Beyond the Blueprint: Richard Hurd on Faith, Family, and Fortitude

Richard Hurd, a seasoned real estate entrepreneur from Des Moines, Iowa, joins Courageous Crossroads to share his inspiring journey from renovating and reselling homes in the 1970s to leading a successful real estate business spanning 200 properties across 20 states. In this episode, Richard opens up about the
resilience and tenacity that have fueled his career, from learning the ropes under his father’s guidance to overcoming setbacks like economic downturns and personal tragedies. With stories highlighting the importance of faith, family, and unyielding determination, Richard offers listeners valuable lessons on building a lasting legacy and finding courage in the face of life’s toughest crossroads.

Thank you for listening! We hope you feel inspired and encouraged by our conversation today. If you did, be sure to share this episode with others.

Let’s stay in touch:

• Follow us on Instagram @crossroadsapologetics
• Email us at info@crossroadsapologetics.org
• Visit our website www.crossroadsapologetics.org

See you in the next episode! Be blessed!

Full Transcript

Intro:
Welcome to Courageous by Crossroads Apologetics, a look into what motivates us to step out in courage and the everyday bravery of men and women like you. In each episode, we hear a personal story of bravery centered around this question. What’s the most courageous thing you’ve ever done? And now your host, founder of Crossroads Apologetics, Jeff Johnson. 

Jeff Johnson:
Hey, everybody, this is Jeff. Welcome to another edition of the Courageous Crossroads podcast. Glad to have you join us again today. And I’m especially grateful for a very talented audio engineer who’s able to recover some audio that I recorded improperly. I had some settings off on my recording piece of equipment and kind of blew out the audio a little bit. So if there’s any of that fuzzy sound at all on this audio recording of my upcoming interview, that’s on me. But anyway, you are going to be very inspired with my next guest, Richard Hurd, a very successful businessman and a wonderful husband and a wonderful father and a veteran. And you’re going to be inspired and encouraged by what Richard has to say when he answers the question, what’s the most courageous thing you’ve ever done? 

Jeff Johnson:
I recorded this in his office and was grateful, so grateful that Richard took the time to share with you and I his take on the topic of courage. So, without further ado, here’s Richard. Thanks for joining us, Richard. It’s wonderful to have you on the podcast. And you and I know each other a little bit, but we haven’t known each other for very long. Could you tell us, our listeners, a little bit about your, like, where you grew up and a little bit about your youth and maybe how you got into the business that you’re in right now? 

Richard Hurd:
Well, yeah, we’ve met. You and I met through our breakfast club a while back, and I’m from Des Moines, lived here most of my life, I mean, other than stints in the military and, you know, some other things. But most of my life I’ve lived here. Started in business way back when I was going to college and really was not gaining a lot of traction at college and, you know, at the suggestion of my father to, you know, get into try real estate. And it ended up sticking, but it was not something that was my brainstorm to go that direction. I was thinking I’d do something totally different. So that was way back in the mid-70s. And you know, the company was, you know, it’s a first generation business. 

Richard Hurd:
We started with just buying old junker houses and fixing them up and reselling them and then just basically stair stepping from houses to duplexes, to apartments, just moving on to bigger and better properties over time when I could afford to do so. So I mean, that’s kind of the way it got started. 

Jeff Johnson:
I mean, this is, you’d consider this a large real estate business? 

Richard Hurd:
Well, I don’t know, it depends on how you’re, what you’re comparing to. We, we have 200 properties in 20 states which by local, you know, measurements probably quite a bit compared to. Most of our competitors are national REITs and you know, they’re much bigger than we are. So most of them are nationwide and have, you know, a thousand properties or more. But that’s who we compete with when we buy things. Generally we don’t really compete with very many local companies on acquisitions, so. Depends upon your unit of measurement, how you would view us. 

Jeff Johnson:
Yeah, well, from my perspective, it looks like a really big operation, so. And you got a lot of success under your belt, Richard, and I congratulate you for that. I’m curious about how you got into this business because my, I’ve got four kids and three of them have gone through college. My one son, my youngest son, Emmett, didn’t want to go to college at all, just didn’t want to have anything to do with that. And he ended up doing a school to work program his senior year and absolutely fell in love with it. So he’s a heavy machine tech and I have never seen somebody so happy in the career that they’ve chosen and the things that they do. He comes home covered in dust and grease after he’s fixed umpteen different machines and solved problems and done that sort of thing. 

Jeff Johnson:
And he’s just, I don’t want to say he happened upon this, but gosh, it’s clear that this is exactly what he’s supposed to do. I would assume based on your success that this is exactly what you’re supposed to do. And I’m curious, how did you find it? 

Richard Hurd:
Well, I think this is exhibit A of, you know, a lot of times parents see things in their kids, the kids don’t see themselves. You know, this is my father seeing something in me that I didn’t recognize. I mean, keep in mind, I was 21 when all this was going on, so I was relatively young. But he saw that as a kid I was always buying things and fixing them and selling them. So I would buy cars in high school. And this was back in the day when cars were a big deal. I don’t think they’re not nearly as big a deal today. For kids, because that represented your independence. Back in my day, because they’re no computers, no cell phones. 

Jeff Johnson:
It was a big deal what kind of car you had and how you set it up. 

Richard Hurd:
Well, how you got around. I mean, to socialize with your peers, you had to go to McDonald’s or you had to go to Reed’s ice cream, or you had to go somewhere. You couldn’t just get on a cell phone and connect with somebody. You had to make an appearance. And for guys, making an appearance in a car that got people’s attention was a big deal because, you know, as a young teenage boy, you’re generally trying to get the attention of young teenage girls. 

Jeff Johnson:
That’s right. 

Richard Hurd:
So anyway, what I would do is I would buy cars and I knew what teenage boys wanted in a car. And it was basically, you’d add a stereo, you’d put, you know, tires and wheels that were fashionable at the time, and maybe exhaust system that might be, you know, glass packs or something. And then I just put it on the market and resell it. 

Jeff Johnson:
And you were mechanically inclined like that, too? 

Richard Hurd:
Oh, yeah. 

Jeff Johnson:
Okay. 

Richard Hurd:
You know, and it was pretty easy to do because most, a lot of kids didn’t know how to do all that stuff. So they. If they bought a car, then they’d have to figure out how to get the stereo, get it, install it, how to buy tires and wheels and put them, all that stuff. So I would get. I would make the car the way I wanted it, and I was driving it, and I just put it for sale at school, and kids would buy them, and I’d buy. Buy another one and fix it up. And then I started buying trucks from the businesses up and down Southwest 9th Street. Back in those days, you know, today everything’s so different, but today, all businesses all lease new trucks. Back in those days, businesses had all these older trucks. 

Richard Hurd:
And then when they got older, they just sit in the back lot. I go down and look in the back lots of these businesses, and I go up into the office and ask them if they want to sell that, you know, 57 Chevy three quarter ton or whatever. And most of the time they just wanted rid of them. And I buy them and fix them up and sell the truck. 

Jeff Johnson:
So it wasn’t taking. It wasn’t a huge investment for you to get into these vehicles to begin with. And then you just fix them up and. 

Richard Hurd:
Right. 

Jeff Johnson:
Wow. 

Richard Hurd:
And then resell them. So anyway, my dad said, you know, in high school, you were always good at recognizing value and something and how to improve something to the point where other people would want to buy it. And he says, I think you can do that with real estate. And I said, I have no answer. I have idea how to deal with real estate. Don’t know anything about it. All I know is we live in a house and I go to school in a building. That’s basically all I know. And so he said, well, the first one will go out and find it and I’ll help you, I’ll show you what to do, teach you how to work on a house. Which we did. And the house was just terrible. 

Richard Hurd:
And I got a guy with a dump truck, had him put it in the front yard and we just ripped everything out. But we put it back together, put it on the market, sold it and made money. And I thought to myself, well, this is better than cars because you can make a lot more money selling a house than you can fixing up a car. 

Jeff Johnson:
So like, how much money would you make on a car? 

Richard Hurd:
Oh, I mean back then, you know, if you made a hundred dollars or $150, that was basically, that just cost. 

Jeff Johnson:
You some sweat equity over a course of a week or two, probably. Okay. 

Richard Hurd:
You know, and the house, you know, I think the first house, I don’t remember exactly, but I mean, keep in mind this was back in the 70s, so the cars were between 2 and 3,000 and the houses were between 12 and 18,000. 

Jeff Johnson:
Wow. 

Richard Hurd:
You know, so you’re talking a much compressed. 

Jeff Johnson:
You’re not buying a quarter million dollar house yet and flipping it for 400,000. 

Richard Hurd:
No, I mean we, I think we may have made, I’m guessing right now, but I’m guessing four or five thousand dollars on the first house, which was quite a bit for an old house. But we did everything ourselves, you know, so we didn’t hire out any labor, we did it all ourselves and probably got lucky when we sold it. You know, we had somebody that wanted it, came in as I recall, didn’t really negotiate much on the price and they just bought it. So anyway, that gave me a, you know, that gave me a big boost and I thought, well, you know, this, I, I can do this. And you know, so at that moment in time, working all year long as a young person, you’d might be trying 10 and 12,000 a year. 

Richard Hurd:
So if I could make almost half of that amount with one house. Yeah, that made sense to me. And we did it in like four months or five months or something. 

Jeff Johnson:
I wish your dad must have been a handyman to a certain extent. 

Richard Hurd:
Oh yeah, my dad and my grandfather had a sign company, okay. And so they painted signs and it was my grandfather’s business. My dad worked with him after the war. And yeah, he was very handy and he taught me how to do carpenter work, how to paint, how to do some plumbing work and electrical, all those types of things. So I was really fortunate to have him as a mentor. So then the first one went well and so I just looked for another one and just kept going, you know, try to find another one that needed a lot of work. They needed to be really cheap. And over time I saved enough money that I didn’t have to sell each one. I’d keep one and rent it and then buy one. 

Richard Hurd:
And so try to generate a revenue stream so I could have some money to live on. Because when you’re doing these house flip things, you got no revenue except for on the day you close on the sale. So I was trying to generate some rentals so that I could have money coming in every month from tenants so I could pay my bills while I’m working on. You know, was it when you, was. 

Jeff Johnson:
It when you finished that first house and sold it that you had an aha and you said to yourself, okay, this is a thing, I’m gonna chase this for a while. Or were you just living in your parents house, just doing this stuff, going, I’m gonna, I’m just gonna do another one. 

Richard Hurd:
Well, I didn’t live at home at that point anyway because I had already been in the service at that point. So I went in at 17. So I was back and going to Drake. So, you know, I didn’t live at home. But I don’t. It wasn’t like I woke up one day and thought, oh man, this is my career. We had that the first house, we had the closing, we made some money. I didn’t know if it was durable or not, if that was just anomaly or if it was something that I could repeat on a regular basis because, you know, banks didn’t recognize, you know, house flippers as a valid occupation. And so I get a lot of rejection letters from banks for borrowing money on houses. And you know, they just say it’s not a valid. 

Jeff Johnson:
You know, you don’t have a business right now. 

Richard Hurd:
Yeah, yeah, it’s not a valid career, it’s not a valid business. But so after, I mean, I just kept doing it and it kept working. It didn’t work as well. Every time. It’s like anything in business. One time you do really well One time you might not do so well. One time. Maybe you barely get out with your teeth. Maybe you make a big mistake and you lose some money. I mean, that’s just part of it. But you never want to have that happen on the first. First thing you’re working on, right? You want to. You want to at least have success for a while until you. And before you have a big mistake. Because, you know, there’s all kinds of things that show up on these old houses. I mean, you might have a foundation that was hidden, you know, that was covered. 

Richard Hurd:
And you get in there and find out it’s of expensive repair, expensive plumbing, repair, electrical, you could pretty much see. But there’s things that you could run into that you were not visible that could really cause you problems anyway. You know, I liked it. I kept doing it, and, you know, it worked in general for a number of years. 

Jeff Johnson:
So your dad said. He pointed out that you have an aptitude for this, for finding value and things. But what you’re describing is some of the things that didn’t. Some of the house flips didn’t work. And so you’re talking about a little bit tenacity as well. Which is more important, the ability to spot a winner or the tenacity of just not quitting? 

Richard Hurd:
Oh, man, that’s a. That’s a tough question, because I think they go hand in glove. I think you gotta be able to recognize opportunity, but you also gotta have stick to itiveness. I mean, if when things don’t go well, you gotta get back up on the horse and ride it again, because you can’t give up. You can’t just stop. 

Jeff Johnson:
Yeah. Well, this podcast is about. It’s around the topic of courage, and I’m gonna come down to the question, what’s the most courageous thing you’ve ever done here in a minute. But before we get there, I think it’s really valuable for me and I’m sure the rest of our listeners to just kind of understand that character from where you define courage for yourself and where your story comes from. So it’s interesting to me. Did you have a time when you wanted to quit? 

Richard Hurd:
Oh, yeah, many times. Yeah, absolutely. I mean, 1980 and 81, when interest rates went into the high teens. I mean, were choked out. I almost went bankrupt. 

Jeff Johnson:
Really? 

Richard Hurd:
Oh, well, yeah. I mean, we’re. 

Jeff Johnson:
And it was a growing business then. 

Richard Hurd:
Well, it was a business. I. You know, I don’t know what. How you define going, but I mean, I had a business, you know, were building at by that time were building houses, which was a problem because the high interest rates prevented people from buying them. And I had spec houses out there. And by that time I was married, had twins and were living off my. I was the sole provider because my wife was staying home, taking care of the twins. And the high interest rates just about choked us off because when you’re young like that, you’re probably got variable interest rate debt. And when the market went from 9% to 18%, I mean, you basically doubled your interest cost and you don’t have that type of margin in what you’re doing. 

Richard Hurd:
So what I did was we put everything that we owned, that I owned on the market at that time, including the house that were living in, and just started picking them off. And as they sold, I’d moved, we’d moved to another one and we just moved. We moved ten times in our first nine years of marriage. 

Jeff Johnson:
Wow. 

Richard Hurd:
Because of that type, because you’d sell one sometimes, you know, were kind of forced into it, you know, during the high interest rate period. Yeah, I just had to get rid of them at what however we. Because I couldn’t afford to carry them at that point. And you know, when you’re a spec builder and you’re young, you budget in maybe nine months maximum and you know, to build it, market it and close it. And when that’s not happening on multiple houses, you’re in trouble. So that’s what happened to me. So. So I was really in trouble trying to stay afloat. And so I just, like I said, we just put everything on the market. 

Richard Hurd:
Even if we lost money on something, I’d sell it just to get out from under it and finally got it cleaned up to the point we never went into any type of deficiency. I made the payments every month somehow, but it was touch and go for a long time. They’re trying to get out from underneath some of those houses. 

Jeff Johnson:
Hard to sleep at night, I would imagine. 

Richard Hurd:
Well, it was tough when you got a wife and two kids. And so it was so bad that my wife finally told me to get a real job. So I took a job working at the railroad. So I go to work at 4 o’clock every night, work till 1 in the morning, come home, go to sleep, get up, work on real estate and go back to work at 4 because we really were not bringing in enough revenue to survive with the load of the spec houses inventory that was on my back. So, yeah, so that’s what I did for almost a year, probably close to wow. 

Jeff Johnson:
Wow. You probably don’t suffer complainers very well. 

Richard Hurd:
Not very well. Richard. 

Jeff Johnson:
Roll up your sleeves and get to work. 

Richard Hurd:
Yeah, I mean, I don’t really blame my wife. I mean, at the time, she says, just give up on real estate. Go. Go get a real job. And because we need. We need to support this family, needs to be supported. I don’t. I didn’t blame her. 

Jeff Johnson:
Yeah, for sure. 

Richard Hurd:
But the problem was it’s not like you could just give your two weeks notice. I mean, we had all those. These obligations that had to be dealt with. 

Jeff Johnson:
Right. So then. So the tenacity was maybe just practically speaking, you had to stick with it for a while. But also the market recovered. And so then interest rates come down. 

Richard Hurd:
Here I am. Yeah, the market. Interest rates came down, the market got better. We were able. Our model started working again. And, you know, I went on to continue to do. Do what we do. 

Jeff Johnson:
But was there a time or was there a catalytic event or anything that really put wind in your sails with the business, you know, and you scaled up and you were like, now we’re really going, you know, where you felt like it wasn’t one property after another, month to month. 

Richard Hurd:
It took a while to get to where we actually were able to build. When we made. When I made a deal with Bill Cross at Come and Go, started doing Come and Go stores in the 80s. So this would have been probably seven or eight years after the high interest rate period. That really propelled us because we could build these stores and finance them and make money on them and have a. Make. It made sense for Come and Go too. Because what I did was I got a hold of him and I said, like, I just want to meet with you. I want to ask you three questions. If you don’t like the answers to any of them, I won’t come back. It’ll take 15 minutes your time. 

Jeff Johnson:
This is Bill Krause. 

Richard Hurd:
You’re asking Bill? Yeah. And I said, you know, if you had more capital, could you expand your chain faster? He said, yes. What? Do you mind if I ask what the average return on your store was? And he said, yeah, it’s mid teens. And, you know, number three was if we could build or buy your real estate for half of the return on your stores, would you be interested? And that was basically it. That was all there was to the pitch. So if we could do their stores for 8%, they could get more stores. They’re getting probably double that, maybe 16%. It worked for them. It worked for me because we could borrow money back then for maybe 6 or 6% or something. And so that was probably when we had our biggest boost from just a production perspective. 

Richard Hurd:
But what I, you know, I do speak to high school seniors somewhat frequently and colleges as well in the entrepreneurial classes. I just tell the kids there’s three things I don’t have a complicated analysis on how to be successful. Number one, you have to find your whatever your passion is. So whatever that is, you have to find it. I mean, if it’s music, if it’s law, if it’s medical, if it’s construction, whatever it is, that’s number one. But number two, you have to ascertain whether your passion is a valid way to make a living. If your passion is studying insects, unless you can get a job at a university, you probably cannot make that work, right? So it has to be something you’re passionate about, number one. Number two, it has to be valid that you can make a living at it. 

Richard Hurd:
And if those, once you figure out those two things, the third thing is just stick to itiveness, persistence. Just don’t give up. Just keep working at it, whatever it takes. I mean, if you going to be a doctor, you got to go to college. If you’re going to be a musician, you got to learn how to play and play a lot of gigs and try to learn how to connect with the right people, whatever it is. But it just takes a lot of hard work. 

Jeff Johnson:
Did your military service inform your business acumen and your business success? How do you relate? I mean, I’m sure that it did. 

Richard Hurd:
Oh, yeah. 

Jeff Johnson:
But how does it relate? How does it relate to. 

Richard Hurd:
Well, I think there’s a lot of things about that. My dad was a World War II vet, as were all the dads of my friends growing up. I don’t think I had more than a handful of friends whose dads were not World War II vets. But those guys were amazingly resilient and entrepreneurial to the extent that if they have a problem today, if you have a problem, you go to Google and you Google it and try to find out. These guys didn’t do that. And they didn’t have a lot of fancy equipment. They just looked at the problem, analyzed the problem, determined a path forward, set out to get it done. 

Richard Hurd:
And I remember I was building an apartment building, and when I was young and I told my dad, I said, I got to tell you what, I’m a little freaked out by this. You know, I’m not really sure how to get this done. He says, well, he Says, it’s not that hard. I said, have you ever built apartment building? He said, no, but you’re looking at it all wrong. You need to break it down into smaller pieces that you can understand. Take the west half of floor one. Focus on that. That’s like a small house. You know how to do that? Do that, and then do the east half of floor one, and then go up and do the second west half of floor two. He says, you know, this. This is how you do it. 

Richard Hurd:
You don’t try to take on something that’s too big for you to wrap your arms around. You break it into smaller pieces, focus on those, get them done, and move on to the next challenge. I mean, and it’s the same thing they taught me when I was in the military. I mean, you have to learn how to figure out how to solve these problems on your own. Nobody’s gonna. In the military. At least back in my day, nobody’s gonna help you. I was a munitions guy. We were at a place called Last Chance, which was removed from the base, where you load, arm the arm and bombs, rockets, and guns. 

Jeff Johnson:
So if they called it Last Chance. 

Richard Hurd:
Last Chance, because it was the last chance to get the munitions on and off the aircraft. And if they come back with hot munitions, you got to get them off without a mistake. Right. Without having something blow up or what. So you just had to figure out how to get it done. There wasn’t a manual for every eventuality. We had a lot of things come back that were jammed and hot, and, you know, you just. You had to figure out how to get the munitions off the aircraft without there being an incident and get the aircraft out of there. So, I mean, that’s what they teach you. You. And I think it’s good instruction for business, because in business, if you have a problem, it’s the same principles. 

Jeff Johnson:
Yeah. 

Richard Hurd:
It’s just a different movement. Figure it out. It’s not. It’s not munitions, and it’s not ammo. It’s a building or financing or something. But you got to find a solution. 

Jeff Johnson:
Yeah. 

Richard Hurd:
And it’s up to you to find that solution. 

Jeff Johnson:
Wow. How do you define courage? 

Richard Hurd:
Well, that’s interesting to me. I think going the extra mile to accomplish something that you’re very passionate about, whatever it is. I mean, if it’s sports, if it’s business, if it’s military, it. Whatever it could be. But you have to do whatever it takes within the scope of fairness and honesty to get the job done. I mean, that’s what it takes. And I mean, there are a lot of examples out there of that you can point to that. I mean, I think the most probably prevalent ones are sports heroes who go the extra mile. You know, throw the touch the pass, catch the pass, you know, whatever, be a linebacker, be a baseball player. That. Those are the ones that get the most press. Right. Because people love our sports heroes. But there’s, you know, it’s in everything. 

Richard Hurd:
It doesn’t matter if you’re in the ministry or in business or in whatever case may be, you can still have a lot of courage and stretch out and do things that are over and above and beyond the call of duty, get the job done. 

Jeff Johnson:
I think you talk about sports. I don’t know if I’ll quote it correct, but Tom Landry said something like the goal of a coach is to get somebody to do something they don’t want to do so that they can achieve something they’ve always wanted to achieve. You know, you’re talking about pressing through and going the extra mile and doing that sort of thing. So I think that’s a really good definition of courage. Richard, who represents that in your life? Who’s a courageous person? It could be a historical figure, public figure, somebody in the past. I mean, your family. 

Richard Hurd:
Yeah, I mean, there’s. There’s no doubt that my family, you know, I. All my ancestors and my grandfather was a World War I vet. My dad was a World War II vet. I learned so much from those guys that it’s hard for me to pick somebody else just because they were so influential in my life. But the, you know, the essence of it is that there’s so many examples out there that you can choose from that would be great examples for people who have achieved a lot of things and done it the right way. And, you know, like, I don’t know a lot about Jerry Jones. I know a little bit about his story. Amazing story. You know, Dallas Cowboys gets it, builds it. It’s one of the most valuable franchises in sports history. 

Richard Hurd:
I mean, that’s pretty amazing story for a guy that started. Started with, you know, just being a guy out in Texas and wanting to get involved in the NFL. Well, I don’t know if it was even the NFL then, but in major league sports. So anyway, it’s those. There’s lots of people out there like that. I think you. You pick the ones who are closest to you, and they’re the ones that I think mean the most to you. 

Jeff Johnson:
Yeah, not to make any political comment or anything like that, but we’re just at the time of us recording this, we’re just a few days past the presidential election where Trump has been elected president. Again, I’m curious, do all good societal country advancements take place when people act out of courage? That’s a terrible question, Richard. But you know what I’m trying to get at? 

Richard Hurd:
Oh, yeah, that’s a, that’s a complex question. I, I mean, we’ll see how our country is 200, what, 40 some years old. It, it’s been able to deal with lots of ups and downs over that time period. I mean, it’s endured through many highs and lows, wars, depressions, all kinds of crazy things. Courage is important. It’s essential. But there’s lots of other stuff. I mean, you got to have trust and faith in, you know, your country, your God, your family. I mean, there’s just so much more to it than just saying, okay, well, I’m going to have a lot of courage. I’m going to go out and do this. No, I’ve got, you got to have a backstop that helps you achieve that. And a lot of what that is those other pillars that you lean on in order to get it done. 

Richard Hurd:
You can’t have courage if you don’t have, you know, strong faith and others that will stand by you when things go wrong because there’s nothing goes right for everybody every day. 

Jeff Johnson:
Yeah, I like that. Richard Hurd, what is the most courageous thing you’ve ever done? 

Richard Hurd:
Oh, that’s pretty easy for me to answer. It’s probably when my daughter got cancer and taking her to Iowa City, and that was the hardest thing I ever had to contend with, and then all the surgeries and that type of thing. So that’s the difficult thing I’ve ever faced in my life that. 

Jeff Johnson:
Took more courage than anything else. 

Richard Hurd:
Oh, yeah, by far. I mean, I didn’t think I’d make it through it, to be honest with you. 

Jeff Johnson:
Yeah. 

Richard Hurd:
And then, and then when she passed away, I thought it was all over for me because I kind of lost some of my will to live at that point just because it was just out of order. And anytime if you know any parents that have lost children, it’s a very devastating effect and you can easily spin out of control. And I think for me, I decided I need to focus on the rest of my family and my work and not focus on the loss so much. And, and that’s what I did. But you never get over it. You just learn to live with It a little bit better, but that’s the most courageous thing I’ve ever had to face in my life. 

Jeff Johnson:
How many years ago was that, Richard? 

Richard Hurd:
She died 15 years ago in 2009, but the cancer hit in 2005, so he had, you know, a few additional years in their stress. So. 

Jeff Johnson:
Yeah. How do you make sense of that? 

Richard Hurd:
Well, I’m a Christian. I mean, I think that God has a plan for all of us. We all have an expiration date. I don’t know what mine is. And only he knows. And for some reason he didn’t. He didn’t want her to go on beyond me, 29 years old. So I just have to accept it. I mean, it’s not that I like it, but I do accept it. As you know, that was his plan for her life. 

Jeff Johnson:
How did walking through that inform you with the courage that it took for you to get through that? I can’t imagine how difficult that was for Richard. But how did that courage inform the rest of your life? Is it an endurance thing or is it something that just makes everything else pale in comparison or. 

Richard Hurd:
Oh, I think it makes you more aware and thankful of the rest of the people in your family. I think it makes you. It puts things somewhat in perspective, but it’s. I think it, you know, it. It’s a pain and a heartache that goes on every day. So you wake up with it and you go to bed with it every night and you never forget why you feel that way. But I don’t know if it makes you any better or any worse, but it makes you certainly a aware that you have this major loss in your life. 

Jeff Johnson:
Yeah. 

Richard Hurd:
So I don’t know how to explain it any better than that. 

Jeff Johnson:
Yeah, I think you’ve explained it very well, Richard. I’m sorry for your loss. 

Richard Hurd:
No, thank you. 

Jeff Johnson:
So do you think courage. We can jump back on that topic a little bit. Do you think courage is something that can be taught or do you think it’s something that is situational that you discover about yourself? 

Richard Hurd:
I’m guessing it’s pretty much innate. I mean, it’s like. It’s like a lot of things. I mean, some people can sing, some can’t. Some people are great athletes. Just naturally. Some people, if you train them with the best trainers in the world, are never going to be very good. I think it’s pretty much the same thing. You either have it or you don’t. You can expand upon it, but I don’t think that if you have. If your personality is such that you don’t have courage. Not sure you can obtain it just by trying to add on to your personality. And I’m. I’m no expert in that field, but that’s just my guess. 

Jeff Johnson:
I did a little bit of flight training for a while, for a real short period of time, and that was one of the things that I noticed in people that I would fly with, is if they got into difficult situations, they would go one or two different ways. Either their. Their mind would become almost delusional, like they were just not able to grasp the fact that the plane was about to stall or whatever, or their instincts and their senses would become very heightened and very sharp, and they’d start to act quickly and solve problems and do things fast. So I wonder a lot of times if courage isn’t like that, too. When you’re confronted with the situation, it’s either fight or flight or what, you know, what are you going to do? How are you going to react to it? So. 

Jeff Johnson:
Well, you clearly reacted in the side of great courage, Richard. So if we’ve got somebody, this will be the last question. I’ll let you go with this one. Somebody out there listening to this podcast, and they’re confronted with either a wonderful opportunity, or maybe they’re not sure about their internal fortitude to take a chance, you know, in business or a relationship or something like that. How would you encourage them to flush that out? 

Richard Hurd:
I think you just have to do what you would do with anything. You take all the information, analyze it, make a list of pros and cons, try to come up with some type of analytical answer. But beyond that, then you got to take a look at how do you feel? How’s your. Do you personally feel? Are your senses such that you’re comfortable or not comfortable? Sometimes there’s. There’s extenuating circumstances that you don’t get down on a piece of paper when you’re trying to make a decision. And it may be that you have. You’re uncomfortable with a person that’s involved, but when you’re putting it down on paper, it doesn’t recognize that because this person’s just performing a function. But you know, the. That person’s not very dependable or not very honest in your opinion, and that can change the whole decision. 

Richard Hurd:
I’m big on listening to yourself, and I think analyzing things is fine, but you got to listen to yourself and you got to be comfortable. If you’re not comfortable with it, don’t do it. And I’m also really big on goal setting. So I mean, you gotta. Whatever it is you want to do, you gotta have a path to get there. And goal setting is essential for that. So wherever you’re going, you need to have goals to get to the point where you can achieve what you’re trying to achieve. 

Jeff Johnson:
Okay, I apologize. I lied to you. I have one more question you’re making me want to ask you more and more. Somebody that I admire very much, I consider a mentor of mine is John Lennox. He’s a wonderful theologian over in Oxford. And he told me once that we’re not supposed to trust reason and then use God. We have that backwards. Instead, we need to trust God and then use reason. And because you’re a man of faith, you’re a Christian. I’m curious what you make of that. You know that first line, trusting reason and then using God, you know, like I might think it’s a great idea, and then, Lord, please bless it. Bless it, you know, or get me out of trouble or whatever. And he says that’s backwards. He said, instead, we need to listen to what God wants us to do. 

Jeff Johnson:
And then when we understand or we feel like we’ve heard from the Lord, then we engage our intellectual. Does that resonate with you? I mean, would you agree with that? 

Richard Hurd:
Yeah, I think, you know, if you have a big decision, you pray about it first and that will help generate your internal comfort or discomfort. But, yeah, I think you definitely pray about whatever the decision is, the situation at hand. And you just. There’s no way to know how you’re going to. What type of feelings you’re going to get, especially if you pray about something God might say to you. You know, it just isn’t. That isn’t the right thing for you to do right now. Or you might get the feeling that we really need to do this and for what reason, I don’t know, but I feel like it’s something I should do. And those are just internal feelings. How do you get those? Reason. That’s not reason that God will tell you what he thinks you should do if you pay attention. 

Richard Hurd:
Sometimes I think that, you know, he tells you to do things that don’t work out because you need to learn a lesson or two. I mean, I don’t know, but I mean, that’s what I can conclude from that from time to time. 

Jeff Johnson:
Yeah. Richard Hurd, thank you for your time. Really appreciate talking to you. 

Richard Hurd:
You bet. Thank you. 

Outro:

Thank you for joining us today on Courageous. If you’d like to hear more about the work and ministry being done at Crossroads Apologetics, please visit our home on the web at crossroadsapologetics.org Would you or someone you know like to be featured on Courageous? Send us an email at info@crossroadsapologetics.com or info@Crossroadsapologetics.org telling us about the most Courageous thing you’ve ever done.