The story of today’s guest starts in a recording studio. When Dr. Tony Evans was a student at Dallas Theological Seminary, he was asked to preach on a radio show based out of Houston. After giving countless sermons to an audience he could never see, Tony gathered 10 people in his living room, which was the start Oak Cliff Bible Fellowship. 

Fast forward and Oak Cliff Bible has roughly 10,000 members, Tony has written dozens of books, and countless people have encountered the gospel of Jesus Christ through their work. 

We couldn’t have been more excited to sit down with Dr. Tony Evans, and we think you’ll be blessed by what he shared today...

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.

Tony Evans: God is able to create U-turns on the wrong highways of life that you are traveling to bring you back down to the right road so that you can be redeemed either from or through the consequences that have come as a result of decisions that have been made. You know, Deuteronomy 30 said you get to choose when you get to choose, you know, life or death, blessings and curses. So if we can change the choices, we can affect the consequence.

Henry Kaestner: Welcome back to the Faith Driven Entrepreneur. We've got Tony Evans in the house. Dr. Evans, thank you so much for joining us on the show today.

Tony Evans: Good to be with you. Thank you for having me.

Henry Kaestner: We're super excited to have you here and want to just jump in. And I want to ask you about a part of your story that's always interested me. When you're 24 years old, really young, studying at DTS, you had the opportunity to preach on a radio show was based in Houston, so you recorded sermons in a studio. So your first kind of preaching, especially in front of a large audience, is in front of an audience that you couldn't see. And now you do lots of talk in front of bigger audiences. But that's an interesting way to get your career started. What is it like preaching to an audience you can see?

Tony Evans: Well, a challenge because, you know, I like to be with people around people and talking to people. So that was something I had to get used to. And I actually had to gear myself up for it because it was a new experience for me and a challenging one, but a necessary one. But what I didn't know that God was going to have me doing later on in terms of broadcasting and just learning the broadcasting field. So it was a great introduction, but with a challenge.

Henry Kaestner: Yeah. OK, so fast forward a few years. You're founding the Urban Alternative where your wife is helping you organize and fulfill. Was what was it like working alongside your wife for that season?

Tony Evans: Well, that's a great season and there would be no national international ministry without Lois Evans partnering with me to get tapes on cassette tapes back then, the people who are requesting my ministry of word. So she would box them up and collect them and duplicate them and then mail them. And so it was a tough task, but she was committed to it because she was committed to ministry and committed to me and our family. And so it was a great season of growth during that time.

Rusty Rueff: So I think that's fascinating also about what you're doing. Dr. Evans, if you look at your history, how you started off with Henry, talked to you about being in an online studio, so many pastors are having to do that right now inside of covid. Right. They're having to preach to a congregation where you get no feedback. So in some ways, God was preparing you a long time ago for right now.

Tony Evans: Absolutely. I mean, this is an unprecedented time. Passes have been thrown into something that I got introduced and old to remember what it's like to be twenty four years old. You brought that up, but that was a long time ago. But we're reusing it now because we've been doing this online church with no audience. So was I'm now comfortable in doing something I had to learn to become comfortable with many years ago?

Rusty Rueff: Yeah, likely someday in the future, if not already. The theological seminaries are probably going to start teaching that skill.

Tony Evans: Well, I think many of them are having to be forced now to do training online without students in a classroom. So I think that's becoming more and more the norm given the reality of this divine disruption we're experiencing.

Henry Kaestner: So we've been blessed in the past that some really need pastors with us, Chip Ingram and Tim Keller and J.D. Greear and some others. But I don't know that we've had anybody on the podcast since covid had started. And I'm really interested in as a pastor and somebody has seen a lot since you started your ministry in nineteen eighty one, is that right? For a long

Tony Evans: time. That's the term we started the church in nineteen seventy six. OK, so the urban alternative in 81.

Henry Kaestner: OK, so that's a long time in ministry. You've seen a lot. What's your sense about what's going on in the world, what the world needs? And you know, we're always taught to say that the answer is always Jesus. Right? So I'm going to presume that you'd say yes, Jesus is right. The answer. But what are your reflections as a pastor? You've studied race relations, you studied the church. What are your reflections about the season?

Tony Evans: Well, my reflections about this season is that we are experiencing what I called a minute ago, a divine disruption. Divine disruption is where God interferes with the natural order of things in order to do a divine reset. So he allows things to become turned upside down, inside out, because there's been such a great graphic spiritual departure that a realignment is necessary. And because of the need of that realignment, he lets mankind see that things can happen outside of their control. And it's mainly to force the church to get straight so that through the church he can influence the culture. So that's what I believe is happening right now. And the critical thing is that the church teaches that God is talking to us. That's what Hebrews 12 talked about, that God is speaking to these circumstances to reveal his unshakable kingdom. So I believe that is exactly what's happening today, politically, socially, medically, economically, racially. All of that one pandemics back on top of another pandemic because having this green,

Rusty Rueff: that is thought provoking. I mean, that makes you really want to stop. And I wish we could spend the whole episode just on that. We'll have to come back to you. To talk about that, because that's just fascinating, but I do want to pivot us a little bit here. You wrote this book U-turn, and you, as Henry said, we've had a number of pastors on. I'm not so sure that we've ever had anybody who is the perfect person to talk to entrepreneurs like you are. Because, you know, I've always and I think we all share that thought that pastors are very entrepreneurial. Right. It's a startup. You had a startup and you scaled it and you scaled it to a big size. And there must have been lots of learnings for you as you took Oak Cliff Bible to the size it is now. Share your entrepreneurial learnings for us.

Tony Evans: Well, entrepreneurs have something in common, they have vision and they're willing to take risk. OK, so that was a vision of having a church that would not only teach the Bible, but show the socio economic, racial and cultural implications of biblical truth. So because the vision was this comprehensive vision that we call the Kingdom agenda, which is the visible manifestation of the comprehensive rule of God of every area of life, the scope of that is big sort of was big vision. And we started with 10 people in our living room. But with those 10 people, we began to cultivate and communicate a bigger vision and the components of what that vision would mean. So in addition to the traditional things that churches do, you know, the preaching of the word, the ministering to the flock, the carriage. We also talked about the needs in the community socially, politically and economically. So we threw out a vision of economic development, of property acquisition of developing social services, of community engagement through the adoption of public schools. All of these things began to grow as we mobilize the growing membership to use gifts, skills, talents and resources to infiltrate those other broader areas. Because in the kingdom, all of those areas fit. Our problem is the church has become an end in itself and not a vehicle through which God accomplishes comprehensive Kingdome programing and impact. So as we began to infiltrate all of these areas and as we begin to grow our membership or our customers, our constituents, then an economically viable process, then we began to see them engaged in that to expand the company. And that is the church in this case for impact. And we know if you're an entrepreneur, then that means you've got to have people who want your products, because the more people who want your product, the more the company grows to provide goods and services to the people with the product. Well, our fundamental product is Jesus and is the Bible, and this is the spiritual impact. But what we wanted to show was the practical implications and ramifications of this centralized product of the Lord entering your life, your personal life, your family life, as well as your community life, as well as your political life. You know, we've come out of political season. I just did a series on Kingdom Voting to show how you can demised the ballot box and you don't just look at it as voting for candidates, but as an opportunity to leverage kingdom influence. And when you have this kingdom view of your business and of economics, then you you take interstate batteries would normally I mean, East Kingdom buys a car battery. So the takes a car battery and uses that to proclaim the gospel. So every Christian entrepreneur, we try to bring our members and our business people in our church that your business is a kingdom enterprise. You're not just a business person, you're God's representative in business or the business world gets to see what God looks like when God cuts a deal. So when you orient people that way and you entrepreneur realize them to think that way, then you give them freedom with their vision because they now don't have to make a separation between secular and sacred and economics in the kingdom because you can all flow through that central grid.

William Norvell: Amen Amen, amen Dr Evans. William here. I'm going to turn to your latest book here in a second. But before I have to give a quick plug, three or four months ago, I picked up your study Bible, and it has just been so much fun to read along with some of your thoughts and sort of how you go through the scripture. And if anyone's out there looking for something new to lead them through scripture, I just can't recommend it enough.

William Norvell: Something you only want to do once in your lifetime of study Bible. I figured if the Bible commentaries this think Bible commentary. So we go to the whole Bible and we try to show this kingdom theme running through all of scripture and applying the word to the world.

William Norvell: And one of the things to get a flavor of some of the semi comedic impacts, one of the things that hit me the other day when I was reading Proverbs six, twenty seven, twenty eight, which was can a man embrace fire in his clothes, not be burned? Can a man walk on burning coals without scorching his feet? And your commentary said this is a Galatians six principle at work, a reminder that you reap what you sow. For example, if you adopt a baby dragon for a pet, don't be shocked when it grows up to eat you and I just love that. And there's some great communicants through there as well. And then obviously it all brings you back to Jesus and and I just really enjoyed it and appreciate it. And on that, I want to turn to your book. You turn that you've recently put out and I'm interested in the subtitle to reversing the consequences in your life. Can you tell us what that phrase means and where this idea came?

Tony Evans: Yeah, the idea, you know, in ministry, you're always dealing with people with regrets, personal regrets, family regrets, decisions that they've made which they are reaping the repercussions of, and they're needing guidance and help to see whether there is hope for a reversal of the circumstances that either they created or maybe somebody else created it, but they're bearing the repercussions of it. So I wanted to write this book of hope to let them know that God allows for U turns. And we all know what it is to go down the wrong road to discover you hit it in the wrong direction and exit, go over the overpass, come back on the on ramp and be headed back in the right direction. So I wanted to let people know through the various consequences that they may be facing, relational consequences, addictions of various kinds, idolatries consequences, moral consequences that God is able to create U. Turns on the wrong highways of life, that you are traveling to bring you back down to the right road so that you can be redeemed either from or through the consequences that have come as a result of decisions that have been made. You know, Deuteronomy 30 said you get to choose and you get to choose, you know, life or death, blessings and curses. So if we can change the choices, we can affect the consequence.

William Norvell: Absolutely. And gosh, I empathize. I have definitely been in those moments in my life. And I can't wait to read and glean your wisdom. But if you could go one layer deeper and share with our audience a little bit, what are some of the common things you see that that keep people from making that U-turn? And how can we overcome some of those obstacles? Because I think that comes up in every entrepreneur's life. They make a decision. They hire a person. They they spend too much time at work and neglect their family. I mean, there's so many things that an entrepreneur struggles with. How would you counsel them?

Tony Evans: Well, first of all, we have to understand that we have to start with God because God is the one who is calling into a U-turn. In the second chapter of the book, we talk about the key to the U-turn and the key to the reversal is repentance. Repentance is a decision to change your mind about the direction you're going because you want to reverse and go the opposite way. So it's a decision tied to a reversal. So, you know, you repent it not only because you have lost about the decision, but because you have enacted steps to reverse it, because that proves that your remorse was serious. So with that in mind, a decision is necessary that first God's will, because repentance always starts with God, then repentance goes into what steps do I need to take to demonstrate that I am serious about the reversal that I say in my mind and with my mouth that I want to take place in my life. Now, what keeps us from doing that is usually pride. We don't want to admit that we have been going the wrong way and we want to get a new road and an old road when God is trying to get us to lead the road all together. So we have to become humble enough to submit ourselves to the process. God has put in place the repentance to bring us back right. What we got to become like the prodigal son and say, I'm tired of the pig pit because unless you're tired of the pig pit, you just try to find out how to make a better life in the pig penrather than leave the pigpen and come home to daddy. And what God is asking us to come home to daddy so he can throw a party instead of keeping us in a pit.

Rusty Rueff: I like that. I use the word pivot earlier. And that's a popular phrase in the entrepreneurial world. Right? We're going down a pathway. We realize that, you know, we shouldn't be doing that and we pivot. But is that the same thing is you're trying to say if you turn or maybe just bring those two together for the entrepreneur to kind of understand the same or difference?

Tony Evans: Well, you know, in ministry and in business, you pivot you adjust things along the way because you analyze things and seen that the old way is not the best way to achieve the new goal. So you develop these pivots. But I guess when I use the word reversal, I'm putting a Bunsen burner under the word pivot to give it a more intensification because we're not talking about a minor adjustment, but a redirection, which is a reversal and a reversal is the opposite. So a pivot can be a reversal, but a pivot can be lighter than that and simply a tweaking. And so when we talk about U-turn, we're talking about coming back the other way because you are seeing consequences that are bringing negative effects on your life or in your business and you want to reverse those consequences. So I'm saying Pivot may not be as strong a word when you're talking about reversal.

William Norvell: Absolutely. And. Our audience is entrepreneurs and business leaders, would you have any practical steps? I heard that I'm ordering the book, but if someone happens to only listen to the podcast, what can be a couple of practical steps someone could take away from the book? And how could they put that into work in their life or business tomorrow?

Tony Evans: Well, depending on what the situation is that put you in this situation or the consequences are that you are facing, you have to start off with the goal to start with repents because that leads to spiritual forgiveness. And one of the things we do in particular, if it was our decision that caused it, is the need for us to know that God has given us to accept his forgiveness. But the second aspect is to forgive others, because there may be people who have put you in this situation that needs reversal or forgiving yourself because you put yourself in that situation. And forgiveness is not a feeling going back to that its first decision. So let's start with deciding that I'm going to forgive myself. I'm going to accept God's forgiveness, and I'm going to give somebody else, even somebody else I know who can no longer repent because they're no longer in the picture, because they've already passed away or whatever. So they can't repent. But you can still release them because releasing them releases you. So you always start with that as a practical decision of the will and you let your emotions catch up with that decision making. You feel it, you do it, and then you let the feelings catch up with that. Then the Bible says, do your first works over again in Revelation Chapter two? Which means that after you've repented, then you go back to find out what does God want me to do with reversing this decision? The Bible is jam packed, is pregnant with reversal principles depending on what the situation is. For example, let's say it's a financial pivot or reversal that you need to make. A lot of people are in debt because of bad decisions. A lot of companies have made bad decisions. OK, so what are the biblical principles of biblical economic finance? When I wrote my book or Kingdom Stewardship, I have a whole chapter on getting out of debt, God's way. Those principles come from God's word. So if you don't take the time to find out what God's principles are about handling debt, then you don't get God's help. A lot of people want to pray their way out of a problem with our principles and their way out through obedience to God's standards. So if you skip God's standard and simply pray about it, then you're not really fully inviting God into the reversal of the consequence. So what do you talk about, Proverbs? What are the principles and proverbs? Because they're jam packed with principles that deal with that. It can be relationships, because what happens is that happens in families. OK, what have I done to be a repair of the breach of these relationships? Another one is spiritual theft in an economic way. If you're robbing God, don't expect nobody invites a robber into their home. So why should God come to help us with stealing from him? You do not assist robbers to keep robbing you so much. And some of what we go through, a spiritual theft. So we've got to get that economic house in order. If it's a financial issue, if it's a relational issue. You talked about abandoning the family for the business. Well, you've got to repent your wife and children. You've got to say I've loved the business more than them because the Bible says if you're out of sorts for Savage with your mate, then you can't pray because God will not hear your prayers. So if a man is loving his business more than loving his family, creating a breach in the relationship, God won't his prayers even though he's praying Lord, heal my family, because he must take steps to solve that breach so that God is free to enter into the relationship and bring healing into the business. Because one of the reasons the business may not be prospering, because God seems damaged by the business person entrepreneur that he's doing to the home.

Henry Kaestner: Doctor Evans, this is awesome. This is hopefully the first of very many conversations about just debunking some of the mess and just understanding, helping people understand the way that God works and just understand what we're asking for, the obstacles that we are unwittingly putting up in the way of God, doing work in our relationships and in our business. What are some of the other reflections you might have in your work? You've worked with business owners, you've worked with entrepreneurs. Are there additional patterns you see that are holding entrepreneurs back and you don't want to be stereotypical? And yet when you meet a business owner or an entrepreneur, are there things as you would pass to them and say, I want you to watch out for this and I shouldn't lead the witness here, but maybe it's things about money, maybe other things, but. What are some of the other obstacles that a Faith Driven Entrepreneur listen to this and saying, oh my goodness, I really need to pay attention to X, Y or Z, because those are things that Dr. Evans has seen plague entrepreneurs and business owners in the past?

Tony Evans: Yes. First of all, I would give this broad the number one sin in all of the Bible. This sin is repeated more than any other. Sin in the Bible is idolatry. Idolatry is any noun: person, place, thing, or thought that you look to as your ultimate source, any person place thing of thought that becomes your ultimate source. What entrepreneurs and business people do is they turn the business into the ultimate source. So therefore the business becomes an idol. And whenever you have a noun that becomes an idol, it is now competing with the one true living God. When you compete with the one true living God, you lose his existence because he will not compromise with another idol and an idol is in the Bible were not just simply things they built, but things they looked to to provide. So they were a source of something. They were providers of something. Your business is not your source. It is merely your resource. You need God as your source to bless your resource so that your resource blesses you, your family and the business. Others work for you and other people who benefit. So I would say the first thing you've got to watch out for is idolizing your business, because I've had periods of being guilty of idolizing the ministry of making the ministry so dominant, I can't live without it as though God is not my source anymore. So that mindset is the first thing I'll go for. But then that filters down to our money, our morals. You know how we relate to people appropriately in the workplace, to my time, to getting you know, let me bring in a very critical thing that most Christians, many Christians and certainly business people don't look to. And that is the Holy Spirit job in decision making. God has given us the Holy Spirit to guide us in decision making. And because business entrepreneurs are risk takers, we know you must take calculated risk. You want risk to work out because you can't guarantee the result of the risk that what makes it a risk. So risk involves faith. You've got to believe something about taking a risk. But everything you believe in is not the risk you want to take. So you need the Holy Spirit to authenticate. This is a risk worth taking. The Bible talks about the fact that he will guide you in making a profit [...] God will guide you in making a profit. So you need guidance. If you need guidance and you have a guide, the Holy Spirit, every decision you make, big, medium and small, should be. And he should be invited into the boardroom or to the conversation or to the Starbucks or to the golf course where you are making the decisions to validate. How does he validate it? He validates it in your heart. But then after two or three witnesses. So if you're not confident that this is of God, you asking for the two or three confirmations and they can call a myriad of different ways. So a lot of business people move ahead because they like ourselves, they like how it feels when it has never been confirmed. And then they want a reversal of how it turned out. So bring the Holy Spirit in on the front end so you can avoid a myriad of decisions that will take you [...].

William Norvell: It's fantastic to think about and ponder through. And unfortunately, as we come to a close with our time on this episode, we do love to ask our guest every time. We love to see how God's word transcends between our guests and our listeners. And so what we love to ask is, is there a piece of God's word, a scripture, a story that maybe God is teaching you about in new ways? Could be something you read this morning, could be something you've been meditating on for a season. We just love seeing how his word continues to be alive and breathing and working through the lives of our guests and our listeners.

Tony Evans: Well, my dominant scripture all through this season we've all been going through has been 2 Chronicles 15:3-6.

Henry Kaestner: I was going to ask you about Second Chronicles when you're talking about this is looking to get the confirmation in entrepeneurs not making bad decisions. I was going to jump in and William beat me to it with the final close. But I think about the good kings of Judah and the second part, a second chronicles. And even though they were the good kings, every one of them made a big mistake. Right. And they didn't see God's wisdom in something. They didn't get the confirmation from two or three witnesses. So it's amazing that you when going asked you a question, you go to the second part, the second chronicles.

Tony Evans: Yeah. Yeah. And it's very interesting with that statement in light of. Versus 15 three to six, because it said that was conflict in the land, this personal conflict, family conflict. It says there was city conflict and national conflict. So it is conflict everywhere. No peace, it says, but then very successful. God troubled them with every kind of distress. You would have thought with all the conflict, they would have said the devil troubled it, but it doesn't. It says, God troubled it, if God is your problem, only God is your solution. And it says the reason why verse 3 says there was all this chaos in the land was because God had been marginalized. It says the churches had failed, the priest had failed and God had been marginalized. So nature abhors a vacuum. So when that open space opened up with God was no longer in the vicinity, all manner of evil and conflict went into that space. But verse 4 says this. In their distress when it got bad enough, they sought the Lord and he let them find in verse 15 says, and God gave them rest when they got back to their spiritual priority, the kingdom priority, their relationship priority, God turned conflict into order. So this is not the first person in the White House. This is a person who's in God's house. And if we can get God's house straight with God's people, then we can address a lot of these other places from God's point of view.

Henry Kaestner: Amen. Yeah, I was going to say that preachers. But of course it preaches.

Rusty Rueff: Of course it does. Yes, that is fantastic. Thank you.

Tony Evans: Thank you. It's been a joy being with you.

Henry Kaestner: Thank you, Dr. Evans. God bless you and your ministry. I hope that we get a chance to have you back on the show at some point in time in the future. But you've blessed at the very least, the three co-hosts and our executive producer.

Tony Evans: Thank you. Glad to be with you.