Transcription
I thought I was a good man, and yet by everyone's standard, I would have been a bad man. The last relationship I had, or that I had as I was coming to know Jesus, she was probably 19 years younger than me. Uh, I have two children, uh, with her. I have 11 total children with five different women. Uh, I've been divorced three times, all before I came to know Christ. And if you would have asked me, I would have said that I loved every one of them. Uh, and that I, I love my children. What, what I know now that's different is there's, that's an impossibility. Before I came to know Christ, it was impossible for me to love anyone but myself. However, I had these ideas of what, what it was to be a man, what it was to be a father, what it was to be a husband, and all of them were based around how other people would view me in certain situations or at just pleasure, whatever it was that fed me at that time. And at the same time, I would go home and tell my kids, okay, just, just go to your room now.
That I know Christ, that, that, uh, there's no way to love them without knowing the love of the Father. I started working Ringo Rigu, Morning Tower, when I was 15 years old, getting involved in drugs and women and everything that you can imagine. Doing a little bit of time as a juvenile, I would say. In the midst of that, like, I never knew what sexual purity would have been. Uh, I would, I would, I think that I could say that every woman I've ever known in my life, up to knowing Jesus, I had a sexual relationship with. Uh, that would include my mother, my, uh, sister's cousins. There was never my mom owned a bar in a porn store and, and, uh, and so if you can imagine the immorality that went along with that. And then my, on my dad's side, we had, uh, everybody was in and out of prison. And so you had, uh, you had those affiliations. And, and I can look back and say that, that the gifting of God in my life was always present. I always had the ability to edify. The problem without Christ is I would always build up myself. Uh, a lot of people, I think you would call that a con man, and I believe so wholeheartedly in the idea that I could make something profitable or successful that I would sell it completely, cuz I believed in myself that it would happen. But then whenever the money hit the hand or the, the opportunity to make someone think better of me would come, I would squander whatever opportunity that was for my own image, my own self-interest, or my own pleasure. And so that's what my life looked like before Christ.
I ended up going into a very deep addiction. Uh, there was a perfect storm. Literally, natural disasters wiped out a cell tower business, and then all this other stuff that I'd built, this empire that I'd built under myself, got wiped out in a matter of months. And I had my sister, who was an addict, living in my garage. And I started going home on my lunch break and getting high with her. And, uh, and it wasn't anything big at first. Uh, I, I'd stopped shooting dope. It was just like that until all of the identities were stripped away. You know, it's wild. You don't realize how selfish you are until you get upset because of everything you've done for a person. I remember going in my addiction and I'd reach out for something for help, for anything from somebody, and the first thing I'd think is, do you not remember all I've done for you? And then after knowing Jesus, I hear myself say that and think, man, you're selfish. Like, if you're accumulating this level of debt and this account against people that you've helped, you're doing that all completely and totally for you. And I'm so grateful for the ability to break a soul tie. Uh, just a short, quick testimony of recent stuff. My wife was going, my current wife, the one that, as, as a believer, that God said this is going to be your wife. And, and we've known each other since we're 11. She started having dreams about her ex, uh, that she's with for 17 years. And they were, uh, dreams. He was, he was very abusive. And in the dream, he's hunched over somebody in the bathtub, and he, he's doing something. She goes up there, and he's drowning this person in the bathtub. And, and she's doing everything she can to save this person's life. And right as this person dies, she realizes it's a younger version of herself. So we come up, and, and, and I'd done the soul tie stuff in purity, like, I don't know, four years ago, cuz we teach that at the ministry. Uh, we teach that out of that book. And so, but I don't know that I ever truly believed it. We'll do this, we'll break the soul ties, but it wasn't real belief. But then I saw my wife. So, you know, she just said this quick thing, and I already knew about soul ties. I'm like, okay, maybe this will work. And, and so she did it. Boom, boom, boom. And then my wife, who is not a game, she's not going to play games with you, she's just not that person. She's serious. So she's not going to just hit the ground, and she's just there, man. And it, it even kind of delayed second service a little bit. And anyway, I got to thinking after that about the soul tie. I was thinking, man, because I've been in this deep battle for, for four or five years over the sexual stuff, and I just thought, look, take the captive, lay it at his feet. I'm getting sifted. Flee from the lust of your, of your youth. What I didn't realize is, man, the fantasy comes on so thick and so hard sometimes, it creates an euphoria. And I blamed it on the enemy the whole time, and it wasn't actually the enemy. It was the Holy Spirit. And I, I'll explain. For years, he's been trying to get me to break those soul ties. And so even whenever I would look at a woman, and there would be a familiar fantasy, right? You, you see the woman, and then, and I say the enemy drops this image, but that image in my mind came from real life experience because I still had a soul tie. It would hit me, and I would almost revert to the battlefield, right? Because I'm good at, I'm a good soldier, man. I can do battle. And, uh, but then I would, oh, wait, hold on a second. And I made it. It's just so simple, right? The simplicity of the Gospel. I give back everything I took. I take back everything I gave. Father God, I surrender this to you. I don't want this anymore. What does it say? Uh, don't be surprised that whenever these tri-, don't be surprised that you still have a flesh suit on. And so there's still this thing that'll cut up, and I can grab it, and, and if I want to go, you know, there'll be a lure of, of the fantasy that wants to take me there. But ever since I did the soul tie thing, it really helped, uh, minimize the battle because there's no memory associated with it anymore. It's like I broke the soul tie, gave back, and took back, and then even the, the muscle memory of the action over 30 years of depravity is almost gone.