Today on the 40 Days of Reconciliation, Tune 40 Podcast, we are following the 40 Days of Reconciliation series. I am honored to welcome Mr. Rotterman, the founder of Walk Right Ministries. Steve lives in Portland, Texas, USA. Welcome, Steve.
SPEAKER_00Hey Emmanuel, thanks for having me. Good to see you.
SPEAKER_01Steve, as you've heard, he is a servant of the Lord, uh helping many people who walk out of trauma to experience inner healing, emotional awareness, and to live a reconciled life with God transformed. So he has a lot of experience, and today, Steve, your journey includes includes walking through addiction in your family and discovering your own struggle with codependency. And please, you help us understand what that word is. But as you do that, how did you manage to break out of this bondage to begin helping others instead?
SPEAKER_00It was a good Christian counselor that helps me out of this. And I guess we should probably describe what codependency is. And Steve's version is if you put all of your value and worth into another human being, not thinking of yourself, you're only as good as that human being is. And you're only as good as that person is that day. And you're not thinking about what you need, you're not thinking about the stuff that you need to take care of yourself, and you're putting all your emotional needs into that person. That's pretty much codependency. And my codependency was trying to fix an ex-wife that was addicted to pain medication. I tried to help her with that.
SPEAKER_01How do you relate it with uh self-denial?
SPEAKER_00Well, I mean, I I had codependency and I didn't know it. Yes. And I went to a Christian counselor. First 15 minutes I'm there, he said, uh, you have codependency. And I was like, what are you talking about? I didn't know what it was. And he actually told me that I was destroying my family just as much as my wife was. Except for I was using emotions, I wasn't using any drugs. And I was like, wow, that really hit me. And I was really angry at him. But I left that day and went home and looked on a computer what was codependency, and I saw it wrapped in almost every lake relationship I've had since a child. So I've had this codependency my entire life, which started from a mother that abandoned me at the age of four. I lived with a father who was an alcoholic off and on, felt that he loved me but tolerated me. I just wasn't good enough all the time. I was molested as a young child at the age of six by a neighbor for a season. And then, of course, I married a a woman who I thought I'd be with the rest of my life, and she ended up being addicted to pain medications, and then went on to heroin and meth and all that. So it was uh there that I connected all these dots of my codependency.
SPEAKER_01How did you come to know that what you were doing was wrong?
SPEAKER_02And how do you find your breakthrough?
SPEAKER_00Well, once I sort of excuse me, once I started to study that word and go back to counseling, he started to help me identify what in the relationships that I was doing that was harmful. And when I was in a relationship with this my ex-wife, and she was battling addiction, mind you, I'm a pastor this entire time and I'm loving on people and trying to sell Jesus to people, I'm planting a church, I had a great radio ministry doing all this while hiding this from my congregation and everybody else. And that right there, those two went together because me being a pastor made me feel loved, it made me feel important, it made me feel wanted, and I woke up every day feeling that people needed me, which that's part of codependency. I just never felt good enough and always felt less than. And then my wife taking medicine, okay, I know that she has trauma, I know that she has issues of her own, but I felt that she was taking medicine to escape me. I felt I wasn't good enough, so she had to escape. So if I could fix her, she would be better to see how good I am, and then I would feel better. That's codependency. And I had to identify all that through my life to finally come to realization going, Wow, I really do have a problem. And it was with a counselor that we moved forward from that.
SPEAKER_01Do you feel like there are some bits of it still remaining?
SPEAKER_00I'd like to say that I'm healed and I've recovered from that, but we're always gonna have triggers. We're always gonna have attacks from the devil to try to bring us down. And it's little ones, just as like getting on this podcast or getting on any podcast. It's like, oh, you're not gonna enough people are gonna listen to you, and there you you have to fight that off and say, Father, I know that's not who I am, I know that's not who you created me to be. And it's learning to cope with the triggers, it's learning to cope with the things that set you off. That's how you get out of recovery, but I it never goes away. It's always gonna attack you, and it's always gonna be there.
SPEAKER_01Do you feel that there are times when a pastor may be busy helping people, but at home the gap is still there because they don't see the person active at home, engaging with them, uh walking in love with them. Uh, and was that that situation? With was that the situation you experienced during the days of codependency?
SPEAKER_00Yeah, let me back up a little bit. When I came to know the Lord and got called into ministry, I still viewed him as my earthly father. So I viewed God as a God that tolerated me, he loved me, but Jesus was there to sneak me in the back door because I I just was horrible. And that's the view I had. I had that separated view, I had that I'm not good enough view of God. So when I was in the church, I was never transformed. So I would be a pastor and I'd love the Lord and I'd go to church and I'd do ministry, but I'd come home and be a complete jerk to my family because I didn't know how to handle this addiction, I didn't know how to fix it, I was trying to fix it, I was battling this for 13 years, so I would take my frustration out on my kids, I would take my frustration out on my wife, and that is not transformed. That's not God's love. So, in a sense, I was a complete hypocrite in the church. I mean, I loved the Lord, my intentions were good, but it was just destroying my thought process and how I viewed everything was just it was just crumbling and falling apart.
SPEAKER_01First of all, I think we'll come back to those questions. Uh, would you kindly be able to tell us your ministry today and what you do for the people? Because it's it's a great work you're doing. Please share with us.
SPEAKER_00Yeah. So I walked away from the church. I walked away. It got to the point where my ex-wife was passing out on the front row while I was preaching. She was nodding off. And I had so much shame, I had so much hurt, I had so much anger, I ended up walking away. I said, God, if you're not gonna help me, fix her, we've been trying to fix her. I work directly for you, why won't you fix her, fix her, fix her? And I ended up walking away, and I spent two years in hell just denying him and trying to fix this myself. It wasn't until I got into counseling that my counselor said, You need to define your identity in Jesus Christ. And I said, Well, what are you talking about? I've been a pastor for years, I know what you know, I know God, I know Jesus, I know what you're talking about, and he says, No. He says you're still living as an adoptive son. He says you have to step into the spiritual sonship of full inheritance of what you've earned. And that took a long time. That was a long healing process. And through that process and through those years of healing, I slowly came back to the Lord and I slowly identified who he really was, and who I really was, and how loved I really was, and that he wasn't mad at me, and that he wasn't waiting for me to screw up. And through that whole healing and transformation, he allowed me to come back into ministry. And my ministry now is to help people become unstuck from their unhealthy habits, such as codependency, anxiety, and and all those things that go along with the emotional traumas that they've had.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, thank you so much, because that is very encouraging to see uh that you've have come through all that and you have come to overcome. So many people don't turn back. They remain so far away. If you don't mind, there are very many people, or some of them include pastors, religious leaders who will be watching this podcast or listening. So I wouldn't want us to miss the opportunity to learn from your experience. And I think we uh if you don't mind, I I'm interested in knowing how you were able to see the light. Because you see, you were able, I I know that somebody uh you spoke to somebody, and this person identified you had codependency, but even in you being a pastor, understanding, yes, you are right, it must have been the spirit of God for you to respond. Yes, which we thank God for.
SPEAKER_00Yes. And it was in John, it was in John 14 when he says that in that day you'll know that I'm in you, I'm in the Father, the Father's in me, we're in you, and we're doing all this life together. That's what will really woke me up. And that was powerful to me, and that's where the transformation came from. Knowing that I think most people, even pastors, uh we have this vision that God's way up there just waiting for us to mess up, and Jesus had to die for us and make us better, and the Holy Spirit's just kind of floating around as our butler. And once you really get that cleared up, knowing that they're all together in a union inside of you, living this life of love and light, it's transforming. It's completely transforming.
SPEAKER_01You seeing that yes, I'm a person who is respected, um in a person uh in a place of glory. You did not decide to continue taking that away from God. You decided, even if it leads me to shame, I'm going to have victory after all. So you decided to overcome. You suffered the shame. It's exactly the way the Lord Jesus Christ suffered the same shame on the cross, but actually that was the way to his glory and to give God the glory. So I think we're not concluding even when I ask you for your word of encouragement. There is somebody out there who is in in place of authority and has not had the opportunity to find somebody to talk to uh uh and live alone the desire to seek God, the God who has called them. What would you say to them?
SPEAKER_00Surrender. Um this whole time I was using God to fix everybody else to make myself feel better. If my only if only my ex-wife would stop using drugs, things would be better. If this would happen, if that would happen, the whole time it was outside of me. In Emmanuel, when God just finally says, Look, I just worry about you. I want to fix you. I want you and I on the same page. When you get that revelation and you get that just that vision of what he really wants for you and what the redeeming blood of Jesus Christ did on the cross for me, that's what's freeing. And a pastor or anybody in authority, or anybody not in authority that has a less than feeling, that feels that they're not good enough or they're not worthy enough, needs to fall under that surrender and needs to just let the love of Jesus just come in and and take that away. And he will.
SPEAKER_01You are running a credible ministry helping people to be to find their restoration in Christ. And in this program, you have mentioned uh twelve steps that you have discovered that you have you you deploy you use to help these people. Would you like to tell us briefly about these steps?
SPEAKER_00Sure. I I don't know if you've heard of Celebrate Recovery. I was a big part of Celebrate Recovery, a 12-step program that's from Saddleback Church out of California. Uh, I believe that's Pastor Rick Warren. It's a great program. And it was involved in that, and even at my local church here, I've been involved in it a little bit. And one night in the parking lot, um, he just sat me in a car and I just I had a I had a really big heavening on my heart for the people that were in the celebrate recovery. I just felt that they were stuck. Even though they're in this recovery and they're healing, I just felt people are still stuck. And he gave me this vision of creating 12 steps in your identity in Jesus Christ and who you really are. And I created this program that has 12 steps and principles, and it's just like a lot of Christian twelve-step programs out there, except for the only thing different, is we don't focus on the behavior modification, which a lot do. You've got to stop doing this, you gotta stop doing that, and people focus on if you want to call it sin or the unhealthy habit. People focus on that and they try to behavior modify modify that. My twelve steps are transforming from the inside out. They're letting you know who you are, who you were before the foundations of the earth, how Adam and Eve messed all that up, and how the blood of Jesus Christ reconciled all that back to God when that happened on the cross. And those are the transforming steps that allow you to not want to do the unhealthy habit anymore. And that's what that's what that 12-step program is for. It's a community that's online, it's a community that is people can come whenever they want, whenever they feel they need to. They don't have to wait for Thursday night at 6 p.m. for a meeting. They could just come on on their convenience and do the step work. And I'm a facilitator of a lot of things. There's Bible studies, there's worksheets, there's everything that just like any other 12-step program. But this is a community that's online for everybody around the world to get on and help each other out.
SPEAKER_01We're going to look at one scenario, like some experience you've had with a difficult case, because I imagine you've found a difficult case, somebody's finding it hard to overcome addiction. How have you helped them to find their restoration?
SPEAKER_00I just lead them to Christ. I lead them to how they're loved and who God really is and how he can truly heal people. It isn't um anything that I really do, it's just pointing them. It's like Paul says, we go through our sufferings so we can stand next to other people and help them through that suffering. And then they're to turn around and be that love and light and help them through the suffering. So when you're talking about somebody that comes in or I work with one-on-one, it's it's nothing I do except we're stand by them and draw out of them what they already have inside of them. And that's with Jesus helping them identify what that is.
SPEAKER_01So somebody comes to you and tells you I'm struggling with alcohol. This person comes home and there's no peace at all, but he is a Christian. So leading them to Jesus may not be new. They think they're a Christian, but they also they know for sure they are under captivity of alcoholism. How do you deal with that?
SPEAKER_00First of all, I tell them they're not an alcoholic. Don't identify yourself as that. You're a child of God, and don't believe the lie that you're living. And first of all, every addiction that somebody has is tied to a less than feeling. I'm a not good enough feeling. And I try to bring them to that understanding. Look, Adam and Eve fell, right? And what was the first thing they did? Well, they had shame. They thought they were naked. And then what was the next thing they did? Well, they denied. They did the blame game. And we carry that. We were born in that sin, right? We carry that. That's the curse, that's what we've had. And we want to live in that skin still. Paul says it all through the Bible. We want to live in the old self. We there's no we we have power over all that deadness now. When Jesus died upon a cross, God reconciled you back to Himself, like you were before the foundations of the earth. And it's getting people to understand that and live in that. So when you come to me and say I'm an alcoholic, no, you're not. You're a loved child of God. And let's show how you are in that position so you cannot believe this lie any longer. And hopefully, with the power of God, that you can start drinking less and less and less until the point where you're like, I just don't want it anymore because now I know who I am.
SPEAKER_01And to those who are occasionally involved in cancelling such categories from wherever you are, now you're learning new insights, helping this person not to condemn themselves. Thank you so much, Steve. Yes. And yes. And somebody is afraid they are going back. And you think they now make regulations for themselves and you think they are overdoing it. Do you find people making resolutions as you cancel them, as you help them, and then you find they uh because of that, they are afraid and they feel they are ashamed. They want to undo what they have done. For example, they have gone back to addiction, and therefore they are saying, I am cutting off this route, I will never walk this way again. And you find that's a road. It's impractical. Do you find such a people? How do you deal with that?
SPEAKER_00It's taking off the layers. It's, you know, you have to learn forgivenness, you have to learn surrender, you have to come under this place of understanding who you truly are before you can continue down the path. It's, you know, it's not. I mean, God can do this, and I've seen it do it in people that immediately they just stop using or they stop drinking or they stop doing an unhealthy habit, and that's amazing. Unfortunately, it doesn't happen with everybody, but you can't just, I'm gonna stop drinking today and then turn around and walk a different road, like you said. You still have to go down that road because there's so many layers that you have to shut off of that coat to drop before you can feel free. And transformation is freedom. The truth will set you free, right? That's what the Bible says all over the place. And once you learn the truth of that and who you are as a person, who you are in the eyes of God, who you are in in the world of the kingdom, that's what's freeing, that's what's transformation. Like I said, when they come to me, it's you can't give them shame. You can't condemn them. They come back the next day and say, Well, I drank again last night. Okay, why did we do that? You know, not, oh, you shouldn't have drank again. What do you, you're a failure, you messed up. You're two days into this and you messed up. You can't, there's no condemnation, there's no judgment. It's okay, why did you feel that way? What made you go to the drink that? And then that's where they start opening up and saying, Well, this really hurt me, or I heard a song and it really made me sad that I lost this person. And okay. Then we start tackling the inner side of you and why that why are you turning to the bottle whenever you get this trigger, this emotion, and you know. We just build upon that and we start to strip away the lie and replace it with God and what God thinks of you. And then slowly, as you keep doing this through session after session after session, it just peels away.
SPEAKER_01That's very, very insightful. Thank you very much. We're getting close to the end of this podcast. Uh but before we go there, would you like to tell us your worst experience in your casting uh sessions?
SPEAKER_00My personal my worst experience was reliving all the trauma from my past. I had to step through that place in order to come out onto the to the the healing process. I had to go back into my mind and face the guy that molested me as a child. I had to go into that construction trailer, I had to see Jesus in that trailer. I had to see Jesus in all the times my father would tell me that I wasn't good enough. I had to see Jesus in the way that I felt abandoned. That was very hurtful, that was very troublesome, and when I came through that, wow, it was so freeing.
SPEAKER_01How about your waste in that real waste experience counseling somebody else?
SPEAKER_00There isn't really a bad experience. It's a freeing experience. That's why I'm in it, that's why I'm doing it. Um I don't like to see people hurt. I don't like to see people think that they're not good enough and that they're lost. And I try to that I mean, if that's the worst thing, that's the worst thing. Seeing people as Jesus sees people, that's what's sad. Because he sees them as beautiful, loving people, and and to watch people not believe that and fall for a lie, that's what hurts, and that's the worst thing.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, uh why it keeps you encouraged daily in your work, in the ministry you're doing.
SPEAKER_00Knowing that I'm in love. I woke up today not to need anything from anybody because God gives me enough. I don't base my life off a circumstance anymore. I base my life off the love and light that I'm to be today in the kingdom.
SPEAKER_01That sounds like divine transformation.
SPEAKER_00Yes.
SPEAKER_01God has powered into you his own love, and so you're pouring the same love into more people that they may be transformed.
SPEAKER_00Yes. And that's simply what the Bible is. I mean, if you just want to narrow it down, love and light. That's what we're supposed to do. We're just supposed to love God so much and turn around and love people like he loves us. Simple.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, please would you like to share with us a few more insights before we cruise? Uh great lessons from your experience with God that we can learn from.
SPEAKER_00Yes. Um, number one, have a conversation with him. Um not just before a meal, not just before you go to bed, but while you're going throughout your whole day, while you're driving in your car, while you're taking a walk, uh just commune with him. Just have a conversation. Father, what do you think of me? What, you know, if you can ask God anything, is it something that you want personally? Are you trying to use him like a butler still? Are you trying to lean on him to get through every day of your life? Or do you have a conversation with your father? Hey dad, how you doing today? What's going on today? What can I do for you today? Hey, father, will you put somebody in my path today that I can love on? Maybe at McDonald's, maybe at Walmart, maybe at some place. Just highlight that person that I can talk to and just be love. And that's one of the keys of getting through this daily thing. I journal a lot, so journaling helps me. God speaks to me a lot when I journal. So, number one, he gets all the feelings out that I have, so I'm not harboring anything, I'm not carrying anything. And um, that's really helpful as well. But just commune with him, just be with him constantly and pray without ceasing. That's what that is. It's not a ritual thing, it's a it's he's a good father. He's my dad.
SPEAKER_01Thank you very much. Your encouragement to our audience, and then we cross.
SPEAKER_00Yes. If anybody is stuck in any unhealthy habit and would like freedom from that, find somebody that you can talk to to uh get you out of that. If you'd like to reach out to me and I'll help you, uh you can go to walkrightministries.com and you can find out where I do speaking, I do coaching, I do the uh I have a podcast myself I just started called Recovery and Identity, which is goes through those 12 steps, which goes through the recovery process, through what I've just described shortly in this these uh two episodes. So, but my word of encouragement to finish this out is there's victory on the other side. There is victory in the pain and trauma that you're carrying around now. There is freedom in that. And just allow God to come into those dark places to help you through that.
SPEAKER_01Thank you. And you mentioned the podcast on the website.
SPEAKER_00Uh, and I think you've written a book, right? I did write a book. It's it's my full story. Yeah, I I know that I gave just a little blurb of my life, but it's my full life story written out, and it's called God's Imperfect Plan is Perfect. And it talks about all those things that we inherited that we had no choice in. We make bad decisions, we get bad, we make bad choices, we get you know bad consequences. But what about all those things that I didn't choose? I didn't choose to have my mother, my mother leave, I didn't choose my dad to be an alcoholic, I didn't choose to be sexually molested, I didn't choose to have a wife addicted to medication. So it's seeing God through all of that, that his plan, while we go through a lot of suffering sometimes, but his plan is perfect. And what we can look back, yeah.
SPEAKER_01Find your book internationally.
SPEAKER_00It is it's on Amazon, and they can go to my website and get a link there as well.
SPEAKER_01Great. Thank you. It's been a pleasure hosting you on this podcast. Please come again. I feel like we needed an hour, but it's okay. Time has gone. So you're always welcome to this podcast.
SPEAKER_00Emmanuel, it was such an honor to be here and meet with you, and I always like making new friends, so thank you very much.