This is Sam from the Mask on Journey Podcast, and our goal with the podcast has helped you to try to find your way in this difficult world. Your chosen Truth Network Podcast is starting in just seconds. Enjoy it, share it, but most of all, thank you for listening and choosing the Truth Podcast Network. This is the Truth Network. Welcome to Truth Talk Live. All right, let's talk. A daily program powered by the Truth Network, where pop culture, current events, and theology all come together.
And now, here's today's Truth Talk Live host. So what happens when addiction comes home? What happens when you've got a family member, you love them, and they are using, and they are stuck in something deep, and it takes you a long time to figure it out. It takes you even longer to realize, I can't help them. I am not built for this. I'm not trained for this. I must, hey, I'm that messianic figure. Well, I can help fix anybody.
I can, let me talk to them. But you realize this addiction is deep, and there's a sense to which everyone struggles with some sort of addiction. There's addictive behavior, or you're one decision away from that, potentially. We have a special guest on a day who is the head of a great ministry called Freedom Farms, and he deals with addicts all the time. He houses them, he counsels them, he disciples them, he teaches them the Bible, he leads them to Christ, and he sends them back into society to do the same, and he's actually one of those that God has saved and used in a mighty way. Jim Quigley, good to have you with us, brother. Always good to see you, Stu. What a blessing.
Stu Everson here, hosting Truth Talk Live. When has addiction come home? How have you dealt with it? How has an addiction recovery program helped you? How can you have an addiction recovery program that is gospel-centered, that actually gives the true answer, that's not just behavioral modification?
What's the difference, Jim? It's a huge difference, and actually the majority of people, or majority of programs out there, behavioral modification basically is what you're gonna get. It's gotten a little bit fancier nowadays, where there's a real big push for harm reduction and medication-assisted therapy. These are roads that, they have a admirable goal, which is to reduce the amount of deaths and try to give people some kind of relief, but essentially they have to do that by abandoning any hope for change. So that's where I think I can't get behind it myself. But you opened up what do you do, and I think it's important for people to know, I don't think anybody has the exact one, two, three answers for how do you help someone in this kind of situation. But people like Freedom Farm, we provide one path, and it's a long-term program.
One year long, it's the commitment people are making. I actually have a real desire to make a hybrid program. I was down here in Winston today because, like I told you before, I was meeting with some pastors, and I'm trying to build relationships with churches because Freedom Farm doesn't want to replace the church. We have no intention of doing that, but the church is vital for the person that struggles with an addiction, and they need to be a part of one, they need to be serving, they need to be accountable, all of those things, and so we're hoping to start working with some churches where they can get through the first three phases of the program, which would take about five, six months, and then instead of the fourth phase where they'd work, we could send them home because we have a strong relationship with the disciples and church. Plug them right into a faith community, that's so important. Yes, absolutely.
I love that. Freedom Farms is a ministry that basically could be your church's addiction recovery ministry. You want to come alongside the church and help them, much like the Rescue Mission does for helping with the homeless folks trying to transition back into life, into the Lord.
Just like the local Crisis Pregnancy Center wants to help the local church with helping with the young ladies that are in a crisis pregnancy. It's hard. Jim, why is this so hard? Here's a question for everyone, why is it so hard to ask for help? Pride.
I mean, that is the number one struggle in my experience with myself in my own struggle with addiction, and with the majority of the men I work with, it is a pride issue. Wow, you were in ministry, you had a lot going on. I want to get into your testimony in the second segment. I want to invite listeners to call in. I want to invite you to call in. You don't even have to use your name, you don't have to mention the name of the person struggling you know. If you've got someone that's battling in this area, you want to talk to an expert who loves Jesus, who just can help pray with you, we can talk to you on this show. Where we are live, and you can hear my voice, you can call at 866-34-TRUTH. We've got St. Nick in there.
Why is he St. Nick? Because he puts up with me all the time. Your host of Truth Talk Live and Truth Talk on the weekends as well, 866-34-TRUTH. How did Christ set you free from an addiction? How do you handle it when addiction comes home? When you have that family member, they're hitting synthetics, they're hitting the needle, they're struggling, they're living two lives. One day they're wonderful and they're going to change the world, and then the next day they're crashing.
You can't find them there in some hotel. Jim, this is really tough, even for people of faith. We all have—talk about this as not an us versus them, but as a we all kind of a community that really needs help here. Yeah. So I'm glad that you asked that, because one of the biggest urban legends or myths that it's very, very difficult to convince people of in church is that they look at an addict and say, I don't have anything to help them.
I can't. And I can understand that in emergency settings where someone would need to go and just be taken out of a negative environment for a while. But ultimately, fundamentally, anybody that belongs to Christ has the answer, and we're supposed to give that answer. This is a spiritual issue, and the problem is that even the church has been trained to believe that this is a medical problem.
Okay. Yeah, let's just medicate it, let's get them on some kind of— Right. And then the medication can be addicting. Now you've got a whole other problem.
Absolutely. I mean, how many people have got major back issues? If they get on medicine, they're stuck and hooked on it. And the interesting thing is that they say it's primarily a medical problem, but they will acknowledge that it seems like spiritual encouragement helps them. Okay, we've got a caller calling in. 866-34-TRUTH is our number.
toll-free nationwide, 866-348-788-4. My buddy Jim with Freedom Farms, helping you with your addiction or your friend that's stuck when addiction hits home, helping you in connecting your addiction to the power of his resurrection and the gospel of Jesus Christ. When we come back, Truth Talk Live, I'm Stu Epperson. Don't touch that dial. Look at this. Hang on. Truth Talk Live!
You're listening to the Truth Network and truthnetwork.com. Jesus said he came to set the captives free, and he also said he came not for the righteous. Those who are whole need no physician. He came for the sick. Luke 19 and 10, he came to seek and save the lost, the broken.
He came on a rescue mission. I think sometimes, Jim, Freedom Farms, you're helping folks with addiction ministries. You're an in-house place. People come for a year. You have a couple open beds. People come from states all over the United States, even from overseas, and they come and stay there, and you help them work through that with pretty intense counseling, right?
What else? Yeah, really, just like you said, the Bible in Galatians says that for those of you that are caught in a trespass, for you who are spiritual should come alongside them to help restore them in a spirit of gentleness. That really encapsulates what we try to do at Freedom Farm. We just wanted to come alongside people and point them to the one that can change their life. And we were able to do that because our lives have been changed. Whether you come from an addiction background or not, if you have been transformed by the blood of Christ, you have that message. Yeah, so we're over the phone lines up.
You're glad to use a different name if you like. We're just asking you this question. What have you done when addiction hits home? When someone you love, they're addicted, and you're kind of blind to it. Maybe it's a kid. Maybe it's a parent. Maybe it's a aunt and an uncle, somebody that they're stuck, and you want to help them. You don't want to send them away. I'm going to ask you this—not now, but later—I'm going to ask you, because I'm in a very tough situation with a friend who's a pastor who's got a family member who needs help desperately. He'll admit he needs help, but he won't go away. He will not come to Freedom Farms. We know you could help him, but there has to be a willingness. How do you deal with that?
You go get Guido and a couple of big dudes, elders, and just grab them, put them in a straitjacket, and haul them up to Freedom Farms. You know what I mean? There's actually programs that do that. Interesting. Okay. See, we're opening up a whole lot of stuff here today on Truth Talk Live. Well, I'm Stu Epperson. I'm so glad that Jim, my buddy, is here with me with Freedom Farms, and I want to bring a caller on.
The number is 866-34-TRUTH, 866-348-7884. Hope for the addict. What's your addiction? What do you struggle with?
Have you handled someone that's given in to—there's all kinds of the whole spectrum, man, from porn to alcoholism to synthetic drugs to other things. At some point in this program, we're going to get into harm reduction, where our own government is pushing people to push. They're pushing, pushing. That sounds like a redundancy, but they're actually saying, oh, we know you're going to do it anyway, so do it safely, do it with friends.
I want to get into that and my experience in Seattle over the summer, which was kind of wild with my kids. But Jim, first we've got to call her. We've got Kyle calling from Florida, one of our new affiliates down there, 91.7 FM, Jacksonville, 91.9 St. Augustine, 91.3 Brunswick, up in southern Georgia. So glad that Kyle called in. Hey, thanks for calling Truth Talk Live.
You're on the air. Hey, guys. How are y'all doing this evening?
Good, Kyle. Nice to meet you. Nice to meet you guys. I'm so grateful that you guys brought this topic of conversation up. I think this is such a huge need in our communities all across the world, you know, for people to talk about how it is they got out of the depths of their addiction. I just wanted to tell you a little bit about what happened to me and hopefully it will give someone strength to take the next step.
Absolutely. I am a disabled veteran. I became addicted to opiates through injuries from military, spent many years taking heavy duty painkillers, ended up getting out and becoming addicted to heroin, dipped all the way into IV use. It was a pretty rough path that I went on for a long time. And I'll tell you, the things that helped me the most were I was fortunate enough to have family who led me to Christ at a young age. And although I was doing bad, I was in constant prayer and constant attempt to communicate with Christ as I know him.
And there was a lot of silence for many years. But then I went into a program and I heard something that helped me tremendously. And it was actually Dr. Paul's statement, which is acceptance is the key. First thing that I had to accept is that I am a sinner and I have sinned like all of us have. We are born into sin.
If we are of the flesh, we are of sin. And I prayed and asked forgiveness over the things that I had done. And through reading scripture and getting counsel from other people, pastors, people that I know from my church community, I came to the understanding that forgiveness is mine if I just ask for it.
But the answer to your question, I know that you had said that you had a friend or a pastor who has a family member who is struggling with addiction. This for me did not come until I was at my rock bottom. I had overdosed multiple times and luckily for me, I had a family that loved me enough to cut me completely off, which led me to my rock bottom, left me on the streets. And that time that I spent homeless, literally living in the bushes, that time that I spent there saved my life. It made me realize that the bottom can only get deeper if you keep digging.
And there's got to be a stopping point. And what a relief to know that Christ went to the cross and died for our sins because without that, I wouldn't have any hope. And through accepting that my life could get better, that I did deserve love, that I didn't deserve to have to stay in shame and stay in guilt and waller in those things, those facts brought me out and opened my heart up to letting people back into my life and stopping being afraid of judgment, being able to talk and communicate and tell about my story and tell what happened to me without fear of judgment from them. I mean, because with addiction comes, I mean as I'm sure you can imagine, immense shame and guilt and crippling separation from your community. I didn't want to be around anyone that wasn't doing what I was doing while I was in the depths of my addiction.
If they were not okay with doing what I was doing, I didn't want to be around. Because it shines so much light on your sin. That's why. Exactly. Jim, what about Kyle?
I mean, even coming on a national radio show saying this stuff, what do you say to him? Yeah. So Kyle gets it. You know, what the secular world basically tells you is that you're addicted, you have an addiction problem due to some genetic disposition or some mental health problem. But you know, Kyle said, hey, look, I need to deal with my sin. That's what I need to deal with.
And you know, that's right out of James. It says if any of us are suffering, right, go to the elders and pray, right? And then it says right after that, confess your sins to each other and pray for each other so that you may be healed.
Mmm. Wow. Praise the Lord. Kyle, thanks for sharing, man. We're at a break.
We've got more callers. Hey, thanks for your testimony. And listen, I'm going to call everyone out there to pray for Kyle. How about that, man?
And you stay plugged into a church and keep making disciples and be discipled. Okay, brother? Thank you, sir. Y'all have a blessed day.
You too, pal. What a blessing. 86634, truth, more coming up on Truth Talk Live. What happens when addiction comes home? How does the gospel, the power of the gospel heal from all addictions? More coming up on this program.
Coming up. You're listening to the Truth Network and truthnetwork.com. How can the gospel, how does the gospel, how has the gospel brought healing to your addiction or someone in your life?
We just heard from Kyle, very transparent, called in, got stuck on some stuff. And thank God for his service, by the way. We just love those that serve. But in the battle and in the pain, even those that maybe have medical issues, it's easy to get hooked on something. The next thing you know, you're not taking it, it's taking you. And it's a substance, it's some kind of thing.
There's addiction on all kinds of things, be it sexual, be it chemical. And you deal with the whole gamut, don't you, Jim? We got some more calls, but Jim was with us with Freedom Farms, and the website's freedomfarms.org. Okay, freedomfarmministries.org. And effectively, you bring in, is it mostly men that you take in? Yeah, we have partnering programs for women that we refer to and help get them in, but we only deal with men right now.
Okay. If you have a problem, if you're struggling with something, you use your name, you just want us to pray for you, if you have someone going through something, you have an addiction situation you're dealing with, or someone you know that you love is trapped and they just are looking for a way out, and they're looking for the light, the only light that can bring them out of that darkness, we'd love to talk to you today, 866-34-TRUTH, 866-348-7884. And Jim works closely with local churches, he works closely, does biblical counseling with what they do.
You take a whole lot of acres, you take a whole bunch of cabins and bunk rooms, you take a big mess hall and you take a whole lot of trails and a whole lot of messed up people and you got Freedom Farms, and you got a lot of godly people like Jim pouring into them. And that was your story, wasn't it? It was. Okay, I want to get into your story, Marissa's been hanging on forever, a caller from Ohio listening to us on 106.5 FM, the Dayton, Ohio area. Marissa, God bless you, thanks for calling, let me give the number, 866-34-TRUTH, if you want to phone in and come on the air with us, 866-348-7884, Marissa, we are so glad you called today, welcome to Truth Talk Live. Hi, so I struggled with addiction for a long time, just alcohol, that's always been my problem, I've never smoked cigarettes before a day in my life, but at an early age, I think at the age of 13 I had my first drink. You know what, Marissa, people say that often, just alcohol, I just want to tell everybody listening, I believe alcohol is the worst, it's one of the worst substances to get addicted to. So, sorry about that. Absolutely.
Yep. No, you're fine. And I had my first kid at 16, and alcohol kind of really ruined our relationship. It wasn't for a long time that I realized how bad I had gotten, and when I did, I wanted help, and I tried numerous outlets, I tried AA, it didn't work, I went to emergency departments, I said please help me, I have this problem, and some doctors would listen, other doctors would turn me away, they didn't really, I guess, take me seriously. And I just kept going back to it because I had nobody reaching their hand out to help me, and it was really, really rough for a long time. And I started going back to church, and I tell you, the preacher there and the people at that church were just so loving and kind and non-judgmental, and I had already started working on it, but I opened up to them about the issues I was having, and they have been so supportive, and it wasn't until I got fully involved in church that I was able to make the choice of starting a medication and abuse, which has saved my life, it's not addictive, it's something that military use, when someone drinks a lot, it makes you ill if you drink. But I keep going to church and I keep reading the Bible, and it has just given me this enormous strength to just keep pushing forward.
Praise God. You know, alcohol is powerful, and I don't think anyone really understands what it can do to you. You go to a gas station, and that's all you see. You look around, there's alcohol ads everywhere, there's beer coolers everywhere, you go to a lot of restaurant service, it's just like, it's... It's everywhere.
You know, yeah, grocery stores. It seems like even the Christian community has kind of become maybe a little more welcoming. Oh yeah, it's... And I'm not out here trying to be Mr. Larry the Legalist, but Jim, I'm hearing her heart, I'm hearing her calling a radio show, her passion and the struggle, how have we gotten here? Yeah, I mean, it is such as just an accepted thing, that's what makes it even more insidious, it's everywhere, and it's just accepted. And I have people that I've worked with that will say, I was a heroin addict, but I never really struggled with alcohol, and then they leave and they say, well, I can drink like a normal person, and then they find a whole new bottom of addiction, because they have this idea about alcohol not being harmless or something. But the premise of Freedom Farms, and I know, Marissa, it sounds like God's brought you to this point in your life, and we all need to daily be at this point, by the way, is beneath the alcohol, beneath the heroin, beneath the addictive behavior, beneath the OCD, whatever that thing is that's driving a wedge in all your relationships, that you're more consumed with the sports betting, you're more consumed with be it anything, I mean, I could just name all kinds of addictive kind of things.
Once you start feeling really good about yourself, you're thinking, oh, wait a second, I'm addicted to some stuff. What is it at the heart? What is it the heart, Jim, that you try to get to at Freedom Farms, that Maria, God has worked in her life too, and what is it beneath all the things? Because we can tag in on all these, it doesn't make it easier, but what's the real issue?
Yeah, the real issue is one of two, in my opinion. When we have people that come, the first one is they need a new heart. They've never had a born again experience, they've never been transformed, so they need a new heart. And so that's an evangelistic appeal for people. But people that do have, which was what my case was, I had a new heart, but it was dysfunctioning because I did not understand sanctification.
And I love that Marissa found a church that she went and she felt not judged. And if you sit and think about it, if you've been given a new heart and been actually saved, where is there any room for judgment to other people? And so beautiful, and the problem is that there's many places, even churches, that will say, well, it's up to you. It's up to you to sanctify yourself. Jesus saved you, you're to sanctify yourself, and that's just not true. The same grace that saved you is the same grace. His power, his gospel power, his resurrection power, that sanctifies you, that grows you.
It's just justification applied in the process is sanctification, and you're not going to dig it out. I mean, yeah, the fruit of the Spirit is self-control, but it's a life of faith in him. He is the vine, we are the branches, okay?
Apart from him, you can do nothing. That's how fruit is produced. And for some reason, a lot of people try to support fruit being produced without the vine. Yeah. Okay, Marissa, you have blessed us today with your testimony. Thank you for calling in. Thank you, Marissa.
You're welcome. God bless you. You guys have a good day.
You too. Yes, and by the way, a great shout-out from her on the glory and the beauty of the local church, God's plan A. Yeah. Amen. Because we get counsel to the cows come home on this show.
We can bring in all the PhDs that are godly biblical counselors, but you need to be slugging it out and living in life with people that are bringing the best of Christ out of you, that are loving you and dealing with you and calling you at 10 o'clock at night and hanging out with you, discipling you, and in a place where you're encouraged to be—don't just be the object or don't just be the cul-de-sac, but be the dispenser that you're discipling others. We're going to go to Mrs. DJ, Roanoke, Virginia, 101.5 FM. She's calling in.
She's next on Truth Talk Live. If we get to a break, we'll come back to her. I think we're okay. We've got a couple minutes. Hey, jump on in here.
Thanks so much for calling. Okay. I'm going to give you a super brief testimony, and really what I would love to come away with is some tips, but at 1201, 1980, I went home and was on all kinds of drugs. Every other word out of my mouth was, F this, two cartons of cigarettes. I just prayed for God to come in my life and woke up the next morning, and I was completely delivered, didn't even ask. Praise God. Wow. Now, there's a danger if you don't stick with his word and get charged every day, you will fall. So I ended up, oh, I guess about unfortunately almost 20 years in the dark side of the desert until God got a hold of me and took care of that problem.
Now, here's my problem. I have been smoking cigarettes for 54 years, and they're killing me. They killed my mom.
They killed my grandpa. And I would love to get the world to focus on addictions, addictions, you know what I mean? Okay. What do you say to this young lady?
Give me some help on this. Give her some. Well, the good news is she is on her way to the eternal non-smoking section. That's the good news. But in this struggle right now, we were talking to my office just before we got on the show.
We were talking with my son-in-law Harrison about how addicting nicotine is. Yeah, we were. And you addressed that. Hey, we're going to address this when we come back. Thank you for your call and for your transparency, and praise God for what he's done in your life. Praise God. Thank you, guys.
Yes, ma'am. Hey, keep your radio on, and we'll deal this directly front and center when we come back. We'll hear a little bit about how God saved Jim sitting across from me from his addiction and God is working his life. More about Freedom Farms and more calls at 866-34-TRUTH after this. Hang on.
You're listening to the Truth Network and truthnetwork.com. Sol, you should be in this studio during the breaks, man. I tell you right now, we're lighting it up, we're encouraging people, we're growing. My text message is going great. I just posted on Instagram on my story with a little video of Jim. You can meet him there, follow me, at stuepperson, S-T-U-E-P-P-E-R-S-O-N.
Same thing with Facebook, Instagram. We just re-lit up our YouTube channel. If you're not subscribing to the Truth Talk Live podcast, the Truth Network podcast network, it's unreal. We've got all kinds of pastors, we've got all kinds of great leaders.
We've got Nikita Koloff, the Russian nightmare. We've got some great programs. Peter Rosenberger, Hope for the Caregiver, he's one of our best stand-up hosts here. What a great... Addictions, it all runs together, Jim Quigley's with us.
He is head of a great ministry called Freedom Farms, freedomfarmministries.org, a great ministry in Boone, North Carolina, a beautiful mountain area where people go for a year to get healing from their addiction. And God has set this lady free from all kinds of things she's shared with us. Go back and hear the whole story in our podcast, hear the story that others have called in, graciously called in, Marissa and Kyle, all of our callers today, we're so grateful for you. But she's still battling nicotine, cigarettes. What do you say to this lady calling from Roanoke, Virginia, Jim? What's your word to her?
Yeah, first thing, it is a tough thing. Nicotine is a... I smoked for a third of my life. We were just talking about this before the show in your office. And I got to the point to where I knew I needed to quit. It sounds like our caller knows they need to quit. You were ready.
You're ready for it. So what I did was I actually got help with a medication called Chantix. Chantix... Have you heard of that? Yeah, and I got some, fantastic. Yeah, I took that. I'll tell you, I'll tell you that in three days of taking Chantix, I no longer desired to smoke.
Okay. And it was like a miracle. It was like a miracle. It's unreal, too. They're saying, okay, well, that's something, I mean, I just, there's, but I mean, ultimately, you know, trust in the Lord too, Jim, I mean, prayer, being in a support group, you know, you've got some, it sounds like you've got some godly ladies around you who are encouraging you to.
And where the Lord was coming in is, it sounds like with her too, I don't want this to be a part of me anymore because of who I am in Christ. I don't want this, but it's got this real physical pull on me. And you know, the other paths, like you could do step down through nicotine patches, gums, lozenges. Nicotine, there's lots of studies that nicotine itself isn't that harmful to you. It's the smoke that you're bringing in, or the, interesting, or the tobacco that's cutting your lip when you're doing, you know, when you're chewing tobacco. Gum cancer, other things.
That's what's harmful to you, those chemicals, but the actual nicotine itself is, some people say you have a 50% less chance of getting Alzheimer's if you use nicotine, so. Oh, wow. Yeah. Cool. Well, can we pray for you real quick?
Mrs. DJ? Yes, and before I let you do that, what I really was wondering, if you could help me, I'm going to, there's a local church that has Celebrate Recovery. I have 10 kids in this neighborhood, six of them have already died.
The epidemic of heroin is unreal. And I'd like to be able to bring, when you talk about Jesus, especially the addicts, that's the last thing they want to hear. But I was wondering if, do you have any tips on how I could, you know, incorporate and bring him in there, because he's the only one, as far as I'm concerned, that can do it. I don't want to alienate him right out of the gate.
Yeah, sure. I wish there was a silver bullet answer. Your Christian witness and your desire and your efforts, they're enabled by God and he's got purpose in them. So I understand that not wanting to shove Jesus down the throat, but you can be a part of their life, speaking boldly about Christ and how he's changed your life.
And just tell people, hey, you know, he can change yours too. And stay at it. Be praying for him. We'll pray with you. Pray for him right now. Real quick. Pray for him right now. Oh, yes, ma'am. And one more.
This is real important. Your caregiver one, I'm a hospice nurse for 40 years, and that man is awesome. Your program is awesome, and now I'll shut up and let you bless me. You've blessed us, and just hearing your testimony and your kind words. Jim, pray for her real quick, and then we'll give some more information.
Sure. Lord, I thank you for our friend, and I thank you for everything you've done in her life. She is a vocal witness for you, and she's got a real burden for a couple things.
One, Lord, her addiction to smoking. Lord, she knows it's not good. She wants to honor you with her life. So Lord, I pray that her round of Chantix will give her that edge that she can put it down for good now, Lord. Help her with that. And also, Lord, she's got a real compassion for the kids in her neighborhood, and it's just heartbreaking to hear how out of 10, six have already died, and Lord, it's heartbreaking.
But Lord, she wants people to come to know you because she knows that's the answer. So I just pray that you would help her with her efforts. We pray this in Jesus' name. Amen. Amen. And Stu and your crew, you guys are awesome. I'm going to shut up and get off the line.
Oh, well, you call us any time. God bless you. God bless. And I want to encourage everyone listening to pray for you, too, and for sure. Jim, you would have called a show like this when you were set free, but you were a seminary-trained, written-down, born-again ministry machine that went on a major binge, and a lot of folks didn't even know you had addictions, including the pastor that you stayed in his house.
Give us—we don't have a lot of time, but give us, in a little nutshell, your testimony as a way of hearing what God's done in your life that led you to be the leader of Freedom Farms. Yeah, so 13 to 24, active, progressive drug use, started sneaking alcohol. By the time I was 24, I was an IV drug user. 24, lots had happened to me, where I found myself in secular recovery for addiction, but I also attached to my church I grew up with, which was a very conservative, intellectual-type church. Well, these two worlds were separate worlds to me, but they were producing sobriety and progress in my life. And that's when I went to Bible college to be trained to go into ministry. The problem was me trying to mix those two worlds. What I was learning in secular recovery was I can get myself sober by doing these things.
It's me. I am at the center of my destiny. I am the one in control of these things. And if you're a Christian, you have to understand that that's not how it works, right? So I fell from grace. I relapsed for five long years and found myself at 35 years old at the Freedom Farm Ministries.
I arrived here, I'll be 49 in February, so you guys do the math how long I've been there. But when I was at Freedom Farm, that's when I realized that Jesus wasn't just my savior for when I needed him for heaven. Jesus was also what I needed every single day, and I just never knew that for some reason. You can get through Bible college, I'm a testimony to it, without understanding that. That's what a testimony. And God's using you in a mighty way at freedomfarmministries.org.
Wherever you are in the country, in the world, they'll take you and of course go through the vetting process. But you've got to be willing to go. What about a guy who's just dead set against not going? He's addicted. He just won't go.
What happens? That's tough. And again- Intervention.
Yeah. You can do interventions. And there's just no one way that's going to... What I suggest to people is if you have a loved one that has an addiction and it's creating all kinds of destruction, never let them think that you don't love them by telling them.
Tell them how much you love them, acknowledge that they have a big problem, and acknowledge that you want them to get help and you want to help them get help. But you're also not going to support their lifestyle anymore. At some point, you've got to stop subsidizing it and you've got to stop thinking you're the savior or you've got to go to someone at the next level who's been trained in this. In my experience, addicts that have options are never going to take the rehab. If someone's going to pay for me to continue living like I am, then I'm not going to take another option.
Wow. I'm in a harmful... or harm reduction. Harm reduction. I'm in Seattle with my family and I see all these people openly, heroin, shooting up right in front of the cops. Right, right.
And I'm walking with my daughter like, what in the world? I'm, of course, praying for them, Lord, open a door, but also at the same time, how could this be? But the government's kind of... Our government's come along and said, hey, well, you're going to do it anyway, so here, do it in a group, right?
Yeah. I mean, it's really bleak. And basically, the secular world has all but given up on people being transformed in addiction or bleeding. So now, they're just trying to get people to stop dying and so they've implemented this idea of harm reduction.
So they want to give you clean needles and clean pipes and they want to give you testing kits to test your drugs before you use them. They want to give you government subsidized drugs to be on and it's really depressing to see. And it makes sense because they only have about a five to 10% success rate in the secular methods. And what most people don't know is that people quit on their own without any help at five to 10%. Good gracious.
Freedomfarmministries.org. Real quick, you're challenging people about the gospel. Our only hope is Jesus.
In the last 10, 15 seconds, we're out of here. What do you say to everyone out there listening? The gospel is the power of God. So don't give up on the gospels being the answer. Our hope is found in Jesus, who God raised from the dead. And that same resurrection power, Romans 8, is working in you. We serve a living God, the great I am God. Thank you, Jim, for blessing. Thank you to all the callers. We'll be back again tomorrow this time with more Truth Talk Live. We'll see you next time.
