In this episode, we delve into the life-changing moments that shaped Pastor Cole Fleiks as he reflects on overcoming the fear of failure and embodying his calling. Dr. Chrysandra Brunson dives deep into the profound insights Cole gained as a pastor and leader, navigating doubt and embracing the beauty of God’s intentions. Listen in and be inspired to step out in faith and witness the miracles that follow.
CHRYSANDRA :
Welcome, everyone, to The Calling’s radio show, To All the Dreamers. I’m your radio host, Dr. Cassandra Brunson, and it is such an honor to be with all of you today. You know, at The Calling, we have realized that so many people are afraid to go after the dreams that Jesus has put inside each of our hearts because they are afraid to fail. And that is just plain wrong because if God has given us a dream and we’re not living it out, we are wasting it. And we do not want you or anyone else to die with regret. That’s why at The Calling, we love to inspire, empower, and equip people to, after God’s calling on their lives, treat the best kind of eternal legacy possible to have immediate impact on themselves and their families. We love to do this through so many different avenues, through custom tools, programs, workshops, seminars. but especially through this radio show where we’re able to bring on world-renowned guests to share how they’re going after their God-given dreams and how you can do the same. Today, as no exception, we have the one and only Cole Flex. We are so honored to be able to have you, and welcome to the show.
COLE FLEIKS :
Chrisandra, thanks for having me.
CHRYSANDRA :
Cole, your name does ring a bell to so many of our listeners, but can you just share a little bit about your background and some of the leadership positions that you have held thus far?
COLE FLEIKS :
Absolutely. Well, I’m from Oklahoma. I’m coming to you from Southeast Oklahoma, beautiful Southeast Oklahoma, where I pastor a church called Carlton Landing Community Church. And that is my passion. That’s what I love to do. I love being a local church pastor. And we may get into this a little bit in the next interview later but it’s a unique place it’s only one one church in the town and so we have this wonderful community that’s kind of wrapped around this church and faith kind of comes into everything we do i also run a media company called so we speak so in uh so we speak does all kinds of content and we do podcasts videos writing and our our goal is to think christianly about the world sometimes we say to keep people informed without being conformed And that is such an important thing as we try to think through all this going on in our world and try to live as salt and light in it. Maybe one of the things I’m proud of is is we just started a library in our town. And so I am the chief librarian, head librarian of our little library. And I’ve had a lot of fun doing that. So those are a few things that I do. I’m married to Laura, my beautiful wife. And we have three girls who are four, two and nine months since we have a lot, a lot of fun at our house right now.
CHRYSANDRA :
What an adventure. Cole, we just love being able to go back to the roots of when God was molding you as a child. And can you just share some of the different things that you can look back on and see that God was molding in you the character and experiences to now be doing what you are today?
COLE FLEIKS :
Sure, those experiences are so formative. And my dad is a pastor now, but he wasn’t a pastor when I was a kid. Although I grew up in a really strong Christian home, he became a pastor when I was in high school. So in some ways, I’m not a pastor’s kid, I’m a pastor’s adult. We were pastors together for a little bit, but faith has always been instrumental in our family. Going to church, I grew up with great Christian parents, but at some point realized that you can’t just be a Christian because your parents are Christian. You have to make your faith your own. And for me, when I was in high school, I came to the realization that, you know, if I wasn’t really a Christian, which at that point I really wasn’t, You can do whatever you want. And I thought, wow, you know, as a 15 year old, that sounded amazing. It’s kind of exploring different things, questioning, you know, not not extremely rebellious externally, but really inside trying to figure out what do I think about God? What do I think about all the things that I’ve learned? The Bible, everything. Well, when I was 17, I was going to a Christian school. And one of the things now I always share with Christian school kids is I remember what it was like to go through the motions, to be in church or to be surrounded by Christians and not really believe. And that has always given me a heart. for people that are in that same position. You may be, you know, on the outside, everything looks great, but on the inside, you have doubts or you have struggles or you have things that maybe you haven’t worked out yet. And I just love people that are in that position because I always think God has something in store for them. And that was me as a teenager. And what happened was when I was 17, it was the night of Christmas. I’m asleep in bed after a great Christmas with the family, and I start having this dream. And in the dream, there are all these pictures kind of of great things from my childhood that had to do with So whether that was church or camps or weekend experiences and things that I’d done, people that have made a big impact in my life and they’re going through my head and all of a sudden I kind of sit up in bed and everything stops. And in that moment, kind of in the darkness, I hear this voice. And the voice says, Cole, if you want to be content in life, it will only be through me. So I wasn’t sure at that point what to do with that. I really didn’t know if I thought that God spoke to people today. I didn’t know what was happening. And I’ll be honest, I just I thought I’ll deal with this later. I went back to sleep. But when I woke up the next morning, though, I thought to myself, I think that was God. I really think God is getting my attention. I think he’s calling me to something. And I got down on my knees next to my bed. And I’ll tell you how much faith I had in that moment. I said, you know, I’m going to surrender my life to God. I knew that that’s what I needed to do was surrender, trust in Christ to forgive my sins, start to live for him. But I only had enough faith to say, I will do it for one month. And I’ll see what happens in this month. And if not, I guess there’s like a money back guarantee that I was presuming would be there. And I could say forever. I’ve tried it. I’ve tried it 100 percent and I’ll give it my all. And then I’ll know I’ll either know that this is the real deal or I’ll know that. Yeah, I tried it. I went all in. I gave it everything I had, but it’s not I don’t believe it. That was a pretty tumultuous month for me. This is how God always works. I started reading my Bible. I started praying. I started to really surrender my life to God and do what he wanted. And what happened was about a week. So this was on Christmas break. About a week after that, I’m back at school and I get called in the principal’s office. And the principal sitting there saying, hey, we’re, you know, we’re uncovering this cheating scandal among some of the students. And we want to know everything you know about it. Well, I had completely forgotten, you know, that before break for finals, a buddy of mine and I had taken a test from a teacher and used it on the final. We had cheated on this test. And I hadn’t thought much about it since then. But now here I am this brand new Christian living sold out for the Lord. And I’m confronted with this sin, with this cheating in my life. And unfortunately in the moment I lied about it and said I didn’t know anything about it, kind of got off. went home and I had started the practice of praying every night before I went to bed. And so that night, you know, my head hits the pillow and I’m just going through my day with the Lord, but I have this huge block in my spirit. You know, I can’t, can’t be right with the Lord without doing something about that. This is going to be so catastrophic. I can’t, I’m just going to have to swallow the guilt and move on. So I do that. And for a couple of days, I do that. And each night I lay down and start to pray. And I think, I can’t do this. I cannot pray. I can’t have this relationship I want with God. I don’t deal with this lingering sin in my life. So I thought to myself, I said I was gonna do this 100%. You know, I’m gonna really try it. And what better opportunity to see if God really is who He says He is, than to offer Him something that’s really costly to you. When I went to school the next day, I’d resolved, okay, I’m going to follow God. I’m going to do this. I’m going to answer the call that he’s giving me right now to trust him. And so I’m sitting there in my car, you know, just paralyzed with fear as I think about what I need to do. And for whatever reason, I don’t know when I had memorized this, but in Matthew 16, where Jesus says, whoever wants to come after me, take up his cross, you know, but whoever wants to save his life will lose it. Mm-hmm. Whoever loses his life for my sake will find it. And what good is it for a man who gains the whole world but forfeits his soul? And I certainly didn’t have the whole world in my hands at that moment, but it felt like I did. It really felt like all my hopes and all my dreams and aspirations are kind of here. And then what God’s calling me is over here. And I’ve got to make that choice. And I trusted God. I trusted God because I believed. had committed to and because I thought, if anybody can make good on this promise, God can do it. So I went in, confessed, you know, that I had done it, that I had lied, got suspended from school. And what happened after that was amazing. So this was a couple of weeks after I had surrendered and committed my life to Christ. I’m following him. I’m going what seemed to me like going out on a limb here to trust him. And after I was suspended from school, God just started to do some some pretty cool things in my heart. He started to take away my dependence on things like reputation and achievement and, you know, kind of the resume you carry around with you, all the wonderful things that you’ve done. He took a lot of that away because now I didn’t know what the future would look like with, you know, academically or college or anything else, friendships, you know, that were strained over this. But what God did was he started to rebuild me from the inside and based on Him, based on trusting Him alone. And so in some ways, I don’t know if I would have articulated it quite this way at the time, but in hindsight, I can see that God helped me go from building my life on my own merits, my own achievements, to really building my life on the fact that I’m a forgiven sinner. and somebody who is loved by God in spite of the bad things that I’ve done, not because of the good things that I’ve done. So he brought new friendships, he brought new practices, he brought new confidence in him. And it’s amazing, I blew through the end of the month without even thinking about reevaluating because once you trust God, once you follow him and surrender to him, it is so much better. Spiritually, it is so much more fulfilling to follow him even if things aren’t really falling in line in your life the way you thought you were. I would trade all those things to have God. And that’s what he taught me in that month. But I do remember at some point going back to think about that, kind of reevaluate my month. I guess in some ways now I’m still on that month. It’s just been extended for decades at this point. But I went back to evaluate and all I could think about was that story in Joshua. where the Israelites crossed the Jordan River and, you know, they had to take the step in. The priest had to take the step into the river before it stopped. You know, they really had to go trust God in faith and carry the ark into the river. And when they did, of course, the water stopped and they walked across on dry land. And when they get across, Joshua tells them, you need to go get 12 stones from the river and you need to bring them out and we’re going to set those up as a monument. So that in the future, he says, you know, when people ask you what happened here, you can tell them that the Lord is God and he saved us and he is wonderful and he’s provided for us. And so I can remember in a journal at the time tracing, I think at the time it was like one of those little iPods that we don’t even have anymore. But, you know, I traced that around as a standing stone and wrote that verse in there. And that forever, I mean, that’s the way I really came to own my faith. It’s the way I came to know God. God through Christ. But it also is just this testament in my life. Everything I do now basically flows from that. I trusted God and he’s proved himself true a million times over. That was the first big way he did it, but that’s never stopped. I mean, he’s proven himself over and over.
CHRYSANDRA :
We love it, Cole. We need to take a short break, but everyone, you are listening to the one and only Cole Fakes, and we will be right back. Liquid Acre is the world’s first crypto to land marketplace, allowing you to own fractional acreage through non-fungible acres. Don’t let the dream of owning a piece of the trillion dollar real estate market slip away. Visit liquidacre.com to invest in real survey land in seconds and start building your real estate legacy. Twist and shout with Lee & Co. They are the premier oldies band delivering the rock and roll vibes you’ve been missing. Great songs, great memories. Book them at LeeAndCo.com. Have you heard you have an opportunity to come with The Calling and I to Greece this fall? You don’t want to miss it. Go to The Calling Nonprofit’s Instagram to find out all the details.
ADVERTISER :
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CHRYSANDRA :
At Ignite Brilliance Coaching, you will get 34 years of science teaching, a decade of university-level instruction, and over 10 years of instructional coaching to empower educators with the tools, mindset, and confidence to thrive. Contact Ignite Brilliance Coaching on Facebook. We are back. Thank you for listening to all the dreamers radio show. I’m your radio host, Dr. Cassandra Brunson, founder and CEO of The Calling. It’s such an honor to be with all of you today and to have the one and only Cole Fakes. And Cole, you were just sharing right before we went to break. this story and vulnerability of being able to trust the Lord as a teen. And Cole, on this journey of just being able to take that situation and now be just a world-renowned kingdom leader and pastor, what is one story that you can think of just facing a Goliath and not knowing how you are going to be able to make it through to the next season?
COLE FLEIKS :
Well, I want to talk a little bit about about calling because that it’s been that kind of story for me. I think everybody listening has a calling on their life. I think everybody has things that God has in the future for them. Sometimes you know it and you’re pursuing it. And sometimes he just he he shows you one step at a time as you pursue it. And as a pastor, that’s been really big for me. I think your sense of calling, your sense that God has has brought you into this is the thing that helps you when you’re in those kind of David and Goliath moments is, all right, I’m not sure how I got here, but I know who got me here and I know who’s going to get me through. And I want to talk a little bit about my calling because I think it might be encouraging to others that. So when I was in college, after I’d become a Christian and started to grow, God had really shaped me, but I had no idea what I was going to do next. And, you know, I didn’t know I was math major at that point. And so I know that won’t resonate with most of our listeners here, but that just tells you there’s not a normal path from math degree to pastor. But that’s where I was. And I was I was wanting to know what God had for me in my life. And it’s interesting because the two times in my life that God has really spoken have been these two moments. And the rest of the time, it’s much more like you read the Bible, you put it into practice, you listen to wise counsel, you make a pro and con list and say, all right, the pros outweigh the cons, let’s do it. And we think God will bless it. But God made this really, really clear to me, again, in that calling, When I was in college, I was working at a camp, a Christian summer camp, just having a blast. And I remember I was with our students at the camp and just had a moment kind of standing there while they were doing an activity. And I felt like God just leaned in, just kind of pressed in on me. It was kind of a weird experience. On the one hand, I knew that it was God. But on the other hand, it was really terrifying. It felt like I was going to be crushed or something because of this heavy presence of the Lord. And again, I hear this voice that says, mouthpiece. And I’m like, no idea, no context for that. No idea what that would mean, just mouthpiece. And so I kind of stood there and thought about it for a minute, but of course you’re busy. So I go off to the next thing and that morning I set aside some prayer time to ask God what he meant by that. And what he revealed over the next few days is that he wanted me to do a couple of different things. First, he wanted me to give my life to him in ministry. And I had no idea what that would look like at the time, if that would be pastoral ministry or nonprofit or whatever it would be. And I’ve done multiple things in that calling since then, but I knew that that’s one of the things that he wanted me to do. The second and third thing though, I think maybe are a little more interesting. I felt like he wanted me to read through the prophets, Isaiah, Jeremiah, and Ezekiel, not as just historical, interesting people and not just devotionally, you know, to pick out little gems for my own encouragement, but to read them as examples of people who are following God’s call in very difficult circumstances.
ADVERTISER :
Mm-hmm.
COLE FLEIKS :
Certainly circumstances I haven’t faced. And I’m thankful for that. But they’re a model for us of what does it look like to follow God, to answer his call, to do what he wants you to do, to say what he wants you to say. Even when you like in Jeremiah’s case, he never sees any real earthly success. I mean, he gets Baruch. This is one convert at the beginning and one at the end. But otherwise, it’s just tough sledding the entire time. And so I read those and they became kind of exemplars to me. of what it means to follow God faithfully, even if you don’t see the results that you want to see. Then the third thing was there were some sins in my life that God said, I’m about to take those out immediately. And there was this freedom that came from following that call where God did release me from some temptations. Now there’s all kinds of other things, you know, that just like anything else, you have to put it to death every day in your life. And yeah, say no and resist temptation. But there were some things that he just really set me free. Some of it was just with my tongue, the way that I talked about others, the kind of language that I used. God freed me from a lot of things that I had really been working on, but had not been making any progress. And so he did those things in that calling. And that shaped my ministry now, like without a shadow of a doubt, when I have difficult days personally in the church, in ministry, whatever it is, I go back to that. And I think, oh, you know, God has been so faithful to me. He’s called me. He’s assured me. He’s laid out the path before me. And he never promised me that it was going to be easy. In fact, I think he set me up at the beginning to think there’s going to be some really hard moments here, but it’s going to be worth it.
CHRYSANDRA :
Cole, on the flip side, when you have been able to come to these different barriers and it seemed like you needed a miracle, what’s one of your most favorite stories of God doing the seemingly impossible to be able to get you through the Jordan River, per se?
COLE FLEIKS :
One of the things is where we are now and this wonderful church that we’re in, in this really beautiful place. We’re in a town called Carlton Landing, which is in Southeast Oklahoma. And I had come back in the middle of COVID. I was working on my dissertation. I was trying to finish my dissertation again in one of those kind of liminal seasons, not knowing exactly what’s next and struggling a little bit to think what’s the future of ministry and church and everything had been canceled, you know, People were gathering like no church is hiring, you know, in those moments. And everybody’s thinking how what’s what’s life going to look like after this? Well, I was I was certainly wondering that and wondering what God had. And I get a phone call. And it’s from a friend who had been in a men’s Bible study that I had taught years before that, who said, we’ve got this wonderful little church and we want you to come see it. We want you to come preach at this church. So we came out and the church at the time was meeting in a tent, like a revival tent. Love it. 50 people outside in a tent. And you know what? We just fell in love with the people. We absolutely fell in love with the people. And it was that conviction of, we will come do this no matter what. You know, hadn’t talked at all about what the job would look like, anything. We just knew in that moment, we went from no idea to what God has to this kind of, what sounded at the time, it kind of like an outlandish, we’d have to move and never been there before, didn’t know these people. like home, you know, you just immediately love the people who are there. And, you know, we needed God’s guidance there. We needed God’s provision there. We actually, we moved out to this town to pastor this church a week and a half after we got married. And so it was like newlyweds, here we are. What’s God going to do? And he’s been so faithful. We’ve been here more than five years now, and he’s grown our church and our community. He’s bonded us together. But mostly, I think the thing I look back on is he’s taught us what real community looks like. And coming out of that season where I think I think one of the things that we all learned during COVID was that. It’s really hard when you’re not around the people that you’re used to being around. It’s really difficult when you’re not doing as much face to face. And, you know, that looked different for everybody during that time. But I think one of the takeaways for me was how important community, especially in the church, is, you know, when we get the chance to worship together, to love each other, to care for each other, bear each other’s burdens, how important that is for us. And so that was a big moment of. stepping out again and trusting that God was going to do something. And he’s proven himself a million times. And so that that may not seem like a miracle. But of course, when you’re wondering what’s next, anything that you see God’s hand in was it was miraculous for us. And what he’s done in this community is miraculous as well.
CHRYSANDRA :
Oh, we love it so much. And we should be saying Dr. Cole fakes this whole time. But Dr. Cole, we are coming up towards the end of our show. But there are a few things that we want to make sure that we hear from you. And one of those things is that there is someone tuning in right now and they are afraid to go after what God’s called them to afraid to take that next step. next step, what would be your encouragement to them, piece of wisdom to be able to know that God is faithful and there’s no time to be wasted to live out God’s calling on their lives. And then we want to hear all that’s up and coming for you and your incredible ministry.
COLE FLEIKS :
Well, I want to share one of my favorite verses for that person who’s in that situation. I’ve already shared one that’s really meaningful to me about saving your life versus losing your life. It’s always better to just trust God with the results. But one of my favorite verses in the New Testament is Romans 5.1 that says, therefore, having been justified by faith, we have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ. And then it goes on to say, and we have access by his grace into his presence. I was meditating on this not too long ago and doing a little study on it. And that access piece, we’ve been justified by Christ. We’ve been made right with God. And we have peace with him. That means we’re whole with him. We’re not what we will be. We all feel that every day. We physically, spiritually, we’re growing.
COLE FLEIKS :
and we’re looking forward to what God has. But in terms of how God sees us spiritually, we are whole, we are at peace with Him, and we have access. So to the person who’s wondering, you know, what’s God doing here? Or should I step out and trust Him? go to God, work through that with God. You have access. It’s like, it’s like the private keypad code into a room full of God’s presence and love and design. And too often we try to make these decisions by ourselves, you know, thinking that if we do the right thing, God will bless us and love us more or something like that. Or if we don’t, you know, it’s going to be the total wrong path. We have access to God, his complete wisdom, his complete love for us. He cherishes time with us. And so I would encourage you make that decision with God, go to him, trust him, step out in faith with him because he loves you.
CHRYSANDRA :
Love it. Love it, Cole. And share how listeners can tune in to be able to come visit, to tune into your incredible sermons. Come visit the amazing library that you are the librarian of. Where can we do that at, Cole? And is there anything up and coming in this season?
COLE FLEIKS :
yeah so the easiest thing to do is just to follow us on social media uh the library company is what we call we modeled it after ben franklin’s library company in philadelphia ours is called the library company of carlton lanning so you can follow us on instagram you can go to our website the library.company and then i write and podcast and do interviews at so we speak and so you can follow so we speak so we speak.com we have a sub stack we we do podcasts and on youtube and the one thing and and we have a a mutual friend here, Dr. Jerry Pattengale. He was just on our podcast, had a wonderful interview. Every time I’m with him, I learn something from him, usually multiple things from him. But we’re talking about his new book, The Gospels. And for those that are listening that haven’t seen it yet, it is a beautiful book. It’s full of art through the ages that tell the gospel story. His writing and telling the story is wonderful. And we are giving away a copy of that book to go along with our interview with him. And so, Chrisandra, I know we both know and respect him.
CHRYSANDRA :
Yes.
COLE FLEIKS :
And have learned a lot from him. We’re giving away a copy of his book on our Instagram page at So We Speak.
CHRYSANDRA :
We love that. So, you guys, you have a chance to be able to win one of Dr. Jerry Pattengill’s incredible books. And more importantly, to be able to connect with Dr. Cole Fakes. And Dr. Cole, thank you for just… giving Jesus your wholehearted yes and challenge everyone to pull over, follow Cole, follow this incredible library and go visit if you’re going through Oklahoma or are looking for an adventure, go to this incredible town and just challenge everyone to think of what Paul wrote to us in Ephesians 4.1, as he said, as a prisoner of the Lord, then I urge you to live a life worthy of the calling you have received. Till next time, dreamers, keep dreaming big.
