Summary: In this episode, Matt McMillen's incredible journey from addiction and a troubled past to a life filled with grace and redemption takes center stage. Unveil the powerful narrative, from the influence of Matt's grandmother's wisdom to his ministry shaping communities with love and forgiveness. Weaving theology and personal experiences, explore the complexities of repentance, identity, and the transformative impact of true grace. Matt's story isn't just a recounting of the past; it's a roadmap to embracing our stories with faith and courage, recognizing the cornerstone of real change lies in our identity in Christ.
Join us to witness the liberating embrace of grace over fear and self-imposed restrictions, freeing lives from legalism. Matt's journey becomes an open invitation to anyone seeking similar freedom, emphasizing that through faith and community, hope transcends mere concepts—it's a lived reality. This episode promises an inspiring narrative that assures, amidst life's trials, the enduring truth: everything will be okay.
View more resources on our website!
TimeStamps:
0:00 - Transformative Stories
10:02 - Childhood Trauma and Salvation Journey
20:54 - Christian Faith
27:43 - Understanding the Book of 1 John
30:45 - Childhood, Allegations, and Foster Care
45:00 - Boys Ranch and Grandma's Influence
58:11 - Challenges, Love, and Success
1:13:13 - Discovering True Identity and Overcoming Addiction
1:25:23 - Fruit, Legalism, and Christian Faith
1:29:57 - New Covenant and Living in Identity
1:43:46 - Living a Grace-Filled Life Without Legalism
1:49:06 - Prayer for Freedom and Encouragement
Keywords: Faith, Transformation, Addiction, Redemption, Ministry, Forgiveness, Love, Theology, Identity, Spiritual Growth, Courage, Community, Repentance, New Covenant.
Summary: In this episode, Matt McMillen's incredible journey from addiction and a troubled past to a life filled with grace and redemption takes center stage. Unveil the powerful narrative, from the influence of Matt's grandmother's wisdom to his ministry shaping communities with love and forgiveness. Weaving theology and personal experiences, explore the complexities of repentance, identity, and the transformative impact of true grace. Matt's story isn't just a recounting of the past; it's a roadmap to embracing our stories with faith and courage, recognizing the cornerstone of real change lies in our identity in Christ.
Join us to witness the liberating embrace of grace over fear and self-imposed restrictions, freeing lives from legalism. Matt's journey becomes an open invitation to anyone seeking similar freedom, emphasizing that through faith and community, hope transcends mere concepts—it's a lived reality. This episode promises an inspiring narrative that assures, amidst life's trials, the enduring truth: everything will be okay.
View more resources on our website!
TimeStamps:
0:00 - Transformative Stories
10:02 - Childhood Trauma and Salvation Journey
20:54 - Christian Faith
27:43 - Understanding the Book of 1 John
30:45 - Childhood, Allegations, and Foster Care
45:00 - Boys Ranch and Grandma's Influence
58:11 - Challenges, Love, and Success
1:13:13 - Discovering True Identity and Overcoming Addiction
1:25:23 - Fruit, Legalism, and Christian Faith
1:29:57 - New Covenant and Living in Identity
1:43:46 - Living a Grace-Filled Life Without Legalism
1:49:06 - Prayer for Freedom and Encouragement
Keywords: Faith, Transformation, Addiction, Redemption, Ministry, Forgiveness, Love, Theology, Identity, Spiritual Growth, Courage, Community, Repentance, New Covenant.
The world doesn't think that the gospel can change your life, but we know that it can and that's why we want you to hear these stories, stories of transformation, stories of freedom, people getting free from sin and healed from sin because of Jesus. This is death to life.
Speaker 2:One night I woke up and Dad was putting me in the back seat of his vehicle and I'll hear Dad screaming. I look out the window. Mom's over here with a shotgun trying to shoot my Dad and she's clicking, clicking, clicking and there's nothing in the gun. Yeah, the older you get, you think about the mistakes that you make and you think of some of the reasons why you do some of the things that you do, and I think Christ within you will remind you. Hey, by the way, think about your mom in this situation, think about your grandpa in this situation. Forgive them, think of them with love. At the end of the story, I forgive, I've forgiven them.
Speaker 1:Yo, welcome to the Death to Life podcast. My name is Richard Young. Today's episode is with a brother of mine named Matt McMillan, and I first saw Matt on Instagram and he was just sharing beautiful gospel and so I was so impressed and I was following him and I wanted to know his story, and so we brought him on to tell his story and it is a wild, heartbreaking, beautiful story and I think you'll you'll be able to see if you do follow Matt on Instagram. You'll be able to see his heart and see why he does what he does. I want to caution you that this episode is not for the babies, and so use wisdom with who hears it, but I think you're going to be really blessed. So buckle up, strap in. This is Matt McMillan. Love y'all, appreciate y'all. Hey, man, let's jump into this All right. When you're thinking about your story, your spiritual life story, where is the starting point? Where does it start for you?
Speaker 2:Starting point. Yeah, it would probably be like the beginning of my family. If I had to, if I had to tell a story of my spiritual journey, it would start with my family. So when mom and dad got together, they had the idea of having two kids. They wanted a boy and a girl. So they put their order in for the boy and they got Luke. So this is 1979. And Luke was born. They were going to name him Scott, but grandma said, oh no, you got to give him a name out of the Bible. So she picked Luke. So they named him Luke and they put their order in for a girl. And then they were going to be done. They got twin boys. Oh no, lord, have mercy, I'm one of them. So they had twin boys and they were going to name us Benjamin and Brandon. So it was going to be Luke, benjamin and Brandon. And grandma said you're going to find out my grandma's a big part of my life. Grandma said no, you need to name him something out of the Bible. Again, mom and dad let her pick and she picked Matthew and Mark.
Speaker 1:So are you guys identical?
Speaker 2:We're not identical. We're actually as fraternal as it gets. I've got straight hair. I don't have any hair now, but I've got straight hair. He has curly hair. I'm lighter skin, he's darker skin. So we're completely fraternal two completely separate babies at the same time.
Speaker 1:I have a twin sister and she looks like people don't know what I am. They're like. The other day someone was like you got some Hispanic in you. Yes, I'm half Hispanic, and so they. But my sister looks like a straight white person, just regular white person, and her Spanish is so much better than mine, Her everything but she wears for Spanish, so you said she was Spanish.
Speaker 2:At one point I was like yeah, he is Spanish.
Speaker 1:It got some darker skin. Matt and Mark. What was the first one, Luke?
Speaker 2:So you had Matthew, Mark and Luke, so just needed John Paul. Dringo, and so they put the order in for a girl and they got a boy, so it couldn't have been Matthew, mark, luke and Fred. So John was pretty much named before he was even.
Speaker 1:So there is another one. There's a John too. There's a John. Yeah, you guys got the whole gospels.
Speaker 2:All right, old deal, man, I'm telling you Matthew, mark, luke, john, and then they tried again. And then my sister, faith, finally air quote had faith and one had a girl. So that would, that would be the beginning of my story. Now, if there was good things to say right after, that would be good, but it wasn't good after that.
Speaker 1:Wasn't good after that was. Was grandma the kind of matriarch that kind of kept the family? She's focused on the gospel, or was your whole family into it?
Speaker 2:Grandma was always there. Grandma was always around, and I'm going to talk a lot about grandma here in just a little bit.
Speaker 1:but don't want to jump the gun.
Speaker 2:You go ahead Because you know she was always there. Grandma was always there, always present, always that guiding comfort, voice of reason, christ being expressed, unconditional love, good food, warmth. Everything you could possibly ever want from a human being is grandma. So she's just the best. And that was my mom, that was my dad's mom, my mom's mom. She had actually left my mom's family when she was growing up and abandoned her and her brother and her sister, and mom had to step in and take on the role of her mom, which probably caused her to do a lot of the stuff that she did, because it was, it was mom was not a good mom. I'm trying to keep my emotions in check today.
Speaker 1:I mean don't do it for my sake.
Speaker 2:Yeah, no, and I'm not afraid to cry, but I don't want to be crying already.
Speaker 1:We're like five minutes in.
Speaker 2:It's probably going to happen today, maybe not, but anytime. If you really pay attention to my ministry, I don't talk a whole lot about personal stuff. I've got some antidotes antidotes whatever that word is in my ministry, but my ministry is focused on Jesus and unraveling scripture based on what Christ has accomplished. I'm extremely private. I'm extremely I don't want to say guarded, but my focus is not my personal life. My focus is not my, my upbringing or anything like that, even though there's there's people who are interested in that. I've written about it in my books, but it's not something that I really talk a lot about. So when I do talk about it, I do get emotional. I get emotional sometimes with my podcast and the stuff that I do on social media, but I'm not known for it. So emotions are good, but when we get to the point of that's, what everybody knows is by is Matt's going to be out of control, or Matt's going to be crazy, or we know he's going to cry or we know he's going to do that. I'm not known for that. It's just it's about Jesus and the new covenant, who you are, who Jesus is, who you guys are together. So when I talk about my upbringing, there's a lot of stuff that I try to like tread very lightly when I talk about it, because, number one, I don't want to hurt anybody's feelings, sure For sure, and number two, I don't want to disrespect anybody. And there's a lot of stuff that when I, before I even say it, I'm like, should I say it? But when it comes to mom, I really have no easy way of saying it. She was just, she was a bad mom. She was she cheated on my dad, she was addicted to drugs, she left us all the time. She was very mean, very cruel, not loving. She would get an award for worst mother of the year easily, but I don't like even saying that. But that's the reality. That was my childhood and the beginning of my family. The story always starts out good. We got Matthew, mark, luke, john, faith, mom and dad, two really good looking people. But that's about as good as a gift, because mom really just had a different time being a mom and I know now that I'm 42 years old, that it was because she didn't get to see a mother modeled. Her mom abandoned her, her mom left when she was a very young girl and mom had to step in and do all the cooking, cleaning, basically everything that the mom's supposed to do while she's supposed to be raised up by mom, a loving mom. And then my mom's dad. He was a preacher and he was an absolute nightmare. Hellfire and burnstone he's if you burn yeah he was the bookie man to me growing up. He was just. The biggest nightmare in my life was my mom's dad. So I couldn't imagine being raised by him. So she didn't have any of those skills. Mom and dad did not get along. Mom was in and out of rehab, mental hospitals, dad trying to hold the family together with five young kids. We were born from the year 1980 to the night year 1986. So you got five kids in six years and you got an addicted wife. It's, it was. It was hard on dad and dad. He didn't always make the greatest choices. He had a very short fuse and maybe didn't handle a lot of things in the most mature way. But long story short, when it comes to my childhood, mom and dad couldn't get along. One night I woke up and dad was putting me in the back seat of his vehicle and I was waking up. And it's the middle of the night. And I was waking up and it's the middle of the night and I hear dad screaming. And then I hear mom screaming and I sit up in the back of the car and I look out the window. Mom's over here at the door of the house with a shotgun trying to shoot my dad and dad's running off. She's clicking, clicking, clicking and there's nothing in the gun. So dad runs off. They get into a custody battle. Mom and my grandpa come up with this idea to create that create some false allegations against dad in order to get custody. So she said that he sexually abused us.
Speaker 1:Oh yeah, Pretty pretty diabolical.
Speaker 2:It's not cool at all. So it's pretty diabolical because dad never touched us. Right, dad never touched us. But when you accuse somebody of sexual abuse, you got to go through all the steps to be clear that you actually don't do that. So mom got custody of us. So mom got custody of us and my grandpa had a church, a raggedy old, nasty church in St Louis, and he had like two people that went there and above the church there was an old, dank apartment. We moved in there. So we lived in that apartment above the church with mom, all five of us kids, and it sucked, sucked, really bad. And this is in a very dangerous part of St Louis. You would hear gunshots all night long. I seen mom break up fights right outside on the sidewalk and during this time we were forced to go to church because grandpa's a preacher Got to get, can't forsake the assembly, got to get down below the apartment, go to church. And I remember when I was saved and I was a young boy, sitting on this cold, hard pew and my grandpa is just letting us have it, and I remember him saying you don't want to go to hell, do you? And just mouthing the words no, and at that point I was saved through fear, but I was still saved. So that was the moment of my salvation. I know that was when I was saved, when I believed Jesus. You can be saved in any way. You can be saved through fear. You can be saved in a pressure filled way, in a motivated way. As long as you trust Jesus, by grace, you're saved. Now I don't agree with how I was saved. Yeah, would you say.
Speaker 1:Method the method that your granddad used.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I don't agree with that at all, and that's probably why a lot of the motivation for my ministry is to get to the bottom of the scriptures that someone like he used, or those who use scare tactics to bring people to belief. That's probably one of the foundational reasons. If I was to pinpoint it is because I know what it's like to just be incomplete and utter petrification of God based on this representative of this person. But I was saved and this podcast is Death to Life. I would say right there. That would be the moment I received the life of Christ.
Speaker 1:Praise the Lord. Who was he? Not Jesus perhaps, but who was God at this point?
Speaker 2:At this point, somebody I was afraid of.
Speaker 1:Yeah, how did he feel about you?
Speaker 2:Oh, he loved me and he didn't want me to be afraid.
Speaker 1:How did he feel about you and your mind back then?
Speaker 2:Oh he was. I better. I better not mess up, I better toe the line, I better listen to grandpa. So he was.
Speaker 1:Santa Claus, but not with the toys, but just with the stick If you messed up.
Speaker 2:Yeah, that's perfect. Yeah, yeah, but it was. That's not how God ultimately wants you to think of him. And the problem with this is you have somebody who is supposed to be a representative of God on stage behind a pulpit, screaming, spitting, slapping his Bible, pointing at you, and you're a boy, you're a little boy. I can remember just the beatings I would take from this man when I would be bad, from my grandpa was. I don't remember any type of comfort, I don't remember any type of love, I don't remember any type of guidance. I just remember anger, shame, condemnation. You better mess up. You better not mess up. You're going to find yourself burning in the lake of fire and I'm your enforcer. And when you got a mom who is barely 20, who is in recovery off and on, and you've got five kids, and you've got this man who does not understand the love of God, who is basically, who has basically taken the spot of your extremely caring, comforting father, and you want your dad back, so much trauma was being seeds of the trauma was being planted at that time. It was a nightmare the life that we lived at that point me, luke, mark, john, faith it was an absolute nightmare. The beatings we would take from grandpa when we mess up the threats from mom that grandpa's going to get you as soon as he gets here. Mom was a terrible mother and she hated being a mom. She did not want us. She didn't want any of us kids. We were nothing but a bother. I remember one time I was scared of the dark and I went and tried to get into the. Mom did not want you sleeping in the same bed with her, don't even think about it. But I was really scared that night and I just I wanted to sneak into the bed. I just wanted to sneak into the bed, just away from whatever it was I was scared of. And I remember crawling into the bottom of my mom's bed, at the very bottom. I wasn't touching her, but I crawled in and I got under the covers and she moved her feet and she felt me and she sat up and she kicked me and she kicked me out of the bed like onto the floor. Here I am, kindergarten first, second grade, whatever year it was thinking that this is normal, that moms don't love their kids, that moms treat their kids like this and kids are a bother. Stay out of the way, be quiet, don't have an opinion. Don't get in any fights with your brothers or sister. Do the dishes vacuum and if you screw up, you're going to get it that was that was probably the worst part of my early childhood.
Speaker 1:In your adult life, have you been able to look back? I say that everybody comes by their stuff honestly, like you're just talking about how your mom didn't have a mom, like I'm thinking about, like it's all honest why we behave the way we behave, it's because of some lie believed or some mischaracterization of God, like your granddad ended up treating his congregants in the way God was treating him and his mind and he had to get it together. In your adult life, were you able to go back there and look at it and say, oh yeah, I didn't understand why mom was doing these things, but I see it clearly now?
Speaker 2:Absolutely. Yeah. The older you get, you, you think about the mistakes that you make and you think of some of the reasons why you do some of the things that you do, and I think Christ within you will remind you. Hey, by the way, think about your mom in this situation. Hey, by the way, think about your grandpa in this situation. Forgive them, think of them with love. They had a difficult too. They had the opinion about me, not true? So I think it's just a maturation process, and the sooner you come to the point of just like you said they went through it too you realize they're human as well. So one of the reasons why I don't really talk a whole lot about this stuff is because, at the end of the story, I forgive, I've forgiven them and I don't. I think that's powerful, though. Yeah, not everybody chooses to forgive, right, but some people are like I'm not. I know people like that. I'll never forgive. There's no way. Send me to hell, I'm not forgiving. But I think when you choose to forgive, first of all, it's natural for me to forgive. When you believe, your old self dies, you get a new self. You get a new Holy Spirit of your own. The spirit of Christ joins you, you get a new nature. You're dead to sin. Unforgiveness is a sin. You feel like a court geyser until you choose to forgive. And then, once you choose to forgive, you don't feel any more like yourself than when you choose to forgive. It's like when you choose to forgive you're like it's like a fish swimming in water. It's just what you do. It's not that you're saying what they did was OK, it's that you're deciding to forgive. You're also not forgiving to be forgiven. When Jesus said that he's setting up the impossible standards of the law to the people who thought they were doing a great job of following the law, we don't follow the law and we don't forgive to be forgiven. We forgive because we have been forgiven. That's what. Paul told the Ephesians what he told the Colossians forgive in the same way God has forgiven you. You choose to forgive.
Speaker 1:And it's just what you do when Jesus is making that point in Matthew 18,. He sets them up for failure Because he says this will happen to you if you do not forgive your brother from your heart. And they didn't even have the ability in that moment to give themselves a new heart to be able to forgive from. So Jesus is always setting people up to fail and so that they need him.
Speaker 2:That's perfect. Yeah, and when I first and I'm getting ahead of myself again when I first started my social media ministry, as you get a lot of kickback actually when you talk about forgiveness and one of the lines that you get is, if you don't forgive, god won't forgive you, and I'm like not exactly. And then, of course, getting ahead of myself here as well when you begin to understand the difference in the old and new covenants, you can decipher. Ok, that is what he's talking about. But let's look at this side of the cross, let's look at when the new covenant came into play. Yeah, man, that's the good stuff.
Speaker 1:This guy and I are having actually a conversation today about repentance and he says do you need to repent? And I said for what purpose? I said because confession and repentance is a way of life as a Christian. But for what purpose? And he said to make your relationship right with God. I said Jesus has come and has reconciled you to God, so you do not need to repent for your relationship to God. There's no gap there, there's nothing to be mended there because of Christ in you. But then he said so there's no need for repentance. I said there will be repentance, you will have a changed mind, right. But they want to make that repentance is the thing that gets forgiveness. Rather, because we are forgiven, we change our mind about God. That's perfect.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I mean I love doing this podcast with you because I've done podcasts in the past and people don't know that and I have to explain that. But what you just said is exactly how it works. You don't repent to be forgiven. You have repented of unbelief once to receive the Spirit in order to receive complete forgiveness past, present and future sins. Now you're going to repent of immature actions and attitudes to enjoy your salvation, not to get your relationship better, not to remain in fellowship, not to receive more forgiveness. If you repent of a sin in order to receive forgiveness, that would mean you're only forgiven until you sin again. So, then, that overlooks everything that Christ accomplished at the cross. But, based on my studies, this entire mantra of repenting of a sin in order to receive forgiveness began with the frontier revivalist, the tent revivals, where you had to repent of a sin. Air quotes stop in order to receive forgiveness. You don't stop a sin to receive forgiveness. You stop a sin or you repent from a sin because you have been forgiven.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I think that we just haven't reformed from this idea, because now we're getting into it a little bit. First, john 1.9 seems to be a method that people use, because before we reformed from Catholicism that was how we received forgiveness. We would go into a little box and we would say, father, I've sinned, and we would say the severity of the sin, and then he would hand out what dependence was. And we've reformed from that, but probably not enough, because we still think that Kieber says that there is no forgiveness of sin without blood, right, right, and Jesus is not dying ever again. And so then we just have to make Jesus gave for provision for forgiveness, and that little word provision then keeps us in this sin and forgiveness cycle, which actually doesn't bring life.
Speaker 2:No, it doesn't. And one of the things I began to understand about the book of 1 John is this is a book that is, first of all, it's an invitation to trust Jesus. So John was battling Gnosticism. So the Gnostics, first of all the Gnostics said Jesus didn't come in the flesh because flesh is bad. You ever heard of that? Your flesh is bad. Also, sin is not a real thing. So the entire book is a contrast of nature. That's why he starts out saying I touched him. So the Gnostics who were infiltrating this young group of Christians said Jesus didn't come in the flesh. John's, I actually touched him, ok. That's why he also said test the spirits to see if they say Christ did not come in the flesh. So if they say that he came in the flesh, ok, that's spirits from God. So when you get to this also this notion of repeated confession for repeated forgiveness, john before the cross, he never stopped and asked for forgiveness. He never confessed. He went to the annual day of atonement. He was a Jewish person. So he's not going to go from annual forgiveness to confession by confession. So 1 John 1 9 says all If we confess our sin, he is faithful, just to forgive us and cleanse us of all All means, all Plus. Also, what if you forget about a sin? God doesn't forget just because you forget. What if you lose your voice? What if your tongue gets cut out? How are you keeping track? So it's an enemy of the cross. It's a distraction by the enemy, which gets the focus back on what are you doing about your sin, as opposed to what has Christ already done about your sin and what are you resting in.
Speaker 1:I knew I wouldn't be. I knew you can help preach a little bit and do a little teaching in this story. But let's get back to that. So you're growing up in this kind of a toxic religion where it's yet you believe in Jesus. Did you think like Jesus was the cool version of God? Was there like a separation there? It was complete fear.
Speaker 2:Even of Jesus, jesus, yeah, jesus, jesus and God. So I'm a little boy. I don't know a whole lot of the difference. I know about this man named Jesus who died on the cross for my sins. I better believe or else I'm going to hell. And I better stop sinning or else I'll mess up and still find myself back in hell. So that and I know we said we weren't going to talk about theology because you and me we could do that for hours, so I'm going to try to keep it on the street.
Speaker 1:I want you to let the spirit lead. If you want to say something about theology, man, feel free. I'm going to sit here loving it, and I think the listener will love it as well.
Speaker 2:What I like about you is I've followed you on social media for the past couple of years, so I know what you believe and I know what you think. So I am completely unapologetic with absolutely everything I say. I'm not worried about stepping on toes. Right right, right, right right. I know that you know what the cross did. Praise the Lord. You make a big deal out of Jesus. You make a big deal out of how we're dead to sin. We don't want to sin. So when I start talking about that stuff, when I talk about it with close friends, it just comes out. But yeah, back to my childhoods. We lived there for a while kindergarten through second grade and then mom and dad got back together, ok, so they tried. So the problem with that is the allegations against my dad were still not finalized. So mom and dad moved to Florida with grandma and grandpa my dad's mom and dad. So they moved to Florida to get away from my grandpa my mom's dad because he was the puppeteer and he's the one who came up with all these allegations in order to get the kids.
Speaker 1:He didn't feel weird about that being a pastor and bear in false witness about any of that stuff.
Speaker 2:You would think that the spirit would let him know. Hey, man don't do that Maybe he did.
Speaker 1:I'm sure he did actually, but I'm sure you've got to listen, right.
Speaker 2:If he believed the spirit was urging him the whole time. Hey, no, we don't do that, but it's still up to us to listen. Whether you're struggling with extreme legalism or extreme licentiousness, the spirit will always guide you and never lead you. So even if he's struggling with all of that legalism and he is going against it, he would have to deal with whatever came along with that in his own mind. It doesn't mean he's not saved. It doesn't mean he's losing rewards in heaven or anything like that. It just means look what happened. He didn't have a relationship with his grandkids. He didn't have a relationship with his son-in-law, with his daughter. It was just a bad deal, and I want to make that clear as well. Grandpa could have been saved. You could never tell who's saved. Some of the most polished appearing people are not saved. Some of the most grimy appearing people are saved. You are saved by grace, through faith in what Christ has done for you. At that point, you have the spirit within you, the ministry of the spirit leading you. What are you going to do with that? That's up to you. Your problem in regard to your relationship with God is solved. Your problem in regard to your relationship with people is not. His actions destroyed my relationship with him and I'm getting ahead of myself again. We never had a relationship, even after all of this happened, and he's an old man and I seen him six or seven years ago, so we didn't even know each other and he's just this old, frail man, but I've got his blood running through my veins. But we didn't have a relationship because of his choice. Yeah. But mom and dad moved to Florida and the troubles continued. Grandma and grandpa had retired to Key Largo. We moved in with them. We all moved into this little bitty house Love Florida, by the way, such a nice place to live. But grandpa found out. Grandpa called the state of Florida, said hey, there's still allegations against that man. He's not supposed to have custody of the kids. So mom also decided to get back on drugs and, as a result, mom couldn't keep us. She's strung out. Dad couldn't have us because of the allegations. Grandma and grandpa couldn't have us because we were that was, my dad's parents and he wasn't supposed to be around us. So we had to go into the foster care system. Foster care system really is difficult and if you know any kids that are in the foster care system, you've got to be friendly to them. You have really no idea the amount of stress and turmoil and heartache and pain that they're going through. They don't want to be in the foster system and the foster care system is. It's a crap shoot. You're either going to get a nice family who actually cares about you and wants to feed you, shelter you and show you some love. Those people are out there. But there's also people out there who you're just in their house for a paycheck. They don't like you, it's you're not important, they have their own kids. You are just there so they can get the check from the state. Some of the stuff that we went through in the foster care system was diabolical. First of all, they split us all up. Mark and I went to one foster home, luke went to one, john went to one Faith. By the grace of God, she got to go stay with our aunt and uncle up here in Missouri and she lucked out when it came to that. But the foster care system that we were in, the parents that we had, my foster parents, were very verbally abusive. They made very clear that we would not be staying there permanently. Do what you're supposed to do or else. And kids that are in the foster care system, they have behavior problems because of stuff like that. I'm one of them, but I had severe behavior problems because I was mad, I was frustrated, I was scared. I don't like you people, I don't want to be here. You're not my mom, you're not my dad. Screw this whole system. And I began to get in a lot of trouble. And my brother Mark? He is not as type A as me. He's not as mouthy I guess is a good way to say it as a kid. He's not as quick to say something. So I was pretty much the one who took the brunt of all of the verbal abuse and whatnot which came from the foster parents. But I remember one time my foster parents force-fed my brother Mark dinner because he wouldn't eat. Literally we're sitting here at the table. He didn't want to eat, he's not hungry and these are Cuban foster parents.
Speaker 1:We live in the Florida Keys and we had that I love Cuban food, but I don't think I'd like it if they were forcing it down my mouth. The food was good.
Speaker 2:The food was good, but it wasn't the food that was the problem. It was the people serving the food and Mark just didn't want to eat fried plantains and rice and beans again, we had it all the time and he didn't want to eat it. These were very bigger people and they got up and they shoved the food in his mouth and I remember thinking what is going on here? We don't waste food in this house. You're eating your food. We're sending you back. Blah, blah, blah, blah. Mark got to stay. I got sent to a different foster home because I threw a big fit and I went to another foster home. Let this next foster home. They put me with Luke. Well, luke was already there and they liked Luke. And then they had a couple adoptive kids I'm the troublemaker is the label that I have from the other foster parents. So they were already on high alert. You get mad in here. He's going to cause some issues. Just letting you know I really like these people. So there was no behavior issues there. So it just went to show that you had some people who actually cared for you and treated you as a human being, like you were one of their kids and I love them people. They were super nice. Another thing in the foster care system you get to try out different religions the Cubans you get to see what they were celebrating every Sunday and I had it was a white family. They went to Mass and I was also put with some fundamental Baptists. You get a good. It's probably another reason why I can talk about a lot of stuff that I talk about with my ministry is I've experienced it. Yeah. And my family growing up was Pentecostal.
Speaker 1:You've Catholicism, pentecostalism. What was the Baptists?
Speaker 2:Baptists, the Cubans, I think the I'm not picking on. Cubans Catholic right, anything like that. I think they're Catholics too, but I just remember getting a good flavor of, a good taste of all these different flavors of religion, thinking when Christ is within me the whole time and guiding me and comforting me, but just going. You're like what's the truth? Why are all these things different? You know, why are there so many different styles? But they're all saying that it's about Jesus.
Speaker 1:So that's a question that this girl reached out to me this week and she's been loving my page and was like I want to get baptized. Where do I go? And she lives in Michigan and I'm in Tennessee and I was like I don't know, are you a member of a church? Is your family a member of a church? And she's like I think so. And then she's like, looking into Christianity, and she's I thought we were all Christians. She's like it seems like I read their website and it says that they all believe in Jesus. So it doesn't seem like they believe differently and I'm like they do, but she's should I not worry about which church or denomination to be and just keep finding out about what Jesus has done? I was like absolutely.
Speaker 2:Let's do that. That's great advice.
Speaker 1:This is tough out there. If you're ignorant of it, then you're like what?
Speaker 2:Yeah, yeah, yeah, man, I'm not going to go down that road, but yeah.
Speaker 1:Yeah, don't go down that road, let's go with the story.
Speaker 2:Keep this going, man, All right. Yeah, and besides my counseling sessions, because I've done a lot of counseling over the years, I've never talked this in depth about my childhood, but I know when I listen to your podcast I know what you want on your podcast here. So I know I'm being a little bit more over-explanative than I probably would, but I think it will help somebody who's dealt with it, Especially if you know anybody that's in the foster system or if you've experienced the foster care system. You got to love those people, man. Man. You got to love those people. You. Really, if you pick on those foster care kids, it's just, it's not their fault, they're just kids. They're a victim of whatever's going on in their family life. And when you go from school to school, to school to school because when you go to a different foster home, you go to whatever school you're in at that house. So I'm going from this school to this school, I'm always labeled as the new foster kid and you develop a mindset of fighting. So that's that. You just you're triggered because that's your defense mechanism Either you're going to fawn or you're going to fight. And when you're a kid and you get picked on a lot, you're going to get in a lot of trouble. And I got in a lot of trouble and I fought a lot and I couldn't focus on my studies. I couldn't focus on just the stuff that kids should just be focusing on, like having fun with your friends, because as soon as you get some friends, you got to move. As soon as you are used to playing basketball at this court with this group, you got to move. This kid here, you used to live next to him, you got to move and it's just, it's a nightmare and it was just all bad. We were in children's shelters, foster homes. Mom was still on drugs. Mom actually got us back a couple of times. She got sober, went to rehab, got us back, but she would get on drugs again and lose us again. One time she got us back and that same day she got us all back from the children's shelter. She left us in a crack dealer's house. The crack dealer's mom called the cops and said hey, there's a bunch of kids here and they ain't mine. And they came and took us. Division of family service took us right back to the children's shelter and plantation key. And it was just like you think you have freedom and you think that your parent is there to save you, but they're not, because they're addicted and your other parent who wants you, they can't have you because of allegations from the state.
Speaker 1:I'm so sorry, bro. This is a nightmare. Dude, it was a nightmare.
Speaker 2:It was terrible, but God was still with me this whole time. I remember a lot of times I would just be praying on my bunk bed at night. God, would you just get me out of here. God, just send somebody. Just, I don't want to be here. And he heard me. He heard me, but I was suffering because of the choices of people, not because of God. God didn't put me in the children's shelter. God didn't put me in foster homes. God didn't make my mom do what she did. So many people, when they hear stuff like this, you're like where was God? Why would God do that to you? God didn't do that to me. God was here. He had already been here the moment I trusted Jesus. He was one spirit with the Lord. He was there with me the whole time. He felt what I felt. He protected me, he guided me. All of the stuff that I was dealing with. He felt it. We went through it together and we made it through. I one memory that really stands out for me when we were in the children's shelter because you got foster homes, you got children's shelters and when you're looking to be split up into a foster home, they put you in a children's shelter and I went on family vacation summer before last and actually drove by this children's shelter because we vacationed in Key West and I said, hey, I want to drive by this children's shelter and plantation key, it's still there. And I remember mom said that she was going to come for my birthday and we had grandma was there, dad was there, everybody was there. We were in the visitation room. Mom didn't show up. It still hurts me today when I think about it, because the love of a mom is so important to a little boy. Yeah, and when they don't show up for your birthday and you're in a children's shelter, it has a huge impact on that child. Yeah. So it hurt a lot. It hurt a lot. So anyway, let's move forward to six. Eight months later, they actually put all four of us boys in what's called a boys home or a boys ranch. It's in Palatka, florida. It's in the northern part of Florida. It's called Road Heaver Boys Ranch. Now, road Heaver Boys Ranch. This is supposed to be an awesome place to go. Me, Mark, luke, john, all get to be together. It has cottages, it's only boys, you have really loving cottage parents and you get to do stuff on the farm, ride horses, swim. It was supposed to be just this amazing place and I get. First of all, I got to say this it was better than a foster home. Okay, there were still a lot of things that happened in the boys home in Road Heaver Boys Ranch while mom was still doing drugs and dad couldn't have us and we got put in this place, that a lot of bad stuff happened which just was not good.
Speaker 1:I'll try to keep this part. How did your dad feel about all of this?
Speaker 2:Oh, it was an absolute nightmare. It was an absolute nightmare. So dad was a very hardworking person. He had a lot of savings. He spent all of his savings on lawyers trying to get us kids back. If you knew what dad went through, it would be, something that's right. Yeah, he was trying to. It would be something that exactly. It would be something that somebody would commit suicide over, for lack of a better explanation. Your kids are gone, you're being accused of sexual abuse, you're spending all your money, your wife is on drugs it's bad and dad was living with grandma, driving to Miami, working, coming back, trying to get his kids back. It was just when my dad did flooring his box truck with all of his tools got stolen one time. So dad had it rough. Dad had it rough, but anyway, at the boys ranch we were all together and it was a good place to live overall. But something happened at the boys ranch which would change our life forever and it was the accident. So we got in an accident me, my twin brother Mark and Luke and when we were in this accident, my brother Mark was thrown from the vehicle and he was crushed and he was killed and he was brought back to life. He was in the hospital, died again, and he was in Shriners Hospital in Tampa for, I want to say, a little over a year and he had gotten down to 75 pounds and he lost his right leg. So he lost his leg. He had died. All of his internal organs not all of them, but majority of his internal organs were crushed. He was in some really bad shape.
Speaker 1:Do you remember this accident? I don't want you to.
Speaker 2:I remember vividly. I remember vividly and for time purposes I don't want to explain the whole accident, but where Mark was sitting, we actually argued over that seat. So had I not given up on that argument and I could win that argument with Mark because he's more passive had I not ended up with that argument with Mark, I would have been the one who was thrown from the vehicle. I would have been the one who died and had to be brought back to life. I would be the one with one leg right now. And what's interesting is, mark had a NDE, a near-death experience at that time and I've spoken to him about it several times and I believe him and he said in his near-death experience that all of this is part of a bigger plan and that you can go back if you want to. And he did so. Anyway, we got in the accident. Mark lost his leg. It was a big ordeal. Dad ended up suing the state, winning the settlement. So Mark is taken care of. So Mark is not rich by any means, but he has one leg and he gets that structured settlement because of that. So anyway, dad got us back. Finally, after we got to go to court and testify and say, hey, dad never sexually abused us. And the judge was like, okay, great If he didn't go live with your dad. So Dad got us back and it was pretty awesome. It was almost like I don't know being reborn again, getting out of jail something that you never thought would happen again. You finally get to go live with your dad again, who you know never laid a finger on, you never touched you and you should have been with him the whole time. But he got us back. We went to Universal Studios for a week and it was a big celebration. So Dad moved back up here to Missouri to get away from Florida. And when we moved back up here to Missouri, mom also moved back up here. Mom and Dad tried to work it out again and it just didn't work. Again, mom couldn't get off the drugs, mom couldn't stop messing around. So Grandma moved in with us and that was good. It was good that Grandma moved in with us, because Grandma is probably the reason why I'm like I am today. She instilled the truth about who already lives in me, in my mind. So many Christians are saved. Christ lives within them, but they have been lied to about who Christ is on such a grand scale that their conscience is just seared by so much error and their mind just needs to be renewed with the truth of the organic gospel, of who Christ actually is, what the fruit of the Spirit actually looks like, what he wants for you Not only what he wants for you, but what he wants to do through you. The cross forgave us. That's what he did for us. He forgave us. The resurrection gave us new life, but it wasn't just that. So we're forgiven, we're righteous, but we also have the Holy Spirit within us, and we need people like Grandma to show us. Okay, this is what Jesus actually looks like. She moved in with us and it was good.
Speaker 1:That's awesome. How old were you at this point?
Speaker 2:This was seventh grade, so I was what? 12, 13, something like that.
Speaker 1:Man this roller coaster up until that age.
Speaker 2:Yeah, it was pretty insane. I finally had some stability, if you want to call it that, and with Grandma moving in, mom moving out, grandma basically raised us. So when you're a seventh grader, you're still a kid and Grandma began to wrangle in this misbehaving kid. But she did it with love and she did it with patience and gentleness and she was never rude, she was never mean, she was never overbearing, she was never aggressive. It was always the gospel, served up on a platter with love. And you want to have good behavior, because that's what's going to set right with you, that's what fits you best. And she showed me what it looks like to express unconditional love. So Grandma Granny Mac is unlike anybody I've ever known. She is an absolute angel. She was about five foot one, two, 50. So she's a short, fat lady. They used to call her Big Mama, or Dad would always call her Fat Lady, and she didn't care, she was really good at making. She didn't care, she knew it. She didn't care, she was good at. She was good at making fried chicken, biscuits and gravy, bacon and eggs all the good, healthy stuff. That's right. Yeah. And she's. She's the reason why I came to understand God like I do. She encouraged me to read my Bible. She encouraged me to get to know Jesus. She encouraged me to forgive my mom. If anybody could have a grudge against mom, it would be Grandma. I never heard her say a bad word about my mom. Wow, in fact the opposite. When I would be out of control saying I hate my mom, why isn't she here? Nobody has a mom like this. Why don't I get a normal household? Why don't I have a normal family? She would always douse that out with love. She would say, matthew, that's still your mom you need. You need to just forgive her and love her. And she's just she's having a difficult time. She never talked bad about my mom. She never, ever said anything bad about mom.
Speaker 1:That's beautiful man, that's a testimony right there yeah.
Speaker 2:Matter of fact, I never heard her say anything bad about anybody. You know a lot of old ladies. They like the gossip. A lot of old ladies. They want to be known by having a smart mouth. And just Grandma wasn't that. And she didn't have any hobbies, she wasn't super smart, she just loved people and made such an impact on the community around her. We always had somebody in our house from the neighborhood. Always, they would always be over there with Granny Mac. She'd always be cooking for them, she'd always be praying with them. She'd always be. Everybody always said go see Granny Mac. What's Granny Mac got to say about that? What's your grandma doing? I'm going to go see her. Can I call your grandma? I'd always walk in from the back door and she'd be on the phone talking to somebody, praying or listening. She would sit there and I wouldn't hear her say anything. I said Grandma, I need to use the phone. Oh, hush your mouth, because she's sitting there listening to people and she would just listen to people who other people would just completely write off, people who everybody gave up on, those who were addicted to drugs, those who struggled with alcoholism, those who abandoned their families, my mom, for example. She would always take phone calls from my mom, talk to my mom. She would always ask if there's anything she could do for my mom. At that point we were pretty poor because dad spent all his money on lawyers, spent all his money trying to get his kids back. We lived in this little bitty, janky house on 32 East Main Street in Park Hills, missouri. It is just, it's a little dump, and we lived there. I would have rather lived there because Grandma was there than live in a million dollar house without Grandma. She just made it so pleasant. Even in the midst of all this chaos, there was always something, some kind of fight going on at our house. There was always some type of argument. Me and Luke would be fighting, mark and John would be fighting. Faith would be doing something that she shouldn't be doing. Neighborhood kids would be running in and out of the house, leaving the back door open, stealing our clothes. But in the midst of that was Grandma. She was Christ in the center of this chaos. I had Christ in me, but I'm deciding not to listen to him at this point. Of course, he's always in me trying to say hey, you don't want to do that. Hey, you should probably turn from that. Hey, that's not for you. We know we have the choice as to whether or not we're going to listen to that or not. But Grandma actually expressed Christ and I got to see that she didn't put any religion down my throat. She didn't use any shame there's no shame on you which I heard from certain foster parents and people. I'd wake up in the middle of the night to go to the bathroom and she would be sitting at the kitchen table reading her Bible. I'd wake up early in the morning to get ready for school and she would already be up with the coffee on, have biscuits and gravy. She'd say get you a plate, sit down, let's talk. And it was good. It was good Even in the midst of all of that difficulty. Dad wasn't there at that point, and not by his own choice. He had to work. Dad was literally gone before the sun, and I know what literally means he was gone before the sun got up and then he was gone when the sun was already down or he came home before the after the sun was already down. That's every day of the week, sunday through Sunday, because he's got all these lawyer bills to pay, he's got five miles to feed. He's got to get caught up and we just didn't see Dad, and I would get mad about that too. I would say where's Dad? Why ain't he coming to any of my games? Everybody else has their. They've got their parents in the stand. Where's my mom? Where's my dad? I would say, matthew, you know he wants to be there, but he can't. We're gonna get kicked out of this house. We gotta have food. She was just such a guiding force during that time and had she not been there it would have been so much worse. There's no way I would be there. Probably is a way. God could still have made a way, but the odd you know what I'm saying the odds of me maturing into who I am today probably would not have happened had grandma not come a little nothing's written in stone man. Yeah, yeah, praise the Lord for praying people yeah, I tell you one, one more story about grandma. So my best friend lived across the alley in his house with his mom and dad and he always got in trouble. But he was my best friend because I didn't have any friends, because I was a new kid and I was the poor kid. But he befriended me and he got a hold of a bottle of Jack Daniels and he drank the whole thing when he's a kid. So you don't know, that's probably gonna mess you up pretty bad. He drank the whole thing. I came home to the back door because I had been playing basketball side note here I took a love to basketball about this time and I played basketball all the time at the local basketball court. So I came home to the back door, open up the back door and I hear him say Maddie Matt, matt, matt, matt, because they called me Maddie Matt and I was like what the heck? And I walked into the other room and I went into the bathroom and he's in the bathtub, butt naked and I'm like, oh my god. And he was drunk and laying in bathwater and I'm like what is going on? And I walked down to the kitchen and grandma just had this look of like sadness and concern and she was like I couldn't send him home like that because his dad would have beat him up. His dad was very abusive and a macho man and had Jeremiah I had said his name again had he gone home he probably won't care. I've told this story before. Had he gone home he would have gotten trouble. But just the love of God coming through my grandma to cover this and to take care of him, even though he did something really stupid. It just goes to show the love that she had for everybody she could have been. She could have called up and said hey, your, your idiot son's here, he's drunk, come get him. No, she put him in a bathtub. I don't know if she took his clothes off or not, but he sobered up and he thanked her for that so how long are you in this house?
Speaker 1:did you go through high school there?
Speaker 2:yeah. So from then on out seventh, eighth, ninth, tenth, eleventh, twelfth grade we were there. Finally some air quote, normalcy, if you want to say. In regard to the school life, I love school, did just fine in school, had lots of friends, played lots of basketball. High school years were good, but I did do something when I was 15 which would set up some dominoes for some later struggles in my life, and that was the first time I got drunk. So I got drunk and it was not fun. It was not fun the first time I got drunk because I drank a lot, just like my friend did, thinking that's just what you do and it was bad. So I didn't do it for a while. And then later that year I did it again, only I had a little bit and I liked it. So I started to take a liking to drinking alcohol. So that became something. And there's no supervision in my house. Grandma can't wrangle everybody. She's in her 70s, she can't keep track of everything, so you pretty much do whatever you want and it's not good. So anyway, took it a liking to alcohol and I didn't know that later on it would become a problem. I'm just thinking, I'm having fun, I'm young, everybody does this. I'm socializing, but it wasn't bad yet. So fast forward, get out of high school, try college. College was not for me. I was still struggling financially as far as being able to even pay for gas money most kids that go to college. If you have a kid that goes to college or you're a kid in college and you have parents that are paying for that and you have a financial stability and you don't have to worry about how am I gonna pay for my food, how am I gonna pay to support myself and enjoy that, that's such a gift. I didn't have that. So when I went to college it was very stressful, so I quit after a semester. I don't recommend that. Get your education. Education is good. But I quit college and I got a job selling insurance. Right, I was going door-to-door selling insurance, not making much money, still living at the house, and I would always borrow gas money from grandma. Every morning I'd get up early, start working. I was always self-motivated, very driven to be successful in business, and when you grow up poor, you really have a drive to want to be not poor. Typically, at least I was anyway, because I know what it's like to not have enough or struggle, so I didn't want that. So I was always driven and I wasn't making any money selling insurance so I kept applying for other jobs. Rose one job that I applied for. I got hired. I was really good at it and it was selling security systems. So I started selling security systems door-to-door. Quit my job selling insurance. Another long story short. I was really good at it, I was the best. I set national sales records what?
Speaker 1:do you attribute that to just natural charisma, or was it that so my?
Speaker 2:motivation every day was to see as many people as I could possibly see and to see however many people I could get to tell me know the fastest. Because I knew if I could see as many people as I could possibly see every single day face-to-face, if I could get somebody to tell me no as fast as possible, I can get to somebody who would tell me yes. And my goal every day was to sales a day. So if I had one sale before lunch, I was. I wanted one sale after lunch. If I had one sale, and it was. If I had one sale after lunch and I already had one sale before lunch, I had my two sales for the day. I'd be done. For the day I'd go chill, I go play basketball, go play video games, hang out with Jennifer, my wife, which I haven't had a chance to talk about her yet, but that's my wife, met her in seventh grade, by the way. Shout out to Jennifer. I talk about Jennifer a lot and all my other stuff, so I was trying to keep her as low-key on this as possible you're chilling on this episode, jennifer, but we love you we love you. So, anyway, that was the goal. That was my goal. I don't think it was charisma. I think it was a determination to put in the time and treat it as a full-time job. I knew I was gonna have to work 40 hours a week somewhere, so why not put 40 hours a week with this goal of being able to get two sales a day and be done so? I was actually gonna prove that this is not possible. So I actually, when I first got hired, I even went to Jennifer's job and I walked in. I had the I'm not gonna say the company, but I walked in because she was a receptionist at a lawyer's office. I walked in. She saw my shirt what's that? I just got hired here. So what are you gonna do about insurance? I'm gonna try this out. I'm gonna give this two weeks, put insurance to the side and man, it was just like this is this is me. This is like MJ on the court. And it was like I said all these records and everybody was wondering what are you doing? What's the secrets? Are you selling to all your family? Are you selling all your friends? I had a rule of thumb not to sell to my family and friends because I knew that would run out. So if my family and friends approached me then I would talk to them about it. But I wanted people that I don't know every single day. I want to talk to strangers all day for eight hours. I don't care who's rude to me, I don't care. I don't care if I'm stammering, shaking, stuttering, mess up on my words, because I know the quicker I get done with these people. Where I mess up, I'm gonna get to somebody. Where I get it I messed up here, I'm gonna go. The next one messed up here gonna go the next one messed up here. I got one. So I got my sale for the day or my sale for that time. So to a day was my goal. But I was getting three a day, four a day, five a day. I had the big wigs come and visit me at Farmington, take me out to the dinner. We like hey, man, but we like you keep going. Yeah, man, and it was, but my. All I did was treat it like a full-time job. But when you get into a business where you're like nothing's guaranteed, a lot of people like that's scary and I understand that. But I'm a 19 year old kid and I'm just looking for the vehicle to be successful. And this was the vehicle. And God's, here you go, this is the vehicle. At that time I still was making a lot of poor choices, still saved, still had the life of Christ, but I'm beginning to find my identity and stuff. I'm beginning to find my identity in success. I'm beginning to find my identity in I'm really good at this and it's a dead end street. So I began to get a little bit arrogant in regard to my success. So I ended up getting into it with my office manager and my office manager. We had a disagreement. He said you're fired. I said I quit, I don't need you. So the big wigs called me and they're like hey, man, we're getting ready to give you your own office anyway. So I got my own office. So I did really good at that, because now I had a sales force. So I got a sales force. With my own office, I'm successful, doing big things, driving a Lexus, eating good dinners, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, and this whole time I'm completely ignoring God, doing lots of bad stuff, getting drunk all the time still saved. Mind you, this didn't unsave me, it's just me being successful and then erroneously finding my identity in success mercy. At that point I was. I had a big opportunity that I was taking advantage of and I was doing the most that I could. Another issue with this is I had become a workaholic the very thing that I despised about my dad. I was doing the same thing. I was working from 7 am to 10 o'clock at night and and then getting drunk at. I'd start getting drunk about 4 or 5.
Speaker 1:My alcoholism started to get out of control and when did you realize I don't think I like the, or maybe I did it. It's a problem, it's a problem.
Speaker 2:I knew my early 20s. I knew it. I started going AA meetings and I'm the successful alarm guy and people recognize me. And AA meetings just made me want to drink more. Why is that, man? I'm not like these people. Air quotes.
Speaker 1:You know what I'm saying and it just you went to them voluntarily and then you're so like nah and I already had the UI, so I already got one DUI.
Speaker 2:That was one of the wake-up calls. I'm like you got a problem, dude, you need to get some help. So I started going to but I just couldn't stop, like when that urge hit me, four or five o'clock, I'm like I want to drink. Yeah, and I would. The company that I worked for they had put me over my territory, another territory on the other side of the state and then on the southern part of the state, and then they shut down all of their dealerships. So I didn't have a job. So when they shut down all their dealerships, I started my own company. I was like I don't need them, I'm not successful because of that name, I'm successful because of me. They're not putting this work in, this is just a name. I was right. It wasn't the name, it was me, it was my hard work, it was my determination, it was me putting in this effort, it was me not having negative nancies in my sales force. So I was continue to be successful. Only I had my own company. Now that's what I form my own company. And at that point my company grew, expanded. I was very successful, but I was burnt out. I was struggling with alcoholism, my relationship with Jennifer was struggling. So you married at this point? No, I was not married at this point.
Speaker 1:And she like, hey, we've been together since seventh grade. Brah like, yeah, want to make it official.
Speaker 2:She was never oh, yeah, she wanted to get married. Yeah, and what's funny is we knew each other in seventh grade, all the way through school, but we didn't even start date until after high school. We were just friends. So she's a great person, but she, yeah, she wanted to get married. Of course she wanted to get married and I should have got married, but I still wanted to do. I wouldn't even say I wanted to do it. In my core I didn't want to do those bad things. I wanted to make the right choices but I was making poor choices. So, anyway, another long story short I actually stopped that business. I put it on hold. I'm like I'm too stressed out I. So I put it on hold and I took all of my savings and I invested it and I moved in with my father-in-law in his basements. Now, at that time, jennifer got pregnant. When Jennifer got pregnant, I got super, super legalistic. I stopped drinking. Now, alcohol was the enemy. I started Bible thumping you need to stop drinking and be like me. I started to become express a lot of legalism. I would shut off the world. I wouldn't go anywhere that served alcohol. How dare you drink alcohol in front of me? I'm in recovery, that type of deal. So I was miserable. Must have been fun to hang out with. It sucked, it sucked bad. And at that time my father-in-law who is just one of the most important people to me in my entire life, he's just amazing, phil. Just Phil loved me, like my grandma loved me, and he's he even to this day, phil, he's the rider die for my family as a whole. He's never just on Jennifer's side, he's always. This is a family and he is the best father-in-law anybody could possibly have. He would do anything for anybody and he's always caring, always loving, always gentle, patient, kind. And he didn't have to let me move into his basement, but we lived there, got sober, grace was born and Grace is my daughter and she was born and Jennifer and I got married while Jennifer was pregnant, because I was in my legalistic phase, which I should have got married anyway. I should have been married and so yeah, from that point on yeah, doing something right isn't legalism.
Speaker 1:Doing something right to an order to earn favor with God because you didn't have it from before right?
Speaker 2:that's what I was doing. That's exactly what I was doing. I was thinking. I still had this mindset of you need to do stuff to impress God so that he'll give you stuff, or you need to stop doing stuff to impress God so that you can earn more stuff in heaven or so that you don't go to hell. So I just had it all wrong. Fast forward, we move out, I build, I get back into the alarm industry. The investment that I made finally paid off, got the money back, built a house, had a nice place to live and it was just didn't skip a beat as far as where was that running my company? And I started drinking again and I started doing the bad stuff again and I became obsessed with video games and I was just playing video games until the Sun came up. What?
Speaker 1:is it about those video games, man? They're just. I don't even know if they're fun, you just get into it. I was playing Call of Duty as a like when in my 30s, and now I'm just like I can't. I can't like it's fun, but why would I do it? It doesn't add anything to my kids or my wife exactly that's it.
Speaker 2:It's such a time suck and when you're just a kid and you've got nothing else to do. But when you're in your 20s and 30s and you've got a wife and kids, you should probably spend some time with them my wife's what are these zombies on the screen?
Speaker 1:and I'm like I get it all right. That doesn't really make a lot of sense for me to have that in front of the kids. I'm not against video games video games are not the problem, but they can be just like anything they're like. Like your phone is not the problem. How you use your phone perhaps is a problem.
Speaker 2:The video games aren't a problem. That's exactly, if they take up valuable time alcohol is not a problem. It was me being addicted to it I'm. Drunkenness is a problem. Drunkenness is the problem. Depending on something for fulfillment is the problem food is not a problem.
Speaker 1:Drunkenness with food is a problem. People don't talk about gluttony. When was the last time you heard a sermon about gluttony? And it's killing a ton of folk, right, but when's the last time you heard a sermon about it? Yeah, man, it's a secret killer, reach man.
Speaker 2:But yeah, you had asked me the other day. You know all I do. I see your ministry stuff. Do you do ministry full-time? No, I don't I do. I own an alarm company. The name of the business is alarm security and you'll see it on my shirt, on my hats and my stuff because I got lots of merch. But, man, I do this ministry stuff for fun and fulfillment and my job was just so overwhelming and so stressful. And then I got to the point where my marriage has fallen apart and still not really enjoying a close relationship with with God. And then Jennifer had filed for divorce. I had filed for divorce. By the grace of God, all that fell through. We worked it out.
Speaker 1:Was God a part of that? Like, when you're going through these tough times, were you like God help me? Or was it just God has compartmentalized off to the side and he's not actually involved in life? He's involved in this section of life over here, but he's not helping me with being able to figure this marriage thing out or being a good father.
Speaker 2:Always prayed. I would always pray, even in my drunkenness, even in my struggles, I would pray. If I would be three sheets to the wind and I laid my head down, I would say some type of short prayer or help me, or something like that. But I knew that God still heard me. But I just felt like he was disappointed in me and I think that disappointment got me to the point of just not interacting on a level of trust and I had to get to the point of understanding. I could literally get drunk every second of the day and God's still not disappointed in me. He's disappointed in my actions.
Speaker 1:He might be disappointed for you.
Speaker 2:Yeah, he wants better. That's perfect. Yeah, he's disappointed for me. He wants better. The Bible says don't grieve the Holy Spirit. So many people want to say that's sinning and he's mad and he's going to get you. So grieve means he wants better for you, and I just think at this point in my life I was just grieving God and he had gotten to the point of just, of course, letting me do which I shouldn't say he got to the point, but I was pretty much doing a lot of things which were not of faith, a lot of things which were focused on being successful financially. I struggled with looking at porn. It wasn't just alcoholism, it was pornography. I stepped outside of my marriage. I've done a lot of things that I regret, and if it wasn't for the grace of God and if it wasn't for forgiveness, there's no way I would be married right now, and Jennifer and I have been married since 2004. So if we can make it through it, anybody can make it through it, and I'm painting myself as a big bad guy. She made some mistakes too. We both did, but you have to come.
Speaker 1:Probably a couple of people that didn't know who they were and getting their identity from a bunch of stuff that they had no business getting their identity from.
Speaker 2:Yeah, that's hitting the nail on the head right there. When you're successful financially, when you got a nice house, when you got a pool, you can go on vacations, you can get the stuff, you can drive the car, you're somewhat local air quote local famous because your face is on billboards and stuff you can begin to find your identity in something that's just not, it's not really your identity. That's why I just don't talk about this stuff much. I don't talk, I don't flaunt, I don't talk about my business I don't talk about, I don't even talk about how I got to this point. I just downplay it. Any time somebody wants to talk about my company or my business, I downplay it Because I just don't want that to be the focus of what people think about, because in essence, this doesn't mean anything. If your identity is not right, if your identity is focused on stuff or fleeting immature pleasures, you're not going to be able to enjoy your life, you're not going to be able to express Christ in your relationships, in business, it's not going to be a good life. I think I had to get to the point of burnout, of realizing that it's not what you do that defines you. It's who you've trusted, if you've trusted in Christ, you're a new creation. That's why, when you asked me in the beginning, when did your spiritual journey begin? I wanted to say when I was sitting in front of my Mina's, a Hornet grandpa's pulpit, because I knew at that point I had received the life of Christ. He was with me through all of this. His spirit has been infused with my spirit from moment one. He never left me. I was doing the dumb stuff. He was with me, trying to get me to stop. Remind me, that's not for you. You don't want to do this. This is never going to set right with you. These are the things that I began to understand, and as I began to understand those things, I got sober in May of 2014. May 8th of 2014, I got my sobriety date. I had tried a thousand times to quit. My last big drunk, I did some really stupid stuff. I drove drunk with the kids in the car and went to the Mexican restaurant, got even more drunk there. It was Cinco de Mayo of 2014, and I just made an absolute fool of myself. I remember thinking you're done. You're never going to drink another drop of alcohol. That was it. At that point, I decided to stop drinking. I started to talk about my sobriety on social media. When I started talking about my sobriety on social media, I got some pretty good interaction with it. I continued doing that.
Speaker 1:How soon after that date were you like, oh, I'm sober.
Speaker 2:It was August of 2014 when I finally made it public, I remember, because I was a little ashamed, because I didn't want everybody to know that I put it on social media hey, I've been sober this long. If I can do it, anybody can do it. Blah, blah, blah. I just pulled off the band aid because getting sober is embarrassing to a lot of people. That's one of the number one reasons why a lot of people don't stop, because they're like what will people think you got to get to the point of they're going to think what they think Some people want you to say.
Speaker 1:If you think you're the sum total of all of your decisions in life and all of your mistakes, then you can't talk about them because you're talking about yourself. That's why people hear the podcast and they're like how do you convince people to come on here and tell all of their stuff? I'm like they're not talking about themselves. They're talking about an old person who died and so they're not having to defend the dead person, because if we're really taking 2 Corinthians 5 seriously, whoever is in Christ is a new creation. The old has passed away. Behold, the new has come. We can't be looking in the mirror and saying, yeah, I'm actually all of my mistakes.
Speaker 2:Or even deeper than that, rich. We could be talking about the new creation who was confused Absolutely Because I had already been saved. I was doing stuff as a saved person and there's so many people who they're saved right now they think that they're not saved because they're doing bad stuff, because they've been told that you are known by what you do. A tree is known by its fruit. So often we hear that that is actually describing an unbeliever. We are not known by our fruit. We are known by the fruit of the Spirit, so we are branches, and branches can produce nothing on their own. It is the fruit of the Spirit, so we aren't known by our fruit. We are known by the fruit of the Holy Spirit. We don't even produce fruit, we bear it. Can a branch produce fruit? No, a branch abides. The vine produces the fruit.
Speaker 1:So say that one more time for the people in the back. We don't produce fruit, we bear fruit because we're attached to the vine and the vine is yeah, let's think about it.
Speaker 2:When you look at Scripture in the Old Testament, a tree planted by still waters will produce good fruit, according to the law. If you followed the 613 commandments, an outward expression of the proof that you were following the commandments is you would bear good fruit. Jesus says a tree is known by its fruit, as he is describing a law follower. So he never describes us as a tree. He says we are branches. If a branch is producing fruit, a branch does not. Let me back up A branch does not produce fruit. A tree can produce fruit. A branch can do nothing on their own. That's why Jesus said a branch can do nothing on their own, but no, the vine and the branch. That's the relationship that we have with Jesus, the legalistic community, and when I say that, that's the community that wants to say you will show fruit to prove who you are and then you'll produce that fruit. A branch cannot produce fruit. Only a vine can produce the fruit. The branch bears the fruit, so we bear it. We bear the love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faith on this, gentleness, self-control, keeping no records of wrongs, delighting in the good stuff, not delighting in the bad stuff. We are bearing that stuff as the branch, the vine produces it, we bear it. Do you see that? So it's not us. We can do nothing on our own. The sustenance isn't coming from us. We're a branch, and then Jesus is the vine.
Speaker 1:Does that make sense? That makes perfect sense. And when you talk about the legalistic community, there's no building that has. Oh, this is where the legalistic people are. It's anybody who is motivated, like through fear, because, like, when you fear, you conserve this thing and we want to make sure that people are behaving appropriately. That's it. We dump up and we thump the Bible and we spit and we just, but it doesn't work. So if you really want to see good behavior, you cannot motivate through fear. You cannot motivate, you can't turn and burn. That will not actually motivate any kind of good behavior. What motivates good behavior is Christ in us, what he has actually done, and it's love that awakens love. It is not fear or anything like that. But when I think about I'm about to do interview some people about the just the term legalism, because legalistic people don't know they're legalistic. I don't know anyone who'd raise their hand and be like, yeah, I'm legalistic, but they're motivated through fear and like these parameters keep them safe. And if we're saying that everybody comes by their stuff, honestly legalism has come like. The honest genesis of legalism is fear of these parameters being taken out and then bedlam happening, if that makes sense.
Speaker 2:It makes perfect sense because when I got sober and I had somewhat of a legalistic mindset so my legalistic mindset was the same self effort that I put into becoming successful in business I was going to do that for my sobriety. So I began to pressure people. I wasn't legalistic in the same sense as I was before, when Jennifer was pregnant with grace, but it was a sense of motivation Just try harder. I actually got to the point of realizing I myself didn't even quit drinking by trying harder. I quit drinking by trusting harder. So it was when I began to trust Christ in me. That is what empowered me to no longer put a drink up to my mouth. It wasn't trying harder, it was trusting harder. It was understanding I could drink again and I'd still be saved. I'd still be holy, I'd still be righteous, I'd still be sanctified. But it's not for me. So many people say be holy like God is holy. That's a descriptive passage and people say you're not completely sanctified. The Bible says we have been sanctified. Past tense Sanctified means holy. 1 Corinthians 6-11, hebrews 10-10, all the future tense sanctification passages.
Speaker 1:Well, it says that Jesus Christ is your sanctification in 1 Corinthians 1-30. So the reason if you look in the Old Testament, people were holy based on proximity to the holy mountain. Because in the Old Testament that's how they thought about things In the ancient Near East. Their gods lived on high places in these mountains and they would draw, they would go up to these mountains and the closer they were, like that's what made them holy. Now in the New Testament it's the same thing. It's proximity. And guess what? You live in him and he lives in you. You could not be any closer because Christ is your holiness. But we don't understand that because some religion down the way and I think I don't know what the nomination you are, but the Wesleyan, if you're coming from a Wesleyan thought point it's then that this idea that sanctification as a process comes in, where they're probably talking about spiritual maturity. And I don't mind saying that I'm growing up into Christ and I'm becoming spiritually mature, but I'm not coming spiritually mature to be sanctified. It's because I am.
Speaker 2:So your identity is sanctified. Your actions and attitudes are being sanctified. That's the difference, because the only thing that can sanctify you is blood. Hebrews 13 says you can't be sanctified unless blood is shed. Christ is not pouring out his blood ongoingly in order to sanctify you more. And sanctified is another word for holy. The noun version of sanctified is saint. We are saints. You're a saint. You're saint Ricky. I'm saint Mateo. Let's go. So you know we're. When I was growing up, I thought a saint was somebody who was off at a monastery or never did anything bad. No, I'm a saint, you're a saint.
Speaker 1:That's why he wrote to the saints in Rome, to the saints in To the saints in St Louis, to the saints in Kansas City, let's go Bro.
Speaker 2:But if you're writing to the saints in Corinth and these people are struggling with lots of debauchery, sinning, but he still calls them saints, it's all about identity and so that fast forward. I used my social media to begin basically preaching the gospel, started social media ministry and my Facebook following got up to half a million followers. Then I went over to Instagram, got up to a hundred thousand followers, went over to TikTok.
Speaker 1:How did that happen? It's just like the stuff you were saying was wild, or was the way like the production of your stuff.
Speaker 2:I don't know, I don't know, I just I honestly don't know. So I just had a. My goal every day was just consistency. So I'm a creative writer, so I started writing and I would write, and then I'd put it on Facebook and my following not that my following being big is a big deal, but I'm just saying people were paying attention to it. And when people were paying attention to it, I was like I should probably do something with this on an even grander scale. So I was like I'm gonna start writing books. So I wrote my first book, true Purpose in Jesus Christ. That came out in 2016,. Wrote my second book in 2016, 60 Days for Jesus, volume one. Then I wrote volume two, volume three. Then I wrote my next book series, the Christian Identity, volume one, two and three. So my books became a primary part of my ministry.
Speaker 1:So, as I learned, I wrote and I began to put it in book form and then promoted on social media Between 14 and 16, like you said, may think of the mile 14 was your last time In these two years. Did you like the stuff you're preaching now? I'm sure you had some idea, but you didn't have it all. What was going on in those two years that you were just growing?
Speaker 2:So, with my mindset of consistency, it was just Matt do something every day. It's the same mindset that I have with every other part of my life. If you knew me, I'm just a creature of habit, whether it's business or my health or what I eat. My ministry my social media ministry was the same. So I was just consistency. And just because you're consistent doesn't mean you're saying everything you can consistently suck Ecology in regard to a lot of the stuff. When it came to the gospel, in the beginning it was not on point. That's okay. I went back and rewrote a lot of the stuff. My first two books. I did not understand the new covenant. It was a lot of pressure. But once I understood the new covenant, my next five books are just littered with new covenant truths and I went back and trimmed the fat on the old ones. And the new covenant changed my life. And when I began to understand the new covenant, which is the covenant that Christ brought in at the cross, therefore setting aside the old covenant, everything changed about my marriage, my life, my ministry. It was just like it's going from eight millimeter to 4K in how I viewed everything. Now. Once I understood what Jesus actually accomplished, but not only that, who I am let's go, but not only that, what he wants to do through me, it was just like. It was like believing again for the first time.
Speaker 1:You have told me to see taught what God is and I'm grateful that you've gone with me. I'm your god's pastor and show me the new covenant and keep it up introduce your amazing, your old covenant bring all the way to Hell, hey Ulster. I've added the new one. I encourage some of you to join me in me. I've been rocking with Good Gospel since July 2020. July 2020. Mercy, how has the understanding of Good Gospel changed your life?
Speaker 4:Oh man, it's changed my life in so many ways, but right off the bat it freed me from some crippling anxiety that I had in my life from the time I was probably about six years old.
Speaker 1:Yep. So if you really wanted to hear about that, there's a whole Death to Life episode of you explaining that's awesome there sure is. So, alicia, you've gone as far as to dedicate some of your finances to helping move this Gospel message forward. Why have you done that?
Speaker 4:I've done that because what I've received has changed my life and God has blessed me in ways that I could not have even imagined that he could have. So for me to give just a small amount of what I've been given, man, I've been given the kingdom, so I am going to share what God has blessed me with right back into growing this kingdom, so that all the sons and daughters out there can know who they are.
Speaker 1:Wow, that's so powerful, and if you would like to donate and be a part of this message being moved forward, you can go to loverealityorg. And donations from people like Alicia and from you will help us getting this message forward. And we really believe this. Do you hear me say it all the time? We really believe that we'll never run out of Death to Life episodes as long as we keep preaching this Gospel. So we want to keep preaching it. So please join with us so that we can get this message out there. Thank you so much, alicia. You are a blessing and a testimony to us. Absolutely Rich. Thank you.
Speaker 2:Some of the truths of the New Covenant. First of all, what is the New Covenant? The New Covenant is Jesus. The New Covenant is what Jesus talked about at the Last Supper. This is the blood of the Covenant in my name. So you got the Old Covenant, and so many Christians don't know this. You got the Old Covenant. The New Covenant does not begin at Matthew, chapter one. The New Covenant begins at the death of Jesus, not the crib of Jesus, because you got to have blood shed in order to bring in a new Covenant. The Old Covenant couldn't even be put in place without shedding of blood. So the Old Covenant is between God and Israel, which was finalized through Moses and the angels in the wilderness. Okay, it was a covenant where the Israelites said we will do everything in the book of the law and God said okay, if you do this, I will bless you. So it was a trade-off system. Is you going to say something?
Speaker 1:No, I was just going to say we like to make promises to God and I tell people don't make promises to God. See how often that works out when somebody makes a promise to God, Just believe his promises to you, that will work out much more.
Speaker 2:How do you say that? Because there's a line that I heard when I first understood the New Covenant, and it was the first promise keeper's convention was a bust and that was in the wilderness. When they said we will do it all, they were already breaking the first commandment by making the golden idol. So you got this covenant between God and a people group and it was a trade-off system. This is why all the health wealth pastors go back into that stuff and cherry pick out, because God said if you do this, I'll do that On this side of the cross. It doesn't work like that. We're blessed with every spiritual blessing in Christ. You got the Old Covenant. God was protecting the line of Judah because he wanted the Messiah to come from this individual group, from this DNA, and he's doing all of these things. That looks bad. And he's dealing with the rebellion of Israel and humanity, with the Gentiles who were depraved in their minds, and he said I'm going to make a new covenant. It's not going to be like the Old Covenant. Jesus talked about that new covenant. When Jesus went to the cross, he said it is finished. His blood brought in the new covenant. The book of Hebrews says this is a covenant that is based on better promises with a better guarantor. So there's nothing wrong with the Old Covenant. The problem was the people. They could not live up to it. So what does God do? He comes down, inserts himself into his own covenants. Father Son removes humanity, and now he has invited everybody to believe.
Speaker 1:So this is not universalism, where everybody would say he removes humanity or he puts humanity in the man of Jesus Christ.
Speaker 2:So, as far as the covenant is concerned, he removes humanity from the covenant. So the new covenant, according to the book of Hebrews, is between the Father and the Son. We see this in Hebrews, chapter six. So it's a promise between the Father and the Son, two unchangeable parties who cannot lie. Now, israel could lie, we could lie, I could lie, richard Young could lie. So our promises have nothing to do with this covenant. So it was the covenant that was brought in at the cross, where Jesus would choose to remember our sins no more. The Father would choose to remember our sins no more. Therefore, the offer is on the table he will write his laws, not law on Rich's mind and heart, my mind and heart. So we know because we have the ministry of the Spirit in us. So that is ultimately the new covenant. I never heard about this. So not only am I completely forgiven because of the new covenant, I also have the spirit of Jesus Christ written on me. So I know what I need to know and I'm maturing, learning, growing, and I want what God wants. I don't want to sin. He's going to guide me out of any type of immature behavior if I will allow him to do that, and there's no condemnation for me. So once I began to understand that about me, I could then apply it to you, I could apply it to other people and I could understand hey, the same grace that I'm enjoying they can enjoy. So I'm not going to judge somebody according to what they're doing, whether it's very successful or not, whether it's very air quote sinful, based on what humanity wants to define as sin. And, of course, sin is still sin. I'm not downplaying sin, but what I'm doing is I'm upplaying the Savior above the sin.
Speaker 1:Let me ask you this question has this mindset produced more sin in your life? Absolutely not you would think, it would you would think we're preaching, sinning and getting away with it, right, you would think.
Speaker 2:I have never met anybody who understood the new covenant and they're like woohoo, I get to go sin. Never. It's the opposite effect, Because when you are told thou shalt, you're going to sin more. That is why you see Paul struggle in Romans, chapter seven. He's describing his past life as a devout Pharisee and he lists one of the 10 commandments. Nobody can see him being coveted at this. And what happened? Sinning of every kind. Who will save me? And he remembers oh yes, there's no condemnation for me. I'm in Christ. Sinning will be increased the more you tell people not to sin. The legalistic community when I say legalistic community, I'm not thinking of any individual group, I'm just thinking of people, like you said, basing things on fear. The legalistic community are obsessed with behavior. And if you're obsessed with behavior, you're going to be obsessed with trying to keep people in line. If you're going to keep people in line, you're going to be trying to micromanage their behavior. Therefore, you're going to be keeping new commandments. It may not be one of the 613, but it's going to be a commandment from the church or from mama, and all it's going to do is stir up more sin. So grace is going to be the way that you teach people how to live an upright, holy, self-controlled life, not the law. You better not, because for me, when I realized this, I came to the realization is, I could still be drinking right now, I could still be making lots of bad choices right now, I could still be looking to my identity in having a successful company right now. But that's not for me. And when I realized the grace of God, I realized what I really want. So many people when they first hear this, they say you're telling people they can do whatever they want. Yes, that's exactly what I'm telling them. I'm telling them they can do what they want. Once they understand what they want, then they're going to live that life and when they mess up, they're not going to confuse that mess up with who they are. That's how my books are structured and I get a lot of good feedback on my books because I try to really help people understand their identity. Because once you understand who you are, you're going to live that way. And when you're raised in an environment that doesn't teach you who you are as a holy person, you're going to struggle with understanding who you are.
Speaker 1:Man, what a powerful story and just to hear the way you've been moving, the way you've been stewarding your life in light of what God has made you, I just praise the Lord. I guess this is how I usually wrap it up. I want to take us back. We jump in the DeLorean and I've been trying to decide where we're going to go back to. But let's go back to maybe right before you started to get a revelation of how good the gospel is. And there's this guy who's super successful, who knows how to work hard because he came up from the mud and having all this success, but is struggling with the DUI, struggling in your marriage. If you get to pull this guy aside and before this revelation you get to pull this guy aside put your arm around him. What would you say to this guy?
Speaker 2:Everything's going to be okay. I would just try to comfort him Because I think that at that time my stress level and my worries and my concerns about continuing to be successful or trying to get rid of anxiety through alcoholism and stuff and video game binging, I would just say, hey, man, everything's going to be all right. God's going to use all this stuff, you'll see. I don't think I would say anything theologically to him, I would just say it's going to be all right. I think we need to know things are going to be all right and I think that's the comfort that Jesus ultimately gives us that no matter what you're going through, no matter what's happening in your family, whatever addiction you're struggling with your finances, even if you're worried about a sickness or dying or the next life, everything's going to be okay because of Jesus. And I think that's I think that needs to be the message for those who have trusted in Christ is, at the end of the day, at the end of the life, this is just a little blip on the radar of eternity. It's, everything's going to be okay because of Jesus. We don't need to be afraid and we don't need to be worried.
Speaker 1:Praise the Lord. Man, your ministry has been a blessing to me and a lot of my friends. If I told someone I'm going to go on the podcast with Matt McMillan, they were like man, that guy has been such a blessing to me. So you're a city on a hill, people are seeing your good works and they're glorifying God. And yeah, man, you've encouraged me. I want to encourage you to keep on shining and doing this. I don't think you're going to stop anytime soon. I think you just you're just getting going.
Speaker 2:I always tell everybody till the wheels fall off, praise the Lord, my Lord, till the wheels fall off. Man, it's fun. It's a fun ride, and I'm getting older. My hair started falling out so I had to shave my head and I got gray. But you know what I'm going to be in the prime of my life, even when I'm 80, I'm going to be talking about Jesus. We'll see.
Speaker 1:Let's go. Thanks so much, my friend All right brother. Wow, that was so powerful. To hear his heart was a huge blessing to me. If you are where Matt was and you're struggling and you want out, but you don't know how to get out, well then this prayer is for you. Father, I hear the truth, I hear what Matt was explaining and what Richard was talking about, and I want that kind of freedom. I want the truth to set me free. So, father, if there's any lie that I'm believing, make it plain, make it obvious so that I can see what you've done for me in Christ and that I can walk in newness of life. Thank you for revealing that to me. I believe that you will, because I'm praying this in Jesus's name, amen. I just want to encourage you to join our Love Reality Gospel group on Facebook. You gotta be encouraged. You need encouragement in the saints and that's what we got going on there, and we do that on internet church every other Friday night. So join one, join both. Both they are a blessing Internet Church, the Love Reality Facebook group. We are in the house. We want to be there for you. Thanks so much.