039 Hollywood > Your Pastor

There is a new frontier of missions today - screens and stages.

Justin shares the vulnerable and exciting next season for Firelight Creative Productions. 

Firelight exists to fight for truth on the frontlines of the entertainment industry and is stepping into its boldest chapter yet. 

With screens and stages as today’s mission field, the vision is clear—create truth-centered stories that awaken hearts to Jesus. 

Join us on this journey of creating truth-centered art at www.firelightcp.com or join Justin on July 28th, 2025, at 7pm CST to hear the full story and discover how you can partner. 

RSVP at justinrizzo.com/invite

Chapters

• 0:00 Introducing Firelight Creative Productions
• 13:14 When God Calls: Arts & Entertainment
• 18:05 Supernatural Provision for Films
• 21:43 The Vision: A New Frontier of Missions
• 25:56 The Fundraising Ask: $175K Annually
• 28:43 From Reluctance to Three Films

Transcript

Speaker 1: 0:00

Hey guys, welcome back to the podcast. Today I'm excited to talk about my production company, firelight Creative Productions. So a lot of you guys who listen to this may know me more from the worship space, the songwriting space, and I still do all those things. But my wife and I, nearly 15 years ago, started a production company and I'm gonna share a bit of that story and a little bit about a upcoming meeting just a couple days away, on July 28th, that we are hosting live on Zoom, and I want to invite you to come and be a part of that. I want to invite you to invite other people who might have an interest in attending this event to join us. It's all virtual, it's all online on Zoom on July 28th at 7 o'clock Central, and I'll share more about that here in a little bit. But again, if you have no idea about this production company, it's been a part of our life for quite some time.

Speaker 1: 0:52

So I became a full-time worship pastor at the age of 18 years old and after I had done that for about five years, it was in 2009, april 2009. I still remember it. It was a Friday night and I was sitting in a church service and someone was preaching and, out of nowhere, I felt the voice of God, heard the voice of God. Whatever you want to say, I didn't audibly hear it, but I knew so clearly this is the Lord speaking to me and I've never heard it so clear before or since, honestly. And this kind of still small voice came to me and it said arts and entertainment. And I literally began this dialogue back because I had, you have to understand, I had zero, zero history in this zero desire to do this whatsoever. I wasn't a theater geek growing up, had no interest in, you know, taking Hollywood by storm for the glory of Jesus, like at all. I was actually probably more repulsed by that idea, thinking that all those people had, like you know, weird motives and, I'll be honest, I had. I had judged these people very, very wrongly and so, um, I said, you know, no, I'm not going to do that. And then the voice you know came again really clearly films, musicals, hollywood, arts, entertainment. And I literally began responding back to the Lord again, me, like no, I do biblical things and super prideful, right, I do biblical things. I do worship, prayer, discipleship. I do not do Hollywood for Jesus. Those people are weird and I am not going to be one of them. And then the voice stopped and so I was so genuinely, deeply troubled because I knew it was God. But I told him no kind of just like hoping like hope. He forgets you know where I'm at and he just like hoping like hope. He forgets you know where I'm at and he just like doesn't ask me to do this again. So I told my wife that night and I said, hey, please don't tell anybody. I told another close friend and my wife. I said, please, guys, do not tell anybody. But the Lord called me to this tonight but I told him no, so I think we're okay.

Speaker 1: 2:37

So six months goes by and I'm at my church in a backroom meeting and we brought in a guest speaker, a woman. She was an older woman I think, two doctorates in theology, just really, really smart. She was teaching on the Hebrew and Greek words for worship or whatever, and she's up at the whiteboard you know writing and mid-draw on the whiteboard. She turns around and she looks at me in this room and she says Justin Rizzo, I feel like the Lord just told me that you're called to the arts and entertainment industry and I see scripts coming forth from the scriptures and I see the text of the Bible separating. There's a bass and a treble clef and you're composing music to scripture. Does that resonate with you?

Speaker 1: 3:17

And I was so, honestly, I was like mad. I'm not going to lie to you. I was upset, I lied, I was like no, no, it does not. I'm so sorry. Thanks for giving the word, but no, it doesn't resonate, because I had all my peers of worship leaders in the room with me.

Speaker 1: 3:34

The last place on earth I'd want to be ousted as a sellout to the Hollywood arts entertainment world Because you have to understand, back in 2009, there was no the Chose and the House of David and these types of shows we're seeing nowadays. Back then, in my humble opinion, a lot of the things that we were putting out just weren't cutting it. It was just cheesy or not well done or whatever, and so I didn't have a grid or reference for it, and so I went home that night very upset and it and so went home that night very upset and I talked to my wife. I said, well, we're going to pray and we're going to see what God does, but I am angry about it and I'm not okay. So we began to just pray Every single Thursday morning we would just pray.

Speaker 1: 4:18

And we began to pray that the Lord would raise up something outside of Hollywood that would make Hollywood jealous, began to pray that the Lord would bring forth scripts from the scriptures. We would take Disney and Paramount Picture executives by name. We'd Google them and we'd literally pray for them by name. Lord, encounter these people, let your kingdom come, let your will be done. All this different kind of stuff and, as they say, what you pray for, you fall in love with. And that's a great spiritual principle that you should definitely get out of.

Speaker 1: 4:46

This episode is that. That's why they say the couple that prays together they will stay together, because where your treasure is, your heart will be also, and it's not just talking about your money where you give, you'll fall in love with it. Where you give your resources, your spiritual enrichment, your spiritual investment in your prayer life. So if you pray for South Africa or Zimbabwe or Russia or wherever it is, you're going to end up hey, we should take a trip to Russia. I love Russia. It's like, why is that? Because I've been praying for it for five years. So, as we took, I think it was about a five-year season when we would just pray every single Thursday morning for Hollywood and we began to fall in love with Hollywood and the Lord began to connect us to different people, different things happening in LA. We'd travel out there many times those coming years. I won't share all those stories, but some amazing things have happened.

Speaker 1: 5:37

And a couple years later well, very shortly after, less than a year later I would write my first musical. We'd perform it. Seven sold-out shows. It was amazing. No, I'm sorry, nine sold-out shows. There were 700 people at each show. So nine sold-out shows. And then did a second musical. I'm actually staring at it here, the poster's on my wall signed by the cast right in front of me. And then the Lord spoke after we did that second uh show live that we were to start a production company. So it's about 2013. Uh, yeah, about 2012, 2013.

Speaker 1: 6:16

And, um, again didn't want to do it Cause I'm like again, like that takes time, it takes energy. You know it's all this stuff. You got to become this, you got to become this legal entity, you know, whatever it is, I was like I don't want to do that. The Lord wouldn't let it go, wouldn't let it go. So, right here in my writing room where I'm standing right now doing this podcast, my wife and I sat for a couple hours you know, a couple different nights of the week couple hours just brainstorming and praying through names. And so finally, this name dropped in us Fire, firelight Creative.

Speaker 1: 6:42

So we founded Firelight Creative Productions as a 501c3 nonprofit and at the time I didn't understand why I was starting this, because I was at my local church and things were going well. I was like why would I start a separate entity? I'm part of a mega church. Why would I need to go outside for fundraising or resources or whatever? We have it built in here in our church? Well, little did I know that the arts department at our church would shut down about two years later. I was like, okay, the Lord has a lot of wisdom, right? Also, little did I know that six years later, in 2019, I'm sorry, six years ago for me, in 2019, from where we are right now, in 2025, the Lord would bring my wife and I to leave staff and so go from this, you know, full-time worship pastor position to suddenly all right, here we go and the Lord speaks really, really clearly in our first year of not doing this, this full-time worship leader role.

Speaker 1: 7:38

And he said three movies in three years. And, unlike 2009, where I gave a really horrible response to the Lord, I responded much better. I was like great, let's do it. And I think the naivety helped me, because I was genuinely naive. I had no idea what I was doing. I had no idea and so I thought, okay, three movies in three years. Well, I know how to have a good business. Just hire people way smarter than you to do things that you can't do. So I'm going to do my part of you know, composing and writing and telling stories, and I'm going to hire all these other positions you know out to people you know. And so very, very quickly realized like, oh no, that means I have to have money to pay these people.

Speaker 1: 8:17

And so, you know, the first film we did was just being honest. It was, it was a first fruits. You know, as they say in the Bible um to the Lord. It wasn't awesome, but we gave it all. We had the budget for it. Get ready with $65,000, which is like, if you know the film world, that is literally nothing. That's like one small department in your film. But we did it. We pulled it off.

Speaker 1: 8:42

I was on set, we were shooting the film and we had $60,000 raised and someone texted me who didn't even really know, because that first film we didn't really get the word out to a lot of people because I didn't know what I was doing. We were just kind of building it. And someone texted me who didn't even really know the situation and said, hey, we just feel led to give you $5,000. Where should we send it? And I said, can you please not send it to? You know, our nonprofit ministry, my wife and I, and our personal ministry. Can you please send it to my production company ministry? Right, and so the first film was paid off the next. So we wrapped shooting the very, very next day, I kid you not, I sit down and I come up with the budget for the second film, which would be 170. Okay, and it was way better, for sure Still lacking a lot of areas. But we learned a lot of things from the first film. The budget was way bigger so we could hire bigger, better, all this different kind of stuff.

Speaker 1: 9:35

And there's an amazing story with that I've talked about in the podcast. I did a whole podcast on the worst fundraising meeting of my life. You can check that out. I forget which number episode that is. Actually. Let me just check for you guys real quickly so I can just tell you guys. If you want to listen to that that's the nice thing about having your computer right open let's see here. Let's see here Because it's worth noting. I'll quickly summarize it here in this episode, but if you want to go listen to this one you can, because it was a doozy of a time. Thank you, yeah, episode number 15,.

Speaker 1: 10:23

Episode number 15, my failed fundraising meeting didn't go well. This, this business guy, real successful was, was super unkind, just not a good time. Not a good time. But quickly to share that story, we're going after 170,. You know, at this person I'm at this point I'm talking with, to any business person with a pulse of like hey, you know, do you have a heart to impact the arts, entertainment industry? Would you sow a tax-deductible gift into this film? So we had raised $70,000 and we were three weeks out from filming this second movie for 170. So we were $100,000 short, had this horrible fundraising meeting. It did not go well.

Speaker 1: 11:02

And then I'm up here again in my office and send out another fundraising email and again I'm not begging, I'm not leading from weakness. Then I'm up here again in my office and send out another fundraising email and again, I'm not, I'm not begging, I'm not leading from weakness, I'm leading with strength. You know, vision right, just sharing the vision of our nonprofit, which I'll share about here at the end. And I get an email back, end up on the phone with a person who says a statement well, you know, we're about to change your life, we're going to cut you a check for $100,000 to finish your film. And I just broke, you know, tears of the faithfulness of God, of using this you know these precious people to make this thing happen. It was just, it was incredible and amazing moment.

Speaker 1: 11:43

So we filmed that second movie the next day. After that we said it was three films in three years. We will literally make the budget quarter of a million dollars to make our third film. And, um, it was a long process. I've talked about that in a different episode, just a couple of episodes back of how the Lord supernaturally provided for that Cause. We were way short, about $90,000 short for that. And then we were $60,000 short for another event that we did, our creative conference, and the Lord provided $150,000 that we are now debt-free. We snuck in another Christmas show in the midst of our debt, last December that we did. And so the Lord has been so, so faithful to Firelight Creative and to what we are doing and doing.

Speaker 1: 12:27

This podcast I'm oh, you have a podcast. You must be the authority, you must have all this information or whatever. And sure, some of that's true in some areas. But I must be straight, honest with you guys the amount of weakness that, justin Rizzo, that I have had to, like you know, embrace these last four years, being massively out of a comfort zone, you know, not so much even in the creative spaces. Again, you just bring this like we've had. You know, our last film had 90 people involved in making it. It's like that inspires the heck out of me. I'm like this is beautiful seeing people operate in their gifts, but the financial strain, the financial challenge the past four years has just about killed me. It's been very, very intense and I'm actually working on a resource right now.

Speaker 1: 13:13

There's a whole kind of regime that I really had to kind of undergo and undertake in terms of eating habits, fasting, sauna-ing, all kinds of things to keep me on the straight and narrow, to pursue what the Lord has asked us to do with these films and so with Firelight Creative, with what I'm about to step into and talk about here, what we're going to talk about on July 28th, which, again, if you're able to come, it's there on the screen for you to check out. We'd love to have you come. If you're listening to this, justinrizzocom slash invite, justinrizzocom slash invite. We'd love to have you there and I'll also do another debriefing episode once we kind of have that night and see how it goes. But Firelight Creative, as it stands right now, has so many projects in our hearts and in our minds, and a very, very small team of myself and like one or two other people have been, you know, slowly percolating, you know, in this writing process, talking about some dreams and some desires. And we're not going to be announcing, even on Monday night, july 28th, we're not going to announce in this podcast. I'm not going to announce our next project, because we're not even at the next project stage yet, though that is close. We'll be announcing that We'll be opening up ways for people to donate or even invest in it. We're really steadfastly that's a weird word we're really focused on opening up that realm for investment for our next movie. But we're not talking about that right now. What we're talking about right now is the seedbed stage of Firelight Creative, and so Firelight Creative right now, though, it's nearly 15 years old really the last four years of doing these three movies in three years. We're about to turn like four years old, right, and I want to just share a story with you guys based on Angel Studios, because I think there's a lot of similarities. There's one big thing that's not the same, which is awesome, but Angel Studios. Formerly before there were Angel Studios.

Speaker 1: 15:19

Many of you guys might not know this, they were AngelVid. Okay, so you guys might not know what that is, but AngelVid used to exist, and it was a way to mute out cussing or take out bad scenes in a movie. It was a family-friendly thing. Actually, a form of it may still exist a form of it, but as it stood back then, it does not because they got a ton of popularity amongst Christians. Being like we want our children to only see good things, delete the nudity, take this stuff out, whatever it is.

Speaker 1: 15:47

Well, eventually, angelvid this is years ago they got sued for I believe it was copyright infringement from Disney and some other really, really big wig studios. Being like you can't just like, you know, tailor our content. They lost the lawsuit. So AngelVid was on the hook, for I think it was like 50 or 68 million. It was some crazy number, the tens of millions of dollars that they had to pay these studios because they lost. And like, yeah, that was copyright infringement. And they got their hands slapped hey, pay this massive, massive amount of money.

Speaker 1: 16:22

So what did Angel Vidd do? They're like, hey, church Christians, even though they themselves are not Christian people. Well, they're a different denomination, they're Mormons and, again, I know a lot of amazing Mormon people. There's some pretty gaping differences in terms of our theology, but they love righteousness, in terms of we want our kids to see wholesome things or whatever it is right. And so they said hey, church, will you guys get on board with us and help us pay back the big bad you know it's my words, not theirs, but the big bad Hollywood machine is coming after us. You know we're going to like, you know we got to pay this back, right.

Speaker 1: 17:11

And then, while they were doing that, this idea also spawned of, like, what if we don't just get the church and the Christians to rally around us to pay off this debt or what we owe in this lawsuit. What if we also say, hey, through your donations we'll give you guys a piece of the ownership of what we're doing and we're going to form Angel Studios moving forward, which I don't have all the insights on that, but there was a massive. It's been very, very challenging in terms of the ownership piece for a lot of people in Angel Studios and so we are not going to be offering for your donation of $50 a month. You'll have a partial ownership and everything that we, you know, in this movie or this series or whatever moving forward we're. We're not going to be opening up that realm again. As I said, for our future um projects, which we will be announcing, you know, fairly soon here, lord willing, there'll be an investment realm where people can actually, you know, tap in and invest you know, um, you know, a million dollars, $2 million, $100,000, whatever it is and see investment on the return.

Speaker 1: 18:05

But so AngelVid flipped to Angel Studios, rallied the church, they gave donations, they paid off what they owed and then they continued that model to what Get an influx of cash in Angel Studios where then they could begin to not just, you know, kind of nickel and dime and kind of write things and kind of do this and kind of do this, but actually hire writers, hire editors, hire actors, hire composers on their staff that are constantly just churning out content. Let alone that's all on the creative side, let alone the legal fees that go with that, the administrative fees that go with that, the different managers that you have to I administrative fees that go with that, the different managers that you have to. I mean there's so much in the back end to support these people being creative and so they undertook that process. And again, I have nothing negative to say about Angel Studios. Like they're doing incredible, incredible things for the world and it's incredible what they have done. So Firelight Creative.

Speaker 1: 19:05

Now, at this stage, we're at the same stage, I feel like, where they were about five, 10 years ago. We are saying we've raised donations for a project by project basis, but we're at a place now where we need to raise our annual functioning budget to just allow us to continue to do what we're doing and to majorly upgrade to actually hire writers on our staff and not just kind of working. You know, hey, do your nine to five job, your business or your church, whatever, and then you know, write whatever. Like hiring people full time to majorly up the production, to majorly up the speed at which we are creating things. And that is not going to happen without donations and finances coming in.

Speaker 1: 19:51

And the vision that God gave us for Phyla Creative, it was different. Most of the time people see a need or they had that vision of, like people need water in this African nation, we're going to go dig wells. Okay, that's compelling, I'm in right. Everyone needs water For us. Like I said in the story, I begrudgingly said yes to doing this, fell in love with it and got a really heart after five years of praying for it and then the Lord brought almost to that place of prayer, brought this clear vision to Firelight Creative, brought this clear vision to Firelight Creative and kind of our tagline is Firelight Creative. It is.

Speaker 1: 20:29

There is a new frontier of missions today. There's a new frontier of missions today and it is screens and stages. Statistics show that kids between the ages of 8 to 18 years old spend an average of 7.5 hours a day on a screen for entertainment 7.5 hours a day for 10 years of their life, between the ages of 8 to 18. Over 66% of young people who said that they attended church in high school said that they stopped attending church between the ages of 18 to 22, over 66%. So kids are addicted to their phones for entertainment from 8 to 18 for 10 years and then after that they want nothing to do with our beautiful God, with our beautiful God, and we as a staff, as an organization, we are compelled to see that flip, to turn it up on its head, to say no, we're going to produce incredibly high quality, truth-centered art to keep people or to get people fascinated with Jesus. We want to create truth-centered art to ultimately see the Great Commission fulfilled. And there's a new frontier of missions today and Firelight Creative is seeking to be one of not the only, but one of the answers to that call. And we are at a place right now, where AngelVid became Angel Studios years ago, where we are asking the church to join us, to partner with us, to donate with us. We're asking businessmen and businesswomen to donate to Firelight Creative Productions. It's a 501c3. It's all tax deductible To give us the starting cashflow to begin to hire and put these teams together and say here's the vision, here's where we're going Now. This is the like. We need the runway bills now to lift this plane off the ground and I've again.

Speaker 1: 22:33

I'm a very type, a personality, very, you know, high achiever. I hate wasting time and I wrestled with the Lord this past spring as we were, like, you know, kind of formulating this plan. You know, july 28th, this meeting, this podcast we're going to talk about, we're going to continue to talk about it. And I was like, well, my gosh, like why didn't I do this, like four years ago? Like this is so stupid, like I am stupid, like why didn't I just get this, instead of like hey, we need 65 for this one movie. We barely make it, okay, I didn't drown. And then we do 170. We barely make it. I didn't drown, we do 250. We barely, you know, we barely. I'm like why have I been living this way? Like this is so, so stupid.

Speaker 1: 23:10

And I was like beating myself up and beating myself up and I was talking with one of my mentors and they kind of came down to me hard, they're gracious, they're pretty intense, they're like dude, like shut up, like what are you even saying? And they began to kind of paint a picture of me, of like, if you're a successful business person out there and you hear and ask like you're going after and the number I'm going to present to you guys here in a moment. In your annual budget you're going to ask for that much money every single year and you have nothing to show for it. You're just some random kid who has a cool idea, a new frontier mission. It's like, yeah, we'll see how you do in five years. He's like, literally, you have solved all those negative pushbacks that business guys would say, we'll see where you're at in five years.

Speaker 1: 23:57

It's been four for us. We've done three full length movies, we did a Christmas show, so we have four high quality things. Again, they grew in quality as they went, but we've stewarded this thing for four years. We've shown we can raise these donations at pretty high levels quarter of a million dollars, you know, consistently for four years. Now you're saying, hey, I'm coming to the table ready to play. Will you donate?

Speaker 1: 24:23

Again, we're looking for multi-year donations to give us that starting time financial piece to say, hey, this is our budget moving forward every single year. The sky then becomes the limit and when we do different movies and different films where there will be donation route available but also there will be a capital investment armed to that, then the sky's the limit of what we can do in saying, hey, we want this next movie to be released at the box office, we're going to spend X amount in marketing dollars, we're going to pursue this A or B list celebrity person to try and get us there. That's where we're going, but the springboard, the jump, is where we're at right now, like today, as a company, as an organization, we need to get legal teams, we need to get I'm sorry, my phone's ringing we need to get legal teams, we need to get administrative teams, we need to hire writers, we need to hire staff to begin to be a functioning production company. So, all that to say, we are going after $175,000 a year and our year is starting August 1, just in a couple of days, depending on when you're listening to this podcast 2025.

Speaker 1: 25:39

And we are asking businessmen, business leaders, ministry executives, ministry people who have, you know, wear a $50,000 gift, you know commitment for the next five years. We'll give you $50,000 a year. You know we get five. You know, know four or five of those, those people you know who can commit to that. Ten people, you know eight people giving twenty five thousand dollars a year, you know, for the next five years, that gives us a burn rate to say, all right, we are going to begin this foundation that we've already kind of laid, but even more firm up that concrete. That plane's going to start to roll and we're going to see something take off into the atmosphere. The runway is built and so you might be listening to this podcast.

Speaker 1: 26:21

You're like dude, I'm a college student, I got no money, whatever it is. You might know somebody you might have an aunt, an uncle, a grandma, grandpa, whatever it is who might be interested in sewing and donating for a tax-deductible receipt into an arts and entertainment company that has proven itself for the past four years to say we're just getting started, would you sow into Firelight Creative? But I believe there are businessmen and businesswomen listening to this podcast, or ministry leaders that for your fiscal year, for your year, you have to give away this much money. I want to unashamedly ask you to look at Firelight Creative, to pray about sowing into Firelight Creative, because it is good soil, it has been tested soil and the harvest is ripe. The harvest is ripe, the fields are ripe for the harvest.

Speaker 1: 27:13

Guys, there are so many people out there on screens addicted to screens, addicted to shows and watching things on a stage and we're saying we want to be the answer to those and I won't share in this meeting right now, but the Lord has given us several high level connections to some different people. If you're a potential large donor on this, call and you wanna hear some of those stories and ask some different people, if you're a potential large donor on this call and you want to hear some of those stories and ask some different questions, shoot me an email, justin at justinrizacom. I'm available. Hop on a Zoom, hop on a call, justin at justinrizacom. But I just want to unashamedly go after this and I again, when this mentor told me this a couple months ago, kind of rebuked me, kindly of like dude, like shut up, you didn't miss it, you're not behind. You have proven a framework. You have proven that you guys can follow through, that you have the team, you have the reach to get people to actually successfully make these films and now the rubber can meet the road. So we're going after $175,000 a year and July 28th there's a couple of days from now if you're listening to this before then, if not, that's great. But join us live. If you want.

Speaker 1: 28:25

I'm going to share some of these same things, 7 pm Central, july 28th. It's this upcoming Monday. We're going to have a time of worship together. I'm going to share a lot of what I already shared in this podcast, along with some additional things, and we're going to go after the Lord, rallying people around businesswomen, businessmen around us, to again not even just a one-time gift of $10,000, $15,000, $25,000, $30,000, but say hey, for the next five years. You are in my business line itemized budget. You can count on this for the next five years because we believe in the mission of Firelight Creative. All right, if you made it through that, you're awesome. Thanks for listening to the end.

Speaker 1: 29:03

I am, you know, just being really transparent. I am like, not the sales guy. I know I just was on the whole sales pitch for like four and a half minutes, but I am not the sales guy. I'm a creative guy who is trying to get funding to steward something God called me to in 2009, and I got really angry about it. Now, 16 years later, here I am looking for $175,000 a year for our annual budget to say, yeah, what God called me to in 2009, I couldn't see it. What did he ask me to do in 2012 with starting this production company, firelight Creative. I was like, ah, I couldn't see it. What are you asking me to do? Six years ago, when I left full-time worship staff, I couldn't see it. I was like, why am I leaving this thing that I've done my whole life and we still do a ton of worship, leading and songwriting and all kinds of stuff. But this is what the Lord is really highlighting to my wife and I, and we could not be more fearful and excited. Just not going to lie. Fearful maybe is a strong word. We are genuinely. We have a big portion of us that is excited about what the Lord's called us to do, but there's also part of us that's like man. This is beyond the scope of what we've ever known. And for the next film, what we're moving into, even the 175 that we're raising and the next film of some of the numbers that are being put together by my team to make this film.

Speaker 1: 30:25

The same mentor told me he's like, hey, I've come to realize in my life, my career. He's been following Jesus for many, many years. In his late 70s he said I've come to realize now that if what the Lord is asking or pressing upon my heart to do seems illogical, it's probably God If it seems that illogical, it's probably God. Just say yes in the day-to-day, he'll see you through and it'll happen. And so I just leave you guys with that. I hope that this was encouraging, challenging, maybe something for the Lord's asking you to do in your own life and ministry. Hey, he wants you to pivot and start this company. He wants you to start an orphanage or whatever it might be.

Speaker 1: 31:05

I just pray, as I leave you guys in this episode, that there would be the clear steps that you take to begin to see the hand of the Lord move upon your life. And so many times for me it's not even like all right. If God shines a light over here, I'll move. So many times as I begin to move in what feels like the dark, a light comes and then I move just two more steps forward. A light shows up. I was like, okay, I think I'm in the path that God has for me to walk. You know his word is a lamp to my feet and a light into my path.

Speaker 1: 31:39

But you know, faith without works is also dead, and I think there's that, that team and that partnership. That's why he didn't create us just to be, you know, robots. You know, and just say, hey, go, do this and you know, evangelize people and it'll be great. It's like no, like he wants us willfully intention and challenge and like why are you calling me to movies and theater stuff? Like not my deal. He's like I'm asking you to live in the tension, justin, because I see things you don't see For your life right now. God sees things you don't see.

Speaker 1: 32:06

Song of Solomon. In the book of Song of Solomon there's an obscure Bible verse I'll leave you with this and it says, talking of God, it says that his right hand embraces you right. So his right hand, if you're being embraced by someone, their hands are around so you can see that hand. So it says his right hand embraces you, but his left hand is under your head. You can't always see what God is doing. You can't always see what God is doing, but he is always there and sometimes he's waiting for us to take that first step. And so here we are, we are stepping out in faith as a production company.

Speaker 1: 32:39

Thank you guys for listening. Again, if you have questions, you want to talk about large donations, you can email me, justin, at justinrizzocom if you want more information. The link is in the show notes if you want to make a tax-deductible donation today Again, you can make it monthly, you can make it annually or just a one time gift. We're we'd be so grateful If you consider that. Thank you, guys so much. We'll see you in the next episode. You.