Jay Stewart & Justin Reeder- A Ride Across America for Love

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In Lithuania, he weighs 123 kilos. The Russian nightmare, Nikita Kolov. Now, The Devil's Nightmare. Welcome back to another episode of It's Time to Man Up. I got a tag team in studio with me here today, and I think you're going to really enjoy these stories as week by week by week, week after week, we try to bring to you some interesting stories, some fascinating stories. And today is, nonetheless, we've got Justin Reader in today from Love Life.

Justin, welcome to the Man Up show. Thanks so much. Good to be here.

And, of course, we're going to find out more about Love Life and you and what all that entails. And then, of course, my pastor Jay Stewart is in the house again as well. Holla, somebody.

Great to be back with you. Give a holla, give a holla, give a shout out. And I wanted to have both these guys in the studio. There's something special coming up later this year that we're going to enlighten all of you listeners to. But before we really dive into that, Justin, I've had Jay on the show before. And, of course, a lot of our listeners know kind of his background or our history together. Twenty nine plus years that we have journeyed life together. And but but let's for our listeners, let's give a little backdrop on Justin Reader and like, where are you from? Are you married?

Got kids? Just tell us a little bit about who you are. Well, first off, I didn't know you guys have known each other for twenty nine years.

That's pretty amazing. Jay didn't give me the whole back story, but I feel like I'm here with family then. So, yeah, my story is I grew up in South Florida down in Fort Lauderdale, grew up in a godly home. Godly parents moved up to Charlotte, North Carolina, to start a business at the age of 20 and have been running that business now for 17 years.

Married to my beautiful bride, Jennifer Reader, for 12 years of four young children ages nine, seven, four and two. So I'm a business guy. That's been my background for the last 17 years. I'm not a pastor like Pastor Jay. But I had some business friends that invited me out to our local abortion center back in 2012 to expose me to the reality of abortion in our city. And that's what where God broke my heart over this issue.

And God really started to plant some seeds and vision in my heart. OK. And of course, we'll dive in more more into that love life, right? That's right.

That's when love life really started to manifest. So a father for marketplace guy. I call I call guys a bit marketplace guys. So you're right. So what's your business?

I'm just curious. What's your business? It's a commercial cleaning business. We clean fleets of trucks for companies like FedEx, Coca-Cola, Pepsi, waste management. Started here in Charlotte with one truck.

I didn't know anybody here in the city. We just moved up here to start the company, lived in an apartment or actually in a hotel for a few weeks until we found an apartment. And just washing trucks nights and weekends and then started doing sales during the day. And by God's grace, it's grown out to 11 locations across the southeast.

We clean about 10000 trucks per week. OK, hold on. So I hold that bless. I'm just trying to wrap my head around all that. So and you were 20, 20 when I started the company, when you had a vision for the company, you were 20, but it started it in Charlotte, started in Charlotte with one truck. Yep. Now we're in 11 locations across five states in the southeast.

And I got about 70 to 80 guys that are working for us right now and wash about 10000 trucks per week. Wow. That's that's that's a success story in and of itself.

Yeah. So but really our our passion has always been ministry in the marketplace. God has just given us a platform. You know, I got saved when I was 11 years old and I felt the call of ministry on my life at a young age, but didn't really know what that meant for me.

I grew up again in a godly home. But my my paradigm for ministry was you either got to be a pastor, a worship leader, a youth pastor or a missionary in China. Right. Like my four options.

Right. And just it never really connected with me that that's where the Lord was calling me. Always had an entrepreneurial spirit throughout high school. I was starting car wash companies.

I was selling Cutco knives, always had side hustles going on. And when the Lord got me started into into the marketplace, he made it very clear that this is your ministry. These are the people that I'm bringing to you to disciple.

You have them for 40 plus hours a week. People that might not ever step foot into a church, but you have them here for 40 plus hours a week. And I want you to show Jesus to them.

So really, that's what we started doing. Just ministering to our people who are working with us, our clients. We saw our employees, some of our employees are coming to the Lord, baptizing guys and YMCA pools, doing discipleship training in our office space. And so that has really been my passion for the last 17 years is is ministry in the marketplace. And I just believe that if you have Jesus in your heart, it's all full time ministry. It doesn't have to be done just behind a pulpit or behind a microphone like.

And so I'm just speaking to everyone that's listening to you know, if you're an employee at a restaurant, if you're a business owner, if you're a stay at home mom, if you're a student in the classroom, it doesn't matter. If you have Jesus in your heart, you're called the full time ministry. And that really just kind of broke my whole the mindset of what my paradigm was for ministry. And it started to unleash some things in our lives and we started to challenge other business guys that, hey, God's called you to full time ministry.

Use your platform, use your voice. And it was in the midst of all of that then that I got invited out to the abortion clinic in 2012. And, you know, we were doing a lot of great things. We're doing ministry in the marketplace. We were doing inner city ministry. We were working with refugees. My wife and I were in those communities, discipling young kids. A lot of great things were happening, but honestly, we were doing nothing about abortion.

We didn't even understand the reality of it in our city until I came face to face with it in 2012. Or you might say the gravity of it as well. Well, it's interesting because I think in my view, I think it's great what you're doing, what you just described, I think is amazing. Because in my view, in some sense, it seems like the church has failed in the sense of separating those two. Okay, there's the marketplace over there, Monday through Saturday, you know, and there's the ministry over here and some see it as two separate things.

But I love your vision and understanding that really it's one and the same. And I agree, I have often said, well, in fact, when you search scriptures, it seems like, I could be wrong, we got a pastor in the house. So that Jesus spent more time in the, quote, marketplace than he did in the synagogue. And how often, you know, we're encouraging people, hey, bring somebody to church, which we should do. I'm not saying we shouldn't do that. But how about to your point, we bring the church to the marketplace instead of just always focusing on trying to get the marketplace to bring their family and friends into the church house, right?

So there's, it should be one of both, right? You think about it like, you know, we send missionaries out into the mission field as we should, right? Right. And they have to raise support to go into the mission field. But what if we just flipped our understanding to say every employee who's already being paid by their employer was to be a missionary in their workplace. Now they no longer have to raise funds to go to the mission field.

They're being paid by their employer to be on mission in the workplace. If we truly caught a vision for that, then, man, the gospel will spread like wildfire across our cities. Man, that's a novel idea right there, like for real. You remind me of a story. I challenged some friends. They have a car dealership in Aiken, South Carolina, and I challenged them last year. I said, have you ever, have you got, and they love the Lord and they're big supporters of Coal Offered Christ Ministries, financially so into the ministry, have sewed into the radio show here and the podcast. I said, you guys ever thought about like putting a Bible in every glove box of every car you sell? And they're like, no, I hadn't really thought about that.

I go, you should. And I had to revisit that with them like a few, you know, a couple months later, whatever. And so God really convicted them and put it on their hearts. And so they started doing it. Right. And they're like, I'm having dinner with them just not long ago.

And they're like, wow. I mean, like our business, we had them in sales, like car sales, like 25 years. Right. And like June was a record month and July was even bigger. Summers are usually slower and August is even bigger than that.

And then September. So they're rattling off all the success. Right. And I go, out of curiosity, I'm just curious.

When did you start implementing the Bibles in the glove box? I go, what about mid-May? I go, what a coincidence that your business in June and July and August exploded. Amazing. Yeah.

And, but kind of to your point though, right, just blending or recognizing or realizing that, hey, your business can be your ministry to everyone that walks through that door or however many trucks you're washing or whatever else. Right. Right.

Yeah. We say we're not in the truck wash business. We're in the people business. It's all about people. And that's for every business.

I don't care what you make or what you do. At the end of the day, you're in the people business, the people that work with you, the people that you serve. So, as godly people, as people who are called by God, that's perfect for us. We're in the people business as well.

We're called to reach people. Right. And so, yeah, and you think about it the other way. You see businesses that take public and bold stands all the time for ungodly agendas. Right. Right. They use their platform.

They use their influence, whether it be Amazon or Target or Apple, whoever you want to think about, they're using their platform for their agenda and what they believe. So, why should we not as godly people, God's people, use our platform for something that is actually truthful and sets people free and brings people hope? And so, that's just our challenge to business leaders out there is to use your talent, to use your platform to promote righteousness. And don't be afraid of it.

Man, that's good. So, let me ask you, are you always looking, Justin, to expand your business even more or are you kind of settled at where you're at or what's that look like? We're still growing.

Thank God. We have an incredible team that runs the company for us and that really believes in the vision not only of the company, but also in the vision of Love Life. And they know that as the company continues to grow and thrive, that can continue to fuel Love Life as well. And so, yeah, we are looking to continue to grow, but honestly, I've been given the last seven years of my life to Love Life. I've been pouring all my energy into that, which has left our team, you know, a little bit underserved because I've been pouring everything into Love Life.

But they've done an incredible job continuing to hold the fort down and actually see it continue to grow. Okay. Well, we're going to shift gears and talk more about that and why is Pastor Jay here in the studio with us as well today. But before we do that, just last thing, I guess, business related. So, if there's someone out there who was interested, had an interest in bringing you on to wash their fleet of vehicles or something, is there a website?

Is there a way that they could get a hold of you for that? Sure. Yeah.

Superior Wash Southeast is the name of our company and you can shoot me a direct email, Justin at SuperiorWashSoutheast.com. Awesome. Awesome. Well, what an incredible success story. So, as mentioned, Pastor Jay Stewart in studio with us today. Now, Jay, let me ask you, how did you guys first get connected together?

So, I think it was in 2016 that I first heard of Love Life and that's the year that Love Life started. Also as a pastor of a large church, we've never shied away from controversial issues. And it's not because we're trying to pick a fight with somebody. It's just because we're trying to stay true to scripture.

And so the abortion issue is what I would consider to be the greatest moral issue of our day, where when we think about the fact that 62 million babies that we know of have been killed in America since 1973, there's no way that the church can turn its head away from that and remain silent on that issue. You're listening to the Truth Network and TruthNetwork.com. Nikita Koloff here and I am excited. Did you hear the huge announcement, the big announcement? Well, maybe it's a minor announcement.

Anyway, Facebook, go look up my new fan page, Nikita Koloff Fans, and like it and follow today. When I learned about Love Life and learned about their approach to fighting for the unborn and standing with those mothers who choose life, it didn't take long for me to decide that the refuge was going to hitch its wagon to Love Life. And so we've stood with Justin and we've stood with Love Life from day one and have partnered with them in fighting for children that are both in the womb still and children that are out of the womb, children in the foster care system, children who need to be adopted, and mothers who make the courageous decision they're going to keep their babies. That's great, but the church can't just say, well, it ends there with that decision. The church has a responsibility to come alongside of them and mentor them and support them and help them in that journey. So that's what the refuge has tried to do and Love Life has given us an amazing vehicle to do those things.

Well, you bring up something interesting, Jay. What kind of pops in my head is similar to how I think there's been the tendency to separate church in the marketplace. We've talked about that, but also I feel as though the church in some ways has failed miserably in these unmarried young girls, teenage girls or whoever who get pregnant in the church, shun them, not embrace them and come alongside them and be that encouraging voice to say, you don't have to do that. There's other options.

Yeah, exactly right. And when my daughter had just turned 16, she came to us and let us know that she was pregnant and she made the courageous decision at that point. And I'm sure that there were other voices in her life that were encouraging her to do otherwise, but she made the decision that she would carry that baby and keep that baby.

And I'm so thankful for that. And I believe the church has failed miserably in some of these areas because those young moms, whether they be teenagers or in their 20s or 30s that have an unplanned pregnancy, there's a lot of pressure on them from others to terminate that pregnancy and to kill that baby. And the church really has the responsibility given by God to come alongside of them and help them and support them. One of the things, and Justin can talk about this certainly, is that Love Life has what's called house of refuge churches and the refuge, the church that I started and pastor, is a house of refuge church. And what that means is if a mother chooses life, and I think right now there are currently about 140 house of refuge churches across America, is that when a mother chooses to keep that baby, she needs a place she can go to where she's not going to be shamed. She's not going to be shunned.

She's going to be surrounded by people who love her, support her, help resource her, walk with her, journey with her, both up until the time of the birth and even after that. And that's what we've tried to do as a church, and that's one of the many things I love about Love Life. Yeah, and I love that point. And I'm reminded of the scarlet letter, right?

Too often the church puts a scarlet letter on these girls, these women, instead of embracing them. And I think that's amazing. And for those who don't know, you're out there in a listening audience. Jay's mentioned the refuge based in Kannapolis, North Carolina.

Of course, you have a number of campuses around the world. And of course, we go back, as Justin mentioned, 29 years. As we go back to when I first gave my life to Christ in 1993, he was pastor on staff, and we just connected and have remained friends ever since.

But also I've viewed him and has been my pastor ever since, even in all of my travels. And so he mentioned, Justin, he mentioned the House of Refuge. And tell us a little bit more about Love Life. Like, is it just based in Charlotte? Tell our listeners more about Love Life.

Sure, yeah. So we started in 2016 with about 32 people gathered around our tent. They're at our very first prayer walk here in Charlotte, North Carolina, just believing that God was going to do something miraculous in our city. With a handful of pastors that started out partnering with us, Pastor Jay and the Refuge, one of the very first churches to partner with us. And by God's grace, now we've seen it grow to over 140,000 prayer walkers, over 600 partnering churches.

We're in 14 cities right now, expanding to five more cities this next year, three more in California, one in Phoenix, Arizona, and Chicago, Illinois this next year. The network continues to grow as God's people are raising their hands and saying, hey, I want to be used by God in this way. More and more pastors are hearing about this and saying, hey, this is something I can plug my people into. And the vision of Love Life is simply to unite and mobilize the church, which we believe is the greatest organism on the face of the planet. We believe God's word, Matthew 16, 18, that the gates of hell will not prevail against the church. So we love the local church.

We believe in the local church. And we work with the local church to see a culture change in their city where people stop running to the abortion clinic for the answer and they begin running to the local church. And the way that we practically live that out or play that out is through four steps that you see in the book of Nehemiah. Nehemiah chapter one through three is really where this whole thing was birthed out of. And just to kind of back up a little bit, that when God put this in my heart, it was in the book of Nehemiah and the Lord just started waking me up in the middle of the night over the course of a week and started downloading a strategy and a plan right out of the book of Nehemiah. And that's the playbook that we use to mobilize the church. And there's four steps in Nehemiah chapter one through three.

There's hear, pray, go, and connect. So on a Sunday morning when a church partners with us, they give a message on life. What does God's word say about life?

But they don't stop there. And that's typically where churches have stopped in the past, those who maybe do a sanctity of life message. They'll kind of just say, here's what God's word says. And we stand where God's word does and we stand for life.

But there's not a whole lot beyond that other than maybe writing a check to a pregnancy care center. And so what Love Life is doing, it's giving a pastor in the congregation tracks to run on. So the pastor preaches a message on life on their Sunday morning. Then he calls their people to prayer and fasting on Wednesday because we believe that this is a spiritual battle that must be fought with spiritual weapons. So Wednesday we pray and fast to get our hearts right. Repentance begins in the house of God. We repent of our own complacency, our own apathy.

And we begin to get God's heart over this issue. And then on Saturday that congregation comes out for a prayer walk where we go to the abortion center and we pray and we worship and we testify about what God is doing. We're not there protesting. We're not there yelling or screaming at anybody.

We operate under strict code of conduct that says we're not here to engage with anybody at the abortion clinic. You're here to pray and really to examine the walls personally for yourself. And at the end of the prayer walk is step four where we say, hey, thank God that you've been a part of this journey all week, but don't let this be the end of your journey.

This is now an opportunity for you to get engaged beyond this week. So we're asking for people to come forward that want to do sidewalk outreach counseling to be trained. And how do you minister to a mom or dad that's showing up for an abortion on a Monday or Tuesday? We need people that are going to be here, that are going to be a gospel presence. Maybe God's calling you to be a mentor to one of these moms or dads that make the choice for life, to disciple them and do long-term care with them. Maybe God's calling you to the foster care or the adoption crisis. We want to help train you and equip you to be able to step into that space. Or maybe you've had an abortion in your past and you need healing and restoration.

We want to walk with you through healing because we believe that when you get set free, you're going to help set other people free. And so we follow these four steps, again, found right out of the book of Nehemiah. Nehemiah heard about the tragedy that was happening in Jerusalem. He had to hear about it first.

He had to be educated on it. And that's what a pastor does on Sunday morning. But then what does Nehemiah do? He turns to prayer and fasting. That's his next step. And then he leaves where he is, the cupbearer to the king, and he goes to Jerusalem. He goes to the brokenness to examine the walls personally for himself. And then he begins the rebuilding process. And he has everybody take a different section of the wall. And so we're just calling for the Baptist to stand next to the Presbyterians, next to the Pentecostals, next to the non-denomination, the sidewalk counselors, next to the mentors, next to the orphan care families.

It takes a united body of Christ to break the stronghold of abortion. Okay, that's amazing. And I do want to get to something special that Jay is doing. God gave him a vision 40 years ago, I believe, Jay.

And although the vision didn't come to fruition, you never lost the dream. And now you're partnering with Love Life to do something special this year. Before we run out of time, take a couple minutes and tell our audience what you are doing, Pastor Jay.

Well, first of all, I have been accused many times in my life of being certified crazy. And I have confirmed that for everybody recently because I have announced that starting on the National Day of Prayer in 2023, which is May the 4th, that I will get on my bicycle in Corona Del Mar, California, and I'll begin a 3400-mile ride across the country that will end in Charleston, South Carolina, to mobilize the church and to see churches raised up as houses of refuge all across America in partnership with Love Life. And it is a dream God put in my heart.

It could be a whole other show. We could talk about the details of how all of this came together, but a dream God deposited in my heart 40 years ago that just has never left but has finally come to pass, or is about to. 3400 miles on a bicycle across the country and raising funds because you have a goal, a target of raising for Love Life, huh? What's the goal? So the goal is that a thousand house of refuge churches would be raised up and that we would raise a million dollars to continue to battle for children, both in the womb and out of the womb. And I just turned 60 just a few days ago, and so I'll be doing this at the age of 60.

The big 6-0, and that's a milestone in and of itself. What might seem like a daunting task, but I know you're up for the challenge. Well, I know God's going to give me the strength to do this. This is undoubtedly a God thing, and I could not be more excited about being the one that God has chosen to do this. Yeah, and of course there will be more promotion and advertising to people if they want to help support you, support it. They'll be able to do that.

They do that through Love Life? Or if they want to see a really compelling two-minute video along with all of the details about Life Ride, they can just simply go to liferideusa.com. liferideusa.com.

That's amazing. And a website for Love Life. How can people find out more about Love Life? lovelife.org. Love Life, simply lovelife.org. And the refuge website in case people want to know more about the refuge.

Yeah, absolutely. Therefuge.net. So check out those websites and please be in prayer. And if God so leads you to fast and do your part, do your part when it comes to the sanctity of life and get involved and engaged, whether it's in Love Life or a crisis pregnancy center or something in your community, in your area. Thanks for tuning in to the Man Up show. Until next time, God bless you. This podcast is made possible by the grace of God and your faithful prayers, support and generous gifts.

May God bless you for your continual contributions. Go to koloff.net and donate today. Hi, Nikita Koloff. Be sure to check out the Man Up show, now available on television, broadcast and podcast. Go to MorningstarTV.com or the Truth Radio Network. Check out your local listings or better yet, download the Truth Network app today. Nikita Koloff here.

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