Latest / The Redeemed Backslider / Fallen Faith to Faith Restored: Dustin Long #TRB Season 2 Episode 45

Transcript

Fallen Faith to Faith Restored: Dustin Long #TRB Season 2 Episode 45 · The Redeemed Backslider

• 0:00
  SPEAKER_04: If you haven't heard the Redeemed Backslider podcast in the Pentecostal Lighthouse of Viselia, it's getting ready to host Unshackled, a conference that is specifically geared for prodigals and the families of prodigals.
• 0:15
  SPEAKER_04: It's taking place March 6th, 7th, and 8th at the Pentecostal Lighthouse Church.
• 0:21
  SPEAKER_04: We are attaching the flyer to this podcast, and you're welcome to follow us on social media for more information.
• 0:28
  SPEAKER_04: You can also email us or visit the website theredeembackslider.org or pentecostallighthouse.net.
• 0:39
  SPEAKER_04: We hope that you will make plans to come.
• 0:41
  SPEAKER_04: We are expecting a wonderful presence of God.
• 0:45
  SPEAKER_04: This episode has been sponsored by my friend and dentist, Dr.
• 0:49
  SPEAKER_04: Craig Sadio at SmileVicelia.
• 0:52
  SPEAKER_04: If you're looking for a dentist, you won't find a better one in Teleri County.
• 0:56
  SPEAKER_04: He specializes in all your dentistry needs, plus cosmetic dentistry and ortho.
• 1:02
  SPEAKER_04: His phone number is 559-734-7035.
• 1:08
  SPEAKER_04: If you call him, please tell him that Kathy from the Redeem Backslider Podcast sent you.
• 1:14
  SPEAKER_04: Thank you so much.
• 1:16
  SPEAKER_03: Welcome to the Redeemed Backslider.
• 1:19
  SPEAKER_03: With your host, Kathy Chestane, Christian-based psychotherapist in the Redeemed Backslider.
• 1:28
  SPEAKER_03: This podcast is dedicated to those who have wandered but are ready to return to the life-changing power of grace and the freedom found in Jesus.
• 1:38
  SPEAKER_04: Hi, welcome to the Redeemed Backslider.
• 1:40
  SPEAKER_04: I'm your host, Kathy Chestain.
• 1:42
  SPEAKER_04: I'm a Christian-based psychotherapist and a redeemed backslider.
• 1:46
  SPEAKER_04: With me today from Louisiana is Dustin Long.
• 1:51
  SPEAKER_04: Dustin is the uh president and CEO of High Hopes Ministries, which is a ministry to prodigals and their families.
• 2:01
  SPEAKER_04: And we were connected just by the Lord by chance from a prodigal that I interviewed, had told me about this ministry.
• 2:11
  SPEAKER_04: And so I was very anxious to connect with him, but also to hear his story of redemption.
• 2:19
  SPEAKER_04: And so, Dustin, thank you so much for being with me today.
• 2:24
  SPEAKER_02: Thank you, Kathy.
• 2:25
  SPEAKER_02: I I want to just let you know I appreciate everything you're doing, and it's such a faith builder, not just to families who are walking this journey, but also to the those who might still be out there and struggling and going through uh to hear a testimony and that they've overcome.
• 2:41
  SPEAKER_02: Um you're building faith and you're building the kingdom, and I appreciate everything you do.
• 2:46
  SPEAKER_02: It's an honor to be here today.
• 2:48
  SPEAKER_04: Oh, thank you so much.
• 2:49
  SPEAKER_04: Well, I I love what you guys are doing too.
• 2:52
  SPEAKER_04: You guys have you'll you can tell us about that at the end, but God is really just building his kingdom, I think, in this last hour and calling the prodigals home, and you know, just really reaching for those who have a heart for him deep down, regardless of whatever wounds or struggles that they have suffered through in life.
• 3:14
  SPEAKER_04: He is redeeming his people, I believe.
• 3:17
  SPEAKER_02: Absolutely.
• 3:18
  SPEAKER_02: Absolutely.
• 3:19
  SPEAKER_02: He's using those wounds, yeah.
• 3:21
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah, where you've been is usually where your ministry is gonna be.
• 3:25
  SPEAKER_04: Yes, isn't that so true?
• 3:27
  SPEAKER_04: And I I don't know that I don't know that people actually know that.
• 3:33
  SPEAKER_04: You know, shame gets used against people so often.
• 3:37
  SPEAKER_04: But I heard, I think they even said at Landmark, but I've heard it also before that whatever you have overcome, you have the authority to help deliver someone else in that same area.
• 3:50
  SPEAKER_04: So if you've been healed of cancer, you have the authority to pray for someone to be healed of cancer and etc.
• 3:57
  SPEAKER_02: So Amen.
• 3:59
  SPEAKER_04: Well, Dustin, I really don't know your history.
• 4:03
  SPEAKER_04: I know little bits and pieces.
• 4:06
  SPEAKER_04: So um if you don't mind, would you just share a little bit about your upbringing and uh your history with the Lord and what drew you away from the Lord and what life was like for you?
• 4:21
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah, absolutely, Kathy.
• 4:23
  SPEAKER_02: I was um I couldn't have been born into a a greater church, a greater f home.
• 4:30
  SPEAKER_02: Um, you know, I was born at the my my family, I'm third generation at the Pentecostals of Alexandria.
• 4:37
  SPEAKER_04: Um one of the greatest churches for anybody who's familiar with Pentecost.
• 4:42
  SPEAKER_04: Like, you know, they're one of the greatest churches around.
• 4:46
  SPEAKER_02: Well, and and it's it's uh you know, it's a very it's a blessing, and um the Mangans are the greatest, most loving people probably that I know.
• 4:55
  SPEAKER_02: I know there are a lot of great pastors, and everybody should feel their churches the best, obviously, but I genuinely feel um my pastors in my church exemplify God's love greater than no other.
• 5:08
  SPEAKER_02: But and my mother and dad were also like that.
• 5:11
  SPEAKER_02: They were um I I didn't I didn't I can't look back and say that there was anything I could put put on them or blame them.
• 5:19
  SPEAKER_02: They were involved in ministry, they were involved in um for for my entire life.
• 5:24
  SPEAKER_02: I mean, I was raised, you know, Bishop G.
• 5:27
  SPEAKER_02: A.
• 5:27
  SPEAKER_02: Mangan, the uh elder Mangan, who's gone on to be with the Lord, um, started 24-hour prayer at the POA.
• 5:34
  SPEAKER_02: And I remember with my parents going and um spending the night three hours in the middle of the night sleeping under pews, you know, while they prayed for three hours and home Bible studies and just um continuously involved in something.
• 5:49
  SPEAKER_02: And even to this day, you know, now you know they started their hope prodigal ministry because of me, but they've always been involved in ministry.
• 5:57
  SPEAKER_02: So I grew up with a with a with a love for God.
• 6:01
  SPEAKER_02: I mean, I grew up with a heart for God and and really from a young age knew that God had something for me.
• 6:08
  SPEAKER_02: Um didn't really know what that looked like, but knew I enjoyed um, you know, serving in his kingdom.
• 6:16
  SPEAKER_02: I enjoyed going to church, being around church.
• 6:18
  SPEAKER_02: And at the at the age of 15, I do remember God calling me to the serve full-time in the ministry.
• 6:26
  SPEAKER_02: And um I followed that call at 21, moved to San Antonio to become actually an assistant youth pastor out there.
• 6:34
  SPEAKER_02: And then my uncle, uh Darold Weber, who is now my general superintendent here in Louisiana, um, was starting a church in Lafayette, Louisiana, and asked me to follow him there.
• 6:46
  SPEAKER_02: And so I did.
• 6:47
  SPEAKER_02: I followed him there, and and it was a beautiful thing starting in a living room, um, and then seeing that church grow tremendously and just just being a small part of that.
• 7:00
  SPEAKER_02: Um, so that so God allowed that for I was I did that, I it was six, seven years, somewhere around six, seven years, I believe.
• 7:08
  SPEAKER_02: And then I was just sitting at dinner one night.
• 7:12
  SPEAKER_02: Um and with with my family, I had my wife, my my wife then, um and I were at dinner and and we had a little baby girl, new baby girl.
• 7:24
  SPEAKER_02: I think she's three, four months old then.
• 7:26
  SPEAKER_02: And I and I got a call out of the blue, Kathy.
• 7:29
  SPEAKER_02: Um had no idea.
• 7:31
  SPEAKER_02: I hadn't applied for anything, but a pharmaceutical sales repri uh manager contacted me.
• 7:38
  SPEAKER_04: Okay, so you were in you were in ministry full time and you got a pharmaceutical sales call?
• 7:46
  SPEAKER_02: Uh yeah, just out of the blue.
• 7:48
  SPEAKER_02: Wow.
• 7:49
  SPEAKER_02: And so I um he said he'd seen my resume on monster.com, which that shows you that's I don't even know if Monster still exists.
• 7:59
  SPEAKER_02: Uh um or but it was but he's he saw it on there um and was just wondering if I'd be interested in meeting him for lunch the next day just to look talk about the job.
• 8:11
  SPEAKER_02: So so I did.
• 8:12
  SPEAKER_02: Um not really thinking there would be because that's a very tough industry to get into to crack your door, especially just right out of college.
• 8:18
  SPEAKER_02: I just graduated.
• 8:20
  SPEAKER_02: So I met him and he called me that night and offered me the position.
• 8:24
  SPEAKER_02: And so um I'll be very transparent.
• 8:28
  SPEAKER_04: That's unheard of.
• 8:29
  SPEAKER_04: That is very unheard of.
• 8:31
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah, it it was.
• 8:34
  SPEAKER_02: And so it's definitely um, I didn't I didn't pray about this this decision.
• 8:40
  SPEAKER_02: I didn't go seek counsel of my pastors, uh, my uncle, who was my pastor at the time, or even my pastors in Alexandria, my parents didn't seek any counsel, didn't pray about it.
• 8:50
  SPEAKER_02: Um and and the catch was was that uh it was initially supposed to be you know there, so I thought I could do both things, but come to find out there was a glitch.
• 9:00
  SPEAKER_02: So they said, look, you can either go to Roanoke, Virginia, or wait for the next position to come, whenever that might be.
• 9:06
  SPEAKER_02: And and not knowing if that would ever happen, I jumped on it and I said, I'm I'll take it and pack my family, moved to Roanoke, and uh left everything to do with ministry.
• 9:21
  SPEAKER_02: I I left my office at the church there, didn't touch anything, just left everything.
• 9:26
  SPEAKER_02: Packed a U-Haul and and left.
• 9:29
  SPEAKER_02: And um I still believe that I could possibly um maintain a relationship with God and maybe find something there in Roanoke.
• 9:41
  SPEAKER_02: I just I kind of in my mind said, hey, look, this is maybe this is God, a God opportunity.
• 9:48
  SPEAKER_02: Um but remember I hadn't prayed or fasted, and so I uh moved to a Roanoke and little by little, um just to kind of fast forward little by little, you know, I I went places that morally I I never thought I would go.
• 10:06
  SPEAKER_02: Um it just and and it wasn't a quick, quick fall, but it was just letting go of little things at a time.
• 10:13
  SPEAKER_02: And so um had great success, moved back to Alexandria because the understanding was was that when a position came back up in Louisiana that they would I they'd roll me back over there to get closer to a family.
• 10:27
  SPEAKER_02: So we had another little girl on the way.
• 10:30
  SPEAKER_02: And so um a position came up open in Alexandria.
• 10:34
  SPEAKER_02: I took that very successful, three presidents' clubs, great opportunity, and then uh another opportunity opened up in oncology uh based out of Austin, um Austin, Texas.
• 10:48
  SPEAKER_02: So in that was in 2007, and so I took that position and found myself flying three to four nights a week uh or three days a week and spending nights in hotels, and it just led to more opportunities, a lifestyle that um was so far from God.
• 11:08
  SPEAKER_02: Um, but it was it was um feeding everything I wanted in the flesh because uh, you know, there was very little, very little God, if any, in my life, and there's a lot of flesh.
• 11:21
  SPEAKER_02: I I like to say Psalm uh Proverbs 1023 says it it's as sport for a fool to do mischief, and that's exactly what my life was.
• 11:31
  SPEAKER_02: It was a sport, it was a game, it was all about conquering uh the next thing, um whatever whatever my flesh desired, I pursued it and and pursued it with everything.
• 11:45
  SPEAKER_04: So Dustin when you when you were in ministry and this call came, were you like in a dry season with the Lord?
• 11:57
  SPEAKER_04: Like how were you able to leave your office untouched and just pack up so easily unless you were already struggling someplace in your life or feeling like you were in a lull or unfulfilled?
• 12:13
  SPEAKER_04: Like when do you look back and where were you at at that time for all of these doors to just open so easily and quickly?
• 12:23
  SPEAKER_02: That's a very good question, Kathy, because um I know exactly where I was.
• 12:29
  SPEAKER_02: I was in a place of um I had been asked, and there's an episode coming out pretty soon on our podcast that my uncle and I sit down and talk, but I was in a place where he had asked something of me, and I I didn't agree with it at the time.
• 12:49
  SPEAKER_02: Um and him being a the pastor, uh uh it was a submission issue on my part.
• 12:55
  SPEAKER_02: Um a submission issue of and and what he was asking, he actually was right in retrospect.
• 13:01
  SPEAKER_02: Looking back, I mean he was older, he was wiser, he was the pastor of the church.
• 13:06
  SPEAKER_04: Um what did he ask young?
• 13:09
  SPEAKER_02: It it it was simply something to do as far as you service schedule, and it was it wasn't a big deal, actually.
• 13:14
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah, it was something very it was something very to you know um to do with adjusting the youth service schedule.
• 13:20
  SPEAKER_02: So it was actually very minuscule, but at the time I allowed it in my spirit to fester.
• 13:27
  SPEAKER_04: Because that happens.
• 13:28
  SPEAKER_04: Offense happens so easily in the church that opens that door.
• 13:33
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah, I allowed I allowed that to happen.
• 13:36
  SPEAKER_02: Um and I allowed that to fester, and so as as I allowed that to fester when the first opportunity came, I used it as a way to to get out.
• 13:46
  SPEAKER_02: So that was a good that was a good and and and you know, and in our episode, we'll talk about how that um the episode that my uncle and I talk um we'll talk about how that affected he and I later in life, um, me more than him, um with c the consequences.
• 14:03
  SPEAKER_02: But so yeah, I I was you know, and and that that goes back to um you know well I I'll I'll address that here in a second.
• 14:15
  SPEAKER_02: I want to say in Austin, I was living uh I had everything I wanted.
• 14:19
  SPEAKER_02: I mean, living life experiences, traveling places in the world.
• 14:24
  SPEAKER_02: I never thought, I mean, it life was good.
• 14:27
  SPEAKER_02: I was living in sin, and honestly, I was loving it, loving every bit of it.
• 14:31
  SPEAKER_02: Love Austin.
• 14:33
  SPEAKER_04: Um so was that clubs, was that houses, was that cars, was that just influence of all the powerful people?
• 14:43
  SPEAKER_02: Like all all of it, all of it.
• 14:46
  SPEAKER_02: And I was just meeting people that had lots of influence, lots of power, and um in both worlds, not only in the in the you know, in the financial world or even in the in the pharmaceutical world, but also in the club world, people that could get me into places and all around that I wanted to get into.
• 15:08
  SPEAKER_02: And so it was just a it was just I was lost.
• 15:14
  SPEAKER_02: I was lost.
• 15:15
  SPEAKER_02: I was I was dead uh spiritually.
• 15:18
  SPEAKER_02: Um and I remember I can't tell you exactly why, Kathy, but in June or July of 2012, I I was actually flying into Houston and I had organized a speaker program with a key opinion leader out of MD Anderson, and he uh and I I landed in Houston.
• 15:43
  SPEAKER_02: And when I landed in Houston, I don't know why, I can't explain it to you, but for some reason I I could not, I just I couldn't do the program.
• 15:54
  SPEAKER_02: So I I called my counterparts and I said, hey, look, y'all, I I can't do this tonight.
• 15:58
  SPEAKER_02: Y'all are gonna have to cover for me.
• 16:00
  SPEAKER_02: And when I did that, I got in my rental car in Houston, drove it all the way back to Austin, picked up my car at the airport, and on the way home from the airport, I I bought the biggest bottle of vodka that you that you can buy.
• 16:17
  SPEAKER_02: I think they call it a handle or something like that.
• 16:21
  SPEAKER_02: But to that point, I was a very I was functioning.
• 16:25
  SPEAKER_02: I was I worked, I would, I didn't have, you know, I wasn't an alcoholic, I wasn't a drug addict.
• 16:29
  SPEAKER_02: I know I abused them um on weekends and and partying, but then I'd go work the rest of the week and and be high functioning.
• 16:37
  SPEAKER_02: And so I bought that bottle of like on the way home and and Kathy for the next for the next I would say well it was until November, from June or July till November, I drank myself.
• 16:52
  SPEAKER_02: Um I I would wake up, and if I went out as soon as I woke up, I would drink myself back to sleep.
• 16:59
  SPEAKER_02: I just want to be numb.
• 17:00
  SPEAKER_02: I did I wanted to numb out.
• 17:02
  SPEAKER_02: I didn't want to feel anything.
• 17:05
  SPEAKER_02: I didn't want to, I I just wanted to lay there and drink, and it it brought me to um a terrible, terrible place.
• 17:14
  SPEAKER_02: Um I I just you know, my literally almost lost my life.
• 17:19
  SPEAKER_02: I went from 185 pounds down to like 140.
• 17:23
  SPEAKER_02: It was terrible.
• 17:24
  SPEAKER_04: What was causing that desire to be numb?
• 17:27
  SPEAKER_04: Do you know what was it a particular thing?
• 17:29
  SPEAKER_04: Were you feeling conviction?
• 17:31
  SPEAKER_04: Uh like what happened that made that shift take place from being high functioning to then now just totally wanting to be numb for all those months?
• 17:42
  SPEAKER_02: I um I have to be very careful in that answer because it involves I had I was I was dealing um I I was dealing a lot with a a lot in the home and that um and so I it it caught up with me.
• 18:02
  SPEAKER_02: It caught up with me.
• 18:03
  SPEAKER_02: And I have to be very very delicate there, but um it caught up with me and and a lot of that I have to say, I a lot of that I have to say was me not being the man of God or the man that I should be.
• 18:17
  SPEAKER_02: So it wasn't one person or the other, it was a combination of two lives that were brought to a place where you know uh I was miserable.
• 18:30
  SPEAKER_02: So in November um I was I I was driven to a five-day detox facility in Austin.
• 18:40
  SPEAKER_02: Um I was so bad off they had to drive me across the street first to the ER just to stabilize me.
• 18:47
  SPEAKER_02: And my my BAC was 0.467, which is Oh you could have died, which is it was lethal.
• 18:54
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
• 18:54
  SPEAKER_04: Yes, it is, yeah.
• 18:56
  SPEAKER_02: And so they they told me they put me when they drove me back across the street, they put me on suicide watch, obviously for that high of a blood alcohol level.
• 19:06
  SPEAKER_02: Um, thank God I I lived.
• 19:08
  SPEAKER_02: But here's the interesting part, Kathy, um just to kind of get you, you know, to kind of I was in that that facility for five days.
• 19:19
  SPEAKER_02: On the last night I was there, I was in the bathroom shaving, which was the you know, they let you do that the last night, and there was a male nurse in that bathroom, and he walked in and he closed the bathroom door.
• 19:34
  SPEAKER_02: Um and you know, the protocol was that he had to be in there with me with you know, since I was shaving with a razor.
• 19:41
  SPEAKER_02: And he closed the door, which you know that wasn't really protocol, the the doors were all supposed to be open, and he just stopped and he asked me, he said, Dustin, he said, Have you ever been filled with the Holy Ghost?
• 19:54
  SPEAKER_02: Oh wow and I I said, and look, I I wasn't at that point in my life, I was just ready to get out of there, see what I could do to get back to my job, my family, repair everything I had damaged.
• 20:08
  SPEAKER_02: I wasn't interested or in talking about God.
• 20:11
  SPEAKER_02: I my mind still wasn't there, it was just still so messed up, and I really didn't want to talk about this.
• 20:18
  SPEAKER_02: But I just told him, I said, uh, yes, I have.
• 20:20
  SPEAKER_02: And he said, Dustin, I know.
• 20:22
  SPEAKER_02: He said, because there is a light around you.
• 20:24
  SPEAKER_02: And he said, the glory of God is in this bathroom.
• 20:27
  SPEAKER_02: And he said, God still has a purpose and a plan for you.
• 20:33
  SPEAKER_02: And he told me some more things that that um, you know, some of which I just don't remember.
• 20:40
  SPEAKER_02: But here's the thing that's interesting, and I have to just quickly back up.
• 20:46
  SPEAKER_02: My mother and I, and my father and I had been estranged for several years at this point.
• 20:51
  SPEAKER_02: They didn't know what was going on with me, they didn't know where I was, they didn't know what shape I was in, what was going on in my life.
• 20:58
  SPEAKER_02: But my mom had been on a 70-day fast for me.
• 21:02
  SPEAKER_02: 70.
• 21:03
  SPEAKER_01: Wow.
• 21:03
  SPEAKER_02: And it wasn't, it wasn't uh 70 days of no food and just water.
• 21:08
  SPEAKER_02: She God would tell her every day what to fast, whether it be food.
• 21:12
  SPEAKER_02: No, she didn't, she didn't drink coffee, which to her, she and I, those are two big, that's a big thing, coffee.
• 21:19
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 21:19
  SPEAKER_02: But she'd stop drinking coffee, and she also fasted food many days.
• 21:25
  SPEAKER_02: She fasted, God would speak to her each day.
• 21:27
  SPEAKER_02: But during that 70-day fast, and while I was in this detox facility, God spoke to a pastor's wife in Colorado, who I knew.
• 21:40
  SPEAKER_02: And this was and and this lady will come into my story later.
• 21:43
  SPEAKER_02: She's actually was out of her, she and her husband out of Alexandria, pastor church in Colorado.
• 21:48
  SPEAKER_02: God, she was in a Walmart parking lot in Colorado, and God said, Call Diane Long.
• 21:55
  SPEAKER_02: We've got to pray for Michael to stand up on Dustin's behalf.
• 21:59
  SPEAKER_02: No.
• 22:00
  SPEAKER_02: She's talking about the Archangel Michael.
• 22:02
  SPEAKER_02: Um and our bishop Anthony Mangan had preached a sermon in 2007, I believe, on when Michael stood up.
• 22:12
  SPEAKER_02: And so and so Jamie was uh she was the pastor's wife, and when she called mom, she said, Diane, we've got to pray for Michael to stand up.
• 22:23
  SPEAKER_02: So they did.
• 22:24
  SPEAKER_02: They they bound together, prayed, and um prayed that Michael stood up.
• 22:29
  SPEAKER_02: And I didn't know any of this.
• 22:32
  SPEAKER_02: My mother and father didn't know where I was.
• 22:35
  SPEAKER_02: Uh Jamie didn't know where I was.
• 22:37
  SPEAKER_02: And so let's go back to the bathroom and the in the detox facility and that gentleman.
• 22:43
  SPEAKER_02: And so he told me a few more things that I didn't, I did not, I really don't remember, but they were powerful.
• 22:49
  SPEAKER_02: And I my mind was just kind of spinning from all of this.
• 22:54
  SPEAKER_02: And he turns and he said, Look, if you need anything else before before you leave, he said, My name is Michael.
• 23:01
  SPEAKER_04: Wow.
• 23:03
  SPEAKER_04: Wow.
• 23:05
  SPEAKER_02: I didn't know the impact of that.
• 23:07
  SPEAKER_02: I didn't know the impact of that.
• 23:09
  SPEAKER_02: I didn't know the impact of how that even played into anything at all until a year or so down the road, which was a beautiful time.
• 23:19
  SPEAKER_02: Of um I I ended up going to a 30-day rehab after that, came home.
• 23:27
  SPEAKER_02: Um, my wife then left and then and took the kids, and it was around Christmas.
• 23:33
  SPEAKER_02: And I spent Christmas Eve, I had toys, everything.
• 23:36
  SPEAKER_02: I spent Christmas Eve by myself.
• 23:38
  SPEAKER_02: I drank myself, I don't know how I made it home, drank myself silly, went out in Austin, drank myself silly.
• 23:43
  SPEAKER_02: Christmas Day, drank myself silly after getting out of a rehab.
• 23:48
  SPEAKER_02: And then uh I called a friend in Alexandria, excuse me, who was struggling at the time himself, really, really bad uh with heroin, one of my best friends.
• 23:58
  SPEAKER_02: And I said, I called him and I said, Hey, look, if you don't come get me, I I don't know if I'll make it through the night.
• 24:04
  SPEAKER_02: And he drove all the way to Austin, picked me up, and drove me back to Alexandria.
• 24:10
  SPEAKER_02: And I walked back in the doors for the first time to my parents' house in I don't know how many years, broken, messed up, um just so damaged, going through so much, so much guilt, so much shame, and they just they just opened their arms and and loved me.
• 24:28
  SPEAKER_02: And it was uh it was a powerful, powerful, powerful moment.
• 24:33
  SPEAKER_02: And so since 20, you know, and and I would love to say, hey, look, that's how the story ended, and God did great things.
• 24:39
  SPEAKER_02: But it was a it was a long process, and we can talk about that in a second.
• 24:43
  SPEAKER_02: But I will tell you this in 2015, um, because I moved back to Austin in 2013, try because I wanted to be close to my family, still trying to do it my way.
• 24:54
  SPEAKER_02: Um, and I did that a couple of times actually, but in 2013, moved back to Austin, finally came back, spent a year in 2014 to 2015 in the faith-based rehab, um, which I'll tell you that was voluntary, Kathy, but I made a commitment to my dad that I would do that uh because I was ready to surrender.
• 25:19
  SPEAKER_02: And I went into that thing thinking that, hey, it's a faith-based rehab, and God's gonna, you know, I'm gonna finally get right with God, whatever.
• 25:28
  SPEAKER_02: And when I went, when I went into that thing, God spoke to me because it was, I don't want to knock it, but it was it was anything but faith-based.
• 25:36
  SPEAKER_02: You got very little God in there.
• 25:38
  SPEAKER_02: It was a lot of work and a lot of, you know, but I stuck to it because I told my dad, but God told me, He said, Dustin, your entire life, we talked about the blessings of being raised in the POA and the blessings of uh of having just just in that atmosphere and feeling that, but there's also kind of uh maybe a a I don't want to say a not a curse in any way, but you can live in the overflow and you can live off of the overflow and the anointing.
• 26:08
  SPEAKER_01: Take it for granted.
• 26:10
  SPEAKER_02: You can take it for granted, and you can almost operate robotically just because you've been raised in such a atmosphere and you didn't never had to dig, and that's where I really feel like in laffeat.
• 26:25
  SPEAKER_02: I had a great ministry, a powerful ministry.
• 26:29
  SPEAKER_02: Um, in San Antonio, and and I had been preaching out, and God allowed great things for me there, but I had never really dug deep and found God for myself and and gotten that deep relationship and falling in love with his word, other than to preach a sermon, falling in love with just that relationship with him.
• 26:51
  SPEAKER_04: Right.
• 26:52
  SPEAKER_02: And so um he told me that if you want me, you're gonna have to find me yourself this year.
• 26:58
  SPEAKER_02: So that's what I did when they were playing games or had free time, when they were playing pool or watching a movie in free time.
• 27:05
  SPEAKER_02: I was in the chapel just digging in the word, just digging in the word.
• 27:10
  SPEAKER_02: And I came home in 2015 after graduating that, and the pastor and pastor's wife in Colorado had resigned their church there and moved back to Alexandria, which was amazing, about a month or two before I came home.
• 27:27
  SPEAKER_02: And so the beautiful thing about this is that when I came home, Jamie and I connected, and she was such an integral part, and my restoration, such a powerful part, not in just what had happened pre prior, but because I'll never forget it.
• 27:48
  SPEAKER_02: We were praying at the altar one night after service, and she just she had come up, walked up behind me, and was just praying with me, and then she just stepped back and she said, Oh my god, Dustin, you've been molested.
• 28:06
  SPEAKER_02: Kathy, nobody knew this other than my parents and our pastors from from way this this was from early late low, late 70s, early 80s.
• 28:17
  SPEAKER_02: That's five, six years old.
• 28:20
  SPEAKER_02: Nobody knew this.
• 28:21
  SPEAKER_02: God revealed this to Jamie, and she said, We've got to heal this.
• 28:27
  SPEAKER_02: God's got to heal this.
• 28:29
  SPEAKER_02: So we stayed.
• 28:30
  SPEAKER_02: She and I by ourselves three hours in the congregation, uh, in the sanctuary that night, just crying.
• 28:39
  SPEAKER_02: I was just laid over on her shoulder, just crying.
• 28:43
  SPEAKER_02: Uh there are pictures of it.
• 28:44
  SPEAKER_02: And then the next night, six hours at my parents' house, just God doing a work and and healing that.
• 28:50
  SPEAKER_02: And um, and so that really began a time of of restoration and transformation once we got once we got to that point and really found the root of a lot of a lot of things that um I don't want to say excuses, Kathy, but as you know and as I know with what what I'm walking into right now and in the program I'm in, and please excuse my voice, it's it's it's I've been sick for a few days, so we're powering through this.
• 29:27
  SPEAKER_02: But we know that unresolved childhood trauma, um it it call it it causes, it can cause disease later in life, it can cause substance abuse, it can cause so many things.
• 29:40
  SPEAKER_02: And so to really uncover that and unpack that begin a true healing in me.
• 29:46
  SPEAKER_02: And um then ever since then, it's been a process.
• 29:51
  SPEAKER_04: Up until that time when she spoke that were you carrying that with you daily or had you suppressed it and forgot about it and just put it away?
• 30:03
  SPEAKER_02: Completely suppressed it.
• 30:05
  SPEAKER_02: It was completely suppressed, which we know our brains is not built to suppress try.
• 30:11
  SPEAKER_04: Right.
• 30:12
  SPEAKER_04: Yeah, I think so many people that you know um live through that childhood molestation or abuse of any kind.
• 30:21
  SPEAKER_04: Um there's nothing you could do.
• 30:24
  SPEAKER_04: You just I feel like it's kind of like grief.
• 30:26
  SPEAKER_04: How do I ever accept the loss of someone I love that has died?
• 30:30
  SPEAKER_04: There's no way to accept that.
• 30:32
  SPEAKER_04: So you just endure it and you have to just keep going.
• 30:35
  SPEAKER_04: And I feel like it's such a similar thing.
• 30:39
  SPEAKER_04: There's no way to get over it.
• 30:41
  SPEAKER_04: It's just something you have to live with, but but that creates deep, deep, deep wounds, especially as a child not having any capacity cognitively to understand it or talk through it or the shame.
• 30:57
  SPEAKER_02: Well, that's that's exactly right.
• 30:59
  SPEAKER_02: And that's um and and and look, to be very fair, I don't I don't blame anyone, I don't blame my parents.
• 31:05
  SPEAKER_02: There were in the late 70s, early 80s, very little resources and and not as much knowledge as there is now on access.
• 31:13
  SPEAKER_02: Um, and and and I don't I I so I I don't want it to ever sound like that.
• 31:19
  SPEAKER_02: I I'm I blame it's been dealt with, but that is true now that we have awareness, and that's such that's why high hope exists is and like you said, we'll talk about that, but it's it's it's really at the crux of it is I feel like if we can start and I feel like we're s we're it's it's it's happening to a to an extent better.
• 31:44
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah, but if we start asking instead of what's wrong with you, asking what happened to you.
• 31:51
  SPEAKER_00: Yes.
• 31:52
  SPEAKER_02: If we can be curious and ask, because at the root of everything is not, I I don't believe is not a completely rebellious spirit.
• 32:03
  SPEAKER_02: I believe that spirits do creep in and take advantage of past traumas or experiences, and it doesn't have to be molestation, it doesn't whatever it is.
• 32:13
  SPEAKER_04: Right.
• 32:14
  SPEAKER_02: Um and and I know we'll talk a little bit about that in a little bit, but I I feel like if we can just become curious and look at people and ask them instead of what's wrong with you, why are you so rebel?
• 32:29
  SPEAKER_02: What and just start saying, Tell me what happened to you.
• 32:33
  SPEAKER_04: Yeah.
• 32:34
  SPEAKER_04: Right.
• 32:34
  SPEAKER_04: From a place of compassion to really know and to love a person.
• 32:39
  SPEAKER_04: Yeah.
• 32:40
  SPEAKER_04: Yeah.
• 32:40
  SPEAKER_04: Because you're right.
• 32:41
  SPEAKER_04: I I read some in one of the books that the enemy is an opportunist.
• 32:48
  SPEAKER_04: He comes to take advantage of where a person is.
• 32:51
  SPEAKER_04: So if something hurts me just by our humanity, just by the nature of friendships or the nature of uh, you know, growing up in a household, like normal things are going to happen in life.
• 33:05
  SPEAKER_04: But when they get when the enemy comes in and takes opportunity to dig that wound deeper and amplify that pain, it's a whole different level of hurt and sorrow that leads to rebellion, even though the heart's posture is not necessarily to be rebellious, it's just trying to survive, I think, most of the time.
• 33:30
  SPEAKER_02: Exactly.
• 33:31
  SPEAKER_02: And that's that's exactly right.
• 33:33
  SPEAKER_02: And you know, to to kind of give an overview, I know you and I have talked um, you know, on the phone about we're we're in the midst of writing a curriculum, and it's been a great, it's been an amazing journey because God just kind of, and I know it's this has been spoken of and even written about a lot, but 1 Peter 5 through 7, where Peter gives this order of add to your faith virtue, to your virtue knowledge.
• 34:01
  SPEAKER_02: And so I I started just digging into that, and um, you know, starting with faith, I really started and I looked at was before the fall of man, was there was there faith?
• 34:13
  SPEAKER_02: Was there a need for faith?
• 34:14
  SPEAKER_02: And I started really digging into that deep and and looking at it.
• 34:18
  SPEAKER_02: And, you know, in the beginning, before the fall, there wasn't a need for redemptive faith.
• 34:26
  SPEAKER_02: It was just a trust, knowing it's it's like the air we breathe.
• 34:29
  SPEAKER_02: We don't have to think about it.
• 34:31
  SPEAKER_02: God walked with them, they had all the provision, they had everything they needed.
• 34:35
  SPEAKER_02: It was just a trust.
• 34:37
  SPEAKER_02: And you go look in the faith, the Hall of Fame faith chapter, Hebrews 11.
• 34:42
  SPEAKER_02: The first one mentioned was Abel.
• 34:44
  SPEAKER_02: Because before Abel, before the fall, there was no need for it.
• 34:50
  SPEAKER_02: And so, why?
• 34:51
  SPEAKER_02: Because that connection with God was broken, right?
• 34:54
  SPEAKER_02: That that and there was shame and guilt through Adam and Eve.
• 34:58
  SPEAKER_02: And so then we see with Cain and Abel the first example of faith.
• 35:03
  SPEAKER_02: Abel had it, Cain didn't have it, because Abel gave his best, Cain helped held back.
• 35:10
  SPEAKER_02: And so what we see is that at that loss of connection with God, it created distrust and it created a breach in trust.
• 35:21
  SPEAKER_02: And so that faith is the foundation, and so 2 Peter really begins where Eden ended, and that's what we base are basing our curriculum on.
• 35:31
  SPEAKER_02: Is how do we a start?
• 35:35
  SPEAKER_02: It's everything falls and and or starts with a foundation of rebuilding a foundation of faith in themselves, whoever they are, like myself, I've got to believe in myself.
• 35:49
  SPEAKER_02: I've got to believe in others, I've got to believe that others are good, and I have to but ultimately that connection with God and have that faith, that redemptive faith in Him.
• 35:58
  SPEAKER_02: And that's where that's where First Peter is trying to get us back.
• 36:01
  SPEAKER_02: It's trying to build us back from the agape love that they first had in the garden that fell.
• 36:09
  SPEAKER_02: Now we start with brotherly love and then familial love and and there are Greek words, and I'm not going to go into all our study, but we're trying to get back back to that.
• 36:19
  SPEAKER_02: And 2 Peter 7 ends with charity.
• 36:23
  SPEAKER_02: That's the ultimate goal, that agape love of God.
• 36:26
  SPEAKER_02: That's what we're trying to get back to.
• 36:29
  SPEAKER_02: And so if we can at the all I was trying to say there is that if we can recognize that at some point we're born in sin, and whether a parent, um, and our trust in the beginning is nurtured, our faith is nurtured by those earliest influences in our life, whether it be parents or family members or Sunday school teachers.
• 36:53
  SPEAKER_02: And if that trust is broken at some point, and it may not be by molestation or something hard, it could be they might have a lack of faith.
• 37:01
  SPEAKER_02: They may say, be going to church every Sunday, but not believing in God to handle this situation or that situation.
• 37:08
  SPEAKER_02: So it damages our faith.
• 37:10
  SPEAKER_02: And so, whatever the situation is, there is something at the root of that that has caused these individuals or backsliders, prodigals, their faith to be cracked.
• 37:22
  SPEAKER_02: And the enemy, as you said, to get back to it, has capitalized on that.
• 37:27
  SPEAKER_00: Right.
• 37:28
  SPEAKER_02: And so that's why I just wish we would become more curious and less quick to judge.
• 37:33
  SPEAKER_04: Yes, I feel like there is a shift taking place um in our Christian culture, our Pentecostal apostolic Christian culture that is becoming more like that compared to what it was like in the 70s and 80s when you and I were children growing up in it.
• 37:53
  SPEAKER_04: Um, I feel like that it's there's a different level of understanding and compassion for people.
• 37:59
  SPEAKER_04: But I I think it's what you said.
• 38:01
  SPEAKER_04: There's more resources available, mental health has come to the front foreground of so many things, and people in the church are beginning to talk about their own struggles.
• 38:12
  SPEAKER_04: Where before, you know, if if you were struggling, it was because you didn't have enough faith, you didn't believe in God.
• 38:19
  SPEAKER_04: But you know, we see that that's just not true.
• 38:21
  SPEAKER_04: The the process of humanity and living life, uh, you know, we live in a fallen world, we're gonna struggle, no matter how much we love God.
• 38:31
  SPEAKER_02: Exactly, yeah.
• 38:32
  SPEAKER_04: And I it is getting, I think, more open now.
• 38:36
  SPEAKER_02: Um Absolutely, absolutely.
• 38:39
  SPEAKER_04: I want to go back and ask you about being called at 15.
• 38:46
  SPEAKER_04: Um, as I talked to prodigals through the course of the podcast, and I know that you do as well, I feel like there seems to be a common thread, and that is that many of them knew the Lord.
• 39:00
  SPEAKER_04: Obviously, they're a prodigal.
• 39:02
  SPEAKER_04: They they loved the Lord.
• 39:05
  SPEAKER_04: Um, and I think they probably lived in the overflow, you know.
• 39:10
  SPEAKER_04: Um, some had a relationship with God, some had the Holy Ghost at three years old and four years old, and I think I was like eight years old.
• 39:19
  SPEAKER_04: Very early, like we had a very real relationship with the Lord.
• 39:23
  SPEAKER_04: Um, but and I think we saw things from such an innocent lens, but then we grow up and life seems to happen and pull us away.
• 39:34
  SPEAKER_04: So with you being 15, you heard the call of God on your life, and it took you all the way to 21.
• 39:43
  SPEAKER_04: Did you say 18 or 21 until you got to live that out?
• 39:48
  SPEAKER_02: It was actually till about 25.
• 39:51
  SPEAKER_04: Okay.
• 39:52
  SPEAKER_02: 25.
• 39:53
  unknown: Yeah.
• 39:53
  SPEAKER_04: So could you talk a little bit about what how did God call you?
• 39:58
  SPEAKER_04: What what did that look like for you?
• 40:01
  SPEAKER_04: And what did you do with that at age 15 while you were still going through school and becoming an adult?
• 40:09
  SPEAKER_04: How did you put it away?
• 40:11
  SPEAKER_04: Were you did it give you purpose?
• 40:14
  SPEAKER_04: Was it, you know, um the energy behind getting up every day, or did you just, you know, take it for granted?
• 40:22
  SPEAKER_04: Like what what did that look like for you?
• 40:25
  SPEAKER_02: I think I think to be fair, it was a combination of both.
• 40:29
  SPEAKER_02: I um I knew and I was um I was given opportunities at a young age, um, you know, to answer that in various ways, to to even fulfill that in various ways.
• 40:45
  SPEAKER_02: But at the same time, um, and I've I feel like this is more of a personal um deficit in myself.
• 40:53
  SPEAKER_02: I I I didn't dig into it like I felt I should.
• 41:00
  SPEAKER_02: Um because I feel like it was also because I received some some there's a term that I I've learned in um you know in the Townsend Institute.
• 41:15
  SPEAKER_02: It's it's premature um encouragement, or you know, before you've really earned something.
• 41:24
  SPEAKER_02: So I feel like to an extent that kind of carried me and said, hey, yes, it there was a lot of pride.
• 41:31
  SPEAKER_02: There was a lot of pride in me.
• 41:32
  SPEAKER_02: And that's been one of my biggest struggles to overcome.
• 41:36
  SPEAKER_02: So I feel like it was dear and deep to me, that call and very humbling.
• 41:45
  SPEAKER_02: But I feel like my pride and my lack of self-discipline, um, I wanted I wanted both, even as from a year, you know, a young age, I wanted both.
• 41:57
  SPEAKER_02: Um and by both I mean to have a good time and play basketball, baseball, football, um, just the normal thing, girls the normal thing um that that you do as a teenager, but also walk with God.
• 42:16
  SPEAKER_02: So I felt like there was this this pull between the two.
• 42:20
  SPEAKER_02: Not an I wasn't a I'm I'm not talking about I was, you know, a bad teenager.
• 42:25
  SPEAKER_02: I was involved in heavily in church, but there was also a part of me that was just I would focus a lot on the fun things and not digging in deep.
• 42:35
  SPEAKER_02: Um and and I, you know, I I really haven't, and I'll be honest with you, I haven't dug deep to see what that may have come from.
• 42:46
  SPEAKER_02: Um, because that even carried over into school, honestly.
• 42:49
  SPEAKER_02: I I didn't have to study that much in high school.
• 42:51
  SPEAKER_02: I'd made good grades not having to study, and could that that hit me hard in college.
• 42:56
  SPEAKER_02: Um, I had to figure that out pretty quick, but so I I don't know, Kathy.
• 43:01
  SPEAKER_02: I I feel like it was just a combination of everything because you receive so much at POA and have the best preachers and the best singing and the best evangelists come through and the Sunday school teachers, you get taught and fed so much, it's it almost I guess it it can become for some if they allow it, like me, you just get fat and not um and just consume, consume, consume, you know.
• 43:34
  SPEAKER_04: Off everybody else's yeah, yeah.
• 43:37
  SPEAKER_04: That would be easy to do, I would think.
• 43:40
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
• 43:41
  SPEAKER_04: Yeah.
• 43:42
  SPEAKER_04: And I I would guess also that there was a knowing in your spirit that you were called.
• 43:47
  SPEAKER_04: So, you know, uh back to kind of because God gives us a sense of things, I think, within ourselves.
• 43:56
  SPEAKER_04: So when that confirmation comes, it's easily Accepted and then you just maybe wait for God to to do that in your life.
• 44:06
  SPEAKER_04: So I was just curious because it seems like that tension you know that you described between trying to be a normal teenager but also trying to fulfill a calling, it's difficult for people.
• 44:23
  SPEAKER_04: I think I think a lot of kiddos live in that tension and not really knowing where the balance should be or could be in that.
• 44:32
  SPEAKER_04: I think for adults as well.
• 44:34
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah, yeah, for adults as well, absolutely.
• 44:38
  SPEAKER_04: Um Okay.
• 44:42
  SPEAKER_04: Okay, I asked that.
• 44:44
  SPEAKER_04: I was just I just was looking at the questions I wrote as you were talking.
• 44:49
  SPEAKER_04: So I'm always interested in like when the first door gets open to the backslider.
• 44:57
  SPEAKER_04: What was it in you?
• 44:59
  SPEAKER_04: Um you said there was already a little bitterness, you were already kind of predisposed to kind of want to get out.
• 45:08
  SPEAKER_04: Um do you feel like being separated in Virginia led to it being easier for you to start saying yes to things that you knew you shouldn't, that isolation or for sure, because I was disconnected from really any accountability or root uh root system, my my my tribe.
• 45:37
  SPEAKER_02: I I really had no uh zero accountability, and you know, truthfully, for the first time I felt like I and it felt good.
• 45:48
  SPEAKER_02: I felt like I blended, I was just anonymous.
• 45:55
  SPEAKER_02: I I I nobody was looking at me.
• 45:58
  SPEAKER_02: I wasn't in a you know, I wasn't being I don't want to say judge, but you you understand what I'm saying.
• 46:04
  SPEAKER_02: I wasn't right.
• 46:05
  SPEAKER_02: I I I didn't have to hide.
• 46:07
  SPEAKER_02: Um and I feel like a lot of that comes from even goes all the way back to what we talked about earlier.
• 46:14
  SPEAKER_02: Um but I felt like I didn't have to perform.
• 46:18
  SPEAKER_02: Um not that I've anybody was putting pressure on me to perform before.
• 46:23
  SPEAKER_02: It's just the culture.
• 46:25
  SPEAKER_02: It's a culture.
• 46:26
  SPEAKER_02: And I and I even think that goes back to even you know my experience as a as a five or six-year-old being molested.
• 46:34
  SPEAKER_02: I had to there I lost control there and that situation.
• 46:39
  SPEAKER_02: So being in control and and and even performing to an extent, putting on a mask.
• 46:46
  SPEAKER_02: Um, so that was all gone when I went to Virginia, and uh there was a freedom to just be.
• 46:54
  SPEAKER_04: And um and so for you, you were probably getting acquainted with yourself in your own freedom, right?
• 47:02
  SPEAKER_04: Because that was probably the first time you ever got to just kind of figure out maybe who you were.
• 47:09
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah, yeah.
• 47:11
  SPEAKER_02: It really was, and um not and and ultimately we know it was leading to a path of me getting to know God in a much deeper, sure, deeper, personal, more intimate way for myself.
• 47:27
  SPEAKER_02: Um but I know was it God's will?
• 47:31
  SPEAKER_02: No, but it was God allowed because had I never gone down this path, I would have never, ever been at the place I'm at right now in Him.
• 47:41
  SPEAKER_02: But yeah, I mean I you know to go back at that moment, getting to know myself and you know, and and all these whatever was in me, all these roots or whatever, I I was I was they were starting to sprout, you know, and and that crack that the enemy, because I was so surrounded by prayer and and family and um and and accountability, he had never really been able to penetrate those cracks.
• 48:13
  SPEAKER_02: And so there, being away from all that and not underneath that covering um you know, of of the of submission and accountability, I was wide open.
• 48:25
  SPEAKER_02: I opened myself up.
• 48:27
  SPEAKER_04: Yeah.
• 48:27
  SPEAKER_04: I just want to illustrate how very uh how how very um interesting it is that call came in for you because when I graduated with my bachelor's, I was very actively pursuing pharmaceutical sales for lots of reasons.
• 48:49
  SPEAKER_04: And um I was called after applying lots of places.
• 48:55
  SPEAKER_04: I was flown out to uh Dallas for an interview.
• 48:59
  SPEAKER_04: I was one of five people nationwide out of 290 applicants, I think, that was selected for this interview process.
• 49:08
  SPEAKER_04: And I ultimately didn't make it.
• 49:12
  SPEAKER_04: But the competition for for pharmaceutical cells is really, really steep.
• 49:18
  SPEAKER_04: And, you know, they they told us to create what's called a brag book, and I mean, like we really prepped, had to be prepared.
• 49:26
  SPEAKER_04: It was it was very, very competitive.
• 49:30
  SPEAKER_04: And so for them to just call you out of the blue, offer you the job in the moment, or I mean, literally within hours after it you met with them, that is very, very unheard of.
• 49:42
  SPEAKER_04: And um it was definitely a trap, but as you said, God, God allowed it, you know, to bring you to where you are now.
• 49:51
  SPEAKER_02: You're exactly right.
• 49:52
  SPEAKER_02: And it it was uh I believe it was God allowed um ultimately to get me to this end, but you you you know, just just that call and then the one to that moved me to Austin.
• 50:05
  SPEAKER_02: I mean, there were 367 applicants for that position, um for that oncology position, and I had no oncology experience, but God opened that door, so which got me out of Alexandria, and um which I wasn't living for God even here.
• 50:22
  SPEAKER_02: I was doing things here, but it got me out of here because I had gotten in trouble in Alexandria a couple of times, uh, or pulled over, but I got out of it because I I mean I was very good friends with the mayor and the pol chief of police and uh this, that, and the other.
• 50:38
  SPEAKER_02: So it just I it just went away, you know, uh when I would get pulled over driving drunk or whatever.
• 50:44
  SPEAKER_02: Um Austin, that can't happen.
• 50:47
  SPEAKER_02: That that didn't happen.
• 50:49
  SPEAKER_02: You know, I had a couple that um that I was like that I didn't get out of.
• 50:54
  SPEAKER_02: Thank God they were reduced to some kind of road road construction violet or whatever.
• 51:00
  SPEAKER_02: Um but I paid for it, paid for it dearly financially, you know.
• 51:04
  SPEAKER_02: But so the cont I I couldn't I couldn't get away with the things there that I I could hear.
• 51:10
  SPEAKER_02: So God has a way of moving you and and and moving you around to get you to a point of yeah.
• 51:19
  SPEAKER_04: Did you feel like you were suicidal when you were in the five-day rehab, or was that just their assumption because of the level you were drinking at?
• 51:28
  SPEAKER_02: I felt well, first of all, I I don't feel I was suicidal, but I didn't I was at a place where I didn't care.
• 51:35
  SPEAKER_02: I I if if if I passed, I passed.
• 51:40
  SPEAKER_02: If I I was just in a deep place of I just didn't care.
• 51:44
  SPEAKER_04: So there was no conviction, there was no fear of the Lord, there was no thought of heaven and hell, there was none of that was present.
• 51:54
  SPEAKER_02: No, I was I was in a just uh I I would have to say it was a deep depression and oppression um that just hit me that day I flew into Houston.
• 52:04
  SPEAKER_02: It was deep, and I was in a in a deep dark place.
• 52:08
  SPEAKER_02: So um, but as you know, so no, I wasn't actively trying to, but I just I didn't care.
• 52:15
  SPEAKER_02: But um when I got there, it was their decision, you know, because of the blood alcohol level.
• 52:21
  SPEAKER_04: Yeah.
• 52:22
  SPEAKER_04: Yeah, I think that's just a miracle that you survived that.
• 52:25
  SPEAKER_04: That that's poison.
• 52:27
  SPEAKER_04: I mean, that could have definitely killed you, as you well know.
• 52:31
  SPEAKER_02: Absolutely.
• 52:32
  SPEAKER_04: So uh Dustin, what had what did you learn?
• 52:36
  SPEAKER_04: You so I heard you say two different rehabs plus the five-day uh stint.
• 52:43
  SPEAKER_04: What did you learn about addiction um and about yourself needing to go to the different rehabs?
• 52:51
  SPEAKER_04: Like for people that say, I'm not going to rehab, I've been already five times, you know.
• 52:57
  SPEAKER_04: What what would you say to parents about kids that have, you know, in and out of rehabs and it just doesn't seem to work?
• 53:05
  SPEAKER_04: What did you learn about that process?
• 53:09
  SPEAKER_02: The the process of rehabs, um, I I do think they're important to get get you to a place of sobriety and get you to a place of um where where you're where you can think clearly.
• 53:23
  SPEAKER_02: Um I I feel like this is it it's kind of what we're trying to do with high hope.
• 53:30
  SPEAKER_02: I feel like high and we're we have we're a network of resources.
• 53:34
  SPEAKER_02: It is a resource uh you've got to put out the fire before you re rebuild the house.
• 53:39
  SPEAKER_02: And so I feel like that's an area to put out the fire.
• 53:43
  SPEAKER_02: I feel like with us, I mean, people may come to us, not substance abuse, but it may be um trauma, you know, where where we need a counselor such as yourself or some of the ones we have on our teams, and we have to send them there to put out that whatever fire they're going through, whatever trauma, whatever mental um, you know, illness, whatever it is, depression, anxiety.
• 54:06
  SPEAKER_02: And then we we try to, you know, then coach them and and rebuild that house.
• 54:12
  SPEAKER_02: And but but so I feel like rehab for me got me sober.
• 54:18
  SPEAKER_02: Um and the 30-day rehab, I found very little God.
• 54:24
  SPEAKER_02: It got me sober, and I got out and I drank again.
• 54:27
  SPEAKER_02: And the and the next the year-long one, I feel like I honestly didn't, as far as the program itself, I didn't enjoy the it was some pretty miserable conditions um and work conditions, and it was it was I don't say miserable, it was just hard work.
• 54:47
  SPEAKER_02: It was um you were the whole time you were there, you and on purpose, they they did not tell you the next day's schedule or what you're doing, so that you would learn to let go of control, yes, so yeah, yeah, and and submission, and they did it in a pretty harsh way, which um, but I feel like going back, I look back and I feel like that was one of the best years of my life because I did give myself to getting into the word, and that's what I feel like was such a gift to me, because that's where I really began to God, uh not I, but God began to transform my mind, and he told me and God spoke to me, and Kathy, look, I I know it's not audibly, I know God's voice.
• 55:40
  SPEAKER_02: We all know God's voice, the way he speaks to us individually.
• 55:43
  SPEAKER_02: But he said, you know, he had not only told me during that time, if you want me, you're gonna have to find dig for me.
• 55:49
  SPEAKER_02: I'm here, but you're gonna have to dig for me.
• 55:51
  SPEAKER_02: But he also said, he also said, look, I don't want you to conform to what you feel I want you to be transformed.
• 56:00
  SPEAKER_02: And so he began doing that.
• 56:04
  SPEAKER_02: God began doing that by me digging into the word and washing my mind with the word, and that's why I'm so huge on the word, the word, the word.
• 56:16
  SPEAKER_04: Yeah, yeah.
• 56:17
  SPEAKER_04: I think most backsliders that come back have a love for the word because it is what carried us.
• 56:23
  SPEAKER_04: And I I never I grew up in church, I never read the Bible ever.
• 56:27
  SPEAKER_04: You know, I knew the stories, I couldn't tell you where they were unless it was Jonah, you know.
• 56:33
  SPEAKER_04: Um, and I'll never forget sitting in church, you know, maybe the first or second year after I had come back, and uh my colleague now was preaching on the children of Israel, and I realized I've heard this term like my whole life.
• 56:49
  SPEAKER_04: I have no idea who they are or what this term means, you know.
• 56:54
  SPEAKER_04: And so I asked them after church, and from that moment I just determined to to read the Bible and to really learn what all this stuff that I've been told was that I had no understanding in, you know.
• 57:09
  SPEAKER_04: Yeah, but I but I do hear that a lot, you know, backsliders they just fall in love with the Bible because it is living, it is breathing, it is our instruction, it is God's love manifests through his word to us, and it does have power, you know.
• 57:25
  SPEAKER_02: It does have power, and it's and it's um it's not somebody else's word uh that God's given them.
• 57:32
  SPEAKER_02: It's it's him directly speaking in and in some different way to you, or something that just jump leaps off the page to you that he wants to speak.
• 57:43
  SPEAKER_02: So, yes, I do get encouraged by others preaching and hearing their word, but there's nothing like getting in there and God speaking to me directly.
• 57:53
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah, just me and him.
• 57:55
  SPEAKER_02: So that that personal time is so vital.
• 57:58
  SPEAKER_04: Yeah.
• 57:59
  SPEAKER_04: So what was the process once you once you got back to Louisiana?
• 58:04
  SPEAKER_04: You well, before I ask that question, I want to go back to something you said.
• 58:08
  SPEAKER_04: God told you he wasn't looking for you to conform.
• 58:14
  SPEAKER_04: What does that mean for a male?
• 58:16
  SPEAKER_04: Because I hear that as a female, and I think about all the things that we're taught, you know, in terms of holiness coming up in church.
• 58:26
  SPEAKER_04: Um, but what pressure were you feeling as a man to conform that God was very clearly speaking to you that wasn't what he was looking for?
• 58:35
  SPEAKER_04: What what was that like for you?
• 58:38
  SPEAKER_02: It was just any expectations of uh preconceived expectations of of um things that I may have been brought up in.
• 58:50
  SPEAKER_02: And look, some things I I'll be honest, at that point it meant something a little different to me than it does now.
• 58:58
  SPEAKER_02: But what I what I I look back and I know he was saying is is and it and it goes back to our our curriculum and our process, you know, a lot of times uh you you just said it, people come in and we expect them to jump from faith and believing in God to and virtue and then getting filled with the Holy Ghost, and then bam, jump all the way down to godliness, which is several more down the list, right?
• 59:31
  SPEAKER_04: Right.
• 59:31
  SPEAKER_02: Um, before they've even reached knowledge and temperance and patience.
• 59:36
  SPEAKER_02: And so um I didn't know that at the time that God was speaking that to me, but it was a I want you to be transformed, and only he can transform, only God can transform me, can you, anybody else?
• 59:53
  SPEAKER_02: And so he was leading me on a journey of don't just do this because you feel like this is expected of you, or somebody else expects this of you.
• 1:00:02
  SPEAKER_02: Don't just if you're doing that, it's it's for the wrong, it's for man, it's not for me.
• 1:00:08
  SPEAKER_02: So he had to take me through a process of, and I never realized this until we until we really started getting into this curriculum.
• 1:00:18
  SPEAKER_02: I never really realized that's the power of his transformation, is it and it's a step-by-step for me, Kathy.
• 1:00:27
  SPEAKER_02: I mean it's an ongoing process for all of us, but it was it was really um an initially a s a slow process for me to let go of such a even though I had lost everything um that God had allowed me to be successful in everything, to let go of such a life of um that satisfied my flesh so much.
• 1:00:53
  SPEAKER_02: I had one hand in the or one foot in the world, one foot in him, and I I clung on to that for a long time, trying to make a lot of things work, work my way, and let God have a little bit of it.
• 1:01:05
  SPEAKER_02: And so, yeah, it was it was more don't just conform because of expectations you felt in the past.
• 1:01:15
  SPEAKER_02: I want to transform you and I'm gonna lead you.
• 1:01:17
  SPEAKER_02: And that was just going on with more of the finding him and finding out why some of these um some of these guardrails and things are in place and though that are in the word are in place because they're gonna protect you from further, you know.
• 1:01:38
  SPEAKER_02: Um Yeah.
• 1:01:39
  SPEAKER_04: I've come to really appreciate the guardrails that were put in place as a kid, didn't understand them then, but but now I can understand wow, that was really for our protection, which is what they always told us.
• 1:01:54
  SPEAKER_04: But it didn't make sense, you know, from a place of innocence when you don't know any better.
• 1:01:58
  SPEAKER_04: But now from an adulthood, it makes a whole lot of sense.
• 1:02:03
  SPEAKER_04: And I I would I would guess um it takes time to let go of the expectations that are so ingrained and the ones you place on yourself too, you know?
• 1:02:18
  SPEAKER_04: Because they they just come so naturally.
• 1:02:22
  SPEAKER_04: Like I I know some people I've talked with coming back into um our church culture, they really struggle to just stay in their lane and not automatically just conform.
• 1:02:37
  SPEAKER_04: Like it's easier to conform than it is to stay true to where you're at in God.
• 1:02:42
  SPEAKER_04: And and that's something I think we also don't talk about much because I used to tell the Lord conformity would have been the easiest thing for me.
• 1:02:52
  SPEAKER_04: And when I first prayed back through when I was 28, I did all those things.
• 1:02:57
  SPEAKER_04: I I conformed all the way, every single thing that I was taught as a kid.
• 1:03:04
  SPEAKER_04: I did all the things and and it didn't work, you know, and then I had to go back out and relearn all the things over again.
• 1:03:12
  SPEAKER_04: And so, um how do you help people?
• 1:03:16
  SPEAKER_04: I think it's a trust issue, but what are you discovering in the curriculum of how to help people just learn to trust that God has them where he wants them and that he will change them in time as they grow in him?
• 1:03:35
  SPEAKER_02: I think it it's that's a process that takes grace, truth, and time.
• 1:03:41
  SPEAKER_02: And that's um and that's that's that's honestly the Dr.
• 1:03:45
  SPEAKER_02: Towns, and that's his his growth character growth trunk of his tree.
• 1:03:51
  SPEAKER_02: And and and and that's biblical.
• 1:03:54
  SPEAKER_02: Um it starts with grace.
• 1:03:56
  SPEAKER_02: I mean, where they are at that moment accepting that, even though what they're seeing, feeling, hearing may not be truth, it's their truth at that point.
• 1:04:08
  SPEAKER_02: Right, and I'm so important.
• 1:04:10
  SPEAKER_02: And uh so I'm gonna listen and become curious because I think by doing that, it's gonna open up um a dialogue that's gonna allow me to find out the real root, um, and find out the truth.
• 1:04:26
  SPEAKER_02: And and that by doing that, you're establishing that trust, that dialogue between them and you.
• 1:04:36
  SPEAKER_02: And I think also, Kathy, it's um it's being very open and transparent, as we talked about earlier, need need to get better at of opening up with our lived experience, with what we've been through, so that they can say, Oh, this person gets me.
• 1:04:54
  SPEAKER_02: I can't tell you the amount of people that I've sat down with.
• 1:04:58
  SPEAKER_02: I'm look, kids half my age, even more than half my age, have no business trusting or opening up and confiding in me.
• 1:05:08
  SPEAKER_02: And I'll and their mom or dad will reach out and say, Look, will you just talk to them?
• 1:05:13
  SPEAKER_02: I don't know if he'll and we'll meet and immediately and a lot of this mo it's all God who allows that you know that to happen.
• 1:05:23
  SPEAKER_02: But when I open up and tell them my story, where I've been, how deep, hopeless, by me just opening up and being transparent, and like I'm I haven't always been like this, and I'm still not there, but I've been exactly in the spot you're at.
• 1:05:43
  SPEAKER_02: Um, so transparency breeds trust, obviously.
• 1:05:49
  SPEAKER_02: So just by giving them grace and understanding where they're at, telling them your truth allows them to open up and trust you and tell you their, and they'll tell you.
• 1:06:00
  SPEAKER_02: their truth and then just being able to walk along with them and however long that takes um I I it it starts in the beginning with that faith and trust component and and themselves believing in themselves believing in others to open up right and ultimately that trust and faith in God so I I try not to get that out of order because if it's and and you you know you know the story of um your previous guests going to coffee and and all they talked about wasn't God for how long you know it was just a connection building a connection and a relationship and it's gotta start there right connection yeah how long before you came back to Louisiana and walked in the church doors that fateful day um two when God began to deal with you about high hope ministry how long of a process was that was a four or five year process I came back I came back for really for good in 2018 and I began um when I came back in 2018 it I had 2017 at the end of or no the beginning of twenty January of 2018 I was actually arrested for a non-alcohol related this this incident I was actually it was an alcohol related incident but not on my part I was actually of all the things that I had done and should have been arrested for and there were plenty um you know driving just foolish things driving drunk drugs whatever um this this one I wasn't but God used this one and I was arrested brought to jail and I thought I could have bonded out I just needed somebody to sign uh you know sign what whatever they call that um and my dad refused he said no I'm not gonna do it this time which was hard hard on him but I give him honor I give him honor and to stand up and and make that decision that that was true love believe it or not and it ended up so I thought it was only going to be a week in there till I went before the judge and it was terrible it wasn't just your little county jail it was a room full of 50 60 men it was I I this this skinny boy here is not made or built for jail I wasn't out so I was scared to death and it ended up being three weeks because it got kept getting pushed back and I was going crazy and God spoke to me there and said if you don't get it if you don't get it right this time Dustin he said you're not gonna be able to handle the next time so that was enough so I moved home and in 2018 and said God I'm submitting to you to my pastors to my organization everything whatever it takes this is it and so I began just praying and um I began getting up to the church I got I was going twice a day I was going at uh four in the morning that's a whole nother story and then I was going at night till from from about six till about nine and just pouring myself in and then God began dealing with me um organically on you know my parents had started uh an amazing ministry because of me in 2015 um hope uh ministry for prodigals and their families um and it was really really connecting with families um and helping pray with them and give them advice and give them counsel a phenomenal ministry that's carried them all over the country I think it's in 43 or 44 countries or I'm sorry um states at this point they they've set up I hope in in various churches and in uh numerous countries I know um so they had set that up and they have a conference ever biannually every two years and God began dealing with me well you need to walk along some of the the prodigals themselves those that are walking through it those that are really fighting so it started out Kathy I was actually um driving flying places doing things um and and sleeping in apartments with some of these who are in active addiction and um you know that that can get pretty heavy I mean you know and they and they call you at all hours and which is great.
• 1:10:34
  SPEAKER_02: But I was single at the time and then when God uh allowed me to become uh put the best thing that ever happened in my life Leanne um you know you have a family now and an eight year old and so there's shifting responsibility so we started really um not getting away from that at all but how we um how we reach and how we address that and we're doing a lot of that through via Zoom via um podcast as such as you are um and then going out uh God's allowed me to go out and and just he's opened doors and churches and just speak and then high hope at the beginning or in September started launching these in in-person connection weekends of Friday Saturday Sunday where we go to churches and you know Friday night is just connecting with whether it be prodigals or whether it be people who are just hurting I mean if if you are at a church and your family or or somebody your neighbor down the street or your coworker is going through a divorce or a loss of a child or um just a terrible time in their life we come in on a Friday night to somebody's home and just just have a time of connection and and um we have a great little team Leanne and then Terry Fisher who who is a worship leader travels with Charity Gail tours with her around the world and they just have a heart for worship leaders but they they'll play some acoustic music for a little bit on a Friday night and then after that it's just eat and connect you know and then um a great time on Saturday and Sunday of connecting with people so we've kind of um optimized technology and um and and trying to really build our resources and connect our network and God has just brought people to us as far as counselors and connected us with people like yourself and we're we're so excited it's been really we the revamp has really started in August of last year so it's still so fresh and the things that God is doing right now is just I I'm so excited about the future that yeah I did yeah me too I feel like God's really dealing with the prodigals to come home.
• 1:12:58
  SPEAKER_04: He is yeah so so when you got married and found your wife you had to sort of switch gears and God began to to put this ministry on your heart more was it already formalized high hope ministries already formalized or was it just something you were doing out of the overflow of your own desire to help others it was already I mean we had already incorporated as far as a 501c um it was more but it was more mentoring personally one-on-one gotcha which is still which is still important um with the encouragement of my uh one of our assistant pastors who was a Townsend graduate uh he said look he'd been encouraging me for a couple of years you ought to look at the executive coaching and consulting program there um out there in Irvine and so I said you know what I dove in was going to get a skinner certificate go I said I'm gonna get my master's I fell in love with it so much so I'm I'm doing that and it's found it has changed me actually uh it's it's done more for me I think than I honestly that you know but it's put such such good tools and so yes we just kind of recently pivoted and it's it's to anybody hurting because I feel like it's not just prodigals there are people not in the church there are people in the church yes who need need healing who have gone through um they need they may be stuck in one of these phases that we're doing as as far as our curriculum they may be still at a point where they're not they haven't moved from one to the other or they skip past and I I think it's beneficial to all so we've just pivoted and they're also going through some traumatic stuff themselves.
• 1:14:47
  SPEAKER_02: So right um I love what the church is doing and addressing as far as recovery and people with substance abuse I I feel like there's a big door though for people also sitting on the church pews that need healing as well because they they could be one step from becoming a prodigal.
• 1:15:06
  SPEAKER_04: Right, right.
• 1:15:07
  SPEAKER_04: Are you finding that there is a lot more um are you hearing more stories of those that have been molested as kids as you've done this work that are sitting on the pew I have I have yeah more than you know it's it's more prevalent than I I would have thought yeah yeah I read a study um in 2000 2000 or 2001 um and uh it was six out of ten people had been victims of sexual abuse and I just did a quick inventory in my own life I had boyfriends I had best friends I had people at church like so many people in my own circle I I felt like at the time that number was spot on but now that you know that's been 25 years ago and I personally think that that number is so much more increased.
• 1:16:06
  SPEAKER_04: I think it's more common that people are sexually abused than it is uncommon you know e even in a Christian home it happens um sadly you know but I do think that if we can if people can start addressing and not not feel like they're not Christian enough you know or that they should just believe more have more faith and it just goes away I think if they could just start to really like you said be transparent and begin to heal those wounds I think that would make a huge difference also in the body you're exactly right and you know well I heard you say have more faith how can you have you know we know every man is given a measure of faith but how can you have more faith when you really feel like you you have no faith.
• 1:16:57
  SPEAKER_04: I mean you have to get they judge themselves you know that that condemnation that comes from the enemy but so so many Christians really think they're not a good Christian because they're struggling and that's just a lie I think from the pit of hell.
• 1:17:18
  SPEAKER_04: Absolutely absolutely Kathy Well Dustin so um high hope ministries you guys offer coaching you have resources uh for prodigals and the families your dad has hope for the prodigals ministry your dad and mom and by the way um both of these ministries can be found on social media um Dustin also has a podcast and it's under um high hope ministries on YouTube correct yep and you you interview some prodigals but you also interview others as well I mean do you have a is your podcast geared towards one particular thing or is it just topic based?
• 1:18:07
  SPEAKER_02: No it's more it's it's it's pretty topic based it's it's anybody who's ever been through any type of trauma or addiction it can be uh whether it be substance abuse as I said you know um it could be a a mom a single mom that's walked through you know infid infidelity in the marriage or or you know vice versa um whatever it could be it's somebody who's walked through something traumatic or is walking through in some cases and has overcome that we had we even have um we've had some great pastors um who have walked through some very tough roads I mean one of our one of our yeah one of the ones that sticks out is AJ Holloway who is a pastor yeah and his losing a a child to a house fire and having to watch that um you know and how he overcame that after even having thoughts of just wanting to go be with his child um you know so it's addressing that and how they got through that what carried them through that um because I feel like it's it's uh we're all going through we're all going through something so if we can address all these things in some way somehow hopefully somebody will one will resonate with somebody um and and I I feel like God has put some pretty good guests and we have some good ones coming up and yes uh we're on social media Facebook Instagram um YouTube and um we also have a website high hope ministries dot com they can connect but I have to I have to unreservedly give honor to my mom and my dad because they started hope ministries like I said for me in 2015.
• 1:20:10
  SPEAKER_04: A lot of these connections a lot of these uh the reason I'm here a reason this this high hope ministry is here is um because of them and their continual prayer and support and um dedication to the ministry that they built um so I I I give them the highest honor and um yeah they they deserve I I thought it was wonderful you know your dad uh when I spoke with him he said they started that obviously because of you but feeling like they learned what they did wrong as parents of prodigals and how to come alongside other parents as prodigals and I bet it's very different than what we might think it is you know what whatever they felt.
• 1:21:01
  SPEAKER_04: I haven't heard their full testimony but it's so needful because we have we you know my cousin who was my first interview um his mom and dad both passed away before they ever got to see him come home but we know those memorial prayers that they prayed you know have come up before the Lord and the Lord met him in prison and filled him with the Holy Ghost in prison and you know uh he's just come out on fire for God and his parents never got to see the fulfillment of that you know and so I think there's a whole generation out there of parents whose children are still prodigals that would really benefit from the ministry of your parents.
• 1:21:49
  SPEAKER_04: We don't see that we don't see that very often you know um so I'm grateful I was blessed just talking to your dad and hearing the heart behind their ministry you know which then of course he directed me to you and I just I just am so encouraged by all of it.
• 1:22:09
  SPEAKER_04: God is God is just doing the work you know he's just doing it.
• 1:22:14
  SPEAKER_02: He's putting together such an an amazing army for these last days and and I mean I was going to say one by one but there I mean Kathy as you know they're they're coming in droves and they're coming in and just joining us and that's that's the way uh the the end time revival it's gonna be a revival of prodigals that's gonna be I firmly believe that's gonna be the the catalyst to the harvest I mean these prodigals are going to rise up and then they're gonna bring in this harvest and um it's ex it's exciting but humbling at the same time just to be a little little part of it.
• 1:22:52
  SPEAKER_04: That's why what you're doing is so important um just getting this out there any platform we can yeah well it it is I I just feel like it's such a miracle that God allows like you said be a little teeny part of it you know because I I wanted it my whole life but I was never I was never I just never been where I am today in him you know which I'm I'm so grateful for because I I know the miracle that I am I know you know the miracle that you are because no one knows where we've been better than ourselves but God's love is so great and the world really does not have anything to offer in comparison to his love.
• 1:23:39
  SPEAKER_04: There's no counterfeit to that yeah there's not and so uh for the people out there Dustin and his uh high hope ministry team is gonna be coming to Visalia to our conference unshackled conference so um we're so grateful that the team is coming but you know if you want to meet him talk to him get involved with his ministry it's a great opportunity uh for anybody who's interested to come they'll be in California at at our church so that's super exciting we are so excited the the team is yeah we can't wait Kathy so I always end with two questions Dustin um what would you say to the prodigal who hasn't come home yet to the prodigal that hasn't come home yet I would I would honestly I would I would tell them that God loves you where you are right now if if you can allow that just to sink in above anything else any other noise you're hearing is that he loves you as much now where you're at as he did before anything that you've walked through.
• 1:25:06
  SPEAKER_02: His love hasn't changed and if if you can just accept that and trust that that's that's really the loudest message and the only message I would want them to accept and receive in their spirit is he loves me as much now where I am as he did before I ever made any decision bad decision decision or or even if I feel like my decisions right now are not bad just know God loves you accept that receive that and just seek him with all your heart that's it yeah that's so good.
• 1:25:49
  SPEAKER_02: What would you say to the parents or a spouse of a prodigal I would say to the the parents or a spouse of a prodigal is a trust God um it that's so hard to do um show that one of the biggest things you can do and that my parents did is they kept walking and trusting God had they wavered in their faith had they wavered in their trust it would have affected me in in such a a negative way so you just you being consistent and in your walk and in your faith is a testimony to your prodigal that's that's the main thing and then know that your prayers yes your prayers go where you can where nobody else can right but the most important thing is is like in my situation your prayer sends people you might not reach them the words that they say the parents say or the spouse cannot reach them but those prayers are going to be sent and I pray for God to send people like he did in my life that can minister and reach to me because they're gonna open up a lot faster and receive those from those godly people that God sends in their life like he did with um and and I can't I mean the people in Austin Kenneth and Wanda Phillips the Hernandez family Steve Miller I I shouldn't have started naming names but God sent those people into my life um through the prayers of my parents that usured me and comforted me and walked alongside me non-judgmentally you know Mike and Tara Maxwell I I shouldn't have started naming people but anyway those people he'll he'll send those into their life if you'll pray step back and God's going to use people you never thought of um to help bring your your prodigals home and that's what we want that's what high hope is trying to be is some of those people that'll walk alongside um when the parents just can't and they're tired exhausted or their faith is you know that's that's what my words to them would be.
• 1:27:59
  SPEAKER_04: Yeah that's A good word.
• 1:28:01
  SPEAKER_04: All right.
• 1:28:01
  SPEAKER_04: Well, Dustin, nice to meet you via Zoom.
• 1:28:05
  SPEAKER_04: See your face.
• 1:28:06
  SPEAKER_04: Um, thank you so much for being here.
• 1:28:09
  SPEAKER_04: And um, I love what you're doing in your ministry, and I look forward to seeing you soon.
• 1:28:15
  SPEAKER_02: Just about a month away.
• 1:28:16
  SPEAKER_02: We can't wait, Kathy.
• 1:28:18
  SPEAKER_04: Okay.
• 1:28:18
  SPEAKER_04: Well, God bless you.
• 1:28:19
  SPEAKER_04: Thank you for doing this while you were sick.
• 1:28:21
  SPEAKER_04: I really appreciate it.
• 1:28:23
  SPEAKER_02: Thank you, Kathy.
• 1:28:24
  SPEAKER_02: God gave us give us strength.
• 1:28:26
  SPEAKER_02: We appreciate it.
• 1:28:27
  SPEAKER_04: Okay, and for everyone out there, thank you.
• 1:28:29
  SPEAKER_04: And if you are a prodigal or have you been a prodigal, please reach out to us.
• 1:28:35
  SPEAKER_04: We would love to hear from you.
• 1:28:37
  SPEAKER_04: Bye-bye.
• 1:28:38
  SPEAKER_03: We are so glad you joined us.
• 1:28:41
  SPEAKER_03: If you have a story of redemption or have worn the label of a backslider, we would love to hear from you.
• 1:28:47
  SPEAKER_03: If you'd like to support our ministry, your donation will be tax deductible.
• 1:28:52
  SPEAKER_03: Visit our website at Kathychastain.com.
• 1:28:56
  SPEAKER_03: We hope you will tune in for our next episode.