Tackle Box Studios

Success = Love and Safety, Right? – Randy RalstonIs the safety we find in our performance and success truly safe?Randy learned at an early age that Grace existed… but in a performance based environment. He excelled in everything he did, and that led to a sense of safety. The stress of continued performance led him to finally break, learning in the process that God would continue to use him to lead others to healing even though he was broken and resisted letting God heal some of his deepest wounds.This podcast could also be called, Finding Fulfillment apart from God.My guest is longtime friend and co-sojourner Randy Ralston.At age 10 Randy’s impression of God was that he was Angry, Capricious, Pernicious and demanded obedience, led with fear and shame. Randy's understanding of God’s personality was influenced by his relationship with his parents. These relationships led to a perspective of God that was centered around fear. The fear that “If you don’t perform, or worse yet, you disobey, are disrespectful or dishonor your parents,” there would be punishment and ultimately rejection.Randy opens up and shares how one, seemingly insignificant moment, defined the relationship with his mom and impacted his personality and his perception of God. This moment of perceived rejection, led Randy to a deep pursuit of acceptance and significance.Randy shares how his identity became what he did and what happened to him. This reinforced his perception that performing was the only way to find significance, and importance in the lives of those around him.Over the years, it appears that Randy transformed this performance personality into a mission to make things better for everyone around him. This led to the idea that, not only could Randy perform enough to find a stable, safe place in the relationships around him, but he could provide that for others as well. He tried to be the hero in the lives of his family. Often saving them when they hadn’t asked to be saved.Eventually, all these efforts to continually perform and save himself and others from the pain of punishment and the ultimate punishment, rejection, became too much of a burden to shoulder. Randy had found his breaking point. He responded by pushing even deeper into helping and serving others while covering the stress fractures that were showing up with alcohol. The harder he pursued success and significance through performance the more alcohol he needed. It started with drinking at the end of each day and led to drinking all day.Now, 30 years later Randy says he can’t come close to understanding who God is, but that his earlier perspective has proven to not be true. While he can’t explain who God is, Randy knows that God is Really Really Good.Randy and I discuss how God is not the Angry God that we perceived him to be. How the older he gets, the more Grace filled Randy learns that God really is.Randy sees that God used him even as broken as he was, to touch and influence the lives of those around him. Even though Randy had not let God into the areas in his own life that he was touching in the lives of others.“God uses the most broken parts of me, the most effectively in healing of others.”#Omnipotence #Alcoholism #Brokenness #Success #Healing #RealGrace #GodIsGood #Family