The Tree That Didn't Die

Most testimonies follow a familiar shape — someone was lost, someone was found. But some lives don't divide that cleanly.

This week on Paths to Glory, we sit with a young man in his early twenties whose story is not about how he was rescued from the world — it is about what held inside him when everything he had leaned on was suddenly taken away. Born into a family that prayed through together every morning before school. Raised by a father who, when spanking was no longer the answer, would come stand beside him and pray, then walk the rooms of the house praying over the doorways. Fifteen years old when that father was lost to cancer, after a church that had prayed for healing until the very last night.

What followed were years of drift that never once became departure — and a slow, quiet return, service by service, prayer by prayer, to the roots that had been put down in him long before he knew what they were.

Because as he would tell you now, in his own careful words: the tree hadn't died. It was just drought.

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If you’re enjoying Paths to Glory, be sure to check out our two other podcasts!

Paths to Glory Kenya shares powerful stories of faith and transformation from the heart of Africa — voices of hope, revival, and purpose.

And for the young — and the young at heart — don’t miss The Jones Family Chronicles, a fun, faith-filled adventure series for the whole family.

You can find Paths to Glory Kenya and The Jones Family Chronicles

The song "Paths to Glory" created with Udio and written by Roy Allison IV.

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Transcript

SPEAKER_01 1:15

Everyone has a story. That story is your path. A path filled with trials, triumphs, transformations, and miracles. Welcome to Paths to Glory, where we dive deep into the extraordinary narratives of those who have had their darkest moments, turned into beacons of hope. Each episode unveils the wrong, heartful stories of redemption and renewal, showcasing the awesome power of God. Prepare to be moved, inspired and reminded. But no path is beyond redemption. Now join us and let these powerful stories illuminate your own happy. But every so often we sit down with a life that does not divide so cleanly. Where the person was never really in the world, where church was the whole air they breathed from before they could remember. And where the real story is not how they were rescued, it is what happened inside them when everything they had leaned on was taken away. That's the kind of story we have this week. He is younger than most of the voices you have heard on this podcast. Early twenties, soft spoken, careful, the sort of young man who chooses his words the way a person chooses stones for a wall, one at a time, and only after seeing whether they are going to hold. To understand what happened to him, you have to start a generation before he arrived. His mother did not grow up in church. Her family sold drugs, and as far as she can remember, there was no particular religion in the house, only the business and the people who came around because of it. She spent her teen years searching for something no one had ever named for her, and for a season the searching took her into things like witchcraft and spirits, powers she didn't understand and could not control. Then on an ordinary day, she stepped into an intersection, and a semi did not stop. Her body was broken, she was in a coma for a long time. When she came back to herself, she came back knowing, the way survivors sometimes know, that she had been kept alive for a reason she had not yet found. She began looking for it in earnest. The man who would become her husband was searching too, but from the other direction. He had grown up in the mountains, and when he told the story to his children, he described a boy who used to look out at the ridges and simply know there has to be a God. He carried that quiet certainty into their marriage, and he kept telling her in his gentle way to stop looking where she had been looking. It wasn't in witchcraft, it wasn't in spirits, and to look instead to Jesus. The two of them were living in California when she found a Sunday school bus flyer on the ground. There was a phone number on it. And the phone number had been printed wrong. When she called, she was not calling the church whose logo was on the paper. She was calling a Pentecostal church in Glendale, Arizona. A church half a state away that she had never heard of and had no earthly reason to reach out to. She told them she was fighting spirits in her house, and that that was how, through a misprint on a piece of paper, an Arizona sanctuary became the door into truth for a family that had not yet been born. They found a church near them in California and stayed. Both were baptized in the name of Jesus Christ. Both were filled with the Holy Ghost. She actually wanted to be filled with the Holy Ghost before her first child arrived, and she was. Her husband followed. Before the next child came, they moved to Arizona and joined that congregation whose number had been misdialed onto that flyer and never once looked back. This is the family the young man was born into. He was the second child. He never knew a life without church. He went to the Christian school, connected to that church, from kindergarten through twelfth grade, the full 13 years. His mother, who had chosen to stay at home with her children, would drive them to school each morning and take them into the sanctuary before class. And she would not let them out to play until they had prayed through. Not just prayed, prayed through. Filled up with the Holy Ghost again before starting the school day. That was normal to him. That was the entire shape of his childhood. His father worked the same job from the age of eighteen until the day he passed. He was a calm man, his children rarely saw him lose his temper, unless there was a very specific reason for it, and a very specific child had earned it. And of the four of them, one child earned it more often than others. That child is the subject of this story. He was, in his own father's affectionate telling, the black sheep. The one always in trouble at school, the one always pushing at whatever edge was closest to hand. His father used to tell him, and he remembers this clearly, you are the one who makes me laugh. When I'm down, I just think of what you're up to. By the time he was in his early teens, his father had stopped spanking him. He was too old for that, and the offenses had shifted from the kind of spanking answers to the kind a spanking cannot touch. So his father did something else instead. His father would come and stand beside him, and his father would begin to pray. He would pray for God to touch his heart, and then he would walk slowly through the rooms of the house, praying over the doorways, praying that whatever spirit had come in on this boy would not be allowed to settle into these walls. That, the son will tell you, was worse than any spanking. That is the man that he lost. The illness came with little warning. His father began to have trouble drinking water. Only water. Tea and coffee were fine. There were days when the pain in his stomach kept him from walking. Eventually he went to a hospital and was told his gallbladder was infected. They took it out. He didn't get better. He actually got worse. Fluid began to gather where fluid should not have been. At the next hospital, the word came back that no family ever wants to hear. Cancer. The son was thirteen or fourteen. He doesn't remember exactly. He remembers only that his father was calm about it. The way his father had always been calm. And that the whole family, the whole church, was full of faith. Full of faith until the very end. There was no room in that sanctuary for the thought that this was not going to end in healing. Near the end, when they were wheeling his father out of the house for the last time, his mother turned to the pastor with a question. If we prayed right now, she asked, could God raise him up? And the pastor, who was now the bishop, answered her the way faithful men have had to answer since Job first put the question to his friends. If it was God's will to raise him up, he would have done it. That the son will tell you now is how much faith we had. He was fifteen when his father passed. A fifteen-year-old boy who has just lost his father does not lose only a father, he loses a compass. He loses the voice that would have called him back from every wrong turn. He loses the person who knew at a glance when something was off. He loses the only man who had ever been able to reach him. He didn't want to hear from anyone. He didn't want to substitute. He would tell you plainly that no one could speak to him the way his father had, carefully, precisely, at the exact place he was actually standing. Everyone else missed. So he took over the practical care of the house and his quiet mother, and he built a wall around the rest of himself, and he began the slow drift. He was not in the streets, he was not on drugs, he was not gone, he was simply, well, as he puts it, a young man without direction. The bishop of the church saw him standing at a service one evening when everyone else was praying and stopped in front of him. And said something he still remembers word for word. Your dad would be so ashamed of you right now. It hurt. He agrees looking back that it was completely true. And it didn't move him to change at all. He would drive home from services in that period thinking to himself, clearly without drama, if God came tonight, I'm going to go to hell. Yet he still wouldn't turn. But here is the strange quiet miracle in the middle of this testimony. He never once thought about leaving. He would tell you that leaving was not on the table. It's not an option his mind had ever generated. Not because he was better than the friends around him who were leaving. He was in trouble as much as any of them were. He simply, and he traces this straight to his father, could not bring himself to run from his own mistakes. His father had raised him to walk to the fault line and stand there and say, I did this, I need help, and let the correction come. So the rebellion he carried never became the rebellion of departure. There is another piece to it that matters just as much. He would not talk about the man of God. When friends grumbled about the pastor and friends grumble about pastors, especially young ones, he wouldn't join in. Whatever he was doing wrong, that line was firm. He would say, That's the man of God, and whatever he says is what we are going to do. He held that line even while he was breaking every other one. And when the change finally began, there was still a road it could travel down. It didn't come fast. He's careful to say so. It was not a single service, not a single altar call, not a moment he can circle on a calendar. It came the way weather changes, one small system after another, each one slightly softening the ground a little bit more. He began to notice what was happening to some of the friends who had left. It wasn't going well. He began to think quietly, I know what's right. I know what I need to do. Every service, or what felt like an entire year, seemed to be aimed directly at where he was standing. One sermon after another after another. And then for a season, the sermon stopped landing. He couldn't feel anything. And that scared him more than the rebellion ever had. He began to pray a new prayer. A prayer he had never had to pray in his life. God, do not stop reaching for me. Do not ever give up on me. Because in that season it felt like everyone else had. And he decided at the bottom of that feeling that even if the whole world let go of him, he was going to live for God. One night during a message, he does not now remember the exact words, but he made eye contact with the bishop. And something in him simply closed on that hook. He went to the front of the church that night, he knelt down, and he prayed a prayer that anyone who has ever come back from a long drift will recognize. He said, God, arrest my heart. From that night forward, something had shifted. It was no longer God reaching for him. It was him reaching for God. He began praying with what the bishop of that church has always called a bulldog mentality. We are going to stay here until something breaks. Some nights nothing broke. He would tell you plainly that for a long time nothing broke. But something inside him kept softening. Service by service, prayer by prayer, brick by brick. A wall he had built at fifteen was being taken back down. He has a phrase for what happened and it's worth sitting with. The roots his father had put into him. The mornings of praying through the memorized verses, the Bible he had grown up inside of, the reverence for the man of God. None of that had been killed by his wandering. It had just gone dormant. It had waited. And when the rain finally came again, there was still a living thing there for it to fall on. You can watch him now on the platform. He serves as an ambassador, one of the young men who served the ministry. To help, to hand a coat, to steady the moment. And he will tell you in the quiet way he tells everything, that the hardest thing he has had to learn since his father died was not how to run a house or hold a job or be the man his mother needed. He figured all that out. That part, he says, was carnal survival. What he has had to learn, what he is still learning, is how to trust a man of God without his father in the room to translate. How to have his own relationship with a pastor, instead of receiving everything through the filter of the dad who used to sit beside him. How to want God's will and God's way and God's time. Because when you try to do it alone, he says it never works. There is a verse in the 22nd chapter of Proverbs that gets quoted often. Train up a child in the way he should go, and when he is old he will not depart from it. We usually hear that as a promise about the child. We hear it less often as a promise about the training. But a father who spent his last years walking the rooms of his own house, praying over the son who kept getting in trouble, was not preparing the surface of a life. He was putting something down in the roots. As a young man, in his early twenties, still finding his footing, and he's still living inside the answer to those prayers. The tree didn't die. Was only a drought. In this story? Well, it's yours, Javier Jaccoon. This is your path to glory. Let me start with this. So are you born and raised in Arizona? Yes, I was. Okay, so your family was here. When did your family get in the church?

SPEAKER_05 23:06

And I think that's where it it started to um like click like there's something more there's something out here. Like she got saved for a reason. Like there was it's a miracle that she's still because of what happened. Yeah. And uh her and my dad, they like keep moving on, like past that. Her her and my dad they met and she was looking for something. She didn't I don't know if she knew what she was looking for. They were looking for truth. And I remember my dad like telling us the story and he said he said as a little child he remembered looking out into the just out into the like I think where he lived, he lived like in the mountains. And so he would just look out into the view and he would just think like there has to be a God. Yeah. And so he knew something, like in his heart, he knew there was a God. And so I don't know if he told my mom to like look for instead of like what they were doing with witchcraft or whatever spirits. Um he said about looking for Jesus or something. There's gotta be something, something.

SPEAKER_03 24:30

Yeah.

SPEAKER_05 24:31

So I don't know if she had started going to church somewhere or something happened where she found on the floor there was a flyer, like a bus, like a bus kid flyer for um Sunday school, and the number somehow had gotten messed up, and the number was for Valley Pentecostal church. But it was in California, and she was in California. Oh, interesting.

SPEAKER_01 24:57

So it wasn't one of our flyers for sure.

SPEAKER_05 24:59

It wasn't one of our flyers, but it was Valley Pentecostal Church, it was the number for our church. At the time, Faith Temple. Yes, Faith Temple. And so she called the number and she was like, Hey, I'm like struggling and she's fighting spirits at the house. She's telling her store, like she needs help. So she calls the number and they're like, Well, where are you at? She's like, I'm in California. And well, they were like, Well, this is Glendale, Arizona. And somehow or another, I don't know that part of the story, but they started, they got into church, started living for California. Yes, I don't know what church they went to. Somehow they ended up coming, they were having my sister. Well, that's another thing. My mom wanted to be in church and have the Holy Ghost before my sister was born, and so that ended up happening. So, all that they come down here to uh Valley Faith Temple, and they just ever since started living for God. My mom got the Holy Ghost in California, and my dad was like, This is truth. It was really easy, just started living for God and never turned back. Did he get the Holy Ghost there or here? He got the Holy Ghost there in California.

SPEAKER_01 26:20

So when they came here, they both had the Holy Ghost and your sister was born.

SPEAKER_05 26:25

Yes.

SPEAKER_01 26:26

Now you're the second oldest? Yes. Okay.

SPEAKER_05 26:29

Yeah, it's and I'm feel like I'm missing a lot of the parts of the story just because it's Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 26:35

Well, it was before it was BC. It was before you. Yeah. But so all you know.

SPEAKER_05 26:40

So all I know is living for God.

SPEAKER_01 26:42

All you know is church. Great, which is exactly where we needed to be to start with. So you did you go to the did you go to GCA? Yes. From the beginning? In the garden all the way to Did you really? Oh, you're one of those 13-year-old as well.

SPEAKER_05 27:00

Every day for school, my mom, because my mom was a stay-at-home mom. And so she would take us to the school every morning. We would pray in the Tim's Hall, which was a sanctuary. And she wouldn't let us go out and play until we had prayed through every morning. Oh, not just pray. Yeah, yeah. We had to pray through every morning, like after we had gotten the Holy Ghost. And so that was well, that's all we knew growing up is like you're going in, you're gonna go to school, we're gonna pray through before you start your day. And that's all we knew. Life was, you know, I could say life was just easy. We well, I was always in trouble. I was always getting spanked and all that.

SPEAKER_01 27:58

But you were a boy, you still are, you know.

SPEAKER_05 28:01

But we were we prayed through every morning. That's what I'm saying.

SPEAKER_01 28:05

Bad all day, pray through every morning. Yes, started all over again. Uh and your dad was a hard-working man. Yeah, he worked at the same job.

SPEAKER_05 28:12

Yes. Still he passed, he was at the same job from the time he was 18.

SPEAKER_01 28:20

So, really normal childhood. I mean, really happy home life, both your parents living for God. Um, and then you got hit with that.

SPEAKER_05 28:30

Yeah. That came out of nowhere, too. Well, and I was 15. I was well, he was he got sick, he got cancer right around when I was, I want to say, either 13 or 14.

SPEAKER_01 28:43

Now, do you remember what was going on before he got diagnosed? What what it was that caused him to go get looked at, or did did that just not come up until after the fact?

SPEAKER_05 28:55

Well, he kept having issues with he wouldn't, he wasn't able to drink water. And all he would drink he was like, Well, I guess I'll just start drinking tea and coffee. He could drink that. Yeah. But he couldn't drink water. And he couldn't drink water. There was just something going on. And as time went on, there was days where it his stomach hurt so bad he couldn't even walk. This is before he went to the doctor. Before he went to the hospital to see what was going on. And finally one day he was like, I'm gonna have to go get checked. So he went to the hospital and they said, Your gallbladder is has an infection or something like that. And so they removed his gallbladder and he was still having issues, and the issues got even worse, and he started getting a lot of fluid in his stomach. The lining of his stomach was swelling. And we took him, he went to another hospital, and that's when he was diagnosed with cancer. Now, how did you find that out? Were were you all together? We kind of knew it was heading in that direction. You knew something was really bad. And my dad was always so like calm about everything. Everything he never like you ne we never saw him lose it over in just anything. I feel like it was very just, you know, we we found out he had cancer and we were all stunned. I know we were stunned, but I know he wasn't really there wasn't much uh panicking. Did you realize at the time what it could mean? None of us, I don't think we knew what it meant, how bad it was. We didn't, I don't know if I really realized how bad a situation to be. And we were so full of faith. I do remember the church was. Yes.

SPEAKER_01 30:48

It was just there was no doubt. This was he was gonna be healed. And this is it was this is gonna be okay.

SPEAKER_05 30:55

We were full of faith until the very end. I remember my mom saying, if it's God's will, like the night he passed, we were wheeling him out of the house. And my mom said, I think she told Pastor Bishop now, like, if we could pray for God to raise him up right now, is that something we could do? And I remember, I don't really know what Bishop said, but I remember he was kind of like, Oh, if it was God's will to raise him up, he would have already done it. That's how much faith we had still that yes, even until the very end, like God can turn this around at any moment. So we were full of faith that God was gonna do something, and he never did. And I remember for me, I was really struggling with the fact that like nothing happened. Um everybody the same way?

SPEAKER_01 31:49

Did it kind of hit everybody the same way?

SPEAKER_05 31:51

No, it was different for everyone, it was different for all of my siblings and my mom. And I remember I was already struggling as a young teen. I was I was it I was 15 when he passed away. And I remember like two weeks before he passed, I was I don't know if I had talked back to him or talked back to my mom, but I had gotten to an age where my dad had stopped um spanking me. Yeah, something had happened where I had really made him disappointed, and instead of spanking me, he he would start praying. He would stand around me, like stand right beside me, and just start praying. He would pray that God would touch my heart and just and spanking, he would just start praying for me, and then he would start walking around the house praying for the house and praying that whatever spirit I had going on wouldn't affect the house. Now, what that do to you? Oh, that was like worse than getting spanked. Like it broke my heart.

SPEAKER_01 32:59

Yeah.

SPEAKER_05 33:00

And so as late as a couple of weeks before he was before he passed, I was still just getting in trouble being Yeah, just being a heathen. Yeah. I was, I mean, I lived growing up, we were praying through every day before school. And then somewhere I was just getting in trouble all the time. I was my dad always called me. He was like, You're the black sheep. He was like, but I love you so much. He was like, You're the one that makes me laugh. When I'm down, I just think of you and just the stuff you're up to. And I wasn't up to anything necessarily bad. I was 15. You can't really do anything talking back.

SPEAKER_01 33:44

Yeah, you couldn't drive anywhere. You couldn't, yeah.

SPEAKER_05 33:46

So he was just like, You make me laugh. And he's like, They I remember he told me he was like, the doctors asked me which of my kids I think of the most. And he's like, I told him you because you're always in trouble, so I have to be on top of you. And the doctors were like, Well, we know who you care about the most.

SPEAKER_01 34:06

And so it hit you really hard.

SPEAKER_05 34:09

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 34:10

When when God didn't heal him.

SPEAKER_05 34:13

Yes. After the fact, and I because my dad was so involved with each and every one of us, he knew exactly where we were. He could tell when anything was wrong. He always knew exactly what to say to get us to get right back on track. And after he passed, I was a young man without direction. Yeah, you were lost. I was lost, and I didn't want to hear from anyone anything because I was like, you don't know what I'm going through. No one really had a way of speaking to me like my dad did. And he was so careful and so precise, really helping us out.

SPEAKER_01 34:51

So you really if I could say it this way, you didn't really like dig in with God after he passed. You kind of went the other way. Yeah. Kind of a I'm I'm now, I'm now, for the lack of a better term, and I'm sure part of this is true, I'm now the man of the house. And I need to take responsibilities and you just plugged in, go in a different direction.

SPEAKER_05 35:21

Yeah. So I started, I had to take care of the house now. Yeah. And my focus was on all of those things. On your mom. My mom. Yep. And I was running from God in a way I was I didn't I didn't know what to make of everything. And I was 15. I was just about to turn 16.

SPEAKER_01 35:44

Now what was going on, brothers and sisters? Uh everybody was was kind of going through it differently and on their own.

SPEAKER_05 35:53

Everyone was struggling. Leadership is gone.

SPEAKER_01 35:57

Yeah, your your mom is a very quiet lady. Yes. Um, so it wasn't in her to reach out and work and and take charge, and and it was she still she still needed to be taken care of.

SPEAKER_05 36:13

It was pretty hard. I know that, and I was also struggling with the fact that I wanted, I don't know if I wanted to um be noticed, or it's just like the one that tells you you're doing a good job is no longer there.

SPEAKER_01 36:26

Yeah. So there was nobody there to do it. Yeah, there was no one there to be like Nobody to pray or pray over you, stand in the room, or run around, walk around the house praying for you. Exactly.

SPEAKER_05 36:36

When you needed it, now you Yeah, I don't have no one to tell me, hey, you're doing wrong, unless like I go to school and then sent to the principal's office, or there was multiple times I ended up in the pastor's office. Yeah, exactly. It was rough. It was, and I remember thinking, like I would be driving home from church thinking, if God were to come tonight, going to hell. But it didn't move the needle for you, did it? No, because I know God was tugging on my heart, he was pulling for me. Sure. Um, but it just didn't do it. I don't know why I was too busy distracted. I was distracted, is probably the right word. I was distracting myself with everything, anything and everything. COVID hit, so we were all just on our phones.

SPEAKER_01 37:30

Stuck at home, really nothing to do, go anywhere. Distracted. And so it was like that for you for a few years. It wasn't just a quick impact.

SPEAKER_05 37:42

Well, there was a lot of for my siblings, they got over it pretty quick. I remembered I could see when it started happening for them that they have made it, they had made up their mind. This is gonna be okay. We're gonna make it. We're gonna be okay. Whereas for me, I was always I don't know if I was always pushing the line or I don't know what's the right word. I was like trying to see how far I could go and get away with things. I was always just pushing it.

SPEAKER_01 38:10

And so now, was there anybody during this time from the church that was able to get through to you?

SPEAKER_05 38:17

Well, there was a lot of people that spoke to me and would try and help me. I remember Bishop one time we were we had got we had gone into the new sanctuary, and Bishop came up to me and he like I was just standing there, everyone was praying, and I was just standing there, and Bishop said, Your dad would be so ashamed. And I was thinking to myself, man, that hurt so and still didn't do it for me. I still kept on yeah messing around, just not really caring. Full of I I was full of rebellion because I didn't want to hear anything from anybody that there was just a whole lot going on and I kept getting in trouble for different things. And now I'm an adult and so it's different. Yeah, yeah, it really hits like a little bit of a different level.

SPEAKER_01 39:15

Yeah, I'm wearing anything I'm doing, it's just like it just you were pushed, you were you were taking it right to the edge with everything. So what changed it for you?

SPEAKER_05 39:26

Well, it it didn't happen fast.

SPEAKER_01 39:28

Oh, it didn't.

SPEAKER_05 39:29

No, it wasn't a one moment thing, it wasn't a one moment thing. It was I kept seeing what was going on with my friends. In a bad way. In a bad way.

SPEAKER_01 39:38

Okay, okay.

SPEAKER_05 39:39

And I remember thinking to myself, I know what's right. I know what I need to do. I was never it was never in my heart to leave church. That was never an option for me.

SPEAKER_01 39:51

No matter it really never entered your mind.

SPEAKER_05 39:53

No matter what I was up to, it was never I was gonna leave church. It was there's always hope. There's always mercy, you're you can you can make it. And I had that mentality of I'm gonna do right, and it just started happening like one thing after another of preaching. I would go to church, I would go to church, and every service or a whole year was for me. Every service, it was just right where I was at. Every service was talking to exactly where I was at in the moment, and it was one service after another of this God's word getting to where it needed to get at in my heart. And I was struggling with a lot of things going on, of just issues I had. I don't know if there was a singular message I can go back to. But it was just one on top of it. It was one thing, one message after another of just God reaching for me. And and then there was a period of where I didn't feel anything. I didn't feel like God was speaking to me, and I was started to think, oh, is like God done reaching me? And so then I really started like praying, God, don't ever stop reaching me. Yeah, scared you. Yeah, it scared me. And so then that's when I was like, I don't ever want to feel like God has given up on me. Because it felt like everyone around me had given up on me. It felt like my mom had given up on me. My siblings were all like, yeah, whatever happens, happens with you. It felt like everyone had given up on me, and I was like, no matter what, I want to live for God. And there there was pivotal moments where I remember Pastor was preaching, or it was bishop or bishop now, pastor then. He was preaching, and I don't know what he said, but I remember like we locked eyes, and I remember saying, You're right. And whatever it was that he said, he said, so I was dealing with something, and whatever he had said was for me, and I was it just like clicked, like, you're right. And I'm thinking it was something he was probably preaching about rebellion. He was talking to me. Well, it found me. And I remember going up to the front and just crying and like praying, God, arrest my heart. I was like, I don't, I can't really feel you, but you like arrest my heart. And there was just service after service of it wasn't no longer God reaching me, it was me reaching for God. I wanted it so bad. I wanted to feel him. Because I it was just a point where I couldn't feel anything. I don't, I don't know what was going on. I just I couldn't feel God, and I wanted to, I wanted to break through whatever I was going through. Yeah, got desperate. And I've always had that mentality of I know Bishop has said the bulldog mentality where we're gonna make this happen. And I remember I was so desperate, I was like, whatever it takes, God, for me to break through this, then we're gonna do it. If it takes me praying here until the morning, we're gonna be here until something breaks. And it was that mentality and that attitude about God at every service that we're going to break through. At all costs, we're gonna break through. And I didn't break through, I wouldn't break through at all. And just service after service, God it my heart began to soften.

SPEAKER_01 44:02

Like it was getting you're right. That's probably what it was.

SPEAKER_05 44:05

I was getting worked on.

SPEAKER_01 44:08

So it was a you you had he had to build you back. It had taken you a while, you had torn it all down, and he had to build you back, and and did it one brick upon another brick, and and and here you are.

SPEAKER_05 44:26

I had built a relationship with God from a young kid. I was sure, he was my first love. I loved God with all of my heart. I think I went back to those roots that I had. Because it the tree hadn't died, right? It was just it was drought. I was my dad always taught us like never lie, and obviously everyone has, but he was always about being honest with him, with my mom. And so that was the relationship I had with him is anytime I would do something wrong, he never really had to come up to me and ask. What's going on? I would always just go to him and be like, Dad, I did this. I need help. Yeah. And he was so quick to just, okay, let's take care of it. Because I had a relationship where anytime I felt like I messed up, I could go to him and tell him, like, hey, I made a mistake.

SPEAKER_01 45:25

And it wasn't a reactionary.

SPEAKER_05 45:26

It wasn't like the hammer didn't come down. It was just, it was very skillful in how he would deal with our mistakes. Let's just take care of it. Yeah. And so I always had that when I was making mistakes. When I when when he was gone, it was always, well, once I would get caught, this is what I did. And I'm not going to run from it. I'm not going to run from church. It's it wasn't I it wasn't even a thought of running off and not paying my dues. It was I want to live for God. It's just I don't know what's going on. I'm a young man without direction. I don't know how to do it all. And I just keep keep making the mistakes I'm making and I need help, but I wasn't looking for help in the right place.

SPEAKER_01 46:16

Yeah, exactly. Yeah. But you knew that eventually.

SPEAKER_05 46:21

Eventually I was like seeking after God with all my heart and going back to the relationship I had with him when I was younger. I had something, I had verses, I had the Bible to go back to. I had things that I had put in my heart as a young guy.

SPEAKER_01 46:40

Like so that was all it played a big part into it.

SPEAKER_05 46:45

So it wasn't if I didn't have that to go back to, I don't know where how it would have turned out.

SPEAKER_01 46:52

Exactly.

SPEAKER_05 46:53

So it's really how I was raised that kept me. You've spent your entire life with Bishop and you had to go through a pastor change. How's that been for you? It was very easy for me, and I I submitted myself real fast. I was like, this is my pastor. And well, again, it was something you were taught as a child. Whatever pastor says, what's going to go for me.

SPEAKER_01 47:14

Yeah. And you were seeing, you've already mentioned it. You were seeing some of your friends.

SPEAKER_05 47:18

And there yeah, going back to that, there was times where friends would say things and I was doing wrong. And they would say things, and I would be like, That's the man of God. And whatever he says, that's what's that's what we're gonna do.

SPEAKER_01 47:32

Even though you were doing wrong. Even though we're doing wrong.

SPEAKER_05 47:35

But we're not what we're not gonna do is we're not gonna talk about it and lay hands on the man of God.

SPEAKER_01 47:42

Yeah.

SPEAKER_05 47:43

We were I was very careful about that.

SPEAKER_01 47:45

Well, that's that's that's another reason, and I'm very, very confident in saying this. It's another reason why you were also able to um come out of it, is that conviction.

SPEAKER_05 47:59

One of the things I I wanted to talk about is in my walk with God, it's I don't know if I've always had this mentality or this way of thinking of it. Just because after my dad passed away, it was always we have to f figure it out for myself, right? I always carried that attitude about me of I don't have a dad, no one's gonna stand there for me. I need to figure this out on my own. Now it's instead of having that way of thinking, it's I want I want God's will in God's way in God's time.

SPEAKER_01 48:44

You've been listening to the Paths to Glory Podcast. To contact us, send your emails to Paths to Glory Podcast at gmail.com. We all travel different paths, so it's important that we remember Proverbs 3, 5 through 6. Trust in the Lord with all thine heart, and lean not unto your own understanding. In all thy ways acknowledge him, and he shall direct thy paths. Our paths to glory. Thank you for joining us.