It's time to believe...

If you could close your eyes, wake up six days later, and find that God was giving you a happiness like you’d never known, would you let him? That’s exactly what happened to me three years ago. In spring 2020, death came for me, asking me to pay the check. At age 39, I went into cardiac arrest, flatlined, and died. When I closed my eyes that day, my life as I’d known it was essentially over.

Little did I know, but the symptoms I’d been experiencing for a few days turned into complete heart failure. My wife, Mikhail, with great concern raced me to the hospital. I was admitted through the emergency room, but it was too late. The day arrived that God was preparing for Mikhail and me as He brought me to my final hours as the man I once was.

That’s when I came face-to-face with a literal heart-change.

Ezekiel 36:26 says, “And I will give you a new heart, and a new spirit I will put in you. And I will remove the heart of stone from your flesh and give you a heart of flesh.”

On April 29 that year, the day I died, that verse never became more real. My heart completely stopped for eight minutes ... a lifetime. Then in a string of profound miracles, the doctors recovered a faint heartbeat. A short while later, I died again for six minutes. Although everything for me went black, Mikhail remained strong in her faith, strong in her love for me and for God.

Five years earlier she had vowed in sickness and in health” but was now staring down the barrel of “until death do us part.” Yet, through it all, she accepted whatever God had in store. Even a future without me.

Mikhail trusted God as she made the decision alongside my doctors. They decided to give me a new heart — a transplant that ultimately saved my life. God guided my doctors and the hospital staff to move mountains as they raced against the loss of brain function and kidney failure. While I was on life support, He propelled them to break every record previously held to save my life All this happened so I could be here to share the mysterious power and love of God.

On May 4, 2020, He woke me up and said, “I give you this day and nothing more.” For the past three years now, I have been on a journey where I have truly learned what it means to say time is precious. At the time of that literal heart-change, I already had faith in Jesus as my Savior, but along with getting a new heart beating in my chest, another miracle happened, too.

I now realize that relationships — how we treat our kids, spouse, friends, co-workers — are the most important thing on the planet. It gave me new eyes to see and new ears to hear God. It’s all about where you spend your time and really what you love.

I went on to write a book called Heart to Submit that goes far more in-depth on God’s miracles, but what I would love to share is the gift of God’s love. The kind of love Mikhail consistently gave me throughout my recovery, which allowed me to spiritually heal. That’s the kind of love we’re called to give each other.

Like many marriages, when Mikhail and I embarked on that joyous occasion it was more about doing than sacrificing. Do they make me happy? Check. Do they make me laugh? Check. Do they provide? Check. The list goes on, but what happens when we can no longer do those things? When the value you once had has been replaced by the hard times of life?

Through my heart transplant and recovery, God revealed for us that forever kind of love. We can do nothing for Him, and we don’t need to work to earn His love. When I could no longer check all the boxes, I was essentially stripped bare: I could no longer be the hero in my own story. Self-sufficiency had killed me ... so now I had to rediscover who I was.

Some of us have defined ourselves by our careers, the brand names in our closets, our