The Eric Metaxas Show - Rip Wahlberg

Episode Date: November 23, 2023

Pastor and Author of "Shattered" Rip Wahlberg 

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And now here's your Ralph Cramden of the Airways, Eric Mat, Texas. Folks, in this hour, I get to talk to someone I've known for some time. How did I meet Rip Wahlberg? My guest is Rip Wallberg. It was through Ken Fish. Some of you know Ken Fish. Rip is a pastor, and he's now an author, who's written a book. This is tough stuff.

The book is called Shattered. surviving and thriving after the worst pains of life. Rip Wahlberg, my friend, welcome. Yeah, thanks, Eric. Good to be with you. You've written this book about something that happened 15 years ago. So the book is just out called Shattered, Surviving and Thriving After the Worst Pains of Life. So give us the Nutshell version, and then let's get into it.

Because processing this with God. God is the, it's the big picture. So yeah, talk about that. Yeah, so the big picture is we lost our son, Aden, to a sudden drowning accident 15 years ago. And what I wanted to write about was not just the story and how God is good in the midst of the story, but what do we do typically? We kind of hide our pains from the Lord. And that the actual opposite is true that if we allow God into our pain, it actually helps us process it, and that we find there's hope to survive and thrive after the worst pains of life if we'll let God touch our wounds. And so that's what I was trying to drive at. So give us the backstory, Rip,

where did you, where did you get a name like Rip? Where'd you get a cool name like Rip? Let's start there, Rip Wahlberg. Yeah, so I was, my name is Richard. but my parents always intended for me to be called Rip. I was named for my dad's best friend that he grew up with, and that was my given nickname from birth. And where did you grow up? I grew up in Tramble, Connecticut. Oh, in Trumbull, so you're a Connecticut boy like me.

I am a Connecticut, New England native. And when did you find God? When did God come into your life? As I mentioned, I know you through our mutual friend Ken Fish. when did that happen in your life so grew up into the church went to black rock church for um until my mom passed away when i was 13 went to black rock church i remember walking into my mother's bedroom when i was like four years old i don't know how i know i was four but i seem to remember i was like four got up on her bed and said in the morning it was like mom i want to have jesus in

my heart and right then and there just she's like okay let's go and prayed with her and that was kind of you know that was that beginning um and i've always always loved god's word always had kind of an affinity for like it comes i'd say it comes quickly to me and i've always been passionate about faith so when did you uh when did you decide you wanted to go into the ministry or how did that happen when did you get married i want to get so when i was yeah when i was 15 i had gotten back from a trip with teen missions where I went to Alaska for the summer. This was actually the summer after my mom passed away and came back and I was like just, this is amazing.

I love God's word. I experienced him for the first time right on that missions trip where the presence of God came in the room filled it. Like you couldn't breathe and you didn't want to breathe improperly. It was awesome. And I came away from that going, I want to be in ministry. Like, I want to do this somehow. And so when I was 15, that was kind of the initial, the thing that was the catalyst for me wanting to go into ministry.

Kind of took some terms and stuff. You mentioned losing your mom at 13. That's a huge thing. I mean, here we are. The book is about losing your four-year-old son. But that's a big deal for a 13-year-old boy to lose his mom. I mean, that must have been very difficult right there. You know, a lot of people turn away from God because of things like that, especially young people.

Yeah, it rocked our family pretty good all the way to the core. I mean, we were never really the same. We kind of held it together, but, you know, by God's grace, like my dad now lives three miles from me, and that's a wonderful thing. But, yeah, it rocked us for a while, and I didn't process that probably until I was about 30 years old. Man. Yeah, it was interesting. But so you knew early on, obviously, that you wanted to pursue your faith.

It was the most important thing to you. So what did you do about that? When did you get married? Talk about that. So I kind of have backed into ministry. Like a lot of people will go into school and whatnot. I got trained up in the church, was a vineyard pastor, went to a vineyard church in New Haven, got trained and equipped, came down here.

After we got here into Pennsylvania in Lancaster, about four months later, I was like, God, why are we here? What did you do? And he spoke, I said, you don't just up and move a family with five kids for no good reason. And he immediately said, I brought you here because I'm going to move the other pastor on into a different assignment. and I'm going to give the church to you. Don't do a thing.

You don't have to do anything for it. God said this to you. A hundred percent. So you're one of those people that hears from God. I like that. It's a lot of people want to hear from God. I'm one of them, and sometimes we hear from God. But some people like you and Ken Fish, you have a real gift from God that you're able to hear him in a way.

That's just amazing to me when you just put it that way, so a matter of factly. every now and then but yeah it was pretty it was interesting it's a whole story to itself and so yeah about two years later or so they approached us and that ball started rolling and we eventually

took the church over in time but but then we had this hiccup of this book right in the midst of it yeah this is not a hiccup this is like an earthquake the loss of a child yeah this was this was an earthquake this is a big big big big after they, sorry, three weeks after they announced to the church that we were going to take the church over, that's when everything blew up and Aiden drowned.

So we got delayed in that transition a while, but yeah. Do you write in the book about how this happened, or is that something you don't want to go into? Oh, no, absolutely. Yeah, the book starts out with the phone call from my wife, where I was hanging sheetrock in my garage. with my father-in-law and my best friend. And my phone rings, and it's the hottest day of the year in the summer. And I pick it up, it's Amory, and she says, Rip, you got to come to Connecticut right now. Aidan just drowned.

And my mind just exploded. Like, wait. And I had to kind of catch up to what she said and absorb it for like half a second, but there was such urgency in her voice. I couldn't wait. I mean, you're a four-hour drive. We're a four-hour drive to Trumbull. And you know how I know that?

I was in Lancaster recently and drove to Danbury, Connecticut. And it's a four-hour drive if you're going 75. Honestly, that's a long way to get a call like that. Yeah. I mean, so your wife was in Connecticut visiting family, or how did it happen? Yeah, so she had taken all five of our kids back to Connecticut to see some friends of ours, very close friends of ours. In fact, we just saw them a week ago and had dinner with them. So we are still friends with them closely.

She took them up there. They were hanging out at their pool in Trumbull, and Aiden just kind of slipped under their radar for like just enough time. and in the hot tub across the pool, he just was like, oh, I'm going to jump out of the pool, go hang out in there for a second. And we think, I think what happened was he got caught between, in the deep spot between where the bench, like where the seats would be, and his little four-year-old legs couldn't touch.

And I think he got stuck in the middle there of that. So they looked up and they're like, wait, where's Aiden? We see all the other kids, where's Aiden? And then, boom, everything went crazy. And that's when she called. I'm talking to Rip Wahlberg. The book is shattered. Surviving and thriving after the worst pains of life.

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life. Rip, you just described getting a phone call. You're in Lancaster, Pennsylvania. It's a hot day. And you get a call from your wife that your four-year-old son, Aden, has drowned and to come to Connecticut. What, I just, what goes through your head now? You're going to get in a car and drive to Connecticut thinking about the... Yeah, the first thing that goes through my head. The first thing that goes through my head is, well, just do CPR. Like, that's what they do on TV. And it, It works. And, you know, in my head, I'm trying to catch up. And so I go into my, I go back into my house. My father-in-law's there.

Dave is there. And I put my tool belts down. And I just fell on the ground and screamed. And didn't say anything to him. Walked into our bedroom. Change my shirt. Left my shorts. Took my keys.

And I walked down and I said, I got to go to Connecticut right now. Aidan just drowned. And that was it. I didn't say anything more to them. I got in my truck. I was gone within five minutes and starting to just, you know, cry in and whatnot. And I stopped to get gas. And I just was like, do they even know, does people around here even know?

Like, my world just exploded, you know? And then God said to me, then he goes, don't worry about. about a thing, just get there. I'm going to take care of you. This is all on me. And he did. It was really amazing. People came out of the woodwork with generosity

to support us in every kind of way. It was amazing. I mean, I imagine this must have been tough on your other kids. Oh, yeah. I mean, when I finally got there, they all came running to me and I'm trying to comfort them

and by then, Anne-Rey was back at the house. They had taken Aden by that time, and she was back at the house too, and they were just, what do we do? And, you know, there's this chunk of you that was just viciously ripped out of all of us. And, you know, so they're, there, we got them help then.

They're still kind of processing some of it now, even. But, yeah, it was, it was pretty, traumatic for them. Absolutely. And what about your, what about your wife? Again, I can't really imagine. Most people can't, but I know there are people listening right now who have lost kids. And how do you, what do you, you know, there are a lot of people that maybe they aren't where you are with the faith.

They don't want to hear about God because it's, it's just too painful. How could God, you know, that's the question. How could God allow that? right do you deal with that in the book yeah i try to i try to deal with the um theodicy a bit like you know it's god capable um but won't or or willing but incapable and i tried to deal with some of that um in the book it was obviously i knew that am marie's hardest thing was that this happened on her watch and so just tried to support her in that um i never wanted to and i never have put pressure on her about that.

I was like, no, this is just like, we're good, this happened. But she wrestled with it for quite a number of years. Yeah, absolutely. Clearly and understandably, right? She wrestled with that. And I knew the ways in which it was going to rock her, and it absolutely did. She's doing wonderful about it now,

15 years in, she's gotten some healing about it. She's still processes some things. But God did do a work in her once she kind of let him get close. And he did take that, like the guilt that she was carrying. He did take it from her eventually. But she had to let him get close. What made you write about it now 15 years later? You know, it's interesting.

So I spoke at the funeral. And it seemed like whatever I said was profound for people. I tried to, instead of say, hey, let's have a life celebration of a four-year-old. Like, this is a dramatically cut short life. I tried to be real, honest, and genuine instead, and then glorify God in the destruction kind of thing instead. So I wanted to write something, but I didn't know what. And so I just kind of let it formulate in me for many years. I think it was like nine years before I felt like it was really about ready to formulate.

A number of things came together, and I just kind of let it ruminate. I took notes and whatnot for a long time. Even stuff that I heard on your show with you and Hugh Ross made it into the book about the eclipse. Remember the eclipse that was a couple years ago? And Hugh Ross said on your show, he said, the occulting event is going to last, you know, say two minutes and 47 seconds. And in my world, I was like, a cult. Why did he say a cult?

Because in my world, that's this, that, and the other thing that we do ministry to. But what I realized and God gave me a picture was all this pain sits like this thing in front of the truth of the cross. And it filters information to us. Okay, just to be clear, we were talking about, on my program, I was talking to Hugh Ross, who I've written about in my book, His Atheism Dead. His books kind of turned me on to the whole world of science, apologetics, really amazing. But yeah, he was on my program talking about an eclipse. And obviously, an eclipse, he referred to it as an occultic event.

Is that right? Not an occultic, occulting. Occulting. Occulting. Okay, but to occult is, is to cover or to hide. Yes, exactly. When we talk about the occult, we're talking about the hidden, the hidden mysteries, you know, that's the dark side. But the actual word means, means it in the way that you're using it.

Yeah. Exactly. So he used it appropriately in a scientific frame. And yet it was descriptive. And I was like, so God gave me a picture of this that the, pains of our life filter the truth of the cross. So we start taking all this information. We say, well, maybe God this and maybe that. And our job is to, how do we move that idol that sits then in front? And so I just took like through ministry, through time, I took a lot of time just kind of wait and practice and try things out.

And slowly it kind of, it got into the book and the book started to take form. And I asked out, I'm like, God, I got it in my head and my heart, but can you help me figure out how to organize it? And that's when I, he showed me break it into three parts. Like the first part is the story through the first year. The second part is dealing with theodicy. Like, what do we do? We avoid the pain. You need to explain the word theodicy.

Not everybody listening knows what theodicy is. We're not talking about the odyssey by Homer. No, we're talking about the word theodicy. I mean, you can explain to or I can explain it. but I want people to understand what you're saying. Yeah, so theodicy is like, why do bad things happen to good people kind of thing? And where is God when it hurts type stuff?

So the odyssey is how do you reconcile God with evil? I mean, ultimately, right? Yes, in a broken word. It's sort of how do you, how do you theoretically reconcile a good God, an all-powerful God, with evil? And everybody has that question. I don't get it, God.

If you're all-powerful, why do you let evil exist? And so something like this happens in a family, And the first normal question everybody has is, God, I don't get it. It doesn't make sense. It doesn't make sense. Why? It doesn't make sense. Absolutely.

And so we see the same thing going on in the discussions of Job. And so I talk about that in the book. Like Job and his friends are trying to figure out, well, why this happened to you. And Job's like, I was a righteous man. There was no reason for this. And they come back in him and stuff. So I talk about a number of those things. What do we do with our pain?

We typically hide it from God. we avoided ourselves because we don't want to feel it. And yet, like, Jesus even asked God for the father for the same, excuse me, for the same thing. Like, Lord, if there's, God, if there's any way to avoid the cross, please. And the silence of the father was like, no, no, we have to do this. And so I point out that the way is, like, straight through the pain, not to avoid it, but to go through it. So, like, I would go to his grave. I would sit there.

I would, I'd fall in asleep on Aden's grave. I've, I have wept at Aden's grave many, many, many times. And as I've done that over the years, it gets to the point not where I've become none, but where I've actually processed the grief and the pain out. I don't have to go there now. And then I all of a sudden, I'm like, wow, it's been a year. year and a half. I haven't even been there and so forth. So there's this stuff of healing by going to it. And I try to point that out, making God the central focus of healing. He's the source.

There's so much to this. And I think that the key, when we come back, I want to get into it, but it's the practicality of it. Because a lot of times people have these religious band-a-baud, they just say, blah, blah, blah, blah, give it to God. What does that mean? How do you give it to God? how do you apply God's love to this situation? How do you do it? We're talking to Rip Wahlberg. The book is shattered, surviving and thriving after the worst pains of life. With the overturn of Roe v. Wade, lots of companies are coming out saying they'll pay for employee abortion travel and expenses. Most of you've heard about some of these companies. You've decided to stop shopping or doing business there, but did you know that you most likely own stock in those companies through your 401Ks, IRAs, and other investment accounts?

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They work. I promise you. Welcome back. I'm talking to Rip Wahlberg. His book is shattered, surviving and thriving after the worst pains of life. We're talking about the loss of his forewomen. year old son 15 years ago in a sudden drowning accident. So you were talking about processing the pain with God. You know, people want to understand what does that mean? And I have to say that without God,

I cannot imagine how people process any of the pains of life, much less something like this. I remember, I wrote about it in my book, Fish Out of Water. When I was a senior in college, one of the most amazing students, a black kid from Arkansas, who was a Rhodes Scholar, just unbelievable. He was killed that spring break, just a couple of months from graduation by a tractor trailer, just out of the blue.

And his name was Roosevelt Thompson. Rosie, his father at the funeral, said, we loved Rosie, but we love God more. And I was really not walking with God at that point. And that statement blew my mind. I thought, wow, that's real faith. Like, that's real.

That man knows God because how can you say something like that? So powerful. That's part of it, is that God is real. And God wants us to know him for our sake, not for his sake, for our sake. Because if you know him and love him, it changes everything. And I think to me, this is the classic example, to lose a son, there's really no way to process that in the natural. You have to process it with God. Yeah, he absolutely do.

I mean, it was one of those things. I didn't say out loud, but my prayer was always, I'm not going to let go of you for this. I'm not, we're not done because of this. but what I found was that we the like I said going away from it and avoiding it is we just all we do is extend the time whereas if we'll let God into it there's a myriad of ways we can do it but it's really letting ourselves have the emotions that are real about the situations of our life and so for me it was going among other things it was going to his grave

and just crying, you know, crying out until the tears were done. And the interesting thing is that you think it's going to last for a long time, but it actually doesn't. What we feel this emotional bottomless pit that, oh, if I start crying, it's never going to stop. In fact, what it does is the most intense times of crying that I had would last, for about 45 seconds, and then my tears would be done for that cycle, which was interesting. And then that would be done. And then over time, I could feel it's like a pressure cooker.

It would build up over in a couple days and whatnot early on. I can remember one time coming back from work and in the middle of my house, like I could feel an anxiety or a panic attack or something. And I'm like, God, not now. Not right now. Please, I got to go to work. I will address this later. Sure enough, it just kind of subsided, and I went back to it probably later that night. So I describe, have the emotions, let yourself have the emotions that are real.

And I talk about that in the book, like what are the different ways we can do that? For me, it was weeping and sobbing until it was done. For others, it could be go exercise. For some, I know this sounds, this will sound weird. from a Christian worldview, but like even swearing, not that you have to by any means. And I'm not saying it's acceptable, but the emotional realness that we just let it out. I think God's okay with that because I think he'd rather real than fake in masks. That's a very, you bring up a really interesting thing because I think part of the problem with many people of faith is they confuse.

religious behavior with honesty before God. They're afraid to be honest or raw because they're more afraid of cussing than they are of bottling something up or of believing the lie that God can't deal with that part of me, that my anger, my way. And all through scripture, we see examples of, you know, the real saints of God wrestled with God. argued with God. We're upset with God. You know, that's, you do that in a real relationship. You know, you show those who love you your worst side sometimes.

And, you know, sometimes that's not good, but sometimes that is real and it is good. And so that sounds like what you're talking about. It is. Like, you look at the Psalms and David, like, get them. Like, tear their heart out, God. Just make them dust. so to speak, right? Paraphrasing things.

And God's okay with that in the sense of not fulfilling David's desire, but he's okay that David was expressing these deep, intense emotions. And I think we forget that God, that to be human and to be like God is to also have the emotions. So one of the things we do is we suppress our emotions about all these pains. and we leapfrog the pain when with let's have a life celebration and we jump right to things like we know we'll see them again. And so we are celebrating or we're okay and we have hope. We focus on the hope and not give ourselves time to grieve a lot of times. When Jesus actually walked up to the grieving mother's casket while there was other people and they were grieving and stuff together helping her grieve.

And Jesus walked up and met her. in the middle of her grief. Let's pause there. Final segment. We're talking to Rip Wahlberg. The book is Shattered, surviving and thriving after the worst pains of life. Welcome back.

We're talking to Rip Wahlberg, pastor and author of Shattered, surviving and thriving after the worst pains of life. Rip, you were just talking about how Jesus goes up. Tell that story again. You just ended with that. Yeah, so I'm never good with references. but in the in the Gospels it's recorded where Jesus walked up came upon a grieving mother's like funeral procession for her son and they would be destitute.

She was going to be destitute with that. And so Jesus walks up, raises the son from the dead, meets her in the midst of her grief. She wasn't avoiding it and so forth. And I find that the Bible speaks to us so many times of the compassion of God. And, you know, he says, come to me all you who we're in a Hervalid. And he says, cast your cares upon me for I care about you. Like, God cares about these things that matter to us. We don't need to put masks on about that because to have our emotions is not being

unfaithful to God in the midst of our difficulties. And I find that it's those things that get in the way. Well, it's interesting because there is a fine line. right, where you are, you know, there's this one thing to be honest. It's another thing to give voice to lies. And sometimes we're tempted to do that, right? Where we say something like just, you know, what we call a negative confession. And it is like you're not just grieving.

You're saying something that's not true. God doesn't care. That's a lie from the pit of hell. You're giving voice to what the devil's is. God loves us in the midst of our pain. And I think that sometimes in the interest of honesty, people can sometimes go down that other path where it becomes self-pity or it becomes, it just becomes negativity. And you say, well, I'm just being honest. And it's like, well, you're not really being honest because you're giving voice to a lie.

So there is that fine line between we don't want to bottle stuff up. We want to be real. And sometimes that means being raw. but it never ought to devolve into where we are, you know, we're just saying things like, you know, well, God doesn't care about me or God doesn't care about, you know, my life or my career or my this or my that. And it's like, that's not true. God loves you more than you could ever imagine.

And I just think it's important to say that, you know, you can go wrong in two ways. you can go wrong by bottling stuff up, but you can also go wrong by just, you know, saying whatever. And the question is, is that true? Is that right? And I know that that's a real issue for people. Yeah, I think when you think about it, like when we're in the midst of a grief and a pain and we say, oh, our takeaway is God doesn't love me. Like, I think we find that one is an expression and one's an accusation. So the accusation would be, God doesn't love me, whereas the expression would be, God, I feel like you don't love me. Like, I'm wrecked right now. Yes, right.

Right. And so I tried to take that approach of like, God, I'm not putting you on the hot seat here. You and I are going to work this out one way or the other, and we're going to go together. And that's what I try to show in order that hopefully people will, would be willing to take, their own stuff to God. My whole thing about toward the end of the book is maybe by me sharing my story, maybe you, anything you've been hiding from God and holding onto, maybe this gives you some permission to start to let God into and touch your pain. Well, a lot of people say, you know, that losing a child, usually that wrecks marriages. Like that's the normal thing in the world, right?

you lose a child, like the marriage doesn't survive. So to know God the way you do, to forgive your wife, whatever, and not to have that voice in your head. Because again, that's the voice of the devil to go over. Like, why didn't she? Why didn't, that is the voice of the devil. And that's normal. It's sinful, but it's where people go.

And if you know God, you have a place to go with that. The love of God just, you know, touches that kind of stuff. Because, I mean, people who have lived through this, as I was saying, it's like it really has destroyed marriages. They kind of don't know, they don't know how to process it. Yeah. And I can still remember sitting at my kitchen table. I think it was like a Tuesday night after we had gotten home.

And I was writing late at night. And I remember thinking like, this is our greatest threat to my family right now. are we going to even survive this? And it wasn't a thought that was deep and long because we had issues, but it was that realization of like, yeah, this can tear marriages apart. And what I'm really grateful for is that we both gave each other space to just walk it out. Anne-Marie took a very pregnant approach, and I took a very direct approach. And we gave each other's space no matter what if we understood or didn't.

And I can tell you, like, we're better. today than we were even then. And I'm so grateful to God for that, that our whole family is intact and doing very well. I'm incredibly grateful to the Lord about that. What did you mean you said

you took one path and she took the pregnant path? What do you say? Yeah, I kind of explain it, I describe it as like the pregnant path. Like Emery avoided the pain. Right. And I went to it. And so I took, I would think of it as a more direct, I went

through the pain. I decided to go at it. And she tried to avoid it for about as long as she could until she couldn't carry it anymore. And then you know, it will start kind of your life will start cavitating after some point in time. And so she eventually let God

let God in and go with it. Your life will start what? I would say that our life, if we hold our pains in too long and we avoid them, our life will start to cavitate. Cavitate? Is that a word cavitate? What does that mean? I've never I think of like a ship, like a submarine, right?

Cavitation. Like, isn't that a... You mean, you can start to rock. Maybe I'm not used to... No, no, no, no. I don't know. Maybe it's a word I don't know. But, uh, but, but I, but the meaning, I'm getting, I'm getting the meaning.

You're basically saying... I could, I could be known to make the words up too, Eric. No, no, I honestly, I have no idea if it's a word or not. That's why I'm asking about it. Um, yeah. But, but that's right. In other words, eventually, I mean, God and his mercy wants us to deal with it, but we're all different. And that's the other thing.

Things still start to come undone. about us. Well, we're basically at a time. Rip Wahlberg, thank you for sharing your story in the book, Shattered. Folks, I'm sure everybody listening knows somebody who's been through something like this. Tough stuff. The book is Shattered, surviving and thriving after the worst pains of life. Rip Wahlberg.

Thank you, my friend. Thank you for having me. It's a pleasure. Folks, welcome back. I'm talking to Robert Netsley right now, who is with Inspire Investing. Robert, I can't help but get excited about what you've created an opportunity for people to find out if their money is funding wicked things. If they have money in a 401k or a retirement fund, whatever it is, that is invested in companies that are doing evil things, that is promoting pornography, promoting abortion, promoting any number of things or ideologies with your money, folks. So Robert Nestle has created something where you can get a free report that tells you

where your money is and they will help you get your money into companies that are doing good things. So you have to go to InspireAdvisors.com slash Eric. InspireAdvisors.com slash Eric. You get a free report. But this is something I, you know, Robert, I guess it just gives me hope that it's possible to turn things around in America. Because when I think of how much money people have invested out there, if they would understand what's going on and shift that money to good stuff, it's just huge. It's just absolutely monstrous.

It's enormous. It's enormous. And we are seeing fruit from that labor. It's remarkable. It doesn't have to even be trillions of dollars to change things. I've been on the phone, you know, in recent. weeks, you know, with investor relations and CFOs and whatnot, we regularly engage with companies that we invest in or are like to invest in or kind of just speaking biblical truth,

the corporate power. And, you know, one of the things we hear is often that, number one, these people have never heard, they tell us they've never heard from a faith-based investor before. They've been doing their job for 20, 30 years, you know, executive, major organizations never heard from a faith-based investor. So number one, they need to hear our voice. Number two, they're thankful to hear it. Even in some of these sort of, you know, woke businesses, you think that this don't care, there are people in those businesses of influence that actually do care about what we have to say and oftentimes have enough influence to change things.

So, for instance, Costco stopped giving money to gay pride parades. Chevron stopped giving money to Planned Parenthood. There's a laundry list of other organizations that have changed things. That is unbelievable. Robert Nelson, that is unbelievable. It is so wonderful. I want to tell people, folks, what you do and don't do, you can change the world if you take an interest in this. When I hear that a company like Costco would stop giving money to something like that or Chevron, these are huge, huge companies.

And you shop there, your money may be invested there. When we get involved in these things, we can change the world. So I want to say the action point is go to invest, I'm sorry, inspire advisors. dot com slash Eric. Inspireadvisors.com slash Eric. You'll get a free report that will help you figure this out. And I know, Robert, that you guys will help people if they want to transition to invest in companies that believe in their values.

But this is a gigantic thing that we have, I mean, it's to me scandalous when we have power and we don't use that power. It's like when I say, I'm not going to vote. I'm not going to do this. I'm not going to do that. When you don't do those things, people who don't share your values, who share opposite, who have opposite values, they're going to prevail. So I just want to say to you, Robert, thank you for taking this on because it is game-changing. Like you said, it's a movement. The more people that do this, it's an amazing thing when we think of the money that is out there, that many people of faith, with traditional values have invested in woke companies.

Ladies and gentlemen, you've got to do something about it. You've just got to do something about it. This is like a mandate that we've got to live our faith out in every sphere and where your money is. That's a big deal. So please go to InspireAdvisors.com slash Eric. This is a free report. Inspireadvisors.com slash Eric.

Robert Natsley, thank you. Pleasure. Thank you, Eric.