Latest / One Voice Many Conversations / Crushing Strongholds #071 Special Guest Michael Muccio - Evils First Breath

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Crushing Strongholds #071 Special Guest Michael Muccio - Evils First Breath · One Voice Many Conversations

• 0:02
  SPEAKER_01: Hello everyone.
• 0:04
  SPEAKER_01: Welcome back to another great episode of Crushing Strongholds.
• 0:07
  SPEAKER_01: My name is Mickey.
• 0:08
  SPEAKER_01: I'm your host today.
• 0:09
  SPEAKER_01: And I'm so excited because Crushing Strongholds is a podcast where we talk about turning pain into power and trauma into triumph.
• 0:17
  SPEAKER_01: And how do we do that?
• 0:18
  SPEAKER_01: We do that through exposing lies of the enemy.
• 0:21
  SPEAKER_01: And another way we do that is by sharing people's testimonies and how they have overcome obstacles in their life where the enemy tried to prevail, but God interceded.
• 0:30
  SPEAKER_01: And I'm so excited to be here today.
• 0:31
  SPEAKER_01: I have a wonderful guest.
• 0:33
  SPEAKER_01: And um so far we started conversating without recording, so I thought we'd better get on here and and and not let you miss out on everything we've been talking about.
• 0:41
  SPEAKER_01: This um gentleman, um, I'm excited to have him.
• 0:44
  SPEAKER_01: And um he is a um speaker and a pastor of over 40 years.
• 0:49
  SPEAKER_01: He does um traveling ministry, he's also an author, and um I will introduce him, bring him on, and let him share his story with you.
• 0:57
  SPEAKER_01: So, Michael Muccio, welcome to Crushing Strongholds.
• 1:00
  SPEAKER_01: I'm so glad that you're here today.
• 1:02
  SPEAKER_03: I'm great.
• 1:03
  SPEAKER_03: So happy to be here with you, Mickey.
• 1:05
  SPEAKER_03: Looking forward to this.
• 1:06
  SPEAKER_01: Yes, me too.
• 1:07
  SPEAKER_01: So I know that we already started the conversation a little bit about talking about um some of your ministry, and I know that you've been a pastor for 40 years, but now you're a traveling speaker and a missionary.
• 1:17
  SPEAKER_01: So, do you want to shine some light on that and just kind of just tell us who you are?
• 1:22
  SPEAKER_03: Right.
• 1:22
  SPEAKER_03: Well, I I got started years ago.
• 1:24
  SPEAKER_03: I was climbing the corporate ladder, very successful in the hospitality industry, making a lot of money, getting a lot of recognition, but I wasn't satisfied.
• 1:34
  SPEAKER_03: Uh, and so I went in a bookstore, bought a Bible the first time uh that I'd ever ever read the read a Bible, got a book by a guy named Zig Ziggler called See at the Top.
• 1:44
  SPEAKER_03: And he spoke my language because he was talking about success in seven areas of life.
• 1:50
  SPEAKER_03: Uh, but he talked about his relationship with God, Mickey, like he knew him personally.
• 1:54
  SPEAKER_03: And that got my attention.
• 1:56
  SPEAKER_03: So I went and met him, took a business class, the rest of the time, his history.
• 2:00
  SPEAKER_03: I left the uh the hospitality industry, went to work with him consulting.
• 2:05
  SPEAKER_03: I would go to the big clients or the small clients that couldn't afford Zig because they paid him$30,000 an hour for a one-hour talk.
• 2:14
  SPEAKER_03: And he would go to the big, the big clients.
• 2:16
  SPEAKER_03: And so then I so I'd sit down with business people and try to teach them how to overcome and be more productive and effective.
• 2:25
  SPEAKER_03: But then from there I felt the call of God in the ministry, and that's where I went to next, ended up throughout my ministry, uh authoring, writing three books.
• 2:36
  SPEAKER_03: Uh I love uh I love reaching into Asia.
• 2:40
  SPEAKER_03: That I'm I've got a real heart for Asia, Korea, Japan, um, China, and the Philippines, uh, my favorite uh uh company or country is I've been to there the last two years.
• 2:51
  SPEAKER_03: I say, I say they're all my favorite when I'm there, but uh anyway, I I just uh I just want to reach people for for for Jesus and impact the world for Christ.
• 3:03
  SPEAKER_01: So when you're talking about your traveling um ministry and missionary work, that's where you're going.
• 3:08
  SPEAKER_01: You're going over to like Japan and China and the Philippines.
• 3:11
  SPEAKER_01: That's where you're headed.
• 3:13
  SPEAKER_03: Philippines is a is a become a country that I've really attached myself to.
• 3:17
  SPEAKER_03: Um there's just so much poverty there.
• 3:20
  SPEAKER_03: There's so much potential.
• 3:22
  SPEAKER_03: The Filipino people are just so delightful, they're so pleasant.
• 3:26
  SPEAKER_03: Um, but it there are many, many of them just waiting to hear the gospel clearly proclaimed and understand what it means to be born again and to fully commit your life to Christ and to love God's word.
• 3:40
  SPEAKER_03: And and they're very, very responsive, just incredible people, I think.
• 3:45
  SPEAKER_01: Well, that's amazing.
• 3:46
  SPEAKER_01: So you're also a book author.
• 3:48
  SPEAKER_01: I know you have a few books, but let's talk about um the evil's first breath, that book.
• 3:55
  SPEAKER_01: And what that's about.
• 3:57
  SPEAKER_03: Alrighty, great, Mickey.
• 3:58
  SPEAKER_03: I'm I'm I'm happy to talk about that because that book has changed my life more than any other one thing, uh, simply because uh it it alerts us to the the importance of the need to crush strongholds, the very name of your podcast.
• 4:17
  SPEAKER_03: Um spiritual warfare.
• 4:18
  SPEAKER_03: It's a it's a it's a rallying call.
• 4:21
  SPEAKER_03: And it's uh it was a vision that I had 35 years ago where I was minding my own business, just going to a secular interview, and um all of a sudden I had this quick little mini vision that was alarming enough that I pulled off the road and was I didn't didn't fully understand it, but as I pondered it, I realized it was based on uh Ezekiel 28, Isaiah 14, Revelation 12 on the fall of Lucifer.
• 4:50
  SPEAKER_03: And so it was about it was the angelic warfare that was going on before mankind was ever even created.
• 4:55
  SPEAKER_03: I didn't know what to do with it, Mickey, for five for seven years, so I did nothing.
• 4:59
  SPEAKER_03: And then I finally sat down and wrote a drama that we performed in our church, cast apart, produced it.
• 5:07
  SPEAKER_03: We packed out the church for four nights, more successful than anything else I had done at that church.
• 5:13
  SPEAKER_03: 168 people gave their lives to Jesus.
• 5:16
  SPEAKER_03: Then we did a sequel the next year, packed the church out again, standing room in the back, four more nights, four more nights straight, and then 135 people gave their lives to Jesus.
• 5:26
  SPEAKER_03: Then, Mickey, I didn't do anything else with it for the next 30 years until I had a transition this last fall in 2025, and I knew that I knew that I was supposed to write the full story, and so I sat down my computer, I said, okay, God, this was your idea way back.
• 5:45
  SPEAKER_03: So you write this through me.
• 5:47
  SPEAKER_03: And I had come at that point in my life, my second book, The Miracle Exchange, was an alarming alert to me uh of what it means to be crucified with Christ and to let Jesus live his life through me.
• 6:01
  SPEAKER_03: So that's a core message of evil's first breath.
• 6:04
  SPEAKER_03: That's how Michael and the loyal angels were able to defeat Lucifer.
• 6:09
  SPEAKER_03: Um, and so the it's the it's the details that are not in the biblical narrative.
• 6:16
  SPEAKER_03: I can't prove it by scripture, so that's why I've identified it as a novel based on a true story, but it's what I saw, and to the best of my ability, what God gave me as I sat down at my computer and let him bring the story through me.
• 6:32
  SPEAKER_01: Wow, that's remarkable.
• 6:34
  SPEAKER_01: Um, a really good friend of mine who I do another podcast with called Truth Be Told, we talk about scripture.
• 6:39
  SPEAKER_01: We've been talking about forgiveness and how um and why we need forgiveness.
• 6:43
  SPEAKER_01: And it really does start at the very beginning of Genesis before evil existed, because evil was brought into the world.
• 6:51
  SPEAKER_01: And it started with, you know, that first that very first breath that you're talking about.
• 6:55
  SPEAKER_01: So it really resonated when I was reading, reading through your um your information.
• 6:59
  SPEAKER_01: I was like, oh my gosh, we're literally talking about this right now, even with just forgiveness, because even when we talk about forgiveness, we don't think, why do we need forgiveness?
• 7:10
  SPEAKER_01: Why do we need salvation?
• 7:12
  SPEAKER_01: Why do we need um Jesus in our life so much?
• 7:15
  SPEAKER_01: And it's because of the evil's first breath that you're talking about.
• 7:19
  SPEAKER_01: It's so powerful.
• 7:20
  SPEAKER_01: And there's so much that um resonates with me with that because we don't look clear back to Genesis, we just see evil all, we just see darkness.
• 7:29
  SPEAKER_01: And people people just say it's you know, when we think of dark and light, um, and how how evil is so dark compared to the light that Jesus brought to the world, we don't even think about where did that begin?
• 7:40
  SPEAKER_01: Where did that start?
• 7:42
  SPEAKER_01: And it started in Genesis.
• 7:43
  SPEAKER_01: It started, you know, in in the garden.
• 7:46
  SPEAKER_01: And and it started also, you know, when when um Lucifer became jealous and wanted to be um God.
• 7:52
  SPEAKER_01: He wanted to be God.
• 7:53
  SPEAKER_01: That's all there was to it.
• 7:54
  SPEAKER_01: He he saw God and he said, I want that, and that's what I'm gonna go after.
• 7:58
  SPEAKER_01: Um a little bit zealous there, I think he went overkill, but you know what?
• 8:01
  SPEAKER_01: God said, you know, you don't you don't hold that kind of power.
• 8:04
  SPEAKER_01: So um and and we know the end of the story, which is which is remarkable, and it's kind of terrifying.
• 8:09
  SPEAKER_01: It terrifies people too, you know, the end times of tribulations and and the things that we're walking through.
• 8:14
  SPEAKER_01: So I I was really, really smitten when I was reading about, you know, um evil's first breath.
• 8:21
  SPEAKER_01: Just just the title alone just is so powerful in itself.
• 8:24
  SPEAKER_01: So I think it's so amazing that you wrote a book about it and um how exciting.
• 8:29
  SPEAKER_01: Um, I know that as you're going through life and you and you're like you said, you know, God just kind of gets a hold of you and says, Hey, I need you to do something with this.
• 8:37
  SPEAKER_01: We need to do more.
• 8:38
  SPEAKER_01: We can't just let put this on the back burner and let it sit there.
• 8:41
  SPEAKER_01: And I feel like from what you're saying, that's kind of what happened.
• 8:44
  SPEAKER_01: Like you said, like 30 years later, after you did it in the beginning, you brought it back to life.
• 8:48
  SPEAKER_01: What did what was that like for you?
• 8:51
  SPEAKER_01: I mean, it had to be remarkable.
• 8:53
  SPEAKER_03: It it is, but I have to comment on something that you said because it's so it's so uh relevant.
• 8:59
  SPEAKER_03: You're talking about forgiveness, and in the verse in 2 Corinthians, where God says, do not be ignorant of Satan's devices, he says that right after warning the Corinthians to forgive the man who had fallen into immorality because, and then he said, You must forgive him because we're not ignorant of Satan's devices.
• 9:24
  SPEAKER_03: That's what Satan uses as much as anything is this is this root of bitterness that gets going inside of us and this uh unwilling to let certain things go and to forgive.
• 9:36
  SPEAKER_03: And so we it's like we open up the door to evil when when we do that.
• 9:41
  SPEAKER_03: So as far as your specific question, I um I had no intention of going.
• 9:47
  SPEAKER_03: I thought I fulfilled my responsibility by writing the church drama and and having the success that we had with it until but if God's got something that he wants you to do, he he he brings it back and he brought it back to me.
• 10:01
  SPEAKER_03: And I knew I'd be in disobedience if I didn't sit down and write uh the full story.
• 10:07
  SPEAKER_03: So um I would go to bed many nights, Mickey, in tears because I truly was writing things that I had no intention or plan to write.
• 10:18
  SPEAKER_03: It was like it was flowing through me, and I was learning so much, and it was impacting me.
• 10:25
  SPEAKER_03: And I realized that God was the importance of the story of going back to that first breath that Lucifer breathed out of his mouth when he said, I will exalt myself above the throne of God.
• 10:41
  SPEAKER_03: Now, here is the most beautiful of the creation of God, perfect in all of his ways, the perfect warrior, the musician.
• 10:49
  SPEAKER_03: No other created being had ever been as great and as magnificent as Lucifer was, but he wanted the one thing he didn't have, Mickey, which was the worship of all of the other angels.
• 11:04
  SPEAKER_03: Instead of being satisfied with his supreme position under the Trinity, the Father, Son, and the Holy Spirit.
• 11:11
  SPEAKER_03: And then Lucifer, instead of being, he was of the three archangels, he was the exalted one among Gabriel, Michael, and Lucifer, but he wasn't satisfied.
• 11:22
  SPEAKER_03: And I tell you what, if you go back, first principle thinking is when you if you go back to where something began at the origin of it, then you're better, more effective to overcoming it in your own life.
• 11:35
  SPEAKER_03: And maybe I can give you more illustrations about first principle thinking, but that's what it was like to get back into that story.
• 11:42
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, that's kind of how like we felt when we started talking about forgiveness and um you know when we wanted to dive into that that discussion, like where did that arrive from?
• 11:51
  SPEAKER_01: And when the cr the question arise, as simple as the word it why is, it's so complicated at the same time because why do we have a need for forgiveness?
• 12:00
  SPEAKER_01: And it's because of the evil.
• 12:02
  SPEAKER_01: And you know, you know, we know the the the the devil is the author and the father of all lies.
• 12:08
  SPEAKER_01: And as we as we walk through this life and we um we're we're encountered with so many different things.
• 12:15
  SPEAKER_01: And people, I I feel like people have a genuine um ability to learn who Jesus is, but they are they are um what's the word I'm looking for?
• 12:28
  SPEAKER_01: Um detoured and distracted by by so many things that the enemy the enemy is is is pulling them away from you know where God leads.
• 12:38
  SPEAKER_01: And I feel like with crushing strongholds, that we do not um we do not embark on the purpose that God gave us in our life because God's characteristic is for us to thrive in the identity in which he created us.
• 12:52
  SPEAKER_01: And we do not thrive in that.
• 12:53
  SPEAKER_01: We we thrive in everything but that.
• 12:56
  SPEAKER_01: And the enemy has his foothold in there, and and and he's just he's just making a big old mess out of everything, you know.
• 13:03
  SPEAKER_01: But but we know in, you know, like I said, and in you know, and joy still comes in the morning because we know in the end who wins, because you know, a lot of people can't fathom the supernatural realm of who God really is, who the Holy Spirit is, who Jesus Christ is, even the Trinity.
• 13:17
  SPEAKER_01: Some people don't even believe the Trinity is real, and it's so it's so um invigorating to me because I'm just like you I kind of sometimes want to take people and just kind of give them a little shake, like, hey, listen up, listen up, I got so much good news to share with you.
• 13:30
  SPEAKER_01: And they just they don't see sometimes, and I feel like the enemy just smothers people, and it just makes it makes me kind of sad in that area because there's times where I've felt, you know, um oppressed by the enemy, not not possessed.
• 13:44
  SPEAKER_01: So I want to make sure I clear that word up so people don't get it miscued, but you get oppressed because the enemy just hangs on you like a leech, he leeches on you, and he just drains you, and he knows if you're feeling weak, he's gonna jump right in there.
• 13:57
  SPEAKER_01: He doesn't care at all about anyone.
• 14:00
  SPEAKER_01: He's so selfish.
• 14:01
  SPEAKER_01: The only thing he cares about is himself.
• 14:02
  SPEAKER_01: He don't even care about the one-third of the angels that fell with him.
• 14:06
  SPEAKER_01: He doesn't care about them at all either.
• 14:08
  SPEAKER_01: And so it's amazing that, you know, we think, oh, he's just, you know, he's just the head honjo of his little his little club, his little group.
• 14:15
  SPEAKER_01: No, he doesn't care about nothing but himself.
• 14:17
  SPEAKER_01: He's the most selfish, selfish entity, being whatever you want to call him, um, ever.
• 14:23
  SPEAKER_01: And it's amazing that um, you know, as we are given a free will, God gave us the ability to make decisions for ourselves.
• 14:31
  SPEAKER_01: And I could see, I could see, you know, uh in my own life, going through different career changes in my life where I felt like I wanted to be at the top, where I wanted to be in control.
• 14:41
  SPEAKER_01: I wanted to be the the the best at my success, you know, like you you know you were saying in the beginning with what you were doing with your consulting and and and all of that, you know, it was it it's what you thought was there.
• 14:51
  SPEAKER_01: But you know what's funny is when you're when you're going after some things like that sometimes, and you could probably relate with this and jump in anytime if you want, but is when you know there's something missing.
• 15:04
  SPEAKER_01: What's the missing piece?
• 15:05
  SPEAKER_01: And for me it was it was it was God.
• 15:08
  SPEAKER_01: God was missing in the equation, and you know, because God gives us the free will to step out and try anything we want to try or do anything we want to do, but going at it alone, you and you know, that's where we end up stumbling.
• 15:19
  SPEAKER_01: And it says, you know, in Philippians, we could do all things through Christ, not through ourselves.
• 15:26
  SPEAKER_01: If that was the case, we wouldn't need Christ to be successful, we'd just be successful.
• 15:30
  SPEAKER_01: We wouldn't even have to compete with each other, we would just be successful at everything, you know.
• 15:36
  SPEAKER_01: So I just think that the enemy really does like to tamper and and play on that.
• 15:40
  SPEAKER_01: So um any anyhow, I went kind of like on a tangent with that.
• 15:44
  SPEAKER_01: But what are your thoughts on all of that?
• 15:47
  SPEAKER_03: Well, um, if our eyes, if we don't see Christ, if somebody is presented the with the gospel and they don't, they're unable to accept Christ, it's because according to 2 Corinthians chapter 4, their eyes have been blinded from the light of the glorious gospel of Christ.
• 16:08
  SPEAKER_03: So he is the barrier to people being saved, he's the barrier to Christians going deeper in their faith and being able to be more effective at mentoring and discipling others and leading others to Jesus.
• 16:24
  SPEAKER_03: He is uh he's going overboard.
• 16:27
  SPEAKER_03: And even in the parable of the sower, 75% of the people who hear the word are not good soil.
• 16:35
  SPEAKER_03: They're not going forth and bearing fruit.
• 16:37
  SPEAKER_03: So, and it's because of the distraction, the deceitfulness of riches, it's the cares of this world entering in.
• 16:46
  SPEAKER_03: It's all stuff orchestrated.
• 16:47
  SPEAKER_03: I tell people we have three enemies.
• 16:50
  SPEAKER_03: We have got the world, the flesh, and the devil.
• 16:55
  SPEAKER_03: But we heavenly we have one puppet master or one ringleader, and that's the devil.
• 17:00
  SPEAKER_03: So the devil uses the world to pull us into that orbit and to get us out of uh orbiting around God and get gets us in our own orbit.
• 17:12
  SPEAKER_03: And then he'll use our own flesh, years of habitual negative thinking, and you'll use that.
• 17:19
  SPEAKER_03: And then many times, Mickey, he will make a suggestion in first person present tense, where he will whisper, he'll say something like, Um, I am, I have such a such a failure in my uh ability to communicate my heart's desire.
• 17:39
  SPEAKER_03: Maybe you're you're gonna get up and you're gonna speak to a group and you'll have that thought and you think it's yours, but actually it was the devil presenting it as a in first person present tense as if it was your thought.
• 17:53
  SPEAKER_03: So, one way or the other, the enemy's trying to influence us.
• 17:57
  SPEAKER_03: And and the idea of first principle thinking or going back to evil's first breath, the origin of evil, is where if you know the characteristics of how something began, you increase the chances of being able to be more effective at overcoming it in your own life.
• 18:16
  SPEAKER_03: And so you let's take the a master chess player.
• 18:20
  SPEAKER_03: A master chess player studies the first three moves in the game, and then he bases his all of his moves after that, after those first three moves.
• 18:30
  SPEAKER_03: A novice like me just looks at what's the next move I can make.
• 18:36
  SPEAKER_03: So, but the master chess player wins every time.
• 18:39
  SPEAKER_03: So, and this is how Elon Musk has built rockets, reusable rockets.
• 18:43
  SPEAKER_03: Is he he what is a rocket made of?
• 18:46
  SPEAKER_03: He went to the commodity market, what are the components, cost, and so he's made everything a lot cheaper than NASA was making it.
• 18:54
  SPEAKER_03: And so, first principle thinking is core.
• 18:56
  SPEAKER_03: That's why the book's so important.
• 18:59
  SPEAKER_03: You go to the head with a point and to the heart with a story.
• 19:02
  SPEAKER_03: And we have the scriptures in Ezekiel 28, Isaiah 14, Revelation 12, going to the head with a point.
• 19:09
  SPEAKER_03: This is what happened.
• 19:11
  SPEAKER_03: But then with what God has given me, I'm going to the heart with a story.
• 19:17
  SPEAKER_03: And so people were telling me that they saw it as a movie, they would see it as like a Frank Peretti, some of his novels, or C.S.
• 19:25
  SPEAKER_03: Lewis, or they would they they saw it as like a pilgrim's progress, and it it allowed them to enter into the storyline, and that's how we change because our emotional brain is 10 times bigger than our thinking brain.
• 19:39
  SPEAKER_03: So when you're when you're able to picture a story, you that sticks with you, and you're better able to apply it and to bear fruit with that message.
• 19:50
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 19:51
  SPEAKER_01: I I think that we are getting a lot better in the entertainment world about um not perfect, but we are getting better at bringing um some perspective to storytelling about you know scripture in the Bible and different books of the Bible.
• 20:05
  SPEAKER_01: I think we're getting a lot better.
• 20:06
  SPEAKER_01: That would be amazing if they turned they could turn that into a movie because um it would be phenomenal.
• 20:12
  SPEAKER_01: But um you mentioned something about you know the enemy and you know, again, playing chess and stuff and how um the enemy is like the ruler over everything.
• 20:20
  SPEAKER_01: And I feel like the enemy sometimes um we fall into manipulation sometimes.
• 20:25
  SPEAKER_01: But the one thing that I I I do talk about with Carsi Strongholds um is that there's three causes to um dealing with strongholds, and one of them is the enemy.
• 20:36
  SPEAKER_01: That's that's one of them.
• 20:37
  SPEAKER_01: The other one is is ourself, um, our our own obedience.
• 20:41
  SPEAKER_01: And then the other is our you know, our our past history, you know, what we grew up with with our genetics and and you know, just where we came from our roots and our background.
• 20:50
  SPEAKER_01: And I I do believe that we have certain things that take us to where we end up in and the decisions that we make in life.
• 20:57
  SPEAKER_01: But there are times that we sometimes allow the enemy more credit than he deserves because we blame it all on the enemy, when sometimes it's ourselves or it's something that came from our past.
• 21:06
  SPEAKER_01: But sometimes we and and the enemy just eats it up because he gets the credit for not even doing anything he didn't even do.
• 21:12
  SPEAKER_01: But he'll take all the credit we we give him, I believe.
• 21:15
  SPEAKER_01: But I also think that um when we when we look at who God is and and again in the supernatural realm and how powerful he is, and how um when we go back to the very beginning, like you said, we have to know the roots, we have to know where where it all started from.
• 21:32
  SPEAKER_01: And back in Genesis, clear back to the garden and in in Eden, um, just that first conversation that he had with with Eve was so easy for him.
• 21:42
  SPEAKER_01: It was so easy for him to manipulate.
• 21:45
  SPEAKER_01: And and and and he still manipulates to this very day.
• 21:48
  SPEAKER_01: And I think that we don't recognize it because we're so consumed and overwhelmed with so many things in the world that we don't pay attention and don't realize that he's just devouring.
• 22:00
  SPEAKER_01: You know, he and he comes to the enemy comes to steal, kill and destroy.
• 22:03
  SPEAKER_01: That's all he does.
• 22:04
  SPEAKER_01: That's all he does day and night.
• 22:06
  SPEAKER_01: And we allow it because we're not paying attention.
• 22:08
  SPEAKER_01: So I think that there's so much going on in the world that we just kinda have a you know, we we kinda have our blinders on all the time and we live inside this big box and and I always think, you know, we gotta get God out of the box because if we don't get him out of the box, you know, we're missing the whole point of what, you know, God is doing in our lives and the revelation that he has on our lives, especially with our identity.
• 22:32
  SPEAKER_01: There's a lot of identity issues in the world today.
• 22:34
  SPEAKER_01: Um people don't know who they are, you know.
• 22:36
  SPEAKER_01: All the all the acronyms, you know, the they they want to relate to a a word instead of who God created us to be.
• 22:44
  SPEAKER_01: Um, like I'm a woman and you're a man, and people are like, No, I'm a her and you're a him, and I'm like, I'm a what what what did you say, you know?
• 22:50
  SPEAKER_01: It can it gets it's the confusion, the author of confusion is the enemy, and we know that God isn't the one who brings the confusion.
• 22:57
  SPEAKER_01: And um, so we get we get twisted with it.
• 23:00
  SPEAKER_01: So, but I know that you wrote a couple of other books as well.
• 23:04
  SPEAKER_01: And um, do you want to shine some light on those?
• 23:06
  SPEAKER_01: Because I I seen that you have like uh like you have three books, I think.
• 23:10
  unknown: Right.
• 23:11
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 23:12
  SPEAKER_01: Um, you want to talk about your other two books?
• 23:14
  SPEAKER_03: Sure, I do, and I and I also want to kind of add on to what you just said because I wouldn't want to ever show any confusion.
• 23:21
  SPEAKER_03: Um, I we are responsible for our lives, whether whether we were influenced by the world, our flesh, or the devil, either one of those three enemies.
• 23:32
  SPEAKER_03: When I say we have one puppet master, one ringleader and puppet master who uses the world to tempt us and bring us down.
• 23:43
  SPEAKER_03: He uses our flesh or our history to bring us down.
• 23:48
  SPEAKER_03: Uh, and then he gives you those direct suggestions into your mind.
• 23:52
  SPEAKER_03: But but he he we're responsible.
• 23:55
  SPEAKER_03: We have power and authority to tread on all of the power of the devil.
• 24:00
  SPEAKER_03: So we have there is no reason for us to not be victorious.
• 24:05
  SPEAKER_03: And you mentioned identity a couple of times.
• 24:08
  SPEAKER_03: That's absolutely correct.
• 24:09
  SPEAKER_03: This is my the second book, The Miracle Exchange, or really the, I guess that would be the first book, The Miracle Exchange.
• 24:16
  SPEAKER_03: And this is when I 20 years after being a pastor, I had um my dark night of the soul where I realized that I wasn't really tapping into the power.
• 24:28
  SPEAKER_03: I had had crisis in my life, and and I caused me to face the truth.
• 24:33
  SPEAKER_03: So I'm crying out to God, Lord, show me what is where I am missing it.
• 24:38
  SPEAKER_03: And he took me to Galatians 2.20.
• 24:41
  SPEAKER_03: I am crucified with Christ.
• 24:43
  SPEAKER_03: Nevertheless, I live, yet not I, but Christ lives in me.
• 24:47
  SPEAKER_03: The life I now live in the flesh, I live by the faith of the Son of God who loved me and gave himself up for me.
• 24:54
  SPEAKER_03: So I said to God, there's five eyes in that verse, Lord.
• 24:57
  SPEAKER_03: He used to help me understand it.
• 24:59
  SPEAKER_03: And he let me know that the the one of the eyes is crucified with Christ, and the other eye lives surrendered to Jesus the rest of my life.
• 25:11
  SPEAKER_03: And the eye that's crucified with Christ is the eye that's full of pride, just like Lucifer, full of selfishness, full of uh full of anger and fear and worry and lust and all of the negative works of the flesh.
• 25:26
  SPEAKER_03: That's crucified with Christ.
• 25:28
  SPEAKER_03: Well, I kept, uh Mickey, I kept trying to put band-aids and fix individual problems instead of realizing the fix was already in.
• 25:38
  SPEAKER_03: It's in the gospel.
• 25:39
  SPEAKER_03: I didn't have to search and hear behind this uh book or that book, or it was right within the contents of the gospel.
• 25:48
  SPEAKER_03: Jesus talked about unless a kernel of wheat goes into the ground and dies, abide in me and I in you as a branch cannot bear fruit of itself.
• 25:57
  SPEAKER_03: Um, your life is hidden with Christ in God.
• 26:00
  SPEAKER_03: It's all the way through the Pauline epistles.
• 26:03
  SPEAKER_03: I don't, for whatever reason, I'm preaching two and three times a week, but I and I preached those scriptures, but I didn't understand the depth of them until I hit that rock bottom.
• 26:14
  SPEAKER_03: And then I started discovering that whether it was Andrew Murray or Oswald Chambers or Jay Hudson Taylor, there were so many great people down through history who had done ministry, their initial ministry, Watchman Knee and others, in their own strength, and they had that same eye-opening discovery.
• 26:34
  SPEAKER_03: Uh, so I felt like, well, I'm not alone in how I messed up.
• 26:40
  SPEAKER_03: And some many, many preachers they go there.
• 26:42
  SPEAKER_03: You can tell by how they preach and what they're talking about.
• 26:46
  SPEAKER_03: It's like they go their whole life and they never seem to have that wake-up call.
• 26:50
  SPEAKER_03: That our ministry, it's about Christ living his life through us and me yielding and surrendering and letting Jesus.
• 26:59
  SPEAKER_03: And this was what the loyal angels needed as things went back and forth in this warfare in heaven.
• 27:06
  SPEAKER_03: The whole storyline was built about the power of prayer.
• 27:10
  SPEAKER_03: People tell me that their prayer life has been enhanced when they read Evil's First Breath.
• 27:14
  SPEAKER_03: And people are telling me they understand now the miracle exchange, that second book, because they they realized that when they when the loyal angels learned how to let Jesus fight the battle through them, they were more able to defeat um their their their enemy, the enemy angel, the rebel angels.
• 27:33
  SPEAKER_03: So that book was was that was a more where I went to the head with a point and then to the heart with a story, little stories, short little stories, whereas evil's first breath, the whole book is one big story.
• 27:46
  SPEAKER_03: But uh that book and the uh the other book, America's Battle for Free Enterprise, uh the value of incentive and competition, that's pertinent for today with this demonic um push toward communism and socialism.
• 28:01
  SPEAKER_03: If if that's nothing more than the demonic entity trying to rush the world into this antichrist spirit of a one-world government, that's gonna happen at some point, but it doesn't need to happen for many, many years.
• 28:17
  SPEAKER_03: And we're our job as Christians is to occupy, meaning for us to pray and intercede and to hold back the forces of darkness because more people need to be born again.
• 28:30
  SPEAKER_03: And I believe God wants to bring revival to the whole earth.
• 28:35
  SPEAKER_03: And so we need to be focused on the winning of souls.
• 28:39
  SPEAKER_03: And if we're gonna win souls, we've got to tear down those strongholds.
• 28:43
  SPEAKER_03: We've got to get the devil off of people's back.
• 28:46
  SPEAKER_03: When I'm witnessing to somebody, the first thing I do is I break the power of the devil off of them.
• 28:53
  SPEAKER_03: I claim their deliverance and salvation, and then uh I ask for laborers to be sent into their harvest, people that they will respect to witness to them beyond just me bringing the gospel.
• 29:08
  SPEAKER_03: So somebody needs to break the power of the devil off of people for their eyes to be open to the truth of the gospel.
• 29:15
  SPEAKER_03: So that kind of gives you a little bit of a storyline.
• 29:18
  SPEAKER_03: And then that second, the the the the uh America's Battle for Free Enterprise came out of the last chapter of the Miracle Exchange.
• 29:26
  SPEAKER_03: And the publisher read it and said, Michael, would you consider writing a secular book?
• 29:31
  SPEAKER_03: You can you can use the principles of the Bible, but instead of making it a Christian book, we need this is needed in our nation for people to be more convinced of the significance of free market capitalism and free enterprise and all of the principles that go into it and with it.
• 29:49
  SPEAKER_03: So and the really the essence of that last chapter was like, what if everybody in the Senate and everybody in the House was a statesman like Jimmy, like uh Jimmy uh Stewart was in Mr.
• 30:01
  SPEAKER_03: Smith Goes to Washington, if you ever saw that.
• 30:05
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 30:05
  SPEAKER_01: I could imagine trying to be in that position, but I think that I wanted to touch base on something before we get too far.
• 30:11
  SPEAKER_01: You you're talking about, you know, the enemy um having that power with the enemy and the the one world um going into the one world religion and all of the government.
• 30:21
  SPEAKER_01: What I've noticed, and and to help me uh maybe um dive into this is I find that people have put themselves in solitude, like solitary confinement, and have have literally closed themselves off to what's important.
• 30:34
  SPEAKER_01: What's so important is is each other with our relationship with one another, the fellowship that we have within our homes and our family and our children and our teachers and our like everybody has like separated into this this solitude where they're just isolating and and and and headed right towards that that that one world religion.
• 30:55
  SPEAKER_01: And again, when you say one world, it's it's one.
• 30:58
  SPEAKER_01: It's not it's not a unity, it's one world.
• 31:01
  SPEAKER_01: And and then God doesn't want that, he wants unity.
• 31:03
  SPEAKER_01: And so I wanted to know if you could touch space a little bit on that because you mentioned it a little bit, and um, I don't want to get too far ahead of you or behind you, but um I really see people struggling with making connections with their own families because they they have just been drawn into this like solitary confinement type of living that we have with, especially with electronics.
• 31:25
  SPEAKER_01: We're so wrapped up into our phones and our games and and and that that we're we're missing connections with people.
• 31:33
  SPEAKER_01: We're not connecting with one another.
• 31:34
  SPEAKER_01: Do you see that happening?
• 31:36
  SPEAKER_03: Oh, totally.
• 31:37
  SPEAKER_03: And if we don't connect with people, then we don't know how to pray for them, and hence we don't know how to cast out devils.
• 31:43
  SPEAKER_03: Think about the Great Commission in the book of Mark, you know, go into all the world, preach the gospel.
• 31:48
  SPEAKER_03: Right.
• 31:48
  SPEAKER_03: These signs shall follow them that believe in my name, they'll cast out devils.
• 31:52
  SPEAKER_03: Uh they'll they'll uh pray, uh speak in speak in new tongues, they'll they'll lay hands on the sick and they shall recover.
• 32:00
  SPEAKER_03: So uh when you think about the Great Commission, is part of it is casting out devils.
• 32:06
  SPEAKER_03: If I don't, if I'm not reaching out and getting outside of my of my family and connecting with people, then how am I going to know how to intelligently pray for them?
• 32:17
  SPEAKER_03: These people deserve the love of God, and somebody has to rescue them out of the clutches of darkness and wickedness.
• 32:26
  SPEAKER_03: And that somebody can be me, it can be you, it can be everybody else that's listening to this today.
• 32:32
  SPEAKER_03: We have, we have so much power.
• 32:35
  SPEAKER_03: Greater is that's in us than he that's in the world.
• 32:38
  SPEAKER_03: We have the power to deal with this and this and this push into, you know, if if God wanted a one-world government, he would not have confused the languages at the Tower of Babel, because that's what they had there is they were they there was so much of a concentration of evil in one place.
• 32:58
  SPEAKER_03: They were going to build a great tower to God, but God said, no, no, that's not that's not my vision.
• 33:04
  SPEAKER_03: We're we're gonna create governments and people groups all over the world.
• 33:08
  SPEAKER_03: And uh so this idea of of each company, each country having its own sovereignty and the in the and the the French being the French, the English being the English, um the the uh the Brazil being the Brazilians and on and on, uh United States being the United States, the individual sovereignty of each country, but each country can and wants to be free, uh, and can be free if we get the if we hold the devil at bay within our country.
• 33:40
  SPEAKER_03: If my people called by my name will humble themselves and pray and seek my face and turn from their wicked ways, then I'll heal the land.
• 33:48
  SPEAKER_03: So we all have that responsibility to hold back the the principles, the principalities and powers and evil spirits that are trying to pull us, our country, into a into a socialistic, it's like it's never worked anywhere in history.
• 34:04
  SPEAKER_03: It's brought nothing but harm, but so many people are don't, they're not, they haven't read it enough of a history book.
• 34:10
  SPEAKER_03: They don't understand.
• 34:12
  SPEAKER_03: They're just here.
• 34:13
  SPEAKER_03: Um, I mean, Hitler used to say, I'm gonna put a chicken in every pot and a cake on every table.
• 34:20
  SPEAKER_03: I mean, doesn't that sound like so much of the socialistic words that are being put out there is is we're we're gonna give you this, we're gonna give you that.
• 34:29
  SPEAKER_03: Uh what happened to ask not what um your country will do for you after you're country.
• 34:37
  SPEAKER_03: You know, so anyway, exactly.
• 34:40
  SPEAKER_03: All of this, I am so passionate about taking on, exposing Lucifer, who is now Satan, exposing darkness, because the Bible does say that we wrestle not with flesh and blood, but with principalities and powers and evil spirits.
• 35:01
  SPEAKER_03: If that's the case, then we need to recognize who the enemy is, and we need to deal with the enemy.
• 35:08
  SPEAKER_03: We we uh we are not um victims of of the devil.
• 35:14
  SPEAKER_03: We are the conqueror, we're more than a conqueror.
• 35:18
  SPEAKER_03: He's given us life and life more abundantly.
• 35:22
  SPEAKER_03: We are carriers of the power of Jesus.
• 35:26
  SPEAKER_03: And so, ah, you got me all preaching.
• 35:29
  SPEAKER_00: No, I love it.
• 35:29
  SPEAKER_00: I'm I've got me getting you riled up.
• 35:31
  SPEAKER_00: I'm going.
• 35:32
  SPEAKER_03: You've got to preach on me now.
• 35:34
  SPEAKER_03: I'm about to run around my uh my home here.
• 35:37
  unknown: That's good.
• 35:38
  SPEAKER_00: No, no, I love it.
• 35:39
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, I I I I agree.
• 35:41
  SPEAKER_01: Like the the weapons of our warfare, they're not carnal.
• 35:44
  SPEAKER_01: We think everything is just a you know, uh, you know, at our fingertips, but but it's also with our words and and and the power that we hold through the power of Jesus Christ.
• 35:52
  SPEAKER_01: And I think sometimes we we are mistaken by not understanding the word of God clearly that when we have Jesus within us, we have the power of Jesus within us.
• 36:03
  SPEAKER_01: It's not just, you know, not like not me myself.
• 36:06
  SPEAKER_01: I mean, we have to take everything like when we're talking about um casting down imaginations and and pulling down strongholds, we have to take it to the knowledge of God's word, what he says about it, what he what he does with it.
• 36:16
  SPEAKER_01: And if it doesn't line up with God, then we need to do some rethinking and we need to do some like, okay, I need to reevaluate what I'm doing in my life or what I'm doing in this situation or what I'm doing with anything, because if it doesn't line up with the word of God, then then we're probably off somewhere, you know.
• 36:32
  SPEAKER_01: And you know, we don't use the power of the tongue in in the ways that God gave us the power to use.
• 36:39
  SPEAKER_01: We use it, you know, as we use it as, you know, that double-edged sword, you know, we we we we attack, we we don't um we don't think about what we say sometimes.
• 36:50
  SPEAKER_01: We just speak mightily.
• 36:51
  SPEAKER_01: We just you know, we have no we have no filtration system, you know, and we don't bring our thoughts.
• 36:57
  SPEAKER_01: It says to take every single thought captive to the knowledge of God.
• 37:02
  SPEAKER_01: I mean, it seems like a hard thing to do, but when you start doing it, it just starts flowing.
• 37:07
  SPEAKER_01: It becomes it becomes a habit.
• 37:09
  SPEAKER_01: Like, okay, you know, I have this thought, I better check that out with God and see if it's a thought that is from the enemy, is it from my flesh, or is it what God is really wanting me to do?
• 37:19
  SPEAKER_01: And sometimes we don't we don't even take accountability for having thoughts that God didn't give us, you know, and we we just go with our flow and go with our actions.
• 37:28
  SPEAKER_01: And and and I know like even just this podcast alone, when God spoke to me and told me I was gonna do a podcast, uh, you know, him and I we had a conversation because I had to laugh out loud.
• 37:37
  SPEAKER_01: I said, There's no way I'm doing a podcast.
• 37:39
  SPEAKER_01: I'm never doing a podcast.
• 37:41
  SPEAKER_01: I don't know anything about a podcast.
• 37:43
  SPEAKER_01: And I told my daughter, my daughter laughed out loud too.
• 37:45
  SPEAKER_01: And she said, You're not gonna ever do that.
• 37:47
  SPEAKER_01: You're not ever gonna do that, you know.
• 37:48
  SPEAKER_01: And I thought, oh my goodness, you know, me do a podcast, that's insane.
• 37:52
  SPEAKER_01: And God just kept pushing it, kept pushing, and I I literally had to sit at the feet of Jesus and get into some scripture and figure out what it is he was wanting me to do.
• 38:00
  SPEAKER_01: And I'll be honest with you, Michael, when I when I approached a couple of people with the title of my podcast, they said, Don't you dare do that.
• 38:07
  SPEAKER_01: That would be terrible if you use that.
• 38:09
  SPEAKER_01: And I said, Why?
• 38:10
  SPEAKER_01: And they said, There's it's it's it's too it's too um there's too much power in it.
• 38:16
  SPEAKER_01: I go, power?
• 38:17
  SPEAKER_01: I didn't understand that.
• 38:18
  SPEAKER_01: And they're like, You're talking about crushing people's strongholds.
• 38:21
  SPEAKER_01: And I go, yeah, because we're hanging on to them as if you know we can't let them go.
• 38:26
  SPEAKER_01: If we don't let them go, we can't fulfill the purpose that God has in our life.
• 38:30
  SPEAKER_01: It's weighing us down, it's keeping us from going the direction God has for us, but we're dragging it all around with us, and we can't get to where God wants us to go.
• 38:40
  SPEAKER_01: Huh?
• 38:41
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, if we can't get to if we can't get to the bottom, you know, get rid of those strongholds and start breaking them off from us, then then we can't be successful in what God wants us to be successful in.
• 38:51
  SPEAKER_01: And I feel like it, you know, and that was just a passion that God laid on my heart because that's what I did most of my life.
• 38:56
  SPEAKER_01: I carried around, you know, all of my stuff with me, and God started breaking it off for me and started showing me where the strongholds were coming from, where where you know what was going on in my life.
• 39:07
  SPEAKER_01: And, you know, I had a crazy childhood and I was raised in foster homes, and you know, I, you know, I was yo-yo'd around, and I had a lot of a physical, um, physical, mental, and and sexual abuse in my life.
• 39:17
  SPEAKER_01: And I thought, you know, God, I don't understand even why I'm here.
• 39:20
  SPEAKER_01: And and all those strongholds that I had to go through, God said, We need to get those off from you because I've got a plan for you.
• 39:28
  SPEAKER_01: And I got saved when I was 10 years old at a Billy Graham crusade, and I knew I wanted Jesus when I was 10 years old.
• 39:34
  SPEAKER_01: I couldn't wait to get me some Jesus.
• 39:35
  SPEAKER_01: I had to get to Jesus as fast as I could that day.
• 39:38
  SPEAKER_01: I was with my grandmother and I told her, I said, You just sit right here, I'll be back.
• 39:41
  SPEAKER_01: I gotta go get Jesus.
• 39:42
  SPEAKER_01: And she thought I was absolutely out of my mind.
• 39:45
  SPEAKER_01: And she was scared to death because there's thousands of people in this building, and she thought, I'm never gonna see you again.
• 39:52
  SPEAKER_01: And I took off running.
• 39:53
  SPEAKER_01: I had to go get Jesus.
• 39:54
  SPEAKER_01: They were running for the door and I was running down for the altar.
• 39:57
  SPEAKER_01: I had to get Jesus that day.
• 39:59
  SPEAKER_01: And I remember being that excited, and I and but there were times in my life where I lost that excitement, and God brought it back.
• 40:06
  SPEAKER_01: He kept restoring it, restoring it, because I as I got rid of strongholds and started facing them and started talking to God and and casting all of my imaginations that people spoke over me, all the things that were done and said and everything to me, and I gave it to God, I was allowed allowed to break those strongholds off of me to start walking in the purpose God had for me.
• 40:28
  SPEAKER_01: Which is this podcast is one of them.
• 40:30
  SPEAKER_01: And so it's been it's been a challenge.
• 40:33
  SPEAKER_01: I'm not gonna lie.
• 40:33
  SPEAKER_01: It's it's you know, because you know, I still have that enemy still sometimes going, No, you're you're not you're not good enough to do a podcast.
• 40:40
  SPEAKER_01: You're not good enough, you know.
• 40:41
  SPEAKER_01: Those, you know, like you said about being a failure.
• 40:43
  SPEAKER_01: The enemy wants you to get up every morning and look at the mirror and tell yourself how horrible, rotten you are, and how how you're not very smart, and how you're not attractive, and you're you're dumb, and know what you don't measure, all those things.
• 40:55
  SPEAKER_01: Because if we walk out the door with that, he wins.
• 40:59
  SPEAKER_01: He wins and we don't fulfill the gospel that day.
• 41:02
  SPEAKER_01: You know why?
• 41:02
  SPEAKER_01: Because we don't feel adequate or equipped with sharing the word of God with somebody when we're holding all of that on us.
• 41:09
  SPEAKER_01: That's baggage that we need to let go of every morning and put that armor on with the the the the helmet and the and the righteousness and and and everything that God wants us to have that day.
• 41:20
  SPEAKER_01: We need to armor up and be like, no, not today.
• 41:23
  SPEAKER_01: Not today, devil.
• 41:24
  SPEAKER_01: You're not getting me today.
• 41:26
  SPEAKER_01: And go out the door and be ready to tell people about Jesus, no matter what we go to.
• 41:31
  SPEAKER_01: You know, I I went to the store the other day, and this lady, she was this this little old lady, and she's kind of slow, and I could see people in line kind of grumbling because she's kind of taking her time, you know.
• 41:40
  SPEAKER_01: She's older, and she's helping people get through the line, but kind of not very quickly.
• 41:44
  SPEAKER_01: And they're kind of, you know, you could see them sighing.
• 41:48
  SPEAKER_01: And as I got closer to her, she was the sweetest lady, and she, you know, she was like, Um, I hope you have a blessed day, God bless you.
• 41:55
  SPEAKER_01: To every single customer, I hope you have a good day, God bless you.
• 41:58
  SPEAKER_01: I couldn't wait to get up to her.
• 42:00
  SPEAKER_01: I I I got I was anxious to get up to her because I wanted to, you know, I I just wanted to enjoy that conversation with her.
• 42:06
  SPEAKER_01: And we had a conversation and I enjoyed it.
• 42:08
  SPEAKER_01: And I know the people behind me were probably thinking, can you move it along now?
• 42:12
  SPEAKER_01: I'm in a hurry.
• 42:12
  SPEAKER_01: We're in such a hurry to get nowhere.
• 42:17
  SPEAKER_01: But at the end of the day, I tell people when we stand before God, no one else is gonna be there but you.
• 42:24
  SPEAKER_01: I'm not gonna be there for you, and you're not gonna be there for me.
• 42:27
  SPEAKER_01: We're gonna be there on judgment day standing before God, and we have to answer to Him for everything we do or don't do.
• 42:34
  SPEAKER_01: And if we have a calling, we need to try to fulfill that.
• 42:37
  SPEAKER_01: And I believe it says in the in in and like you said in Mark that we are to go out and we are supposed to preach the gospel.
• 42:43
  SPEAKER_01: And how do we do that?
• 42:44
  SPEAKER_01: God told me to start a podcast, and I've been I've been sharing the word of God ever since, and and I love it, and I think it's exciting, just like you you share in your book, and you're you're going after the you know the things of the darkness of the world because you're telling people, hey, you you can stand up against this, you don't have to put up with this anymore.
• 43:03
  SPEAKER_01: And and that's what we should be doing.
• 43:04
  SPEAKER_01: We need to tell people you hold power in your own mouth, in your own tongue.
• 43:09
  SPEAKER_01: You can stop that with with with who you are, with who Jesus is in you.
• 43:14
  SPEAKER_01: If it you know, as long as you're you're safe and you have Jesus in you, you got all the power of the world.
• 43:18
  SPEAKER_01: We're not God, obviously, we're not gonna try to do what the enemy did, but you know, God gives us the ability to do that.
• 43:25
  SPEAKER_01: So it's exciting for me.
• 43:26
  SPEAKER_01: So yeah, preach.
• 43:27
  SPEAKER_01: I love it when you get to preach it and you start talking about it.
• 43:30
  SPEAKER_01: It's like, you know, we we think about strongholds and um being in captivity.
• 43:36
  SPEAKER_01: And I tell people there's two types of strongholds.
• 43:39
  SPEAKER_01: There's a stronghold that's your fortress.
• 43:42
  SPEAKER_01: It could either be your fortress or it could be your prison cell.
• 43:45
  SPEAKER_01: And for years for me, it was my prison cell.
• 43:47
  SPEAKER_01: I didn't live in a fortress, that wasn't my stronghold.
• 43:49
  SPEAKER_01: My strongholds were what kept me in prison, and God released those strongholds off for me and gave me a fortress.
• 43:56
  SPEAKER_01: And I encouraged people to go after wanting to.
• 44:00
  SPEAKER_01: To be in a fortress and not living in a prison cell anymore.
• 44:02
  SPEAKER_01: That pit that the Bible talks about it, like the Bible calls it a pit.
• 44:06
  SPEAKER_01: I call it, you know, like a prison cell or fortress, whatever.
• 44:10
  SPEAKER_01: And even when I was in my pit, I had it all sparkly and pretty.
• 44:14
  SPEAKER_01: I had to I had to make sure it was impressive, you know?
• 44:17
  SPEAKER_01: And so we gotta work we we we have work to do in the world.
• 44:20
  SPEAKER_01: I think that we're we're doing it.
• 44:21
  SPEAKER_01: And I love what you're doing.
• 44:23
  SPEAKER_01: I love that you're speaking.
• 44:24
  SPEAKER_01: And also I wanted to ask you about that.
• 44:26
  SPEAKER_01: So when you're doing your speaking ministry, um, so where are you doing that currently?
• 44:31
  SPEAKER_01: Are you doing that at churches?
• 44:32
  SPEAKER_01: Are you doing that at like um like like are you on missionary trips?
• 44:38
  SPEAKER_01: I know you said you're going to the Philippines and Japan.
• 44:40
  SPEAKER_01: Is that part of it?
• 44:42
  SPEAKER_03: Every any wherever wherever there's a God opens a door, I'll go there and preach.
• 44:47
  SPEAKER_03: So it's sometimes it's in churches, sometimes it'll be with with with groups in various groups in churches.
• 44:53
  SPEAKER_03: I will speak to uh um social clubs and and organizations that will have me, uh, youth groups, I'll go anywhere that God leads me.
• 45:02
  SPEAKER_03: I'll go to businesses, athletic teams.
• 45:04
  SPEAKER_03: Uh, from my standpoint, I put I have a lot of free resources at my website.
• 45:10
  SPEAKER_03: So every when people think you know a novel, they're thinking something that's fiction.
• 45:14
  SPEAKER_03: One of the guys that read the book said, I never read a fiction book in my life.
• 45:18
  SPEAKER_03: I only read nonfiction until I read this.
• 45:20
  SPEAKER_03: And he says, I but I was amazed at how I would be imagining myself in the scenes, and I would be entertained in one minute, and the next minute, all of a sudden, it I'd be hit by like a two by four with uh with some spiritual truth that was life-changing.
• 45:36
  SPEAKER_03: And so the but at my website I put I put the nonfiction, I put the biblical support behind the evil's first breath.
• 45:47
  SPEAKER_03: So there's like eight lessons of 35 minutes each right there at evil's firstbreath.com.
• 45:54
  SPEAKER_03: You go to the bottom and you can see what 35 other people who've read the book have to say about it.
• 45:59
  SPEAKER_03: Um, you there's other interviews.
• 46:02
  SPEAKER_03: By the grace of God, we'll put this interview up there on that so people can hear hear other interviews as well.
• 46:08
  SPEAKER_03: Um everything at my website's completely free on the other on the other book as well.
• 46:13
  SPEAKER_03: But then when you go to Amazon, that's where I'm still.
• 46:16
  SPEAKER_03: I'm letting Amazon and Barnes and Noble and Books a Million and Christian Book Distributors, I'm letting them market and and sell the books.
• 46:24
  SPEAKER_03: So you can go that go to Amazon.
• 46:26
  SPEAKER_03: I I'm gonna just same uh suggest that people get them get evil's first breath.
• 46:31
  SPEAKER_03: Even if you have to get the ebook, you can get all three of my books, ebooks, for$6.99.
• 46:36
  SPEAKER_03: I put them all at a very low price so people overseas would be able to afford them.
• 46:41
  SPEAKER_03: Uh or if you need, if you want the paper bell, many people want that paper, they want to hold the book in their hand.
• 46:46
  SPEAKER_03: They're available.
• 46:47
  SPEAKER_03: I I did the uh the audio recording of the Miracle Exchange as well as uh America's uh uh uh is Evil's First Breath, uh full full audio.
• 46:59
  SPEAKER_03: Um so it's all right there at Amazon, but go to the website, evil's first breath.com or michaeljmuccio.com.
• 47:07
  SPEAKER_03: Either it's gonna get you to the same place, but uh, and then take advantage of all the free resources.
• 47:13
  SPEAKER_03: I'm gonna be doing some teaching online.
• 47:15
  SPEAKER_03: I'm gonna be have some big, some big meetings online where um I will have uh people from overseas as well as from America join in and we'll do some teaching about this whole business of spiritual warfare.
• 47:30
  SPEAKER_03: And we've got a job to do with getting the church to stand up and speak the truth and stand on God's word to overcome uh darkness.
• 47:42
  SPEAKER_01: I agree.
• 47:42
  SPEAKER_01: I think we need to stand up to the wicked walls of the devil.
• 47:45
  SPEAKER_01: I 100%, you know, and I think it's important, and I think that um, you know, we don't do it enough.
• 47:52
  SPEAKER_01: And I love what you're doing.
• 47:53
  SPEAKER_01: I think it's wonderful.
• 47:54
  SPEAKER_01: I love um the title of your book.
• 47:56
  SPEAKER_01: Like I said, it resonates with me um um pretty deeply and definitely can't wait to go and listen to it.
• 48:04
  SPEAKER_01: Um by the way, I own a bookstore, so I'm one of those ones that like to have the book in my hand, but but so I'm the same way.
• 48:11
  SPEAKER_03: I'm the same way.
• 48:12
  SPEAKER_03: I've given away so many books because I keep again a big, big library, and then I give it to the church or I give it here and give it there, but I still have a I still have bookshelves full of books, and I always will.
• 48:23
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, my daughter uh she runs our bookstore, but she's an audio.
• 48:26
  SPEAKER_01: She she listens to um several books um a week, and and so she likes the audio and I like the actual visual book in my hand, and I feel like it's more meaningful and more personable, but um, especially the word of God.
• 48:38
  SPEAKER_01: And I always encourage people, you know, um not to take my word for anything that I say about the word of God.
• 48:43
  SPEAKER_01: Get the word of God and put it in your hand, read it for yourself.
• 48:45
  SPEAKER_01: God will move through you when you just open up the word of God and allow him to just um speak his word to you as you read his word.
• 48:54
  SPEAKER_01: And I always encourage people, you know, sometimes you just read it out loud, even if it's just a passage.
• 48:59
  SPEAKER_01: And so not only are you are you saying it and speaking it, but you're also hearing it.
• 49:02
  SPEAKER_01: So I always encourage people to put the word of God in their hand um because a lot of times it's just electronics.
• 49:08
  SPEAKER_01: It's it's electronic, everything is electronic, you know.
• 49:11
  SPEAKER_01: And I think we get so distracted by the electronics that we forget, you know, how the simplicity that God carries with his word and how important and passionate God is for our lives and how he loves and cares about us so much.
• 49:24
  SPEAKER_01: And I hear people say, Well, why we live in why do we live in such dark times um if God cares?
• 49:30
  SPEAKER_01: And I said, You guys are not, you're missing the picture.
• 49:32
  SPEAKER_01: God loves you so much, He has so much passion for you.
• 49:35
  SPEAKER_01: And um, the enemy, you know, we have to be careful for the enemy, so you gotta know who who um the enemy is.
• 49:42
  SPEAKER_01: And if you read the word of God, it tells you who he is.
• 49:44
  SPEAKER_01: It's pretty clear.
• 49:46
  SPEAKER_01: Tells you right in Genesis who he is.
• 49:48
  SPEAKER_01: Like ask Adam and Eve, you know, they know who the enemy is.
• 49:50
  SPEAKER_01: So, but I have enjoyed thoroughly having this conversation with you.
• 49:54
  SPEAKER_01: I've enjoyed talking to you about your book and and and um your ministry and what you do, and and thank you for um jumping in there and giving us some preaching.
• 50:03
  SPEAKER_01: I would love to hear you preach sometime.
• 50:04
  SPEAKER_01: I think that'd be amazing.
• 50:05
  SPEAKER_01: And um, I will share all of your information on um the the speaker notes.
• 50:11
  SPEAKER_01: Every episode it'll be there.
• 50:13
  SPEAKER_01: Your website, everything will be attached to it so they can go right there.
• 50:16
  SPEAKER_01: As soon as they open up this episode, they'll be able to go right there, and all your information will be easy for them to access so they can get right to where you're at at your website and to your book.
• 50:25
  SPEAKER_03: The uh YouTube up on my website too.
• 50:28
  SPEAKER_03: Um I'm that's that's the podcast that I'm putting up there is the ones that are on you.
• 50:32
  SPEAKER_03: You I mean the ones that are video.
• 50:34
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 50:35
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 50:35
  SPEAKER_01: I do video and audio.
• 50:37
  SPEAKER_01: Um, I'm on, I believe, 17 different platforms right now.
• 50:40
  SPEAKER_01: So I do, you know, YouTube and um Spotify and all of those, but um, I believe it's 17 different platforms.
• 50:46
  SPEAKER_01: Some of them are audio and some of them are video.
• 50:49
  SPEAKER_01: And again, I I like to make sure that even when I do um the information on YouTube, I make sure that your information is also plugged in there so that our listeners can get to all of that and they can get to um go and um look you up and and read about who you are and what you do and and they can reach out to you if they if they if they want to or need to, and also follow you and and you know maybe pick a book and get a chance to read it.
• 51:12
  SPEAKER_01: Sounds exciting.
• 51:13
  SPEAKER_01: I would love um I I love theatrical anyway.
• 51:16
  SPEAKER_01: I would have loved to have seen that performed, honestly.
• 51:18
  SPEAKER_01: I really would have.
• 51:19
  SPEAKER_01: I think it would have been amazing to see that in a in a in a church setting.
• 51:23
  SPEAKER_01: And so but having that said, um, is there anything that you would like to share with our listeners before we close out this episode?
• 51:32
  SPEAKER_01: Um, we talked about strongholds, we talked about the enemy.
• 51:34
  SPEAKER_01: What what what bit of encouragement can you leave with our listeners today?
• 51:39
  SPEAKER_03: Be teachable and humble because evil's first breath was was pride.
• 51:46
  SPEAKER_03: And it's this whole idea that I can handle it myself, I can do things myself.
• 51:52
  SPEAKER_03: And we we we carry that like a badge.
• 51:56
  SPEAKER_03: We we want to prove our worth.
• 51:58
  SPEAKER_03: We don't need to.
• 51:59
  SPEAKER_03: My worth is wrapped up in Jesus Christ and what he's done for me when he shed his blood and he filled me with the Holy Spirit.
• 52:09
  SPEAKER_03: My identity is in Christ.
• 52:11
  SPEAKER_03: I'm here for God's pleasure, for his will, not for my own.
• 52:16
  SPEAKER_03: Keep that in mind.
• 52:17
  SPEAKER_03: When you do, then you're teachable, you're always looking to, all right, God, what do you have for me?
• 52:24
  SPEAKER_03: You're you're humble, you're not trying to do everything in your own strength.
• 52:29
  SPEAKER_03: It's a beautiful way to live.
• 52:31
  SPEAKER_03: It's what when Jesus said, my yoke is easy and my burden is light.
• 52:36
  SPEAKER_03: It's it's it's if we let him live his life through us.
• 52:41
  SPEAKER_03: But if we're trying to wow him and impress the world with who we are, I tell you what, we're not going to be effective.
• 52:49
  SPEAKER_03: That is a burden.
• 52:51
  SPEAKER_03: So let's let Jesus live through us.
• 52:54
  SPEAKER_03: Put pride aside, humble yourself in the sight of the Lord, let him do the exalting whenever that needs to occur.
• 53:02
  SPEAKER_01: Amen.
• 53:02
  SPEAKER_01: That's good advice.
• 53:04
  SPEAKER_01: I love that.
• 53:05
  SPEAKER_01: And so um also for all of our listeners, um, again, the information will be um noted in the footnotes.
• 53:11
  SPEAKER_01: But if if you have any questions or or have any comments towards this episode, please um make sure that you reach out to either myself or Michael.
• 53:19
  SPEAKER_01: Um, if you need prayer, you can also reach out to me at any time at CrushingStrongholds.com.
• 53:23
  SPEAKER_01: I have a place on there where you can request um your prayer needs.
• 53:27
  SPEAKER_01: And also um, if you need any more information, it'll be also on my website as well.
• 53:32
  SPEAKER_01: And um I just want to leave you guys with this that um um as we venture out today and close out this episode um with with you, Michael, thank you so much for for coming and sharing your book with us and who you are and what you're doing and your ministry.
• 53:48
  SPEAKER_01: And um I I hope and I will be praying for you that you get to reach a lot of souls, especially in the Philippines, like you said.
• 53:54
  SPEAKER_01: I've met some wonderful Filipino people, and they're just they are very teachable, by the way, um, the ones that I've encountered and and come across.
• 54:02
  SPEAKER_01: And um, I just um wish you very uh, you know, a lot of um blessings in that area that you can reach a lot of souls there.
• 54:09
  SPEAKER_01: And I just pray that everyone listening, following, that you will like, share, and follow this episode and send it to anybody that um you think would um benefit from it, um, which is everybody, I think, but I don't want to be biased.
• 54:22
  SPEAKER_01: But anyhow, um, Michael, thank you for joining us today.
• 54:25
  SPEAKER_01: It's been a wonderful pleasure.
• 54:26
  SPEAKER_01: I've enjoyed the conversation thoroughly, and I'd love to have you back sometime if you'd like to come back and talk about it.
• 54:32
  SPEAKER_02: Thank you so much.
• 54:33
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, thank you.
• 54:34
  SPEAKER_01: And so for our all of our listeners, thank you all so much for listening.
• 54:37
  SPEAKER_01: Um, y'all take care.
• 54:38
  SPEAKER_01: And then until then, this has been another great episode of Crushing Strongholds.
• 54:42
  SPEAKER_01: Thank you for joining us.