Brian Robinson (00:00:00) - You are listening to the real Faith stories podcast interviews with people who chose to boldly follow their faith. I'm your host, Brian Robinson. Now let's meet our guests and hear their story. Dave, it's so good to have you back on real Faith stories. We're going to take a really different approach to this particular episode, where I'm going to share a personal story about performance and how that was a real issue in my life, and how not too long ago, the Lord really dealt with that. And I'd like to share that. And then I'm going to have you ask me questions about that. So we're going to flip the table, as it were, and have you interview me. How about that?

Dave Charlson (00:00:48) - I like.

Brian Robinson (00:00:49) - It. So I'm going to share a little bit of the backstory regarding what happened. For those of you that don't know, I wrote a book a few years ago called The Selling Formula, and it was a codification of my sales process. It did well, and I got on a bunch of podcast episodes, got interviewed, and the rest is history, so to speak.

Brian Robinson (00:01:10) - So I have a friend of mine who is very well known in the sales and marketing space, pretty much world renown in terms of his notoriety, who very kindly asked me to get on a webinar with the folks that he works with his clientele and share the five steps of the selling formula. I agreed and said to myself, I've been doing this for years. This should be fun. Little did I know what was about to happen to me. About an hour before the webinar started. I was so full of anxiety. It was probably one of the worst senses of anxiety Dave I ever had. And that's saying a lot because I have felt anxiety in my life. In fact, about a half hour before the webinar started, I'm literally laying on my back and I'm doing deep breathing exercises to try to get rid of the stress. I'm quoting scripture. I'm asking God to remove this from me, and I hear in my heart the Lord say, I'm going to teach you a lesson. And so I'm like, oh great, wonder what this is going to be about? I get on the webinar, I'm so stressed, my left eye feels like it's going to fall out of my head.

Brian Robinson (00:02:22) - That's the adrenaline. I get introduced and I start to talk about these five steps. Anyone listening knows. And I'm sure you do as well, Dave, that when you're in that stress state, the nuances and the ways that you normally communicate, they disappear because you're in what they call the lizard brain, right. And so that's where I was. And I'm hearing in my head this dialogue going on, and the voice in my head was, you are really effing this up. I'm like, what? I heard it twice. This is going on in my head while I'm trying to share this information with these people, and I know I'm missing certain things, I'm trying to follow the steps. And thankfully, the host who invited me on started to ask me questions and it kind of broke off of me. And so the rest of the call went well. In fact, when it was over, he texted me and said, hey, great job. You seemed really calm. And I said later, I talked to him like, dude, it was terrible.

Brian Robinson (00:03:24) - So I went to bed that night at 745. I was so exhausted from the adrenaline that was flowing through me in the stress. Got up the next morning and this is where the Lord wonderfully started to help me unpack what happened in that experience. So I took a good hour to journal all of this out. And after four plus pages of journaling, here was the takeaway. The Lord showed me that when I perform, it's subtracts from who he created me to be. And he said you are enough. And then he told me to renounce the spirit of performance over my life. I'm about to lose it as as I share this. It was so real, Dave. I prayed and the Lord before I prayed, he reminded me of key moments in my life where I had been in performance mode, and the associated stress, which was similar to what I just described. I renounce that over my life and literally I felt something shift in me. This peace, this joy, came on me because I knew something broke.

Brian Robinson (00:04:34) - And I can tell you it broke sincerely. Because the days following, and since then, it's been completely different. When I'm in a potential space where I need to speak to a group or I'm being interviewed about something, I am totally comfortable in just saying things I need to say. But the key takeaway was, again, anytime I perform, it's subtracts from who he created me to be. So how's that for an intro?

Dave Charlson (00:05:02) - That is a mouthful. Has he revealed to you? Kind of when that first started? Most of the stuff starts in early childhood, but do you have any clue of how that got started?

Brian Robinson (00:05:14) - I do, what a great question. I grew up in a family of five. I was the. Youngest of three kids, and my older siblings were eight and 11 years older than me, so I was kind of like an only child. I grew up in a predominantly Catholic neighborhood outside Chicago, where many of my friends had a bunch of siblings. I was kind of the Lone Ranger, and I would get pretty frequently rejected when it came to hanging out with those families, so rejection had been quite an issue growing up in my life, feeling a sense of rejection or being afraid of rejection.

Brian Robinson (00:05:45) - And I kind of built a moat around that with performance. I did it through my academics, I did it through my athletics and college, grad school then, and different endeavors in other companies I had worked in. So yeah, that was that's been kind of a lifelong deal. And the root of it, which I believe the Lord showed me, was this fear of rejection caused me to want to be in a performance mode.

Dave Charlson (00:06:12) - And do you have any stories or experiences either? Both internally or possibly even externally, or probably both, that have happened since, since then, where you found yourself tempted to lean on performance and then getting a check and not going with that instinct. Have you had a moment or moments like that since?

Brian Robinson (00:06:33) - Absolutely. I was interviewed three days after this experience by Troy Mangum on the Kindling Fire podcast. It was audio and video. I started to feel a little sense of concern rising up in me, and immediately I reminded myself that was no longer who I was again. It changed everything with respect to how we interacted.

Brian Robinson (00:06:56) - It was very comfortable. Because of that comfort and non-performance mindset, I was able to say the things the way I felt in my heart. I needed to say them. What's interesting is, even as I say, this is it's almost like that performance is a filter that blocks the truth, the true heart of who you are coming out when you interact with other people. Does that make sense?

Dave Charlson (00:07:20) - Yes, it absolutely makes sense. So I think that's worth saying again, would you say that again? Performance.

Brian Robinson (00:07:26) - Performance is a filter that blocks the truth of who you really are. When you interact with people, it colors it incorrectly.

Dave Charlson (00:07:35) - And then to go back to what the Lord said to you, the Lord said that when you perform, it's a subtracts from who you really are.

Brian Robinson (00:07:42) - Yes. And then he said, you are enough and you know that can be taken. Somebody casually listening to this, when they hear someone say I am enough, can misinterpret that as pride. I think that's the furthest from what was spoken to my heart.

Brian Robinson (00:08:00) - It was in the context of Jesus in me, and him with me is more than enough.

Dave Charlson (00:08:07) - Yes. And and one of the things I'm noticing right now in this interview, and I'm experiencing it differently. And even like as you said, the phrase you are enough. I felt the Lord's life on those words because it's really what he said. It's a testimony of how he is freeing you of the lie that you're not enough. But there's so much substance just on those three words. Like performance says, there has to be a slick program with formulas, a very elegant form. And yet Jesus would say things like, do you want to be healed? And you could just feel in his words in the Bible that there was substance on those words. There wasn't a class on how to get healed. It was just, do you want to be healed? And if the person said yes with their heart, that was it was over.

Brian Robinson (00:08:52) - Yeah. I'm glad you seized on that, because I remember speaking to somebody else the other day about this experience, and I said, I know that, I know I'm enough now.

Brian Robinson (00:09:03) - Years ago, I could have said out loud to myself, you're enough. But in my heart I would not have believed it. It would have just been untrue, because I didn't experience that freedom that I described earlier. Somebody can argue and say that you are enough, but until you know that in your knower, so to speak, it's just words.

Dave Charlson (00:09:22) - So looking back at the anxiety, which was very uncomfortable, how do you view that now? Because that's the part that as I lead people through these experiences, you know, when someone calls me and they're in that state of anxiety and they're going through it and I'll say, oh, I'm so excited for you. And of course, it's the last thing you want to hear when you're in a state of anxiety is, oh, there's somebody excited about this. But I say it on purpose because when you're in that state of anxiety, it feels like something's dying. How do you view that anxiety and what's and for someone that might be on the cusp of this happening to them, or they might be experiencing anxiety and they're confused by it, what would you say to them about how to navigate that?

Brian Robinson (00:10:02) - On the surface, it's it's utterly life sucking.

Brian Robinson (00:10:05) - Literally. It just sucks the creativity out of you, your ability to think when you're in that space of anxiety. And I think that if you're experiencing that personally. Right. Now. It would be very wise to stop what you're doing. Get before the Lord. And for me, writing out, just write. Until you can't write anymore about these feelings you've got and the depth of what you're experiencing. And don't hold back. For me, getting it out on paper has been a tremendous way to process before the Lord. And then ask the Lord, what do you want me to know about this? How do you want me to deal with this? And invariably he will show you things that are contributing to this, the triggers. And it could very well be a fear of rejection or fear of blank, you know, fill in the blank and then go from there and see what he has. You do what he may have, you pray. And that's the best advice I could give.

Dave Charlson (00:11:03) - That's well said.

Dave Charlson (00:11:04) - And it's interesting because there's there's a lot of teachings on fear and how if it's an irrational fear, if a lion isn't really about to pounce on you, sometimes the best thing to do is to is to run through the fear to to take action through it. The interesting thing about what I believe you had was an encounter of God removing shame from you, because the message was that was still rumbling in you was I am not enough, which is a message of identity, which is a shame message. And what I loved about what you said. The interesting thing about when it's shame and not fear, is the best thing to do is to pause and surrender to the Lord, you know? And and it's the opposite of what you do when when it's just an irrational fear that you need to kind of action your way through.

Brian Robinson (00:11:47) - To put even more clothing on that, so to speak, and dress it out is knowing what people desire most out of us is authenticity and vulnerability, the humanness of just being who we are.

Brian Robinson (00:12:03) - And what that does then is let the Christ in you, in the personality he's put into you, come out in a way that can truly speak to other people. I think we intuit when people are putting on a front, no matter how minute that might be. Is that a fair statement? Dave, based on your coaching, I.

Dave Charlson (00:12:20) - Absolutely think that's a fair statement and you even can recognize it without them saying words because we communicate via our body language, you know, more than even our words. So when someone's posturing, you kind of can feel it.

Brian Robinson (00:12:31) - And posturing. That's true. Same as performance, right?

Dave Charlson (00:12:35) - Yeah. Same as performance.

Brian Robinson (00:12:37) - Well, you had an experience that you shared with me that really spoke to me. That was somewhat similar to this. Once you share that, please.

Dave Charlson (00:12:45) - Yeah. So I got invited the first time ever to speak internationally, and it was a very generous offer. I was invited by a church in Switzerland. I'd been telling my wife that God wanted her to go to Europe and she's afraid of flying.

Dave Charlson (00:12:58) - And I said, And God is God is going to make a way for us to go to. We were newly married. So sure enough, you know, the funds aren't really coming together. It was in between jobs. And so she's like, well, how are we going to pay for it? It wouldn't be responsible for us when you're without work to go to Europe. I'm like, I agree, we're not going to take our savings and spend it on a Europe trip. And I'm looking for work. But I said, but somehow another we're going to Europe and it's going to be very soon. And sure enough, I got a speaking invite out of the blue. Someone that saw me speak. I had like a ten minute conversation with him afterward, and he's like, I was so impacted by your talk, we want to pay for you and a guest to come. We'll pay you such and such amount per day to speak. And I just showed it to my wife. I go, well, here's here's how the Lord's providing.

Dave Charlson (00:13:39) - Yeah. So that was incredible in of itself. Right. And so I was so excited about that. And we ended up taking a little bit of money and got help from family. We even took our one of our son as a high school graduation. So the three of us all go. It's a family trip. It's great. So I'm so caught up in that. Like you, I have a lot of material prepared for this kind of talk. I'm not really worried about prep. I've got some loose notes, and I figure on the train rides when we're traveling, I'll just take some time to myself and kind of tighten up my presentations. Well, by the time I'm tightening these things up, all my normal way of preparing doesn't work. It's just I don't feel life on any of it. I'm like, I've done this material countless times and it's always borne fruit. Why am I so reluctant to just share this material again? And it was. It was like the worst writer's block ever, even though I had all the material, like, all of it seemed like like junk.

Dave Charlson (00:14:28) - And so we're in Paris, and the next morning we're getting on a train to go to Switzerland, and I'm going to be speaking that afternoon for five hours. And that night before that, I just I'm panicked. I'm like, I can't share any of this. And if I don't share this God, then what am I going to share?

Brian Robinson (00:14:44) - Didn't your wife ask you a question during the trip that was really telling?

Dave Charlson (00:14:48) - Yeah, she's like, what is wrong with you? Like, we're in Paris. Why do you seem so distracted like I am? I'm having the time of my life and I want to connect with you. And you seem really frustrated, really disconnected from us. And I told her none of this stuff I'm about to share is going to work. You know, I hate my life right now, is what I told her. And she was so frustrated with me. She goes, you know what? I'm having the time of my life, I love you, I know you're going to get through this, but.

Dave Charlson (00:15:17) - I don't feel like I can help you. So I'm going to go and enjoy myself. And you just figure that out. Yeah. I don't blame her. Yeah, I was a mess, and I really didn't want her to be around me because I. There's nothing she could have done to help me, you know, other than just say she loves me, which she did. We're on the train ride. The anxiety is getting worse and worse. I'm trying to enjoy the scenery because we're in Europe on the Eurostar and it's beautiful. And then all of a sudden there's the only thing that has life on it is one Bible verse and one question. And I felt like that's all that had any life on it, and I couldn't think of anything else, and that was it. And I thought, how am I going to fill five hours with that? And the Lord said, I'll fill five hours with that. You just you go with that. So he stripped me down. So all I had was one verse and the verses in John.

Dave Charlson (00:16:03) - And Jesus says to two disciples that follow him, what do you want? And they respond, where do you live? And so, so and then the question that I had for the group was, what do you want? So really, my verse and my question were just really just one thing, which is what do you want? Um, and so I thought, well, I guess this is what I'm going to go with. I'm going to go with one phrase, what do you want? You know, I've got a translator, I've got about 50 people that are in a year long class together. And when I stood up and kind of got the pleasantries out of the way, shared a little bit about myself, and then said, okay, here's the teaching. And I said the word, what do you want? It was as if Jesus himself walked through the back door. I felt his presence fill the room, and it was like those three words. The only word I can think of was you, and the word you is.

Dave Charlson (00:16:55) - Jesus was basically saying to people, when we say, what do you want? We often answer from a you. That's a performance. You not, not the real you. And so I began to speak that out. And then we just did a group exercise where I said, everybody here, we're going to take turns. And I want you to say, what do you want? And I want you to to answer and not think about your words, but just answer. Is it flowing from your heart? And if you get stuck, we're all going to help you. And it was one of the most life giving teachings I've ever done. It went on for five hours. I mean, we could have gone for six and it's hard to keep it, but the substance was the people in the room and we were having a group experience as one together. And it was very, very, very vulnerable. To go back to your word. It was all about authenticity and vulnerability.

Brian Robinson (00:17:37) - I'm thinking through this and setting this up here.

Brian Robinson (00:17:40) - You are getting paid to come on this journey to deliver a word to these people, all expenses. And you have literally one Scripture and one sentence to say for a five hour discussion. I cannot imagine the anxiety that you were feeling before you said those words. Did you have a release of that anxiety, or were you full on anxiety when you got up in front of that group?

Dave Charlson (00:18:07) - You know, I'd had some of that beat out of me that anxiety and I don't beat out of me sounds really dramatic, but that's how it felt. It was actually loved out of me. It was not beat out of me, but the feeling I had. So yeah, I had gone through a divorce and had launched a product on the market where I literally had zero ability to pretend and perform for about an 18 month project where I grew a product in the market. And so I'd had a lot of experiences already up to that point where I just had no energy of my own to give, and the Lord had to work through me.

Dave Charlson (00:18:41) - So I kind of was a little bit familiar with that feeling of showing up to a meeting and going, wow, I really feel like I'm doing my best, but it sure doesn't feel like it's enough. Yeah. And so I think the anxiety was pretty high that night before. And once I had that phrase and that verse, which were really the same thing, a peace did come over me. But I think the reason it did is because I, I'd been in this spot before and it just it was kind of familiar to me. I'm like, oh, I know what this is, and I don't know how it's going to be okay. But to say that I wasn't anxious at all would be a while. So I was definitely pretty worried and hopeful this was going to work out somehow. Intellectually, I couldn't see how it would work though. It just it made no sense.

Brian Robinson (00:19:22) - But it did work out fabulously.

Dave Charlson (00:19:25) - So much so that it got so noisy in there because there was so much life that the pastor, the senior pastor, came down from his office and came in just to check it out, and all of his students just waved him in, and we put him in the hot seat, and he began to cry from his heart of what his vision was for the church, what the Lord and then his whole congregation.

Dave Charlson (00:19:44) - At least that part of it was praying and supporting. It was just, wow. It was a beautiful moment. And the cool thing was, I wasn't the expert with the answers. I was there to activate what was already sitting there in that organization, in that church. I mean, it was it was really the content in the room was them, and I was just an outside catalyst, an agent to come activate it. And so I felt like it was much better than if I'd done the presentation that I'd planned to give.

Brian Robinson (00:20:11) - I was just reading in Psalm 33 this morning. The scripture, I believe it starts. Around 1314 that the horse is a vain hope for victory. It's the strength of a man is a vain hope for victory. All of that is nothing. What God is wanting to do. He wants to rescue us. He wants to help us. But we are so good at grasping on to the things that we know in our minds and around us. Instead of releasing what we think is really helping us, but in fact is hindering us from moving forward.

Dave Charlson (00:20:48) - Yes, I think it's 100% true. The verse that comes to mind to back up what you said is, you know, his strength is perfected in our weakness.

Brian Robinson (00:20:56) - There it is. Yeah.

Dave Charlson (00:20:57) - And then the verse that I think that's more of an action verse in this, because surrender as a business person, surrender always sounds so passive to me. I'm like, oh gosh, I don't want to be one of those flaky Christians that just sits back and waits for checks to show up in my mailbox. I'm an active person. I love the idea of surrender, but I feel like having it paired with something I can actively pursue surrender. And so to me, the way I do it is James 516, which is to confess my sins to my brothers and sisters. In addition to you mentioned the anxiety confessing to the Lord. I, I think that is absolutely biblical, you know, to be anxious for nothing, to bring all that before the Lord and let him show us what this anxiety is trying to tell us about what he wants to release from us, but also to confess the sins.

Dave Charlson (00:21:46) - To me, a sin is a state of separateness from God. So when I'm going through something like you went through, I've gotten in the habit of I have a small group of people that I leave really weird text messages for, like voice text messages, and I'm like, hey, I know this isn't me, but this is what I'm experiencing. I just wanted you to know. I know you're part of my journey. Um, just please pray for me. I know I'm going to get through this. If you have any words of wisdom, that'd be great. And then sometimes it's so intense and that doesn't shake it. I'll do the opposite of what I feel like is the right thing to do, and I will move toward somebody and share this really kind of embarrassing, vulnerable part of myself that I feel like is immature and not based in the truth. And I just confess it. And he promises healing in James 516, if you confess, I'm faithful to heal. And then he says, a prayer of a righteous man avails much.

Dave Charlson (00:22:36) - I think what it does is it realigns me with my righteousness. The truth is that you and I are saints and and we're not meant to live under this stuff. Healthy vulnerability is an active way. It's the opposite of what Adam and Eve did. If you want to go and just unwind the inheritance of Adam and Eve, it's confession is key.

Brian Robinson (00:22:53) - Yeah it is. I've just pulled the scripture up, Dave, that I was mentioning. I didn't do justice to it. I'm just going to read Psalm 3313 to 19. It says, the Lord looks down from heaven. He sees all the children of man from where he sits and throne. He looks out, and all the inhabitants of the earth, he who fashions the hearts of them all and observes all their deeds. The king is not saved by his great army. A warrior is not delivered by his great strength. The warhorse is a false hope for salvation, and by its great might it cannot rescue. Behold, the eye of the Lord is on those who fear him.

Dave Charlson (00:23:29) - Wow!

Brian Robinson (00:23:30) - On those who hope in his steadfast love, that he may deliver their soul from death and keep them alive in famine. So is there any other thought you'd like to share? As we wrap this up, or question you want to ask.

Dave Charlson (00:23:43) - I think the word that comes to mind. And then maybe you can comment on this and see what this word means to you. It's the word revealed. Like when I think of your experience, it was as if God wanted to reveal the real you, to you that broke through the lie of you're not enough. He's like, I just want to show you that you're more than enough, Brian. It was almost like he took that experience of you bumping into that lie as as a kind of a prestigious talk came up. He used the intensity of that situation, brought that lie to the surface, and then all he wanted to do was reveal the truth to you. Yeah. You just he just wanted you to know the truth. Exactly. Because the truth that's your free.

Dave Charlson (00:24:24) - That word is.

Brian Robinson (00:24:25) - Perfect.

Dave Charlson (00:24:25) - The part that you had to play was to be childlike. You know, like, these things get formed in us when we're young and vulnerable, and the distortion or the block, as you said, gets removed by returning to a childlike posture but with grown up wisdom. And it's it's a beautiful way that he redeems us and restores us. Yeah.

Brian Robinson (00:24:46) - It is, it's priceless. I feel like we've kind of waded into some deep waters, I think.

Dave Charlson (00:24:51) - So I think we're in the deep end.

Brian Robinson (00:24:53) - By the way, for those that have not heard Dave's episode, go ahead and just go to whatever site you're listening to this podcast on and search for Dave Charlson and you'll find his episode. You can hear the whole backstory about what he shared. Uh, very, very powerful story. Thanks again for doing this with me today, Dave. I'd love to pray as we finish up here. Would you mind doing that for? Both of us and whoever's listening. Yeah.

Dave Charlson (00:25:18) - Thanks.

Dave Charlson (00:25:18) - God. I just want to. I want to honor Brian's story, and I want to. I want to use this time to honor the offering that he gives of his work to you in this podcast as a act of worship. And I want to honor his vulnerability on this particular episode. And, God, I ask that as people that are listening to this connect to Brian's vulnerability, to my vulnerability, that you would empower them with courage to be real with themselves before you and those that they trust about their weakness, so that you can come and strengthen them and bring them and show them who they really are. God, I pray that people would get a new sense, a new childlike joy that bubbles up as they release the grown up anxieties that come with growing into an adult and the responsibilities. And may they encounter a light yoke. I pray that right now, over all of us, and I bless Brian and the real Faith stories podcast in Jesus name.

Brian Robinson (00:26:21) - Thank you Dave so much. So good hanging out with you, man.

Brian Robinson (00:26:24) - Appreciate it. You too. You bet. Hey everyone, thanks for listening. Please make sure you subscribe to the show and share this with someone you believe would be encouraged and motivated by these stories. Until next time, I'm Brian Robinson, reminding you that the greatest decision you could ever make is to ask Jesus Christ to become the Lord of your life. If you haven't done that, read Romans chapter ten, verses nine through 11. Thanks again for listening.