A Better Way: God’s Design for Less Stress, More Rest, and Greater Success

By Ryan Haley

WHEN IT COMES TO DOING BUSINESS AND LIFE, THERE’S A BETTER WAY...

Are you tired of hearing all the promises about the “abundant life”, getting the life sucked out of you in your own efforts to attain it? Are you stressed and wearing yourself out trying to get results in your business? The bad news is that your limited human thinking and abilities will do little to end this vicious cycle. But there’s Good News! In fact, it’s almost “too good to be true” news...

In this book, Ryan Haley uses his remarkable life story and personal experiences to provide a unique and life-giving revelation of God’s unconditional grace. Through powerful testimonies and scriptural illustrations, A Better Way brings to life eternal truths about the truly Good News of the Gospel that will show you how to:

-Have less stress, but more success in your business and personal life
-Embrace the liberating cessation of self-effort
-Transfer your focus and burdens from yourself to Jesus–with much better results
-Benefit from God’s grace and rest in bottom-line, measurable ways
-Experience deeper personal fulfillment and greater professional effectiveness
-Live a life that demands a supernatural explanation!
A wealth of practical exercises and resources are included to take you from head knowledge to personally experiencing “where the supernatural meets the practical”.

You can have it your way, or a better way–invest in rest for God’s best!

"If you’re serious about pursuing success in business, and in life, but you want to follow biblical principles and do it the Lord’s way...read this book."
-Tony Dungy, Super Bowl Winning NFL Coach, New York Times Bestselling Author

• Language: English
• Publisher: Ryan Haley
• Release date: Apr 30, 2020
• ISBN: 9781950710331

Ryan Haley

Ryan Haley is a former U.S. Navy Officer, SH-60B helicopter pilot, Afghanistan combat veteran, and Pentagon defense budget analyst. In 2007, a helicopter crash served as a dramatic wake-up call for Ryan to live a purposeful life centered around his faith in God. His life message is about God’s grace and the “too-good-to-be-true news” of the Gospel of Jesus. Ryan is called to inspirational communication and personal development as a writer, speaker, coach, teacher, and counselor.Ryan is the founder of A Better Way, a media and teaching platform that inspires people to experience “where the supernatural meets the practical” in faith, business, and life. A Better Way currently includes a podcast, blog, website, and book. Ryan’s mission is to apply the practicality and power of God’s grace in helping people and organizations experience deeper fulfillment and greater effectiveness by tapping into their deepest passions, deepest pain, and greatest strengths to provide maximum service and value to others.Ryan is an adjunct professor at Charis Bible College Business School, a real estate investor, and self-manager of his retirement and investment portfolio. Ryan has worked as a Pentagon defense budget analyst managing a $4.5 billion annual appropriation, a licensed realtor, and sales and account manager of a tech startup. His extensive educational background is complemented by personal experience in business, entrepreneurship, and financial investing. Ryan’s desire is to use his wealth-building acumen and leadership skills in helping others reach financial freedom and empower them to be unhindered in following their God-given dreams and purpose.Ryan received his MBA in Financial Management from the Naval Postgraduate School, a postgraduate Business Administration certificate from Georgetown University, and his BA in Psychology from the University of San Diego. He also finished a two-year biblical studies program at Charis Bible College in Woodland Park, Colorado, where he received his Christian Ministers License and completed a subsequent third-year business program.Ryan is originally from Portland, Oregon. He lives in Woodland Park, Colorado, where he enjoys the beauty of the mountains and outdoors through hiking, snowboarding, and playing disc golf. He also enjoys being part of church and small group fellowships.You can schedule Ryan for speaking and coaching engagements as well as sign up for a free weekly email list through A Better Way’s website: https://ABetterWayPodcast.com. Ryan’s email is [e-mail].

Book preview

INTRODUCTION

THE BOTTOM LINE UP-FRONT

I want us to start with the end in mind and give the bottom line, up-front for you as the reader. So, to establish expectations before you start reading this book, I want to make clear what this book and its central message is and is not. Let me start by defining what I mean by A Better Way: God’s Design for Less Stress, More Rest, and Greater Success.

Therefore, this is not another business or Christian book about hard work. It is, in fact, about the CESSATION OF SELF-EFFORT and all of its associated and endless performance, striving, toil, stress, and anxiety. It is about unlocking the blessings of the Kingdom of Heaven by adopting the counterintuitively productive virtues of entering into God’s REST and EASE, based purely on His incredible Grace. Many times, this flies directly in the face of our human logic, reason, and wisdom.

This is NOT a book about religion. We will most likely kill some sacred—as well as secular—cows here. Just like Jesus did in His day, I may shock and offend you at times, but that’s OK because the true Gospel of Grace is SCANDALOUS to both the religious spirit as well as its counterpart, the self-focused flesh. This is about where the supernatural meets the practical (as true spirituality always has a corresponding practical impact in the natural realm).

My goal is to demonstrate the intersection of Heaven and Earth. I generally find that at one extreme end of the spectrum, people are, as the saying goes, so heavenly minded they’re no earthly good'. At the extreme other end of that spectrum, many people give lip service to prayer and faith while operating exclusively from their own human abilities and getting hopelessly mired in the practical details and demands of business and life.

The purpose of A Better Way is twofold:

1. Equipping: Inspire by providing real-life examples to budding entrepreneurs and burned-out business owners in the household of faith that it is possible, and so much better, to walk by faith through Grace and do things God’s way than to strive and toil in our own human effort and wisdom.

2. Evangelistic: Blow the minds of business-savvy people who don’t yet have a personal relationship with Jesus with testimonies from real-life business owners that demand a supernatural explanation, which can only be explained through a relationship with Jesus!

The purpose of this book is to use real-life stories and testimonies as a vehicle to illuminate truths from the Word of God. My hope and belief is that this will encourage, inspire, and set you free with the almost-too-good-to-be-true news Gospel of God’s Grace and Rest through the finished work of Jesus Christ. So here’s the bottom line, up-front: it is my heartfelt desire and expectation that by reading this book, you will:

1. Have a life-changing revelation of God’s goodness, nature and character

2. Have less stress, more rest, and greater success in your business and personal life

3. Depend more on God and less on yourself than you did before reading it

4. Be fully persuaded of—and personally experience—God’s goodness in your businesses and personal life in practical, measurable ways

5. Trust God more and live less by sight and more by faith in practical ways

6. Be inspired and given permission to prosper greatly in your God-given purpose by tapping into your deepest passion, most natural strengths, and greatest contribution to the world

7. Have your own real-life testimonies to be a catalyst of helping others to achieve everything listed in numbers 1-6 above (in a nutshell, discipleship!).

As you read this, I trust and pray that the Holy Spirit will bring you into that Sabbath rest and ease God promises in His Word for New Covenant believers in Jesus. As you do, please share your testimonies and/or the testimonies of others you know so they can inspire and encourage others! You can submit nominations through A Better Way’s website at: https://abetterwaypodcast.com/nominations or send an email to me at [e-mail]. I’d also like to encourage you to sign up for A Better Way’s email update list, which you can do at the bottom of the website homepage: https://abetterwaypodcast.com

I once heard a statement that I’ll never forget: "Our lives should demand a supernatural explanation." That is what I hope this book will do: present testimonies and personal accounts that have Jesus as the only possible explanation, leading you into a deeper relationship with Him. I’d like to invite you into this journey of doing business and life A Better Way.

Grace & Rest,

RYAN HALEY

CHAPTER 1

CRASH AND BURN

I believe that hard work is ungodly.

I know, I know… I probably just dropped an incendiary grenade on many of you who are reading this, and you’re probably shocked and offended by that statement. Fair enough. But before you put (or more likely, throw) this book down in outrage and call for me to be publicly stoned and crucified, please just hear me out first. I promise I will address this, both scripturally and experientially. First, though, I want to give you an overview of my background so you know where I came from and how I arrived at that belief.

Like many who are products of our driven American culture and predominantly legalistic Christian subculture, I grew up with a very high achievement and performance orientation. My mom once said that as a little kid, I would line up my shoes and toys in my room with military precision. I asked Jesus into my heart when I was about 8 years old at the Bible-believing, non-denominational Christian church I grew up in. From a young age, I had a desire to excel in school, sports, and a variety of extracurricular activities. For the most part, I did. I excelled academically, played a variety of sports, played trumpet in jazz band, was a member of National Honor Society, always kept my room clean, and eventually became an Eagle Scout.

By the time I got to high school, I had a pretty ingrained work ethic and high set of expectations for myself. Even though I was attending an academically rigorous college prep school and taking a number of challenging advanced classes, I would get extremely upset whenever I got that one B+ that got in the way of a perfect 4.0 (which somehow always happened!). I was never totally satisfied with my athletic performance, either, especially my cross country and track running times. I always felt like I could have pushed myself harder and gone a little faster—like I always had too much left in the tank at the end of the race.

This relentless, driven attitude seemed to lend itself perfectly to military service. I attended college on a Navy ROTC scholarship and was quickly indoctrinated into another level of Duty, Obligation, and Discipline (what I now refer to as the DOD spirit).

This only increased as time went on, and I was commissioned as a Naval Officer upon graduating college. It ratcheted up another notch when I went to flight school as a student Naval Aviator, and then another after that once I had earned my wings of gold and reported to my first operational squadron as a warfare-qualified SH-60B Seahawk helicopter pilot (flying the Navy’s maritime version of the Army’s H-60 Blackhawk helicopter).

The issue at this point was that I was surrounded with many other driven, intelligent, high-performing people in an extremely performance-driven cultural atmosphere. Far from being consistently well above average compared to most of my peers, I was finding myself consistently below average and constantly feeling inadequate. I felt like I could never measure up to the standard of performance, behavior, professionalism, motivation, and execution that was expected and required.

Worse than all that, by this time I had strayed from my faith and relationship with Jesus. In order to distract myself from the gnawing sense that I was way off track with my life and my spiritual walk, I would spend most of my time zoning out with TV and blacking out with alcohol. At the time, I was deluded into thinking that I was having a good time and enjoying my life. After all, I was a successful young man enjoying the fruits of my labors from working hard most of my life to get to this point: I was a college graduate, a commissioned Naval Officer and helicopter pilot making good money, living in sunny southern California in a beautiful condo I owned, driving a sporty BMW M3, and partying with my old college friends now that I was back in San Diego. From an external perspective, it probably looked to most people like I had it made and was living the dream. But deep down inside, I knew I was becoming more and more empty and dissatisfied.

This all came to a head one afternoon. It was July 31, 2007. I remember that date because it’s my dad’s birthday, and it was about a month before my first scheduled overseas deployment. I was on a routine training flight conducting a practice maneuver called an autorotation in which we simulate engine failure and attempt to land without power. This is a fairly dynamic maneuver but one that I had performed hundreds of times before during training. However, on one particular attempt this day, I got significantly off safe parameters. My airspeed was too slow, and as a result, my rate of descent was too high. Instead of waving off and going around the runway pattern for another pass, I attempted to salvage a bad situation.

In doing so, I made it worse. Much worse. At an altitude of about 100 feet, the other pilot and I both realized something was seriously wrong and we both pulled full power. Unfortunately, by that point, it was too late to stop our precipitous descent, and we hit the ground… hard. So hard that the right main landing gear wheel broke off and hydraulic fluid sprayed my right-side windshield. Innumerable klaxons, warning lights, and cockpit indicators screamed at me, confirming what I already knew: I had just messed up—big-time.

Miraculously, we all walked away from the crash after recovering control of the aircraft and eventually making a safe landing back at home base. I say miraculously for good reason. I was told after the accident by the ranking officer of the safety mishap investigation board that he had run the models and simulations seven ways from Sunday and couldn’t figure out how we survived. Based on data from the onboard computers that recorded the crash, the simulation showed us getting into a state called dynamic rollover in which the rotor’s blades hit the runway and the aircraft violently rolls over on top of its occupants. Suffice it to say, that’s a pretty bad day in a Naval Aviator’s line of work and not something one typically walks away from.

Despite that, the other pilot and I escaped with very minor injuries. The aircrewman in the back had some back and neck injuries, but they were much less severe than they could have been. Just prior to the mishap, his safety harness had been unlocked. Even though the procedure calls for everyone’s harness to be locked before entering the autorotation, in practice, many times the aircrewman will leave it unlocked for greater ease of movement around the cabin, which was the case in this instance. However, just prior to entering the auto, for no apparent reason, he providentially felt an urge to lock his harness, which most likely saved him from much worse injuries than he actually sustained.

Though we were all in much better shape than anyone could have hoped or expected, it was going to be a very long night of exhaustive medical tests, drug and alcohol screenings. Following that, there was an even longer period of shame and rumination on what had just been my single greatest failure in life. To add insult to injury, after the crash, I found out that debris from the very sophisticated—and expensive—electronic and flight equipment from this $30 million weapon system was strewn all over the runway.

This earned me the nickname—or call sign in Naval Aviation parlance—Yardsale: a reference to the kind of epic skiing wipeout wherein one leaves one’s skis, poles, gloves, goggles, and other gear strewn several hundred feet down the mountainside. Despite perceptions propagated by movies like Top Gun, call signs are rarely, if ever, complimentary. Quite the opposite, in fact; they’re usually meant as a form of humiliation to the recipient and derived from ignominious body parts, sexual references, and/or a humiliating incident. Embarrassing call signs or nicknames are like quicksand: the more you struggle against them, the deeper you go and the more you get stuck in it. My recommendation: Just give up the fight and maintain whatever dignity you have left at that point.

Worse than my newfound call sign, however, was the Navy’s eventual decision that my flying days were over. I would no longer be in a flight status; I was permanently grounded. I felt like I had just crashed and burned my entire life. All those years of hoping and dreaming of being a Navy pilot, long hours studying in flight school, the blood, sweat, and tears I had put in to earn my wings, all seemed to amount to nothing but a painful reminder of my life’s greatest failure. This was unquestionably the lowest point of my life. I was face to face with shock, disappointment, failure, and shame because of that failure.

I now believe that a critical part of the reason I had such a deep sense of failure and resultant shame is tied to putting my identity in my performance. I purposefully emphasized the word earn in the last paragraph. If everything of value comes to us because we earn it by our performance and self-effort, then those same things of value can just as easily be taken from us when our performance and efforts are unsatisfactory. To modify an old saying: "Live by performance, die by performance." To be fair, I will be the first to admit that it is absolutely staggering what human beings can accomplish solely from their performance, even apart from a relationship with God. That’s because we are all creators, made in the image of our Creator.

Live by performance, die by performance.

However, even though it may not be as dramatic as a helicopter crash, at some point, we all crash and burn if we’re living by self-effort and our performance. It may be your marriage, your health, your job, your finances, or any number of things. I once heard Bill Johnson (one-time Senior Pastor of Bethel Church in Redding, CA) say something that arrested me and has rung true: "Whatever is initiated by human effort must be sustained by human effort." Therefore, no matter how hard-working, smart, strong, disciplined, or otherwise good you are as a person, if you’re living from your own strength and wisdom, it’s not a matter of if—but when—the bottom falls out under you, just like it did for me in that Navy helicopter. That’s the bad news.

But there’s good news. In fact, it’s nearly too good to be true...

PERSONAL REFLECTION AND PRACTICAL APPLICATION

Learn from my mistake! Don’t wait until you crash and burn something in your own life to get right with yourself and with God. Take honest inventory of who and where you are, and ask yourself if this is who you want to be and where you want to be going. Whether it’s your marriage and family, career, health, personal habits, or anything else, be willing to ask the hard questions and surround yourself with people who can help you in that process. If you already have crashed and burned, just know that God is with you and for you and can turn any setback into a setup if you’ll rest in His grace and perfect love for you. Cry out to Him now; don’t wait any longer!

CHAPTER 2

THE PRODIGAL SON RETURNS

When it comes to doing business and life, God has a better way. We don’t have to rely on and be limited by our own human abilities. As discussed in the last chapter, that sets us up for certain eventual failure in some area of our life and establishes a pattern where it’s "live by performance, die by performance." And at some point, our own strength and abilities will let us down. With the Gospel of Grace, our pattern is live under Grace, die to self.

I know that dying to ourselves may sound painful and sacrificial (and many well-meaning people in church and ministry certainly do paint that picture), but when I got a revelation of God’s incredible Grace, I realized it is actually incredibly liberating. On my own personal journey of discovery, I’ve realized that to live under God’s Grace and die to myself means I’m no longer judged or rewarded according to my effort, work, and performance. I get to live a life of blessing based on the perfect performance and finished work of Jesus.

God has a better way. We don’t have to rely on and be limited by our own human abilities.

As I mentioned in the last chapter, when I was working and flying at my operational Navy helicopter squadron, I never felt like I was living up to the high standards of performance and conduct that were expected of me. I constantly felt inadequate, guilty, and condemned because I didn’t have a good enough attitude, enough motivation, and there was always something I wasn’t doing well enough. Even though I had gone through the training and qualifications—and had my wings to prove it—I somehow never felt like I could do or be good enough.

Unfortunately, I believe most Christians feel the same way in their relationships with God. I know I did in my own Christian walk for many years. I knew of all the Bible stories and miraculous things God did in and through the heroes of the faith but somehow never experienced that same level of supernatural power in my own life, especially the ability to live free from sin and condemnation. Because I was born again and had the Holy Spirit inside me, I had knowledge of good and evil and felt genuine spiritual conviction about right and wrong. I even genuinely wanted to do the right thing (most of the time) but just didn’t seem to consistently have the power to do so.

The Apostle Paul talked about this, too: "For we know that the Law is spiritual, but I am of flesh… not practicing what I would like to do, but I am doing the very thing I hate… for the willing is present in me, but the doing of the good is not. For the good that I want, I do not do, but I practice the very evil that I do not want" (Romans 7:14-15; 18-19 MSG, emphasis own). Even though I may not have been consciously aware of all this at the time, it resulted in a sense of frustration, exhaustion, and failure, which is why the allure and temptations of the world became so appealing to me.

After working so hard for so long both spiritually and practically, by the time I entered college, I was ready to just coast and ride the coattails of my hard work and success in life up to that point. I decided that it was time that I just relax and enjoy myself in this new phase of life. I started to party hearty at the beginning of my freshman year, developing a habit and reputation of consistent, heavy drinking until I blacked out (which would unfortunately last for about the next eight years until and even after my crash). Once I had secured the ROTC scholarship for the next three years of school at the end of my first semester, I even started doing drugs despite the fact that it could get me kicked out of ROTC and school.

Thus began a long, slow drift from God. I basically kicked him out of the Captain’s seat of the aircraft in mid-flight, made myself the Pilot in Command, and departed the runway pattern He had me in. I set out on my own new proverbial course, heading and glide slope for a long time that very easily could—and by all rights should—have made me a literal smoking hole in the ground. But for God’s Grace and (I believe) supernatural protection, that’s exactly where I would’ve ended up. But not just from the helicopter crash. There were literally hundreds of times before (and even some after) the crash that I was driving drunk, which could and should have resulted in the same fate or multiple DUIs at the very least. I was consistently making irresponsible, reckless, and destructive decisions that very well could have cost the lives of many others in addition to my own.

I was in willful rebellion, consistently making choices I at some level knew could have seriously negative consequences but went right on sinning anyway. I honestly have no idea why I was spared disaster so many times and even escaped unscathed from numerous potentially life-altering or life-ending decisions and circumstances. What I can tell you for sure is that it had absolutely nothing to do with my goodness or righteousness. In 2015, I would get a profound revelation of how God’s grace through Jesus’ finished work operates with our faith and belief. But this was 2007 at the time, and I was reprobate and clueless, so this truly was 100% God’s Grace and 0% me or even my faith. Looking back at things now, I clearly see all this as an amazing demonstration of God’s Grace, or unmerited favor, in my life.

This ties back to the earlier point about living under Grace and dying to self, which means I get to benefit from the fact that Jesus lived up to the perfect standard of the Law. It’s something I never could, never can, and never will be able to do on my own merits. That is why it had to be Jesus as the perfect sacrifice to do it on our behalf. I’ve always lived my Christian life knowing that there was no way I could ever earn my eternal salvation apart from simple faith and trust in Jesus as my Savior. When it comes to this life, though, until relatively recently I thought and acted as if my success and God’s ability to bless me was entirely dependant on me. By and large, I think