Untitled EpisFrom Survival to Surrender: How God Builds Discipline, Faith, and Unshakable Resilienceode

Welcome to Purpose of Heart, the podcast, where real stories meet God's promises. I'm Priscilla Allman, and every week we dive into powerful conversations about purpose and the pressure. Through caregiving, illness, grief, addiction, and more. If you've ever asked God, where are you in this? You're in the right place. Be sure to follow the show. And let's find purpose together. Hello. Welcome back to Purpose Apart, the podcast, where we bring real stories of purpose, faith, and perseverance to light. Today's episode is powerful and deeply inspiring. We are joined by JD Tremblay, an integrated engineer, ultra-endurance triathlete, certified naturopath practitioner, a best-selling author, and one of the only three people in the world to complete the epic data. With a background in military service, firefighting, and search and rescue, JD understands pressure at a level few to. But even more powerful is his testimony. How God met him in his lowest places and transformed his life. Can you take us back to your early life and share what growing up looked like for you?

Yes, of course. Well, thanks uh Priscilla for having me on the show. Um yeah, my my childhood was uh filled with curveballs, and uh I was bullied as a child, and it was uh quite it it was difficult at the time, but then I understood that it was now a stepping board to what I could achieve and what God could do through me. So um my parents got divorced, I was 14 years old. I grew up in a Christian household. My dad was a Baptist evangelist and uh quite quite strict, but the only sad part that I would say is that my dad did not explain to me how to have faith. It was more you have to follow this is the rule. On Sunday, we're going to church, you will do this, and you will not ask any questions. So that's quite uh the the the part that was sad. Um, then when my parents got divorced, I was 14 years old. Uh, for over three years, they were looking at how to survive uh on their own, and uh that's where uh at the age of 17 years old I needed to remove myself from an unhealthy environment, both in uh school and even uh in uh the family home. So I joined the military.

No, that's really interesting, and you brought up some interesting points about you know, even in the future, like how important it is not just to you know talk about um faith and Christianity, but even how to model it and like let people know how to have it, especially in children. And so um talk a little bit about because you've walked through some you know challenges through your year through your youth. At what point did things begin to shift for you? And how did you encounter the Lord in the middle of everything?

Yeah, I would say it was at different stages. So uh in my early childhood, I thought I was a Christian because I accepted Jesus in my heart, but I was only following what my dad was telling me. So I did not really understand the whole concept until I joined the military. And in the military, I was using God as a pinball machine or as a um one of those slots machines where I would uh pray and then crank the the lever and hope I would get all sevens and pray, and then if I get all sevens, then I got my prayer answer. And if he did not answer, then I would just say, well, that's his will, and I would just leave it as is and not really fight for what I I wanted to. Like even if I wanted this situation, um, I would not I would not even look at to try for it. So I would just use God as a slots machine, that's it. Just a wishful God, like a genie and a lamp, somewhat. So uh I would not go to church. I had on my dog tags the military necklace that you wear that if you die you break it, and so on it you can put your religion, and on my dog tags was written Christian, so that if you die, then you're asked by a priest to or a pastor to look after uh the ceremony, and so they just wanted to respect uh your religion, and so that's the highest level of Christianity that I was at. I did not understand that I needed to pray and meditate on the word of God, that I had to read my Bible regularly, that there are rules, and if I don't follow these rules and this structure, then I don't end up with the proper discipline. So uh, but I understood it at another level where the military I started noticing that a lot of military members were undisciplined, and then there were others that were disciplined, and I started looking at who or what type of behaviors were different, and what I discovered is that the military doesn't give you discipline, the military gives you a structure and systems. If you follow the structure and the systems, then the byproduct is discipline, so then you can acquire that level of discipline, and then eventually, once you culture cur culture or cultivate uh discipline, then you end up with resilience. And um that's how I could correlate it also with the Bible, where if you follow the structure, you follow the system, and you acquire a certain level of spiritual discipline in your life, and then you're able to create a certain level of resilience in your life uh in terms of um how God views how you uh see your life.

So one thing that I think was coming through as you were just speaking was you know how God really fathered you throughout your years and sort of called you deeper into relationship with him, where it started out where maybe you didn't necessarily know exactly how to have faith, and then it was more so like, okay, now I'm gonna look to him to get things, right? Um, and that sort of uh pinball stage, as you call it, but then moving towards, you know, relationship and like getting to know him and meditating and things like that. And so it reminds me a little bit of Jeremiah 333, where it says, Call to me and I will answer you and show you great and mighty things which you did not know. And um you know, I think that's just a beautiful thing, is how he, you know, has led you to here right now. So, um before we get a little bit into you know the resilience piece and even the Epic Deca connection to your life, how did your relationship with God begin to transform your mindset um as you went along?

For sure. Um you start making different decisions and you start seeing differently than all the others. The way I could explain it is many people um for example, we had a discussion a discussion uh this morning with a client, and uh we were talking about money and how a lot of people think that $250,000 is a lot of money, and a lot of other and and then when working for another uh company, and then that large company is um they're if they have a piece of equipment that fails, that piece of equipment cost over a hundred and seventy thousand dollars an hour to the entire company if that piece of company if that piece fails, and that's every hour. And so once you start looking at the math of it, and then now I just talked about it, right? And I said, well, we think, or many people think, that Elon Musk is one of the richest men on earth, and the media is claiming it, and they're saying, Oh, he's close to a trillion dollars, but if you start looking at the companies that are pumping oil, they're making billions of dollars, billions of dollars every single day. So if you start doing the math, they're past trillions of dollars, like they are way past, but then if you've only been subjected to a certain amount of money and you've always been in in survival mode, then all your thinking is is about towards well, 250,000 is a lot of money. Now, for the majority of people on earth, I completely understand when we look at the global population of the earth. If you have 60,000, if you make sixty thousand dollars a year and you have a roof over your head and you're healthy, then you are in the top one percent of society. But then we talk we tend to just look at the next level and the next level and the next level, and so that's how God again shapes your your your life. If all of a sudden now you're able to see no no, there's way more wealth in the world, way and and right now we're just talking about finances, but now he's able to expand your mind on every single aspect of life, and that book is phenomenal for it. It's a it's a book that that the Bible is a series of stories of men who have failed miserably too. You're looking at the life of Samson or David that took his, he took his his the the wife of his uh best general, top general, had sex with her, got a kid, and and he wrote it as a king saying, look, I made that mistake, like I'm terribly sorry. And so those are men that failed miserably, and if you're going through a difficult moment in your life, then definitely it doesn't matter if it's 2026 or 2030, or it doesn't matter where you are in the history and time, there is a story somewhere in the Bible that will be correlated with the situation that you are going through. And so what God does is again somewhat takes those uh those blindfolds off your eyes and help you see and understand that there is grace beyond what you just did, that there is uh uh an outcome to every single situation that you are going through, and that he is able to bring a shepherd into a king, he's able to manipulate um physical situation that would render a death sentence in some cases, and he's able to flip an entire situation uh by the day, by the minute, and so it it helps you really rely on him and know that he's the source for everything. Uh, for for my practice, I've seen a lot of uh miracles in terms of of health, the medical system where you have doctors that uh they're not able to explain the situation, and you're not able to explain it either. You can just say there is some force out there that somehow just removed that specific um problem in your life, and you're cured, and there's no machines, you can't base it on some form of small pill, it's just it happens, and when these situations happen, then that's when you start opening your eyes to where God can take your life, and and he just brings you to a whole new level. You're you're saying that well, the question leads to the epic deca, and that's what he did with the epic deca. I was scared when I heard in 2009 when when he said, Yeah, you're gonna be doing ultra endurance uh triathlon. I I said to God, there's no money into it. You can't make money out of this. You're I'm racing around the world doing these uh even one ultra man is it's two thousand dollars just to register. Wow, and that's just the event. You just have your seat to race at that specific race. You have to pay for the flight, you have to pay for your crew for the food. Uh, it's a three-day event, so you have to show up at least a week before to acclimatize to the situation. So, again, that's just one ultraman. That's not even the epic deca. And meanwhile, when I moved to the epic deca financially, it makes no sense, like at all. It was $100,000 that I had to spend in under two weeks. And for the majority of people, $100,000 is it's it's some people it's two years' salary, but I I spent it in two weeks because God, that's that's there you go. That's what He wanted me to do, right? And I don't come from a wealthy family, I'm not a trust fund baby at all. I don't have money, statue. No, God had to create a certain level of faith based on what I could handle. I was scared of a sprint triathlon, which is the lowest level of distance that you can have in terms of triathlon. And he had to build me up all the way to the level of epic deca to go, okay, now you're at this point. What are you gonna do? And I needed the money uh because I was already in debt and uh I was doing fine, but just normal debt like most people, and uh and and I ended up selling my house so I could do that race. So that's how I paid for the Epic Decca. So then I was homeless after the Epic Decca, yeah. But I was willing to follow what God had told told me. So God, that's that's what he does when he renews your mind. Um rarely, okay, and I don't I don't say that it doesn't happen, it does because well, Paul clearly, right? He went from Saul to Paul, but his mind renewed. Uh, we think that well, it renewed immediately. Well, no, it didn't, uh, even then. For for him, it took it took him a while. He was not he was blind for a while. Jonas, he was still blind, he was still in the belly of the fish for three days. That means this guy did not understand that he had to go to Nineveh despite his life being in danger for three days, he was still battling it. So God does not just renew your mind, just there you go, now you're gonna be doing an epic decka. This is what's going to happen. Everything there is a process that God is taking you. And when looking back now, uh, yes, many people are looking at well, the epic decor, or yes, many people are looking at the medals, or people are looking at the achievement, but it's the process on getting to it. All of this process of becoming an engineer, becoming a natural path. Um, it's not just helping other people in the medical field, it's also understanding the process of how I got there, and now people just want to skip the whole line and and become uh doctors overnight because now they have Chat GBT in their pocket. Like this, this is this is going to hurt a lot of people, a lot of people, because it's not overnight that these things happen. That's how God renews your mind, God renews it every single day, gradually, and it takes time, and then people just want to skip the line. There is no skip the line, that does not happen with God, it happens in his own time. And looking back, I would have never ever sold my house and took the money. And instead of buying new income property or paying for more schooling and trying to upgrade my skill. No, I that's what I would have done back then. But I understood that's what God wanted me to do, and so he built me up to that level of the epic deco.

Wow. Well, thank you so much for sharing that because you actually beautifully answered um the next question that I had was how did those experiences sort of mirror your internal journey? And you've already like taken us through that, um, which is amazing because you're so right. God knows each and every one of us, He knows the process that He has to take us through in order to, you know, align our hearts with His and get us to go, you know, where He wants us to go. And so you know, it's so beautiful to hear you say like how He sort of shepherded you on your journey to be able to make those decisions, to be like, you know, this is what He's led me to do, and this is what I'm going to do, and I'm gonna trust Him in that, even if it doesn't look you know like what you would have even chosen for yourself in the past, or what anybody else would have chosen to be completely honest. Um, because like oh man, I did not know it was that expensive, number one. But then, you know, just like in order to get there, that's not even talking about the physical training and the discipline that you had to sort of have in order to even do that. Um, you're just talking that's just the financial aspect, um, and the mental one too. So that's that's really interesting.

Yeah, it's like when people want to become doctors and then they don't look at okay, there's a huge cost to it, okay, but then they just look at the finances. Oh well, I can get school loans, all right. Uh what about the mental capacity that is required? What about the that the mental load that is required for medical school is extremely demanding, which now I'm correlating, like you can just change medical school and then you add epic decays the exact same concept. Hey, yeah, we think that it's more physical. As soon as you hit the first Iron Man, even that before the first Iron Man, you're inside of it, it's not even physical anymore. It becomes all a mental game, and then the mental load is extreme. So we have, like you said, to look at all of the components before we make a decision to know is this really from God? Because it's not just the finances that I will require. You're cutting out a little bit. I will require all of these multi-active You cut out for a little bit, sorry. Yeah, we will require all of these facetive life, and it's it's it's an intricate way, especially that for me I look at it as physically a lot of people would be able to complete what I did. If we add the mental component, less people, but more than the physical. But when we add God. Into the mix, that's why there's only three people in the world that did the epic deca. Is that because God decided this is your time? This is gonna be that moment where you do the epic deca, and he was able to control all of the variables that I didn't in that equation of life.

Before we move on, just so that all listeners know exactly what the epic Decca is, can you actually just talk us through like what the components actually are?

Yes. So there is a sport called triathlon, which uh encompass swimming, biking, and running. Within the triathlon umbrella, there are multiple distances, and you can see it on the Olympics, that is the Olympic distance. One of those distances is called the Iron Man. The Iron Man distance consists of 140.6 miles of swimming, biking, and running. That is considered one Iron Man distance. Now, for this particular event, we had 24 hours to complete 140.6 miles of swimming, biking, and running. And we also had to go from one island to the next. Now, for the epic Decca, we had to do 10 Iron Men in 10 consecutive days on all six Hawaiian islands, which equates to 1,406 miles of swimming, biking, and running throughout the Hawaiian Islands. That's what the epic deck is.

Well then, and yeah, that is that is absolutely amazing. Um let's talk a little bit about um so you've been through a lot of things, you've said also like the epic deck is a lot mental. Um what are a passage of scripture or even a verse that has sort of taken you through hard or very deep moments for yourself?

For me, it was uh John 17, 14, which was be in the world but not of the world, and so to me it was about seeing that the world behaves so differently than what I want to behave, uh, and then God is uh really helping me through that whole process. So that's uh the verse that uh to me, uh that's because after the Epic Decca, a lot of people were calling me the alien, and they were saying, Well, you're definitely coming from another planet for doing all of these races, and I am trying to tell people that I'm just a normal human being. If I cut myself, blood is gonna come out. I believe the same color as anybody else, unless you have some form of uh dysfunction in your body. But I I I'm not different than every any anybody. I have fears, and um I just behave differently because again, God placed me in a situation, and that situation is the epic Decca, and at that specific moment I was able to complete it, so I had the courage to follow God, and I would say that's the that's the secret sauce that everybody has access to. Uh, they're able to be courageous, which means that they are able to deliver results or face their fears. That's what courage means. And so um there's nothing special about JD, it's just that uh I follow God and God placed me in that situation, and I'm incredibly uh grateful to God that He was able to place me in that situation.

And it's so interesting because one of the verses that I actually had for this next little section was Romans 12, 2, and do not be conformed to this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind, which we talked about a little bit earlier. Um, but you now help people regulate their nervous systems and build resilience. And can you talk a little bit about practical steps um that helped you to renew your mind? I know you talked um, I think a little bit about that in your book as well.

For sure. So there are multiple steps. The foundation of it is to pick your values before your goals, and uh the system that we use at the Hungry Warrior Academy is called a DECA, which is um based on an acronym, which is discipline, energy regulation, um, capacity, and then action, and then our pillars, which is our foundation to conduct ourselves, is based on EPIC, which is also an acronym, which is eternal restoration. P is for physical temple, I is identity, and C is community. And so once you're able to understand and navigate these four pillars, then you're able to create some form of traction in your life.

Yeah, beautifully said. Thank you so much for joining us um for this episode of Purpose Apart the Podcast. Um, is there anything else that you'd like to share to the listeners? Like one thing you'd like to just say before we close out a little bit?

Uh yeah, well for me it was um like where I gained the most momentum in my life was when I started being really serious about following uh Jesus. And uh so that's what I encourage all the listeners to. Uh reevaluate their walk with Christ and be serious about it.

Amen to that. All right, so for our listeners, if this conversation spoke to your heart today, we encourage you to share it with someone who may need the same reminder that no matter how heavy life feels or where you're going, there's always still hope. Um, and that God sees you. You are um not forgotten, you're not too far gone, and you are not without purpose. And even in seasons that may feel confusing or painful, God is always working, shaping, refining you, renewing you, and preparing you for something greater than you can see right now, because it's always a journey with him. Keeping this reminder from Jeremiah 29 and 11 that he knows the thoughts that he thinks towards you, that thoughts of peace and not of evil to give you a future and a hope. So take heart, to keep going, and stay anchored in him. Because the same God who carried JD through his journey and even now is the same God who is walking with you right now, being confident of this very thing that he who has begun a good work in you will complete it. Philippians 1 6. Your story is still unfolding, your healing is still happening, and your purpose is still ahead of you. Until next time, my friends, we'll see you soon. Thanks for listening to Purpose of Heart the Podcast at www.purpose of heartpodcast.com. Make sure you hit that subscribe button so you never miss an episode. There's so much more God is doing, and I don't want you to miss a thing. Thank you in advance for the reviews and shares. They help this message reach more hearts. I can't wait to walk with you again in next week's episode. See you there.