One80 Podcast, Episode 54 Transcript
Dale Hummel, Taking the Gospel Beyond the Mountains
This transcript may have errors that veer from the audio found at https://one80podcast.com/listen/
Dale Hummel was running. Literally, from a man with a machete as a boy in Papua New Guinea. But even as an adult, he found himself constantly running from his past of childhood trauma. But Dale finally ran into the arms of Jesus. And there he found strength and courage to overcome, and encouragement to take the gospel beyond the mountains. Welcome to dale’s 180.
Ryan Henry: Well friends, we are so excited to have Dale Hummel here with us today. Dale is the senior pastor of Wooddale Church in Eden Prairie, Minnesota, and the author of Reset: Live Every Day Like It’s a New Day.
Dale, thank you so much for being with us on this show today.
Dale Hummel: Thanks, Ryan. Glad to be with you.
Ryan Henry: Yeah, man, it was gonna be great to hear your 180, but we’d like to start off with a random question for you. Are you ready for it?
Dale Hummel: Yeah, I am.
Ryan Henry: Let’s do this. if you could add a sport, to the Olympics, what do you think you would add?
Wow. If I could add a sport to the Olympics, I would add the sport of, ice cream championship.
Ryan Henry: I’m with you, man.
Dale Hummel: Yeah. See who could put the most away in an hour.
Ryan Henry: Do you think you could compete in that?
Dale Hummel: Absolutely. I’d win it.
Ryan Henry: What’s your favorite ice cream? I’m curious.
Dale Hummel: You know, I love peanut butter chocolate.
I just read an article, uh, came out in the Atlantic Monthly that says that ice cream has been proven to be actually healthy for you. Dairy products can have a healthy benefit.
Ryan Henry: There’s really an article about this?
Dale Hummel: Yes, yes, actually. It’s very scientific, but, it made me so happy I celebrated by eating a pint of ice cream.
Ryan Henry: Well, it sounds like we’re gonna have to put that in our show notes. That’s good news. I know it’s not the, the good news that you’re gonna share with us today, but it is great, great news. What sport does your wife do?
Dale Hummel: Uh, well, Marcia currently is a skydiver. She has, I think, something like 1,250 jumps under her belt.
Ryan Henry: Oh my gosh.
Dale Hummel: Yeah. So I mean, she jumps as often as she can. You know, whenever I mention that to people, their first question is, have you ever jumped with her? And the answer to that question is no. And I never will.
Ryan Henry: Oh my!
Dale Hummel: Way too afraid of heights.
Ryan Henry: Yeah. Well, I have done zero and I will also continue to do zero, so I’m with you on that one. But, uh, let’s get into your story, Dale. So,talk to us about where you grew up.
Dale Hummel: So I was, born actually in the West Indies. My mom and dad were missionaries, so I was born in a little tiny island called Dominica. The little city was called Rosa. And then, after they’d been on the field for about a term, they came back to the states. And God opened the door for them to go to Papua New Guinea, and my brother was actually born there.
So that’s kind of where I started my early childhood.
Ryan Henry: Could you talk to us, as far as like growing up in, in Papua New Guinea? Like, any crazy stories, just kind of pick.
Yeah, I’ve got one great crazy story. So it was, very primitive and, airplanes would drop parcels out with parachutes for my parents to get medicine, food, things like that.
When the planes weren’t using the airstrip, we would go out and play soccer. On the field we had a perimeter around it of what was called Kunai grass. And Kunai grass is really tall, like five, six feet tall and very sharp. And so while we were out there playing soccer, all of a sudden the boys I was playing with ran off and I’m standing there by myself and I’m wondering what’s going on.
And they’re on the other side and they’re kind of pointing toward the Kunai grass. And, in there is this native who’s stalking me.
He’s got a machete in his hand and this guy is mentally unstable and so he’s coming for me. I take off running. And it was about a quarter mile from our mission station, and I remember running down the path and I remember running and screaming and the thought is going through my mind to look back and see, how close he is to me.
But it’s like, I won’t do it. I have no idea where he is. I’m just running as fast as I can. and I made it to the station and they came running out to see what in the world was going on. And they formed a search party and located this guy and then were able to subdue him.
And then he was taken out to the coast to Port Morris Speed where he was dealt with in terms of his mental problems. That’s one episode I’ll never forget.
How old were you when that happened?
Dale Hummel: I was only like Six or seven years old.
Ryan Henry: That would’ve been terrifying.
Dale Hummel: Yeah.
Ryan Henry: Oh my goodness! What was your, family’s religious beliefs?
Dale Hummel: Well, my dad is from Holland. My mom is from the US and both of them came to faith in Christ at a fairly young age.
Ryan Henry: Okay. All right. And for you, what was that like growing up as a missionary kid; what role did faith play in your childhood?
Dale Hummel: That’s really part of my whole story. it was a battle for me to get to the place where I understood that God really loved me and I had a relationship with him.
And, all of that really for me started on the mission field. one day on the mission station, where my parents were, one of the folks that had been trained or was being trained, sexually abused me. And, uh, I was pretty young at the time, probably about five or six years of age.
I didn’t know what to do with it. I didn’t know if I should talk about it. I didn’t know How to respond to it. and along with that, in the area that we were, there was a lot of, spiritual warfare, a lot of darkness.
And so, coupled with the abuse, were stories and things that were pretty dark, And that really, thin sliced my soul, I think as a kid.
So, when I was a kid, on the one hand, I’m, I’m growing up in an environment where, I’m experiencing probably everything negative that you can experience about being in the church, right?
But on the other hand, there was something in my heart that did have a sensitivity to God One of my earliest memories of that was, When we were back on the mission field in Papua New Guinea, listening to my dad teaching, these new converts who he was discipling to become pastors, and I have this vivid memory.
We lived in a home that was made out of bamboo thatch. And my dad he was talking to these pastors and they asked him about who was going to take the gospel beyond the mountains.
And I can still see the mountains in my mind. I remember listening to this and I remember saying, “I will go.” As a kid I meant that, and that never left me. And what happened was, I had this strong desire in my heart to want to communicate God’s word.
And so as a kid, I’d get off of my own and I just would begin to, for lack of better terms, I just would begin to preach to nobody, but I would preach to the fields. And we came back from the field. My dad, farmed with his dad in Canada where they had settled after they came over from NE the Netherlands.
And I would go out and I would stand and there’d be these 125 acres of tomatoes. And I would just imagine they were a crowd and I would just preach my heart out. It was bizarre. It was kind of weird. Okay. but it was just like that was in me and I was compelled to do that.
And I think that was God. I think that was his gift. But the challenge or the twist in the story is that while that’s happening, in one area of my life, all this other darkness is happening in the other area of my life. And I’m in this conflicted relationship with God, where I love God and I want to do right, but then I’ve got this darkness going on inside of me.
Ryan Henry: What did the locals think of you as a, you know, as an MK?
Dale Hummel: You, you mean on the field?
Yeah. you know, my, my dad and mom were very gifted in missions. um, I. They were so well suited to be missionaries.
Um, they, they loved the people that was very obvious to them. My dad and mom did a lot of medical work amongst the people dental as well as other medical work.
And so because they showed the love of God in, um, caring for the people medically, et cetera, the people were very receptive of them. And it was through that then that they would communicate the gospel and my dad would go out on what we call Trek. He would go out for weeks at a time into unreached, uh, regions, people groups, and he would bring medicine with him.
He would trade things with the natives. My dad was in a lot of frightening situations where the spears were, were pointed to his throat and he didn’t know if he was gonna make it or not. Um, but just trusted God and, and, uh, God did a great work there. But no, I was, I was, I was accepted.
Um, I, and you know, growing up there, I didn’t know anything else. Right. Um,
Ryan Henry: Hmm.
Dale Hummel: when we left the field and came back to the states, we really didn’t have much at all.
And, as a result of that, had to live with some relatives. And, within days of arriving back in the field, abuse started with a relative
Ryan Henry: Oh my goodness.
Dale Hummel: it became rather chronic. And so a lot of darkness was kind of sewn into my life, at that point in time. A lot of fear, a lot of, anxiety that manifested itself in lots of different ways.
that abuse lasted, into probably my junior high years. it became less frequent. as that person moved away, I. but by the time I’m in junior high, I developed lots of problems.
Dale Hummel: and my parents’ marriage was not doing very well. Dad was gone a lot. And so, I knew about God, obviously, I, heard preaching my whole life.
I understood all those things, but I was very confused And then I grew up in a brand of theology, which teaches that you can lose your salvation. So imagine this kid growing up, right? you’ve got all this, sexual abuse you’re now pre-adolescent and your hormones are flowing and there’s all kinds of feelings and confusion around that. Your parents’ marriage isn’t doing very well, and you’re in a church environment where, frequently, you’re being told that if you sin you lose your salvation. You need to be saved again.
So by the time I got into high school, Ryan, I was a mess. I’ve had all this sensuality awakened in me. And, by the time I got to high school, I was not in a good place spiritually.
Ryan Henry: Hmm.
Dale Hummel: I wasn’t sure if I was a Christian or not. I was struggling with a whole issue of sexuality, and I had developed lots of, nervous ticks, kind of tourette. type of ticks. it was multiple ticks. head jerking, grunting, squinting in my eyes.
And, I’ll never forget one day, My dad could see me doing it in the rear view mirror. And, he just, kind of looked back and just was so angry at me. he called me a name and, I just sat there, devastated. and just thinking to myself, what is wrong with me? why can’t I stop these things that are happening in me right now?
These movements, these jerks, these noises. And that was being caused by all the anxiety I was having. About the abuse, about, Does God love me about, being in a public school system where there’s, bullies and being beat up and, and all the stuff that was going on just made it worse.
And, to this very day, I still struggle with it. I can control it, in public, but when I am in a place where I can actually relax and it’s funny, if I sit down to watch television or. I’m in a place where I’m not quote, performing I’m not out in front of everybody.
that’s when I really have try to control it. saw a neurologist, I don’t have Tourettes necessarily, but it’s probably part of my O C D. And what I’ve had to learn to do is not fight them because you fight them to get worse.
you just have to distract your mind to something else. And I talk about that in the book. and then, later on, I was diagnosed with O C D and, my O C D became, checking.
And, ruminating thoughts. And so by the time I got to college, I was pretty angry. I was filled with a lot of self-doubt. and yet, in the midst of all of this, and this is the goodness of God, I never lost my faith in God. I was sure that God lost his love for me.
I, I really didn’t thinkGod had any, Value for me because how God was presented to me and how I thought about God. I just was sure that God was angry at me. I would never be able to please him. you hear some people who’ve been through these kinds of situations, they hate God, they hate the church, et cetera.
I never felt any hatred towards God. My hatred is all directed toward myself. I just believe there’s something really, really wrong with me. That all these things had happened and were happening in my life.
Ryan Henry: My goodness. I’m so sorry to hear that. It’s that. It’s so hard to, to hear, you know, and to know you’ve walked through that.
Dale Hummel: Yeah. I mean, it really is it, and that’s part of my story, right? Is God’s grace. God never gave up on me,
Ryan Henry: wow. That’s so good. would you say that as a kid that you had, your own faith
Dale Hummel: I think I had my parents’ faith. All right. And you know, as a pastor, um, these last 40 years, I. You know, one of the concerns that we have is the number of, of students who grow up in the church, leave home, go out to college, and then really never return back to the church and, and in essence walk away from their faith.
And I think one of the reasons why is because, because the faith did not become their own. They were really living their parents’ faith, or they were living the youth group’s faith or the church’s faith, right? But it never became part of who they were. So in that sense, I would say, you know, as a kid growing up, I had faith, but it was really more the faith of others and what I saw in them, or what I thought I was supposed to be and do, and my own personal faith experience where it really became mine.
I think happens somewhere in my, senior year of high school to my, first year of college, that’s where I kinda had my crisis of faith and really embraced it as my own.
Ryan Henry: Okay.
Dale Hummel: after the abuse occurred, how did you findthat affected your view of God?
I’ve never blamed God for it. I’ve never hated God for it. it did however, gimme a view of God as being distant and because I grew up in a theology that taught that, you could go to hell, even as a Christian if you sinned.
I just felt very far removed from God. I just felt like I could never please God. I couldn’t be good enough for God and because of my O C D I would then obsess about
my sins, which, when you obsess about those things only makes them worse.
Ryan Henry: Yes, you’re right. You’re right.
Dale Hummel: there was part of me that kept wanting to please God and earn his favor, but it was up one day down the next.
Ryan Henry: that seems like a really lethal combination to have O C D, but then also, yeah, and just to be so worried about sinning,
Dale Hummel: Uh, by the time I got into high school with a dad who was mostly absent by then because, um, he and mom didn’t get along very well, and he was off working in Canada. We lived in Michigan. Um, I was kind of on my own. I, I was kind of the one who, um, you know, became the man of the house, so to speak. Had a lot of responsibility placed on me.
Um, by, by my sophomore year in high school, I had actually, I had been quite, uh, Uh, heavy up until then. Um, and, um, I, I just had horrible, uh, self-image ab about myself, uh, as you can imagine. But I decided, uh, I decided to go out for wrestling
and, uh, I lost a whole bunch of weight. Um, I, I started lifting some weights, right?
You know, I was trying to, I wanted to become a man. Okay. Um, I didn’t, I didn’t wanna be how I was being stereotyped. in one sense, uh, an area of, of sexuality.
It was, it was not so much about, being confused, but it was certainly being misdirected,
The abuse was a problem. it created all kinds of issues for me in terms of what I thought about, what I believed,
my view, was not healthy in terms of, how I viewed the opposite sex. and, Not being chast as I should have been. I also was then really struggling as well with other kinds of issues that would go along with that.
by the time I’m in high school, I don’t even know if God caress about me anymore because I feel like I’ve blown it so many times. Um, you know, with O C D and everything else that was going on in my mind. And, So I rebel by the time I’m in my junior and senior year of high school, I’ve gone off of wrestling.
I won’t take any crap from anybody, if you don’t mind me saying that. I’m angry.
I am trying to find myself, my identity, and I’m pretty lonely. I got a group of friends, but I’m actually quite lonely. I started drinking a bit, not much, but I would go out with a couple of my friends and we do that.
and then I was going to, a church, in another city that was a little bit larger. I liked the kids there. I had a crush actually on the pastor’s daughter. Yeah. And, I found out she was gonna go to this bible college in Minnesota, so I decided, I wanna go to bible college too, but I’m not sure.
I wanted to go for the right reason.
Ryan Henry: I came to Minnesota, and, I met this young lady, who had later on become my wife, Marcia.
Dale Hummel: Marcia was very solid, very strong in her faith, in her walk with God. And for the first time in my life I saw somebody who I just felt was really an authentic, legitimate Christian. she was interested in me and, our relationship began. And, I kind of in my o c d kind of obsessed about her.
and we were on a small campus and everywhere, she was, I seemed to be, and, one day she came and said, maybe we’re seeing, too much of each other. And that was really painful for me to hear. ’cause she was the first girl I was ever really sincerely serious about.
And I remember, going on a walk one night and, talking to God and, I really felt God speak to me. this happened a few times in my life actually in the throes of some of the most challenging times in my life, I had had a dream that was very vivid for me, and I was pretty young at the time and in this dream, it was very dark there was this, tremendous wind blowing and I heard a voice.
And I assume it was the voice of God, but all I heard God saying to me was that he would not forsake me. he would always be with me.
Ryan Henry: Yeah. Yeah.
Dale Hummel: so I’m out. I’m on this walk and I hear God speak to me.
I don’t hear an audible voice, but I hear this voice in my soul and I hear God ask me a question. ’cause I really started to straighten up my life because of Marcia. I was not doing well my first semester in college. Academically or socially.
I was hanging out with the wrong people. You can go to Bible college, by the way, and get in a lot of trouble. and God say, are you change your life for me or for her? And I remember on that walk, telling God, if we’re not meant to be together, I want this to stick.
And that was my defining moment. That was like, okay, God, I am so done playing games. I really wanna walk with you. I really wanna follow you. A few weeks later, we got back together and, the rest is history, as they say.
Ryan Henry: Ha ha. Wow. On that walk, is that your moment of saying, “Hey, I’m all in?”
Dale Hummel: Yeah. Yeah. That’s my all in moment. Yeah.
Ryan Henry: Wow, that’s amazing. So you’re at Bible college, did you find that there was any like theological, key that kind of just suddenly came to make sense to you or was, it kind of a backwards thing where, you were all in and then it started making sense.
Dale Hummel: I knew enough having growing up in the church, having grown up in a quote Christian home, I knew enough about the truth, so it wasn’t like I didn’t understand the truth. It was just what does the truth mean for me personally? Okay. it’s one thing to stand on the outside and look at it.
It’s another thing to say, okay, I’m actually gonna get into this. And I’m gonna establish my own personal relationship with God.
I’m going to surrender myself to this God, not just like a Pharisee would by keeping all the rules, which I could never keep. It’s like I want the relationship.
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Dale Hummel: And so, I learned more and I heard more about that when I went to Bible college. and I was challenged intellectually and spiritually. Particularly my philosophy class to ask the hard questions and to wrestle with, do I really believe this stuff? Is this something I want to be part of my life?
And, in my life God has sent some individuals who I look at and I just realize these are people who not only believe it but live it. I see God’s transcendence presence in their life. I feel it. And I’ve had people like that my whole life long that God has used to really kind of motivate me to say, alright, I want what they have.
And, one of those was my wife, another one my senior year in high school was a preacher by the name of Reverend Ssf Porter. he was invited to come and speak and, I listened to him and I I just could sense there’s a presence in his life. and it’s like, I want what that guy has.
Ryan Henry: Yeah.
Dale Hummel: So in my life, the things that’s helped me the most spiritually have been the men and women who had not only been able to talk the talk, But, but live it. and not just live it in the sense that they aren’t legalistic, but there’s a presence, an immaterial presence in their life.
Ryan Henry: I love the way you described that. ’cause there’s a very big difference yeah. And ever since I’ve been a kid even on the mission field with all the,stuff I endured, I’ve always been sensitive, spiritually sensitive and craving and desiring that walk with God, and wanting to know him intimately. That’s so amazing. Thank you Lord, those people in our lives, so when you made that commitment, Did you find that anything changed for you?
Dale Hummel: yes and no. I became more serious about my faith. God’s word wasn’t just something I was reading. I was now beginning to actually take it in. Apply it and try to live it. my wife, in essence, began to disciple me, ’cause I saw how serious she was with it.
that part began to change. what didn’t change for me, was the O C D, which I didn’t know what it was at that time. So what I couldn’t reconcile was, was, Okay, here’s this truth. Here are these things that I want in my life, but why do I struggle with these awful thoughts that keep coming into my mind that I don’t want to have, but they won’t leave.
I mean, I literally got to the point, Ryan, where I, I wondered for years if I was demon possessed. ’cause it was like, where is this stuff coming from? and it wasn’t, until probably when I was in the ministry itself that I began to. Deal with, guilt and shame, which I had struggled with my whole life.
even after getting married and, and I’ve got my act together in terms, I’m now a pastor, And I’m doing all these things. I still had this life inside of me that I could not figure out, It’s like, how do I deal with all the things that happened in a short amount of time between childhood and, that night, in Bible college, when I’m 18 years old and I’m having this moment with God, I mean, a lot happened in 18 years of my life.
Ryan Henry: Right. so how did you find healing?
Dale Hummel: So, I graduated from college, got married. we had our first child. We went, uh, pastor a church in Ohio, for seven years. I went to seminary While I was doing that, I’m growing, in my spiritual journey in terms of my knowledge, my, understanding of God’s word.
Um, enjoying preaching his truth. I finished seminary. I look at where else God might wanna use us, and I get an invitation, from a church in California to come out in candidate in San Francisco Bay Area. Uh, they asked us we would come be their pastor.
We packed everything up, moved out there and God blessed, uh, church began to grow. and, I remember,still dealing with all these mental, emotional battles in my life, these spiritual battles. and it, just took a long journey that kind of culminated in my mid thirties when I basically had what I would call a nervous breakdown. And, God used that to begin to heal me from the inside
out. And, I remember praying to God one day, and I said to God, I can’t live like this anymore. I need you to break me. I need deliverance from this.
Ryan Henry: Hmm.
Dale Hummel: And, shortly after that, I was involved in, doing the funeral for a girl who had been murdered, brutally. she was in eighth grade.
And, man, I don’t know what happened, but, For some reason, dealing with all of that, just really affected me, spiritually, affected me emotionally. As I thought about her life. Uh, at the same time, we were also adopting, um, a child, um, our, our youngest son.
and so we’re bringing this little life into our home and, I had what I would call my, , I had a crisis, mentally and emotionally. the church was growing. I’m dealing with this traumatic experience. It’s like I couldn’t take it anymore.
And And one night I was at the dinner table. and I got up from the table and I walked into the hallway and just, put my back against the wall and I slumped down to the floor and Marcia came running over. She said, are you okay? And I said, I don’t know if I’m having a heart attack or a nervous breakdown, but my heart was pounding.
I was sweating profusely, and I thought I was gonna die.
Ryan Henry: Oh my gosh.
Dale Hummel: I calmed myself down. I said, don’t call an ambulance. I got a grip and, I decided to go see, a doctor and figure out what was going on. They ran all kinds of tests on me. My heart was fine. and I’ll never forget him saying, Dale, I think you need to go visit the fourth floor.
Well, the fourth floor was the psych ward, And it’s like, I’m a pastor. I don’t want to go there. right? I’m,
I’m okay. and so he goes, okay, if you won’t do that, we take a stress class and I think what’s going on is you’re just totally stressed out. And I said, okay, I’ll do that.
So I go to sign up for the stress class. This is like October, the first opening’s in February. Okay. I am thinking to myself, man, there’s a lot of stress people around here, and secondly, I’m thinking, I can’t make it that long. my life’s coming apart. I’m having these, what I later learned were panic and anxiety attacks.
I would wake up at three in the morning. Just frantic. I would wake up choking sometimes and feel like I’m gonna die, So I finally decided I was gonna go see a counselor and she was a Christian counselor.
It took me a lot of courage to go see her ’cause I was sure I’d run into somebody from my church and they would ask me, what are you doing here?
But fortunately, and I talk about in the book, she made my appointment so that nobody else can be around, sat down, we began to talk, we began to unpack things. And for the first time in my life, I shared with someone the things that had happened to me in my childhood.
Ryan Henry: Hmm.
Dale Hummel: And, it was like taking somebody who had this severe abscess and Lansing, the abscess.
All this poison just started coming outta my life. And, God used her powerfully in my life to start unpacking my past. And that began my healing journey. And I talk about that in the book and I talk about how.we eventually left California and we moved to Naperville and that’s where I, pastored this church called the Evangelical Free Church in Naperville.
Now, we changed the name to Compass Church and that’s where I still was struggling with a lot of issues in my life. And, My daughter, who by that time had her master’s degree in social work said, dad, you need to go see a counselor again. I’m like, oh my goodness, here we go again. So,
I met a great, psychologist there, and he’s the first person that diagnosed me with O C D and. I can’t tell you, how happy I was to be diagnosed with O C D. it was like, finally, I know what’s going on with me, It’s not, I’m not demon possessed. I have a actual, Problem. I have this disease, I have this issue in my brain.
And, from that point to this point, tremendous healing has taken place. I now know why I struggle, what I suffer from, I know how to deal with it. And my whole book Reset is really meant to help anybody with mental illness, learn that you can actually change how you think.
Ryan Henry: That’s so amazing. So now you’ve got this book reset and you’re helping other people overcome their trauma.
Dale Hummel: Yeah,
Ryan Henry: That’s so amazing.
And, friends, we’re gonna have a link to Reset in our show notes so you can check it out. would you mind actually just taking us through the four main points of Reset?
Dale Hummel: Okay.
Every human being on this earth has mental illness, and that’s because we’re all born, sinful human beings. It’s in our nature, We don’t think, right. I used quite a bit of theology in the book You know, I talk about what happened to the human mind, When God first created us. Everything we knew about him and each other and the environment around us was influenced by him through our minds.
Then the enemy came along and basically said, God’s a liar and you can be in control of your own mind and be your own God. where does sin first happen? It happens in the mind, The enemy talks to Eve Adam’s standing next to her, and it’s a deception of the mind,
And we believe the lie. And we’ve been believing lies ever since. And ever since then, we’ve had troubles with our minds, and so our minds are either gonna be in focused or unfocused mode.
The default mode of our mind is always unfocused. It is always wandering,
Ryan Henry: Mm-hmm.
Dale Hummel: and it, as Dallas Willard said, it always wanders toward evil. It always wanders toward the negative. And if you think about your own life, how many times during the day do our minds go to past regrets, past failures, or to future fears and anxiety? Versus being in the moment, which is the only time I can ever truly be present, is in this moment, and it’s the only time I can really know God. So, how do we retrain our minds to live in the moment?
Ryan Henry: Hmm.
Dale Hummel: so what I do is I take what I learned about O C D and I apply it spiritually.And I talk about the fact that our, none of our minds work, right? And here’s what’s happened to our minds and how can we experience healing in our minds?
Romans chapter 12, verse one and two, Paul talks about how important it’s for us to renew our mind, to change our minds. Well, how do you change your mind?
So O C D is a disease. That we know for MRIs and, and other research, we know it’s an actual mental problem.
but what’s unique about O C D is you can actually heal O C D by changing how you think. when I say you can heal O C D, it never goes away, but you can get victory over it.
so when I finally understood what O C D was and O C D is something that, it’s a physiological issue in the brain.
Ryan Henry: Okay. Yeah.
Dale Hummel: O C D is, I feel compelled to do something, or I have these thoughts in my mind and I don’t want to do it, and I don’t want to have these thoughts. Okay? I don’t wanna touch the door knob for the 50th time in a row, which is what I would do when I was a kid.
Ryan Henry: Mm-hmm.
Dale Hummel: And it’s like I would sit there and have this mental battle, why am I doing this? Why can’t I stop this?
My biggest problem is what’s called ruminating thoughts. So I get bizarre, weird thoughts in my mind that I, can’t get rid of, and their thoughts about things I would never do. I would never say. as a kid, it was those kinds of thoughts that made me wonder, my demon possessed.
It’s like, where is this, bizarre stuff coming from? most quote normal brains, if a weird thought comes into your mind, you can exit it out really quick and not think about it again. and what I learned when I was diagnosed with O C D and I have a pretty strong case of it, is that it’s a physiological issue in the brain.
You either think things or wanna do things that you hate, that you don’t want to do, and you don’t wanna think, but it’s like there’s just something inside of you that’s driving you to have to do it. It’s not a spiritual issue. the brain is not working Right. And what I try to say in the book is none of our brains aren’t working. right. You don’t have to have O C D to know that your brain doesn’t work. Right.Because we’re all sinful. And our brains have been damaged. Our minds are sinful minds. And I talk in the book about the difference between the mind and the brain. We won’t get into that now, but the thing about O C D is you can actually change how you think.
So you have to learn to rethink, you have to learn how to change your brain. and that’s done through what’s called neuroplasticity.
I learned how to do that by entering a program at Mayo Clinic in Rochester, Minnesota. Working with a, famous doctor, their named Amit Sood, who’s done a lot of studies about the brain, et cetera. I learned how to use neuroplasticity to start to change how I think.
So what happened to me is I had this huge aha moment when I realized, you know, what I’m learning about how to deal with O C d in my mind. can be applied spiritually,
And so what my book does is focus on, how do you reset your focus? How do you reset your attitude? How do you reset your identity? How do you reset faith? How do you reset your view of community? And I’ve created all these exercises based on what I learned about O C D to actually help change the mind in those areas.
So what I do in this book is I take people through different exercises to show them and demonstrate to them and invite them to actually begin to change their brain, to change how they think.
So for instance, in the human brain, most of the time wants to operate in the unfocused mode, so we either wander to the past and regrets, or we wander to the future and fear we have a hard time just being focused in the moment. in the right now. And you know, when you think about it, you can’t go in the past and be with God, and you can’t go in the future and be with God.
The only time I can be with God is right this moment, and then the moment’s gone. So it’s like, how do we learn to practice mindfulness in the moment? it takes hard Changing the mind is not something you do overnight. It’s something you have to practice.
Ryan Henry: Wow. That sounds so fascinating. We will definitely have that, link to that book, friends in the show notes.
Dale Hummel: I wanna ask one last question, Dale. if you could go and talk to the Dale who was a child and who was in the midst of the abuse and the confusion, what would you say to him right now?
Well, the first thing I, I would do is get him outta there.
Okay.if that it was actively going on, I would do everything I could to defend and protect. and you know, I think what a lot of people don’t realize is those. Who are the victims of abuse oftentimes, are paralyzed by fear and guilt and shame.
And the abuser oftentimes uses that to keep them under their control, So I would want, to extract them from the situation then I would spend an awful lot of time, um, helping them understand their identity.
Because when you’ve been abused, it messes up your identity. who are you?
Are you a thing for people to use and abuse? I would want them to understand, who they are in Christ as God’s creation. I’d want them to know that they’re valued. I would want them to know that, they’re loved. I would want them to know that God doesn’t hate them.
I, I want them to know that bad things happen to good people. and we can’t be angry at God for it. It’s the world that we live in. He’s not at fault that those are some of the, things right away. I’d I’d wanna, I’d wanna say to him,
Ryan Henry: Yeah. I love what you said there about identity ’cause it’s so true. the enemy is an identity a stealer.
Dale Hummel: Yeah.
Ryan Henry: You know, he loves to destroy what we know about the truth,
Dale Hummel: Yeah, think about this, Ryan, when you look at our culture right now. So much of what are is wrong in our culture, what’s wrong in people comes back to sexuality. Isn’t that interesting? what is it about our sexuality that is so powerful that the enemy, that that’s where he strikes,
Ryan Henry: Yeah. Exactly. I appreciate your vulnerability. I know these are, hard things to talk about, but they’re good things to talk about.
And, I actually, I said one more question, so the people in Papua New Guinea were asking who was gonna take the gospel behind the mountains.
And I thought of your heart for missions. Um, have you ever thought about yourself as being the answer to their question?
Dale Hummel: Yeah, I have, I felt called, I guess, if you wanna put it that way, while on the mission field as a child, Because I had that desire to go and bring the hope of the gospel, that got bushwhacked. you know, my wife and I have talked about how, God has a plan for your life and so does the evil one.
Ryan Henry: Yeah.
Dale Hummel: And, I really believe Ryan, that Satan tried everything he could from that moment on to destroy me. And, God has prevailed. God has been sovereign, and I remember, uh, when we first got into the ministry, Marcia and I were actually interested in becoming missionaries, but God, really made it clear to us that wasn’t his calling on our lives.
What’s really fun though, is that in the last 10 years, God has opened that door up really wide for me. So I travel once a month now overseas, and I train pastors who are planting churches. I’m part of a ministry called the Timothy Initiative where. We’re seeing one church planted every 16 minutes. Right now it’s phenomenal what God is doing.
And so I get to go and I do a lot of the Spiritual training in terms of the leaders of, TTI talking about character and holiness and making sure that, we stay close to God and walk with him. And, it’s just phenomenal what God’s doing with that, ministry.
So it’s like, yeah, God’s brought me full circle.
Ryan Henry: Yeah. That’s amazing. What was that you said? Was it Timothy Mission
Dale Hummel: It’s called, TTI or the Timothy Initiative.
It’s probably one of the top three church planning organizations in the world, particularly in Asia and Africa, and reaching, unreached people groups.
Ryan Henry: Okay, great. Thank you for that. I had not heard of that before,
Dale Hummel: Dale, thank you so much. It is just so good hearing your story and hearing what God has done, to bring you from everything you experienced into where you are now and how you’re blessing people and leading a church and your family and all that stuff. and all these church planting,
Ryan Henry: Wow. It’s just amazing. So it’s a story of His grace, you know, and his kindness. And it’s definitely gonna bless a lot of people. So thank you so much for being on the show with us today.
Dale Hummel: Yeah. You’re welcome.
Ryan Henry: Bless you, Dale.
Margaret Ereneta: Today’s Sunday features Michael Thompson with savior like a shepherd lead us. If you want this song. Long for free just check out our show notes for a free download Thanks for listening today