Get The Hell Out of Your Life
Hear the life-changing moments that transformed individuals. Be inspired by powerful testimonies that promise to inspire and encourage.
Get The Hell Out of Your Life
The Power of Divine Timing
Have you ever hit a slump? That feeling when motivation disappears, purpose seems distant, and getting out of bed feels like climbing a mountain? You're not alone.
This powerful conversation between Ron Myers and Tommy Letson—a former high-profile drug dealer once facing life plus 25 years who now works in Christian rehabilitation—emerged spontaneously when Ron made what seemed like a casual check-in call. What unfolds reveals the extraordinary power of divine timing.
When Ron called Tommy that morning, he found his friend mourning the loss of his mentor Bob McLeod. Tommy confesses he was lying in bed feeling worthless until the phone rang. "Thank you for being obedient and making that call this morning, because it's right on time," Tommy tells Ron, recognizing how a simple connection can pull us from our darkest places.
The conversation weaves through profound insights about finding purpose in pain, surrendering to something greater than ourselves, and discovering how our personal messes can become powerful messages for others. Tommy shares his mentor's wisdom that "we don't walk ahead of God, we don't walk behind God, we walk with Him," offering a beautiful framework for navigating life's challenges.
Perhaps most striking is their discussion about how we're often "looking for love in all the wrong places." Tommy observes that many people transfer their need for unconditional love to pets because "people have hurt them so much," while missing the unlimited source of love available through spiritual connection. As Ron puts it, we're "only one divine thought away from an incredible day."
Ready to pull yourself out of a slump? Their prescription is simple yet profound: reach out to someone today with kindness. Call someone you haven't spoken with in a while. Share a word of encouragement. As this conversation beautifully demonstrates, sometimes the lifeline you extend to someone else becomes your own path back to purpose and joy.
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Hello, my friends, good to be with you today. Have you ever hit a slump? Maybe you are in a slump right now. You're not too motivated and you know that you've got to get moving, but you don't know how to get moving. Maybe you heard some bad news and you start to sense your mortality. It happens to every person alive. The real question we need to ask is how do I get out of a slump?
Speaker 1:A few weeks ago, I found myself in a slump. I had become aware of quite a few people that I really admire and respected had died, and way too young. They still had things to share with the world. So I started thinking about the things that I do. Do they matter? Should I quit and spend the rest of my life traveling or playing golf? In other words, I was beginning to sit on a pity pot and I was becoming aware of it, and I didn't really like it. I stood up and said Ron, get your head in the game. It is a fact that all of us die and we have a choice to make. We have to get busy living or get busy dying. And then, after my pep talk to myself, I felt the urge to call one of my former guests just to say hi and without either one of us aware of it.
Speaker 1:This week's episode of Get the Hell Out of your Life was created After I saw what was happening with our conversation. I told Tommy I'm going to turn the microphone on and we had a pretty special conversation, a conversation that will bless you, encourage you and inspire you. My guest is Tommy Letson, a former high profile drug dealer and a former convicted felon with a life sentence plus 25 years added. But God had a different plan for Tommy and today he is a man in love with Jesus and works in a Christian rehab facility. And I called Tommy at a good time Tommy, I'm talking about a slump, and you said my phone call was a blessing because you are in a little slump.
Speaker 2:Yes, it's been one of them days. A very dear friend and mentor of mine, bob McLeod, who was our father's arms here in Jacksonville, alabama, passed away. Truly, a man of God Loved the Lord beyond more than anybody that I've ever known, trusted him fully and totally. He had a saying that he said that we don't walk ahead of God, we don't walk behind God. We walk with him. When he moves, we move. When he stops, we stop. And that's the way that this ministry actually operates. We've got a big place over here at Fort McClellan that was donated to us called Remington Hall, and we're in the process of opening it back up. And Bob passed away preaching a funeral, on his way to do a great service of a dear friend of his. And he had an aneurysm and he had a saying he would say to live is Christ, to die is gain, even if you've got a bubble on your brain. Totally at peace going through what he was going through.
Speaker 2:And I'm laying here this morning just in my bed under the afghan just oh, I'm just a worthless piece of crap. I know me better than anybody knows me. I know me better than anybody knows me. And then I realized that there is hope after dope and there is a transition. It's a process, not an event, when we think we've arrived, we just missed it, and I'm laying here all in my poor pity potty laying here and then, mr Myers, you call me and just woke me up because I know who my father is.
Speaker 2:I know there is purpose, I know there is something that we all have to go through to get to and, man, god bless you. Thank you for being obedient and making that phone call this morning, because it's right on time. I mean, it's amazing how a phone call can reveal the personhood and the love of our Father, that through Jesus Christ we can be saved and we can be forgiven. There is nothing that we can't be forgiven for, unless it's, of course, in the flesh, in the Holy Spirit. I'm really not sure what that is and I really don't care, but I'm just going to make sure that I don't do that. Amen to that. I'm just trusting in him, I'm trusting in my friends.
Speaker 1:Amen.
Speaker 1:Tommy I have—well, thank you. I've told people before that I have met that are atheists and don't believe in God. Well, let me ask you have you ever got a phone call at the right time or somebody ran into you at the right time or something you were thinking about began to happen? I said do you really think those were coincidences? I said I personally don't believe in coincidences, whether people listening to this show, whether me, making the call that God is so loving and so awesome that even if we don't call him our father at this time in life, he will do things to try to make us aware that he is there. I remember Tommy, after I really started walking with God and I started looking back over my life and some of the things that happened. I'm thinking that had to have been God.
Speaker 2:I should have never got out of that. Mess 'm thinking that had to have been God.
Speaker 1:I should have never got out of that mass. In fact I should have been dead, I should have went to jail, I should have done this and that, but it didn't happen. And I look back and it was God and it's kind of like this coincidence. There was no coincidence. Something told me to call you this morning.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I'm a little jealous, though, laying there in the bed with a nice little afghan. Well, I'm going to tell you, you know, and I was dealing with a guy the other day that claimed that he did not believe in God. I said you don't believe in God. I said, by you just saying that you didn't believe in something, it must exist because you can't believe in it. So, and the revelation of who he really is. Bob McLeod had that saying of you can't do right to be right. You are right because he's making you right, and the way he makes us right is through the things that we go through the transition from light to darkness. Sometimes it's not easy and sometimes it's just a revelation, but sometimes just a phone call just reveals the personhood of him and how much he actually loves us. You know something that the world needs to know.
Speaker 1:Our mess can become a message for God if we allow him to mold us and shape us into the person he created us to be. Amen, amen. You know, tommy, I don't think that until you really understand why you were born and what your purpose is, that you can really truly have that peace and the joy of happiness. And only God can reveal why we were born. All these self-help books and motivational speakers Now they can make us feel good for a day, for a week, but they still don't fill that little void in our life, do they?
Speaker 2:No, they don't, they don't. I was born on November, the 27th, which is Thanksgiving Day, and it was Thanksgiving Day when I was born and my mom used to say that, bless her heart, before she passed. She said you were born on Thanksgiving Day for a reason, she said, but it only comes it only the 27th. I think it's every seven years. It comes back on the 27th Again. It's different days. It's the last Thursday in the month, however, that works.
Speaker 2:But she used to tell me she said You're going to do something that's going to transform the way that you even think life's about, and I never could understand that. And the only way that I'm starting to get a glimpse of it is not trying to do anything, it's to let not make. And when I let him lead, guide and direct my life, it's not me making it, it's him making it. And I'm starting to get a glimpse of letting not make. Bob McLeod used to say that all the time He'd say beloved, let not make. We don't have a gavel in our hands, we can't have a gavel. We have to love people and most people that's going through addiction and different kinds of sins and stuff is because they just don't know their love.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I think that's the one thing that so many people are looking for. They're looking for love in all the wrong places.
Speaker 2:Oh, like that old song goes, you know, let me tell you something about that old song.
Speaker 1:It has a connection right here to the Mississippi Gulf Coast. Wanda Millett I know Wanda. She wrote that song Looking for Love in All the Wrong Places, and that's what people will do. You're right. That will preach, won't it?
Speaker 2:It will. People think that they look for love as a feel good. It's got a feel. Sometimes love hurts, but you know what is still life in that love? The only true life is in love and the process that you're going as long as you can remember that you're loved and that there is a God that loves you enough to go with you through the mess that you're going through, that you've made for your life. There is a light at the end of that tunnel and that's Jesus Christ.
Speaker 1:I told you I love to run into people that don't believe in God and I had a conversation with one about two weeks ago and I said let me ask you something Do you have a pet? Oh yes, I have a pet, little little Muffy I don't know if that was the name little Muffy the cat and I said you love that cat, right? And she said oh yes, I love that cat. And I said you know, right now pet ownership is up probably at the all time highest ever. And I said think on this and then I'll leave you alone. Why do people like pets or love pets so much? That is an example of God's unconditional love.
Speaker 2:That is an example of God's unconditional love.
Speaker 1:No matter what you do to that pet, that pet will always come back to you, curl up on your lap and lick your face and just love the hell out of you. And isn't that what our Heavenly Father does to us?
Speaker 2:Yes, absolutely. Pets are up. Somebody else mentioned that to me a couple of weeks ago. It's people looking for something to love. They don't look at people because people have hurt them so much that they transfer that love into an animal or to a pet or something that's going to love them unconditionally, Our Father in heaven. If they can ever get that revelation of that they are loved, then they can also love. But until you know that you're loved, you can't love.
Speaker 1:Tommy, that was very insightful. I never thought about that with pets that people, they're looking for something to love and something that will love them back, and yet the very thing that will give them everlasting, unconditional, nonjudgmental love is the God of the universe, the very God that they resist, reject and think is a fairy tale.
Speaker 2:Doesn't make sense to me a fairy tale Doesn't make sense to me when we look at the world and the broken state that it's in right now, the turmoil and stuff that's going in the world. People say if there is a God, how can this be happening?
Speaker 2:It's a regressioning. You know, in order for a seed to produce, it has to be put in the ground and it has to die, literally die to bring life. So, you know, if you look at it with a perspective like to live is Christ, to die is gain, even if you've got a bubble on your brain, that seed is planted in order for life to come forth, it must die. And we have to die to self, surrender, we have to surrender. When the Germans surrendered to the United States, they lost the war. Well, when we surrendered to Christ, we went in order to live, we must die, die to self. Once we die to that, then we are renewed daily. You know, yeah, so as you know, it's opposite of what society teaches you, and the way that Christ teaches us is so much smoother.
Speaker 1:Yeah, so much smoother. What do we do when we're in a slump? What do we do? How do we get motivated? How do we get off of our pity pot?
Speaker 2:We trust in him. This phone call this morning I'm laying here in my poor, pitiful me this that this is going wrong. Bob's died. You know my mom going wrong? Bob's died. You know my mom is dead, my daddy is dead. All these people have died. But you know, when we die, that's the beginning, not the end. It's just a transition and so how we get out of it, we look at the blessing at the end of this journey. How can God use me today?
Speaker 2:Maybe I can just be a blessing to somebody and just say hey, buddy, are you okay today? I gave a guy some money the other day and one of the people that was with me when I did it he said all he's going to do is buy liquor with it or buy drugs with it. And you know, I said I don't care what he does with it. The Lord gave me an unction to give this man money. What he does with it is to him, but I am being obedient to what I feel that the Lord is saying to me at this time.
Speaker 1:Yeah, you gave him some anointed money that had the power of God on it. He probably got a shock when he got that money and said oh my God, what just happened to me? You know, like when you were a kid, and if you rubbed your feet across the carpet and you touched something, you got this shock and it shocked you.
Speaker 2:Yeah, it shocked you. You gave him that. I used to make me a little static electric. Come on, jesus. Yeah, come on.
Speaker 1:Jesus. So he's walking over there and he's thinking about buying that alcohol and something tells him no, you know what, maybe I better get that little bean burrito instead. And you know we laugh at that. But we can say a prayer and say Lord, when he gets into that 7-Eleven, let him have a desire for that beanie weenie or that burrito. And all of a sudden the cashier says what are you doing? You're not, it's not Miller time, no, it's beanie weenie time. And you know it's not funny. But it is funny because you know you and I were only and all the people listening, we're only one divine thought away from an incredible day, one divine thought away from that solution to the problem in our life.
Speaker 2:That's it, you know. And he is the future. If we believe in him, we believe in the beginning and the end and he is the blessing. And he just walked us through this insane asylum earth to work things out of us, to get us more like him. If we don't work it out of us, it stays in us. That guy that I gave that money to he was sitting there and he didn't ask for that money, but you know he was homeless. You could tell he had all of his belongings. And when I hand it to him he was like what's this for? And I said I just want you to know that the Lord loves you and I love you. There is hope after dope and here. And he looked at me and he took it. He said for real. I said absolutely Wow. He said what are you going to do? I said whatever you want to do with it.
Speaker 1:Well, you know, and Tommy, going back to conversations with people that don't believe in God, I'll ask them. I said, well, will looked out your business window today and somebody fell in front of your place of business, hit their head and it was bleeding. You'd run out there and you'd want to give comfort. You wouldn't sit there and laugh at them and say, hey, what a dummy you fell on the sidewalk in front of me and they said well, that's true.
Speaker 1:I said where do you think that came from? Where do you think that feeling came from inside of you? I believe that is God's moral conscience that he's placed inside each of us. Does that make any sense to you, tommy?
Speaker 2:It does. It does you know, in spite of ourselves we try to. I'm so good Look at me with my hair long and shaggy. You know giving to the poor. What gave you the desire to do that to begin with? To make yourself look good? Absolutely not, because, believe me, I could have used that money, you know. But, being just, if we are a little bit obedient to him and to his voice, he blesses us outside of our realm 100%. And we don't do it for the blessing, we do it because we love him and his expression, the love of the Father through us, and we are that conduit. We can be that conduit. I'll tell you what I want to send you a thing over here at Remington Hall.
Speaker 2:They were a World War II prisoner of war held here at Fort McLuhan, alabama. His name was Alvin Sabin and he painted a bunch of murals in a room. And Bob wrote a song and it's called Steel Forming Niagara Falls. He said every big shot would turn out to be a little squirt and you can dam up the water, but you can damn well know that the dam's going to leak and sometimes we just leak out on people and it's not us really leaking out, but it's the spirit that's in us, by little random acts for one another. That's just the sprinkling of that water, that loving water, that spirit that he puts in us, that's so good.
Speaker 1:I was at a fitness center and they had an upstairs track and I was went early every morning to do my little running and jogging, trying to stay healthy. Down below was the kitchen, and so I'm not thinking of food, I'm not thinking about anything, and I got around to the back of the track. I was ready to run down there and get some bread, but something happened. I felt that quiet voice inside of me say that aroma is representative of God's love. If we are soaked in God's love, that we have an aroma of love around us, and without saying a word, people will be drawn to us. And I think about that every time I smell bread, the bread of life is Jesus.
Speaker 1:Christ, and when we are soaked and absorbed in his promises, his love, then we have an aroma of Jesus that goes out and it goes back to St Francis of Assisi, who said preach the gospel everywhere and, when necessary, use words.
Speaker 2:That's right, right. And you know the way that, the way that we treat people, the way that we act around people, is a message in itself. People is a message in itself, amen. You know, and it is the way that you treat your friends when people see you treating somebody on the side of the street or something that that it seems like some people walk around. The way that we treat our brother and our sister is not because we're so good, but it's because that he is so good in us and we can't get the glory for that. No, we can't, he's just all the glory.
Speaker 1:You know, it's kind of like leaving church Sunday morning. You can bet that somebody is going to pull out in front of you at that stoplight and you can go from praise you, Jesus, you are, are so awesome to where is that son? Of a gun. I'm going to find him, and you know I always said that if there was an extra thing I could add in my car Now, this was my before Jesus days it would be submachine guns.
Speaker 2:And then, when you come up to those people that pull off, pull in front of you.
Speaker 1:You just ignite those submachine guns and blow them off the road. Of course that was my before Jesus days. But right after church you see somebody go through that stoplight. You think of that stuff and then you say you know what, I'm not going to let negative influence ruin my day.
Speaker 2:You know, you know that's that is so true. And it's funny that you mentioned that, because that happened to me a couple of Sundays ago when I was coming back and somebody pulled out in front of me and I was like that son of a gun. And I heard this and I said uh-oh, because I know what. I just left church talking about God and Jesus and blessing and loving and caring about his people and all this stuff. And here comes a guy that he didn't pull out in front of me on purpose, I'm sure he just didn't see me coming. And here I am ready to wring his neck, or words to come out of my mouth to tear him down instead of build him up. And I hear that and I said, oh, that's it. Oh. So then I started blessing. Well, and we, when we bless those, then guess what? We don't do it because we're going to get blessings from it, but we can do it because we love him and that's what we're commanded to do Blessings, not curses.
Speaker 1:Yes, and we're still growing to become more like Jesus. Let's imitate Jesus in the things we do and say, and you know what Everything else falls into place. Well, tommy, what an incredible morning.
Speaker 2:call you to just say hi, and end up recording this for a show.
Speaker 1:So let me ask you, because I was obedient, do you feel better? I am, I've got my shoes on. You've got your shoes on, you're ready for?
Speaker 2:me. I got my shoes on. I'm going to go get this day started, get this party started, in the name of you.
Speaker 1:Amen, so right now thank you, Ron, for being obedient.
Speaker 1:The moral of today's show is this friends, reach out to somebody today with a kind word, maybe take them to lunch or go get a cup of coffee, or call your mom, your dad, your brother or sister, someone that you know maybe you haven't talked to in a while, and just share a little bit of love. And just tell somebody today how much you love them, because God is so in love with you. And today is your day to begin that relationship with Jesus Christ, simply by asking Jesus to come into your heart. Dear Jesus, come into my heart, change my life. I commit my life to you. You know, I always tell people when you begin a commitment to God.
Speaker 1:A lot of people won't walk into church right away, but one of my first books that I recommend is the book of John. John is just such a love letter. Oh yeah, the book of love, the book of love. And I think when we understand this love thing as you said earlier in the show, how much he loves us, then we have a desire to want to do things, not out of trying to earn brownie points, but because we love, because he first loved us.
Speaker 2:Sometimes, when we do a deed for somebody, that's be the only Jesus that that man sees all day long. That woman sees all day long.
Speaker 1:And speaking of that, Tommy, I'll be sending you a bill for my little therapy session this morning.
Speaker 2:I love you Ron, I love you brother.
Speaker 1:God bless you.
Speaker 2:We'll talk to you soon, okay, okay, bye.