Mick Wienholt

David W Ebel: Welcome to the God Says Yes podcast. You are welcome. Welcome back to God Says Yes. My name is David Ebel and I'm your host. This program has been going on a while, but the mission has been going on for a long time. I've been in ministry over 50 years and it's always been about the love of God. And that's why we're here. want people to fall in love with Jesus, not the buildings, not the labels on the door, but who God is and who Jesus is and how it all works together, regardless of the knuckleheads who offend in church or people who let down or whatever. This is a place without reservations, without judgment, where we can talk honestly and transparently about who we are, who we want to be and what we want to happen in our future. So we're not stuck anywhere. under. I totally believe that God custom made us to love. That there's not one of us that's aware we are by accident. I don't believe God does oops. I believe God does intentionally. And I believe that each of you is here today intentionally so that God can show his love to you. You don't have to join anything. There's no secret handshakes. Just the realization that God is real. And how do we know? Because that's what Nick and I are going to talk about is our relationship and how good yours could be. So you're custom made to love. He made you just the way you are from the inside out. We don't have to look alike. We just have to believe alike because guy created us that way. So this is a great chance to just to share and I'm glad that Mick Weinholt is here. He is a brother from another mother. He and I have just got got to know each other and became instant friends and I'm so I'm excited because I've heard enough of his story to know that he's got something that we need to hear. I want you to hear it personally. So Mick, welcome. Tell us about yourself. ⁓ David, thanks a bunch for having me on man. You do great great work here on the show and I'm grateful for the conversation that you and I just had and the one that we're about to have. So genuinely, genuinely excited to be here. And for all the listeners, a little bit of background on me. Well, I'm a redeemed son of the Living God, period. But there's so, so, so much more than that. I have a conversation about all of that. I'm excited to be able to communicate who I once was, which was someone that completely, actively hated God and how God got my attention, how he saved me and changed me into a completely different person. So let's start with growing up in greater Baltimore. That's in the United States and ⁓ I grew up in a quote-unquote Christian household Meaning there was conversation about God there was conversation about Jesus and the Holy Spirit and my parents put me through ⁓ First grade through 12th grade in Christian based education ⁓ And so I had this sort of intellectual understanding of God But what I observed in my household growing up was that there was a lot of discontent of anger, there's arguing between my folks and so this loving God that was described didn't seem to match up with the behaviors that I exhibited or excuse me I observed with my folks and I couldn't put my finger on that as a kid but I definitely felt that there was just a disconnect and then better or worse. at the time it was definitely worse, David. I was built with this ego. And so as a young kid, I just liked to do my thing. I wanted to do it my way. And this God that I was learning about who has all these rules, aka, you know, 10 commandments and other things like putting other people first. Well, that just didn't align with me and what I wanted to do, you know, So my folks did a really nice job of providing discipline to me and direction of which I hated 99.9 % of it. And so even though they were doing a wonderful job, all things considered of parenting me, I wanted nothing to do with them. So I'm sure we've heard in our years that the phrase of rules without relationship equals rebellion. Well, that was a hundred percent me with my folks. And then frankly, by extension, it was also that way with God. So I wanted nothing to do with my folks and I wanted nothing to do with God. And so as soon as I essentially graduated high school, I moved from Baltimore to Greater Denver my brother lived there it was 1800 miles away from my folks and so it was an opportunity with a relatively soft Landing meaning I could crash at my brother and sister-in-law's place until I got my own apartment And so that's what I did. And at that point in my life, I am fueled 100 % by ego and Mountain Dew. And that led me into a life of... trying to prove that I was capable trying to earn my way right I was I was productive in the workforce and ⁓ paying my way through college which is kind of the typical deal that my parents had on the last four all four kids were essentially told we get you through 12th grade then you're kind of on your own and you're expected to go to college so you know we pretty much all knew we had to kind of pay our way through so I moved to Colorado as mentioned and did not not enroll in college on purpose because I couldn't afford to so I planned to do what's oftentimes called a gap year but for me it wasn't a gap year it was literally an established residency year. So I worked full-time became an in-state student and then started going to school and working full-time to pay my way through that. And at this point I'm 19 years old fully fueled by ego as mentioned and I did a lot of outdoor activities. So David, I enjoyed mountain biking. I enjoyed road biking. I enjoy hiking, climbing, ice climbing, all of these types of things. And that's part of the reason why Colorado was so appealing to me. So I had like so many other people that lived in the front range of Colorado, hiked many 14 years or 14,000 foot peaks commonly called 14 years. And two of them called Gray's Peak and Tories Peak are right next to each other. Almost everybody hikes them in a day because they're so close. They're literally next to each other and they're also pretty close to Denver So they get a lot of foot traffic on a nice summer day and I had hiked both of them and so as we get into November of 2000 I decide that I'm gonna now do something better Okay, and I'm picking my words here on purpose because it's my ego and I keep mentioning that because that's literally like who I was okay it was all about me even though I couldn't have recognized that then okay and my ego said you need to go do something better okay you have a day off from work ⁓ go do something better. So what I decided to do was to climb Graze Peak instead of just hike Graze Peak. And November is of course what appears to be a winter wonderland, but there's really not enough snow for the snow to be safe to play on. So. It happens to be November 7th of the year 2000. Many of your listeners will absolutely not remember that until I remind them that that was the day of the Hanging Chad. That is George W. Bush and Al Gore Election Day, November 7th of 2000. I work retail. I happen to have that day off. I vote for the first time and I then raced to the mountains to climb. a couloir or a snow gully on the side of this 14,000 foot peak and my plan David was to climb so not just hike okay climb something much steeper on Grey's Peak then get on to the ridge that the gully or that the couloir topped out on head up to the summit of Grey's Peak cruise over to the summit of Tories Peak back down the main trail that I had hiked previously and literally home for dinner Well, I get to the trailhead parking lot and at that point I realize that in my rush in the morning to vote and not knowing where my polling place was that I had actually forgotten my helmet. So I had everything that I needed to climb but I didn't have my helmet and I realized this. based on standing at my pickup truck door right there in the trailhead parking lot. So I'm a full hour and a half from my house and I'm thinking to myself, well, this isn't going to work. Your plan today was to climb. So you're not going to go back and get your helmet. And then that was this kind of decision point. What do I do? And my plan was to just climb the lost rat coular. And that is a snow climb. So I told myself distinctly, absolutely remember this crystal clear, you're just climbing snow, you'll be fine. That was what I told myself. That's the decision that I made. And so I set off up the trail, eventually get to the point where to get to the bottom of the climb, I deviate from the trail. And at about 12,800 feet, I'm now at the base of the route to start climbing. I take a little bit of a break there, of a water break, snack break kind of thing, and then I start ascending. the actual route and as I'm about two perhaps 300 vertical feet up the route I'm ascending on all fours and just so we're clear here these this cool are the snow gully think of it as a very very steep type of ⁓ double black diamond that might be at the top of a ski resort okay so it's not something that you easily hike up it's more something that you have to climb to or ascend right but you're not ⁓ climbing something vertical for because it's this type of slope that people would want to ski or snowboard down. So I get two to three hundred vertical feet up the route. I'm right around 13,000 feet and I hear this distinctive whoomph and that was the snow settling and it's at that point David that I looked up saw the fracture line and realize that I have caused the avalanche that I am now quite literally in the middle of. I immediately attempted to run perpendicular to the travel of snow as the snow is coming down, right? I got one step literally to my left and I was swept off my feet and I remember thinking as I was being swept off my feet. that this is going to suck for my family, especially my mom. And then the lights went out. I was knocked unconscious. I have no idea how long I was unconscious, but I then regained consciousness. And I regained consciousness, David, at the bottom. And I am not buried by snow. I am literally sitting on a rock. with my feet below me and I'm laying back on my backpack. So think of it almost like when you lay on a bed and your feet are dangling off the bed. You know what mean? You might sit on the side of a bed and then lay yourself back, for example, and your feet are dangling off the bed. That is the position that I was in. I'm highlighting this because one, I wasn't buried. Two, despite literally sliding hundreds of feet down a mountain. I am not in any precarious position. I'm not upside down. I'm not face down in the snow. I'm sitting on a rock with my feet right below me and that allowed me to just simply sit up and sort of shake it all off. It was so odd, frankly, amazing. incredibly unexpected so I sit up as I regain consciousness and I do this systems check and everything's kind of indicated like everything was everything was a go like all systems were go like I knew something was wrong I had this kind of acute, keen sense that I was in danger and that I needed to go, but it seemed like everything was okay and all systems were a go. So I left. I took the one ski pole that I had that was still in my backpack and I used that to help me hike my way back through the deep snow that I had traveled in to get back to the trail. And then I spent the next two miles or so on the trail headed back to the trailhead parking lot and this whole time David this whole time my focus is on getting to my pickup truck because I have this mindset of if I get to my pickup truck, I can drive myself to the hospital and they'll essentially take care of me if I get to the hospital. Well. Along the way, I'm sort of assessing things, especially once I'm back on the trail and I can travel somewhat more easily as opposed to being off trail and the travel is quite arduous. And so I realized something's wrong with my mouth because I keep spitting blood and blood continues to drip into my right eye. And every time I went to wipe that or to hold it, you know, and sort of stop the bleeding, it just made things worse. So I made this very conscious decision, just let it bleed, which seems so different than what we normally would try to do, right? Like just stop the bleeding as opposed to just let it bleed. But I distinctly remember saying to myself, just let it bleed, because every time I address it, it made it worse. So I get all the way back to the parking lot and at this point that's probably David 75 to 90 minutes elapsed time from when I left the bottom of the route after having regained consciousness. So there's a lot of time elapsed here of which I don't know specifically how much it's late in the afternoon. And as I walk into the parking lot having not seen anybody for hours, having climbed alone, traveled alone, all of that, there is one human being in the parking lot. And he looks at me and I look at him and he says to me, what happened to you? And I very matter factly said, I was in an avalanche and walked right past him on my way to my pickup truck. Well, he follows behind me. This is a complete stranger. And again, we're the only two people in the parking lot. It's a Tuesday afternoon. There's no real reason for anybody to be here because as I said before, it's a beautiful looking winter wonderland. But smart people, seasoned people know it's a terrible time to be in the mountains because there's not been enough snow and the snow is very unstable and very unsafe. So I make it all the way to my pickup truck. This particular guy is a complete stranger, continues to ask me what happened. I tell him again, I was in an avalanche. He's annoying me because he continues to ask me questions and I'm focused on getting into my pickup truck. Well, the realities of things were that in the unlikely scenario that I ever got into a really precarious situation in the back country. and had to lose or ditch my backpack, then I kept my keys locked in my truck so that if I ever did lose the backpack, I wouldn't have lost the keys. So the idea was that if you make it back to your car, even if you don't have your backpack, you at least then still have your wheels. So to that end, I always kept my keys locked in my pickup truck because underneath of the pickup truck bed, I had bolted a spare key. And so I'm standing here at my truck realizing that I can't get down on the ground, shimmy underneath of the pickup truck, look up, unbolt the key, shimmy back out from underneath of the pickup truck bed, stand up and unlock my truck. I knew deep down I didn't have the strength for that. So there's this guy, this complete stranger standing there with me and I have to ask him, hey, can you get the key out for me? And he graciously agrees to do that. Like this is a complete stranger and I've had a little bit of an attitude with him, okay? He still is kind enough to do that. And so we get my truck opened. And the goal here is, as mentioned, get in the truck. But another goal that I had was to gain access to the truck to get my warm, thick down jacket and put it on because it's quite cold. Up to this point, I just have the ski or rain kind of shell jacket that I'm wearing that I had been wearing the entire time. And so we now have the truck opened and I go to unzip my jacket. And David, I cannot get the zipper down any farther than my sternum. And the reason is that the zipper is stuck in all of the coagulated blood and other fluids that have been dripping off of my forehead onto my chest. And those things are also frozen. And I don't have the strength to pull my zipper down. So at the beginning of this story, I'm a strong athletic 19 year old. And now I'm standing here just a handful of hours later, and I literally can't even unzip my jacket. So I have to say to this complete stranger, can you help me take my jacket off? This is essentially like humble pie serving number two. Okay. Well, things were so bad on the front of my jacket that he actually ended up having to break my zipper, break the jacket open in order for us to get it off. And again, I couldn't have done this without his help. And it was at those points that I realized this guy who's a complete stranger has been saying to me, let me take you to the hospital. And I had been resistant to that. I sort of know I'm good. Just help me get in my truck. And I finally realized I need to let him take me to the hospital. So this complete stranger, his name is Steve, I learned that later, but ⁓ he takes me to the hospital. and I ended up spending six days in the hospital, three of which were intensive care. I had to have emergency brain surgery because all of the injuries, which I'll describe in just a moment, all of the injuries in the avalanche occurred to my head. And those injuries went like this. My jaw was broken on both sides, which is why I was spitting blood. My skull was fractured in three places, one of which was the rear plate of my skull on my left hand side and that was shoved forward and that pinched the auditory nerve, which caused me to lose hearing in my left ear. And as mentioned, I had blood dripping into my right eye. Well, that was because I was split wide open from just above my eyebrow all the way to the top of my head. where right before it starts to curve down. And so this guy Steve says he goes when we finally got your jacket off and my I had been wearing my hood quite tight at that point when we took your hood off he said for all intents and purposes because of the gash from your eyebrow to the back of the head of your head your right ear was basically sitting on your shoulder and he said I was looking at your skull and ⁓ he's like it was bad really really bad so the ⁓ The brain surgery was a result of all of the trauma and the bleeding on my brain as well as the swelling of my brain. And so they mechanically removed that pressure, installed a drain. And so I woke up the next day with my vision obscured. So it wasn't blurred, but it was literally obscured. And it was obscured, David, because of what we've seen in enough TV shows and movies of where they have gauze wrapped around around somebody's head, know, like something happened to that person. Well, that's exactly what had happened to me. And so the gauze that was wrapped around my head had just come over the corners of my eyes. So I wake up to this and they explained to me that, you had brain surgery last night. And As mentioned, after six days, I was discharged. And after 17 days, my jaw was ⁓ cut open, basically. So it was wired shut for 17 days. And after a total of three weeks, I was back at college and back in the workforce. And 100 % of this, happens because of my ego, okay, I'm there because of my ego and It essentially Was me without knowing it right putting myself in massive peril. What would have in what would have? resulted in me dying because of my own stupidity truly God delivered me from he literally saved me So he doesn't have me buried. doesn't have me in some precarious and awkward situation. He has me regain consciousness because I'm all alone. He gives me enough strength and energy to get all the way back. And then he sends a complete stranger, a guy by the name of Steve, to arrive in that parking lot 30 seconds before I did. And that guy, Steve, takes me to the hospital. If Steve is not there, I can tell you with certainty that I'm dead. No question. And so after all of this goes down, okay, and I'm now back in the workforce, right? We said it'd be literally three weeks. I'm like normal for the most part. You don't mean I've certainly had actual physical trauma, right? But for all intents and purposes, if I didn't tell people about this, they really wouldn't even know. And All I did at that point, David, was give God intellectual credit for what had happened. Meaning I was like, it was a miracle, right? Because I knew about God from growing up and I believed in a general sense that miracles happened. And while I knew I had experienced one of those, it was, like I only knew it in my head. It's kind of what I'm trying, like I didn't have it in my body. I didn't have it in my chest. I didn't have it in my heart. This like knowing. And the biggest reason for that was that I knew about God, but I just didn't have any relationship with him. He existed, but in a distant sense to me. So I gave him intellectual credit and basically moved on with life and continued to let my ego drive me and eventually made more money. So it became not ego and Mountain Dew, but ego and Red Bull that fueled me. Wow, that's a lot. We're just getting started, David. No, I'm following you. think wow is a good way to respond to all that. God saved you from yourself multiple times, starting with Steve. Yeah, I mean, it's... Were you able to keep in touch with Steve? Yeah, by God's grace. And of course, I didn't recognize that to be the case. But yeah, over the years, ⁓ Steve and I have had a couple of phone conversations. And then as technology, you know, has has advanced, we've been able to have some video conversations. ⁓ And he was even gracious enough for us to do a really deep dive together as almost like a family memento ⁓ and recorded a episode for my podcast called When You Look, where Steve and I kind of got into every bit of the details of it and it was super, super neat to get all of it from his perspective firsthand too. That's amazing. I'm, you know, I'm, thank you for sharing all that. Now that got you to that point, but what happened next? Yeah. So as I mentioned, I basically kept going with life and ⁓ God had given me a lot of drive. ⁓ So I got into financial services, which was my career progression and was really focused on growing a career and making money and all of that stuff. I met the woman who is my wife in 2002 and we were married in 2006. And because it's ego that drives me, it's because I don't have any relationship with God. We decided that we, and I'm like, I'm going to be really specific with my words here. We decided we were going to be married without kids for an extended period of time. And so that's what we did. And then in 2011, we're now five years into marriage. We decide now it's time to start a family. And we knew people that had had challenges getting pregnant. We didn't know if we were going to have any challenges and lo and behold, we didn't. So like everything seems to be kind of going as planned, you know, like we didn't have any kids because we decided we didn't want to have any. Now it's family planning time and we get pregnant right away. We're now pregnant with a little baby boy. I go to the first handful of obstetrician appointments, you know, the whole new mom, new dad scenario. And then because I'm climbing the corporate ladder, I don't need to go to any of the ones in the middle. And I end up going to the last OB appointment. And during that appointment, so this this puts us then typically like within 30 days of the due date. OK, and I said to the doctor who had met a couple of times before, I said doc, know, is there seems like everything's kind of going well Is there anything that we need to be aware of? know, you're the expert I'm not and she said to me David she goes You guys are all good Your wife should be on the cover of fit pregnancy magazine Now I remember that because that was a stroke to my ego if if you're obstetrician or your wife's obstetrician says your wife should be on the cover of fit pregnancy magazine it implies that your baby is healthy and it also implies that she is fit enough and attractive enough to be on the cover of a magazine because let's be honest those are the types of people that they put on fit pregnancy magazine okay I mean like but that's the reality of it and again I'm trying to be transparent here right like this is all ego So that's how we leave the obstetrician. In a handful of weeks, I think it was probably 10-ish or so days later, okay? I come back from walking our two dogs and my wife is standing in the kitchen. This is first thing in the morning and she's crying. And I said to her, honey, what's up? And she says, I haven't felt him move since last night. So we go to labor and delivery. in the hospital that we're scheduled to deliver in. And they place us into this room, they bring an ultrasound machine and ultrasound tech in, can't find the heartbeat. Another ultrasound tech, another ultrasound machine, and then finally they bring an MD in and he does his work. And he at that point has to tell us what we really already knew, which is, I'm sorry to tell you this, but your baby no longer has a heartbeat. Hmm So David we are one week from our son Luke's due date the Scenario that I'm describing to you is January 4th of 2012 His due date was January 11th and we are now my wife and I are literally overcome by the grief of the death of our son who is still in my wife's tummy. This of course is not what we planned for. ⁓ We had planned for everything I just described, right? No kids, life will be honky-dory, all that stuff, especially because fit pregnancy, everything's going great, all is good. Well, we're just truly overwhelmed. My wife says, hey, I need to go to the restroom. So I said, all right, I'll go with you. So I help her take the handful of steps down the hallway. We leave that little room, go down the hallway. And I help her into one of those hospital bathrooms that has one toilet, but it's so big you can like basically, you know, park a dump truck in it. You know, it's got that super wide door, but it's just for one person. She's on the toilet. I close that giant door and I'm now on my knees. Okay, but I'm not on my knees in a spiritual position. That's what I want everybody to hear. I'm on my knees because the physical weight from the emotion of grief is basically pushing me down. My face is six inches off of the linoleum floor and I cried out to the God that I knew of and I said, I need you. And I knew I needed him because up to that point in my life, every challenge that I had experienced, whether it was in the relationship with my wife, whether it was in the workplace, whether it was just in life, I had overcome with some tenacity, some grit. maybe a little bit of coaching from somebody, DIY type of video or manual, little bit of money, whatever it was, I had overcome it. And I knew at that moment, I couldn't fix this. There was no way that I could fix a dead kid. And it was beyond me. So I cried out to God and said, I need you. And that's when everything changed. Because it was at that point, David, that I began a relationship with this God that I had known about, but was never. never really experienced anything with, even though he had saved me. He had saved me 12 years prior in the avalanche. just, like I said before, I'd given him intellectual credit, but I had never really experienced him. And so, My wife and I, she comes out of the bathroom. We go back into that little room. The doctor and the ultrasound techs leave. They're like, we'll give you guys a little bit of privacy. And I just said to my wife, I'm like, we're going to pray. And she's like, for what? Because this wasn't normal for us to pray. I was actively pursuing life without God, OK? And so there was no evidence in our relationship of God. You know, it's totally out of the norm for me to say, let's pray and completely normal then for her to say, for what? And I said, because it's basically the only thing we can do. And so we prayed, we just cried out. My wife was induced that day, the following day, January 5th, she delivers Luke. We spend 24 hours with him before we leave the hospital and he's cremated. And then we go home. ⁓ Literally empty armed, empty little baby bucket, you know, back to watching TV and baseball and all that and dealing with the grief and. in the middle of the night, one o'clock in the morning, three o'clock in the morning, four o'clock in the morning, as we're awakened by the grief. We just kept crying out. We kept crying out. We literally just dumped our heart out to God. We dumped out all the pain. We dumped out the grief. We dumped out the anger, the frustration, unable to understand, you know. We asked why, but we did it in a... in a questioning with like a little cue, you know, we weren't like, how dare you God, but we were like, why, you know, and, he handled all of it and he loved us through all of it. And what he did as he healed us through the grief, okay, not from the grief. would say yield us through the grief was that he showed us that what we thought was this Luke shaped hole in our heart. was actually a God-shaped hole in our heart. And he filled that hole and he loved us through all of it and he changed our lives forever because we then accept Christ as our savior. Jesus then becomes Lord for us. We are baptized in October or November of that same year and so now my wife and I Have eternal life. So when I say he changed our lives forever There's no Exaggeration with that. Okay, literally changed our lives forever. Mm-hmm. And then He blessed us with three living children years later and their lives are changed because they grow up in a household where Jesus is real, where he's honored. You know, where there's alignment with what mom, the way mom and dad behave and the things that mom and dad do with the expectations that the God of the universe has for us. And like there's blessing that our children get to see from that and they get to experience themselves. And then our oldest daughter, who's 12, she accepted Jesus, you know, a handful of years ago. And so her life has changed forever. Amen. And our younger two, they're twins. ⁓ They haven't yet accepted Jesus, but I pray regularly that the Holy Spirit will move them in that direction, you know? They will. So it's one of those things where, who was I? I was this selfish punk, OK? ⁓ It was all about me. And who was I also? I was somebody and David I can tell you with this with conviction. I was somebody that actively wanted nothing to do with God. It wasn't an ignorance for me. It was a willful. I want nothing to do with you. You stay up there. I'll be down here. I'll do my thing. You do your thing will be good. And in that Living out of that, okay, actively rebelling against him wanting nothing to do with him He saved my life He still loved me like when I was legitimately his enemy and again not out of ignorance, okay purposeful willful He saved my life literally saved my life Amen. And because that didn't get my attention, and because he had other plans for me, while still fueled by ego, he makes a decision that I couldn't have made, wouldn't have made. I wouldn't have given up my son to get God. I just know it. I would not have done that. He makes that decision for me. He takes our firstborn son, changes our lives. gives us perspective that we would have never had. Like understanding to the smallest degree, okay, I want to be very clear here. I don't have a complete understanding of how God gives his only son. But I have the littlest glimpse of the fact that like my firstborn, like his, is dead. and how changed everything for us and changes everything for everybody else if they will accept that. And then through experience with him, we've seen that he is real. Amen. We have been blessed by him, not in in dollars and cents, but also in dollars and cents. We've been blessed with living children. We have been blessed with relationships. We have been blessed with with an understanding. We've been blessed with communication from him directly, very rarely audibly hearing his voice. But what he's done is he's literally given us enough personal evidence in our own lives to believe, to see, to know he's real. Amen. And so... Later on in life, you know, he leads us to get pregnant, leads us to get pregnant again, blesses us with a living daughter. And then twin sons, identical twin sons born in January, the same month of Luke's death and delivery date. We never thought we'd have twins. We didn't even know if we were gonna have kids after Luke, you know. And so the person that I am is completely different than the person that I was. And the only explanation is the blood of Jesus Christ and the transformation that has occurred when I said, I give up. This is beyond me. I can't do it. I need you. Wow, you just Thank you for sharing so transparently. I could feel that, and I'm sure our viewers and our listeners will be able to feel it as well. I've got a question, and I want you to mull it over a minute before you... Now, we're only on here for just a limited amount of time in each podcast. But I invite you to give us a nugget, something we can chew on, something we can mull when the show is over and people are thinking about what you've shared. What would you want people to take with them that would make a difference in their heart, we pray. Well, David, thank you for the opportunity to do that. You you and I prayed before we started this. And the thing that I believe that I am to share here is the encouragement to everyone who hears this to prove to themself that God exists. And what I mean by that is, is don't take my word for it. Don't take David's word for it. Don't take a pastor or a preacher or somebody that's an influencer on some type of social media. Seek him out and prove to yourself that he exists. Because He will for sure, in my experience and in so many other lives, will show you He does. Amen. And when you have your own evidence, like you're not borrowing it from somebody else, kind of like I did and that I sort of believe that God existed from my upbringing, when you believe it for yourself, when you've proven it to yourself, everything changes in your relationship with Him. because then then there's a desire, at least for me, to be obedient to him. Amen. It's changed everything, Wow. I couldn't be more grateful for everything you've shared. Now, as we get ready to wind this down, is there a book in process? Is there a book that you're writing? Is there one available? David, you're very kind. No, there's no book. God has not directed me to write a book. But he did direct me to literally host a podcast. And those that are watching can see it on my hat. It's called When You Look. And it's really neat stories where people share incredible firsthand accounts. And then we let the listener decide, was that incredible thing miraculous? Was that God or was that just a total coincidence? So we hold space for both of those conclusions. So it's whenyoulook.com. When you look dot-com That's great. ⁓ I am I couldn't be happier than you that we found each other Since Scott doesn't do coincidences. I'll have to give him credit and say this was a divine appointment I concur for sure and ⁓ I would be I would love to have you on again There's I know there's more to the story that we were able to squeeze into one podcast And you've already invited me to be on your podcast at some point. And I would be honored and in a half to share God's love with your listeners as well. Yeah, David, I look forward to that. I mean, there's so much depth in the story that God has written in your life. And it's it would be a pleasure for for that to be heard. so if someone wanted to email you and reach out to you what would be an email address that they would want to reach out to you yes so easy way is info i n f o at when you look dot com good to know i i didn't have that contact information so now i do and uh... i'm gonna put it in my phone as soon as we hang up but uh... as we as we finish this time together It's my turn to pray and I'm going to pray for everyone. And then when we're done, I'm going to hit stop and our listeners will get a chance to think about the golden nugget and all the other good things that have been shared. And while you and I compare notes for the next plan. So let's pray. Heavenly Father, we're grateful for the privilege we have through your son, Jesus Christ, who lived and died and rose again to shed his blood so we could be forgiven for all the dumb, foolish, willful, selfish, we've done. Lord, sometimes life is just hard and to try to do it on your own strength just is overwhelming. So Lord, let us help each other lean on you. Let us encourage each other to realize when it's too much and to help each other, you know, bear each other's burdens to help each other make it through. Lord, we pray for every listener and every viewer that if they're searching that they would consider what's been shared today and find out for themselves, test and see that the Lord is good. Lord, bless them and bless each of us who's here until we can come back and do this again next time. And as always, Father, I'm grateful that you've given me a challenge to give to each of our viewers and listeners, and that is never stop seeking. always keep seeking because the beauty is in the discovery when the seeking starts. Thank you Jesus, we ask you to bless it in Jesus name. Amen. This has been the God Says Yes Podcast with David Ebel. with it. You can get his latest book when the doctors say no, God says yes at amazon.com.