 welcome to hope today. I hope you're having a glorious Tuesday. We're going to be talking about alone time. We're going to be talking about, you know, we love joining you joining us and joining together and having fellowship, but we're going to be talking about what it means to have that time alone as well. I'm Tom Hollis. I am here with Amanda Brocker. Tell me about that, Amanda. Yes, we're going to have Terry Savelle Foy. We're so excited. She's going to really dive in and help us see why it is so important to make sure you're having that quality time with your Heavenly Father. You know, in any relationship, Tom, we just got done celebrating Valentine's and having that, you know, alone time with the one we love. And it's so important to see our relationship similar with the Lord that we have to pour in and set apart time for that. Well, you know, every Christian, it's important that for every Christian to go to church and be involved in fellowship and have maybe a small group of people that you study the Bible with or pray with, all those things are super duper important, but not as important as this time alone with God. Amanda, Jesus had it. That's right. He set his self apart. And as a matter of fact, I mean, he lived to do the will of the Father and he emanated that example for us. How will we actually know what the will of the Father is if we're not hanging out with him and giving time? It's not just us coming with our bucket list of prayer requests and doing all the talking, but there's a lot of listening that comes into play when you are having that solitude time. And for me, Bible reading, I mean, God is speaking. People are like, well, is he speaking today? Yes, he is through his word. Are you engaged in the Word of God? It's more of the question to ask. You know, even, even just that time where we're not doing the spiritual disciplines that are so important, but just with our thoughts and where those are going and ordering those, it's so important. And maybe you need prayer today. Maybe you're watching by yourself and you say, Hey, I'm already alone. Why don't you take time to call one of our prayer partners and get some prayer today for whatever is going on in your world? God is concerned for it. And we've got prayer partners that are to be concerned as well. Right now, Amanda and I are going to be concerned if we can answer questions because we're going to play Stump the Host. This is our occasional chance to be embarrassed on TV to see if we really know what we're talking about when we talk about the Bible. So you ready, Amanda? Oh, well, ready or not. So play along with us. Here's the first question. In the book of Revelation, what is the final destination for the righteous and faithful believers? Oh, this is interesting. It's easy. It'd be easy to say heaven, but I think it's the New Jerusalem. Is it the New Jerusalem? Maybe we ought to say New Jerusalem. Does that sound good to you? It sounds great to me. Oh, boy. She's just, uh, all right. Let's go with the New Jerusalem. That was correct. That's correct. There you go. The New Jerusalem. Rick's trying to get us. He's hitting every button. That's right. We got that right. Wahoo. All right. Next question. Who was the prophet that confronted King David about his sin with Bathsheba? Was it Nathan? This was Nathan. Okay. Yeah. This was, uh, yeah. This was Nathan. Oh, man. Yeah, Nathan. He went in and he told him a story about, you know, about a family. They didn't have many sheep and then he went and took their sheep when he had a lot of sheep. Yeah. David was all angry and then he's like, you're the man. David's like, uh-oh. That's great. You know, busted. Well, here's the last one. Who was the first king of Israel's northern kingdom after it split from the southern kingdom of Judah? This was Jeroboam. This was, yeah. She's saying amen over here. I don't know if she's ever said amen to Jeroboam ever in her life, but she's saying amen. But we're going to go with Jeroboam. Hey, three for three. On a Tuesday morning, I think that's the best set of Stump the Host. Amanda has ever been a part of. Wahoo. Well, we all know that the hustle and bustle of life can be overwhelming. And at times we can find ourselves always on the go and moving from one thing to the next without ever resting or spending time alone with God. And according to our next guest, that time alone is critical to achieving our God given dreams. Terry Savelle Foy is the author of the book, The Alone Advantage. And she joins us now to share how important our alone time with God is. Terry, welcome to Hope Today. Thank you. It's an honor. And I'm just so glad you didn't play Stump the Guest. Thank you for that. Yes. I know we didn't have to call you in as a lifeline. Praise the Lord. We did pretty good today. But I just appreciate, you know, this wonderful work that God has given you. I know you grew up, you know, in the household with your dad, Jerry Savelle, and just growing in God's word. So as an adult and doing life, you know, yourself, you have learned a key principle and that's this alone time. So talk to us a little bit about, like, why did you feel that the Lord put this on your plate to put this out there for believers? Yeah. Well, it's interesting, Amanda, if you told me years ago that I would write a book called The Alone Advantage, I would have said no. Being alone is punishment. That's why they call it solitary confinement. But I found out that that was the very thing missing in my life when I was exactly like you described. I was so busy. I was stressed out. I was living paycheck to paycheck. I had no money in my savings account. I worked hard on my job and I had no vision or goals for my life. I was just busy. But at the same time, I was separated from my husband and I was this close to divorce. And during that season, this was back in 2002, during that season, my dad, who was my boss at the time, he knew what I was going through this close to divorce. And he said, I want you to work from home temporarily alone. And when he said alone, that just sounded like misery. Well, during that season, I flew to New Orleans to see one of my friends. And while I was there, her dad, who's a minister, he knew what I was going through. And he spoke four words to me that just kind of gave me the direction I needed. He just simply said, you work on you. He said, stop looking at your husband's problems, stop looking at everything around you. He said, you work on you. Well, then I got home from that trip and I heard Joyce Meyer on a message. She said, God will change your circumstances. I thought, oh, thank you, Lord. She said, but he'll change you first. Then I heard this great motivator, Jim Rohn. He said, if you want the future to change, you've got to change. And my first thought was, why is everybody pointing to me? What is the problem? But I took those words to heart and that first morning, I'll never forget, took my little girl to school. I drove home to this empty house, which I wasn't used to, separated from my husband. I walked in the back door. I put the keys on the counter and I just kind of looked around thinking, what do you do? But I grabbed a journal and I grabbed a pencil, which I'm from Texas, so this is just a regular pencil. I grabbed a journal and a pencil and I sat on the couch and what I did next led to God restoring my marriage. Now we've been married 32 years, launching a ministry, writing 15 books, starting an organization, you know, ministering all over the world. But what I began to discover, Tom and Amanda, was that people are rewarded in public for what they practiced in private. So now I know that it's an advantage to get alone and I began to discover the habits that successful people practice behind closed doors. So I'd love to talk about some of those if you want to. Absolutely. Go right ahead. I'm taking notes. This is good content. So feel free and enlighten all of us. Okay, I would love to share. So when you think about in the Bible, which I love props, so I got a bunch of little toys here, but I want you to think about David in the Bible. He killed a lion and he killed a bear in private with nobody watching, but that prepared him to kill Goliath in public with everybody watching. So again, people are rewarded in public for what they practice in private. So I began to discover simple habits, which in the book, I share 10 behind the scenes habits, I call it that drive crazy success. Well, one of the habits was they simply wake up a little bit earlier than everyone else. Successful people wake up earlier. And I used to think, why? What is the point? You know, Benjamin Franklin said, early to bed and early to rise makes a man healthy, wealthy and wise. Well, I used to always just go, why though? Why do they get up so much earlier than everyone else? Well, they practice mind over mattress, I call it. They win the battle of the bed. But the reason why is they get up a little bit earlier to invest in themselves. Here's what I found out. Just waking up 30 minutes earlier than normal, just 30 minutes is 15 hours a month. 15 hours that could change your life or keep you stuck. So I started waking up just a little bit earlier than I used to, and I would go to bed a little bit earlier, but I would wake up and start investing in myself, just setting time aside to spend with the Lord, to journal, to read, which let me just tell you this, one of the other habits, number two is grow up. I call it grow up because I found out successful people, they actually read, they read books, you know, Les Brown said it like this. He said, unsuccessful people have large TVs. Successful people have large libraries. They get up and they invest in themselves. You know, the Bible says my people are destroyed for a lack of knowledge. Well, that's what was happening to me. I'd love to tell you this funny story if you want me to share this. How this, how this came about me discovering this habit. When I graduated from college, I went to Texas Tech University and when I had the big graduation party, my family was in Lubbock, Texas at El Chico's Mexican restaurant. And I think I made the dumbest statement I've ever made. I announced to my family, I said, I will never study again. I thought I've paid my dues. I will never pick up another book. Well, the sad thing is I backed up my dumb promise for 11 years of my life. So for 11 years, I would wake up at the last minute to go to work. I would jump in the car, listen to music and sing all the way to the office, work all day, jump in the car, come home and just turn on the TV and watch it for hours. Well, when I hit this rock bottom in my life on the verge of divorce, living paycheck to paycheck, I'm in a rut. All of a sudden I started waking up a little bit earlier and I would go in my room, my little study by myself and I picked up the first book. I set the alarm on my phone for 20 minutes and it felt like torture. I started reading a book and I would look at the clock and I'd turn the page and read the book. But something surprising began to happen. The more I read, the more I began to learn. The more I learned, the more I began to earn, just like they say. Do you know what happened the next 11 years of my life? I went from ghost writing books for other people to authoring books. I went from attending conferences to speaking at conferences. I went from just watching TV for hours to hosting a TV show. I like to call it, I have another little problem. I found the key to success and it's K-E-Y. Keep educating yourself. K-E-Y. Terry, let me tell you what you think about this. Terry, if I could, let me ask you about that. I want to ask you about specifically imagination. Because again, television tends to rob us of imagination because everything's kind of just presented right there, right before us, whereas books encourage it. But what do successful people use? How do they use their imagination? What does God do through our imagination? Yeah, so that was another advantage of being alone. I like to say it like this is I just started with a blank canvas and I just started in those private hours in the morning, just imagining what does God want me to do? What can I imagine myself doing five years from now? If my life was perfect and I had no limitations, what can I imagine? And I started realizing that successful people write their dreams and goals. They don't leave them in their head, they put pen to paper. And of course, every success principle comes from the Word of God. Habakkuk 2-2 says, write the vision, make it plain. So I started doing that in those private hours. In fact, you know, making myself read books, I remember reading something about a professor at Virginia Tech who did research on successful people and goal setting. And he said he walked up to random people and he said, what are your goals for life? Like what are your goals? Your vision? He said 80% said, I don't have any goals. So think of 80% of people walking around with no vision. Proverbs says where there is no vision, the people perish. Well, he said 16% said I have some goals, but I've never written them down. 3% said I've written my goals at some point, but I don't know where they are. 1% said I have goals. I've written them down and I review them on a consistent basis. He said, do you know who the 1% were? Millionaires. And the clues these millionaires gave us. Number one, I have vision. Number two, I write them down. And number three, I review them consistently. Well, as I began to realize, this came from God's Word. You know, there's a principle in the Word of God that you become what you behold. Whatever you keep before your eyes, it will eventually show up in your life. Like when God told Abraham, he said, I want you to count the stars. And Abraham said, I can't, there's too many. He was endeavoring to get a vision in front of Abraham that this is where I want to take your life. So I began to realize God gave us the gift of the imagination. We just have to take time to just sit and think. Henry Ford said, thinking is the hardest work there is, which is probably the reason so few engage in it. Well, Tom, as I began to sit in those private hours alone and just imagine my ideal life, my life began to move in the direction of those dreams. So that's how important it is that you get alone and you just sit and dream. And of course, in the book, I share seven indicators. You have a dream from God, not just your own dream. It's a dream from God. I hope that helps. It's beautiful. And I'm just thinking about, you know, your relationship then with your spouse. And you were talking about how you've been together now for 32 years. So you changed, you know, what did this look like for him? Did he feel drawn to have alone time as well? Like what were the dynamics for anyone out there that is walking through a season similar to you? Yeah, I think what happened was he noticed these changes in me because when I started this routine of every morning, getting up a little bit earlier, investing in myself, spending time with God, using my imagination, reading books that were causing me to grow, you couldn't help but notice the change in me. In fact, one of the habits, the 10 habits, is to speak up. In other words, start speaking God's word over yourself. So I started declaring things like, I'm confident, I'm courageous, I'm qualified by God. God is restoring the love in my marriage. He's given me a new love story with my husband. I started speaking those every single day behind closed doors with nobody watching. Well, if you want to know where your life is headed, listen to the words that are coming out of your mouth. So my husband began to see positive changes happening in me as a result of these habits, and God began to restore our marriage. So I remember hearing Joyce Meyer say, because I was listening to her a lot during that season, and she said she asked a man who'd been in ministry for 40 years back then, and she was just getting started. She said, if you could tell me anything that would help me to stay focused and not give up under pressure, what would it be? And the man said to her, he said, whatever you did to get to where you're at, don't stop doing it. Well, I've never forgotten that because these habits are what changed my life, restored my marriage, opened up opportunities. Don't stop doing it. So I believe success is in our routine. Amen. So I'm just thinking we might have viewers out there, you know, they're walking through seasons and you had said about reading. So I'm thinking predominantly the Word of God is our favorite book. We know that it's the truth and it sets us free. But is there another read, a loan advantage, which is your book, but that really inspired you just, you know, as a recommendation for our viewing audience? Well, I mean, Jerry Savelle is my favorite preacher. So any book from him is going to recommend. Yes. But you know, I also began learning and reading books that would help me in what I felt God called me to do. So leadership books, teaching people how to go after their dreams, how to develop good habits. So I began learning in the area where I felt God was calling me. You know, something I want to say real quick was I remember hearing John Bavir make this statement. He said, when judgment day comes and it's going to come, when we stand before God and give an account for our lives, he said, but when that day comes and you're standing before God, he said, God's not going to hold you accountable for what you did on earth. And I was like, what? I'm so confused. He said, God's going to hold you accountable for what you were called to do on earth. So what you did and what you were called to do could be two different things. God may say, I called you to sing. Why didn't you sing? I called you to write a book. Why didn't you write the book? Well, when I heard that statement, it drove me to discover how to discover what I was called to do. So in addition to reading the Bible and reading books that are going to open up your mind to what God has, I also recommend you start with a blank book and you just get a journal and a pen and you practice hearing what God is speaking to you. And that's part of how you discover your calling. So I hope that helps. Absolutely. Well, well said. Thank you, Terry, so much for being with us today on Hope Today. It's such an honor. Thank you so much. I'm cheering you on. Amen. Well, stay with us when we return in 60 seconds. We're going to take a look at a scripture that is important for our alone time prayer with God. We'll be right back. Are you tired of just getting bills in your mailbox? Find inspiration instead by subscribing to the Cornerstone Television's Hope Today newsletter. Each month we'll deliver good news about what God is doing in our region and world through CTVN's ministry. We'll keep you in the know about our latest special programming and our full program guide will keep you connected to all your favorites. You'll also find a new Dashing Dish recipe every month. As you read our Hope Today newsletter, stay encouraged knowing your generosity and giving to CTVN is making a difference in building God's kingdom. We can't do it without you. Sign up today to receive your inspirational, free Hope Today newsletter every month in your mailbox. Go to our website at ctvn.org slash news or call us at 888-665-4483. Thank you for being a part of our Cornerstone Television family. Hope happens here. Wow, we sure have an interesting article in here. Have you gotten your newsletter? We want to make sure that you do, so if not, give us a call or go to ctvn.org and sign up. Tom, you take part in writing articles in here and it tells all of our specials we have coming up. So if you want to just stay in tune with what's happening here at Cornerstone, make sure you get your newsletter. It's awesome. It is important to get one, so you will be connected to us. We were just talking about solitude and prayer and relationship with God. Here's a scripture from Matthew 6.6. It says this, but as for you, when you pray, go into your inner room. Close your door and pray to your father who's in secret and your father who sees what is done in secret will reward you. It's interesting, Amanda. Of course, the scripture is talking about when it's showy prayers, prayers outward, prayers trying to draw attention to yourself on what a holy person you are. I know none of us have ever been guilty of that, but what I want to say is that alone time Jesus had, as we said at the beginning, Jesus had that alone time with God. If Jesus needed it, we needed it, and we needed it. In fact, even I, you know what I like to Amanda, what Terry was sharing, it isn't just alone time with God. It's kind of a alone time period, you know, active alone time, not passive alone time, but kind of active, thoughtful, thinking, journaling, caring about what, you know, having something going on that says, what are you saying to me, God? And how can I put this down on paper? And how can I have this as a goal? Those are all super important because when you do those things, you begin to move in that direction. And that all starts from alone time. I loved what she said about reading, that it was so hard that she, like to turn that other, that page of a book that she was reading was just so hard. But as she kept up with it, she began to desire to read and desire that input into her life. You've got to go there. Maybe you don't like to read, just pick a book, any book that you like and just start reading. You begin to get that inside of you and desire it more. That's right. My son and I, we just spent some time out or Robert University. And one of the big things that, you know, they were talking about is that how reading, not every reader is a leader, but every leader is a reader. And just what she said, so many people who you see in leadership, it's not because they didn't take the time to invest in themselves. We are, you know, people say, Oh, natural born leader, but I feel that the Lord really desires for us to sit with him, to develop his character, because we will lead out of whichever nature we're feeding our spirit man or flesh. And so we want to make sure that we are leaders who are actively feeding our spirit so that we can lead well. I've seen, you know, in all these leadership courses we've taken to cornerstone or other things happening in our city. It's, it's so important that we lead well starting at our homes, you know, and then in our workplace or school or our church. Yeah, it's so important because God desires to reveal himself through us. But if we are acting out of our flesh and we're just hurting people, offending people in our leadership, and I mean, just think about Terry and her husband, their relationship was restored because of that nurturing to the self, to being willing for the self to change. I've told a lot of people that are in a difficult, maybe relationship situation, family situation is all all you can do is work on you. Okay. And Terry even said that work on yourself. And how do you do that? Well, you say, Lord, what's in me? What's in me that needs to change? What do you want to do in me? Maybe the other person is completely wrong, but usually there's a part of us that is wrong too. And God works on it. Even if it's only 10% of the problem, God will begin to work on that. And when he works on that, because we're 100% responsible for our 10% and when he works on us, it seems to change the atmosphere. Maybe there'll be restoration, maybe not, but you know what? You will be better off for it because God will do something in you. God wants to work in us. He wants to do to work and to do his good pleasure. It says in the scriptures. So when he does that, that's the perfect thing for us. So he says, come to me, my child, be alone with me. You know, when my kids were little and they'd jump into your lap, they didn't have to do anything. They didn't have to perform. They were just alone with me. God wants to be alone with you like that. You don't have to do anything unless he tells you to. And when he tells you to, it's going to be the right thing. It's going to be the perfect thing. So that is the relationship that we're sharing with you, proclaiming to you today. It's what Terry is talking about. And we believe that God wants that intimate personal relationship with you today. Do you know him today? If not, cry out to him. And when you find him, you're going to find hope today. On Tomorrow's Hope Today, tackling tough topics that Christians are afraid to talk about. Pastor and author Mike Novotny takes a look at certain scriptures that are relevant for providing answers to controversial modern-day topics. Don't miss Tomorrow's Hope Today. Cornerstone Television wishes to thank all our faithful viewers, whose consistent prayers and financial support have made this program possible.