The Redeemed Backslider
“Welcome to The Redeemed Backslider—with your host, Kathy Chastain, Christian-based psychotherapist and a redeemed backslider. This podcast dedicated to those who have wandered but are ready to return to the life-changing power of grace and the freedom found in Jesus.
In Luke 4:18, Jesus proclaimed: ‘The Spirit of the Lord is upon me, because He has anointed me to preach the gospel to the poor; He has sent me to heal the brokenhearted, to proclaim liberty to the captives, and recovery of sight to the blind, to set at liberty those who are oppressed.’
This is the heart of our message. Whether you’re wrestling with regret, despair, seeking freedom from spiritual chains, or longing to see the light of God’s love again, you’re not alone. Here, we share testimonies, biblical truths, and encouragement to remind you that no one is too far gone for God’s redemption.
This is your invitation to find healing, hope, and restoration in Jesus. Welcome to The Redeemed Backslider—where grace is greater than your past and your future is abundant when God redeems your story.”
The Redeemed Backslider
God's Amazing Grace: TRB #22 Reid Mendez
After his body went over an overpass, Reid Mendez couldn't be found for 48 hours. When someone finally found him, they were shocked he survived his mysterious accident. With a broken femur, crushed face, fractured neck, and brain bleeding, his survival defied medical explanation. But for Reid, it was the latest chapter in a lifelong story of God's relentless pursuit—a journey he shares with raw honesty in this powerful episode.
Reid's testimony begins with a troubled childhood marked by his father's imprisonment and his early rebellious years. He recounts his first encounter with Pentecostal faith while wearing an ankle monitor after a high-speed chase DWI charge—a divine appointment that introduced him to the supernatural gifts of the Spirit that would captivate his spiritual hunger for decades to come.
The most gripping segment explores Reid's descent into methamphetamine addiction and the dramatic intervention through visiting evangelist Brother Poe, who prophetically revealed details about Reid's life and warned him that death was imminent without immediate repentance. This supernatural encounter demonstrates the reality of spiritual warfare and God's sovereign timing in reaching those who have wandered.
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Kathy has two books out and they can be found on Amazon or Barnes & Noble online:
Redeem California, With God it IS Possible:
God of the Impossible: 30-Prayers for the Redemption and Restoration of California
Welcome to the Redeemed Backslider with your host, kathy Chastain. Christian-based psychotherapist and Redeemed Backslider. This podcast is dedicated to those who have wandered but are ready to return to the life-changing power of grace and the freedom found in Jesus.
Speaker 2:Hi, welcome to the Redeemed Backslider. I'm your host, kathy Chastain. I'm a Christian-based psychotherapist and I'm also a Redeemed Backslider. With me today via Zoom is a good friend of mine. His name is Reed Mendez.
Speaker 2:He used to be at our church many years ago. Him and his family moved to Texas quite some time ago and recently he just became a redeemed backslider. So I'm very excited to have you guys hear his testimony because it's pretty amazing and it just really speaks to God's pursuit of us throughout our whole life. So, reed, welcome. Thank you for having me. Yeah, I'm so glad. I'm so glad, first of all, to see you that you're okay. Yeah, it's pretty miraculous that you survived the accident, which we'll get into in a little bit. But before we get to the end of your story your recent events I want to hear about how you guys got in church. So I met you many years ago, I think, when I had first gotten back in church. I don't know how old I was when you and Karina and the family came to Visalia. Do you remember what year that was?
Speaker 3:I don't remember what year I want to say. It was probably somewhere around 2004, 2005. You're my best guess, probably in that area.
Speaker 2:And so where were you guys originally from and what brought you to Visalia?
Speaker 3:Well, I was originally from Tulare and Visalia. I was raised there, raised in Tulare, went to grade school in Tulare, went to high school in Tulare up until my sophomore year and then moved to Visalia just due to some you know trouble that I was getting into in school and couldn't get back into regular high school. So I moved, actually at the time with my cousin who took custody of me. He was actually awarded custody of me through the court because of some trouble that I got into. The judge tried to really like reprimand my mom because I wasn't living at home, but he didn't really know the situation. If I back up, my father had actually went to prison when I was in eighth grade. I was living with him. So then I was forced to move back home with my mom and stepdad and those next two years just became very rebellious for me, a lot of things I didn't really understand in life, questioning why that you know what was happening to my father happened and I was just making a lot of bad choices with you know how I was acting, who I was hanging out with. So I got to the point where my mom was just like fed up. She needed to do something. I needed to get back into like regular school. So I moved with my cousin and when I moved in with him I started attending Golden West High School and my senior year just prior to my 18th birthday this would have been probably around May of 1997, I got my first DWI on a high-speed chase down 198 going out towards Exeter and Woodlake area and as a result I got put on house arrest ankle monitor and the only places that they would let me go were work and school.
Speaker 3:I had a job at JC Penney at the Visalia Mall at the time and school, but they did mention that if I had a church I attended, that I could attend church. And somehow, during all of that and you know countless nights of me just crying in my bed, crying out to God, I was dabbling with LSD. You know the rave scene was real big at the time. Obviously I was smoking weed all the time and alcohol. I decided you know what, maybe I'll try church. Then I just started running into these random people that I used to party with, who had turned their life around and were just so on fire for God, and they invited me to church and at that time they were attending Mount Zion Apostolic Church in Goshen, california and that was the first Pentecostal church I walked into was uh.
Speaker 3:Gordon Winslow was the pastor and um, I'd never seen anything like it and, uh, the thing that stood out to me the most was that these guys were not just on fire for God, but they were in the word and they were rightly dividing the word of truth on a daily basis and talking to me about the word and what salvation was and what it meant to be saved the right way. I was always raised in church, but I was more non-denominational. My family comes from a long line of Germans, lutheran that's on my mom's side and then they became non-denominational. And then on my father's side, the Mexican side, was Catholic and they all left the Catholic church and my grandmother became Assemblies of God, and so I was always in and around church. I was shipped off to church camp because I was in trouble most summers.
Speaker 3:Uh, I never fell in love with the word and I never really had anybody like teaching me the word of God. It was just, you know, hey, we have church friends, that that, uh, we associate with. But church was something you did, it wasn't something you lived. And, uh, this was completely different, uh, when I started to attend church in Goshen.
Speaker 2:Reed, how old were you when your mom and dad split up, and did you have siblings?
Speaker 3:Yeah, I have one brother and one sister. Me and my brother are about 15 months apart, my sister's about two years younger than me. I think I was five. Yeah, I don't really remember their split much. I mean, all I really remember was growing up, you know, visiting.
Speaker 2:Did you always live with your dad or at some point did you leave your mom's and move in with your dad?
Speaker 3:Yeah, no, I never lived with my dad. I moved with my dad for the very first time in eighth grade. I had stole a gun from my neighbor one of my good friends from his dad and they caught me on the phone telling one of my friends about it. They were listening on the other line and my mom called my dad. He lived in Stockton at the time and he drove three hours and apparently he was going through his own marital issues at the time and we moved in with my grandma together. That was the first time that I lived with my dad was in eighth grade.
Speaker 2:Reed, when you look back at that. Well, first of all, have you spent much time looking back at your childhood years and how troubled you were at such a young age stealing a gun? That's pretty severe at such a young age. Did you have plans for that gun or was it just because you could? I mean, have you thought about that very much and what led you to get in so much trouble?
Speaker 3:I don't know that I had plans for the gun. I was just one of those kids that, uh, I think deep down I was suffering, uh in ways really that I couldn't explain. Uh, my around. We would see him like three times a year at least on my birthday, my brother's birthday and my sister's birthday, uh, but it was always very traumatic every time he left, because it was like a piece of us was just getting ripped away and he was driving three hours away and we knew we wouldn't see him again for a long time. And when we saw him, it was always fun.
Speaker 3:My father was somebody who always made sure publicly, that we knew that he loved us. We were the kind of kids that you know run up, kiss dad, hug dad in public. No shame in that sense, but for me I wrestled with it in a different way than I think my siblings did. I went through a major, I think, identity crisis, you know, growing up, and I just I lashed out in the wrong ways and I look back and I really think that a lot of the issues that I even still carry today internally was a result of that. I saw shrinks and psychologists or whatever.
Speaker 3:A lot as a kid, my mom was always and stepdad would take me to figure out what was wrong with me, the way I was, and it turned to a very dark hate for my stepdad. I just I didn't want to be there. So when I go live with my dad, that was probably one of the happiest times of my life, though it was sad I was leaving my brother and sister. It it was very, uh, very happy for me that I got to finally go live with my dad. Yeah.
Speaker 2:Yeah, and then he, he went off to prison.
Speaker 3:Yeah that was short lived. So one year, um, we had moved to Napa, california, and one day he was like, hey, we got to go back to Visalia. It was on my birthday actually, and I didn't really understand why. He's like, well, I want you to go spend time with your brother and sister and family for your birthday. And he's like, oh well, I want you to go spend time with your brother and sister and family for your birthday. And I go to my mom's house and here I was on Sunday, thinking it's time for me to go back home to my dad and we're going to go back to Napa. And when I went back, my cousin pulled me to the side and she told me that the SWAT team had come, come and kicked down my grandparents doors the night before, looking for my dad, and that he finally went and turned himself in and, uh, they were looking for him on a couple of crimes.
Speaker 3:Uh, that ended up turning into uh, another. This was a case that was happening that happened in napa, california, which essentially opened up the door to another similar case. He was profiled and another charge was slapped on him that had been open and pending, from biselia, and uh, he was. Then he ended up getting sentenced to 152 years, and or 151 years, in uh prison he's. He's now been locked up almost 30 years, wow. Wow.
Speaker 2:I'm sorry, reed, I didn't know any of that about your outing.
Speaker 3:Yeah, that's a. That's a very, I think, detrimental part of my life and one of the things that I I never try to think about it. You know, as time went, you know, as I got older, one of the things that really made me, I think, become drawn to Pentecost. Not only was it the ministry of Gordon Winslow, he operated in all nine gifts of the spirit. I came into Pentecost understanding and seeing right from the start what supernatural and the moving of God's power meant, which was something I never got in any other type of church. I was raised in Right, so I became drawn to it and that became the miracle that I prayed for year after year after year, like God opened up those prison doors and let my dad out. And I've been, I think, you and I.
Speaker 3:One point, we went and saw Freddie Clark I can't remember what city it was, because I know we saw him at a bunch of different places, him calling me to the altar and telling me that very day that what I had been praying for was going to happen by November, that the release was coming in November, and just something that has been an annual prayer of mine was God to put his hand on that situation and bring him home.
Speaker 2:Well, I have learned over the years that God does open prison doors and sometimes it doesn't always look like a literal prison door, like what you would hope, but he does heal those places in us that keep us bound and you know, maybe that day will still come for your dad. I hope for your sake, you know. But I do believe that God does heal and restore all things and whatever that situation is for you right now, reed, I don't know, but I don't want you to give up on that because the Lord you know God hasn't saved you for nothing. I know that. You know that your heart has always been very pure before the Lord. You know all the times you were out. I think it's yeah, I know that, you know that your heart has always been very pure before the Lord.
Speaker 2:You know, all the times you were out, I think it's. Yeah, there's lots of reasons that things happen, but I do. I've seen God heal the deepest places in my soul and I know that if he can do it for me, he can do it for others, you know. And our perspective of things begins to change when healing comes. Yeah so that's just something I'll just be praying for you with you know. So you end up at Brother Winslow's church and I assume you just jumped in with both feet.
Speaker 3:Yeah, brother Winslow's church, and I assume he just jumped in with both feet. Yeah, I tell people all the time I got baptized in Jesus' name with an ankle monitor. That particular service I remember vividly. Greg Dansby is the one that his son-in-law, actually, you know, dunked me down in the water. They showed me baptism in Jesus' name.
Speaker 3:I had already been baptized as a Lutheran child, just like they do in the Catholic Church, and I said, oh well, they did it wrong, let's do it again. And so I jumped in, man, and I was on fire. I just I wanted to get closer to God. I wanted that supernatural power in my life. I envied it, I sought after it. I had countless conversations with Brother Winslow about it and I knew that I wanted to stop living in sin. And you know, as a young 18-year-old going on 19, I turned 18 June 30th of 1997. So I just graduated high school and I thought, you know, this is the life I want to live. And you know they tell you in church you can't be out there living in sin chasing girls. You got to get married. So we would go to the youth convention. And that's what I did, man. I went to youth convention and, you know, ended up meeting Karina at the time the mother of my children and got married shortly after and ended up moving from Visalia to Simi Valley, california, where she was from.
Speaker 2:Oh, I didn't know that she was from Simi Valley, wow.
Speaker 3:Yeah, we ended up at Pastor Connor's church, didn't know that either.
Speaker 3:Yeah, okay, a lot of probably the same people that you know. I know the Clarks used to come down a lot and they were really good friends with Karina's mom, but it was a different dynamic part. One of the things that was very difficult for me at the time was that, you know, this was only the second Pentecostal church that I had ever attended. The time was that, you know, this was only the second Pentecostal church that I had ever attended where none of the uh real supernatural was was happening in the sense of in comparison. You know what I had as a, as a comparison, in Goshen and it was hard for me. Um, I learned to appreciate uh, somebody who was very solid in the word as a good, studious, uh Bible study teacher and pastor. Uh, and, and I, I learned a lot about being uh steadfast, just patient, and and making sure that man I just I studied learned as much as.
Speaker 2:I could from him and then. So what brought you guys back to Visalia when I actually became acquainted with y'all? What brought you guys back here?
Speaker 3:Yeah, that's a great question. So at the time I had heard from a few people that the guys who got me in church at least one of them, seemed like God was always setting up these divine appointments where I would see them while I was in the world, in these random places. I'd go to the library and pick up tax forms and they'd be at the library and I'm like what is that?
Speaker 3:That is random we're seeing the history of the Trinity and why and I'm like you're doing what it just never would escape my mind that God keeps putting these people in front of me. That's what ultimately got me to go to church. And when I heard that they were now addicted to drugs and alcohol, it broke my heart and I felt an obligation that you know what. It was time for me to go win them back to the Lord. And I'll never forget the day I decided that you know, I'm coming back. And I got back.
Speaker 3:There was a few people from the lighthouse that I would hang out with, because we all a lot of people from the lighthouse came from Goshen and we were messing up a little bit. You know, we were going out to the clubs and drinking, but it was still in my heart that, you know, I needed to help these guys get off drugs. And we decided one day that you know what, that we're going to go back to Goshen, go check it out. I hadn't been in a long time and the day I walked into service was the day that Brother Winslow resigned the church. It was like something to this day that I just was like man. I didn't understand it. I feel I was still relatively newer in church, but that's how I ended up at the lighthouse, yeah.
Speaker 3:I started attending the lighthouse.
Speaker 2:So you were on fire and somewhere along the line you started drinking with the fellas. Like, how did that work for you in your mind, did you? Because I know that we all justify things that we do and you know when we. I know that for me, I always drank just a little. I would make sure that I could maintain a certain amount and never go beyond that because I felt such a need to control it. And I would still pray and go to church and I felt like, well, I'm not doing this, I'm not doing this, I'm not doing this. So all the ways we justify those kinds of things. And then the Lord woke me up one night and that was the end of things. And then the Lord woke me up one night and that was the end of that. I've never drank a drop since. But I'm asking you, when you reconnected with your old friends, how did you take that step from being on fire and wanting to come back and win them back to God to being at the clubs with them?
Speaker 3:What I attributed to is that I was still reed in the flesh. I still had the same temptations that I faced as a child and before I got in church constantly. The difference, I think, these times, and why I ended up in in a position we'll talk about here in a minute, was that I felt more comfortable, that these were my brothers from church. My guard was definitely down and the guard was definitely down uh and uh, the the ability to kind of like, let loose and not feel judged because these were my brothers from church who were in the same position. But I, I had never been that person. You know what I would try to convince myself in the moment of just being. You know, I'll have a drink with them the minute I started getting, you know, a little intoxicated.
Speaker 3:I'm a social, I'm a social bug. I I love everybody. People have fun around me, I love to have fun and I can't stop, you know. And then next thing, you know, we're um. You know, one of one of them them was a limousine driver at night. So we get in the limousine and we're cruising, you know, visalia, and part of it was, you know, I'm back home, would you sometimes just get out of control, but there was always that conviction. You know those would. I would look at us and think man, man, how did we end up here?
Speaker 2:you know, I like what you said. I mean, I think that's such a good point. I would still read in my flesh I think that that's like and that's what I. I think about a lot with backsliders the wounds that we carry are still with us until the Lord completely heals us. So we can still be tempted by certain things in our flesh when we walk in our flesh, and it takes a while to learn how to walk that out in the spirit and then get your flesh on board.
Speaker 2:It takes a long time and it's not always easy to distinguish and differentiate, because in our heart and in our spirit we just want to serve the Lord. You know, but we don't always know, I think, where that line is. It's very convoluted for me to try to explain it to others, but I understand what you're saying and I could imagine that it would feel good to just be among friends where you could just be yourself, because they knew you. You know when you were in trouble they knew you serving the Lord and I would imagine that would be some sense of comfort for all of you guys.
Speaker 3:Yeah.
Speaker 2:And then did it take time for that to get really out of hand? I actually don't know how much out of hand it got. I remember you and my cousin Keith. I think it was you that told me you guys would be sitting on the barstool talking about the things of God and talking about the Bible, which is so ironic.
Speaker 3:I think it got to the point where they got tired of hanging out with me because I would, especially in that state of mind. To me it's just so unbelievable how things came full circle there. I was thinking I'm moving to a town to go help somebody get off methamphetamine. I go to church, pastor resigns to church and then I end up at Lighthouse. And as I try to plug into the lighthouse and get acclimated with that, I end up in in really the same situation meeting a new group of friends through church events.
Speaker 3:I think we're at Mooney's Grove Park for the light church picnic and uh, meeting Keith, I think for the first time, and meeting some other people. And here I was again in a situation where you know it was me and Keith hit it off right away. We got along great. I had another good friend of mine that I'd already met a couple years prior through some other church friends and I was just comfortable again, church friends and and I was just comfortable again.
Speaker 3:And, um, I ended up in a position one night where we were doing some some work out late for some reason I don't remember if I was helping Keith with catering or what it was and there I was in a position where I'm being handled, handed a methamphetamine pipe, and you know, I fast forward a year and a half later and I was in a full blown addiction man. That that that really took us down a very dark hole and I remember it starting where it started. Uh, and I remember it starting where it started. I was there through it all until what happened with brother Poe coming and saving my life. Really.
Speaker 2:You want to talk about that?
Speaker 3:Yeah, um I. I ended up in a, in a position where I was probably smoking up to I guess the best term would be eight ball.
Speaker 2:I can tell people it was two, eight balls of crystal meth a day, where I wasn't even getting high anymore and, reed, you guys were still coming to church.
Speaker 3:Yes, right, yes, we were coming to church. It started to get to the point where I was. I was feeling so guilty I couldn't. I couldn't really like live in my drug addiction, in in a very happy state because all the drugs I was doing were with church people. So I was constantly reminded in my subconscious, in my mind my, my, I was always talking to myself, or the, or god was talking to me, the sp. I was still filled with god's spirit. But there was just times I would just break down crime, I would just break down crying, and me and Keith would cry together. And then it became something that I didn't really know if it was the drugs talking or if it was, you know my paranoia. I was just a mess and I knew that I was deteriorating physically. I still had a job, I was technically employed as a mortgage loan officer, so I felt like I still had things together. You know at our place that we were living, my kids were still very little.
Speaker 2:But was it harder?
Speaker 3:Sorry, go ahead. The addiction just had started to take over.
Speaker 2:Was it harder to come to church and see the people you were getting high with at church, or was it comforting to come to church and know that they were at church too?
Speaker 3:I would say there were some days where I felt both ways. You know, yeah, it was hard to come to church in general. Uh, it was hard to come to church in general, but I've never been one that went to church and was, you know, scared. You know, I I always was in church, even to this day, with a open heart and just believing in the miraculous, that at any moment, god, you can take this from me. I might be addicted, but, lord, you could take this from me. You have the power to do so. In fact, that's really how I ended up in that service with Brother Poe.
Speaker 3:I was going through those things mentally and it was getting to the point where I was getting drugs from. They didn't want to give them to me anymore just because that particular individual still had a care for me as a friend and saw how quickly I was deteriorating. We had somebody that was known to us that had just died about two weeks prior, and I ended up in the hospital with a very large abscess on the side of my head, for whatever reason. It was about the size of a softball protruding out, pushing my eardrum from the inside out, and very painful, and I remember many, many nights just getting on my bed and praying. Karina at the time wasn't really, like you know, sleeping in the room. She was always away from me with the kids, you know, trying to shield them from what was going on in my life. It became very obvious. For a long time I hid it. A long time I hid it. But when you go from you know 210 towns down to 140, it was pretty hard for me to hide what was going on.
Speaker 3:And I opened up my Bible one night. I got on my bed. I started praying to God that God would take the addiction, that I couldn't do it. I've tried, I can't quit. I needed him to supernaturally take the addiction from me and shift my life back the way he wanted it to be. And we had just bought this little kitten. I prayed.
Speaker 3:I remember the scripture of Jesus casting the legion into the swine, and I was just quoting scripture. Like God, I cast these demons into that cat, poor cat. The cat ends up dying a day and a half later and then one day we're sitting in the living room. Actually, I felt bad when I cast it into the cat because I'm really thinking this is working Right and I was like no, that's our cat. You know, the little kitten that I just got for the kids. And I said, no, not that cat, like Lord, go out, cast them outside this house into the cats around this house and torment them.
Speaker 3:And, as God is my witness, about two and a half days later, three and I were sitting in the living room and we kept hearing this loud like cat growl, you know, and we're like what is that noise? And when we opened up the front door, we had this deck with a fence going around the front deck and the garage was a condo. So the garage was a detached garage. In front of the condo, kathy, there was at least 40 cats all up on the fence, the fence posts just growling like that, one after another, as if there was a cat in heat and it was. It'll make the hair on the back of your neck stand up being that. Wow.
Speaker 3:The very next day, karina goes to a church service where Brother Poe is preaching Mind you, this was about a six-week revival and he preached a message called the Wind. And that's when he called her, or when she went to the altar, told her that you know, know, god showed him a reed that was bending in the wind and the reed was bent and it stands upright and it's bent. It stands upright and it's bent, and told her that this time the reed is tattered, torn and split. Your job is stand at the base of the reed and hold it up. And I say everybody and their mother started calling me the next day dropping off CDs from that service for me to listen to. It shook me.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I was in that service.
Speaker 3:It got me scared because I know what happened that night. And then I know that I ended up in the hospital the next day because of the abscess in my head. This was, I think, on a Thursday or Friday. I think revival was going like Friday, saturday, sunday or something like that. Saturday my cousin shows up at my house the one I told you I went to go live with when I was in eighth grade or my sophomore year, rather and he's got my grandpa and he's like get your stuff, let's go. And I'm like where are we going? He's like we're going fishing. He had his boat, you know, hooked up to his truck, and I go with him and my grandpa and they sit me in the middle of the boat and we're fishing on Lake Cahuilla pulling for trout. We picked up a 12-pack of beer and he's essentially trying to talk me through this.
Speaker 3:What was going on with me? We had family members that had, you know, been involved with with drugs our whole life and uh, he just kept telling me I never expected you to be this way, we never thought it would be you and uh, that he was going to take me to rehab. That was the purpose of him picking me up was that he wanted to take me off at rehab and he brought my grandpa because he didn't think I would, I guess, argue and fight it with my grandpa being there. We get done, we get out of the boat and he's like are you okay? I was like, yeah, I'm fine. He's like you're not buzzed or drunk or anything. I said no, why? He's like because you just drank that whole 12-pack all by yourself and I've never seen you town beer that fast. I was so messed up in the head thinking about this service like fearful but almost thankful to the sense that you know what I knew God was bringing something to an end that you know what I knew God was bringing something to an end. I just didn't know to what extent if it was going to be my life ending. I felt that I was deteriorating physically. I started having a lot of chest pains. I got home that night, saturday night, I told them you know, here's what's going on at church me till Monday. I want to go to this church service and if, depending on how things go, I'll go to rehab on Monday.
Speaker 3:And that night I came home and at about 2 30 in the morning I woke up with a sharp pain in my chest, like somebody had just hit me with a sledgehammer, and all my breath was gone. I couldn't breathe and I just she starts freaking out. What do you want me to do? I'm going to wake the kids and call 911. I didn't want her to wake the kids. I said no, just pray. Pray for me. She prayed for me. I felt it lift. I got my breath. It was like a large gas of air and we loaded up and went to church Sunday morning and that was the day that my life forever changed. God saved my life.
Speaker 3:Brother Poe was preaching a message called the Missing Number. God had numbered Judas as a disciple, how Judas had obtained a part of the ministry and that somewhere along the way he let the devil enter him and steal it. And Brother Poe just started prophesying to me and he said I'm saying this because you, right there in the blue tie, pointed at me and said God numbered you. You played a game. You played it with hypocrites. He said your time has run out. If you don't get right with God in this service, I will preach your funeral in the next couple of weeks.
Speaker 3:I got up and went to the altar immediately and he said God showed me that principalities and powers have been set up around your house and you've been playing a dangerous game in the spirit world. I immediately started thinking about those cats. A lot of stuff that went on. People didn't understand what he was talking about. I knew what he was talking about and you know I had already felt the call to preach. I had been preaching but here I was. We were all being hypocritical. You know I was doing drugs with a bunch of people from church and it happens all the time.
Speaker 3:Yeah, I. Then he. Then he says god woke me last night, at the same exact time that that happened, said he showed me you were fixing to die. And I knew exactly what he meant. When, when I woke with that pain in my chest and he said I I've been up all night, I'm tired, I've been prevailing in the spirit all night for God to change your life, and uh, yeah, that's uh, that would be the. I would say that the really the first time I I came back from being backslidden and, um, it was something very supernatural, very uh.
Speaker 2:Reed, you've always been, you've always been drawn to that. I mean, I think I think that there are some people that are much more drawn to the supernatural, to the deeper things of the Lord, than others Not that others aren't, but you know, I think some people are just called to it, if you will, and you've always had that.
Speaker 3:Yeah, it's something I think Brother Winslow put in me. I know he put it in me. We had a lot of conversations about it. I was such a curious kid and I looked up to him so much and I was just always asking questions how does that happen? I wanted that. I wanted to be a part of that and I envied it. I prayed for it and here I was, you know, in a position in life where I don't know that I'd be here if somebody wasn't following the will of God and had a ministry. In that sense.
Speaker 3:Right sense, because it's what I needed. It scared me enough. It let me know that God was speaking directly to me. It was as if the voice of God was directly showing me that you know what, reed, you matter to me. I think there's a lot of people that we go through the motions of being in church and we go through the historical things that we're either accustomed to or not accustomed to, but we don't know what it means to be in relationship with God, and to me, that's what it truly means. To be and have a relationship with God is that you serve a powerful, mighty God that will reveal himself to you if you ask. Yeah, there's nothing like it when you know that God is speaking directly to you.
Speaker 2:Right, yeah, nothing like it. So what? I don't want to miss the moment. It's powerful. I'm fighting back tears because I was there for all of that. I watched all of that and I don't know. I remember when you and Karina announced you guys were leaving, I think, to move to Texas. I was so sad to see you guys go. You're such an important part for me and the church and friends and so when that happened with Brother Poe, you got, and the church and friends. So when that happened with Brother Poe, you got in for a while. I want to say it was a year or two after that that you guys left. Was it that time frame or was it sooner?
Speaker 3:It was probably two to three years. I remember one of the last services of him closing out that revival, him telling me that this revival was for you. I had a mandate from God to come and save your life and now it's done, it's over, I'm leaving, and he told the church. He said he's not going to be preaching. Nobody's going to be prophesying over him. Leave him alone. He scarred his soul really bad and he needs to spend some time repairing it.
Speaker 2:I remember that. I remember that I'd forgotten all about that, Reed, but I love Brother Poe's ministry. He was the real deal, I mean he is. He ministered to me quite a bit when he was here too. Have you thought about that? Because I know that after this era of time, you backslid again. Yeah, what do you think when you look at these events together and the way that you seem to slip back? What what's happening for you? Do you like do what is happening for you? Do you know? Have you thought about that?
Speaker 3:there. There was a long time that I really lived in fear. After that of ever backsliding. It was nothing I ever thought of, and and believe me when I say that immediately after that, the level of temptation that started coming to me in life was like no other many moments where I can look to and say, no, nobody would have ever known but me and God. But I was in such fear that if I messed up I was going to die in sin that I wouldn't, dare you know, try anything.
Speaker 2:Because after that you know that God's watching. Yes yes, I mean because we know that, we've been told that our whole life. But it's a much different thing when you experience that hand of I don't want to say judgment, but that awareness when he just lets you know hey, listen, this is as far as you're going to go, otherwise you know you're not coming back from it. It's scary, but it does give you an awareness that you're right in his sight.
Speaker 3:Yeah, one of the things that stuck with me during that time that George Poe called me out was that I'll never forget that. When I went to the altar, one of the things that he said to me was that I've warned you once, I've warned you yay, twice, yay, thrice. You're getting another chance, but if you don't get right with God, I will preach your funeral. And he looks at my wife at the time and says I'm serious, you go pick out his suit on how you want him in the coffin, because I saw him stretched out in a coffin. That's what God woke me and showed me last night when he told me you were fixing.
Speaker 3:I visually saw you in a coffin and instead of praying for me, he turned around. He walked to the back of the altar and all I could hear with as many people you know Pentecost, they all get around you and everybody's laying hands on you and screaming and praying, laying hands on you and screaming and praying. The only thing I could hear was his voice at the back of the altars saying God, don't shut the door on him. Leave it a little bit longer. Please. I'm begging you, don't shut the door on him. As if he saw into something or didn't have a full assurance yet, If God had saved me, because a lot of that obviously was going to have to do with how I responded- right right right and uh, I'll never forget that.
Speaker 3:So for the longest time I was in fear and, and I remember it started to develop into this idea that I serve this God. That's great and powerful, but I'm hanging on by the very last thread and that scissors are right there waiting to cut it off if I mess up to the point that's a lot of pressure but I started looking at God the wrong way.
Speaker 3:You know what I mean right, right yeah developed into, uh, something where I you know I would I would almost dabble to see what I could get away with. I started working in corporate america. Well, I'll up, I started preaching. As a result of that, I fell under Brother McPhail, pastor McPhail of the Lighthouse at the time. Under his leadership he got me to a place where you know, I think I was pretty steadfast and steady and under good leadership I went before the board of the United Pentecostal Church International and was licensed with them. I didn't know that I started preaching, I was evangelizing. One of the first churches I preached at was in Taft. In fact Daniel Lankford, who now pastors in Louisiana, brought that up and was telling me he goes. You remember when you got done preaching that first service, you went and got in your car and you had that breathalyzer in your car that you had to blow into to start it and I said, man, I didn't remember it.
Speaker 3:But not long after, god started using me in the gifts of the Spirit and I'll never forget me and Brother Ralph, I was helping him mow some lawns one day I felt strongly. God started speaking to me about an elderly woman of faith that he wanted to heal, and I just remember Brother Winslow, a conversation I had with him years prior about you know, if you start feeling the voice of God, reed, you got to test it, practice. I said what do you mean practice? And he's like question, ask questions. And he told me about a story of a woman that some things had transpired in her life, but he was being spoken to in a grocery store and that this lady was about to come, walking down the aisle at this grocery store. And next thing, you know, here she comes, and he's like scared to say something to this lady. Thus sayeth the Lord, you know, here she comes, and he's like, scared to say something to this lady. Thus sayeth the Lord, you know. So I didn't start with all that, I just asked her ma'am, can I ask you a question? And he taught me a lot about that. You know, testing and letting God confirm for you whether or not you're not just being a zealot, you're not just being, uh, you know, just covetous of the gifts and wanting so bad that you're making stuff up in your head and, um, it didn't happen that way. I remember I didn't. There was a school bus shortly after that that pulled up to this house that we were working at and I'm like, oh, this is not an elderly woman, lord, and I'm certainly at my age not going to stop a bunch of kids that get out there getting off the bus and start questioning them. That's probably going to end up in jail if I did that. And so I remember going home that night pretty discouraged because I felt strongly that God had spoke to me about this specifics. And around nine o'clock at night the doorbell rings and I go downstairs and at the time your dad, you actually used to attend what I called the upper room.
Speaker 3:Every Monday night I had a men's Bible study. I was up there studying. I come downstairs and it's this neighbor kid that I had witnessed to one day and he's got his grandmother with him at my door and he's like he had some challenges. He went through a military training operation in the Marine Corps and fell and hit his head and so he was, you know, a little challenge. His mother was taking care of him. The state was paying her to take care of him, but he loved the Lord and we just always invited him in and he told his grandmother about it. The grandmother told him I want to go meet this guy. He comes in, he said my grandma wants a Bible study.
Speaker 3:So we take her upstairs and me and my family, we're sitting in there and I'm giving her a Bible study and it's just going over her head. I'm young, on fire and I'm just trying to get into these deep things of God and I'm just like Karina looks at me like cut it off, this isn't going anywhere. And then, immediately God spoke to me and said there's the elderly woman of faith I was telling you about and it was like whoa? So it was time to test and I asked her. I said ma'am, can I ask you something? And she said yeah. I said do you have cataracts? And she said yes, I do. I said well, god has been speaking to me all day about you and he wants to heal you and heal your vision. If you don't mind, I'd like to pray for you.
Speaker 3:And she stood up. We prayed for her and, you know, nobody was there to watch me. So I'm hey, can you do me a favor, take your glasses off. I'm going to stand on the other side of the room. How many fingers am I holding up? I'm testing everything you know. And, um, he said she could see. I said okay, we're going to start. He said she could see. I said, ok, we're going to start. Let's pray over you completely. We lay hands on her and as I'm praying, I said something to her about her back and I I reached my hand around to touch her back and it was almost as if there was this hole, my hand right into the hole, and she, just like I, said God's going to heal this. And she had told me that she was in a major car accident as a child and her rib and punctured her lung and she'd had trouble breathing her entire life and and uh.
Speaker 3:I felt like God healed her right right then. And there the things. Kathy started working that way for me throughout my ministry and that's when I felt like you know what, man, I really want to get out here and do this full-time. And brother McPhail had put us up to possibly go try out for a church in Oroville, california, to go pastor that church, and I just didn't feel like you know, I was ready for it or that I wanted to move to go pastor a small town church and I came and preached a revival for Brother Greg Dansby and at the time his church was in Glen Heights, texas, and you know I felt back at home again. I mean, this is a guy that baptized me in Jesus name. This is Brother Winslow's son-in-law. He was coming around a lot because he was evangelizing at the time, or pastoring, in Jackson Mississippi, jackson, mississippi.
Speaker 3:And right when we got done preaching, he asked us if we wanted to come and work full time and assist him in the vision that God had given him for that area. And we talked to Brother McPhail. Brother McPhail gave us a blessing. I don't know that he was doing things about us leaving just yet, but you know I wasn't really messing up either. So we moved to Texas.
Speaker 2:I did not know any of that, reed, that is wonderful.
Speaker 3:Yeah.
Speaker 2:Do you think, though, that call on your life though is? I mean, do you ever look at the parallels about why you've had such a struggle in the flesh because of what God has for you in the spirit realm?
Speaker 3:I mean, do you crucify your flesh daily? Because I don't care how spiritual you are, how much you think you've arrived, how much fasting and praying you're doing, You're going to wake up with some thoughts in your head one day that you have no control over. But what you do with those thoughts and how you respond to those thoughts and what you do to put that flesh into submission is going to make all the difference in the world and what that outcome is.
Speaker 2:And that was something I just struggled with and that was something I just struggled with, because you jumped right into what God had called you to, to coming back to church and just trying to pursue the Lord. Pursue the Lord but never really dealing with your past or never really healing the places that got you in that position in the first place. Right, and that's what I think a lot of people do, coming into church for the first time and and backsliders that come back to church, like you know, we just jump in again with both feet because there's a desire there to know the lord, to walk with the Lord, to do all the things right, because we love him. But if we don't address our life and where we come from, it can creep up on us when we're least aware, because all of those wounds still exist.
Speaker 3:Exactly, exactly, still exist, exactly. Also deciphering what is the voice of God, what is your unconscious and what is the voice of the enemy. Yeah right.
Speaker 3:You said something earlier that reminded me. If I had to explain it in any simplistic form, it reminds me of the old Bugs Bunny cartoons when he would be sitting there and the devil was on one shoulder and God, or the angel, was on the other shoulder, whispering in his ear. And that's how life was for me. A lot. I knew right and wrong. We morally have a compass sometimes. I would hope that most humans do as to what, what is, uh, the right thing to do, and I don't always, uh I don't always listen to the the the right way. You know, there's a euphoria and a a release of dopamine. Sometimes it comes from doing what you know is wrong and the high and the rush that you get from that, like any drug, would be yeah well and I think that that's.
Speaker 2:I think that that's part of your history, because you learned at a very early age to cope that way. That rebellion served you well. It didn't serve you well, but as a coping mechanism as a young boy that was hurting, rebellion gave you some form of control and power that you were missing. Because you were so helpless in the rest of your life as a kiddo and you didn't have an outlet for what was going on with the loss of the loss of your dad. You know that piece of you that was missing. So because you learned to cope like that as a kid, it was very familiar to you and you did get a dopamine rush because you had was familiar and you had, you had already learned that. So your brain chemistry just kind of fell right back into place with that.
Speaker 3:Yeah, yeah. And you know I attribute a lot of it to not going back to the things that I knew were going to keep me steadfast into the will of God. You know not recognizing and crucifying the flesh when it was necessary. You know feeding the lust of the flesh, and I don't mean that in a sexual sense, I mean just overall desire of what the flesh would desire.
Speaker 2:So you're saying that there was a naivety there that existed. You didn't know. You didn't know that you were feeding the flesh in those ways. You were just living, trying to understand.
Speaker 3:I'm not naive to it. I would say that I consciously blocked it out. You know what I mean. It goes back to that idea of me being fearful that I was going to be cut off. In fact, I remember one of the brothers from the lighthouse calling me one day, telling me about a dream that God had given him, about some disastrous I can't remember to this day what it was something disastrous that was going to take place, because he had felt in his spirit that I was backslidden At the time. I was not, so I dismissed it.
Speaker 3:It's like hey, man, I know you love the Lord, but pray about it. The devil's a liar and that's not where I'm at in life. Who knows if that was something he was seeing in the future. I mean thus, here I am now, but I was in Dallas probably eight months and I don't know that I really ever came under spiritual authority the way that I should have, or submit myself Mentally, I think subconsciously. I felt like you know I had arrived. Now I'm walking in the calling of God.
Speaker 3:If God needs me to do this, I don't necessarily need a covering to leadership. Tell me what my next move is. I'm getting answers directly from the source and I met a lot of great people up there. A lot of pastors up there started preaching at various churches up there in Dallas, came down for one of the first times to Brother Poe's home church where him and his wife went, met Brother Macy. Brother Macy had me speak to the church there and I felt like things were really moving for me and doors were starting to open where I didn't want to be in Dallas any longer.
Speaker 3:I wanted to either A come back to Visalia and go full force into what it was that God was trying to open up for me or evangelize full time To do it with kids. You know I needed to have an income. Karina's grandparents had moved to Austin probably five years prior to us, and so she had family here. We kind of had a safety net and we moved here and I got into corporate America and that's where it really went south for me again. You know startup in.
Speaker 3:Austin. So you, we drank on Fridays with the company you know, and there I was right back in it.
Speaker 2:So you left ministry to move to Austin, thinking that you guys would have help with family so that you could evangelize.
Speaker 3:Yes, yes.
Speaker 2:Okay, and then your idea was that you'll get a job and then preach out on the weekends.
Speaker 3:That's right.
Speaker 2:Okay.
Speaker 3:And we came and met at the time I think Pastor Bernard David Bernard was still, I believe, the bishop of the church and Rodney Shaw was the assistant and sat down, talked with them and, you know, got their blessing. And I had to really apologize to Greg Gans because we left abruptly like on a Thanksgiving weekend, didn't really sit him down and talk to him and tell him hey, this is the direction God wants us to go. We just left, which was wrong on my part and for the longest time I just I realized that because of the way I left, that I was just gonna have to fall in line it at a church and be a normal parishioner, and I don't remember how long it took. But we started running the hyphen class at new life, started getting various um, uh, opportunities to preach in and throughout Austin church and round rock one in Buda, and so I felt like God started opening those doors, uh, for me. But, uh, I felt like God started opening those doors for me.
Speaker 3:But Corrine and I started really going our separate ways and there I was at Corporate America Monday through Friday, living one life and living a whole other life on Sunday you know, just a hypocrite and it started weighing on me again that I knew I was drinking at work and having you know corporate fun with my team. I got promoted to management really fast. I ran a team of about 20 people in a sales startup and, yeah, I, just I went there. I was off the deep end again and I'll never forget I was out with a buddy drinking one day and a bunch of the youth walked into the same.
Speaker 3:It was a pluckers wings place and the guilt and shame that I felt that I was there drinking with some buddies when last weekend these kids were in my class at church and at that point I just stopped going altogether. I didn't want to deal with the shame. You know, I was too embarrassed and instead of trying to get restoration for myself, I retreated and went into a shell of just guilt and shame. Karina and I's marriage started going south and then we finally divorced. For the longest time I lived in just guilt and shame, not knowing if I'm ever going to be able to preach again. You know, I let my license go and that's really how I've lived, probably since oh man, 2016. Nine years.
Speaker 3:Yeah.
Speaker 2:So you were in church for a long time before all of that.
Speaker 3:Yeah.
Speaker 2:Reed, do you know? I mean, clearly you've had a life-changing event, but do you look back and understand where you're going sideways? I mean, what is the draw that has pulled you away? What was the draw with corporate America that appealed to your flesh? What is it that was able to seduce you away from? What is it that was able to seduce you away from that place with the Lord that you knew? I mean, I know that he's still with you, but what do you think that is? Do you know?
Speaker 3:Have you identified that? I don't know, that I could say I have enough wisdom and knowledge to focus on overcoming it. If I did know, I think there's always been an addictive personality, addictive side of me that has ran to, not ran to, but went down the path of drugs and alcohol. One of the things that I think was different about this last time is that I made sure that, you know, I would never touch a drug again in my life. You know, that's the one thing that I really feared was that and it was like, oh, you know, I drink a beer. Nothing happened, I'm still alive. You know happens if I drink three or four or 10 or 12. And Did you? You were totally playing Russian roulette four or 10 or?
Speaker 2:12. And um did you? You were totally playing Russian roulette, like what? Why? Maybe this is something to pray about and ask God to reveal to you. But what is it that causes you to want to push that envelope versus staying as far away from the edge as you can, not ever wanting to get in those crosshairs again?
Speaker 3:You would think right, I don't know. I mean, that seems like the obvious answer, and that was the thing that always went on in my head was yeah, reed, you're playing a dangerous game and you have who? Who saved your life and told you that you were playing a game? And you're still playing it. Like, why do you keep ending up here? Um, and I don't. I don't have the answer to it, I just one. It starts off small, nobody backsides overnight, you know, you. You, you start with with something that you know, maybe you held as a conviction that maybe you don't hold this strong anymore. And maybe it didn't start with drugs and alcohol, maybe it was, you know, whatever conviction I held, I let go of it and nothing happened as a result. Uh, bad, Um, and the same token, and nothing happened as a result. Bad In the same token. I also don't think God was forcing me to live for him either. No.
Speaker 3:I recognize that during all of that that was happening positive for me I came under severe attack and I understood that you know, if this was about to be my full time lifestyle, that I was going to battle spiritual warfare and were you afraid of that? There was parts of me that was afraid of it. There was other parts of me that felt I was better equipped to face it than most because of the things that I went through, and I felt like that's why God called me to that. Right.
Speaker 3:But I also was no longer when I moved to Austin around it, so I was kind of on an island all by myself. Now I was in probably one of the best educational churches that I could be in, best educational churches that I could be in, a solid, growing church with some of the best educators in the UPC, a place where I felt like man, I was going to get probably the best knowledge that I could ever get and obtain. But there was also that side of me that was really like man Reed, you messed up, man, you need to get back to where the gifts of the Spirit are really moving. I have a very hard time being in a church where there's no gift of the Spirit moving and I'm not saying that they weren't moving in Austin, but I had. There's a difference. Yeah, there's a major difference, yeah.
Speaker 2:And so, reed, this is yeah. So this is the second time you went from being in a gifted church to one that didn't have it flowing as much. You know twice and I think the lesson here I'll point out the obvious you probably already know. You know twice and I think the lesson here I'll point out the obvious you probably already know.
Speaker 2:You know, whoever, whatever God is going to do with you, he's clearly. He's clearly given you a heart for that and I would say you got to follow where the Spirit of God is moving. You can't afford another sense of being in a church where the gifts are not flowing freely and the movement of the supernatural is not in operation. You know, some people can perhaps be content in that, but I think when you have come from that, it is like nothing will ever satisfy like that, because it's just different. It's a different depth, it's a different everything when God is moving and you're going to have to find a church where the freedom of the spirit can move.
Speaker 3:Well, there was also, I agree with you but there was also a side of me that really also sat back and analyzed and said, side of me that really also sat back and analyzed and said, you know, uh, I don't want to be the person that is blaming, uh, my walk or my lack of obedience or steadfastness on that, because then you start, of course, not individuals, right, you start, right, you start comparing people, right, others and and right.
Speaker 3:What if you know, reed, god had you there so that you got your act together and you became the vessel in which that started to flow freely within that church. You know, there was so were so many scenarios that God would really help me try to deal with, and I never wanted to feel like I was blaming my walk on a particular church.
Speaker 2:No, yeah, and thank you for saying that, because I don't mean to say that either, but I think, as we walk with God, I think he's always trying to reveal to us who we are and who he is. That includes all of our history, all of our wounds, all of our proclivities, all of our idiosyncrasies, all the things that create us to be who we are and how. What needs to go, that's the dying of the flesh, what he's going to empty out of us and then what he places in us, and so I look at it more like a consecration thing. What's good for one person in their walk with God may not be good for the next person, and it has nothing to do with something being right or wrong. It has to do with a consecration and who God is trying to and what God is trying to develop in individuals as their individual ministry and their individual walk. You know what I mean. Yeah.
Speaker 2:And I just think that people are called to different aspects of the body because we're all different members of the body serving a different function. So you're right, and I bet it would be super confusing because it would be attractive to sit in a church like that and glean from that kind of an education. I totally get it. I would love that as well. And so, yeah, I don't think it's any particular church or ministry that is at fault. I think it's what is God trying to reveal to you about you and about who he's making you to be. You know now and throughout every experience you've had, and where he eventually wants to take you.
Speaker 3:Yeah, yeah, I think I texted my pastor the other day just about spiritual authority. You know, I need to get to a place where I'm under a covering, I need to submit to a pastor. I need that in my life. I have no accountability right now whatsoever and, um, for the time being, at least until god reveals something else to me, I want to become the best saint possible and that's awesome.
Speaker 3:Just, you know, sit back and just say Bishop tells me hey, you can't, you can't be doing this, I'm okay, I welcome it. You know, let them know like, hey, I'm here, I want to have dialogue. I need you in my life. Don't forget about me. You know, I feel like I'm starting over. Uh, I know that, after this last incident, beyond a shadow of a doubt, that god is sparing me for something. What that is, I don't know yet. I know it'll be revealed in due time, but I I've had a taste of what that was and, uh, I just pray that I could get to it and it's in its fullness and, um, I understand what's going to come with it and I make sure that you know I'm prepared.
Speaker 2:So so walk us through what happened recently, so walk us through what happened recently.
Speaker 3:So about two years ago I started back at a company. I went through a relationship after I was with Karina for about six years and then we were living together and it just got to the point where it was time for me to go on my own. So here I was, the first time single, really since I was 19 years old, at out a little bit, you know. I was going and doing, doing all those things, bar hopping and, uh, you know, getting in a bunch of relationships that I probably shouldn't have been getting into. And uh, you got a dwi, got a DWI and was found with possession of cocaine. And there I was right back on the probation felony probation, you know and under the radar again of what I've done so many times prior, and started getting to the point where I was just like, when are you gonna learn read? You know they wanted to send me to on a minimum of a six-month jail sentence but possibly prison, because since the time I was 18 this would have been considered my fourth DWI. Thankfully California had a law where after 10 years it drops off your record, so the state of Texas couldn't really get any paperwork to confirm that I had any priors. They knew they were there but they didn't know, couldn't really bring it up in court and prove it. So I ended up on a felony probation for two years, which I'm on currently. Another breathalyzer installed in the vehicle and At the time I think I was running a mortgage company, opened up an office out in Camarillo.
Speaker 3:I was the associate vice president of business development, so financially I was working from Texas but things were going good. I was making good money. Then I ran into a friend of mine who was working at this company that I had worked at prior in about 2012 and decided to come back At this particular time a couple months back. The last two years I've been blessed. I've made more money than I've ever made in my entire life. You're talking, I'm coming home sometimes in a month over $100,000 that I made and I'm like don't know what to do with myself and I'm feeling like you know I'm a king, I'm on cloud nine, things are going good, I'm by myself.
Speaker 3:And um, this particular incident, what led up to it was I, um, I had found this lake, lakeside, lakeside community property here outside of austin, um, with some new construction. Had a realtor, friend of mine, come from houston to help me, uh, find a home and I was finalizing some um additions that I wanted on this house. I had put a deposit on and was buying a house and I was excited and as we were leaving, um, the realtor that was with me was like hey Rita, have you looked at these? I said no, those are like a million dollar homes. I'm not, I'm not trying to spend a million dollars, it's just me. And he looked it up and they had dropped it from like $975,000 down to like $600,000. It was right in my budget. And, lo and behold, I put an offer. They accept the offer, I put the earnest money deposit.
Speaker 3:The day that this all happened was about two weeks later. I, to the house, uh asked the, the listing agent to let me into the house brand new construction. I needed to take some measurements on some things I wanted to change. You need to find out what size refrigerator what not was going in. I was just happy.
Speaker 3:I was at a place where I knew that I was blessed like I'd never been blessed. About two weeks prior, I had given the first Bible study that I had given in probably 15 years to about five people from work, to about five people from work. A girl that I work with had a ministry called the Forgiven Project that started for women, but it was. You know they're not Pentecostal or anything like that, but I was just. I was like you know what? I'm going back to church. Anybody that wants to talk about God, I'll talk about God. And anybody asked me like man, what is different about you, how are you doing so? Good, I became number one that particular month at work and I was just happy and eager to tell man, god is blessing me, god is blessing me, and that's all I kept saying was.
Speaker 2:I'm blessed. So what made you go back to church? Because you said a few minutes ago, from 2016,. You had kind of stopped going. What made you? You recently had gone back to church.
Speaker 3:I just knew that with what was happening at work, how things were going so good, any minute I knew the devil was going to come, try and interrupt something and call it selfish reasons, call it what you want. I didn't want that to stop. I didn't want to be that guy that somehow one day got called into HR and they're firing you or your production went down and you know, I wanted to make sure that God knew. I knew he was blessing me, he was going to get all praise, all glory. And on top of that, this girl at work was always every day walking in with gospel music blaring on her phone and it was just in my face every day, to the point where a lot of our coworkers didn't like it. But she was good friends with my ex-girlfriend and we knew each other and I just appreciated having somebody around me that way and somebody that I could talk to God about. And she kept saying to me because I had transferred departments to where now we were working together. And she kept saying to me I already knew that when I found out you came back to the company that you were going to end up here Because God wants you to be the part of this ministry that I've been trying to launch and you're going to be the spokesperson for it, and I know, I know. And so then I was like, well, let's do it. And kicked it off with the Bible study and then realized we had some serious doctrinal differences. That was the last Bible study I gave them because they didn't necessarily agree, which is fine. I still pray for them, I still love them. But I wasn't going to compromise my doctrinal beliefs either and I knew what God had done for me and what he brought me out of. But I knew the minute, kathy, that I gave that Bible study, that attack was about to happen. I knew it.
Speaker 3:And about a week prior to this accident, one of the guys at work that I used to work with years ago pulls me to the side after a morning meeting and he asked me. He says hey, man, there's something different about you. What is it? What's going on in your life? And I said well, what do you mean? He goes, bro, I looked up at you in the morning meeting yesterday, when they were giving you recognition for being number one last month, and it was like a bright light was in front of you and I could just see the joy on your face and how happy you were and you kept pointing to the sky. He's like what are you pointing to? I said it's God, bro. I'm giving God the glory. Anything that's happening in my life right now is because God has his hand on me and God is blessing me like he's never done before. And I'm making sure that everybody knows that it's not me, it's not what I'm doing different, it's what God's doing different through me. And uh, he was like you know, man, that's awesome.
Speaker 3:Well, the next day he comes to me and he pulls me aside again and he says Reed, can I talk to you? I said, yeah, what's what's going on? And he says, man, I went home and I was telling my mom about what we talked about yesterday and he said to me or she says to me, write down his name on a piece of paper. And I looked at her like why? She says just write his name down, first and last name on a piece of paper. And so he writes down my name, he gives it to her. Down my name, he gives it to her. And that night she took it with her to a prayer meeting at a pretty big church here in in the austin area. And she comes back home and he says what, why did you need the, the name? And he said I had all the ladies in our prayer group pray over him and he's like why he goes. She goes because god told me that he needs to stick with god because the devil's trying to kill him. And he came and told me that mom just said emphatically, man, you tell reed that he needs to stick with it this time because devil wants to kill him. And uh, and I told him I know, man, this isn't the first time. I said I know exactly what she's talking about and that's why I told you the other day this is all, god, man, I've got to stay focused on God.
Speaker 3:Well, there I was that day and I went and had dinner with some friends of mine. They invited me to their house, they made me dinner and that's the last thing I remember. I don't remember where I went that night, who I was with, what places I visited. I was in the hospital and there was a lady that messaged me on Facebook when she saw my missing persons report and said that she couldn't believe that it was me when she saw my picture. She asked her husband if this was the same guy that we met last night told me that she met me at a taco truck in the Austin area the night that I went missing, which I have no recollection of. Another friend said that he saw me out and that I was just super happy about buying my house and that I was just ecstatic and super happy and that's how he remembers seeing me.
Speaker 2:So you go to the house to take some measurements that night you go to dinner to celebrate with friends and then you get in an accident. Tell us about the accident, because the people watching don't know anything about that and, to be honest, I really don't know much about it either.
Speaker 3:Yeah, so the mystery is around this accident. So the missing persons report was posted that I was missing and I was last seen driving a Range Rover. Well, when I came to and this was several weeks after surgery, cause I kept going in and out the amount of pain meds that they had me on after surgery my son let me know that the reason they found me was that my vehicle was found that night at around 2.30 in the morning crash in this particular area of Austin, which is not an area I go to. I would have no reason to be down there, even if I was trying to be out doing the things that I normally would do in sin. That's not an area I ever visited and where they found the vehicle. That's not an area I ever visited and where they found the vehicle. Nothing about where they found it makes sense to me.
Speaker 3:I was found two days later, 11 miles North of that vehicle, next to an overpass and the. What was told to my family was that I fell off the overpass, not the vehicle. The vehicle was crashed into wherever I still don't know to this day. I haven't talked to anybody about where they actually found the vehicle, but where they found me was underneath an overpass and the orthopedic surgeon, when I came into my follow-up appointment, told me that when he first saw me he went like. He gestured like this. He said I thought that was it, man. We thought we were going to have to put a tracheotomy down your throat to revive you. He said it looked like you got beat up by at least 10 guys, and the it is. Was I walking on the overpass and got hit by a car and launched over? Was I thrown off or did I just fall off?
Speaker 2:Well, to fall off, you would have had to climb over something, right.
Speaker 3:Yeah, over the retaining wall.
Speaker 2:So you you're. You went missing over the retaining wall, so you went missing. After your vehicle was found, they posted missing persons for you.
Speaker 3:Yes.
Speaker 2:Did the police do that, or did family do that?
Speaker 3:My family did that. My son contacted the police department, I think was told that they're going to document everything, but it wasn't going to be an actual missing persons report. Hadn't been 24 hours when they called. Nobody knew who saw me. Last, detectives were interviewing two different girls that I had been in relationships with.
Speaker 3:We're trying to interview different people about where, where could he have been? Who saw him laugh? And nobody knew. Nobody had saw me. I think they were trying to get into my phone. Maybe they found my phone in or no. They didn't have my phone yet. Uh, they couldn't figure out where I was. And um, the story is that a homeless man found me and walked across the frontage road into an applebee's, pulled somebody there and they called 9-1-1 and then that's when they they came and found me, which is is still odd to me, because the area in which they found me, in front of this um overpass, is right by one of the only malls that all of austin has. A very busy road, uh, especially during the weekday major freeway how nobody saw me major freeway.
Speaker 3:How nobody saw me is unreal to me, or that people just thought, maybe you know because of my beard.
Speaker 3:Maybe I was just some homeless man. The only memory that I have of this entire situation is waking up once in the middle of the night looking down, seeing blood all over my leg, trying to reach for my phone to call 911, but it was dead. I was so dehydrated, I was thirsty, I wanted water and I have an Apple smartwatch and I was trying to dial the emergency on the smartwatch. I didn't have my glasses. I can't see. I need glasses to read and Seeing two guys at a distance drinking water and just started screaming for help.
Speaker 3:One of the other stories is that I crawled across the street into Applebee's, so I don't actually know what happened, but I didn't drive my vehicle off a bridge. I personally, from what they're saying, because I had a puncture from a branch that broke my fall in my right leg. So they put titanium rods in my femur, titanium pins to join the femur back to the joint if the ball joint that goes into the hip fix the left foot. I have a plate in my orbital eye socket that my face was all broken and crushed in. I had three different fractures or breaks in my neck and bleeding from the brain, which, when they told my family and my mom came into town to come try and take care of me.
Speaker 3:She unraveled the whole house, purchase things and everything, and I remember asking her why did you do that? She said, reed, we didn't know if you were going to be a vegetable. I mean the way everything looked and the way these doctors were talking. They had neurological doctors wanting to talk to you about your cognitive skills. We didn't know. You were in bad, bad, bad shape.
Speaker 4:I would imagine it was touch and go for a while.
Speaker 2:Yeah, you were in bad, bad, bad shape, mm-hmm, I would imagine it was touch and go for a while.
Speaker 3:Yeah.
Speaker 2:And so how many weeks ago was that, reed, and how many surgeries have you had?
Speaker 3:I've had One, two, three, three or four surgeries. That happened on May the 12th and this is my mom saying she knew something was wrong. When my son called her and said we can't, nobody can get a hold of dad, he said I knew something was wrong when you didn't call me on Mother's Day. When my son called her and said we can't, nobody can get a hold of dad, he said I knew something was wrong when you didn't call me on Mother's Day. She was on vacation in Spain, vacation short. No, come try to find me. And I had acute kidney failure from the dehydration they said. Said when I was found.
Speaker 3:So there was a plethora of things that were going on with me and I don't remember any of it. Not any of it. Do I remember? I got in an argument with my daughter just a few weeks ago about how long I was in rehabilitation. I swore up and down that I was there for a month. Month and a half. She's like. No, dad, you were there like a week and a half. I go. There's no way she goes. No, you were in the hospital for over a month or close to a month. That's how bad you were. And then you went to rehabilitation. So I am so thankful that that God spared me and that I'm alive, because, uh, this is probably the worst that I or the closest, I think I've ever come to uh, not making it.
Speaker 2:So where? Where does that leave you now with God? Have you? What are you talking to him about?
Speaker 3:I'm just thankful. Everything to me now is being thankful. I'm not in any rush to do anything other than get in his Word every day and pray and thank Him. I've got people calling me, telling me and who are outsiders, looking in and saying look, we know God spared you. There's going to be something great that comes out of this. I can't wait to be a part of it. I can't wait to see it and I hope that's all right.
Speaker 3:I don't know why he spared me. You know others that don't believe or not. You're just lucky man. You're strong, you're strong-willed, you're a likable guy, guy. A lot of people love you, a lot of people care about you. Uh, you know, I know that there's a purpose. He spared me for something.
Speaker 3:I was in a very toxic relationship before all of this and there's some things that you know I. I know that, uh, I know that I'm ashamed of and very much in a place of God. I need your forgiveness and I need your restoration because of the things that I've just went through and the pain that I've caused on others, but where I end up as a result, it's in his hands. I don't know that I'm ever going to preach again. I don't know, that's in God's hands. I would like to believe that. You know, those gifts and calling of God are without repentance and that he never took them away from me. But, man, there's some. There's some dark paths that I've walked down that I really need to spend and focus my time on understanding why, like you said, I keep going down these paths and overcoming it once and for all and making sure that you know it could be it could have been a lot worse.
Speaker 3:I should be in prison, you know. Uh, so I'm just thankful right now that, a I have life, b that I'm not in prison. And, uh, I want to get through this felony probation and get that off my chest. And I've got a brother here in Austin that really wants me. I just took a online application and completed that he gave me to go into the prisons and start preaching. He's saying they're seeing revival to 300 people filled with the Holy Ghost at the same time, and I can't say that that's the burden I've ever had, you know. But I'm willing to just say yes, lord, to anything. Now you know, god, whatever doors you're trying to open for me, I'm just thankful.
Speaker 2:I'm just thankful, yeah, yeah, I'm just thankful yeah yeah, all of us here are thankful too, reed, that you, that you made it. You know you're alive to tell this story and to get restoration and you know, and hopefully never walk down that road again, because it is, I think, embracing. You know, I know that when you really embrace your calling, whatever you feel, whatever God has spoken to you in your personal time with him over the years, like that, that can be very daunting and very heavy. You know, when you walk in the place that God calls you to, and I think that there is an eternal wrestle, one that we don't always recognize, and just our own fears and insecurities that take place. But I think, if you can ever just embrace, whatever it looks like, lord, whatever I have to walk away from, whatever blessing you give, whatever, for me it was accepting the fact that I might be alone forever. You know that was always my Achilles heel and when I could finally just embrace, okay, if this is what you have for me, it doesn't matter. All that matters is that I can be in his presence, that I could walk with him and hear his voice, because I think there's nothing worse than that separation, when you no longer hear his voice every day, or just to abide in his presence, you know worldly culture, and just say yes to him, to just, you know, walk wherever he wants you to go.
Speaker 2:Everything else just kind of fades away, and then he also brings everything back because your priorities get set in order in the right place. You know, and I have no doubt, reed, I mean your heart has always been for the Lord, and I think you're right. There is some lessons. I'm curious where you learned about covering. That was one thing that the Lord dealt with me about too is needing to have a covering and needing to be obedient. I just had not ever found a pastor that I trusted, loved me enough to be able to be submitted to, and I think that had to do with all my own stuff, you know, in my history. So I just I'm so glad that you're okay, you know.
Speaker 3:Yeah, yeah, I would. I would encourage anybody. You know I love the title of this podcast, the redeemed backslider, and I really dived into, you know, redemption and and this story of redemption, you know, for a lot of people. I hope that they never have to experience that story and they never have to be labeled, right, you know, a redeemed backslider, but for for some of us, it's just the love and mercy that god has extended to us is really what this is all about is that his mercy endures forever and his mercy is, is covering us, and I love the fact that before we get to his glory and we get to see his presence, that we meet him at the mercy seat of what was, you know, we read about in the tabernacle plan and the Ark of the Covenant, that over that was was mercy and, um, I would say that the spiritual authority aspect really came from, uh, understanding that.
Speaker 3:You know, I've kind of just been rogue for the longest time, uh, doing my own thing. I've had no accountability, accountability. And then Brother Daniel Lankford was telling me about a preacher in the UPC that I really needed to start following because he was much like myself, his ministry was the way mine was and was also somebody that came under Brother Winslow. But when they were in either Louisiana or Mississippi, this particular individual lived in Louisiana and Daniel and this preacher his name is Evangelist Justin Leyva called me a couple years ago.
Speaker 2:He just prophesied over me. Not very long ago he was in the Tulare church. Yeah, yeah, I don't know his story, but I knew he came up under Brother Winslow.
Speaker 3:Yeah, he prayed over me the other day and I just started watching a bunch of his videos and one of his interviews on his podcast, on the Elisha Generation podcast. He was talking with his pastor, his bishop, about covering and falling under spiritual authority and it just started to make me realize, like man I I've been robed and one of the things I really felt really strong about was when I was in the lighthouse. That was probably the first time that I really felt like I had a real spiritual authority and covering was was brother McPhail. Brother McPhail was that to me and unfortunately, when I moved to Dallas not to any fault of his, it was mine. It was like all communication with almost everybody from the lighthouse just became Nolan Boy void for me because you know, I was doing my own thing and Reed, do you feel like this has changed your viewpoint on God?
Speaker 2:like before you saw, you were afraid, you know. Like you said, do you feel like, do you still feel that way, or do you feel like you have a new perspective towards him?
Speaker 3:Yeah, I think that it has absolutely changed my perspective on God.
Speaker 3:I think God's mercy, his grace although I would not say is a covering or an ability that gives us the ability to sin I believe that God is a lot more tolerant of what we have been led to believe, and rightly so.
Speaker 3:I thought that way for the longest time, just because of the dynamic on how God saved me from my drug addiction. Like I said, I feared that I was playing roulette on a daily basis, and rightly so. I don't think I was wrong for believing that, because it kept me. But at the same time, there was a lot of times that I don't think I was extending the grace and mercy to, maybe individuals that I needed to as a result, because I thought that I had this god up there that was about to punish me any minute that I messed up. Yeah, and so I think what I've learned through this is that I don't care how far you stray from god, how much you think you're backslidden, uh, how much you think that you know wrong, that you've done, how you've hurt, how you've hurt people, how you've hurt others. You still have a chance and you still have a God that has so much love and so much mercy, that is going to take you back into the fold.
Speaker 2:As long as you have breath.
Speaker 3:Yep.
Speaker 2:As long as you have breath.
Speaker 3:That's right yeah.
Speaker 2:I think one thing I never understood is free will, which I have learned over the years, and that it's our love for him that causes us to want to be obedient. Is there grace if we go out and do things we shouldn't? Yes, there is, but at some point, to what degree we do not know. When that hedge is broken and we reach our hand towards something we shouldn't, the Bible says the hedge is broken and the serpent can come in, and we are the ones that break that hedge of protection when we exercise our free will and we make a choice to do the things that you know the Bible addresses as sin. And so I think that, definitely, when God woke me up on my fateful night and I never have drank since it was because I realized, oh, he cares about this. I didn't know he cared about it. You know the way he cares about it, and so I've learned that.
Speaker 2:You know there's a lot of things I think we could do, but, like Paul said, you know I have liberty to do all things, but not all things are expedient for me, and that's how I see it now is like there's a lot of things that we could do or look like or whatever, but it's not always who God is calling us to be or the things that would necessarily be pleasing to him. And now, having that place of grace, I just want to be pleasing to him, I want to make him happy, I want to love him and give back that love that he has extended to me, which I think is what was the difference for me, you know, this time around, when I finally got to learn some things I didn't know before. You know. Yeah.
Speaker 2:And I wonder with you if that's it. Like you know, you definitely have experience knowing you can do those things. But I think the Lord wants us to choose Him over those things you know, over our flesh, over that instant gratification, over all the things, and then I think he gives us everything back when it's aligned properly.
Speaker 3:Yeah, I agree.
Speaker 2:Well, reed gosh, I am excited about your life because I don't believe God spared you for no reason, and you know, walking circumspectly, that's what we all have to do. I hope you'll come visit us in Visalia. Our church is on fire and, yeah, it's so exciting and the gifts are starting to operate in a more complete way. I was going to say earlier.
Speaker 2:Brother Clark used to say that we get seated with the gifts when we are under the gifts, and I think you got seated. We got seated because we were around the prophetic ministry for so long. Brother Clark was my mentor for years. I know Brother Winslow was yours, but I think we get seeded with that. We just hunger for more of that, you know, when we're around it. So, anyways, that really had no application to the rest of what we were saying, but anyways, I'm really glad that you're okay and I'm glad that you said yes to doing this interview and I can't wait to see you and Keith together in church one day, worshiping together on fire for God, totally redeemed, with your lives, on the right track for this last day revival.
Speaker 3:I will tell you too. I want to thank you because I remember the journey in which I talked about, you know, and how I ended up doing this Bible study at work with my colleagues. All of that started, colleagues. All of that started and why I ended up going back to church was seeing your advertisement on YouTube and the video with Keith, and it immediately did something in my. I broke down crying the minute I started watching it because this was somebody that I know, his whole story and I was right at the beginning and to some degree I was worse, way faster than they got their. Their issues kind of became a trickle-down effect later on and the darkness became darker. But thankfully, god, god reached out to me in that service and I got right and I know that his story became what it became after all of that. So to see that he was back living for God, oh, it tore me up inside it just oh, it did something for me.
Speaker 3:So thank you for having this burden and for letting people come on here and be vulnerable in the way that I think the Holy Spirit is wanting us to be and that we should be, to help the body of Christ come back together.
Speaker 2:Yeah, well, thank you, I just want to reach people man. I just want to reach people man. I just want to see people know the goodness of God like we know it, because he is so much greater and so much better than I think. Words only are so good. They don't quite convey how wonderful God is until you really experience him. And so, um, thank you, I'm glad, I'm glad that it made a difference for you. But, um, I know I keep saying it, I'm just glad you're okay, reed, it's. I'm just so grateful that that you're alive today to have another chance to live out your walk with God. It's truly the grace of God and His miraculous love for us. So just stay the course, stay the course, stay the course.
Speaker 2:It's so good, and I know you know that and I pray for a speedy recovery, for the rest of your body to come back into order and you to get on your feet soon up to see what kind of weight bearing status.
Speaker 3:But, as a brother, lava called me the other day to pray for me, I'm I'm believing. I mean, I'm testing it every day. I'm like my daughter keeps coming in, freaking out Like what are you doing? Are you trying to stand? God's going to heal me. I know he's going to. I'm going to walk here where they say I can walk.
Speaker 2:But uh praise the Lord. Praise the Lord. All right, Reed, will you stay in touch and come visit us soon?
Speaker 3:okay, I will God bless you, Kathy.
Speaker 2:Yeah, and thank you for everyone that has watched. Please share it, like it and tell all your friends Bye.
Speaker 1:We are so glad you joined us. If you have a story of redemption or have worn the label of a backslider, we would love to hear from you. If you'd like to support our ministry, your donation will be tax deductible. Visit our website at theredeemedbacksliderorg. We hope you will tune in for our next episode.
