Episode 100 - The Motive of Faith Driven Entrepreneurs with Patrick Lencioni
Today’s guest is a special one and someone you’re probably already familiar with. Patrick Lencioni is a renowned business consultant and the author of 11 books—including The Ideal Team Player, The Advantage, and The Five Dysfunctions of a Team—which have sold over 6 million copies.
Today, we got to hear him talk about his new book, The Motive, that dials into the why behind every great leader. Few people have more expertise on the subject than Patrick Lencioni, so stop reading this and start listening!
Useful Links:
Episode Transcript
*Some listeners have found it helpful to have a transcription of the podcast. Transcription is done by an AI software. While technology is an incredible tool to automate this process, there will be misspellings and typos that might accompany it. Please keep that in mind as you work through it. The FDE movement is a volunteer-led movement, and if you’d like to contribute by editing future transcripts, please email us.
Henry Kaestner: [00:02:52] This is very interesting. It seems that there's a lot that is going on in my personal life and and also the life of our podcast community. We just came off of an interview that we'd done with Horst Schulze, who is the was the president of Ritz-Carlton. You probably know him. And he talked about how important driving into motive is in terms of getting an employee base. It's really focus on being able to deliver. So they need to understand the objective and then a motive. And then also in some of my own time, I've been really impacted by Proverbs 16 to and 21 to which both of them say effectively all the man's ways seem pure to him, but the Lord weighs the motives of the heart. And so I see the motive. In a world in which leaders are so focused on, let's go ahead and let's accomplish that goal or let's do 20 percent month over month, I think that people are missing this concept of the motive. And clearly you must have seen that because you've you've dealt with hundreds and hundreds of leaders. Tell us more about how you've kind of come to this realization over time if you found that people just aren't really trying to unpack that more. [00:03:54][62.1]
Patrick Lencioni: [00:03:55] You know, I think looking at myself, too, I think there's times in life where we have to ask ourselves, why am I doing this and am I doing this for myself because of of how it's going to make me look or feel or what I'm going to get out of it, or am I doing it for others? And as a follower of Jesus, I realize that and the verse that I've been reading recently in the Gospels is where he just said everything will come to light. You know, I mean, God knows what's in our hearts. And if we go about our jobs and we make decisions about how we're going to lead and how we're going to spend our time based on what we're going to get out of it, even if we can effectively disguise it as looking like we're selfless. But it's really for us. Bad things happen. And so there has to be a purity of intentions and a true burden for others. And so in the book, when I talk about is there's two motives. One is it's responsibility centered. And that is I have a huge responsibility and I have to steward this well and I have to serve others even at my own expense. The other is what I call reward centered, which is I'm going to get something out of this. And, you know, the economics of leadership are very bad and they should be. In other words, if you weigh the what I get versus what ideas a great leader will say, I'm going to give much more than I get. And it is if you go into leadership with that in mind, you will be a very good leader. [00:05:11][75.6]
[00:05:12] If you don't, you are going to be an angry or negligent leader, because it's not going to make any sense if you calculate the economics of leadership. I think it's like parenting. If a person says, I want to be a parent because it sounds like it's going to be fun, they're going to be a bad parent. Now, I love being a parent, but it's 85 percent doing things I don't feel like doing at the moment. But it's the right thing to do. And if I'm doing it for that 15 percent, life is going to get hard for me and my kids. So I think this is very simple. [00:05:41][28.9]
[00:05:41] But a lot of leaders, when they read the book, they go, oh, my gosh, I have to readjust my motive because it's too much about me. [00:05:47][5.1]
Henry Kaestner: [00:05:47] Well, I think it's also really helpful in the book. You paint this picture of these two rival CEOs and the different positions they have on these binary options, if you will. You know, is it reflecting back on the book? Many of our listeners are one or two positions. Either they're just starting now and they're highly motivated because you believe in the product or service you've created or they've been in the trenches of entrepreneurship for a long time and are starting to get burned out and possibly even asking themselves what I ever think this was a good idea. What advice would you give to people in each of those camps? [00:06:15][27.8]
Patrick Lencioni: [00:06:17] You know, I think if you're just starting out, recognize that leadership is not the inevitable next step in your career. [00:06:21][4.9]
[00:06:22] People think, well, now I've done sales, so now I should be a sales leader, sales manager, or I'm a good teaching pastor. I should run the church. And it's a different calling. It's a different calling. And if you're not doing it with the cost in mind and feeling like you're called to that, then you shouldn't do it. And it's just too easy for people to slide into that thinking, well, this is the next step of my career. If you're struggling because I was just thinking, as you ask the question, some people are OK with the burden, but they don't balance that with having to take care of themselves. Because I'm thinking about like if you're a pastor or just a leader, there are leaders that put more into their company than they do into their family. And I just think that my responsibility to my wife and my kids has to come first. And if I'm pouring into my company and I'm doing that in a way that doesn't allow me to be a good leader in my home, then I could get burned out even though I have the proper motivation. But I'm just not applying it at home. So I guess I just want to be clear. This is not about being a martyr and letting your family suffer your first responsibility as your spouses and your children and then becomes the organization. So I guess I just want to say that because there are people that are very ready to take on that burden, but they're not necessarily making a good decision about their family. But the majority of the people I'm addressing in this book are people that are seeing their work as a leader as something that is fun and cool for them. I'm sorry. That's a long explanation. I hope that makes sense to your listeners. Good. [00:07:54][91.2]
Henry Kaestner: [00:07:54] It was something you mentioned in there I think is super important, which is just really as an entrepreneur looks out there and thinks about starting a business, understand why they're starting the business and having a passion to that end allows them to be able to get through the times, presumably when things are really, really hard if it just as something just seems to be the next logical step. Like I make cherry pies, people who like the cherry pie. So therefore, I should go ahead and start a cherry pie company, which is kind of this thing that the myth book goes through. If your motivation is that seems like the next logical step or I'll make more money from that, that's not going to be enough to really kind of latch on to. Things are hard, but instead you need to have a deeper why. [00:08:33][39.3]
Patrick Lencioni: [00:08:34] Yes. And that's the thing. This book is about not how to be a great leader. It's about why you should become a leader in the first place. And, you know, I will tell you this and I can say this here, I could not be a leader without my faith, without Jesus, because I just know that if I didn't have a selfless idea, right now we're in the midst of a crisis. OK. The virus that's in this time that's going on in the world. [00:08:54][19.8]
[00:08:55] And if I didn't realize that it was my job to put my people before me, I would probably be I don't know what I'd be thinking, but I realize now that my family and my employees are actually have to come before I do. [00:09:10][15.0]
[00:09:11] And the truth is, we live in this post-Christian world where people forget that Jesus actually is the one who introduced that idea before Jesus. That was considered foolishness to make yourself less than others was considered foolishness. I mean, that's why he was such a radical, because he said these things publicly and it was really a threat to people in power who thought you're supposed to take the highest seat at the table. And so I actually think in the book I talk about this concept of servant leadership that everybody talks about, which we all know come from Jesus. But it kind of bothers me that people talk about it because it seems to imply that there's any other options. Servant leadership is the only kind of leadership. Anything else is just self-serving. And that's not leadership at all. So anyway. Boy, I'm wondering today, I think I got a lot on my mind and a lot going on. [00:09:57][46.4]
Rusty Rueff: [00:09:57] So as we all do. I mean, thank you for even. There might be some of our listeners who might be listening this from years from now. But we should mark this time, which Pat just did, which we're in the middle of. And Pat, myself and Henry, not William, who's on the east coast of the US right now, but we're all in it under a thing called Shelter in place, which is a really odd place to be using technology during this pandemic time. So part thanks for even giving your time in the midst of all of this. One of the things I wanted to even say before I even ask question questions, I want to commend you for the years going back in the last century. We could say that right. 1998, when you came out with five temptations of a CEO, that your use of fables, you know, have just been something that has been so powerful. I know myself when I was doing my H.R. work that I would just give the books to someone who I knew needed the lesson and just said, just read this. Just read this story. And their ability to read the story because it was a fable and find themselves in. It was very powerful. And even back in the days where I didn't know that, you know, your faith was part of what drove that. It was almost like you had a calling to take a fable, like a parable and make something of it, you know. And so I wanted to commend you on that. While I had the chance. That's called fanboi. There is what? [00:11:16][79.0]
Patrick Lencioni: [00:11:16] When I met you right after I wrote that book. [00:11:18][1.7]
Rusty Rueff: [00:11:19] You did. You did. And it was just, you know, an exciting time because it led to so many other people also seeing the power of narrative and storytelling that they really hadn't thought of before in the business environment. I want to go a little bit into, you know, this tying of faith and motive together, because I think, you know, we have listeners and we've talked about this before on the podcast where they're trying to figure out, you know, this thing that I'm called to do, this burden that I have for my business model. How do I discern that? That is really God speaking to me, saying this is what I should do and that's my faith aligning to my motive. Can you help people understand even, you know, how to get to that? [00:12:00][41.7]
Patrick Lencioni: [00:12:01] Well, discernment is a hard thing. You know, I mean, I think that humility has got to be at the heart of discernment, and that is that his will be done, not mine. Then it's about knowing what that is. And how do you know? And I would just say, I don't know. But if I really purify my intentions and I really try to set aside my desires for myself, but tap into the passion and the talent God gave me. And if I'm humble enough, then hopefully I'll give it my best shot. And then I'll learn from that. I think we can get paralyzed, like, is this really what God wants for me? And I think sometimes we just have to take that step forward, because when we have a business model, you know, like when I started my company, we didn't know where it was gonna go. Rusty when we met you, we had that first book out. I had no idea that I was going to even write another one. And so people will say, well, how did you know that you were supposed to be doing what you're doing here today? And I said we just kind of looked at the next logical step that God was putting in front of us. And then he opens doors that you can never imagine. So I think sometimes in discernment, we get caught up in trying to understand exactly what God wants us to do. And maybe he just wants to step out in faith and then learn from there. That's the best answer I can give, because when I look back, we had no idea where this was headed. And if I had tried to know the path where God was leading me, I could have never seen it at the time. [00:13:22][80.7]
Rusty Rueff: [00:13:23] Well, go a little bit further into that, Pat, because I assume that you also, as you were trying to discern that you probably surround. Yourself with other godly people to give you advice and I mean, you sort of had a co-founder to write. [00:13:35][12.3]
Patrick Lencioni: [00:13:36] Yes, but I have to tell you that what's interesting about this is my faith has grown during this, and the faith of the people I work with has grown during this, too. At the time, we were not clearly understood where how faith played into this. It was a personal thing for me, and even then it wasn't fully formed and it never is fully formed. But there came a time in our company where we stopped and had to I was gonna quit because I wanted to grow in my faith and I didn't want to force the people who worked for me to grow in their faith. But I was finding that I was hiding it or I was suppressing it. And so I literally went to my staff and said, you guys, I'll continue to help, but I have to leave because I really want to go pursue my faith. And they all said, no, we want to do that, too. And as a result of that, we're in mission together now. And not everybody is in the same place. But we pray together. We talk about our faith together. We love on each other in God's name. But we had to make a decision at one point that that was so important that I needed to put my participation in the firm at risk. So I just tell that story because it wasn't like from the very beginning I was completely in touch with that. [00:14:41][65.1]
[00:14:41] God kept drawing me closer and closer to him through suffering through a lot of suffering. Till one day I finally said I can't do this anymore. And as a result of that, my entire firm, we've all grown in our faith. Wow. What a blessing it's been. [00:14:53][11.3]
Rusty Rueff: [00:14:53] Yeah. Thank you for sharing that. Because when you do that also comes accountability. Right. I mean, talk a little bit about that. When you marry your faith, your motive, and you stand forward on that. You get challenged to stand behind it. Right. [00:15:06][13.1]
Patrick Lencioni: [00:15:07] More and more and more as time goes on and as society changes, we live in this post-Christian world, it becomes harder and harder to decide what clients to work with, what work we should do, whether we're doing it for the right reason. And again, it's always about purifying our intentions. And it's supposed to be hard, you know, I mean, it's so easy when I think back when I think about the Beatitudes and I think about, you know, Jesus like the meek shall inherit the Earth. And, you know, blessed are the poor in spirit. And we go through that. And then he says, and blessed are you and they persecute you. [00:15:35][28.0]
[00:15:36] And I used to think, wow, I'm so glad I don't live in that time anymore. That must've been really hard. And now I'm like, oh, wait, we still live in this time. We're always gonna live in this time. Jesus made that very clear. And yet for the longest time, whenever that happened, I would just complain. And now I really have to remind myself. [00:15:54][17.4]
[00:15:54] OK, if I'm being persecuted a little bit today for being a follower of Jesus and I have to lose opportunities or have people judge me. [00:16:01][7.1]
[00:16:02] I have to rejoice in that. It is so hard to remember that, you know. [00:16:07][5.5]
[00:16:07] And I go back and realize that Jesus wasn't saying yes for the next hundred years will happen. After that, it will be easy for the rest of our lives here on this earth. [00:16:15][7.3]
[00:16:15] We have to welcome and rejoice in that persecution. [00:16:17][2.5]
Rusty Rueff: [00:16:19] That's awesome. I'm going to turn this back over. But before I do, you know, as we said, we're in this moment with the COVID 19. You speak to leaders, you know, extensively. You write to us. You know, you kind of find the heart of where we are as leaders. What words do you have for our listeners on managing through a crisis like we're in front of us right now? [00:16:38][19.7]
Patrick Lencioni: [00:16:39] I guess what I would say first was this is the time when leaders are necessary and this is the time. [00:16:43][4.1]
[00:16:44] You know, that tried by fire. [00:16:46][1.7]
[00:16:47] We will find out who we are as a leader during this time more than ever. And this is what are the people who we lead will remember. And so I think this is like when we have to step up and go, OK, thank you, God, for letting me be a leader during this time. And may I steward this? Well, we are meant to be signs of hope and love in the midst of this. Anybody can lead during easy times. I'm not even sure that's leadership. This is actually we should say thank you, God, for letting me be in a position of influence during a time when people need it. And if I have to suffer from this, let me do it well and let me show others your face during this time. [00:17:24][37.2]
[00:17:25] So I think that this is actually a window of opportunity to grow and to show others what his truth is about. I just hope I can live up to that. [00:17:37][12.2]
William Norvell: [00:17:40] Hey Pat, this is William here. Hey, will you just switch gears for a minute? We've been talking about the motive, which I ordered last week before I knew we were seeing you today. So I'm excited to read it. Just love your books as well. [00:17:52][11.5]
Patrick Lencioni: [00:17:52] Thank you. By the way, William, people seem to think that this fiction. This might be some of my best fiction. It's kind of edgy and a lot of conflict. And the characters are pretty direct with each other. And it's my shortest book yet, which I didn't do on purpose. It just kind of came together that way. So I hope you enjoy it. [00:18:08][15.7]
William Norvell: [00:18:08] That sounds like you're hit in 2020 right down the middle. Little edgy, but shorter get attention span. There you go. Well, I'm excited. I got I was excited already. Now more excited. But all but also, you know, other books you've written, Five Dysfunctions of a Team Ideal Team Player. You have been just really impactful people's lives. And I want to go to sometimes around here. I'm known as the esoteric Bible question guy. So Lay ought to go there. OK. The disciples, right. We've got a team. We've got a leader, arguably, I would argue, the greatest leader of all time and front. We have disciples. When you look at the twelve disciples, who do you think was the ideal team player? Who was and who was it? And he was kind of bringing them together. [00:18:49][40.7]
Patrick Lencioni: [00:18:51] Oh, wow. That's very interesting. [00:18:52][1.2]
[00:18:53] You know, probably John seems like the ideal team player, right? I mean, he was there at the foot of the cross. The only one. And it's easy for me to say that because I'm more like Peter. I think I'm a little bit impatient. And like, that shouldn't be that way, you know, and not to criticize Peter, but, you know, his humanity is easy for us to relate to. So I would probably say, John, now that's kind of lazy of me because I can't tell you like what the other Judas was like. And Andrew, I'm sure, was cool. And so I don't know the others as well. But John certainly seemed like the most loyal one, the most thoughtful one, the most gentle and meek one, but pretty darn strong to stand there in the fray. So I'm going to go with what is John Alex for 200 and then for the people who have not had a chance to read the book. [00:19:38][45.4]
William Norvell: [00:19:39] First of all, go get it. But if not, give us a quick flyover of what the ideal team player looks like on a team and just kind of what the quick fly over the book would be. [00:19:48][9.5]
Patrick Lencioni: [00:19:49] So the ideal team player, it's really about the three qualities that we should be developing in ourselves and looking for and the people we hire that will ensure that they're gonna be able to work well with others and slide in our team and frankly be successful in life. I just did a TED talk where I talked about the fact that we should really be preparing our young people to be humble, hungry and smart. Those are the three virtues they talk about in the book and memorizing the periodic table of or the quadratic equation. That's great. We have to know things. But if a person is not humble, hungry and smart, they're not going to come close to fulfilling their potential. They're not going to be easy to work with. And in a world that's increasingly team oriented, those are the most critical factors. And so the book is really a fiction story about a company that needs to grow and hire people and it needs to hire some leaders. And they come to terms with the fact that if they don't start finding ways to identify and develop people for humility, hunger and emotional intelligence, they're not going to succeed. [00:20:46][56.9]
[00:20:47] So that's what the book is about. That was the simplest book I've ever written. I wasn't even going to write it. I thought it was too simple. And that one probably took off out of the gate faster than any book we've written. [00:20:57][10.3]
[00:20:57] And young people benefit from it. They're sports teams that are using it. People in the classroom, because it's very simple. And it's like you sit down people and say, which of these three is your weakest area? Humility, hunger or mobile intelligence? And people will call it out and then they'll coach each other and say, let's help you get better. So there's something really. Oh, my gosh. There's a turkey in my front yard right now. Hilarious. I'm sorry. [00:21:25][28.0]
[00:21:26] My Myers-Briggs type. That's the prayer of the ENFP is dear lord, help me to focus more. Look, a bird and I look up and there's a turkey walking across right outside my office away anyway. Humble, hungry and smart are the three virtues of an ideal team player. And if we can become those things and help others become those things. [00:21:42][15.6]
[00:21:42] And getting back to John. John was certainly humble, hungry and smart and dealing with people as well. So go, John. [00:21:49][6.4]
William Norvell: [00:21:49] That's amazing. Thank you for walking us through that. I'm going to keep telling this the Bible a little bit as we read the Bible as someone who's who's written dysfunction of the team, as you've written the ideal team player. These are groups of people. You know, we often are looking, you know, we read the scripture and different people come out to us at different times of our lives, like, oh, wow. Like, I'm I'm being so much like John right now or Peter or or Deborah Wright or all of these different characters throughout the Bible as you read them as a team. The best team I think we see is probably the disciples and and maybe even thorax trying to work together without Christ, but with the Holy Spirit to start a movement. What do you see as the things that as you're reading that as our listeners might be reading that through the lens of your books, that maybe can break up our teams that you see and in some of the biblical stories that they're trying to to gel together in a new reality. Anything that jumps off from either one of those books that you've written, that as you read through AC's and how they try to spread the gospel. [00:22:44][55.2]
Patrick Lencioni: [00:22:45] Well, humility obviously is. And vulnerability is critical. And I think about Paul and the apostles, you know, in Ax. I think what's interesting is that people tend to think of Jesus and also the disciples in our society today as this, you know, Birkenstock wearing, guitar playing hippie, you know what I mean? [00:23:05][19.3]
[00:23:05] That is like, everything's good. You're good. I'm good. Let's just affirm everyone and everything. [00:23:10][4.9]
[00:23:11] But, you know, there is accountability, too. And love is not nice. It's kind. And Jesus said to love one another as yourself, not to be nice to one another as yourself, because sometimes you have to demand that people step up and that they adhere to truth. And that's not always easy. And when I think about things like when Paul said, hey, if you don't work, you don't eat. And that wasn't true of the widows. That wasn't true of the poor and the destitute. But when you were an apostle, you weren't just a slacker. You didn't just get to hang out. And in our society today, we tend to think that if you actually demand something of somebody that they're not comfortable with or that you encourage them or provide any tough love, that somehow that's not Christian. That's just so not true. The very best teams hold each other accountable even when it's hard. They demand of one another to be their best selves. And Jesus did it. Like when Jesus told everybody, those who haven't sin to cast the first stone and they all threw their stones and walked away. [00:24:09][58.1]
[00:24:10] Then he said, Go and sin no more. He didn't say Go and don't worry about what other people think. He calls us to get better. And I think sometimes in the world today we don't feel like it's our place to ever call someone to be better. And yet, if we don't do that, we're not actually loving them. And so I think the best teams engage in healthy conflict. They're uncomfortable. They push one another knowing that they're actually doing what Christ calls us to do. I think one of the hardest things in our times today in our companies and our families is that we think we're supposed to affirm people and everything and never call somebody to change. And that that's actually being kind. And it's actually cruelty. It's cruel not to ask somebody to work harder in order to eat. Paul. And by the way, as a parent, I'm an ENFP as we established before. I often want to let people off the hook. I don't like to hold people accountable. And that's actually an act of selfishness and weakness on my part. So I guess I would say when I look at the Bible, I see a lot of people exhorting one another to be better and they do that in humility and love. And I think that's one of the things that makes teams great. And it's a thing that the world really struggles with today. [00:25:24][73.9]
William Norvell: [00:25:25] Amen. And I'll think of one just to piggyback on, never once again. It's one of the biggest sparks, right, in access. When things Paul and Peter end up getting in the fight on whether to go to the gentiles or not and what standards to put them on. That is the flame that real contentious. I mean, Paul got you can imagine just what that scene was like when you're reading the scriptures. And that was the spark that fanned the rest of the book and the rest of the Bible. [00:25:47][21.8]
Patrick Lencioni: [00:25:48] And we talk about in our stuff about conflict being a part of being a teen. And people think again, this is this kind of reinterpretation of the Bible has just been easy and nice and everybody just walking around and affirming one another. But when you trust one another, as Paul and Peter did, they were vulnerable to each other because of their love for Christ. [00:26:06][18.0]
[00:26:07] That conflict was the pursuit of truth without that conflict. They don't get to truth. And yet in our society today, we tend to think conflict is always bad, sometimes in our marriages, often in our workplaces. [00:26:19][12.0]
[00:26:20] And what happens is when we don't have conflict, we actually make worse decisions and we leave people to suffer. And so there's something very selfish and unwise about avoiding conflict when that conflict is necessary to find the truth. [00:26:39][18.8]
[00:26:39] And sometimes discernment is the process of people getting in a room who love each other and pushing on each other and being frustrated into one another in prayer and seeing the truth emerge. So I think that conflict, accountability, suffering these things in our society are seem to be things we're supposed to avoid. [00:26:56][16.9]
[00:26:58] But when we appear intentions, they're actually really, really important. And when they existed throughout the Bible. [00:27:02][4.7]
Henry Kaestner: [00:27:04] Pat, I want to ask you one last thing, which is completely optional when we get a guest. It's not meant to be flattery, but when we get a guest who we know has been very, very thoughtful about entrepreneurship and business owners and leaders and is also somebody who's very serious about their faith. We also want to leave room in for anything else. That God would put on your heart, your mind about just something you think that Faith driven entrepreneurs need to be considering. And it has something to do with what we've asked you already. You can have to do with something completely new. But as God would put on your heart anything that you think we didn't hit on today. Do you think the average Faith Driven Entrepreneur needs to know this, Videgaray Thomas said? [00:27:43][39.0]
Patrick Lencioni: [00:27:44] You know, I think most of our entrepreneurs are disciplined human beings, you know, because you start a company and you work hard and all those things. One of the things I'm learning and we're in lente right now is if I don't apply that discipline to my faith, it's easy to slide. And I'm an ENFP. I don't like discipline. I like following my nose and being inspired. And and I'm Catholic as well. And so one of the things that I've tried to do and this is an unprecedented time almost in history, I think during some of the plagues they had this to where there's not mass going on right now. And I try to go to mass most days that I can't I try to break away from work for a half hour for daily mass, certainly on Sundays. And this is the first time in my life when mass is not available. And so I'm finding that if I don't apply the same level of discipline to my prayer life, to reading scripture, to praying and to engaging in that, I'm going to slide. And I think we should be very afraid of sliding. And we call our company conserve annoyed. We're conservative and paranoid about finances and we don't want to overextend ourselves. Boy, I need to be more conserve, annoyed about my faith. And I'm really afraid that during this next I'm going to go through lente and into Easter and have no public services to go to, no mass, no stations of the cross. [00:29:04][80.2]
[00:29:05] So I guess what I would say is and this is particularly timely for me is let's have great discipline around our face even before our family and our business. And that will take care of our family and our business. So I think if many of us, you know, I didn't grow up studying theology. I studied economics and I went and worked in business. I've never lacked discipline around my business. I need to apply that to my faith life as well. [00:29:31][25.4]
Henry Kaestner: [00:29:32] That's a great encouragement for me and for all of our listeners. [00:29:35][2.8]
William Norvell: [00:29:36] And then as we come to a close, one of the things we love to ask right along those topics is, you know, where God might have you today or in the season, even in his word. Maybe a passage or it could be a verse that he may have come in alive to you in a new way or or maybe for the first time that just that you would maybe share that with our listeners. It's amazing how our collective journeys can interact through God's word. And we love just sharing that with our audience. [00:30:01][25.5]
Patrick Lencioni: [00:30:02] You know, for years people been asking me about my favorite Bible verse and I've never really quite knew. But something for me has emerged. And it is. And it's that, you know, he says, come to me. All you who are labor in our pressed my yoke is easy and my burden is light. And during a time like this. And granted, this is a worldwide struggle. But we all go through struggles in our lives. The thing that just always occurs to me is if we just submit to him, boy, his yoke really is easy and his burden is light and we make it so much heavier by wanting our own will and not his. [00:30:36][33.6]
[00:30:36] I mean, just last night I was walking down the hallway. I have two sons that are in college and their college experience just ended. Their seniors and their friends are dispersed and they're like, dad, the best two months were coming up and we don't even know how it's going to play out now. And I felt really terrible. And I just realized that Jesus just said, that's my will for them. There's goodness in that. I have things in store for them that you could never even understand. And when I just surrendered that to him, I was like, of course, I can find joy in this. And so his yoke is easy and his burden is light. And when we surrender to that, everything else changes. So that's what I would say. I would also share with your listeners that what I've started doing is, you know, people say, do you read the Bible? And people like, what do you mean by that? Do I? [00:31:24][47.5]
[00:31:24] It's really daunting to people. And I've just been picking up the gospels and I'm just like doing a constant review, like read a couple pages of the gospels every day and they never get tired. [00:31:34][9.9]
[00:31:34] You know, I constantly get reminded like, oh, yeah, so I'm doing that during Lent. And hopefully for the rest of my life. [00:31:40][5.5]
Henry Kaestner: [00:31:40] So may we do the same. Pat, it's been great having you with us. I'm very grateful for your time and for your commitment and what guys put on your heart to share with our audience and for your life's work and the fact that you're fun to talk to as you get a lot of great points that maybe a theologian can make it be really, really drive it. You make a lot of fun. And I'm grateful for that. I'm grateful to have a chance to serve with you out here in Silicon Valley. This is a special place in the world. And so just grateful for you. Thank you. [00:32:09][28.4]
Patrick Lencioni: [00:32:09] Thanks for having me. And it's so important that we ministered to one another here because it's so easy in the valley and in the world to think that, you know, nobody's a believer. And I think about Rusty. I met you 20 years ago, 21 years ago, Rusty. And I remember now meeting you, but I don't think I realized at the time you were a believer. And it's so easy to go to your life of. [00:32:26][16.9]
Rusty Rueff: [00:32:27] Right. You wouldn't know because like like you you know, I have faith, but I didn't show it. Right. I didn't show it. [00:32:34][7.3]
Henry Kaestner: [00:32:34] I want to know. Did he ever really call Soul Patch back then? [00:32:37][3.0]
Patrick Lencioni: [00:32:37] No, he. Clearly do not know it was something else, there was a different color. [00:32:42][4.5]
Rusty Rueff: [00:32:42] Let me tell you, it was a lot darker. [00:32:44][1.4]
Patrick Lencioni: [00:32:45] Hey, guys, thanks so much for having me on. God bless you. And may he bless us all and help us to serve others. [00:32:45][0.0]