The Tools To Unlocking Resilience When Life is A Mess

0:00 With our world being in shambles today, it looks everywhere you go that there is craziness happening, and the Bible tells us in John 10, 10 that the thief comes to steal, to kill, and destroy, and it looks like that's really what's happening, but there is a promise. Jesus says in that second part of that verse that I have come that you might have life and life abundantly. So how do we deal with it whenever you have the thief coming to steal, kill, and destroy, but we know that the Bible says that God has an abundant life for us? Well, in today's interview, I'm going to be talking with Daniel Fusco, and he is an author, he's a pastor, he's a speaker, and his book, you're going to make it, Unlocking Resilience When Life is a Mess, is going to help you right after this short break here. Read more stories on spirit-led living when you subscribe to Charisma Magazine.

0:57 Go to mycharismashop.com and enter in the promo code CPN to receive 10% off the price of a subscription. I'm John Matarazzo back with our guest, Daniel Fusco. It's great to be able to have you here to talk about your book, You're Going to Make It, Unlocking Resilience When Life is a Mess. And Daniel, I just mentioned the verse, John 10, 10, the thief comes to steal, kill, and destroy, and it seems like that has been a big thing that has been happening in our world with COVID, with the lockdowns, with government unrest, with wars and rumors of wars. It definitely seems that the abundant life that we're promised is out of our reach sometimes. Help us, brother.

1:49 Yeah, I mean, so I think for all of us, we look at the world and we see all these things going on, and we have to remember Jesus told us that all this was going to happen. And so when Jesus said, like you read John 10, 10, that I've come that you might have life, you might have life more abundantly, like he's the king of kings and the Lord of lords, he's the savior. And so he's not lying to us. So really for us, it's about learning how to unlock this abundant life in the midst of all of these really messy, really hard, challenging things. And I think that over the last number of years, the impetus to write this book, the genesis of it was in the midst of the beginning of the pandemic, everyone I talked to, every pastor I talked to, everyone was just like, how are we going to make it? What's going to happen? And I caught myself saying that as well. And at one point I said, I felt like the Lord was like, Daniel, of course you're going to make it.

2:43 You're more than a conqueror. It doesn't mean that everything's going to work out the way that I wanted to, but God already knows all this stuff. And I realized I needed to learn how to live that overcoming life, that victorious Christian life, but I was struggling to do it. Everyone I knew was struggling to do it in the midst of it. So I began to search the scriptures and say, hey, what does the Bible say about this? And what is the spirit of God trying to teach us? And I actually, you know, with the publisher, we came up with that title, you're going to make it. Cause I wanted to make a prophetic declaration over the people of God and say, hey, listen, I know that sometimes we don't know if we're going to make it. We feel like, man, I'm just, I'm barely hanging on, but no, it's like, we're going to make it because Jesus already made it. He died and rose again. And that for us is huge. Yeah, it really is. I mean, we know that Jesus is the author and finisher of our faith. So if he's the author of that, he knows the beginning from the end.

3:33 And even though it feels that, you know, we're, we're in the middle, you know, sometimes what we think is a period is really a comma and God's giving us, there's more to come. There's more to come. So tell me about some of the things that you've dealt with that made you question if you were going to make it. Yeah. So like, so I came to know Jesus at the very end of my college experience, but in the beginning of my college experience, my mother was diagnosed with cancer and I'm an all Italian kid from New Jersey. And so, you know, that, that stereotypical like large Italian family, that was not definitely the family that I was. I know what you mean to know about this. Right. We both have those at the end of our last names. So we know what we're talking, we know what you're talking about here. Yeah, totally. And so like, and, and, and, and, and in every family, you know, moms take that central place. And when my mom got sick, it was real devastating. And I didn't know the Lord at the time. And after a two year battle with cancer, you know, she went home to be with the Lord and I was ill equipped. I had no, I had no framework to process through what I had gone through. And very quickly I found myself like in that hole where I was just mangled, you know, and I was numbing out, it was just sin. But what was amazing was, is even in, in, in how tragically that situation went and how terribly I was, I couldn't handle it. I came to know Jesus about a year later and Jesus, as he began to put me back together, started to show me like, Hey, Daniel, the reason you couldn't handle that is because you don't, you didn't have the tools at all. And so, you know, I had that experience. And then, you know, as I went into, you know,

5:05 and I talk about it in the, in the intro of my book, I kind of put together a couple of different things. One was a nine 11. So, you know, being from New Jersey, my brother-in-law at the time was one of those miraculous stories of somebody who worked in the, in the, in the towers, worked late the night before, came in late by his boss's thing the next morning and, and made it out. But they lost a bunch of coworkers in that because they were on like the, I think they're on like the 99th floor of the law firm. So, you know, you have that and then, you know, when you fast forwarded into COVID, you know, I use all these different things to, as a way to frame the fact that, you know, God still works in the midst of the hardest things. And I'm trying to help people because I needed my own, my, how to, how to not divorce my faith in Jesus and the fact that he is the King of Kings and the Lord of Lords, and he is the all-knowing and all-powerful one.

6:00 We don't want to divorce Jesus from the hardest things. We actually want to see him working in the midst of it because he is. Amen. Amen. So yeah, I mean, everybody has things that we're dealing with and I know you, you kind of break down in your book, the different categories or buckets of fear and worry, stress and suffering. Could you explain why you broke those down that way and, and how we deal with some resilience when it comes to those? Yeah. So, I mean, I broke it down into those three categories because, you know, obviously it's all through scripture that, you know, where, where we have fear and worry. I mean, you know, they've said, people have said that in the Bible, there's a derivative of do not worry 365 times. I've never counted it, but I just trust that. And I'm like, you know, that that's important because we all battle with that. You know, a stress is something that everyone in the West talks about. It's, you know, it's, it's how our body responds to uncertainty. And then obviously suffering, nobody likes times of suffering, but it's, it's an inevitable part of life, whether it's physical suffering or relational issues or emotional, you know, spiritual stuff that like all of that is very real. And I've been, I've been a pastor now. I love getting to be a part of the local church. I've been a pastor for over 20 years. And, and Sunday by Sunday, meeting by meeting, I sit and I pray with people who are going through all those different things. So I really wanted to look at it through, you know, rubber meets the road street level stuff that we're all dealing with.

7:26 And one of the things that I did in the book is I unpack what I like to call the resilience equation. Now I didn't invent the resilience equation. I just stole it right out of chapter 12. You've, you started with, you know, cause Jesus is the author and finisher of our faith. But what it teaches is that for the joy that was set before him, Jesus endured the cross. He's despising the shame. And then he's glorified. He's seated down at the right hand of the father. And so really what you have there is you have for the joy that was set before him, I call that hope, right? It's the ability to look at something and say, even though I don't know what's going to happen, I trust that something good's coming from him. So we need a mindset of hope and then we need to marry it to grit. Now, you know, it says there for the, for the joy that was set before him, he endured the cross and he despised the shame. So really grit is a popular word. I mean, people think of John Wayne, you know, little Western kind of stoic mindset, or there's a very popular business book that came out called grit bio, a brilliant researcher named Angela Duckworth, amazing book, but I define grit biblically, which is to continue to do the right things the right way for the right reason, no matter the outcome, because what we realize is that what God is interested in is building Christ like character. So the key is, is if we, we have a mindset of hope that keeps us believing and trusting God, and then we marry that to the continued doing the right things, the right way for the right reasons that, that, that, that integrity lifestyle, when you come out the other end, you have unstoppable hope. And if we can grab hold of that, because if you have hope without grit, you're believing that God's going to do something, but you're actually not going to be there to see

8:59 it because you're not going to continue on. Or, and if you have grit without hope, you might make it to the end, but when you get to the end, you'll be cynical, hard hearted, and, and, and crispy, which is not the abundant life. So we really need that mindset of hope married to, you know, actions and decision making of grit. And when we land there, then we're literally living that abundant life, that unstoppable resilience, as I like to call it. Wow. I like how you express that, you know, with hope married with grit. That really is a good equation there and just how one without the other, you're going to fall flat in some ways. I mean, you, you might get to the end goal, but it's how you're going to get there is the real issue. And that's, that really does show resilience, you know, as, as you're talking about these different things that we have to deal with in life and different sufferings and worry and stress. I think biblically about the character Job, the book of the Bible Job, you know, there's somebody that just went through suffering after suffering after suffering. I mean, in the early part of his story, I mean, he loses his, his family and then, you know, before that person, before the messenger is finished telling Job about what has just happened, another messenger comes and says, your other kids has, has been killed as well. And then another one, it's like all these things just keep piling on. And I think that's something that definitely we deal with whenever something goes wrong. I mean, sometimes people say, well, bad things come in threes, you know, but look out for that. Like how, what advice do you have biblically

10:31 to help us with resilience? And, you know, let's maybe even look at the life of Job in that. Yeah. And so, you know, in, in the section on suffering, I take a whole chapter and I unpack all the, cause there's, cause the Bible teaches us so many important things. Like one of the things that we learn in the life of Job is that, so Job had a lot of questions and God didn't answer any of Job's questions, which is really kind of, and when you read it, you're just like, wow, like in Job is he trusts God, but he has no clue what's going on. Right. And he has all these questions. And then when God shows up at the end of the book, God doesn't say, Job, let me explain to you what this all was. He just pretty much just says, Job, like, where were you when I created the waters and where were you create, when I created the beautiful mountains and where were you when I create, and really it ends with God just being like, Hey, look, I'm God and I do what I do.

11:17 Yeah. And he doesn't answer it. Another thing you learned from, from the story of Job, and it's very important for us when we're suffering is that sometimes your family and your friends fail you. So if you think about like Job's wife gets a bad rap, but she was grieving too. She saw him and she's like, curse God and die. Now, you know, I remember when my mother passed away, walking through that grieving process with my mom, my grandma, who I love so much. She's 96 years old today. And, and just the like, and my grandma used to say, nobody should have to bury their children. And I remember hearing that. And that now as a parent, I'm like, I can imagine, I don't want to imagine it, but that would be so devastating. So like Job, but Job's wife was broken and hurting and she couldn't be there for Job. And then Job's friends show up. And in the beginning, they show up and they just kind of hang out. They just kind of take, take up some space there, which was beautiful because Job needed some fellowship, but then they started talking and they're, and really what they're saying is Job, like, you must have done something wrong for all this bad stuff to happen. And so when you look at all that stuff, really what you learn in the midst of it is that like for Job, he had no chance to get ready for what he was going to go through, but God did a work in him in the midst of it. And so one of the things I always try and one of the tools I talk about in the book is being able to take the long view, you know, like to remember that, you know, suffering by and large is temporary. We know like that the best is yet to come because we know that after, like, even if, if our suffering lands in the loss of life for the follower of Jesus, like that's actually like, you know, Paul said to live as Christ and

12:49 to die as gain. He's like, listen, while I'm here, it's good. I'm going to walk with Jesus, but when I die, it's going to get better. So we always have to take the long view that, listen, whatever I'm going through, it is temporary. It is, it might be painful, but it is temporary. And when we start to grab hold of some of these concepts, it helps frame our suffering as we're going through it because we begin to realize like, Oh, like when I'm suffering and the people who should be there for us fail us, it's like, Oh, that happened to Joe. Like remember Jesus, I mean, what a terrible example, but remember Jesus on the cross, like all of his disciples were gone. I mean, John was still there. His mom was there and a couple of ladies were there, but all like, you know, Peter's like, Lord, I'll never deny you. I'll fight. I'll kill people for you. But he wasn't even there. And so, so Jesus knew what that was like in his time of suffering to have most of the people who were closest to him not there. And so it's just a great, these are just all great principles and tools and lessons that if we can grab them from the scriptures, trust the Lord with it and, and put feet on them as we walk through life, there's just a ton of fruit that can be born.

13:52 Amen. Amen. I mean, there's, when you're in that moment, I mean, that's, that's, it seems so big like that your world is falling around you. There's, there might be nothing that you can do. How do you keep a heavenly perspective or how do you keep a eternal perspective and healthy? And how do you, how do you keep from having yourself in a downward spiral? How do you keep looking up? Yeah, it's, it's, that is the million dollar question. And I would love to tell people, listen, you grab my book, you're going to make it. And I'm going to give you the, like the easiest way to do this. The only way to fight that battle is to everyday choose to fight that battle. So, so what I have, what I'm learning is that, and I'm so grateful for the grace of God is that oftentimes my initial thoughts and reactions are not always biblical reactions. Like I like to say that discipleship is transforming our natural reactions to biblical responses. So oftentimes, like when, when, when it's all crashing down, but my initial response, my, my initial reaction is going to be, Oh, this is all bad. Here we go. It's all coming down. But then when I catch myself doing that, and I don't say this as like, I'm not an expert on it. I'm a practitioner. I'm learning.

14:59 I'm walking by faith like everybody else. But really what it is, is when you catch that, and then with faith, you say, I'm going to take my eyes off of all this and I'm going to put my eyes on Jesus. And what I do know about life is that even though I don't know how a situation is going to work out, I know that God is good and that God loves me and is for me. And I know that Jesus died and rose again and that God doesn't waste anything. And then I remind myself that I love the outcome, but God loves the process. I like getting to the end of something when I, when it all makes sense and hindsight's 2020, but really what God loves is when I choose to trust him in the moment and say, God, I don't like any of this that's happening. This is horrible, but God, I know you're working. So I believe Lord help my unbelief and that little step off of the circumstances, you know, off of the situation and onto the savior to make it real pithy. You know what I mean? Like, like if you just, if we get that, and that is the life of faith is just off of the situation onto the savior, all off of the circumstances onto Jesus. And that's like a all day, everyday type of thing. You know, I referenced one of my favorite verses, Lord, I believe help my unbelief. You know, I think that is one of the most honest prayers or honest petitions that somebody has ever made. You know, like Lord, I believe what the word says is true, but help my unbelief.

16:18 You know, that is something that I, I pray all the time. You know, I've seen God do amazing miracles. I've seen God, you know, heal the sick. I've seen God do financial miracles. I've seen God, God do weather miracles. Like I've seen all these different things, but I still am saying, Lord, I believe help my unbelief because of the moment that I'm dealing with in that instance where I just feel like I'm overwhelmed and I don't know what else to do. I really appreciate that you're taking the time to talk about hope and grit and how to get through all these different things with a heavenly perspective. You know, Daniel, I know that as you write a book, I mean, this is something that you've, you poured yourself into your, you know, that this message is going to impact lives because God gave it to you and it's, he's holding you responsible to get it out there the best way that you can. And we believe that it's going to go far and wide and it's going to, it's going to impact a lot of people. But I know the time has passed since you initially wrote that until now. So what has happened in your life since writing this book or that, that you can use as an example, what has God taught you in this process since the book's completion? Yeah. So what's, what's beautiful is so when I wrote the book, you know, I was in the midst of the pandemic and, and I, and I'm like, I knew I needed to write it, you know, because I was like, man, I need to figure this out. And I was looking for something and, and I didn't, I couldn't find what I was looking for. And so I wrote it, but now in the years since I wrote it, I am more and

17:51 more convinced that I'm so happy I wrote it. And because I wrote this stuff now I'm like, oh, I need to, I need to put feet on this and walk this out, you know? So the number of times in my house with my, with my bride and my kids, where someone's like, Hey, you're going to make it. And we all start giggling, you know what I mean? Because it's, it's, and so for me, you know, what I'm realizing is although maybe the pandemic is over and like, I mean, I live in Washington state, which we had some of the most intense, you know, kind of government, you know, pressure and all this stuff. But like, I, what I realize is that, you know, the people are struggling, you know, like, it's not like, like we're, we're maybe out of that, but like with all that's going on, even as we're recording this right now, there is like, if we were just to go down the list of there's this and there's this and there's this and there's this, everyone I know is still kind of in that, like the reeling phase. And so, and as a pastor, you know, as you know, meeting by meeting, as I hang out with people in our, in the church, I get to be a part of, and you know, people are struggling. And so for me, I'm more and more convinced that like, Hey, like hope is a decision.

18:55 It's, it's me putting on the mind of Christ and, and, and in all that's going on, I can very easily be hopeless. And then again, like coming down to like, Hey, am I going to continue? Am I going to cut corners or am I really going to lean into my faith and, and, and being the kind of person that, that other people be like, Oh, that person's definitely a Christian. And not because I'm carrying my Bible, even though I'll do that. And not because I have, you know, Jesus fish on my car, even though I'll do that, you know, it's like, but, but just who I am, how I work and talk to people and how I engage with people, you know, just yesterday, I was in a coffee shop and I watched somebody just, just really flip out on the barista. And I was just like, Hey, Hey, I don't know what's going on in your world right now, but like, let me buy your coffee.

19:41 They're just trying to, they're just trying to take care of your coffee. Like, like, I'm so sorry for whatever's going on and let me just buy your coffee, you know? And, and, and, and, and, and so they're like stopped and they're like, I'm so sorry, I'm acting that way. And then they started sharing, there was all these things going on. And I'm like, listen, I don't know where you're on your faith journey, but I follow Jesus. And I don't think it's by chance that we're here right now. I'm happy to buy coffee, but can I pray for you? And all of a sudden, the baristas are crying. Like literally, it's just like started crying. And, and, and, and in that moment, I prayed for them. And then the barista was like, Hey, like, thank you for, for, for doing that. I'm like, Hey, I'm so sorry that, you know, obviously they're having a bad day, but it's nothing against you. I think you're doing a great job. And, and, and like, in that moment, it's like, I could have very easily just stood there and stared at my phone. Like there's a lot of things I could have done, but I felt like the Lord kind of nudging me like Daniel, like you want to be the kind of person who wouldn't like, yeah, I see someone's upset. They're being rude, but let's not just kind of come down on them. That's like, they're hurting maybe, or maybe I would have said something. They would have just socked me in the jaw. I mean, who knows what would have happened, but like, that's the way it worked, but I want it, but it's like, no, I need to lean into that because what I'm finding is as the world becomes more messy and intense, the body of Christ needs to shine the light. The light functions the greatest in the darkness. But for so much, so many of my brothers and sisters in Christ, we're starting to get a little shady where we're kind of like taking that lamp and we're maybe sticking it in a basket or maybe we're just putting a lower wattage bulb in. And it's like, no, no, this is the time in the darkness. That's when the light gets all the

21:13 work done. So let's so shine that light into this world that people see our good works and glorify our father in heaven. So now more than ever, I'm like, man, I want to see God do a revival and we need to lean in, not lean back. Yeah. I like what you did there with the barista. I mean, actually the customer who, you know, it's easy to give somebody like, I'm going to give this person a free drink whenever they're like, you can see that they're struggling with, you know, paying, they might not, they might look like they're not ready to, they might look like they can't afford it. But here you're going after somebody that has, you know, they've got seriously something going on. They're not acting right that you would want to reward that by giving them a free coffee, but God used that moment and you were obedient to the Holy Spirit to do that. And that changed the situation and you're able to witness to them. That's amazing. That's really, really cool. And that's something that I think we need to look for opportunities to do that because, you know, even if you're going to make it, we need to make sure that other people are going to make it too, because we're not an island, you know, you can't do this, this Christian life alone. We're not called to. And so we got to help each other out, whether you know that person or not. So, and so much of spiritual maturity is, you know, like it's like when a child is young, they need their parents to do everything for them. And then part of like their maturity is they start doing less and less things. They start doing more and more things and

22:48 parents are doing less and less. Like I have an eight year old at home and she's like, dad, I can do this. And when she says that, I'm always like, okay, she should do that. I also have an 18 year old at home who I'm like, Hey buddy, you're 18. And so like, you don't need me to do this for you. And he's like, you're right, dad, sorry, I got this, you know? And so part of being someone who's spiritually multiplying in the world is, is inserting yourself in things and helping knowing that it won't always be that way, but you do that in the short term, knowing that, Hey, like, you know, we got, we have to, you know, crawl before we can walk. We have to walk before we can run. We have to run before we can run a marathon or run an iron man. And so, so, you know, so much of life, I think for the believers looking for those opportunities and saying, God, let me help.

23:33 Every day, I'm like, Lord, let me, cause you just said the greatest in this kingdom is the servant of all. Right. And so a servant at the very least is someone who helps in it. So like, so every day I'm like, Lord, let me just help. Like, is there some situation I can help? And sometimes I try and help and I mess everything up. And that's kind of the beauty of the walk with Jesus where sometimes like, yeah, I shouldn't have done that that way. That wasn't exactly the best, but then you, but you don't, you don't stop doing it. You, you had that resilience. Like I got to keep going after I got to seek, uh, you know, forgiveness for how I messed that up and just keep going forward. Yeah. And I'm so grateful that, you know, God overcomes our failures. You know, if we're trying, he's still going to follow through with us and help us in that, even if we fail. And so I want to encourage people to check out, you're going to make it, unlocking resilience when life is a mess, um, which happens to be all the time. So you're, you're going to want to, uh, check this out. Uh, so pastor Daniel, how can people get a hold of this book and how can they get ahold of you? I know you, you've got a great YouTube channel. You've got your two minute messages that you do. Uh, tell us about how people can, they can follow you and get ahold of you and get the book. Yeah. So if anybody wants to connect with me, if you put my name in, uh, whatever, you know, platform you're looking at, I'm sure we have content there, obviously wherever you like to buy books, uh, there's, you know, the physical books, there's the eBooks. And if you think my voice is super sultry and you like audio books, I actually read the book for the audio book as well. So wherever you like to get books, uh, you can get it there. And literally I have different content, you know, whether it's podcast, I have TV, radio, all the different social platforms. And so, uh, just trying to do,

25:08 to do my best to sprinkle a little, a little hope, uh, a lot of Jesus, uh, all over the place, uh, on the interwebs and all, and all the different platforms is trying to reach people for the, with, uh, with the name of Jesus. Amen. So that's Daniel Fusco, D-A-N-I-E-L F-U-S-C-O. And you can just look him up anywhere and you'll be able to find them. I did that before this interview and was able to find him pretty simply. Um, for those of you that are just listening, he's got these cool dreadlocks and he's got a great beard and, uh, he's got a great smile that you can tell that he really loves Jesus. And so I just want to encourage everybody to check out his book. Uh, you are going to make it. That's a great promise that we know that you are going to make it. And you know, even though, as we said at the beginning of this, that John 10, 10, the thief comes to steal, to kill and to destroy, but God has come that you might have life and life abundantly.

26:04 So pastor Daniel, as we're wrapping up here, would you just pray for our audience here and, uh, bless them? Oh, I would love to. If you're able to shut your eyes, if not, if you're driving, just keep those eyes on the road, please Lord. I want to thank you for everyone who's listening to this. I thank you for John God. I ask more than anything that you would meet us in the messy situations Lord, and that you would help us to keep our, our, our minds drenched with hope, Lord, because you're a good God and you're the God of all hope. Like to remind people that hope has a name. His name is Jesus. And so Jesus, thank you for being the hope giver and, and God, will you help us to, to walk in that biblical grit? You want to make us more like Jesus and you don't want us to cut corners. So Lord, if any of us right now are cutting corners, Lord, will you just kind of hem us in, help us to amend our ways and more than anything, God, we want to know you. We want to walk with you. We want to be a filled and empowered by your spirit. So God lead us forward and Lord, in the midst of all of the sufferings and the fear and worry and the struggle and the stress, God, will you meet us and will you lead us in that way everlasting? So God be glorified in and through our lives. And we ask it all in the powerful name of Jesus. And we all agreed and said together.

27:18 Amen. Amen. Amen. You are going to make it. You're going to make it by Daniel Fusco. Check it out, go to his social media, his website. You'll be able to find that information there. Daniel, it's been a pleasure talking to you here on the Charisma News Podcast. This has been John Matarazzo. God bless you.