Eager to be Healthy

A Health and Happiness Hive

JR Rennie: When the Paycheck Stopped and the Calling Started

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JR Rennie, founder of BrushFires Ministry

Podcast: Eager to Be Healthy
Guest: John “JR” Rennie, founder of BrushFires Ministry, Hayden, Idaho
Host: Michael Scott Eger
Episode length: about 43 minutes
Watch or listen: JR Rennie on Eager to Be Healthy

A note from Evie

If you’ve been reading Michael for a while, you may have guessed he’s a Christian. It comes through in his writing now and then, the way anything true about a person eventually does. This conversation with JR Rennie leans into faith more than most of our episodes, and we think that’s a good thing. Here at Eager to Be Healthy, we believe it matters to have something larger than yourself to put your faith in. It steadies you when the plan falls apart, it gives the hard days a reason, and it keeps you looking up and out instead of in. For JR, that something is God, and it led him to his purpose. Wherever you find yours, we hope you’ll read this one with an open heart.

Evie Nova Wells, Editor

Ten years ago, JR Rennie quit paying himself.

He’d run a custom software company for close to forty years. Then the revenue dried up. There was money for payroll or money for his family. Not both. He paid his people.

He still works for whatever’s left at the end of the year.

JR is 67. One rebuilt knee. No prescriptions. When his guest form asked what changed his health, he didn’t mention food or the gym. He wrote that he found his purpose and went after it.

Most health checklists stop at sleep, food, and blood pressure. JR would add one more line. Finding your purpose.

He opened the show saying he was eager to be happy. Close enough.

“Have You Always Been Happy?” “No.”

I open every episode with two questions. Have you always been healthy? Have you always been happy?

JR said yes to the first. To the second he said no, and he didn’t dress it up.

There are times when life kinda sucks. Happiness is based on the circumstances that you’re in, and none of us go through life unmarred by the circumstances of life.

He married young. He and his wife raised three kids, and one of their sons has lived with epilepsy for forty years. That’s four decades of helping someone you love manage a condition nobody chose.

Life doesn’t always work out perfectly, and it’s how you get through it that is the really important part.

Hang on to that line. The whole conversation runs through it.

Employees First, Paycheck Last

It started in 2015. Revenue dropped hard and fast. By January 2016, the income his family lived on was gone.

He had a choice. Close the doors, or keep them open for the people who counted on them. He kept them open. The only way to cover his employees and keep serving his clients was to stop paying himself.

I pushed on that. Keep your team employed or feed your family. That’s a gut punch of a choice.

JR’s answer was plain business sense, and I don’t hear it often. Owners do better than their employees in the good years. So when the cash runs short, a lot of owners take the hit first, because their people depend on a steady check.

Then there’s the catch nobody warns you about. As the principal of a company that’s still bringing in money, you can’t collect unemployment. On paper the business earns. In real life, every dollar is spoken for. He was working for free.

Mostly, he still is. The company still supports clients across North America. He’s been trying to wind it down for years. What he takes home is whatever is left at the end of the year.

I’ve held a lot of jobs, a few of them on a factory floor. I know what a steady check means to the person on the line. JR knew it too, and he put himself last.

“I Know You’re Behind This. What Do You Want?”

JR is a man of faith. He’ll tell you God has always provided for his family, going back to when they started out young with very little. Still, in 2016 nothing he tried was working. Every fix that should have worked, given his experience and his position, fell flat.

By May 2016 he was frustrated with God, and he said so. Out loud.

I know you’re behind this. What do you want?

That question started a conversation he’s still having. He came to see he wasn’t going back to software to earn a living. God had a different plan, and his job was to be patient and listen.

With sales and new development on hold, JR had time on his hands. He filled it with prayer, scripture, and writing. Short stories. Plays. Articles. Whatever was running through his head.

By the end of that stretch he had peace.

All right, Lord, I know that you’re with me. I don’t know where you’re leading me, but I trust you.

He says his faith has grown every day since.

My Own Crash, and Why I Brought It Up

I told JR something on air I don’t say often.

Just before my 29th birthday, I fell asleep at the wheel and totaled my car. I came out of it with a traumatic brain injury and no broken bones. When I looked at the photos, the whole car was crushed except one spot. The driver’s seat.

In the months before that crash I felt abandoned. No direction. Faith running low. I’ve always been a person of faith. It goes up and down, like it does for most of us, and right then it was in the basement.

I was out of the hospital in about five days. Then I had to rebuild my life. Along the way it sank in that I had been protected the whole time. I was not forgotten. I have never been alone.

JR didn’t let me off easy with it. My accident wasn’t a surprise to God, he said. How I respond going forward is the real challenge. Same goes for his software company. And he thinks the hard thing you went through is what gives you standing to help the next person going through it.

Faithful People Still Get Tested

A lot of folks believe that if you’re faithful, you won’t get tested. JR called that completely untrue, and he brought examples.

Start with the Apostle Paul. Paul’s own list of hardships in 2 Corinthians 11 runs from shipwrecks to beatings to sleepless nights. Stephen, the first Christian martyr, saw heaven open moments before he was stoned. I’ve stood in India at a place where tradition says the Apostle Thomas was martyred. The faithful have never had a free pass.

Being a believer is not a get-out-of-jail-free card where everything is going to be unicorns and rainbows the rest of your life.

Good people have terrible things happen to them. JR’s son did nothing to deserve epilepsy. Neither did his mother during the pregnancy.

What changes for a believer, JR says, is who’s in the room with you. God is present in the middle of it. He helps you through, and He uses it. JR pointed to marriages. Some couples come apart under a terrible loss. Others hold together. In his experience, the ones who make it are the ones leaning on God.

He also doesn’t save the conversation for emergencies. His version is daily. All right, Lord, you gave me another day. What do you want me to do today? He said he even prayed about our interview. Michael has been through some hard things. How can I encourage him?

He was careful to say he isn’t trying to earn anything. His word for it is available. He shows up out of gratitude, and he trusts God with the results.

Why JR Never Prays for Patience

I brought up an old saying among people who pray. Ask for patience and you don’t get patience. You get situations that teach it.

JR would never pray that prayer. You’re inviting a challenge you won’t appreciate at the time.

His alternative is to take the focus off yourself. When Jesus was asked for the greatest commandment, he answered: love God with all your heart, soul, mind, and strength, and love your neighbor as yourself (Mark 12:30–31).

He doesn’t say love yourself, treat yourself to every good thing that you can possibly get on your credit card. No. He says love God and love others.

The way JR sees it, people who fix their eyes on their own pain get more miserable. People who look outward find something to give, even with empty pockets. Kindness. A listening ear. Gentleness. A smile that tells someone you see them. No Elon Musk money or Brad Pitt looks required.

If you want the definition on how to be happy, it’s love God and love other people.

Research backs a piece of this. A 2018 meta-analysis pooled experiments on acts of kindness and found that doing kind things for other people gives the person doing them a small, real lift in well-being. Small. Real. Free.

JR went to the fruit of the Spirit in Galatians 5:22–23: love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, and self-control. Every one of us wants those. None of them are for sale. And 2 Timothy 2:6 says the hardworking farmer gets the first share of the crop. Grow that fruit for other people and you get to eat some too.

Notice patience is on that list. JR doesn’t ask for it. He grows it, as a side effect of loving people.

Your Purpose Has No Expiration Date

JR has an acronym for BIBLE: Basic Instructions Before Leaving Earth. Corny. I’ll allow it. The bigger point is his: everyone was created for a purpose, and there’s no expiration date on it. You can be in your eighties or nineties and still be doing what you were made for.

Around 2018 or 2019, a couple of years into what JR calls his loss of identity, a visiting prophet at a church service picked JR and his wife out of a crowd of two or three hundred people. The man knew nothing about him. His message: you think your best days are behind you. God is making new wineskins for your life. Your best days are ahead.

I asked JR to explain wineskins, since not everyone reads scripture. Jesus used the picture in Luke 5:37–38. Back then, new wine went into leather skins. As it fermented, the gas stretched the leather to its limit. A skin could only do that once. Put new wine in an old skin and it bursts.

JR’s old skin was the ERP and MRP software developer life. It had stretched as far as it could go. The new one is BrushFires Ministry.

I put it this way on the show. The contents don’t change. The container does. JR added the part I missed. The growth does too.

A health blog owes you the research at this point, and the research is honest about being unfinished. A 2019 study in JAMA Network Open followed almost 7,000 U.S. adults over 50. The people with the weakest sense of purpose were about two and a half times more likely to die during the study than the people with the strongest. Then a 2026 reanalysis in PLOS One of the same national data pushed back. Once you account more carefully for how sick people already were at the start, much of that gap shrinks. Sick people may simply report less purpose.

So purpose and health travel together. Which one leads is still an open question. I’d rather tell you that than sell you a headline.

What BrushFires Actually Does

JR wanted one thing on the record: he is not a licensed pastor. BrushFires doesn’t have a congregation. The work happens online through video series, books, and coaching. When a church invites them, JR and his team will come teach in person on discipleship, mentoring, and seeing the potential in a person so they can grow in the direction God intended.

Then he boiled it down better than he ever had, in his words:

It helps people grow closer to God by being obedient to what He created them to do, by helping them to understand what He created them to do.

I told him my best lines tend to show up under pressure too.

“Happy” Comes From “Hap”

When I asked what he’d tell the Hive about being healthy and happy, JR started with the word. Happy, he said, comes from happenstance, the circumstances rolling through your life. And not all of them are happy ones.

He’s close. Both words trace back to an old word, hap, meaning chance or luck (Etymonline). In the 1300s, happy meant lucky. So JR’s point stands. Happiness rides on what happens to you. What people really want, he says, runs deeper: God’s love and that fruit of the Spirit. The kind of peace that holds even when the circumstances don’t.

He was clear that it reaches the body too. Emotional and spiritual strain can wear on your physical health.

For JR, the way there starts with a relationship with Jesus, and then doing what God asks, even when it doesn’t make sense. He admits he’s told God more than once that it doesn’t make sense.

Then he taught me a Hebrew word. Shema. Most Bibles translate it as hear or listen. JR says it means listen with the intent to obey. BibleProject puts it plainly: in Hebrew, hearing and doing are the same thing. JR’s version: when your boss says have this done by five o’clock, that’s not a suggestion.

My shorthand was this. Be quiet enough in the storm to hear the directions, then walk through the next door.

JR brought it into the kitchen. A sink full of dirty dishes has a simple fix. You wash them and put them away. Life isn’t always a sink full of dishes. When the problem is bigger than you, staring at yourself and how miserable you are only makes it worse. Look up instead. Tell God you trust Him. Ask what to do next.

Then wait.

That’s the hard part. I said so on the show. When you’re in survival mode, every instinct you have is yelling stay alive, provide, be safe. Waiting feels like doing nothing. JR agreed. It’s really hard.

Daily Bread, Not Filet Mignon

Ten years in, JR still isn’t drawing a full-time paycheck. Savings have been drawn down. Money has also shown up in ways he never planned on. He doesn’t call that luck. He calls it God saying I see you. It doesn’t fix everything. It gets him through today, and maybe tomorrow.

Give us this day our daily bread (Matthew 6:11). I read that as a promise of freedom from need. Not freedom from want.

JR spent a good chunk of his life in the South, and he took it straight to the kitchen. Daily bread isn’t a medium-rare filet mignon at the most expensive steakhouse in town. It might be lima beans and rice with a little bacon. Or black-eyed peas and ham hocks. Southern cooks, he says, can make the most humble ingredients taste good.

As a guy who cooks, I’ll back him on that. A pot of beans with a little smoked pork is a fine dinner. It’s also a pretty good picture of the last ten years of JR’s life. Humble ingredients. Someone who knows what they’re doing. Enough.

Key Takeaways

  • Happiness follows circumstances. JR says joy grows from loving God and loving other people.
  • A hard season can point you somewhere new. Losing his income pointed JR toward BrushFires Ministry.
  • Faithful people still get tested. The difference JR describes is that you’re not alone in it.
  • When you’re hurting, look outward. Kindness costs nothing, and research on acts of kindness shows a small, real lift for the giver.
  • Shema means listen with the intent to obey. Hearing and doing go together.
  • Your purpose has no expiration date. At 30 or at 90.
  • Daily bread covers the need. Gratitude covers the rest.

Find JR Rennie and BrushFires Ministry

Before You Go

Eager to Be Healthy is a value-for-value podcast. No ads, no sponsors, nobody telling us what we can and cannot say. If this episode was worth something to you, send back what it was worth at eagertobehealthy.com/support.

Got a story like JR’s, or a corner of health you think the Hive should hear about? Come on the show. Start at eagertobehealthy.com/booking.

Always consult your healthcare provider before making changes based on health content.

So try JR’s morning question this week. You got another day. What are you supposed to do with it? Then stay quiet long enough to hear the answer. I’m better at the asking than the waiting. Still working on that part.

Full Episode Transcript

JR Rennie: Hello, hello, this is JR from BrushFires Ministry, and I am eager to be happy.

Michael Scott Eger: Our guest today is JR Rennie. JR spent 40 years running a custom software company. Then in 2015, he was forced to pivot. He got quiet enough to listen and said God had a new job for him. Today, JR and his wife Buffy run BrushFires Ministry, which helps believers find their purpose, the work God built them to do. The skills that made him a good boss, knowing what he does well and hiring for the rest, became a system people use to map out their strengths and weak spots. If you’ve ever felt overlooked or stuck spinning your wheels, JR has been there. And he’ll make the case that knowing why you’re here is part of being healthy. JR Rennie, welcome to Eager to Be Healthy.

Michael Scott Eger: How are you?

JR Rennie: I’m fine, Michael. How are you?

Michael Scott Eger: So we start every show by reminding everyone this is a value-for-value podcast. That means we’re listener supported and we have no ads. We depend on your donations. Now, JR, have you always been healthy?

JR Rennie: Yeah, for the most part, I have been. I’m sixty-seven years old. I’ve had no major medical problems. I had an ACL replacement in my right knee, but I’m on no medications.

Michael Scott Eger: Okay. And have you always been happy?

JR Rennie: Well, no. There are times when life kinda sucks. So happiness is based on the circumstances that you’re in, and none of us go through life unmarred by the circumstances of life.

Michael Scott Eger: Okay. Could you expand on that?

JR Rennie: Well, see, I got married at twenty. My wife was sixteen and pregnant. So that was a scary time, because we were both very young. We have three kids. Two of the three are completely healthy, but one was born with epilepsy, or developed epilepsy within the first year. We’re still trying to figure that out. And so we’ve had many times of difficulty in dealing with his medical conditions and helping him, and that’s been going on for forty years now. So life doesn’t always work out perfectly, and it’s how you get through it that is the really important part.

Michael Scott Eger: What was the biggest thing that changed your life view?

JR Rennie: So in 2015, 2016, my software company had a very abrupt interruption in revenue that has been going on for some time. God used that as a catalyst to move me into my God-given calling and purpose. The software company basically provided the income for our family, and when that is completely turned off, which is what happened in January 2016, you’ve got to figure out how to replace that income and what is going to go on with your life going forward.

Michael Scott Eger: And you found yourself unemployed?

JR Rennie: Yes. Now understand, we’ve been married now for almost forty-seven years, so there’s a bit of a delay between these two processes. So yeah, in 2015 I had to make a decision about either keeping our software company’s doors open or closing them. I decided to keep them open, but the only way that I could provide for our employees and for our clients was for me to stop taking a paycheck. And then that left a problem with trying to provide for my family.

Michael Scott Eger: And then you had to make the hard choice of whether to keep your team employed or feed your family.

JR Rennie: Exactly. And that is a situation that will happen with a lot of business owners, where they have to make a decision between taking care of their employees or taking care of themselves and their own family. And it’s not unusual for a business owner to make that sacrifice, because they proportionally will do better during a really good year, and the employees don’t. So therefore, when things go south as far as the cash flow, they will oftentimes take the hit, because they value their employees, and their employees are depending upon that steady paycheck.

Michael Scott Eger: Yeah. And you had some savings, and your employees probably didn’t.

JR Rennie: It could very well be. I wasn’t going to test that possibility. I made the choice and went with that.

Michael Scott Eger: So when you basically worked as an unpaid contractor, you couldn’t take unemployment, because you’re the principal of the company.

JR Rennie: Right. That does preclude you from taking unemployment. And also the company was still going and producing income. So as far as the government’s concerned, well, you should just take that income. But if I did that, then my employees would not have a paycheck.

Michael Scott Eger: Yes.

JR Rennie: So it’s a very weird position to be put in, because you are effectively working for free from that point forward. The company is still going. We are still supporting clients throughout North America. I’ve been trying to close the company now for probably well over six, seven years, and I still do not get a regular paycheck. I get whatever’s left in the company at the end of the year.

Michael Scott Eger: Okay. Yeah, so that’s stressful. And now, you are a man of faith, right?

JR Rennie: I am.

Michael Scott Eger: So how did that come into play?

JR Rennie: Well, God’s always provided for our family. Understand that we got started under the more difficult circumstances of being very young. I was twenty, my wife was sixteen. And so we’ve had a number of challenges in getting started that young, but God’s always provided. And everything that I attempted, that should have worked given my experience and my position and understanding, didn’t. And in May of 2016, I was very frustrated with God and the circumstances, not seeing any answers on the horizon. And I said out loud, “I know you’re behind this. What do you want?” And that began the conversation, with me realizing that I wasn’t going to go back to software, and running my software company, as a way of producing income. God had a different plan for me, and I needed to be patient and listen.

Michael Scott Eger: So now, a lot of people think that if you’re faithful, you’ll never get tested.

JR Rennie: Yeah, that’s completely untrue.

Michael Scott Eger: Yeah, I know.

JR Rennie: All you have to do is read about the Apostle Paul and all the things he went through. He got tested quite a bit.

Michael Scott Eger: Hm. I was in India, and I went to see where the Apostle Thomas died.

JR Rennie: Okay.

Michael Scott Eger: And yeah, he traveled all the way to Asia, came back a second time, and he was tested, and he lost his life too. I have to check my scripture, but I think all but one died a natural death.

JR Rennie: Only one died a natural death, and that was the Apostle John. All the others died very horrible deaths.

Michael Scott Eger: Yeah. And back to the point, sometimes people of faith are tested.

JR Rennie: Yeah, so here’s the misnomer. There are people that believe that if they just do good things, nothing but good things are going to happen to them. And reality disagrees with that vehemently. There are a lot of really good people that terrible things happen to. Our son, who has now suffered with epilepsy for forty years, did nothing wrong to deserve epilepsy. His mother, during the pregnancy, did nothing wrong to deserve epilepsy. The difference between a believer going through a terrible thing and a non-believer going through a terrible thing is that in the midst of the terrible thing, for the believer, God is present. He will help you get through it, He will lead it, He will use it for His glory, He’ll use it as a testimony.

So the gift of salvation is the gift of the presence of God in your life, even when things don’t go as well as you would like. Why do some people have terrible things happen and their marriages fall apart, and others have terrible things happen and their marriages are sustained? They have God, and they lean on God, and they depend upon God to get them through the difficult time.

So, yeah, being a believer is not a get-out-of-jail-free card where everything is going to be unicorns and rainbows the rest of your life. In fact, it’s just the opposite. The more that you do what God’s asked you to do, the more the enemy is going to attack you and create problems. And this is why all those apostles had terrible deaths, because the enemy hated them so much for doing what they were created to do that he led other human beings to crucify them upside down, to draw and quarter them, to kill them with a spear. Those were good, godly men who died horrible deaths. It doesn’t mean God wasn’t honored during the process. Saint Stephen, in the process of being stoned to death, sees Christ waiting for him. Christ was present with him as he was being murdered.

Michael Scott Eger: So in this process, how did your prayer life change?

JR Rennie: Yeah, so pretty much at the beginning of 2016, when I made the decision, I had a lot of time on my hands, because I wasn’t doing the work of selling the software, developing new software. All that stuff was put aside, because I didn’t know how long the company was going to be in business. And so I spent a lot of time in prayer and reading scripture and writing short stories and plays and all kinds of articles that were going through my mind at that time. So my faith grew during that time, to the point where in May of 2016 I realized that God was not going to bless my plans of reinventing the software company or developing a consulting business out of it. I then had peace: “All right, Lord, I know that you’re with me. I don’t know where you’re leading me, but I trust you.” And it has done nothing but strengthen my faith from that day forward.

Michael Scott Eger: Now, I’m sure you don’t know this, but just before my twenty-ninth birthday, I totaled my car. And before that period I felt a level of abandonment, and my faith kind of suffered. What happened was I fell asleep while driving, and I had a number of injuries, including a head injury, but otherwise no bones were broken. And when I looked at the picture of my car, I realized that it was completely totaled. The only place that was protected was the driver’s seat. And in that process I realized, despite all the feeling of being abandoned and having little direction in my life, I was still protected. And that kind of refocused me. I was always a person of faith, but you know, it goes up and down. Just before that it was pretty low. And afterwards I’m like, okay, mathematically, scientifically, there has to be a bigger explanation. I was out of the hospital in like five days, and I had to rebuild my life. But in that process I realized I was not forgotten, and He was always with me. That kind of cemented my faith life, and I realized, yeah, I’m never alone.

JR Rennie: So God will use all kinds of terrible things that happen in people’s lives and turn them around into a testimony for that individual, to get their attention, to redirect. There’s no reason why my software company should have failed. It was related to an employee issue. The software is bulletproof, and it’s still running businesses today. There’s no reason why that should have happened, but God used it in a way that led me to do something that He wanted to accomplish through my obedience.

The conversation shouldn’t only happen when life really sucks, and we reach out to God and say, “God, save me,” or “God, help me,” or “God, whatever.” It needs to be every day. It’s like, “All right, Lord, you gave me another day. What do you want me to do today? Hey Lord, I’m on this podcast with Michael. He’s gone through some terrible things. How can I help him? How can I encourage him in his faith and his walk with you?” It’s that constant connection with the Father that says, I want to do something that is pleasing to you, and I need to know what it is that you want me to do.

It’s not that I’m trying to earn God’s favor, because I can’t. I’m a sinful human being. What I want to do, though, is show my gratitude and appreciation by being available to Him whenever He tells me to do something. It’s more about my being available than it is about anything that I do. Because if He tells me to do something and I’m available to Him, He will accomplish His will. He’s just using me as a conduit for His love and affection. So however He connects with somebody through something that He’s asked me to do, He’s the one that gets the glory for it. All I did was say, “Okay, yes, I will collaborate, I will participate, I will share, I will encourage,” whatever it happens to be, so that I can be of use to Him. And I do that out of love and gratitude for who He is and what He’s done in my life.

Michael Scott Eger: Okay. So there are times that you use patience, love, forgiveness. Let’s say when you pray for patience, you don’t always get the ability to be patient. You get the opportunity to have to learn why you need to be patient.

JR Rennie: Yeah, yeah, yeah. I would never ask that prayer, “Lord, make me more patient.” Because basically you’re inviting an opportunity to be challenged in a way that you’re not going to appreciate at the moment. So instead of looking at self and the circumstances that you’re dealing with, look at others. When Jesus was asked what the two greatest commandments are, He said, love God with all your heart, soul, mind, and strength, and then love others as yourself. He doesn’t say love yourself, treat yourself to every good thing that you can possibly get on your credit card. No. He says love God and love others.

People that focus on their own pain, their own misery, their own terrible circumstances are going to be very miserable because of that focus. People that focus on God and how they can help somebody else… you may not have any material possessions to be able to share with another human being, but you can be kind to them. You can listen to them. You can be gentle with them. You can express God’s love to them. Those are all things that we have the power and authority to share with other people, and it doesn’t require us to be Elon Musk rich or Brad Pitt good looking. We don’t have to be those things to express God’s love to other people. And really, if you want the definition of how to be happy, it’s love God and love other people. Because that will create the circumstances that will cause you to have a joy-filled life.

Michael Scott Eger: Yeah, if you love yourself more than anything else, it makes you greedy, it makes you selfish, and it reduces the ability to have people and things that care about you.

JR Rennie: Yeah. Selfish, self-centered people are the loneliest, most miserable individuals out there, because they’ve got nothing of any real value. They may be the wealthiest person in the neighborhood, but they will be miserable, because when they shut the door and nobody’s looking, there’s nobody that cares about them in their life. Believers always have the Holy Spirit, and as a believer begins to walk out what God’s called them to do and demonstrate His love to other people, the life changes.

There is a list of things in Galatians 5:22–23 called the fruit of the Spirit. It’s love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, and self-control. Every one of us wants that. I don’t care how wealthy you are, you can’t buy it. It’s the thing that will heal our minds, heal our emotions, heal our souls. And it’s only available when we are obedient to what God’s asked us to do: to love Him and love others, to help somebody, even with your meager resources. Even if it’s nothing more than a smile, to acknowledge that you see them. There are so many people that are starved for attention and love in this world.

When you are obedient and you are producing that fruit, you also get to share in that fruit. It says in 2 Timothy 2:6, I believe, that the faithful farmer is the first to enjoy the fruits of their labor. So when you are laboring on behalf of God, showing His love to other people, you’re producing that fruit of the Spirit: love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, gentleness, faithfulness, and self-control. And you’re granting it to the person you are sharing that love with. But guess what? You also get to share in that harvest. In the process of demonstrating God’s love to other human beings, you get to experience that fruit of the Spirit, which is what your soul needs the most, and you can’t buy it no matter how much money you have.

Michael Scott Eger: So you’re saying that time on earth gives us experiences that build our character and might move us closer to the ideal human being?

JR Rennie: Yeah, there’s an acronym for the word Bible: Basic Instructions Before Leaving Earth. We were all created for a purpose. People that are saved and those that are unsaved were all created for a purpose. There is no expiration date on your purpose. So if you’re in your eighties or nineties, you can still achieve what God wanted to achieve in your life.

Your accident was not a surprise to God. He knew it was going to happen. How you react and respond going forward is the real challenge in your life. The failure of my software company was not something that surprised God. He knew it was going to happen. How I responded, in faith and trust in His leading and His provision, is what has made the difference. So it’s not that bad things aren’t going to happen to good people. Bad things happen to good believing people and good non-believing people. It’s that the believer has the presence of the Lord and the Holy Spirit in their life to help them get through it, and to use it as a testimony of God’s provision and love, to help somebody else.

I have a friend that recently lost a son. He died in a terrible car accident. I’ve watched their marriage deal with that pain. They’re holding it together right now, but not every marriage can when they lose a child. For those that have overcome one of the worst things that could happen to a parent, they now have the authority and agency to talk to somebody else who is going through that same experience and say, “I know what you’re going through.” The rehabilitation from your car accident has not been easy for you. It can’t be. But as you grow through this process, as you grow closer to God as a believer, He’ll begin to show you how something that you think is a hindrance is now something that allows you to speak to other people that need to be encouraged, that need to know there is more to life still waiting for them.

I had a prophet in a church setting pull my wife and me out of a crowd of two or three hundred people. He said, “You,” and he had us stand up. This was 2018, maybe ’19, so it was two years into this loss of identity. And he goes, “You think your best days are behind you? God’s developing new wineskins for your life. Your best days are ahead of you, and the things that you’re going to accomplish.” He knew nothing about me. He knew nothing about my ministry. But he got a word from God to tell me He’s got bigger plans for me. And if you have faith and trust in His leadership, and listen and obey when He tells you to do something, you get to experience that. So even though I have never replaced the income that I’ve lost since 2015, I’m eternally grateful for what God’s done.

Michael Scott Eger: Now, you mentioned wineskins. Not everyone reads scripture, and not everyone knows that verse. Could you explain that metaphor?

JR Rennie: Sure. Wine in the days of Jesus was stored in leather, some kind of wineskin. Whether it was made of goat or something else, I’m not sure. But they would sew this stuff together and put the new wine in it. As the wine fermented, it expanded and created a gas, and it stretched that leather to the point where it was almost bursting. It’s a one-time process. You can’t put fresh wine in an old wineskin. So what that prophet was saying was, you had this success, you had this status, you had this life, and it expanded to its limit. “I can’t put anything new in that. I’m giving you a new wineskin,” in this case, BrushFires Ministry. “I am going to expand that in your life to its fullest.” So that’s what that metaphor was. God’s swapping out my software ERP, MRP developer wineskin for a BrushFires Ministry wineskin that will allow me to encourage other believers, help them discover what their purpose is, disciple them in living it out and achieving it, and help them enjoy the exact same relationship with God that I’ve now been able to enjoy.

Michael Scott Eger: So the contents don’t change, but the container does.

JR Rennie: Yep. And the growth does, if you are abiding in Christ.

Michael Scott Eger: And time keeps on passing, and you move forward. Wine still ages and develops. The fermenting that produced the wine might not be as active, but the lessons, the contents, still develop.

JR Rennie: Yeah, they’re developing and they’re growing and they’re expanding. And really, my spiritual walk with God has grown by leaps and bounds in the last ten years. It has given me a perspective on life that I would never have had if I’d continued with a successful software company.

Michael Scott Eger: Now, is your ministry primarily on the web, or do you have a congregation?

JR Rennie: No, no. I am not a licensed pastor. I want to make that real clear. We do things through our video series, our books, and our coaching, which is all done over the internet. But we have done live presentations when a church wants us to minister with them and helps us get to that location. We’re happy to minister to the congregation if they want to learn about discipleship, how to become a mentor, how to understand human design, how to see the potential in an individual so that they can strive in the direction that God’s intended for their life. That’s what our ministry does. It helps people grow closer to God by being obedient to what He created them to do, by helping them to understand what He created them to do.

Michael Scott Eger: Okay.

JR Rennie: That’s probably been the most succinct way I’ve ever been able to put that.

Michael Scott Eger: I find sometimes my greatest phrases come under pressure. So what do you want to tell my audience in relationship to being healthy and happy?

JR Rennie: So the term happy is derived from the word happenstance. Happenstance is the circumstances that go through your life. As we’ve already proven here, not all life circumstances are going to be happy ones. What a person really wants is the love of God and the fruit of the Spirit. That’s what they really, really want. So if you want to be emotionally happy, spiritually happy, even physically happy, because those things can have a negative impact on your physical health, then what you need to do is, first and foremost, have a relationship with Jesus Christ as your Lord and Savior. And then, as He has made this available to you, establish and develop the relationship with God the Father, because He’s the one that’s got the marching orders for your life. He knows the fruit that He wants to produce through your obedience. And then, as He tells you to do things, even when they don’t make sense, and I’ve said that to Him more than once, do it. It’s worth it.

Faith is not Him telling you what’s going to happen in your life and you getting all the ups and downs in advance. Faith is Him saying, “I want you to do this,” and you doing it, not knowing why, not knowing how it’s going to turn out, not being given any guarantees of success or wealth or fame or anything like that, but simply listening and obeying.

There is a Hebrew word, shema, and it’s usually translated as “listen.” Well, your people are listening to us have a conversation right now. You’re listening to what I have to say. That’s not what shema means. Shema means listen with the intent of obeying. It’s like when your boss tells you to do something. It’s not a suggestion. He is saying, “I want you to get this job done before five o’clock.” That’s not a suggestion. You’re supposed to listen with the intent of obeying. When God tells His child something, He intends for you to obey, and obey out of faith and love. Add gratitude in there if you want. It’s those things that will allow you to move forward in your life, not knowing and not receiving any guarantees, but knowing that you can trust God for His love and for His provision and for His plan.

Michael Scott Eger: So what you’re saying is, despite all the storms of life, be quiet enough to listen and follow the directions through the next door.

JR Rennie: Yeah. This world teaches you that whenever you have a bad situation, focus on yourself, your resources, how to fix it. And to a certain extent that makes some sense. If there’s a sink full of dishes, there’s a solution to fixing that. You wash the dishes and you put them away. That is a simple solution. Life isn’t always simple. And when we are given a difficult challenge, and we simply look at ourselves and our lowly state and how miserable we are, we are going to be more and more miserable. But if we take our eyes off ourselves and look to God and go, “All right, God, I don’t know why you allowed this to happen. I trust in you. I trust that you’re going to deliver me through this, and that I will grow and love you more in the process. What do you want me to do? How do I move forward?” And then wait for Him to answer you.

Michael Scott Eger: That waiting’s the hardest thing sometimes.

JR Rennie: It is really hard, right?

Michael Scott Eger: Especially when you’re in survival mode, and all your evolutionary processes are saying must stay alive, must provide, must be safe.

JR Rennie: Yeah. I hear you. God has provided for us. I’m still not getting a full-time paycheck ten years later. Like I said, I get whatever’s left in the company at the end of the year. Our savings have been drawn down, but there have also been some miraculous deposits of money that have come into our family, through legal cases that my long-deceased father pursued that finally paid off ten, fifteen years after he died, and I was the beneficiary of that. It’s just odd circumstances where money comes in, and it’s like, okay, God, I hear you. You’re providing. Those things aren’t just good luck. That’s God saying, “I see you, I’m encouraging you. This doesn’t fix all your problems, but it is an encouragement to get through today, and maybe tomorrow.”

Michael Scott Eger: Yeah, when we pray “give us this day our daily bread,” it doesn’t say we can be the next Walmart. It just means that we are free from need. It doesn’t mean we’re free from want.

JR Rennie: Right. “Give us our daily bread” doesn’t mean a medium-rare filet mignon at the most expensive steakhouse in town. It may be lima beans and rice with a little bit of bacon in it. That might be the provision, but guess what? You can learn to enjoy that. I grew up in the South for a substantial part of my life, and I will tell you, Southern ladies can cook with some of the most meager ingredients, and it tastes good. So it doesn’t have to be filet mignon. If it’s black-eyed peas and ham hocks, that’s good too.

Michael Scott Eger: Okay. Now, if people want to learn more about what you do, where do we send them?

JR Rennie: So brushfires-digital.com is our website. You can find it through Google and everybody else. Our 800 number is there, our email address is there. They can reach out to me directly. If they register at the site, and it’s free to register, they’ll get four books, including our Sparks Turn Into BrushFires book, and one of our assessments, our Romans 12 spiritual gifts assessment, which we make available to everybody for free. And then if they want to discover and learn their purpose, they can sign up for our Design WorkShop. There is a fee associated with that, but that fee covers all the expenses of maintaining that site and having it available to everybody in North America. That’s how we fund our ministry. So if you want to discover your purpose and get your purpose statement written by myself or one of our mentors, sign up for the Design WorkShop. If you stay on that site, you’ll learn about our discipleship workshop that is in development right now. It’s a two-book series. The editor has the second book right now, so it should be available for pre-release next month.

Michael Scott Eger: Okay.

JR Rennie: That’s how they can find out more about us. Take a free assessment, get four free books, and go from there.

Michael Scott Eger: Okay, and the web URL is?

JR Rennie: BrushFires-dash-digital-dot-com. If you look over my shoulder there, it’s actually on the screen.

Michael Scott Eger: Okay. With great gratitude, I want to thank you for coming on Eager to Be Healthy. And till the next time we speak, be blessed.

JR Rennie: All right, thank you, Michael.

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