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