Summary
I had a wonderful discussion with author Russ Ewell about how we can discover God for ourselves, based on his book ‘He’s Not Who You Think He Is’. We speak about how to build relationship with God as well as how to form a deeper connection with Him. We also discuss his love of music, basketball and his favourite TV show Downton Abbey. Listen now.
Links
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Visit Russ Ewell’s website russewell.com
Visit Matt McChlery’s website mattmcchlery.com
Chapters
00:00 Introduction
00:55 Why do we need to discover God for ourselves?
04:56 What’s the difference between God and religion?
07:31 Nones and Nuns
08:01 How can emotions be a barrier to discovering God?
13:43 How can we rebuild emotional lives in a positive way?
17:03 How can we discover God for ourselves?
21:14 Interactive book
24:42 Ad Break
25:53 Russ Ewell’s favourite things
30:01 Downton Abbey
31:55 Upcoming Projects
34:47 Where to find Russ Ewell online
Transcript
Matt (00:18.824)
Well hello and welcome to the Christian Book Blurb podcast where we like to encourage you in your discipleship one book at a time as we meet some amazing Christian authors and learn about their books, their lives and their faith. Well I’m your host Matt McChlery thanks for joining me today and on today’s show I’m going to be talking about discovering God for yourself with the author Russ Ewell. Russ, hello and welcome to the show.
Russ Ewell (00:47.662)
Hello, Matt. It’s great to be here. Thanks for having me on. I’m looking forward to our conversation personally.
Matt (00:53.416)
Yeah, I am as well. And you’ve written a great book called, He Is Not Who You Think He Is, which we’ll be dipping into a little bit later on. But just to start us off, a fairly general question, really. Why is it important that we need to discover God for ourselves?
Russ Ewell (01:14.09)
Well, one of the things that I’ve learned, I became a Christian decades ago, but initially things were more behavioral for me and I did not have a church background, didn’t grow up growing a church, didn’t grow up really reading the Bible, so it was all new. And so the first approach I had was, okay, well, what are the rules? And that’s kind of the person that I was. What are the rules, what are the guidelines? But over time I burnt out because
I was so busy trying to get the behavior right that I didn’t get the power right. And as we were getting ready for this and talking and praying.
You mentioned the Holy Spirit and I just, I did not have that spiritual experience of the power that I think God can give you or the grace that God can give you to get through things. And so what happened to me is across from my dorm, I was in college, was a Christian bookstore. I’d never been to a Christian bookstore before. I’d never listened to Christian music before, but I was sort of frustrated and didn’t know where to go and people around me were trying, but it seemed like I kept getting a reinforcement of behavior. Well, here’s the way to behave.
this scripture and set your mind.” And I was like, I can’t get my will straight. I can’t get my heart straight. So when I went in there, I ended up discovering an author that, you know, you’re familiar with, I’m sure, but some of your younger listeners may not, J.I. Packer. And he written a book called Knowing God. And I was like, what’s that? You know, what’s this Knowing God thing? And so over the years, what I’ve learned is if you don’t have
Matt (02:26.505)
Hmm.
Matt (02:39.541)
Hmm.
Russ Ewell (02:43.574)
your relationship with God straight, sort of John 15, Jesus talks about that. In fact, one of the things I admire about, what I’m inspired about with regard to Jesus, is he shows us his relationship with God, especially in the book of John, you just see it jump off the page of his interconnectedness with God. And that I realized that a lot of the times I was going to church reading my Bible, but I was disconnected. But for me to discover God, I had to, another author I read was Floyd McClung. He wrote a book, The Father Heart of God.
And I realized I’m looking at God as an authority in a way that is keeping me distant and keeping me a little more fearful, a little more nervous, never fully relaxed. And then I finally read another book by, I think it was also J.I. Packer, no, J.B. Phillips called Your God is Too Small. And when I read that, I said, oh, I see God as a policeman that’s, you know, following me around, waiting for me to make a mistake.
So when you discover God for yourself, you begin to understand him personally, and that means you understand the qualities about him. Psalms does a good job with that, talking about he is a deliverer, he rescues us. Jacob talks about the fact that he is the shepherd of his whole life. Abraham, where he describes that he, Abraham, God became his friend. And those were things that were really new to me. And I think a lot of times as churchgoers or Christians or those who are searching for God, but don’t go to church.
We don’t know how to approach God. And even though we read about Jesus, we can sometimes only see what Jesus is doing with people and not see what he’s doing in his relationship with God. So I think when you discover your personal relationship with God, you learn it for yourself. You’re less vulnerable to making Christianity about people. You’re less vulnerable to making it about your emotions and going up and down, which I did a lot, you know? And then when I got my relationship with God straight,
Matt (04:38.228)
Hmm.
Russ Ewell (04:40.694)
It really changed my life, settled me down, gave me a lot more peace, a lot less guilt, a lot less worrying and fear, because I realized that God’s presence was with me all the time. So that’s sort of the reason. I hope I answered that question okay there.
Matt (04:54.54)
No, that’s great. Thank you. And you’ve kind of hinted at it already, but for the sake of clarity, you’ve talked about sort of kind of knowing God from a distance or whatever, but what is the difference between God and religion?
Russ Ewell (05:13.73)
That’s a great question. And it’s, first of all, I didn’t know at the beginning because it seemed like the same thing to me. But even if I go back in time, a lot of times when I was focused on religion, like I said, I was focused on behavior, but I was also focused on, well, what’s my doctrinal belief and what’s your doctrinal belief? And a lot of times it becomes organizational, it becomes institutional.
It can even become argumentative, it can become debate oriented, it can become focused on the externals, it can become focused on people. And I think the difference between God and religion is that when you get a relationship with God, it’s personal, I think it’s emotional, I think it’s clarifying, it’s internally strengthening, and it’s freeing. And it frees us from all the worries that most of us have. What do people think about me? Am I a failure or a success?
If I have mental health problems, will anybody ever understand or accept me? And so I think when you start to get a relationship with God, you’re getting a relationship with him, you’re becoming more spiritual, you’re getting a relationship with people instead of being focused on whether people feel good about you, don’t feel good about you and the rat race of religion. And I think a lot of people, you know, in my mind, there’s a pure research.
They did, I think it was 2021, they did research on people and the religious nuns. That’s a big thing in America. But I know it’s been something that was preceded in Europe, that people moving away from church and that’s happening more here. And as a Western country, America was probably the most religious and people probably still see it as the most religious as far as like the sort of out there upfront, it’s in politics, it’s in everything. And so what’s happened is there’s been an increase
Matt (06:40.008)
Hmm.
Russ Ewell (06:58.192)
who don’t wanna have anything to do with religion in its institutional form. That means churches or synagogues or even mosque. And three out of 10 people in America are saying, I don’t want anything to do with it. But what’s interesting is 90% of them believe in a higher power. And so to me that says people want a relationship with God, but they sometimes can’t see God.
because of all the religion and politics, et cetera.
Matt (07:30.072)
Yeah, when you mentioned just now the religious nuns, I immediately pictured ladies running around in sort of flowing robes and habits and a… No, not nuns! Nones as in no religion, none, you know, okay, I get it, I got it, I got it, but… It made me chuckle for a minute there.
Russ Ewell (07:37.518)
Ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha
Russ Ewell (07:43.657)
Exactly, exactly. Awesome, awesome. I…
Russ Ewell (07:52.63)
Yes, I don’t have an organization. I’m creating with nuns that are religious so
Matt (07:59.781)
You’ve also mentioned mental health problems as people seeing it might be kind of a barrier. And in your book, he’s not who you think he is. You mentioned some barriers that may stop us from truly discovering God. Mental health wasn’t one of them. But one of these, you mentioned, is our emotions. What do you mean when you say that our emotions can lead us away from truly knowing God?
Russ Ewell (08:26.166)
Well, all of us are different with regard to emotion, but one of the stories I tell in there is about growing up.
And I grew up in a state, Michigan, and at about 11, I fell in love with Star Trek. I’m talking about the original Star Trek, so I’m a little older, not, yeah, I do too. And I was facing what all kids face, I think, stress at home, stress in school, trying to grow up, who am I, do people like me, do girls like me, that kind of thing.
Matt (08:41.816)
Oh, I love Star Trek.
Russ Ewell (09:00.09)
And it just seemed like everything was so emotionally tumultuous that I just couldn’t handle it sometimes. And so every night during the summer at 1103, it was a specific time Star Trek came on, there were a few commercials and it came on. So I started watching Star Trek, got my parents convinced. My parents let me stay up and watch Star Trek and I fell in love with Spock. I still love Spock, but I fell in love with Spock and I was like, that’s my guy right there. But the reason he was my guy was because.
it gave me a way to suppress my emotions and not feel them. I took it as, okay, I don’t have to feel any emotion, which I don’t think was the point of Spock, but that’s another whole story. And so I said, I’m gonna approach everything with logic. And the reason was, is my emotions were so overwhelming. And they still would be that way for years in my life, and they still can be, because I’m a very emotional person. So what does it mean?
when emotions can become our God, emotions can consume our life, is that everything we do is shaped by, to some degree, by how we feel.
And if we begin to let those emotions guide us in everything, they’ll deceive us. Jeremiah 17, 9, which I know you’re familiar with, the heart is a seat full above all things. I think that’s God trying to tell us one, the heart in many ways is the seat of our emotions. And if we just listen to them all the time, they’ll take over. And so I’ve had times in my life where my emotions were God, like I did what I felt or I reacted to what I felt. And so one of the things I try to do in the book,
is help people unravel the sort of mysteries of their emotions and start to see them clearly and understand the effect they have on them and on others.
Matt (10:47.757)
And in the book you say more people lose their faith in God due to an emotional crisis than they do because of any facts that disprove his existence or truth. Can you just explain or unpack that a bit for us if you will?
Russ Ewell (11:06.946)
Yeah, that’s a great question and it gets me thinking. So when I was studying religion, one of the things that I had to do was read agnostics, to read atheists, which I was an agnostic before I became a Christian. And I enjoy it and seeing them sort of throw dynamite into Christian beliefs. And so as I began to read them and look at them, I said, okay, I don’t.
I don’t just, I don’t buy these arguments are fundamentally where they start. And as I’ve talked to people and helped people gain faith, I’ve realized that a lot of times it’s the things that have happened to us emotionally that make us suppress our emotions, not deal with them. And sometimes people are reacting to God or have a particular attitude toward God.
and they’re unaware of the reason they have that attitude is an emotional crisis. So I tell a story in the book about a young man who was in a young teen group I was doing here in California, and he just wasn’t getting over the hump to believe in God. He grew up in a Christian family, a great family, his dad, one of my friends, and I was with him one day and I was like, well, I can’t figure out what the deal is. And then he kinda, it took a long time, then he kinda opened up and he said,
I can’t understand why my friend died of cancer and God didn’t save him because he was so good. He was such a great person. And I said, well, one, God didn’t cause him to die. And I began to explain to him everything from time and chance to, you know, what life’s about. Once he was able to get that emotional crisis out there, suddenly his willingness to read the Bible increased, his willingness to talk about God, and it just, it rolled in him ending up becoming a Christian.
I think there are people out there who really legitimately believe they have an academic or an intellectual problem with Christianity, but they don’t necessarily explore the heart. And I think that’s one of the things that they need to do. I’m not saying they need to do, I would encourage them to do, is put away the academics and put away the theology and just say, what’s happened to me in my life? Do an emotional history if you want. What’s happened in my life? And have I dealt with those things?
Russ Ewell (13:24.926)
And do I need to deal with those things? And what are my options for dealing with those things? So intellectualism can sometimes hide what’s below the surface, which is the emotional things we go through in life. I hope that helps our listeners get a grasp on that. And I talk about it more in the book.
Matt (13:36.724)
Hmm
Matt (13:41.6)
Yeah, yeah, and you mentioned getting it out there and kind of letting the heart respond rather than the intellect. Are there other things we could do to kind of rebuild our emotional lives in a healthy or positive way?
Russ Ewell (14:03.086)
Yeah, I think there’s a lot of things we can do. I think one is understanding when I’m talking about emotion, I’m not just talking about feelings. I think in many ways, I don’t wanna say it’s only this, but in many ways, emotion is the language of the heart, to me. Truth is the language of the mind. Faith is the language of the soul. So I sort of, I kinda do it that way. And I think what it is that the barriers we can face,
that we have to get through to get our emotions in connection to God, they come up with a lot of different things. It can be overcoming the fear of what people think about us. And so we can get over that barrier by understanding God’s love, which is something that I didn’t look at a lot. And when you start to look at, say, a book like 1 John, and you understand, wait a minute, God loves me all the time.
through the tough times at the best of times, at the worst of times, and when I’m able to see that, it steadies me out and makes me secure. What I had to do is I played basketball growing up, I got awards, I achieved this, I achieved that, but I’d go home and I’d be riddled with insecurities and doubts, you know, and I would go around, I’d be very boastful, but inside, there was a small amount of confidence, outside it looked like it was a large amount.
So I think getting past that, and I talk in the book about how religion can become God, not just emotions, and a lot of that has to do with people. And there’s a story I tell about being in Cambridge, not in England, but in America, in Boston area. And I had so many spiritual struggles, and I was a leader by then in my church. And I’d had so many struggles, I’d do great.
And maybe our listeners can understand it. You have these periods where you’re on top of the world spiritually, life’s going great, and then something happens. It may be sin, it may be a relationship breakdown, it may be a job loss, and then we crash. And I had that happen so many times, I was like, why am I always struggling? And I got so frustrated, I went and I sat under this tree in Harvard Yard, and I was sitting there, and I went to one common denominator in all my spiritual struggles.
Russ Ewell (16:23.698)
is I become consumed with what people think about me. And so I think overcoming the barrier is saying, I’m gonna make God, you know, the Bible talks about pleasing God. Well, it’s not just about, I better do what God wants. It’s about being so focused on God that we’re able to get through those rocky times. Hebrews 12 does the same thing, where I think he says, toss off the entanglements, toss off the encumbrances, and really focus on Jesus, right? And stay zeroed in on him, so that you don’t get thrown around. So those are some barriers.
Matt (16:50.938)
Hmm. Yeah, that’s really good.
Russ Ewell (16:53.118)
I think bitterness and a bunch of other things can be barriers, but we can overcome those things. So that’s a snapshot of how you can overcome barriers.
Matt (17:01.96)
Yeah, that’s great. Thanks, Russ. How can we develop our own personal relationship with God? I mean, this episode’s called Discovering God for Yourself. So how do we do it? What are some of the most vital things that you can give our listeners to do that?
Russ Ewell (17:14.007)
Yeah.
Russ Ewell (17:19.69)
Well, yeah. Well, it’s, you know, that’s a big question. And one, I would say that checking out your website is a good place to start because I’ve looked at it and there’s a lot of great stuff there and one of the things you do, and I think I’ve mentioned this before we got started, to me, music is a big deal. And I talk about this in the book, that I discovered Bruce Springsteen in college and I did not like listening to Bruce Springsteen when I.
Matt (17:26.129)
Yes.
Russ Ewell (17:49.11)
first heard him, but he has a song called Two Hearts. And I listened to that song, and this is years, decades later, I listened to that song, because I was a big Clash fan, so I need to get that out on the table. But yeah, I had to get that out there. But I listened to it, and I began to understand him later, and I realized, oh, this guy, he’s talking about real life. He’s talking about what we go through. And so I think…
Matt (17:50.953)
Hehehe
Matt (18:01.64)
All right, all right.
Russ Ewell (18:16.978)
One of the things that I would encourage people to do to discover God is what happened to me and what I did. Number one, I had a friend of mine who I was at the library with and I saw his schedule book and he had written in at Genesis 5 and he wrote about Enoch walk with God. And I was a fairly young Christian, a couple of months old, and I said, who’s Enoch and what is walking with God? You know, and then he started to tell me, oh, you get up in the morning, you read your Bible, you pray.
Have a friend, find a really great friend that you can talk to. Number two, and some of these are in the book in different places, and we might talk about it later about some of the additives in the book that people can go to, but number two is find some music you can listen to because I think music awakens our emotions in our heart and our mind. And when you listen to Christian music, which sometimes the younger people I work with are like, ah, I don’t wanna listen to Christian music. And I’m like, you’ll be amazed if you let it in.
Matt (18:57.728)
There you go.
Russ Ewell (19:15.35)
how it can transform your mind and connect you to the scriptures. Number three, find a book of the Bible that you can read. You know, my first book of the Bible was from a college class I had. It was on literature and the Bible was one of the books you read, but I had the King James Version, nothing against the King James Version, but that’s a bit rugged. And a lot of people don’t know. The King James Version written about a 12th grade reading level, whereas the New Living it’s written at like a sixth grade reading level. The, the,
Matt (19:23.113)
Yeah.
Matt (19:44.472)
And the King James kind of sounds a bit like Shakespeare. You sometimes feel you need a degree in order to read it sometimes. I don’t know. It’s lovely. Yeah, it can be tricky. It makes things difficult.
Russ Ewell (19:48.232)
Yes.
Russ Ewell (19:54.318)
100% and it’s beautiful but you know it’s like reading Shakespeare sometimes. Yeah it’s like yeah so when you quote it no one understands what you’re saying. So finding a great Bible that you can read. I think another thing you can do that will help you as you read through the Bible is look for who God is. I believe fundamentally the Bible is a book about God. I came at it
Matt (20:04.521)
No.
Russ Ewell (20:20.798)
And I learned a lot of the rules, the behavior, and even the doctrine. And I’m a very into being biblical. But I think sometimes we become so doctrine-oriented and we begin arguing doctrine that we miss God. And so I read the Bible as a book about God. What’s it tell me about God? Not just people, but what does it tell me about God? And so those are some ways to start. Start with 15 minutes in the morning and then expand that as you can. But I’ll tell you what, I still listen to
great Christian music and that really can get you, that can give you leaps forward because it gives you the language of the Bible a lot of times in the songs and it connects you with God. There’s some songs, I mean you have one of them I told you, Sweet Surrender. There are some songs that connect you with God in a way that you maybe couldn’t connect yourself. So those are some ideas.
Matt (21:13.208)
That’s great, thanks Ross. And you touched on this just now in your previous answer. Your book, one thing I really love about He’s Not Who You Think He Is, is the interactive nature of it. I mean, it’s still printed on paper.
and you can still grab yourself an actual physical copy, which I love, I love physical books. But it’s so interactive, you’ve got all sorts of wonderful things in there. Yes, of course there’s all sorts of lovely writing and ideas and stuff, like all books have got, but you’ve got areas in there where you kind of guide people to scribble and to kind of draw pictures and reflect on verses and things, and you’ve got…
Russ Ewell (21:33.858)
Hehehehe
Matt (21:53.88)
Images in there and you’ve even got QR codes, which I think is a stroke of genius that take you to Playlists and blogs and videos and stuff that rarely kind of help to I don’t know It’s it’s almost like it’s almost like your books like this kind of bomb and then you kind of you know You scan the thing and it then explodes and you get all this extra stuff and detail and depth that you wouldn’t have got just On the page alone. So yeah, where did that idea come from?
Russ Ewell (22:11.019)
Yeah
Russ Ewell (22:24.386)
So the credit goes to the team I work with, and one of the things I do is understand that people younger than me see the world differently than me. And in America, and I think this has been proven to be true around the world, getting millennials and Generation Z people involved in feeling like God and Christianity can make a difference in their lives is one of the great challenges I think we all face.
I have a very positive view of millennials. I have a very positive view of Generation Z because I remember myself as like an 80s kid, you know, growing up in college and all that. And I had very different views than my parents. I had very different views than my dad to get up in the morning and go to church. I’d be saying, hey, you wanna go? And I’m like, no, that’s okay. I’m good. I wanna go play basketball. And so meeting with this team we have, they’re all either millennials or Generation Z.
and we talked about the book and they said, we gotta do some of the stuff that we do online, we’ve gotta connect it to the book. And so that’s how we started and.
I gave them a lot of freedom to tell me what they thought of the writing and to change things around to make it more accessible. That’s a big thing with me is can I make God accessible? I have a Church of Christ background and sometimes I didn’t think we were making God accessible. And it’s one of the reasons I’m non-denominational. Nothing against Church of Christ, but just…
I don’t think my job is to be right about everything. My job is to try to make God accessible, and Jesus did that, right? He made God accessible. And so I think that’s where it came from. So I can’t take any credit any other than realizing that I didn’t know what I was doing and I needed to listen to other people. So I could take credit for not being aware of that. I love technology. I live in Silicon Valley, but that’s not something I was planning on doing. And it has been a big hit.
Matt (24:13.167)
Ha ha ha.
Russ Ewell (24:23.606)
like a huge hit, especially people that are younger.
Matt (24:26.652)
Yeah, I think it’s brilliant. So thank you. Thank you for opening my eyes anyway to what is possible these days. And we’ll be back just after these where I’ll be speaking a little bit more with the author Russ Ewell. So join us after these.
Matt (24:45.812)
Hello and welcome back to the Christian Book Blurb. I’m chatting with author Russ Ewell about his book called He’s Not Who You Think He Is. And just before the break, we spent a long time talking about the book, but Russ, something we like to do after our little interval on the show is to ask a little bit about you as a person. Click on your QR code and find out a bit about your life. Ha ha ha. So what do you do for fun? Do you have a favourite?
Russ Ewell (25:05.478)
Okay. Ha ha ha.
Matt (25:14.232)
thing to do or a hobby or you know do you play a sport? What does life look like?
Russ Ewell (25:18.194)
Yeah, well, I, yes, I, you know, I played basketball for a long time. I grew up playing basketball on the team and all that kind of stuff. And, but now as I’ve gotten older, I do more yoga than I do basketball playing, more stretching than I do basketball playing. But the things I like, one thing I love that I’m about to rewatch it is Downton Abbey. So I’m a huge Downton Abbey fan. I’m like a fanatic. I ended up getting the flu one year.
Matt (25:41.86)
Ah, yeah.
Russ Ewell (25:47.866)
And I was miserable. And I was laying there and my wife was like, bringing me stuff and everything. And then I had heard a sportscaster say he wasn’t gonna watch the game tonight because he was gonna watch down NABBY. And I was like, what’s that? And so I’ve watched it. I’ve watched it all the way through three times. And so I’m planning to go for number four. So that’s something I like. I love reading. I love books on business.
Matt (26:00.948)
Ha ha
Matt (26:07.412)
Wow.
Russ Ewell (26:16.126)
I love technology and when I, it’s not, my work is my hobby. And so I enjoy all the things that I do. And one of the things I do enjoy, I enjoy writing, but I enjoy the use of technology to help people with special needs. I have two special needs kids. And I love using technology for that purpose. I love it to help people connect with God. I love it to help people learn about leadership. And I love, but I love learning from other people. Love music.
really love music. That, if there’s a sort of hobbyist fun thing I like to do, it’s music and I love walking. I love to walk. In fact, I can’t remember the name of the park in London when I was there. The main park, I can’t remember its name. But I, yeah, I went crazy when I went to London because I was like, oh my God. I was in school in Boston. And so when I got to London, so full story, I love history. So I’ve read all about English history. It’s…
Matt (26:47.231)
Yeah.
Matt (26:59.574)
There’s several of them in London.
Russ Ewell (27:14.894)
probably was my favourite. And then I started to like American history. I got into the Kings and the Queens thing when I was young. But I went for walks in London everywhere. And I just loved walking in the park. So I love walking. I love walking downtowns. I love just being around and seeing people. So yeah, those are some of the things I like.
Matt (27:36.86)
Yeah, great. I’m always amazed how green London is. You think of this huge, big kind of in dust, you know, concrete jungle, but it isn’t. There’s so many parks and trees everywhere. It’s wonderful. Coming back to your music, love, do you play an instrument? Okay. All right. Yeah.
Russ Ewell (27:40.258)
That’s.
Russ Ewell (27:47.659)
It is amazing.
Russ Ewell (27:52.306)
No, I don’t have the ability to play an instrument. And there’s a reason for that. Because when I was in high school, I was like, people have to be athletes. Nobody plays an instrument. Why are they playing? Now, the full story is my sisters played clarinet and guitar, and I tried at home, and I…
couldn’t do it and I got frustrated and said, well, I don’t like this. So later on, as I got older, as I got older, I figured it out. The guys who played music, they had it on straight. I’m sitting in these audiences watching bands, clubs, and I’m seeing everybody loving the musician guy. Nobody wants to talk to the nerdy tech guy. Nobody wants to talk to the religious guy. They want the music guy, jazz, acoustic, country. It doesn’t matter. They’re cheering and yelling. And I said,
Matt (28:15.153)
Hehehehe
Matt (28:33.248)
Ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha
Matt (28:39.584)
Yeah.
Russ Ewell (28:40.662)
Bruce Springsteen, you know, they’re all in every people who don’t even speak English in Barcelona or singing his songs. And I was like, bad move should have learned the piano, but here I am.
Matt (28:50.528)
Ha ha ha.
And Downton Abbey, the next time you’re in London, you should see if you can go and visit the house where it was filmed. So I think, yeah, you can visit and go on tours and stuff. Yeah, be good. Yeah. And do you have a favourite character in Downton Abbey? Mine’s the grandmother. I love the grandmother with her kind of sideways comments. He’s my favourite. Ha ha ha.
Russ Ewell (29:00.032)
Oh, you can visit it.
Russ Ewell (29:04.574)
I might move in.
Russ Ewell (29:12.182)
About a hundred percent. How could anybody, maybe it says a little bit our personality, Matt, I don’t know, but she, I mean, one of my favourite lines is when she goes, weekend? What’s a weekend? I mean, that’s one of my favourite lines, a hundred percent. Now, I think the character, I wanna get it straight, Matt who died in the car accident, I think he was Matt. Yeah, he was my favourite for a, and then they just,
Matt (29:26.792)
Yeah.
Matt (29:36.804)
Yes. Yes it was.
Russ Ewell (29:41.422)
crushed me. They crushed me. When he died, I was crushed. I needed a whole season off to recover from the devastation.
Matt (29:50.752)
Yeah, my sister will definitely side with you on that one. And you may not know this, but the episode when he died was actually the Downton Abbey Christmas special for that year. So that happened on Christmas Day when it came out. Yeah, so she was like, you know, they’ve ruined Christmas. You know, it was terrible. Just devastating.
Russ Ewell (30:06.041)
No!
Russ Ewell (30:13.522)
No, I’m with your sister a hundred percent. How could you? For us, it didn’t occur then, which, which I was always like, I remember when I figured out, yeah, I started liking it and I figured out that it was, it was British. Cause at first I didn’t know. I mean, I knew people were British, but I didn’t know it was rich. And then I was like, I’ve got to find a way to get the British programming.
Matt (30:23.045)
Yeah, yeah.
Matt (30:28.528)
Uh huh. Yeah, yeah.
Russ Ewell (30:35.41)
ahead of time so I see it when it’s really released and you know you couldn’t do it I was so frustrated by that but yeah that was heartbreak for me I you can still see the pain in my life over it oh man.
Matt (30:38.081)
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Matt (30:46.874)
Oh brilliant. Russ, we are almost out of time. It’s been so great chatting with you. But before we go, do you have anything that you’re working on at the moment? Is it another book or a project or something that’s kind of boiling away in the background that you can let our listeners in on?
Russ Ewell (31:07.706)
Oh boy, Matt, you’re going to get them in there. And I haven’t even told many people about it. But so what I’m working on right now is with our site, Deep Spirituality, where you can buy the book. And there’s like 600 different devotionals. There’s videos. There’s all kinds of things. And we just, on our team, we put it out there so people have these resources. It’s a lot like yourself. We feel like it’s our responsibility to share, to connect, and all that. But I have been.
Matt (31:11.572)
Hehehe
Russ Ewell (31:35.602)
I looked at the book and you know how you’re a writer, so you know this, you get done with the book and you start going, well, why didn’t I explain that better? Or I should have covered that more. What did I do with that sentence? You know how that is and how that feels. So I’m thinking about a devotional series to be more accessible for younger people that aren’t familiar with the Bible. And I’m thinking about four 25-day devotional series that allow you to know how to begin, where to start in your relationship with God.
Matt (31:42.184)
Hehehe
Matt (31:47.077)
Yeah.
Russ Ewell (32:04.286)
And how to get to that, not ultimate place, but get to that destination where you’ve seen God transform your life. So I’m thinking of releasing it in 25 day segments so that it ends up being a total of a hundred days. And the reason I got that is I love Franklin Roosevelt, one of our old presidents, and he started the whole thing about the first hundred days of the president and I go, wouldn’t it be cool to do a hundred days, but not in one book, but to do a hundred days and so someone can have it. So yeah, that’s, that’s percolating. I’ve got a lot of this stuff for that. So.
Matt (32:21.012)
Mm-hmm.
Yes.
Matt (32:28.143)
Yeah, yeah.
Russ Ewell (32:33.61)
That may be, that’s gonna begin in 2024.
Matt (32:37.016)
Oh great, that sounds really exciting. I’ve done some devotionals as well myself and I thought, oh you know, this will be, you know, I can do this, I can sit down and just, you know, just write and you know, it’s all there and I’m just explaining what the Bible’s saying with some life stories and what have you. And I did a 40-day devotional for Lent, sort of the lead-up to Easter.
Russ Ewell (32:59.68)
Okay.
Matt (33:00.9)
I think my original intention was to do like a massive one and publishers talked me into just sticking with 40 days. Boy, I’m glad I stuck with 40 days because it’s a lot of hard work. So, so, you know, hats off to you going for the hundred. That’s that’s really good. That’s really something. So
Russ Ewell (33:11.813)
Hahahaha
Russ Ewell (33:18.902)
Well, I’m thinking it’ll be 25 one year, 25 the next year. I’m not thinking I’m gonna get it all done. I’m with you, I’m with you. I might be knocking on your door trying to move in and find real estate to get away from life if I tried to do 101 year. Oh boy.
Matt (33:25.412)
Yeah, quite possibly.
Matt (33:34.816)
Ha ha
Matt (33:39.384)
Brilliant, brilliant. So you already mentioned briefly, but where can people find you? Where can people connect with you? Have you got websites, social media, all of that?
Russ Ewell (33:47.402)
Yeah, I think one of the best places to go to get the material and devotions, and we have a whole team, so it’s not just me producing a video. And the video content, we have everything from scripture playlists, which you can just listen to someone read scriptures, to videos, which I do something called One Quick Thought, where I give one quick thought about a particular spiritual subject. We have all kinds of stuff. It’s Deep Spirituality. You can find it at deepspirituality.com. So you just go www.deepspirituality.com.
If you want to learn more about what I do, you can go to russewell.com and you can find the different things because I have a technology company and I work for a church as well. I work there and then I am the editor-in-chief of DSPirtuality. My company’s digitalscribbler.com and it creates for those parents out there who have children with special needs, digitalscribbler.com is a place you can go to if your kid has a language challenge, we have software we’ve created.
that you can use, your child can use to communicate. And the last one is esports.com. Now, that is for inclusive sports. So I received some awards and stuff. I didn’t know I was gonna do this because of developing an e-soccer program for my boys where they played sports with typical kids all together. And so it’s around the world, it’s gone all over.
But that can be found at e-sports.org. You can find it there. So those are some of the places, but the spiritual stuff’s deepspirituality.com.
Matt (35:25.268)
That’s great and I imagine you’ve got links to all of these different places on your website russewell.com, is that right?
Russ Ewell (35:30.676)
That’s right, you go to russewell.com
Matt (35:33.244)
So what we’ll do for my listeners is we’ll put a link to russewall.com in the show notes of this episode. You can go there and then you can kind of branch out to whatever interest you have on what Russ is doing from that point. So that’s fantastic. Thank you, Russ. Thank you so much for spending your time with us here on the podcast and for sharing your heart and for writing the book, He’s Not Who You Think He Is. Thank you so much for joining us.
Russ Ewell (35:40.035)
Thank you.
Russ Ewell (36:00.514)
Thank you for having me, Matt. It’s been awesome.
Matt (36:03.056)
And thanks to you, the listener, for sticking with us in this podcast. It’s been fantastic having you along for the ride. Don’t forget that this podcast comes out twice a month on the 1st and the 15th. But here’s a little heads up for you. We have a Valentine’s Day special coming out later on this month. So we won’t be coming out on the 15th as usual. We will actually be one day early.
and we’ll be coming out on the 14th of February on Valentine’s Day itself, where I will be chatting with Dr. Gary Chapman, the author of The Five Love Languages. So do join us on Valentine’s Day for that fascinating discussion. Thank you so much for joining me, and I do hope to have the pleasure of your company again really soon. Thank you and goodbye.
Russ Ewell (36:54.41)
That’s awesome. Thank you.