Latest / Millennial Mustard Seed / S5 149. Pt 1 - The Pressure Seat – Carly Tebbs Interviews Rod Smith

Transcript

S5 149. Pt 1 - The Pressure Seat – Carly Tebbs Interviews Rod Smith · Millennial Mustard Seed

• 0:01
  Hello folks, this is Princess. You are listening to the
• 0:04
  Millennial Mustard Seed podcast. Thanks for listening.
• 0:07
  Don't forget to share with your friends.
• 0:11
  That's tough. We're in a very tough spot.
• 0:13
  I think that what we're doing right now is a great benefit and
• 0:17
  virtue because it's an end around between this whole
• 0:21
  corrupt informational system, media system.
• 0:25
  We claim to believe in a God who spoke the universe into
• 0:28
  existence and literally raised himself from the dead, and yet
• 0:33
  we're not going to believe that anything else exists in the
• 0:36
  spirit realm, even though His word tells us that they do.
• 0:40
  Their bodies weren't permitted to go to sleep like humans do,
• 0:44
  and they weren't permitted to go to heaven, so they wander the
• 0:47
  earth. You know, I've seen the eyes
• 0:50
  turn black to unknown tongues being spoken.
• 0:55
  These giants would love way up in the island, the young Braves.
• 0:58
  The young men would hide up in the trees and wait for one of
• 1:01
  these 12 footers to come walking down the path and they would
• 1:04
  jump on them and kill them, drag them back to the village, and
• 1:08
  the village would feast on the body freedom.
• 1:15
  Then people start to get weapons, they start to get
• 1:17
  armor, they start to build cities, they start to fortify
• 1:19
  their cities. Now God looks down and there's
• 1:22
  violence everywhere. The battle, this war that we are
• 1:26
  at, is not against each other. It's against these
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  principalities and these rulers and these archons in the high
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  places. It's really worthwhile to read
• 1:34
  the Bible yourself. Fear is one of the primary
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  drivers of mind control because we have to take every thought
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  captive and resist fear. You're going to have a testimony
• 1:49
  that is a justice case against the Kingdom of darkness.
• 2:16
  Well, this week on the Millennial Muster Seed podcast,
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  I'm interviewing Rod, which is such an honor and a blessing.
• 2:23
  And he comes on today just to talk about his testimony.
• 2:27
  He talks about how when he was younger, just he was in this
• 2:31
  experience having to testify in a court and how that impacted
• 2:35
  his life, how it showed him that maybe sometimes the outside
• 2:38
  world isn't safe and but his inside world always is.
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  And he journeys farther into his life and has a paranormal
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  experience where he finds himself outside of his body
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  looking at himself. But it wasn't even scary.
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  He felt the warmth and the love of Christ without even
• 2:54
  recognizing it, you know? And there's so many times in his
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  life where things were really hard and painful.
• 3:01
  And because he knew so many stories about people going
• 3:04
  through hard times, it just didn't seem like a big deal.
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  He didn't maybe even recognize that it was Christ in the midst
• 3:10
  of the storm. But as he grew up, he had to
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  face a massive pivotal moment where he had a near death
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  experience. And that was such a massive
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  shift in his life. Not only did it make things
• 3:22
  harder, but it almost forced him to make a choice for Christ.
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  Forced him to take a look inside of himself and see if what he
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  had now in his life was enough. And as he journeyed through the
• 3:36
  effects of post traumatic stress Disorder, he found himself, like
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  so many of us who have experienced PTSD, thinking that
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  maybe another place would make the change inside of him that he
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  needed. But when he got there, he just
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  found that the change was not to be found outside of him, but
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  inside of him. And in a moment of honesty and
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  just the realness that Christ comes in, he cried out.
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  And everything from that point changed in such a magnificent
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  way. And time and time again as he
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  moved forward from that point, he found the grace, the mercy,
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  the favour, the love of fellowship and brothers in
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  Christ and it transformed his life to the rod that we know and
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  love today. And even though I'm sure the
• 4:20
  journey right now isn't perfect because it never is on the side
• 4:23
  of heaven, but he finds Christ in his day-to-day life.
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  He didn't just arrive there on some magical carpet.
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  He got there because of the faithfulness of God, the trials
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  of life that the Lord held him up through even when he didn't
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  know the name of Christ. So stick around and enjoy this
• 4:42
  episode where Rod gets real Rod and shares his heart after part
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  one of his story. This is Rod from millennial
• 5:10
  mustard seed pot. No, no, this is not Rod.
• 5:14
  This is Carly and I'm interviewing Rod.
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  So the tables have turned and we are glad for it.
• 5:21
  So today you're joining us to hear Rod's story as he tells it
• 5:25
  from his heart, the testimony of the Lord overcoming in his life.
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  And it's truly an honor to have been asked to to play this role
• 5:33
  in the Millennial Mustard Seed podcast ministry, home of
• 5:37
  awesomeness and Excellency for all the world to partake.
• 5:40
  So I am so glad to have Rod here with me today.
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  So welcome, Rod. It's an honor to be here with
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  you, Carly. It's interesting being on the
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  other side of the pressure seed, if I can say that.
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  Pressure seed. We're here to hear your story,
• 6:00
  Rod. So wherever you want to start,
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  however you want to tell it, we are here to just be along for
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  the ride, as you like to say. I think about just everything
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  God has done through this podcast, the reflecting process
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  of going back and digging all these times, Carly, where it
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  would be like trauma would be triggered about stuff that was
• 6:24
  way on the back burner and it's like, oh, let's not go there.
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  Forget about that. But then hearing all this other
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  stuff, it just compounds and compounds to the point where a
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  lot of this I've been working out behind the scenes.
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  And as much as that has helped me in my personal life to
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  realize, man, when we go down this journey and we're trusting
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  in the Lord, it looks crazy. It looks different.
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  It's hard to put words to sometimes.
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  There's emotional roller coasters, all this stuff going
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  on. Maybe not extreme for everybody,
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  but everybody has a testimony who's in Yeshua.
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  And as I realized that, you know, the fuel to just keep
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  going was like one more person get unlocked, one more person
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  out there needs to hear this. One more person needs to be
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  comforted and, and, and to know that they're not alone.
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  And then here I am, this whole time doing everything I can do
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  and and and I'm that one person also it's.
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  True. No difference at all between
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  where I sit and what I do versus people who listen.
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  And I say that in humility because the way that God worked
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  this out and showed me stuff over all this time, it's just
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  that's the facts. That's what it is.
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  So just to dive into my story a little bit, you know, there's a
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  lot of things that happened. You know, obviously you're
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  interviewing me. So you dig in, pry, ask
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  questions, do whatever you feel led to do as well.
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  But one of the big things that I've noticed with the enemy is
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  he's always tried to take my voice away from me, always tried
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  to get me to white knuckle and just be quiet and and hide in
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  the background. And I always felt I was
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  important and I had something important to say even as a kid.
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  But there would be these times where I just completely choke
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  and freeze up. And that was a common theme.
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  So five years old is this first thing of trauma where, you know,
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  we have this event that happens where a male in the family who
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  was older, he was not blood, but married into the family, tried
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  to take advantage of one of the women.
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  And as a 5 year old kid, I so I have to testify now I'm being
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  asked to come forward and testify in the courtroom at five
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  years old. And I'll never forget like
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  there's like prosecutors, there's like people there.
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  My, you know, my mom and dad are there trying to be like, it's
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  OK, Just tell them what you, you know what everything.
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  But while they're asking me all these questions and just choke
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  up, just just choke up. There's so much pressure because
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  that was like a whole different world for me.
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  I was really animated and a big thinker and just had like tons
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  of heart and just tons of my head in the clouds, my feet
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  running through the field as I'm growing up to be thrown into
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  that situation and and then learning like how wrong these
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  things are. Because when you're a kid, you
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  know stuff's wrong. You see it become a big deal.
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  It becomes this badge of I'm walking around with something on
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  my chest that everybody knows this.
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  It's like it's, it's all these emotions.
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  So really it's this first thing, a trauma at five years old that
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  never left me, you know, always looking back on that and just
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  being like, man, nobody should ever feel like that.
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  It's been a lot of the driving force to just contest for other
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  kids, you know, other people who don't have a voice or don't or
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  that need protection just to be like, listen, nobody should go
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  through that at a young age. So it sounds like, Rod, you felt
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  kind of marked by that experience in some ways.
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  I mean, not just trauma wise, but almost like you felt like
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  people were then looking at you and they knew.
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  Is that what you were trying to describe?
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  Yeah, absolutely. The enemy's trying to take my
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  voice away, and then everyone's watching me to make sure I don't
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  talk. It's like this weird feeling.
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  I didn't really know at the time that God was going to use my
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  voice, but clearly it's, it's 2020.
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  Looking back, I'm like, so much makes sense as I go on, but be
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  quiet. You're not good enough.
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  All these feelings were being pressed on all this other stuff
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  in life. And then this trauma comes up.
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  I feel like I'm being watched by a crowd.
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  Don't talk, but we're going to ask you questions like that.
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  Like that's just this feeling. It was this mark to me with this
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  upset. So it was just a big upset and
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  confusion at that young of an age.
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  Really. It just compounded and and kept
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  rolling into other things that happened over the course of my
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  life. But that's really the the first
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  one that I can remember. Carly, that's the first ticket,
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  if you will. So what was the kind of belief
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  system that was birthed in you from that moment?
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  Oh, like I'm not worthy. The world is crazy.
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  It's only OK and fun when I'm living in my world because who I
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  don't know what these people are doing, what they're about, You
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  know, this flailing of arms, there's yelling, there's there's
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  all this chaos. But in my little thing like I
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  love dinosaurs and I'm checking through a field and I'm like
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  going to go on this great exploration into the woods and
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  my stick now just became, you know, this sniper rifle so I can
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  kill a velociraptor. I was a big dinosaur nerd when I
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  was a kid in Jurassic Park definitely did not help.
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  It kept me occupied was dinosaurs and just let you know.
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  People said I had over imagination when I was a kid and
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  I had a heavy stutter too. Somebody asks you a question and
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  you're like like stuttering over and over again is be quiet.
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  We really, we didn't want to ask you that anymore.
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  I was content with me, myself and I growing up that like I
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  just remember being even my mom would say, or my dad, like you
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  would just sit there and play contently with your little toys
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  on the floor. I wasn't over emotional or over
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  dramatic as a kid. I was pretty mellow for the most
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  part, but I was always a watcher.
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  I always observed because I had reasons to, because I, I, I
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  wouldn't, I would realize life in a split second can change to
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  weeping or tragedy. So for me, I'm like always kind
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  of looking around like, well, and then you get a little
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  comfortable and then something happens again and then you get,
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  so I was an observer growing up. Yeah, Yeah.
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  It sounds like what you're describing is it almost birthed,
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  this isolation and hyper vigilance because it's safe
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  inside your world, right? It's when the outside world
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  invades your world that problems come in.
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  So you're like, let me make my inside world as amusing as
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  possible, right? Because then I'll have all my
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  needs met. Woo Hoo in here with myself.
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  And the dinosaurs. Yeah, it's safe here.
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  Like I'm not trying to hurt myself, you know?
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  Yeah, that's a really good way of putting it together.
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  That's a real good observation of what it looked like at 5, at
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  7 years old. I've talked about this quite a
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  bit. The interest of people asking me
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  the supernatural end of things that have happened is when I had
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  this out of body experience or I guess like whatever, I don't
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  even know what to call it. I've literally listened to all
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  the fringe people and tried to like compartmentalize and find
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  what was what happened. But the language doesn't matter
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  because I'm still dealing with the the reality of it.
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  There was really only one person in my family on my dad's side
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  that was Bible, and it was my aunt Condi.
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  And she would real surface, glance, talk about the
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  Scriptures. I remember she was on fire for
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  God. But everybody else in my life
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  was like really a Easter, Christmas Christian.
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  They were all smoking and drinking.
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  They used to say work hard, party hard.
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  So that's kind of how I grew up. But my aunt is talking with
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  somebody on the telephone, sharing, just talking about God,
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  his brilliance, He's never ending, He's love, He's like
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  this language. And I'm sitting there on the
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  floor playing with my Batman toy, and I'm listening to what
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  she's saying. And I have no idea.
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  You know, I think it has something to do with some of the
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  discomforts that came along with growing up in like this old
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  historical haunted house. I'm hearing my aunt talk about,
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  oh, there's going to be no discomfort.
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  Like all this language. I'm sitting there and like,
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  that's real. Really, what's what she's
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  talking about is reality and it's accessible.
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  When I grow up, I'll serve a God like that.
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  And then I'm up in the corner of the room and I'm just watching
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  myself play with the toy and I don't remember anything that I
• 14:16
  heard or experienced up in the corner.
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  I just knew it was warm. I knew it was comfort.
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  And that, that's a hard one for me because I'm like, I know
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  something. I knew something in that place.
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  I wasn't allowed to know it coming back, but I was filled
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  with comfort and. That's the first time that you
• 14:35
  ever had anything like that happen, even in.
• 14:37
  Dreams, Yeah, yeah, like dreams like really picked up from like
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  10 to 14. I had some crazy dreams all, I
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  mean, even up until now, that was like the first supernatural
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  experience that I was involved in.
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  Now, the house I grew up in was really old.
• 14:53
  It was in our family for my dad's mother.
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  She had gotten it and then she had died when my dad was seven.
• 15:00
  And the house kind of like went and it kind of like fell apart a
• 15:04
  little bit and needed some restoration.
• 15:06
  When my dad gets older, he, he gets, he buys the place from my
• 15:10
  grandfather. So it was left abandoned for
• 15:12
  like quite some time. But then all of a sudden my
• 15:14
  dad's like, oh, I'm going to move my family in here.
• 15:16
  I'm starting a family. And he was a hard worker.
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  So he, he spent years and years getting this place fixed up.
• 15:21
  So but this house was terribly haunted.
• 15:24
  There was some major problems with this place, man, just
• 15:29
  unique experiences. It's funny, like even my buddy
• 15:32
  Lindy Luciano that I grew up with, shout out to him because I
• 15:34
  know him and his wife. Listen, we're riding the other
• 15:37
  week and I'm like, what was your experience?
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  Every every one of my friend has an experience in my house.
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  So he has this creepy one where I'm outside and he thinks that
• 15:47
  it's me walking around downstairs and he's like,
• 15:50
  upstairs. He went upstairs to use the
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  bathroom. So like, as I get older, like
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  I'm 36 now, I talk with other friends intermittently, like,
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  over the years. And sometimes it'll come up and
• 15:58
  they'll always be like, yeah, that one time this happens.
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  So everybody has this thing or scenario, but I live there.
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  Like, I couldn't leave that place, you know?
• 16:07
  It was like, even worse, like. What were some of the things
• 16:11
  that you remember happening and how did that impact you?
• 16:14
  It, it definitely contributed to the isolation.
• 16:17
  The, the world is crazy and I don't know why it is the way it
• 16:21
  is. Because one of the scenarios
• 16:23
  that was difficult is and we had one bathroom at the time when
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  I'm growing up. So I must have been maybe eight
• 16:29
  or nine years old. And my parents would watch
• 16:33
  Sopranos on Sunday nights. And I'm the youngest, so I have
• 16:37
  to get ready for bed first. So I have to go up and get ready
• 16:41
  for bed. And then 1/2 an hour later,
• 16:42
  Stephanie would have to come up and then Amber.
• 16:44
  And it was just that's what the way my parents did it.
• 16:47
  So I was terrified to be like, oh, I don't want to go upstairs
• 16:51
  and brush my teeth and wash my face and get ready for bed.
• 16:54
  In the upstairs bathroom. There's this picture that my
• 16:58
  parents had. I don't know where this thing
• 17:00
  came from, but it it's an old picture of a lady advertising
• 17:05
  bath soap that look like it's from the late 1800s or early
• 17:09
  1900s, real European distinct look.
• 17:12
  And it was like bath soap in it. In in the picture, it had a foot
• 17:15
  claw bathtub in the background. We're talking old advertisement
• 17:20
  from like who knows where this thing's from, but for some
• 17:22
  reason, old historical house, they liked old historical
• 17:26
  paintings, I guess. Well, this thing would freak me
• 17:29
  out. I feel like this thing was
• 17:30
  watching me every single time I go to the bathroom, which is
• 17:33
  very uncomfortable way to live. Do not live like that in my
• 17:36
  house. We don't do no such thing.
• 17:38
  No creepy pictures on the wall. And, and I just remember going
• 17:43
  up and just feeling it. It was like something extra was
• 17:46
  in the air. And when I get into the bathroom
• 17:51
  and I flip the light on, I'm like, don't look at that
• 17:53
  picture, don't look at that picture.
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  Just my eyes jump and I look at the picture and the eyes move
• 18:00
  and watch me. That stuff didn't happen all the
• 18:12
  time, but that stuff did happen throughout the course of my life
• 18:15
  growing up. The way that I feel about it
• 18:18
  before it would happen. It's real to me.
• 18:20
  Like I know that something's terribly wrong.
• 18:21
  I know it's not my imagination because in my when I have
• 18:25
  control, it's my imagination. It's like I'm creating like I
• 18:29
  love this place, you know, it's the outside influences that
• 18:32
  we're that were horrific, if you will, for my young mind.
• 18:36
  And just, you know, Carly, as the years go on, more ghost
• 18:40
  stories, you know, we had like cereal box that flew off the top
• 18:43
  of the fridge, just like weird random stuff like that.
• 18:46
  My parents, once again, they believed in what was called work
• 18:49
  hard and party hard. So they worked both of them full
• 18:53
  time. My dad, you know, did body work
• 18:55
  at the house and ran a concrete facility.
• 18:58
  My mom, you know, she did waitressing stuff and then she
• 19:00
  worked at ACA, so Alternative Counseling Association and she
• 19:04
  was like assistant director there.
• 19:06
  So they're, they're working a lot.
• 19:07
  We had a lot of free and alone time to run and gun when I was
• 19:11
  growing up. And the parties that they would
• 19:13
  throw, there's always a story that will come out of it.
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  Like somebody would, you know, and obviously they're drinking
• 19:19
  and smoking and playing cards and all this stuff, but all the
• 19:22
  kids would have to like everybody's kids would be in one
• 19:24
  room all hanging out. We used to get in trouble
• 19:27
  because we would, we have bunk beds and we would take sheets
• 19:31
  and create hammocks underneath the bunk beds.
• 19:34
  But we would sit in it and hang for so long you couldn't undo
• 19:36
  the sheet then create hammocks. Just, you know, there's like 15
• 19:41
  kids in a room and all the parents are partying.
• 19:42
  The whole, the whole rule was everybody stay upstairs and the
• 19:45
  kids stay upstairs. Well, the parents will walk up
• 19:47
  to go past the bathroom and there was stories that came out
• 19:50
  of all their parties, a little ghost girl just like stuff over
• 19:54
  the years. And then some of the
• 19:56
  conversations I remember, you know, I talked about this a
• 19:58
  little bit when I was on rallying show, the the Business
• 20:03
  Christian Podcast where she was asking me about my testimony
• 20:05
  and. I was not a stranger at that age
• 20:08
  to hearing about astral projection, to hearing about
• 20:10
  aliens stuff in the outskirts in the Philadelphia area.
• 20:14
  This was a big topic of conversation.
• 20:15
  We had the nuclear power plant there.
• 20:18
  There was tons of people all over the place from all
• 20:21
  Montgomery County that would see weird lights in the sky near the
• 20:23
  power plant. So I'm growing up and all of
• 20:26
  this is like serious topic of conversation, but I started to
• 20:30
  realize when people would talk about it and when people
• 20:32
  wouldn't, I didn't go to church enough to like understand what
• 20:35
  church culture was like. And I did, I was not aware of
• 20:38
  denominations, but as an observer, you start to realize,
• 20:41
  oh, well, none of this stuff gets talked about a church ever.
• 20:45
  Oh, it only gets talked about in these certain environments with
• 20:47
  like the average people, you know, whatever the haunts of
• 20:51
  this house were just were kind of unreal.
• 20:54
  Now that I'm older and like my house is not haunted.
• 20:56
  It is anointed. Like there's a whole different
• 20:59
  spiritual environment here, but when I reflect and look back,
• 21:04
  I'm just like, man, I could literally probably fill a couple
• 21:08
  hours with just minor stories, like just weird stuff that
• 21:12
  happened to me and people, what's up?
• 21:15
  If you roll those stories up and reflect on them, yeah, like we
• 21:21
  know that that kind of made your outer world feel unsafe and your
• 21:25
  inner world world feel safe. And you talked about how when
• 21:30
  you were alone with your imaginations, they were
• 21:32
  positive, but when something would influence you from the
• 21:36
  outside, it was consistently negative.
• 21:38
  So it's interesting. I'm curious about if you roll up
• 21:42
  all of those paranormal experiences, and you said
• 21:45
  there's a lot of minor ones, so maybe diving into all of them
• 21:49
  isn't what you want to do. But how did that affect your
• 21:52
  belief system, especially when you started to really look at
• 21:57
  Christ as as God and king? When you talk about people in
• 22:01
  the church didn't talk about this, but it was people in the
• 22:04
  back rooms or the house parties did, Like can you kind of dive
• 22:08
  into that space and talk about how that formed you?
• 22:13
  Yeah, I mean, that's a really great question.
• 22:15
  And when these two worlds collide, it's funny because, you
• 22:19
  know, you're kind of asking how did that develop my belief
• 22:22
  system? What did that look like?
• 22:23
  And then and coming to Christ like it, like what does this all
• 22:26
  look like? But it was messy and long and
• 22:29
  drawn out. I have this this idea of the
• 22:34
  time slot that it really started to become clearer.
• 22:37
  But I had some really terrible experiences with what quote UN
• 22:42
  quote, women and men of God look like and in the church.
• 22:45
  So this one lady was a good friend of the I'm not going to
• 22:48
  say the name. Don't worry, don't if if you're
• 22:50
  out there listening, I'm not going to blow you up like that.
• 22:54
  I think I'm 1314 years old and I'm literally getting weed for
• 22:56
  this lady, but she's involved in the church so she's taking me to
• 23:01
  youth groups on Wednesday. So I'm just thinking, well,
• 23:04
  church is like I would go and all these kids are there and
• 23:09
  they being this kid activities. I mean, I got my first tattoo
• 23:12
  when I was like 15. Like I was like a grown man
• 23:14
  about 15. So 13 or 14.
• 23:17
  Like I'm like, I'm getting dime bags and quarters and eights for
• 23:20
  people, you know, I'm, I'm getting weed for, for older way
• 23:23
  people way older than me, 30-40 years old even.
• 23:26
  I was like a little plug in the neighborhood, like I just had
• 23:29
  access. It's just, it was just the way I
• 23:31
  grew up. I didn't think it was wrong.
• 23:34
  It's just what we did. I knew what I was taught.
• 23:36
  I knew what the environment that I was in, but I didn't know how
• 23:39
  different it was in, in other people's lives.
• 23:42
  So my introduction to church is like, Oh, it's cool.
• 23:45
  Like you can get weed for somebody who goes to church.
• 23:49
  You just don't smoke weed at church.
• 23:50
  You don't talk about weed at church and you keep mince, you
• 23:54
  know, to pop and like, you don't you don't smoke weed on the way
• 23:57
  to church, but you can smoke weed on the way home.
• 23:59
  So it was just like that was even coming into like young
• 24:02
  manhood. I'm just like, Oh yeah, these
• 24:04
  church people are just whatever. Like, I mean, I knew
• 24:07
  spirituality, but I'm like, OK, whatever.
• 24:09
  I would go because they did pizza and there's like, you
• 24:11
  know, 25 kids that would show up on a Wednesday.
• 24:13
  So I'm like, yeah, I'll go with this lady would pick me up, but
• 24:16
  most of the time it was just get weak.
• 24:18
  But she's taking me to church. So like, this is a really bad.
• 24:21
  This is like when I say my story is long and drawn out.
• 24:25
  I had to figure out so much stuff the hard way, Carly.
• 24:29
  Like, there was no manual. There was no Dandeval.
• 24:31
  There was no Brother Klaus or nobody to come knocking on my
• 24:34
  door and say let me pray with you and help you figure this
• 24:36
  out. I was lost and blown in the wind
• 24:38
  for most of it. And it was just just really
• 24:43
  living life to the point where I, I seen Churchianity and then
• 24:49
  I knew there was so much bad intention out there.
• 24:51
  I literally just tried to, I partied a lot.
• 24:55
  And I was never into heavy drugs or heavy drinking.
• 24:58
  That's the strangest thing for me.
• 24:59
  I always had a bag of weed and I was like the smoke guy, you
• 25:02
  know, And I was never into the other stuff.
• 25:05
  I had friends that were dying at 18 years old from overdoses and
• 25:08
  of all kinds of stuff, drinking and driving.
• 25:10
  But the Lord kind of always told me like you need to have
• 25:13
  control. You can't be so altered in your
• 25:16
  mind because of how unsafe it can be in in these environments.
• 25:21
  So the Lord spoke to you and said to to maintain control.
• 25:24
  What did did you recognize at that point that it was the Lord
• 25:27
  or or is that retrospective? Still, small voice.
• 25:32
  That's dangerous territory. If you blackout or if you lose
• 25:35
  control like that lights is really bad.
• 25:37
  You always want to be able to move or just be alert.
• 25:41
  So I was always a guy. I'm the youngest.
• 25:43
  I had two beautiful and super popular older sisters.
• 25:46
  So you know, big parties, you know, I was the cool brother who
• 25:49
  would go go to all these different parties around the
• 25:52
  area and I remember just they're in their 20s.
• 25:55
  I'm a young teen and it would be 5:00 in the morning and I would
• 25:58
  just be grabbing their marbles or Newports and just smoking
• 26:01
  them and watching everybody passed out and like seeing crazy
• 26:04
  stuff. And I'm just like, I'm, I'm
• 26:06
  good. Like I didn't drink at all, you
• 26:08
  know, And so a lot of that was my, my upbringing And so, but I
• 26:13
  didn't know how bad that was for my young mind.
• 26:17
  And for like, oh Lord, by the time I had gotten jumped Carly,
• 26:21
  I went right from the world just living, doing whatever I wanted
• 26:24
  to do, no restrictions to having my near death encounter like 19
• 26:28
  or 20 years old. That shocked me.
• 26:31
  It, it was such a culture shock. These guys tried to kill me.
• 26:36
  I didn't get a black guy. I got stomped into the ground,
• 26:39
  like brutally stomped into the ground.
• 26:42
  Like swollen from here all the way out to the tip of my nose,
• 26:46
  my eyes swollen shut, my, my jaws locked up, my ribs, my
• 26:49
  back. That's what it took.
• 26:51
  And in some weird way, like because I forgive these guys and
• 26:54
  I pray for them. I know a couple of them are
• 26:55
  dead, but God was even moving me on this recently where I'm like,
• 26:59
  man, if I see them, I'm going to preach the gospel to them.
• 27:01
  I'm going to tell them the truth because there's an eternal place
• 27:04
  where if you don't get this, there's a separation from God.
• 27:08
  And I'm like, I'm not the same creature I was when, when that
• 27:11
  happened. And if I seen these guys, I
• 27:13
  literally would hug them and be like, you can get changed, you
• 27:17
  can get powered. God is chasing all of us, his
• 27:19
  wills that none of us perish. But at the time, oh, when they
• 27:23
  did this to me, no, that was not, that was not, that was not
• 27:27
  where I was at. That's not who I was.
• 27:30
  But that was the shift where PTSD crept in and just rode on
• 27:36
  all the other disturbing things in my life.
• 27:38
  Just rode on all these other, what do you call this traumas
• 27:41
  and just weirdness of life. I almost died.
• 27:46
  I started to sit up out of my body.
• 27:48
  I got questions and what would have happened if I really would
• 27:51
  have left my vessel? Where would I be?
• 27:55
  What really just happened? And I would take these questions
• 27:58
  to people that are supposed to be somebody like a pastor or,
• 28:01
  you know, a counselor. And it's like the language
• 28:05
  they're using was so foreign to me.
• 28:07
  I got to hold this one in again. I got to bite the bullet on this
• 28:10
  and, and, and, and hold it down and somehow keep, keep me from
• 28:14
  at suicidal ideations. All kinds of stuff came out of
• 28:17
  that, 'cause I'm like, well, I just want to figure it out and
• 28:19
  just leave. Like there was, there was such a
• 28:20
  crazy time in my life, man. See, I didn't know.
• 28:25
  I didn't know then what kind of stealing and how gracious he is
• 28:28
  and how much love he was showing me and how much mercy he was
• 28:32
  showing me because I should be dead, like so many times over.
• 28:37
  But I'm curious how it felt, comparably speaking, when you
• 28:41
  were seven and you found yourself up in the corner and
• 28:43
  then when you got jumped and you found yourself rising out of
• 28:46
  your body is can you like compare and contrast those two?
• 28:50
  Yeah, because they're so different.
• 28:52
  There's like no similarity to them, The best way to describe
• 28:56
  it, What I can remember when I was seven is warmth and comfort,
• 29:00
  light, super bright light. And like, I wasn't questioning
• 29:05
  why I was looking at myself. It wasn't like there was a
• 29:08
  wrestling match taking place. It was warmth, comfort and
• 29:11
  light. When I was 7, all that I was
• 29:13
  left with is being able to watch myself from 15, whatever, 20
• 29:17
  feet away and having that memory.
• 29:21
  But when I got jumped, it's a wrestling match.
• 29:23
  I don't want to come out of my body.
• 29:25
  Come to find out, my brain was swelling up and tapping the
• 29:27
  inside of my skull. So I'm having the first stages
• 29:30
  of what you would call like anaphylactic shock or death or
• 29:32
  whatever. That was a stubborn feeling of I
• 29:35
  don't want to come out. Now to contrast them is I was
• 29:38
  fighting not to come out of my body when I got jumped, but when
• 29:42
  I was seven, I just was there. I didn't like float and like get
• 29:46
  up like no, it was just I, I exactly like I said.
• 29:50
  And my aunt is talking. She's on the long curly cord on
• 29:52
  the phone and she's talking about this God of love, this God
• 29:56
  of never ending peace. Wipe away every tear, like just
• 29:58
  all this language and I'm listening.
• 30:00
  And I'm like, if that's real when I grow up, I serve a God
• 30:05
  like that. And then boom, I'm just looking
• 30:08
  at myself engulfed. There's no transition.
• 30:11
  I don't remember going back. I don't remember coming out it.
• 30:14
  It was just like that quick. Now the whole wrestling match
• 30:17
  where it felt like a long time, but it was a small window.
• 30:20
  When I had gotten jumped, I was like aware of that.
• 30:24
  Didn't come all the way to my body.
• 30:26
  It was, I was sitting up and like my hips to my knees and,
• 30:30
  and like the rest of my legs didn't come out.
• 30:32
  So it was like I'm doing a sit up, but your body's your, your,
• 30:35
  your flesh is on the, the floor. And that's kind of the feeling I
• 30:38
  got. But it was like, I'm just trying
• 30:41
  to roll and get out of the way 'cause I'm still being hit.
• 30:43
  I'm like, oh man, I'm dying. But like it's silent.
• 30:47
  I don't hear anything when it's happening.
• 30:49
  And then it was like, no, I'm not coming out of my body.
• 30:52
  I want to stay in my body 'cause I'm like, I'm dying, I'm going
• 30:55
  to die. I mean, that's that's how it
• 30:59
  happened. So when did you realize what
• 31:02
  Mercia was that you didn't depart?
• 31:03
  At that time, you had started to talk about mercy.
• 31:07
  Yeah, this this is when I find the Lord.
• 31:09
  So I leave the Philadelphia area and I, I moved to Jacksonville,
• 31:12
  FL 1000 miles from home. We say I jump in my 95 Acura
• 31:18
  Integra and I hit Interstate 95 and did 95 the whole way down.
• 31:22
  And we're like, we're so me and my, my twin, the mother and my
• 31:25
  twins were like, let's, let's start fresh palm trees,
• 31:29
  different people, different location.
• 31:30
  Let's see if that works because I'm, I'm, I'm in a slump and we
• 31:34
  get down there and it's not working out.
• 31:37
  We're young, we're mature. I'm PTSDI can't hold a job.
• 31:41
  I can't really, I just want to like try to understand what
• 31:44
  happened to me, but there's like nowhere to go, no one to talk
• 31:47
  about it. And then everything's just like,
• 31:49
  babe, be quiet. Like if you bring it up, almost
• 31:52
  everybody gets beat up or this guy got shot or this or somebody
• 31:55
  always has this story or I was in a car accident.
• 31:57
  So you're you got beat up. It doesn't matter.
• 31:59
  But for me it was like a big deal.
• 32:02
  But like everybody goes through something, right?
• 32:04
  Like, oh, I broke my leg and lost my job.
• 32:06
  Like it was so everybody has a sad story.
• 32:08
  So keep yours to yourself. But like, I need somebody.
• 32:12
  So we did the Florida thing thinking maybe reset the
• 32:15
  environment, just reinvent myself in that way.
• 32:18
  That doesn't work. Now the mercy comes in where I
• 32:21
  start to see it slowly start to come in.
• 32:25
  There's a big storm that blows through.
• 32:28
  I'm home alone at the time and I just God, if you are who you say
• 32:33
  or if you're real, you got, you got to show up, you got to do
• 32:37
  something. My life is riddled with sin,
• 32:40
  uncertainty, lack of confidence, just the lingering question of,
• 32:45
  like, death is real and you got a handshake from it, and someday
• 32:49
  it's going to body hug you and, like, all of that.
• 32:51
  Yeah. So like, all this stuff is in my
• 32:53
  mind, and I start beating the ground and crying out to God.
• 32:57
  And I'll never forget my front door is open and the banana
• 32:59
  trees are blown sideways and the wind is whipping and it's
• 33:02
  raining and I'm just beating the ground.
• 33:05
  And I remember thinking, I can scream like a crazy person now
• 33:08
  and the neighbors won't call the cops because it's storming and
• 33:11
  it's so loud. So I'm like, this is the
• 33:12
  opportunity. I'm I'm crying out to God like a
• 33:15
  crazy person. Everything I have crying veins
• 33:19
  popping out. Just my hands hurt.
• 33:20
  The next I'm beating the ground. If you're real, show up.
• 33:23
  I can't do this. I don't want to be alone.
• 33:26
  Nothing makes sense. Just spilling my heart to them,
• 33:30
  raw and just crazy and as real as I possibly could.
• 33:39
  Is that the first time you really showed him that
• 33:41
  vulnerable side of yourself? Yeah, it's a pivotal moment.
• 33:50
  He uses my daughter to answer me, but within a window.
• 33:56
  After this experience, my daughter Sienna, she's like 2
• 33:59
  1/2 or three years old and she has an angelic encounter.
• 34:05
  And this is where I started to understand, like God, your mercy
• 34:08
  has kept me here because I shouldn't be here.
• 34:14
  I'm a walk in case of grace because I wrecked it.
• 34:17
  This is bad. My daughter when she spoke to me
• 34:22
  about this angelic encounter, one of the first things she said
• 34:25
  is, is God heard your prayer? Then it's going to be OK.
• 34:30
  And that like punched me in the gut and I fall down to my knees
• 34:32
  and look at her because I I've told this story before and I
• 34:36
  know I might be jumping around as it's not as thorough as it's
• 34:40
  kind of difficult. You're doing great.
• 34:44
  She has this angelic encounter. She comes to me in the middle of
• 34:46
  the night. She's lit up like a light bulb.
• 34:49
  They're route my son Riley and Sienna's room, that which are
• 34:52
  fraternal twins that look nothing alike.
• 34:54
  It's it's miraculous what got to there.
• 34:57
  They're they're down the hallway.
• 34:58
  So she comes and wakes me up and my first thing is, why do you
• 35:03
  look like you're wide awake? What happened?
• 35:05
  She said, dad, they're beautiful, Dad, they're
• 35:06
  beautiful. I'm like, what's going on?
• 35:09
  They're so bright. She's saying she wants to twirl
• 35:11
  around and dance. And I'm like, what is going on,
• 35:14
  kid? Like, why do you look like
• 35:15
  you're wide awake? And then she says, dad, it's
• 35:18
  going to be OK, God heard your prayer.
• 35:20
  And now I'm like, because I, I was in the mood prior to her
• 35:25
  saying that. Check the doors, check the
• 35:27
  windows. What is going on?
• 35:29
  We were living in Duval County, north side of Jacksonville, FL.
• 35:32
  Not the best neighborhood. It wasn't a bad, bad
• 35:34
  neighborhood. But it's like, yeah, you know,
• 35:37
  yeah, let's check the doors. So she hits me with it.
• 35:41
  And now, and now I'm like this, this is you can't make this up.
• 35:48
  We're not going to church. She's like 2 1/2 or three years
• 35:51
  old. I mean, I was reading the Bible
• 35:53
  a little bit because I'd call back home the pastor in
• 35:55
  Norristown or to my mom and they'd be like, you need to get
• 35:57
  into the Bible. You need God's word in your
• 36:00
  life. And I'm like, This is why not
• 36:05
  right? All this craziness.
• 36:07
  But my daughter is how God showed me, listen, you came to
• 36:12
  me correct? You came honestly, you poured
• 36:14
  your heart out. You cried to me.
• 36:16
  It it wasn't a 12 magic this, that or the third.
• 36:19
  It was just, I need to know if you love me and if you have a
• 36:25
  plan for me and if you are who you say you were.
• 36:27
  Because I don't want to do it unless there's something so pure
• 36:31
  and something so worth fighting for if it does.
• 36:34
  If you don't exist. God, I don't, I don't.
• 36:37
  This is mundane, This is nonsense.
• 36:39
  This is torment. This nonsense.
• 36:41
  This whole life is just, it's nonsense.
• 36:44
  My daughter's the one. So that's because if somebody
• 36:47
  would have came up to me on the street and so and told me
• 36:49
  something or somebody in the church, I would have been like,
• 36:52
  I bought weed for people like you on the way to church before,
• 36:55
  like I don't trust you. So God like uses the babe.
• 36:58
  And this wrecked me because now I'm like, I don't want to die.
• 37:05
  I want to live. God, you, you can't make this
• 37:11
  up. She's too little.
• 37:13
  We don't go to church. It's not like she's been
• 37:14
  brainwashed in church to be able to just recite some Bible
• 37:17
  stories here. All this stuff is going through
• 37:19
  my mind to justify God is answering me and and he's real.
• 37:24
  And now I'm like look flooding back in the rest of my life.
• 37:28
  You protected me so many times, but I still felt the pain.
• 37:33
  I still went through dark and shadowy places.
• 37:36
  I still went through things that are hard to explain.
• 37:39
  I still felt like I was being ripped open at times.
• 37:42
  Stabbed in the back, lied to, cheated on, just everything that
• 37:45
  you could possibly go through. Bottles, throwing bottles in,
• 37:48
  throwing weed in the party lifestyle, trying to figure out
• 37:51
  what I'm going to do with my life, trying to copycat other
• 37:53
  people. Maybe I should go into the
• 37:54
  military. I go and take the ASVAT past and
• 37:57
  then I can't make my decision what I want to do, you know,
• 37:59
  because they're like, oh, you got a good score.
• 38:01
  You can go do anything you want and and all this stuff I'm like
• 38:04
  always trying to fill in this pocket of is that going to make
• 38:07
  sense? Is that going to give me value?
• 38:09
  Where do I belong? What is my purpose?
• 38:11
  But but God uses this sweet little child and all of my
• 38:15
  frustration and all of my trauma and all of my tears to to get me
• 38:23
  in correct thinking. Said something so important
• 38:28
  there when you said, I realized he's been protecting me the
• 38:32
  whole time, but I still felt the pain.
• 38:36
  And that is something that at times when people look back over
• 38:42
  their lives and they found their fists on the ground and they
• 38:44
  say, God, where were you? And the answer is always, I was
• 38:48
  right there. We think because we still
• 38:51
  experience the pain that he's absent.
• 38:55
  But your testimony is that I felt the pain and he was right
• 38:59
  there in the pain with me, keeping me alive, keeping me
• 39:03
  going, keeping me from judgement.
• 39:05
  And using the one voice you could actually hear, which was
• 39:09
  the innocent, pure, perfect voice of your daughter who was
• 39:13
  completely uncorrupted, who had no association with hypocrisy in
• 39:18
  the church. No, go to church sober, but
• 39:20
  leave stoned. Like how beautiful was that?
• 39:23
  That she was the body that Jesus walked in your bedroom in and
• 39:28
  said it's going to be OK because the word truly became flesh in
• 39:32
  that moment. He walked in your room in her
• 39:36
  body. That's so powerful and so
• 39:39
  beautiful. And your family was telling you
• 39:42
  pick up the word, read the word and the Lord was like, I got
• 39:45
  something better for you. I'm going to come in your room
• 39:48
  in the middle of the night and speak through the one person you
• 39:52
  can trust is real and that's his love.
• 39:57
  That is his love through and through.
• 40:01
  I love that rod that is so you know, you've said a couple times
• 40:05
  like everybody's gone through trauma, everybody that it is
• 40:07
  minimizing what you experience like it's of no substance.
• 40:10
  But but he was in all of it and his breakthrough moment was
• 40:17
  perfect, perfectly executed one wise God, Lord Jesus, only you.
• 40:27
  It's beautiful. Yeah, that's how God worked out
• 40:38
  my my life until I was about 23 or 24 years old.
• 40:43
  That's kind of what it was looking like.
• 40:45
  I left a lot out, but you know, I included in this part one just
• 40:50
  some of the climaxes and, and we can unpack more of it too, as
• 40:56
  we, as we go along. However many parts of this needs
• 40:59
  to be 1-2 or three, whatever. I was trying to figure like the
• 41:03
  bigger things because there's a lot of smaller stuff that
• 41:05
  happened along the way. It's so funny when God speaks to
• 41:09
  you, the enemy comes right side by side to try to try to Jack it
• 41:15
  up, try to mix it up, try to steal it from you, try to take
• 41:17
  that feeling away from you almost as quick as you can.
• 41:20
  Because I remember called to tell my mom about Sienna's
• 41:24
  Angelica encounter, her experience with these three
• 41:27
  beings. My mom's like, you know, six
• 41:31
  police officer. They came to the house at 5:30
• 41:34
  in the morning, surrounded the house.
• 41:35
  They're here. You got a warrant for your
• 41:36
  arrest. Oh, man, I'm excited to try to
• 41:40
  tell you something. And now I'm like, Yup, can't get
• 41:44
  out of this one. This is not good.
• 41:47
  And it's just so funny how the enemy tries to do that too, like
• 41:51
  he wants to steal your joy and and steal the basking of that.
• 41:55
  Because I I have a now I have a very peculiar thought as to a
• 41:59
  lot of how this stuff goes Carly, where this manifested
• 42:03
  world that we're living in this shadow of a large reality, the
• 42:08
  the the eternal things that can't be seen or actually what
• 42:11
  what stays forever. This this temporary stuff is
• 42:13
  we're in the voting booth right now.
• 42:15
  But but I have a interesting thought as to and when we really
• 42:19
  start serving God and and acknowledging God in our ways,
• 42:23
  he can make stuff look however he wants to somebody else.
• 42:28
  But it still looks simple and like whatever to you, like he,
• 42:31
  he, you know, he can make it look like you have angels there
• 42:34
  with you when you're alone. You're just walking down the
• 42:37
  road, Nick, And so he he can do whatever he wants.
• 42:40
  Literally. I was talking with your husband,
• 42:41
  Prince, I don't know, two weeks ago and he said something that
• 42:43
  knocked me out the park. He's like, did you know that God
• 42:46
  is powerful enough just to erase a name in a person right off the
• 42:48
  face of the earth and and nobody else could even remember that
• 42:51
  they existed. I'm like, oh Lord, with fear and
• 42:54
  troubling, we work our selfish and I'm like, that is the that's
• 42:56
  the God who I'm talking about now, like he doesn't do that
• 42:59
  because his will is that none of us perish and he's the suffering
• 43:02
  servant that he's possible of doing that at the end of the age
• 43:06
  when he says death, where's your sting?
• 43:08
  All that stuff was swallowed up. All those evil participants who
• 43:11
  rejected God and said, Nope, we're not choosing that they get
• 43:14
  swallowed up that that the whole library of their existence is
• 43:17
  gone. So the reason I bring all that
• 43:20
  up is because this is the enemy who is chasing my tails my whole
• 43:23
  life, you know, he's been chasing through our generations,
• 43:25
  each one of us. It's like a target on your back
• 43:29
  and nobody ever tells you that it's there, you know, because
• 43:32
  because they're not looking out for you, they're looking out for
• 43:34
  themselves. Everybody's walking around with
• 43:35
  a target on their back, but nobody can stop and say, hey, be
• 43:39
  careful, look out for this. And so I realize this enemy is
• 43:45
  not going to play nice. He's not going to play fair.
• 43:49
  God gives me a breakthrough, innocent lips of a babe making
• 43:52
  declaration to me. I'm crying and now I'm reading
• 43:55
  the Bible. Now I'm feeling like I don't
• 43:56
  want to die, but I don't know what to do with myself.
• 44:00
  And now it's like, oh, well, you have.
• 44:01
  You have to literally come 1000 miles from where you're living
• 44:05
  and turn yourself in. So they're like, we're going to
• 44:08
  give you an amnesty period. Do you want to turn yourself in
• 44:12
  at the time? Coolest guy ever, Corey
• 44:14
  Peterson, I'm giving a shout out.
• 44:15
  He's a big musician now. He really took off still talk
• 44:19
  with him, but he was my boss at the time and this guy like loved
• 44:23
  me. He not even a Christian, but he
• 44:25
  was just like man, whatever you need, like I got your back.
• 44:27
  I'm I'm a row with you. I tell him what's going on.
• 44:29
  He's like, well, let's take a road trip.
• 44:31
  If you go back to the amnesty, you won't go to jail.
• 44:34
  We jump in his what did he have? I think it was a minivan that we
• 44:39
  used for word. I was working at ADT at the
• 44:43
  time, American District Telegraph security, fire and
• 44:46
  medical stuff, right. And, and he's the, what do you
• 44:49
  call this? Like the team leader and just
• 44:51
  took a liking to me. It was, it was good to have a
• 44:53
  friend during this. He, he stepped in and was like,
• 44:56
  man, I'm going to drive. So we drive literally all the
• 44:58
  way from Jacksonville, FL to Norristown, PA.
• 45:01
  And I got caught during the week.
• 45:02
  So it takes us like 20 hours, 21 hours to get there.
• 45:06
  We grab a hotel in Norristown. I got court the next morning.
• 45:09
  We get there in the evening. I'm able to meet up with some of
• 45:11
  my family members. They they order pizzas and
• 45:13
  stuff. We go to the church, right,
• 45:15
  Norristown where we're, we're fellowshipping and hanging out
• 45:17
  there like you're going to be fine.
• 45:19
  It's all going to work out. God is working it together.
• 45:21
  Go to court. It's on an amnesty.
• 45:23
  So it's a guarantee. I don't go to jail, but I have
• 45:26
  to abide by what the court says. So the courts like, listen, your
• 45:29
  license is frozen. We drained your bank account.
• 45:33
  Until you pay us this much money, you actually can't leave
• 45:36
  the state of Pennsylvania. You got a child support case,
• 45:40
  you got traffic violations, you have all this stuff.
• 45:41
  So you have you have to now be in Montgomery County,
• 45:46
  Pennsylvania. You're not actually allowed to
• 45:47
  live outside of the county because my address was
• 45:49
  Montgomery County, Pennsylvania. So all these cases are open
• 45:52
  against my my Pennsylvania address and they make these
• 45:55
  stipulations. They want this payment and I'm
• 45:57
  supposed to be back in two weeks.
• 45:58
  Well, I leave and Corey's like everything good, everything.
• 46:02
  I'm like, Yep, everything's fine.
• 46:03
  Let's go back to Florida. That's fine because I have no
• 46:07
  place to live. I have my two kids being babysat
• 46:10
  in Florida and then I have my at the time I think it was my
• 46:12
  broken street bike. And I'm like, I can't just
• 46:14
  leave. I'm like, Nope, we're staying in
• 46:16
  Florida. I'm not going to be homeless up
• 46:19
  here for this. And, and honestly, I can't.
• 46:21
  I couldn't afford to pay all their fines if I would have
• 46:26
  stayed because I would have lost my job.
• 46:27
  So I'm like, I'm going to jail if I stay here, I'm going back
• 46:30
  to Florida. So I do that.
• 46:32
  That lasted a little while. I finally get to come to the
• 46:35
  conclusion the only way I'm going to be a normal person.
• 46:37
  Because now I'm trying to really think this through.
• 46:40
  How do I become normal? What does a normal person look
• 46:43
  like? How do I model my game after
• 46:45
  them? Like, how do I get a decent job?
• 46:46
  Like all the stuff's going through my mind, you know, I
• 46:49
  don't want to be on the run. I don't want to be nervous if
• 46:51
  I'm driving in Florida. And what if they expedite me?
• 46:54
  You know, that's like super expensive.
• 46:57
  So I realized I have to come back and I have to just face, I
• 47:00
  just got to face it all like everything, the old
• 47:02
  neighborhood, like the people that tried to kill me, court,
• 47:05
  like just betrayals. I just got to come back and I
• 47:08
  got to stake myself in God's word, plant myself in the region
• 47:12
  that is my home and not back down and not bow down.
• 47:17
  That's just what I got to do. And it took me, it took me like
• 47:19
  8 months to get to that point to muster up like, like, like
• 47:23
  Canada wasn't like super confident.
• 47:26
  It was kind of like people have died for less, but here I am.
• 47:34
  And you know what? And God taught me so much
• 47:37
  through that, you know, brought me back to southeastern
• 47:40
  Pennsylvania. I get locked up, I get a purge
• 47:42
  release agreement. I find just enough favor with
• 47:46
  the judge the second time around where she says I'm not going to
• 47:48
  lock you up. I see that you're really trying.
• 47:51
  You know, you're moving across halfway across the country.
• 47:53
  You're trying to get established and we're trying to do the right
• 47:55
  thing. So I found some favor in places
• 47:57
  where it was like before, no black look like, you know,
• 48:00
  you're just a statistic. I got a little bit of favor.
• 48:02
  God would show me. I'd be up praying all night
• 48:04
  long. Like God, I can't do anything if
• 48:08
  if I'm in a cell, you know, I can't do anything.
• 48:11
  And he was like, well, what if I tell you, I want you to preach
• 48:13
  the people in prison? I'm like, God have mercy on me.
• 48:15
  I don't want that for my life. I'm like, nobody can argue with
• 48:18
  you. You know everything.
• 48:19
  But I go in the judge, she's looking at me and say, Mr.
• 48:22
  Smith, something has changed with you, hasn't it?
• 48:24
  And I said, yes, ma'am. And she says, I feel like you're
• 48:26
  going to do the right thing. This judge locked up like eight
• 48:30
  people in front of me and the other eleven people behind me.
• 48:33
  So I would notice. I would look up and like, God.
• 48:35
  So I came down garlic. I came down the steps to the
• 48:39
  courthouse in Norristown, PA. And anybody from my area, you
• 48:42
  guys know, it's like, it's like the steps that Rocky Balboa runs
• 48:46
  up in Philadelphia. I came running down, yes, Lord,
• 48:52
  like, what is next? What, what are we doing?
• 48:54
  God, if I'm a friend of the King and you can Get Me Out of this,
• 48:58
  we can do anything. You know, I'm like, I'm happy
• 49:00
  now. It still was long and gruesome
• 49:03
  and drawn out because I still was learning so much along the
• 49:07
  way. It was like all the stuff I
• 49:09
  should have learned as a young man.
• 49:11
  I'm getting boot camp. I'm getting God's boot camp, you
• 49:15
  know, spiritually, like dealing with demonic stuff and you know,
• 49:18
  and weird stuff like people, especially people that a new
• 49:22
  world heavy on drugs because I would, I would live it like in
• 49:26
  I've, I've lived everywhere. I've lived in nice houses, I've
• 49:29
  lived in like the hood. I've just everywhere in between.
• 49:32
  But there would be people that I knew were like, like had demonic
• 49:35
  stuff going on with them and they were on drugs and they
• 49:38
  would, they would look at me different.
• 49:40
  I would feel it when they looked at me.
• 49:42
  And then in just the way that they would communicate with me
• 49:44
  was different. And I'd be like, what do you?
• 49:46
  And I'm like, this reminds me of when I'm a kid with the whole
• 49:49
  courtroom thing where it's like, I feel like everyone's watching
• 49:51
  me and it's like I'm being evaluated.
• 49:53
  But but there was stuff that would follow up that I'm like,
• 49:56
  it's not just in my head. There's something going on.
• 49:59
  Well, a lot of that. What did it, what it turned out
• 50:01
  to end up being Carly's people will come to me, you know, this
• 50:04
  development and tell me they're supernatural stuff that they've
• 50:06
  been through. And then I'm like, OK, but I
• 50:09
  didn't really know. I'm a pray or I'm going to cast
• 50:12
  it out or we're going to go to Dan Deval's prayer portal and
• 50:15
  bride ministries and we're going to lock some stuff down.
• 50:17
  I didn't know it, you know, any of that at the time.
• 50:19
  So I'm like, but I would listen and then I would start to
• 50:23
  realize, like, man, there's trauma out here in this world.
• 50:26
  People are hurt. I don't care if it's a soccer
• 50:29
  mom, it looks like her life is fine or if it's somebody who's
• 50:31
  standing on the corner with one pant leg rolled up.
• 50:33
  Everybody's going through something.
• 50:35
  And so, you know, I'm wrestling through like how to even express
• 50:39
  and, and live and I'm going to the word.
• 50:42
  I'm just finding myself in this situation, Carly, where I'm up
• 50:44
  till 3:00 in the morning, waking up at 3:00 in the morning, just
• 50:47
  praying and reading the word and the word just washing over me
• 50:51
  and just washing over me. And this season of just like
• 50:55
  complete celibacy, because now I'm separated from the my kids
• 50:58
  mom, who, you know, put me through a lot.
• 51:01
  And I'm finally back in Pennsylvania.
• 51:02
  I faced all these giants. But now I'm like, I need to
• 51:05
  think, right, I'm getting the Bible, I'm getting in the word.
• 51:09
  I trusted pastors. There's some men of God I
• 51:11
  respect, but there was also like places I couldn't go because I
• 51:14
  would test the boundaries, ask questions or like, how do we
• 51:17
  deal with this? Why don't we actually minister
• 51:18
  outside of the church? Like why did why do we just kind
• 51:21
  of come here? And a lot of this stuff was like
• 51:22
  softly kind of dismissed and it's like, oh, well, you know,
• 51:26
  you're a new believer, just focus on this right now.
• 51:28
  So a lot of my things were kind of thrown to the wayside that
• 51:31
  kind of bothered me. But I'm like, I respect these
• 51:32
  guys. They're men of God.
• 51:34
  They've opened up the building. A lot of these people were
• 51:36
  helping me in certain ways. And I'm like, I know, I know
• 51:38
  love, but there's all this other cyclone of experience and
• 51:43
  questions that are reflected in the world around me that I need
• 51:48
  to know about. But that kind of launched me
• 51:51
  into discovering Canary Cry in 2017.
• 51:55
  And when I heard them talking about like the the personal
• 51:58
  stuff going on in my life, but they're having like this public
• 52:01
  discussion about it and they're Christians.
• 52:03
  I'm like, OK, there you go, somebody else is out there.
• 52:07
  Well, I'm already doing that in person because people are coming
• 52:09
  to me and telling me stuff. And I'm kind of like undertoning
• 52:12
  and challenging the narrative of churches, respecting them, not
• 52:15
  stepping on toes. You were completely genuine and
• 52:18
  you're not asking me to think. You're kind of trying to get me
• 52:21
  to recite what you recite and to act the way you act.
• 52:24
  But I'm like, that's not really going to work with me.
• 52:26
  So Canary Cry, I find LA Marzulli, Dr. Chuck Messer, all
• 52:30
  these different people and I find out there's a whole world
• 52:33
  outside of the Bermuda Triangle of, of Pennsylvania that I live
• 52:38
  in that literally they're, they talk about this and not only
• 52:44
  that, but they do ancient Semitic language deep dives.
• 52:47
  They're there's biblical scholars, there's armchair
• 52:49
  researchers that can spin your head on the facts that you can
• 52:53
  just go into all these heights and details and start to learn
• 52:56
  all the, and I'm like, this is crazy.
• 52:58
  OK, now Lord, do I fit in here? Will they be my friend?
• 53:07
  Yeah, yeah. It's like this is my tribe.
• 53:10
  Jesus, will they accept me? Well, yeah, I mean, still a long
• 53:15
  journey. OK, so I started this first
• 53:17
  podcast. It was actually this wild event
• 53:19
  I had. I had given up all of my friends
• 53:22
  and the music and all this different stuff.
• 53:24
  Like through this transition of coming to the Lord Yeshua, there
• 53:28
  was one friend who who came into my life.
• 53:30
  I won't get into the whole details of it because he's
• 53:32
  actually going to come on, we're going to testify about some
• 53:34
  stuff. But Nick Long, he, he actually
• 53:36
  was on some of the symposiums we did.
• 53:39
  He's been on over the years. He's holistic nutritionist and
• 53:42
  he's a personal trainer for like 15 years.
• 53:44
  He's a real deal. I minister with him in and out
• 53:46
  all the time. He lives like 7 minutes from
• 53:49
  miles. Well, he shows up in my life.
• 53:51
  So I finally get one friend. Eventually everyone wants me to
• 53:55
  go to church because I'm glowing like a light bulb, but I'm not
• 53:58
  like churchified. So it's like weird.
• 54:00
  I'm going all the places that like the church won't go.
• 54:03
  And then bringing people to the church, pastors like you line
• 54:06
  them up, I'll knock them down. I remember they said that to me,
• 54:08
  like you bring people in and we'll get them saved, you know?
• 54:11
  And I'm like, oh, this is interesting, right?
• 54:13
  So I'm just being me going about this new chapter, trust in God
• 54:17
  and all the storm and all the pain and blah, blah, blah.
• 54:20
  And I find Nick, we're talking in this church up here.
• 54:24
  We're close to where I live now in Berks County.
• 54:27
  We want to do this Men of Iron program or something where we're
• 54:29
  going to pair up you young radical men with an older man
• 54:33
  who's a little more disciplined. And you guys are going to do a
• 54:35
  study for like 4 weeks where like you, they come to your
• 54:38
  house, you go to their house, you do like this hour long.
• 54:40
  I wrecked it in the first like week and a half.
• 54:42
  They paired me with some old guy.
• 54:44
  He was like you were 3 minutes late when the first time I went
• 54:47
  to his house is like 3 minutes late for the study.
• 54:50
  This is not going to work. So I just sat down.
• 54:52
  Why are you in this? You don't know anything about
• 54:54
  me, so I just hammer this out with this guy and it becomes
• 54:57
  this big old fence. So like I crashed this like men
• 55:00
  and Nick sides with me. Bro, you're legit like I spend
• 55:05
  time with you like I know your heart.
• 55:07
  I know what you're about. I'm rocking with you.
• 55:09
  Nobody needs a cardboard cut out accusation while you were 3
• 55:13
  minutes late because you're so strict and sit up straight when
• 55:15
  you're reading, you know, reading like what is going.
• 55:18
  So I'm like, I don't want them to do it.
• 55:19
  But out of this, me and Nick get birthed into this relationship
• 55:22
  where we start talking more, he comes over, we start doing
• 55:25
  outdoor church is what we called it, which is we would take a
• 55:28
  Bible, we go for a hike and we would just read scriptures and
• 55:30
  and just hammer ideas back and forth and sharpen and just talk
• 55:34
  real raw conversations about what we're going through.
• 55:38
  I start bringing up some stuff and Nick says to me, he's like,
• 55:43
  it sounded like something that that guy.
• 55:44
  Have you ever heard of Steve Quayle that he talks about?
• 55:46
  And I'm like, yeah, I know who he is.
• 55:50
  I was afraid to bring it up because I thought if you knew I
• 55:52
  was weird and fringe because, you know, he was like, we're
• 55:56
  talking like really deep weird, like stuff that we've kind of
• 55:59
  have been figuring out by the grace of God now.
• 56:01
  But back then it was a brand new, like, are people truly
• 56:04
  programmed to not be able to understand what's going on
• 56:07
  around them? But at the time, we're like
• 56:10
  testing the waters. Whether Steve's quayle and
• 56:12
  what's his name the other guy from Sky Watch TV.
• 56:15
  Yeah. Tom Horn.
• 56:15
  There you go. They're they're talking about
• 56:17
  stuff that me and Nick find out we're about to hammer out these
• 56:21
  conversations in persons. Now I got Canary cry on and I
• 56:24
  got one friend who's willing to be like you're not nuts.
• 56:27
  And I'll I'll talk with you about anything.
• 56:28
  We can pray through anything. And that developed into Nick was
• 56:33
  the inspiration for me to start not of this world because we go
• 56:37
  to a men's retreat in Allentown, PA.
• 56:39
  This men's retreat, it's like a one day thing is they have all
• 56:42
  these men coming out. This is masculinity.
• 56:44
  This is really the gospel. So we're like, oh, let's go
• 56:46
  because we're in the fitness. I was big in the bodybuilding,
• 56:48
  Nick's big in the bodybuilding and fitness.
• 56:50
  We go into a just push up challenge and Nick does like 114
• 56:53
  push ups in the time frame and everybody else there did like 60
• 56:57
  or 70 at best, like the elites. So he was like super encouraged.
• 57:01
  He goes home, we go home, we're talking on the phone after the
• 57:04
  event. He's like, man, I feel like I
• 57:05
  can do anything if God is for us.
• 57:07
  Well, this is how crazy Nick is. He wakes up then at 3:00 AM and
• 57:13
  decides to do what's called a Jacob ladder challenge.
• 57:17
  So it's the the height of Mount Everest on this literally like
• 57:21
  wooden stair piece of equipment that's on this like sharp angle
• 57:25
  that you like, hands and feet are kind of like monkey crawling
• 57:28
  up. I'm going to do this Jacob's
• 57:31
  Ladder challenge. I don't know.
• 57:33
  It was 8000, some feet, whatever the distance, and I'm not going
• 57:37
  to stop until till it's done. I'm not taking a break.
• 57:40
  Well, he goes and does this and ends up like getting on the
• 57:43
  news. He's getting interviewed by
• 57:45
  people's hands are all bloody and ripped up.
• 57:46
  He's on there for like 8 1/2 hours and he has this shirt on.
• 57:50
  Yeah, like the owner of the gym, All these people come out
• 57:52
  because they realize like people show up at like 5:00 AM to start
• 57:55
  working out. He's already there coming up on
• 57:58
  like 12-1, you know, in the afternoon.
• 58:00
  He's still there. People are like, he's doing
• 58:02
  something amazing. It's like turns into this local
• 58:05
  thing where everybody's talking about his hands are all bloody.
• 58:07
  He gets off, he has his shirt on that says give God the glory.
• 58:11
  And he goes, I'm giving God the glory in my insanity.
• 58:15
  I have a opportunity now to declare His Majesty because all
• 58:18
  of you are around me asking me what I'm doing.
• 58:22
  And so we laughed so hard about that.
• 58:23
  And we're like, this is so radical.
• 58:25
  Let's start, let's start not of this world.
• 58:27
  And just because me and him would do like missions together,
• 58:29
  we wouldn't even realize. We'd just go out to do something
• 58:32
  and encounter a situation. Oh yeah, I'm dealing with
• 58:34
  somebody's attacking me, an astral projection.
• 58:36
  And at the time we're like learning the language and we're
• 58:38
  like, we can bind it in Jesus name.
• 58:40
  So we're always going through like finding crazy stuff to get
• 58:42
  ourselves into. So we're like, let's start a
• 58:44
  podcast and talk about it. So I remember I ordered this
• 58:47
  like $10 microphone on Amazon and it plugged into my cell
• 58:53
  phone and not in this world. Episode one, we called it
• 58:56
  Jacob's Ladder. And like no introduction, just
• 58:59
  like terrible audio. Just me and Nick talking for
• 59:01
  like 2 hours about the craziness of our lives and how we're not
• 59:06
  going to be boxed in by these weird religious people that are
• 59:09
  mad because you're 2 minutes late at that.
• 59:11
  And, and so that's, that started the podcasting journey for me.
• 59:14
  And I mean, I don't know if you have any questions, Carly, but
• 59:16
  that that kind of lands us into this last like 5 1/2 year window
• 59:21
  in a nutshell. That's it's so amazing to hear
• 59:24
  this story because I'm just like watching the threads go by.
• 59:28
  It's like, you know how the the priests, Ephad or Ephod or
• 59:32
  however you call it, it's described as being sewn together
• 59:35
  with this red thread, right? It's like as I'm listening to
• 59:38
  you talk, it's like I feel like I'm watching in the spirit, this
• 59:41
  red thread of the Lord just weaving all these beautiful
• 59:45
  pieces together, but in the moments you can't see them as
• 59:49
  beautiful. And it's, it's just so profound
• 59:52
  because especially the parts about how you were poised at a
• 59:59
  young age to question if what's outside of you is safe or not.
• 1:00:04
  And and what does it mean when people watch you and return?
• 1:00:08
  And like how then after you got saved, you are still asking that
• 1:00:11
  same question of the church, which is a really hard question
• 1:00:14
  to ask the church. It's like I understand you want
• 1:00:17
  me to recite these things. These whatever proclamations of
• 1:00:23
  the Lord, and you want me to be this person, but is the person
• 1:00:27
  you want me to be who I am? And is it working in reality?
• 1:00:31
  Right. And then there's the whole part
• 1:00:33
  about when you had that breakdown and you cried out to
• 1:00:36
  the Lord, and you were so real, you faced it like you faced what
• 1:00:41
  was inside of you instead of running away from it.
• 1:00:44
  And then immediately on the back of that, you described it as the
• 1:00:47
  enemy coming to steal from you. But when you said that, I
• 1:00:49
  thought to myself, this was the Lord making you walk out that
• 1:00:53
  moment. Because when you had to face
• 1:00:57
  that judge, you had to get real with your choices, right?
• 1:01:01
  So it was almost like a mirror of what you just did in the
• 1:01:04
  spirit and in your soul and in your heart, right.
• 1:01:08
  And it's another opportunity to choose the right path.
• 1:01:12
  Like when you get really real with God, things change and, and
• 1:01:19
  that's what he wants from us. And so you had to do that in the
• 1:01:22
  spirit and then you had to do that.
• 1:01:24
  And you, you did that runaway for a minute to recalibrate.
• 1:01:27
  And I think you said you were gone for eight months or
• 1:01:29
  whatever and you went back and then you had favor.
• 1:01:32
  But in that time you were like facing stuff and, and setting
• 1:01:35
  yourself up to even though you didn't even know the word or was
• 1:01:40
  really having the right counsel or whatever, he was just with
• 1:01:43
  you. I mean, it's so profound how he
• 1:01:46
  just gets in there and makes the path and you don't even see it
• 1:01:50
  happening. You're just following it right
• 1:01:52
  along. And then there's that whole
• 1:01:54
  question again that comes up where you start seeing Canary
• 1:01:57
  cry and you start listening to Steve Quayle and you're like, Oh
• 1:02:00
  my gosh, what is outside of me can be safe and it can be.
• 1:02:04
  I do fit, right. So then there's that kind of
• 1:02:08
  plugging in like you had said to yourself before, but like, how
• 1:02:11
  do I plug myself in to the external world?
• 1:02:14
  And and you found it and like it's just this epic journey and
• 1:02:20
  you could just see his hand. And I'm sorry to go on so long
• 1:02:22
  because this is your interview, but it's just so it's so
• 1:02:26
  beautiful and how often in those pivotal moments in life we see
• 1:02:31
  we we can see it as a problem, right.
• 1:02:33
  But he's like, I'm in the problem, OK, I am in the problem
• 1:02:38
  you. I don't I don't come as a shiny
• 1:02:41
  something all the time. Sometimes I'm the one in the
• 1:02:43
  darkness with you, right? Exactly.
• 1:02:47
  And you found it over and over again in these weird places,
• 1:02:51
  which is where he is and where he loves to be.
• 1:02:55
  Jesus is a weirdo. I mean, think about his, the
• 1:02:59
  testimony in the Bible. Like his life.
• 1:03:01
  He was a weirdo. He bucked the system, he asked
• 1:03:04
  the hard questions, he was in the places nobody wanted to be,
• 1:03:08
  and right when you got saved there you were being just like
• 1:03:11
  him in the places that nobody thought a Christian should be,
• 1:03:14
  talking to the people nobody wanted to talk to and
• 1:03:16
  questioning authority. Like dude.
• 1:03:19
  Amen. This is so awesome, wow.
• 1:03:24
  Wow. I mean, I love hearing what
• 1:03:27
  you're getting from this because like, you're even highlighting
• 1:03:30
  stuff that I haven't even thought about quite like that.
• 1:03:33
  And I know the scriptures say God works all things together
• 1:03:35
  for his good. But the reality of it is, is
• 1:03:37
  when you're in those situations, it feels so distant and it feels
• 1:03:42
  so heavy and it's such a burden that there is no connection to
• 1:03:45
  like, oh, for the glory of God, I suffer and go through.
• 1:03:48
  No, you're just like, I need to make it through this.
• 1:03:50
  I won't be destroyed. God, are you really there?
• 1:03:52
  These people are not going to take me down.
• 1:03:54
  Like you're just like in survival mode.
• 1:03:56
  And it's like, not until later. It was kind of weirded out by
• 1:04:02
  being interviewed, but but it's a little uncomfortable.
• 1:04:05
  But I've been the shifts just don't stop happening.
• 1:04:08
  Whatever. We could just go there and talk
• 1:04:10
  about it. I don't even care.
• 1:04:11
  Amen. Because I get to reflect and see
• 1:04:15
  the beauty. Nobody can take your testimony
• 1:04:19
  away from you. And when you spend time to go
• 1:04:22
  back and look at it and be like, man, all the times that I should
• 1:04:27
  have been taken out, all the bad choices, all the times where I
• 1:04:34
  never, I was living like I wouldn't be alive next week, the
• 1:04:41
  whole time he's like watching and he's there and he's present.
• 1:04:44
  And that's what's wild to think about because it's like, Jesus,
• 1:04:48
  you've really been through some stuff.
• 1:04:49
  Like the cross wasn't enough, man.
• 1:04:51
  Like seriously, you had to. You had to.
• 1:04:55
  Because now I hear other people's testimonies, Carly and
• 1:04:58
  I hear other things the satanic ritual abuse people go through.
• 1:05:02
  Some of them can't even understand that that's what they
• 1:05:04
  went through, yet they're still wrestling like, whoa, no.
• 1:05:07
  Well, I kind of am wrestling with that too.
• 1:05:10
  So I got Grace and Mercy for you because we're kind of all
• 1:05:13
  finding this out together. Yeah.
• 1:05:16
  You, you sure was been there the whole time.
• 1:05:17
  Yeah, and what's so beautiful about it is now it's like you're
• 1:05:22
  letting your inside world out, you know, and.
• 1:05:26
  And that's where the that's where the gold is, right,
• 1:05:30
  Because that's where he finds us and that's where he abides.
• 1:05:32
  So all those years you question, is it safe to let the outside
• 1:05:35
  world in? He's like, no, but it's real
• 1:05:38
  good for you to let the inside world out, especially when he's
• 1:05:41
  abiding in you, right, Because people can start to learn as
• 1:05:44
  you're talking about is in the moments it's hard to understand
• 1:05:47
  that he's in the chaos. It's he's in the chaos.
• 1:05:51
  And I think that's a discipline to learn right There is in the
• 1:05:54
  day-to-day when there's chaos. Lord, you're with me.
• 1:05:59
  I know you're with me. Look at my heart.
• 1:06:03
  And the reality that that that I'm learning with all of this
• 1:06:07
  and it's not everybody, I guess has this much of bad things that
• 1:06:11
  like there's some people that their life is like really pretty
• 1:06:13
  good. Like everything just seems to
• 1:06:15
  work out and they don't really understand why, why I am the way
• 1:06:19
  I am, although they seem to be fascinated with it.
• 1:06:22
  The people who really go through this stuff and they really live
• 1:06:25
  this stuff out when we preach the gospel to him.
• 1:06:28
  I think there should be some really serious you have been
• 1:06:32
  fighting. You can't give up.
• 1:06:34
  The fight is about to change in the long term of your favor
• 1:06:38
  because God wants to restore and bring you out of this.
• 1:06:40
  Because a lot of times I feel like it's presented as come and
• 1:06:43
  get baptized and come to church and then all of a sudden your
• 1:06:46
  life is going to be butterflies and and flower fields.
• 1:06:49
  That's not reality. Almost all the time when I see
• 1:06:54
  somebody who's like a a true soldier in the Lord, people who
• 1:06:57
  live this life like I, I just was with 20 people that are from
• 1:07:01
  the gutter and we are out here and 20 people get baptized and
• 1:07:05
  you know, things are being broken off with love in the
• 1:07:08
  streets. We're doing this and each person
• 1:07:12
  will tell you when you sit and build relationship with him and
• 1:07:14
  you talk with him. Man, I came to the Lord, my
• 1:07:16
  whole life fell apart for the people that really want it and
• 1:07:19
  really fight for it. And I'm not saying this is for
• 1:07:21
  everybody. So don't try to act like what
• 1:07:24
  I'm saying is, is, is for the entire body of Christ.
• 1:07:26
  This is localized to the level of trauma that people have not
• 1:07:29
  dealt with that is now on the table because God is here to
• 1:07:32
  heal it and he's here to do a new thing.
• 1:07:34
  So we have to get real with each other.
• 1:07:36
  But a lot of the times people will get told it's flower fields
• 1:07:40
  and butterflies when you come to the Lord.
• 1:07:42
  But that's not accurate. So we need actually real
• 1:07:43
  soldiers who got those scars, who's been through it to say,
• 1:07:46
  listen, you've been fighting your whole life, but now you're
• 1:07:50
  about to fight with the backup of heaven on your side.
• 1:07:53
  He's about to work it together for good.
• 1:07:55
  And yes, you got to keep fighting.
• 1:07:56
  You don't get to lay back and just relax now all of a sudden,
• 1:07:59
  because you came to the Lord and actually give him the identity
• 1:08:02
  of who they are fighting in this eternal war.
• 1:08:05
  It having this position, all of it, all of it.
• 1:08:08
  Like, so I start to make sense of it now seeing a little bits,
• 1:08:13
  but like there's so much I'm still missing and probably still
• 1:08:15
  a lot that I have wrong. But there's certain things that
• 1:08:18
  I know that I know that I know God has allowed me to go through
• 1:08:22
  this. God has allowed me to literally
• 1:08:24
  go along, collect these experiences, collect these
• 1:08:27
  locations and collect all this different stuff in the library
• 1:08:30
  of who I am as as a testimony to, to speak on behalf of the
• 1:08:35
  glory of how he did not let me die.
• 1:08:37
  He didn't leave me there. And now he's sending me back
• 1:08:39
  into those places. That's.
• 1:08:41
  Right. This is for somebody out there
• 1:08:43
  right now. Who?
• 1:08:44
  Who is on the teeter totter? Listen, you're going to have to
• 1:08:49
  keep fighting whether you're with the Lord or not with the
• 1:08:52
  Lord. But the difference of coming to
• 1:08:55
  the Lord is is he starts to take the brunt of it.
• 1:08:59
  He actually keeps you together through the whole thing.
• 1:09:02
  You may feel it, but the Bible says these light and momentary
• 1:09:05
  afflictions that we feel now are nothing compared to what is
• 1:09:10
  coming. And that's hope.
• 1:09:13
  That's something I cling on to. And then I hold on to this
• 1:09:16
  choice. I want you guys to know that
• 1:09:19
  when you make it that you're not alone.
• 1:09:21
  There's real ones out here who will do life with you.
• 1:09:24
  We will cry with you, laugh with you and go through this with
• 1:09:26
  you. You're not alone.
• 1:09:28
  Somebody needed to hear that because that was me.
• 1:09:31
  I was just some guy didn't know how all this stuff works out.
• 1:09:34
  So hopefully that can plant the seed for you just to to rise up
• 1:09:39
  on the wings of the Almighty and speak life, the power of life
• 1:09:42
  and death is in our tongues. That's that's what I felt to
• 1:09:45
  say, being moved here by the Spirit.
• 1:09:48
  It's a beautiful way to wrap up part one of your testimony with
• 1:09:53
  that word. I didn't even have to prompt you
• 1:09:54
  to leave the word with the people.
• 1:09:56
  It's right there on your lip. Amen.
• 1:09:59
  That's so good. Oh yes, that's so good.
• 1:10:02
  It's like you're going to fight either way.
• 1:10:03
  So you're the going to fight with the army of heaven at your
• 1:10:06
  back or you're not. Life is hard.
• 1:10:10
  So you're either going to go through it and get to the good
• 1:10:13
  and get to the glory, or you're going to go through it and
• 1:10:15
  you're not. So, so choose right, choose this
• 1:10:20
  day whom you will serve. And that's that's a beautiful.
• 1:10:22
  And you know, there are seasons of loneliness.
• 1:10:24
  You lived it. I've lived it and now you're
• 1:10:27
  here. And so these seasons are exactly
• 1:10:29
  that. They're seasons.
• 1:10:30
  They don't last forever. And that's the enemy.
• 1:10:31
  That's like, this is never going to end.
• 1:10:33
  And you're like, you know what? Shut up, fool.
• 1:10:36
  Seriously. Yeah, because it doesn't, it
• 1:10:39
  changes. It always changes.
• 1:10:41
  He's the constant. Everything else is changing.
• 1:10:43
  So really great. Thank you so much for opening up
• 1:10:47
  and sharing your thoughts and your feelings, your experiences
• 1:10:50
  and those vulnerable moments of of honesty.
• 1:10:53
  And and there's something really beautiful about honesty.
• 1:10:57
  Even when it's painful, It it's moves mountains.
• 1:11:01
  I I hand chose you to be the interviewer because you led in
• 1:11:07
  vulnerability being a weapon. Appreciate that so much.
• 1:11:11
  It's it's been a blessing just following the Lord in these epic
• 1:11:14
  adventures. So I'm glad to reunite with you
• 1:11:18
  on this side of heaven. Well, that's it.
• 1:11:21
  That's the interview part one today with Rod Smith.
• 1:11:24
  Dunk, dunk Dern. Like share, subscribe, share
• 1:11:28
  with your friends. You know you got friends out
• 1:11:30
  there that need this. Stop lying.
• 1:11:32
  Look, stop what you're doing right now and hit share.
• 1:11:34
  Don't pretend like you're going to remember later because you're
• 1:11:36
  not you're not. Do it now.
• 1:11:38
  Pause me and do it now. So coming to you from Minnesota,
• 1:11:45
  the middle of the Arctic N cheers to all of you and love
• 1:11:49
  and abundance and blessings. Bye, bye, Ciao.
• 1:11:58
  I've heard you do interviews with other people, so I have a
• 1:12:02
  gist of the story as you've told it thus far.
• 1:12:05
  And so I'm just hoping that when you go to tell your story this
• 1:12:09
  time, you tear down your walls a bit.
• 1:12:12
  Because I think it's the parts that you're guarding against
• 1:12:16
  that are the parts that really touch people's hearts.
• 1:12:18
  And that was the word of the Lord about this interview today.
• 1:12:27
  I was on my dead bed. On my dead bed.
• 1:12:30
  I was really stressing. I was stressing
• 1:12:53
  all alone. Where would I be if I didn't?
• 1:13:44
  Have you thought I was on my dead end?
• 1:13:46
  On my dead end. I was really stressing.
• 1:13:51
  I was stressing all that stressing needed to depression
• 1:14:00
  thought the Lord don't want me like you.
• 1:14:01
  Gonna learn this lesson now. I'm on my way up.
• 1:14:29
  Holy Ghost fire filling me down to smoking.
• 1:14:32
  If you want it, you can get a year.
• 1:14:33
  I'm overflowing. Got that power inside of me and
• 1:14:36
  you're really potent. Every captain will be free.
• 1:14:40
  Every devil got a flee, and not because of me, but they got
• 1:14:46
  inside of me. Sometimes I think about.
• 1:14:49
  Sometimes I think about. Without you, what would I be
• 1:14:53
  about? Where would I be if I didn't
• 1:14:56
  have you? Sometimes I think about,
• 1:15:00
  sometimes I think I better live without you.
• 1:15:02
  What would I be about? What would I be if I didn't have
• 1:15:07
  you? Who thought I was on my dead bed
• 1:15:09
  or my dead bed? I was really stressing.
• 1:15:14
  I was stressing all that stressing.
• 1:15:19
  It didn't turn depression, thought.
• 1:15:23
  The Lord don't want me like you gonna learn this lesson.