How art and culture create "thin places" for God to break through
Jordan Raynor sits down with Kevin Cloud, the masterful author of God and Hamilton, to talk about why Hamilton’s life was both extraordinary and also thoroughly ordinary, the 5 movements of the creative process, and how art and culture can create “thin places” where God seems to break through, and what normally feels hidden becomes real and tangible. This episode also includes a bonus conversation with Costi Hinn, author of God, Greed and the (Prosperity) Gospel.
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[0:00:05.3] JR: Hey, everybody. Welcome to the Call to Mastery. I’m Jordan Raynor. This is a podcast for Christians who want to do their most exceptional, masterful work, for the glory of God and the good of others. Each week, I’m hosting a conversation with a Christian who is world class mastery at whatever it is they do. We’re talk about their path to mastery, we talk about their habits, their routines that make them productive and we talk about how their faith influences their work.
I’m over the moon excited about today’s episode with Kevin Cloud. Kevin was a four-time successful church planter who recently made the shift to focusing his time and energy on writing about the inner section of faith and creativity. I met Kevin a few months ago when after he sent me a copy of his book, God and Hamilton. Yes, like Alexander Hamilton and the musical phenomenon that his life inspired and you know, usually when I see books like this, I’m skeptical of them, it’s very rare that I’ve seen them done well. But I am obsessed with the musical, so I agreed to read the book.
I was totally blown away. I feel like every conversation I have with people right now, I’m telling them, they have to read this book. Honestly, it’s one of the best books I’ve read probably in the last five years. Kevin is a truly masterful writer, so he was gracious enough to come on the Call to Mastery and talk about a few things. First, we spent some time talking about Alexander Hamilton’s life and why it’s both extraordinary but also at the same time, thoroughly ordinary.
We talked about what Kevin calls the five movements of creativity and the creative process and perhaps my favorite part of the conversation was talking about how art and our cultural creations can create thin places what Kevin defines as “places where God seems to break through and what normally feels hidden, becomes real and tangible”.
This is an excellent conversation, you’re going to love it. Without further ado, here’s my conversation with Kevin Cloud.
[INTERVIEW]
[0:02:18.1] JR: Man, I’m so excited to Kevin that we’re hanging out, we’re talking about my favorite topic, Hamilton. How could this episode not be fun? Thanks for being here man.
[0:02:27.4] KC: Yeah, of course, thanks for having me, I’m excited about the conversation
[0:02:29.5] JR: Yeah. For our listeners who haven’t seen the musical or read your book, God and Hamilton or read the churn out biography that inspired the musical. Can you give us the cliff notes of Alexander Hamilton’s life?
[0:02:44.0] KC: Yeah, sure, of course. Alexander Hamilton grows up in the Caribbean. He is a poor orphan kid that experiences all kind of difficulty and hardship through the early years of his life. His father abandons the family, mom dies when he’s 11 and his life is just – he doesn’t really have any future possibilities.
A hurricane comes and descends on the island he’s living on and he writes this really beautiful response in a letter about this hurricane and the local newspaper picks it up and this business man read the letter and they see this enormous intellectual potential and the person who has written it.
They put this money together and they send Alexander Hamilton to America to get his education and he arrives right at the dawn of the American Revolution and he kind of is right place, right time, brilliant young leader, has all this great ideas about economy and about warfare and joins kind of army and very quickly rises up to the ranks, Becomes George Washington’s right hand man and is off and running and becomes truly one of the most influential founding fathers which is shocking because before the musical came out, nobody knew anything about him, right? We completely forgotten about him.
[0:03:47.9] JR: It’s crazy. I mean, I knew the basic of Hamilton’s life which basically meant he got killed by Burr in a duel, that’s basically like I knew. For you, did you see the musical and then read the famous Ron Chernow biography or was it the other way around?
[0:04:03.2] KC: I saw the musical and again, I knew nothing about him, I knew absolutely nothing, I knew there was this hit musical out and was lucky enough to stumble into some tickets to see it on Broadway and went and saw it and just kind of walked out of the heater in this stunned silence. I mean, just leaving the theater feeling like what in the world just happened.
This was stunning.
[0:04:19.9] JR: We’re going to talk about that in a little bit but first, I think my listeners know this by now, I mentioned Hamilton in Call to Create, I talk about it incessantly. I have the Hamilton: The Revolution book sitting behind me on my book shelf which is like my all-time favorite read. I have to ask, what are your favorite songs from the musical? What are your go tos over and over.
[0:04:40.3] KC: Yeah, there’s so many, it’s interesting because I’ll kind of listen to it forever and then take a break and then every time I go back to it, I’m just like gosh, these songs, they’re so brilliant. Some of my favorites, I love Nonstop, this song where they both come back to New York after the war and they’re kind of hustling to kind of get their law practice both Aron Burr and Hamilton and they’re trying to figure out what this new country’s going to look like.
I love that one, I love so many of them, The Cabinet Battle that you know that I think is so creative and so clever, where they’re having this rat battle and arguing about the different policies that the government is going to start. I love the Eliza Hamilton song where she sings about this affair that Hamilton has had and whether or not she’s going to forgive him and how she could possibly forgive him and the shame that she feels and this hatred that she feels towards him in that moment.
There’s just so many songs that are so beautifully written but just connect so deeply with the human spirit, I think, and the very real issues that we deal with every day and I think that’s part of why it connects so deeply with audiences.
[0:05:40.2] JR: I don’t want to forget that there may be members of the audiences who have no idea that there’s a musical about Hamilton which sounds crazy. I think you’d have to be living under a rock for the last five years to not know this, but yeah, give people the gist of the musical, right? It’s like, what is this, what makes this so special, what makes this so unique?
[0:05:56.2] KC: Yeah, I would say a lot, I think first of all, it’s the first time that hip hop musical has been performed on Broadway and so it’s a completely –
[0:06:04.0] JR: I didn’t know that.
[0:06:04.5] KC: Yeah, completely new genre, never been done before, in fact, it’s interesting, we have some Hamilton cast members, they came through Kansas City a few months ago and I work at an organization called The Culture House which is a faith-based arts conservatory program.
Through the book, I’ve connected with some of the cast members and they came out to speak to our people which was amazing. But one of the guys was telling me that he had a buddy that was kind of trying out for some – or auditioning for some of the original parts and nobody had heard about it before and this guy was telling the other guy, yeah, it’s this hip hop musical about this founding father Alexander Hamilton and the guy was like, this sounds like the worst idea I’ve ever heard, get out of there, that sounds like – that’s never going to happen.
Go do something real, go do something important, this isn’t going to work.
[0:06:45.7] JR: That’s awesome. Have you always been a musical theater fan by the way?
[0:06:48.6] KC: Yeah, I graduated with music degree from The University of Kansas and I’m not an actor but I’m a singer songwriter, I love musicals, in fact, I’m writing my own musical right now, totally crazy side project, it’s called Evil Clown Joe and the Singing and Dancing bears. It’s a story about a bear –
[0:07:04.3] JR: That sounds as absurd as a hip-hop musical about Alexander Hamilton.
[0:07:07.8] KC: It’s actually funny because everybody, when I tell them about it, they’re like oh, kids musical, sounds great and it’s like nope, it’s actually a very dark comedy about this bear that wants to sing in a world that will not allow her to and I’m having a ball writing those songs and try to make that work.
But yeah, I’ve always been into musical theater, always seen them when they came through town, you know, get to New York when I can to see them on Broadway, love being able to do that, but I just love. I love music and I love story and I love dance, I just say musical theater is a really unique place where all that comes together and can really impact us in some pretty deep ways if we allow the story to touch us and do its work in us.
[0:07:44.4] JR: I can’t remember if we talked about this when you and I got on the phone a couple of months ago but music was one of the first loves of my life. I played piano from a very early age. I was a vocal major at Florida State for about six weeks until I decided I wanted to make money.
But I also loved musical theater on particular. In high school, I always was in high school musicals, so I was in West Side Story, I was the lead in Oklahoma.
[0:08:09.0] KC: Awesome, man.
[0:08:09.8] JR: Yeah, I love it. I went to Florida State and my first week on Campus, they were having auditions for musical theater like a musical theater program. I come from this like really small private school, graduating class of 34. I was the lead in all the musicals, thinking I’m amazing. I walked in and I literally stood there for two minutes, I was like, hard pass. I am way out of my league.
All right, Kevin, talk a little bit about the work you're doing today, right? You’ve written – I mean, you planted four churches which is incredible. I want to talk about that shift in a minute, but you planted these churches. Now you’ve written this book and now you’re working for this really cool organization, they’re in Kansas City. Tell us a little bit about the work you’re doing right now?
[0:08:52.9] KC: Yeah, I wrote the book about year and a half ago, God and Hamilton and when I wrote it, I was hoping it would open up some doors for me to travel and speak about Hamilton which it has and that’s been really great, I really love those opportunities but the door that it opened that I didn’t anticipate was organizations starts reaching out to me and saying hey, will you come and speak to our people about creativity and faith?
Christian theater groups would call me and I’ve had so many conversations with people who are leading Christian theater companies around the country who are saying, I don’t even get encouraged, nobody sees value in the work I’m doing. If anything, the church kind of looks down at this creative work that I’m doing.
We just need voices in our community that are telling us, hey, this is important and this matters and this is worthy and this is spiritual. When you come out and talk to us about that and so, Christian theater groups, fine arts colleges, church staffs even that wanted to learn more about that intersection of creativity and faith. I started speaking about that and for me, it was kind of a convergence.
Again, I’ve always been a creative person, I’m a musician, singer songwriter. Some of my most transcendent moments have happened when I’ve been playing music. I remember, I was in a kind of an alternative rock band in college and I remember moments playing drums at bars in Laurence where I felt so present in the moment and so filled with joy in the moment and just this absolute sense of transcendency as I was playing music.
Same thing, I did Jess Trio after college and similar type elements. When I sit down on my piano and I write songs for this musical that I’m working on right now. I just feel this joy and this life pouring out of me so I’m really been convicted and challenged about this idea that living creatively, it’s what it means to be fully human and fully alive and it’s a central part of who God is and God’s character and it’s a central part of what it means for us to be made in the image of God.
After I started traveling and doing these talks, the Lord just was calling me down this path of working with creatives and trying to be a voice that inspires and encourages, people that are doing creative work and like you said, I planted four churches so I’ve always been a starter so I thought I was going to go start another like nonprofit around that idea somehow and I had a really good buddy of mine that came to me and he said, hey man, you’ve been starting stuff for 20 years, why don’t you go find someone who has done something and like join their team for a while.
[0:11:00.0] JR: Man, that’s good advice.
[0:11:01.7] KC: It was great. I had never even thought about that possibility but when he gave me that advice, I started looking around Kansas City and I actually did have some relationship with this community called The Culture House and they’re this amazing, it’s a faith-based arts conservatory so we have classes for kids and camps and performances for kids but we also have the professional division as well where we have a dance company called Sterling.
We have professional theater that happens around town, we perform on some of the best stages in Kansas City and this place is just doing amazing work in theater, in art, in music, in a dance and so I’ve kind of come on their staff as the director of spiritual life and I’m investing in relationships and building bridges with churches in town and just trying to be kind of an advocate for the work they’re doing and support and this amazing creative work that this organization is doing.
[0:11:47.8] JR: I love it. Hey, I was thinking about this part of the interview. I love Hamilton too, I love this musical, I wrote about the call to create. I never thought I should write an entire book of the story. Why do you do this?
[0:12:04.1] KC: Yeah, I saw the musical and again, left the theater with this profound sense of experiencing in God’s presence. I kind of have an obsessive compulsive personality and so I got everything I could get my hands on that had to do with Hamilton and so I went and bought the Chernow book first and I read the Chernow book and there were scenes in the musical where in the theater, not only me but everybody around me is just weeping because of these moments that happened in Alexander Hamilton’s life that are so moving or so heartbreaking or so profound.
That was happening as I’m watching the musical. I go home and I read the Chernow book and the same thing happens. There are these scenes where I’m just so moved and so touched by this man’s faith, by this man’s love for his wife, by this man’s brokenness, by the successes and the heartaches and the failures that he experiences and I just keep having these moments where I feel like God is challenging me or speaking to me or communicating to me about how important this person’s life is and how important this person’s faith is.
Not only his faith but Eliza’s faith as well. In fact, in many ways, Eliza Hamilton –
[0:13:06.2] JR: Hey, for those who don’t know, who is Eliza?
[0:13:07.9] KC: Yeah, Eliza Hamilton was Alexander Hamilton’s wife. She actually, after Hamilton was shot and killed by Aron Burr who is the sitting vice president at the time. May just add stunning story when you think about that. We think politics right now is out of hand, the vice president –
[0:13:21.2] JR: We killed people.
[0:13:23.4] KC: It was crazy. But Eliza lives another 50 years and just lives a remarkable life, she fights for evolution, she raises money for the Washington monument and then kind of her crowning achievement is this orphanage that she builds. It kind of was born out of this Alexander Hamilton growing up and really losing both of his parents at a young age and living with a deep shame about being an orphan.
As he became kind of an influential founding father, there was a lot of tension with his background and a lot of the other founding fathers who came from wealthy families and well to do families and a lot of times, Alexander Hamilton felt shame and was even teased and bullied and the other founding father really looked down on him because of his orphan status.
I loved the idea, in fact, I write about it in my last chapter on redemption in the book and I loved they did it, Eliza feels this pain from Alexander’s life, this brokenness is from Alexander’s life and then redeems it, right? She does something beautiful with it, she goes and she starts an orphanage that then impacts hundreds of children, in fact, it’s still is in existence today. Under the name of Graham Windom in New York City, they’re still doing work today, reaching out to families in need in New York city and I just love that idea that Eliza felt really called by God to do this work and in a remarkable way, changed hundreds and now you know, 200 years later, thousands and thousands of lives.
[0:14:39.8] JR: Kevin, you’re a talented creative, you’re a talented musician, you’re a talented entrepreneur. But I got to say, after reading God and Hamilton, I think your superpower is writing. This was one of the best written books I’ve read in a very long time. Super well researched, super well written and listen, I’m a nonfiction writer myself, right? I have so many selfish questions about how you pulled this thing off, right?
Can you talk through the process? We got a opt of people in our audience who are aspiring authors. Can you talk through the process, from the moment you got the idea to write this book to the moment the manuscript was done.
[0:15:16.2] KC: Yeah, as a pastor, I had a little bit of a head start because I first turned it into a sermon series and just started preaching through it. I got into some immediate sense of what works, what doesn’t work, how it’s coming together, the ways it’s not coming together and so that was super helpful to do that. I think my congregants got really tired of hearing stories of Hamilton and the musical.
They’re like, God, another sermon on Hamilton but you know, my secret plan that I haven’t told them at the time was it was turning into a book. That helped me get a good start and then I just had a lot of people that gave me a lot of really great feedback. I mean, they were probably three or four different people who shaped and molded this book in really significant ways.
[0:15:51.9] JR: Stop there for a second. When you were getting feedback from people, were you getting feedback, like when I write, I have two or three people that I’m getting feedback on but I get it in like really – it’s very rapid, right? I finish a chapter, I send it off, took care of my wife and Tony, one of my best friends and give feedback, is that how you did it?
[0:16:09.5] KC: Yeah, the people in my world for this project, I actually hired a manuscript critique, this is my first book that I’ve ever written and so I hired someone to read through, not the entire manuscript but she read maybe three or four chapters, pretty in depth and then kind of skimmed the rest and she gave me really great just kind of big picture feedback on what I was doing well and what I needed to work on as a writer and that was super helpful.
JR: What were some of those things?
[0:16:31.3] KC: You know, as a pastor and a preacher, she said, you’re kind of wordy as a writer so she says you write long was her phrase and so she really talked about economy of words and making sure that every word is absolutely necessary. She would talk about how I would have a paragraph that had five sentences and it really only needed two sentences or I would have a story that will be three paragraphs and really only need one paragraph and so I did a lot of work of going back and just editing out every single unnecessary and try to write within economy of words.
That was super helpful. The other person that was really helpful in shaping the book was an agent that signed me for this book project. She went through all the chapters and really helped me focus the story on Hamilton and his life and our life and how that connection happens and the original manuscript was actually a lot longer and I would start with the Hamilton image but then I might jump off into another movie I saw an then I might jump into a personal experience for my life and it would kind of be all over the place and she kind of really challenged me and said, make it way tighter, make it connect with what this book is about, which is Hamilton and our spiritual lives.
If you make that connection in each chapter, in a very short and sweet way, that’s what your readers are looking for with this book. That was super helpful as well to kind of really get focused on what I wanted to write and what this book was about. The third thing I would say is I went to a workshop that was so helpful and the workshop basically said, when you’re writing, you’re really writing for one person and it’s you.
If you write something that connects with you and it moves you and that challenges you and transforms you, then and only then do you have something to offer to the world. I think, I know for me, as a writer, I will always and forever have this voice in the back of my head that’s saying, more people need to buy your book, why are more people interested in your book, you’re not valuable if you don’t sell thousands and thousands of copies, you’re a failure if you don’t make this bestseller.
All these ridiculous things that are going on the back of my head, right? She really helped silence some of those voices and be able to say, if I’m going to write this project and it changes me then that has to be enough and if one person outside of that reads this book then that has to be enough.
[0:18:37.5] JR: Quoting Hamilton there, that would be enough.
[0:18:39.9] KC: Right, that’s right. For me, I teach about this way. I travel around and I do this workshops on creativity and faith and I have five principles on how to live out our best creative life and one of the principles is what we’re talking about right now. This idea that we’re called to do the creative work we’re called to do and then surrender the results to God.
I have such a hard time surrendering the results. I want thousands of people to buy and read and pass my book along to others and I want to get on to Amazon and see how high my book is ranked and I’m really kind of obsessed with that at times. When I’m really unhealthy, that’s where I go. But when I’m a healthy person, I can say you know what? I wrote the book, I did what I was called to do and I was faithful to that creative act and that’s all that I can control and whether this book sells a few hundred copies or a few thousand copies or a million copies, it has nothing to do with me at this point.
It’s out into the world and I can hustle and I can try and I can do what I can do to market and I can make connections but ultimately the impact of this book has very little to do with me at this point. The more I’m at rest with that and can surrender to that, that more healthy and whole hearted of a human being I –
[0:19:43.6] JR: I write a lot about this topic in particular because it’s something that I struggle with so much, this idea that yes, it’s this concept of trust, hustle and rest that I wrote about in Called to Create, this idea that you know, yes, we’re called to work hard, work heartily as unto the Lord. But we’re also told over and over again in Scripture that we do not produce results. I can’t remember the exact reference in chronicles but it’s the first I think about wealth and honor come from you alone for you rule over everything.
Power and might are in your hand and your discretion Lord, you make people great and give them strength, right? Yeah, we’re called to work hard and write great books and do our very best but at the end of the day, the results are in his hands so it’s not this let go let God. I think that’s bad incomplete advice most of the time but it’s this work hard and yes, at the end of the day, be able to take a step back and look at your work and say, I’ve done my very best and the results are in the Lord’s hands, right?
[0:20:38.1] KC: That’s right. I think just develop on that, I think often times, we really need to ask the question, why am I working so hard and why do I want this so desperately and why am I longing for this to happen because more times than not in my life, it’s not for God’s glory, it’s not for God’s kingdom, it’s not for the other people’s benefit. It’s because I have this voice inside of my head that says, you will be more worthy and more valuable and more loved if you’re more influential or if your work reaches more people.
It really is about my own junk and my own identity and my own struggle with all of that and so, I think that’s an important question that we probably have to do battle with daily is why am I doing the work?
[0:21:14.8] JR: Well, it’s the question that Aron Burr asked Hamilton in our shared favorite song, Nonstop in the musical. “Why you write like you’re running out of time, write day and night, like you’re running out of time.” I could sing the rest of it but I won’t. I wrote about this in Called to Create, the answer for Hamilton was pretty clear, he was writing nonstop because he was – this is my take, you’re more of a Hamilton expert than me but like, he was desperately trying to prove to the world that he was worthy of the grace that he had been shown in this new life that he had been given here in the United States, right?
That was his pride. His driver was what they sing in the musical, the world’s going to know your name. Would you agree that that was like the primary driver in his life?
[0:22:02.4] KC: Yeah, I think so. I think that especially coming to America from the poor background as an orphan kid, trying to make his way into the society that he didn’t really belong in. In fact, it’s really interesting. One of the history books I read talked about how what Hamilton accomplished would never have happened in any other country in the history of the world because all these other countries at the time, they were built on your family, they were built on your reputation, they were built on your wealth.
Hamilton had none of that. America truly was one of the original meritocracies where he shows up and he is a leader and he is smart and he’s intelligent and so he’s able to build a life for himself and build opportunity for himself. I think that he, and again, I’m by no means a Hamilton expert but I do think he lived with a deep insecurity and I think he was constantly trying to prove himself worthy, trying to make a name for himself, trying to prove that he belonged with all these other founding fathers that had so much wealth and so much influence.
There’s the other great song where Hamilton and Washington are arguing about whether or not he can – he wants to fight in the war and Washington wants him as his basically, as running the army as his right hand man running the army, running the kind of army. Hamilton wants to go on the battlefield because he wants to go make a name for himself and he’s not going to make a name for himself as an administrator running the army.
He’s going to make a name for himself as a hero if he actually becomes a leader of men in the army and so I think that was constantly there. This pressure, this insecurity, this desire to become more to rise above his current setting and to feel like he was more.
[0:23:35.4] JR: I’d never made that connection in the musical before. Because one of my unanswered questions in the musical maybe it’s answered in the Chernow biography is like, why was Hamilton so obsessed with this idea of serving in the military, but I think you nailed it, right? How is he going to make a name for himself as George Washington’s number two?
He had to go do something brave and heroic on the battlefield. I was –
[0:23:56.8] KC: The interesting thing about that, not to interrupt you but Washington finally gives him the command of the troops in the final battle where they actually defeat the British and that is what makes a huge name and he goes back to New York now a war hero because he was the one that led the battle where the British surrendered and so in a very ironic way, he finally got what he wanted a the very end and it catapulted his career in New York as a war hero and helped him become the influential leader that he was.
[0:24:23.8] JR: Yeah. For all the reasons you’ve already mentioned, right? Hamilton’s story is like really remarkable, right? This kid growing up, in desolate poverty in the Caribbean grows to become secretary of treasury, we have Hamilton in our pockets. Well, I don’t because I’m under the age of 40 and I don’t carry cash but you get the gist.
But, that’s extraordinary, right? In another sense, I was talking about this the other day like his story’s the most ordinary story ever, right? It is this story of ambition for all the wrong reasons, it’s the story of the tower of Babel. It’s the story of I would argue, 21st century Americans of just desperately feeling this need to work hard and to achieve as a means, I think of covering up sin. I mean, we would never articulate it as that, right? Of course, right?
We all live with a sense that there’s something deeply wrong with us that we’ve been graced with things that we don’t deserve which is true and we feel the need to earn it. It is the anti-gospel that we fight day in day out, right? How do you help yourself? How do you remind yourselves practically of these truths that your identity and your ultimate worth isn’t fond in the success of your next endeavor but in Christ alone?
[0:25:42.7] KC: Yeah, I don’t know.
[0:25:45.2] JR: I don’t know either, that’s why I’m asking you.
[0:25:47.0] KC: It’s a daily, hourly, minute by minute battle and there are seasons in my life where I have a deep understanding and a deep sense of presence of God and his love in my life and understanding very clearly that I’m his beloved and there’s nothing that I have to do to earn that or to accomplish to earn that and there’s times where I live there and there’s more times where I just feel overwhelmed by this need to become more than I am, by this need to produce by this need to achieve, by this need to accomplish and connecting this really unhealthy dots between if I do more of that then I will be more loved, more accepted, more whatever.
It’s a lie, it’s the human battle and it is the journey that I think every single one of us are on at one level or another and I don’t know if that battle ever goes away.
[0:26:38.2] JR: yeah, I don’t know that does either and I think we grew closer to the Lord as we fight that tension, right? Fight that battle. I want to go backwards, I want opt go back to the process of writing for a second. By the way, when you talked about writing for one person, I thought that was really interesting. I’ve thought a lot about that, when I’m writing books, I have a very particular person in mind when I’m thinking about writing. I’ve never heard somebody say thought hat that one person should be you.
I think that’s interesting. I’ve actually thought about this at this podcast like, I’m asking very selfish questions. These are questions I want to learn and I’m just hoping and praying that other people are interested in their answers too. Because I’m a writer, back to selfish questions.
[0:27:15.9] KC: Great, let’s do it.
[0:27:17.0] JR: Where’s your favorite place to write?
[0:27:19.4] KC: Yeah, I have a basement and it’s this kind of an older house and I have this beautiful stone foundation and I just kind of hold up down there and I’m not an early morning person, you meet all these people that are like, I get up at 4:00 in the morning and –
[0:27:31.2] JR: Yeah, that’s me, yeah.
[0:27:32.5] KC: I’m just like nope, never going to happen, that is not my bag but for Hamilton, the book that I wrote, it was really kind of put the kids to bed and go downstairs at eight or 8:30 and you know, sometimes crank for three, four hours type of a thing and just work until I’m ready for bed and getting tired and go to bed, that was my rhythm for that book, I actually had a lot of momentum for that book because I signed with an agent and she was basically saying, hey, this is a time sensitive –
This issue’s not going to be very relevant three years from now so we got to get this sucker out now and so I have a lot of motivation and a lot of pressure on me which also helps for me in the writing process. I’m not one of those people, you know, you hear people that talk about like get up every day and just write 500 words and man, that’s just not how I work creatively. I get an idea and I’m kind of like I said, obsessive compulsive and I hit it hard for as long as it takes to do that project and you know, when I was doing the musical, it was the same thing.
My wife would always joke, we’d be sitting and having dinner and I’d be spacing out about something and she would kind of tell herself like yeah, he’s off at the circus again and he’s you know, off figuring out his bear story and –
[0:28:34.4] JR: Story of my life, yeah.
[0:28:36.0] KC: That’s how I work and I feel like that is what works for me is kind of intense pockets of really getting after a project and hit it hard and then moving on to whatever the next project I want to be about is.
[0:28:47.4] JR: Yeah, I think, especially when something’s a side project. Like a book is for a lot of people, God and Hamilton was for you. I do think that there is this extra – I don’t know, extra something that allows you to spend more hours on the project just because you're so motivated to get it done, it’s the thing that you're most excited about, it’s the thing that you're thinking about when you’re not thinking about anything else, right? Making creative connections with it.
You know, whereas I can’t do my typical work at nighttime if I had that extra motivation, you definitely can. I look at a book like God and Hamilton and I’m like my gosh, how in the world did this guy write something so great as his first book? But then I remember, you spent years writing sermons, right? You’ve been honing this craft of writing for a long time. I’m curious like, what specific things have you done throughout your career to intentionally hone that craft of writing and communicating these gospel center of truths?
[0:29:42.6] KC: Yeah, I don’t think it even is ground breaking but as a preacher, certainly listening to great preachers and learning for about what works, I would typically listen to my sermons and each time each week getting feedback from other people and it is –
[0:29:58.1] JR: Is that hard for you?
[0:29:59.0] KC: I don’t really like the sound of my own voice so.
[0:30:02.2] JR: Yeah, I hate the sound of my voice.
[0:30:03.9] KC: I don’t like that but I just knew it was part of the process and that is how you get better at stuff. I read a book once, it was talking about a filmmaker. In fact, it might have been your book now that I tell the story, you tell me if it was but it was about this filmmaker who loved making films and one night he was up late and one of his movies came on and he was watching this movie that he had made and there was a scene in it that didn’t work.
And he was watching this scene and it was almost like a – he looked at it. It was with almost this curiosity of why didn’t that scene work? I wonder what I could have done differently there. I wonder why that didn’t hit the way I thought it was going to hit? And so there is a constant evaluating your work and honing your craft and whether that is feedback from others, whether that is your own internal dialogue of figuring out what you thought connected with people and what didn’t connect with people.
That is one of my other points that I make in my workshop when I talk about your best creative life. One of the points is you have to hone your craft and I have a good friend of mine that’s a brilliant communicator and he says that you have to do as much work on the backend of your craft as you do doing the original creative work as far as getting better and honing and challenging yourself or else you just keep staying on that same level your entire life where you are not improving and you are not getting better.
[0:31:14.1] JR: Yeah, so this is what my next book is all about right? This was Master of One is about, how do we, one, find the thing that God has created us to do uniquely well in the world, how do we focus on that thing and say no to everyone else and then once we have committed to our one thing, how do you get world class at it and in chapter eight of the book, I write about this concept that Anders Ericsson made famous in his Rules of Purposeful Practice of embracing uncomfortability, right?
So masters always push the envelope, they always raise the bar. They are always doing something that is outside of their comfort zone but I think a part of that that I haven’t really connected with that particular concept is this idea of like listening to your own stuff and like reading. I don’t like reading things that I have written in the past like I have heard Aaron Sorkin, my all-time favorite writer talk about this a lot like he has never turned in a script for a screen play that he doesn’t want.
Like he’d immediately rewrite. I feel the way about books, right? I feel a way about speeches like I hate watching speeches of myself, but it is critical like how else are you going to critique and make things better. So did you did that with God and Hamilton? Did you go back and re-read the book like, “Oh man I wish I changed that.”
[0:32:25.2] KC: No, I haven’t re-read the book yet. I probably will at some point. I mean I have read parts of it. I have never sat down and just read the whole thing but I do it all the time with my sermons and again, as I travel and speak about the Hamilton stuff, I do it all the time and I re-watched videos and I get feedback from others. Again, this buddy of mine, his name is Isaac and he is just a brilliant communicator and I actually had him.
I had a pretty big speaking gig this past summer and I said, “Hey man, I am giving this talk like 20 times.” We just watched this last video before I go to this other one and just see if there’s anything and I just assumed he would read it or watch the video and be like, “Yeah man it’s great like maybe this and this” just a small things and he comes back with these huge changes that he suggests that I would make and again, I’m like I thought of this 20 times and I didn’t see any of that and I made some of those changes and it was so much better on the other end, it was so much better.
[0:33:13.7] JR: So that talk is that the five principles of this creative?
[0:33:17.7] KC: No that is my God and Hamilton sermon. So that is when I go to churches and talk about the book and Hamilton and connect this idea of the transformation power story.
[0:33:24.7] JR: I want to talk about these five movements of creativity. You and I of course responded that a little bit. So you know a lot of people who are listening to this episode have read my book, Called to Create. They’ve got this baseline theology of creativity and how will we create or reveal the character God but I think you have a really interesting framework for thinking about this. Talk us through that workshop and those five movements? Is that what you call it the five movements?
[0:33:51.7] KC: Yeah, the five movements. So this is my next book that I am working on so I am hoping to get this out into the world hopefully in the next year or two and it really is born out of my own experience as a creative person and what I have learned and what I have experienced and then as I’ve been teaching these workshops, you know dozens if not hundreds of conversations with people who are doing really, really beautiful creative work and asking them similar questions.
And having these ideas fine tune it or whatnot. So, I will just go quickly through the five movements and I hope I can remember them all –
[0:34:17.2] JR: Take your time. This is what I love. I love those.
[0:34:20.1] KC: I keep saying I need to come up with an acronym because I always have a hard time remembering all five of them. So the first one is we have to connect creativity with calling. We have to see creative living and creative work as absolutely central to what it means to be made in the image of God. The idea in which you wrote about in Called to Create where Genesis 1, the very first thing we learned about God is that God is a creative God.
And the whole point of Genesis one, we try to turn it into this argument about science versus creation and all these nonsense that I think has very little to do with the original intent of this person who writes this beautiful poem about the creative work of God, right? And so we have to connect that and that is something we miss a lot. I have spoken in national conference once for a Christian new theater, this was last summer and all week long, I have talked about how when you are doing creative work on the stage.
This is deeply spiritual work and you are honoring God with this kind of work and at the end of the week, probably a 16 year old girl comes up to me and she just thanks me for what I shared and she says, “You know, I’ve always wanted to write a novel but I never felt spiritual enough” and she said, “I felt like I should become a missionary or a pastor or do something really spiritual with my life and writing a novel never felt like that.”
And she said, “After hearing this week, you helped me give myself permission to go chase that passion and to go do that and to see that as spiritual work” and you know I just read a novel recently that was beautiful and powerful and that transformed me and what’s more spiritual than that than putting a story on the world that can change people’s lives. So that is the first one, we got to connect creativity with calling.
The next one is when we have to identify resistance and overcome it. So resistance is concept that I ripped off from Steven Pressfield who is a brilliant writer and have done a ton of great books about this but he basically says that every single time we create there is this voice in our heads. This voice are a force that is working against us and trying to keep us from doing that creative work and it is really powerful when I go and I do these workshops.
Every time when we get to these point, I give everybody time to journal what is the voice telling you about your creative work and man, people will start weeping as they share out loud these voices that say, “I am not smart enough. I am not talented enough” from women often times especially in the theater world they will say, “I don’t have the look, I am not pretty enough. I am not thin enough.” I can’t say anything that someone else isn’t already said or say it better than someone else.
I am working with a group of dancers at the cultural house right now and we just had this conversation the other day and she said that her resistance tells her that you are not even saying anything. You are just dancing so how important could that be? And so these voices of resistance can be so unique and so sinister to the way that we are created and to the work that we are created to do and so the trick is we have to overcome with to identify that resistance and then overcome it.
So every time I sit down at the piano and when I say every time, I mean every single time, I sit down and write a song. There is this voice that says, “This melody is garbage. This core progression isn’t any good. This song isn’t going to stay with people. This is a dumb lyric like you don’t know what you are doing. Leave the musicals to the dare of handsome people and you stay in your lane and do what you do. You don’t know how to write a musical. This is a crazy side project.”
“You are going to fail, it is going to be joke. You are going to waste all of this time” these are the voices that are going onto my head and when I am being a mature person, I can recognize those voices for what they are and I can almost welcome them to the conversation and I can recognize, “Oh yeah this is resistance” and this happens every time and now that I have identified it, I need you to go resist it. Sit over the corner because I got a song I need to write and then I get after the work that I am called to do and so that to me is the second step and a really important one of the process.
The third movement then is to do the work. It is put the butt in the chair and work for a long, long time. I actually had a chance to meet with Max Lucado once. My family in Texas goes to his church and have gotten to know him a little bit so I had the chance to meet with him to talk about writing and creativity and he has one picture frame in his office. One quote in his office it is in a frame and it says something to the effect of, “So you want to be writer? Put your butt in that seat and stay there for a really, really, really long time” and that was the only quote in his entire office.
And I think that’s right that if we want to do creative work then we have to be really disciplined and we have to work really hard and we have to be willing to spend hours and hours and hours sitting in a chair, writing or composing or painting or whatever it is. So that is the third one and then the fourth movement is to hone your craft and we’ve already talked about this a little bit but this is the idea that we have to – on the backend of our work, we got to go and learn from that and we got to sharpen our saw and we got to get better at the craft we are working at.
And if we don’t, we’re just going to stay at that same level of good but maybe not great or adequate but not excellent and you know I hope that my second book is a lot better than my first book and you know I hope that my next musical is better than the first musical that I write and you just have to keep honing it and getting better and then the final one we have also talked about is to surrender the results to God that we are faithful to the work we have called to do.
And then we surrender the results and we say, “Okay God, I am doing the creative work” that the image that I am using for this book and for this workshops is that every time we create, we send a ripple out into the world and this ripple has this enormous potential for good both in our lives but in other people’s lives as well and so we send the ripple out in the world and then we surrender and we say, “Lord if you want to use us to impact 10 lives, praise be to God.”
“If you want to use us to impact 100 people, praise be to God” but that is not up to us. The impact isn’t really up to us.
[0:39:49.1] JR: Amen to that. So, I think it was in the introduction of God and Hamilton, you had this section that really made me stop and pause and think. You said quote, “This musical and this story draws people into the very presence of God and His kingdom among us. It is becoming continuous to be a thin place, places where God seems to break through and what normally feels hidden becomes real and tangible.”
How does art and maybe you need to explain what you mean by thin places but how does art usher us into thin places?
[0:40:23.3] KC: Yeah, so the idea of a thin place is from ancient Celtic spirituality and it is the idea that the kingdom of God is not up in the heavens millions of miles away but it is here among us but then there is this veil that separates the reality that we live in and the kingdom of God and God’s presence among us but then at times that veil becomes very, very thin and all of a sudden we can see things that typically are hidden from us or typically that aren’t able to be seen.
And so I think nature often times can be a thin place. I mean I think a lot of different things can serve as a thin place but I think art specifically does that work and maybe it ties back theologically that God is a creative God and that God as a creative God would we enter into that work? We are doing something so spiritual and so central to who God is that a connection happens, something opens up in us. Something opens up in the world that we live in.
Maybe keeps things from being hidden that maybe draws us a little bit closer to the life that we’re creative to live. I think art also becomes a thin place because it gets past our intellect a lot and it gets to our emotion. It gets to our heart, it gets to our soul. There’s things that happen when I go see musicals that don’t happen when I read a book or when I listen to a sermon intellectually. Now books and sermons can do that same work as well obviously.
But I think there is something about music and art and emotion that opens up a space first that we don’t normally live in and we don’t normally encounter and I think it is why theaters are packed when we have their well written stories and why movies are sold out when there are stories that connect with people and that is why people weep when they stand in front of a beautiful paintings and there is something in art that just connects so deeply with us and connects with who God created us to be.
[0:42:08.5] JR: I love that, all right three questions I love to ask anyone who comes on the show. First, what book or books do you gift the most?
[0:42:18.4] KC: That is a good question. I think I would say Donald Miller and specifically he has a book called, I always script the title. I think it is A thousand years and a Million Miles or something like that but it is a book about story and it is a book about looking at our lives and asking ourselves are we living a good story and I have read it probably three times cover to cover and I am giving it out to a bunch of people so I love Donald Miller. I think he is doing amazing work and I really love that book.
[0:42:43.6] JR: Yeah I haven’t read that one. I obviously read Story Brand, a great resource for any marketer but I have to check that out.
[0:42:49.9] KC: I think it is A Million Miles in a Thousand Years, I think.
[0:42:53.1] JR: A Million Miles in a Thousand Years. I have to check that out.
[0:42:54.6] KC: Something like that.
[0:42:55.0] JR: What one person would you most like to hear talk about the intersection of their faith and their work and creativity on this podcast?
[0:43:03.0] KC: That is a great question –
[0:43:05.2] JR: It’s basically a ploy for me to get people to make introductions or have excuses to go ask people to be on the show yeah.
[0:43:10.3] KC: Yeah, no I love it. So the one person. You know there are so many brilliant writers on Broadway right now that are doing incredible work. I think the guys that do Dear Evan Hansen. They just did a – that story I just saw it a couple of months ago on Broadway and I just wept during multiple parts of that story and it’s coming to Kansas City in October and I am forcing my children. I have two teenage boys who hate musicals.
If we have brought them to musicals, then they fight us every time and I am just like you are going. It is the end of conversation you have to come see –
[0:43:44.1] JR: I mean that musical in particular yeah. I mean it’s…
[0:43:46.7] KC: And those guys have done – you know they did –
[0:43:49.3] JR: They did The Greatest Showman, right?
[0:43:50.5] KC: The Greatest Showman, they did Lala Land. I mean they’ve done just beautiful works in the last couple of years and –
[0:43:56.7] JR: I’m all in on these guys and I heard and maybe what you are about to say is one of them is a personal of faith, one of them is a believer?
[0:44:02.9] KC: Yeah that’s right. Their names are escaping me right now. Their names I am so bad with names but one of them is a person of faith and it is Justin, Justin –
[0:44:13.7] JR: Okay, we are going to track Justin down consider this the starting of the petition to get Justin on the Call to Mastery.
[0:44:20.4] KC: Yeah, I totally spaced on his last name but anyway –
[0:44:22.4] JR: I could do a three-hour episode on The Greatest Showman and Dear Evan Hanson easily.
[0:44:26.4] KC: I mean they are – I mean the song “You Will be Found” in Dear Evan Hanson is the gospel, right?
[0:44:33.1] JR: It’s so good.
[0:44:34.0] KC: It’s the gospel so I would love to hear a little bit more about his faith and about his journey and about how his faith intersects with his creative process. I think he is one of the best songwriters on the planet right now. I mean to be frank I think that those two movies and that one musical are just absolutely remarkable.
[0:44:53.7] JR: Yeah they’re great. All right last question. What one piece of advice would you give to somebody who is pursuing mastery of their vocation in particular a creative vocation or a writing specifically, something that you have really mastered, what one piece of advice would you give to them?
[0:45:11.7] KC: Yeah I think I would say I think that the last step that we talked about in that workshop that I teach is personally the hardest one for me but also one of the most transformative and it is surrendering the results to God and it is doing the creative work you are called to do and doing it the best that you can and giving everything you can to the craft and to do it not believing that it is going to make it rich or famous or influential.
But to do it because you love the moment where you are creating. I mean for me when I am at the piano and a lyric comes together or a song happens. It is one of the most life-giving joyful moments of my life. Same thing when I am on a computer and I am typing and to me one of the favorite parts of the writing process is when you are writing and all of a sudden things start happening that you didn’t expect or words start coming out that you didn’t anticipate and it is just that creative process.
And so it is giving everything you can in that creative process and then surrendering the results and knowing that it’s 0.0001% of people who become their best sellers who become the famous ones, who become wealthy doing this kind of work, 99.999% of us you know we just live normal lives and we do the creative work we’re called to do and we do it faithfully and the more we can surrender that dream I guess or that ambition or that desire for own self-validation the more we can surrender that and just get after the creative work that we are called to do, I think the more healthy and whole, contented and satisfied we will be as creative people.
[0:46:44.6] JR: And I think too, I thought about this a lot and I write about this in Master of One but when we get world-class at our craft, I didn’t say world famous those are two different things but when we are so good and we are administering the ministry of excellence through our work, I think those moments that you are describing you’re sitting at the piano or you really figured out that lyric or you really figured out that line in the book, I feel this sometimes.
I think that is what people mean when they say they feel God’s pleasure. It is knowing that you are doing the thing you were created to do so extraordinarily well not as a means of making yourself famous but as a means of revealing the character of an exceptional creative God and loving neighbor as self. That is what it means to be human. That is what it means for work to be worshiped. So Kevin I just want to commend you. You talked about the ministry of excellence.
You lived this out I am so impressed with your work. Thank you for doing work that matters not just plenty of churches but talking about somebody like Hamilton and serving the community of Kansas City and helping them embrace their creativity. Your work matters, it’s important and I am grateful for you. Hey, if you’re listening the book is God and Hamilton. I am not kidding when I say this is one of the best books I’ve read in a very, very long time. I am excited to read it again. Go pick up a copy. Kevin, thanks so much for hanging out with me.
[0:48:04.7] KC: Yep, thanks so much Jordan. I really appreciate the time and loved this conversation.
[END OF INTERVIEW]
[0:48:10.6] JR: It took every ounce of will power I had not to wrap Hamilton during that entire episode with my friend, Kevin Cloud. Hey that was fun. I hope you guys enjoyed that episode as much as I did even if you are not a Hamilton fan. Hamilton fans had the title of their life during that episode. Hopefully the rest of you guys enjoyed it as well.
Hey, if you enjoyed this episode, be sure to subscribe to Call to Mastery so you never miss another episode in the future. If you are already subscribed, do me a favor and take 30 seconds to review the podcast. If you have no idea how to do either of those things, go to jordanraynor.com/podcast, we have made it super easy for you to do both of them.
Hey before you go, I’ve got another shorter conversation I want to share with you guys. As you all know as an author myself, I am an avid reader. I read all the time usually reading a couple of books, listening to one in my car, reading one on my Kindle and a few month ago, I started sharing with you all some of the books that I have added to my personal reading list.
So as you guys – most of you guys are probably receiving my weekly devotional email. I have a weekly faith and work devotional that goes out every Monday morning at 8 AM Eastern. By the way, if you’re not subscribed to that you can go ahead and sign up for free at jordanraynor.com and I have been sharing with you guys some of my reading recommendations and I recently sat down with the author of one of those books that I’ve add to my reading list.
His name is Costi Hinn and he is the nephew of the world famous televangelist, Benny Hinn and Costi has written this fascinating book called God, Greed, and the (Prosperity) Gospel, in which essentially exposes the lies of his uncle and the other leaders of the prosperity gospel movement and this movement and this teaching. This is a fantastic gospel centric book. I’d love getting into it, so I recently sat down with Costi and I just asked him a few questions about the book.
To help you guys wrap around what it is and decide if you want to read it. So without further ado, here’s my conversation with Costi Hinn.
[INTERVIEW]
[0:50:25.7] JR: Costi, thanks so much for hanging out with me man, I appreciate it.
[0:50:28.1] CH: Yeah, thanks for having me on, Jordan.
[0:50:30.1] JR: Yeah, so I am really looking forward to this conversation about your book, God, Greed and the (Prosperity) Gospel. So out of all the books that I’ve endorsed to my audience, I think this is one of the most popular ones like when you’re just judged by clicks and shares and comments on Instagram, people seemed to be really resonating with this title book for those listening to this episode of the podcast, who don’t know about this book, tell us what God, Greed and the (Prosperity) Gospel is all about.
[0:50:56.6] CH: Yeah, it is a book I wrote because I came out of the prosperity gospel. I grew up in it, worked in it, was behind the scenes in it and it is one of the most prevalent issues when I talk to leaders and pastors and church influencers around the world. There might be a lot of noise in the US about certain issues but around the world it is unanimous that the prosperity gospel is one of if not the most threatening system to the health of the church, the health of church leaders and of course, people who leaders are serving.
[0:51:30.2] JR: So, and the book itself, talk us through the narrative arc of the book, right? So you tell a lot of your story, a lot of the story of it was your uncle, Benny Hinn, correct? It is part narrative driven but you also get into some expository teaching against the prosperity gospel. Can you just give our listeners kind of an arc of the track they are going to follow as they read the book?
[0:51:51.3] CH: Absolutely, the beginning I wrote on purpose to be really fast and so you are writing the storyline. I am taking you into one of the crusades I was at when I was a young man and were – the climax is rising quickly. You’ll get my full story, all the details of my life, the lifestyle, the inner workings of a lot of things I saw and then I wanted to take readers through the questions I had as well and so we’ll ask big questions. You are going to see certain things and read certain things.
And in your mind, readers will begin to assess and go, “Well that is not right. Well that doesn’t seem odd” or maybe they might even say, “I used to believe that or I always thought that was actually true” so I will take readers there and then after the storyline concludes and for some, it will have broken down their belief system potentially. For others it would have raised questions they never had. I’ll begin to answer those from the Bible and that is the teaching aspect in the final few chapters.
[0:52:45.5] JR: Yeah, I love it. I can’t remember if it was the introduction or the first chapter but whatever it was the first part of the book, I read it and I’m like, “This is just a fascinating story” right? It is a wildly compelling story, but it also sets up some really core theological questions that I think the entire church has to wrestle with. So all right Costi, who is this book for? I mean I know this is every publisher’s favorite question. I am sure this Sandra Venn asked you this question, is this truly for everybody? Who is the audience for God, Greed, and the (Prosperity) Gospel?
[0:53:20.6] CH: Yeah, it may seem cliché to say it, but it really is for everyone. If you’re a Christian and you’ve been in the church world a long time, maybe you have never heard of it or you haven’t known a lot about the prosperity gospel, this book is for you. It will open up your eyes to the issues that are there that maybe you weren’t aware of. Also, if you grew up in church in the prosperity gospel or a system like it and you are wondering if it is genuine and you’ve had questions like I had this book is for you.
And then honestly, if you are unchurched or one of those fringed church goers or church onlookers and you are religious or you believe in God but you’re a little bit apprehensive because church can be shady and leaders can be dangerous and you are not sure what to do with all of that this book is for you too because it might heal some of those wounds. It might answer some of those questions and I’ve had even secular people who are completely unchurched read the book already.
And say, “This is helpful just for understanding what is true Christianity, what is a pastor and what does a real church represent and teach” versus what probably gets most of the press and bad press at that.
[0:54:31.7] JR: So for those who don’t know this term, prosperity gospel. They may be familiar with the teachings, but they don’t know the label. How do you succinctly describe the prosperity gospel, Costi?
[0:54:43.0] CH: I would say the prosperity gospel is the belief that Jesus Christ died for your sins and/or but mostly so that you wouldn’t just wait for heaven to get all the things you want. You could be healthy, wealthy and happy now. The gospel of Jesus Christ is good news because it guarantees all the good things in life you’ve ever wanted.
[0:55:05.7] JR: And your succinct counter to that in the book would be what?
[0:55:10.8] CH: The true gospel is not about getting stuff. It is about getting saved. We want to go to Christ for who he is not what he can give us and, ultimately, that is eternity, that’s heaven that is Him as the ultimate treasure not just gaining earthly things.
[0:55:28.2] JR: Yeah and I love that and so I have young kids. I have a five-year-old and a three year old and we’re starting to talk, Ellison, my five year old through the gospel and we’re really being careful not to make heaven the end all be all, right? It is being with Christ that is the prize. It is the true reward of salvation. It is not Golden Streets either here on earth or in heaven. So, I love that. Hey, Costi, so the people listening to this episode, my audience, these are high achieving Christians.
Who are ambitious for their work, who have this deep integration of their faith and their work and are seeking to do really masterful work not for their own fame and fortune but for the glory of God and the good of others, how is this going to serve that particular person? How is this book going to serve that person well?
[0:56:18.4] CH: This book will challenge your character. That is the reality here for any of us and whatever we’re doing or wherever we find our hands to do, God’s word tell us to do with all of our might and we are to do that for His glory. Your character is where everything rises or unfortunately falls. Leaders in the workplace, in the workforce, corporate America and the church, this book will challenge your character.
I think everyone of us will have to ask ourselves by the end of a book like this, do I believe the prosperity gospel and I am not talking about the crazy stuff you see on TV. When you peel back the layers of your heart as a faithful working achiever for the glory of God, do you believe that God is good when things are going good and when you don’t achieve, when you miss the mark, are you one of those people that begins to say, “Well maybe God isn’t excited about me” or maybe God doesn’t love me or maybe He is not happy with me.
Those are signs that even in our own hearts the prosperity gospel system has leaked in. The reality is God is always good even when things are not and even when you don’t achieve all that you desire, God is still for you. He loves you. Your identity is not in what you achieve. It is in what Christ has achieved and so this is about our character no matter what level of success we reach, and I think this book will help people a lot with that.
[0:57:40.8] JR: Amen. You guys listening to Costi talk sounds like a lot of what we talk about here on the podcast so you can understand why I am so excited about this book and why I have enjoyed it so much. You know you said something, I just want to wrap up with this thought. You know when we think of the prosperity gospel, we think of watching televangelist in this like we think of the prosperity gospel as this very narrow thing, right?
But the prosperity gospel’s impact is far wider than that. I do believe I think you said it really well it is this core belief that if things are going well God is good, if things are not going well God is not good and I think that is a pretty common belief system for a lot of people and so I am so thankful that you wrote this book to help all of us spot where in our hearts the prosperity gospel has seeped in. Costi, thank you again for writing this book.
Thank you for protecting and fighting for the true gospel of Jesus Christ, the pure gospel of Jesus Christ and thank you so much for hanging out with me for a few minutes on this podcast.
[0:58:38.1] CH: Thanks for all you do Jordan. Keep it up.
[END OF INTERVIEW]
[0:58:42.4] JR: Thanks again to Costi Hinn for answering those questions. The book God, Greed and the (Prosperity) Gospel, I highly recommend it. You can get the book wherever books are sold, Amazon, Barnes & Noble, wherever the heck you guys buy your books. That is it for today’s episode. Again, if you enjoyed the episode, be sure to subscribe to the Call to Mastery and if you are already subscribed leave a review. It’s the best way that you can help us get this message out in the hands or I guess ears of more people.
Again, I hope you guys really enjoyed this episode of the Call to Mastery, I’ll see you next week.
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