 You have come though, right? Son. December to you and with Angela, conversation just ahead, tell us about it. I am telling you I'm pumped up for this interview today. We all want to lead this earth knowing we lived a meaningful life, poured out all we had to give and left the world better for it. But how do we actually do it? And where is the healthy boundary of being an impactful business leader and our faith? Today prominent pastor in the San Francisco Bay Area, Terry Brisbane and renowned Silicon Valley investor, Rusty Ruth, sit down to give us the framework for building a life of meaning and eternal impact. I think this question of making an impact in our world, what is my purpose? What am I here for? It's something that continually and forever will be at the head of our discovery in life. And I think it's so important to have this conversation because it's all about building the kingdom. God has given us gifts. He's given us talents. He's given us abilities. And I think it's so important for us to seek Him first and then use those things so that we can be a light in the midst of the world. I love these conversations because this is what the kingdom is all about. This is why God has called us to be the ecclesia. So whether you're called in the family or government or media or entertainment or wherever it may be that God has a place for all of us and it is so important for us to do this and this time and this hour and season because Anna, you know, there's so many people right now that are desperate for answers, searching for solutions, but we are the ones that carry the glory of God and we have the right answers to share with them. We absolutely do carry the glory of God. And I am just so excited that we will be entering into the Advent season this weekend and in the midst of all the hustle and bustle, the everydayness of life. This is the time of year where we slow down even in the midst of all the busyness to remember that we are the children of God that a great savior has been sent for us. And I just love how the angels filled the sky to say, I bring you good news of great joy. Let that never get old on us, that it is good news of great joy that will be for all the people. That's you and that's me and Angela. We're just so privileged to be able to bring the good news, no matter whether we're in business, ministry, whatever area God has called us to, we get to bring the good news. We do. I mean, he's the one who gave us the ultimate meaning of life and he is the source of it all. But sometimes I think it's difficult for us to figure out what's our role in this journey with Jesus and how it looks in the earth. What does that look like? Well, today if you wanna know how to build a life of meaning, substance and contribution that will affect generations and echo into eternity, today's guests are truly the perfect pair of experts to answer your age long pursuit. And they give us the keys in their latest book, The Faith Code, a future proof framework for a life of meaning and impact. Terry Brisbane, a prominent pastor in the San Francisco Bay area and Rusty Roof, our renowned Silicon Valley investor, leader and philanthropist, join us now. Welcome, Terry and Rusty to Hope Today. Good morning, good morning. Hi guys. Good morning, good afternoon, good evening. Those who are watching, I know they are going to gain so much from this insight. So before we dive into the book and all the wisdom you all have for us, would you just start us off by sharing how does an investor and a pastor come to write a book together? I'll jump into that. First of all, it starts with relationship. The two of us, along with a friend, have been meeting for decades now, every Wednesday morning. And through many, many years of talking and going back and forth and us sharing about what's going on in the marketplace and Terry talking about what's going on in the ministry and he's my pastor as well. We came to this idea from a talk that I've given 20 years ago that Terry said, wow, wouldn't this be a great message series? And we turned it into a message series. And then after we got done with the message series, Terry had the idea again, you know, we should turn this into a book. And eight years ago, we started on the journey of writing this book and bringing the faith code to the marketplace. And here we are. But it starts with relationship. A pastor and a business person or a pastor and anybody inside of a company, inside of an organization or a church, it starts with actually having a relationship together. I love that you share. It's really that marriage of friendship, that joining of two different mindsets even and kind of iron sharpening iron. As you guys have journeyed together and in relationship, in friendship, and in writing this book, what have you found as being the core to discovering your own purpose and making a meaningful impact? Go ahead, Terry, if you wanna share. Well, there's always a journey in stepping out in faith and believing that the Lord can take something that he's put into your heart and bring life out of it. I mean, isn't that so much also a big part of what we're celebrating in this season, this idea of new things that God can do when we just trust Him. Even with things that sometimes we weren't even conceiving, God has a way of birthing new life as we walk in faith and open up our hearts to the possibility that he can do some extraordinary things with simple little desires that he places into our heart. We just started with a yearning to wanna bless and share some of the things we had learned along the way. And so we worked hard together and just said, Lord, what is it that you want us to be able to give as we collaborate with something that's kind of unique? You know, the faith code is something that's a little bit different because we're trying to combine both the marketplace concepts that we've learned here in San Francisco and Silicon Valley, but also have a very biblical, centered Jesus approach, focus on healing, strength, life, how to get over the hurts and wounds of life. So this is a very interesting combination and it's been a journey that we've loved making together so far. It's been great. I do think it is an interesting combination and for those who are watching today, maybe they feel, man, I really have this calling into ministry, but I feel very entrepreneurial to do things in the business world. Rusty, would you say it's possible for the likeliness of being business successful and ministry successful can exist within one single individual? Well, absolutely. I mean, God gives everybody different gifts and different experiences. I look at it and say, you know, my talents that the Lord gave me is one side of it, but then if I'm walking in His will, He's also given me experiences. And when you put those two things together, you know, you have an opportunity wherever you are to live out the example of Christ and to bring the message of what God's done for you into whatever you do. And so I think, you know, a lot of people feel like, well, if I, you know, if I'm not in the pulpit, I'm not really ministering. That's not, well, if you're in the pulpit, you're doing amazing ministry, but in the marketplace, we can do amazing ministry too by being God's arms, eyes, ears, feet, you know, out there in the jobs that we do. And so I look at it and I say, you know, very fortunate here in Silicon Valley that as a technology guy that I've had a front row, front row seat to what's going on in the marketplace around technology. And I feel a responsibility to bring that back into the church to help Terry and other churches understand what's going on and how we can take technology and turn it into a part of the ministry. So absolutely, you know, we all should feel that. Silicon Valley is infamous. Everybody knows that, right? And so my question for you, Rusty, is how did you discover this is where you were called to and where you would fulfill your highest purpose? Well, I've headed a long career with PepsiCo and out of the blue, I got a call from a headhunter that said, you know, you've been very consistent over all these years, what you want to do in your career. And I think I have a job for you. And I had never heard of this company called Electronic Arts, EA, it's a video game company. And this was in 1998, just to set the tone of, and the time that was the same month I came to Silicon Valley that Google was funded, right? So this was pretty early days of digital technology. And my wife and I both, you know, were working for PepsiCo many, many years. And, you know, at the time I wouldn't tell you that I felt like, well, this is God telling me that I should go left and go to the West Coast. But God laid in front of me some interesting little, what I would call Easter eggs. And we talk about this in the book, the faith code. If you're watching, God puts these little things out here for you to be able to look at and discover. And the boss that I went to work for, the CEO and chairman of Electronic Arts, all he wanted to talk about were values and principles. Values and principles, I want you to come here and help me establish values and principles. And I'm sitting there going, wow, that's a different language. You know, that he just wants to talk values, principles, integrity, you know, what can we do? And I will tell you that I looked at that now in hindsight and I said, that was an Easter egg God was giving me. He was giving me words to latch on to to say, hey, Rusty, that's what you're supposed to go pursue. That's what you're supposed to be an example of. And you know, lo and behold, that was 25 years ago and here I am. I love the Easter egg analogy you bring to light in the book. I found that to be such a treasure and so true in my own personal life. Terry, what would you say is the greatest principle we can obey as human beings? To give our lives substance and meaning? Thanks, Angela. Yeah, I think that one of the things I know it's gonna sound simple, but it is the absolute truth Jesus gave us the truth. He reminded us that the greatest thing that we can ever do in our life is to love the Lord our God, with all our heart, with all our soul, with all our mind and with all our strength. And then of course to love our neighbor as ourself but we begin with our critical relationship with God. There's so much discussion around identity, where we find our meaning, how we define ourselves. One of the things we really try to explore in the faith code is how to establish a firm sense of identity, a place to stand. There was a quote from the ancient mathematician, Archimedes, that just matches perfectly with what Jesus taught us in Matthew seven. He talked about having a lever long enough and a place to stand and I can move the earth. And of course Jesus taught us we have the faith the size of a mustard seed. We can say this mountain be moved and it will be moved. Now that principle that we're talking about here is that place to stand is the key. Once we can get our place to stand established, then we can begin to apply tools that will allow us to be able to do things far beyond what it is even possible to do. And so this idea of a place to stand for us is having that relationship with Christ, making sure that we are cultivating a loving relationship with God and allowing ourselves to be healed and touched, restored into a place of wholeness, life and meaning in Christ Jesus. This is a journey. This is a process and it's an exciting one. And it doesn't mean we have to be perfect people at all. I underlined, I starred that quote in my book. I loved the lever quote, it was so beautifully written. And you speak about barring from Rusty's world, the source code being love. You share five different mindsets. Would you mind sharing with us, Terry, one mindset of love that is critical to us living a life of meaning? Yeah, when we talk about the mindset of love, I mean, for me, I know this is gonna sound maybe a little bit more focused on ourselves, but I truly believe that until we find a place where we are loving ourselves properly as a child of God, as a son of God, as a daughter of God, until that identity is firmly established. And that means we're gonna need to heal sometimes of things that we're carrying in our past. And it means that sometimes we're going to have to be open to letting the Lord do some of the rewiring inside of our hearts and apply that grace and that life. And I know these are just easy concepts, but if we have a broken sense of self, it's almost impossible to love others well. So these things are very intertwined and it's not selfish to want to become more whole because the good that flows out of that has generational impact. But I gotta start there. I gotta start there in my own relationship with God. I learned how to love myself in a healthy way in either too much nor too little. Not self-consume, but also not self-demeaning, right? And having that love begins to then flow out of our lives. We talk a lot about that in the faith code. And truly, like you said, it seems so simple, but it is foundational and without it, nothing can exist on it. So Rusty, let me ask you, how would you say our belief system or our foundation is similar to an application that we find on maybe our iPhone? Yeah, well, we live on these things, right? You know, every day we wake up, maybe one of the first things we do is we grab, we grab our phone. And what we expect out of that is that it boots up the same way every day. That platform that's underneath the technology here is a very dependable, consistent, always there ready to be built upon piece of technology. And that's a platform, that's a framework. And that framework is the same framework that when we think about God's source code, which is His word and His scripture, if we think about all of the things that we also add into our framework around our worship time and our prayer time and our fellowship time and our serving time and our time in the word, and we put all those things together, we're trying to build a true platform, a true framework that's built on Jesus. So it starts there. Then we have all these applications. So just like on our phone, you know, I'm guessing all three of you have hundreds of applications on your phone. And I would bet if you put your phones up to each other, the front page applications would be totally different. Right, because some people go to the news first, some people use the weather, some people go to sports, some people have their travel, some people have their stock. There's so many different applications. Social media might be right out there in front. We also have applications in life. Those are our jobs. Those are some of our friends. That's where we, with the car that we drive, the clothes that we wear, the music that we listen to, the television shows that we watch, the sports scenes that we follow. They're all applications. The question is, and we are asking in the faith code, is which one are you building your life on? Are you building your life on a platform, on a framework? Or are you building your life on some application? Like think about our jobs. Our jobs and our work is an amazing application. But if we build our life on that and then we lose that job, or something changes, what crashes? Just like an app crashes, so does our life. That's what we're trying to help you avoid in the faith code. Let's build our life on a firm foundation platform which are the teaching and the scriptures of Jesus. I love that instruction on the platform that all these apps are sitting on and how you explain that it actually gives the information of what to do and how to do it and how to respond to different inputs. And Terry, if you could just take for us a moment the one who's watching today and maybe they've got a lot of different things that are happening and they're just, I don't know what I'm to do. I don't know what direction to go to actually pursue meaning in my life. What is one piece of advice you could leave them with today that they could apply today? Well, my most basic and honest and authentic advice that I could ever give to anyone is to move towards God, like move towards the Lord and don't be awkward and reluctant to bring him your honest self, your honest broken self because he loves us so much and he cares about us and he knows each of us individually. And I think if we'll come to him towards him don't wait to get all perfect before you do that. Like, isn't that also the Christmas invitation? Don't be afraid of God. He's for us. He loves us and he cares deeply. So make your way towards him. Don't push him away. Draw near to God, he'll draw near to you. Thank you so much, Terry. That is beautiful advice. One step closer to the king of glory. Thank you, Terry, for coming on. Thank you, Rusty. We so appreciate you. You too, thank you. Merry Christmas. Merry Christmas and we'll be right back for a personal time of ministry for you. Hope happens here at Cornerstone Television. All this month we're offering a joy filled DVD, Christmas with the Chosen, the Messengers for your best gift to the ministry. Gather around the manger with loved ones and experience the first Christmas through the eyes of Mary and Joseph. Follow the young couple as they take the long road to Bethlehem and prepare for Jesus' birth. Plus enjoy an extraordinary lineup of musicians performing both new and classic Christmas songs from the set of The Chosen, such as Phil Wickham, Brandon Lake, Maverick City Music, Kane and many others. Thank you for your generosity that makes the ministry of Cornerstone Television possible. Request your Christmas with The Chosen DVD when you give this month. Call 888-665-4483 or give online at ctvn.org slash donate. From all of us here, we wish you a very Merry Christmas. Well, before we get into our ministry time, we wanna give a quick shout out to our free monthly newsletter. It is the Hope Today newsletter. And if you don't get it, please just give us a call here at the station. You see the number on the screen, 888-665-4483. We would love to get this in your mailbox every month in December. I particularly love just to highlight a couple things. I know many of you love to have Cornerstone Television on over the Christmas season. And so it has our full schedule of Christmas programs, all the great block party programs and Christmas day. And I know many of you are baking in the kitchen and making all those goodies for your friends and family. And so our dashing dish recipe this month is a Christmas snack mix that looks like so addictive once you make it. So try not to eat it all before you give it all away. And then we've got Arlene Williams coming up in December with all of her Christmas shows. And we know how you love Arlene Williams. So lots of good stuff. Give us a call, get our newsletter. You know, I just love, we are just so thankful for your partnership because you make it possible for us to bring hope to you every day. And I love the conversation that Angela had with Rusty and Terry and just about the whole process of just knowing our gifts and our talents. And I just think about you and how when you're giving to Cornerstone that you're able to help us through the media mountain, just convey a message of hope, convey a message of love, convey a message of deliverance so people's lives will be changed, so people will be set free and people will know the truth. And something that during that conversation that God really put in my spirit is I've just been really studying the parable about the mustard seed and the mulberry tree. And it's just like, if you have the faith of a mustard seed, a mustard seed's very small, then you plant it by the mulberry tree, it can be uprooted, right? And you can cast it into the sea. And so I think even I've been studying that passage what the Holy Spirit's been really highlighting to me. And I was studying about, well, why is a mustard seed and a mulberry tree? Like, what do they have to do together? But if you look at the mulberry tree, it's a very invasive species. And so when it was planted, it just does a lot of bad things. But when you put the mustard seed in that place, mustard seeds, if you look at their life, I've studied the mustard seed too, that it has significance and impact. And so even as I was doing a deeper digging, what the God was just showing me is that we have a mustard seed of faith. It might be this small, but there's so much greatness. There's so much impact. There's so much that can be birthed forth through it. And it's in those situations. It's when we're planted, right now we're in the world, we're not of the world, that we can do so much damage to the kingdom of darkness, but we can truly be a light. And, you know, speaking of being a light, I just wanna share, many of you know that today is my last day on Hope Today because I'm starting a new venture called The Glory Hour with Sydney Goldman. It's an inspirational podcast where we're featuring culturally relevant issues. So it's gonna debut next Wednesday, December 6th at 3 p.m. So go to our YouTube channel, super excited because we had conversation with the CEO of Fellowship of Israel-related ministry. It's called Firm with Michael Mistretta. He's in Jerusalem, had a conversation with him yesterday. And can I tell you just the stories of impact, just the things that he was sharing of what God is doing behind the scenes in the midst of the crisis? You know, we see in the news right now that there was like the seven day temporary truth. It has ended and there's fighting that's starting up again. But just you have to stay tuned. Make sure you go to our YouTube page, go to Cornerstone Intelligence Network, search for it. And then you'll see a playlist. It'll have the start for The Glory Hour. You don't wanna miss this conversation with Michael because he's just like telling us just ways that God is moving, how the gospel is being spread, how his network and his team that is working with Christians in Jerusalem. And they're spreading the gospel when I tell you ladies that it's just like a rise and shine for our light has come because the glory of the Lord is over us and he's using us in this season like never before. It just gets my heart so excited. So I just wanna say, I love you all so much. It has been an honor to be on Hope Today for these years to come into your living room, to share hope, laughter, can we sprinkle some joy, Larry? Yeah! Yeah! And I just wanna say thank you all so much and just really looking forward to seeing you on The Glory Hour. It's gonna be every week that we'll be doing it and I'm really excited just to bring news and what's relevant, it's happening and we're pioneering this and I'm grateful for the whole team. It's just an honor and joy. So I'm not leaving quarters. So it's just starting a new thing, but I just wanna say I love being with you ladies and it is a joy, but we'll be having segments of The Glory Hour that will be appearing here so you can check it out. So go to YouTube, see you on there, super excited and so I just wanna say, I love you all so much. It's been a joy. These are happy tears. Yeah, they're happy tears, they're happy tears. Well, we love you so much, Sydney and we know just like that little mustard seed, it might be small to begin with these little steps that we take but we know God is gonna multiply it and make it beautiful, more glorious. It's truly gonna be a glory hour for you, sis. So let's pray over you and let's send her out. Agree with us right now as we pray. Father, we thank you so much for Sydney and for her life, God. We thank you for her faithfulness and her obedience to your voice. We ask that as she follows your heart and your word and your guidance, God, into this new season that you would bless her path. We pray that you would bless her and be before her, behind her and beside her. We ask that this new venture would bring you even greater glory than every season before in her life. In your matchless name, we pray. Amen. Amen. Amen. I wasn't expected to cry. I was tearing up, but I got your tissue. I got my tissue, like I like tears, but yeah, honestly, it's just been truly a joy. God, I didn't know Jesus was gonna be breaking down like this, but just from the inception that started from, it's been like, how many years has it been? Like five years, you know, started with the coronavirus and we just want, you know, we shifted a new gear and it birthed into hope today. So it's just been an honor to like launch it with the team. And I'm so excited. There's such a great team of hosts and I am excited to see what God is gonna move and do. I know there's new things that are coming to hope today. It is a new season on Cornerstone Television. I'm super excited. I'm like, let's go, let's get her going, let's go for the kingdom. And I just really believe that, you know, it's gonna be a great season of what God is doing here. So whether you're in Pittsburgh, Florida, wherever you are, you better stay locked in to the whole network because we are truly advancing, we are moving and we are like going on this media mountain and we are taking it for Jesus, we're taking it back and we are called to be a mouthpiece in this hour, in this season with everything that's shaking, with everything that's going on. I just truly believe in this season like God is up to something big and God is up to something great. So it is December 1st, it is a new season, but honey, let me tell you, 2024 is going to be a game changer. Things are gonna shift, things are gonna change. We're gonna see a breakout breakthrough. I believe there's gonna be a powerful move of God coming to your household and to your family and to wherever you are called to be. So, Anna, final thought. I'm sure you could feel at home the excitement is palpable for all that the Lord is doing through Sydney and truly through you at home. One of the biggest messages that I took out of today is that God wants to do something magnificent through you. He came to do a mighty work and to cause you to do a mighty work in this earth for his kingdom. So this Christmas season, draw near to him, come near to the manger just as you are because he loves you and he has good things in store.