Day 338: Dr. Larry Vass
“Everyone has potential. Everyone has God-given gifts that they can develop and use in their lives if they just would search for it, and the way to search for it is to read and to observe people who have been there.”
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Toni Reece: Thank you so much, Dr. Vass, for being part of this Project, and before we begin, can you please introduce yourself?
Dr. Larry Vass: Sure. My name is Dr. Larry Ivan Vass. I’m a dentist in Waldorf, Maryland, which is a suburb of Washington, D.C.
Toni: Dr. Vass, when you think of inspiration, who do you inspire, and how does that happen?
Dr. Vass: Who do I inspire? I’ll tell you what, there’s a group and there’s a person, and I would like to first talk about the person. The person is my adopted daughter, Ashley. She came into my life when she was 12 years of age. I married her mother when Ashley was 13 and then adopted her when she was 17.
Ashley followed the route of most early teens. She experimented and pushed the envelope and later attended a party college, but watching her mother and me experience extreme adversities in our lives, seeing me not able to work for a couple of years, and witnessing me not transferring blame to someone else but taking responsibility for my own actions, my own failures, she was inspired to excel and move beyond mediocrity.
She observed me using the time out of work to further my education and draw lessons from the losses that I had and for my failures. She saw me complete my Master’s of Divinity and pursue my passion for writing. And since that time I have published two books: A Reformed View of the Sovereignty of God In a Postmodern World, and the latest one came out two months ago, Hell Is Too Good for Some People.
Ashley left the party college and graduated from a Christian college and since has completed two Master’s degrees in Biblical Counseling. She is an avid reader, she loves to write, and she takes responsibility for herself. She never fails to tell me that she is so grateful for the influence I have had on her life and her desire for reading, her drive for success, and her insatiable love of God and all she attributes to me. But of course her mother laid these foundations, for example, by example, before I even came into her life, but inspiration by example is the key here.
And the second is a group. The group I inspire is a young married couples’ Sunday School class that I teach, and there I have intended to inspire them to be participants in the class, not just listeners. My encouragement and using my wife as an example, who actively participates, they have become active in the class. The class has turned into a discussion group rather than a group of young people listening to a demagog. Everyone, including myself, learns from the sharing that everyone does.
And I think those are the people, and my daughter, that I inspire, and that’s how I do it.
Toni: Well, those are two very, very powerful examples, and I would ask you, based on the examples that you stated, how do you think then that you help … what specifically have you done to help others explore their own potential?
Dr. Vass: What have I done specifically? Okay, I think the answer would have to be, show no fear. If you treat someone like you don’t trust them or their abilities, they will tend to retreat from showing you what they can do. Even though your insides may be churning, in order to get another person to delve deeply inside themselves, you have to allow them to come out of their shells and share their ideas of what they would do in a particular situation.
There might be times when what happens is contrary to what you would want to happen, but not showing and giving trust to that person will hinder them from developing the potential that will benefit them and possibly everyone around them. So I think show no fear, and allow them to explore.
Toni: What inspires you, Dr. Vass?
Dr. Vass: I’m sorry?
Toni: What inspires you?
Dr. Vass: What inspires me? I’ll tell you what inspires me is challenge. If I’m not challenged, there’s no inspiration, and years ago I started listening to a man by the name of Dr. R.C. Sproul. He’s on the radio. He’s a well-known reformed theologian who teaches for a half hour every weekday on hundreds of radio stations.
When I first started listening to him, things he said … I couldn’t agree with him, but I found that mainly I couldn’t agree with him because I didn’t understand what he was saying. But without ever knowing me, this man challenged me to read and study on what he had said. And when I began to understand, I found myself in agreement with him, and without that challenge to confront what I didn’t know and understand, I wouldn’t have been inspired to research the text required for the understanding.
As a matter of fact, the inspiration I garnered from his lectures calls me to go beyond mere understanding. Even though I was a practicing dentist, I went back to school, to seminary, in fact, and worked for and received my Master’s of Divinity. Then the challenge inspired me to write Christian books so that others would be inspired. So it all boils down to the fact that my inspiration comes from challenge.
Toni: When you are possibly having a day where you’re seeking inspiration and maybe you’re not as inspired as you’d like to be, are there certain resources … you’ve stated the gentleman, but are there other resources or tools that you tend to reach for on a consistent basis that help you kind of fill that up so that you can keep moving?
Dr. Vass: Other resources besides like a lecture or something? Yes. I find most of my inspiration from reading Psalms and Proverbs every day. Those are basics. Those are foundational.
And then for other research, I go to the internet. There’s a wealth of information that if you have something that is in the back of your mind you would like to explore, maybe even design, maybe even write, or maybe even come up with a new product, you can research what’s been done and from what people do and what people say and the conflicts that they’ve had in their own lives, it will inspire you to overcome those conflicts.
So consequently, I think the world around you, the Bible is a great source. As I said, I read Proverbs and Psalms every day; those are very inspirational. And I don’t mean religious inspiration – they’re truths that help you to understand when you’re down in the dumps, help you understand when things are not going right, you can overcome those by exploring your potential.
Everyone has potential. Everyone has God-given gifts that they can develop and use in their lives if they just would search for it, and the way to search for it is to read and to observe people who have been there. And what I mean by that is like my father was a great example to me. I admired him when he was alive, and the things that he said and taught me have always stuck with me. So I think you can find a wealth of information and resources in observing and listening and asking questions from older people who have actually been there and done it.
Toni: So really it goes back to that inspiration by example for you.
Dr. Vass: Absolutely.
Toni: Whether you are receiving that inspiration from another one who is setting that example, or you’re giving it.
Dr. Vass: Absolutely. Examples are always there before you, and you just have to grasp the opportunity.
Toni: So how do you explore your own potential?
Dr. Vass: How do I explore my own potential? I think what I need in exploring my own potential is not putting myself in a box. What I need to explore my own potential is not only to be allowed by others, but most importantly allow myself to think and act outside of the box.
I believe too many people surround themselves with parameters that stymie their creativity, and they place tops on their boxes that will not allow them to escape into new realms of possibilities or even to soar with the eagles. The constraints of the safe, known world, I think keep people from reaching their potential.
As in my newest book, Hell Is Too Good for Some People, I relate how if I had looked at life through the eyes of a farm boy only, the same way as urban people expected me to see, I would not have reached my potential to escape the confines of that farm life and become a dentist, a seminary graduate, or an ordained pastor and author of two books.
If one finds others keeping them confined to the world of their closed box, then they need to pry off the top and look hard outside their box to discover what else is out there that they can influence and utilize their God-given talents they have. That spells potential.
Toni: Dr. Vass, did you have other mentors, and … I don’t know, you spoke about adversity early on, but how you moved through all of that to have all the accomplishments that exist for you and the success that you’ve achieved – how did that happen along the way for you? Was it just your own will and resilience that allowed you to keep moving forward?
Dr. Vass: I think basically my strong Christian upbringing by a man and woman, my father and mother, who not only relied on God in their lives and put a lot of trust in that, but they themselves lived out that type of life. They set examples of hard work, of stick-to-itiveness and to go after what you want.
My father only had a third grade education, my mother, eleventh grade education, and yet throughout their lives they never put a lid on my brother, my sister or me to excel and accomplish things. I grew up on a farm, a farm kid, and yet it wasn’t that I was pushed from the nest, but the nest was made so that I could climb out of it.
My father gave me visions. The main thing he always said in my life, “If a man does not have a good reputation, he has nothing at all.” And so with that in balance and for him to show the work ethic that he had and instilled in my brother and me, he made us aware that there is nothing that we could not accomplish, and so he gave us that potential that we had in ourselves, and he pulled it out by showing us examples.
Toni: Thank you for sharing that. That’s an important point for people to really understand as they are listening to you speak here. We cannot thank you enough, Dr. Vass, for being part of this Project, and we want to make sure that people can take a look at your books and learn a little bit more about you, so we will be sharing your links at the bottom of the transcript, and for the open and honest interview that you’ve given, we so appreciate that.
Dr. Vass: Toni, you’ve given me a chance to talk, and I’ll talk all day. I’ve enjoyed it. Thank you so much.
Toni: Thank you. Take care, Dr. Vass.
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For more information about Dr. Larry Vass: www.Larryvass.com
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