Jesus Breaks the Chains!

Hello, this is Matt Slick from the Matt Slick Live Podcast, where I defend the Christian faith and lay out our foundations of the truth of God's Word. Your chosen Truth Network Podcast is starting in just a few seconds. Enjoy it, share it, but most of all, thank you for listening and for choosing the Truth Podcast Network.

Welcome to Truth Talk. I'm Matt Slick from the Matt Slick Live Podcast, and I'm here today to talk about what God has done in your life. Thanks for hanging out with us today. Thank you so much for having me here to North Carolina and Winston-Salem, this area, and I've just really enjoyed the hospitality and the opportunity to be able to come here to this great network to be able to share what Jesus has done in my life in hopes that it will touch someone else, that they may hear this story and they may identify with it, and they too can be set free in Jesus. Amen. And you hail from the Dallas, Texas area, right?

That neck of the woods? We want to hear your testimony. It's really remarkable, because if we zoomed in to certain parts of your life, there you are laying on the ground as a crack addict, your second time in prison, or catching huge touchdowns in a major college football program, or growing up in a home of privilege.

Really. And then fast forward to preaching the gospel in the darkest, most dangerous, crack-infested areas in Liberia, Africa. I don't even know where to start! Well, we start and begin everything with Jesus, because I can only do what I do, or what the Lord has blessed me to do, through Jesus Christ, and it's his power, and it's his will and purpose for me in my life, and I'm just stepping into it. I just made myself available to him. I just surrendered my life to Jesus and said, Have your way in me. Amen.

So Michael Bowen's with us. Michael, tell us how it started. As you share your testimony with us, we'll spend time on that in this first segment. Folks, you're going to love hearing his story, and please share it with other folks. And then we'll get into what you're doing now in your ministry, and going into literally entombed kids, little kids that are pushing drugs in Liberia, the darkest, most dangerous area, baptisms, all that.

But start with, who is Michael Bowen, and how did you find Jesus? Well, I grew up in Dallas, Texas in the late 70s, early 80s, and just a typical suburban life. Both my parents worked hard, college educated. We were just provided all the things that you would expect in the United States of America for a middle-class family.

My dad was very successful in business, started his own telecommunications company, and it did very well. And so we did get some of the finer things, and I was provided with some of the niceties of life. And so I just had such a good role model, such good examples from my parents. I grew up in church. We went to Bible class and church on Sundays growing up. So you were around the faith. You weren't in an impoverished, real rough home growing up.

You had a lot of privilege, a lot of blessing, a lot of Christ around you. You excelled on the football field. That was a big deal. You were a star. Now, Texas high school football, people have no idea. There are Texas high school football stadiums bigger than college stadiums elsewhere, right?

Yes, there is. And that was what I really gravitated towards. I was a good athlete. And being from Dallas, I mean, the Dallas Cowboys and watching the Southern Methodist University Mustangs and the Pony Express and Eric Dickerson and Craig James growing up and all that, that's what I dreamed to be. I dreamed to be a professional football player. Everything that I did was pointed towards football because it was a place where I excelled and I really enjoyed it. And I love the game.

I love the competition, and I love the aggressiveness of it and just the fighting in the football and the hard work that it takes. And you could catch that ball. You were a receiver, successful receiver, doing well, and you ended up with a scholarship playing football in college, right? In 1986, I was one of the top high school running backs in the state of Texas. I was able to go to Southern Methodist University, and I started as a true freshman on that team. Unfortunately, that year was the year of the death penalty, where the program was canceled for two years, and I transferred from SMU to the University of Georgia and played there in 1987, where I became the Allen Huff Award winner for the most outstanding walk-on athlete at the University of Georgia, and we were Liberty Bowl champions. Finished like 13th in the nation that year.

No kidding. So you got your career, you're really blossoming, but then you ended up going back to the old school, I guess, right? Because things got better at SMU?

Yeah, when I was homesick, I was a Dallas kid, I was a Texan, born and raised, and I just missed home. And when Forrest Gregg, who is an NFL Hall of Famer, was hired to resurrect the football program from the ashes of the death penalty, I just really wanted to go back to my school. That was the school. That was my dream, to play for the SMU Mustangs.

When I saw that opportunity open up again, I left the University of Georgia and finished up at SMU, where I had great success. And in 1990, I was the offensive MVP, team captain, and all-Southwest Conference receiver. And then in 1991, I was drafted into the Canadian Football League.

Wow. So you went up to Canada, played up there a little bit. Tell us what happened next. Well, that was where the wheels started falling off. I mean, through my high school years and my college years, I experimented with alcohol, and I drank a lot of alcohol, just kind of the party scene that a lot of college kids experience and experiment with. But I also started trying some drugs like ecstasy and cocaine, but I never let it get out of hand because I didn't want it to interfere with my greatest love, which was football. And I knew that that would interfere with it. So I did a lot of I had a lot of control in the early years of using drugs.

I would only do it during the offseason and I would limit it. But when I went up to Canada, I went up, signed a six-figure contract for two years up for the Edmonton Eskimos, and I started training camp. A week into training camp, they came in and knocked on my door and handed me a paper and told me that they were no longer interested in me playing football there. And they handed me a plane ticket, told me to go back home. And I was devastated.

Wow. So your whole life, everything you've ever worked for in one moment, one knock on the door, over? Over.

Gone. And what happened? What did Michael Bowen do then? Well, what Michael Bowen did was I tried to find a plan B.

There was no plan B for Michael Bowen. Plan A was I was going to go to Canada, play there for two years, and then do well enough like I'd always done. I'd always succeeded in football.

I always had success. I was going to go, and this was my plan, I'd go two years in Canada, and then I'd go into an NFL training camp. I was real close to being a free agent to the NFL, but I just had a little bit of size issues, and they didn't want to take their chance on me. That's why I had to go to the CFL.

And so that was my plan, and when that didn't happen for me, I just really didn't know what to do. I went back to the United States, went back to Dallas and began drinking and using cocaine. And I became addicted to crack cocaine at that time real quickly after I got back to the United States. So you've got something, it gets worse, the story gets worse, and usually on these shows we've got to take a quick break. We say, hey, there's some really good stuff coming up, and there is, but we're going to go into the prison of drugs and the literal prison that brought when we come back and how God's using you mildly.

How God sent you back to prison to lead people to Christ is just a great story. You guys are going to be blessed by this. Stay tuned. Make sure you download this podcast. When that comes out, you can hear the whole thing.

You can share it with your friends. He is the founder and president of the Sons and Daughters of Thunder Ministry. He is Michael Bowen. He's in the house on Truth Talk, and we're coming back to talk to him more about his fall into sin, into prison, into drugs, and then how he met Jesus Christ and how Christ has changed his life. Don't touch that dial. We'll be right back.

I'm Stu Epperson, right back with Michael Bowen. After this, what happens when you get stuck? What is addiction?

What happens when it takes you all the way to prison and almost to death? Can Jesus Christ transform the life of someone addicted to crack cocaine? Can you turn that person into a mighty missionary who's leading thousands to Christ and baptizing people on a whole other continent? Well, I've got a guy in here who's a walking miracle, and the more I hang out with him, the more I like him.

We're actually talking about making his own show, because he should be doing this and interviewing all these people. He is Michael Bowen with the Sons and Daughters of Thunder Ministry. We left off with our hero. We played for some big Division I football programs in Texas, here in Georgia, getting to the Liberty Bowl, getting all these accolades and awards, getting a contract with a big CFL team in Canadian Football League, the Edmonton Eskimos. I would love just to be on a team like that, even if I'm just like a water boy, just to say I was a part of the Edmonton Eskimos program. That's so cool!

I love that! So you were there, living the dream. You got that knock on the door where they let you go, and then you crashed hard into the drugs.

Take us there now. You're back, Michael. Things got worse. Tell us what happened.

What does rock bottom look like for Michael Bowen? What was that experience? I had a good role model with my parents, and I knew the right way to go and the right thing to do. So when I got back to the United States, I decided, well, I'm just going to get a job. I have a degree in economics, minor in finance from SMU. I didn't really want to be an economist, but I decided to go into sales.

I said, I'm good with that. I like talking to people, and I think I can excel in that. I started a few sales jobs, and it just wasn't there for me. I wasn't finding the satisfaction, and I just still was not healed. I hurt, and I was disconnected, and I had no identity. Everything was stripped from me because I put all my hope in football.

That was it. Football became my god. It was my idol at the time, and I put all my hope in football, and I was just devastated. Before, I was experimenting with alcohol and drugs, so I already knew. I already knew I liked them, and so I just got deeper and deeper into it. When I took that first hit of crack cocaine, that was it. Real quickly, that sent me down into being fully completely addicted, abandoning everything. I couldn't work.

I couldn't do anything. I just became addicted to crack, a crack addict. I would disappear into the inner cities, into the ghettos, first for days, then for weeks, then for months on end. I would get lost, and nobody would know where I was. I'd be smoking crack in crack houses. I became homeless.

I would wander the streets. I became a thief. Because when you run out of money and you have to have the drugs, you have to keep doing the drugs because it keeps you high, because when you're high, you don't have to face the reality of your fallen life.

That kept me locked in. I was shamed, guilt, and I was going to the drugs to try to cure me of what was going on wrong inside of me. What happened was the cure became more of the problem when you go to drugs, and nothing worked. Through that time, I started going to rehabilitation centers, psychiatrists, psychologists, every 12-step program, every NAA, CA, you name it, I went to it, and nothing would work. I even went to a few mental hospitals when the other things didn't work. People were thinking I was crazy. Let me interject this for a lot of parents out there and a lot of people that struggle, and you're dealing with them all the time.

This isn't how the story was supposed to go. You grew up in a Christian home, Christian parents, Bible study, a good church. You knew all the good things about God. You knew how many times, countless times, you were told how much God loved you.

You heard John 3.16. There's people out there, there's many folks listening right now who have that child in their home who is just addicted and binging and just struggling. This is not how the narrative that Michael Bowen's parents had written or had prayed for, but here you are to the point where now it's becoming a legal threat to society and enter prison, jail, the bars.

Can you get into that? When you're addicted to drugs, you will do anything to get that next hit, to get that next high. I became a thief. I stole cars. I broke into stores. I would shoplift. I even snatched purses from ladies from time to time. It was just devastating what my life turned into.

The addiction is so strong and you're so bound to it that you lose what you know, the difference between right and wrong, and you lose all of that. All that goes out the window. The only thing you do, your whole life is whittled down to one selfish desire. How can I get more?

How can I get higher? And you can't think of anything else. And so that's what happened. And I ended up in high speed police chases, fighting the police, going to jail over and over and over again, and then finally went to prison for my first time in 2009 in Arizona. I spent two years in Arizona prison. When I was released, I moved to Texas and had my kids come with me and we started to try to have a new life. I started coaching my son's football. He was 10, 11, 12 years old and we found great success. I was his Pop Warner football coach and we were a championship team.

We didn't get beat. And there I had the love of football again and I thought that would do it. I finally got it again.

Now I'm doing that. And I really thought I wasn't going to do drugs again. I thought that prison was going to be the cure. OK, I've been to prison.

It was horrible. I'm never going to do drugs again. But over time, I spent about three years and after about three years in 2013, I relapsed again on crack cocaine one night.

I went to the bar to have a few drinks. When that didn't work enough, I went to the crack house to find something stronger and I never returned. I abandoned my whole life. I abandoned my children, abandoned my job, everything that I was doing at that time.

My family members, nobody knew where I was for three months until I was pulled over. I was living out of my car, selling crack, smoking crack, and then I started shooting methamphetamines in my veins because I didn't care anymore. I had given up.

I had no hope. I just knew there was no way that I was going to be able to get off drugs. I thought I'd be a drug addict for life. The only way that I would be able to stop using drugs is if I was dead.

And that's what I looked at. The devil had me convinced that I was hated by everybody, that I'd let so many people down that I would never see them again and I would never know anything about my former life. This was my life. I was a drug addict and you better do as much as you can until you're in because you're going to die.

I believe that. One night, I was driving my car and I got pulled over by the police. They arrested me for six felony counts of theft and they threw me in the back of the police car. I looked up and I said, thank you, God. I called that night, the night I was captured by God because he knew what he was doing. And what the Lord had did, I ended up doing a year in prison in Texas and that was when everything changed in my life.

What happened? When I first got to jail, I was just trying to kick the drugs. It took me a couple of weeks to kick the drugs. I still just had them all in me and everything. But as I started sobering up and coming off the drugs, then the Lord started speaking to me. But I felt so shameful and I had so much guilt and I couldn't face even speaking to the Lord. I couldn't go to prayer.

I couldn't do anything. So I began to walk. They have dorms and so I began to walk around the dorms. I spent about a week walking. You'd see me.

All the guys would be looking and Michael Bowen was walking laps. I was walking, I was walking, I was walking until I walked myself out. I couldn't walk anymore and I finally stopped. I walked over to my bunk and I knelt down on my bunk and I prayed to the Lord.

I said, Lord, please forgive me. And everything changed. So that was the moment, that encounter with God after the second time in jail and then in prison and the drugs and trying everything. What changed?

What happened? Well, that right there, that moment when I went to him in prayer, that was just the beginning because I still was so messed up and so broken. I was just such a broken man. If I had gone out of jail that day, I probably would have went and got high.

So it took a little time. That was in jail. Then I got moved over to the prison and I was in prison. I just began picking up the word and I started reading the word and the Lord started speaking to me through his word. He started changing me with his word. And one night I was in a prison chapel and I walked in the prison chapel and there was a song that was playing a worship song by Jason Upton called A Better Way.

And thank God. God knew that I needed a long worship song. It's a 22-minute song. I needed 22 minutes to unravel what had gone on in my life. I was so broken. And in that song, he began to speak to me. He said, Michael, give me your life and I will show you a better way.

Just give me your life. And that song was playing. That song was playing. And the Holy Spirit brought me into godly sorrow. And the godly sorrow produced the repentance in my life. And I found myself falling to the ground. I went to the floor and I started weeping and crying and asking the Lord to forgive me.

And I'm so sorry. I started going through all the things where I had chosen this world and chosen other things and that I had rejected the Lord. And I just started telling him, I said, Lord, I hate myself. I hate this world. I don't want it anymore. If I'm going to go smoke crack when I leave here, you kill me right now on this floor. You kill me right now.

I can't do it anymore. But if you save me, I will serve you the rest of the days of my life. And in that moment, I felt my soul crack and my spirit being poured out of me. And I just emptied myself of myself. And I was laying on the ground. And finally, when I had enough strength to finally raise up to my feet, I felt his presence.

On the ground in a prison chapel, worshiping Jesus, this man would go on to serve Christ. And we're going to hear how that's worked out for you when we come back on Truth Talk. More with Michael Bowen, his amazing story after this.

Don't touch that dial. We're coming back with more Truth Talk and Stu Epperson. Hang on. Have you ever hit rock bottom? Have you ever hit rock bottom after being a huge success in life?

In sports, in sales, in a career, having a family, growing up in the perfect Christian home, and only to find yourself laying on the ground, face down, in a chapel, in a prison, when a bunch of people said, this guy's done. He's an addict. He's never going to change. It's over. Well, that's the story of Michael Bowen. But Michael, that wasn't the end when you were there. That was a new beginning.

Because you got up off that floor. What did God do in your life? And if you just joined us, I'm Stu Epperson. This is Truth Talk. Listen to the whole program. We'll make this a podcast soon, and you can hear his whole story and how he ended up in that prison and what God did in his life. But we're still kind of in that moment there in that prison chapel.

Take us back there. Well, I was able to gain enough strength to stand up. And when I stood up for the first time, I felt a peace come over me, and I felt his presence. And in that, I just knew I had been changed, and that I had died out on that floor. And I knew that something had changed.

I didn't know what yet had changed, but I knew that I was different when I walked out of that room. I got into that Word, and I read that Word every day, and that's all I did. For the rest of the time I was in prison, morning, noon, and night, I was in that Word.

I was going to every church service I could. I was praising and worshiping the Lord and studying, and I became that Word. And that Word changed me, and it taught me who I really am in Jesus Christ. All things passed away.

All things had become new. And Jesus began to give me instruction on what he wanted me to do. And he gave me the name from the ministry, Sons and Daughters of Thunder Ministries, and how I would go back into the prisons and help people.

And he gave me a blueprint for a discipleship home for men coming out of prison and all that. And he gave me a gift of poetry. And believe me, I never knew that I would be a poet.

I was too tough and strong for that, but I do. I'm a poet. I've got a book coming out too. I've got a book coming out called The Poetry of Addiction. One man's journey into the captivity, darkness, and hell of addiction and delivers back to his God, Jesus Christ. And it's just a story of my life, and it uncovers the spiritual truths about addiction. How addiction is seeded into us at an early age is fun and excitement.

And how it seeds itself and attaches itself in our flesh. And it's either you walk in the spirit or you're led by the desires of your flesh. And is it true that addictions aren't just limited to drugs or chemical substances? It's anything that you choose to medicate yourself, escape with, or change the way you feel. It could be eating. It could be gambling. It could be drugs.

It could even be overworking. Anything that is separating you from your purpose in God. You could argue that you had an addiction to sports, to football. Well, yes, I had an addiction to football.

Absolutely. And everything that came with that. And when that was gone. Actually, I made football. My God, football was my idol.

I put all my love, trust, and hope in football, and that couldn't save me. All that did was disappoint me. It let me down. Just like everything in this world let me down.

I checked all the boxes. Fame, wealth, money, success. All the things that this world tells you that's going to make you happy.

And I had them all, and I checked all the boxes, and I was miserable inside. None of it brought me what I was truly looking for until I laid on that floor, and I gave my life and certain of my life to Jesus Christ. And he filled me with himself. That's it. That's what I was missing was him in me.

Hallelujah. So tell me about the Michael Bowen that walked out of that prison at some point. But how many guys walk out of prison but then go back to prison? Me?

I'm one. Not as a prisoner, but as a preacher. Amen. Tell us about that, and then through that ministry, and then through God restoring you with your children and whatnot, and then you end up over the pond in Liberia, of all places. Yeah.

Okay. Well, when I got out of prison, I went to the halfway house. It was a Christian—they call them Christian sober—living program.

It was Texas Reach Out Ministries in Austin, Texas. I went there, and it just gave me a little structure in my life. We had Bible studies. I got plugged into a church. I got baptized. I got filled with the Holy Spirit, and my life just began to change. I began to serve in the church, and the Lord surrounded me with great men that were my mentors.

One after another after another after another, and they just started pouring into me, and I just kept saying yes. Every opportunity I had to go hear the Word or serve somebody or do something just made me stronger. In that time, I went to Bible college, and I got my second bachelor's in theology, and then I was licensed and ordained as a minister of the gospel of Jesus Christ. In that, I started going back into the Texas prison system, and I started preaching to those men in prison, telling them about how I used to be in these same rooms. I actually preach in the very same room where I laid on that floor in that Texas prison in Austin, Texas, where I served my life to Jesus Christ. I preached to those men in that same room, and I walk over to that spot where I laid on the floor, and I died out. I jump up and down on that spot on the floor, and I said, This is the grave of my old man. This is where he's buried. He's got a life sentence.

He's never coming out. Hallelujah. I tell them that Jesus will do the same thing for you that he did for me, but you have to surrender your life to him. Wow. So you're going back to the same places. You were locked in. You were cellmates with these people.

You're going back to talk to them about how Christ can set you free. Isn't it fascinating, too, in a very gracious man named Allen? He's listening to the Truth Network right now, and he loves our network. He sent me a six-page, single-spaced, handwritten letter that I have read, that brought me tears I want to write back to him. But he listens to the Truth Network in prison, and God's used the Truth Network, the sermons, the messages, programs like this, to touch him. But isn't it fascinating?

I look at that letter from Allen. He is more free, and at some level, Michael Bowen, when Christ had set you free, whom the Son sets free is free indeed, John 8, 32, 33, 34. Michael Bowen, Allen, you and him were more free and are more free, locked behind bars, than so many people on the outside, who don't have Jesus, who are slaves to sin, who are in the bondage of death and on their way to a Christless eternity.

What a thought! This is when I knew my life was changed forever. It's when I found the freedom and peace in the most unlikely place, behind concrete walls, iron bars, in a prison. And I was the freest I'd ever been in my life.

Because, like you said, whom the Son sets free is free indeed. And he set me free, and I was free. Because from that point on, I did not have the addiction in me.

There's no addiction in Jesus Christ. And what he did is he delivered me from addiction. And what he did, he says, I'm going to replace your desire for drugs and alcohol with a desire for me. And he just changed it.

He flipped it. And now I desire him. I still have the same struggles that everybody had. I still have the same struggles that I had before I had Jesus when I would go to drugs. But I would choose to use alcohol and drugs for that. But now I go to Jesus.

And why would I ever go back to drugs? I have Jesus. So you went from selling drugs to sharing Jesus, the only one who can satisfy, the only one where the well never runs dry, the living water, the bread of life.

And then, with COVID and all the chaos, you still go to prisons, you still are ministering, but there were all kinds of restrictions. God sent you, of all places, to Liberia. Now, we don't have a whole lot of time left, and this is our last segment, but we've got Michael Bowen in the house, the founder of the Sons and Daughters of Thunder Ministries, which, I tell you what, someone in that ministry has got to own a motorcycle. I mean, I love the name of that.

It's a powerful name. But just what God's doing through your ministry. Now, you're baptizing people, you're going to the most dangerous places in the world.

You find out these kids are these young kids, orphans, whatever, they're dealing drugs, and they're in these cemeteries in Liberia where everyone says, even the Christians are like, no, we don't go there, but why would God call Michael Bowen there? Well, that's just, it's so amazing what the Lord has done for me from that respect. When COVID hit and all the Texas prisons were closed down, and it was at that exact time that Liberia opened up for me, I had met a gentleman through Facebook, a pastor in Liberia, and we became friends, and he actually came over to the United States and Dallas and was preaching at a church, inviting me over there to speak to him, and we ended up preaching together at the church. And when I was over there, he invited me to come do a crusade in Liberia.

And I said, okay, yeah, great, I'll do it. And so that happened, and before my first trip over there, he was telling me about the Zogos. The Zogos are the forgotten ones in society. Most of them are the leftover childhood soldiers from the bloody civil war. They had to deal with great atrocities and devastation in their own lives, and when the war was over and the disarmament came, they had nowhere to go because they were orphaned, and the warlords got them addicted to drugs. So they were addicted to drugs. They went into this 13-acre cemetery called Palm Grove Cemetery on Center Street in the middle of Monrovia, Liberia. So the pastor was telling me about these people. They actually live in the tombs. They broke open the tombs.

They live in the tombs and deal drugs and do the drugs within the bones of the tombs. And so I heard this story, and it 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. I said, you set it up.

I'm going there. And so we went over there, and we set up a sound system, and we had a service. And it was the most incredible service. These people came out of the ghetto. There was a ghetto on the edge of the cemetery, and the people came out of the tombs, and they came out of the ghetto, and we brought food, and we worshiped and praised the Lord, and they were worshiping and praising the Lord.

And there was just a mighty move of God. And that was the first trip. And then when I came back, I went back and specifically visited the different ghettos and cemeteries, and we did more of it. And you're baptizing these kids. Yeah, we baptized 70 on the first trip, and it was just incredible.

What's your website? This is remarkable. When the story goes on, every time I talk to you, the last two days, there's more. You had a whole crowd in the Truth Network back in the halls. Everyone comes out, they're hearing you talk, and then you start sharing.

It's like the Book of Acts, right? What's the website for the Sons and Daughters of Thunder? It's www.sonsanddaughtersofthunder.org. And then I have a ministry, a website for the Liberia portion of it, which is www.liberationcenterliberia.org. Okay, now it's all at that site.

You're also on social media, Facebook, Facebook, Instagram, I've followed you on all those, and Twitter. And then we'll take a picture and shoot a little video here, because people need to know about what you're doing, they need to be supporting missions, they need to go with you, and I know you've touched a nerve and blessed some people, pastors, churches, that may want to have you come share your testimony, which is remarkable. Thank you for just taking the time to bless us today.

Yeah, thank you so much. What an encouragement. You brought all the glory, and my message to you is give Jesus a chance. I did, and it changed my life. I promise you, you will not be disappointed if you give your life to Jesus Christ. Amen.

Those are the words of Michael Bowen. And to hear his whole story, we've just gone through it. If you just joined us, listen. Go get the podcast.

Listen to the whole thing. It'll be out soon. His book will be out soon, and you can learn more about his ministry at his website. So go there.

We'll put a link to it at ours. Thank you, Michael. What a treat, man. Thank you so much, and God bless everybody listening. We love you so much here, and I just love the Truth Network. It's just an awesome instrument in the hands of Almighty God.