Aloha Alive: The Dawn O'Brien Podcast

E:27 Healing Hearts Finally, Overcoming Trauma Truly

• Dawn O'Brien • Season 1 • Episode 27

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0:00 | 45:44

Stop asking, “What’s wrong with me?” & start asking, “What happened & how do I heal forward?” Healing Hearts Creator Rob Gross talks about how trauma leads to so many “bad choices” a.k.a. survival strategies gone wrong.

You’ll hear personal stories of ours that make it real: patterns passed down family lines, the pressure to perform for love, & what it looks like to break generational patterns and live FREE! 

If you want inner healing, family restoration, & breaking generational cycles, you're in the right place. Subscribe, share this with someone who needs hope, & comment to let us know what was your biggest takeaway. AGAPE & ALOHA for YOU ALWAYS!

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Welcome And Guest Introduction

SPEAKER_02

Welcome to Aloha Alive. I'm Auntie Don O'Brien, and today I have one of the supernatural superheroes of the state of Hawaii and our world. His name is Pastor Rob Gross of Healing Hearts. Welcome, Pastor Rob.

SPEAKER_00

It's great to be here.

What Healing Hearts Is

SPEAKER_02

I'm gonna go straight for the KO because your son does some judo. We love boxing. The straight for the KO Healing Hearts is a program that rocks hell on its heels and it destroys demon strongholds. What is Healing Hearts?

SPEAKER_00

Well, Don, Healing Hearts is a nine-week program that's designed to help people overcome their adverse childhood experiences. And the primary entity that helps it all come to fruition is the spirit of Elijah. And so one of the things that we deal with also is different types of inner healing issues like parental inversion, when a child, for example, becomes the parent because of a divorce or early premature death. Right. And the the child becomes, you know, the one who's carrying responsibility on their shoulders and they don't know how to function uh in terms of knowing how to rest. And then some families, you know, love and affirmation is given only when you do well.

SPEAKER_01

Yes.

ACEs And Trauma Patterns

SPEAKER_00

And so you learn to do, do, do, not knowing that God already loves you. And so we deal with issues like that, but primarily adverse childhood experiences. And you're the one who actually shared that with us, and it has just taken off uh over the years.

SPEAKER_02

Thank you for that. And of course, I learned that from my mentor, but adverse childhood experiences, and we're gonna show them on the screen, is actually from also science, and we have a lot of backing for it, but there are 10 top traumas that children experience universally. This is around the whole wide world, right? And it shows three three different types. One is abuse, second is neglect, as you were saying, when a child has to bear the burdens of being the adult in the family, right? Neglect. And then third is household dysfunction, which includes things like divorce. And by the way, divorce is pretty pervasive as we're talking right now. I know there's people listening. So those are known as adverse childhood experiences or things that we experience that are against childhood. It forces you to grow up fast. I used to teach this out at Nanakouli High School and WaiNai High School in the um ALC, and that's the alternative learning center. Don't listen to the other version of what that acronym stands for because I won't stand for it. But um, and I can't even say it on this show, but just think West Side. So Alternative Learning Center, and I had to break it down really simply because I also come from um Polynesia, as you know, and and this man is a brother of mine. But I you have to break it down simply. I said ACEs or adverse childhood experiences are traumas. They still glaze over. And I go, okay, let me say it again. It's bad things that happen to good kids, and then good kids start to make bad choices. That's where we start to hang with the wrong crowd. We start vaping, smoking, drinking, um, doing a lot of questionable things with um addictions and even sex addictions. Does that sound about right, Pastor Rob?

When Buried Memories Surface

SPEAKER_00

Yes, it it definitely does. I mean, that's one of the pervasive things with everyone that we minister to. Yes. Some uh inappropriate touch. Yes. It's amazing. Yes, it's amazing. Recently I had a uh situation where uh we were speaking to a woman and um I was I was ministering to her and all of a sudden she started saying, sex, sex, sex, and we were like, Whoa, what do you mean? And she said, uh I said, Who with? And she said, Daddy, daddy. And um then she had a memory that she had suppressed. And it's it had started when she was age five and it went on for five years. Wow. And so we had to work through the process of getting her to forgive her father.

The Spirit Of Elijah And Sonship

SPEAKER_02

Wow. And um, yeah, it was quite and you know, interesting that you say that. I'm so sorry to hear that for that wonderful lady, but I'm thinking to myself as I'm hearing you, Pastor Rob, I went through the program Healing Hearts almost 10 years ago. It was 2017 at the time of this taping. It was an intensive, I had been through, I'm a church girl. I grew up in the church. I was Catholic from birth, and then at age 13, I got saved in an evangelical church, Pastor Wayne's church. I have been through prayer and healing and deliverance many, many times as a child of trauma, but it wasn't until healing hearts that I really got freedom. And and we both know the scripture that says, where the spirit of the Lord is, there is freedom. But what's the key difference? Because even for that lady who was saying sex, sex, there are things that get surfaced. How does that happen with healing hearts?

SPEAKER_00

Yeah, I think I well, I'm glad you brought that up because it's when you look at Matthew chapter 17, verses 10 through 13, Jesus said Elijah must come first.

SPEAKER_03

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00

And so healing hearts is an Elijah ministry. It is the anointing of Elijah that turns the hearts of the fathers back to the children and vice versa. Yes. But also when you look at the story of Elijah, 1 Kings, uh, I believe it's uh 19, he said to the people of Israel who are dealing with bail worship, yeah, you know, how long are you going to waver between two opinions? Wow. And so the spirit of Elijah deals with mixture in the church.

SPEAKER_02

Yes.

SPEAKER_00

And um it it it's an anointing.

SPEAKER_02

Yes.

SPEAKER_00

And it is it really precedes revival. That's why I'm so um excited about healing hearts, is because God is preparing us ultimately for revival so that we can become sons and daughters and our hearts can be free of all the opala and the junk that the enemy has put in there through our parents. But ultimately it's related back to the tree of knowledge of good and evil, which I refer to as the tree of chaos.

SPEAKER_03

Oh, wow.

SPEAKER_00

And so parents have been brought up by parents who are parenting from the tree of chaos.

SPEAKER_02

Come on.

SPEAKER_00

And God wants to turn us to the tree of life and parent from that perspective and that sap that's in that tree. And so, you know, we we help people to shift from the wrong tree to the tree of life.

SPEAKER_02

That's so good.

SPEAKER_00

And it's an anointing and it precedes revival. And I feel like when the church really captures and embraces this move of Elijah, revival is going to start to come more and more. We see it with our people that you come alive to God because you become a son and a daughter, and you know you're loved by the Father.

SPEAKER_02

Amen. And I love that you brought that up. A few things come quickly to mind is when you're talking about fruit and a tree, and we know that's in the Bible, where Jesus says that we can judge a tree by its fruit, right? Like if you got a guava tree, you better have guava fruit, not oranges. If you have an oulu tree, you better have oulu and not prunes, right? So that makes sense, but I'm judging the tree by its fruit. And you taught us, as I recall at Healing Hearts, that um the fruit bears the root.

SPEAKER_03

Yes.

SPEAKER_02

Right? Because it has to be one guava comes out of one guava root, and that when we go back and fix the root, then, or the root issue, if I may speak secularly, right, in uh psychology and behavioral psychology, you fix the root issue, you're gonna have different fruit because the definition of insanity is doing the same thing generation to generation, grandpa to father to daughter, and expecting a different result. Uh, if I'm gonna drink like my daddy drank, like my grandpa O'Brien drank, you're gonna get the same result, girl.

SPEAKER_00

That's right.

SPEAKER_02

And they tried to warn me, my dad literally, I we never had the sex talk because I refused. I was like, I'm not talking about sex with my single dad. He tried to give, you know, all four of his daughters, let's have the sex talk. I'm like, ew, gross. But um I had the alcoholic talk with my dad. And we're my last name's O'Brien, it's always been, and we come from a long line of O'Brien's. He said, You also come from a long line of great alcoholics. He tried to give me the talk, but we didn't have the spiritual tools to break the curse. And so when I talk about the other thing I was gonna say, and I'm gonna hand this right back to you, is fix the fruit, fix, fix the root, fix the fruit, is we reverse the curse and we bring the blessing. Because as for me in my house, for Don O'Brien, I am not going to do the transgenerational curses or it says in science, transgenerational patterns, either which way it's the same demons. And we're done with that. So, Pastor Rob, thank you for that. And is that does that resonate with what you've been saying and what you've been teaching us through Healing Hearts?

SPEAKER_00

Oh, absolutely. We have to trace the fruit back to the root. We have to find out where the open door is, where the enemy came in. And as you shared, a lot of it is comes down the family line. It does. They're patterns, their tendencies. Yes, but there's pain. Yes. We have to identify where the pain is and address that.

SPEAKER_02

So good.

SPEAKER_00

And it's scary for a lot of people to go there.

Fear Shame And Safe Confession

SPEAKER_02

It is very scary, but that I think is uh the main root issue as I perceive it and I read the Bible is fear. Does that make sense? And then there's the shame, right? So we're talking about some of the sex um abuse that happened for that woman, and in my family, that was one of the lines that came through was sex abuse. And to this day, and I want to apologize in advance to my sisters, but um, I have three sisters, there's four daughters. We we grew up in the same home, and two of us had experienced sexual abuse. Uh uh, two of them don't want me to ever talk about it because we were raised, and you might resonate with this, or it sounds very similar to you. You never air the dirty laundry, you never speak ill about the family, you always hide. All those things stay in the house. And as for me in my house, I said no, I have been set free and I want to turn around and set other children free. And one of the main things they tell children who are um victims of sex abuse or sexual assault is tell somebody. So I'm just bringing that to you because we are looking at a lot of these aces, this trauma, and that's the problem. But the solution is healing hearts. It's going in beyond the fear and bringing faith to shine the light and deliver people from shame and the pain.

SPEAKER_00

Yeah. One of the reasons why people um control things is because of fear. Or they don't want to revisit pain. But the Bible clearly says confess your sins to one another so that you may be healed. Amen. So the key to healing is revealing.

SPEAKER_02

That's right.

SPEAKER_00

And so we want to create in healing hearts a very safe, secure environment. We want to create home. So when you come into Healing Hearts, you know, we'll have a lot of poo-poos, we have dinner, we we tell people everything's held in the strictest confidence. It is. And we we just want people to experience what they didn't because when they grew up, is is they didn't have home. I mean, you said that.

SPEAKER_02

I say it, I say if you come from a broken home, then when you grow up, broke feels like home. So I saw the pattern of my life with um certain types of men, and I'm still single to this day because I was repeating a second verse, same as the first, third verse, same as the first. I was repeating a lot of the brokenness I had growing up with um both a father who was bipolar, and I love my father. He was a single father, he did the best he possibly could, and then a very narcissistic and adulterous mom. And I repeated both of those patterns where my dad became an alcoholic, my mom turned out to the world, and she's a beautiful woman, but um, a lot of those needs that probably got passed down from her abandonment by her parents. So thank you for bringing that up. That in when I came to Healing Hearts, and I remember the first time I came, I actually looked at you point blank because I got put into you. You did not want to be there. Small group. I came kicking and screaming like a cat to baptism. I was like, I told the driver of the car because the person who sponsored me is my Hanai Daddy's a pastor, Pastor Jimmy, and he had gotten a pastor to drive me there who also was coming for healing deliverance. His wife, Pastor Missy, and then Pastor David Stone was in the back seat. And I said, Okay, it's just one time. And Pastor David Stone said, No, no, it's like 10 times. And we all went, What? I said, I need a drink right now. I mean at Starbucks. So if you go through the Kaneohe drive-thru, I'll need five shots. Like I was looking for all the comfort mechanisms. And then I sat at your table at your small group and I looked at you, and you can attest to the truth of this. I said, I am a public personality, but I'm a very private person. You ain't getting jack out of me, Rob. I remember. I was ready to fight you, Rob, because of my fear and my shame. Sure. And I'm actually a very transparent, truthful person. I had shared a lot of my testimony, but I knew, I think my spirit woman knew that a lot of the junk and the gunk was gonna get looked at, and we were gonna have some spiritual surgery. So thank you for pressing through and loving through. You're well. It was in your home at the time. Your wife Barb was there. Thank you, Barb. Um, it was very Ohana family style. We were at tables, right? There was food. You made it very family, and to be honest, that was not something that was in my life, it'd never been um consistently good. Family was where you got hurt the most.

SPEAKER_00

Yeah, you're wounded to love.

SPEAKER_02

We fight to love and we love to fight. And so when I shared my testimony, I think we're gonna use it as part of this podcast, Godcast, I opened my healing hearts testimony by saying, We're all just children trying to find our way home.

SPEAKER_00

That's right.

SPEAKER_02

Thank you for helping me to find my way all the way home to Jesus.

SPEAKER_00

You're so welcome.

How The Nine Weeks Work

SPEAKER_02

And I'm still healing. Thank you, Pastor Rob. So, what does a nine-week course look like if somebody was thinking about coming to Healing Hearts?

SPEAKER_00

Well, the first four weeks, uh, we have video curriculum. I I was taped years ago at uh, I think we did a combination service for Calcanen and uh who is head of TOW Hawaii or part of the leadership of Transform Our World Hawaii, very powerful. Alan Cardenas was there, a whole bunch of pastors. About 150 leaders. Oh, and so we taped the show and so we show that video now.

SPEAKER_02

Wow.

SPEAKER_00

And so you come in and you get uh an hour and a half of video instruction, wow, primarily about what the orphan stronghold is. Yes, an orphan is someone who doesn't really know the father's love. They go to church, they tithe, they serve, but they don't have this sense that they're loved as a son or daughter. Yeah, and so we unpack the orphan stronghold in four weeks of video cur curriculum. Wow. And that goes for about 90 minutes, and then we get people into small groups so that they can begin to connect and feel safe with one another. We reassure them nothing will leave the room that they share, and it takes people time to warm up, but they begin to connect over the weeks. Yes. And and then on the fifth week, uh weeks five through eight, we have 150 minutes, two and a half hours worth of ministry time. And you know, some people will fly all the way to the United States, spend thousands of dollars to go through therapy or counseling clinics, whatever. But we have found in 150 minutes of key strategic prayer into the areas that they've identified on a questionnaire that they fill out during weeks five through eight. Yeah. We pray into those things, and um it's just a beautiful thing. And we have facilitators, uh, usually a mother and a father, yes, figures who repent on behalf of the parents who hurt hurt you. And um and then the final week we have a Shabbat banquet.

SPEAKER_02

Wow, testimonial time.

SPEAKER_00

We eat together, we share uh testimonies. Yes, and so it's a beautiful nine-week encounter with the Lord through the Spirit of Elijah.

Training Leaders For Church Healing

SPEAKER_02

Yes. Encounter anointed through the spirit of Elijah. And in my experience, um, we were in a small group, like you said, the first few weeks we watched, you know, you did the teaching at that time, and then we would break into small groups to one, get to know each other better and trust each other, but also to digest the material. It's heavy duty material. I mean, it's simple, but it's not easy, right? So we would go through the material and then uh think and pray and talk about it. And then the last few weeks we we joked, we're like, who's on the hot seat this week, right? Like, what is Pastor David Stone gonna confess? Like stealing a bubble gum when he was five. I mean, some guys are so nice, and the rest of us are the sinners in the back of the bus and the back of the classroom, right? But um, it really worked because as you were saying, there was a mother figure and then a father figure praying, and there were things that came out, and this is not to over-dramatize or or try to make drama out of trauma because trauma is very real, but God is more real. He is natural and supernatural, right? So when we sat there and did that, for myself, my experience was a lot of tears, and there was forgiveness and things that were broken off, I didn't even realize that I was bearing. And then I know people have been through it maybe two, three times, like um some of the pastor brothers, I won't name them by name, but then more things were revealed. It was kind of like an onion layers were being peeled off because some of that trauma is truly tragic and traumatic. It's really deep stuff that went all the way to small kid time, like for that woman who had repressed the memory of her sexual assault by her father, right? So God is a gentleman, he is gracious and he takes his time, but it's the anointing that's brought with healing hearts, Pastor Rob, that I think really helped me. And I'm still praying over my orphan mindsets and those vows, those false promises that I believed in, that I'm a performer and I have to make my alcoholic dad laugh and my mom who gives him the ice shoulder all day long. I have to make entertain them and distract them. And I became a great entertainer and talker. But when you look at the route, and somebody just complimented me yesterday, I was at Christian Academy. They said, Don, you're just so entertaining. And I always remember, but that route was not healthy. I strive to perform, I strive for perfection because that was what was expected. So to come out of the orphan mindset into an agape love of Abba Father was revelationary. Can you um so you've evolved the program just slightly, right? Uh can churches or viewers register or get training? How is it going beyond? Is it still in your house and you're still serving dinner?

SPEAKER_00

Well, we moved our church because of COVID to Halava Valley. Yes. And so now we have it at the at the sanctuary. I love it. And so uh you can register through MVC Hawaii.org. Okay. I gave you the information or I emailed it to you.

SPEAKER_02

Thank you.

SPEAKER_00

Uh right now, however, we're primarily focusing on key leaders in the body of Christ.

SPEAKER_02

Wow. Yeah. So you're going for the shepherds.

SPEAKER_00

We're going for the shepherds and the gatekeepers because if they get healed, then their flocks will get healed.

SPEAKER_02

Right. Yeah. I love that because I heard one of them, and I know he he testifies publicly, so I'm not gossiping, is Pastor Alan Cardenes, as you had mentioned earlier. He is at Nanae Kapono Protestant Church, which is West Said. He's in Nanakouli. What good can come out of Nazareth or Nanakouli? Well, Jesus and Pastor Alan. And Alan took it and he, I think he shrunk it down into like one-day training for his leaders so that he can deploy them into Nanakouli, which is a high need area. And I say that with all love. I ain't throwing no rocks because I'm half tonguing and we build rock walls. That's lunch money right there. I ain't throwing no rocks. Plus, Nanakuli is my ohana. So um he wanted to deploy the troops quickly because there are so many needs in Nanakouli, Y'ai. So that's how we're getting signed up. But you said we can go onto the website if we're hearing this, if anybody is watching and saying, and I'm 55 years old at the time of this taping family. I'm still working through issues. I have a dear lady friend who just met Pastor Rob and she said, I'm 61 years old. I'm still looking for deliverance out of certain things. It's not age-dependent, is it, Pastor?

SPEAKER_00

No, absolutely not. You know, the orphan stronghold is pervasive through ethnicity and age. And you know, basically God is trying to come and say, Hey, you're my kids. Amen. And you know, if you look at Matthew chapter 3, verse 16, Jesus, the Son, is in the is he's in the Jordan River and hears a voice. This is my son in whom I am well pleased. And so we bear false images, false images, image of maybe achiever or entertainer. Yeah, right. And the father is saying, No, you're my son, you're my daughter. Amen. Right? And I think in that passage we learn something profound because the father is saying, You have my pleasure. Yes, and my son took care of it for you on the cross. But I'm speaking to my son right now. I'm pleased with you. Have you shared a sermon? Have you raised anyone from the dead? Have you delivered anyone? Healed anyone? Yeah, recruited your disciples. No, I love you just because you're my daughter or you're my son. And I think when we remove those false images, which we deal with in healing hearts, then we we flow out of sonship and daughtership.

SPEAKER_02

Amen.

SPEAKER_00

And that's one of the keys because when you're a daughter or a son, you know you have an inheritance, you know you're unconditionally loved. You mess up, and God says, Well, I know your your house under construction. It's okay.

SPEAKER_02

It's so good.

SPEAKER_00

And we don't pound ourselves.

SPEAKER_02

Right.

SPEAKER_00

And we have freedom. And where the Spirit of the Lord is, there is freedom.

Rob’s Story Of Abandonment Healing

SPEAKER_02

And it's so freeing and so good. Um, how did you discover healing hearts? Was one of the questions I wanted to ask you.

SPEAKER_00

That's really interesting. Um I was on the mainland at a conference in Kansas City, and um this pastor stood up and he said, Hey, the spirit of Elijah's here. And if you feel the presence of God lighting on you right now, please stand. And I was like, Wow. I started feeling something. I didn't know what it was. So I stood and I came back to Hoy, and I just I couldn't put the Bible down. I kept studying John the Baptist. Baptist and Elijah in the Old Testament, and all these things started popping out at me, and then all of a sudden the Lord took me into this dream. And in the dream, I woke up in my front yard. There were all these holes.

SPEAKER_02

Wow.

SPEAKER_00

And my car was up on jacks, and the tires were gone, the body and chassis was being deli uh dealt with, the engine wasn't there. And so the Lord was saying, I'm gonna start to heal you. I'm gonna start to do a total recovery process rehaul on your car. And so I went to Elijah House in Idaho and went through four days of intense counseling. And it really woke me up to the reality if I'm dealing with all this junk, right? Are the people dealing with it just as a pastor, as a pastor? Yeah, I never thought that I had all that junk inside of me. And so that's kind of how it began. But it also is traceable back to a time where uh my friend Dean Fujishima, who's a pastor here locally, he called and he said, Hey Rob, um, I need to get together with you. So we got together up at Grace Bible. I love that church. I love that church, Sam Webb and Nancy. And he said, uh, you're angry at your dad. I said, No way, I love my father. He said, No, you're you're angry at your dad. I said, No, I'm not. He said, Yes, you are. So I said, take your best shot. So he started praying for me. So I laid down on the floor and I started to scream, Dad, Daddy, Dad, why did you leave me? See, my dad had a massive heart attack when I was 15 years of age.

SPEAKER_01

Wow.

SPEAKER_00

And I did not know that the spirit of abandonment came into my heart at that time. And so Dean said, Man, I had my hand on your heart for uh 15, 20 minutes. I could feel the heat and the anger coming out of you. Wow. So when that experience and encounter with the Lord occurred, he then said, Okay, there's something more. And I said, What? He said, You're mad at God. I said, I'm a pastor. I'm I love Jesus. I love the Lord. What are you talking about? He says, No, the Lord has shown me. You're mad at your father. I said, Okay, take your best shot. The next half hour, my fist is up in the air and I'm screaming, why God? Why? Why? Why did you take my dad?

unknown

Oh my God.

SPEAKER_00

And that was just a huge excavation of my hurt and my pain. And then it went further when I went to Elijah House in Idaho. It's just me, and that's how it all started. And I came back and I said, okay, I'm gonna start to study and figure out, given how the Lord is leading me, how to minister to families so that families are restored. If our ohana is healthy in Hawaii, we're gonna see healthy revival. And what are we gonna do right when all these people broken people come into the kingdom when the revival goes full blast?

SPEAKER_02

Yes.

SPEAKER_00

Are we gonna know how to minister to them?

SPEAKER_02

Wow.

SPEAKER_00

And we can't if we're not healed ourselves.

Building A Family Culture Of Forgiveness

SPEAKER_02

Amen. Heal the man, heal the land, heal the woman, heal the womb and more. And that's how we see the anointing coming down. That's huge. And did it impact your Ohana, Pastor Rob? Because you were already a pastor, you were fairly successful with your church, and here you are getting spiritual deliverance, right?

SPEAKER_00

Oh, yeah. Absolutely affected um all of our kids. We have a culture in our family of forgiveness. Wow. As hard as hard as it is. For example, my son Brandon, he got married, so his older brother, who was already married, wanted to move into his room in our home. So my my second son Brandon moved out. Older brother moved in, but he did it very quickly. And my second son, Brandon, is very, very tender and nostalgic. And he was angry and felt like we all pushed him out. And so he wouldn't answer phone calls. He was angry like crazy. We tried, all of us tried reaching out to him, he wouldn't answer calls, and finally we were scheduled to do a healing hearts thing out in IA. And I said to him, Son, unless we heal up, I'm gonna cancel that because we will be hypocrites if we do not settle things right now. So we all got together and we talked things through. And um, you know, that's happened a lot. Every family has issues. We do, our issues have issues.

SPEAKER_02

And our issues have issues have issues because we're crying about it all day.

SPEAKER_00

Yes, and that's just one one example of um there's another example where our oldest son, I'm our youngest son, Jonathan, he used to play a lot of video games. Okay, and that got kind of a little bit violent online with other gamers. It's and so my oldest son, middle son, and I would always tease him.

SPEAKER_02

Oh.

SPEAKER_00

So my wife Barbara started to say, you know, hon, um, I think we're losing Jonathan.

SPEAKER_02

Wow. And a mom knows.

SPEAKER_00

Mm-hmm. He's here, but he's not here.

SPEAKER_02

Right, exactly.

SPEAKER_00

He's emotionally gone, disconnected. So around the dinner table, we all apologized. And then we all To Jonathan. To Jonathan, and you could he started to cry, and then we started to prophesy of what we saw God doing in his life, the giftings, the callings, and just telling him what a wonderful brother he was and son. Wow. And God brought him back into the family.

SPEAKER_02

See, that's amazing and a little bit shocking for me as I'm listening to you, uh, and maybe some of us watching here and listening with us, because I would think that Jonathan was the perpetrator, right? So in my old mindset, my fleshly world mindset, I would think, well, you're the the guy who went off and started playing video games. I have a number of nephews who did the same thing. It totally changed their personality and their lifestyle. It became a thing. I would never think to sit down and let's all apologize to Jonathan or to Dominic John or to Christian, right? These nephews of mine who went off and started gaming. But that was God's plan, is we come in the spirit of humility. I once had a girlfriend teach me, Don, if you lay yourself all the way down to the ground, they can't hit any lower than that. They can't hit you back because you're down to the ground. You guys laid yourselves down to the ground as a submission sacrifice for Jonathan to come back. Did it work?

SPEAKER_00

It absolutely worked. Wow. He'll invite, I mean, he's married now, and so he invites us, uh, my wife and I out to dinner on a pretty regular basis. We have a solid relationship with him.

SPEAKER_02

Which is the biggest fruit from fixed root of fixed families, right? Or repaired families would sound nicer, is that the adult parent has a relationship with the adult child and it all is well. It's good. We want to hang out with you. It's not just you're no longer my parent, I don't want to see you ever again. It's I love you and we've known each other the longest. I want to be in relationship. I love that.

SPEAKER_00

Yeah, we we have a culture in our family where, hey, what's going on in your heart this week? And to this day, all three adult boys, even though they all have wives, right, and families come home, you know, they raid the fridge, eat our food. They never really leave home, right?

SPEAKER_02

And you know sounds like a Samoan host. Still coming home reading or tongue-ins. Yes, and and I love that it impacted your ohana, and that you that they do raid the fridge, that they're still your kids, but they're also your peers and your friends, and you can go out to a nice dinner and have you know talk story conversation time, Pastor Rob. And that's what I see through these things is that healing hearts is restoring the family. And as you said, if we don't restore the churches first and the pastors and their families, how are we gonna deal with the evangelism that breaks out that we've all been praying for for years, right? And I've been saying Hawaii is the 50th state, the last shall become the first, the tail shall become the head, and the lead shall become the greatest. We will lead this great nation into the third great revival, but how are we gonna do that if we don't have the Lord is smart and he knows we need the infrastructure in place to bring them home, then home has to be fixed.

SPEAKER_00

And as you you know, your whole ministry here is about it's about aloha, right? An ohana.

SPEAKER_02

Amen.

SPEAKER_00

And so if our ohana is in disarray.

SPEAKER_02

Yeah, exactly.

SPEAKER_00

I mean, look at the United States. Yes. We are a divided nation. Oh, we are in trouble. Yes. And it says in uh Malachi 4.56 unless the hearts of the fathers are turned to the children, vice versa. That's right. The land will be smitten with a curse.

SPEAKER_02

Yes.

SPEAKER_00

And you know what a curse is is just things are being drained, your finances are drained, your relationships are drained, uh, your business suffers, things are taken away.

SPEAKER_02

Yes.

SPEAKER_00

And so God wants to heal families.

SPEAKER_02

That's good.

SPEAKER_00

That is the key to revival, family restoration.

SPEAKER_02

It really is. And it's um I've found it's a daily walking thing. I mentioned that uh my Hanai dad, and he's funny, Pastor Jimmy Yamada Jr., if you ever see him or if you already know him or you're watching, when you take a picture with him, he's always pointing up. It's not he's not making the number one symbol. He's his pointer finger is pointing up to God. And he always says one word. What's the word, Pastor Rob?

SPEAKER_00

Um I'm not sure what you're referring to, but I don't know. He always says God is better than good.

SPEAKER_02

God is better than good, but he always says, agape. Oh, that's true. Unconditional love. Agape is unconditional love. And he was the man who uh I was drunk driving. I got busted. I was arrested. And that's when, and I was in the company car. I work for Cedar Assembly of God. I was in the company car as a church worker in the church vehicle, and I get arrested. And my Hanai dad, who always says agape, unconditional love, he looked me square in the eye and he said, Don, nothing you've ever done has made me love you more, and nothing you ever do has made me ever love you less. I love you the same. Not even 0.01%. I don't even know what 0.01% means, Pastor Rob. I'm not real smart at math, but I get that it means like itty bitty little bit. And he said that to me, and I had to run away from him because as a child who grew up in the house I grew up in, getting dirty lickings, right? Which means spankings and all kinds of discipline, hardcore physical discipline. I was not used to being told when I got busted for something really bad that you still love me. I ran away from him. I ran upstairs where I live. I wept my brains out, but he was true. And he paid for me to come to Healing Hearts. He managed to get the drivers to bring me there. And then he walked me with me through those 10 weeks of what it was at the time, the program. And to this day, that was nine years ago, he's still my Hanai dad. So he was like the Good Samaritan who finds the busted up person on the side of the road, pays for them, puts them in the inn. He he put me in this inn here. I live at Cedar Assembly of God, and pays them to take care of that person out of his own pocket. And where I'm landing on this story is not to glorify a man because he's gonna hate that I said his name. He's very humble Japanese, but I ain't Japanese and I'm not humble, so I'm just gonna say him. And so, what I'm landing on, my point, the moral of the story is that I did not learn agape until I learned Abba. You cannot know unconditional, sacred, sacrificial love until you find a parent or a shepherd, a pastor who can show you that love. And for me, I asked you earlier what the key to healing hearts is, why it was so different than any other healing and prayer deliverance ministry. But for me, Pastor Rob, it was you and Barb living out that unconditional ohana. And then it was also having my Hanai dad being an Abba figure. I I'm not allowed to call him Abba. He said you have only one Abba, God, Father in heaven. But I'm telling you that that's the key. It's the Ohana factor.

SPEAKER_00

Yes, it is.

SPEAKER_02

Right?

SPEAKER_00

Right. We are all houses under construction.

SPEAKER_02

Come on.

SPEAKER_00

And I think our Heavenly Father comes and He doesn't scold us or punish us. Yeah. Jesus took care of that on the cross.

SPEAKER_02

Amen.

SPEAKER_00

What he does is he redirects us. Yes. According to His Word.

SPEAKER_02

Yeah. And it's really mind-blowing. It's a complete upside down of what we've learned in this world, right? It's if the world calls good evil and evil good, God just calls good good and he means it because he is good. And we learn good family in a good home, and we're all walking it out. No one is perfect, not a single one. But if we're falling forward, then that's a good fall, right? Not falling backward and going regressing into name-calling and shouting and swearing at each other revenge.

SPEAKER_00

That's a tree of chaos.

SPEAKER_02

Yes, then we're going back to the tree of life and we're saying, Hey, I'm sorry I hurt your feelings when I did that. And we can fall forward together. Thank you for teaching me that and teaching many other leaders. Because Hawaii, we can lead that third great revival, but we really have to know what aloha truly means.

SPEAKER_00

Yes, and we love Ohana here. We have that anointing for family. And so that's why I think God has picked Hawaii. Amen. To share, to show the nation.

Books Prayer Manual And Resources

SPEAKER_02

And you know how I know that's true? Because Disney made a film called Lilo and Stitch, where Ohana means family, and family means nobody gets left behind. But you and I, Pastor Rob, know that that's not Disney. That's the real spiritual DNA of our Aloha state. It is Ohana. It is nobody gets left behind. Everybody's included. Inclusion was invented by our God. It was just perverted by the world. But in Hawaii, we include everybody. Hanai is powerful. And so thank you for saying that because we are going to lead this nation by ourselves learning Ohana first and practicing that with the many people who come here. Do you have resources available in books, workbooks, prayer books? We do.

SPEAKER_00

Of course, we have You're My Bambino, which you've read, which was the first book that I I wrote. It happened the impetus for writing that book happened in Argentina. I was with Pastor Cal Chanen, and I went down there very um burned out, striving to have a good ministry, a powerful ministry, wanting recognition. I grew up in a very performance-oriented family, and we're walking through the streets of Buenos Aires looking for the prize Argentine jacket, and I was with Cal and my friend Dean, and uh an Argentine prophetess that Dean had met earlier in the trip was there. No, and she came up to me and she said, You and I went, All right, tell me what God's gonna do through me. Wow because I was so performance-oriented from my upbringing, and so she goes, You're God's bambino, he loves you. And at that moment, the Holy Spirit broke over my head and I began to weep. And Cal says, Wow, Rob, what a great word. And I thought to myself, shut up, Cal, what a what a junk word. I want to know what God's gonna do through me. Yes, but God was trying to get through to my heart and say, It's not about what you do for me, it's you knowing that you're my son and I love you because I didn't know it. And I'd been a pastor for so many years. So out of that trip, I wrote the book, You're my bambino, which features uh insight about the orphan stronghold and the whole healing, you know, the essence and foundational elements of healing hearts. But I've also written a book called Heal the Man, Heal the Land, where I really explain the spirit of Elijah and what Elijah wants to do with families. That's good. And then uh we've also written a book called Legacy of Blessing, where we teach people to have Shabbat and family time and bless your children on a weekly basis, Hawaiian style. Very rich heritage, and also a uh it's our third edition now, um, a healing hearts prayer manual.

SPEAKER_02

Wow.

SPEAKER_00

And it has all the different strongholds that a person may deal with, and it's all aligned well with prayers to pray for those areas.

SPEAKER_03

Wow.

SPEAKER_00

And so what we're trying to do is raise up prayer warriors.

SPEAKER_02

Yes.

SPEAKER_00

Because we can't do it all alone. We have to train and equip people to minister to other families. We want this to be a revolution, a movement. That's good. And so um, those are the primary uh resources that we have. I've written other books, but those are the four that pertain to healing hearts.

Defining Aloha And Final Charge

SPEAKER_02

And I love them all. I have copies of You Are My Bambino here. We give them out in a lot of places that I get to minister and go into schools, even if they want the book, they get it for free for me. But also the prayer book for me helps because I am a strong, articulate woman. I know that I'm a big mouth for a big God, big mouth for big aloha. I can run my mouth so long that Jesus will have to interrupt me, right? He's gonna tap me on the shoulder, Donald Bryan, it's the second coming. Let's go. And I'm like, nah, Jesus, I still got things to say, people to save. So you go start the wedding feast, I'll be right there. But when it comes to praying for myself, it's like I get struck just silent. It's like suddenly I don't know what to say. And I get it that the Bible says, in the moanings and the groanings, God understands that. I can cry and He will hear me. Rest assured if that's who you are, praying for you and your family, and you're crying and groaning and moaning. God gets it. The Holy Spirit can translate, interpret. But reading the prayer book helps me to pray over myself when I'm praying over my Atlas spirit that I think that I hold up the whole world, and if I don't do it, nobody will. And I'm like, God, you're not able to do it without me. When I pray over the crown, um, the clown spirit, right? That I need to entertain and joke, otherwise, people will crack from the stress. I pray over all these different mindsets, even um the people pleaser spirit. And I read the words and it says, God loves you for you. You don't have to do anything. You please God by doing nothing. And I thought, this is heresy. I'm gonna call Rob. We need to change this verbiage right here because that mindset is still so ingrained in the membrane and the DNA of Don O'Brien, and not just, I think it was my my nurture right in the house that I was raised in. So thank you for writing the prayer manual because it just helps to read it and then to go through it. And then the Holy Spirit, you know, when we get more advanced, I'm not so 101, I can speak my own, right? Converse in the 401 level. Thank you for those. Um, and then again, the website that you have, if people want to get trained to help deliver their MVChoi.org. It stands for Mountain View Community Church. It does. I just make sure because people are watching, listening, we're gonna put it on the lower third there. So MVCChawai.org, because they're a nonprofit organization. Thank you. Last question that we ask all of our guests is um, what is aloha to you, Pastor Rob? And then who's your aloha hero? Somebody who embodies aloha spirit, either past or present.

SPEAKER_00

Well, I think we all know that aloha means multiple things. For me, it really centers on unconditional love and compassion. Yes, and I I think that I experienced that through my mom. I um at the age of 15, you know, having just lost my dad, I was very, very angry. And it was manifesting in multiple ways. I got in fights, I threatened people terroristically, um, almost got through uh thrown out of Yelani High School for threatening a teacher.

SPEAKER_01

Wow.

SPEAKER_00

And I got caught shoplifting and spent a day in jail, and my mom showed up and she said, Why didn't you ask me for the money? I would have gladly given it to you. And it was the first time I experienced, I think, the grace of God in my life. And so, yeah, my my mom is one of my heroes. You know, she really showed me aloha. Yes. I really for me it it's compassion, the compassion of our God.

SPEAKER_02

Yeah. Can I say one last thing to the body of Christ? Yes, sir.

SPEAKER_00

That you know, it says that there are apostles, prophets, evangelists, pastors, and teachers to equip us for works of ministry. Yeah. And I think one of the misunderstandings that that's so prevalent in the body of Christ today is the word equip. Wow. It literally means to mend the nets. Wow. Or to set the broken bone in place to renew and restore what was originally created by the Lord.

SPEAKER_02

Wow.

SPEAKER_00

So I think we've confused equipping with training.

SPEAKER_02

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00

Right.

SPEAKER_02

I think you're right.

SPEAKER_00

Training was we grow in character, we grow in the gifts of the Spirit, we grow in, you know, knowing how to minister to others and shine our light to others.

SPEAKER_01

Yes.

SPEAKER_00

But equipping is getting healed. Wow. Right. And so we're to equip the body of Christ so that we can touch all of Hawai'i. That's so good. So I just wanted to end it.

SPEAKER_02

That's very important. Thank you, friend, that we are here to help to mend and bind up the wounds.

SPEAKER_00

Yeah, because we're all a net. We're supposed to catch fish.

SPEAKER_02

Yes.

SPEAKER_00

But we're also supposed to be trained to learn how to clean the fish.

Closing Blessing And Goodbye

SPEAKER_02

Amen. I love that. Thank you, sir. And I've been learning recently in my own life that, you know, we all have relationships and there will be at some point a rupture, whether big or small. Maybe it's a small cut, maybe it's a heart attack level, right? It's a great trauma, or it's a small, like you hurt my feelings, right? So we have a relationship, there's a rupture, but it's how we repair, as you just said, to mend and bind up the wounds. And if we could do that for one another, oh, how beautiful the body of Christ, the bride, the church would be. And fulfilling Jesus' prayer of John 13, 34, and 35. Love one another as I have loved you. By this, all men will know that you're my disciples by your love. So thank you for making love even more loving, Pastor Rob. You're most welcome. Especially in my heart. Boy, I sure needed it, friend. Thank you. So we turn around and um those who are set free, the captives, turn and we set others free. In fact, I recently preached. To the Lord as I was going through some tough times over even this recent Christmas season. And it's okay because God is working things together. He allows the storm so that he can look at his disciples and go, Why are you still afraid and have no faith? Right. He said to the storm, peace be still or be quiet. And I think he was actually talking to the disciples at that moment, right? But then he does face off and say, Why are you still afraid? Don't you have faith? And so he allowed the storm to test our faith. It's not to break us, but to test us. And I said to the Lord over the Christmas season, I said, Um, you allowed me to be fired up in the pits of hell, to be forged as the warrior that I am, but to then be freed to set the captives free and then to fire up those who are fired up. So let's go for God. Victory is the Lord's. It is guaranteed by the blood of Jesus on the cross when he said, It is finished. Uapau. Know that God is with you powerfully, family, and that healing hearts is a wonderful equipping tool for mending up the lost. And you and I can both still be lost no matter what age, no matter how rich or how poor, no matter the nation you come from or the neighborhood you grew up in, God loves you and He is here for you. Today we were with Pastor Rob Gross, a dear brother of mine, him and his wife Barb, such wonderful Ohana, Hanai Ohana, with the Healing Hearts program. We love you and God bless you. Aloha. Aloha.