Life, Liberty, and the Pursuit of Happiness - Steve Maxwell

Steve Maxwell joins us on this episode! We talk about bargaining with God, Christian business foundations, experiencing death, and Citizens Defending Freedom

Transcript

SPEAKER_03 0:18

We want to buy two.

SPEAKER_04 0:24

That's right. If we run it here, we will have to turn it into it.

SPEAKER_03 0:32

We'll have to hear from our trend. How excited we are for the mudding what we're gonna be doing.

SPEAKER_04 0:40

Yeah, you don't want that. Sending those tests. All right, well, today's guest is Steve Maxwell. Steve, thanks for coming in today.

SPEAKER_02 0:58

It's my honor to be here. Thank you for inviting me.

SPEAKER_04 1:00

Yeah, we're glad to have you. And so as our audience is uh is ready for our tag you're it segment. Highly anticipated. So uh Steve wants you to step up to the the huge wheel, you know, that's here in this room. You're gonna only in Charlie's head. I'm sure you're gonna, you know, you're gonna spin as hard as you can and you're gonna come up with a with a question. All right, here we go. Here we're spinning the wheel. All right. That was a long spin. Yeah, it was you did a really good stuff. Good spin there, Steve. Yeah. All right. So what is a bargain you have tried to strike with God?

SPEAKER_02 1:45

What decade do you want me to speak about?

SPEAKER_01 1:50

Let's see.

SPEAKER_02 1:51

You know, I I can remember being in one of my lowest times financially and just you know, just saying, Lord, I I I wrote down what I would like to have, and uh, you know, whatever I have to do, you know, I re-surrender my life. I think we've all done that. Yeah, I remember doing that like at eight years old, too, you know. Yeah. But uh but not really as an adult. I don't I learned early on God's the boss. And uh you receive what comes your way. I just like to try to be clean before him because that way if you are it's you know it's not punishment. He's allowing a stress to come into your life for a purpose. Yeah. Okay. Yeah, that's a good way to look at it.

SPEAKER_04 2:33

Yeah. I guess what comes to my mind is you know, when I was a kid, when I was growing up, the uh the rapture was a big topic, you know, left behind was a big series at the time, you know, and and I think part of me was excited for that, but you know, also that part of me that was like a little nervous that I might be, you know, missing out on things if if someone thoughts, you know, I'd like to get married, I'd like to have a family.

SPEAKER_02 2:58

Yeah, exactly.

SPEAKER_04 2:58

And so uh I think I probably I probably prayed to God, you know, God just you know you can come back. I'm can't wait for you to come back, but just you know, let me, you know, live my life a little first. As though he's asking, as though he's waiting on me. But that that's kind of what came to my mind. But yeah, I think now I've and then maybe that's because I've lived a life a little bit more, but I guess I'm I see things differently now that you know, whatever heaven looks like, it's more than I could imagine here. So I don't know. I see it differently now.

SPEAKER_03 3:28

Yeah. I think I've probably had some bargains like that. I don't know if I've had a true bargain, but I've definitely been like, God, if you could just give me the clearest sign in the world so I know what the answer is to this question, that would be great. Like, you know, something smacking me in the forehead, like a note would be great, but it's not really a bargain. It was just more like a just I really want a clear, very clear answer. Yeah.

SPEAKER_04 3:49

Yeah, yeah. I've been there too for sure. All right. Well, that's some good, good discussion there. I like that. So thanks for thanks for participating in that with us, Steve. All right. So, Steve, uh, tell us a little bit about yourself, you know, like where did you grow up and what are you up to these days?

SPEAKER_02 4:06

Well, I'm a Florida guy, so I was born and raised in a little community called Lithia, Florida, uh just south of Plant City. It's about an hour from here.

SPEAKER_04 4:13

And we were just there.

SPEAKER_02 4:14

Lithia Springs. Yeah, Lithia Springs. Spent many, many summers at Lithia Springs, yeah. Okay. But born in a Christian home, my dad was uh state trooper here in Florida for 30 years. Um was a homemaker and worked part-time for the county. So we came from very modest beginnings and you know, was born and raised there, met my wife today, been married 43 years, met her in the second grade. Wow. And started liking her in the in junior high. So we've been together for our really our entire life.

SPEAKER_03 4:44

That's awesome.

SPEAKER_02 4:45

We have three grown children, five grandchildren, and they're all local, pretty much. So business entrepreneur, U.S. Navy veteran, and just tried every every step of the way to the best of my ability to serve the Lord. Uh came to came to Christ at uh in third grade and then really had an encounter with Christ at age 19. It changed my life in a in a profound way. And and we all have our ups and downs, we all sin, we all ask forgiveness, you know, that tapestry of life that we have with the Lord. But I can honestly say I've tried my best to serve him in every way that we can in our businesses, everything. Not always successful, but that's that's kind of my my story. So very cool. Again, a Florida guy, so very few of those. My wife is sixth generation Floridian, very few of those.

SPEAKER_04 5:36

So wow. Wow, sixth generation, man. Yeah, they're right. There's a lot of them are I'm a transplant from Georgia. Yeah. Oh, you you're you're how many generations are a Floridian?

SPEAKER_03 5:45

I know I was born and raised in this area, but your dad too, right? Yeah, my dad was raised in Fort Meade. I'm not I want to say that one of my sets of grandparents is originally from out of state, so not quite so many generations.

SPEAKER_02 5:58

My parents were from Georgia. Okay. I was born here, yeah. Yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_04 6:02

Okay, well, yeah, we so that's good to know. Do you still live in are you live in Lake Wales now? Is that right?

SPEAKER_02 6:06

We live in Frostproof, which is south of Lake Wales.

SPEAKER_04 6:08

Yeah, gotcha. Okay, very cool, very cool. All right, and uh, what kind of things do you enjoy doing, you know, outside of work or ministry or anything you're doing?

SPEAKER_02 6:16

You know, to be candid, it's it's it's family, it's the Lord and work. I mean, I love my work, I love what we do. We're building stuff all the time. We've got multiple companies, we've got the nonprofit, so there's always something to do. And and every bit of it is about kingdom. It's about the kingdom and and being successful, helping people. My partner and I, at age 24, he came to know Christ while I was still in the Navy. We lived in South Texas at the time, and and we made a commitment to the Lord. You know, our goal as business partners were was to produce hundred financially independent people before we died that we give back to the kingdom work. And how we do that is we start companies and we provide opportunities for our employees, our management team, especially, to participate in the profits of the company. If we sell a company, they participate in the profits of the cell. So that's that's that's been our been our mission. So we can get into some of those details later, but so really my my whole life has been geared toward taking advantage of the opportunities we have in the country, but by you know, anybody can go in business for themselves and and try to and and business itself is an act of faith. It's an act of service to your customers. So, you know, in my mind, it's everything's about the kingdom.

SPEAKER_04 7:35

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 7:35

Yeah.

SPEAKER_04 7:36

Okay. Very cool.

SPEAKER_03 7:37

So yeah, you're very focused and yeah, it's something that just struck me though. So you've had the same business partner since at least your business partner was 24.

SPEAKER_02 7:45

Both of us are 24. We were born the same week, same year. Wow. So yeah, helped lead him to Christ. And once that happened, we lived in he lived in a you know, right around the corner from us, and we had the biggest house in town at the time, about 1,200 square feet, and he had a thousand square feet, you know. I mean, we go from nothing. And uh, but yeah, we started dreaming, working out together. And first companies didn't make it that well, but we kept trying and kept going, and now he's he's built way more than I have, and we built several together, still, still doing that. Wow, yeah. For 64 now, by the way. Wow, 40 years ago. Wow, yeah.

SPEAKER_03 8:20

That's a long business relationship. But I mean, it sounds like it all started with grounding it in your faith.

SPEAKER_02 8:25

I've been very blessed to have John as my business partner. And really, I came home from the Navy and went to work in the produce industry. So, how we got to frostproof, we worked with the big citrus family, the Griffin family, but I was in all kind of watermelon industry, tomato industry, and we kept talking back and forth. He was still in, he still is in Texas, and and then lo and behold, the opportunity came and we took we went for it. So that was in 03, 2003, and we started our first company together, and then since that time we've had several together and still do. Wow. So, but uh I've been very blessed to have him. We never had an argument. Wow. We talked twice today, and we talked pretty much every day, and even when intense business decisions, never never an argument because it's all about the kingdom. I mean, we some crazy stuff in business you've run across, you know. Yeah. So it was a god thing.

SPEAKER_03 9:21

What does that look like walking it out? So no arguments, everything's for the kingdom. How do you how do you keep it kingdom focused so that that kind of stuff doesn't slip in?

SPEAKER_02 9:31

Well, actually it slips in, but you have to identify it.

SPEAKER_03 9:35

Okay.

SPEAKER_02 9:35

And then once you identify it, you know what to do with it. So, for example, early on we had a a partner that was a minority partner in one of our businesses, and he'd only been with us a little while, and all of a sudden he wanted out, and he wanted us to pay him an exorbitant amount of money, more than what we pay for the business. We we bought a little company and we were building it. And and it was it got pretty nasty, and we didn't do anything wrong. He just wanted out, and so I was green. This is back in 05, maybe. And and John just called and said, John, here's what's going on. What do you want to do? He said, pay him out. I said, What do you mean? We don't have the money to pay him out, just pay him out on time, and we'll never look back. But he's doing us wrong. We'll let the Lord handle that, and we'll never look back, we'll never think about it again. That's what we did. And we never looked back, and the company grew to the largest company of its type in the world in 13 years. Wow. So you it's not that you're trying to avoid the enemy coming in, the enemy's coming. You just got to identify it and then do the right thing. Why sue? Why get into all that? Why just give him what he wants and let's go?

SPEAKER_04 10:42

Wow, yeah. That's yeah, I was gonna say, like you could I I could see like trying to posture and and you know, not let him be taken advantage of and and kind of fighting against that and kind of leading to a lot more.

SPEAKER_02 10:55

So the first thing you want to do is react when something comes at you, and what did Jesus say do? Turn the other cheek. Yeah, and it doesn't necessarily turn the other cheek if somebody's attacking you, but it's it's it's more or less no, don't hold the grudge. You know, and there's I I just found that intensity inside even relationships. When you're uh I think James says it best, but we have these quarrels because we're not getting what we want. That's what creates friction. Right? In any relationship, or even a three-year-old crying over their toy, right? You know, it's human nature. So we we spend a lot of time identifying the human nature part of the issue that we're dealing with. And once you identify it, just take scripture to it and hit it over the head.

SPEAKER_03 11:41

Wow.

SPEAKER_02 11:42

And sometimes that means you have to sacrifice yourself. That's okay.

SPEAKER_03 11:46

Are the businesses that y'all create, do they also operate with a kingdom mindset?

SPEAKER_02 11:51

Absolutely. Our core values are the same in every business. We have seven main core values, and it's really all biblically based attitudes toward toward the business and our customers. And so yeah, we try. Now you you know, you got you got flesh in there too. Sure. But we try to we try to hold people to that standard. You know, it's simple stuff. Like a customer comes first, the second and probably the most difficult rule is pass negatives up and positives down. Okay, so negatives up, positives down. What are we really saying? You're gonna be involved in the business, some way, shape, or form. There's gonna be negatives coming the room. You as a leader, your job is to pass these negatives in the business to someone who can deal with them and squelch the negative. And and so really what we're saying is can you control your thought process enough to control your tongue? See what I'm saying? Yeah. So that's just rule, that's that was rule number two. And so these principles are what we look for when we're looking to advance leadership in the company. We try to promote from within. So these key, these key attitudes that we have and and core principles, that's what we look at for bonuses, that's what we look at for promotion. That's just the first one. Customer comes first, then pass negatives up, positive down. You want me to go through the rest real quick? Sure, sure.

SPEAKER_01 13:15

So I think this is possible.

SPEAKER_02 13:16

Yeah, so uh team before self. Can you do your job and not have to get the credit? Can you give the credit to the team? That's a humility factor. Jesus described himself once in scripture. I'm meek, I'm strength under control. That's what that means, and I'm lowly, I'm humble. You don't have to get the credit for anything. That's a big one, especially in this day area, right? Always strive for perfection, knowing that we're not gonna hit perfection. But if you strive for perfection, you'll settle with excellence and we can live with excellence. If you strive for excellence, you'll you'll settle for above average. If you strive strive for above average, you'll settle for average. And if you're average, you're terrible. You know, you're not gonna make it business. So always strive for perfection. Uh believe. There's no challenge too difficult. Uh that if we work together as a team, believe we can get it done, we can get it done. So there's your faith principle. Do unto others you haven't done to you, golden rule. Which means you want to be honest, you want to be honesty is the most difficult thing for people to do is learning how to be honest but truthful. Does that make sense? And what I say is truthful tr what's the Bible say uh or the principle is uh truth hurts sometimes, but it's healthy. If it's truth, it's healthy if it's if it's expressed in the right way. So we teach people how to communicate with with with truth and honesty. If you feel something a certain way, you need to be able to express that. If you don't, it festers. Right. And then right, it turns into something bigger, way bigger than it should have been if it had been handled back at that area. So those are some just some of the key things that we do. Yep.

SPEAKER_03 15:02

That last one is like where you see gossip breed, I think, and other workplaces.

SPEAKER_02 15:06

Absolutely. Your job as a leader is to squelch that. Don't participate in that. That's a it's biblical. Don't I mean God hates that stuff. Yeah. And so, and then it it just creates an environment inside the plant, inside the team that there's a standard set. And and then, like I said, that's how we've selected our leaders as we move forward as a company grew, is who can maintain those core principles. And because it's not about your knowledge, it's about your your character. People, you know, people respect people of character. And relationships, another thing we taught our people, all all of life is relational. Everything is relational. Even in the age of AI, which I've got an AI company now, it still comes down to people. And and so all of life is relational. Relationships are built on trust. Trust is built by being trustworthy under crisis. That makes sense. So when the pressure's on, can I count on you?

SPEAKER_01 16:09

Right.

SPEAKER_02 16:09

When the pressure's on, will you make the right decision? So that's how trust is built, which builds the relationship. So, so we we we build relationships with our obviously our customers, stock shareholders, the owners of the company, the employees, and our vendors. So our mission, even with our vendors, is we want to build relationships while we're doing business with our vendors. Build relationships trust with our employees, with the owners and with our customers.

SPEAKER_04 16:42

Yeah. That sounds like a good good uh strategy for doing business. It sounds like it's you know a very authentic way, way, and and like you sound very authentic the way you talk about it.

SPEAKER_02 16:55

And what happens in that process is I've learned is is people your customers react. I mean, how do we grew we we went up against billion-dollar companies? Me and my partner, we had nothing really. Um, we just scrapped together what we could to get started. And but because we treated our customers that way, and we built you got to build good products, don't get me wrong. Our products, we figured out a way to build better products and that type of thing. But I I just believe you invoke the kingdom of God into your system and into what you're doing, and he does things that you can't do. He divine providence, we talked about, you know, where God steps in because we're trying to align with him. Our mission at the end of the day is lead people to the kingdom. Yeah.

SPEAKER_04 17:33

Yeah, very cool. Okay. Okay, so uh maybe I didn't I like to get a little more clarity. So you said you started in produce and different different areas, citrus and different things. Is that is that and I know it sounds like you have multiple businesses doing different things, but what would you say is like the we, you know, we came home from Texas.

SPEAKER_02 17:50

We had started one business out there, it was doing really well, and it was a franchise type business, and it sold, and it just it really went it it crumbled before our very eyes, out of our control. So we decided we had our first child, we decided if we're gonna start over, let's go home. So my business partner said we he was starting his first company. Won't you stay with us enough? If we're gonna start over, we're gonna go home. We'll look at something when I get home. So my my grandfather on my mother's side was a farmer in Georgia, where I get my accent from. Oh, yeah, yeah. And so I got to spend summers with him, and I always loved, I learned so much from him on the farm, a little small farm. And so I got a chance to go in the produce business. My son-in-law, my brother-in-law is a big farmer down in South Florida. So he hired me and we ran potato shed. I ran his potato shed, helped with his marketing team, and that was there for a while. The season ends. Then that job led to the tomato industry. That was year-round, worked there for several years and was became general manager of that operation. And we wound up expanding into Georgia and Alabama, so had a tremendous amount of experience. We got into the banana ripening business with the tomatoes. When Publix moved to Georgia, most people don't know this. Publix is a homegrown chain here. But when they moved to Georgia, that was that was after George Jenkins passed away. And he had a deal with the owner of Piggly Wiggly. We would never come to your turf. You don't come to my turf, right? And but when when I die, the bets are off, right? So Publix moves to Georgia. Well, the first 37, 38 stores, they opened, they didn't have a distribution center. So our company moved to Atlanta on the market, and we became their banana distributor, their tomato distributor, and all their shorts. When they short some product on, we'd pick it up on a produce market and run it to them. We ran about 30 trucks. So that was a great experience. And then from there, Ben Hill Griffin got a hold of me, which they were a big citrus family, still are. Citrus is taking a hit due to disease, but they're cattle and and uh citrus and sugarcane and all that. So anyway, that's I interviewed with them, got the job as their vice president of uh fresh fruit division, and moved to Frostproof, and and that's when John and I, my partner, kept talking. And so I was with their 10 years. Oh, okay. But I learned so much in the produce industry that when we bought our little produce distributorship here in Mulberry, Florida, I already knew my customer base and what their needs were because of the twenty, you know, the 10 years of almost uh 17 years in the produce industry.

SPEAKER_01 20:16

Uh-huh.

SPEAKER_02 20:17

So that's when we started. And uh the business we started was called Highland Packaging Solutions. And it was when you buy strawberries or blueberries in a clamshell and little plastic containers, that's what we produced and put the label on and distributed. And so that was a long story, but we got in that deal and uh we went up against some big players and we knocked them out of we knocked them out of the park. And it didn't take very long because they were corporate, they they did not have the passion for the farmer. We built our whole program around the farmer. We're out there with them in our boots and trucks, and you know, we're and we built great products, built great products and built relationships with all of them, doing the very things we talked about with our core values. Right. So that's that's how we did it. Good. That makes sense? Yeah, yeah, yeah. Okay.

SPEAKER_04 21:01

Service mindset, I guess.

SPEAKER_02 21:02

You know, you know, and success. Yeah, I tell people every successful business I ever saw that was truly successful takes at least 10 years to get there. Okay. Right. That's another misnomer. I'm gonna make money quick. You don't want to make money quick. You gotta there's a price to pay, and for some reason it takes at least a decade for it to really turn around.

SPEAKER_04 21:21

So I guess that that was that was kind of maybe leads me to my next question, which you know, so that that may be part of what uh like answering this question, but you know, what guidance would you give someone who is thinking of starting a business?

SPEAKER_02 21:33

Well, the first thing was I would find out what your reason for starting the business is. If it's money, I tell them don't do it. I'm serious. Because if you're in it for the money, it's too tough. You're gonna quit. You better off at Walmart being a greeter. They save a lot of headache.

SPEAKER_03 21:51

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 21:52

So but if you have a passion, if God's given you a passion for what you're doing, my passion is I I go back to my grandfather. I'll tell you a cute little story that really gives you an idea of what I'm talking about. So I'm around 10 or 12 years old, and he had a small farm, but he he cut okra during the summer. And it's a hard job. It's hot. They cut okra, they grade it. My grandfather was, I mean, headed at the Sunday school, deacon in the church. He was just a good man. And so we did that one summer, and I remember going to the market in Cairo, Georgia, and there's three grades of okra, right? You got you got fancy grade, which is your top dollar, then you've got choice grade, which is medium dollar, and then you have soup grade, which is the big okra, they're too big to cut up and eat. So you put them in soup, it's a lower grade. So we we pull these hampers up. We've been working all morning, and this broker, this produce broker, is going to take them and sell the okra. And he comes out and he says, Mr. Wet, my grandfather's name is Wesley. He said, Mr. Wesley, I know you said you graded that a fancy, number one grade, but we just checked it and it came out as a choice. It's about three or four dollars a difference per per container. I had I had no clue. I'm I'm young, I don't know what's going on. So we're in a pickup truck, windows down, put yours in a Georgia, hot Georgia summer day. Oh, yeah, you know, and and my granddad is talking to himself all the way back to the farm. He said, I know we graded out of fancy. I know we graded out of fancy. He was so upset because he felt like that still makes me emotional. He felt like that that broker thought he was trying to cheat him and it was killing him. Because he would do, he would not cheat anybody. So fast forward now, I come home from the Navy, I start with my brother-in-law in the potato industry. I'm in I'm packing potatoes all day, I'm loading trucks all night. So I'm on I'm on I'm on the on the clock for the marketing company during the day. At night, I switched to the farmer, which is my brother-in-law, and I load trucks at night until midnight or whatever, until we went home and start back at seven again in the morning. But anyway, it one of the nights we're waiting on the last truck. It's just me in the room. This is back before computers and we just had fax machines, but I got a phone call from the guy that was selling potatoes. He was down in Miami, I'm down in Amockley. So we're we're we're ways apart. He says, Steve, I need you to change the tags on the that load of B's. See, potatoes have three grades too, A, B's, and C's. Okay. B's middle grade. Take that load of B's, they were physical tags, off and put A's on them and get rid of those B's tags. I said, okay, and I'm thought that's weird. So I'm going to do it, and it dawned on me. Flashback to when I was 10 years old with my granddad. That guy had just stole $4,000. There's a thousand bags of potatoes, and it was a four-dollar difference in the price of potatoes and between A's and B's. So he just put $4,000 in his pocket and took it away from the farmer, which was my brother-in-law, and that flashback hit me. See what I'm saying? Yeah. So my mission was not to make money. You gotta make money, you gotta make a profit.

SPEAKER_01 25:02

Right.

SPEAKER_02 25:02

My mission was I saw farmers being handled wrong in the marketplace. So we wanted to go into this whatever segment, we went into packaging, we saw the same thing happening there. Big billion dollar companies taking advantage of a little farmer that's trying to put his strawberries in that cup. You know? So we came in, immediately the prices dropped. I mean by a bunch. We put millions of dollars back in those farmers' pockets. But that was at the core. It was, you know what, we're on a crusade to work with these farmers, and that's still a part of what we're doing today. We've got a software company, we got an AI company, we're doing the same thing. We're gonna go help these farmers get set up in this modern world where they can compete better and better and better. So that's a long story for a short uh long, long answer for a short story.

SPEAKER_04 25:52

Yeah, yeah, that's a great story. And I think it's really cool the idea of like taking, you know, I don't know if anybody's like, and it maybe this is not true. I don't want to disparage it, but like potatoes does not sound like something to be passionate about, but I like how you turned it into a turned it into a passion. I know it's a you know it's a livelihood for a lot of people. I'm not discouraging, you know, I'm not saying anything like that, but how you took that and like you found a way to like looking at where you can make it a passion and and you know, helping those people.

SPEAKER_02 26:19

Well, we live in a country that's so we've never really had to suffer a lot, right? So, and I you know, I can remember my grandfather, then I got in the produce business uh working for for these farmers, and it's like, oh my gosh, I mean, most people don't realize a strawberry grower over in Plant City, right down the road from us. I mean, the it takes about $30,000 to $35,000 per acre to get the crop in the ground before you pick the first berry. And then they've got all the you know, all the weather issues, you got labor issues, you got the governments coming down on them, all the housing, they provide housing for all their H2A workers now, which is wonderful, but there's government regulations on them. There's food safety. I built a software company to manage their food safety program, right? So uh but it's it you see what they go through, and you think, man, and some make it, some don't. It's just the margins are very narrow and it's just a miracle they do it. You talk about having you have to have a passion to win in farming. I've seen a lot of corporate farms that don't make it because they don't have the passion. It's a corporate farm. But a farmer, he's got it in his blood or her blood, they are there because they love farming. So that'll go back to your question. If somebody wants to start a business, you find something that turns you on, gets you excited, that you love, and and that it'll eventually it'll eventually pan itself out. And I the second thing I'd suggest is you study every single businessman you know. And I was one of those guys in school, I I struggled in school. I I hated school, be honest with you. But I was always ready to go and go do stuff. But but I I I I got out of high school without reading one book.

SPEAKER_03 27:57

What?

SPEAKER_02 27:58

Okay, how? So, you know, I had some good good girlfriends that would help me. But what I found out when I got to be an adult, a young adult, is I read my first book. And my you go to my house now, I've got a library full. So what I did, I began studying entrepreneurs. I studied Steve Jobs, I've studied, you know, the Amazon story, I've studied JC Penney, I studied old business guys, new business guys, so I could learn their mindset because it's really a mindset. And every one of them, without a shadow of a doubt, I mean, Sam Walton almost went bankrupt. Steve Jobs almost went bankrupt. You know, they've all gotten to the point that we're not gonna make it unless God shows up, right?

SPEAKER_04 28:42

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 28:42

So you realize, man, this is tough, but man, they had a passion. They were fur, they were they were leaders, they they didn't quit. So I wanted to be that person, you know. And so your business is gonna put you through the ringer.

SPEAKER_00 28:54

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 28:54

Okay.

SPEAKER_02 28:55

Yep.

SPEAKER_03 28:56

Sounds terrifying. Yeah.

SPEAKER_04 28:59

So all right. Well, I I I like this topic, but well, I want to kind of get to uh something else here. So so a few years ago, and I correct me on the timeline if I got anything wrong, but I remember you came to the church here at High Point and you gave your testimony about a near-death experience, is what I call it. And you may clarify the terms there, but but can you tell us a little about that? Like what's the story there?

SPEAKER_02 29:24

So uh Yeah, we uh you know, we I did have a near-death experience. I don't call it a near-death, it was a death experience that I came back from. Yeah. So I actually had a widowmaker heart attack, was dead for 25 minutes, just happened to be in an ambulance that they were trying to resuscitate. It's an absolute miracle. We're in the process of writing a book about it right now. The hospital will tell you would tell you it's a miracle. Matter of fact, the name of the book is There's No Code for Miracle, because they can't they don't have a code in the insurance forms, you know, for miracle. But I wound up, I'll tell you what led up to it in a moment, but I'll just tell you the end of the story right quick. So wound up in the ambulance to come to the house. I'd been struggling a little bit, not not much, just a little bit of a pain in my left arm for a couple of maybe about three months, and I was going through every series of tests, nothing showed up. The last test we had to do, we did was on a Friday. This all happened early Monday morning on on Veterans Day of 24, November 11th, I think it was. So anyway, my wife on that Friday decided look, the last test is you got to go in with a catheter and take a picture of your heart and all that kind of stuff. So I said, well, if this thing flares up, we'll just go to the ER and we'll get it done. Don't waste any more time. So we made that call on Friday and 11 o'clock, and I was working the business. I was working, we have a nonprofit, I can tell you about later, and we were just super busy. Uh, the election had just happened, and so that night I was working up to 11:30, finished my last call, and uh laid down and wasn't feeling good. So by the time the ambulance got there, I was feeling fine. Nothing showed up. EKG, nothing. Blood pressure was back down to normal. But we went went anyway. So as we were pulling out of our driveway, I walked to the ambulance, and the ambulance told my wife, let's just follow, you know, go down to the hospital, take your time, we're gonna get him checked in. And so this happened between the time I left the house and the hospital. So when she got there, she had no idea what had gone on. But I uh I coded. I coded in the ambulance, and the net result of that was it took him about 25 minutes to get my heart rebooted, paddled seven times, I forget how many epi shots and 20 other shots. I don't know what all they did. They did everything in their power. And for protocol, anything over five shocks, paddle shocks, your kidneys are gone. So my kidneys shut down, my liver shut down. I had aspirated in the in the amulets and and and and wound up with E. coli in my blood, had staph infection in my blood, 105 degree temperature. Wow. The heart came back right before they got to the hospital, but it was 80% damaged. So the protocol, my lactic acid was over 20. Anything over four protocol is basically don't do anything. So we had two doctors, one said don't do anything. And one doctor, who's a believer, bless her heart, told Bev when she got there, you know, I think it's it's either going to be a blood clot or it's gonna be a heart attack. I think it's a heart attack. But if it's not, I'm probably gonna kill him trying to determine if it's a heart attack. If it's a blood clot, if it's a heart attack and I go for the blood clot, same thing. So if you'll give me a chance, I'll try. And so and Bev said, please try. So she went in and found out it was a Widowmaker, my Widowmaker heart attack, and there's about a 12% success rate on that. Wow. So there I sat, I was in a coma for seven days. That's I'll tell you about my experience of what I was doing. I met the Lord during that during that time. I believe I met the Lord when I died at 25 minutes. But I was in a coma for seven days. Came out, they were about to be ready to unplug me if I didn't come out of it. They told her on a Thursday, if he didn't come out by by Monday, we're probably gonna we're gonna recommend, you know, we we shut everything off. And so I opened my eyes on Saturday, Sunday I woke up, and Monday they pulled the tubes out, and the following Saturday I was released from the hospital. Wow. Heart was back to 100%, lungs were back, liver was back, fever was gone. The only thing missing was the kidneys, which they told me I'd probably need to have kidney, I had to have kidney dialysis. They were going to do it for like three months and then start looking for a kidney because your kidneys are destroyed when you go through that process. And so uh my fourth had three dialysis a week. I went through the first week. The following week, the first dialysis, the doctor walked in and said, we can't explain it, but your kidneys are back to 100%.

SPEAKER_00 33:47

Wow.

SPEAKER_02 33:48

Pull the port out. So within three weeks, basically, I went from dead in an ambulance to completely healed. Wow. So that's that's the story. And so it's uh, and it's still we're we're doing interviews for this book right now. It's still very emotional. My family, you know, I was gone. I was with the Lord. I mean, I I was but my family just did an incredible job. My wife and my children, and just and they fired up the prayers and had them going on social media and just miracle after miracle happened during that. Wow. That's so that's pretty powerful, isn't it? Yeah, absolutely. I listened to we we give our testimony around the country now, and I listen to my wife, and I go, Is that me? You know, it's like, wow. Because I was with the Lord. Uh yeah, I want to hear about that. As soon as I coded, I was in the ambulance. I was just pulling out of a driveway, and I'm starting to float out of this ambulance, you know, I'm looking down and what's going on. And all of a sudden, I mean, the ambulance people didn't even know what's going on because I just I was looking at them and they were doing their normal stuff. And the next thing you know, I'm actually floating into outer space. I remember seeing the city of frostproof, you know, the lights, and and all of a sudden I'm in the middle of outer space, and it's just like you see in TV shows and stuff, the stars are everywhere, and all of a sudden, appears in front of me by the millions, as far high, if you could think, just looking up into outer space, low on every side are these millions of I call them television screens, so they're really holograms, and there were scenes of earth, things going on on earth, and I couldn't really make them out, but I could tell there were people, and this person was in a house and they were talking, and this person was in a car, and it was every scene on earth. And then all of a sudden, to my left, here comes Jesus in a white robe, brown hair, big smile on his face, the most loving, peaceful. I can't even describe the feeling that you have when you leave your body. You, you're, it's it's just it's total bliss, you know. And he's smiling at me just like you're smiling at me right now. You know, and he's going, Steve, I want to show you what's going on in the spiritual realm. And I believe the whole thing was set up because of what I was going through here on earth, because like I said, we have a nonprofit. If you'll give me a chance to kind of back that up and tell you what was happening at night. So we started in 2020, after the 2020 election, a group of business guys got together and we began looking at, okay, what's really going on in our country? We got a we got a problem. And so we met with Senator Rand Paul, we met with some other people in the in that in that world, and we determined, you know, we've got an enemy. That enemy's come down to the local level. And so we found out through some investigations, it was all local, met with our sheriff, and we decided to form, you know, if you if for example, if you if you go to you've seen all the bad stuff going on in school boards, for example, trying to get rid of the bad books in the children's libraries or whatever, just a prime example. Or little Johnny goes to Sally's bathroom. Where's that coming from?

SPEAKER_01 36:50

Right. Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 36:51

Well, that's coming from the evil one that's imp infiltrated in our government in different ways. And so what you have is you have a school board and you have maybe three ACLU attorney ACLU attorneys over here forcing them to let Johnny go to Sally's bathroom because of quote unquote Title IX, and the school board scared, the school board attorney's scared, and the only person fighting is a mom, three minutes and a microphone.

SPEAKER_03 37:15

Right.

SPEAKER_02 37:15

Right? So we said, what does she need? I'm business mind, you know. What can we do for her to provide a level playing field? And so we we have an intelligence operation, we have a media team, and we have lawyers that are boots on the ground that match up with their lawyers. So that's what we put together with Citizens Defending Freedom. And so we've been very successful. But that night, the the the election happened the week before, and we were doing all kinds of stuff there, which I can't even talk about, but just know there were good people that saved that that election, too, that's coming up. But also our Intel team, from time to time, they come across human trafficking. So, and and matter of fact, the guy that leads our Intel team, that's where we hired him from. He was former special special ops and worked for all kinds of agencies, but he was working in that field. He comes to work for us. So I get a call from our leader about 11:30 that night. He said, Listen, we got we got over a hundred girls on a plane leaving Mexico, American girls, headed to South Africa. They're gonna land there, get on a plane, head to the Middle East, and once they get to the Middle East, it's gonna be maybe eight months and they're gonna be dead. We've got to get them. We got some people, boots on the ground in South Africa. Can you help me? Need to raise X amount of money. And I said, Let's do it. So I get on call, I call a few people, we raise the money. So we had boots on the ground when that plane landed to rescue this girl. So now fast forward, I'm with Jesus, okay? And the first thing he comes, he comes to my side, he puts his arm around me like this. He's standing right here. He says, Steve, I want to show you what's going on in the in in the spiritual realm. Because I was thinking, man, I'm tired. How hard is this supposed to be, you know? And so it was almost like a pep talk, but he he he pulled in one of those screens, one of those holograms to me, and it was those girls, and they were in a building. I don't know if it was those girls, it was some girls locked in a in cages in a dark, dark room, and all of a sudden, three points of light come into that room, and the room gets illuminated, and the girls are freed and they run. And he begins telling me about how God works on earth and how that Jesus is the radiance of his glory. And the first thing he said is to Steve, I see everything. Okay, I see everything. But when when when you are doing what you're doing, you're working with me to shine light into that in that arena, and so in that arena of darkness, but you cannot see my God, my father, my God's glory. And he told said, You remember Moses? He tried to he asked to see God's glory, right? And what was he told? No, you can't see God's glory. You can see my goodness, but not my glory, right? Okay, right. So he's he's he he mentioned that. He said, the reason is my father's holy, and if you saw him, you'd be destroyed, right? So he sees you through me, and you see my father through me. So I'm the I'm the mediator. So when we work together, we've shined the light of my father into these dark areas, and that's that's your mission on earth. So you're doing what you're supposed to be doing.

unknown 40:22

Wow.

SPEAKER_02 40:22

Isn't that cool? Yeah, that's amazing. So so that was I said, okay, you know, and I'm I'm uh it was it was almost like a not a pep talk. It was like, hey, let me show you what's going on so you understand, you know. Oh gosh. And he went through, you know, he really spent a lot of time on the energy and the all of light is God. All energy comes from God. He we took and we took and we went into a womb and to a DNA strand of a baby in a womb. He said, These these DNA strands are my father building that baby in the womb. Isn't that cool?

SPEAKER_04 40:57

That's amazing. Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 40:58

So he said, My father is everywhere, everything, every part of creation he created, including you. So we get through with that, and then we fast forward, just like Star Trek. I mean, these stars going fast, and we've come to a halt, and we're sitting, and here's this massive city of heaven.

unknown 41:16

Wow.

SPEAKER_02 41:16

I mean, massive. I I don't know what I had in my mind about heaven, but I mean, it's just as far as the eye could see. And there's tall buildings, short buildings. I come up to a fence, it was the it was a wall, not a fence, but a wall, and it was probably about chest high to me. And all of a sudden, and it if you can picture it, it's it's it's golden, it's translucent, has a golden tone, it's almost like clear, and these buildings are everywhere as far as the eye can see, big and tall and small. And then there were like side streets, but there was one main street, you know, that went all the way to it disappeared in the back. And these saints began coming. These saints began coming out of the streets, and they were rotating in. And my grandmother was one of them. She comes right up to me and she goes, Steve, keep going, keep going. Don't be discouraged, you know, keep going. And every saint, they knew me, I didn't know, I didn't know all of them. They would come up and they were, it's like they had a project they were doing, and they were just coming up saying, Listen, just keep going. We lived our lives. This is your turn. Keep going, keep going. And then they would be rotating in, rotating in. What was interesting is after I woke up about four days, one night, Bev and I were in the room by ourselves, and and I was, you know, hospitals are always cold. So I said, Bev, crawl up in here with me. It'll come cold, warm me up. And all of a sudden we're sitting there, and about 20 of these same saints came in my room. Wow. And they said it one more time. He said, Steve, keep going. Keep going. Wow. You know, you can do this, keep going. And so that was the second big scene, was just an encouragement from the Lord and my own grandmother.

SPEAKER_01 42:58

That's that's wow.

SPEAKER_02 42:59

And then we came back to outer space, and the last two things he shared with me. He said, Steve, I'm he said, I'm about to expose all corruption and evil in the world, and I'm bringing every nation to the valley of Jehoshaphat, Joel chapter three. And they're gonna either receive me or reject me. For those that reject me, I'll deal with. But for those that receive me in the world, uh he said, I'm about to fill the portals of heaven with those people, and the final harvest has begun. So go home and share with your friends what I've shared with you. And next thing you know, I wake up and my little wife's right here.

SPEAKER_04 43:37

Wow. How long was it for you? Like in that, like you sound like you were in coma for seven days, you said? How long did it feel?

SPEAKER_02 43:44

Yeah, I I you know, you don't have time. Yeah, I was I was gonna say you don't have time there. People ask questions, you hear the voice. When you're there, they you speak in spirit. Okay. We don't speak in words like this. But when God impresses upon you in spirit, it's more clear than us speaking. Right now. Wow. Same with the saints. So you speak in a spiritual realm, a spiritual language. And and you have no doubt who who Jesus is. I mean, when he comes, you know it's him. And it's it's it was it was awesome. So I don't know how long it was. There's no time there. You know, it could have been 10,000 years. Yeah. All I knew is I was totally at peace. And it was just, I've never, I've always had a bad back, you know.

SPEAKER_04 44:26

Uh-huh.

SPEAKER_02 44:26

A back doesn't never, I mean, no pain anywhere, no pain. But uh, but the main thing, I was just in awe of all of it. And and I never felt like I wasn't gonna come back. I mean, I hear some people say they've experienced that. I didn't want to come back. I I just said, Lord, what what do you want to show me?

SPEAKER_04 44:43

That I was just eager to kind of had a sense you were gonna come back.

SPEAKER_02 44:47

I I didn't know. Right, okay. I didn't care.

SPEAKER_04 44:50

Uh-huh.

SPEAKER_02 44:50

You know, I really didn't care. I just said, okay, what are you teaching me here? You know, I'm just amazed. Wow. Oh man. Wow. Thank you. I just wanted to thank you, thank you. You know, to the Saints, you know. Yeah, yeah. It was just in pure encouragement. Wow. And so anyway, that's when I came back. Turns out I was down for seven days. I said, seven days? You know, what are you talking about? I've been in bed for seven days. I gotta get up. You know, I gotta get up and go, no, no, no, you gotta sit still. But uh I said, I had meetings lined up. What happened to those meetings? My partner was here, I had all kinds of people here, you know, took care of my businesses and stuff. But anyway, that's that's what happened. I mean, that's that's the reader's digest version, but it's uh still impactful today. And what's interesting we're learning as we interview these people for the book is just how many people's lives were changed through that because the prayer was so intense, and prayer changes things. And I didn't see the I I you know, I don't know, I could talk about this forever, but uh, we had a Bev had a a second cousin that we had not seen for 25 years. She's a prayer warrior. But that night, that morning, the Lord had woken awakened her, and she had a vision, and she's and the Lord told her, You need to pray for Steve Maxwell now. So she gets up and starts praying. She has this vision of she said, Steve is a 15-foot tall. She said it was Angel Gabriel. Now, Bev said that was too high ranking, you know, but but uh she said he was 15 foot tall and he was in your room and he was covering you, and you had demons trying to come in and get you, and the angel was protecting you. Funny, we had an interview today for the book, and another lady, friend of ours, Shayla said she was in the room immediately. She was one of the first ones there. She said, I felt the wings of angels in that room, and the Holy Spirit was just really telling her what was going on. She didn't even know this woman had the vision until today. Wow. So there's stories like that over and over and over again.

SPEAKER_03 46:53

So anyway, the crossover is just even more confirmation of what was going on.

SPEAKER_02 46:58

Yeah. And so the second the same lady had a vision two nights later. She said, and I was hooked up to machines and everything, just like the time before, but there was no angel in the room. But the enemy had come back. And that was the night, Bev will tell you they had real problems. They thought they'd lost me for a little bit, they couldn't get things done, things were going crazy. And it was a day, she had this vision, the demons had come back, and they were trying to get to me, but she said there was a force field around me. And the Lord shared with me when I came home, because I got right into God's word, and I just said, Okay, Lord, you got to show me what this is all about. And he said, This is still small voice that I know what it is now, and you've heard it before too. I can tell you that. I tell your audience, if you've heard that still small voice, you've heard the voice of Christ. You've heard the voice of the Holy Spirit. It's the same one I heard. So, but he that voice told me, he said, Steve, I sent my angel there to protect you until the pre until the word got out. And once the word got out, the prayers of the saints are enough to hold back the enemy. Wow. Powerful. So we don't look at prayer the way we used to look at prayer. Prayer is the weapon of choice in the kingdom. And if you read Daniel, that story of Daniel, how he prayed, and remember the angel finally showed up and he said, Daniel, he's kind of out of breath. You know, we were coming down. God heard your prayer. He sent me, but I got held up over here, had a fist fight over here with another devil. So I've been trying to get here, but the Lord heard your prayer. That is real. Wow. That spiritual realm is real.

SPEAKER_03 48:30

I don't know where my brain is going. I'm just like, that's like spinning right now.

SPEAKER_04 48:35

That's a really overwhelming story. Very cool. So well, I'll tell you too.

SPEAKER_02 48:40

When you look at our world today, it's always been two kingdoms at war. Yeah. Right? Revelation 12, read that one. It's like, whoa, Satan's after us Christians, those that keep God's testimony of Jesus and keep God's commands. Revelation 12. He tells us he was so mad he couldn't kill Jesus when he's a baby. So that's us, man. That's why the world hates Christianity, because the world world's spirit is the spirit of of Satan.

SPEAKER_04 49:06

Mm-hmm.

SPEAKER_02 49:06

Yep.

SPEAKER_04 49:07

Yeah, I've I think I've recently kind of been more convinced about just the realities of spiritual, you know, the spiritual side of things, things we don't see, and just how that that is really uh impactful to us, you know, on a day-to-day basis. And so, you know, I think it's really cool to hear that. And I've heard other near-death experience stories. It's interesting, some of them kind of line up with what you're saying, like the city of God. Like I've heard other other near-to-th experience stories where they see that kind of thing. And very cool.

SPEAKER_02 49:36

Very one thing I know I can tell you for sure in your audience, there's no such thing as death unless you go to hell. Because the definition of death is not leaving your physical body, it's a separation of between you and God. There's no separation. That is death. Yeah. Because when you leave this body, we're just going to another dimension.

SPEAKER_04 49:57

That's so cool.

SPEAKER_02 49:58

Yep. I'm an eyewitness.

SPEAKER_04 50:01

Yeah. That's incredible. Well, so I guess is that is that kind of what has led to your your and and maybe it maybe I shouldn't say it like that, but maybe it'd sound like you already started this. Is your citizens defending freedom and then and then this near death experience? Is that is that kind of I don't know, refocused your your mission or is it kind of not really.

SPEAKER_02 50:22

It's just confirmed everything. And you know, I'm human, you know, you worry about stuff and that shouldn't be worried. I don't worry about anything anymore. Don't worry about dying. Don't worry about anything. I just just go do my job.

SPEAKER_04 50:35

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 50:36

Okay. Have fun.

SPEAKER_04 50:37

So why so recently you spoke at at uh high point about, and I think is this is this kind of where your the citizens defending freedom kind of comes into your your your your mission right now?

SPEAKER_02 50:50

Is that so kind of going to churches and talking about the founding of the cum country and and and kind of combating that other narrative that's the people in America, we've never been taught our true history, and really it's about the two kingdoms are at war, is what is what our nonprofit is, is it's Christian based. We're fighting against an evil kingdom. So the Bible's very clear who's responsible for fighting back. It's not the heathens, it's those that don't believe, it's the believers. So what we're finding is about 25% of our pastors are ready to defend, and we have a wonderful pastor here with Pastor Jack. Yeah. He's a matter of fact a leader in the in the nation right now. Most of our church don't even know that. And what he's done here is being duplicated around the nation. But it's God's people. If my people call by my name and level themselves and pray, seek my face, turn from the wicked ways, I will come from heaven and I'll come and deal your land. But we have to be willing to be forward, get out of the walls of the church and stand in our communities, right? So we got about 25% of our pastors that are ready to do that, but they don't know what to do, they don't know what to do. I say it's like throwing third graders on the beaches of Normandy.

SPEAKER_01 52:02

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 52:03

Is what we got. We got a we got a mess. Most people don't even realize, oh my gosh, it's that bad. I went through the same experience back in 2020 when we realized that there's 29 NGOs in Polk County that funded by George Soros, which is an evil guy. Yeah. And and what's their mission? Their mission is to tear down the United States. So you've got you've got political Islam, you've got the LBGT pride group, and you've got Marxism. And they've all come together. And the root of all three of those is not the Spirit of Jesus Christ.

SPEAKER_01 52:36

Right.

SPEAKER_02 52:36

So so they've come against this nation, and what's happened is we're sound asleep at the switch. So these 25% of the pastors, that's a lot of pastors, right? So but they are looking for how do I engage? So we the first step of our program is we work with Liberty pastors. Pastor Jack went to those, that's a three-day conference, and we deprogram them from seminary. Our seminaries have taught pastors just keep the gospel inside the church. No, Jesus never said that. Matter of fact, he said, Upon this rock, I'll build my church. And he's talking about Jesus Christ is a rock. But but what do he when you when you look at the word church? Upon this rock, Jesus Christ, I will build, I will select my leaders in governments, basically what it means. Most people never heard that.

SPEAKER_00 53:29

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 53:29

Why? Because your leadership in your local communities become those uh bearers for goodness and truth if they're the right leaders. So when you got to look at all the world history, you know, first time in the world history that a country was formed, it was formed under the authority of the Holy Scriptures. And that's what we covered in church the other day. Most people don't have never been taught that. The law of nature, nature's God. But you got to go way back. Just take children of Israel, they're slaves, they come out, and they, you know, you got all that old Old Testament history, monarchs, kings, judges. There's no real freedom. It's just you had a good king or a bad king, right? So, and then all of a sudden, Christ comes, he's crucified, he resurrects from the grave. All of a sudden, like we talked about in the service, uh, the Garden of Eden was the first opportunity to understand the difference between liberty and freedom. And for the audience, freedom without liberty is is licentiousness, and that leads to death, right? So Adam and Eve had a they could eat of free to eat any tree in a garden, hundreds and hundreds of trees, except you can't don't eat of the one. So that was a restriction. That was one obedience they had to obey, and if they did that one thing, then they could eat of all the other. Well, they they failed, right? So but in it when they founded the country, if you opening paragraph of the Declaration of Independence, and uh, you know, the enemies told us these guys weren't Christians. Yes, they were. 55 out of 56 were Christians, 26 out of 56 had seminary degrees. These guys were well written. Every constitution from every colony in the Lord Jesus Christ, you know, that the whole mission was the colony was to expand the gospel. I was reading today about the signing of the end of the war of the declaration uh uh against Great Britain and the opening statement in the Lord of in the name of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ and the and his Father and the Holy Spirit. That was the opening sentence on the peace treaty with England.

SPEAKER_03 55:34

I can tell you they didn't teach me that in school.

SPEAKER_02 55:36

Yeah. They don't teach that in school. They don't teach, you know, we had a college president here, never heard of that. Wow. It's just like the whole slavery thing we touched on, too, right? Slavery, terrible. It's always been terrible. It's been a human nature problem for all of human nature, not just here. But yet this country was one of the first to try to get rid of it. We got we're the first to get rid of slave trade. We were the fourth to get rid of slavery behind Great Britain and a couple other countries, but we tried, right? We were trying, even that was one of the one of the complaints to the king in the Declaration of Independence that was removed at the last minute, it was the longest one. It was 168 words long, and they were blasting the king of England because he would not let the colonies end slavery. And they put that in there, and but Georgia and South Carolina wouldn't vote it, voted in. But the other colonies were all good. But they left in all men are created equal. So why so there's you know, there's there's a sect out there that says America's bad, it's terrible. Wait a minute, you gotta look at the whole picture. They were trying, and we we still today, there's two nations in the world that are still fighting slavery. One's the United States, the other one's the Netherlands. So, I mean, you got to look at everything, right? You gotta put everything together. So back to your point. So, what we saw at CDF was we needed to activate the church and teach them how to do so. We provide technology, we provide training, we provide the lawyers, intel. So when we first come to a community, the first thing we do is we do a deep dive research on dark money, what else is going on in the community, and economics and good, and you know, we we look at the whole community, and then we go to the church and say, okay, here's here's some hot buttons you may want to look at. Let's start praying for these people. But the mission, and we start a group, like Jim Abney runs our group here. Okay, we start a group inside the church, and their role is to keep tabs on everything going on civically. And then the first thing we do is we pray for all of our leaders, right? We truly pray they come to salvation if they don't know the Lord, and but then we keep an eye on everything. And Jim's done a great job here.

SPEAKER_04 57:38

We got Yeah, we went through his class. Yeah, he's great. Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 57:42

He's got a lot of volunteers. He's his goal is to put a volunteer on every committee in every uh at the county level, school level, and the city level. So we got eyeballs on everything. Yeah. And then CDF comes in, and man, we're the we're the we're the we come in with the B-52 bombers when we have to, you know. We come in with lawyers and and we give them the support they need. If somebody sues Jack, we we we we defended nine pastors last year across the nation, one all nine. So we we give the pastors the lift they need. We say don't don't worry about a thing. We got your back. The Constitution protects you. Just go do it.

SPEAKER_04 58:14

Yeah. Wow.

SPEAKER_02 58:15

Yeah. That's really cool. So that's where that came from.

SPEAKER_04 58:17

What would you say then? I don't know, and you've kind of already been touching this, but like, you know, I think uh did you have like a uh what would you say is your vision for CDF and like what it's gonna you know grow into or or what what do you see being becoming?

SPEAKER_02 58:31

Yep. Our goal is to be in all 50 states. We're expanding now from seven to thirty-eight. So we're in the process of doing that. Wow. And we wanted to be, we just want to be a resource and a and to defend good Christian people that are trying to do the right thing, but more importantly, to help them be the watchman on the wall. You know, the Bible talks about the watchman on the wall, and we've we haven't been, we you know, I'm I'm I'm as guilty as my generation, you know, we we thought you could elect a good person and they they they love the country. We've got a bunch of people who don't love the country, they're trying to take it down. So it's a it's a it's a shift. So we hope to be that catalyst to stand for help churches stand firm in their communities. And what's happening, the cool thing is, is people are come to Christ in the process. I mean, everywhere we go, we give it, we give a we give an altar call every meeting we have, even with pastors. We've had pastors come to Christ at our meetings. Wow. So it sounds crazy, right? So but how do we defeat? We're defying we're fighting Satan, right? We agree with that, right? It's just a dark kingdom. So the Bible tells us the same Revelation 12, they defeated the enemy by the blood of the Lamb. That's Jesus has already done that, by the word of our testimony. So your program's talking about testimony. Well, testimony comes in a lot of ways, yeah, but testimony is always outward facing, right? Yeah. So that means the city hall, the school board, anything, anybody in leadership that can provide power or direction around our lives, we got to be involved in that, or the enemy will come in and do what he's done. So, word of our testimony is a second thing, and they did not love their lives so much as to shy away from death. In other words, I'm willing to die for my kingdom and standing firm in my testimony. And when we do that, just like that we talked about at our church service, our founding fathers signed, you know, they they they they talked about the law of nature, nature's God. Then they talked about God giving us our rights of life, liberty, and pursuit of happiness. They talked about the supreme judge of the world they're going to submit themselves to. And at the very end, they talked about divine providence. They were calling on God's providence to help them win. We're going up against the biggest power in the world. But when you submit yourself and willing to sacrifice yourself even to your own detriment for the kingdom, that's when God steps in. That's what Daniel did, it's what Moses did, it's what Esther did. So you go back and look at the Faith Hall of Fame, Rahab, they all put themselves in a position to be harmed because of their love for God, because they were obeying God. That's the that's the secret that most people don't talk about that invites God into your life. So when you are struggling with a marriage and you know you're gonna have to, you can't get it your way. You're gonna need to, you're gonna need to humble yourself, right? That hurts. All right, you're going against the flesh. But when you say, Lord, I'm gonna follow you, not me, even if it hurts, that's when you invite God into your process of your marriage. And so it's a it's a big concept, but it's very, very consistent throughout scripture. So that's what our founding fathers did. Our lives, fortunes, sake, our honor. And most people don't don't don't understand the whole law of nature, nature's guy, but it's very simple. I'll say it real quick again. The holy scriptures are the are the law of the universe, law of nature must follow the scriptures, the creator of the scriptures. That's law of gravity, law of physics, the law of how babies are born, how a seed dies and grows stalk of corn. That's all God's laws. And then man's law must submit the law of nature, nature's God, or it's considered invalid. That's powerful. Invalid. The actual term that that uh that I think it was John Locke used. If not, it was it was Blackstone used it. It was Blackstone. Those are the two guys that wrote about the law that we hung our whole law practic law system on here in the United States. But he said it's not pretended, it's not uh invalid, it's pretended law, and we're not supposed to obey it. So think about that. So when the government comes down and says you gotta do this, and it goes against the law of nature, nature's God, we don't have to obey that law. That's what Daniel did. You can't pray, Daniel. Watch me. Hold my beer. I'll tell people you obey that opens his window, watch me. Why? Because I serve the God of the universe, not the God, not man. That's the difference between the United States of America. That's why we're unique. And when we do that, you submit to God, that one thing in the Declaration of Independence, it's just like the Garden of Eden, you submit to that one concept, now you're free to pursue life, liberty, not freedom, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness, which means going and reaching your full potential till you're unleashed. And all of a sudden, this country's born, and we plowed and farmed the same way for 5,000 years, and within just a few decades, we were modernizing everything. I mean, we went from nothing to the moon in just a couple of hundred years. And for 5,000 years, we don't. Where did that come from? That's the creativity of a holy God working through people who are submitted to him.

SPEAKER_03 1:03:53

I agree with that. Yeah. That's cool.

SPEAKER_02 1:03:57

That's good stuff, isn't it?

SPEAKER_03 1:03:58

Yeah.

SPEAKER_04 1:03:58

Yeah, really good. Yeah, you got me. I'm gonna run through a wall here and say I think this is this brings us to our tag out segment. All right. So this is this is where each of us gives a one-sentence takeaway from the conversation, and then Steve, you can uh kind of leave our audience with just uh some anything you want to impart to them. I'd say I mean there's a lot of things I could talk about. Man, I I really thought your just everything you said about you know your visit with Jesus in heaven. Oh my gosh, that's so exciting and very cool. I'm trying to decide between two here. I guess going back to that, I'm gonna go back to what you said about prayer being a weapon, being the weapon of choice in the kingdom of God. And just it was kind of very cool to hear the stories that you're sharing about you know how impactful the prayer was while you were in the hospital. And just that, you know, I know sometimes, you know, we you know, I try to be pretty regular with my prayer life, and you know, sometimes it just it doesn't feel like it's doing anything, and but it's very, very cool to to hear those those testimonies that you know the prayer prayer is real, prayer is meaningful, and it's it's not a wasted breath or wasted words. And so I don't know, it's just very encouraging to to hear that.

SPEAKER_02 1:05:17

Well the Bible says a fervent prayer of a righteous man availeth much and it has a whole new meaning you know to that. And but do you think about human nature? It's hard to be fervent, right? I mean, uh you gotta be in trouble to be fervent almost. Yeah, yeah, yeah. At least I'm I'm human, but we were in trouble. And uh I I was fine, but I mean, for my family, I mean it was it was so that the prayers were intense. Yeah. And so anyway, yep. But they they they do they do work.

SPEAKER_00 1:05:44

Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 1:05:45

Yeah. I I agree. There's like a lot of things that we can take away today that I was thinking about the prayer one. I guess another one that I would say is just like the business concept of like building the businesses around the kingdom. I think. Maybe before today, whenever I think of someone saying, like, oh yeah, like this is a Christian business or whatever whatever term they're wanting to use with it. I envision like, oh, okay, so you guys like pray before your meetings or you pray over your business every day, like that sort of thing. And maybe there's a Bible study. I don't know. I don't really have a concept for that. And you really brought that today, where I was like, oh, there is actually like a I'm gonna call it a business model that's actually grounded in the kingdom. And it's not just throwing some prayers out there or some devotionals. It's no, we're gonna actually ground this in the truth of the Bible. And then this is how the company gets let forward. And so that was that was very powerful for me.

SPEAKER_02 1:06:37

Well, thank you for that. I, you know, I if I can add to that, what you know, my grandfather had a great saying. He said, What you are speak so loud, I can't hear what you're saying. So we try not to shove it down their throat, we just try to live it.

SPEAKER_01 1:06:49

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 1:06:50

So like we had one time over 600 employees, but what we would do, we identify we identified uh like we adopted 16 kids at the orphanage in Lakeland, you know, and um and our employees every holiday, every every time to go back to school, our people adopted those kids. We went over, we raised money, the employees did, and we we cooked a meal once a month and took over there, so they could see and start serving. One year I went to Haiti for an omission trip and I got the feedback, right? Right, yeah, I was there with you on the next one. Right? Remember that? And houses and things. So I I went back and reported back to our people because they sent me, right? So I got to report back to my people, y'all helped do this. And so, and what I found is in it like one year we had Flag Day, we had we had a we had a Irojima veteran and a Normandy veteran. They were still alive back then, and we had Flag Day, and we had a whole historic day with our people. We we tried to uh what I found is in the Christian life, it's and I had to learn this the hard way because it you know but if you can see people and value people, your employees, it's everything. And that's a that's a picture of Christ. So for example, we named ourselves the national champions. We had the egg containers, strawberry containers, blueberry containers, and we had track, we knew our competitors how much they were selling. As soon as we sold 51% over 50, we named ourselves the national champions. I had a 3D board in the in the building in this huge plant, huge board, national champions, you know, island packaging. And then I would shut the plant down, 24-7 operations. We'd have all the employees come out, we would put a medallion on their head every year. They'd get a medallion, blueberry champion, egg champion, right? Knew them by name. I had my HR guy would make sure I had new every birthday. I wrote a birthday card to every employee. I gave them a $10 gift card. Hey, I'm glad you were born. Thanks for working in shipping departments. So it's not just what you say, it's what you do. And that was the spirit, I believe the spirit of Christ that was in that, in that, in that place. I still miss those people. But they're doing good now. I just went over and saw them the other day, but they're doing good. So if that makes sense. Yeah. Yeah. So it's not just I love to give people ideas because people don't think that way. You know?

SPEAKER_04 1:09:09

And so well, Steve, uh, so this is you know, your chance. If there's one more thing, you anything you'd like to to leave our audience with, just uh kind of you know, feel free to I cannot leave an audience without asking them if they know Jesus Christ as their Lord and Savior.

SPEAKER_02 1:09:24

And if they don't, just how simple it is to come to Him. He's there, He loves you, He came here to die for your sins. That's the problem. It's a sin problem. And every religion in the world is trying to figure out a way to get to heaven. Well, in Christ, in Christianity, we can't get there. Uh-huh. Yep. Because we can't live a perfect life. He came and lived the life for you. And the Bible says He who knew no sin, he made him. God made Jesus who knew no sin become sin on your behalf, that you may become the righteousness of God through him. So that's the message. Just all you gotta do is simple God. I'm a sinner. I believe that Jesus is the son of God. I'm asking to come in my heart and save me. And I want him to be my boss from here on out. And you give your life to him. And you're saved.

SPEAKER_04 1:10:17

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 1:10:18

And I'm telling you, there's coming a day we're all going to face it. And you're going to leave these bodies, and you want to be saved when you leave the body. Amen. Okay.

SPEAKER_04 1:10:26

I can't get a better, a better end up than that. That's great. All right.

SPEAKER_03 1:10:31

Yeah. Well, Steve, we really appreciate you coming on. This has been a very powerful time together, and I think there's been some pretty unique topics today, too. Yeah, absolutely. So I'm sure our audience will definitely appreciate that. But we super appreciate you coming out.

SPEAKER_02 1:10:44

That's been my honor. And remember, your whole life's a testimony. Absolutely.

SPEAKER_04 1:10:47

That's right. To our audience, if today's episode incurs you, share it with someone who might need it. And if you are interested in sharing your testimony, email us at testimony tagteam at gmail.com. This has been Testimony Tag Team.

SPEAKER_03 1:11:00

And we're tagging out.