Sid Roth - Simple Method to Hear God (Even Works for Atheists)
Sid Roth: My favorite part of the show. Welcome, Holy Spirit, go and flow. My guest, Ed Rush, a top gun fighter pilot, started badly. He failed kindergarten which he says is impossible, except for him. Tell us how that happened.
Ed Rush: So I was saved when I was eight years old which was convenient because it was right after I failed kindergarten, as you said in my introduction. And by the way, I have four kids. My daughter recently graduated from kindergarten, and I looked at her report card. The classes, so there's a blocks 0 class, there is, stories, is literally a class. There's all kinds of like, nap is a class. And I realized how dumb do you have to be to fail this particular grade. It was a very surreal moment for me. But the point was, actually, I learned how to break things down simply. I realized I wasn't the sharpest tool in the shed. And so I had to make things a little bit easier for me, and that actually led me not only to graduate from kindergarten, but I made it all the way through college if you can believe it. I made it into the Marine Corps, which was the only service who would take me, ended up in the cockpit of a fighter jet, and turned out I was a pretty good pilot, actually. Breaking things down simply worked really good for me. I always tell people, if you want to know how to fly the F-18, you push the stick forward, the houses get bigger, and you pull the stick back, and the houses get smaller. And it's really as simple as that. And I ended up graduating from Top Gun, I ended up a pretty good pilot. And then I found myself in a situation that most pilots never hope they find themselves in, ever. In fact, most pilots never do. And if you've seen the movie Top Gun, actually the first movie Top Gun, you'll remember there's a scene where Maverick goes out of control in his F-14. Well, I've been out of control twice in the F-18.
Sid Roth: Now, when you lost your plane, did you just parachute out?
Ed Rush: So one of the options I had for me that day was to punch out of the airplane. They say it's better to swing in the sheets than to sing with the angels. But I took a completely different road. I decided to try to fly the airplane out of it. And this is how the story goes. By the way, I was flying with a really young student. When you're flying with a really young student, and you graduated from Top Gun, you're trying to show the young student how great you are. And that day, I was a little bit of the opposite. But basically what we did, if my hands are airplanes, we separated from about three miles. We turned in, and we passed each other at about 1,000 miles an hour worth of closure. My young student pulled 8G's into the vertical. I pulled 8G's into the vertical. 8G's, by the way, as you're watching this, if you were to take yourself and multiply you by eight times, so if you're 200 pounds, and you are eight times more than that, you are now weighing 1,600 pounds. That's what it feels like to pull 8G's. All the blood pools in your lower extremities. People do pass out under 8G's, but of course, as pilots, we've been trained to be able to withstand that. We passed each other, my young student and I, he makes a left-hand turn which is a perfectly acceptable move. And I'm about to pull off a maneuver that is a very highly advanced maneuver. And if I'm able to pull this off which as you can imagine, I'm not, I could win that day. What I found myself actually happening was my airplane parked itself immediately nose high, and I ran out of airspeed and ideas at exactly the same time. Now, the F-18 flight control is a beautiful flight control system, but when you have no air going across the wings, you're no longer flying. You're actually falling. And my airplane picked up a very rapid descent. I looked up at my heads-up display, saw that I was at 20,000 feet above the ocean. By the way, this was the Sea of Japan, one of the most shark-infested waters in planet Earth. And so this is why punching out wasn't an option that particular day. But I was falling to the ground at 20,000 feet per minute. So having failed kindergarten, I still knew enough math to know if you're at 20,000 feet and you're falling to the ground at 20,000 feet per minute, you've got a minute, a minute to live, a minute to get your airplane under control.
Sid Roth: Wow.
Ed Rush: I was 27 years old, hadn't even married yet, had my whole life in front of me. And the airplane, by the way, is $40 million. So you don't want to give that one back to the taxpayers and you don't want to die. So there's two things competing. And so in that moment, as my airplane is completely out of control, as I'm hurtling to the ground, as the altimeter is counting down, I actually hear a voice out of nowhere. And it was my instructor's voice. And my instructor said to me, he said, "Head". That was my call sign. He said, "Head, if you ever find yourself out of control in an F-18, release the controls. Just release the controls". And in the cockpit, I remember hearing that voice. It wasn't an out loud voice. It was just a voice that I heard. And I was left with the decision. I could trust myself and try to maneuver my airplane out of the problem, or I could trust my training and let go. Now, here's why you let go. The F-18 flight control system is a fly-by-wire system. And when it operates properly, it is able to get an airplane out of a complex, out-of-control situation very easily because the computer's no better than the pilot who got it in the situation in the first place.
Sid Roth: It's the original AI.
Ed Rush: It's it, right? So when you let go, the computer kicks in and goes, hey, we're going to solve this problem for this dumb pilot. And wouldn't you know, it did. My airplane was falling to the ground and I literally let go, pulled my feet off the rudders like some sort of flying turtle, pulled my throttles back. And next thing you know, at about 9,000 feet, my airplane actually finds center. The nose pitches over, which is a good thing. That means you're getting airspeed across the wings. And at 7,000 feet, I recover the airplane. A very nervous pilot, by the way. And an extremely embarrassed pilot because my young student's flying circles at 20,000 feet, watching his dumb instructor about to die. But a very alive pilot. And I was alive fundamentally because of a great piece of software. And so we have a conversation today about talking to God which I know we're going to do. The first thing I love to tell people is God designed you with a beautiful piece of software up in that brain of yours. And part of your job is just to connect your software to His divine intelligence and let Him do the rest.
Sid Roth: Ed went, by the way, from being a cessationist, a person that believes miracles and the gifts of the Spirit were finished when the last apostles died to teaching all people, even atheists, how to hear God's voice. Tell me about it.
Ed Rush: So as you described the cessationist as a person who does not believe in the gifts, I did believe in the Trinity, the Father, the Son, and the Holy Bible. I had no understanding of the Spirit's work at all. But you know, I had left the Marine Corps. I'd started building businesses. I'm a business person. So, entrepreneur, I started growing and selling businesses. And things were going really well. On the surface, everything looked great. But on the inside, the best way I could describe myself is I was completely blank inside. If you've ever been to Hallmark, they have these cards that when you open them, there's nothing in them. Those are called blank inside cards. I felt like a blank inside card. Literally, if you were to look at my soul, even though I was a believer, it was dead inside. And so I dragged myself to a counselor's office, not because I wanted to. I didn't. Not because I thought it was going to work, because I didn't think there was anything that could help me. But I did it because it was a simple act of desperation. So sitting in this counselor's office, there were three of us, me and the counselor. His assistant was sitting there with a notepad, all in the room about the size of a broom closet. And I was sitting on this folding chair with a day-old cup of coffee in a Styrofoam cup. And the counselor asked me to do the strangest thing. He said, "Ed, I want you to ask God, what lies you believe about you"? Now.
Sid Roth: That's different.
Ed Rush: If I had my way, I would have walked immediately out of the room. The first thing was, I knew God wasn't going to speak to me because God didn't speak to people. And the second thing is, I thought, well, if He does speak, I don't want to hear what He has to say because I'm sure He's going to tell me how disappointed He is or how upset He is with the life that I had led up until that point. And so I was trying to find a way out of the room. But I had paid for an hour, so I was going to stay for an hour. And so I asked the question. But I didn't ask because I thought it would work. I asked because I was told to ask the question. And so I said, "God, what lies do I believe about me"? And then I heard His voice, and He said to me.
Sid Roth: But your a guy who doesn't hear His voice!
Ed Rush: I mean, like, when He speaks, He has a way of cutting through the clutter. And very clearly, He said to me, "You believe you are alone". And in that moment, my mind actually transported in the Spirit.
Sid Roth: This was the lie that you believe.
Ed Rush: This was the lie. He said, "The lie you believe is that you're alone". In that moment, my entire spirit was transported to when I was six years old. I'm sitting in the back of a car without seatbelts, and my Mom is sitting in the front of the car also without seatbelts, and my Dad is standing on the side of that road, and they're having, through the window of the car, a divorce intensity argument about who is going to pay for my second attempt at kindergarten, of all things.
Sid Roth: After you failed the first.
Ed Rush: And my Mom is yelling at my Dad. My Dad's yelling at my Mom. By the way, two beautiful people, just so you know, they were just having a hard time. And in her frustration, my Mom throws this application out of the window of the car, it blooms into the air, and she starts to drive away. And as she's driving away, about 10 yards later, I, out of the back seat, for reasons still unknown to me, I yell, "Stop". She stops the car, I open the door, and I go start picking all these papers up off the ground, and I'm seeing this whole memory in the Spirit, and then I hear myself tell myself at six years old, say, "Well, I guess you're all alone now". And those words, six or seven words, became literally like a self-fulfilling prophecy for me. It was like a self-licking ice cream cone that just kept perpetuating in my life over and over again. It made it difficult for me to connect with my wife, made it very hard for me to connect emotionally with my kids. I had a revolving door of employees. The idea that I was alone became my life theme, and all of a sudden, I see that as a lie. So I'm snapped back into the counselor's room, and the counselor looks at me and says, "Now I want you to ask God what's true". Suffice it to say, I'm not...
Sid Roth: So there were two questions.
Ed Rush: There's two questions.
Sid Roth: What's a lie, and what's true?
Ed Rush: And suffice it to say, when he asked the second question, I'm ready to go for it. I'm not doubting at this point. I already heard God's voice, and He already brought me in that moment. And God clearly spoke to me a second time, and He said, "You've never been alone". He said, "I've always loved you". And then He said, "I'm proud of you". Which about melted my heart because remember I said I thought He was going to be disappointed in me. And in that moment, He transported me again back into the backseat of the car. And I see the papers fly out of the window, and I yell, "Stop"! And I get out of the car, and as I go to pick up the papers, I look over my shoulder, and Jesus walks out of the car and begins picking up papers next to me. The God of the universe is picking these things up, and I get back in the car, and Jesus is sitting next to me. And we drive away, my Mom and Jesus and me in the back of the car. And I think, how strange is it to think you're alone when Jesus is in the backseat with you when you're six years old, right? And everything changed for me then. I was able to get closer in my relationships with my wife and my family. My business employees stuck around, and we built something beautiful together. I was able to communicate a message of hope, and it all started with two questions.
Sid Roth: I told you, this guy is on to the simplest way you can hear from God, remove blockages. When we return, I want Ed to pray for you to hear God clearly, just as easily as you're about ready to hear this atheist. Be right back.
Sid Roth: Ed, I want you to talk about the atheist that's heard God's voice. I mean, it doesn't make sense.
Ed Rush: So I had gone from not wanting to talk about talking to God to literally being on stage teaching huge audiences of business people, by the way. It's not a ministry thing, literally. Rooms full of atheists, Hindus, Buddhists, Christians, Muslims, everyone in between. And the way I used to do it was I would teach for about an hour, hour and a half to warm the audience up just a little bit, and then I would ask them to ask God some questions. And some of the questions were similar to the story that you just heard, but this woman, her name was Maya, she walked in the door about the hour and a half mark. So she was late, which happens, sometimes people show up late. And the moment she walked in the door, I said, "Now I want you to grab a pen, and I want you to ask God a question". That's all I said, "I want you to ask God a question". Now this woman was an atheist. The reason she was an atheist was because when she was five years old, her Dad started sexually abusing her, and that lasted for 12 years until he was dropping her off at college when she was 17 years old. Can you imagine the pain in the heart of a young woman and the confusion? And she decided two things in that moment. She decided she was going to work as hard as she could. She became one of the nation's biggest attorneys and a big wave surfer, both of those things. And she also believed there was no God, because if her earthly Dad could treat her that way, how much more an all-powerful God. And not only was she an atheist, she was one of those atheists that wanted everyone else to be an atheist. And then she walks into a business event, and as she walks in the door, she hears me go, "Now I want you to ask God a question".
Sid Roth: Did she turn around and go out?
Ed Rush: Every bone of her body, she says, everything was screaming, leave. But I have to honor her for her curiosity because she sat down. Now, she said, she sat down to ask her subconscious mind a question. But we know who she was asking a question to because as soon as she asked God the first question, which is actually my first question, which is, what lies do you believe about you? God showed up and said, "You believe the lie that you are ugly, and that you are unworthy, and that I'm done with you". And in that moment, an atheist heard the voice of God. I asked her to ask the second question. I said, "What's true, ask God what's true about you". And God, out of the silence, and the darkness, and the pain, and the suffering, and the tragedy, out of that, God said, "I've always loved you, Maya. You're beautiful in my eyes, and I love you". And in a moment, the chains broke free. She hadn't told this story to anyone for 40 years, not anyone for 40 years. And her heart begins to get healed, and she begins a relationship, a face-to-face relationship with the Heavenly Father, of all people. It's amazing how this woman's heart was healed. And a story that she had never told, ever, three months later, at my next event, she's standing on stage, in front of hundreds of people, telling of the abuse, telling of the lies, telling the story of all the tears, but also telling the story of love, and how God met her face-to-face three months later. And it's crazy because what happened in that event, as you can imagine, is there are a whole bunch of other people whose stories matched hers. People who were trying to duck and run, and hide from God, who got healed that day too because healed people heal People. And it's just amazing what happens when you hear from God, like when you connect people face-to-face to the Father, it is the best evangelism on planet Earth because all you have to do is simply make the introduction, and let Him do it from there.
Sid Roth: So what you teach on hearing God's voice, you even teach a non-believer, and once they've heard from God, they're not a non-believer.
Ed Rush: So it's amazing. So I was taught, back when I was a cessationist, that only God's people could hear from Him, right? By the way, that's a lie, and it comes from the pit of hell, and it smells like smoke. Okay, God can talk through a donkey, okay? And so if He wants to talk to someone, He can talk to someone. It's been my experience that in certain cases, it's easier for me to take a non-believer, and facilitate a conversation with God than it is a believer, because sometimes we get our head full of what we can't do, right? And I'm just here to tell you, listen, if I can teach an atheist how to have a clear and concise conversation with God, I can teach you, okay, how to teach you how to talk to God, too.
Sid Roth: I want you to do that, right?
Ed Rush: Yes.
Sid Roth: Would you do that right now? Right now.
Ed Rush: I'll do that great. The first thing you need to know is that you were designed, and when I say designed, I don't mean just spiritually. Okay, listen, you are not just spiritually designed to connect with God, you are physiologically, mentally, psychologically designed to connect with God. Listen, brain researchers right now, are on the cusp of observing something in the brain that is fascinating. There is a center in your brain, I call the super-conscious mind, there's actually a name for the center of your brain, that lights up, literally when they use magnetic imagery, they can see the center of your brain when you pray, check this out, the moment you pray there's a part of your brain that literally lights up like a Christmas tree, and then starts reaching out for other parts of your brain. I want you to understand that you were designed, biologically to connect with God. Okay, now, the most important thing that you can do, is to connect with God conversationally and get your filter out of the way. This is one of the most important things that I teach, and when you consume the materials like the book, you'll see, one of the most important things you can do, is ask God questions, I'm going to tell you the questions to ask God, journal the answers, but don't edit, just allow God's voice to flow because He can tell you some really fun and also some strange things, that make sense over time, but there is nothing like this walk with God, and conversational relationship with God, literally, it will change your life like it changed mine.
Sid Roth: Now, do most people that do what you teach, do they hear an audible voice or is it just almost like a thought?
Ed Rush: So what I recommend people do, is write down whatever they hear, see, sense, or feel.
Sid Roth: No matter whether it's a thought or audible.
Ed Rush: Write it down, okay, you have all kinds of senses, and God has a lot of fun communicating to all kinds of senses, so sometimes people see a picture, sometimes people like me will see a memory, a lot of times you have a still small voice in the back of your head, that sounds like you because you're a spirit, God is a Spirit, sometimes you're hearing from your spirit what God is saying to you, sometimes that voice sounds like you, sometimes it's literally God's out loud voice. And fundamentally the structure works like this, question number one, what lies do I believe about, and then you fill in the blanks. What lies do I believe about myself, what lies do I believe about God, what lies do I believe about my past, what lies do I believe about money, literally you can do it about any topic. The second question is, what's true? And you say, so what's true about me, what's true about money, what's true about this show? The second question is what's true but this is the important thing, once you get the questions, you need to do something with the answers, and that's the part that I talk about in terms of neurologically recoding your mind. Take the answers, turn them into statements so that your subconscious mind can turn them into a process that creates a result in your life. When you do this, what you're going to see is first of all physically neurologically your mind will rewire itself. I can show you video after video of people's brains literally rewiring themselves when they think a new thought after God's thoughts when they have the mind of Christ. The second thing when you think differently results in your life happen differently. So if you want a different result in your bank account or your relationships or with your health or with all of the things in your life, the first way to do it is what Paul said when he said not be conformed to the world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind. You train your mind differently and the results show up in your life differently. That's your mission right now.
Sid Roth: You're raised in a home that was Christian and you believed, but you never had your own experience with the Living God, this is your moment. It's going to transform you, your life, your relationships. Repeat this prayer out loud, mean it to the best of your ability: "Dear God. I'm so sorry for my mistakes. I'm so grateful for your blood. Because your blood has washed me totally clean. And now that I'm clean, come inside of me. I make you my Lord. I make you my Savior. I make you my all-in-all. Fill me with your Holy Spirit. Give me a language to tell you how much I love you. Because I do love you, Lord. Amen". Ed, I want you to pray for everyone viewing in our audience or at home to hear God clearly.
Ed Rush: The first thing I want you to do is to understand that I'm going to pray for you and after this you're going to hear from God, okay. This is not an option for you. God is the one who wants to have a conversation with you. So Father, I just pray for the person listening and watching right now, first of all, I honor them, Lord, before You for their desire to hear from You. They've gotten all the way through this program, all the way to the end and I can just feel this desire to hear from You. Father, You said in Psalm 37:4, "Delight yourself in the Lord and He will give you the desires of your heart". So Lord I ask that you would fulfill that promise for the person listening or watching right now. That you would fulfill the desire in their heart to hear from You. Jesus You said, "My sheep hear My voice," and so right now we just release the ability to hear, open ears, open ears, open minds also, Lord re-engage that super conscious portion of the person's mind, that hardware portion of the person's mind so that they might hear from you clearly and then once doing that Father, I ask not only that they would hear from You, but they would use what they hear to change the world that needs changing, to get on the mission that You've called them to do so that life and the world will never be the same and may God bless you. May God bless you. Amen.