Lessons - How to Turn Your Darkest Season Into Your Greatest Strength | Travis Hearn - Phoenix Suns Chaplain & Author of The Fire Is For You

0:00 In this lessons episode, discover how life's hardest trials can become catalysts for purpose and personal growth. Understand why success and wealth cannot replace inner peace. Explore how adversity can refine character and reshape priorities and uncover how faith and perspective can help navigate life's most difficult seasons. So you're writing a book, The Fire is for You, and that's really focused on your journey. And when somebody chooses a title for a book, it always has a lot of meaning and significance to them. So as we go through your journey, The Fire is for You, what does that mean to you as a title and why did you choose it?

0:44 But what does it mean to you as you go through all these inflection points in your life? For example, when you go through that title, point where you have your DUI, you go to your mom's pastor's house for the first time. Connect those dots for me. Great question. The fire is for you title. The book is not a book. It is about what happened and things that I've been through. The book is for you. The book is for the reader. The book is because every one of us, every one of us go through fires, right? So you just said like you have a business or you're chasing, we all do that, man. Like, man, I wanna build a great company.

1:25 The church is a business. The church is a ministry, but it's a business. It is a it is a corporation. It has money coming in, money going out. You know, we've got I've got 50 full time employees, probably another 50 part time. And like the church is a business. You're growing a church. Yes, it's ministry. But there is this business. We have a department. We got to conform and abide by laws and all these things. So, you know, so Impact Church, my church, it's entrepreneurial, entrepreneur birthed out of a Bible study for the Arizona Cardinals. So the Arizona Cardinals football team, you know, started Bible study for the football team, eventually opened it to the public and the rest is history. So, yeah. Going back to your question, my church is flooded with people going through fires.

2:09 So is this nation. So is this world. Man, I'm going through depression. That's a fire. Anxiety, fear, guilt, worry, shame. Shame? Oh my gosh. The times that we've done stuff in our life that we're not proud of, and we know other people that hurt them, and we can carry this shame, this guilt. And so those are fires, man. Cancer. My stepfather was diagnosed with cancer given two to five years to live. It's my mom's, you know, third marriage, her first great marriage. He's a good man. That's a fire. My sibling who is fighting fentanyl addiction. That's a fire. Like we all go through fires, man.

2:51 Addiction, alcoholism, brokenness, divorce, failure, my business. Dude, I... This is the fourth time I've tried to get a company off the ground. And all four of them have, like, that's a fire, right? So what I have learned in my own life is that God... God, there are no wildfires in life. There are only controlled fires. Meaning, scripture, whether somebody believes in it or not, you can't deny the things that it says, the truth, the little nuggets of truth. Like, thou shall not murder. Maybe you don't believe in God or Jesus, but I mean, that's a pretty good rule to live by. It doesn't matter if you don't believe in God.

3:31 Yeah. Don't murder. Don't commit adultery. I mean, that's kind of good. Don't lie. Don't cheat. Don't steal. Don't, you know. But one of them, one of the scripts or a couple of them, but it talks about how we get put in the fires to be tested and that fire purifies us, right? It refines us. So the fire of brokenness that I went through, the fire of that failure. That's going to refine me because I'm not doing that ever again. So that's refining me, right? The fire of whatever, infidelity or the fire of cheating and you get caught. Okay, well, that sucks. We're human, man. We have all done human stuff.

4:13 But hopefully we learn from that and we go, man, I need to change some things about who I am. Maybe I need some therapy. Maybe I need some counseling, right? And so the fire being for you, it purifies you. Hopefully it burns out the image. It doesn't feel like it though. And the moment it's hot, it burns. It feels like the house is going to burn down. See, in the Bible, it uses three metaphors for trial. It uses storms. It uses valleys and it uses fires. Right. And so the fire is for you is a book for people to go, dude, I've gone through some some hell. And this book is going to help you get through your hell. I've gone through some hell, too.

4:53 You know, being a man of faith doesn't exempt you, doesn't put an umbrella of like, you know, like, dude, this is life. This is in heaven. You know, it rains on the just and the unjust and good things happen to bad people and bad things happen to good people. And so. So going back to your story, the fire is for you. That's what that title means to me. Because like two years ago, I went through the fire of my life. My family, we went through the fire of our life and it almost killed me. So and I want to talk about what that fire was in a second. I want to go there just yet. I just want to I want to just point out. So even when you're getting that DUI and kind of just like tying back to something that I mentioned about.

5:34 If it didn't happen, who knows when it would have happened, right? And that's like the perfect example of fires for you. And I think that... Without the biblical analogies, I think that when people go through stuff, when people go through really hard times, the people that I repeatedly see come out of that successful, because everybody goes through it. It's not like, hopefully, it doesn't happen to me. Life's going to happen to you. Life's going to happen to you. Fire's going to happen to you. Right. But it is how you come out on the other side of it. So how did you come out on the other side of that DUI? But I do want to, and I'll answer that question. I do want to say you literally just, you literally, you just, you were a preacher for a second.

6:15 Because here's why. Because you said, well, you said it's not if, it's when. Yeah. Right? Well, David said in one of the most famous chapters in the Bible that every rapper has done a segment on this chapter is, even though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, right? I shall fear no evil for you are with me. What does he say? He says, even though I walk, he doesn't say, I hope I don't. He doesn't say maybe hope like it might. No, he says, even though and and and those are valleys. And so going back to that DUI, I wouldn't be who I am today without it. I always say I went from jail to Jesus like like that was a wild day. I went from like I had this cool accolade and, you know, got an award to like, dude, I got arrested, put in jail.

6:59 to like, dude, I just discovered my purpose in life. And yeah, it did shape me. It did define me. God has no, this is what I've learned, dude. I'm in the people business. I have billionaires in my church, 500 millionaires, 200 millionaires, like it's Scottsdale. It's the entrepreneurial hub of the nation. It's a very wealthy city. Very wealthy city, very affluent. I pastor pro athletes. I have for 23 years. The biggest names in sports are in my church. They're in my phone. I pastor them, right?

7:39 This is the thing. When you talk about mine, mine was jail. I was like, dude, I screwed that up. But a lot of times people have everything and it looks seemingly good realizing, dude, I have nothing. And a great example of that is a friend of mine that I had on our stage in year three of the church is Reverend from Run DMC. Right. And I interviewed him and I go, dude, like, when did you become a Christian? Because he's obviously very vocal about his faith. And he goes, my top, he goes, my top was my bottom. And I go, tell me, he goes, you know how a lot of people, they hit rock bottom and then like, oh, I found God. I found real. I'm like, yeah, yeah, I know about that. I know. And he goes, well, mine was the opposite.

8:20 I'm run run DMC at the peak of like run DMC. Right. He's like, dude, I got everything you can buy. I bought it. I've got everything money can buy. I've got any any earthly thing that you want in this world. I got it. And he goes, and I felt so spiritually. bankrupt, that in my bathtub, right then and there with a pile of weed on the bathtub, he's like, I said, you know what, I'm going to give this Jesus thing a try. You know, and I think... What are we trying to do? I can tell you story after story after story, Scott. I can tell you hundreds of stories of people who are trying to chase what many of us are trying to chase, and they've got it.

9:06 I can tell you the hundreds and hundreds of people that have gotten it, and they go, Yeah. Dude, this is empty. This is lonely. I'm broken. I have 30, 40, 50, 100 million dollars, 200 million dollars in the bank. I'm broken. So what actually is the meaning of life? You know what I'm saying? And that's what I discovered from me being put in jail. You know, it was like, dude, and it wasn't my first time in jail. Dude, I told you I partied my face off. I, you know, I got in trouble for stealing and I got in trouble. Like, he's just brokenness. And so the fire is for you is like, yeah, that was a fire. The DUI was a fire.

9:47 Disappointing my mom, man, that was dude, like that was a fire. And, but at the same time, there was a fire going on before those moments. And the fire was just like, dude, who am I? What am I supposed to do? Why am I here? What is this what it's about? Win awards? Yeah. get on a starting team, be a star. That's what life is about. And I can tell you star after star after star, NFL, MLB, NBA, WNBA, who they look, they're all stars to us. But like, I know the truth. I know what's going on in their lives. You know what I'm saying? And like, life is tough, man. Hurt people, hurt people, broken people, break people. Like that's what life is.

10:27 And so for me, the fire is for you is not about me. Yes. I'm telling many of my stories, but it's giving people tools to get through the fires that they're going through right now. Tools, like real tools. Like, how do I do this, man? How do I do this? Like, I had a player my first year in pro sports, and I won't. My last ring. Yeah, yeah, yeah. I'm 25 years old or something like that. And, you know, I'm walking in the hallways of an arena, and I'm like, dude, there's Shaq, there's Kobe. They're on the Lakers, and they played the Suns that day. And I was starstruck. You know, like I'm like starstruck. I'm like, dude, I'm 25. I'm like, this is my first time ever doing this. I didn't sleep the night before.

11:08 I was like, this is crazy. And I called Natalie. I went around the hallway. I'm like, dude, Shaq's the biggest dude I've ever seen in my life. Like I'm literally as big as his leg. You know, Natalie's my wife. And so I'm starstruck until like the third game. And in the NBA, we have chapel before every game. By the way, the NBA is a business. The NFL is a business. Major League Baseball is a business. The WNBA, it's a business. They're a business. Multi, you know, million, billion dollar businesses, right? I think it's fascinating that they make space for, like, people to, like, have a little devotional. I think it is interesting. I've never heard of this before I heard of you. To be quite honest, I didn't know that exists. I didn't either.

11:49 Until it, you know, until I got invited to be a part of it. I didn't even know it was a thing. Yeah. But like, so for the NBA before every game, one hour before every game, we have a little 15 minute window of chapel and it's both teams come or invited. And, you know, in that moment, we'll talk maybe a verse of scripture, but just like you're getting centered. You're about to go perform. So no matter all, it's all, it's all centering. It's all like it's centering its routine. So, hey, I might own a company. I might own a McDonald's. I might own an Arby's. I might own 15 of them. I might own 3000 of them. But like, but but don't don't miss out on this, this, this kind of power to go.

12:31 But you know what? I do need I needs to center myself because we just go. And then, you know, and then pretty soon, like what you said, we're going and blowing. And then it's like, dude, now, like, man, I lost my marriage. I wasn't there for my children's games. And man, I made a lot of wealth. Yeah, but then you wonder, what's it for? And then you're wondering, what's it for? Thanks for tuning in. If you found this valuable, don't forget to hit that subscribe button so you never miss an episode. And if you want to dive deeper into this conversation, check out the links in the description to watch the full episode. See you in the next one.