SPEAKER_00: Good listening to this edition of the road.
SPEAKER_01: Now, guys, please hear me.
SPEAKER_01: If you don't drill down on anything else I say today, you need to really pay attention right now, because unfortunately, I'm going to describe a lot of people who are in this auditorium.
SPEAKER_01: When we share our testimony together at this point that city would take over and say, the next eight years after I said the prayer would become a living nightmare.
SPEAKER_01: And here's why.
SPEAKER_01: I accepted Jesus as my savior, not my Lord.
SPEAKER_00: At The Road, our vision is to raise up wholehearted disciples of Jesus Christ.
SPEAKER_00: For more information on the road, visit theroad.org.
SPEAKER_00: We hope you are encouraged by today's message.
SPEAKER_01: So today, now it's time to for the message time.
SPEAKER_01: You want to hear a message?
SPEAKER_01: Really?
SPEAKER_01: Let me try that again.
SPEAKER_01: You want to hear a message?
SPEAKER_01: Well, uh you got me.
SPEAKER_01: Pastor Steve said, You take it.
SPEAKER_01: So uh I'm taking it this morning.
SPEAKER_01: So if you don't like the message, you can blame Pastor Steve.
SPEAKER_01: How's that?
SPEAKER_01: Actually, uh, Pastor Steve spoke yesterday at that uh Trans America event.
SPEAKER_01: How many of you were at that event where Pastor Steve talked yesterday?
SPEAKER_01: Are there anybody here from that event?
SPEAKER_01: Just a few of you.
SPEAKER_01: I understand it was an incredible event.
SPEAKER_01: He spoke there to a lot of uh business uh folks and brought a powerful message.
SPEAKER_01: He'll share more about that next time he comes up, I'm sure.
SPEAKER_01: All right, uh okay to have fun in church.
SPEAKER_01: Is it okay to have fun in church?
SPEAKER_01: Next fall, uh Pastor Steve and Liz and then Cindy and I are gonna be uh bringing a couples event to our church.
SPEAKER_01: We're gonna, we don't know what the dates are yet, but we're gonna, and it occurred to me when I was thinking about this yesterday.
SPEAKER_01: In fact, I woke up in the middle of the night thinking, you know, we gotta prepare for that.
SPEAKER_01: When when Cindy and I first started doing couples events many years ago, Cindy encouraged me that I need to go out and find out more about women, because he he didn't think I knew very much about women.
SPEAKER_01: So um, how many of you have discovered that there's a difference between men and women?
SPEAKER_01: Yeah, all right, come on, man.
SPEAKER_01: I mean, if this were a men's event, the men would be going, yeah, they're different, man.
SPEAKER_01: I mean, no, there's a difference between men and women.
SPEAKER_01: Do you know what the difference is?
SPEAKER_01: You want me to can I teach you what the difference is?
SPEAKER_01: Huh?
SPEAKER_01: You gotta encourage me.
SPEAKER_01: All right, when little babies are born, we're essentially the same.
SPEAKER_01: Our brains look pretty much the same.
SPEAKER_01: We don't know why this happens, but around the six-week mark, there's a chemical released in the male brain called testosterone.
SPEAKER_01: And it has the effect of deteriorating the connecting fibers between the right and left hemisphere.
SPEAKER_01: No, no, no, this is true of a little boy's brain.
SPEAKER_01: We it doesn't sever them completely, it just deteriorates them a little bit.
SPEAKER_01: The result of that is that little boys, as we're growing up, we think more compartmentally.
SPEAKER_01: We think with one side of our brain at a time.
SPEAKER_01: So a man can walk into a room and experience that room.
SPEAKER_01: He can leave the room, shut the door, and go into an entirely different room and experience that room, totally independent of the room we were just in, it's called called compartmentalization.
SPEAKER_01: Now, with you ladies, it doesn't work that way.
SPEAKER_01: Everything in your life kind of flows together like a river.
SPEAKER_01: So we you ladies are more right brain, uh we men are more wrong, left brain, and so we so and when you ladies say something to us guys like, how does that make you feel?
SPEAKER_01: I mean, you know, you kind of get the deer and the headlights look, it might take us a couple of weeks to think about it, you know?
SPEAKER_01: And so we're just not in well, think of it this way: you ladies have this incredibly thick network of wires and conduits and transistors and electronic gadgetry connecting both sides of your brain.
SPEAKER_01: And with us guys, it's like two paper cups and a string, man.
SPEAKER_01: Hello! We're just out of touch.
SPEAKER_01: Uh I was down in San Diego many years ago.
SPEAKER_01: Some of you know Dwight Johnson.
SPEAKER_01: Uh Dwight Johnson uh is pretty well known around town.
SPEAKER_01: He's come here for a while, and I had an invitation to speak in an event down there, and this was like way back in the 90s, and Dwight Johnson let me stay at his house in San Diego.
SPEAKER_01: So I stayed there, and I got home, and I told Cindy, I said, Hey honey, Dwight let me stay at his house, and I saved a lot of money.
SPEAKER_01: You know, I didn't have to go to the hotel.
SPEAKER_01: And she said, Well, that was really nice.
SPEAKER_01: Why don't we s why don't we send him a card?
SPEAKER_01: I said, Great, let's let's send him a card.
SPEAKER_01: And she said, Well, you know, it was so nice, why don't we send them a why don't we send them a gift?
SPEAKER_01: I said, Great, let's send them a gift.
SPEAKER_01: So she says, What are their colors?
SPEAKER_01: I said, honey, I think they're both white.
SPEAKER_01: No, that's not what I mean.
SPEAKER_01: What color is the carpet?
SPEAKER_01: How many of you guys look at the carpet?
SPEAKER_01: We don't understand what the color of the carpet is.
SPEAKER_01: So I got so frustrated, I decided to find out the technical difference between men and women.
SPEAKER_01: You want to hear it?
SPEAKER_01: Okay.
SPEAKER_01: I know this is true.
SPEAKER_01: You got it off the internet.
SPEAKER_01: What is a cat?
SPEAKER_01: Cats do what they want.
SPEAKER_01: They rarely listen to you.
SPEAKER_01: They're totally unpredictable.
SPEAKER_01: When you want to play, they want to be alone.
SPEAKER_01: They expect you to cater to their every whim.
SPEAKER_01: They're moody.
SPEAKER_01: They leave their hair everywhere.
SPEAKER_01: They drive you nuts.
SPEAKER_01: And they cost an arm and a leg.
SPEAKER_01: Conclusion.
SPEAKER_01: They are tiny women in little fur coats.
SPEAKER_01: All the men are saying, honey, I have no idea who that guy is.
SPEAKER_01: I don't know.
SPEAKER_01: What they find, but well, I'm not done.
SPEAKER_01: I'm not done yet.
SPEAKER_01: Ladies, are you ready?
SPEAKER_01: What is a dog?
SPEAKER_01: My dogs lie around all day sprawled on the most comfortable piece of furniture in the house.
SPEAKER_01: They can hear a package of food being opened half a block away, but don't hear you when you're in the same room with them.
SPEAKER_01: They can look dumb and lovable at the same time.
SPEAKER_01: I'm sorry, Stu.
SPEAKER_01: They can look dumb and lovable.
SPEAKER_01: They growl when they're not happy.
SPEAKER_01: When you want to play, they want to play.
SPEAKER_01: When you want to be alone, they want to play.
SPEAKER_01: They will love you forever if you rub their tummies.
SPEAKER_01: They leave their toys everywhere.
SPEAKER_01: Conclusion: they are tiny men in little fur coats.
SPEAKER_01: And that is the message that Steve wanted me to bring to you this morning.
SPEAKER_01: So there you go.
SPEAKER_01: Anyway, I'm excited because I had a I had a message planned for this morning, and when I shared it with staff, uh they all encouraged me not to share the message I had prepared, but rather to tell my story.
SPEAKER_01: It occurs to me that many of you know who I am, and they know uh you know a little bit about Cindy and my journey and our family, but many of you don't know.
SPEAKER_01: And I've been on board here now since September, so I'm gonna tell you just briefly a little bit of my background, my story, because it's a it's a powerful one, but I generally don't tell the the front end since 1989 up till now.
SPEAKER_01: Just quickly let me rehearse that and what brought us here to the road.
SPEAKER_01: In 1989, I left the business world.
SPEAKER_01: I was with a Fortune 500 company for 25 years based in Southern California.
SPEAKER_01: I found myself on the top floor of the Alker Towers one day because I was an officer and vice president of this corporation.
SPEAKER_01: I was I was up there with a battery of lawyers signing paperwork to buck to borrow$200 million to protect our company from a hostile takeover.
SPEAKER_01: After that happened, I discovered that there was no hostile takeover threat at all.
SPEAKER_01: It was a ruse on the part of some of the people that were above me to buy back 51% of the shares to have controlling interest in the company.
SPEAKER_01: I read the handwriting on the wall, and I got out just in time.
SPEAKER_01: Two years later, they filed bankruptcy.
SPEAKER_01: When I left the business world, didn't know what I was going to do, I ran into a man named Dick Eastman.
SPEAKER_01: Many of you know who he is.
SPEAKER_01: We were introduced by a mutual friend in Southern California.
SPEAKER_01: Dick had just taken over a little ministry, or actually a big ministry called Every Home for Christ, with his little ministry, Change the World School of Prayer.
SPEAKER_01: He'd been there three months, and he really needed someone like me to come in and help run it.
SPEAKER_01: Long story short, they hired me in 1989, right out of the business world, and they made me executive vice president and CEO, very unusual combination, of Every Home for Christ.
SPEAKER_01: I actually reported directly to the board at that time.
SPEAKER_01: Came on board, helped reorganize the ministry, merge two ministries together, uh, helped work through a new vision casting process, and in year three of that development decided that we needed to look at maybe another place to locate.
SPEAKER_01: Decided to check out Colorado Springs, by the way, totally independent of Focus on the Family.
SPEAKER_01: Didn't have any idea Focus on the Family was moving here.
SPEAKER_01: We found that out later through a mutual friend, Gary Larson, who happened to be the architect for Focus on the Family and a dear friend of ours.
SPEAKER_01: So we came here on the coattails back in 91.
SPEAKER_01: You guys remember that whole migration?
SPEAKER_01: We moved here with 30 families and lived in Monument, built a house in Monument.
SPEAKER_01: But uh I left in '94 and started on target ministries.
SPEAKER_01: And if you want to know anything about us, you just go to otm.co.
SPEAKER_01: That's the website.
SPEAKER_01: But we've been doing men's ministry for 25 years now.
SPEAKER_01: This is our 25-year anniversary this June, and uh mostly for men.
SPEAKER_01: I've done Promise Keeper events and we did our own events all across North America, really around the world.
SPEAKER_01: And uh my wife and I do couple seminars all around the world, and I also do a lot of conferences for senior pastors on the six structural elements of effective churches.
SPEAKER_01: So I've been doing that ministry for 25 years, and then most of you know the story of what happened to Cindy back in 2009, where we almost lost her.
SPEAKER_01: I shared that story last year when I was here about how miraculously God intervened, and on Super Bowl Sunny 2010, the doctors came in and informed us after four months in ICU, mostly in a coma, they came in and told us that Cindy was not going to live.
SPEAKER_01: There was zero chance for survival.
SPEAKER_01: And of course, many of you know the rest of the story.
SPEAKER_01: God had a different idea.
SPEAKER_01: She was miraculously healed, but as a result of what she experienced, she had scar tissue on her lungs, which made it difficult for us to live at this altitude.
SPEAKER_01: So we decided a few years ago to go to Southern California, where our other daughter lives.
SPEAKER_01: Uh, Kim and Mark, our daughter, our Kristen and Mark, Kristen, our daughter here with her family, is here with us today, and they're part of our church.
SPEAKER_01: Our daughter Kristen is uh in Southern California where we moved to.
SPEAKER_01: And then as we began to come back and visit in 2017, uh, we figured out that she didn't need oxygen anymore at altitude.
SPEAKER_01: So that was another miracle.
SPEAKER_01: So we decided to take a risk and step out on faith, really, to come back here and give it a try.
SPEAKER_01: When Pastor Steve found out we were thinking about coming back, I had met Steve a couple of years ago.
SPEAKER_01: We became dear friends.
SPEAKER_01: I heard his story and his journey, and it so impacted me.
SPEAKER_01: What God has done in this man is just nothing short of amazing.
SPEAKER_01: Uh he is one of the most humble, gifted leaders I've come across in a very long time.
SPEAKER_01: He has a powerful ministry to men, which also drew me.
SPEAKER_01: Uh he asked me to be an overseer, I agreed, and then when he found out that we were possibly coming back, he asked me if I would consider coming on staff.
SPEAKER_01: And so we went back and forth for a while, and then I decided to do that.
SPEAKER_01: So we're on staff here since September, and we're still doing on-target ministry.
SPEAKER_01: So that's kind of the back end of the story.
SPEAKER_01: Now, the front end of the story is uh a little different.
SPEAKER_01: I was born into a very large Italian family in in uh in Rhode Island back in 1945.
SPEAKER_01: I I know I don't look like I was born in 1945, but I was I was born when I was 12, so that counts for that.
SPEAKER_01: But anyway, uh and Cindy and I, by the way, have been married this year 54 years.
SPEAKER_01: 54 years.
SPEAKER_01: Cindy, Cindy, honey, honey, honey, will you pay attention to me?
SPEAKER_01: Stand up for just a second.
SPEAKER_01: Say hello.
SPEAKER_01: Does that look 54 years marriage?
SPEAKER_01: No.
SPEAKER_01: So anyway, I was born in Rhode Island into a large Italian family.
SPEAKER_01: When I was eight years old, my mom and dad decided that uh they we we needed to move to uh uh to Southern California or to go to Southern California to visit my mom's relatives for a two-week vacation.
SPEAKER_01: So they they packed all three of us kids, my myself, my brother, who was I was eight years old, my brother was six, and my little sister was just a few months old, into an old Nash Rambler, ugliest car you ever saw.
SPEAKER_01: And across the country we went for a two-week vacation to visit the relatives in California.
SPEAKER_01: Well, uh we never went back to Rhode Island.
SPEAKER_01: And I I didn't realize until I was 14 years old that the reason we didn't go back is because mom and dad were running from the law.
SPEAKER_01: Now, we didn't know that at the time, but there wasn't a Bonnie and Clyde thing or anything like that.
SPEAKER_01: But uh my dad had got into some financial trouble, and uh they decided to encourage us to move to Southern California and they'll send the furniture later.
SPEAKER_01: Well, you know, you could do that back then, you couldn't do that today.
SPEAKER_01: So here we are in Southern California, but here's the problem for me.
SPEAKER_01: I was this eight-year-old, firstborn in my dad's generation, so everybody spoiled me, especially my grandma who lived with us.
SPEAKER_01: Everything I wanted, she would get for me.
SPEAKER_01: And I and and and my mom, I would go to the store with my mom and she and I would say, I want that.
SPEAKER_01: She'd say no.
SPEAKER_01: So I'd throw a temper tantrum in the middle of the store, yell and scream, and my mom would always give in to me, which of course we know is not a good idea.
SPEAKER_01: So I learned at a very early age, now listen, I learned how to become a controlling person.
SPEAKER_01: We don't intellectualize it like that, but we learn behaviorally that if I can do certain things and cause other people to do what I want them to do.
SPEAKER_01: So I learned how to do that.
SPEAKER_01: So my mom and dad, here I am, this out of control little guy.
SPEAKER_01: So my mom and dad decide to put me in the Catholic school system.
SPEAKER_01: So how many of you have been in the Catholic school system?
SPEAKER_01: Okay, Catholic school system, back then, corporal punishment was in, and they really liked it.
SPEAKER_01: Okay?
SPEAKER_01: And so here I go in this grade school, and and they they had the the nuns, you know, the sisters, they wore the thing, what's the what do you call that thing there?
SPEAKER_01: Yeah, I think it was so tight that they couldn't smile.
SPEAKER_01: You know, it didn't be really tight.
SPEAKER_01: And so I remember Mother Anthony, big woman, could hit really hard, man, and they were beating me up every day, and my mom and dad would bail me out, and I barely made it through the grade school system, ended up in the Catholic high school system.
SPEAKER_01: Okay, all boys, Notre Dame High School, Sherman Oaks, California, all boys at that time.
SPEAKER_01: And so they didn't have sisters, they had brothers.
SPEAKER_01: And if you think sisters are tough, you haven't lived until you've been under the brothers of the Holy Cross.
SPEAKER_01: Okay?
SPEAKER_01: They would hit you, seriously, closed fist.
SPEAKER_01: They would draw blood.
SPEAKER_01: I lasted one year.
SPEAKER_01: The last day, I mean, I was so totally out of control.
SPEAKER_01: The only brother I remember is Brother Marcel.
SPEAKER_01: Why?
SPEAKER_01: Because he was the detention class guy.
SPEAKER_01: That's the class you go to every day after school, the bad guys go.
SPEAKER_01: This I don't usually share this, but this actually happened.
SPEAKER_01: Last day of school.
SPEAKER_01: I'm in Brother Marcel's class and I'm in the back of the class, probably as far away from him as halfway through this section right in here.
SPEAKER_01: I'm in, and he's writing on the chalkboard, okay, and his back is to me.
SPEAKER_01: And I'm saying things about him, and the whole back of the class is laughing.
SPEAKER_01: Well, Brother Marcel had a hearing aid.
SPEAKER_01: And you know, they wore the full robes and stuff, and we thought he was hard of hearing.
SPEAKER_01: No, he wasn't hard of hearing.
SPEAKER_01: He had the hearing aid and he had the control for it in his in his robe.
SPEAKER_01: So he could be with his back to the class and turn it up and hear a whisper in the back of the room.
SPEAKER_01: Well, I did not know this.
SPEAKER_01: And so he he's right, so here's what happened.
SPEAKER_01: He's writing on the blackboard, he hears me, okay?
SPEAKER_01: He and he doesn't not like me, okay?
SPEAKER_01: He he slams his chalk down, and I'll do it in slow motion.
SPEAKER_01: Here's what he did.
SPEAKER_01: He turned around, he grabbed the eraser off the off the uh board there, and he turned around and he spotted me and he went right between my eyes, nailed me right between my eyes, chalk in my eyes.
SPEAKER_01: He came down the aisle, grabbed me by the hair, took me out in the hallway, and beat me up, and and and he drew blood.
SPEAKER_01: And they went into the principal's office, and that's the day they kicked me out of school.
SPEAKER_01: They kicked me out of school mostly for behavioral reasons, but academically I had four F's and a D.
SPEAKER_01: Yeah, you laughed.
SPEAKER_01: The D was in religion.
SPEAKER_01: So, anyway, I kicked out of, and then that's when I went to the public school system for the very first time, and that's where I met my wife, Cindy.
SPEAKER_01: She was like my blonde, blue-eyed Sandra D.
SPEAKER_01: I mean, some of you are old enough to remember old Sandra D, you know, and she was the first person in the history of my family that was an Italian, germ background.
SPEAKER_01: You did you guys ever see my Big Fat Greek wedding?
SPEAKER_01: Okay, well, you met my family, okay?
SPEAKER_01: That was kind of like that.
SPEAKER_01: So I met her and her family and my family very different.
SPEAKER_01: Her family, my family, yelling and screaming all the time, very demonstrative, you know.
SPEAKER_01: Yeah, and we don't mean anything by it, but that's just the way we grew up, you know?
SPEAKER_01: Her family, soft, loving, huggy, sickening to God of me.
SPEAKER_01: I I didn't understand it.
SPEAKER_01: So, so what happened is we started dating right out of high school.
SPEAKER_01: We were like 15, 16 years old.
SPEAKER_01: We got married right out of high school, like we were like 19 years old, got married.
SPEAKER_01: But here's what happened.
SPEAKER_01: Very early in our relationship, now listen carefully because I'm gonna describe some relationships maybe that are right here.
SPEAKER_01: Very early on in our relationship, a winner, psychologists would say a winner-loser pattern began to happen.
SPEAKER_01: A winner-loser pattern happens when one person's personality in the relationship suffocates the personality of the other person.
SPEAKER_01: And as kids, we didn't recognize that this was going on.
SPEAKER_01: I was this domineering, overbearing, insecure, prideful young guy that was suffocating her, and she was being way too submissive, and we didn't understand it.
SPEAKER_01: So when we got married, I was just starting in the business world, and I was living my life, and she was living her life, and so this pattern was going on.
SPEAKER_01: Neither one of us knew anything about a personal relationship with Jesus.
SPEAKER_01: She grew up in the Lutheran church, I grew up in the Catholic church.
SPEAKER_01: We got married in the Catholic Church to save faith and my family, but never went back to church again.
SPEAKER_01: Father O'Reilly, remember, he would call O'Rion or O'Rion would call every Saturday night and say, Hey, uh Cindy, is Vince coming to church tomorrow?
SPEAKER_01: Well, I don't know, I never didn't want to go back to go back to church.
SPEAKER_01: So I had surrounded myself with all the wrong role models.
SPEAKER_01: People who taught me how to go out, drink, do drugs, lie, cheat, steal, womanizing.
SPEAKER_01: I mean, you would not want me, trust me, to go into the details, but I did all of those things in my secret life, and I hung with people who did, and I was their king.
SPEAKER_01: I also had an Uncle Louie.
SPEAKER_01: My Uncle Louis was busted by Ed Meese personally when he was attorney general under Ronald Reagan.
SPEAKER_01: They all knew who Uncle Louie was.
SPEAKER_01: In fact, if you want, when you go home today, Google Louis the Couch.
SPEAKER_01: That's my Uncle Louie.
SPEAKER_01: Funny story how he got named Louis the Couch.
SPEAKER_01: He's a hitman, and he would do his work at night and come home and he'd be in his apartment, and they had his apartment.
SPEAKER_01: The FBI bugged his apartment, so he'd be in the apartment, and the best I could tell, he's lying on the couch watching soap operas.
SPEAKER_01: And in the middle of the day, he's watching soap operas, and they can hear him.
SPEAKER_01: He's crying.
SPEAKER_01: Why did you marry that bum, you idiot?
SPEAKER_01: And then the FBI would they named him Louis the Couch.
SPEAKER_01: That's how he got his nickname.
SPEAKER_01: That's my uncle.
SPEAKER_01: So I'm like 19 years old.
SPEAKER_01: My uncle is on trial for 26 accounts of hits.
SPEAKER_01: I'm in the back watching the proceedings.
SPEAKER_01: But the prosecutor comes in and asks the judge to dismiss the jury because he's about to make an announcement the jury's not allowed to hear.
SPEAKER_01: We didn't know what was happening.
SPEAKER_01: The prosecutor says, Your Honor, the star witness against Lou, along with his wife, were shotgunned to death in their hotel room in Las Vegas last night.
SPEAKER_01: We have no case.
SPEAKER_01: I'm the guy going, Yes.
SPEAKER_01: That's where I came from.
SPEAKER_01: That's where I almost went.
SPEAKER_01: I titled this message overwhelmed by the Grace of God, and some of you know what I mean by this, but it weren't for the grace of God, guys.
SPEAKER_01: I'm gonna tell you something, I wouldn't be here.
SPEAKER_01: And many of you have stories that are like that.
SPEAKER_01: So I'm living my life, she's living her life.
SPEAKER_01: Okay, and so we're going on and on.
SPEAKER_01: And so one day her brother Ted, who who was a Lutheran pastor, uh later, but in during this time, he was like kind of a flower child hippie guy, and uh, you know, he was doing drugs and selling them on campus, and uh he he he got thrown into Beverly Hills jail, which by the way is not a bad jail to be in if you're gonna be in jail.
SPEAKER_01: So his mother called me in to go bail him out.
SPEAKER_01: So we went down, bailed old Ted out.
SPEAKER_01: He and his mother threatened him if you don't go to this campus crusade for Christ meeting, then I'm not gonna help you anymore.
SPEAKER_01: And he he didn't want to go, you know, but but he he finally decided to go.
SPEAKER_01: So he comes Monday morning, he's knocking on our door.
SPEAKER_01: I see him out the window, you know, and he looked horrible, like he'd been crying all weekend, you know.
SPEAKER_01: And Cindy answers the door and said, Ted, what happened to you?
SPEAKER_01: He said, Cindy, you're not gonna believe it.
SPEAKER_01: I accepted Jesus as my savior, and I can't wait to go back to school and tell all my friends they don't need their drugs anymore.
SPEAKER_01: And he's going on and on and on.
SPEAKER_01: And Cindy was searching, I wasn't.
SPEAKER_01: And so he said, Cindy, I'm gonna come back tomorrow.
SPEAKER_01: He goes over.
SPEAKER_01: Dusts off his Bible, comes back, and the next day he leads my wife to the Lord, which really ticked me off.
SPEAKER_01: Okay, so he leads her to the Lord.
SPEAKER_01: She comes and tells me, Guess what?
SPEAKER_01: I'm a born-again Christian now.
SPEAKER_01: I said, Huh! Get away from me.
SPEAKER_01: We used to call them Jesus freaks or RN's religious nuts.
SPEAKER_01: My buddies and I would get drugs and alcohol and watch Christian television, you know, with all the people with the buffoon hair dudes and stuff, and we'd get high and laugh at them, you know.
SPEAKER_01: So that was our life.
SPEAKER_01: She was smart enough not to try to push it on me.
SPEAKER_01: She left me alone.
SPEAKER_01: She went out and got 950 million people praying for me.
SPEAKER_01: I didn't have a chance, and I didn't know it.
SPEAKER_01: So, anyway, so she's living her life and I'm living my life.
SPEAKER_01: So I'm watching her one day, and it's like, wow, she's got a bounce in her step.
SPEAKER_01: She seems happy and full of joy, you know?
SPEAKER_01: And that really annoyed me.
SPEAKER_01: And I'm thinking, you know, why is she so happy?
SPEAKER_01: So one day I decided out of curiosity to go with her.
SPEAKER_01: She was attending a meeting, which was a safe place because it wasn't a church.
SPEAKER_01: The meeting took place at an old converted sorority house off the UCLA campus in Westwood, California.
SPEAKER_01: It was called the Light and Power House.
SPEAKER_01: And every Wednesday night, a young man by the name of Hal Lindsay would speak there.
SPEAKER_01: And I'd never heard of this man, so he had just written The Late Great Planet Earth.
SPEAKER_01: Some of you maybe remember this first book.
SPEAKER_01: So I went down there.
SPEAKER_01: We were packed in like sardines, man, young people all over the place hanging out the windows.
SPEAKER_01: And so this guy comes out, Mike Bartel.
SPEAKER_01: He's our dear friend, lived in Temecula.
SPEAKER_01: Mike comes out, and he's this big, tall, strapping guy, ex-army ranger, ex-assassin who used to go behind the enemy lines in Vietnam, take out his target, come back again, ex-mafia, ex-motorcycle gang leader.
SPEAKER_01: Okay, he came out and gave his testimony, totally blew my stereotype of what a Christian was.
SPEAKER_01: I mean, I certainly wasn't going to call him a Jesus freak, you know?
SPEAKER_01: And so he tells his story, and then Hal Lindsay comes out.
SPEAKER_01: And some of you know his background, ex-tugboat captain, captain, big womanizer.
SPEAKER_01: I mean, he was really living a seedy life, and he gives his testimony.
SPEAKER_01: And I'm going, wow.
SPEAKER_01: And then he opens up the Bible.
SPEAKER_01: Now, guys, when I was going to church in the Catholic Church, and the priests spoke out of the Bible, they didn't even speak in English.
SPEAKER_01: It was either Italian or it was Latin.
SPEAKER_01: We didn't know what they were even talking about.
SPEAKER_01: And he's reading out of the Bible and he's making it contemporary, and I'm thinking, wow, this stuff works in life today?
SPEAKER_01: Yes.
SPEAKER_01: So I went there for three or four months, okay, and I kept getting fed by him.
SPEAKER_01: And then one day on my way home, I decided it was a beautiful, clear day.
SPEAKER_01: Um I'm on my way home, and I decided that you know what?
SPEAKER_01: I'm gonna I'm gonna surrender.
SPEAKER_01: I'm gonna give my heart to Jesus.
SPEAKER_01: They taught me how to say the sinner's prayer, and I said, Lord, if the if you're real, I'm still kind of hedging my bet, but if you're real, I want what these people have.
SPEAKER_01: And I meant it, and I got home and I shared it with Cindy.
SPEAKER_01: And Cindy was ecstatic.
SPEAKER_01: Now, guys, please hear me.
SPEAKER_01: If you don't, if you don't drill down on anything else I say today, you need to really pay attention right now, because unfortunately, I'm going to describe a lot of people who are in this auditorium.
SPEAKER_01: When we share our testimony together, it's at this point that Cindy would take over and say, the next eight years after I said the prayer would become a living nightmare.
SPEAKER_01: And here's why.
SPEAKER_01: I accepted Jesus as my Savior, not my Lord.
SPEAKER_01: And there is a big difference.
SPEAKER_01: He wouldn't become Lord of my life for eight more years.
SPEAKER_01: Here's the, you know, depending upon your theology, maybe I had heaven insurance.
SPEAKER_01: I don't know.
SPEAKER_01: But here's what I want to tell you guys: there are two gods, not one.
SPEAKER_01: Over here is a God that we want.
SPEAKER_01: Over here is the God who is.
SPEAKER_01: They are not the same God.
SPEAKER_01: You pursue this God at your peril.
SPEAKER_01: This is the God who says, Hey, I'll help you if you help yourself.
SPEAKER_01: You'll make it if you're a good person.
SPEAKER_01: You can change that Bible verse and make it say anything your little heart desires to suit your unique lifestyle.
SPEAKER_01: You pursue this God at your peril.
SPEAKER_01: The God who is, listen guys, he's real.
SPEAKER_01: He lives in heaven and he has an opinion.
SPEAKER_01: And guess whose opinion don't count?
SPEAKER_01: We don't like that, do we?
SPEAKER_01: I pursued this guy because he agreed with everything I wanted to do.
SPEAKER_01: I won't tell you all the gory details of my life at that time, but I was in the business world, a hot shot, traveling all over the United States.
SPEAKER_01: I'm in a hotel room in Dallas, Texas, eight years later.
SPEAKER_01: I call home, which is my custom.
SPEAKER_01: Cindy's on the phone and she's crying.
SPEAKER_01: And I said, What's wrong with you?
SPEAKER_01: And she proceeds to tell me that while I was gone in the two days prior, she discovered something about my life that she didn't know.
SPEAKER_01: Someone once said, There's no such thing as a secret.
SPEAKER_01: Let me say that again.
SPEAKER_01: There ain't no such thing, guys, as a secret.
SPEAKER_01: First of all, God knows.
SPEAKER_01: But how many of you discovered there's a way in which everybody else ultimately comes to find out, too?
SPEAKER_01: She found out every dirty lie of my life.
SPEAKER_01: And I was 2,000 miles away sovereignly.
SPEAKER_01: I believe God had me 2,000 miles away.
SPEAKER_01: Why?
SPEAKER_01: So that I couldn't be there in person to try to control and manipulate this situation and make it come out to my benefit.
SPEAKER_01: I'd never been so scared.
SPEAKER_01: I cried myself to sleep that night and I kept calling home.
SPEAKER_01: I said, What are you gonna do?
SPEAKER_01: She said, I don't know.
SPEAKER_01: What are you gonna do?
SPEAKER_01: I don't know.
SPEAKER_01: She had every reason to leave me, legally, morally, spiritually, every reason.
SPEAKER_01: Okay?
SPEAKER_01: She didn't know.
SPEAKER_01: I got home.
SPEAKER_01: First thing I said is, What are you gonna do?
SPEAKER_01: She says, I don't know.
SPEAKER_01: But if there's gonna be any any hope for us, we're going to church.
SPEAKER_01: And I said, Okay, honey, let's go to church.
SPEAKER_01: You know, I how many of you guys know what I mean as a man?
SPEAKER_01: I was totally out of bargaining chips.
SPEAKER_01: Okay, those are those things where you have to store up uh for you ladies to get by and have a little grace.
SPEAKER_01: And I mean, a bouquet of flowers can last me two hours, you know.
SPEAKER_01: But I mean, I have to have chips.
SPEAKER_01: I had nothing.
SPEAKER_01: It was empty.
SPEAKER_01: Going to church.
SPEAKER_01: Well, that's when she started attending a little church in Van Ice, California, known as the Church on the Way.
SPEAKER_01: Some of you remember that's the ministry of Pastor Jack Hayford, who is our dearest friend and mentor to this day.
SPEAKER_01: So, my theological background, I went from Catholic to Hayford.
SPEAKER_01: There's a whole bunch in between that I missed, but it didn't matter.
SPEAKER_01: I would go to church on the way, and I say, okay, honey, so in those days, you got your you the Jack wouldn't let you have any, you couldn't have empty seats like this.
SPEAKER_01: Okay, and that church, huge church.
SPEAKER_01: They usher you in like cattle.
SPEAKER_01: They rope off the sides, and you've got to fill every seat.
SPEAKER_01: Okay, you're stuck.
SPEAKER_01: You guys, you guys have neighborhoods.
SPEAKER_01: You're in your neighborhood right now.
SPEAKER_01: Yeah, this is my row.
SPEAKER_01: You go find your own row.
SPEAKER_01: This is where I said all that.
SPEAKER_01: No, I say that's really dumb.
SPEAKER_01: Move it around so the pastor doesn't know if you're there, you know.
SPEAKER_01: But but you guys have neighborhoods.
SPEAKER_01: We couldn't have neighborhoods.
SPEAKER_01: Stuck in the middle of the aisle right over here.
SPEAKER_01: Stuck.
SPEAKER_01: So they come out, the worship team.
SPEAKER_01: They're praising God, worshiping God.
SPEAKER_01: And I'm thinking, what?
SPEAKER_01: I mean, they're raising their hands, man.
SPEAKER_01: I'm sweating through my clothes, and people are watching me, and my wife is saying it's gonna be okay.
SPEAKER_01: No, it's not okay.
SPEAKER_01: This is people are weird, man.
SPEAKER_01: And so I'm hyperventilating through the whole time.
SPEAKER_01: And then Pastor Haver comes out, and I'm thinking it's over.
SPEAKER_01: We sit down, he brings a message.
SPEAKER_01: Right in the middle of his message, okay?
SPEAKER_01: I turned to Cindy and I said, You you told him, you told him about us, didn't you?
SPEAKER_01: She said, No, I didn't say.
SPEAKER_01: You had to have told him everything that man said was about me.
SPEAKER_01: He even looked right at me.
SPEAKER_01: You ever had that happen?
SPEAKER_01: You know what that is?
SPEAKER_01: Here's what's happening in heaven.
SPEAKER_01: God's up there going to the angels, hey, come over here, come over.
SPEAKER_01: Look at him squirm.
SPEAKER_01: Look at him, look at him.
SPEAKER_01: That's what God's doing.
SPEAKER_01: And so we get through with the message, and I think it's time to leave.
SPEAKER_01: No.
SPEAKER_01: Now we're gonna form circles of prayer.
SPEAKER_01: I said, What?
SPEAKER_01: Well, what's a circle of prayer?
SPEAKER_01: It's when you turn and you face total strangers and you hold hands and you pray out loud.
SPEAKER_01: I said, What?
SPEAKER_01: She was so fed up, she turned and formed her own circle.
SPEAKER_01: I'm sitting there, I'm standing there all by myself.
SPEAKER_01: And so I turn around, and there's three guys behind me.
SPEAKER_01: Now listen, God has a sense of humor.
SPEAKER_01: These three men were elders in the church.
SPEAKER_01: They were on the elder board.
SPEAKER_01: They've been watching me this whole time.
SPEAKER_01: And so I turn around and the guy on the elder board, he says, Hey, I remember him because he's chewing gum.
SPEAKER_01: The last time I chewed gum in the church, the nuns come and they get you, you know, and they take you out.
SPEAKER_01: No, it's chewing gum.
SPEAKER_01: And he says, Hey, got any prayer requests?
SPEAKER_01: So I thought, you know what?
SPEAKER_01: I'm just gonna blow these guys over dead, you know.
SPEAKER_01: So I shared with him what's going on with us, you know.
SPEAKER_01: And the guy chewing gum, here's what he does.
SPEAKER_01: He goes, I thought he was gonna faint, you know, and he goes like this.
SPEAKER_01: He goes, huh.
SPEAKER_01: Okay, let's pray, shall we?
SPEAKER_01: And then it's like nothing to these guys.
SPEAKER_01: And and and then they prayed for me.
SPEAKER_01: And have you ever had somebody pray for you that doesn't know you?
SPEAKER_01: And they're praying something, and you're going, Whoa, where did that come from?
SPEAKER_01: You ever had that happen?
SPEAKER_01: I said, like, there's no way they could have known anything, and they prayed just the most amazing prayer.
SPEAKER_01: So they got all done.
SPEAKER_01: Okay, so now we're in the parking lot.
SPEAKER_01: And I'm walking through the parking lot with Cindy and my two little girls, and I feel like I've just been run over by 14 Mac trucks, you know.
SPEAKER_01: And I said, What are you gonna do now?
SPEAKER_01: She says, Well, now we're gonna go see the counselor.
SPEAKER_01: I said, Ah! Counselor! No way.
SPEAKER_01: Sorry, George.
SPEAKER_01: She says, uh, yep, I made an appointment.
SPEAKER_01: You did?
SPEAKER_01: Yep.
SPEAKER_01: Well, I had no chips.
SPEAKER_01: So I'll end my story by telling you what happened in that counselor's office.
SPEAKER_01: We walk in, and I'll never forget just an incredible young man at that time that was Pastor Jack's assistant.
SPEAKER_01: Daryl Roberts is his name.
SPEAKER_01: Daryl heard our story a little bit, said, Cindy, what are you going to do?
SPEAKER_01: So he says, I don't know.
SPEAKER_01: He said, Well, what did Jesus do?
SPEAKER_01: And he said, Well, he went to the cross.
SPEAKER_01: Yeah, he went to the cross, but what did he do then?
SPEAKER_01: Well, he died.
SPEAKER_01: Yeah?
SPEAKER_01: He died for who he died for me.
SPEAKER_01: And then he took me and he said, Okay, Vincent, come here.
SPEAKER_01: He brought me over and he positioned me in front of Cindy.
SPEAKER_01: I'm six foot, she's five foot two, and I'm looking at her, and she says, I want you to look into your wife's eyes.
SPEAKER_01: So I stood there, looking into her wife, her eyes, and I kept looking, but he said, No, no, no.
SPEAKER_01: Keep looking into her eyes.
SPEAKER_01: Keep looking, keep looking.
SPEAKER_01: He made me look into her eyes for what became an uncomfortably long period of time.
SPEAKER_01: For us men, that's anything more than four seconds.
SPEAKER_01: It's been said that you can tell the character of a man by looking into the eyes of his wife.
SPEAKER_01: Let me say that again.
SPEAKER_01: You can tell the character of a man by looking into the eyes of his wife.
SPEAKER_01: And dear ones, I'm here to tell you that is a true statement.
SPEAKER_01: As I'm looking into her eyes, he said words that reverberate in my soul to this day.
SPEAKER_01: It was just like this.
SPEAKER_01: I don't see a lot of life in there.
SPEAKER_01: Do you?
SPEAKER_01: Just like that.
SPEAKER_01: And it was like a dagger went through my heart.
SPEAKER_01: Do you know how they say a drowning person sees their life flashing before them?
SPEAKER_01: It was like in that moment the Lord allowed me to see this panoramic picture, this montage, if you will, of all the incredible hurt and pain I had heaped upon this precious child of his.
SPEAKER_01: And I never felt so ashamed.
SPEAKER_01: And Cindy would say that it was in that moment, she didn't share with this with me for a long time, that she really believed she heard God whisper something to her that she really didn't even understand at the time.
SPEAKER_01: He said these words, Cindy, if you will decide to forgive Vince, I promise you there will be a third-day resurrection.
SPEAKER_01: And she didn't even know what it meant.
SPEAKER_01: But I thank God every day that she made a decision at that time to forgive me and to move on.
SPEAKER_01: A decision that would forever change the course of our life together.
SPEAKER_01: Did we never have any problems from then on?
SPEAKER_01: You already heard the back end of my story.
SPEAKER_01: Sure we do.
SPEAKER_01: But how many of you know it's a lot different when you're tracking through it and you got Jesus living in you?
SPEAKER_01: Now, why do I share this story and what's the takeaway?
SPEAKER_01: I need somebody with a uh somebody real quick to come up that's got a$20 bill I can borrow just for a second.
SPEAKER_01: I promise you.
SPEAKER_01: Is that why you're coming up?
SPEAKER_01: You have a$20 bill?
SPEAKER_01: I promise you I'll I'll give it back.
SPEAKER_01: Yeah, yeah, yeah.
SPEAKER_01: Here, sit here just for a minute.
SPEAKER_01: Uh thank you, Lee.
SPEAKER_01: Everybody say hi, Lee.
SPEAKER_01: This is a pretty new, clean, fresh$20 bill.
SPEAKER_01: I want to pretend for a moment, this is obviously not mine, but let's pretend like it is.
SPEAKER_01: And I just happen to have way too many of these, and I don't need this one.
SPEAKER_01: Is there anybody here, if this were true, that would say, sure, I'll take it.
SPEAKER_01: Raise your hand if you just take it.
SPEAKER_01: Really?
SPEAKER_01: The rest of you don't want it?
SPEAKER_01: No, seriously, if we were giving these away, how many of you would say, sure, I'll take it?
SPEAKER_01: Okay.
SPEAKER_01: Now, now I want you to watch this.
SPEAKER_01: I want to wrinkle it up.
SPEAKER_01: Crack.
SPEAKER_01: Sorry, leaving.
SPEAKER_01: And now, it's not as pretty and new.
SPEAKER_01: It's kind of a little bit cracked and kind of wrinkled, a little bit more messed up than it was before.
SPEAKER_01: Any of you still take it?
SPEAKER_01: Really?
SPEAKER_01: Alright, well, hang on a second.
SPEAKER_01: Let me try this.
SPEAKER_01: I'm gonna throw it on the floor and take my shoe, which has got stuff from the parking lot and dirt, and I'm gonna grind it.
SPEAKER_01: Grind it on, I'm so sorry, and grind it into the carpet here.
SPEAKER_01: Now, it even picked up some carpet stain.
SPEAKER_01: It's kind of like broken, cracked, wrinkled, dirty, smelly, pathetic.
SPEAKER_01: Anyone still want it?
SPEAKER_01: Really?
SPEAKER_01: Let me make sure I know what you're telling me.
SPEAKER_01: You're telling me that no matter how cracked, how broken, how pathetic, how dirty, how smelly, how messed up this worthless piece of paper may be.
SPEAKER_01: And make no mistake about it, dear ones, this is nothing more than a worthless piece of paper.
SPEAKER_01: The only value it has is the value you and I place upon it.
SPEAKER_01: And you're telling me, no matter its condition, it has value to you.
SPEAKER_01: Come on, guys, are you getting this?
SPEAKER_01: Are you getting this?
SPEAKER_01: Because no matter how messed up, how broken, how wrinkled, how dirty, how pathetic you may think your life may look to you, how can you even put this in the same category of as a$20 bill when you think about how our Heavenly Father may think about you.
SPEAKER_01: It's not even in the same universe.
SPEAKER_01: Listen, guys, he's crazy about you.
SPEAKER_01: He loves you so much more than you can ever comprehend.
SPEAKER_01: Now, next time you want to throw a pity party for yourself, you remember the$20 bill.
SPEAKER_01: And no, you cannot have this one.
SPEAKER_01: In fact, here's what I'm gonna do for you, Lee.
SPEAKER_01: Could you come here?
SPEAKER_01: Instead of giving you this$20 bill, which represents the broken places in our lives, I'm gonna give you this new$20 bill, which is symbolic of what Jesus came to do for you.
SPEAKER_01: He came to make a way and to iron out all those wrinkled places in your life to make you the man that he wants you to be.
SPEAKER_01: That's what Jesus does for us.
SPEAKER_01: Amen?
unknown: God bless you.
SPEAKER_00: You've been listening to The Road.
SPEAKER_00: We hope you have been blessed by today's message.
SPEAKER_00: To connect with us further, visit theroad.org.
SPEAKER_00: If you are walking through a difficult time, we want to pray for you.
SPEAKER_00: Go to theroad.org, click on the ministries tab, and go to our prayer page to send us your prayer request.
SPEAKER_00: Thank you for tuning in today.
SPEAKER_00: Be sure to listen to the next edition of The Road.