Episode 1: A Fresh Start

What if the moment you feared most became the doorway to your real life? Markus opens up about growing up in a home marked by pain, chasing an NFL dream as a way out, and the crash that followed when the call never came. A shoulder injury led to pain meds, then to 38 doctors and 59 prescriptions in five months. On the surface, life looked steady. Inside, it was hollow. The turning point arrived with squad car lights, an empty Father’s Day, and a five-minute FaceTime with his daughter that rewired his resolve: choose life, get help, let God tell the truth.

Inside Teen Challenge, a “Bible boot camp” pace met a desperate heart. Ephesians 1:6 split the old identity in two—accepted in the beloved, not graded by performance. That revelation reshaped everything from sobriety to courage. Markus stood in court and pled guilty, abandoning spin and manipulation. The judge dropped the charges. The gospel moved from theory to oxygen: guilty yet forgiven, undeserving yet free, loved without condition. In that same season, Luke 15 ignited a calling—Reach One, Reconciling Every Abandoned Child Home. The mission rejects vanity metrics and chases the person in front of you, the one, with relentless love.

We walk through practical, hopeful steps for anyone stuck in addiction, anxiety, or despair: trade isolation for seclusion with God, practice honesty that costs you, lean into prayer, fasting, counseling, and community, and build your foundation on Jesus rather than outcomes. As we look toward 2026, Markus casts a simple vision: live from identity, not for identity; measure impact by presence, not applause; and believe that “once an addict, always an addict” is a lie already defeated by a finished work. If you need proof that grace still finds people in their lowest moments and leads them home, press play and join us.

If this story sparks hope, subscribe, share the episode with a friend who needs it, and leave a review telling us the one truth you’re standing on today.

Transcript

Welcome And Purpose Of The Podcast

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What's going on, guys? Listen, welcome to episode one of the Marcus McFalling podcast. I am so glad you're here. Now, you could have been anywhere. You could have been watching all these incredible influencers. You could have been listening to all these incredible pastors. And listen, I do that myself, but you decided to take your time to listen to this episode. And I want you to know that I'm forever grateful that you're here. And I'm excited, man, because this podcast isn't just another podcast. It's not just another guy who loves Jesus talking about Jesus. I believe this is a divine encounter between man through technology because we serve an infinitely creative God where you can encounter the presence of God through a screen where you can hear stories, you can hear teaching, you can hear challenges, and uh most importantly, man, you can hear the voice of God. And I believe he's going to speak through this podcast to you in a unique way. We've already had some incredible episodes, man, that are lined up that I just know when you hear the journey and the stories of these men and women of God, man, it is going to inspire you. And I thought it only fitting, man, for episode one.

Marcus’ Childhood And Early Trauma

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For those of you that maybe don't know who I am, me to share a little bit of my journey, a little bit of my story, and a little bit of direction of what I believe God is doing in 2026. So my name is Marcus. Um I was born at a young age. Somebody just um unsubscribed for that corny joke. No, I'm just kidding. But I more than anything, I want to be myself on this podcast, man. And I just grew up in a home where my mom decided that she was going to take her pain out on her kids. And you see, the reality is, man, my mom went through pain and trauma herself. And so the only thing she knew was to take it out on her kids. And I didn't understand what that meant to be a young man going through what I was going through. But I remember my dad not being in my life when I was young, and the pain that it caused me, and I didn't understand like why would you bring life into the world and not be the parent to the life in which you brought into the world? And so growing up in Seaside, man, there was so much, you know, frustration and brothers and sisters, we all had different dads, and I'm just trying to find my way in the world. And so I found the game of football, football was good to me, but I'm gonna be super transparent. I grew up in a home man where I would be abused, where my brother and I, we just wouldn't be able to, you know, have a typical childhood early on because of the trauma that my mom went through. And I think sometimes it's important for us to know that people get what you're walking through. They understand it, they get it. And it doesn't make it okay. And I know there's somebody young right now that you are in a situation, man, where maybe you're not feeling the love from mom or the love from dad, or maybe there's been things that have happened to you and you're still here. I want you to know that I see you. I want you to know that I get it. I want you to know that I'm for you. And so as I'm trying to navigate life, I found the game of football. Football was good to me, but I don't have anything going on for me in the classroom, and I don't graduate from high school, so I can't accept any Division I scholarships. So I just continued to play the game in junior college and opened the door for me to go to Malone University. While at Malone, man, I I did well, I excelled. Um, I set some records as a running back at the school, and

Football Aspirations And Academic Wake-Up

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dreams are coming true. 2011, getting a chance to work out in front of all 32 NFL teams. As an inner city kid, statistically speaking, I shouldn't have been in that position and yet I was. And I just remember how my life, everything was happening according to plan. It was like, man, all the setbacks, all the pain, all the regret, all the times where people told me I would never amount to anything, it was happening. And there are those of us, man, we we know what that feels like. We know what it's like to overcome until 2011. I don't get drafted, and I feel the first, and for the first moment in my life, I feel like, man, I'm worthless. I feel like I'm broken. I feel like there's nobody that understands what I'm walking through. I was completely isolated. Now Malone was a Christian school, so I was in a Christian environment. I was in an environment where I was learning about God. And it's possible to be close to the things of God, but not be changed by the power of God. Just because you listen to sermons, just because you listen to podcasts, just because you go to church, does not mean that you are a Christian. It does not mean that you're set apart. It does not mean that your name is written in the Lamb's Book of Life. And I didn't understand that because in my life, I thought that if you did the right things, then you would get the right things. Because that's what football was. Football opened the door for me because I was good at it, because what I put in, I got out. And I didn't fully understand how to be a good student because I was never taught that. I was never, you know, never held accountable until honestly one quick story. There was a teacher, uh Dr. Stuckey at Malone, where she held held my butt to the fire. She did not care about football. Uh, she did not care that I was trying to go to the NFL. I remember she gave me an F one time, and I was so upset because I needed that class to be eligible. And she said, Marcus, you earned this F. I'm like, what are you talking about? She said, Well, Marcus, you didn't do the work. Come on, somebody. There's people right now you need to push pause and go and do your homework. But I remember she looked at me, she said, Marcus, you're one of the smartest students I've ever had. You are so capable. You just need to learn how to apply yourself. I ended up having to take her class over the summer and I went from an F to a B plus. And it was East Asian politics, man. But it showed me, man, Marcus, if you apply yourself, if you really focus in, you are more, you're smarter than you think, and you're more capable than what you allow yourself to be. And so as I'm just trying to try to figure this out, uh, I don't get drafted and I meet this beautiful young lady who later becomes my wife, Chelsea. I remember just trying to navigate what does it mean to be in a relationship? How do I love well? How do I lead well? Because in class, I would learn about what it means to be a husband. I would hear scriptures that talked about Christ loving the church and gave himself up for her. Well, I don't I didn't that wasn't model to me as a kid. That that wasn't anything that I understood, like what that looked like. And so I'm like, all right, well, whatever. And I just kept going. And so all my life, man, I just wanted to be successful. I just wanted to make it into the NFL. I wanted to have the money that I can help get my family out of a bad situation. And there might be people that come across this episode, you're that's you right now. You feel the weight of the world, you feel the pressure of so many people that are saying, Man, if you could just be successful, you could change the lives of people. And I that might be true for a

Not Drafted And Spiritual Confusion

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moment, but there's only one thing that'll change your life for eternity, and his name is Jesus Christ. Jesus Christ of Nazareth is who he says he is. And I went through this long journey of discovering what that meant, man. So as I'm, you know, don't get drafted. I signed my first professional contract in the arena football league. Chelsea and I were dating, and then we get engaged to be married at the end of 2013, and then 2014 comes around, and I'm playing ball, I get a chance to work out for some NFL teams. Um, this is my my second contract that I signed, and in this workout, I blew my shoulder out. Now, up to this point, I didn't do drugs, I've never smoked a cigarette to this day, but the but what happened in that moment is the doctors, when I got injured, prescribed me pain medication, and that pain medication took me out. And there's another episode that I'm gonna share later where my wife and I we talk about that journey, man. But I really want to hit really big on this part where when I was struggling the most and I I felt the most broken and the most lost, I would try to regurgitate, I would try to regurgitate what my pastor would say, or I would try to regurgitate the things in which I heard, or I would say the one-liners like Christians say, I'm too blessed to be stressed, I'm too anointed to be disappointed, but I was not only disappointed, I was depressed, I was anxious, and I felt like a failure. And that's somebody today. You feel that. So what's the the question is how you get out of that place? Well, the only thing I continued to do was play um the game. I went back and I was on injury reserve, I was getting paid. Um, every single week, Chelsea and I were doing well. We are living in Houston, training. Things are on the outside looking good, but man, on the inside things were hollow and they were broken, and I was isolated. There are some of us, man, we find ourselves in situations of isolation or seclusion. The difference is the devil tricks you into believing that you're alone and seclusion, man, the Lord is inviting you to be alone with him. And so either are you isolated or are you secluded? I can take the isolated seasons of my life and I can change my perspective and I can be secluded with God. But as I was struggling with drug addiction, the pain meds made me feel something that I didn't feel anyway else. And they made me feel like I could wake up for the day. It made me feel like I could, you know, add value to the world because I would get high and I would feel like I was, I would feel this temporary or this artificial joy. Some of us are feel feeling that right now, maybe even watching this podcast. But there came a day, man, where my wife gets pregnant with Avery. And I what I wanted to

Injury, Pain Meds, And Hidden Addiction

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be was a dad. And when she gets pregnant, I said, we have to put ourselves in this situation where more than anything, we have to, we have to just be around Christians, we have to be around good people. And I thought running away from my problems would change my issues. I'm here to tell you today, you can run, but you can't hide. You can run and run and run, but you cannot hide from God. You cannot hide from your issues, you're not cannot hide from pain. And so my question is, aren't you tired of running? Come on, somebody right now watching this, yeah. Aren't you tired of running? Like you've been running for so for so long, and you where's it got in you? Or maybe you haven't run and you've tried to fix the issues yourself because you want to put your hands to work, and what has that done? You see, self-help is a demonic doctrine that teaches you that you can fix you, you can't fix you. There's only one who can, and his name is Jesus Christ. And if you don't learn what that means and you don't learn how to submit to that, your entire life, however many years God has blessed you with on this earth, you will struggle, you will find pain, you will find setback, you will find disappointment, you might find temporary happiness that is a facade of the devil because all he tries to do is give you the things that satisfies and gratifies the flesh. But Jesus came to give us life and life more abundantly and is only found in a finished work on the cross. And I didn't know what that meant, to be honest. I didn't know what it meant, man. So I just kept running and running and running. And I ran to 38 different doctors for 59 prescriptions in five months, and I was broken and had no idea what to do with my life. And I was struggling, and June 16th is the day that I talk about, man. Up to this point, I'm addicted, I'm broken, I'm lost, I'm struggling, I have no idea what to do. Um I'm taking our money, I'm getting high, I just don't really care about anything. And June 16th is the day that changes my life forever. And June 16th, my wife musters up the courage to call the police on her husband. Imagine what that must feel like. There are some wives that might see this and you might say, Man, I I want to do that. What does it take to follow through? And as you guys listen to the episode with my wife and I, man, she will talk to you what it means to be strong when you don't know what's gonna happen in the end. And so when she does that, and I remember the cop cruisers, they say, McFall, you've gotta go. I had to give them my daughter, and they took me away to jail for the first time. The only thing that logically made sense was I'm gonna kill myself because there's nothing else to live for. And I I I didn't know what else to do, I didn't know how to process that pain. I didn't know how to live with the reality of the mistakes that I made. And there were some of us that we run away. We just run and we run and we run. But I had nowhere else to run, I had nowhere else to hide. And in this moment, man, on my first Father's Day when I'm by myself, I looked at I looked at Chelsea and I just remember like she was gone, and I just kept looking at these pictures of her and these pictures of Avery, and I just felt so broken. And I would call and I would call, but she was in hiding because I was an unsafe person to be around. But she finally picks up for one five-minute FaceTime phone call that changes

Isolation Versus Seclusion With God

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my life. And I looked at my little girl through a screen and I told her, I said, Avery, daddy is going to do whatever he has to do to be in your life. The next day I checked myself into Team Challenge, and uh man, it was an absolutely wild season. I'm gonna have an episode that talks just about the team challenge season. What it talked about the secret place with God, but that's what it was for me. It was a secret place with me and the Lord. And as I'm with God, he begins to tell me everything about myself. He begins to show me um the brokenness and the pain that I've walked through, he begins to show me all the different things and areas that I've tried to hide. And um, it was the power of the cross, the power of Jesus. It was the transformative power of the work of Christ that changed and saved my life. Because I was a dead man walking, I was on my way to hell, but Jesus came in and he rescued me. And two particular moments in Teen Challenge that stands out to me that I love to share, man, is the first is I was in this program and it was, and for those that are unfamiliar with Teen Challenge, it is a faith-based program. It is a Bible boot camp on steroids. I thought Bible college was bad. Come on, somebody. No, this was Bible boot camp on steroids every single day. We went to church, every single day we went to Bible class, every single day we had late night worship. It was crazy. But I realized that God created a unique environment which was a greenhouse for me to be successful and to grow in. And so this particular moment at this time, I'm just striving. I'm trying to be successful, I'm trying to be a person of influence, but I'm still trying to do something. It's the essence of the rich young ruler. I was saying, what do I have to do to inherit eternal life? And it wasn't about what I could do because I had a teacher that showed me Ephesians chapter 1, verse 6. Shout out to Shoot Panic. And she shows me Ephesians 1, 6, and as I read it, for the first time in my life, it says, To the praise of the glory of his grace by which I've made you accepted in the beloved. A light bulb immediately. It was like the words came off the page, penetrated my heart, and I realized that I was loved and accepted by God, and it wasn't about what I could do for him.

Pregnancy, Running From Problems, And Surrender

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In that moment, everything changes. Everything it was buck wild. I couldn't believe that God loved me, that he was for me, that he saw me. And it was like, man, my identity at 29 years old. You mean to tell me that God loves me and he sees me? And it just changes everything. And I began to live from a place of sonship that I was a son that God loved. And the second moment was after God told me who I was, Holy Spirit, I began to discover who Holy Spirit was, and I asked him questions all the time. I said, Holy Spirit, what do you want me to do? And I would sit and I would wait. And even here, man, I've got my prayer journal from when I was in Teen Challenge. There would be these things that I would write in Teen Challenge. I love to read a couple of them, man. This is I've never done this before. Um so this is like journeying back eight, nine years ago. And so this is um July 30th, 2017. So I'm in the program now, a little over a month. Um, and so we would have these things called family days. And family days when your family would come, they would hang out with you for three hours at the facility. That was the only contact we had with them. We would do that once a month, and I could talk to Chelsea for 15 minutes a week on the phone. That's it. But here's what I said after my second family day. I said, yesterday was my second family day, and it was much better than the first, which makes sense. My first family day, Chelsea was it was like three days after I checked in and I tried to leave the program. So it makes sense why it was much better, but it's much better than the first. I saw my beautiful wife and my gorgeous daughter. The restoration process is so real. I truly know that my wife and family, um, let me see. Hold on. I said, I truly know that my wife is falling even harder for Jesus. I believe it because she is just starting to see how serious I'm taking this process. But you see, look, look how selfish I was. I'm like saying that she's fallen more in love with the Lord because of how serious I'm taking this process. But as you guys will begin to realize God begins to do an incredible work in and through me. Um But I said this thing, which is really key, because Jesus will speak to you in the lowest moments of your life. I said, How I approach God will determine what I receive from him. How I approach God will determine what I receive from him. Enter his throne room boldly because I'm righteous, because he says that I am. And it was just crazy, like the Lord was speaking to me even then, and this is prior to anything that I'm doing today. But I would write these things down about what I was believing God for, and here

Rock Bottom: Arrest And Turning Point

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it says this was August 3rd, uh 2017. It says, I'm believing God for no court felonies or anything in Jesus' name. Which leads me to the second encounter I had with God. I began to ask Holy Spirit what he wanted me to do. And as you can tell, in August, I'm like, God, I'm believing you for something that doesn't make sense. It doesn't make sense to my carnal mind, but I'm gonna believe you for it anyway. And what happened was that Holy Spirit spoke to me, says, You need to plead guilty to your felonies. Didn't really know what that meant, except I needed to stand in open court and say that I did it, say that I was guilty, say that I messed up. And when I did that, man, it was it was the craziest moment of my life because I'm there for pretrial and um I'm sitting in front of the judge and I'm just kind of going through the process. And I thought that it was going to be a dialogue, but no, you just stand there with your with your lawyer and they speak on your behalf. But I asked if I could speak, and the judge permitted me to talk, and I just blurted out, Judge, I'm guilty, I did it, I'm wrong, I messed up. And then the reality of the gospel hits me. We're all guilty. None of us could earn it. We we we don't deserve it. We deserve hell, and yet God so loved the world that he gave his only begotten son, that whoever believes in him will not perish, but have everlasting life. That whoever believes in him and then it hits me like a ton of brooks that I'm guilty and I deserve something. But the beautiful nature of the gospel is God sends a perfect gift to stand in our place. He stood in our place, he took our sin on the cross and died for them. And that judge looks at me and she says, Marcus, I've never had someone be that honest. She said, Go back to Teen Challenge. And she completely drops all the charges. And I don't have a record to this day. And so I I I just couldn't believe how Jesus how he opened the door for me to live free. But in that moment, I was reminded of Shadrach, Meshach, and Abendigo, and how I wasn't gonna bow to culture, I wasn't gonna bow to a way that seems right to a man. I wasn't

Teen Challenge And Identity In Christ

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gonna try to make excuses and try to find or finagle my way out of that because prior to that I was the master manipulator. I knew how to manipulate really, really well. And so I go back to the program on fire for Jesus, and it was buck wild. In the program, man, I just began to tell people who they were because I knew who I was. This is for somebody, man. If you know who you are, tell other people who they are. If you know that you're a son and a daughter of the most high God, how selfish is it of us to share, to not share the truth with somebody, share it boldly, share it often, share it every single day. And the best way that we can share it is by living a life unto God that is faithful and consistent with what we find in the scriptures. And so as I'm in the program, uh uh the last encounter I had that I'm gonna share is it was um in it was it was in October, and it was when the Lord spoke to me about Reach One. I'm in the program, uh, we're in class, I'm studying, I'm I'm reading, I'm doing whatever I have to do, and I'm reading Luke 15, and I found the story of the lost sheep. And man, some of us know the story, but this is the foundation in which Reach One was built, the ministry that people hear about now. The foundation of Reach One was built in the lowest, most unseen moments of my life. I don't know who this is for, but God will speak to you in the lowest moments of your life. But the question is, are you listening? God isn't waiting for us to be perfect or to have it all together or have this five or ten year plan. What he's saying is, are you being faithful in the mundane moments? Are you being faithful in the unseen? Are you being faithful in the obscurity? So I was just faithfully following and chasing after Jesus. The only thing I wanted was him, I wanted his presence. And as I'm reading Luke 15, I have a divine encounter, and in that encounter, Holy Spirit speaks to my heart. He speaks to my heart just like I'm here in today, but it was it was straight to me. And he says, Marcus, you were the lost sheep I left the 99 for. As you guys can see in the back, there's 99 back there. He says, You were the lost sheep that I left the 99 for. Don't you ever make ministry about numbers? Every single person has infinite value. He says, I've given you the ministry of Reconciliation. And then he said, Go and win my children. And then I heard Reach One. It stands for Reconciling Every Abandoned Child Home. Y'all, I could not believe it. I couldn't believe that God spoke to me. So I would write Reach One even in my journal. I got Reach One everywhere. I couldn't believe that God spoke to me. And I didn't know what it meant because I hadn't preached up to that point. I wasn't a preacher. I was just a guy in rehab trying to get his family back. But I ended up graduating the program, and exactly a year later, I got a chance to do my first public school assembly, and Reach One was born. And um, but more than anything, people ask me, man, Marcus, are you living your best life? Like what's life like now? Is every single day I get to come home to the same beautiful woman that I'm still married to. We've been married over 11 years, and we have two beautiful little girls, Avery and Dakota. And we've started Reach One in this past year, we've ministered and spoken to over 300,000 people. But the most important thing is we will never make ministry about numbers. By the grace of God, we're able to do

Radical Honesty In Court And Freedom

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that. But most importantly, we get a chance to create spaces where people can encounter the love of God in a genuine way because that's what it took for me. I encounter God through his love and through his kindness. And Reach One exists to create spaces that feel like home where people can encounter King Jesus. And so we have Reach One Nights, we've got our Reach One conference that we just had, where we had about 1,500 to 1600 people that came from all around the country just to hear the truth of who Jesus was, to encounter his love. And we've got countless testimonies. But most importantly, man, this podcast and this platform is to create spaces where we can hear those stories. It's to create spaces where I can share my journey. I can teach the word because God wants to do something incredible with our lives. The question is, are we willing to let him? Are we willing to let him? Are we willing to let him? And man, for the person that's watching this right now, I need you to lock in. 2026 is the year. 2026, you were going to look back and remember how God met with you, how he told you who you were, how he told you who you weren't, because some of us, man, we're believing the lies of the devil and we've been struggling with it for so long, we don't even know what the truth is anymore. But 2026 is the year where you will stand on the truth. You will build your foundation on Jesus, not on what Jesus can give you, not on what Jesus can do for you, but on the finished work on the cross. And remember, the cross is comfort that he loves you, that he's for you, that he died for you. But the challenge is he died so that you don't have to continue to struggle in the same way that you're struggling now. And I say this to anybody watching this that may be struggling with addiction, that once an addict, always an addict is a lie straight from the pit of hell. I have not thought about using drugs in over almost nine years because Jesus said it is finished. He says it's finished. By taking the wounds on his body by his stripes, we're healed. So it's time to live in the reality of that healing, and it is time to go. And for the person that might be discouraged or walking through

Calling To Reach One And The Lost Sheep

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anxiety or depression, I want you to know that I see you. I want you to know that I hear you and I get it. I'm not trying to be dismissive. I'm not trying to act like those things don't exist. But there's a there's definitely a reality that we have to start tapping into, and it's the reality of the spirit. That there's a spiritual realm that we can pray and we can trust God, and He is the God who delivers. And honestly, some of us that are struggling with some things, we just have to discipline ourselves to do the things that we don't want to do so that we can produce the things that really will change our lives, like prayer, fasting, seeking Jesus, talking to a counselor. Hello, it's okay to talk to a counselor about what you're walking through. But man, don't you dare think that you're in this alone. Don't you dare think that somebody doesn't care about you. Don't you dare think that there aren't people that are praying for you and that are for you. And many of you guys know if you shoot me a DM or you reach out to us on our Reach One page or my Instagram, we are going to be there and respond and be there for you because we we know what it's like to walk and be broken, but we also know what it's like to taste and see that Jesus is good. And so, man, I just wanted to share a little bit on this episode. And I pray that this encouraged you. We've got some incredible episodes that are going to drop. So you need to hit subscribe on this channel. You need to make sure that you lock in because Jesus is doing some incredible things through this. Let me pray for us. Father, I just thank you for an opportunity to share the truth of who you are. God, more than performance, more than anything, God, I pray that your presence is made known through this podcast. I pray that those who listen, that they will feel encouraged, that they will feel seen, that they will hear the biblical depth that will bring forth transformation. God, for the person that's lonely right now, Holy Spirit, I pray that you would comfort them, that they would realize that they've never been alone a day in their lives. For the person that might be hurt by people that were supposed to love them, I want to say that I'm sorry. But I also want to say that we don't have to let the sin done to us produce sin within us. So, Jesus, I pray that you would have your way with this podcast, you would have your way with this platform. That it's not about likes, clicks, and reshares, but it's about your presence. So, God, I pray that they felt that through this podcast. And I pray that you would do what you want to do in our lives this year. And we lift up your name, and it is in the matchless and majestic and awesome name of Jesus we pray. Amen. God bless you guys.