Pastor Mike Hayes & Dr. Jeffrey Garner, Real Happy | The Jeff Crilley Show

On this episode of The Jeff Crilley Show, Jeff sits down with Pastor Mike Hayes, founder of Covenant Church in Dallas, and Dr. Jeffrey Garner, speaker and scholar of spiritual formation, to discuss their bestselling co-authored book Real Happy. The conversation traces the book's origin to a spring day on the Mount of Beatitudes in Israel, where Pastor Hayes felt called to write about happiness despite not feeling happy himself at the time. Dr....

Show Notes

What if the word "blessed" in the Beatitudes was never meant to sound religious—and actually just means "happy"? That single mistranslation, Pastor Mike Hayes and Dr. Jeffrey Garner argue, has shaped centuries of Christian teaching in ways that moved people further from joy rather than closer to it.

Pastor Mike Hayes founded Covenant Church in Dallas and has led it for 50 years. Dr. Jeffrey Garner is a scholar of spiritual formation who started as Hayes's ghostwriter before being "unghosted" as full co-author. Together they wrote Real Happy: Jesus' Surprising Path to Genuine Joy.

In this conversation they cover how the book was born on the Mount of Beatitudes in Israel, why "poor in spirit" doesn't endorse poverty but invites emptiness God can fill, the poppy-versus-lily translation and its connection to Jesus's attack on worry, why happiness is an inside job that can't be purchased or pursued, and how serving others breaks the self-focus cycle that feeds depression. Hayes also references Harvard's 80-year study on happiness—and explains what it leaves unanswered.

imrealhappy.com

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Coming up next on The Jeff Crilley Show, this is all about happiness. We're gonna be talking to the coauthors of this bestselling book. It's called Real Happy, their incredible journey just ahead. Many are predicting that the worst is yet to come, which is unfortunate, said one person here. Until now, they've enjoyed the reputation of being the nation's icebox. Watched a burglar in his home this morning by webcam. As a journalist of over twenty five years, stories are what make my world turn. Reporting live from The Dallas Newsroom tonight, Jeff Crilley, Fox four news. But in 2008, I took the jump from my familiar life and started a PR firm from my home. We're talking about anyone with a camcorder like the one I'm using becomes a television network. We started slowly growing the company and we now have over a 100 clients and we've branched into the world of live digital broadcasting. I now own eight different TV studios and have a huge team. And the stories that I now get to share are sometimes the most important of my life. Life has a funny way of coming around full circle. This is The Jeff Crilley Show. So I grew up during the seventies, and I remember during the seventies, it was a kid, life is not a box of chocolates. You're not promised happiness. You go to work for Ford Motor Company, spend forty years grinding it out, and you get a gold watch at the end of a long career. And, these days, everybody is seeking happiness. But, what does it mean to be truly happy? To talk about that today, Pastor Mike Hayes and Doctor. Jeffrey Garner. They're the co authors of this amazing best selling book, it's called Real Happy. Gentlemen, thanks for coming on the show. Thank you for having us. Nice to be here. Well, I want to start with you, Mike, and he gave me permission to call on Mike and I'm just going to call you Jeff. Mike, you were I watched an interview you did on another network and you were talking about there was a time in your life when you weren't truly happy. Right. Share. Well, I think that's one of the reasons I am so appreciative of the understanding that came with the research that we did to write this book. The way it came about was interesting, Jeff. I was in Israel and I took about a 100 pilgrims with me. It was not my first trip. And I finished speaking on the beatitudes up on the Mount Of Beatitudes in the North Of Galilee. And that day was a spring day. There were beautiful poppies, which is pictured on the front of the book. We'll talk about that in a minute. Blooming everywhere. And that day I brought out something that I hadn't before which was at the end of the beatitude teaching. There were some disciples of John the Baptist who showed up and John was in prison. And John the Baptist was a great prophet but he was hurt and bitter. And I'll tell you why. Because his question he sent his followers with was cynical. Ask Jesus if he's really the one we're looking for or should we look for someone else? That's a that's a hurt man. Jesus, you're doing great. I'm languishing in prison and this is not fair. And Jesus said, look, tell John what you've seen. No one knew better than John who Jesus really was. But they said, Jesus said, tell them the blind are seeing, the deaf are hearing. It's wonderful. And they turned on their heel to go and tell him and before they were out of earshot, they turned back and looked and Jesus said, by the way, this is what I added that day, the personal beatitude. Jesus said, by the way, blessed is he, which the word blessed means happy, we learned. Happy is the one that's not offended by me. That was a personal one for John. So there was a real there was a real brokenness. There was a thing. I talked about offense and how deadly it is. And when I finished, people were milling around, some were picking a poppy as a something to put in their book. And I felt this inner directive. I want you to write a book about happiness. I'd written books before but never about happiness. And to be honest, I didn't think I was the guy to do it. I was pastoring a church here in Dallas. I was it was doing well. I had a great family. I had everything that should make you really happy. I wasn't really happy. I know what it feels like to be depressed and to be anxious and to not know why and and to and to kind of feel like the song is this all there is. Then if it is, let's just keep dancing. This then this breakthrough came and the greatest breakthrough in this book is that I thought that happiness was trite to God. I thought he was way too big and serious about problems. I didn't know he was really invested in and interested in us being happy, really happy. And that's the breakthrough. Alright. Jeff, how did you guys meet? How did you collaborate in this book? We've met several times over the course of our life. I think the first moment, he was doing a Mike and some pastors were doing a conference on the West Coast and they wanted to use our church building. And I did I knew of him, but I didn't I didn't have a relationship with him. And I thought, well, I'll just hang out in the back and kind of watch what's going on. And when you get to know Mike, you'll get to know one of the one of his great gifts that he has is is his ability to kind of look into you and speak maybe prophetically, but speak life to something in this kind of dormant, and it's waiting to to surface and spring forth. And so he just says, hey, I I just can I pray for you? So he prayed for me and he said, hey, I feel like you're supposed to be writing, which I knew, like I knew, you know that you know what you're supposed to do and I knew I'm supposed to be. So I was always writing, but I never was publishing. I was just writing all the time. I loved writing. And he then he stopped and he goes, no, you write all the time. I think you need to start publishing. And I was like, this is a man of God. He knows things. He's talking to the man upstairs. And that was really my first introduction, so I was endeared to him. And then in 2000, it was about 2016, he says, hey, he tells me about this idea that he has, what's on his heart. And so he asks me if I'll help him write it. So I wrote, I was helping him kind of as a ghost writer, just kind of come along and write. And then we kind of sat on that for a while, and in '22, he says, he calls me up, he says, I just feel like this is supposed to be something we're doing together. And I wanna unghost you. So that's what happens and that's what happened and that was kind of our journey together and then through that time we've become more like, I would say more like brothers. This is the older brother that I never had and he claims that I'm the younger brother that he never had. So we really have this close relationship. I feel like God brought him in my life at a time when I was at just at the absolute bottom to speak life into me. And then he is he cheers me on, he, you know, so I and I feel like I'm we're in this covenant relationship for life. Mhmm. You know? We're gonna put up the book cover on the screen and it's a beautiful book and you mentioned the poppy. Let's talk about that, Mike. You know, this is not one of the serious ones, but there are ways that the Bible through the centuries had been translated, they miss it a little bit or there's even agenda to change something. So in the scripture that's famous, Jesus is quoted as saying consider the lily that God clothes it like Solomon was never clothed. The issue with that is it's the word in in the original language is not lily. It's poppy. Lilies weren't in Israel. Poppies were in Israel. It's the state flower. And so the reason we change that is because the verse is really consider the poppy and why is that important? Because they were surrounding Jesus as he spoke. He probably picked one and said look at this. Because here's the thing, the other side of the message of consider the poppy, God takes care of it. The other side of that is Jesus on the other half of the sermon just attacks worry. Because that's that's the launching place is consider this poppy. And then Jesus just goes after worry. Can you add an inch to your stature by worry? Can you change one circumstance because you worry? Jesus just hammers worry. So, point is, and it's made in the book, you cannot be in worry and be happy at the same time. Mhmm. It's not possible. So, you're gonna have to have one and give up the other. And, I choose to be happy instead of worry. Well, and and we also live in a society where everybody's comparing themselves to the picture perfect image that their friend is putting on Facebook. We don't see the time they went to Cabo and the rain was coming down. We see the beautiful sunset. Do you think we live in a society where people are chasing something they can never get? You know, part of the American dream or the pitch that we're given is the life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. And I think happiness, know, something that Mike and I really talk about in this and the subtitle of the book is Jesus, a surprising path to genuine joy, is that happiness is not something you pursue. It's something that ensues, right, from your life. If you're following this path, or if you're following Christ in this path of, you know, the eight happy attitudes, oracles of poor in spirit, you know, the the the pure in heart. If you're following that, happiness is just gonna come. It's gonna be there and you're not chasing this mirage, which is what we tend to do. You know, if if I only had this car, then I would be happy and then you get it and it lasts about couple weeks or maybe right when dry when when buyers are more sets in, but it's just a little and then it's fleeting and then it's gone And then you got it, you're chasing the next thing and the next thing when what we see Jesus offering is that it doesn't matter if you're in a state of mourning, grieving, can be happy in that state because the happiness that I am offering you is not fleeting. It's something that comes from within you. No matter what you're going through or what you're facing, it's something that I bring through my presence into your life. And this is the thing, we're like, you don't chase happiness, you know, it's something that comes into your life. I want you to both weigh in on this, the importance of gratitude and how you start your day. Millions and millions of Americans wake up, are sleep deprived, they wake up with, Oh no, it's Monday, I've got all these meetings. They are waking up in kind of this state of anxiety. Is there some benefit to just waking up and thanking God for another day on the planet? No doubt. Psychiatrists and behavioral scientists have proven that if you give what one writer says, a three minute break to all of your concerns and worries, you can set the tone for the whole day. If you'll take the first three minutes of the day and exercise gratefulness and review all the reasons you have to be happy. Because one of the things Jeff was just touching on that we've really figured out in in writing this book is that happiness is absolutely an inside job, Jeff. It's it doesn't come from external. Yes. There's no external purchase or discovery or relationship or whatever. Even a marriage. You say, well, could that be right? Because I have this wonderful marriage and that's why I'm happy. Then you've internalized that because you have enough sense to know. Yes. I have more than a person with a body or or hair or whatever. She or he is in me. Yes. This is an is a real relationship. Happiness is from the inside. Alright. Jeff, I want you to add to that. When I think of the, like all the things that we tend to pursue, one of the things we say, it's like one of the first points we make in the book is that you have to make room. You have to make room for it. The image that I have when I say that is, if you wanna let the sun sun shine in, you go over, you open the drapes, and it floods in. You don't have to force the sun in. You don't have to force the you just open up and make room for it. I think that's the nature of happiness is, it's gonna flood into our lives and into our hearts. The gratitude piece that you were referencing is, is the response to what is already there. The goodness that that breath, what did I do deserve that breath? How did I, did I earn that? It's a gift and that breath keeps coming until the day that I'm taken from here. So whether it's being grateful for the breath, a glass of water, a friendship, this moment with both of you, what did I entitlement destroys that when I think I've earned this and you get but the moment that I open up my hands and I have this open handed posture and I make room to recognize that I'm sitting in a moment that I never never never deserved. What a gift. Yeah. Yes. And it changes my posture. And then all of a sudden, I'm like, like, I'm getting chills right now. This is great. Life is great. Come on. Who doesn't want this, Jeff? Yeah. I'm talking with Jeff, but I'm Jeff. But I'm not Jeff. But I don't feel left out. Alright. So, I'm gonna go on a tangent and I want you to just go with me on this. So, if Ringo Starr and Paul McCartney were here right now and I asked them about Beatlemania, they would be bored with Beatlemania. If I asked them about their childhood, before they had any money at all, nobody knew who they were, they would their eyes would light up and they would talk about days before they were famous and wealthy and had all the trappings of life. And I remember when I was a child, I came down to visit my grandmother in Ennis. I had my father was a pastor, we were broke, but they'd let us loose at nine in the morning and say, see you at sunset, and we were so happy. Were just kinda running the town, you know, buying our little things from the Piggly Wiggly. Do you remember? But, I think there's some there's something profound there that you know we society sets us up to want fame, fortune, the mansion, the jet, but some of the most miserable miserable people on the planet are the wealthiest people on the planet. Why don't you both weigh in on that? Well, I think when you first of all, a lot of wealthy people, some people do, but when is enough enough really? And the pursuit of happiness if it's in the money department, then have you ever there's a lot of people who set goals. I wanna have this many million, but has anybody ever set a goal and said, okay, when I get here, that's enough. I can live my life that I'm going to. But quickly, and I want Jeff to comment on this as well. But in the book, the first realization, he was just talking about making room. I'm not picking on the translators of scripture through the years and the centuries, but Jeff's scholarship and his brilliance in all that has brought me much understanding and information. The first beatitude is one of the most misunderstood by in Christianity. Here's the way it's translated into English. First of all, they use blessed are because that sounds really religious. Blessed are. But it's the word in Greek, is really happy. The first beatitude is the most misunderstood because they do build. And the first one is here's the way it's translated. Blessed are the poor in spirit for theirs is the kingdom of of God. Now, there are major religions that have taken that and built major doctrines of poverty on that. There is holiness in poverty. There is there is good in lack. You shouldn't have stuff. Bad translation of that first one. I'm not saying go out and seek money, but here's what Jesus really said if you properly translate it. Happy, really happy are those who create a void. It's it's literally the word in the original void or empty. Happy are those who offer up an empty place that I can fill. It has nothing to do with money and wealth and the lack thereof. It is give me some room. You can't fill yourself with stuff and not allow any room for real happiness. That's beautiful, Jeff. Isn't that beautiful? It's so beautiful. I think one of my favorite images of this is, you know, Jesus standing in the water in his baptism, And the scripture says, the heavens were opened, and the spirit like a dove descends. And then there's this booming voice. And if you grew up in that world or that culture, the booming voice, God was this terrifying, you know, we call it the numinous, this fascinating yet terrifying terrifying power or force. Yes. And you never would imagine God to speak booming from the sky, anything but get your butt in gear, buddy. Right? And yet, what we have in that moment, this is my son. I love him. He brings me great joy. Yes. A God that is happy. That is joyful. And what has Jesus done? He just stepped into the water. He's not performed a miracle, raised up a disciple, preached a major sermon. He just got in the water. And I think that that image for me, we're talking about making room, and just showing up and saying, here I am. And allowing that presence, not because I've done something perfectly, I've lived my life perfectly, I'm this or I'm that, or I achieved this or that. It's just being able to let God revel in me, and in that reveling in me, enjoying me, I experience joy. And I'm able to show up and live out of that. So the the making room, whether it's making room and the brokenness of loss, the passing of a loved one, like we can't experience what I'm what what we're saying here is Jesus shows up and he basically offers this counter cultural, counterintuitive path to happiness that none of us could have ever imagined. He says, the way that I'm offering you happiness, you could actually be grieving and experience a joy that's inexplicable. It defies modern convention, modern think the way that we tend to think because you'll experience my presence as you're grieving in a way that you would never have anticipated. You can't earn this, get to it, but I show up and I comfort you in a way where you experience joy at the same time. Yes. As you're experiencing sorrow and sadness. So it's this beautiful picture of, I'm not, say it like this, it's not happiness in the absence. Take this pill, it's not in the absence of your sorrow, but it's happiness in the presence through the sorrow. And that is real. It's authentic. It's not fake. And that's what we're offered. This is so beautiful. We're gonna, you guys are the popular guests of many, many podcasts. We're gonna put one on the screen. You it strikes me that you you both have the heart of a teacher. I mean, you love to educate people and some of the things that you're saying right now, I've never heard before and my dad was a minister. How did so many people miss it? Are you asking us? I'm asking you. How many I think, you know, of course, I'm gonna let I'll let Mike weigh in on this because I know he's thought through this a lot. But I think a lot of people miss it because we're living in a world where we're just force fed whatever somebody gets up and says. So if the person up there speaking is speaking from their own shame and their own guilt, one of my professors was a Harvard professor and he also taught at the seminary that I was at. And he said, you know, within thirty minutes of listening to a preacher, I could absolutely diagnose his psychological problems. Wow. Because it just comes out. Yeah. And I think that's what we have a lot. We have a lot of unhealthy people that are continuing to pass on the unhealthy and they're not really thinking, opening up the scripture and really thinking through it or asking the tough questions of it. And so we get kind of force fed that and then we live in somewhat of a, our world right now is very much hypnotic. We just, they feed us this and we just kind of go through the motions. So, don't think we're being really for, really our eyes are being opened up to think. Mike? You know, I would use this example, Jeff. The you have a nice suit on, fit you well. I don't know where you got it or what size it is, but it's it's perfect. Okay. My analogy would be because I'm not gonna vilify or demon anybody, but we've really gotten some things messed up about God's intention in the way the scriptures are taught. So if you're a tailor and you have a pattern and Jeff comes in and says, want a suit and it's a 44 regular, Then I have a pattern for that. But what if I made the second suit from the first suit and the third suit from the second suit and the fourth suit from the third suit. Right. By the time I got to the tenth suit, it wouldn't fit anybody. Mhmm. Because I'm not returning to a pattern. I'm replicating what I've been given. Now, do that for two thousand years, and it's almost like that game we play at party games. You tell somebody something whispered around the room. Yeah. By the time he gets back to you, he's not even close to what you originally said. Right. So without demonizing anyone, we've just really missed the boat on the way some things are translated. And it has given and I think the devil is really happy about it because we've ended up with this angry, frustrated God. And the Bible seems to me like a book where God is just like, what is your problem? And we are like, I can never be good enough. So there's a we're we're broken. So, we gotta get back to the original. And that's what this effort is. We have about three minutes left. I wanna open up another subject and I'm speaking for me. When you're feeling bad about yourself, helping somebody else somehow takes your mind off your own problems. That's why, you know, my father fed homeless people in the basement of his church. Just me serving food and being of service, talk about the importance of giving back and taking your own troubles and putting them off the side for a minute. The one beatitude that we kind of walked through that addresses this is, happy are those who hunger and thirst for righteousness, for they shall be filled. And righteousness, the idea of righteousness is both being in a right way of seeing God and a right, it's both vertical and horizontal. Yes. That when we're doing right by the world, there's a certain happiness with that, right? When we're aligned with, like you're mentioning your father, you know, passing out food from the church basement. But I've experienced that as well. The most crazy thing. You go out and you do something beautiful for someone else and you walk away and you almost feel like, I got more out of this than they did. Right? Pastor? Well, I think that the issue is for all of us, and this is what psychologists, psychiatrists, and people that are in a field that I'm not expert in. So I'm not criticizing anyone. And as I say, I've dealt with depression. I know what anxiety feels like. I've been in a place in my life before where I wasn't happy. My issue was shame. Floating shame. Didn't have to be about something you've done wrong. It's just something you suspect you must have. Because I don't know why God's so ticked, but there's something I've done that he's upset about always. Psychiatrists tell us that one of the greatest reasons for depression is overemphasis on ourselves. And that's what happens. We start to spiral in on ourselves and our every thought becomes about ourselves. It's like the guy I heard about that sat down in the restaurant to with a long lost friend, and he talked about nothing but himself for two hours. Solid. And then finally said, listen, please. Forgive me. I've talked about nothing but myself. What do you think about me? So, I think besides the magic of the feeling you get in your heart for feeding someone that's hungry, that needs it, that's obviously medicine. But it's also, it's not just getting yourself and your mind off your own troubles, but it is, because we do way too much of it. Let me give you both a chance to give final thoughts. Why don't you start, Jeff? I think, as an example, a person watching this right now, you don't need to take a 12 part course. Like, right now, taking a deep breath, being present with that, recognizing that God's in that moment with you, and just opening yourself up for just a little bit of happiness from God that you didn't have to earn work for that will get you going down the pathway, the surprising pathway of joy that's there for you. That's what I'd like to leave somebody with today is that right where you are watching right now, you can just open up your heart, pull the drapes back and just let the flood of light come of God's presence come rushing into your heart, smiling at you, saying to you, we can get you through my presence to where ultimately where you're meant to be, full of joy. That's beautiful. Mike? You know, Harvard University just finished a study that's the longest in history about happiness. John F Kennedy was in Harvard as a student when they started this. They just finished it about three years ago, and there was a book written about it. I read the book because I was grabbing everything about happiness. When I'm gonna synthesize the book into one sentence. Those 1,500 men they studied for eighty years, those who had a strong family structure and good close friends tended to be the happiest. At the end of the book, that's what it was and I wanted to say, duh. Could have saved you some money. Yeah. Saved it. So what do you do when you don't have that? I've got an absentee or messed up broken family and I don't really feel like I have close friends. So there's no chance for me. No. That's that's they did a good job telling us what we already knew. But how am I gonna get there if I don't have that? And that's the magic of what Jesus taught in this book. Mhmm. Is because there are broken people and there are look, stuff doesn't go. I I went through on another time, Jeff, when we come. I wanna talk to you about the hell that Jeff and I went through personally. From family to health issues to marriages to other things in the midst of writing a book about happiness. Wow. And the irony becomes you're not ever gonna get everything in your life and everybody's life you love just right in order for you to be happy. So, you better figure out how to be happy right along with whatever else life is dealing out to you. Alright, I think we do need to have you get back and have a part two and you're gonna have to share the story about how you got a seat at a booked restaurant because the owner likes Sam Elliott. That's called a teaser. Alright, we're gonna end with the website which is i'mrealhappy.com. Pastor Mike Hayes and Doctor. Jeffrey Garner, thanks for coming on the show. Thank you Jeff. You bet. That's it for now. We'll see you next time.