The Chris Voss Show - The Chris Voss Show Podcast – Exploring Faith, Purpose, and Transformation with Author David Richards

Episode Date: February 18, 2025

Exploring Faith, Purpose, and Transformation with Author David Richards Davidrichardsauthor.com About the Guest(s): David Richards is a distinguished author and thinker with a fervent passion for exploring themes of faith, spirituality, and personal transformation. As an author, he has published multiple books, including "Love Letters to the Virgin Mary" and "Whiskey and Yoga," showcasing his versatile writing ability and profound insights into human experience. David is committed to bringing thoughtful perspectives to storytelling, often intertwining thematic elements of religion and self-discovery. Beyond his writing, David offers coaching and workshops focused on enhancing executive presence and personal development. Episode Summary: In this engaging episode of The Chris Voss Show, host Chris Voss welcomes the insightful author David Richards to dive deeply into the themes of faith and personal transformation. Through their conversation, David discusses his prolific writing journey and the spiritual evolution that inspired his works, particularly during the pandemic. His latest book, "Becoming One With Christ," examines the profound intersection of faith, love, and personal growth, illustrating his belief that God's presence is within us all. Listeners are treated to a compelling discussion about the creative process behind David's notable works. From the origins of "Love Letters to the Virgin Mary" to the cathartic influence of COVID-19 on his writing, David shares how his experiences—both life-threatening and eye-opening—inform his work. The conversation ventures into thought-provoking territories, discussing the potential interconnectedness of quantum physics with spirituality, and the role of personal accountability in one's spiritual journey. David also talks about his earlier books like "Whiskey and Yoga," offering insights into finding one's purpose and aligning life's trajectory toward fulfilling one's deeper calling. Key Takeaways: Spiritual Exploration: David Richards emphasizes the importance of acknowledging God's presence within ourselves, challenging traditional religious narratives. Pandemic Inspiration: The challenges faced during the COVID-19 pandemic provided David with a significant source of inspiration for his recent writing endeavors. Quantum Physics and Faith: David's exploration of quantum physics provides a modern context for understanding timeless spiritual truths. Purpose and Self-Discovery: From his book "Whiskey and Yoga," David discusses the need for individuals to explore and determine their life's true purpose. Transformative Experiences: David's near-death experiences and life challenges significantly impacted his approach to both his personal and professional life. Notable Quotes: "The greatest test of faith is did Jesus conquer death?" "If you don't ask yourself the question, why do you exist, you're going to struggle through life." "I realized, oh my God, if I'm honest with myself and I'm honest with other people, like the truth really will set you free." "Faith is like a kayak. You have to get in the water of your life and figure out what it means." "Once you wake up to the fact that God is inside you, you see it in everyone else."

You wanted the best. You've got the best podcast, the hottest podcast in the world. The Chris Voss Show, the preeminent podcast with guests so smart you may experience serious brain bleed. The CEOs, authors, thought leaders, visionaries, and motivators. Get ready, get ready, strap yourself in. Keep your hands, arms, and legs inside the vehicle at all times because you're about to go on a monster education roller coaster with your brain. Now, here's your host, Chris Voss. Chris Voss here from thechrisvossshow.com. I don't know what's going on with our lady today. We just woke her up or something.

She's just doing the whole thing there. Anyway, guys, welcome to the big show. We certainly appreciate it. As always, the Chris Voss Show is a family that loves you but doesn't judge you and all that good stuff. Today, we're going to be talking with a wonderful young man about some of his insights and his multi-books that he has published that will enlighten your world, improve it, and all that good stuff. He's going to tell you how to make your life better. Or else.

I don't know what that means. You're either going to make your life better off of what he says, or you need to go back and listen to the damn show. Just like over and over again until you get it. So there you go. Opinions expressed by guests on the podcast are solely their own and do not necessarily reflect the opinions of the host or the Chris Foss Show. Some guests of the show may be advertising on the podcast,

but it is not an endorsement or review of any kind. We have an amazing young man on the show, as I mentioned before. David Richards joins us on the show. He is a passionate author and seeker of truth, dedicated to exploring faith, love, and personal transformation. His latest book, Becoming One with Christ, The Lessons of King David, reflects his journey through a test of faith during the pandemic. We all had a test

of faith during the pandemic, didn't we? Revealing deeper insights into love and devotion. Granted his belief that Jesus is the Messiah, he brings wisdom, clarity, and a thoughtful perspective to his work. Committed to excellence, David welcomes accountability and thoughtful critique in his pursuit of meaningful storytelling welcome to show David how are you I am fantastic Chris what an introduction Wow I'm excited to be here thank you so much for having me people always ask me they're gonna can we hire you to to write that sort of thing when I enter rooms please especially my wife and kids because they don't. They're like, who are you? Anyway, your latest book that we'll be talking,

we'll start talking off. We'll kind of run through a couple of them. It's called Love Letters to the Virgin Mary, the Resurrection of King David. Give us any dot coms. Where can people find you on the interwebs? Yeah, so it's going to be davidrichardsauthor.com. And right now, my latest book that's coming up becoming one with

christ is not there yet so you'll see love letters to the virgin mary but davidrichardsauthor.com is the place to find me here you go uh give us a 30 000 overview what's inside the book love letters to the virgin mary yes part of it was me trying to process my life and make sense of the pandemic and i found a just a stunningly beautiful picture of a woman on Instagram. I was working on a different topic for my book at the time. And I was so struck by this image. I said, I'm going to make this the inspiration for my book. And that took me on literally an 18 month journey just to come up with the title. And then what I looked at was, if you read the Bible you realize that king david

does not ascend to heaven that's actually part of in the bible and so i started to look at if that's true then what would hell be like for king david and that's basically what love letters to the virgin mary is about is what hell's like for king david yeah so are they love letters or are they is it documentation of his punishment? There's a combination. Part of it is the idea that if you understand the biblical story and the relationship between King David and Jesus, you know that there's a covenant made between the two of them where Jesus is responsible for establishing the everlasting kingdom. And so then looking at that, I said, okay, David would be someone who is obviously at some point has to be resurrected. And what would bring him back to life?

It would be the Virgin Mary. So there's some of it is the torment step back into history to explain how Christianity would have evolved knowing that King David hadn't ascended to heaven. So King David is writing the letters to the Virgin Mary? Yeah. So is he hoping for reprieve? Is he hoping to, you know, get, you know? Yeah, it's kind of, it's partly, I'm actually actually I've been working on a sequel that I'm not

sure that I'll finish yet, but it's the idea that he sees the Virgin Mary in the present day and is so struck by her beauty, and that awakens him to the reality that he has a relationship with Jesus Christ that now he must reconcile. Ah, well that's interesting. Now, sending love letters to the Virgin Mary, eh? That's God's chick, eh? They like had that hookup. You know, isn't that kind of cutting in on God's action?

That might upset them a little bit. They meet at the bar, there's going to be fists. There is one Bible verse. So it's, you know, it's John 3, 16. I think most people are used to where God so loved the world that he gave his only begotten son. When Mary finds out she's pregnant with Jesus, the archangel Gabriel says he will be given the throne of his father, David. So there is a connection between them.

And it's the idea, and that's kind of what, I know we haven't gotten to it yet, but the next book, Becoming One with Christ, is really about the idea that God's not outside you. The whole purpose of Jesus' teaching is God is inside of you. You get to wake up to that reality and discover it within yourself. And so that changes the paradigm on what God's chick being the Virgin Mary, there's a deeper symbol in it.

Darrell Bock Yeah. Yeah. The Love Letters to the Virgin Mary, And you came up with the book during COVID. A lot of great books got written during COVID. I did, yeah. So I had, it was kind of cool. I had a couple of wild experiences early in the pandemic. And one of those involved watching, of all things, a superhero movie. I was watching Marvel's Thor Ragnarok.

And I had this just kind of wild experience. And from that, I went back into the first Thor movie. And in the first Thor movie, which came out, I think, in 2011, there is a reference to King David. So I was like, that's really interesting. And then I started going through history, and I found out that when the Romans were trying to conquer what later became Germany, there was a

war kind of between the Norse gods, Thor and Odin, and Jesus, because the Romans had adopted Christianity in the early in the fourth century. And jewelers at the time in Germany weren't sure if their customers were going to worship Thor or worship Jesus. So they've actually found jewelry molds that have a hammer for Thor's hammer, or a cross for the cross for Jesus. So they've actually found jewelry molds that have a hammer for Thor's hammer, or a cross for the cross for Jesus. And I kind of started to get into that. I'm like, that's really cool. I can bring this into this idea that if God's not external, and there's an intro, and I mean, there's a couple references into the Bible that says you are all gods, like everyone's a god. And once you wake up to the fact that god is inside you you see it in everyone else but i said couldn't it be the idea that you know part of the story of thor is that

odin sends him to earth as a human for punishment and so i said could i connect king david and thor and so that's the other piece that's in the book too oh really yeah oh yeah so we're all yeah yeah now the forthcoming book or the upcoming book that you have maybe coming out sometime this year is the one that has, let me see if I can find it here real quick. The one that has, it's called Becoming One with Christ. Now, is that the second sequel to the book? It's not. It's not a sequel. It's a much more, I didn't really, I mean, I was not in a good psychological state during

the pandemic. I don't think a lot of us were. And I didn't have a good, really solid frame of reference for the significance of the relationship between King David and Jesus and the necessity of it to understand like reconciliation of the Bible. So I'd actually written a sequel to Love Letters to the Virgin Mary called Love Letters to Jesus, The Heart of Ragnarok. I wrote another book called Bringing God to Life. And I've been working with a coach for the past three years. And I guess probably last May, we're having a conversation. And she's like, yeah, but this still doesn't feel right. And so I was kind of like, okay, then what does it really take? Like, what do I need to write? And I said, what is the greatest test of faith? And the greatest test of faith is, did Jesus conquer death? That's really what it comes down to. And when I had that, asked myself

that question and got that answer, I said, I need to write a book about becoming one with Christ. That's the whole thing. Let me connect King David and Jesus from the biblical story, explain the evolution of history with kind of King David's failure to ascend as a consequence of the rise and advance of Christianity. And so it's a much more grounded in the biblical narrative. At the same time, I go huge into quantum physics. Like to understand the law of attraction and manifestation and how much of that, if you're familiar with Napoleon Hill's Think and Grow Rich, that book is based on Christianity. I mean, his book is based on Christianity. So lots of law of attraction, lots of Joe Dispenza, lots of Tony Robbins talking about the power of your voice and incantations, talking about visualizing from the place of what you want to experience, and that is kind of tied into Jesus' teachings. So, becoming one with Christ is much more concrete in terms of explaining the story

and making it relevant in the 21st century. Pete That should be very interesting. That should be very interesting. I'm excited. I'm excited. I think this one has a chance to impact the world on a big stage. And if people go to your website, sign up for your newsletter or something,

they can get notifications when that book comes out? Yes, absolutely. I'm still waiting to hear from the publisher on the launch date. We're working through the cover design right now. In fact, I should have sent you the cover design. It's pretty cool. Oh, do you have it? Yeah, I do. I'll send it to you. Okay, cool. Yeah, let me know if you want us to put that. Usually we put that on the final version of this broadcast that would be great that would

be great yeah to raise awareness for sure i'll look for that uh the other book you have which is kind of interesting too finding your purpose it's called whiskey and yoga find your purpose are we encouraging alcoholism with the exercises yeah you can see you can see a clear trend in my writing, right? I go from Whiskey and Yoga to now Salvation and Redemption for Israel's second king. Whiskey and Yoga, you know, for 11 years. Do we need to do an intervention here, David? I'm good.

No, I'm good. I am good. I got out of the Marines in 2006. All my life I'd wanted to be a writer. I got some stuff published when I was in high school, but I went to college at Penn State, and I knew I was going to become a Marine Corps officer upon graduation, so I kind of thought, okay, writing's nothing that's going to last. Well, you know, my brother was a Marine.

Oh, nice. And I remember he came home, and he didn't drink when he left, but he drank when he came back. And I remember he came back, and we had a bottle of vodka at the house and of course we were you know we're all 20 so we were just like mixing it with probably orange juice or something but he came back and he's like you want any booze here and i'm like yeah uh he took that bottle of vodka put it back and downed about a quarter of it and just straight right out of the bottle wow and he put it down and i remember looking him going this is some marine macho this is of course this is some this is some show-off

macho and a size like just looking at him into his eyes for him to blink or to like shudder you know he just he just backed he just backed the thing right up and and and i'm like holy shit and he goes yeah i mean he would drink like a 24 case of beer and just sit there and you just be like are you are you okay and but yeah he had he had a lever of steel from the marines it's it's part of the training process it's part of the training to become a marine but so i got out of the marines and i kind of realized i'm not going to be moving around anymore and so i thought i can start writing again and for 11 years i wanted to write horror stories i wanted to become the next stephen king and just couldn't make it work and then in christmas of 2016 i started reading thinking

go rich by napoleon hill in the first or second chapter he says what is the purpose of your life and i was like what a concept That is such a great question. And you came up with whiskey and yoga? So I was a yoga instructor besides my corporate job, and I loved scotch. And for Christmas that year, someone gave me a whiskey and yoga t-shirt. And I was like, well, that's ironic. And then when I read Napoleon Hill, I said, I'm going to write my first book about finding your purpose. I'm going to call it Whiskey and Yoga. And that was it.

I found I've meditated a lot on whiskey and vodka. I think we all have. But usually I'm not doing yoga because if there's a girl over, there might be some yoga. I think, yeah, back in the day, that was the machine fuel. And yeah, if there was a girl over, there was fun that ensued. So yeah, there was some whiskey and yoga there was fun that ensued so yeah there was there was some whiskey and yoga nights i think in my past i'm come to think of it that those that i can remember let's put it that way so in the book you help people find your purpose so what i guess the

whiskey and yoga is kind of a memoir about your experience through all of that you're not recommending whiskey and yoga as a workout are you or is this a new exercise trend i mean we talked about that in the pre-show right there is there is some things that you can do but no unless you live in austin texas i understand in austin there are bars where you can use yoga and then order a drink this is really yeah yeah wow i haven't been there but i've heard that oh i so how i brought whiskey and yoga, I thought there has to be a connection besides just the irony of a t-shirt. And then I thought about it. So each one tells the journey of a spirit. Like in whiskey, it's the journey through a cask and the aging process.

And in yoga, it's the journey of the spirit inside you as you go through your practice. And so, okay, that's pretty cool. And so there's no, I don't think there's any references for advocating for drinking, but it's really about understanding if you don't ask yourself the question, why do you exist and assign yourself a higher motive to what that means, then you're going to struggle through life. And so the idea that you can orient yourself to a magnetic or true north to guide you to serve and become more to greater Level is really the idea behind finding your purpose in life. Ah, there you go

So we're not gonna get Jane fun or Suzanne summers to start in workout trend here I don't think so. I might call Cindy Crawford and see if she'll yes. They see what Cindy's up to her rights They're all they're all kind of bored right now. They're not getting calls from movies evidently or something. I saw Brooke Shields the other day and, whoa, she looks, wow, it's catching up to her. I see Brinkley. Did she ever do workout videos? I'm trying to think of, who's the gal from Australia who's in the movie Grease who did

workout videos? Oh, Olivia Newton-John? Olivia Newton-John. Yeah, I was trying to get that. Let's get physical. See, we're doing the marketing tie-in here for the book. I love it. That's genius. Genius. Whiskey and yoga, finding your purpose. If you don't find your purpose doing that, well, I don't know what to tell you people. Another book that you have is called The Lighthouse Keeper, A Story of Mind Mastery. I believe it's a novel.

Is that correct? It is. Yeah. So it was born out of my practice of yoga. It's actually inspired by a chapter or section in the skin yoga. And it's just the idea of how do you master your mind? And so it tells the story of a young man who doesn't want to inherit his dad's chicken business and decides he wants to become an apprentice at a lighthouse and when he gets there he kind of goes on this trip inside

his mind where he has to reconcile him to his younger self and figure out how to take control of his mind ah you got to take control of your mind got to but whiskey's kind of the antithesis of taking control of your mind isn't it though it though? It is. That's why I stopped drinking. I was like, I can't do both. I quit drinking in 2020. It's the best thing I ever did. I mostly just did it for my health because I really, really needed that. And yeah, it was pretty wild.

Your other book, On the Lighthouse Keeper, so it's a novel about how the life he's currently living ends. And it's not the life or the ending he wants. And he has to make a choice to try his hand as a light keeper's apprentice. Is there a William Dafoe movie about this recently? There might be. You know, it's funny. That's right.

That movie came out on Halloween. Halloween 2019. That's right. That movie came out on Halloween. Halloween 2019. I remember that. Actually, it's cool, too, because I'm meeting with an agent next week about potentially turning that into a movie. So we'll see. You can do his number four book or whatever. His number, his sequel. Yeah.

It's Friday, people. Why not? Tell us about some of the offerings you do on your website. I see some workshops and some speaking gigs that you do and different things. Tell us about some of the offerings you have there. People maybe get involved with you. Do you do coaching or consulting? Yeah.

So I have a practice called Epic Executive Presence Coaching. And the motto we have is own the room, inspire the world. And I help clients establish an executive presence so they communicate effectively, deliver impact and drive alignment and action. So you can book me for speaking engagements. I talk with teams about how to do that, how to build trust and cohesion within the teams. I do one-on-one coaching and I also do workshops. There you go. Do you have an upcoming workshop coming up or anything you want to plug there? You know what? I don't. I've been so heads down on building out this next book and I'm building a course to go with it to explain to people, kind of stop

projecting God outside of you and start manifesting it and bring it to life inside of you. So that's been my heads down. I've kind of put my calendar for workshops on hold, but I'm ramping up with some coaching products coming soon. Stuff like that. Helping people find their purpose. Is that what you intend to do? Is some sort of purposeful training or we're just talking about some of the different aspects of religion and things of that nature? You know, I never kind of saw myself, for me, religion was very much a constraint. And it's not an accusation or judgment as people who go to church, but I find it's very dogmatic a lot of times.

And ultimately, to understand what it really means to embody the message of Christ, you have to personalize it. And I think in my kind of perspective has evolved to where I look at religions as like cruise ships. You know, it's nice, you have to follow the rules, but someone else is really doing the steering. And faith is like a kayak, you have to get in the water of your life and figure out what it means. And so that's kind of the direction my life is going is to talk more about that and kind of gently and compassionately break down the conventional idea that God is external and outside of you and wake people up to something that's inside of them and always has been. I'd rather pay myself tithing than someone else. That's just how I roll.

Now, tell us about your, you had a near-death child experience. I did. Tell us about how your, what your upbringing was and what your influences were. Yeah, so my dad was in the Marines. He had been in Vietnam from 1966 through 1967 as an infantry platoon commander. I was born in 69. And most of my life we lived on military bases. And if you've never been on a military

base, it is a world unto itself. It's got movie theaters, gyms, the bigger ones have schools. It's, I mean, every day, everyone goes to work at the same time, everyone's wearing the same uniform. So it's a very safe and kind of traditionally conservative environment. And for one four-year period, we lived out in town. So we lived in the civilian world in Hyattsville, Maryland, when I was going through kindergarten through third grade. And it was wild because on base, all the houses look the same. I mean, they might be painted differently, but they're structurally, they're popcorn, basically. And when we lived in high school it's completely

different so my best friend was this kid named danny who lived up the street about a block and this was i mean 1974 1975 and like six year olds we were roaming the neighborhood you're not going to see that today like there's there was no this was before helicopter parenting was invented and danny was a was a great kid we had lots of fun together he had an older brother who was my brother's age three years older than me and then they had an older brother who was i think 12 so 6 9 and 12 the challenge with danny was he used to get really really upset like incredible hulk upset to the point where his brothers would have to restrain him.

And we just called him a spaz. Like he just spazzed out. You didn't know when it was going to happen. You didn't know what was going to cause it, but it would just happen. So one day we were, I don't know if it was after school or during the summer, but we had found our way into some stranger's backyard. And there was some construction going on in the backyard.

I don't know if the house was being refurbished, but there were like, you know, those sawhorses, and there was like a door or something. And then there was a hammer lying on the ground. It was sometime in the afternoon, and Danny's oldest brother, also named David, looked at that and said, we got to go home to eat dinner. And that immediately set Danny off.

And it was like this. He just filled up with Kool-Aid. His face and head went entirely red. And his eyes bugged out. And both his brothers started to approach him like you might approach an angry dog. I mean, they're just kind of cautiously moving forward to him. He grabs the hammer at his feet and instant like looks at everyone and his his older brother said run and so we all turned to run and danny threw the hammer and i remember seeing there

was a like a curtain of bamboo along the side of the house as a screen from the neighbor's house and the hammer hit me in the back of the head oh wow and i was out yeah and then and i didn't i didn't i put this memory away from me but i came back to it during the early part of the pandemic i remember looking at his brother carrying my body down to their house from outside my body oh wow and i was like 15 feet behind i couldn't get close it's a very dark scene wow and i realized if my conscious presence wasn't in my body then that's not a good sign that's not a good sign yeah that's that's not good and then i came to it at some point later and you know back home bandaged around my head and danny was there with his mom and he had been

crying and he gave me a coloring book and life went on but i like i said i put that experience i mean i was six when that happened i was 50 at the beginning of the pandemic and i probably came back to that event in may of 2020 and just realized oh my god i had an out-of-body experience at six years old that i couldn't explain yeah you may have you know some people do that and then they come back yeah six i think that happened to him with yeah he od'd yeah he's eod'd and and all that good stuff so yeah that was crazy and you know people leave their body and come back and i try not to leave my body i try and stick with it um sometimes my shadow has its own ideas but you know's the trouble. Our shadows usually do.

Those are the troubles, as they would say. It sounds like, yeah, why in 2020 were you having this cathartic moment? I mean, was it just the COVID thing and all the kind of crisis that was surrounding it? You know what, Chris? I had, at an early age, and this is in Love Letters to the Virgin Mary, at an early age, probably, in fact, before this Hammer incident when I was six, I had this idea that was gifted to me that somehow a woman was going to lead me back to God. That was, and it was like, I remember. A lot of guys have that idea. Yeah. But I would watch like i would watch disney movies

oh like i'm like i'm like that that's legit that's the kind of love i'm looking for that's a lot of guys fall into that trap the disney the disney delusion and and it stayed with me and i got into high school and i realized okay i'm not like other dudes like this is they're interested in sex and i'm like trying to win women with flowers. And I went through two marriages and two divorces. And I was just like, this is not this is not it. And as the pandemic started, I was leaving a three and a half year relationship. And in some ways, it had been my best relationship because we had so much in common.

We both love the same kind of music. She loved football. It was just great energy between us. But she didn't have she didn't believe in something higher than herself. Like she didn't believe in God. And that relationship ended in October of 2019. And at the same time, I got into the Tony Robbins world in like 2017. And part of it had been when I realized my relationships weren't working, I would figure out a way to get out of those. And usually that involved infidelity.

Like, I'm like, this is not the thing that I'm looking for. Whatever it is, this isn't it. And I kind of, I started to hate who I was becoming. And then as I got into the Tony world, I realized, oh my God, if I'm honest with myself and I'm honest with other people, like the truth really will set you free. And so in the early part of the pandemic, I was doing Joe Dispenza meditations. If you're familiar with his work. No, I'm familiar with vodka or what is it? Whiskey and yoga. Whiskey and yoga yeah so dispensa does these incredible meditations where he basically has taken a scientific approach to

activating your pineal gland drawing on you know ancient egyptian history in the eye of horus as their symbol of the pineal gland and you can have these mystical experiences and so at the end of march of 2020 i was doing one of these meditations in the evening. And I basically did the meditation and I had a life review. Like it was my review of my life, why my life had turned out the way it had. And I was, okay, this is pretty spectacular. I finished it. It was like an hour long meditation.

I finished that. And then four days later, I saw the image of this woman. And what was so striking about it was that was I had just started following her. It was this French woman who was a school teacher and a semi-professional bodybuilder. And we've been in touch a little bit over the years. And most of her pictures were either of her in nature, like in the Swiss Alps with her friends, or showing off her sculpted physique. But in this picture, she was in a black dress that completely covered her physique and standing in this field of golden wheat. And like, instantly, I was like, I've seen this picture

before. And not that she had posted it before, but I've seen this picture before. And in that moment, I said, I'm going to write this story. This picture is becoming the basis for my story. And as I mentioned at the beginning of our time together, the Bible towards the end in the book of Revelation mentions a woman clothed in the sun. And so that's what I wrote about in Love Letters to the Virgin Mary was this picture of this woman was the woman clothed in the sun in the book of Revelation. That was like the virgin mary and it was it's really pretty dig pretty deep and then just the first i would say between march when the pandemic happened until may i had some really seismic experience i had this thor ragnarok thing watching the thor ragnarok movie and then started to peel back oh my gosh there's a connection to thor and king dav Thor Ragnarok movie and then started to peel back oh my gosh

there's a connection to Thor and King David in the first Thor movie and then by July 4th of that year I was like I don't I don't physically believe in the story of Jesus like that this is kind of this is my journey of faith what does it take for me to believe that he is who he says he is and he did what he said he'd come. So you had a crisis of faith? Yeah. Oh, yeah. Huge, huge crisis for sure. You know, I think COVID gave everyone a crisis of faith of whatever you believe in.

It definitely was a weird time. And let's not do that again, folks. Can we do that? Yeah, seriously. Yeah, let's skip that. I'm like freaking out over the bird flu that's going on right now. Evidently, a bunch of farmers have it. I was reading this morning.

I was just like, yeah, great. That's all we need is more of that. And now eggs are $10 a dozen or something. Yeah, it's really hard to throw eggs at people's houses anymore. Do you realize that we were so rich 20 rich 20 30 years ago that we used to throw eggs at people's houses i do cost anything yeah that or toilet paper people's trees for the papers yeah and for the paper used to be something else efficient use freely just utilize so yeah there's anyway oh you know hey it's cool that we we got through it we survived you know, hey, it's cool that we got through it. We survived. You know, we need these moments to test ourselves, to test maybe our moxie or belief systems,

to challenge them. For sure. To, you know, do a checkup from the neck up. Boy, I haven't heard that for a long time. And do a checkup from the neck up and see, you know, if, you know, what you believe is what you are. You know, it's good to analyze these things and really take them apart because you know sometimes we grow out of things sometimes sometimes we need

to do it the checker from the neck up to do an inventory and be like what's going on around this place yeah a little too busy and it's also i mean i talked about quantum physics playing a huge part in really both Love Letters and this new book, Becoming One with Christ. And, you know, if you look at the idea of multiverses, I know, I don't know if you heard, but I think right before Christmas, Google had their quantum chip that saw Willow is the name of the chip. And it solved a problem in five minutes that it would take our fastest supercomputers 10 septillion years to

solve. And so you think about the idea of a multiverse and you've heard it from, you know, Zuckerberg talked about it. There's other people who've talked about the multiverse and you start to think if that's the next stage of evolution is understanding that it's not just one universe, but there's a multiverse that would be and for me that would be my idea of how heaven and earth connect i mean that's that's kind of the segue that i'm taking into my next book well it sounds like quite the journey you've been on you've had some interesting experience in life that have shaped you and now you're sharing some of that thing i just want to see the the jane fonda suzanne summer's workout video now with the whiskey yeah poor richard simmons it has passed

god rest his soul but uh yeah i i want to see i mean jane fonda has always been a little unstable i mean we think we've all known that since vietnam um jenna see here's right now going what is he going on about oh you can google it kids anyway she's a wonderful woman. I like Jane Fonda. But, you know, I think maybe she might be drinking at this point. Maybe Cher. You know, we tend to drink in our old age because it makes the pain go away. Some people do that in their youth. Anyway, that sounds like a Marine story. It might be.

I'm sure there's one in there for sure. The Marines, man. I just, the way you guys can drink, man. God bless you. They used to, so we stopped we had three ships that were in our deployed units when we were in the pacific before we left before we left for somalia one ship stopped in singapore and the other two shot stopped in thailand and in thailand they keep track of the number of beers the Marines can drink in the time that they're there. Oh, yeah.

Because then the next group has to try and beat that group. What? Oh, yeah. Holy shit. And it's thousands of cans. I know we have one of the greatest fighting. I don't know. Maybe that's the fuel for the greatest group known to man, et cetera, et cetera.

Certainly. You can't get away with that if you want to be a SEAL, that's for sure. No. SEAL training in hell week, that's kind of crazy. It is. That's intense. Final thoughts as we go out, pitch people to reach out to you, order your books, services, et cetera, et cetera, and your.com.

Yeah, davidrichardsauthor.com if you want to find out more about my books, if you want to book me for a workshop or speaking engagements or even a coaching business opportunity as well i'm on instagram at david richard's author and you can find me there and stay tuned for more information about my next book hey david thanks for coming on the show we really appreciate it chris it's been a pleasure thank you so much for having me what a journey and thanks for tuning in go to goodreads.com fortress chris fuss linkedin.com fortress chris fuss you can order up his latest book love letters to the Virgin Mary the resurrection of King David and watch for the new one to come out thanks

for tuning in be good to each other stay safe we'll see you guys next time