This is the Truth Network. Welcome to "If Not for God: Stories of Hopelessness That Turn to Hope." Here is your host, Mike Zwic. If Not for God with Mike Zwic.
So, tell me about yourself. I mean, you—did you grow up in a Christian home, or I did. I did. I grew up in a Christian home. We went to church pretty regularly.
You know, in my Teenage years went astray and all of that because I didn't really have a good, you know, understanding of Christ and how all that worked in my life, and you know it was more just people teaching at you instead of to you.
So growing in that, you know, as I as I got older, obviously life went the way it went, and you know I've. Since then, and my now in my 40s, realized how much you know, God's hand has been on my life the whole time, even in the different areas that I may have fallen short throughout life, and definitely want to you know continue to serve Him in the best way that I possibly can. Yeah, and so you said when you grew up, you grew up in a church. You grew up, so you knew the word of God. But I guess we all have our time where we may rebel or we may want to go our way.
And I guess did that happen to you when you were a teenager, or when was it? It did. I was pulled away by basically the lust of the world. You know, lust of the flesh. You know, I was in addiction for a number of years that ultimately brought me to.
I guess some people would call it rock bottom, but I don't really agree that there is an actual rock bottom. It's more or less when you put the shovel down and you stop digging.
Okay, you know, I think everyone has a different base where that that kind of comes into play, and that that played out between up into the year two thousand and seven, and God had really, you know. You run out of options at some point in addictions, and you have to realize that either you're going to continue on that path, or you're going to let you're going to let God ultimately guide your life. And so, I went to a ministry in 2007 down in Florida called Dunklin Memorial Church. It's a recovery ministry for men in addiction. I spent about four and a half years there.
Came out of there. With a degree in seminary and a degree in counseling, and really, it was a big discipling type platform, city of refuge type of ministry, in just the swamps of Florida.
So there's not anywhere you could actually bail out and run away from. You know, you it was you you were there, and the men that built it incredible, godly men, and it continues to serve men around the world. They send out. The guys that have graduated, and some of the women from the other ministry, the sister ministry, you know, they send them out all over the world. You know, there's disciples headed out doing mission work or starting their own programs to help other men and young.
You know, because they're getting younger and younger, and there's not a lot of stuff out there for young people like you know that are maybe under the age of 21. That's a that's a difficult age to minister to, yeah.
So, people have gone out; they're younger and created these ministries to help, you know, disciple young men away from the life that they're leading into understanding what it is to live in a life with Christ. Yeah, and so you, how how long were you in addiction before before the Lord saved you out of that? I'd say a good solid ten years.
Okay. Yeah. And then when you went down to Florida, you were in the swamps. Obviously, you got out of it, but you didn't just say, "Hey, I want to get out of this myself." You also said, "I want to help other people who may be dealing with that as well." Can you tell me about that? Yeah.
Definitely. It's that's just part of it. We we minister to the people that we've been on similar journeys with.
So for me. Being able to to love on someone, knowing what they've done and maybe how they feel about it, being able to you know compassionately love someone, because that's that's really what changed me was realizing that it's the love that God gives us, and He does it through each other. To help support the body of Christ.
So, when I'm ministering to someone, and a lot of people I minister today is not people that are necessarily in addiction, but just just your average Joe on the street, or just whoever is out in the world, you know, the Holy Spirit will move you to speak to people in in a place where you may say something to them that really resonates with where they're at.
Okay. Right. And so now I did do. Recovery ministry for a number of years after I left, and it's not that God didn't want me to continue in it. It's just, you know, as He grows us and matures us, He's going to take us to new places and new areas where we can.
Still minister out of that, but to people that maybe have never struggled in that aspect, to realize that we're all really a lot alike, and and and mostly all generally have some addiction in our life.
Some of it maybe just not be socially acceptable, right?
So that's something that I had to learn how to not just minister to people that were, hey, you're messing up. You really need to correct your life, but also looking at it from a way. Of Lord, what do you want out of this person, Lord? How how can I, because every time we minister to someone, it's not only just for them. A lot of times, we're the Holy Spirit speaking to us as well, yeah, about our character, about our integrity.
Um, you know, I think a lot of people that do come out of addiction, sometimes, especially for me, I know it took a long time to feel secure that I was not normal, but That people accepted me for who I was, not what I had done, right kind of deal.
So that that took that was a season of growth for me that definitely was challenging because you know ministry it isn't just like this one path and it's so many different areas you can go in. And God has He He has anointed that in seasons in my life, and there's been dry seasons where I've been in the wilderness and I'm. Growing, you know, trying to grow intimately with Him, and you know my wife and our family and the different trials that we've been in through, you know, the last seventeen years.
So, yeah. You mean living the Christian life isn't always easy? It's never easy, and anyone that says that it is, I just don't. I'm not saying that some people don't have it super easy, but what is easy, really? You know, what does that actually look like?
I think it's perspective has a lot to do with. What easy is or what it isn't, and some of us have more perspective than others, but that's why the body of Christ needs to operate. You know, I'm I may be a hand today, you know, you may be the tongue, you know, speaking love over people. Where some people need a push, some people need a fire lit under them, and I think without Having sound, you know, not just doctrine, but your theology about how the Holy Spirit works through us to produce fruit. Being sensitive to that is important, in you know, going from.
Immaturity to maturity in Christ. Yeah, yeah. And so, how about you, Whitney? Whitney, you're you're Jeff's wife, Jeff and Whitney Sutton from Capital Fire. But did you grow up?
You didn't. You didn't go through addiction like he did, right? No, not in the sense that I went to like a recovery ministry or anything. But I definitely had my own. Rebellion and my own time away from God, due to you know trauma and wounds and things like that.
So, but we kind of came together about the same time. Did you grow up in the church? Yes, I mean, I I laugh and say that I was probably in the church more than the pastor was because my mom worked at the church as a secretary.
Okay, and then my dad was a deacon and a Sunday school teacher.
So I mean, I I felt like we were there all the time. And summers when you're not in school, I was there with youth pastors' kids, and we just ran free through the sanctuary. You know, so I I literally grew up in church.
Okay, and so and so you said, but you had a Period of rebellion. What did that look like for you? I had some traumas that I went through, and just bad theology because I was so, I was so like, I guess so raised in the church, but it was it was a very my understanding of it was more. That you had to be bad for God to love you, you know. You had to experience a rebellion or something to set you apart from God.
But I didn't really have anything bad in my life as a young child.
Okay. And then in middle school, some things happened, and I was like, "Oh, I like that." Those are bad things, and um. Yeah, I just I I began to really through high school stayed in rebellion just due to my wounds and stuff, and I was like, I I just don't I love God, but it's kind of the people that are you know I'm struggling with. Yeah, yeah. Um, and then just.
Really, in in my early twenties, I began to experience God in a much different way and experience His love and other people who loved Him too. But my focus became more about God versus the people around me and how they were treating me or how I was experiencing things like that. Yeah, it's uh, you know, I've heard people say, you know, you got to focus on your relationship with God, right? Not just what you're doing for God.
Now, if we have a relationship with God. We're going to do things for God, but it's going to come naturally because we want to. And from Jeff, what you said is she actually met you. She was in a what she was in a church, and you were speaking there. Is that right?
Yeah, that's true. We would run for Dunklin. As leadership down there, we would actually they would send us to different states to you know do like missions where we would raise money for the ministry, and that was since I was from North Carolina originally, I always got sent to North Carolina. And so we would go back to where we're we're from, and we would speak at the churches, the local churches, sharing what a you know day to day operations look like at a ministry like that. And one night we were, I was speaking at a a church and shared my testimony and shared you know what God was doing in my life.
And you know at the end of it, people always come up and talk to you, you know, and introduce themselves. And that was the first night that I met her. Yeah, and so you guys have been together for how long now? Seventeen years this year. Seventeen years, and and you said that it does not go without trials.
And your daughter, who's actually right here with us, she got sick. Was it back in twenty twenty twenty twenty one twenty twenty one And and what was that like? I mean, what? Ellie was diagnosed with B-cell acute lymphoblastic leukemia in March of 2021, and it rocked us. I mean, it's it's God doesn't say like if the storms will come; He says when the storms will come.
Okay, and so it was definitely a very Shaping time for us of a testing of faith, if you will. Of you know, do we really believe what we're saying? Yeah. Is this this this tree really as it is rooted as we believe it is? Yeah.
Um, and there were things spoken over us in the very early days. Um, very challenging things. Very challenging things. We had, uh. We had a gentleman who we were actually we were actually getting ready to start a ministry.
We had the bylaws written. We had our five hundred one like the pages that you would send off to the state. We had all that filled out. We had a board assembled. We had people fasting and praying.
We were ready to start a ministry, and then the week we were getting ready to mail the paperwork in, we got her diagnosis. Oh no! And so we we just paused and. There was a gentleman that was a part of our our group at the time, and he's since come in and out of our lives. And he had been in my life since I was 16, so he's always been a very influential person.
Of, I know he hears from God. I know, I know that he has a relationship with the Lord. And he called Jeff, and he said, "If you just had more faith, your daughter would be healed." Which is exactly what you need to be telling people, right, when their daughter is diagnosed with cancer.
Well, I think just with hindsight, you know, in the moment it was definitely on the nose, and it it stung in a way that I just don't, you know, when it's not that some of those things aren't necessarily true. But here again, is how we deliver the message. Yeah, yeah. It was definitely something that pulled me back because you know I was already unraveling at the seams. You know, just dealing with slept in like four days.
We were. It was just a. It was a roller coaster of emotions and all these different things that you just never. Most, and I know there's a thousand people out there that know what I'm saying when I say you don't. It hits you like a freight train, and it's not something where you know it's it's an endurance.
It's like the doctor said, it's this is not a a sprint, it's an endurance, an endurance race. And so, yes, things were said out of zealousness. I believe, I think that you can speak truth in a way that stings more than actually does good for the body. Yeah, and now. Not to condemn this individual, I love this person dearly, and have a relationship with them still.
And I actually say that, even though as as as hard as that was to hear, a couple of years had gone by, and I actually went by this person's house, and it was just a God thing. I got out of the truck, and you know he was in his yard, and. You know, he just kind of ran up to me, tears and you know, just tears in his eyes, and just was like, you know, please forgive me. Yeah. And I, I think there's a lot of people out there that forgiveness is.
I mean, that's what we're we're called to do is forgive. You know, and I've said things in times of overzealousness in my walk with God where this has got to happen or this is what it is, and it's not been the right time. And so that's something the Lord's really worked in my heart on. Is you can know something and you can have truth, but if the the proverbial soil isn't soft enough for that seed to be planted, it's not. It's not.
It's not going to have the effect that it could have. It's not going to produce fruit. And so I think it was definitely something that could have been done handled differently. But you know we don't always get to. When we speak things, those words go out, right?
They go out into the ether. They're out there.
So I think it's important to recognize that out of that, a stronger relationship was built. And you know, I have nothing but love now, whereas before I was just so it was such a roller coaster of everything. And you know, having your your firstborn, you know. And watching her body change from steroids to, you know, the medicines that they put her on, and it was on top of COVID, so we were having to get her. And I'm, yeah, I don't want to get into all that, but it's it was a huge time of being pressed, you know, the wine press, right?
So it's it's going to get rid of anything that doesn't need to be there. Yeah, and and that's what happened. They look so much alike. You can tell their you can tell their siblings, and and the good news is is that she's still here. She's healed in Jesus' name.
You know that's that's the whole thing. Like. I, I think it's hard. It's a hard thing to unpack, and I think even now, and knowing that, like we we say it all the time, you know, her new diagnosis is she's healed, and I do believe that. Like, and Jesus, like Jesus told us that she was healed, but that doesn't mean that the journey, like the journey, still had to happen.
Like, you know, God could have healed her in the first day, but you know. They were still the hospital wanted to do their thing, you know. Like, you know, here is chemo, here is all this, and this is two and a half, three years, constant, every day, day in and day out. You don't get away from it, you know. And you lose relationships, people that hey, they were, they were in the boat, you know, beforehand, and you know they got kids or whatever, and they bailed out, you know, and you lose friends over something that you think would be a time where people would surround you and love you.
And look, I'm not. It's just things you you witness when you go through traumatic events like that, especially dealing with children. And she was five when she was diagnosed, so she was little and she had no idea the things that were happening to her. And I remember in the hospital, you know, we we pray. I just knew that this was a path we had to take.
We needed to do it in such a way that we could still represent who Christ was in our lives, even though it was difficult walking around the fifth floor of the children's hospital. I tell guys today, if you want gratitude in your life and you're feeling like maybe things aren't really panning out, go walk around the cancer floor of the children's hospital. You know, you'll come out of there different. You will. You know.
So for us, we've tried to minister. I know we encounter probably angels on that journey. People that. You just never saw again, but really dropped a word of truth, and you know it was just a very difficult season, and it challenged a lot of my belief system and what I believed about God, not what church taught me, but who He really is, what is His nature, and His nature is love. Like I mean, God is love, and He loved us through it, but He also expected us to be mature about it.
We prayed over every bag of blood that went into her, every bag of plasma, every medicine we. People that did ride the wave with us, you know, we would tell them, "Look, we know we can't avoid the path, so help us pray that there be no side effects from the medications, because that's really where a lot of the hardships come through. That is the side effects that the medicines do.
So with that, I remember Ellie." Many times she would always you know pray, Daddy, pray, Daddy, and you know there were I prayed so much in the hospital that I literally ran out of words. Wow, I'm serious. I to where just groanings would come out, you know. And I think in that you start to really see the character of God. Yeah, like he he was present through all of it.
You know, like there was hope in it, and he is you know where the hope comes from.
So for us as a family, it didn't destroy our marriage. It actually drew us closer. I know a lot of couples struggle through you know seasons like that, and you know we're really fortunate to love one another the way we do, and to really put ourselves before the Lord, and say, Lord, you know, this is not something I ever anticipated happening in my life, but since it is, like, I need you, and I think a lot of times we just don't. Life can be like like you can coast, right? In certain, you know, if you got a good job, you got all the, you got enough money in the bank account, whatever.
There's a lot of coasting going on out there, you know. And I think that life is fragile and it's precious, and tomorrow is not guaranteed. And it's a you don't really ever live out of that until you've walked through something where nothing's guaranteed. Yeah. Right.
Yeah, and I've heard I've heard it said before, Whitney, that you never know that God is all you need until you realize that God is all you have. And so, when you're in a time like this, there was really, yes, obviously, you took the treatments, you did what the doctors told you to do, but you were fully relying on God for the healing. Yeah. I mean, it's it. I mean, we looked at the doctors a couple times, and I said, I don't care what you say, because God's God's got the final say in this.
Yeah. You know, I I don't care what your odds are. Or what your statistics say, or what the side effects look like, because God's got the final say in this. What what were they saying at the time?
Well, she really did have a good outcome and things like that. But they do warn you about all the side effects, and we've got other people that we became friends with along the journey, and you know their kids are still in. They're still in physical therapy. It's been three and a half years. Like so, there's definitely a lot of side effects that happen with it, and we go through that.
Yeah, yeah. So, how did you grow as a Christian during that time? Oh gosh, it's definitely the longest I've ever had to be consistent.
Okay. And towards the end of it, I got really defeated. And I think when you, if you've ever done long distance running, you understand the wall that you hit. I did, yeah. I ran cross country in high school.
Yeah, so you know, there's this wall that you hit when you're doing long distance running. Yeah. And I definitely didn't finish as well as I wish I would have. Yeah. There was a depression that came over me as she was finishing up treatment, and I stayed in a pretty deep depression for about two years after treatment was over.
Just even when she was better, even when and. That was the thing. She was better. Treatment was done, and we rang the bell, and my body just shut down. I think because I ran so hard for so long that I just was not physically.
I was not spiritually prepared for it.
So it definitely was a. Was a transition time to where I learned that now it's it's now there's a there's a spiritual preparation just like there would be a physical preparation for a long long run. Yeah, and so in the last few minutes that we have the you know what one of the things that I've learned over the years is I do evangelism and I thank God for Jeff. Jeff has come out with me many Saturdays while I've gone and and walked up to people and and been willing to share the gospel. I'm telling you what there's a lot of people who will.
Not do that. They'll want to do a hundred Bible studies. They'll want to do talk about it, look at it, talk about it. They'll want to look at YouTube videos on it. But when it comes to doing it, they just won't do it.
But Jeff, you actually do it. But we can actually do one of my greatest ministries is when I'm out selling insurance and I'm talking to people one on one. But I met you through the group that we have over Cody up in Prospect Hill, and you actually came to a birthday party. I think it was my daughter's birthday party, and she just turned five. And you said Mike something about the the alarms that I had the the smoke detectors, and you said something about if they are older than ten years.
And first of all, they weren't even up and working. But if they're older than ten years, and you have a fire, tell me what happens.
So basically, in most houses, if you most people all have smoke detectors, but the Problem is, is we put them up and we kind of forget about them. Yeah, so there. There's about a 10-year period where, after that 10 years, the manufacturers no longer carry a warranty. Or, like if you were to have a fire and the smoke detector was the issue, it didn't work, and there was loss of life. Obviously, someone's going to have to pay pay up.
So insurance comes in and says, you know, we're going to look at all these things.
Well, the smoke detectors, if it's older than 10 years, and I pull it down and the service work. I'm supposed to legally replace it. Yeah, that's what we're told to do. Sure. And a lot of people are just unaware that your smoke detectors are like your first line of defense.
Yeah, and and carbon monoxide too. Like we talked about that. If you got, we've got gas. Yeah. If you got gas, you got you know a garage that's connected to your and not gas because you ate too much, but no, but you know like some people as we're going into the colder months, people that have a attached garage sometimes they'll start their Car and let it warm up.
Well, that's carbon monoxide that's pouring into that garage, and if there's enough of it that builds up, it's going to seep into the house.
So, having a carbon monoxide detector, making sure they work, we come in. We actually service residential as a part of our business, and that helps to. Equip our neighbors and people also in the community that don't think of you know they're not thinking about hey my smoke detectors probably don't work I've been in this house for 13 years well if you have and you've never changed them or never had someone inspect them yeah there's a good chance that they're probably not functioning the way they're supposed to that's right that's right yeah so and if you know I you mean just get them to stop by excuse me get them to stop by get them to come and and take a look at it because when you did you. Got me all set up and it was reasonable, man. I mean, it didn't cost a lot of money.
And Jeff would love to meet you if they do want to get in touch with you.
Now we mentioned a website. Is that yes? There's a website. What is the website? Oh, I have to pull up my phone.
Well, is that can they call you or text you? They can call. It is what is the number to call three three six. Three eight zero three nine four nine is the work cell phone, so you can call or text. And once again, that is three three six three eight zero three nine four nine.
And it's free to call. Yeah, it's free to look. I mean, if you're anywhere close to Mebane area, Alamance County, I mean, you'll do a. I guess you'll do a free consultation or whatever. Yeah, yeah.
Our our kind of range locally is Raleigh to Winston Salem. Yeah, and everything between. But we do cover three states through the other. And before we go, because we got to get out of here, but once again, the phone number if they want to check it out is three three six three eight zero three nine four nine. Jeff and Whitney from Capital Fire, C A P I T A L.
Thanks, guys, for stopping by. Good to see. All right, for my YouTube channel. If not for God with Mike Zwicky, just like subscribe and hit that notification bell, so you'll be alerted when we have our next video.
