Connecting With God In All Things

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What happens when a baseball coach who says he wasn’t qualified to write a book keeps hearing the same message from God over and over again? In this episode of The Curated Chapter, Coach Lloyd Skoda shares the heartfelt story behind Connecting With God In All Things — a book about faith, purpose, calling, and discovering that if something matters to you, it matters to God.

Coach Lloyd Skoda: I didn’t want to write a book. I wasn’t qualified to write a book, but God made it plain that I was supposed to write a book. 

Theme: The Crated Chapter. 

When God tells you to write a book, then you’d better write a book. That is just one of the lessons to be learned in this episode of The Curated Chapter. A chapter sized look at new books from independent authors like Coach Lloyd Skodawho you just heard saying he didn’t want to write a book, didn’t think he was qualified to write a book, but he did and it’s called Connecting With God In All Things. 

Coach Lloyd Skoda: The whole book is supernatural. It’s not natural.

Before we get too deep into what the book is about I want you to hear how it came into existence. 

Coach Lloyd Skoda: So I was preaching at our church on Wednesday night, and we had an elderly couple there that had been faithful. I’ve known them for years, they’re faithful to God. And I got through preaching and walked by them, and John and Linda Lancaster, and they said, Coach, you need to write a book. Now, my first thought was, I don’t want to write a book. I’m not qualified, the first thing, to write a book, and I’m not going to write a book. Well, so I was teaching school full-time then, and we were—school was going on, and the bell rang, and the kids were swapping classes. And so a young lady that I knew, she was a junior. I was teaching senior. She stuck her—there was a young man first that came—he was the first one in the room. He came in, sat down. Then a young lady stuck her head in the door. Kids were changing classes. She said, Coach, Lord tells you to write a book, you need to write a book, don’t you? I said, Emily, who are you talking to? She said, I don’t know. I just felt like I was supposed to say that. So we had class that period. The bell rang, and the young man, who was the only person in the room when she said that, he came up to me, why is it a ghost? He said, Coach. He said, I almost fell over backwards when Emily said that to you. She said—I mean, he said, God told me last week to tell you you’re supposed to write a book. So, yeah. So I had a coach who had been coaching with me 17 years. We were dear friends, and this was a kicker. He said, Coach, you want to hear a crazy story? Now, he didn’t know any of this was going on. And he said, you want to hear a crazy story? I said, well, I guess you want me to hear it. He said, there was this guy that God told him to write a book. He kept putting it off, said he didn’t want to do it. He got in a bad, a real bad accident where his leg had to be in traction. So he was bedridden. His leg was in traction. And God told him, he says, now you got time to write that book. I said, I’m on it right now.

You can tell right away that Coach Lloyd Skoda is natural born story teller. And maybe that’s part of the irony here. The man who says he wasn’t qualified to write a book ended up writing one filled with personal stories about faith, purpose, calling, and the belief that God is involved in every area of our lives.

Coach Lloyd Skoda  (It Matters) If it matters to you it matters to God.

That simple idea sits at the heart of this book. Coach Skoda believes we all have a calling and no two callings  look the same.

Coach Lloyd Skoda: Everybody has a calling, everyone. people’s lives are at different stages and they have different vocations and they have different marriages. Everything is different. God created us different. And I wanted people to kind of get a taste that God, everything that pertains to their life, God is interested in everything that pertains if it’s if it’s parents, if it’s family, if it’s sports. And I used to get my feelings hurt a lot because people didn’t understand what God called me to do. And even in the same calling, so you being a former educator, even in the same calling, people don’t understand. Like, a kindergarten teacher does not understand how I enjoy teaching older kids, and I certainly don’t understand how they enjoy teaching a kindergarten kid. So even within the same callings, it’s different.

I told you he was   story teller. If you google him you’ll find all kinds of people saying nice thing about him like great coach, amazing man, yrs later we all still tell stories of playing for him. Here’s one of those stories. 

Coach Lloyd Skoda: One of the big the popular stories in there, I asked a young lady, could I use her name? She was a cheerleader and kept score for baseball my early years of coaching. I mean, she was there my first year of coaching. And so she came to me one day. She said, coach, I believe in we’re not going to have a rained out baseball game. Now, in my mind, in my mind, I thought I could care less if we have a rained out game. But it mattered to her. And that’s kind of what if it matters to you, it matters to God. So it would rain her childhood sweetheart. Well, he gave her a fit. He said it’d be a hundred percent chance of rain. He’d say, Cindy, it’s gonna rain today. No, it’s not. No, it’s not. No, it’s not. And boys would give her fits. Everybody. She stood by herself. But see, we go from faith to faith. OK, so then so then we play for a state championship. And it rained all around us. It rained after the game. We didn’t have no rained out game, but there’s a lot of games that’s supposed to be rained out. That was super nice. We had one game. It rained all the way around that field. It didn’t rain on that field. Wow. Oh, I saw that. So we’re playing for a state championship. And I hear this voice in the dugout, Coach Coda. And it was her. So I said, I stopped the game. I called time out when the dugout. So what is it, Cindy? She said, God told me that if we could pray, we’d win because we was kind of hopelessly behind two outs in the last inning. And we prayed and we won the game.

For Coach Skoda, stories like that aren’t really about baseball. They’re about learning to trust that faith can exist not only in churches or scripture, but in the ordinary moments of everyday life.

Coach Lloyd Skoda: What I tell people when I teach Bible or preach at church, I said, if you get every word that I say, you’re missing it. God’s got something specifically for you. So when I say he gives us all things to pertain, I’ve got so many, so many good stories in that book that pertains to life. It’s their life. You know, so I can tell a story and there’s going to be something in that story that’s going to relate to their life. It might not, it might not be anything about sports. It might be about music or something else. It might be about relationships. So that’s the neat thing. When they get through, God will speak to them about things that pertain to their life and they’ll understand that he cares. If they care about something, God cares about something. And I think that’s what everybody goes away with when they read that book.

And maybe that’s why this book connects with so many different kinds of people. Coach Skoda doesn’t claim to have all the answers, but he speaks with the kind of sincerity that reminds us our lives matter, our callings are unique, and that even ordinary moments may carry a deeper purpose than we realize.

Coach Lloyd Skoda: Everybody that’s read that book has been able to identify whether if they’re not even a believer, it talks about how to believe. I give example. We had a young, he called me and he said, he asked me, he said, are you and Elaine home? I says, yeah. He came over and I’m sitting, I’m sitting there and he says, I couldn’t read your book. And I’m thinking, Lord, what did I do wrong? He said, look at me. I kind of looked off and he said, look at me. And tears were pouring down his face. He said, that’s why I couldn’t read the book. Oh, my goodness. I’ve had men’s men. I’m talking about rugged men’s men come to me and say, coach, that book changed my life.   So if you’re not even a believer, it tells you how to become a believer. As the book goes on, the Bible says that I have not seen or heard in the heart of man things God’s got prepared for those who love him. And that’s kind of what that book is about, too. God’s got things prepared for everybody that loves him. But he says the spirit reveals all things, yea, the deep things of God. So it goes from if you’re not even a believer to if you’ve been saved 50 years and a strong believer, there’s something in that book for every single person. And there’s stories that relate to them wherever they are in that thing. 

The book is called Connecting With God In All Things by Coach Lloyd Skoda.

This has been The Curated Chapter. I’m Sam Youmans. Thanks for listening.