Evangelism in a Graveyard!

This is Darren Kuhn with the Masculine Journey Podcast, where we search the ancient paths to find ways that God brings light into a dark world and helps set men free from the struggles that we all face on a day-to-day basis. 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. Thanks for listening and for choosing the Truth Network Podcast.

Thanks for listening and for choosing the Truth Network Podcast. Gather up all the drug addicts and all the hurt-broken people in that country and bring them to a soccer field called Slippery Field, and we're going to set up a stage and we're going to just love on them. We're going to share the love of Jesus Christ with them. We're going to worship and pray. We're going to have music, sound system, and then we're going to preach the word, and we're going to share the truth of the gospel with them, and Jesus is going to break those chains of addiction.

We're going to feed them, and we're going to clothe them, and we're going to bring some doctors and nurses and give them some medical attention, and we're going to do this for three days. Wow. Now, you've been on the show before, and our listeners are familiar with you, but for those that just joined and haven't heard the previous podcast and show, God broke your chains of addiction. Here you were, star athlete, unbelievable. SMU was in the death penalty.

They came out. You were the star receiver, unbelievable in football, but got stuck. Talk about your testimony briefly, what God did in your life, and then how, all of a sudden, fast forward.

You're on your way to Africa to help others find freedom in Christ. Well, I had a real good football career in college for SMU. I played one year at the University of Georgia, but I was very successful. I was drafted in the Canadian Football League in 1991, and when I didn't catch on with the Edmonton Eskimos, I came back to the United States and began using drugs and developed a drug addiction to crack cocaine and methamphetamine. For 25 years, I fought that addiction with everything I had and went to prison and jails and drug rehabilitation centers, and nothing ever worked for me, but my second time in prison, I decided that I needed to change, and I was desperate, and I found myself on a prison chapel floor crying out to Jesus to save me. And I just surrendered my life to Jesus in that prison that day, and I've never been the same, and since that day that I surrendered my life to Him, I haven't had a desire to drink alcohol or do drugs since that day. When I got out, I went to a discipleship program, a Christian Sober Living Home.

I went to Bible College, earned my bachelor's in theology, and I began, and I got licensed and ordained, and I went back into the prisons, and I'm a prison minister now, and also the Lord has opened up to me to be a missionary in Liberia, West Africa. Unbelievable. I never knew when I surrendered my life to Jesus Christ on that floor that the Lord would have such a full life serving Him. I want to put him on the spot that David is sitting here.

He's also one of our Truth Network team members. We're at Buy Good Coffee. If you hear a little bit of noise, it's the sipping of this delicious honey cinnamon latte. It's good. Yeah, it's really good. Can you beat me? And there's Darrell and Abby, great folks, and I love doing truth talk for coffee shops, because especially with a guy like him, he's all over the world, and I couldn't pin him down in the studio. But David, you knew Michael before and after. You hear him testify, even your eyes tear up a little bit. Just confirm to our listeners that this is the real deal here.

Go ahead. Oh, yeah, it's unbelievable. I've known Michael since fifth grade. He showed up to school.

He had his shirt on when his mom took the time to put a picture of him, and you could put that on the shirt, and it said, hi, my name is Michael. And he is going to go one way or the other. He's either going to go in a corner, or he's going to become the young man that he's even then. He's always full of confidence, a great athlete, charismatic in the sense that people always want to be around him. And last time we really spent a good amount of time together, we were in our early 20s, and had no idea that Michael was going to fight this path to this day.

I feel a little bad, because I would have loved to have been there for him, but we just weren't even in the same state. And to hear what God's done in his life, it's such a living, breathing testimony for those of us that, you know, we go to church and we talk with other believers, but God can bring anybody back at any situation, and the life that Michael has now and the fullness of that is just beautiful to see. It's awesome. And before we get to evangelism in a graveyard in Africa, which we're going to go to in just a second, tell everyone a little bit about your new program. It's launching nationally. You've got a podcast. Folks can listen to you weekly. It's downloaded. It's part of the Truth Podcast Network.

It's exploding. Tell everyone real quick what it is, how they can find it, and whatnot, and the whole genesis of that real quick. You can go to find, it's called the Jesus Breaks the Chains Podcast Series, and you can find it, a link to it on my website, www.sonsanddaughtersoffunder.org, or you can go to the Truth Network.

And what is that? Truthnetwork.com. Yeah, truthnetwork.com, and it's part of the podcast programming, and then you can just click the link. And I have several podcasts.

I'm not sure the number now, but over 10 to 15. And we just talk about messages of hope and deliverance and whom the Son sets free is free indeed, John 836. And I invite people on that have come out of addiction and come out of the prisons and are living a life serving the Lord now and doing great things.

So we share that with the audience, and we just talk about everyday things that people are struggling with in their lives, and especially any kind of addiction or things that are separating you from your purpose in God. Now listen to that podcast. You'll hear his story and some amazing interviews there, too. And he'll be able to take you with him to the darkest parts of Houston, Texas, to the darkest parts of Africa, where he's shining the light of Jesus. Now, he may not be a shock jock, but he's shocking a lot of people by taking, I don't know, many pastors, evangelists, missionaries that are going to do their evangelism in a graveyard.

I mean, this is like way out there, brother. But I want you to tell everyone kind of how this came about and where you're about to go. When you come back, we'll get another interview with you. But tell us where you're going and how this declaration of the dead day has turned into suddenly a declaration of the light of Christ and what's going to happen there.

Go real quick on that. Okay, so when I was invited to go on a trip to Liberia to preach the gospel, the pastor who invited me over there was telling me about this group of people. They're called the Zogos, and they're the former child soldiers, and they're also from the Civil War, and they're the drug addicted, the disadvantaged youth, and they live in the cemeteries. When the war was over, they had nowhere to go, so they broke into the tombs and the crypts and the cemeteries, and they lived there and do drugs with the bones of the dead bodies. And so when the pastor was telling me this story, it just started touching my heart, and he was telling me how these people were addicted to drugs, hopelessly addicted to drugs. And when they were done using the drugs, they would go out and steal things.

I started thinking that that's what I used to do when I was addicted to drugs. And I started identifying. I said, I'm a Zogo. And so I told him, I said, hey, I said, pastor, when I come here to preach in your church, I want to go there to the cemetery where the Zogos are. 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 want to go there. And so we went out there, and when I went there, I preached in the church for about five days and five nights. But the highlight of the trip was when I got to go to the cemetery, and we set up a soundstage on the edge of the cemetery in a ghetto right on the edge of the cemetery. And we started playing worship music, and the people started coming up out of the tombs, coming up out of the graves and out of the abandoned buildings in the ghettos, and they started worshiping, praising the Lord. And it touched my heart so deeply, and they started telling me, they said, there's no help for us. Please help us, pastor.

Please help us. And at that point in time, I just knew that was my cause. That was the reason why I was there, and I'm going to help these people that I identify with so much. And so the Lord, you know, I've been to West Africa two or three times now.

Well, actually three trips. This will be my fourth trip in March, and I'm having a three-day crusade at a soccer field. We're going to rent buses and drive around to all the ghettos and graveyards and pick up all the drug addicts, the drug-addicted people, the disadvantaged youth, and bring them to the crusade. And when the Lord was telling me about this, that he wanted me to do this, and he was telling me a day, he said, you need to do it March 9th through the 11th. And so I told my ministry partners in Liberia, I said, hey, the Lord is telling me to do it March 9th through 11th. And they said, well, you can't do that.

I said, why can't I do that? They said, that's a national holiday. I said, a national holiday? What national holiday is that? They said, it's Decorations Day. I said, well, what's Decorations Day?

They said, that's the day where the whole country shuts down, all the businesses shut down, and all the people travel to the graveyards all over the country to decorate the tombs of their ancestors. And then the Holy Spirit moved on me. My hair stood up on my arms. I just knew what God was doing. And so what God is doing is the day that they celebrate going into the cemetery celebrating the dead, we're going to be bringing the Zogos and the drug addicts out and celebrating life. Hallelujah.

And giving them hope and a purpose. And it's just unbelievable what the Lord is doing there. Praise the Lord.

That's Michael. He's with the Sons and Daughters of Thunder Ministries. God's done a work in his life. And he's about to take, he's about to shake the graveyard and bring to life the resurrection power of Jesus. Oh, dry bones come alive.

Oh, dry bones come alive. We believe. Hallelujah.

All right. Modern day Ezekiel there. Ezekiel cried, them dry bones. Oh, hear the word of the Lord.

And he's got a word of the Lord coming from him. Your website one more time as we wrap up here so folks can find you. Yeah. We'll have two websites. www.sonsanddaughtersofthunder.org. And I also have www.liberationcenterliberia.org. And you can find out what we're doing on both those websites. Send a financial gift to help this ministry advance. He's connected with the churches there.

They're discipling these people. And this is a real work. This is what Jesus did, right? He said, I'm going out there. And he went to the, he says, I'm coming to heal the broken hearted. You know, the Spirit of the Lord is upon me to proclaim the good news to the poor. And that's what Michael is doing. Support him and also learn more at truthnetwork.com where he's a part of the, you hear the podcast and we're going to make this into a podcast too so folks will be encouraged by this and be encouraged to go.

Who do I go share with? You know, it's interesting, the people you're going to, you know, we target people sometimes that don't want anything to do with the gospel. But these are people that are hurting. That's why Jesus went to them. And they want to hear the gospel.

They have nowhere else to go. And so, for friends, there are people that need to hear about Jesus right now. And I am rebuked and encouraged at the same time by you, brother Michael. Thanks for what you're doing, man. Thanks for being honest.

Thank you so much. And I just thank for everybody who's listening to this podcast. And I'm just, I'm just so excited for what the Lord is doing through this ministry. And to God be the glory and radically change lives. And we believe that he is pulling people for his army, pulling future disciples of Jesus Christ out of addiction.

Out of the battlefield of addiction and going into the prisons and pulling them out of the prisons to make them fearless disciples of Jesus Christ. He's going to be on the graveyard shift over in Liberia here in a few weeks. So pray for that mission. Just take a second, folks, and pray for this man, his ministry, that God would go ahead. And we'll pray that right now. Lord, just go ahead of him and his team and do mighty things in that graveyard, on that soccer field, in the hearts and the souls of those who are addicted. Prepare their hearts and bring new sons and daughters of thunder into your kingdom to know Jesus and to make him known and to reach that entire country of Liberia. In Jesus' name we pray. Amen. This is the Truth Network.