, a wrestler, uh, my college career. When I got to UVA, uh, as a college wrestler, I was, uh, I never placed in the high school state championships or anything like that. I was just a recruited walk on roomed with a Pennsylvania state champion.

[14:55] You know, it was, he was a superstar. I was like a nobody, but my goal was to be an all American. And to be an all American in wrestling and NCAA division one of wrestling, you have to first qualify for the national championships. And essentially you have to win four matches to become an all American.

[15:09] Freshman year, I made the starting lineup, qualified for the national championships, but I failed to achieve my goal. Sophomore year, again, I qualified for the national championships. Again, I failed junior year, pretty much a repeat of the prior two years qualified for the national championships ended my season again, with my face buried in a towel in tears, wondering why I can’t do this.

[15:28] Am I not good enough? Am I not smart enough? Am I not capable enough? And I was just full of doubt. So I spent the entire off season. Trying to figure out what is it that I’m missing? What is it that is not working in my life? I knew I couldn’t run more miles or lift more weights or watch more film.

[15:44] There’s not enough hours in the day, but I’m like, how can I, what is it that I’m missing? Do I need to learn new techniques? Do I need to do different weight training? What do I need to do? And so I spent the entire off season going around to wrestling camps all over the country, all over the East coast, even went to the Olympic training center to be around other high level wrestlers and try to figure out like, what are they doing?

[16:06] What are these coaches saying? Like, what am I missing? Came back my senior year. And headed into the season and it was the night before the first term of the years, the West Virginia open it in Morgantown, West Virginia, West Virginia university. And I’m sitting in the hotel room and it hits me. I never figured it out.

[16:24] I never figured out what that thing was that I’m missing. And in that moment, I gave up, I gave up on trying to figure it out. I gave up on trying to achieve the goal. And I said to myself. All I can do is all I can do. I’m going to put everything I possibly can into this. I’m going to show up early, stay late, do the extra workouts, rehab, my injuries, you know, diet, right?

[16:45] Sleep, right? Train, right? Everything. We’ll do everything. And if I’m going to end up on the podium, great. If not, that’s fine too. I got to be okay with whatever happens. So I gave up in that moment and I felt this weight. Lift it off of me and I put down this fear of failure and I woke up the next day and I competed with absolute freedom, not afraid to lose, not worried about winning and I competed so well.

[17:09] I dominated everybody went five and oh, I had so much fun. My dad told me after the term, he goes, I don’t know who that was out there, but I’ve never seen you wrestle like that. And this is a guy who saw me wrestling since I was six years old. And the rest of my season pretty much went the same way. And again, I qualify for the national championships.

[17:26] And this time I went three matches and I have one more match to win in order to become an all American. And I got to wrestle the fourth ranked wrestler in the country. He’s on the number one ranked team in the country. And I stepped to the center of the mat and again, in front of 15, 000 people. I said, I’m focusing on the process, let the outcome take care of itself.

[17:46] It’s hard to do hard to do. I mean, listen, logically, I knew I wanted this bad, but I had to put that aside and literally just focus on the process. And I did. And I got my hand raised at the end of the match. I became a division one, all American. It was a huge, huge accomplishment. I was so excited to do this.

[18:02] This is such a huge goal that I wanted to achieve. And now I’m a division one, all American. And I’ve been trying to live up to that ever since when you reach that level, there’s sort of this pedestal that people put you on, at least in the wrestling world. And you feel like you’re supposed to be a certain type of person.

[18:23] And I’ve gone through all the years since then, trying to be that person, trying to live up to what that person is and who that person is. And. I have this bio that I share in my business. Now, if you, you know, if you go to my website, you’ll see some stuff in my bio. If you ever hear me speak and somebody, you know, reads my bio, they’ll tell you all these worldly accolades that I have.

[18:47] And they are things like, you know, Jim was a division one, all American. And in my head, I’m thinking, yeah, but I got last place. I was the last place all American. I was eighth place. I see the weakness. I see the failure in that worldly accomplishment. Another part of my bio is that I founded and sold a company, my first business.

[19:08] And that sounds great. But what do I see? I see, yeah, but it was a disastrous partnership. I ended up selling it for far less than what it was worth. It was just a disastrous end to that business. You know, another thing in my bio is that, yeah, I gave a TEDx talk and I was selected to give this TEDx talk out of, there was 65 people that applied and, and it ended up coming down to this, this open mic night and there was this audience vote.

[19:31] And I had a ton of friends in the audience who all voted for me. I’m thinking to myself, I didn’t really earn that. I see the failure there. I see the weakness there. I see the yeah, but there, you know, I’ve got four kids for people tell me, you know, you got these four beautiful kids and I’m thinking to myself, yeah, but two of them look like me joking there, of course, but like, I see the failures.

[19:51] I see the weaknesses in my bio, in my success and Jordan burrows. He’s a, the greatest of all time. He’s a wrestler. He’s won seven Olympic or world gold medals. He’s the goat. He’s the goat of American wrestling and his Twitter handle is all I see is gold. Well, for me, it’s all I see is failure. All I see is weakness.

[20:16] And I imagine some of you listening to this right now, you may feel the same way. You may look at your bio. You may look at. Things you’ve done and say, yeah, but, or you may look at things you’ve done and said, you know, I, I should be so much further along in my life right now. I should have accomplished that thing in the past, but I haven’t, you may see your failures and your weaknesses just like I do.

[20:38] And so I want to share with you three stories from the Bible where we see failure, we see weakness. And God has different plans in second Corinthians 12, the verse goes on like this. It says, but God said to me, this is a Paul’s letter to the, he wrote to the Corinthians. He said, but God said to me, quote, my grace is sufficient for you for my power is made perfect in weakness.

[21:04] Paul’s goes on to say, therefore, I will boast all the more gladly in my weaknesses so that Christ’s power may rest on me. That is why for Christ’s sake, I delight in weaknesses. In insults, in hardships, in persecutions, in difficulties for when I am weak, that I am strong. For when I’m weak, that I’m strong.

[21:22] Can you internalize that? Can you actually think about that? How that applies to you? I’m going to share with you three stories here from the Bible about weakness, failure, which became strength. Okay. So the first one is Gideon in judges six. And all of this will be in the action plan. We’ll have a link to the slide deck that I’m actually sharing with my church for the sermon.

[21:44] All these slides will be there. The list of the verses, everything. But in Judges six, we learned about Gideon and it says the Lord turned to him and said, go in the strength you have and save Israel out of Midian’s hand. Okay. So the Israelites were being oppressed by the Midianites. And God says, am I not sending you?

[22:06] And Gideon says, wait, pardon me, Lord. Gideon replied, but how can I save Israel? My clan is the weakest in Manasseh. I’m the least in my family. And the Lord answered, I will be with you and you will strike down all the Midianites, leaving none alive. Gideon doubted, but God had other plans and Gideon.

[22:27] Eventually was convinced he kept asking God for proof and saying, you know, if this is really, you do this for me, let me show me a sign. And he got those signs and he trusted God and he went out and did amazing things despite his weakness because of his weakness. All right. So that’s Gideon great story in the Bible about weakness and failure.

[22:51] Another one is in Exodus three. This is a story of Moses and the Lord said. I’ve indeed seen the misery of my people in Egypt. I’ve heard them crying out because of their slave drivers and I’m concerned about their suffering. So now go, I’m sending you Moses to Pharaoh to bring my people, the Israelites out of Egypt.

[23:14] And Moses said to God, wait a second, like, who am I that I should go to the Pharaoh? Stand in front of the Pharaoh? Me? Who am I that I should go into the Pharaoh and that I should bring forth the children of Israel out of Egypt. Doubt again, Moses, just like Gideon doubted he saw weakness in himself. God saw strength in potential inability.

[23:37] Moses goes on to trust in God and does amazing things. Parts of the Red Sea leads the Israelites to safety and out of Egypt. God does amazing things when we have faith. Well, there’s a woman named Wilma Rudolph. Wilma Rudolph was born in 1940 in Kentucky. She was born into a family of 22 children. She was number 20 out of 22.

[23:57] So she certainly didn’t get much attention when she was young. She was stricken with polio and she got braces on her legs and the doctors told her you will never walk again. Simple as that. You will never walk again. But her mother said that she would, her mother told her, God has a purpose for you. This is a family of deep faith.

[24:15] So Wilma decided to, to believe that God had a plan for her. She learned how to walk again. Then she got her braces off. She learned how to walk and then she learned how to run. And then she became a pretty good runner. Not just a pretty good runner. She made the U. S. Olympic team. And then she went to the Olympics and won three gold medals.

[24:33] Three time gold medal, Olympic gold medalist Wilma Rudolph. Imagine that. The girl who’s told, you will never walk again, goes on to win, become the best, the best in the world. Listen, you may not be trying to become the best in the world at something, but in your weakness, there’s strength. Trust that God has a plan for you.

[24:51] And listen, you may not be inspiring the world through a story of winning Olympic gold medals. Maybe you’re maybe just trying to get through the day and, and, and put a meal on the table. Maybe you’re just trying to get through this season of your life where you’re stressed and anxious. And there’s struggle and challenge that you’re dealing with.

[25:08] Maybe things are great in your business, but at home, they’re not. Maybe it’s vice versa. Maybe it’s a health challenge that you’re, you’re, you’re struggling with. God will make you strong, like trust, have faith, lean on God. Don’t make it about you. Make it about following his plan. Focus on the process. And the outcome will be what it’ll be.

[25:27] The third story, I told you I want to share with you three stories. The third story, first one’s about Gideon, second one is about Moses, and the third one is Peter. And there are so many great stories of failure for Peter in the Bible. Uh, Matthew 14, Peter’s on a fishing boat. He sees Jesus. Out on the water.

[25:44] And he said, Lord, if it’s you, tell me to come to you on the water. Jesus says, come. Then Peter got down out of the boat and he walked on the water and he came toward Jesus. But when he saw the wind, he was afraid and beginning to sink. He cried out, Lord, save me. And immediately Jesus reached out his hand and caught him.

[26:03] You have little faith, Jesus said. Why did you doubt? Why did you doubt? Why don’t, why don’t you just follow me? Why don’t you just trust me and my plan? Yeah, listen, easier said than done. Peter failed to have faith and then there were plenty of other times in the Bible, you know, Peter denied that he even knew who Jesus was three times, three times, he denied that he was hanging out with Jesus, that he knew him, that he was a cohort of his, he denied publicly three times.

[26:34] Like, no, I mean, I don’t know that guy. Like, cause he didn’t want to get in trouble. He denied him three times, Peter, but Peter’s the guy who goes on after Jesus’s death to give the first ever sermon. The guy who failed, the guy who had little faith, the guy who had weakness becomes the guy who gives the very first sermon ever.

[26:53] We see this in the Bible. Can we see this about ourselves? We see this weakness. Can we give it to Jesus? Can we give it to God? So let me tell you the rest of the story about that night in the hotel room in West Virginia. Sitting on the edge of the bed in the cheap hotel. In Morgantown, West Virginia, thinking to myself, I give up.

[27:13] I give up on trying to become an all American, I’m just gonna do everything I can possibly do, and whatever happens, happens. What I didn’t tell you is that I gave it to God. I gave it to God that night. I said, listen, God, if you have a, a plan for me to be an All American and, and whatever that may mean to and do down the road, great.

[27:30] If not, I’m okay with that too. And once I gave it to him, once I stopped trying to do it on my own, I had new strength. And it allowed me to fully be the person that God wants me to be, instead of trying to be the person that I want me to be, or others think I am. I’m going to give it up and be like, listen, it’s up to you, man.

[27:51] I’m going to do all the things I can do. I’m going to show up early, stay late, do all the training, do everything right, as much as I possibly can. But listen, it’s in your hands after that. You know, listen, I’m going to do the process. I’m going to do things that I know how to do. I’ll let you, you do the things that you know how to do, and we’ll see where this thing goes.

[28:06] And gave me new strength. It took away my fears. Took away my anxieties. In Philippians 4, 4 verse 6, it says, Do not be anxious about anything, but in every situation, by prayer and petition, with thanksgiving, you know, being grateful, present your request to God. Present your request to God. That’s what I did that night.

[28:28] Yeah, listen, I’m a slow learner. It was another, you know, decade before I, I came to Christ. But at that moment, I gave it to God and you can too, you can give it to God. And when you do, amazing things can happen for you. There’s a woman named Helen Maroulis and for… Any wrestling people following, you know, her name, she’s a us world and Olympic team member on team USA.

[28:54] Helen Maroulis actually interviewed her in episode 143, but she made the Olympic team 2016 and leading up to the Olympics, she was training. She was doing some overseas training and training in the United States. And all these, all these other girls, all these other women. Who were not as good as her.

[29:10] We’re not on the Olympic team. Maybe a couple of weight classes below we’re beating her. She was having terrible training and she went into the Olympics with all this doubt, all this fear, all this uncertainty, all this anxiety, but she makes it to the finals. She makes it to the Olympic gold medal finals, but here’s the catch.

[29:27] Here’s the thing. She has to wrestle the greatest wrestler of all time. Yoshida Saori is a Japanese woman. She is 13 time world. Gold medalist in a three time Olympic medalist. So 16 world or Olympic golds, the most decorated, most successful wrestler, male or female of all time in freestyle wrestling. And there’s an image and you can watch this on YouTube.

[29:54] It’s of Helen standing side by side next to her opponent in the tunnel, you know, smoke and the announcers and everything in the arena, the Olympic gold medal final, the biggest match of her career. Helen’s got to wrestle Goliath compared to her being the David in. There’s obviously no way that Helen’s going to be the greatest of all time.

[30:14] And Helen’s standing there in the tunnel about five or six feet away from her opponent. They’re both facing forward, facing the mat, waiting for the announcer to announce her name. And so they can come running out. And she’s saying this, you can see her words, Christ is in me. I am enough. Christ is in me. I am enough.

[30:31] Christ is in me. I am enough. She gave it. She gave it to Christ and said, listen, I did everything I can do and I’m going to do everything that I can possibly do. Wherever you take this, it’s up to you. You’re in me. I’m enough. I don’t feel my weaknesses. I don’t have my weaknesses are irrelevant. Because listen, Christ is in me.

[30:52] I I’m enough. I’m enough. She goes out and wins the Olympic gold medal against all odds. She defeats the greatest of all time because she gave it to Christ. You can see her lips moving. You can watch her saying these words, this mantra and Maroulis.

[31:20] With the power of Christ inside of her. So how about you, are you willing to do everything you possibly can to work as hard as you can and say, listen, the rest of it’s up to God, whatever happens here, happens here, whatever outcome it is, that’s out of my hands. What’s that thing that you’ve been chasing for years?

[31:41] That thing that you work so hard at, can you continue to work hard, but shift? The mental side of that too, this is not going to be done with my power. This is going to be done with, with Christ’s power within God’s power. I’m going to put down my fear of failure, my uncertainty, my doubt, my striving, and just say, listen, I’m going to do all the things I can.

[32:07] And I’m going to allow myself to be fully who God wants me to be. And when you do that, the doubts and the fears just melt away and you could show up in the world as the best version of you, the one that God wants you to be. When you put down your plans and go with God’s plan, what’s that one thing?

[32:26] Identify that one thing. I challenge you to identify that one thing for yourself right now. That’s your action item from this episode. Take action. Good luck. Thanks for listening. If you want to apply these principles into your life, let’s talk. You can see the limited spaces that are open on my calendar at JimHarshawJr.com/apply, where you can sign up for a free one time coaching call directly. And don’t forget to grab your action plan. Just go to JimHarshawJr.com/action. And lastly, iTunes tends to suggest podcasts with more ratings and reviews. More often, you would totally make my day. If you give me a rating and review, those go a long way in helping me grow the podcast audience.

[33:11] Just open up your podcast app. If you have an iPhone, do a search for success through failure. Select it and then scroll the whole way to the bottom where you can leave the podcast, a rating and a review. Now, I hope this isn’t just another podcast episode for you. I hope you take action on what you learned here today.

[33:28] Good luck and thanks for listening.

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