Jesus, If You're Real..." | David Ebel's Incredible Testimony

What happens when a man reaches the end of himself and cries out,

"Jesus, if You're real..."

David Ebel knows.

Born with 21 birth defects, bullied throughout childhood, trapped in alcoholism, and after multiple suicide attempts, David had lost all hope. But one desperate prayer changed everything.

In this episode of The Valiant Forge Podcast, David shares his remarkable testimony of God's grace, the moment Christ met him at his lowest, and how one encounter with Jesus completely transformed the course of his life.

If you've ever wondered whether God can redeem your past—or someone else's—this conversation is a powerful reminder that no one is beyond His reach.

david@davidwebel.com

https://www.davidwebel.com/

https://www.skool.com/the-cave-of-adullum-1668/about

Want to be a guest on The Valiant Forge Podcast? Send Mark Osborne a message on PodMatch, here: https://www.podmatch.com/hostdetailpreview/17432638464878159623a121d

Transcript

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SPEAKER_03 0:00

When the doctors say no, God said yes. What does that mean for you?

SPEAKER_01 0:04

So out of that, I ended up with 21 birthday. And finally, I attempted suicide three times by overdose and driving around hoping to die.

SPEAKER_03 0:14

What was your view of God during all of that? Like when you were drinking and trying to kill yourself that you had proved a lot of God for you agnostic.

SPEAKER_01 0:24

I didn't know God's last name wasn't damn. I just felt like I love and then I was changed and was it instant?

SPEAKER_03 0:45

Did you right away feel like okay I'll stop? Yeah, it's funny.

SPEAKER_00 0:58

Welcome to the Valiant Force Podcast, where we help me overcome life battles. Become a valiant warrior god. This is a place where we have practical credits that will be quick to life's journey to help you become the man's goddamn. Are you ready to overcome your doubt and fulfill your purpose just by giving it? If so, let's go.

SPEAKER_03 1:25

Welcome to the Valiant Forge, where Christian men come to forge purpose and strengthen Christ. I'm Mark Osborne and I'm the host of the podcast. My guest today is David Ebel, author of When the Doctors Say No, God Says Yes. I love that title. And David is a great man, and he has a very powerful, powerful testimony that I don't want to waste any time. So here is my conversation with David Ebel. David, welcome to the podcast. Thank you so much. So when the doctors say no, God said yes. What does that mean for you?

SPEAKER_01 2:05

Well, it means that uh the doctors don't know everything. They mean a lot and they know a lot, but that doesn't mean they know what God knows. Uh, let me give you a real quick background. Uh, my mom and dad were uh a war bride couple during World War II. My mom was 16 when they got married. She'd been an orphan during the depression and almost starved to death. Brutality would be a kind way of her raising. And when when they married, uh, she only had two qualifications. I always have a pantry where I can feed people, and it'll always be full, and you'll never lay hands on me to hurt me. Those are the only promises he had to make. Well, everything went great until they were eight months pregnant, and she slipped and fell on the ice and lost the baby. And because of my mom's uh severe growing up, she had a nervous breakdown. And eventually she had another child, a son, and then she had a little daughter. The daughter was four months, four years old. She was picked up. Everybody who's ever met her said she was the most beautiful child they'd ever seen. Beautiful curly hair, like angel wings, and just just perfect. And uh, she had the sniffles, and two weeks later, she had bull bar polio of the brain and was dead. And that was six months before the vaccine came out. Needless to say, my mom had the most severe nervous breakdown. I was the makeup child, but at the funeral of the of my sister, the pastor's sermon was that the sins of the parents fall on the children, indicating that my sister died of polio because my parents weren't godly enough. No, there's no theology for that. No, that is that is just pure ignorance, judgmentalism, and the denomination fired him for it and took away his ordination. But in those days, back in 1952, they had you know, 1949, they didn't even have any way to respond to that. And so my parents raised us when we had when she did have kids, we were raised without church, we were raised without God, they were mad at God, and I can see why.

SPEAKER_02 4:34

Yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_01 4:35

And uh, so but when I was born, I was choking to death, and my mom was so in denial that if something was wrong with me, they had failed as parents again. This was was this again God's judgment? There was so much doubt, so much anger. So she grabbed the doctor by the shirt and says, Look, here's how it works. You lost my daughter. If you lose my son, you die too. Fix him. Well, needless to say, that got his attention. And he came back about six, six, oh, 30 minutes later, excuse me, and said, Look, we've got an experiment. Was he gonna die without it? Yeah, then do it stupid. And uh what happened was that uh they did it, and four months later it became illegal to do that experiment on human beings. Wow, the side effects were so severe. Birth defects, sterility, dwarfism, and 100% mortality by 20 guaranteed. So out of that, I ended up with 21 birth defects. Out of it, I ended up being the smallest kid in the school until 12th grade. Out of it, I couldn't do sports. And every I was in a sports school, so I was bullied and bullied and more bullied. And I without going into all the details, I mean, thrown down flights of stairs, hung in lockers upside down by your shoelaces and left for hours, all kinds of brutal stuff. And uh when I when I got out of high school, I went to college on handicap scholarship. In those days, they didn't have vocation of there was handicapped, and I and I received a full rise scholarship. I had to work to pay for food and gas, but they did pay for all my school and my and my books. So uh I worked at a department store selling things and going, good afternoon, shoppers, and welcome to the new news store. And that's when I did, along with going to Scott College, 19 hours, 110 hours, sound engineer of two theaters and singing with the chorus. Uh, needless to say, a year and a half in, overachiever trying to belong, making everybody happy, super people pleaser. I had a nervous breakdown. I didn't even know what that was. I just melted into a puddle. Couldn't I was in the student union? They scooped me up and brought me to the counselors, and uh they diagnosed me on the spot and said, We've arranged for you to your scholarship's good for 10 years. Go home, get well, come back.

SPEAKER_02 7:23

What I heard were you at this point?

SPEAKER_01 7:25

20. Wow. Excuse me, 18 is 18, and by 20, I was at I hit my bottom. At 18, I heard what I heard was you're you're stupid, you're useless, you can't even last in school, nobody loves you, nobody wants you, you should die. That's what my depressed mind hurt. Wasn't what hurt was bad, but you know, when when things get severe in your depression, yeah, you don't hear what everybody hears, you hear what's the psychosis is playing through your head. And uh I got a job selling clothes, and the guy said, You're way too serious, we're gonna take you dancing. I said, I don't dance, I can hardly stand. Come on, you're going. Well, what they didn't know is my mom was a closet alcoholic out of all her drama, she was self-medicating. She also had ruboto, she had juvenile, she had osteoarthritis, but I had juvenile arthritis starting at six, so I had chronic pain from age six on top of all that.

SPEAKER_03 8:33

So uh so you were an overachiever tried through with all that pain, all that stuff you went through, you went through all that pain. So from an early a little bit trying to belong from an early age, you showed resiliency. First of all, you survived. You know, I know the doctors did their experimental surgery or whatever it was to help you survive, but there had to be something in your heart that said, I I want to stay in this world. And the fact that you tried so hard through all that pain to be loved, it's amazing. I just I I didn't I didn't mean to interrupt you. I love your story. Please go ahead. I wanted to highlight that because on this podcast, you know, it we try to encourage men to be resilient and show forth courage, even when you're being forged through the fire, and you're a shining example of that. So I just wanted to highlight that how resilient you are.

SPEAKER_01 9:33

Stop me at any point. This is this is our story today, yeah. So, but the short of it is that uh I went downhill, and but I went when I went dancing with the every them, I started drinking. The thing I promised myself I would never do, as I saw how my mom was so messed up from it, I ended up doing, and I fulfilled the seventh generation of the alcoholic curse. My mom, her dad, her uncle, I mean, it's everywhere on her side of the family. If you drink at all, you're in trouble. And it didn't take it take me five months, and I was drinking all my friends into the table. They all abandoned me like I had lost my mind. And uh, that was the beginning of swirling around the sink. Slowly but surely, life got worse and worse than that, and worse than that. And I kept getting I'd get a new group of friends, and then I would get too weird for them. And finally, I had attempted suicide three times by overdose and driving around hoping to die. God kept me sober and protected me in spite of myself, taking a full prescription bottle of painkillers and drinking a uh a pint of scotch on an empty stomach, and I couldn't get high. Tried that three different times. So I decided we I would I would really do it up. So I got three of my buddies.

SPEAKER_03 11:06

We got what was your view of God during all of that? Like while you were drinking and trying to kill yourself. Did you have any thought of God? Were you agnostic? Were you atheist?

SPEAKER_01 11:16

I didn't know God's last name wasn't damn. My picture of God was a gold little gold guy on a turquoise cross hanging on my sister's bedroom wall. Then we go to the funeral home when someone died, and there was this picture of they told me it was Jesus knocking on a door, and no one ever let him in. So I figured he was a loser too, just like I was. So uh, you know, there was no hope. I didn't see any way out. So I got my buddies in the car. We hadn't we had worked all day and hadn't eaten anything, so we got 12 of these giant quarts of beer and consumed them in 30 minutes between the four of us, and then started joy riding. We're we were going through the back roads out in the country, and I saw a bridge and decided this is it. I floored that old car and we jumped when that we jumped over the ridge into the river, it was 100 miles an hour. It's the day before Christmas. When I hit the gr I hit the bottom of the river, to my to my absolute dismay, it was Michigan. The river was frozen. I hit mud and ripped a tree out this big around. They towed my car out and I drove it home.

SPEAKER_02 12:34

Wow.

SPEAKER_01 12:35

Can you imagine the ugly self-talk that went on in my head that whole trip home? So I began to plan the final time. I was putting a gun, I put a gun on layaway, was paying payments. Three days before the final payment, I uh one of my jobs, I had to have multiple jobs, so I could never run out of alcohol. So I couldn't keep I couldn't keep one job and guarantee I'd stay sober. So I would work two or three part-time jobs so that if I get fired for one, I still had enough money for alcohol. And uh I the whole rafter were I think I stayed in my parents' basement and the whole rafter was filled with pints of scotch.

SPEAKER_02 13:19

Wow.

SPEAKER_01 13:20

And I mean, you know, I'm not real proud of this, but it's I'm reporting the story of a dead man. I'm not storing about I'm not bragging about who I am now, right?

SPEAKER_03 13:28

Right.

SPEAKER_01 13:29

But uh so the short of it is that uh I was I was working a job. One of the jobs I had is I was a candle carver in the hippie commune store group. There was 40 stores, all little stores, all selling stuff that hippies loved. And um, the other people who worked in the candle carving thing uh were carving those beautiful frufu candles that are twisties and turnies that you buy your mom for her birthday. But the day that I was there in my demented state, I was carving skulls dripping blood and skulls melting with blood oozing out of them. What's really strange is the people were lined up trying to buy them before they cool, they wouldn't even get completely solid, and people were paying for them, and all it was doing is feeding my demented mindset, yeah. And uh so when I had a when I had quiet spots, I would draw. I was an okay draw artist, nothing people wouldn't pay for people wouldn't pay for it, but they like my work. I was at that stage, and um this girl came in to tell me about Jesus. She had just been challenged by her church to get out and get out of their comfort range and go tell someone about Jesus. So she she had tried when she was young. Excuse me, I need a drink, I got some apple to sugar. No worries. So she she saw me drawing and asked me what it was. I said, You don't want to know. She insisted, so I I let her I turned it around, let her see it. It was a it was a graveyard with this big gnarled tree with roots that were actually claws growing into the ground, the the the branches held skulls dripping blood, blood shot near leering eyes, and all the and all these gravestones all over the place with my name on them. And this was Tuesday, and they all had Saturday state. She said, What does that mean? And I said, This world sucks. I'm tired. I I'm leaving here Saturday. Well, her three-month into church uh theology didn't help her much. She wasn't prepared for me, yes, for sure. So she decided that she was gonna get me to church on Wednesday night, and she was very persuasive, she was pretty, and in my mind, I saw I thought, oh, maybe I'll get lucky before I die. And she was all being holy, and I was being all ugly. Yeah, so I went home and said, Mom, this girl's gonna bring me to church tomorrow. My mom said, Oh, David, you know, I grew up in the church, they're crazy, they swing from the chandeliers, they roll on the floors, some of them dance like chickens. You're not gonna have a good time. I said, I'll handle that. So I went downstairs and I took all the drugs I had and I drank all the scotch I could drink, and I I drove the car over and picked up the girl. And by the time we got to the church parking lot, all the inebriation hit and one slug. I couldn't find park on the automatic transmission. Wow, I couldn't turn the key to turn the car off. So she parked it, she scooped me out, she said, Come on, let's go, let's find some good stuff. So I go in with her, and I mean, like, I where am I gonna go? I can't walk, you know. I'm like the I'm like the old cartoons where how dry that was me. I was just sloppy drunk, and so we go in, and these it's an old style holiness church, long hair, long sleeves, long sad faces, and they look at me and go, Oh my god, what is that doing in our church? It's a little one-room schoolhouse converted into a chapel. We've got a witnessing team, we got a coffee house. That's not supposed to be where our children are. Look at that wrong hair and those nasty clothes. He smells like a brewery. Get him out of here. So I turned to the girl and said, I'm in the wrong place. Nope, she they're in the wrong place. This is a place of hope, and this is where you need to be. And I said, Okay, not like I could run away, right? She walked me up and snapped me down, and I was planted.

SPEAKER_03 17:58

So a quick question. The people that were saying that, like you don't belong here, I'm guessing they were older. She was younger. Am I correct?

SPEAKER_01 18:09

They were they were between 30 and and 70.

SPEAKER_03 18:14

Okay.

unknown 18:17

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 18:18

And later I'll tell you, I'll tell I I won't tell you the name of the denomination because if I can't be kind about things, they just skip those names.

SPEAKER_03 18:25

Yeah, absolutely.

unknown 18:27

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 18:27

But uh the short of it is uh she said that's okay. You're here, they don't you belong. So it was they were starting to sing, and I love to sing, and I could read music. So I grabbed the songbook and sang along. Then the young guy got up to preach, and he he looked a lot like me, longer hair, a little bit of a beard, you know. Um clearly a lot squeaky, cleaner than me. And uh, I don't have any idea what he said, but as it got to the end of the sermon, something spiritual was going on because my body began to shake. I don't mean a little bit shake, we're talking shake like a windstorm, and it's this is an old hardwood floor in this old what used to be one room schoolhouse, and the hardwood pew and the hardwood uh floor was going bump bump bump bump bump bump, and they're going shh like I had control of anything. Shushimi. Well, that makes me feel like I'm loved. So uh finally he says with every eye closed, anybody needs Jesus, raise your hand. And the girl said, She heard me say, Do I, don't I? I don't know what I want, but I raised my hand. And when I raised my hand, I realized, oh my god, these are the people who are gonna jump me right behind me. And I tried to pull my hand down so they wouldn't find me and jump me. I mean, I'm on the edge of Detroit, I'm expected to be jumped. And so finally says, Thank you, brother. See that hand? I put it down and I sat on that hand like I was trying to hatch a chicken or something. I mean, I was just terrified. Finally, he says, with everybody's eyes closed, if you need Jesus, come forward. Well, I opened my eyes and realized straight ahead is where the preacher was. Immediately to his right was the emergency exit out of the building, and I had sobered up enough to think, well, maybe I can make it to the emergency exit. That guy's got to go out and around and everything else. I can make I can get ahead of him. Guy jumped over the pulpit. Wow, six, four, two, eighty, five foot four, eighty, two pounds. He lands in front of me and says, Can I show you something? I said, Just don't hit me. He opens up his Bible and says, For whosoever shall call upon the name of the Lord shall be saved. And I said, What is that to me? And he looks me in the eye and says, God knows about your birth defects and he loves you. He knows about your nervous breakdown and he loves you. He knows how you're bleeding out of both ends and he loves you. And he lists off everything wrong with me, and no one in the room knows. Not even the girl who brought me knows. And when he was done, I said, So, what do I do with all that? He says, Well, this isn't there's an altar here. That's what they call this when you kneel. You go kneel over here and call out to God. Well, I looked over to the other side, and there was two long-haired converted hippies, long hair, scraggly beards, the you know, still hippie looking clothes, but they're screaming, Hallelujah! Loud as they can. So I'm figuring, okay, I have no idea what point of reference. I guess you have to scream. So I scream, Jesus, if you're real, I give you six months to prove yourself. If you're real, I'll serve you with all of my life. And if not, I know where the gun is. And suddenly I was sober. I hadn't been sober in three years. Suddenly I was sober. Suddenly, I Felt like I was clean as I'd ever been in my whole life. Suddenly I felt loved. I felt like I belonged. I didn't have to do anything. I didn't have to perform for anybody. I didn't have to be anybody's anything. I just felt like I loved, belonged, and then I was at peace. I didn't have to do anything. I didn't have to improve it, impress anybody. I was loved. It's amazing. So, and then the next my response to that was, I need to say I'm sorry. I didn't know until much later that that was called repentance. At that point, it could have been any water buffalo, and I wouldn't know the name. So I began to cry out, Jesus, forgive me for and I start to time and time, date, and place all this the horrid things I'd done in the last three years. You know, I mean some bad stuff. And um the people were so shocked by it, they scooped up their children and got them out of that chapel so fast. You thought I was saying, free cholera, come get yours. I mean, they cleared that chapel up like so fast. And so when I was done, I had prayed until there was nothing left. I just kind of melted onto the floor in front of the the altar. I was on my back, my long 18-inch afro with no perm in it, hanging to my bottom, soggy like an old wet dog, my clothes just wet with tears, laying there, Jesus. I love you, Jesus, I love you. And then suddenly I heard a voice. I look around and there's no one near me. And the voice said, My son, I've called you with an everlasting love and I've called you to preach my word. I've called you to love my people and preach my word. And if you'll love my people and preach my word, I'll I'll change thousands of lives. If you'll love my people and change my word, I'll change hundreds of thousands of lives. Will you love? Yes, sir. Will you preach? Teach me how. Done.

SPEAKER_02 24:09

Wow.

SPEAKER_01 24:09

There, there I was, soggy, clear, overwhelmed, and no idea what to do with it. I didn't even know John 3:16.

SPEAKER_03 24:21

Amazing.

SPEAKER_01 24:23

Those two hippie guys came over, scooped me up, and said, Hi, I'm Tony, I'm Gary. You belong to us now. We're gonna teach you how to live for God. Wow. And they mentored me for the next year of my life.

SPEAKER_03 24:35

Was this during the Jesus Revolution?

SPEAKER_01 24:38

Right on the tail of it, 1973.

SPEAKER_03 24:42

Amazing. So did you did you have you seen that movie? I don't remember. It's it came up uh probably a couple years ago. It's called The Jesus Revolution. Do you know who Chuck's Calvary Tapel?

SPEAKER_01 24:56

Yeah, Calvary Chapel. I've been to his church.

SPEAKER_03 24:59

It it's kind of his story.

SPEAKER_01 25:01

Interestingly enough, the girl, the girl who brought me to church the night I got saved. She that's where she and her husband go to church.

SPEAKER_03 25:10

Oh wow, that's awesome.

SPEAKER_01 25:12

We're still friends after all those years.

SPEAKER_03 25:14

Yeah, you should watch that movie. I think you'll identify with it. It's a Christian movie, so yeah. Okay.

SPEAKER_01 25:23

No, I will I will watch it. You have a promise.

SPEAKER_03 25:26

Yeah, yeah. What I loved when you you said suddenly, suddenly. So you said it over and over again. And it reminds me of the Bible. Because God shows up suddenly. You had all this going on in your life. You were a people pleaser. That's why you were drinking. And then suddenly God changed it all. You're still now instead of being a people pleaser, you're a people lover because God changed your life suddenly. Yeah. I I have a few questions about your story though. When you were drawing this, doing the skull candles and drawing the graves. Do you do you feel like you had a demon in you?

SPEAKER_01 26:13

Oh yeah. One of the things they did that night is cast a demon out of me. I didn't know I had one until they kicked it out.

SPEAKER_03 26:22

Right. So that demon was just tormenting you and pressuring you to do all these terrible things in your life.

SPEAKER_01 26:31

Absolutely. People don't realize necessarily that we live in a spiritual war. There's only two sides to the war: there's the God side and the anti-God side. And if we don't accept God who created us love, we reject it. And Satan, whose use whose name originally was Lucifer, he was the most beautiful angel that God ever created. He got vain and and he he he re created a rebellion and took some of the angels with him. And God kicked him out of heaven, and he became the prince of the power of the air. He became the god of this earth. And he's he finds his greatest joy in destroying those that God loves.

SPEAKER_04 27:19

Amen.

SPEAKER_01 27:19

And destroying beautiful people and beautiful children and wonderful possibilities. Because people get their eyes off of Jesus, who died for them when they they should have died for themselves. I should have died for myself. The Bible says, without the shedding of blood, there's no forgiveness for sin. So Jesus shed his blood so I could have forgiveness for my sin. What's a sin? When you know what right is, you do the wrong thing anyhow. So when you know better and you do it anyhow, that's a sin. How do you get out of that sin? Can't on your own. You don't have anything clean and innocent in you. But when you ask Jesus to forgive you, when he died on the cross and shed his innocent blood, that was to wash away our sins. So we can have a fresh chance, a new beginning, like it happened for me. And that's my my desire of my heart is that it would happen to many of you.

SPEAKER_03 28:13

Amen. Yes, thank you for sharing that.

SPEAKER_01 28:17

More questions?

SPEAKER_03 28:18

Yeah, well, I have quite a few actually. I I've heard your story a few different times on a few of different podcasts, and we talked about it before we got on. I want men to know, you know, more of your story, but I do do have a question, a couple questions. So when you do you remember back the moment when you felt like when you were ready to just end your your life, what was the lie that that put you in that place that made you feel like I just need to escape?

SPEAKER_01 28:52

I'm no good. Nothing I can do will please anybody. Everybody does it better than me. I'm in physical pain. Now I'm in mental and emotional pain, and I can't deal with it any longer.

SPEAKER_03 29:15

So the reason I asked you that is because a lot of men deal with that. They're maybe not as severe as you, you know, not a lot of that's okay. That's okay. There's I I am my myself, you know, I've never really had any physical disabilities or anything like that, but there's been times that I felt like I wasn't the man that I should be, I wasn't doing what I needed to do, and I know a lot of men say that to themselves, and they get to this point. Well, you know, why should why should I go on? Why should I bother? Why should I care? So after you had your your your moment with God, what changed in you? And was it instant? Did you did you right away feel like okay, I'm I'm worth something? God, God loves me and He has a purpose for me. How did that come about in you?

SPEAKER_01 30:07

It was twofold. Instantly I blunt, instantly I knew I was okay. Instantly I got had I felt like I had permission to stop trying. But then I had to live my life, and I knew that forgiveness is free, but to live your life costs you something because you're gonna live it for someone or something, and I already knew that living it the way I'd lived it, all that's gonna bring me is bring me right back to the gun. So I I hadn't, you know, I had people say, Well, why don't you fall back to what a rifle? No, I I don't think so. So if I'm going, if I'm not gonna go back, I need to learn how to go forward, forgiving myself, forgiving everybody who who owned a piece of me. Sometimes when we hold unforgiveness in ourselves, we don't realize that that that takes a piece of us. We can't be whole because we're so busy hating or or being resentful or whatever that we can't say, here's both sides, here Jesus, take both hands because we're holding one back for all the ugly we're that we're still wanting to fight or battle over. But when I realized that it was either all or nothing, I had to live for God, or I wasn't going to. I I I immediately said, Pastor, teach me how. And I asked the guys that had become my personal uh mentors, how do you do it? One was was married, and one was desperately wanted to be, and so how are you doing it? How are you staying on the right side of things? How do you know what right choices are? How do you stay away from pornography? Right, how do I how do I do these things the right way? Because all I know is the wrong way, you know. God's free, but living for him, it it you know, I know it costs something because I've already paid the price and I don't want to pay it again. Amen. And that's when I realized that to become a godly man, I first had to be godly. I couldn't I couldn't perform the act if I didn't know who I was performing it with in four and two. And I fell in love with Jesus enough to get out his body, get out a Bible I could understand. I don't mean some the and vow and thing that that that was beyond um comprehension, right? But to get a Bible I could understand, and I I I I insisted that they teach me where to start, and I didn't want to do this and fail. I wanted this to I wanted this to be my lifetime goal. So they showed me what they called God's love letter. You start with the the book of John, the book of love, and you read it, and you go back three books to Matthew, and you read Matthew, Mark, and Luke to understand what just happened in John. Right, and you read John again, and now you it once you understood the love letter, then you read through the rest of the New Testament, and I got I gotta tell you that by the time I got to the book of Revelation, I had such a hunger. I didn't want to go to Revelation and find out my future. All I want to do is find out how to do this better. So I went back to Matthew, and I spent a long time just figuring out how does a real man live for God? I don't mean a real man like Arnold Schwarzenegger, I mean a real man that that gets up every day and does what he's supposed to do every day and has integrity every day, and and you know, in the meantime, God sent me a wife, and how do I how do I how do I treat her like a woman of God, a treasure from God, and not just some chick that I get lucky with?

SPEAKER_03 34:10

Just just a weird question, not weird, but yeah, more of a curious question. Was your wife that pretty girl that brought you to church? Nope.

SPEAKER_01 34:21

But that pretty girl came to our wedding.

SPEAKER_02 34:23

Awesome.

SPEAKER_01 34:25

And that's the girl who her and her husband are our friends who are we live in California, and they live in California, and so we we've continued to build our friendship all through all those years.

SPEAKER_03 34:36

Amazing.

SPEAKER_01 34:37

And uh, but I met my wife, she was the she had been verbally abused so badly by her father that on her 18th birthday, she crawled out her bedroom window and ran away to teen challenge, not because she had an uh an alcohol problem or a drug problem, but she had a I don't know how to live for God problem. She said she was she was convinced that if God was like her father, how could she love God? Right. So Teen Challenge in six months taught her the whole year program. And she became the secretary of the Detroit Teen Challenge and the ghetto of Detroit. And they invited me to go in the radio program talking about my conversion. And while we were waiting to be able to go to the radio station between their programs for the free radio time, um, I was waiting in the in the uh living room of the teen challenge, former it used to be a mansion, now it was their their headquarters. Uh, this beautiful girl walks in, and I look at her and I go, uh-oh, out of my leg, uh-uh, uh-uh. God, this is my chance. This is my chance to find out how to treat a Christian woman. So I'm gonna treat her as friendly and kind, but I'm gonna make it so clear that I'm not flirting. So I walked up and said, Hi, my name is Dave. Who are you? And she said, I'm Diane. And she walked upstairs. And I mean, she could, if she blew me off anymore, it would have been with a blowtorch. I mean, it was the most unfriendly uh welcome I've ever had in my life. And I went, uh-oh, I've done something wrong already. Well, finally she comes down the stairs and says, I know it's Wednesday night and I'm supposed to go to church, but I don't feel like it. And the director said, But you need to go to church. She says, But I don't want to. And I said, I'm sorry, I don't know you from anybody, but don't you think God would be much more pleased with you if you obeyed those that God has placed above you in the Lord? Oh, I got a look. Man, you could appeal paint with that look. But she went, she came back, and I gave her a card for our Christian coffee house and said, I'm inviting you to come to church with me, nothing else. Here's a card, I'm taping a dime to it because I know you have no money. Teen challenge workers never have any money. She's and tells you how long ago it was it was a dime to call me. So she promised she was going to call. As soon as I we go, she left the room, she put the dime in her pocket and threw the card away. And God said, You promised every time she'd pray, you promised, you promised. So finally she said, All right, God, all right. But how am I gonna call him? I'll show you. She's cleaning the lobby of the church of the of the of the living room, and what's she finding on the couch? One of my cards. The short of a long story is she called me, I invited her to church. We went to church, I took her home. She said, I said, can can we can we just be friends? Okay, and I and I wondered what you know that was pretty. I went from go away to okay. I said, So I'd like to call you sometime. That'll be fine. Or here's my number, you can call me. She calls me and says, Teen challenges having a dinner, and I'm supposed to bring someone with me as a guest. Will you be my guest? Absolutely. I don't want to walk through broken coals to be with a pretty girl, didn't have to be any other reason. That was it. And uh, so we we went, and the pastor walks up, puts his hand on her shoulder, and says, Children, I can see God's all over you. You two are supposed to be married. When are you getting married? I said, Sir, I don't even know her last name. That's never been a big deal to God. He'll work that out when you get married. I said, I'll let you know. Four more churches, four more dinners, four more pastors, same question. Wow. So finally I proposed to her, and she said, Took you long enough. That's when she explained that when what she was mad about when she met me is she had just told God that the guy that she'd been engaged to was probably not good for her. So if God wanted that me wanted to get rid of him, he needed to call and ask for his ring. Next day he calls and asks for his ring. Same day as the day I walk in the room, and God says, This is the one I picked for you. She wanted no part of that, and I happened to be in the room. So that was we we met in February, took her to church in March, and married her June 8th of the same year, and we've been married 51 years.

SPEAKER_03 39:20

Man, it's amazing, it's amazing to me how God's been all over your life, and I know I'm I'm not trying to wrap up a little bit. I know God has used you to touch many lives throughout your story, and I want people to go out and get your book so they can they can see all that God has done for you. Yeah, let's let's see your book.

SPEAKER_01 39:44

It says, when the doctors say no, God says yes.

SPEAKER_02 39:50

Awesome.

SPEAKER_01 39:52

And what's really awesome is right now, at least for the first to the uh the first to the fifth of of this month, Amazon's allowing me to give it away free if you go online and download it. Yeah, but even if it's only five dollars if you if you definitely pay for it. I didn't, I'm I set it up to not make money. I may I I set it up to share so that people could afford the book, read it, then give it to a friend, get another copy, give it to a friend, so we could all plant seeds with it, so more people could fall in love with Jesus. That's why the book was written.

SPEAKER_03 40:28

There's a question I ask every man that comes on the podcast in 1 Samuel 22. David was in the cave of Adulum right after he killed Goliath. Saw was jealous trying to kill him. So David, out of respect, because David could have taken out Saul, he showed that many times, he was in the cave of Adulum. And in 1 Samuel 22, it says the men of the kingdom at that time became disgruntled, disheartened, and discontented. They came to David while he was in the cave. During their time with David before he became king of Israel, you know, he became king of Judah and then king of Israel. During their time, David led them, inspired them, helped them in some way. And the Bible doesn't give us a lot of context, it does tell us some of the awesome things that the mighty men did. Modern day, you got a group of men in front of you who are disgruntled, disheartened, and discontented, and you have this opportunity to speak into their lives. What would you say to them?

SPEAKER_01 41:30

The first thing I would say is it doesn't matter what happened up until today. Today is today. Yesterday and before that is history. It's it's how we got to today. I'm not diminishing anything that happened up until today, but I'm saying if we we have two choices. We can allow what happened up until today to own us, or we can own today and build on a greater tomorrow. We can get past whatever's just making us disgruntled, discontent, miserable, angry, bitter, whatever, whatever uh flavor you want to call it. We don't have to be who we were, and just because it's easy, because we've had so many years of practice at disgruntled and distators, fine, and all these things, it is the easiest thing in the world when things go wrong to fall back on what you already know. Yeah, but that's what Satan is counting on. That's how he destroys the many God, God sent Jesus, God created us to love. You can never stop being loved. You can't even do enough stupid for God to stop loving you. Love is guaranteed. He proved it when he sent his innocent son to come and live and die and rise again from the dead, so we could have a relationship with God again. Don't allow stupid. I'm I'm famous for doing stupid, okay? I'm not shaming you, I'm talking about me. I can't allow stupid my bad behaviors, me jumping to conclusions, me reading between lines, stuff that isn't there. I can't allow that to destroy what God can do in me. So I have to immediately, when I see it come up, I go, nope, uh-uh, been there, done that, not worth it. I refuse to let that own me ever again. No, God, I'm gonna go do something good. So, what I do is I get up off my my my sorry seat and I go find something that needs to be done for God. I I'll go find people to love, I'll go to the nursing home and love on people, I'll go to the juvenile hall and find some kids that really, really need someone to lead them by example. I will get out of my my misery and do something that God can work through me in. And change my heart, change my mind, change me again and again and again, as often as he needs to, because I don't want to be in his way. I've already done that. And oh, it made me miserable. And I don't ever want to revisit that. And I don't want you to revisit that. I don't want you to fall back in it. And I can tell you, keeping score only means one thing. With each time you keep score, you dig the hole deeper in the basement. And you're going down in the hole instead of getting up ahead. You're just you're making yourself even further and further away from the dream that God has for you. So getting past it, moving forward. You can do this. You can do this well. And uh in the in the footnotes below what what we're being posted today, I'm going to give an email address. And you're invited. If you want to write to me and you want to email me, and you want to know what to do and how to do it, and you genuinely want to know, I will take the time to respond personally to you and give you honest, genuine, heartfelt answers on how you can do this if you want me to.

SPEAKER_03 45:16

Awesome, David. I you know what I I love the part where you're talking about keeping score. I I liked it because we don't need a keep score, because if you give your heart to Jesus, he cast everything into the sea of forgetfulness. So everything that you're keeping score, all the bad things that I did this, blah, blah, blah. It all gets washed away. Exactly. So you when you give your life to Jesus, your score starts at zero. You don't have to worry about any of that past. So thank you very much.

SPEAKER_01 45:48

And every minute, and when what every time you go to bed, zero it out. Give it to you in prayer. Get up in the morning, first thought, zeroed out. Start that new day for him.

unknown 46:00

Amen.

SPEAKER_01 46:01

It works every time.

SPEAKER_03 46:02

Awesome. David, thank you very much for coming on. God bless you. Bless you. What an incredible reminder that no one is beyond God's grace. One thing that stood out to me about David's story is it didn't end when he met Jesus. His life changed instantly, but then came the daily decision to walk that out with Christ. Forgive others, forgive himself, and learn what it is to be a man of God. And I think that's an important takeaway for all of us. We often pray for a miracle, but God is inviting us into a process of lifelong transformation. Salvation happens in a moment. Discipleship happens over a lifetime. So what is God asking you to step into today? Maybe it's surrendering something you've been holding on to. Maybe it's forgiving someone. Maybe it's opening your Bible again. Whatever it is, don't wait for tomorrow. Take that step right now. Before we end, I wanted to let you know that in the next coming weeks, there are going to be more conversations that are going to be shared. I'm going to start posting three episodes a week. I'm still doing the solos on Mondays, but then there will be two interview conversations. Haven't quite figured out how I'm going to do that yet, but it's it's going to happen. I have so many conversations in my queue that need to be shared, and I want to get those out, so I'm just going to up the volume a little bit. If you enjoyed this episode, if you enjoy these kind of kind of conversations, I would truly appreciate it from the bottom of my heart if you would share it with another person and let another man know. And if you've been listening to this show for a little while, if you listen to more than one or two episodes, I would really, really appreciate it if you went on Apple Podcasts and left me a five-star review. It just helps get the podcast out in front of more people and pushes the algorithm and lets them know that this show is meaningful and it's helpful. So I would really appreciate it. With that, stay strong, stay valiant, keep forging your path, and be blessed.