Healing, Faith & Kingdom Authority with Eddie McAllister

In this powerful episode of Kingdom Authority, we sit down with Eddie McAllister for a raw and faith-filled conversation about military transition, childhood trauma, military trauma, devastating life circumstances, and the redeeming power of God.

Through pain, hardship, loss, and moments that could have destroyed him, Eddie shares the reality of two life-changing words: BUT GOD! What the enemy meant for destruction, God used for healing, transformation, and Kingdom purpose.

We dive deep into what it truly means to walk in Kingdom authority, live surrendered to Jesus, and trust God through every season of transition. From trauma to testimony, fear to boldness, and brokenness to true faith, this episode reveals how the goodness of God remains faithful even in life’s darkest moments.

This conversation is filled with powerful testimony, biblical truth, perseverance, and the fire of the Holy Spirit  encouraging believers to step boldly into the destiny God has called them to.

 In this episode:

• Military transition and identity
• Childhood trauma and healing
• Overcoming military trauma
• Faith through devastating circumstances
• The restoring power and goodness of God
• Walking in boldness and spiritual authority
• Trusting God through transition
• Discovering purpose through surrender
• Kingdom mindset and identity
• Bold faith that produces action

This episode will encourage anyone walking through pain, uncertainty, or transition to keep trusting God. Your story is not finished. God still restores, redeems, heals, and calls people into purpose.

Scripture Focus:
 “Behold, I have given you authority… over all the power of the enemy.” — Luke 10:19
 “And we know that all things work together for good to them that love God, to them who are the called according to his purpose.” — Romans 8:28

 Kingdom Authority Podcast  Equipping believers to walk in bold faith, spiritual authority, healing, and the transforming power of Jesus Christ.

Transcript

SPEAKER_02 0:11

Hey guys, um, we want to welcome you. This is our Freedom Fire Kingdom Authority podcast. Um, this podcast is really geared around uh helping people understand that that you have authority in Christ. Uh so many people live under what Christ died for them to have, uh beneath it. And so uh I want to welcome my friend Eddie McAllister. Um I guess you what's your town? Uh it's not really Marion, is it?

SPEAKER_00 0:41

Well, we're we're technically, although we're rural, we're we're technically Marion.

SPEAKER_02 0:45

Okay, so we are in Marion. Well, uh Eddie and his wife Joe are really just family to Victoria and I. And um Eddie and Joe serve um in our what used to be our home church, which is still our home church, really, in a lot of ways, uh, life in Christ Church in Marion, Kentucky. And um Eddie, Eddie has always been a very unique guy uh in my life. Um Eddie, in well, let me just back up real quick. In one of my former positions in life, in jobs, I worked in trauma recovery uh with high-risk veterans. Uh Eddie happens to be a veteran. Uh and I was high risk. That was very high risk. And um I want to salute and thank you for your service. Um we have we have the freedoms that we have to do things just like this because of our veterans. Um, and my heartbeat is still for helping veterans because they're just they're broken. So many of them come home. A lot of times, yeah. They come home, man. And they, you know, one of the one of the statements I heard one time was the military tells you how to put your uniform on, it never tells you how to take it off.

SPEAKER_01 2:08

They don't at all.

SPEAKER_02 2:10

Like, not even in the slightest. No, and you guys get turned out into a world. Um, one of the things I've learned, Eddie, is is is a military personnel, their life is on mission. Absolutely. And then you get out and you come back and you're into a world of chaos. There's no there's no structure to civilian life.

SPEAKER_01 2:37

What that becomes is, you know, for me, my last my last three years. So I I did a I was a Blackhawk mechanic and crew chief, so basically I turned the wrenches and then I went and held a gun outside of the bird. That's what I did. Um, I've got 600 hours flying over Afghanistan with a gun in my hand. Good nice. Um, so what what happens um especially and I made the comment about the last three years. So my last three years of that were I called home at the time, I was only there for about seven and a half months. So uh I deployed, you know, leading up to the deployment, you've got so many different trainings you go out of state and do. Um, you go do your actual deployment. For me, uh, I spent like a month in Spain before we got to Afghanistan. There was a hiccup with helicopters, it was a whole thing. But anyway, so we went, did our 12-month deployment on the way back? We got met by uh, and I wish I could remember his name, he was a general over Fort Campbell in Kentucky at the time. And he came on the on the plane before we got off, and he said, Man, don't get comfortable, you won't be here long. Wow. And uh so that was that was an interesting way to welcome us home, you know what I mean? It's like, oh great, 12 months of hell in your day. Thanks, sir. That's great. Um, but so then by the time, even though you just got home, they act like you've forgotten everything you just did for 12 months. So you've got to go do all the other the same training that you just did before you left, and then you go to your last appointment. So that was my last three years I had to do it. And what it creates, you made the comment about they teach you how to put the uniform on, they don't tell you how to take it off. Well, actually, they do tell you to take it off, they tell you to take it off and turn it in. Yep. Um, but then you go through some kind of mamsy pamsy type of classes and things, and they send you re-integration training. Yeah, reintegration training, which is a joke. But um you live on the adrenaline, it becomes the drug. So uh, you know, for me, I I was smoking and drinking and doing the things long before I had my first shot of liquor given to me at like seven years old when I had an adult. So um that adrenaline becomes the high. And what happens is you live in this heightened state for so long that when you do walk out that door for the last time and the dopamine goes away, you just like that's where the hypervigilance comes from. That's where the having to wash the doors and afraid of the crowds, and that's where all those things come in because your adrenaline keeps you on such a such a natural heightened state that when there's nothing to fuel that, anything sideways that happens keeps it back in front of life.

SPEAKER_02 5:41

One of the things that I learned um working with military personnel for an extensive time, most most people, not all, but most military personnel, their trauma did was not created in the military. Usually, what I have found is childhood trauma coupled with military trauma, and all of a sudden the way I always describe it is they've got a rucksack of crap, of trauma. A heavy one. Yes. And I use this analogy a lot. There, have you ever heard of the pebble with a shoe? The pebble with a shoe mentality is this you you ever had a rock in your shoe? Oh, it sucks, right? If you don't take that rock out of your shoe, what happens is you begin to limp, your knees begin to hurt, your hip gets hurt, your back's thrown out of proportion, tension builds in your back, and the next thing you know, you've got a headache, and your whole body's hurting, and all it is is a pebble in the shoe, right? Right. Well, the same principle is relevant in military personnel. What happens is you've got this childhood trauma, and some of it's big, some of it's small. But they've got this imaginary rucksack on their back, and they've piled in, and all of a sudden you've got uh alcoholism, drug addiction, military trauma, three divorces, loss of your uh visitation of your children, etc. Right? Right, but it starts with this little pebble in that rucksack, and they as you go through life, you begin to put in these bigger box uh rocks, and so people have to start unpacking this rucksack. Oh, yeah. Um, you know, I I never was in the military, which was always an odd thing that I'm working with military personnel for an extensive time, but I had trauma myself. You know, uh walking through life, I was, you know, there was a there was a lot of abuse that happened to me as a child. And when when Christ came into my heart, and I know you you we've spent time together and talked a lot, and it was the same principle with you, but you know, one of the verses that really that really popped out to me, uh, this is Old Testament. Um, and so um our producer of the podcast told me, I've got to make sure and remember that not everybody knows all these people and where we're coming from. Right. So I'm trying to I'm trying to walk this out, but uh, you know, Old Testament, Psalm 34, verse 18 says, The Lord is near the brokenhearted and he saves those crushed in spirit. Well, if you fast forward into Matthew 5, the the Jesus has what we call the Sermon on the Mount, the greatest sermon was ever preached. Right. Ever. Yeah. Bar nine. But he says in this in this uh sermon, blessed are those that are crushed in spirit. Well, yeah, we don't like that crushing of trauma. No, most of us had it in some form of fact. We've all got it. If you have on this weird thing called a flesh suit and you've had it on for more than let's say 10 years, you got some kind of trauma. Right. You know, absolutely you've got how old how old is your daughter? Youngest one was 14. 14. I've got a 12-year-old. Guess what they got? Oh, yeah. Trauma.

SPEAKER_03 9:11

Yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_02 9:12

And and so learning to operate in this crushing is is vital in our life with Christ.

SPEAKER_01 9:23

Oh yeah, yeah, no, it definitely is. Um, so the the the beginning stages of that, you know, and not not everyone has it. And the funny thing is, I used to despise the for me, the crushing that started as a kid before before I had the understanding that I have now. So, you know, I never I never have had an image of my parents together. Like I've never I've never seen that. Um, you know, the the idea of you know the stereotypical broken family, it started before I turned one. Like I don't I don't have any images of my parents ever being in the same room until I was an adult in any type of peaceful manner. Um, so peaceful manner is the secret, yeah. Yeah, that's that's the secret there. So, you know, both of them came from extremely tied-down families. I can't name, there's not a single person within my family that isn't in active addiction or has not dealt with it. There's not a single person, not a one. Wow. Um, from my at least that I know of personally, from my grandparents down on both sides of my family. Everybody has got a spirit of addiction. Everybody. Wow. Um most of them, whether it's drugs, alcohol, um, spirit of suicide has been very, very heavy on my family. My my grandfather on my dad's side killed himself in a Montgomery Ward uh in the Bay Area in California with my dad was three. So he doesn't even have so that this idea of what a true family structure looks like is never really there. My mom was kicked out of the house at 11, neither one of her parents no longer. So it's this idea of a broken family and a broken home became a generational thing by the time it met me. Now I've made it my personal mission to not allow that to carry on. I I played into it a little bit with my previous marriage. I didn't understand the things that I've come to understand now. But um, so you know, it just it I say all that to say some people don't know what they don't know. Well, and some people only know what they do know.

SPEAKER_02 11:45

There is such power in understanding that. Um you know, I I say this all the time. If you've ever listened to any of our sermons on at Freedom Fire Church or anything, I say this almost weekly. We are only a product of what we have been taught, right? I don't care who you are in human nature, you are only a product of what you've been taught. Well, you know, so let's backtrack. You you were saying your grandfather killed himself, father never had a father figure, yeah. Uh your mom never, and so they they both came from a spirit of brokenness and addiction, and it was and it was driven by addiction the whole time, too. Right. And then and then they're trying to make a family and have no knowledge of how to do that, right? Right? I was the same way, you know. Uh I don't ever remember my parents. Um, the only time that I remember them was the beatings of my father or my mother, right? Right. Um, but as far as having that family deal, I didn't have that uh until I was in my probably five or six year range old. Uh my my maternal grandmother uh took me in. And so, but by that time, that damage was so done that I didn't know I was I was broken. I was I was this broken hearted and crushed in spirit. Like my spirit was so, but what I heard you say, and I want to I want to hone in on this because it's something that I know you've lived and I've lived. I can walk into a room and and say generational, and everybody will say curses, but why do they do that?

SPEAKER_01 13:32

Because they don't know about the blessing.

SPEAKER_02 13:34

There it is. When you begin to understand that we are the seed of Abraham, yeah, we have the blessings if we're walking in generational blessings. You said you've made it a mission. I did too. Somebody along the line, somewhere already, has to be the chainbreaker.

SPEAKER_01 13:53

Oh, yeah, there's there's there's got to be a line drawn in the sand and and choices made. You know, um our our uh me and Joe's kids don't always get it because you know we we didn't know what we didn't know with the older kids, right? And you know, we we get told and we hear it from multiple that we're we're hard on Mariah. But the reality is is we're we see the things that we did wrong, come on, and we're doing our best to make sure we don't do those things again. And but the fruit, the the the the fruit shows itself. It does. I've got a straight A student. Come on. She, you know, last year she was she was mad because she didn't make all A home rolls, she missed it by one percent on one grade on one report. Yeah, you know, so are we hard on her? Yeah, yeah, it's it's it's my job to make sure that she doesn't do the things that I come on, man. But um, you know, the fruit pays for itself.

SPEAKER_02 14:54

You know, I uh Victoria and I are so blessed, we're we're we have we have five children. And you know, I used to make this stupid statement children don't come with an instruction manual. Well, really, they they they do, yeah. Uh but it we didn't know what we didn't know at that time, you know what I mean? Um, but I've learned throughout life uh raising children, I it's not my job to be their friend, you know. Our older children, um, you know, they're beginning now. Um, I can be somewhat of their friend. Yeah, yeah. You know what I'm saying? I'm still dad and and Victoria's still mom. But but we can be that there's a different transaction points. But with our youngest, guess what we are?

SPEAKER_01 15:44

Yeah, yeah. You've you know you've got to be mom and dad.

SPEAKER_02 15:46

You've gotta be. And and and I'm gonna say this because you and I had this discussion. Um I go through Kinley's phone.

SPEAKER_03 15:56

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 15:58

Um, why do I do that? You know, there's a lot of parents that oh, you should respect their privacy. No, no, no, no. Listen, my job is to make sure that I'm dab with them, right? Because, like you, I don't want her to go through the trauma that I went through. And you know where it it started by being influenced by others. Oh, yeah. Not that it was their fault, I still had choices to make, but I was influenced. And I want to make sure that you know, this is one of our things, this was for free for our listeners. You are not called to be your kid's friend, not at all. You are called to be their parent, and if you don't know how to do that, let me introduce you to this thing. It's called the Bible. Yeah, yeah. And it has these cool instructions of how to be a parent. Yes, it does. Yes, it does. It's wild. You know, you can go anywhere. Let's I want to run over here real quick. You go anywhere in the book of Proverbs. I I just flipped to the book of Proverbs. Listen, listen, my son, to your father's instruction, don't neglect your mother's teaching. And that was absolutely, you've seen it, just flipped open. For they will be a garland of favor on your head and pendants around your neck, my son. If sinners entice you, don't be persuaded. This is how you parent 101. Yeah, you get this in you and you tell it to your kids, and this will give you the training manual of how to raise children. It will. And listen, are we gonna be perfect at it? Probably not. But you you said this a while ago, and I want to run with this one. You're seeing the fruits of it.

SPEAKER_03 17:44

Oh, yeah. Yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_02 17:46

When you put this stuff in you and begin to apply it and live it and walk it, you know what you do? You begin to see the fruits of what this is.

SPEAKER_01 17:58

Oh yeah. By by setting the by setting the foundation, you you're you're setting uh uh almost like an activation or or or a projection for the word and the prophecy. Oh good. The the calling that that comes as that child matures. Yeah. So uh, you know, the the the basis of this episode being trauma. So in a very, very tight nutshell, as fast as I can, I'll rattle it off. So I I told you guys the whole rock and family thing. Mom never got right, dad got right, um, he quit doing the drugs and the craziness um pretty much when I was born. Um occasional casual drinker here and there, even to this day, but for all intents and purposes, got his life together. Mom absolutely did not. Um, that didn't happen until I was well into my adult life. Um so the trauma starts there. Uh through childhood, uh abused, I was molested, I've been you know into junior high years, I've been shot at, I've been stabbed, um moving into high school, you know, I dropped out of high school early, went to take care of my mom, who was an active addiction, um got a job, worked full-time, did the whole thing, you know, and then ended up in the military. So you take there's a whole lot of backstory to every single bit of that, but the rucksack's half full before I got there.

SPEAKER_02 19:36

There it is.

SPEAKER_01 19:37

All right, so walking through that, one the the the traumas are the traumas can be equally impactful the whole way. 100% so when when you take the trauma and you mix in substance abuse. Oh perfect storm. You know, as as a kid, I I said it as a kid, I was given my first shot of Jack Daniels, I think I was seven years old, seven, eight years old. Um it was a man that my mom was with. Uh he was actually my youngest, my second to the youngest uh siblings father. Uh he that that's a whole that's a whole nother story. He he was bound up, he'd done plenty of time, uh he'd been in all the big prisons in in California. Uh it bled over onto my little brother. He's no longer with us, he died last year, partly because of uh you know active addiction. But so you start there, you know, there's you know, me and Joe, fishing's our thing. Yeah. Um, so fishing for me as a kid was you know, the there'd be two or three kids, we got soda eats, and then the rest of the cooler was beer. The soda ran out, you you drank beer. That's what was there, right? Um, so that snowballs into high school and discovering pot and pills and everything else. So leading up to my military service, I can't, there's not a year of my life past probably eight or nine that there was not consumption of some type of substance. So I joined the military, I quit smoking pot, I quit doing the pills and all that stuff. And you know, uh, once you got the uniform on, no one really cares about an ID, so Drake can becomes the constant um snowball into active alcoholism. Um then mixing that with deployments and explosions and bodies, and you know, uh as a veteran, the the number one question that the inquiring minds always want to know is did you kill anybody? Well, I I actually I'm blessed there because from a helicopter. All you know is that the bullet stop coming. You don't have to confront that part of it.

SPEAKER_02 22:06

Sure.

SPEAKER_01 22:06

So I I have the the the blessing side of that of just you know not not having to confront that head on like like some of my 11 Bravo guys do. Right. Um but you start mixing that that the prior trauma, you know, like as I said, the rucksack's half full. Now the rucksack's intoxicated, and you are trying to to deal with with the trauma of the deployment. Um you know, the one for me, the the the hardest one I dealt with, I think, amongst all the different situations. It was Father's Day in 2009. And at the time, my oldest biological daughter uh would have been two at that time, or right about two, something like that. And the ISIS had moved into it. I was out of bald room. Um, we were working, doing a lot of work up in the Pesh Valley, and they had come in, and there was a leader there who wouldn't wouldn't turn over. So they took his granddaughter and force fed her batteries. And so we had to fly out. We went and got this this village leader and his granddaughter, who was deathly ill, uh, brought him back to base, was trying to save her life, and never really heard anything about it. So you fast forward a couple days, and like I said, it's it's Father's Day, and we get this call. I was on uh the QRF team that night, and we get the call that we've got to take the old man and the little girl back to the village. So for leading up to this, we're winding up and it's kind of like, alright, cool, you know, like we got to her in time, it's we're good. And a major at the time come walking out with him with a body bag, carrying the body bag. And uh completely completely impersonal to the situation. Sure. And uh transferring transferring bodies was nothing, unfortunately at that point, it was uh it was a common thing for us, it wasn't really a big deal. Right. Uh but the way this guy carried this situation out was just he was just so disassociated. So he walks up to the aircraft, the grandfather's in front of him, he's he's got the girl in a body bag, and uh he kind of just like pinches her off as he's talking, and uh it just like it blew my mind that it was even possible to be so disassociated. You know, so we carry on the mission, the the the the village leader gets in there, uh the major gets in, uh I hand the little girl with her grandfather, you know, we fly them back, and it has been that that even amongst the the the the gruesome side of things that the trauma can manifest this way itself in different ways. So in the big scheme of things, that was probably one of the least violent right things that I dealt with, but the triggers are different for everyone. 100%. So, you know, you get you get little stories, you know, like that, situations that'll stick with you, and so then the trauma becomes from the situation, it it can actually manifest itself to what ifs. Right. What if I could have got there faster? What what what if if what if we wouldn't have taken so long on the flight line and got there? Right, you know, I and that became that became the biggest trauma for me going through it was I found that there were so many situations that were what ifs. Yeah, you know, I had uh again, uh my second appointment, I was on a quick response team and we were working with Australian Special Forces. Um, not gonna go real deep into that, some bad dudes, um, great guys to work with, but uh they had gotten themselves into a tick, and we were right at crossover between ships. We were at 12-hour ships, dayship, night shift. So I was coming on the night shift, um, and there was basically an argument amongst cockpits about who was gonna be in charge because we were in this crossover. So does day shift take it? Does second shift take it? Well, the med team, their second shift team hadn't come in, we were up, ready to go, and we ended up spending like an extra three minutes on the ground. And by the time we got took off, our pilots got mad about the situation and basically said, in not so many words, get on with it one way or another, we're taking off. So we take off and we get the call 30 seconds out, do it's dead. Wow, it's like what if we spent three extra minutes in on that? We've got a fully loaded medical burn. What if well, trauma then can manifest from that to now I've got to go from out in the middle of nowhere carrying cow, tiny little fog out in Afghanistan and be flying back to Kandah, because we don't have all the stuff there to take care of that. So what I learned um through much counseling, uh I couldn't figure out I'd be driving down the road and I just like freak out. And I could never figure it out. And this is it's the only thing that the VA ever helped me deal with. I I get it, it's been good for some guys, wasn't a good thing for me. Um the only, the only thing, and listen, I had I had the lead psychologist in western Kentucky. Right. Because I had ended up on suicide watch, I had all the cops in Marion looking for me. We talked about that a little bit yesterday. Um, and my agreement was I had to go to counseling three times a week. I had to quit drinking, which I didn't do, um, and you know, take all the pills. And if I would agree to this, they would keep from sending me to the Mental Institute up in uh, I think it's around St. Louis. Uh so during this process, again, the only thing that this guy helped me figure out was Savannah Man's. He had he he he got me into a mode one day and he goes, you know, in in your vigilance and in that in that moment, I want you to try and take inventory of what's around you. Come on. He said, so there's obviously something that you're I guess you could say, now I would say there was something that the Holy Spirit was prompting me to pay attention to. Then it was there there's something going on around you that that your subconscious is picking up on that's triggering this adverse reaction, and it was Savannah Vans. Then I realized it wasn't just Savannah Vans, it was any white van. Wow. And it was because overseas that's what they used. They use white bands in the mortuary. Isn't that wild? And dude, it took me like two and a half, three years after I got out to get and it was the most, it was the only useful thing I ever got out of the VA because it sure as heck wasn't the pills, it wasn't anything else. Right. So you get to the tail end of the trauma part, and that's that's what God wants. Yeah. So um none none of what I said is is to give glory to to the enemy or his teammate. They tried like hell to take me out and and almost succeeded a few times. Um so I get introduced to Life of Christ in 2017, gosh, maybe almost 10 years. This this July. And start going for all the wrong reasons. Um at that time, you know, I'm still an active addiction. Now I've gotten into pills and and I had a very short stint with with meth and some other things. Um nothing, I got lucky there. It never it never grabbed me like it grabbed most people. I just got to a point where I was up all night in a horrible, I mean, just in a wrecked shape, and then someone introduced me to meth and I was like, well, I can get one in a great mood. Right. So why not? Not the right answer, people, not the right answer. But at the time, in my in my crushed state, not understanding who I was or where I fight from or what I fight for, it's it seemed like a good answer. So I was in all of that. On top of, I mean, I was taken the VA had me on gosh, uh over 2,000 milligrams worth of pills a day between antipsychotics, mood stabilizers, this to sleep, this to stay awake, this to help with the aches and pains, and the and none of it ever worked. But I I took it, and what it did was it turned me into a zombie. Yeah, and um, so whenever I started going to life in Christ, again, all the wrong reasons, um, thought I was trying to save a marriage and and save my family, and uh that ended up falling through anyway. But towards towards the end of that marriage and and all the chaos that went with it, um which I I did, I I I put her through nine times. Um I I like to take accountability for my part in her. Um no one's perfect, I sure wasn't. Um, you know, the things that she did are the things that she did, she's gotta live with that. But at the end of that, I found that I had started going. I'd you know, I'd been going quite a bit, and I had started serving. And I started serving in kids' church shortly after I started there. And I I was that guy I would only show up when it was time for me to serve. Yeah. And the kids taught me a lot. They taught me a lot. I just I couldn't deal with my honest language. I couldn't deal with the screaming, I could I would just have to walk out of the house. I couldn't deal with anything. And uh so as that relationship came to an end, uh, this would have been six, seven years ago, right before I met Joe. And what I found was that I was still going to church. I was I had been through Chris's freedom class. I was his I was his first one, and basically that where my faith was at that time was that basically at least it took me off the wrong side of the fence and at least got me to the top of the shirt.

SPEAKER_02 33:43

And there I'll interrupt you. This listen, if you if y'all heard this little, if you heard this little preacher, he's a little boy. Um, and he's a little country boy, he's from North Carolina. Yep. And he says this statement, he said, in 2025, y'all all tried something you didn't try. Jesus. Yeah that's that statement is resonating in my head because we tried Jesus for the first time.

SPEAKER_01 34:06

Well, and see, I wasn't even trying Jesus yet. Right. Really? Like I had I'd been saved, I got baptized in in the church. Um, I was trying church.

SPEAKER_02 34:18

Uh oh. Run that rabbit.

SPEAKER_01 34:21

I was trying church. Um and and trying to figure out why things still still wasn't working. Why is my life still in the shambles? Why am I still fighting with active addiction? Yeah, going in here and teaching these kids on Sunday to follow Jesus. Yeah. Why? Why?

SPEAKER_02 34:40

Felt like a hypocrite. Hugest hypocrite.

SPEAKER_01 34:43

Man, dude, I mean, horrible.

SPEAKER_02 34:47

I done the same, I done some of the similar things. I was I I was trying church. But I'm grateful that that season of my life was so short because in the midst of trying church, I encountered Jesus.

SPEAKER_01 35:11

Yeah. Really. Yeah. Once you open yourself up to it in the people, you you don't even realize it yet, but you're taking it in.

SPEAKER_02 35:20

It was such a powerful moment in my life to quit playing church and really dive in with Jesus. And it was that moment. I remember one time praying, and I was like, God, I'm trying. I'm trying. And he said, I see you trying. When are you going to trust?

SPEAKER_01 35:41

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 35:41

That statement changed everything.

SPEAKER_01 35:43

Yeah, that's that's a whole different basket, man.

SPEAKER_02 35:47

And and it was, I want to talk to our listeners for just real briefly about trauma. You know, we hear Eddie's story, and and we all have those stories. But I want you to understand, Jesus is in the middle of that. He he wants so desperately to reach into your mess of trauma and and work it out. Listen, your trauma's there, it's real. Let's be honest. But in the moment, when you when you learn to trust him, he takes all of the mess and you begin to see him in the process of changing that. Oh, I gotta love that. And and so I know in my life personally, when I when I finally surrendered and said, okay, look here, I've got all this and I have no idea what to do with it. He took it's funny. When Victoria and I first got married, um the first Thanksgiving that we had together, she had she had this huge dinner, like it was wild. And in our house in Kentucky, we had a dining room that looked into the kitchen. And I'm sitting in the dining room around the table, and I'm looking in there at all this mess. There was flour, there was vegetables fell on the floor, and all the mess, and dishes are piled out of the seat. But the moment she brought the meal in, all that mess was worth it, right? It was the same principle with Jesus. I handed him this giant mess of life, and he wove together the most beautiful tapestry. Because it gives us this ability, it's the same way with you. I know, I noticed yesterday you were around a lot of veterans and you were you were engaging because they need to see this thing, this person that has come out of all this trauma and has something beautiful. You know, I honor you in your service, and I honor, I I have, I've never said this to you publicly. Wow. You inspired me a lot uh early on in my relationship with Christ. Um early on in life in Christ, uh, it was a Veterans Day, and um Pastor Chris had everybody stand up, right? And I saw you. Stand up, and I'm watching in the process, you were going through your divorce. And I'm I'm sitting there looking at you, thinking I it was this moment in my life that was real hard.

SPEAKER_00 38:51

Right.

SPEAKER_02 38:51

And I'm just gonna leave it at that at this time, but um, maybe we'll dive into that later on in an episode. But in in this moment, I'm I'm really struggling with some stuff that was real, real life stuff, and I'm watching you, and I thought, all right, this guy has gone through military trauma, which at the moment I didn't, at that time I didn't understand, but I knew it sucked. You know what I mean? Yeah, it doesn't take a genius to no, it doesn't take a genius to figure these things out, and then I'm seeing you're going through this divorce, but at that time, every Sunday, you were at that welcome desk, and I would come in and I would see you, and I was like, Man, who is this guy? You know, but you really inspired me to keep putting one boot in front of the other, and I've never said that to you publicly, so I'm saying it to you now. Thank you. Because in that time in my life, there was that spirit of suicide was all over me. You know, I've got the scars.

SPEAKER_01 39:53

Oh, yeah, you know. Well, we we we can compare, I can show you my, I mean, you can still see them nice and real clear. Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 39:59

I mean, I've been there, and and but you were inspiring to me, and that's what happens. I want our listeners to listen to to hear this. I am so fed up as a pastor hearing, oh, I can watch you online. You can. And for our online visitors, praise God for you. But we want to see you in the house. Because when you come into a house and you begin to see flesh and blood going through some hard stuff, but yet still serving, that's when things become real to you. And he inspired me so much early on because I was struggling. Like, I know I'm sure you went through this too. When I first got sober, I had no idea how to live. Like everything that I had ever done, um, for the well, especially for the last 20 years, right, had been revolving around partying. Okay, so now I'm living this life.

SPEAKER_00 40:59

How the heck am I gonna live it?

SPEAKER_02 41:01

But I started getting around guys like Eddie, um, and and I started to see, you know what? Life doesn't have to be boring. Oh no, dude. I I say this.

SPEAKER_01 41:13

I'm having more fun doing this.

SPEAKER_02 41:15

Bro, um, this has been. I wake up every day, and and and I'm not a morning person.

SPEAKER_01 41:24

Neither am I. I know you're not.

SPEAKER_02 41:26

I know you're not, but I wake up every day with this expectation that God is going to do something that's just powerful in this day. And you know what? He does.

SPEAKER_01 41:38

Yeah, if you have that expectation, you it's a heart posture.

SPEAKER_02 41:43

It is a heart posture, and when you begin to expect God to move, guess what God does? He moves. And you know, um, I'm gonna wrap this thing up, but I want I do I want to thank you for just being so raw and candid. You know, there's so many of our listeners out there, listen to me, listen to me. Everybody's gone through times of life that suck. I want you to know that God is in the suck, he will help you. And if you if the if if you come across this episode, I don't care if it's 10 years from now, and you need somebody to talk to, you got to, right?

SPEAKER_00 42:27

Oh yeah. Yeah, I'll talk to anybody.

SPEAKER_02 42:29

I promise you.

SPEAKER_00 42:29

Anybody.

SPEAKER_02 42:30

Uh reach out. Reach out. Our our team here at Freedom Fire and in Kingdom Authority will absolutely listen. We are an interactive podcast. You reach out, I promise you, somebody from this team will reach back to you. You have my word on that. Because no man is an island, and we don't want anybody to walk through life feeling like you have nobody. You have us, you know. I I say this and I think you'll appreciate this. God uses local reps. Oh, yeah. And you know, we're a local rep of the God of heaven, and we want to be a part of your life. So, Eddie, um, I honor you, I honor your service, I honor the fact that you came in here. Listen, Eddie didn't know that he was gonna be on a podcast till this morning. That's how I do. Um, but he jumped right in here and said, Look, I literally three minutes before this thing started, I said, Hey, we're gonna run down the trauma train. He goes, Oh, okay, where do you start? Listen, Revelation 12 11. You overcome the enemy by the blood of the Lamb and the word of your testimony. Eddie, sharing your testimony today is gonna change somebody's life. Um, and that's what we're about. Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 43:52

I want to add one honestly the the icing on the keg was when I when I made the decision, like. Like really decision that I was gonna come down off the fence. And this go this goes for anyone who's done because I know there's a bunch of them out there. I put all the pills from the VA down. Come on. I never had any type of withdrawal system. Come on, Jesus. I put the weed away, I put the drinking away, and there I there was never an adverse reaction.

SPEAKER_02 44:23

Yes, me too. Same thing. Same thing.

SPEAKER_01 44:26

The only other thing I touched on is you you you made the comment about you know living in the trauma and living in the addiction and not knowing how to live life. Yeah. That that was the hardest thing whenever when our house burned, it was I'm not saying it was a test, but it it felt like a test. Yeah, of course it did. Because we we had been trying to walk it out bright, and that was the first obstacle that I ever came to that I had to face so wow, that's a tough one.

SPEAKER_02 44:55

I remember mine.

SPEAKER_01 44:57

So for me, you know, in that the even through the the blessing that it turned out to be, and and which that that could be a whole nother episode, but the the biggest the biggest thing coming on the other side of the trauma is that's why I want to hit it, because this is the other side. Sure, sure. Is that the reward that you're looking for may not be what you're looking for. Oh my man, that'll breach. It it it it may not be that the house burns and you get a new home. It might be that the house burns and you come out of it without relapsing.

SPEAKER_02 45:34

Come on.

SPEAKER_01 45:35

That was that was the biggest that was the biggest thing for me coming together. That is so rich. What was staying staying true, staying planted. We even to the point of you know, the church helped us tremendously, but every penny that was given, we we gave a tie-off of everything. Come on, just give it to us. Look where you're at now. And dude, we we came out of it debt free, house completely paid for, all the all the debt from print everything. We came through with a clean slate, and as big of a blessing as that was, it was still for me. It was still for me that I can't do it without I can't do it without drowning my family.

SPEAKER_02 46:22

Man, um I I remember when that happened. Um and you know, watching you and Joe walk through. It was hell, dude. Like literally, but from the outside looking in, it never showed. I remember coming to church uh soon after, and Victoria and I at that time, man, we were just starting to live life as Christ's followers. Yeah, she was farther along at that time than I was, but um one of the things that I remember, and and this is not Pat Aaron on the back, please hear my heart. I was still struggling with learning to give. And I remember, I don't know if you even remember this, but God spoke to me walking into church. I can tell you where we were at by the side of the snack counter at Life in Christ, and I walked up and I took everything out of my wallet and I gave to you guys. And I remember thinking to myself, why am I doing this? Why am I doing this? And I looked at Victoria and I was like, you know what? Look at how they're walking this out. And and her and I had this conversation. I said, I hope, and I believe God that none of this is ever gonna happen to us, but if it does, I hope I'm in. You know, you guys beauty from ashes, man. Bro, you guys never missed a beat during that house fire from the outside looking in. I'm sure in private moments, uh, it felt like the world was crashing.

SPEAKER_00 47:59

Oh, yeah.

SPEAKER_02 48:00

But from the outside looking in, or inside, however, I'm supposed to say that. From what my my vantage point, yeah, I'm looking at a guy that came out of addiction and is still walking. And that was another inspiration to me. And you know, when Victoria got sick, um there was very few that knew a lot of what was going on. And it wasn't that we were trying to hide it from people, but we were learning to fight these battles, and I and God was battle testing us. You saw a picture in in our house yesterday of your wife holding my wife.

SPEAKER_01 48:38

Yeah. Your circle matters, man. Because listen, not not not not everyone's gonna lower you down to the roof. It it it matters who you surround yourself with. Now, Pastor Sue says it all the time. If you show me your friends, I'll prophesy your future. Man, you you've got to have friends in your life that are gonna lower you through the roof.

SPEAKER_02 49:00

Do you realize? I don't know if you even realize this, that picture, the reason that's in there is that's the moment that Christ touched my wife. He healed her that day. In your circle, so matters. Oh, yeah. You know, hey, here's a free one, guys. Don't tell everybody what God's speaking to you because not everybody can handle knowing everything. Talk on that in that moment, and I clapped my hands and killed a bug. Praise God. Um, I did. That's cool. Um, that that moment has I look at that picture all the time. You notice where it sets? Here's my chair, and it's right here. Right. Oh man, here's the whole ghost of this. Yeah, come on. I look at that picture all the time, and I am so grateful for that night. Because, you know, most people didn't know they were telling us she's never gonna get better. We had a doctor, look, hear this one. I will never tell people not to go against medical advice, but sometimes if it goes if medical advice goes against the word, don't follow the medical advice. Hear me. We had people telling us at that time for me to to to to let her go because she was never gonna get better, and it was only gonna progressively get worse, and she was gonna be in a vegetative state, right? And at this time, it it would have been, I'm gonna be honest, it would have been a lot easier, a lot easier at that point. But something stood up in me, and I look at that picture all the time. You all didn't even know this. Joe, I don't even know if you know this picture. Joe's in our audience, by the way. He's a beautiful wife. Um beautiful one. Joe was in the pool the night that my wife got hit, and that picture is at our house, and you're holding Victoria, and it sits right here above the couch. And I look at that all the time, and while I'm reading my word, and I because when I encounter things in life that look impossible, I look at that picture because that we had an impossible diagnosis at that time, and I'm looking at it and I'm like, oh no, no, no, nothing's impossible. I need our listeners to hear that. I know I'm trying to wrap this up. This is how my podcast goes. Um, I look at that and I always know nothing is impossible. And and so I want you, if you're listening to this podcast, whether it's fresh or uh it's 10 years down the road, let me tell you something. We serve a God of no impossibilities. He can move in your life. If you are if you're fighting addiction or suicide or or financial trouble, whatever, if you will hand it to him, we're sitting here living proof. God can move in your life. Hear me. Okay. So uh Eddie and Joe, I'm so grateful for you all in our lives. Um, thank you all. We're grateful for you guys, man. Thank you all. They have been, they have been, man, when we plan this church, they have been supporting us uh from day one. And and listen, I want y'all to see this. All the stuff around here, including this podcast, would not be possible without you all in our lives. So uh, listen, this was another episode of Kingdom Authority sponsored by Freedom Fire Church. If you don't have a church, church home, if you will reach out, if you are not in the Lynchburg, Virginia area, and you cannot find a church, reach out. We will help you find a Bible teaching, Bible preaching church in your area. Get plugged in. Get plugged in and serve in that body. And it and if you can't, if we can't find one, we'll help you move to Lynchburg, Virginia, and you can be part of one. Amen. We love you guys. Um, I didn't do this in our last episode, but I want to say this publicly. Thank you, Tony. Uh, the Holy Spirit put this podcast on Tony's heart, and immediately it resonated well. Um, I knew that it was from the God of heaven, so I'm going to close every episode with two things. Thanks, Tony, and we're going to close the prayer. Father, I thank you. We love you, we praise you, that you are the God of brokenness. You'll get into the brokenness with us and you will walk us through your trauma through the trauma that life has dealt us. We cannot face trauma without you successfully. Uh, we heard Eddie's story. They were throwing pills, they were throwing all this, and guess what? He was still in the trauma. But the moment, the very moment that Christ got involved, everything switched. That's the God we serve. He has authority, he has given it to us, and we can manifest it in the world today. We can walk around in true authority, and we thank you for the finished work of the cross of Jesus Christ. We thank you in Jesus' name. Amen. Hey, bro.