Jesus Breaks The Chains

Nothing says Christmas like a water buffalo. For a poor family in Asia, getting a water buffalo is like getting a farm tractor to pull a plow, or getting a milk truck full of delicious milk, or getting a stand at the market to sell cheese. A water buffalo opens the door for work, food, and income. More importantly, it opens the door to talk about Jesus.

And nothing says Christmas better than that. 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. Hello, my name is Michael Bowen, and I want to share with you today a story about my life and the things that happened to me that brought me to my knees. And within that, I was able to find my Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ. As a young man, I loved football. I loved family. And I was just a happy kid growing up in Dallas, Texas. And I really just enjoyed life and everything that life had to offer. And I had all these dreams and aspirations. And really, I thought one day that I would be a professional football player and I would go on.

I loved the Dallas Cowboys, and I loved watching football. And just like any child, we all have our dreams. And that was my dream. And I attacked that dream. And I really believed in myself that one day I'd be a professional football player.

And it worked well for me. And I excelled in sports in high school and college. And in college, I became a star football player for Southern Methodist University Mustangs and one year at the University of Georgia for the Bulldogs. And in 1990, I was the offensive MVP for Southern Methodist University. I was an All-Southwest Conference wide receiver.

And I got drafted into the Canadian Football League for the Edmonton Eskimos. And I really was excited. I was living my dream. My family was proud of me.

Everybody was happy. All my friends were just excited for the success that I was having in my life. And I really thought that this was it and that this was going to bring me happiness and that I finally made it in this world. And I finally made it in my life.

And now I'm living my dream. And so I went up to Canada in, I guess it was, I graduated from SMU in 1990, my last football season. And I was drafted in 1991, actually 1991 in the Canadian Football League. I went up to Edmonton Eskimos.

And I was up there for one week and I got cut from the Edmonton Eskimos and they told me I was not good enough. And it pretty much destroyed me at that point in time because I didn't have a plan B. It was plan A. I was going to be a professional football player. I was really hoping to go play in the NFL. But when I didn't catch on with the NFL and I ended up going to the Canadian Football League, I believed that I would use, I'd spent a couple of years in the CFL and then I would go on and play in the NFL like so many others had done before me. And I had that roadmap and I had that vision and that's what I was going to do.

And so when I was told, they came in and they told me, pack your bags, you're leaving. You're not good enough. It pretty much destroyed me. I was devastated because most of my life sports came easy to me. I worked real hard, but sports came easy to me because I was a good athlete and I had a passion for the game. I love football so much, more than anything in my world.

And so that's what I had attached all my hope and my future to is football, this game that I love so much. And then I was good at it. It gave me so much. People were just proud of me. My parents were proud of me. My family was proud of me.

I was in the newspapers. I was on the radio and it just gave me a sense of accomplishment. It made me feel good about myself being a football player and being able to do those things.

And I had a lot of camaraderie in the sport with a lot of friends and it just opened up so many doors for me. And then all of a sudden that door was shut when they told me I was not good enough. And so when they walked into the room and gave me the papers and said, you are fired, basically what they told me, I went back to Dallas. I took a flight back to Dallas on the plane and I was devastated. I didn't know what I was going to do.

Like I said before, there was just no plan B, plan A. And so I got back to Dallas and I knew I was going to have to start working. So I started to get jobs and sales and think that I was going to have some success.

But it just didn't. It never brought me the satisfaction and the joy that I was looking for. And so I fell into drinking and drugs. And very soon after I came back from Canada, I became addicted to crack cocaine.

And it was devastating. There was an epidemic of crack cocaine in the United States at the time, and I got swept up in it. And by the age of 23, I was fully addicted to crack cocaine. I would go and disappear into the ghettos in the inner cities and smoke crack.

And I would be missing for days and weeks. And later it became months. And I did this for a long time. Over the years, for 25 years, I was in and out of jails, hospitals, prisons, rehabilitation centers. I cannot count on both my hands the number of rehab programs that I went to, 12-step meetings that I went to, 12-step programs, psychologists.

I even went to a few mental hospitals and jails. Just so many different things that I tried to solve this problem that I had that I was addicted to crack cocaine. And I became a thief in that. And the way drug addicts pay for their drugs is they steal things. And I became the biggest thief. I would go into stores and steal from stores, walk in and run out with TVs and different things like that. I even stole purses from ladies. And I became homeless and just a vagabond in the streets, hopping from crack house to crack house, trying to stay high.

Trying to stay high because when I was high, I wouldn't have to think about my broken, empty life. And every time that I would go to jail, I would get out of jail. Or any time I would go to a rehab, I would go through the rehab and I would come out of the rehab.

And I would believe that this would be it. This is what was going to fix me. That now I would be able to stop using drugs and I couldn't. I was never able to stop using drugs. It was too much. It was too strong for me. I had met my match and it was just taking over my life.

And so it was like a broken record playing the same lopsided song over and over again. I would get clean off drugs. And I would put some hope in my life, some hope that, man, I knew how to work hard because of my football days. I said, if I work hard enough at this, somehow, some way I'm going to be able to stop using drugs. And I really believed in my heart and in my mind that I would never use again, that I could do it under my own strength because I had proven that I had a goodwill and determination. If I worked hard enough, somehow I'd be able to pull through like I always did in my sports training and with football. But that never came.

It was just too much for me. So over the years, it was just a failure after failure after failure trying to put back my life after a relapse into drugs. And finally, in 2013, I was living in Austin, Texas. And here once again, I just I just gotten out of prison in 2010 in Arizona.

I had stolen a car and took the police on a on a high speed chase and wrecked the car in the van, ran through the neighborhood and the helicopter lit me up. And and I was arrested for I had drugs and and and for first for stealing the car. And I did two years of prison in Arizona and I got out of the prison in Arizona. And in and before that time in prison in Arizona, I was able to to to get married and and have three children. And so I so I had I had children and I had a wife at the time and I was able to we moved to Texas. And I thought, again, I was going to start this life in Texas and that I would be able to stop doing drugs.

But I relapsed once again. And and this time I was missing for three months running through the Austin city streets, high on drugs. I'd abandoned my children, my job and my my wife at that time ended up divorcing me.

And and I don't blame her from the way I was acting. So I'd lost everything this time in 2013. I ended up in prison for a second time. I was pulled over one night after being on drugs for about three months and I was arrested for six felony counts of theft. And I'd been going around stealing things from stores and just to keep the drugs flowing because I just could not face that that life that I was living. And I was devastated and I ended up in prison.

And I really I just I just really had lost all hope this time. I had tried everything and I just knew there was I was just going to be a drug addict for the rest of my life. And the only way that I would that I would stop using drugs, I believe, was if I died. And that's what I was trying to do this this the last time that I used drugs. I was just trying to do as much as I could because I knew that that that it would be my certain and that that.

I would probably drive, die a drug addict and I'd probably die of an overdose or something. And so I was just going to do as many drugs as I could so I could reach my my certain end. But there were different plans for me, and when I was arrested, I was I was taken to jail. And and then I ended up having a one year sentence in the Texas prison system and I went to prison and and and the Lord started calling on me at that time. I started hearing from the Lord and early on in prison, I would I would start walking and I knew the Lord was was talking to me, but I but I but I just couldn't face them. I couldn't face the Lord. I couldn't do it. I wasn't ready. And I just started walking.

And we have dorms in prison. And so I'd start walking real fast laps and start walking as fast as I could. And the Lord was talking to me, but I wouldn't listen.

I wouldn't listen. I was so ashamed and so defeated and just so devastated. And I just started walking and I would walk for days and days and days. Every day I'd get up and just start walking. And one day I finally had enough.

I just I just I couldn't walk anymore. I'd walk myself out and I listen to the Lord and and and the Lord spoke to me and I went and I kneeled down by my bunk. And I said, Lord, I said, Lord, I said, Lord, I'm sorry, please forgive me. And in that moment, he just he just began to speak to me. And I picked up the Bible for the first time in a long time and I started reading the word and and he started speaking to me. And then I started going to the chapel and and I did this for several months and and things were happening. And I just read I poured myself into the word and I was I was in prison that year and I read probably read the Bible probably three times through from front to back. And I just kept pouring the word into me and I began to change as I started reading that word. And I started believing God's word over what the world had had labeled me over what my identity became as a drug addict, as a thief, as as as just a no good loser, because that's what I felt like when I went in there. And and and the Lord spoke to me in his word and started telling me who I was, that I am a new creation and that old things are passed away and that all things become new.

And I began to believe what he was telling me. And one night I was in a chapel in the prison chapel and I was sitting there and I was just I was crying. And I said, I said, Lord, where are you?

Where are you? And he said to me, he said, Michael, I'm in your tears. And and in that moment, I just I just felt such connection that he'd been with me the whole time through everything. And and and in that moment, he was speaking to me and there was a song that would that came on the came on as I was asking him that as we were doing worship and praise. And it said a better way.

It was by Jason Upton. And it says, I will show you a better way. And thank God it was a 22 minute song, because within that song, I found my freedom. Within that moment of worship, I found my freedom as as as the song was saying, I will show you a better way.

I will show you a better way. I began to come into godly sorrow and that godly sorrow produced the repentance in me. And I found myself falling to the floor and I started laying on the floor crying out to Jesus. And I said, Jesus, I hate myself and I hate this world and I don't want it anymore.

All I want is you, Lord. I said, Lord, if I'm going to leave here again and go out and smoke drugs again and smoke crack again, I don't I don't want to leave here. You kill me now. I can't do it anymore. I don't want to do anymore. Please take my life right now.

I want to die. And I said, but Lord, if you save me, I will serve you the rest of the days of my life. And in that, I just felt his hand come upon me and I felt my my soul crack. And I began to weep and I cried and and I poured myself. I felt like I was being poured out before God. And I felt my spirit just pour out onto the floor. And I laid there and I wept and I cried. And I tell you, that song was was twenty two minutes long.

I really if you if you want to listen to a really good song, Jason, it's called A Better Way. And in that, I just wept and I cried and I wept and I cried. And when I was able, I just felt everything just leaving me. I felt emptied. I felt myself being emptied on that floor and that prison and just all the years of pain and hurt and suffering, all the disappointment and just realizing that this world is just such a big disappointment without Jesus in it and without a relationship with God, that it is such a disappointment that I would never find happiness in the things that I was pursuing, the football, the fame.

I made football my God and my God, my God football failed me. But I know this God that introduced himself to me, Jesus Christ, will never fail me. He was showing himself to me in that room right there in that floor, on that floor. And as my as my spirit poured out and I finally emptied myself of myself, I was finally able to I was on my on my on my face on that floor. I was finally able to get enough strength to bring myself up. And as I stood up, I felt his presence. He's been with me ever since. And ever since that day, I have not had one desire or one thought to ever use in drugs or alcohol ever again.

That was eight years ago. And I just thank Jesus. And from that point, I just got into the word of God and I started studying the word of God.

And I gave myself all to the Lord and I didn't think about anything else. And I said, I am with you, Lord Jesus, and you make my life the way you want it to be. You shape me and mold me. I want to be this new creation. And I want to do what you want me to do. And I know that you will make me a new life as that old life is gone.

And I just believe the word of God, what it said. And so I was able to to do my year in prison. I got out in 2014. And when I got out, I went to a halfway house in Austin, Texas, and I was able to reconnect with my children.

And and that was wonderful. And and through the years, I was able my children came back to me. I ended up coming back with me and living with me. I got a job. I ended up going to Bible college.

I got a bachelor's in theology and I was licensed or ordained as an evangelist. And I go back into the prisons and I and I and I tell the men in the prisons the story of how I laid on that floor in that chapel. I actually preach every Thursday night in that same room where I laid on my face and gave my life to Jesus Christ. And I tell the men, I even go over to that spot on the floor, that same spot on the floor where I wept and cried to Jesus. And I tell the men in that room, I said, and I jump up and down on that spot. I said, this is where my old man is buried.

He will never come out. And I jump up and down on that. I said, this is that old man's grave. I said, everyone, you need to die tonight in this room. If you die, then you can be reborn in Jesus Christ.

Accept him, ask him into your heart and follow him, become his disciple, and you will not be disappointed. And so that's that's my message to tell them I tried my own way. I tried all the worldly ways to get clean off drugs. I tried 12 step programs. I tried therapy, psychologists. I went to jail in prisons and everything else that I tried. And nothing worked.

The only thing that worked is when I surrendered my life to Jesus Christ. And I'm just telling you right now, whatever you're struggling with, it doesn't have to be. It may be drugs.

It could be pornography. It could be anything. Anything that is keeping you separated from your purpose in God. Any struggle that you have in your life that's keeping you separated from living out your purpose in God. You can surrender your life to Jesus Christ right now and let those old things pass away. All that shame and guilt from your past, from your childhood.

It doesn't matter if you've been abused or whatever has happened to you in your life. You do not have to carry that shame with you. You do not have to carry that guilt with you.

Because when it goes under the blood, it is gone and he takes it from you. And he took that shame from me that day in that prison and I don't have it anymore. Because those things that used to shame me now, I hold them high. And I tell people about those things because God gets the glory in a radically transformed life in Jesus Christ. And you too can have this if you just give your life to Jesus Christ. And in that, I'm just so grateful that the Lord has just blessed me.

He helped me start a ministry called Sons and Daughters of Thunder Ministry. I was driving down the street one day. I was doing prison ministry.

I go to churches and give my testimony and I preach and do different things in churches. And one day I was driving down the road and I received a phone call on Facebook Messenger. And I don't usually answer phone calls when I get them from numbers or people that I've never even met.

I don't even know. But the Holy Spirit moved on me and said, Answer this phone call. And I answered this phone call.

It was probably about 2016. And it was a man from Liberia, West Africa, on the line. It was a pastor from over there. And he said he read my testimony and it touched him and he wanted to meet me. And we started talking and immediately we became friends and the Lord kind of connected us. And so over the next couple of years, we would talk once a week and we would share on Facebook and different things. And I got to know about the country of Liberia and the history of Liberia.

And it just started becoming dear to my heart. And this pastor in 2018 came to visit the United States and he was in Dallas preaching at a church. And I came over to visit him and I ended up getting to preach with him. We preached at the church and we were talking afterwards.

We went to dinner with the different pastors at the church. And we just started talking and he invited me to come to Liberia, West Africa, one day. And so I said, yeah, I would love to do that. Really not knowing that I'd ever do that because who really thinks that you're going to go over and go to different parts of the world or whatever?

I said, yeah, I think that would be pretty cool. But I didn't actually believe I'd ever go. I was hoping I would go because I just sounded like such a wonderful opportunity. But anyways, by 2019, the next year, an opportunity arose for me to go over to Liberia, West Africa.

And I went over and did a crusade. But before I went, I heard the story about the Zogos. They're called Zogos. It's kind of a derogatory term, but a Zogos is a drug addict over in Liberia. And I really identified with these people. A lot of them are the child soldiers that were left over from the war that were deeply traumatized and hurt. And now we're living in the cemeteries and the tombs of the cemeteries and the ghettos around the cemeteries doing drugs.

And I really identify with them. When I heard the story of the Zogos, it just touched my heart. And I told the pastor, I said, when I come over there, I want to go there. He said, you want to go there? I said, yes, I want to go there. He said, but nobody goes there.

But I said, I want to go there. And I ended up going over to Liberia. We did a crusade. And we took a church service to the people in those cemeteries. And we held service. And they were so welcoming of the gospel. And they were crying.

They were asking for help. And now, that is my mission in Liberia, is to help the suffering and the drug addicts over the people that are addicted to drugs. And my ministry is active. Right now, we are building a children's safe home. Our first project is a children's safe home. There's babies being born into drug addiction and into the ghettos. And we are building a children's safe home. We'll be able to take in about 15 babies and bring them into a healthy, loving, nurturing environment to get them out of that environment so they can have a chance at a good life.

And we also have plans to do men's rehabilitation discipleship programs and women's rehabilitation and discipleship programs. And just sharing with them the hope and the victory of Jesus Christ, that they too, if they give their lives, it doesn't matter where you are. The gospel is the gospel. It doesn't matter where in the world you are.

It doesn't matter where you live, who you are, what your circumstances are. The gospel is the gospel. And if you give your life, surrender your life to Jesus Christ, he can change your life where you will find success. I found the greatest success in my life when I gave my life to Jesus Christ.

Everything changed for me. I have joy. I have peace.

He is the Prince of Peace. He filled my heart, my soul with peace. And now, I serve him. What I did was I traded my old life addicted to drugs in for a new life of hope and victory and life and light and a passion to serve my God. I serve Jesus Christ.

If it's with my last breath, that is what I'll do. I am a disciple of Jesus Christ. I follow him. I don't follow the world anymore because when I followed the world, all it gave me was disappointment. So my message to you is, whatever you're struggling with, whatever difficulty you're having, give it to the Lord.

I promise you, you will not be disappointed. I would like to end with this. I just want to express to you the excitement that I have in my new life of Jesus Christ and all that the Lord is doing in my life. Three years ago, I was married to a beautiful woman of God, a wonderful woman of God, and she had two children.

So now I have five children. And we just have an amazing life and a ministry and doing so many wonderful things in the Lord together. And I just want to express that. Thank you so much for joining me, for listening to me, to my story. And I'm just so grateful and humbled to be able to share it with you. And I hope that you will receive this and that you will give Jesus a chance in your life. I just, I look forward to being able to speak with you more in the future. In Jesus' name, thank you. Thank you for listening. For more information on Michael Bowen's ministry, Sons and Daughters of Thunder, visit sonsanddaughtersoffunder.org. And remember, there is no addiction in Jesus Christ. Jesus breaks the chains. This is the Truth Network.