Remembering Jeff Paggett

This is Chris Hughes with the Christian Perspective Podcast with Chris Hughes, where we encourage our listeners to engage the culture with Jesus Christ. Your chosen Truth Network Podcast is starting in just a few seconds, so enjoy it, share it. But most of all, thank you for listening to the Truth Podcast Network. Welcome back to the Man Up show.

It's time to man up. And normally, you know, I'm pretty jacked up, excited, and when it comes to the introductions and the interviews. And today's a little slightly different. It's with a little heavier heart that I introduced today's show. My guest on today's show is Jeff Padgett. Jeff was a part of my Bible study, a dear, dear friend for many, many, many years. And since the time of our recording, we had his lovely wife, Kathy, in the studio with us.

He has since passed away and went home to be with the Lord. So I really hope, maybe more than any other show you've ever listened to, I really hope this conversation I had with Jeff Padgett really blesses your heart today. I love having entrepreneurs on the show with me, men of God. And this man is a part of a Bible study that we host and has been gracious to even at times cook for us, you know, prior to our Bible studies. But he's a thriving entrepreneur, has an amazing business down in Concord, North Carolina at the Concord Mall in the jewelry business. Jeff Padgett, Jeff, welcome to the Man Up show. Jeff Padgett Thank you, Nikita. You give quite a introduction to someone who burned the ribs for the first feeding.

Well, my understanding on that note, ribs are not easy to cook on a grill and or takes, takes experience. Well, know that when Nikita says thriving entrepreneur, God keeps us close in a lot of ways. And for me, we have been leaning on him for provision for 24 years. So thriving in monetary note, probably not. Thriving in faith, absolutely. And I would not trade money for faith.

That's a great point. And for those who maybe don't know, or maybe those who this goes out into the Charlotte community, this goes out into Winston-Salem, Greensboro, Richmond, Virginia, Raleigh, Triangle. So you do though, you're the silver mine, right? Is that the name of the business?

It is the name of the corporation. We do business as jewelry mine because we're predominantly trading in gold and silver, coins and jewelry. Okay.

Okay. The jewelry mine. Jewelry mine. That's at the Concord Mall, right? Not Concord Mills, but the Concord Mall. Carolina Mall at Concord.

See, I'm glad I got you on the show today and bringing about all these corrections because apparently I didn't do my homework. I'm pretty clueless here. So the Carolina Mall off of exit 58, that I know, off of I-85. Yes. So, okay. All right. Well, I just want people to know kind of where you're located. And we met, gosh, I mean, I don't even know how many years ago, any idea how many years ago we met? Close to 20.

We've been there 24 years and I would say 18 years, 20 years. Okay. Because I have frequented your establishment and you have been very helpful over the years. In fact, one of the most recent ways you were helpful was, I think it was my daughter Kendra and something, I don't know, something happened to one of her jewelry pieces or something.

I'm always coming to you, you always come to the rescue. Like if something breaks or I need something fixed or whatever, you're the man for the job, I have found. We have an on-site jeweler. So normal repairs are done within an hour or so.

Yeah. And so, what's been interesting as we have developed our friendship over the years, Jeff, is one, and you sharing a number of stories, a lot of different stories with me is, you don't just have a, let's just say a jewelry business. Now you have that and you cater to a lot of customers and I know you've been a blessing to a lot of people, but more than anything, what really impacts me is how you as an entrepreneur, you as a business man, utilize your business as a way of being, shall we say, salt and light to the world. Each day as I come into the store, there's a prayer that says, God, don't allow me to miss an opportunity to share your nature with a people that need to see it. And you find that you have many opportunities to do that if you're willing to do it. And the key is to be willing to do it. When God prompts you to say or do something, simply do it and give Him liberty for the outcome of it.

Don't put your spin on what should happen, simply do it. And you find the miraculous tends to hover around that kind of mindset with God, giving Him liberty. So is that a prayer of yours? Like you say, like every morning you wake up and go, God, bring somebody across my path or bring somebody I can minister to, or how do you approach that? As I'm driving in, I simply say, God, don't let me miss an opportunity. And there is ample opportunities everywhere you look.

The field is white with harvest. If we'll just be obedient. And the key to it is not needing to know the outcome of it. It's simply hearing a prompting, obeying that prompting, and let God do what He does.

And it often impacts people dramatically. So you got, God nudges you, God prompts you, somebody comes in your store, looking to get something repaired, maybe looking for a piece of jewelry or something. The Lord prompts you, nudges you to say, hey, say this to that person. Has there been times, Jeff, when you felt that, that you're like, Lord, I am not saying that to this person.

I mean, has it ever been that scenario? That always is one of the first battles you have to fight. When you hear it, then you say, God, this probably is not you. That's just me.

Yeah. My key is when I hear it, that thought will come. Then I will hear it a second time. And I sometimes will resist it twice. And then a third time, a third opportunity will come up. And I know not to go beyond the third time. And I do not.

At the third time, I take the leap, sometimes at the first prompting, sometimes the second one, but I never go beyond the third. And he never fails to show up. Wow. That's some pretty good lessons right there for the listeners. And so obedience is the key, would you say?

Right? Better than sacrifice. Obedience is better than sacrifice. And I have learned, and maybe you'll agree with this, that saying yes when he prompts or nudges us, as opposed to saying no, because I felt like if you say no, every time it's easier to say no, but every time you say yes, it gets slightly easier to say yes the next time he nudges us. Have you found that to be true? I have found it to be true, but equally so. The more you say yes, the more opportunities you get. Because he sees he can perhaps trust you with a, I mean, think about that.

Let's just think about that for just a moment. So the fact that he nudges or prompts you to say something to an individual that, you know, who knows, right? We're not walking in their shoes. We know who knows what kind of pain they're in, or how their heart has been wounded, or just the fact that they may need an encouraging word that day. And he entrusts you to nudge you to say something to that person.

That's pretty amazing, isn't it? I think that's pretty big, and I think God's looking for people that are willing to do that. One of the first things you have to battle is, I'll look foolish. If I say something that's way off board, I'll look foolish. I guard just a little from moving on the first prompting. Second prompting, I'm thinking, okay, God, you're nudging me again. Third prompting, I'm saying, God, if this is not you, don't give me a third time, because I'm going to jump on the third time.

I don't recall ever missing the mark that way. And I know, because you have shared with me a number of stories on what we're talking about. So if you could give our listeners an example, or give maybe a recent story, or maybe a story that just sticks out in your mind.

It could be from 10 years ago, whatever. Share a story with us on something that happened. Somebody walks into your store, God nudges you, prompts you, and bam, what happened?

Okay, most recent, God prompted me to not be so quick to speak always, that when someone is being ministered to, don't neglect what they return back to you. And so I had a young lady come in the store about two weeks ago, and we were prompted to pray with this young lady. But in the midst of me arguing with the first and the second time, I'm asking her to pray. Do we do that?

We argue with God? I do. Maybe you do not. I do.

I'm with you. No pun intended, but I wrestle with God. I know a little bit about wrestling, but Jacob knows a little about wrestling too. Wrestle with the angel, right?

Anyway, all right, so you wrestle with this decision. As I am wrestling with asking this young lady, can we pray with her? She stops and says, can I pray for you? So she says, can I pray for you? You say, can I pray? So she flips it around.

She flips it around. That does not happen very often. But this young lady prayed in spirit, she prayed in truth, she prayed with power, and she prayed a blessing onto the business. But I was prompted to not be so quick to always be the giver, to listen for the blessing that may come back from the other side, because there always is. For instance, several years ago at Christmas, I had a young lady bring in watches to sell, her and her husband, young Spanish lady. The watches were very low-end watches. There weren't anything that we typically would buy, but I took the three watches, I walked behind our counter. I said, God, what am I supposed to do with this? God says, give her a hundred dollars and give her her merchandise back. I turned, I come back to the counter, I handed the watches. I said, we typically don't buy these type watches, but if you will accept this hundred dollars in Jesus' name, I'm supposed to give it to you.

And she immediately crumbled, tears running down the face, hugging her husband. When they turned and could talk to me, they said that they were trying to get money to buy their daughters Christmas presents. Well, just being obedient to that and watching that young lady's heart melt, I don't remember very many high-end sales that I make, and we don't make that many in our store, but I'm saying that the monetary exchanges in the store, I don't remember, but I will never forget that young lady's face. And she, this happens weekly.

It happens as often as I will give God liberty to use me. And that is why we have a business doing what we do. It's just our platform.

Nikita has a platform of being a professional wrestler. My platform is a small jewelry store, but all of us have a place and a role to play as priests in this end time. And just as being prompted right now, we love Jesus with all our heart. I love Jesus.

My family, we love God with all our heart, and there's story after story. But I found out recently that for too long, the church has looked at Jesus as the Lamb of God, and He is, and He gave His life, and He shed His blood, and He sacrificed, and we love Him because He did that for us. But we have neglected the nature of Jesus that is the Lion of Judah. So, the church has suffered by not mixing the Lion with the Lamb, and we've been pushed around much more than the church with the authority of Christ.

The church should be ruling and reigning instead of constantly on the defense. Well, that could be a whole show right there, Jeff, that in and of itself. You just shared some really good nuggets. I hope our listeners were listening. That's some really, really good insight.

So, what I'm hearing is, and for the listeners out there, you know, maybe you're not a professional wrestler. Maybe you're not an entrepreneur. You don't own a jewelry store, a jewelry mine, if you will. But regardless of your walk of life, you use the word platform. So, every single person, regardless of, I mean, you can be a stay-at-home mom and have a platform, right?

Because if you're raising children, that's a platform to train them up in the way they should go, so when they're older, they will not depart from it, right? And so, your store really is, for you, is a mission field. Now, jewelry is, you might want to say, the byproduct, but the main thing is it's a mission field, yeah?

Saturday afternoon at 1230 on the Truth Network. It is a mission field. The field is white with harvest, and for those that love God, it thrills us more to see our usefulness to God and what he does to the hearts of people. So much of the preaching is done to minister to the physical aspect of knowing God and knowing about God. But when you get into the spiritual aspect of it, hearts get changed, not just trying to attempt to bring a truth to someone in their mind. You actually can attach truth to their heart when you will listen to the Holy Spirit, because then you're operating out of an authority that is God's. It's not yours.

It's not you trying to prove a point. It is God using his power to change a life. Yeah, it's getting past what I have found, Jeff, is it's getting past the battle of an intellectual battle to what you said, just getting past the head down to the heart, right? If you can access the heart of an individual, then there's a good chance, anyway, that there's going to be some transformation for that person. Whether it's a first-time decision surrendering their life to Jesus or even in the personal growth of I established this relationship with Jesus Christ, now I want to grow and mature that relationship.

And you and I even get that opportunity, right? It's not always those who don't believe in God that come in your store, although you have plenty of those, and you've been able to plant seeds. I know from some of your stories you've been able to plant seeds. But it's also those who are followers of Christ that you've been able, I'm thinking, either water seed or share a nugget of truth, spirit and truth, and help them perhaps grow and mature.

Is there one of those stories? Well, there's an authority that comes when you listen to the prompting of God. That means that the Holy Spirit's power, he's ready to use that because he's prompting you not to just waste that energy.

But he's wanting to demonstrate authority, and you're speaking with authority. So I had a young gentleman about a year ago come in the store. He's looking for a necklace for his wife. He's a truck driver. God gives me several words for him. And one of them was, I said, you don't know what tribe you're from, do you? He said, I do not.

He was a professing Christian and a truck driver. He said, I do not. I said, you're of the tribe of Dan.

And he looked puzzled. Kind of like me right now. No, I'm kidding. Go ahead.

All right. Benjamin, you're of the tribe, not of Dan, I'm sorry, I have to correct that, is a tribe of Benjamin. Benjamin being the very last of the 12 tribes. Now, the 11 tribes prior to Benjamin, their mother named each person. You can read through the genealogy and see that the mother named every tribe prior to the tribe of Benjamin. When the mother attempted to name the tribe of Benjamin, the father said, no, he named the father named the tribe of Benjamin. In that the last tribe was named by the father, so is the last priesthood on this earth, in my view, is not named by the mother, which I will consider the mother as Baptist, Pentecostal, Holiness, Lutheran, any of the names that we can give to different parts of the body. The last tribe is named by the father himself, and he has no banner on the wall that says, I am graduated from this seminary.

I get this degree. I can now preach at this church. The tribe of Benjamin has authority that God gave from himself. That authority is deep.

That authority will be different than any authority that has came from the 11 tribes prior. And when I spoke that to him, he just melted in the store. Now, this was a six foot three, 240 pound athletic gentleman that just melted. He said, you don't know that I have been wrestling with trying to preach. I want to preach, but I can't preach because I don't have a degree.

And I see people that I meet in the trucking business, which I'm going to remain in. He said, but I don't feel that I have the authority to preach. And so this allowed him, and he came back several months later, to say that he's ministering to people everywhere that he goes, because he was released to act in the role of a priest outside of a pulpit.

Right. And to take advantage of his platform, that being truck driving to a world of truck drivers. And I will say for Wong, I've stopped at a lot of truck stops.

There's a lot of truck drivers as well as other people that stop at truck stops, but what a platform for him. And what a word of encouragement from you that, and I can actually, Jeff, I mean, relate to that in the sense that, let's go back to the original 12. Now I don't know for a fact, I wasn't there, but I'm pretty sure that Matthew, the tax collector, and the fisherman and others didn't go to some seminary and get a diploma and put on their wall before Jesus released them into the marketplace and go minister the Gospel message. Which brings up an interesting point that for all you listening out there, I mean, if God prompts you to go to a seminary, by all means, do it. Go. I mean, if he prompts you to do it, go.

A Bible school. But you don't need that as a backdrop or a qualifier in order for you to go out and share the Gospel message. Right. And so that's what you're doing, Jeff.

That's what I'm doing. That's what it sounds like, praise God, this truck driver is now doing as you shared that word of encouragement with him, and he felt a release to go do that. I mean, that's pretty amazing. I know we could go on and on and on with so many more stories of people that have come into your place of establishment, and that just means we're going to have to have you back on the show someday. So would you be willing to come back and share some more stories? You ask and I'll come. All right.

And how you've impacted the life. But I wanna get, in our last few minutes here, I wanna talk about something else. Your bride is in the studio with us today.

I could not convince her to come on the show. However, she said, I'm the designated picture taker and I'm the designated driver, she told me today. So she drove you up here, and let's talk for a minute, Jeff, about the miracle of sight that you experienced for our listeners. God's still in the miracle working business. He's still in the healing business.

How many minutes do I have? Give us a two minute version of how God miraculously touched your eyesight. Prior to coming to know the Lord, I've been a diabetic since I was six years old. I knew that diabetes was the leading cause of blindness and amputations and many bad things.

Most diabetics did not live a healthy life very long. And so my idea was I would party and play the games of this world as hard as I could because by the time I was 30, I would be incapacitated at some time. This was prior to me meeting Jesus. At three months, at about two years before I turned 30, I started losing my sight and I was legally blind for two years. Three months before I turned 30, I totally lost my sight and was blind, had to be led around by the hand. It was in the midst of that blindness that I said, Jesus, I've always believed you were real, but I will submit my life to you if you'll take it. I am worthless.

I have no way of making a living, no way of supporting my family. So I yielded to Jesus and no one believed that was the right thing to do until three months later my sight returned. At that point, I did not see a doctor for the next 10 years as in an eye doctor, but I did meet a Jesus that impacted supernaturally my world and I tried to speak of a Jesus that is only limited by how much we limit him.

Wow. Well, and we know from Scripture that, you know, there's several examples of how he healed the blind in Scripture and whether he spit in the dirt, made mud, and rubbed it in a guy's eyes or just spoke the words, right, and said, you know, be healed. And so I know that was a very short version of that, but, you know, I just want our listeners to hear that just to understand God is still in the miracle working business. He still heals today.

He still heals. I've witnessed that many times personally with others that I have prayed for and I can't heal a flea, but I can be obedient and God prompts me and nudges me and says, go pray for that person. One of our recent man camps, God healed a man. He was in stage four cancer. God said, go pray for him. I'm like, okay. A week later, he had full tests done and the doctor says, Ray, I don't know how to tell you this, but you're in full remission.

And so, you know, God miraculously healed this man. So great story. Great having you in the studio. Thank you and thank you, your lovely bride, for coming up and bringing you into the studio. Into the studio today. And I look forward to, I really do look forward to having you back.

Go check out the Carolina Mall, Jeff Padgett, The Jewelry Mine. Did I get all that right? Jimmy Moore You did. Darrell Bock I did good. Good.

I want to make sure I got all that right. You know, go, go check them out. Do you have a website? Is there a website for your store or no? Jimmy Moore No, just Facebook page. Darrell Bock Okay.

Just Facebook page. But if you're ever passing up and down I-85, go stop into the Carolina Mall and see this man of God. Hey, you might stop in to get your jewelry fixed or buy a piece of jewelry.

But, hey, you never know. Jeff just might be prompted or nudged to give you a word from the Lord that may encourage you or release you into your destiny. Jimmy Moore Let it be.

Absolutely. Darrell Bock If you do nothing else, maybe stop in for that reason. And, well, I want to thank you for tuning in. It's time to man up with Nikita Kolov today.

Hey, I hope, listen, if you've never surrendered your life to Jesus, you know what? Man, today would be an amazing day to do that. And I would just encourage you, just stop whatever you're doing right now. Like, if you're driving, like, just pull over, you know, or wherever you're listening to this, this show. Just make a decision today.

Make a decision. Give Him the opportunity to impact your life, to set you on a course, on a destiny, give you purpose where maybe there seems to be no purpose. Man, you surrender your life to Jesus, and He'll give you a platform, whether it's in the jewelry business, a wrestler, a truck driver, or whatever else. Hey, next time on The Man Up Show, tune in again. God bless you. Men, I would like to challenge each of you to consider spending five days with Lex Luger and I at Man Camp, pursuing the heart of God. Ladies, if you're listening, we'll send your men home better equipped to be men of God, godly husbands, and godly fathers.

That appeals to you. Give them your blessing and encourage them to sign up today at mancamp.info. Pastors, if you would like to bring Koloff for Christ Ministries and Man Up Conference to your community, go to koloff.org and email me.

Remember this, it's time to man up. Now, key to Koloff here. If you're needing to buy a car and have marginal credit and considering using buy here, pay here, that's worse than taking the Russian sickle. Winston-Salem Motor Cars will put you behind the wheel of a car you can rely on while helping rebuild, repair, or establish your credit score. Conveniently located on Silas Creek Parkway in Winston-Salem. Be sure to check them out today at wsmc1.com because you are number one. We so appreciate our listeners. If you will support this program with a financial gift of any amount, I will send you a personalized copy of my latest book, Nikita, A Tale of the Ring and Redemption. Go to koloff.net, that's koloff.net, koloff.net, and make your contribution today. This is the Truth Network.