Ep #204: John Stewart Hill: The Moment Life Gave Him A Choice
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What led John Stewart Hill to question his purpose in life?
what happens when you're ready to die and god says no looking at my past and going what a big disappointment i've been i'm looking at my future and going i have nothing god i just wish you would take me off this planet i had a massive heart attack well john do you want to stay or do you want to go If you decide to stay, I'll be with you and I'll give you a purpose. I left there in worse condition on the outside, but on the inside, I knew that God had a purpose for me. With me, John Stewart Hill from the Good Contractors List. And my provocative opening question to you is probably unlike any other question I have ever asked John. What happens when you're ready to die and God says no? Oh, wow. That is a pretty deep question.
When you don't have all the answers, the only thing that you can do is say yes. And so when he says it's not time, it says, okay, well, I don't know how to do this. It's time for you to show me what I need to do. And so that's where I started this whole journey is from a place of, I'm tired of trying to do this on my own. I'm tired of trying to figure all this stuff out. I need help. And the only place I could get it was from God. And that's where I was. He said, no. I said, okay, then I say yes to you. You show me and I'll follow. So now you need to take us there, how you got to this moment where you felt that it wasn't worthwhile hanging around. I know there's divorces. I know there's all kinds of things.
So take us through this rock bottom moment, or I prefer to call it the trigger moment. Well, I'll kind of go back even further into my childhood. I was raised in a Pentecostal church. Lovely people, beautiful, wonderful people. But if you know anything about the Pentecostal denomination, it is very much a hellfire and brimstone kind of teaching. And it's like if you... enter into heaven with a mark on your book, you're not going. It's over for you. And so I learned very quickly early in life to perform, to try to perform to be everything that I needed to be for the world. You know, everything I needed to be a good Christian, a good son, a good whatever. It didn't take very long into getting into my teenage years to realize that
I wasn't going to live a perfect life and that there are so many things now fighting against me. I'm now at that age where I start looking at the opposite sex and I'm, and I'm, you know, I'm driven by the message that says, if you even look, it's bad. One of my big things I wanted to do was get married. Man, if I get married, I'll be able to live a good life because I know how to be a good Christian. I know I got to go to church. I know I've got to read my Bible. I need, you know, all these things that checklist that you have to go down to please God. And so I lived my whole life based on kind of that belief. core feeling of I've got to do the right things or I'm no good or it's all for naught. And so I just had a roller coaster life.
And I found myself at 42, divorced three times, never really had a career of any sort. I was in the Navy for 11 years and got out and started trying to sell things and do different things like that just to try to make a living. And here I was at 42, living with my girlfriend, looking at my past and going, what a big disappointment I've been, looking at my future and going, I have nothing. I don't know where I'm going. I don't have anywhere to go. I don't have a career. I don't have an education. What am I going to do for the rest of my life? God, I just wish you would take me off this planet. And I don't know if any listeners out there get to that point where it's just like, I don't really want to be here anymore.
I'm tired. I'm worn out of trying and failing. And that's where I was in February of 2011. And I'd been praying for two months that God would just remove me from the planet. So I'm sure it takes a lot to get there. And now you are at this moment. And did you just get a straight answer? Like, how did this moment unfold? Did the sky open, angels sing, or was it a little bit more pragmatic than that?
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