[DAWN GABRIEL]
Hi, I’m Dawn Gabriel, your host of Faith Fringes podcast, recording live from Castle Rock Colorado. I am a licensed professional counselor, owner of a counseling center and a sacred space holder for fellow therapists. This podcast is for those who want to explore more than the traditional norms of the Christian culture. I create intentional space to explore your own spiritual path, a space that allows doubt, questions and curiosity without the judgment or shame; a place to hear another story and dive deeper into how to have a genuine connection with God.

For my fellow therapist listening, I will often pull back the curtain of our layered inner world that comes with our profession. I bring an authentic and experienced way to engage your spiritual journey in order to connect you with your deepest values for true renewal and soul-care. But really this podcast is for anyone listening who’s desiring a deeper and genuine connection with God. For those of you wanting to engage your spirituality in new ways, Faith Fringes is for you. Welcome to the podcast.

Hello, welcome back to the podcast. This is Dawn, your host. I’ve been really thinking over the last few weeks about spiritual direction. I know you hear me talk about it a lot, but I’ve really been sitting with it in a different way and realizing that even though I spend time teaching about it and reading about it’s very different than actually sinking into it and experiencing it. So while I have a spiritual director that speaks into my life and we meet once a month, I’ve been realizing I really need to spend some more time just by myself. I think what’s been hard is that with the weather, when I’m recording this, it’s been super freezing cold in Colorado, like in the negatives.

I don’t remember a winter since I’ve been here for like 15, 20 years of how it’s been this cold, to be honest. We’ve just had some frigid weather and I do not like it. So with that, I’ve had a hard time going outside. As my listener that I love my hikes and I love being outside. I just really haven’t been able to do it. I noticed some signs coming up that are red flags or orange flags for me of, I just was getting more dark in my head and I was just feeling really down. I notice it’s because I wasn’t spending that time with God, that my connection time with God. I realized I need to really open up more than just being outside with God. So I’ve been really, I’ve actually been reading a lot more on spiritual direction and noticing how I just love how they talk about it. It’s actually talked about more by spiritual companionship is what I feel.

It’s not so much, I think the reason I love it is because when I’m in a counseling situation, when I’m the counselor and I have a client, it’s more, I’m the professional and I’m sitting there talking with a client and helping them, and I love it and it’s been sacred to me. But I think the thing that has been missing that I’m finding more spiritual direction is more sharing in that journey with the client. So it’s a lot of what God is doing within me and what God is doing within the client, the person I’m talking with and more sharing together, like a companionship, a journey.

That’s what I’ve been really contemplating and just sitting with, as I’ve been reading about spiritual direction over the last few weeks, honestly. It’s been really cool. So part of that is I’ve noticed the rhythm of, again, I just am drawn to the word rhythm and I love the word rhythm, and it’s more of a feeling, it’s more of an experience. As that’s where I’ve been going the last few years with God, is feeling a deeper connection with Him and a rhythm of my spirituality rather than a religious to-do list. I know I say that a lot.

Today I’m really looking forward to you hearing my interview with Dr. Eli Jones. I think it’s so cool that when I’m learning something in my life that sometimes my podcast interviews and my guest on here coincide a lot with what I’m learning. I feel like this podcast has been a huge spiritual growth for me. So I’m just so excited for you to hear my interview with Eli. Yes, and I did not know him. I had connected with him through email. He is an author of a few books, but the book he’s going to talk about is what we’re talking about today.
[DAWN]
So let me tell you a little bit about him. Dr. Eli Jones is a professor of marketing, Lowry and Peggy Mays Eminent Scholar, and former Dean of Mays Business School at his alma mater, Texas A&M University. Barely out of their teenage years, he and his wife, Fern, married and overcame what seemed to be an insurmountable challenges as they rose from poverty to positions of influence. Jones, a first generation college graduate went from being a radio DJ to a corporate executive, to the Dean of three flagship business schools. I am so excited to hear from him today. Well, I want to welcome Dr. Eli Jones to the podcast. Thanks for joining me today.
[DR. ELI JONES]
Oh, I’m so excited to be with you. I’ve been listening to your podcast and it’s amazing, the people you’re talking to, just amazing. I love this idea of soul-care. I can’t wait to spend some time with you on this.
[DAWN]
Yes, thank you so much. I know we were talking just a little bit ago about just some of your views and personal faith journey and how that has really been what you’ve been working on with your book, Run Toward Your Goliaths. I think it fits so perfectly with my podcast. So I’d love for my listeners just to know a little bit more about you. Tell us a little bit about who you are and we’ll start there.
[DR. JONES]
Okay. All right. Well, you referred to me as Dr. Eli Jones. Now I’m not a medical doctor and I don’t dispense medicine. I am a Ph.D. and my area of concentration is marketing and my specialty is sales and sales management. I spent some time in corporate in sales and sales management, and then my wife and I and our four kids decided to go to graduate school for the second time. I went through a Ph.D. program at Texas A&M University. I have a three time, got my undergrad, MBA and Ph.D. all from Texas A&M. Then I changed my career for the third time. So this is actually my third career. My first one was broadcasting by the way. I was in radio broadcasting, and then I got into sales and sales management, worked for three global companies and then I went back to school, got a Ph.D., and I became an academic.

So I write books. I write articles. I do a lot of research in the area of sales and sales management. I actually teach, I teach a graduate course on sales leadership, and I’ve been a dean over the entire business school at three different universities. So I worked at LSU as a business dean, Arkansas, and now back home at Texas A&M. I served here for six years and about, almost a year ago, I decided I’m going to go back to the faculty and I’m going to do some other work and be, as I think right now, it’s all about God’s kingdom. That’s what I’m doing. That is why I wrote the book Run Toward Your Goliaths. It’s why I created the podcast, Victory Groove. I always say that we, as believers, we already have the victory. We just need to get our groove back.
[DAWN]
I love that. I listened to your podcast and I was like, I love that. I can tell your voice at broadcasting, it was very easy to listen to, and I was like, oh, I can’t wait to talk more.
[DR. JONES]
Thank you.
[DAWN]
Yes. That’s a pretty impressive resume. I know I said before, I was a little bit intimidated, like, oh my gosh. So much business degree and yes, but you had such a change over the last year or two. Can you tell us yes, what started that change and what made you want to say, I want to go back to faculty and work on writing books now?
[DR. JONES]
Thank you for asking. So my wife and I, my entire family for that matter had a traumatic experience. We lost our eldest daughter. She went in for a routine surgical procedure. It was completely unanticipated. It was a shock to us and she left behind three beautiful kids. So we have grandkids that are ages 19, soon to be 20; 19, 18 and 11. So, as you can imagine, first, when you think about death, losing a spouse and losing a child, those two are at the top of the list in terms of really major, major Goliaths, major challenges, if you will. So what I did was I took a leave of absence from the university and I really needed to reflect on things. I was practicing soul-care. I didn’t know soul-care until listened to your episode, but that’s, what I was doing, was practicing soul-care.

I needed to step away. I was busy, I was exhausted, all those things that you talked about, and I had all those things going on, but I needed some time away just to reflect on things that were going on and to stop and listen to the Lord. So I took that leave and I just started praying a lot and reflecting, and God then inspired me to do a couple of things. So one is to write this book, Run Toward Your Goliaths and the other is to start the podcast and to put out really positive messages about Jesus, about God in social media. So we’re doing that as well. But the book, Run Toward Your Goliaths is about our faith journey.

I mentioned just briefly a minute ago, I said when I think about it after the loss of our daughter, I started getting all kinds of books on how to grieve, how to cope with death and those kinds of things. Then I reflected on that and I thought about it. My wife and I will celebrate 39 years of marriage in April. But when I go back and I think about at one point we were living in poverty and I managed, thank God, managed to go to school and work my way out of poverty, that’s a Goliath. That’s a major challenge. My wife and I thank God we were able to work through that. We were able to go to school a couple of times with a full family, four children.
[DAWN]
Oh my gosh.
[DR. JONES]
We worked through those things too. Thank God. But it took a lot of faith and it took a lot of work too but we made it through those things. So I decided to start writing about the numerous giants or Goliaths that we faced in a lifetime. Then I decided to take that energy. So whenever someone is experiences something that’s traumatic, I believe that there’s energy that’s produced. All right, it is what do people do with that energy? When it happens for me, it was, I’m going to put that energy into helping others. Alright, conquer their Goliaths. I just laid out many giants, many Goliaths that we’ve faced over lifetime. The book has scriptures, all that we’ve used to overcome. So I just tell that story in the book.

The Victory Groove part came about as I was thinking about a podcast, another way to disseminate the good news that if God is real, when we face these major challenges, we’ve got to hold on to the fact that He’s real and He’s in control. So Victory Groove is about people, other people who have faced other traumatic experiences and what did they do with that energy? So I’ve interviewed people who have had cancer. I interviewed one young man who had cancer, pediatric cancer, who had cancer at two, diagnosed with cancer at two years old.

It’s interesting. I listened to his story, how God put in his heart to start businesses. He became a serial entrepreneur. So when I think about it, he’s birthing life into businesses and these businesses are hiring people and that’s what God gave him to do. That became his mission, his purpose. I’ve had people who have faced divorce. That’s a tough one, that’s a big Goliath. I’ve had people who have actually suffered from anxiety and depression. In every case, these people have said, but God gave me something to do. It’s to help others.
[DAWN]
Yes. So you’re not new to a Goliath, to trauma, and with that though, you felt like I have this energy to run towards God and to fight the Goliath, not just sit and let it happen. But I am curious, we’re saying that now how many months or years later, but can you tell me a little bit more about that process, like in the middle of it or in the beginning of it because I think when a tragedy happens I mean there’s just so much there.
[DR. JONES]
So initially I was writing to my family. That’s the key part here. It was really to encourage my family, our adult children, our grandkids. We have 10 grandkids, four adult children. I started thinking about the legacy part of this. So great grandkids and great, great grandkids, but I wanted to leave something with them. It was to encourage them that, “Hey, these things are going to happen.” At the beginning of the book, my book, I have a full circle, but it’s a distorted circle. There are curves and twists and turns in the full circle that I’ve represented in the book. I describe that as that’s the real world. That’s real life. It’s not a perfect circle. Your life, your career’s not going to be linear. It’s going to come with twists and turns and surprises. So I was thinking about my children, adult children, and grandkids and I’m trying to tell them, look, don’t be surprised if your life changes on you as we had that major disruption. But we have to hold onto our faith. I give some examples of holding on faith while fighting these Goliaths as David fought Goliath. It’s based on David and Goliath. Think about that here. He was a teenager.
[DAWN]
Yes, little guy.
[DR. JONES]
He goes up to King Saul. Everybody’s cowed it down. Then here he goes with his own way. He was being authentic by the way. You were talking about being authentic. He says, no, I’m going to run like this. I’m going stay dressed as a shepherd.
[DAWN]
No armor.
[DR. JONES]
No armor. I’ve got this sling and I’ve got these five stones.
[DAWN]
Crazy. Sounds like crazy, sounds ridiculous.
[DR. JONES]
But he had the faith and the confidence because God was on his side. We’ve got to hold onto that when we’re facing these Goliaths, God is on our side. We have the victory. We just need to get our groove back.
[DAWN]
I love that. I think it’s hard because it doesn’t mean we’re not going to have sadness or we’re not going to have fear. It means there’s something, what I’m hearing you say is there’s something deeper to hang onto in spite of what’s going on around us.
[DR. JONES]
That’s right. We have to stay anchored in that, knowing God is still on the throne. I think about coming out of this pandemic. Think about that. 2020, we all were hunkered down and we faced anxiety, which is the fear of the unknown. We all had a bit of anxiety. We were separated from our family, separated from our friends, separated from our loved ones. For my family, my wife and I were just the two of us, like Washington Junior, just the two of us in our home. But that happened across the whole country. In fact, the whole world and people were hunkered down and it was scary. I always say that if there’s a modern day Goliath, maybe it’s this pandemic.
[DAWN]
Absolutely.
[DR. JONES]
It’s big, it’s scary, there were lots of other giants coming out of that, this anxiety piece, which by the way, as if you look at the research in this area, it’s the number one mental health challenge we have right now.
[DAWN]
It’s true.
[DR. JONES]
Anxiety. We are making investments that our university, for our students, students suffering from anxiety, for all kinds of reasons. We’re having to hire more advisors and counselors to help these students. So anxiety is a big one. So when we think about the pandemic as an example, it was abrupt. It was something that came up, we watched it come across to us but we didn’t expect this mass influence, this thing that was so massive, that changed, disrupted everybody’s lives. So we ended up having to go through that. When I think about it it’s even then as we were going through, the believers, we’ve got a really strong group of believers in our community. We’re keeping each other preyed up. We’re talking about, hey, wait a minute, even though it doesn’t look like it, maybe it doesn’t even feel like it, but we know that God is omnipotent. We know that God is omniscient. We know He’s all powerful. He’s all knowing and we had to hold onto that.
[DAWN]
Yes. I think, I was saying to a few people that I feel like the pandemic is almost like the plagues in Egypt. The plagues, it was so huge that it was trying to change a nation. I’m like, I wonder if this is a modern day plague we’re having where it brings up the hearts of where we’re at with God, because I’ve watched people how they’ve responded to the pandemic, people who maybe don’t have a strong faith versus people who do it. It’s just fascinating to see how people deal with fear and lack of control. It’s been hard, it’s been sad, but I think, yes, helping others, like grounded anchor into our faith has been key to getting through this.
[DR. JONES]
That’s right. This is our moment. This is the way I look at it. This is our moment. We are the light. We’re supposed to be the light. So it’s time to disseminate the things that we know. That’s what this whole mission, this whole, movement’s all about, stepping up and sharing the light.
[DAWN]
I like that. It’s like an action, like fighting your Goliath, running towards it. It’s very, like, I’m going to take back what I can. I’m going to stand up and take control of this. Not in a bad way taking control, but I’m going to fight. I love that. I love it.
[SPIRITUAL REFLECTIONS]
Hi, there it’s me, Dawn. I just wanted to take a moment and say that if you’ve been listening to something today and you feel maybe nudge to go deeper into your faith journey, I offer a free eight-week email course called Spiritual Reflections. I promise it’s only one email a week. It’s a short exercise and a short email and included is a journaling workbook that has guided exercises that will help you explore more of what you were brought up to believe. Even if you’ve been disillusioned or hurt on your faith journey, yet still deep down you’re desiring to authentically connect with God and you can feel that then this course is for you. Just go to faithfringes.com to sign up for your free Spiritual Reflections course today.
[DAWN]
Now, have you always had a faith? Have you always been strong in your faith?
[DR. JONES]
Well, I’ve had peaks and valleys, so, yes. My parents exposed me to Christianity at a very early age. In fact, we grew up Catholic and I was an Alta boy. I still remember ringing the bells in churches, those kinds of things, but like many others I drifted away. I did some things. My first career, I was in radio broadcasting. So I was exposed to a lot of stuff, a lot of stuff in the world and so I drifted, but then over time I’ve come back. I think we all have those kinds of journeys. It ebbs and flows a little bit. I’ve talked to believers even through the podcast and they say, well, yes, I mean, I had the faith. I grew up understanding God and Jesus. I grew up, but something happened and I drifted the next thing I know I had to come back and recommit.

So we know this, the faith journey is not a perfect woman. Nobody’s perfect. We’re all sinners. We’re all fall short of the glory. So we just have to be sure that we come back to our foundation. I mean, even in the book I talk about, the first part is four parts. The first is build on your foundation. That’s the first part of the book. A couple of chapters in that one build on your foundation, whatever your foundation is. Even with negative things, I’ve talked to people who grew up with, I don’t know, something really disastrous happen to them as they were growing up. But you learn from those things. You learn from them.

So build on your foundation is the first section. The next section is, find your rhythm. My wife and I are musicians. She loves to sing and I love to play the drums. I’m learning how to play the bass guitar. So I’ve been around music since I was seven years old so I love music. In every song, there’s a rhythm. There’s a pattern. I believe we, as believers, we’ve got to find our rhythm. What is it that God is calling you to do? Now we call it a purpose, a calling, whatever that might be, but we got to find that rhythm. I believe that life is a steady, drum beat.

What’s going on in the background? No matter what we’re doing, that beat is going. At times God is going to call us to do something. It’s going to be for an appointed time. What I’ve learned and I’ve done it myself is sometimes we missed the beat. We were supposed to do something at that moment but for one reason or another, we didn’t, we missed that beat. So part of what I’m saying in this book is find your rhythm and try to catch all those beats. I had that moment after something traumatic. As as an example, and I had to be quiet and to be still. I had to listen. I had to remind myself of my faith.

I caught that rhythm. It’s that call, okay, God, I got it. All right, I need to write this book. All right, got it. I need to start this podcast. I’m on that rhythm. I’m on that beat. Now I need to put this stuff in social media because it’s for such a time as this. While I was going through my own personal tragedy. I started looking up thinking, wait a minute, there’s a pandemic. There are lots of other people facing really traumatic things. People dying, family members dying because of COVID, lots of people hear these messages. So find your rhythm.

The next section is dare to believe. My wife wrote and published a song called Dare to Believe. It’s by Fern Walker Jones Dare to Believe. It’s about her own journey. It’s about being my partner, the things that she had to sacrifice to be on this journey with me, Dare to Believe and has a section there, encouraging others. Once you build on your foundation and you find your rhythm now it’s time dare to believe, dare to believe. We’ve seen some amazing things happen in our lives so we started daring to believe.

Then the fourth section of the book is leave a legacy or it’s about others. You’ve got to inspire others. Those are the four sections of the book. I hope you get it. Hope you read it and I hope you enjoy it. I’ll tell you, I prayed over the book and that is, I want God to give special revelation knowledge to each person who reads it. It’s been fun to get the feedback. It’s like, oh wow, you got that? Wow, that’s amazing. God is incredible. Things that I even put in the book, but people reading it and it triggers things that happen in their lives.
[DAWN]
Yes, God comes alive in their life when they are interacting with your book, it sounds like.
[DR. JONES]
Yes, that’s my prayer.
[DAWN]
Would you say the book is for people who are grieving in general or could it be for anyone who’s fighting a Goliath or something hard?
[DR. JONES]
So grieving is in there but there are other things. So when you think about, and I say it in the book, when you think about today’s Goliaths, giants, they come in all forms. There’s all kinds of, so there’s disappointment. That’s in there. That’s Goliath for a lot of people. That’s a Goliath. There’s death. There’s also other things. You’re dealing with lots of different challenges. So the whole point of this thing is we’re going to, you’re going to see some examples of major challenges, despair, there are lots of things that we deal with. So the purpose of this is that say, look, yes, death is a big one, but so are these others? Poverty is a big one. That’s a big one. So what do you do in a situation like that? But what’s consistent about it is the faith. Rather the journey we’re consistent about it is having the faith and the confidence to take them on.
[DAWN]
When you were talking about the rhythm that really spoke to me because I’ve been contemplating that word actually for a while I think because I grew up more, a little conservative, a little more strict and it didn’t feel like rhythm. It felt like duty or I have to do it this way, but rhythm was more smooth and it was more what does rhythm look like versus a to-do list? So I felt like rhythm, as I’ve been thinking about it, when you were saying that the verse that came to me was when Jesus talks about my burden is light. The yolk is easy and burn is light because when you were saying like, you caught the rhythm when you were going through grief and that felt like it made it lighter, not that it didn’t devastate you but the rhythm carried you. I don’t know, that’s what came to me when you were talking about the rhythm.
[DR. JONES]
That’s it. I do believe that it’s wonderful how you saw that and that is with the rhythm. Let me give you an example. I’m going to use music. I have to use playing music. So my wife and I have had several music ministries in bands. So one of the things that’s fun to do is putting together a band. So you’ve got these different members, they’re playing different instruments. If you ever watch a band coming together and for the first time, it’s really interesting to watch because you gel and you start playing and jamming, and then all of a sudden you find that rhythm. We’re playing and sometimes it’s just amazing to watch that happen because now we’re all flowing in that same rhythm.

Next time you watch a live band, just watch them. They’re each playing different instruments, but they found that rhythm and they’re working together and they’re creating beautiful music. Similarly, I believe when things come up, we get out of our rhythm. So the thing that happened to my family and myself, we lost our rhythm. For a minute, we knocked off our feet. This was a complete surprise. So we lost our rhythm, we lost our groove and so we had to step back, think about our foundation. God is real, God is in control, no matter what it looks like, no matter what it feels like. Then slowly we came back and we caught our rhythm again. It’s like the band coming back and you’re finding your rhythm together. That’s what happened to my family because we found our rhythm again.
[DAWN]
I love that. It speaks to more an experiential and like you said, energy. It’s not so much, it’s like taking your head knowledge, but going deeper into this, the feeling experiential, yes rhythm is definitely. like the sensations of it, I don’t know, I love it because it’s definitely more how I’ve been experiencing God lately in the last few years. It is just really feeling the, taking it away from the head knowledge, but really getting into deeper relation, a richer, deeper relationship with a rhythm. I love the word rhythm. That’s one sticking out to me.
[DR. JONES]
That’s it. It really fits with the whole soul-care. It fits perfectly with soul-care.
[DAWN]
I love it. Well, if people want to get ahold of you, how can they, what are your Instagram, your Facebook? Tell us or, I mean like your book, your podcast, tell us again how they can get ahold of you if they want your book, if they want to connect with your website/ just tell us all
[DR. JONES]
I have a website it’s elijones.com. That’s the website. You can purchase the book there if you’d like. It’s also at Amazon. So you can get it from Amazon. Either way in terms of contacting me I’m on LinkedIn, I’m on Facebook. I’m on Twitter. I’m not that active on Instagram, but my adult children are trying to make me more active on Instagram.
[DAWN]
Have one of them run it for you.
[DR. JONES]
That’s what I need to do.
[DAWN]
A social media manager.
[DR. JONES]
Yes, yes. That’s what I need. But the LinkedIn is Eli Jones, Ph.D. Then I’ve got a Facebook that with the same name, Facebook page there that’s connected to the book. I have my own personal one, but I also have one for the book mainly. Then of course I’m working at Texas A&M university I’m in MA’s business school. Love to teach, love, to write, love to disseminate knowledge. That’s what we say around here.
[DAWN]
Well, I have appreciated all that you’ve shared with us today. I am very excited. I’m going to be buying your book as soon as I get off of here. I can’t wait to read it and use it with the people I’m working with as well.
[DR. JONES]
Thank you for doing this.
[DAWN]
Thank you so much for your time and just disseminating your knowledge.
[DR. JONES]
Thank you. I really appreciate this opportunity.
[DAWN]
Thank you for listening today to the Faith Fringe podcast. For those of you wanting to take a deeper dive into your own faith journey, you can grab my free email course, Spiritual Reflections on my website, faithfringes.com. If you’re a therapist and would want to work with me, I offer sacred space holding for you through my consulting, as well as my soul-care retreats. To find out more, go to my website or email me at dawn@faithfringes.com.

I love hearing from all my listeners. Drop me an email to tell me what’s on your mind. You can also connect with me on social media. I’m on Facebook and Instagram at Faith Fringes. As always, if you’re enjoying this podcast, I would love it if you could show it by your reviews. Go to apple podcast and leave your review so that others can find this podcast and get curious about their own spiritual journey. Thanks again for listening.

Faith Fringes is part of the Practice of the Practice network, a network of podcasts seeking to help you market and grow your business and yourself. To hear other podcasts like Faith in Practice, Beta Male Revolution, Empowered and Unapologetic or Impact Driven Leader, go to the website, www.practiceofthepractice.com/network.

This podcast is designed to provide accurate and authoritative information in regards to the subject matter covered. It is given with the understanding that neither the host, the publisher, or the guests are rendering legal, accounting, clinical, or any other professional information. If you want a professional, you should find one.