The Power of Red Phone Friends in Helping Leaders Finish Strong

Welcome to the Next Move podcast. It is great to have you with us. And today we're having a conversation with one of my dear friends and somebody that I really admire on so many levels, Greg Steer. Greg is my favorite gangster. He's my gospel gangster friend. So if ever I'm in a fight, Greg is number one on my call list. Uh, but he's also, uh, an apostle to the church in this, in our lifetime that is sharing the message and amplifying the message of sharing the gospel in a way that no one else is. And I'm, I'm grateful for the message that he carries and, uh, uh, The ministry that he's leading, that has a desire for every teenager everywhere hearing the gospel from a friend. And I've been a witness of just seeing that blow up around the world. And I'm excited about that. But I'm more excited about what we're talking about today. Greg, in my opinion, is somebody that hasn't just started off with a bang before. But he is living life to the full and in the process of one day finishing well. And the genesis of this conversation was I was traveling. I was in London at the time and I was standing at a station having a conversation with Greg over the phone. And we were just speaking about, have you heard about? And it was a Christian leader that has fallen away. And we just realized that it happens and it keeps happening. And our frustration as Christian leaders with it keeping on happening. And we said, let's do a podcast on finishing well. And that's the conversation today. How do you finish well in ministry? Not how do you start, not how do you have the best of intentions, but how do you actually follow through to a point of finishing well? And what does finishing well look like? So I'm excited to hear from Greg. I'm excited to hear from you as you listen to us today and we continue this conversation even after the podcast today. Welcome to the podcast, Greg. Great having you here. You're Matt Damon to my Ben Affleck and Goodwill Hunting. You're my wicked smart friend. So I'm glad to be on the podcast. It's nice to have you here, Greg. Let's start off with this, right? We both, and I'm sure the people listening can name people off by heart who has fallen away, right? They were heroes of the faith. They were doing something incredible in our time, but they didn't stay the course. Why do you think that is? Why aren't people finishing well? What's causing it to not happen the way we hope it would? Well, you know, you've heard the statement, we're all one dumb decision away from, you know, being out of ministry. I actually think that's wrong. I think we're a thousand dumb decisions away. I don't think it starts with one dumb decision. I think it starts by, first of all, just, you know, taking off the gas to your relationship board. Yeah. And nobody who's walking in a day-by-day declaration of dependence on the Holy Spirit is going to fall. You know, you are in tune with Him. But you start missing those appointments with God, start forgetting to depend on Him, start believing your own press callings. And I think long before somebody falls in love with somebody else, they fall in love with themselves. And I think you're a thousand small dumb decisions, and then you make that big dumb decision. And a thousand small dumb decisions are straying from the Lord and straying from your spouse. Yeah. And, you know, if we're talking about not finishing well when it comes to, you know, having a moral fall. There's two things you touch on there actually at the same time, which might be worth just separating and exploring a little bit, right? So the one thing I'm hearing you say is it's not one big wrong decision. It's a lot of little ones. And sometimes it's getting away with those little ones, which is… the problem, right? As we get away with it, we don't intentionally spend time with God and we still preach okay, or people still buy a book or whatever it is. And then you think, oh, maybe intimacy with God isn't that important. And then you keep straying along that road, right? But the other thing that you're mentioning is stepping away from some of the basics, right? And I kind of feel like both those issues are worth exploring. Yeah, I agree. And I'll never forget 30 years ago, more than 30 years ago, my father-in-law paid for me to my, I didn't know he was going to do this, to go to a pastor's conference in Colorado Springs. I live in the Denver area. I didn't really want to go. It was on finishing well and accountability. And I'm like, oh, brother, I have too much stuff to do to worry about this. Well, I went down. It was one of the leaders of the Minereth Meyer Clinic. who asked the pastors in the room, how many of you have accountability? You won't counsel a woman alone, or you won't be in a car alone with a member of the opposite sex or whatever. And you know, a bunch of us raised our hands, including me. And he said, you know, I've canceled thousands of pastors who have fallen sexually and many of the names you would know. And he goes, every single one of them that fell had accountability. They had rules and that got everybody's attention. And then he said something I'll never forget. He said, gentlemen, lust will pick a lock. Lust will pick a lock because I don't care how many rules you have, how many locks that you, you know, have lust will pick a lock. He goes, the, The only, only thing that's going to help you is, number one, a moment by moment, day by day, cultivated relationship with the Lord Jesus Christ. Time in prayer, time in his word, intimacy with him, not just legalistically reading the Bible, but intimacy with your creator. And the second, a close number two, is a strong relationship with your spouse. And he goes, a distant third are the rules and accountability. And man, I'm so glad. I mean, I don't even remember anything else I learned that day. That was worth the 90-minute trip there. Love it. Because I never forgot it. It makes me think, I think it was Spurgeon that said, the problem with this generation isn't that their passions are too strong, it's that their passion is too weak, right? So it's that thing of when your passion for God and your passion for your wife is red hot, then the reality is that The other things don't really matter. But when those things are not in place, let's split those two up for a moment because I'd love to speak about both of them. Passionate, intimate relationship with God. How do you cultivate it? If the key is, and I'm not against the rules either. I mean, we certainly have some rules and principles. And when this happens, it's a phone call. So we have all those things lined up. But I think there's a lot of good stuff out there. So I don't want to rehash it. But let's talk about those principles then. How do you keep your relationship with God so that you're not slowly straying away, that you're not slowly taking steps in the wrong direction? You know, I mean, one, it's just a little bit old school, time in the Word, morning devotions. I mean, you can do them whenever. But for me, you know, I'm a 5 a.m. guy. I'm early and somebody can have 8 a.m. or 8 p.m. It doesn't matter, but a consistent time In the word, in prayer, you know, my rule is kind of like first hour. Like I want my... Again, other people can do this different ways, but a consistent time in the Word and prayer and getting the light switch turned back on. My daughter came down when she was in high school. She's an adult now. And she came down and she goes, Dad, you're so godly. You're in the Word. Every time I come down early, I go, Kaylee, it's not because I'm so godly. It's because I'm so ungodly. I have to reset my soul every morning. And then throughout the day, you know, I have an Apple Watch that goes off five times a day, silent reminder for me to get filled with the Holy Spirit. And, you know, D.L. Moody once said, we must constantly stay under the fountain of Christ because we are leaky vessels. And so it's, I think, just the old school spiritual disciplines of prayer in the word, fasting, you know, meditation on God's word, first memory, yielding a moment by moment, you know, what Francis Schaeffer used to call a moment by moment declaration of dependence on the spirit. Man, I just, that's it. We got to remain in the vine. And if I remain in you, and you remain in me, and my words remain in you, you will bear much fruit. And so we have to, you know, I think the battle of the Christian life is remaining in Christ. and not trying to do it on our own. It's the practice of the presence of God, right? It's the walk we walk where we walk with God. And I think the reality is that in the same way that couples drift apart because life changes and they don't change the way they relate. I think sometimes we drift away from God because our life, our season of life, our journey changes and we don't establish those basic disciplines of just practicing the presence of God, practicing intimacy with God, growing in your relationship with God, communing with some people that aren't impressed by you, that you could just relate with. Because if every room you're in discussing your relationship with God, you're the expert in that room, it will cause you to dull in your relationship with God and to stop pursuing God. Because you'd start feeling like an expert, right? And it's that professional Christianity has a way of breaking down an intimate relationship with God like nothing else. Well, and I think also, you know, I mean, we're talking about moral failures. For every moral failure, there's maybe 10 others that Christian leaders that are just jerks. Like they may be faithful to their wives, but they're not faithful to the Lord. They're not producing love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, gentleness, goodness, faithfulness, self-control. They're arrogant jerks that need to get their rears kicked by the Holy Spirit. And that arrogance, to me, finishing well is not just not falling. It's also like... Seeking your best to be a humble servant. When you mess up, you fess up and you try to live at peace as much as you can. As long as it depends on you, you live at peace with everyone that you can. And you're kind and you're loving and you're a leader. You don't lead by being a dictator. And I think we're kind of set up for Protestant popes in the evangelical church. They're just kind of like, this is the way we do things, do what I say. And I'm like, man, that's not finishing well in my book either. So just because you have a strong relationship with your wife doesn't mean you have a strong relationship with the Lord or those that you work with. I think finishing well is way more than just moral faithfulness. But it is more than moral faithfulness because I think, but often the one causes the other, right? So that lack of humility in life causes you to think that you are something you're not. And you, you know, somebody once said it like this, they said that the distance between the perceived person and the real person, the greater that distance is, the more likely that person's going to come to a fall, right? I fully agree with that. And that's one of the things I asked somebody last week who's a couple months in at Dare to Share. And I said, what is your perspective? And they were like, well, what we see on this side of the curtain is what I saw on the other side of the curtain when I was in the audience. Yeah. You know, and to me, that's it. That's awesome. We want to be the same person. you know, high integrity, loving, you're gonna be humble and kind. You know, one of the things we did when we used to do big conferences is we would all load the semi-truck. And if you weren't willing to load the truck, just cause you were a speaker or, you know, whatever, and like, yeah, well, this is your last air tour, you know? So. And I wanna touch on that a little bit, Greg, because there's something where that lack of humility creates an entitlement, right? And that's a problem. But at the same time, there's a reality. I mean, you have been on trips like I'm sure a lot of people listening to this have been where you're traveling from place to place and speaking from place to place. And there's just a reality of you only have that much energy and you need the energy you have for a particular task. And there's just so much left of you. And part of that old story that willpower is a finite resource and most of us mess up when our willpower runs out, right? willpower left to will ourselves to do the right thing. And then we mess up in one shape or form, whether that's being rude to the guy at the counter or whether it's, you know, messing up in some moral way. But the reality is, how do we balance that? How do you balance the demands of life and then the hero worship that comes with doing something well with just staying humble and staying real and staying sane in your relationship with God? Well, I think a couple of things. One is what we talked about before, you know, I mean, inventory every morning, like checking your heart, confessing your sin. What I used to tell my kids when they It says if we walk in the light of season light, we have fellowship over one another. But if we stood in the darkness, we're stumbling around, right? If we confess our sin, he's faithful and just will forgive us our sin and cleanse us from all unrighteousness. So I use a light switch analogy. Light on, light off. And so when my kids were fighting in the back seat, I was like, guys, you're walking in darkness. You're stumbling around. Flip the switch. You know, and there's no dimmer switch. You're either full of the spirit or you're full of yourself. And I think just that constant inventory. And I think the other is to surround ourselves with people that will tell us not what we want to hear, but what we need to hear. That's good. I get nervous when I'm around leaders who have people that are only, you know, cheering them and never confront them. Or if they get out of line, don't say anything because they're afraid of losing their jobs or losing a place on the totem pole. I'm like, man, we need to surround ourselves with people that are brutally honest with us. You know, not being jerks, but being brutally honest. And we need to have people in our lives that we can be brutally honest to when we're going through a struggle. And I just think that sort of, you know, confession and, you know, general confrontation, but also being able to confess when you're struggling with something. You know, a lot of leaders don't feel that freedom. And, man, I have – I call it the old Batman in the 60s used to have a red phone when you called Batman. So I have three red phone friends that I call. when I'm struggling with something. Could be lust or pride or stuck in my marriage or whatever. So good. And we need to have that kind of openness and authenticity before it becomes a serious problem. That's really good. That's really good. Red phone friends. So, so much of this comes down to relationship, right? Relationships with people that's willing to tell you what you really need to hear. Relationship with God. Knowing who those red phone friends are in your life. But also, you mentioned relationship with your spouse. And I've observed you guys over the years and seen some of the stuff and the conversation you guys have had. And the way you're married, having been married for how many years now? 35 going on 36th. 35 going on 36, you're a decade ahead of us. But you guys are, what are some of the keys, Greg? How do you keep the passion alive in the midst of the pressure of ministry? And how do you make sure that the person for you is the only person for you for the rest of your life? 36 years of wisdom. You know, Let me just tell you, it's not been easy for us. My wife and I, literally we did the Myers-Briggs test early on, and you could not test more differently. There's an old book. It's my favorite. I've never read the book, but it's my favorite title for a marriage book. Opposites Attack, not Opposites Attract. There you go. And we had a meltdown when I was a pastor in a Bible study one time. We got in a huge argument. Everybody thought it was a skit or a sketch. I'm like, no, this is happening. So it has been a battle for us, but we fight through the breakthrough. Yeah. And I mean, I love my wife and she loves me, but it takes constant cultivation for us. Yeah. Yeah. We do regular trips together. We spent a lot of times hiking in the mountains of Colorado. So it's beautiful. Last week, we saw it two weeks ago, we were in Estes for a week. And we do a lot of prayer walking. So we got in this habit when our kids were little and now they're grown. But we walk to a destination for a mile or two, talk about our days. We did this last night, you know, and then we on the way back is when we spend time in prayer specifically for other for our kids. And I think just, you know, being together, you know, doing stuff together, cultivating, you know, really. Really. You know, I think the beauty that somebody said, you know, God gave us marriage not to make us happy, but to make us holy. But I'm like, if it's not making us happy, then there's a problem, too. We should be happy together. And I think learning, you know, learning what, you know, each other loves and likes. And my wife, praise God, you know, she is she's got her own. You know, I'm an evangelist. I'm an author. I'm a preacher, all this stuff. She was a public school teacher for 30 years at the same school in Arvada, Colorado, a suburb of Denver. So outside of Arvada, I'm known as the dare to share guy inside Arvada. I'm Mr. Steer's husband everywhere we go. So it's been awesome to really see her get her sense of identity, not just as being Greg's wife, but as being, you know, the awesome public school fifth grade teacher in Arvada, Colorado, you know? So I just think, you know, Being together. I mean, I don't want to oversimplify it, but I travel a lot, but we travel a lot too. She actually doesn't go on a ton of ministry trips with me outside the US, but we do a lot of stuff together. Sure. And, you know, it's prayer and duct tape, man. It's just… But you're touching on something profound, Greg, because it's… I don't think it's a formula, but it is an intentionality. It is a continual working at it. It is a making time for it. It is finding those walks or finding those ways to keep on investing. Yeah. You know, so happy wife, happy life, right? But happiness doesn't just happen, right? You've got to fight for it. You've got to work for it. And the same in the relationship is you want to have a good relationship. But if you don't set time aside, it's not just going to happen by itself. You know, I always joke, you said, you know, opposites would not attract attack. But the… The reality is that if you don't spend a lot of time together, then you also attack because when you get together, you don't get along initially. You've got to fight through that first. So I always say don't go on a nice date. If you haven't seen one another for a while, go on a cheap date. Have a cheap flight and then go on a nice date. Right. Then you then you catch up. Then you reconnect. You don't want to waste your money at a nice restaurant having a fight. Waste that at McDonald's. Exactly. Start with the McDonald's fight. But but I think that's great. But it's a lot of what we're speaking about links to the statement. It's direction, not intention, determines destination. Nobody starts out wanting to have an affair. Nobody starts out wanting to not finish well. Nobody starts out not wanting a relationship with God, but yet people do. And the reality isn't that they had the wrong intentions. The reality is that they had the wrong direction. They didn't make the calls in their lives to stay on the path to get to the end that they were desiring. You know, and I really agree with that. I think that one of the things that's helped us a lot is my wife is just, she's, I'm relentless. She's relational. But we've, it's interesting. We, a year or two ago, we had lunch with a girl that was her old college roommate. And she's like, oh my goodness. You guys have totally swapped roles. Like my wife was more bold and I was more of a list. And it's awesome to see when the Lord talks about oneness in marriage, that the Lord really does use each other's gifts to hone each other and to become, you know, I think the Holy Spirit's greatest tool in the life of a married man or woman is their spouse. That's it. And it's great. And I think just the joy of marriage and the pain. of figuring it out. Like I, I cannot, Yuri, I cannot preach a sermon if I have an unresolved issue with my wife. And I started this when I was a pastor and we were fighting all the time. And so every Saturday night I had to say, honey, would you forgive me? And she's like, yeah. One Saturday night, Yuri, I go, would you forgive me? She goes, no. I go, why? She goes, you just want to preach tomorrow. I go, nevertheless, She goes, I said, the Bible says, don't let the sun go down on your wrath. She goes, the Bible also says, husbands, love your wives as Christ loved the church. And so you married a good one, Greg. The next morning. No, I'm serious. The next morning I did my, you know, hey, baby, you know, I love you. Forgive me. She goes. We go to church, we're sitting and I got to preach. It's the last song and the last stanza. And I go, Debbie, will you forgive me? And she got this mischievous smile. She goes, no, what are you going to do? And I thought about it and I turned to her. I mean, last stanza. I said, I'm going to go up and I'm going to say, I have an unresolved issue with my wife and it's my fault and I can't preach today. So we're just doing early. And now I'm starting to get pumped. Cause I'm like, this is the best. I'm going to hear preached. And right before I go up, cause she goes, no, you're not going to go. Oh yeah. I'm gonna right before I go up, she goes, I forgive you. I'm like stinking the one time. I do not want your forgiveness. I mean, I had to go get my notes again. Oh, man. I love it. I love it. Best non-sermon preached ever, right? Yeah, that's right. I never got to do my non-sermon. There we go. Well, you probably forgot what you preached that day, but you don't forget this lesson for the rest of your life, right? Because that's the thing is we've got to keep the main thing the main thing. It's not about preaching. It's not about the words we'll say in that moment. It's about the life we live. And that authenticity is something this next generation is hungry for. So thank you for modeling it. Thank you for living it. Thank you for being out there. But if you had to give some advice to somebody that's in a space where if they do a real honest audit right now, relationship with God, relationship with wife, they're not winning. They're in a space where they're listening to this podcast about finishing well. But if they're honest about their own life, they don't feel like they're finishing well. I want to add one more thing in there, as I think oftentimes, you know, people... There was a time when the whole idea of a midlife crisis was really popular, right? But today, I feel like we go through multiple life crises, right? Because there's There's an expectation of early life and there's an expectation of early adulthood and there's an expectation of midlife. What is midlife, right? Is that in your 70s now? If 50% of the world's population is going to be more than that's alive today is going to age over 100 years. There's so many lives we've got to live. There's so many successes we've got to. reach is I think sometimes the crisis, the moral failure happens not because you don't feel like you're winning in your relationship with God or winning in your relationship with your spouse. You don't feel like you're winning in work or not winning in one causes you not to win in the others, right? That's just the reality. Someone's in crisis. How do they fix it? Well, I mean, I think one is you got to, you know, you got to flip the switch on. You got to turn the lights on. You have to confess it. Yeah. You have to, you have to find your crew. You know, I've never had a, I never had a dad. I never knew my biological father. I was a one night stand, but I've had a thousand dads. So I've always had like men in my life that are godly shepherds to my soul. You know, I still have to Dave Gibson's my, my mentor. Yeah. God, just godliest guy. I know. I love that man, but I've always had that. And I feel like you have to, you have to find those people in your life and you have to say, Hey, I'm struggling here and I need help. If you need counseling, get counseling, talk to your pastors, you know, Don't let it hide. And I feel like we get this pride that if we admit stuff, it's weakness. What I have found is when I'm weak, that I'm strong. And not just spiritually. I think that's true. What I have found is it's been the struggles that I've shared with teenagers, because I preach to teenagers all over the world, the struggles that we have, the honesty that we have, it actually becomes the bridge of Between me and them, because they're like, oh, okay, you struggle too. So I think admitting, you know, and getting it into the light and getting the help that you need and figuring it out, you know, making that a priority. When you keep it a secret, you know, it just, it turns into poison and it poisons your soul and it poisons your relationship. So I would, you know, just say, you know, obviously go to the Lord in prayer. your sins to one another that you may be healed. And somebody once said, you confess to the Lord for forgiveness. You confess to each other for healing. Good, beautiful. And we have to, you know, I'm not talking about standing up in church, confessing all your sins to everyone. There was a movement in the eighties where that, that was a movement. I let it move on by. I'm like, I ain't getting involved with that. I'm not confessing all my sins to everyone, but there's gotta be those red phone friends that, That know everything. That's it. Yeah. But if the first role of leadership is defining reality, then the first responsibility of a leader to themselves in that situation is admitting reality. Yeah. Because it's only when you admit it that you can start fixing it, right? While you're still telling yourself everything's okay, everything's all right, you know, you're never going to deal with it. And I would say, too, in a relationship is don't, you know, learn how to say the words, I was wrong, will you forgive me? And don't worry about fixing them. Yeah, that's good. Fix what do I need to change in my soul? Yeah. Right? So let's say I was married to somebody who wasn't godly. Yeah. Who wasn't on fire for the Lord. You know, I'm still called. Yeah. To love my wife as Christ loves the church. I don't control the way she responds to me. She controls it, right? So really, you know, take responsibility for yourself. Um, and learn how to learn it. You know, I, there's times you're a dare to share. Like I'll say something that's just a little cross and I'll go back in, you know, usually five or 10 minutes later, say, listen, I was wrong. Will you forgive me? You know, and you need to create that, you know, just short accounts with God, man. Get, get, get back underneath the fountain of Christ. And that creates psychological safety with your team. It creates psychological safety in your marriage. It creates that space where people feel like… There's no psychological safety. There's no psychological safety with me in the room. I feel very safe with you, Greg. I feel great because, you know, I know we both make mistakes and we'll call one another out with it. on it. That's the beauty of it. I mean, we're a good example of it. You and I have had those conversations and to me, that's when you get to adapt to the relationship of trust. When you're able to do that. That's what the Lord do. It's relationship. So confess to Him when we sin and struggle and get, you know, that I A wise man falls seven times, yet rises again, right? Yeah. So I think it's just the older that I get, the faster I confess and get out of the mud. Because Satan will just keep you, you know, he'll press your face when you fall. I heard somebody say spiritual maturity is measured by the time it takes between you messing up and you going back to God, right? That space is the measure of maturity. But I think there's something else here. Go ahead. Go for it. I just said, because he loves us. I mean, he loves us like we, you know, the same degree that we feel, you know, we love our kids. That times, you know, a billion, trillion, you know, that's how he loves us. He's cheering for us. He's wanting us to win. Come on, you know, let's go. Nothing we can say or do can make him love us anymore, right? So we win. We win. So we might as well just give in and say, all right. I'm sorry. Just grab a hold of it. Grab a hold of it. So here's something I've observed is I've never had somebody come to me for help too soon, whether it's for a marriage or whether it's in their own situation or whether it's in a career situation. But I've had a lot of people come to me for help too late. Yeah. And I guess that's the other thing is if you're feeling like I'm not set up to finish strong, find help. Get help. Ask advice. Ask people to speak into that. Lay your life bare in front of some people that you trust and just say, this is where I'm at. Help me through this. Because while it's in the darkness, it festers and it gets worse and it gets harder and harder to bring other people in. But the sooner you bring it to the light, the sooner you can make sure that you finish strong. You know, it's James 4, you know, battles in relationships is enmity toward God. And what do you do? Humble yourself under the mighty hand of the Lord. That's it. You know, grieve, mourn, and wail. I mean, you know, recognize, man, this is sin, this is wrong, and I want to get it right, you know? Yeah. Yeah. It's a Christian life that, you know, when I first got saved, you know, it sounded like bowling, right? You just follow the arrows and you'll get a spear and a strike. It's more like pinball. You're just pushing buttons and praying, you know, and saying, Lord, help me. And it's that utter dependence. that you read in the Psalms all the time, you know, that, and it's messy, but we keep zigzagging our way toward holiness and we, we don't give up and finish. Well, my, my, you know, the older I get, the more Michael, yeah, I want to see every teen everywhere. Here, the gospel from a friend. Yes. I've, you know, staked my, you know, life riveted my life to that vision. And, but I want to finish well, I want to be able to say what sick of Timothy for. I have fought the good fight. I have finished the course. I have kept the faith. Now there's a store for me, a crown, a crown of righteousness. I want to hear him say, well done, my good and faithful servant, man. I want to finish well. And so I just challenge everyone watching this. Don't, Don't settle for anything less. Go all in, serve Christ, be honest about your struggles. You know, don't keep secrets, flip the switch, live in reliance on the spirit, be in the word every day. Don't be a jerk and allow God just to do that mighty work in you and then through you until you collapse in his arms on the other side of eternity. Love it. Come on. May that be so. Greg, thanks for your time today. Thank you guys for joining us. It was great getting to hang out with you. Look forward to hearing from you soon. And Greg, I hope to see you soon. And maybe decades from now, follow up on this podcast and continue on this conversation with some of the lessons that we'll learn about finishing strong between now and then. But it's a privilege to be on this journey with each and every one of you.