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Welcome to 'Changed' a podcast celebrating transformative encounters with Jesus Christ. Each episode unfolds powerful testimonies of profound life changes, providing inspiration for your spiritual journey. Join our community, drawing strength and encouragement to deepen your relationship with God. Witness the irrefutable evidence of lives dramatically changed by His love. We're here to inspire hope, reinforcing God's relentless pursuit, and sparking the desire to seek a life profoundly transformed. Let's chase after God together. Your journey to deeper faith starts here.
Brent Stone (00:00.522)
Welcome to the Change Podcast. My name is Brent Stone and I'm here with one of my good friends, Michael Scholes. And today is a little bit different. If you've tuned into previous episodes where I've had Michael on here, he has been interviewing me well today. We're going to ask him about the experience that Jesus changed his life in. And he has an incredible story and it's.
It's over the course of many years. And so I'm just gonna let him roll. And then when he gets to a point where he feels like we can pause, I'll ask the next thing. But I'm only looking for two questions. What was the transformative experience where Jesus left you changed? And then the second is, how have you walked out that change since? And so I think Michael may end up answering all of that in one shot, but we'll see. Hey, Michael, thank you for being on.
Michael Schulz (00:50.742)
We'll see. Absolutely, it's awesome to be here. Fantastic. Hey, so, okay.
Brent Stone (00:55.382)
Hey, take it away.
Michael Schulz (01:00.709)
So I have an interesting testimony in my encounter. I've had multiple encounters with Jesus and they've happened in different places. So I'm gonna give you a really, really brief synopsis of my early encounter, and then I'll move into kind of the latter encounter. So my first encounter, I have to say this because I'm from St. Louis, Missouri.
St. Louis, Missouri is a predominantly very, very strong Catholic part of the country. And so I was raised Catholic, and so I was baptized as a baby, all this stuff. And so all the traditional Catholic stuff, so very religious. My parents weren't, we weren't crazy religious, but we, you know, we were church going people and you know, my parents are amazing examples of Jesus to me throughout the years. But so my mom...
Michael Schulz (02:03.862)
In the early to mid-70s during the Jesus movement, the Catholic Church had a moment of empowerment by the Holy Spirit. So there was a charismatic move inside of the Catholic Church. My mom got caught up in this charismatic move. So my mom was baptized in the Holy Spirit, you know, moving those circles. Well, she felt like the Catholic Church wasn't serving her.
with regards to that experience, with regards to those things. So she was seeking out for more. So she went to this little four-square Pentecostal church on Wednesday nights around the corner. It was literally around the corner from us, maybe three blocks from where I grew up. And when I say little, I mean there's probably 20 people in the congregation. Well, they were having a revival, and I'm nine and a half.
I just happened to go to this revival because my mom's kind of dragging me along because she didn't want to get a babysitter, so I go there. During that meeting, there's a revivalist there, there's an evangelist, and I feel like he's speaking to me. I tell my mom, I said, he's calling people up to the altar. I said, I feel like I need to go. She said, we'll go. I go and I dedicate my life to Christ at that moment. Well, that's okay. I'm nine and a half. You go, that's cool. That's all great.
But at the same moment I was baptized in the Holy Spirit with evidence of speaking in tongues. Like literally, boom, same moment, same everything. Not getting into too much of the stuff that people would consider weird, but I fell out, came back up, speaking in tongues. I'm just like, so I have this crazy thing going on. So you go home, you're processing that. My mom's new to the charismatic move, so she doesn't know what to do.
Brent Stone (03:40.846)
It's awesome.
Michael Schulz (03:52.365)
I'm in the Catholic Church. I don't know what to do. You know, I'm nine and a half. I don't know. I have no clue. So, um, my parents, the Catholic school system, I lived in St. I live in St. Louis, like I said, but the Catholic school system was like the way to get an education in St. Louis. So my parents didn't, like I, they didn't put me in public school. We're still going to, we go have to go to Catholic church because you pay for the school on Sunday morning. You have to give your money to pay the school. That's how they, they kind of get you to go to church.
I call it tagging base. You got to go tag base. You got to go fill it. You got to go give them your money for your tuition in the service. So we're still doing it. I'm still going to the Catholic Church. Fast forward a couple years. I'm still very, very confused as to what to do. Go into the youth group at the little four square church, not really gaining any ground, just kind of out there doing my thing. So...
Brent Stone (04:23.06)
Thank you.
Michael Schulz (04:50.929)
Fast forward a couple years, I'm getting ready to go, I'm getting ready to figure out when we go to high school. Well, in St. Louis at that time, we had the high school seminary system. So like literally the Catholic schools had, you could start studying to be a priest in high school. And so I literally felt, I felt like I had this amazing call in my life. So what does a Catholic kid do when he has a call in his life? You go to be a priest. So I went to four years of Catholic studying to be a priest. So it was literally, it was...
It's a very, very great education, but there was a huge emphasis on religiosity and on the things of the Catholic Church. But what I found during that journey, so now I'm in the seminary system doing my thing, I'm a musician. I figured out when I was about, I have to tell this part of it, when I was about five years old, I figured out that I could sing. I started singing in church. So like I was the kid who, I was that kid who like went up on,
Christmas and sang solos. You know, I'm like six years old, so I'm singing, doing this stuff. My family becomes a choir, because my mom and dad, my sister can sing. We become a choir, and we start to become, we do this itinerant ministry around the Catholic Church in St. Louis. Absolutely hilarious. We're like, we're like the guys who, we had drums and guitars and stuff when they didn't have drums and guitars. Like, we're the crazy, really crazy hippie guys. So anyway, so I have to get that segment about the music. So, um...
Brent Stone (06:06.136)
It's awesome.
Michael Schulz (06:18.725)
So the whole time I'm on this journey, I still have this love for music. And...
Michael Schulz (06:26.233)
As I'm doing this, I'm in the Catholic seminary. I decide I don't think I'm gonna be a priest for, there's some obvious reasons, the whole being celibate thing was like, not sounding too good to me, like a life, I really liked girls and thought, and I had a girlfriend and like going, so. But this journey kept me really, really focused on Christ.
Brent Stone (06:49.77)
Bye.
Michael Schulz (06:54.705)
And so as I'm focused on Christ, it keeps me away from a lot of the sin that teenagers walk in. Not that they didn't have my temptations, not that they didn't have my deal, but I really didn't succumb to it at that moment. So...
The journey with Jesus is that I'm processing all my information through the Catholic Church. So everything that I'm sensing inside of my spirit, I'm processing through the Catholic Church, which for me was a failed model because I went then started challenging the academics of who was teaching. I started challenging them on the Catholic faith. I was like, I don't see this in scripture.
Michael Schulz (07:42.105)
So they basically, they kind of called me a heretic. And so I graduated from there. But they were not happy with the fact. And they basically came to a point where I was in a conversation. I said, this isn't in the Bible. They said, well, we're not really all that concerned about the Bible. We're more concerned about dogma. And I just went, okay. I mean, I'm 17 years old going, this is not right. And so that was cool. So, but.
Brent Stone (07:42.635)
Yeah.
Brent Stone (07:47.118)
Well you don't see it the way we see it, you're outta here!
Michael Schulz (08:11.273)
When that starts to happen, I start to, I'm starting to lose my faith a little bit because the people who I'm putting my trust in, you know, to teach me, weren't teaching me. So I'm going on my own, I'm 17 years old, I don't, you know, I don't know my rear end from a hole in the ground. As far as I don't have no mentors, I have nobody in that space other than my parents. And my parents are still struggling to walk this out. So, I was a soccer player and a musician and I acted in the theater.
And so I was given four full ride scholarships to multiple colleges throughout the Midwest. I was playing in a band at that time. I started playing music in nightclubs when I was 14. So this whole time I'm still playing music in clubs and stuff and still in church, in clubs, doing this whole duality crazy thing. So in that space, what ended up happening was I...
kind of stepped away from Jesus and got into the music thing and I didn't go to college, I decided to be a traveling musician. So, not gonna give you the gorys of that, but there's lots of stuff that goes on with that.
Brent Stone (09:24.703)
Did your hair look different back then?
Michael Schulz (09:26.929)
Uh, yeah, I had hair all the way down my back. It was, you know, I was like 60 pounds lighter and I was, I was, uh, you know.
Brent Stone (09:36.834)
Since you're the lead vocalist, were you like, the kiss where you could like, you stick your tongue out and like.
Michael Schulz (09:42.565)
No, no, I wanted, I wanted, I literally, I mean, if you were, I really wanted to be David Lee Roth from Van Halen. That was like my thing. So I was, we were hair metal. It was, it was the early eighties. It was, you know, or actually it was late eighties. It was 87 when this all was.
Brent Stone (09:55.523)
You all opened for some big names, didn't you?
Michael Schulz (09:57.425)
We did, we had lots of fun and we traveled and we did, and you know, I'm not gonna get into that part of the story, but just know that the journey of a musician, I succumb to the journey of a musician. All right, so I basically turned my back on Christ at that moment, but so I'm following my dream being this musician. So this is where the journey gets interesting. So I kind of fell away, but yet I still felt...
I still went to church. I was still going to the Catholic church. I still would go because I felt this need. I wasn't participating in sacraments. I wasn't doing reconciliation. I wasn't doing communion. I wasn't doing that stuff because I felt like I was not in that space. So I'm gonna fast forward a couple years. I meet my wife, okay? My wife and I, we get married. We have a son. Our first son is born.
We're still going to, my family's still a choir. When I came in town, I'm home, I still sing with my parents and my family at the church, which is crazy because I'm like, I'm in a Catholic church, I have this long hair and the whole thing, the people just looked at me like, what the heck, just walked in. But it was cool. And so I still felt, like I said, I still felt this draw to God. I still felt my heart, but even though I wasn't living it out full throttle. So.
I'm gonna fast forward two years. This is in 1996. This is where my second encounter starts to happen. So I'm playing in a band, very successful band, and our bass player was a born again believer, awesome on fire believer. And he just kept, he would just sit down and have a conversation with him, just like, man, you should, you know, you know Jesus, you should come hang out again, blah, blah. I'm like.
He's like, you should come to a different church. Don't go to the Catholic church. Come to this other church and hang out. Well, this church in St. Louis, there was a church that was kind of birthed out of the Jesus movement. And they were very receptive to long hairs and musicians and artists and things like that. So I went and they had service on Friday nights. So I went to this service and first service I went to, I rededicated my life. It was just like, I felt like, this is what I've been missing. So...
Michael Schulz (12:21.473)
My wife goes to church with me. She was going to church with me up to this point, but she was a cheaster. She'd only gone to church twice a year for her entire life, not even every year. We didn't get in our relationship because we love Jesus together. We got in our relationship because we thought each other was hot and we wanted to make babies. That's why we were doing it.
Brent Stone (12:46.41)
Hold on, you said something that I need to define for people listening to this. You said a cheaster. Will you explain that?
Michael Schulz (12:51.28)
Sure. Yeah, you only go to church on Christmas and Easter.
Brent Stone (12:55.691)
I knew what it was, I just wanted you to say it.
Michael Schulz (12:56.741)
Yeah, yeah, it's just, it's just, yeah, so that's a, that's a church, that's a church term. For those of us who've been in the, in the church world, in leadership. But, so, so it's 1996. My, my wife is, this is October of 96, my wife is pregnant with our second son. She's having a rough pregnancy. My wife and I are pretty close to divorce because I'm traveling all over the country playing music. I'm a pretty self-centered jerk.
at that point, but I rededicate my life. And so things start, things change. So I'm like, but I'm still this musician. I'm still doing my thing. So on December 20th, 1996, my son is born, my son Alexander, my second born. And he is born, when he came out of, he had an emergency C-section. When he came out, he was blue, not breathing.
They resuscitated him and we came to find out that he, not only did he have Down syndrome, but he had a congenital heart defect called total supple defect, which means that the wall that separates the heart didn't grow and all the blood is just mixing in the middle. So he's basically in congestive heart failure every day. So this is just, so this is the interesting part of the encounter is that God was setting us up.
Okay, so I rededicate my life to Christ in October. My wife's freaking out because I'm kinda becoming this radical Christian. She doesn't want anything, she really doesn't want anything to do with it. My son is born, he's sick. My wife automatically goes into a massive depression. She's had a child with Down syndrome. The child is basically dying every day. We have to give him medicine for him not to die every day. Ourself, the doctor sends us home.
with medicine that can either kill him or have him live depending on how much you give him. And I'm talking like a little bit, like the kid spits out, you give it to him in a little dropper. If he spits out too much, you have to figure out how much he spit out. If you give him too much, he's gonna die. If you don't give him enough, he's gonna die. So she's in this, we're in this very, very stressful situation. I'm still going, at this point, I'm still going to, doing a bunch of work in Nashville. I spend about three days a week in Nashville. So I'm in Nashville going away with her with a sick baby by herself.
Michael Schulz (15:20.081)
That's kind of a jerk move right there, I'm just gonna say that. But as those of us who have careers and stuff, sometimes we think that, well, this is gonna be the most beneficial thing for me to do right now because this is gonna help us get to our goal. And getting to our goal will give us all the money and everything that we need in order for us to take care of this situation.
Brent Stone (15:23.416)
Yeah.
Brent Stone (15:38.754)
been there. I've sang that song.
Michael Schulz (15:41.189)
Yes, exactly. So what's really interesting about this time is that my wife started to go to this church with me. She had never been in it. So there's going to be some folks in here who are listening who aren't charismatic. And when you're not charismatic, you walk into a full-throttle charismatic church, it can be very interesting. So my wife literally sat in the back row going...
what the heck is going on? What are these people doing? What is this tongues? What is this stuff? Why are they? What is this prophecy coming from? Why are you blah, all this stuff? So we said, okay. She said, okay, she's hanging out because she needs to be there. She's not sensing that she needs to meet Jesus at this point. She's just there because she feels like it's the right thing to do. We have a friend of ours that my son was going to, actually my oldest son
their kid. They went to this church with us. She invited my wife to come to a women's meeting. They have women's meetings on Tuesday or Wednesday mornings, whatever it was, some deal. This lady picks up my wife, takes her to the meeting, and sits her on the stairs on the side of the church, and she leaves. She had something else she had to do, so she made sure my wife was there. That day, on the steps of that church...
My wife gave her life to Christ, and evidence is speaking in tongues same day. She calls me up, this is in the days of payphones, and she calls me on the payphone. I'm at my dad's printing shop because when I was traveling I worked at my dad's printing shop. She calls me up and says, hey, by the way, I got saved and baptized in the Holy Spirit today.
Brent Stone (17:13.799)
Wow.
Michael Schulz (17:37.745)
like just nonchalantly, I about fell out of my chair. I'm like, are you kidding me? And so that moment, our journey started and so she was set free from all this anxiety. She was set free from all, and then we had this group of people who now are surrounding us with our son. And so we're praying and we're together and we're growing and we're doing all these, because we're together now, we have this unity in Christ. And so I don't feel like I'm dragging her along. We're very...
equally yoked in this space. Even though she was a new believer, she was like full throttle. We were radical believers. Then we had these people around us who were radical believers. And when I say radical, people sometimes take that word wrong. When I say radical, I mean we believe what the Bible said and we're doing it.
Brent Stone (18:13.826)
man.
That's awesome.
Brent Stone (18:31.371)
Yeah.
Michael Schulz (18:32.357)
And people think that's radical. I don't think that's radical anymore in my walk. I just go, we do what the Bible says. And people think it's weird. Because they're like, why would you do that? Well, it's because that's what the Bible says to do.
Brent Stone (18:42.87)
You like, you like hear these children over in like, you know, underdeveloped countries and they get some scripture right to them from, you know, like Matthew and it's like, they'd be attitudes or they, they get some verses just like, you know, go forth and just in the name of Jesus, just heal people. And you have little kids like laying hands on people and people are getting healed and they're just like, Oh, they, they're not allowed to do that. Like, what do you mean? They're not allowed to do that.
Michael Schulz (18:58.801)
Thank you.
Michael Schulz (19:05.013)
No, this is Jesus. This is like, this is the part of the encounter. This is part of the deal where you go, I want to, I so sense the love of Jesus that I want to go be his hands and feet. So we're in the middle of this crisis and we have this church surrounding us and they're doing all these things. But we're still, my son's still dying every day. We're still going through this process. So fast forward.
Brent Stone (19:18.75)
Yeah.
Michael Schulz (19:33.913)
but five months from that point. And we have a cardiologist, we have a heart surgeon, we have all these people that want to help us. And we're meeting people and the cardiologist says to, or the heart surgeon says to us, your son is probably not going to live because we can't do the surgery that we need to do to repair his heart until...
his heart can take this much pressure, it has to be bigger. And so he said, he set up a surgery for June 10th, 1997. And he said what he wanted to do is he wanted to band the aorta so that it would take the pressure off the heart. And this is, he's had this conversation with us around the, right about the third of June, third or fourth of June. And...
We're in his office and I say to him, okay, so June 10th we're gonna go in, what would it take for you to do the surgery that day, like to fix his heart that day? Because I don't want my son to die. What would it take for you to do that? And he kind of smirked, he's a heart surgeon, they're kind of smug, even though he's a super nice guy, he's kind of smug, kind of like you don't know what you're talking about. And he said to my wife and I, he said his heart, the right ventricle of his heart would have to double in size in seven days. That's what would have to happen.
And so I said, okay. And at that moment, I felt faith rise up in me and I said to him, you'll be doing the surgery on June 10th. And he just kind of looked at me and shook his head and like, okay, like kind of whatever, you know, walked out. So that time period, we were believers in praying for specifics. We were being trained that not only do you pray for the big thing, but you have to pray for the specifics.
So we knew now that what had to happen in order for my son's heart to be perfect, because that's what we're praying for, we're praying for a perfect heart. So if he's given a perfect heart, what does it look like? His right ventricle has to grow double in size in a week. So that's what we prayed. So we prayed that day, we prayed that week, everybody surrounding us, we went, we prayed, laid hands on the kid, more times than he could probably, you know, he's probably looking at us like, what the heck, these people are laying hands on me again? But...
Brent Stone (21:45.152)
Right. Yeah.
Michael Schulz (22:00.709)
On June 10th, I don't want to get too sappy, on June 10th, 1997, my wife and I handed off our son to a nurse who was going, a surgery nurse who was going to walk him down a hallway so they could do this banding of his heart. And I told the nurse, I said, how will we know if they're doing the surgery? And she said, well, they're not scheduled to do the surgery today. I said, well, the doctor told me that if,
his heart will take the pressure, he'll do it. And she says, well, we do a test. As soon as we get in there, test the pressure, see, so we have, and my wife and I moved in, so we handed them off, and my wife and I went to the waiting room with my family, who, just a side note, my family believes that my wife and I are in a cult. My parents, even though my mom was a charismatic believer, we're like these people that we're like, they just look at us like, my dad looked at me like I had lost.
Brent Stone (22:54.156)
Yeah.
Michael Schulz (22:59.909)
my mind. Okay, so I don't want to belabor this. So, 12 hours later, or 45 minutes later, the nurse comes in and she, they call the, the nurse didn't come in, they call to the station, the nurse's station in that waiting room. They had like a, they had a little nun sitting there who answered the phone, gave reports. And she, the nurse, or the nun says,
She goes, the nurse just wanted me to tell you that they're in.
Michael Schulz (23:35.536)
or we knew.
that what their end meant was that his heart had grown.
God had done a miracle that his heart grew, so much that they could do the surgery.
And so fast forward 12 hours later with the surgery, granted I wanna let you know that, so we prayed for his right ventricle to grow, but we're also praying for him to have a perfect heart. So 12 hours later, the doctor comes in and he's standing up and he says to us, he goes, could you please sit down? And we all, like our hearts all went, oh.
He's asked to sit down, he goes, no, I've been in surgery 12 hours standing up, can you please sit down? You know, he's like joking like, hey, he goes, I just wanna tell you that I've done a lot of surgeries, and to date, this is the most perfect surgery I've ever.
Michael Schulz (24:35.177)
He said, I felt like my hands weren't my hands. And he says, my mom prays for me. He goes, my mother prays for me. My mom's a little Catholic lady, and she prays for me every day. And I really felt like God was involved in the surgery. I said, well, I think so, too. He says, but surgeries go bad. That's why I'll let you know, don't be too optimistic. He goes, he's gonna need between six and seven surgeries between now and when he's full grown. Because what they did, they basically just do a patch.
So, to God's glory, my son was given a perfect heart that day. He's never had another surgery, ever. He has a perfect heart, just like we prayed for. So we encountered God that moment inside of, so God set us up. So I go to this church, my wife's pregnancy is going bad. He's born, he's very sick. My wife gets saved in the interim.
We get surrounded by these people. We pray, we believe my son is healed.
So here's what happens.
During the surgery, one of the doctors dropped an instrument.
Michael Schulz (25:52.301)
and cut the lymph duct of my son.
So we have a perfect repair, but yet the enemy wants to steal this from us. The lymph duct is not gonna kill him. He's not gonna die, but it's a very, very arduous. So his heart surgery goes perfect. We spend nine weeks in the hospital.
Nine weeks. My son, neither one of my wife and I were working, we quit working, we said we have to be here, this is what we felt God wanted us to do. So my son was a nursing baby, and one of the things with this injury was that you couldn't breastfeed, you couldn't have any fat. So he had to get this other supplement, call it.
But my wife didn't want to stop breastfeeding because she believed that when this was done, she was still going to breastfeed her son. That's what she just believed. So my wife literally filled freezers full of breast milk. Well, he couldn't do that. We were in there for nine weeks. But we had this encounter with God. So what do we do with this encounter? My son can't be by my wife. If he can't be by my wife, he screams when he's around her because he wants to eat. So she can't be with him.
Brent Stone (27:00.451)
Sure.
Michael Schulz (27:13.169)
So I'm with him. And so we got the nurse that said, hey, the best thing that we could do for you is we're gonna get you this little red wagon and you can just walk him around and keep him quiet, help calm him down. So I'm walking him around the NICU, okay? The Neonatal Intensive Care Unit, walking through the, and the PICU, I'm sorry, by that time it was the PICU. Whatever, whichever one it was. Anyway, we're walking around and I decided, I felt like God say,
Brent Stone (27:28.205)
Yeah.
Michael Schulz (27:42.333)
You need to pray for these people.
So my wife and I spent nine weeks praying for people in this hospital. We saw miracle after miracle after miracle.
Same faith, same deal. I'm just gonna tell you a really, really brief one because this was so familiar, so crazy. So there was a little boy, it was the second night after Alex's surgery, there was a little boy, he was in a car accident and an airbag deployed and caught him and he suffocated, like he had brain damage. And they said to his parents, they said, he won't...
Brent Stone (28:03.402)
Yeah.
Michael Schulz (28:24.833)
More than likely he'll survive, but he's going to have severe brain damage. He more than likely won't be able to walk, never run, and just getting this awful prognosis. Well, his parents are in the next room next to us, and they're crying and upset. I really felt like God said to me, you need to go talk to these people. I said, okay. Again, you have to remember, I'm this long-haired guy, so I'm not like, you know...
I'm not everybody's normal deal at this point. So I walked in there and was talking to them and they found out the prognosis and everything. I said, you know what, I really felt like God wanted me to come and pray for you and your son. Would you be okay with that? And they said, well, we really don't believe that. I said, well, is it okay if I just pray? They said, yeah, absolutely. So I prayed.
And at that moment, when I laid hands on that kid, I felt the power of God. I felt that he was healed. I felt, and I didn't see any manifestation of it.
But fast forward four weeks.
And that boy, we were on the same floor. And I would walk that floor and I'd talk to his parents every day. And I'd talk to him as he was improving and getting better. And around week four, I looked down the hallway and he's walking down the hallway, he's leaving. He's walking. And he goes, Mr. Michael, can I give you a hug? I said, absolutely.
Michael Schulz (30:04.741)
And he ran to me. He ran and wrapped his arms around me.
I don't know what happened after that moment. We said, you know, when you're in the hospital, people are going through that stuff, you always say you're gonna stay connected because we had this deal together. Life just happens and you don't do that, but I know he's healed.
Michael Schulz (30:25.745)
I know that he's probably 30. And he probably doesn't remember a lot about that, but his parents do. I shouldn't say I guarantee, but I truly believe that encounter that they had.
Michael Schulz (30:44.549)
it transformed their life.
Brent Stone (30:47.051)
Yeah.
Michael Schulz (30:50.777)
So, you know, that gets me to a moment in time where...
My life has encountered God. My wife and I's life, we've encountered God. We have, the presence of God was present when there's so many stories that we have. We just felt different. We felt like, you know.
Michael Schulz (31:20.829)
But what the enemy means for harm, God turned around for good, because we could have sat in that hospital for nine weeks and said, we're not gonna do anything. We're just gonna sit here and feel sorry for ourselves and feel sorry for our son. But what we did was, because we had an encounter with God, is we said, hey, you know what? Let's, and we had these thoughts of, let's clear the hospital. Like, let's just go pray for everybody and get everybody out of here, even before we're out of here. Let's go, let's just do this. And...
It was just amazing. So I'm gonna fast forward just a moment to get to my last, the last real encounter. I shouldn't say not last encounter, I have encounters all the time, but this moment in time. So about two months after we're home, I have to tell you that before my son went into surgery, before my son had his surgery, I pressed pause on my career in music.
I was kind of a big, I hate to say it like that, there was stuff happening, let's just say that. And I told him I said I have to take three to six months off. There's too much going on, I just can't. I'm with my wife, my son, all this stuff. And they said, okay. And so I went back to Nashville, things are getting back to normal. It was as normal as it can be at this point, because I'm still sensing God wanting me to do something.
and I go to Nashville and...
I'm basically, I come back and say, hey, I'm here. I'm ready to go. You know? And they said...
Michael Schulz (33:04.859)
No.
Michael Schulz (33:08.025)
No. You made the wrong decision. You chose your family over your career, and you should have chose your career, because now we've lost all of our momentum. And now you're not going to, you know, we're not going to support you, blah, blah. And you have to understand, I was when I have, I guess probably about $150,000 worth of investment in me at that point, maybe $200,000 of people who are literally investing in me as like a professional athlete.
wanting return on their money. So that's what's happened in Nashville. So now you get back to the one you kind of kicked in the, the going aheads, and you go come back to St. Louis kind of with my tail between my legs. But we said, hey, we're gonna, we're gonna go at this. You know, the entrepreneurial spirit is, I'm not done. This is just a setback. We'll go, we'll regroup, we'll do this whole thing.
So here comes the next encounter with God. So I'm starting to lead worship at this church. I'm a musician. So now I'm at this church. It's a big church. It's a big deal to be, you know, be part of the music team at this church. It's a really big deal. And so I'm part of the music team and I'm up on the platform doing my thing.
Ugh.
My wife and I go to this meeting and it was a guest speaker. You got to be weary of the guest speaker. So the guest speaker is there and he just, it wasn't any crazy message or anything. It wasn't really about the message, but he's going to have an altar call. And so I sensed the Holy Spirit telling me, you need to go up on this altar call. And I'm like, you've.
Michael Schulz (35:02.401)
This must be pizza, this must be gas. There's no way this is the Holy Spirit. I'm not going up into this deal. Well, I said, my pride is telling me if I go up, these people who are on the platform, who are up there, who I play music with, they're gonna think that I'm getting saved. They're gonna think, what is going on with this dude? And so everything in me, I was like, I can't do this, I can't do this, I can't do this. Finally, I give, I give and I say, okay, God, you're not, you're unrelenting. I'm done. I go up, go up to the altar call, pray the prayer.
At this point, this church has a prayer room in the back. Once you pray the prayer, then you go back and they have a prayer team that comes and talks to you. It's so funny because I can see the dude's face that was there with me. He's probably at that point, he's probably 80 years old. And he's not listening to anything that I'm saying. I'm this long-haired guy, he's not listening to anything I'm saying. I'm like...
He goes, so tonight you got rededicated, are you saved? I said no. I said just following the unction of the Holy Spirit. I know it's coming back, that's all I did. I said I'm not here, I'm already baptized in the Holy Spirit. Like he's asking me, do you want to get baptized in the Holy Spirit? I'm like no. So there's a lady across the room in this prayer room who is like staring right at me, like right through me. Okay.
Have you ever had somebody who's like looking at you, but they're like looking through you?
Brent Stone (36:25.652)
Yes.
Michael Schulz (36:27.597)
and I look at her and she makes a beeline for me. Okay, like literally makes a beeline.
And she goes.
Michael Schulz (36:38.586)
I have a word for you.
Okay. She said, God's telling me to tell you to lay down music.
Michael Schulz (36:48.581)
I said, okay. And she walks away. I'm like, that's weird. Yeah. I'm a professional musician. This is what I do. It's like breathing. About two minutes later, she's staring at me again and she walks back up. And she said, she looked me straight in the eye and she goes.
God's telling me to tell you to lay down music. I said, oh, okay, you know, I get it. I understand what you're saying. You know, basically blown her off. You know, because I'm like, there's no way. There's no way I'm good. It's like somebody who's been a professional athlete. No, I'm not doing that. What are you, crazy? It's how I make my living, it's what I do.
Two minutes later, she walks back up to me and she says, God's telling me to tell you to lay down music. And I looked and I said, I will go home and pray about this. Famous last words. I will go home and pray about this. She felt release, she goes, I go home and I pray.
and I received confirmation that night that I'm delayed on music.
which at that moment, laying down music was probably equivalent of someone who was gonna be a doctor, like just about ready to take the exams and says, I'm done. So I made that decision that I'm gonna lay down music. I go tell my wife, my wife is frustrated. She's gotta pray it through because this is like, we've invested our lives in this. But she says,
Michael Schulz (38:28.293)
She's like, I'll pray through it. I went to my investors, which one of my investors was my father. I went to my, my investors and they lost. My, my dad MF me.
Michael Schulz (38:41.457)
He MF'd me. He's like, you can't quit. He's like, we've invested too. I said, I have to, I have to quit. God's telling me I have to quit. And so when I laid down music, I had no idea if I would ever pick up music again. Literally, he told me to lay it down. So I felt like I was supposed to lay it down. But over the past, over the next 26 months, I didn't sing a song.
I didn't play a song, I didn't do anything, I literally didn't do anything. What God was taking me, and I'm going to give you the Reader's Digest because I know we need to wrap up. God basically showed me how to worship Him without music. He showed me how to worship from my spirit, how to worship Him in very, to take away all instrumentation, take away all the things that I had been trained to do. And um...
Fast forward 26 months, he told me, so it's like learning how to walk without a leg, or learning how to function if you're right with your right arm, like your arm's cut off. You have to learn how to, so I learned how to function in this space. And then one day I'm in church, and basically sense God say, you need to pick up music again.
Michael Schulz (40:05.393)
And I said, to do what? And he said, to bring glory to me in the earth, that's why.
He's like, but don't think about it as a profession. Don't think about it. He's like, just go worship me. Go lead people. Go show people me. I said, okay. And so I pulled together two days later, I had a friend of mine who, and this is another crazy story, but we had reconnected, people we had played together in the world, music together. And he had shown up to my house. I'm sorry, he showed up at my dad's office just out of the blue.
And he was a born-again believer like two years in, all the stuff. And he said, he said, man, if you ever feel like writing music, let's write some music. So God gives me this release on a Friday night. And on Sunday, we sat down at my kitchen table and.
Michael Schulz (40:59.749)
We prayed a prayer, we read, God told me when we were in the hospital for nine weeks that we were to read Psalm 138 every day at 5.55 before the doctor came in. Heart surgeons come in at six o'clock on the nose. They're very rigid people. And so we prayed Psalm 138 every day over my son while he was in the hospital for nine weeks. And when we sat down to write a song, when God said release.
It's time to start writing again, start singing again. That was the first thing that we wrote. We wrote a song based on Psalm 138.
Michael Schulz (41:40.273)
which has transformed so many people.
And basically what Psalm 138 says is that I will praise the Lord. Before kings and men, I will stand.
I will sing your praises.
Michael Schulz (41:59.493)
At the end of the Psalm, it basically says...
Michael Schulz (42:06.445)
We praise you before.
And that's what God's shown me. We have to praise Him in everything before we get the answer.
Michael Schulz (42:21.789)
So there you go. That's only up till 19, what? 1998, 1998.
Brent Stone (42:24.104)
awesome.
Brent Stone (42:30.978)
All right, well, at this rate, we have to have six more episodes to cover the entire. No, this is awesome. No, I think this is wonderful. So, hey, this is really awesome. Thank you so much. And we will, in your words, we'll do this again. And we'll hear some more. And I know that we've got some other stuff planned already to get back on here for other things too. But hey, Michael, thank you for being on here today. And...
Michael Schulz (42:34.105)
I'm sorry, I apologize.
Michael Schulz (42:44.281)
Absolutely.
Michael Schulz (42:59.302)
Absolutely.
Brent Stone (43:00.278)
For everyone watching and listening, please like, share, subscribe. If this has helped you, we would love to share the good news with as many people as possible. Hey, with that, we'll talk to y'all very soon. Thank you for tuning in for Changed.
Michael Schulz (43:13.353)
for you.
Brent Stone (43:16.786)
Awesome. That's really good.
Michael Schulz (43:20.325)
Tire's long.