Tom Snow

David W Ebel: Welcome to the God Says Yes podcast. You are welcome here. Welcome to God Says Yes. This is another episode in our continuing story of of hope and encouragement. My name is David Ebel, and after fifty plus years of ministry, the passion of my heart is still the same to encourage those that are struggling in whatever chapter of life they're in. Whether you've been church hurt or whether you've been betrayed, belittled, ⁓ you people have made promises they didn't fulfill, they've they've offended you or whatever. If you're struggling, if you kind of feel like you almost want to sit on the curb and watch life go by, because it's not worth it anymore, this podcast is for you. Not because we can't do better, but the best thing we can do is to help you fall in love with Jesus again, not with the man who goofed up and failed for you or hurt you. But the love of God never changed and it's always been there. You were created by God to love, custom made by God to love. You're one of a kind from the inside out. We don't look at the same on the outside, but that's not that's intentional. Because he's not looking at the outside, he's looking at who we are, the spiritual us. And once we give our hearts to Jesus, then he can go in there and gently, lovingly help us become more like him. And we end up blessed and hopeful and healed. And have a a much better life than we ever hoped for without him. So that's why we're here. We're here for you. And we're praying that somehow in something we say or do, it will it would reach your heart. We're not asking you to join a building. Buildings aren't what this topic is about. This is about hearts. This is about hope. It's about faith. I have with me a a good brother of a ⁓ and new friend of mine. His name is Tom Snow. Tom has been around the block a few times himself. Tom, welcome. We're glad you're here. Well, thanks for having me. Glad we're glad you're here. ⁓ tell us a little bit about yourself, married kids, you know, whatever. Okay. ⁓ I'm actually on a second marriage. First marriage ⁓ was difficult and failed, but have four good kids that came out of it. ⁓ my second marriage is I have a wonderful wife and another thirteen year old daughter. ⁓ I'm retired. From having my own software development company for forty five years, worked for big companies. ⁓ math and engineering are my fortees. ⁓ I'm not a ⁓ seminary grad or you know, didn't learn in the church, learned by the hand of the father, walking with him. and now I'm ⁓ I never thought I'd write books, but now I've authored three books in the last published in the last three or ⁓ in the last year and a half, ⁓ working on ten others. Never thought I'd be an author. But God has plans that we don't have plans. And now I'm working on a ⁓ healthy foods company that I think is from him 'cause I had congestive heart failure three years ago. They took me off a salt and you find out the world goes bland. So I had to learn how to make food that tastes good that's salt free and sugar free. So that's ⁓ I I I I'm like Paul. I'm a tent maker. I don't Make my money by selling books. ⁓ I'll give you my books for free if you want ⁓ Hit me up and I'll give you a PDF. ⁓ I I put ⁓ on Amazon for ninety nine cents one weekend a month. So, you know, I'm not here to make money on books, but I hope I can share something of walking with God for the last fifty six years that has value that can help people. Thank you, Tom. ⁓ now the the the purpose while we're here is we have simple questions that we ask each of our guests and they they take a moment and explain to us their story because you know you can argue Bible all day long and everybody's got their own flavor, well, I don't believe this, but I do believe that or you know, this can't be right or th I you know, they they said this wrong. That's not what we're here for. We're here for the life stories, because what God did for you can't can't be argued. It's you've experienced it, you've lived it, and that's what we're looking for. So Tom, ⁓ who were you before you met Jesus? Well, I was a young teenager. I met the Lord at sixteen, but before that I was ⁓ doing experiments and ⁓ in science and math and I created an invention to get my father's attention, who was an engineer. And I wanted to solve a problem, asbestos dust on the brake shoes back in the sixties. and unfortunately in all those experiments it ⁓ asbestos is a very deadly thing and it causes cancer and heart disease and it ends up killing my mother. She got cancer and then I got cancer. And I had terrible guilt that I had caused that cancer. and so I suffered through ⁓ rock hard tumor growing in me from the size of a walnut to larger than a football. ⁓ along the way, I had never met the Lord. I had grown up in religious churchanity, but I had not never heard the gospel, didn't know how to meet him. And so ⁓ there's some wonderful experiences there. I don't know how much ⁓ time we want to get into all that, but in the beginning of my first book it goes into great detail. But you know, I had visions for four months. I hear the audible voice of God. ⁓ he spoke to me and told me that he loved me and it filled the room with his love. It sounded like a roaring train going through the room and yet so full of love. Okay. Thank you, Tom. ⁓ we're gonna we're you we're gonna win to the next piece of that in the next question. ⁓ n when you met Jesus, what happened to you? Well, at first I ha my brother came home and ⁓ he's the one who told me he had gone to churches that knew the gospel. He told me ⁓ how he had just met the Lord and why and all these things, and I knew him well enough to know that he had had a true experience. ⁓ I asked him how, he gave me the scriptures, I repented, I asked the Lord to come my life, but I didn't feel anything. I had goose eggs. I my life was full of guilt and hate and anger, and my father, when he found out, I knew about my cancer long before he did. And when he found out, instead of comforting me, he took out a multimillion dollar life insurance policy on me. So at that point now I have anger and hate towards him. My life's just you know, so I ended up the devil got a got got the best of me, you know, the old angel on one shoulder, devil on the other, and he's whispering in my ear, Hey, this God thing isn't real. It didn't really happen. You probably never heard God's voice a month ago. That's you were probably asleep. Just it was the middle of the day, just 'cause you were sitting there awake in your family room. You think you heard a roaring train. You think you felt his love, which is beyond compare, but doubt, doubt, doubt, you probably didn't. You were probably just dreaming. And I bought into all the baloney. And I became the second biggest drinker in my school. I built up at Harley Chopper. I began to ride with the Hell's Angels. I'm 16 now. And I'm my life is going to destruction. I Created a plan in my mind that when my Harley got running good enough to get outside the city limits, I was gonna blackmail my father and say, I know about the insurance fraud you've done. I knew about it six months before you did. And I was gonna rub it in his face and say, Here's what I want. I want $10,000 up front, and then I'm gonna go ride my bike across country, and then you can come pick up the pieces and collect. Like that was my plan. And Every time I would try to run that bike, get outside the city, it's like an angel back with Balaam with a sword would just like touch the bike and it'd break. And I'd have to limp it home and fix it again. Every week I was repairing that, rebuilding that motorcycle. It was an old 49 Harley. I built it into a chopper. Okay, it was cool, but ⁓ anyway, it was always breaking. I would get so drunk, I was so proud that I could drink a A fifth of whiskey in two hours and then drive home on my motorcycle. Except driving home would be on a four-lane road, and I'd be on the rightmost side, and I'd wake up on the leftmost side, ready to go into the ditch, to all of a sudden get shoved back. And I'd be riding on that right side and then wake up. I'm all the way to the left, Ray on the ditch, get shoved back. There's a lot of badly bruised angels. that are out there that I need to thank personally someday, who are just shoving me back God's grace to keep me alive in spite of myself. Because in if it was up to me, I was gonna destroy myself. So so in that process, when was the lightning bolt moment? Everybody has whether it's a a a a feather, a little wind, or s a two by four in my case, what what it when when did Jesus become real, real to you? Well, at the end of eight months of this going crazy, drinking, planning my blackmail, never pulled off the blackmail because I couldn't get the bike running good enough, always that angel with the sword, just tapping it. And so I'm sitting around one night with my biker buddy gang, the Hell's Angels. We're drinking bottle after bottle of cheap wine. Yeah, I'm a sixteen year old teenage alcoholic, hair halfway down my back. I was a scuzzball. You wouldn't want to introduce me to s unless somebody you hated. And so that's that's me. And so I was sitting there, we're drinking, we're drunk, normal, and we got into a discussion. And we could talk about anything. Well, this night we got into a spiritual discussion. Now, that was unusual. And you know, I was so angry, and I was angry at myself and my father, and and I was angry that God wasn't real because I'd believed the devil whispered in my ear that that really didn't hear God. 'Cause I hadn't felt anything. And so I wanted to mock God. And so I told him about my brother and how ⁓ he'd come off he had asked the Lord into his life in an LSD trip and God sobered him, took him down, and that's when he came home and told me about the gospel. And I that's when I tried to meet the Lord. I didn't know the scripture that it says he seals us in our innermost being on the day we ask him in. Just 'cause I didn't feel it didn't mean that. Our innermost being is deeper than our soul, our heart, our mind, our feelings. So just because my soul was so full of hate and anger and rage didn't mean he wasn't there. So I'm mocking God and mocking about my brother and expecting my biker buddy gang, hell's angels. They're just not nice crowd. And they would they didn't mock. That got me a little upset. So I said, I'm not gonna them about my story. Now they'll really mock. That I think I heard God audibly, that God spoke to me and filled the room and sounded like roaring thunder and told me that He loved me. It was so full of love, but nothing happened. And so the moment I told them nothing happened, all of a sudden, I knew I was wrong. That the God who had sealed my innermost being broke through all the crap in my soul, broke through the anger and the hate and the guilt that I had of myself and everyone else. And all of a sudden, I felt the love of God just like I had felt in that moment when He had spoken to me audibly. And all of a sudden, I was sobered instantly, just like my brother had been. And I Sudden knew I was wrong. And I was so glad I was wrong. I was so glad I was wrong. And I looked around like, what in the heck am I doing here with these scuzz balls? I'm a scuzzball. Why am I here? And I said, I gotta go. And I drove home sober that night. The angels didn't have to shove me back and forth. And the next day, I never drank again while I Do as an adult correctly, but never as an alcoholic. But I was a teenage alcoholic. I never drank alcoholic level again. All of a sudden, my whole I didn't tell you, but the drive across country was going to be I was going to go to the Grand Canyon. I was actually going to drive my motorcycle off after I blackmailed my father because I was going to commit suicide. I was going to take my life. I had to take control of my life, and I couldn't get control. And we all feel that out of control. And I this was what why I was gonna blackmail my father was so that I'd grow cross country, drive off the Grand Canyon, but I was gonna pin a letter inside my clothes that would tell about his insurance fraud, so he'd lose the payout and go to jail. That's how much anger was in me. And next morning, the whole Grand Canyon trip's off. I'm so full of the love of God, and now I drive back to into my high school. They were used to this big old Harley chopper putting along in front of the school and I would drive in very slowly on the school drive and everybody would be up at the window always watching Tom the Scuzzball drive in in his Harley. I was and now all of a sudden I became the Jesus person. In that day we were called Jesus freaks. You know, I was a long haired hippie, nineteen seventy, nineteen seventy one. And I was And all of a sudden everyone's like, Who in the heck is this guy? He was the scuzzballed scuzzballs and now all he can do is talk about the love of Jesus and it just glows from him. They didn't know what to do with me. That changed your life and that's what we wanted to hear. How you know that that can't be manufactured. That can't be talked into. Nope. That can't be ⁓ manipulated. That's that you have to experience that. I have a I have a friend who ⁓ told me that she was she was twenty-seven and she had never the worst thing she had ever done is one time I she hurt her s her foot really bad and said Drat. And I said, that's it. She said, but I'd live I had lived without all that, and I knew how to live. When I said it, I knew that I had failed. I knew that I had that I I no longer was okay. I was I still I I needed forgiveness for that. And when I asked God to forgive me. That peace touched my heart and he's had the rest of my life. Then I told her my story and she said, I would tr f for you to not feel the pain, I would take your story for me. And I and I said, No, no, no, no, no, no. I would trade anything for me to have your story because God prevented you from this and this and this and this. Mm-hmm. But it's not how big or small the story is. It's it's yours a personal relationship with a personal Jesus who personally created you, loves you, and personally wants to bless your life. So whatever your story is, however you've got to where you are, even if you have to do like you didn't and end up ⁓ th thinking it was all nothing and hanging with the wrong crowd until God goes, Are you ready now? I'm ready for you. He he once he once you give your heart to him. He says he'll never leave you for sink you. He'll be with you always. You can run as far as you want, but he's running with you. There's he's he's in it he's everywhere. Mm-hmm. So thank you for telling us that part of your story. Now, what happened to you once Jesus became real? My life changed. At that point, I still knew I was dying. My tumor had grown from the size of a walnut to larger than a football, hard as a rock. My abdomen was full of this hard rock. I knew I was dying, that was a given. I wasn't scared now. That's what happened. I went from being afraid of where I was going for eternity to now I knew I had met the true and living God. I had the peace that passes understanding, as says in Philippians four seven. The peace, not a peace, the peace. And when you get that peace, your life it doesn't matter. I was no longer afraid. And so through circumstances, God led me to different churches. It was early charismatic move. I'm watching the power of God, seeing miracles happen all the time. I'm not feeling compelled or like run up to the altar and go get prayer because I didn't actually care if I was dying. I mean, I actually had the guilt that I'd killed my mother, so I kind of felt like I deserved to die. You know? I didn't know that wasn't God's plan, but it was like I that's where I that's where my mind was. And but at this point I'm so full of God's love and his peace, and I my life changes and it's just everything from that point forward is to walk with him. And so I start studying the word and I read and I learn and I don't read any one translation. I don't believe in anybody. It says you have to read one translation. And I study the Greek and the Hebrew because I want to know the depth of the original text behind it. And I'm just studying away and I'm learning to hear the still small, quiet voice of God that we all as believers can hear every single day, and we should. He wants to talk to us more than we want to talk to him. When he says in the scripture, he has every hair numbered on our head, he really does. He has every hair on your head numbered. And when you comb your hair, brush it, and you throw the hair out of your brush in the trash can, he knows the exact Number of every single one of those hairs you threw away. And you may not understand that level, but he does. He's got that's how intense he is with each one of us. Every single one. He knows every hair. That's that's more than we care about ourselves. Tell me that you care if you comb your hair and you throw it in the trash. Let me ask: do you know its number 8,951? Four thousand one hundred and twelve five ⁓ two. Do you know the numbers? He does. He cares about us more than we care about him. Then we care about ourselves. He cares more about us than we care about ourselves. And when we be when we get to know that peace, that love, that relationship, our lives change. And so I'm studying the word and I'm having a wonderful time learning with Papa God. And I'm watching miracles happen all over the place, and I don't care about the miracles. I love the miracle worker. See, a lot of times we get focused on we want a miracle, I want to be healed. I stub my hoe toe, I want to be I want, you know, God please heal it. I don't like pain. Okay, I'm not I'm not crazy. But I accepted that I had a condition. I didn't it wasn't curable in the all any natural sense. And for a year and a half had this tumor. It now was this big. And one night I'm riding home on my motorcycle and learning to talk to Papa God. And yet that's what Abba Father means in the scripture, Papa. So learning to talk with Papa God, a ri personal deep relationship. By the way, I'm not religious. I'm not fake spiritual. I wake up in the morning. I don't get down on my knees and pray. I don't re open my Bible and say, This is the rules. You gotta do this because church told me that. No. I wake up and I go, Hi papa, how you doing? And I wait to hear what he wants to say to me. And I want to walk with the true and living God through the day. And praying is a relationship. It's come conversation through the day. And reading the word is when he says and to to do it. Like, you know, it's not rules. It's walking. It's the privilege of the most wonderful life. So I'm having this wonderful time. I'm dying of cancer. So what? I already knew that. But I'm riding home one night on my motorcycle, and the Lord's chatting with me, still small, quiet voice. We can have that when we have the peace that passes understanding, that guards our hearts and minds. That way you know you're hearing the right voice, not the wrong one. And the Lord said to me, He says, Hey, do you know? He says, In Isaiah, he says, Do you remember what I said in Isaiah? That by His stripes, you are healed. And I said, Uh-huh. And he says, Do you remember in First Peter where I said, by his wounds, you were healed? And I went, uh-huh. And he goes, and I'm all sudden, you know, I'm a little slow. And I start putting this together. R is looking, current, future. Were is past. And as that's dawning on me, he says, He says, Isaiah was looking forward to the cross. Peter was looking back to the cross. He says, I completed everything at the cross. Everything. He says, Would you like that healing? Now you gotta remember, first of all, I'm enjoying the the com conversation. But ⁓ you gotta remember I'm dealing with a lot of guilt thinking I killed my mother. ⁓ I don't think I deserve to live. He's God. But it's kind of like I just was like, yeah, whatever. You know, if you want to, like, I get to go home be with Papa God soon. Why in the heck do I want to stay on this earth? That was part of that. But in that moment I felt a change. And within twenty-four hours, the tumor that had grown from the size of a walnut to larger than a football, hard as a rock, melted, dissipated. and was gone. Well that's really, really, really, really profound. And I love thank you for sharing that. And because he healed you, that gave you all these other years to live and love and to serve and to reach people and then to write your books. And as we get to this chapter of our of our our interview, ⁓ we we we're going to ⁓ ha have you tell us the names of the books. And a real short summary of each each of them and how peop we can get them. And ⁓ you don't have to hold any books up because magically through the commuters the the books will show up next to you so they can see them. Right. But ⁓ so if you you'll give us a short synopsis of your three books. Okay. The three books. ⁓ the first one is called The Daily Stand and it's a spiritual warfare instruction manual. For today and the next upcoming great move of God. And I actually started it forty-three years ago. during the time of ministry and going through all kinds of things and seeing the power of God, amazing stuff that you would think you only read about in the Bible, seeing miracles and dealing with demons and forces, and you think, you know, stuff that's only written in the Bible is real. We all can we all have to go through it. We just don't realize the forces that exist. They're still there. And so ⁓ but the Lord forty-three years ago said, put it down after I had already written a bunch of stuff. And so three years ago after congestive heart failure, he said, pick it up. And that's when he had put me through 40 years of the wilderness of training, of learning, that and it it prefaced the whole book to talk about. Not just the miracle and the story I just told you. Not tons, but bunch of stories of the miracles of the power of God, but it teaches how to walk with the true and living God. That is the heart, walking with him in every moment of every day. Listening to him. Jesus said, I only do what I see the Father doing. I only say what I hear the Father saying. Learning to walk by the Spirit of God, the anointing of God, because that Then we can walk in God's authority. He said he gave us all authority over all the power of the enemy. Well, guess what? It's not magic. But you when you walk with the true and living God, you will see that authority. You'll read stories in that book that'll blow your mind. And I'll leave it there. Teasers. As I say, give it to you for free. Hit me up on my social media, I'll send you a PDF. They're on ⁓ Amazon, everywhere else, ninety-nine cents once a month every weekend. So You know, I can't afford it, you just hit me up. But the first one teaches us how to walk with the Lord. The second one is called Set the Captives Free. Now, this is for dealing with false belief systems. This is for believers. We've been hurt in the church. We have churchianity that has messed us up. There's church hurt, leadership of hurt. Not all leaders are bad, I'm not saying that, but there's plenty. of us who know the stories of church hurt. Plenty of us who live in ⁓ religious bondage. ⁓ we have religious Stockholm syndrome. We're cheerful in chains together until it all falls apart and feels like it goes to hell and back. ⁓ if you've ever walked in that you'll want to read this. It teaches you how to truly hear The voice of God from all the other voices, how to get past the static, how to get healed from that church hurt, how to walk with him through all of that, how to know him. The third book is Set the Captives Free 2, T O O, and its subtitle is Evil's Great Masquerade. And it talks about the deceptive woo. All the false spirituality that has infiltrated the world that's also infiltrated the church. And how the devil got tired of ⁓ being this the ancient gods that required ⁓ human sacrifice. People kind of got tired of that. So he hired a whole new PR team, and now in that whole PR, there's 10,000 options in the world talking about universe and the energy and you can get all your energy from all these forces and all these things and ancient wisdom and alien wisdom and all these ⁓ 12 strands of DNA instead of two and there's so much garbage and ⁓ quantum not quantum physics in the real sense but there's a whole quantum false world in this whole spiritual side everything to get people off course to miss the true and living God. It's not only in the world, it's deeply infiltrated the church. And so this one is to set everybody free. So those are the three books, 99 cents a piece. Get ⁓ hit me up, you'll get a free PDF. I just I just want to share what God put in me. I'm not here to make money on on books. I appreciate that. Thank you so much. And your website is called Just To Be Clear dot com. But it's the number two. So just number two be clear dot com. And I will give it to you guys to put in the show notes, along with any other links to my social media and Substack things that you can contact me if you want. Excellent. Well ⁓ the golden nugget, something real that the ⁓ just something small that people can take with them from the interview. The most important golden nugget of my life is that we get the opportunity to walk with the true and living God every moment of every day. He wants to walk with us more than we want to walk with him, every hair that we throw away. He knows it. And if we are choose him, and that's life, we can choose him, and you can have the peace that passes understanding walking through the trouble of life. And every one of us have trauma and trouble. And life is not gonna be a bowl of roses. It's not puppy dogs, it's not unicorns and rainbows. That's not life. Life is hard. The beauty is we can walk with the true and living God and have his peace in the midst of all of it. That is beyond compare. Amen. Thank you so much. Well, it is time for me to to pray, and then after we pray, I'll have a challenge for you, and then we'll be done for today. But we'll be back n next time and we will have someone else who's also amazing. So let's let's pray. Father, we're just grateful for your love, for your mercy, and how you've changed individually the lives and the hearts of those who've opened their hearts to you. We pray that it will t that something that's been said today will speak to a heart. That someone who's been struggling, or somebody who's been searching, or somebody who's just flap given up, might be willing to look past people and to trust again. So, God, we just ask that you do a mighty work of grace and mercy, that you do something wonderful in each life, and bless Tom and his family and his ministry and do something to glorify yourself through it. We ask this in Jesus' name. Amen. Thank you, Lord. And the challenge, as always. Seek after God, he will be found. Want to know him more? Jesus said he was the way, the truth, and the life. Come to God through Jesus. You will know God better, and your life will become amazing. Seek after God, he'll be found. Just seek. ⁓ This has been the God Says Yes podcast with David Ebel. Connect with David, email him at GodsaysYespodcast at Gmail. You can get his latest book, When the Doctors Say No, God Says Yes, at Amazon.com.