WWOL LIVE!

From the Salvation Army, welcome to Wonderful Words of Life. Welcome back to all of our listeners, and I want to say a special welcome to the Salvation Army's territorial headquarters in Atlanta, Georgia, where we are recording this episode for what we think is the first time live. Give yourselves a hand, everybody.

That's a good energy, and we will use that for this episode. I'm excited to share a new host with you. This is my friend going back so many years, and our territorial youth secretary. This is Major Cheryl Gillum. Welcome, everybody. Thank you, Bernie.

Cheryl and her husband oversee the youth work in the Salvation Army's Southeastern United States which serves 15 of the Southeastern states and the District of Columbia. It's a pretty big responsibility, but Cheryl, officially, welcome. We're glad that you're here. It's an honor to be here.

Thanks. We're excited because this series, Captains Rob and Heather Dolby are talking about the least of these, and you're going to get to hear from them a little later. They ask a question about how we as the Church are caring for the marginalized people in our society. How do you feel about that?

Right. I think it's a great opportunity as we listen together and as we join in to hear about what they have to say. They're going to be concentrating specifically over the next few weeks on the cost of ministry, counting the cost of ministry, and what that looks like.

They're going to unpack it a little bit. Dietrich Bonhoeffer says that salvation is free, but discipleship will cost you everything. That's a deep statement. When we think about the disciples or those 12 men that we know now who are following around the savior of all mankind, it's kind of daunting to think what part would we play in discipleship or what character, what traits would we take on? You and your husband have surrendered to the idea of officership in the Salvation Army, and that's a calling that you've accepted.

I wonder if you can talk to us about some of the ministry that you've seen or the opportunities you've had to practice discipleship. Right. Specifically in relationship to counting the cost, that looks different. It has many different facets. You count the cost as you give up your time, your energy to different situations and to, most importantly, people. There are great successes in that and great rewards here on earth. We know our rewards are not all on earth because there also are very difficult situations that you walk in.

You begin to count the cost of your ministry in that. It brings back to memory one appointment that we had, a gentleman who came through our rehabilitation program. He went through the whole program, and it was a great success in his life. He had accepted the Lord Jesus as his personal savior, and he was walking in the victory of that. He was great when he was surrounded with community. He was a shining star.

He'd walk into any room, and you could just see the transformation that had taken place. We even employed him in our rehabilitation program at one point. There just came a point where we started seeing just things slipping. He started not coming into community and not attending different meetings.

We got the sense that he was probably using again. It was a very difficult situation just because in that particular circumstance, our community was so tight, and we had poured so much into him. We're trying to bring him back, speaking words of life into him, and just trying to get him on the right path. Unfortunately, in his circumstance, it didn't take.

One day, as my husband and I were getting ready to fly out of town, we heard that he had overdosed and died. I can just remember in that moment the emotion that flooded me as I was in the airport, just thinking about the fact that I loved him. He wasn't a stat. He wasn't just a number on a piece of paper. He had a name.

I knew his name, and I was involved in his life. That was counting the cost at that point because I could have honestly just kind of said, well, I'm kind of done with this. I can't invest myself into people and have this heartbreak, but that's not what Christ calls us to. Amen. I love the fact that you had an opportunity to invest, to maybe even show someone how to fish in a sense. You introduced him to Jesus. You gave them opportunities, but surely there's also some examples of success as well.

Absolutely. Another example is someone in one of our appointments that came through a different kind of a program. He started bringing his family and his children, and now is running one of those programs, and his family is fully involved in the Corps and going strong on fire for Jesus.

Absolutely, you see the good and the not so good. Well, Cheryl, we are fortunate today to have someone with us who's going to speak to us about how his life was transformed because of the people that God put in his path who were willing to bear the cost. Let the ring ring, lift up their voice and sing along. Sing to the one who has opened the gates. Sing to the hope who has broken the chains. Come sing for joy.

Sing to the Lamb who has conquered our sin. Sing to the King who is coming again. Come sing for joy. Sing for the lost. Sing for the lost. Sing for the lost.

Come sing for the lost. Sing for the lost. Sing for the lost. Sing for the lost. Come sing for the lost. Sing for the lost. Come sing for the lost. Sing for the lost. Come sing for joy. Sing to the Lamb who has conquered our sin. Sing to the King who is coming again.

Come sing for joy. We wait for you. We wait for you. We long for your return. We wait for you.

We wait for you. We long for your return. Sing for the sun to rise once again. Sing for the sorrow darkness will end. Come sing for joy. Sing for the broken will all be made new. Sing for the King is returning for you. Come sing for joy. It is really cool to hear that music live, and we're grateful for Transmission for joining us this morning. Give them one more hand, everybody.

That's a song that comes to us from a guy named Randy Bonifield, and it's going to be featured on the new Transmission album, so keep your ears to the ground because I'm sure that you will have an opportunity to buy that real soon. Well, now it's time for our guests. I want you to welcome all the way from Anderson, South Carolina, Rashad Poole. Welcome, man. We're so glad that you are here. Now, you've come all the way from Anderson for our listeners around the world.

That's about two hours north of Atlanta. Correct. And you're wearing a funny thing today. This is a uniform, but your epaulets are blue.

They are. That means you're a soldier or a member of the Salvation Army Church, and we want to get to know you a little bit. Yeah.

And I think Cheryl might have some questions. Yeah, so welcome. We're so glad you're with us. Thank you. Thank you for having me.

I just met Rashad yesterday, and man, I love your spirit. Thank you. Awesome. So we're one I just hear about a little bit more about you. Can you tell us about yourself? And you are an employee of the Salvation Army right now.

For sure. So could you tell us about your position and what you do? So I'm a BFI in Anderson, South Carolina.

I've been there the last two and a half years where I've had the amazing opportunity to focus in ministry for street homelessness, for young adult ministries and at risk youth ministry like in our Boys and Girls Club. Yeah. Awesome. So the BFI program here in the south is what we call our blood and fire initiative. We have to we are the kings of acronyms. We know how to do acronyms in the Salvation Army. Amen. Amen.

But Rashad, you came through. Here's another acronym for you. Our A.R.C. program or our Adult Rehabilitation Center program. Can you tell us a little bit more about that?

Yeah. So I found the A.R.C. through God and honestly, just the power of surrender in 2015. I was at my lowest. I was homeless, addicted in the streets of Birmingham, Alabama. I found my I found myself waking up in a hospital bed. And I can remember nurses and doctors. They were standing all around me. And one of the doctors looked at me with such sincerity and like pain in his eyes. And he said, Son, you're lucky to be alive right now. And so over the next few days, as I began to detox and I sat and laid in the hospital room, I had a lot of time to just evaluate my life, right.

Evaluate the choices and things that I had made. And I told God, I said, God, I'm done. I'm done doing it on my own.

Have your way, Lord. I fully surrender because obviously what I'm doing is not working. And so that led me my last day in detox. I can remember getting up and I went over to a water fountain. I didn't know where I was going to go.

I was kind of scared because I knew once I detoxed out, I was just going to be on the street again. And I got up, went to the water fountain and I looked on the wall and it said the Salvation Army Adult Rehabilitation Center. And I called them and they were like, sure, come on in. So I packed my bags, didn't know what was in store for me.

Right. So I came in the front door and immediately I felt at home. I felt welcomed. I felt accepted even for the things, you know, that I was ashamed of in my past. I was accepted there. Yeah. Well, listen, we, we, you know, God uses people to minister his grace to other people. We know this. So can you just expand on some of the people who God has placed in your life to minister to you during this time of recovery and moving into ministry?

There has been such amazing people that have just came around me as I joined in this community. But I want to pinpoint Lieutenant Chris Pachek today. At the time he was cadet Chris Pachek.

And every week in the ARC, the cadets would come over and they would do AA group meetings at our facility. And there was something in Chris that I just saw. It radiated through him and it would draw people to him. So finally one day I got the courage enough up to go to him and I said, Chris, I want what you have, man.

I said, I need a recovery sponsor. And he was willing to do that. He looked at me and I can remember the words that came out of his mouth. He was like, Rashad, this is going to be hard, but this is a life or death battle. And he really coached, coached me through this.

And I mean, he's a beautiful guy with a beautiful spirit and he invests so much into me. So yeah. So just like Chris spoken to your life because of his journey, I know that God has something very special for you in speaking into others' lives as well for what you've been through.

Thank you. Chris is a pretty cool kid. He's a great hugger as well. But I happen to know that the administrators while you were there were pretty cool people too. Do you remember who they were? Yes, Major Steve and Donna Justice. Amazing, amazing people. And like when I walked into the ARC doors, Major Steve and Donna, they welcomed me with open arms.

I didn't walk through the doors as a beneficiary. I walked into a family. And I remember like any time I ever doubted myself or I was struggling or I had questions in my recovery or my spiritual walk, I could always go sit down with Major Steve in his office and he would always lay it out to me. He would always pray, pray with me and encourage me.

And Major Donna, yes, her hugs are amazing. And she would look at me with a smile on her face. And every time I would hug her, she would pull me tight and then she would look at me and say, you're a trophy. You're a trophy of God's grace.

And that has stuck with me to this day. Now from that program, you decide to become a soldier or a member of the Salvation Army. Tell us a little bit about that journey. So, yeah, so I, it's a weird journey, right? But I had the privilege of attending a Bible conference at Lake Junaluska in 2015. The, the week was entitled Holiness. And, you know, living in the world that I was in, I really didn't know what holiness meant, right? And living a life to holiness to God. So that week, as we focused in on that theme, God really started to peel back some layers in me and was calling me to something deeper.

Right? And so that last day at Bible conference, the Lord was tugging at my heart. And finally I said, okay, Lord, I give in. And so I went down to the altar and I can remember falling on my knees and just weeping and saying, God, I know you have something for me. I know you have called my, called me to do something for you in the ministry.

Right? And that day, God spoke directly to me and said, Rashad, this is what I have for you. This is what I want you to be.

I wasn't even a soldier at the time, but I have was called to be a Salvation Army officer. And along the way, along the way, God had doubted myself. But God kept reassuring me that his promises come true, right? Just remain faithful and continue to surrender to me.

Yeah. That is an incredible story. And Rashad, we need to pray for you. We want to pray for you. We're going to pray for you. Amen.

Audience out there. God has got so much in store for you. He's going to continue to equip you for the ministry that is still ahead. Thank you. We're going to go on to the next part of this segment, but I want you to know that you are a trophy of God's grace, and the experiences that you've been given are going to be used to encourage others to persevere.

The race is not done. Amen. Amen.

Wow. It's overwhelming just to sit and hear someone's story and realize that we get to serve every day and partner with a God who's calling us to walk with people sometimes in really hard places. We get to see the beauty in the midst of that. Salvation is free and discipleship will cost you everything. As we look at Mark chapter five, Jesus finds himself crossing the lake into a new region. And right away he has an encounter with his demon possessed man. Now, not just any run of the mill demon possessed man, but someone who literally the town where he was living got from where they had to try and just like chain him up, but he would actually break out of these chains.

He couldn't even stay in town, rejected by his family, couldn't even be around people. So the scripture says that he just hung out in a cemetery in a graveyard, sitting around cutting himself, just absolutely given over to this torment. And he encounters Jesus as Jesus comes across the lake. And the first thing he says to Jesus is Jesus, son of man, what are you going to do with me?

What are you going to do with me? Jesus? See, I really love the way you set that up because when I first read that story, all my focus was on the guy and all the stuff going on in his life. And even in ministry, like when we are serving the least of these, our focus can often be on all the stuff they have going on in their life and all the madness and all the wildness and all the stuff that is unhealthy and dysfunctional.

And that can be overwhelming. But where Jesus starts is something that's just so beautiful and it's just the gospel. Because when he encounters that man, he just says, Hey, what's your name?

What's your name? Right. Right. And actually it says in that place, because we look at that scripture sometimes that maybe Jesus is like angry, exerting his authority over the issues in this guy's life, the torment in his life. But actually the scripture says Jesus dealt with the torment in that moment and then asks him his name. And I think what that shows us is that Jesus as this all knowing, all powerful God, he knew everything that was already going on when the guy got there, right?

He knew everything about that guy's life. He didn't start telling him about all the things that had gone wrong, all the terrible choices he had made, all the havoc he had wreaked in that community that caused them to push him to the edges and the fringes. But he starts with who that man is as a child of God. Right. He doesn't just see a man sitting there cutting himself, lost, depressed, defeated in a graveyard.

He sees the capacity of that person. That's right. It reminds me of our friend Marnie. Ah, I love Marnie. Yeah. Marnie literally is the person in the town where we serve that is literally out on the street, running around in great torment, struggling with mental illness. Everybody knows her.

She's like that, that wild and dysfunctional lady that nobody wants around because you never know what she's going to do with danger to herself and others even at times. Right. The police are actually coming to the Salvation Army saying you got to help us with this lady.

We don't know what to do. Right. But one of the things that I think we can take from the story that reminds me just of what Jesus was dealing with in scripture is this idea of what it means to be a disciple is we're following Jesus, not just because we're curious or we're like, Oh, what's he going to do next?

But because as a disciple we want to be like Jesus. Right. And so in this situation when Jesus shows up, um, um, with this demon possessed man and all this stuff goes down, so like he ends up casting the demons into this herd of pigs and then the pigs, like they just run off the side of a cliff and fall into the water, which is a big deal because that was livelihood. That was pig farmers. That's right. Like that was like their savings. That was their 401k running off the side of the cliff. So dude is like, I got to go back to town and tell everybody about this. Right. And they all come out to see what is happening and it's chaos and it's this guy at the center of it again because you know that guy, he didn't just end up down by the caves and the cemetery overnight and chains. I'm sure the people that town had been knowing him being dealing with him and they were at the end of what they were willing to pay. And then Jesus takes it one step further and there goes the page. Sure.

It was like major Cheryl. I mean, when we invest in people, there's, there's a cost to be paid. There is a cost. But I think about this as we follow Jesus in the days here and now, you know, the temptation for those people was to, um, look at this man who all of a sudden was in his right mind, clothes sitting around the campfire, having a little cup of coffee and some hummus with the disciples. And what they're remembering is everything he had ever done. And Jesus is showing them who he really is in the kingdom of God.

And what do they say? The cost was too high. They said, Jesus, you got to go. Like we can't, we can't deal with this. And I think, um, for us here and now, like we can see people with our eyes, our human eyes and what the world says is, you know, once an addict, always an addict, once of this, always a that. Um, and there's no hope for them, but that's the pattern of the world. And scripture says, do not be conformed to the pattern of the world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind. And so when we say in that Dietrich Bonhoeffer quote, salvation is free, but discipleship will cost you everything.

That discipleship for us, that following Jesus is that as we care for the least of these, will we be transformed in our thinking to see people as Jesus sees them, right? And that doesn't have to look like a supernatural encounter every time. I think it can start with just saying, Hey, I'm Rob, I'm Heather. What's your name?

Yes, it can start like that. And as we care for the least of these, we give them a gift when we see them as Jesus sees them. It's a gift to give somebody like a holy do over and be for them, the Marnies, the Rashads, the Robs, the Heathers, like a safe place to start again, where someone can hold you close and say, I see you and you're a trophy. Welcome home. It's beautiful. Well, Rob and Heather, we are grateful for your passion for the call that you've accepted in your own lives and the unique ability that you have to just come along.

Say people where they are literally primitive salvationists. I pray that God will continue to use you to continue to bless others. And that is the end of our first live episode that we can remember. Thank you so much for joining us. To our listeners out there around the world, we pray that you too have heard something that might have been a blessing to you. And if that's the case, if you've heard something or maybe God's just touched your heart in a way that you'd like someone to pray for you, reach out to us, contact us at radio at uss.salvationarmy.org and we will do our level best to stay in touch with you and continue to encourage you. God bless you.

Have a wonderful rest of your day. The Salvation Army's mission, doing the most good means helping people with material and spiritual needs. You become a part of this mission every time you give to the Salvation Army. Visit salvationarmyusa.org to offer your support.

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