Choose Joy with Jason Lavrack (Part One)

Hey, everybody, it is Jim Johnson here, your host with Contractor Radio, the head coach of Contractor Coach Pro. And our whole job, the reason that we exist on this planet is to help people grow and help businesses grow. And our show is about that. How do we grow as better human beings and how do we grow better businesses so that we can hopefully lead better lives? Today I have an amazing guest on. I haven't known him real long, but to be honest, but that time that we have gotten to know each other has been like, we've known each other for years. I don't normally bond with friendship and really, more than that, relationship and fellowship with people over it usually takes me a long period of time, and that's pretty common. I think most people, when they become friends with somebody, it takes some time to do that. But every once in a while in my life, I come across a person that is instant. It's like instantaneous. I like this guy, and until he proves me otherwise, he's my friend. I want to bring value to him. He's already brought value to me. I believe he's going to bring value to you today with his story. And I just want you guys to welcome. He's the vice president of First Choice Roofing and Construction out of Houston, Texas. My guy, the man himself, Jason Laverick. Jason, welcome aboard. Happy birthday.

Hey, man, I appreciate that. Is that all right if we start off with a birthday toast?

Yeah, absolutely. I got some water right here. Cheers to you, brother.

You too. Thanks for having me.

Yeah, this is awesome. We wanted to do it actually on the birthday, but your wife went and surprised you. Right. I was just like, hey, I got you this massage deal right during our podcast. So we put it off by day, but no big deal.

Yeah.

So this is like I said before we started the show, and I'm going to let everybody else in on this. This isn't a normal podcast for me. Normally I'm introducing or interviewing, you know, some contractor that's done some things well and has something cool to share. Maybe it's a CEO of a tech company or something like that, influencer in our industry. And I kept thinking, like, how do I introduce this guy Jason to everybody else out there? And really. And truthfully, it's a part of what you are constantly preaching about and a little bit of how I've perceived it. I look at you as a joyful thought leader, and anytime there's somebody like that, I think they can bring value to the masses. And I want to want to help share with that today. So Tell us the story. Like how did, like you became vice president of First Choice? It's, it's pretty interesting how that all came about. But bring us up to speed. What led to all this? The. The Reader's Digest Life of Jason.

The Reader's Digest Life of Jason. That's a good question and thank you for asking. Jim. How I got to First Choice is really starts with faith. The owners of the company have known for a long time, years. And you know, one of the owners, Martin Morales, I just, I met him at a restaurant. I was praying over my meal by myself and I was just asking God to lead me in a way where I could invite people to Easter weekend. Easter weekend was a couple weeks away and Martin had overheard my prayer and we just instantly we had a connection because it was a God centered relationship right from the beginning, very similar to you and I. It took us minutes to talk about our faith and it's been the basis of my relationship with you and it's what led me to First Choice and I'm happy to talk about that versus like a resume because I do have quite a bit of accolades, have been pretty successful. God's blessed me with a power path of, in my realm, we call it failing forward. He's created a lot of purpose. That purpose, the origin of the purpose was pain. Sometimes physically, sometimes mentally, sometimes emotionally, and then also in business. And, and it really has led me to this wonderful opportunity that I have to, to help with the culture here in business, but also the, the people, which is the most important apart. And so the focus now has been how do we choose people and try to get better every day versus a process. Processes are important. The most successful businesses have them. But our focus is really on the people and adding value to them and, and we'll see where it takes us. So that's how I landed at First Choice.

Yeah, it was, it was interesting because we had that first meeting. Martin and Chris, we had coached, you know, five, six years ago, um, in the middle of our coaching, the storm hits. They grab as much quick information as they can to go and, and do that. And the engagement just disengaged at that point and they kind of went on about their business and we stayed in contact. We have conversations, a call here and there. And then Martin reached back out and wanted to re. Engage. So we hop on this meeting and you're there and we do our thing. Like I'm asking my questions and we're having our conversation. Towards the end of it, you're like, hey, can we you and I have a. Have a talk. Yeah, absolutely. Sounds cool, man. I would. I would enjoy that. And the first, first words out of your mouth when we had that talk was, I can tell you're a man of faith. And that is the statement when said to me is this statement that says my actions are right. That's that I'm on this path doing what God wants me to do, Right. To bring his kingdom to earth. And there's no greater. There's no greater comment that could be made. To me, it's better than the comment that I had about three weeks before that that said, hey, you remind me of a young John Maxwell, which I was thrilled with too. But it was like, as I say.

That'S a pretty good comment.

Yeah, that's not bad.

Somebody compares you to John Maxwell, you're doing a lot of things right. Yeah.

Out of your mind. Like, that dude is a whole different level of a human.

Yeah. God, clearly you don't know who I am.

Exactly. It was. It was pretty funny conversation. But so. So faith, obviously a big part. Like, that's how you met Martin. You know, you're praying by yourself. And. And that's how you and I met was. Faith was prevalent. Why. Why is that such a thing in your life? Because lots of people out there profess that they have faith, but it is central in your life, and it's obvious. Where does that come from?

You know, there's three places, right. It was the way that I was raised. My parents were strong believers from the word get. A couple that shouldn't have made it, practically speaking. Right. They had all odds against them. My mom was pregnant at 15, lived in a very legalistic Catholic household. Was. Was asked to leave when she was pregnant. So no driver's license. Right. No high school education. On her own, living in a mobile home park with her sister. Her older sister didn't even have a chance to tell my dad that, you know, he was having a. Having a daughter. And then, you know, my dad was off doing his thing after he graduated high school. He's a little bit older, so you think at. At 17, graduated in 18. My mom 15, about to turn 16. She had my sister and. And turned 16 two days after she had my. My sister Stephanie. And. And as soon as my. My mom wrote a letter just asking for help to my dad's parents. And it's just an amazing story because my dad literally dropped everything he was doing. He went and found my mom when he heard from his parents, like, hey, we had a letter from Yvonne My mom, Randy went and met her and, and they've been inseparable for this. May 16th, we'll make 48 years of marriage. Whoa. Yeah.

It's like, that is unbelievable. That's not how that story usually goes.

No, no. And, and to think that, you know, I have a brother Stephen, who's older than me, and then I'm the baby. And, you know, it wasn't always easy growing up having young. I would even say immature parents. My dad grew up in northern Michigan and a Baptist faith. And what I'll say about that is that it was one of those churches that you attend in a wooden pew or you're just puckered up the whole time, right? Like, you know, like hard back pews and just like there's no instruments in church.

Probably very small would be my guess.

Very small. Like, I think might add 150 members. But I, you know, what I will say is the pastor at the helm was a guy named Pastor Ballman. And he was, he was a man of, of scripture. It was a word church. They did not cherry pick verses from the Bible. And so I learned from a very young age I was not ashamed of my faith. And I loved scripture. It was just a really great book. Just. I treat it as such, right? So at a young age when you don't really understand faith, what I did know is that I loved the stories. And so that is the foundation. So that's one. Number two, I would say is man, my encounters you can't unencounter, you can't un. Experience. Right. I like to use the, the analogy of skydiving, right? We ask somebody, well, have you been skydiving? And they say, yes. How's somebody going to tell them? Well, you don't know what it's like. Even though they've been skydiving. I can tell you that my experience with, with faith and with God is, is he has shown up in, in a radical way. And, and I, I can't take away from those experiences because it can only be explained. God is real and he's been real in my life. So that's number two. And then, and then number three is, you know, I'm a little crazy. Anybody who prays to someone who's invisible in the room, it's got to be a little crazy. And so I don't mind being just a, just a touch crazy.

Yeah, that's that radical faith, right? Like, I'm not really worried about all of you. That's not, that's not what I'm hoping for. I'm hoping at some point I hear the words, well done, good and faithful servant, and that's the master I choose to serve. That's a. It is a radical way to live life. You get some crazy looks. You get this, you get this. What's the right word for it? Stereotype or personification applied to you of, ooh, charismatic. Right. Like that type of thing. And, and, and said in almost like a negative way. Right. Have you experienced any of that?

I have. You know, there's been times where, man, we've had. Well, I just use Covid, like just leading up to Covid, Church local here in Houston was the fastest growing church in the history of the United States. And we were in high schools, we were occupying gymnasiums, and we were converting a basketball court into what appeared to be a church. So it's like, you know, every Sunday. And then, so you have load in where you're literally covering a basketball gymnasium floor with carpet tiles and having a layout like an engineer of the perfect way to put a thousand chairs in a basketball auditorium where you're not violating fire marshal code. Right. And the fire marshal does show up because you're still occupying a school. And, and, and the, the fact that people would show up and not even feel like they're showing up at a school, but at a church campus, it's like super bowl weekend every weekend. And so it was just a, it was an honor to be a part of that and lead it. I was leading it all the while, you know, battling an ailment, being told I shouldn't be doing it. You know, I just had this, this thing where I was like, God was just constantly saying, jason, this is where you're meant to be. We're in the middle of revival and, and we just saw, I mean, we saw thousands of baptisms and tens of thousands of people saying yes to accepting Jesus Christ as their savior right in my backyard, where. It wasn't like that. We're in a big city, very faithful city in Houston. And there was. It was unbelievable to see that there was this gap of the lost, and those people were being found and serving and starting their own connect groups and asking people to come every weekend. And so, you know, that was really critical because I was able to share that with at that time, I would say strangers. We had these wristbands that I wear still to this day, and we would take these wristbands and like, everywhere I would go, the validation, like when you say the ultimate compliment would be somebody says, I know you're a man of faith. Let's talk about that. Everywhere I went, what wristband or not, they didn't notice it. There was something different. And the validation in my faith came from people recognizing like man, there's something different about you. Brand new person never met before. And I would say if you want to learn more about why I'm different, that's that crazy. Hand him a wristband and say come to this church. Here's the website. And I think the part about the wristband, as simple as that seems, it was a way that gave them a reminder because people love wearing right bracelets and the rubber band. This one's active faith. This one is says in Jesus name I play. Lanny, an ex football player is connected to, to my brother in faith. And he's, he's no one's closer to me in this world. It's my accountability partner. His name is Fendi Onobond. They both played in the NFL together and he started a faith based company. So like people like Steph Curry wear it proudly on the basketball court. And he's got. Basically it's a faith based brand of active clothing for men and females like workout clothing. And, and I had the wonderful opportunity of having a bunch of swag given to me and I have countless wristbands. If you want one, I can send you a bag of them.

Yeah, those out for sure.

Yeah man, we need to hand them out to the brand. Plug to the brand.

Yeah, I'm going to be in Houston not next week, but the following.

Dude, I'll bring you a bag of those. It's, it's just unbelievable the, the conversation starter that it would happen and then it's also reminder where they would go. Oh, the name of that church. Oh, you know what that guy that I met at, you know, I might be a happy hour at Capitol Grill or Eddie V's you know, having a glass of wine and a burger or something or a salad. And you know the person behind the bar or somebody next to me, they would hear me talking about my faith and it just was a conversation starter and it was really a, it was the way of like open transparency of the, the gift of handing someone something so simple then putting it on. And it was a reminder. I can't tell you if I wish that I could track the percentage of success of handing someone something tangible that they would wear and the messages I would get because I give people my phone number. I would have. This is not a joke and I'm not. And I will, well, I will say this to Brag because it's in the name of Jesus. And he says we can brag in his honor. When I say, like, dozens. Dozens to sometimes hundreds of people, I would be messaging saying, hey, I'm gonna. Can I get a seat? It's. It's backed up. They only have overflow. Can I get in the auditorium? And I would remember the person because it would trigger this memory, this memory burn of where I met him, who it was, when I met them, because I put it in notes on my contact, right? Like, hey, I was at Irma Southwest in downtown Houston having tamales, right? And I handed it to Chris. And then Chris would be messaging me. Might be three weeks later, we'd be like, hey, this is Chris. I met you at Irma's southwest downtown Houston. I'm here. Can I get a seat? And.

Yeah, I got a question.

Sure.

Okay. That's not normal. You know that, right? Like, I can go to church pretty much anywhere around here and walk in the door on Sunday morning, I sit down one of the pews, and I'm good, right?

Yeah, yeah.

This whole, like, standing room, and I don't know if I can get in. There's overflow. Only that, like, what was. Can you put your finger on what was causing that?

The Holy Spirit. I had an encounter with the Holy Spirit that. You know, there was five years where I said no to a heavy calling on my life. And things started. I mean, I had a pretty. We were poor growing up, but I didn't know it. My parents did a good job of all. We always had great food to eat, come from a family of amazing cooks with amazing backgrounds that kind of feed into how good the food is. And. And everything was surrounded by fellowship and breaking bread and mind breaking bread, having a delicious meal with people you love and talking about your faith, praying over sitting down as a family for dinner was very important. And so, you know, when I fast forward to, like, the. The reason behind all that, I mean, man, it was just God one day, said Jason, enough. Like, I. Like, I didn't hear his voice audibly. It was just. There was just too many signs that just kept saying, you're saying no. And this is why you're saying no. You think you can do it on your own. And life easy to life, not easy. And when I say easy, how you doing? Yeah, and when I say easy, I mean, like, I didn't have obstacles. Healthy, plenty of money, good jobs, good at business. Business, Great friends. So I thought at one time, like, the greatest friends around me, this really good group Popularity. All these things if you check off a list of majority of people, right? Popularity, check. Income, check. Great place to live, check. Those are all tangible things here on earth that are practical. It's things that people want because it's nice to have nice things. And I started saying no. I was saying no to a heavy coin on my life to serve. To serve others, to give money away that I thought was mine. And I had this super heavy conviction. And I finally said yes. And then the pain actually increased. And I think that happens a lot. The enemy goes on attack because he knows what we're capable of. The kingdom work was really going to start when I said yes. To have your calling on my life to serve others and add value as much as I could. And. And that's where the. That's where the inviting people with the wristband came from. It wasn't my idea. I was in prayer, asking God, like, how are you going to use me to reach others? How many people can I lead to faith? Give me the courage to lead people through the prayer of salvation. Let me recognize the opportunity. Let me see the world through your eyes and not my own. I mean, that was my prayer. Like, give me your lens. Not a lens where my flesh. Because I'll get in the way, right? I'll be treacherous. I'll tell a small fib to get ahead. I want to be the guy who has the most attention in the room, right? Like, all these things that were, like, naturally of my flesh. And when I really, truly understood the power of grace and mercy and surrendered to that calling of Jason, it's no longer about you. You're going to be behind the scenes going forward. That's.

So. Is that like the first. So for a couple questions. Yeah, a bunch of them. So the actual wristband itself, was that your idea or somebody else's idea?

No, they already were doing it. They were selling them at what part of Merch? Right at the church. They had T shirts and sweatshirts and hats and wristbands. And I. I was like, how much are the wristbands? And they're like, you know, you can.

Get like, yeah, can I buy a truckload?

No. So literally. So they had. I think, like, it was like, the first time I made a purchase, it was. There was 123 wristbands. Or like, hey, they're a buck a piece. And I said, okay, I want every single wristband in the little pile. And they're like, what? No one? You want one or two? And I said, no, I want every single one because I'm giving them all away because the profit that we got from the merge went to missions anyways. So for me, it was like a double win. Right. 123 bucks. And I'll buy a bunch of sweatshirts and T shirts that I'm not going to wear. I'm gonna give those away, too. Let me just empty out the merch. So I think the. It was like about three months in. I wasn't serving full time, like, as a campus leader. I just started attending a new church. I left my old church and. And that's where the trigger was. I just had this idea. I'm like, man, I want to hand out a wristband to people. And. And it just was this conversation about inviting people to church. In church, like during the sermon, they're like, invite all your friends this weekend. It's going to be amazing. And we got Freedom coming up. Invite all your friends to go to Freedom. It's the best thing. It'll take your relationship with anybody you're friends with to the next level. There was like all this stuff about invitation, invitation, invitation, invitation, invitation. And that was going on to me, I think sublimity, how it was happening. But I was ignoring it. And then it just was like I heard invitation and I just saw, man, what a better way to invite somebody than to just. So I started wearing two or three of them. Not because I thought it was cool, because everywhere I went, I was handing them out. And don't think I didn't have three or more in my pocket.

That's pretty awesome. So that was kind of the first part of how you started to say yes to serving a little bit.

Yeah.

Because you've learned more.

I mean, I was. I was serving in other capacities, but it was more out of obligation. Right. It was those things that we do where we make a commitment. We don't want to go against our word, so we do it. It wasn't like out of obedience. It was out of obligation. And so there was a very small pivot. I would say that that moment was my single degree pivot of my posture. The way that I viewed it was instead of out of obligation, I was going to do it out of obedience. So now it wasn't. I have to. It was, man, I get to do this.

That's one of my favorite mindset type of things. You know, this idea of working out. You. You see all these people that don't. Right. Don't exercise.

Sure.

And. And they have. And when they do, it's like, well, I gotta go work Out. I have to go exercise. I have to do this. I'm like, no, you get to.

Right.

Like, most people don't know this about me right now, so I'll. I'll divulge it here on this podcast. I'm dealing with something. I've got this autoimmune thing that's going on with me, and anybody that's kept up with me for the last couple years knows that I went through the whole 75 hard thing, got in the best shape of my life. I mean, I've never felt better.

It's a big deal.

October of this year, autoimmune gets me. I can't work out anymore.

Wow.

Pain every day. And the. That whole attitude of I get to work out. I never had this. I have to go do this 75 hard thing. I get to. There's so many people that can't. My mom has ms, Right? So she doesn't get to work out. There's a lot of people that don't have access to the facilities, the tools, or any of the stuff to do at the instruction. There was people begging across the world to have the opportunity to work out or to have the opportunity we have here in America. We get to go to work every day.

Yeah.

We get to impact people.

We.

We get to do these things. It's because of the situation that we're in and just that mindset shift of having to go to work. Right. I was super pumped this Monday. I got to go to work.

Yeah.

Like, I felt well enough like, I can. I'm gonna go to work on Friday. Couldn't get out of bed because of one of the treatments I had to go through. So I love that. But, like, that degree shift out of obligation to obedience, that has. Matt's really good.

I'm like, you know, it. That. That was inspired by a sermon by my. My former pastor. And he's just become a really. He's become a really dear friend of mine. And he had a sermon, and he was talking about, like, your destination. Like, where do you want your destination to be? Right? We have two places to go when we die. It's unrefutable that Jesus was a real person, right? I mean, historical facts. If we start going through dates, right? I mean, the crucifixion of Jesus Christ is. There's over 39 accounts. You know, you can go through and look up the history, and people can Google, search it themselves. He's a real person, Right. We can't say that he wasn't. And so then when you Feel that, that level of conviction in your heart and you're ready to, you know, surrender and, and make that prayer of salvation. It's like, okay, so now you get to go to heaven. So what do we do with that? What do we do with the decision that we make and the destination that we're headed? And he had this really great concept of it doesn't matter how lost you feel even, or how qualified you are, your resume. And he referenced this Apollo ship, one of the trips, and they were like a single degree, and that's why I use that degree. You're a single degree off. And they would have not landed on the moon by. It was like 13,000 miles away from your desired destination. And just doing that single degree course correction gave them where they wanted to land. And so he applied that message with scripture in a way of, you know, you want to go to heaven, right? You can have all the knowledge, the head knowledge you want. You can have all the equipment, you have all the accolades. And a lot of times for a lot of lost people and people that are going through pain physically, they're having marriage problems, business problems, financial problems, you know, problems with their kids. A lot of times it's just that. And you know, and you know what you want, the result, you desire it. And when that aligns with God's will, that single degree, that just that smallest change, some of us look at it as like it's so much bigger than what it has to be. There's so many times we're just that small little course correction in our business or that small little course correction in our marriage or our relationship with a family member, a sibling, or with our kid, our teenager, you know, is all it takes to be right on track.

My favorite get to versus have to is in reference to my wife. I get to spend time with her.

Yeah, it's a big deal.

I enjoy her, her company more than anybody on this planet. And so I get to like hang out with my best friend all the time. We, we actually hung out last night. We went to a new place. They, they. This restaurant that was there forever. Went out of business during COVID It's been taken ever since. They, they put this new sports bar and I love sports bars and sports and all that. Wasn't expecting. We were expecting like, you know, dirty biker, sports bar type feel. No, it was.

Where was this at?

This is a New Braunfels. It's fantastic. TV's everywhere. Really nice. It's right on the river. All kinds of games. You know, that's Cool. Yes. It turned out to be an amazing night and was gonna be whether it was the dirty biker bar or the sports bar.

Sometimes the dirty biker bar is kind of cool.

Yeah, we've had some good times there. We, we do our dive bar tours too.

I think if, if Jesus were dwelling on earth today, he would go to the, he would. Gangster Jesus would walk into the dirty. The dirty.

I got some stories along that. But the podcast about you, not me, that's.

Man, I'm glad you mentioned about spending time with your wife. You know, I just, it would, I would be disappointed in myself and, and regret it if I didn't talk about, you know, one of the, one of the things that, that God used to lift my lid, so to speak, if I had a lit on my faith was what was my wife?

Why is that?

Well, you know, I was not able to have children and was, was my DNA carries cystic fibrosis. And, and there was a friend of mine who I was going to church with a female. I was friends with her for years and she would come to church and you know, we, we'd do stuff in group atmospheres and even as friends, it was very platonic. I'd met her through another friend of mine introduction. She was actually kind of like a really good wingman for me when I was dating in the dating scene, which was terrible. Later in life, you know, if you accomplish your, your business stuff and I can tell you that, you know, God used her in the most radical way because, you know, I have a, a very healthy, almost three year old Nala faith when I wasn't supposed to have kids. So you know, we, we told not only my oncologist, but also the doctors who said I couldn't have kids, that they could go, you know, stuff in a sock. They didn't know what they were talking about. But you know, we just have this miracle child. Everything. Even when she got pregnant, they said, you know, this is not a good idea. There's a 90% chance that she'll be born with cystic fibrosis. It'll be passed on from her father and she's just like a kiss from heaven. I mean she's perfect in every way. I mean the way that God intended us to perform perfectly from a health standpoint. You know, she lifts her hands to worship music man. I got videos on my Instagram that shows my little girl, you know, lifting her hands and doing praise and worship to Brandon Lake song Gratitude when she was little, like from age zero, like day one being born up to like six months. The only way we could get her to go to sleep was an elevation worship song called with you. Right. I mean, you can't make that up. And it was because my wife and I played that when during her pregnancy. We played that song a lot because it got us through Covid. We spent a lot of time together and praise and worship and just making declarations over our daughter. And now she's, I'm proud to say, you know this, but I'll make the announcement. You know, being told again I couldn't have kids. And we even did the whole like we went to consider doing iuh which is a form of IVF because, you know, we were wanting to have another child. It wasn't working. Seven months went by. It started creating a little bit of tension in the relationship because of the unknown. And, and man, when we stopped worrying about it and we just started praying, we started making declarations to the Lord that you're going to send us another kiss from heaven. You're going to send us another kiss from heaven. And we know that we're going to have a boy. We're going to carry on the Laverick name. And I'm proud to say that our son will be born late July.

Yeah, I was pumped yesterday.

Yeah, dude, I mean it was awesome. Is like that 3D stuff's creepy because when they have their hands over their head, they look like, like so alien esque and there's all these bumps and then you gotta, they gotta tell you it's hair. You think, oh my word, my kid's gonna like come out with all these weird deformities and it scares you a little bit. And then, and then you get the real profile. And as I was able to share with you, Matt, it was, I mean, just what an emotional moment to see another gift from heaven. We did the, the multi million variations of all the DNA testing and stranding of, you know, the possible deformities he could have. And I mean, our little boy's perfect man. And it's just. That's all God. That is all God. Just covering my wife's womb. And I had to mention her because without Aaliyah and God using her in my life and for my life, we would not be able as a couple to give other people this level of hope of prayer is real and God is answering them and medically speaking, it's not possible for me. That's not a joke. I mean that is on record. It's not possible. And then in the event a miracle happened, you have something else to go against. You have this. This thing that you guys got to worry about. And another. Declarations of prayer, answer to prayer is that, you know, he'll be born perfectly. And I just. I mean, we just live in a complete season of gratitude. And the time. You know, my number one love language is time. And the time I get to spend with my. With my wife, Aaliyah, is. I mean, it just. The posture that I remain in is just complete vulnerability and surrender. And what she has shown me and her commitment to me. I mean, she just shows up, man. She shows up.

That's. It's. It's not easy, right? Like, I can relate. My. My wife's doing the same thing right now that I'm. I'm going through some stuff now. You. You mentioned this word twice. Oncologist. So you're going through something.

Yeah. You know, back in March, March 23rd of 2019, I was diagnosed with something pretty rare. It's becoming a little bit more common. It's called aml. It's acute myeloid leukemia. And. And they had given me a very short period of time. The doctors in Houston at one of the medical clinics gave me a short period of time to live in the news. I didn't have any symptoms, so it was just. It was odd. I mean, I was going through a routine.

You had gone out for just a checkup or what?

Well, it's actually interesting. I. I knew that I always wanted to have kids, even though I was told I couldn't. Kids. I thought, man, right? God is so good. I'm seeing miracles around me, and not, like, provisional miracles, which are awesome. I'm not talking stuff like over nine months. Oh, we can't afford the softball field. And that elderly comes in and donates the difference of the money to make sure the softball field happens. Those things are amazing. And I'm not trying to discount that. I'm talking, like, instantaneous miracles. I was seen around me, healing. Healing of hands, answers to prayer, you know, people having. Being free and being lifted of a lot of things, and I'll. I'll just leave it at that. And so in my own life, I was like, man, you know what? If I'm gonna have a kid, right? Like, I better, like, practically do something that I know I can here on earth. And so I went to go have my sperm frozen, and I went to the Houston fertility clinic and did the deal and just left there like it was nothing, right? It was just a. A routine. And a week and a half after I had Left there. I got a call from the doctor, and he's like, hey, man, my wife's a hematologist. So medically speaking, I'm. I'm. It's illegal for me to share this with you, so I'm not going to share too much about who the doctor is and why. But he was. He's like, my. My wife being a hematologist, she knows results of blood work. Your blood work came back, and I feel like I have an obligation to tell you that you need to go. You need to go see somebody, and I can recommend them. And so we did. This individual did. And I went. I was like, okay, well, I better get checked out. That's not normal, right? So it's more of a. I'm going to check this off the list. They're probably wrong, but better safe than sorry. And so I went and saw a hematologist, had blood work done, and the oncologist came in and said, I got good news and I got bad news. Would you like to hear? Which one would you like to hear first? One of those things? And I'm like, okay, well, just give me. Just give me the news, right? I'm not. I'm here for a reason, so I don't think anything's good, so just tell it to me. And he goes, okay, well, bad news is, is you have something called aml. Good news is, is you got a couple months to live.

Oh.

And. And that's how he delivered the. The news and walked out of the. Out of the room and said, I'll give you a few minutes, like they do bedside manners that they learn. And. And I just prayed to God and.

I didn't know that's what they do. Like, they go, hey, guess what? You got a couple months. See you later.

Well, it was more like, hey, we're going to talk. He did say, we're going to talk about your treatment, you know, options. And I want to go over a couple things with you. But he's like, any. I mean, I. Look, I was in shock because I was processing. He goes, give me a couple minutes.

Bulletproof. At that point, totally bulletproof.

Man, I was in the best shape of my life, you know, serving at church. It was after I'd said yes to the heavy calling on my life. You know, I was, you know, God was pruning my life and exposing some relationships, and in a positive way. I didn't look at that as a negative. And, man, I was just, you know, it was like scripture was just, like, coming off the pages and There was so many things I was applying in my life, and, you know, almost everywhere I went, there was a. An opportunity for discipleship. Even like a car dealership at a breakfast joint, having coffee. Just seemed like God was. Was really showing up in moments, instantaneous moments, and it was. It was beautiful. And so then to. To have that. What would appear like a big obstacle to come. I don't know, man. There was, like, freedom in hearing that because I thought for the first time in my life, oh, my God. You know, this is where I've heard the. The statement, a faith that's not tested can't be trusted. I'd heard that lots of times, and I didn't know how I felt about that statement until that moment. And I was like, man, a lot of people are going to think, you know, when they hear about this, that, you know, you know, my faith is going to be tested and it'll waver, right? Like, why me? Because then that's when it becomes inward. And I just said, God, you know, I know your promise is true. And you said, here on earth as in heaven. And when I'm in heaven, your promise is that my body will perform perfectly. And so I know that that means in heaven, same as here on earth. And so now my body just has to catch up, use me in a different way. And that was one of. One of the first times I was able to really elevate my prayer. I said, God, speak to me in a way you've never spoken to me. Let me see things the way I've never seen things before, right? Let me get out of the way you speak. Use me as a vessel in a way where I know that I'll give people hope. And if it's my time, it's my time. I'm ready to meet my maker. Because when you ask me, what. What did you do with my son? I'm. I'm proud of the being able to answer that question. And so everything else was just going to be a bonus, man. And that. It just shifted my. My. My perspective of my number one language. Language, which was time. And so just like shifting over gear, not like I had a bucket list of places I need to go. My bucket list became people, man. It wasn't like the vacation I could take or the thing I had to accomplish. I knew that kingdom work really started that if God's going to limit my time here on Earth, like, it was time to shake the gates of hell. And I knew that I needed to change to do it.

That, first off, incredible attitude Right. Like, only with faith. Right. Only with faith does that happen?

Yeah, for sure.

I think most people, they get that news, and there's probably some shock right away. There's probably some really foreboding depression and those type of things. They don't just automatically go, hey, all right, God, I got to get to work now. You just shortened up the timeline a little bit. Now I'm doing math in my head real quick. 2019, couple of months. It's 2023.

Yeah.

What happened?

So I had a. I had surgery that. That June and then. And the surgery was successful. And. And then we. We did a second round of treatment after surgery that was recommended. And so then I. I went through that process, and I never rang the bell. AML patients aren't, like, historically individuals who ring the bell just because of the type of blood deficiency that it is. And following year, in 2020, the first part of 2020, my bone marrow wasn't producing the right levels of red blood cells. And so I had this really, really great. Just this lovely story about a doctor from Columbia Institute who was coming down to Houston to MD Anderson, and they just kind of, like, connected the dots and did a pretty unique procedure. And I had that, and it was successful. And I had to learn how to speak all over again because I couldn't speak. And that was three weeks before my daughter was born. She was born on July 10th of 2020. And a few weeks before that was when I had the procedure. And so I couldn't complete a sentence. It's probably good for some people around me to not hear me talk so much, but it was. I don't mean to joke about it, but I'm ser. And there was like this. Even in that, as frustrating as it was, there was simultaneously, like, this level of. I mean, I was just. When I say the word freedom, I mean it in a way where, like, if I had, like, anxiety about what you're gonna say at a big meeting because, you know, you gotta have a difficult conversation with somebody. I thought about those moments, and I thought about, like, how I can be so much more intentional with my words because God limited it for a period of time. And we didn't know if I was going to be able to ever complete a sentence again. And on. On July 8th, sorry, July 7th, or is July 7th, we have a video recording of me recording myself given a message to my unborn daughter. And I said, God, show. Gave me a vision. And he did. God gave me a vision that you're not going to be born on the 14th, you're going to be born on July 10th. And he's going to allow me to, to speak. And in the recording I actually started getting, because it was really hard for me to speak, but I was doing it anyways and my voice started improving and I was able, like on camera, making declarations of prayer, speaking to my unborn child. I said, God is healing me because of you. You're the miracle that's going to give me my voice back. I'm going to be able to be more intentional with my words and show you and teach you what God's teaching me. And I thank you every day from the time you're born. My prayer when I wake up is going to be, I think God, thank you that today's one day closer that my daughter and I love faith. Faith gets to accept Jesus Christ as their savior. And I still to this day, that's, that's my prayer in the morning. So. And as of today, you know, it's a day by day. It's day by day. I take it, day by day. We've had a couple of flare ups.

Recently, but yeah, not sure, not cured, but improving. Right. Like, or at least maintaining.

Yeah, there's a, there's something that's recent for people that may be interested or know somebody with aml. There is. Sometimes there's a mutation and so my mind mutated. It's called AML mrc. And so I take a chemo pill and I go in and sometimes I do blood transfusions and other times there's a, a way that I can, you know, they give me different, different recommendations of dosage and, and so when they do that, it can sometimes be not good. And it affects me, you know, like anybody, you know, you know firsthand what that's like, you know, and they don't make a recommendation based on what's going to make you feel bad. It's what's going to make you. It get better. And so I believe that a combination of prayer, healing affirmations, visualizations and healing declarations right from scripture, as well as that, that mixture of medicine is, is keeping me going. And you know, some days are really good and, and other days when they're not, you know, I lean in. Those are days I really lean into worship. And I listen to worship music more. So it's not just like in the car, I'll actually carve out time and I put my phone on do not disturb and I have a certain playlist that puts me in a really interesting posture for me to Remember characters, individuals in the Bible who had it a lot worse than I do. Not as a way of comparison.

No. Like me and Jeb, we're good buddies right now.

Yeah. You guys are good buddies?

Yeah, we're pals. It's like, hey, man, I got this. You know, and that's really a false statement. I don't got this. And I'm okay with that. The situation I'm going through is Limes and Epstein spar. It's. It's a pain thing all day, every day. 24. 7 and nothing less than a 5 on the pain scale. Most of the time between like a six and an eight. Yes, you. That could really get somebody down. That could really attack somebody mentally. It is obviously physically. And I'm like, instead of being. Because I have a choice on how I react, I can't control that it's happening to me, but I can control how I react to the thing that's happening to me. I always, always hate hearing people say in control of my own destiny. Because I don't believe you are things that happen to you that you have no control over. The only thing that you control is how you react to it. And my reaction is, whether this is a short period of time or my new normal, I'm actually thankful for it. Because I've never been closer to God. I've never had more conversation with God. I've never been around more godly people. I've never had more people praying for me. I've never ever in my entire life asked anybody to pray for me until this particular instance. And so there are things being revealed to me through this that. Jim Johnson, you ain't got it, brother. I got this. And you're going to be okay. Whether you improve physically or not, you're going to be okay. And there's this peace that comes with that. Yeah.

Wow.

And actually a bit of joy. Like, there's like, hey, my faith is being tested and it is up to the test, brother. This is great. I love it. And. And that's not a like. Okay. I have to think about that and practice that and put that mindful. It is just what it is. And I think that's faith. I think that is this okay. No matter which way it goes, I'm covered. Right. So I. You okay on time? Like, I got a couple more things I want to get into.

Please. That's the way for you, man. I'll make as much time as you want, bro.

I love you for this, man. We're probably going to make this a two parter. Because I don't believe you are things that happen to you that you have no control over. The only thing that you control is how you react to it. And my reaction is, whether this is a short period of time or my new normal, I'm actually thankful for it. Because I've never been closer to God. I've never had more conversation with God. I've never been around more godly people. I've never had more people praying for me. I've never ever in my entire life asked anybody to pray for me until this particular instance. And so there are things being revealed to me through this that Jim Johnson, you ain't got it, brother. I got this. And you're going to be okay. Whether you improve physically or not, you're going to be okay.