Finding Strength Through Faith and Family: Rebuilding Life After Addiction

when we open up to him God comes in now I have hope yeah now I know I can be better that life of restoration came and we say we might know what we need but in reality is God knows what we need best well I just want to welcome everybody to another episode of rebuilding life I'm here with my friend Rico and man we're excited to sit down and talk man we've known each other for what about 13 years Yeah man so maybe as we start this podcast is focused on rebuilding life after addiction right the whole aim is once the Lord gets a hold of your life that process of rebuilding and really just putting our lives in our in his hands and man my biggest heart for people is to really help people discover their purpose right and find their purpose that's in Christ because I know that when an individual gets a hold of that yeah they tend to have a track record for longer term sobriety and freedom living in that new life so maybe just start out man by introducing yourself share a little bit of your backstory you don't have to go into the whole thing you don't want to but just a little bit of your backstory some context and then we'll we'll just see where the conversation goes yeah cool well I'll be 37 on April 16 so I'm excited to be old but in knowledge of course but no right now as you were as you were mentioning and what this podcast is about I've been witness of some of the episodes that I have watched from this podcast it is awesome to be part of it is awesome to be here it's it's the first time I'm ever in a podcast so hopefully I don't ruin it for you yeah so but I'm grateful man I think I've told you this before I'm honored and blessed to be able to be alive to be alive and witness everything that God has done ever since I came into the program like about 13 years ago and what life has been a lot of times in Ministry out of ministry in the world and apart from Christ like with Christ and apart from it there is one thing that as you were speaking contemplating and just listening to the spirit saying that it is all about our ident idty and in Christ and and before coming to the Lord and before acknowledging and saying like hey God like I need help I was broken I was hopeless I was lost and if there was one thing that can recall and remember was just to cry out at 4: in the morning after a long night of party and drinking smoking and just losing myself to fatal weight everything that I was dealing with and just contemplating so many other things but inside of me there was something that in the moment I didn't know what it was and it was just crying out for help and it was just confronting the fact that if there was a God I needed to be real for my life yeah and when those words came out of my mouth and I was able to speak in a certain way to God and say if you're real make yourself real to me let me feel you let me know who you are yeah so tell me a little bit about what led up to that past right where you're in this moment of decision you're calling out to God what was your life looking like at that point Teen Challenge right it's a substance abuse drug and alcohol program so what was what were some of the things you were battling with that had led you to this place where you felt like you didn't know who you were it was more of like at a certain age when I was young of course being pushed away from let's say being even being part of something in church and and being pushed away and at a young age it set a whole different path where I would go to church I would just sit and chill and so be it whatever nothing really special but it was more of just like letting myself go to the parties and and of course the smoking and then the drinking here and there but it became more heavy after we have a saying that is our first relationship as when you're intimate with another person with a woman and it's your first ever relationship it and you fall in love deeply with that person it can ruin it can change your life for good and I think that was part of what led to more of like the loneliness part and not being able to have what I once had and never really understanding that God had something better for me and that he was actually real yeah so there was a female in that whole party lifestyle that you had developed a deep connection with was it the lifestyle of addiction and whatnot that blew that relationship up or yeah it was literally like before we before you met the person you have a certain lifestyle where you go out you party you drink you smoke right and then when you meet this person you try to change for that person not really change for who yeah who you really want to be not in somebody else's eye but in God's eye and I think that was the definition of of seeking somebody else instead of seeking The Source which is Christ so Ashley and I are working on a course right now and I'll I'll drop the link in the description for those who are watching but we're going to be doing a relationships and Recovery course and one of the things that I remember when I met Ashley and it almost sounded rude At first she was like I'm whole without you and it's like well excuse me you need me but it was like that whole process of like if we're not confident in who we are as people first no human is going to fill that emptiness inside of us and so like one of the things that we want to cover through this relationship course we're doing this four-part course we're going to walk through what it looked like to get confident in our identity first yeah because I think sometimes we do a disservice to the woman or the person or significant other right if we not clear on who we are and we're not clear on who we want and it really is selfishness to marry somebody into that when we're lost and confused if you're already married that's a different story you sort that out and figure it out but if you're not married yet and you're just simply impatient right and you haven't figured out who you are yet figured out what you want why would we think it's a good idea to bring a family into that and because they the whole family is just going to absorb all of our confusion and all of our identity strugles so man let's talk about that whole identity piece a little bit right yeah so after all that happened of course you come to that Brokenness and the crying out for help and of course you find what you looking for which is when you ask you will receive so he put he put everything in my heart and laid the things that I ask for for me to feel for me to see and and hear and even like people to reach out to be able to help and I guess going to a church who fed me who fed me love who fed me the kindness the love the mercy the grace that that I needed and so that that moved me into say to myself like now I have hope yeah now I know I can be better and so that that life of rest restoration came and of course Teen Challenge came in and I was set apart from everything else just to my myself and God yeah what lies did you have to unpack about who you thought you were just honestly it was a lot of Pride okay a lot of Pride and being able to say like I need to just be who I am and be confident enough that if I do that if I do mess up there is somebody there to help me walk through what and I think that not having the self-confidence of who I was and then realizing because I'm doing this because I'm seeking God then now I know who I can be yeah and so I struggle with with just being having a self-esteem that it didn't matter if I was alone I was with somebody that somebody was with me that's really good and just afraid of end up alone yeah and not have somebody that actually cared yeah and that pride is a big one to break down I think that's something we're constantly fighting with as fleshly humans man Pride just it starts to creep in subtle ways but like that whole concept of God gives opposes the proud gives grace to the humble and what was that process like right like if we humble ourselves under the Lord he'll Lift us up right and what did that look like for you like how did the Lord break your pride down or how did you decide to lay your pride down maybe it's one and the same but what specifically contributed to Breaking the pride down it really happened when of course being in the program it really happened when I said I want to be different m I don't want to go back to my own ways like I don't I want to love somebody else besides myself like I want to know what that means and the caring for somebody else the being the having the attention for helping somebody else for being there for somebody else rather than myself and when you become aware of what is it that is blocking you from listening to God and you open up to him and you say look Lord here I am and I'm dealing with this and I don't want it anymore I want it I don't want to be prideful I don't want to be arrogant I want to be humble I want to do this when they ask me to do something I want to do it out of love like out of appreciation out of the mercy and Grace that you had for me and so when that happened when I open up to God it was me open up to him and saying like I'm dealing with this and I want this to be away like I want this to be gone right and so when we open up to him and we become comfortable to accept who we don't want to be right but who we rather be then God comes in and he lays that on you like he places that inside of your heart he works on your mind and allows you to hear the Holy Spirit begin to minister to you and say look now I'm going to show and when that ever when that really strong hit me was during a service with the Teen Challenge and I always did what you everybody else asked me to do but in the heart was never right in the mind I was always fighting like but why me yeah but when the god came in I was able to feel that urge and that's when I remember this clearly because I came to you and I said look Pastor just please let me clean the whole altar let me clean the whole church yeah because the spirit in that moment was working in me and was ministering to me that I needed to be humble I needed to be humble for me to be able to continue my journey continue to learn not just from you guys as Leaders but also from him because if I cannot be humble enough to listen to you guys right how can I be humble enough to listen to the most high yeah a lot of people I think man have a hard time with that understanding that like there's a process man of obedience that God and Ashley I talk about this so much man like this process of obedience to the Lord and for me as well dude it started learning how to be obedient to the leaders that God had put in front of me and and that was not an easy process cuz like what can this dude do for me I came here to know from Jesus I came here to learn from Jesus not him and and I think sometimes though man there are leaders who have abused their Authority and so especially when You' lived in the drug and alcohol lifestyle man I remember being pulled over so many times for I smell marijuana no you don't smell anything and taking advantage of the authority that they had and dealing with some of that stuff and so bringing some of those mindsets about Authority into my relationship with God and into my relationship with Godly leaders having to work through a lot of that and learn that man there was a lesson to be learned in humility and obedience to people which as you just said would open my mind to be able to hear a little more clearly from God what is it in the scripture where was it Saul right that went out and the Lord told him to obliterate everything and yet he brings back the Sheep as a sacrifice and he's like what did I tell you to do Saul he's like nothing he's like no I hear the bleeding of the sheep I hear the sound of the sheep and that's where that verse obedience is better than sacrifice Saul responds and says well I was going to sacrifice these for you God and God's like well that's not what I asked you to do yeah I asked you to destroy everything and man that's such a powerful powerful lesson so walking through those seasons of obedience the Lord's starting to work on Your Heart Makes You humble you're hearing from him he starts to restore maybe or give you a new identity a confidence in Christ so let's fast forward cuz we don't have a ton of time this evening but like now years later Teen Challenge God's done a lot in your life you're married yeah tell us about the Journey of meeting your now wife because that was a big breaking point for you back then yeah and now God has G a wife and children so talk to us about that a little bit man yeah so know that was another part that was still it was here I was like we got to get to that one it's been great marriages are never perfect but I think that when you're walking with the Lord and you're you have become into that obedience year after year as God allows us to live finding now my wife for 8 years who has given me three beautiful children 7y old and a set of twins of six years old so I can't be any more grateful to say how grateful I am to be able to now have my my wife who is also has been stepping stone for me because iron sharpens iron and we were talking about this with her two nights ago and we were saying like how can we not be better if we have each other right we're definitely going to be able to get better every day because we are irons and we sharpen each other and I'm able to humble myself even more after 8 years being able to listen to her more being able to hear her more and be aware of more of her needs than mine so there is a huge Journey that we're in but through all this married for 8 years grateful Happy and in all there is no words there is no words to describe the season that we're in now and how God has showed up in every single way in every single area in our lives and I told my wife yesterday God is more than all of us put together because if we go back to who we were we don't deserve but he says he has a plan he has a purpose and that he loves us before anything how did bringing that humility and that confidence that you had in your identity and who you were in Christ after getting things together at TC walking through that journey from your relationship experience years back to bringing the new man into your now marriage how did that shift the Dynamic when you guys met I me yeah it's it was very awkward right because when we first met I have a mentality of like God that's all I need is and going into a youth camp and praying to him praying to God and saying look I don't want to put my eyes on nobody I don't want to look at nobody I just want to get to know you more I want to experience you more and then out of the blue you end up looking taking a picture and then looking back into that picture and saying I want to know her and then months later you connect and you go to her church and preach and to the youth and you see her and you start to connect and you start to connect in so many different levels of not just the not just oh I'm interested no first is I want to know what about the one that I'm knowing God and it was that like that at first it was like talking about the Bible reading the Bible praying and just finding out her passion her desires for the Lord and then of course a time after that God places the the need to share my feelings and both of us to start sharing our feelings and then connecting in more of a relationship level of me meeting their her family more hanging out more and then finally marriage and and that's I think that was one of the best moments in my life because we say we might know what we need but in reality is God knows what we need best and I feel like from when I met her to where we at now I feel like she was the right she is the right one yeah that God already had for me yeah that's a big thing man so your role as husband right there's a lot of conversation I think people have about gender roles and biblical marriage and what the role of the husband is versus what the role of the wife is and so we know the scripture says a lot right and I heard somebody say a long time ago that a lot of men want the title but not the job description and a lot of men want the title of head of household leader in the home whatever that might be and you can dig into all the details and the scripture around that but we really break down marriage at its core like we're to love our lives as Christ loved the church yeah that means being willing to die yeah that's the heaviness of it like I'm willing to die to myself to my dreams my plans all of that and surrender my life for the sake of my wife and if my wife comes into the marriage with the same mindset yeah and we're both like in a competition and a battle to see who can out serve one another talk about the joy and that's that's what my wife is man she's a servant but like and vice versa like not that she's you out here washing my feet I me it that way if she sees us I'll get in trouble for that but but man how how have you managed to keep your pride at Bay in your marriage yeah it's it's been it's it's definitely it's definitely been different and CH and more challenging because like I have shared with my wife and just recently as 8 years of marriage seven years now eight going into eight you start to share more and the reason why we talked about iron sharpens iron is because she has been a piece that God has always used to pull out things from my life from my past even from is she vocal she yeah no yeah she gets it and she's like you got to let this go you got to do this you got to what can give me the yeah she didn't say a word she could just give me the like the whole sermon with the face and then we get home we already know what time it is like I got it okay yes I scw but yeah it's good so it's it's been like that and just recently just recently communication has always been in every marriage it has always been a stepping stone for marriages to move on and I feel like that's one of the parts that now I can happily say that I'm working every day on it I'm I'm counting on with her more I'm sharing with her more and the reason why is because since a child I never had my mom and dad together and I had my dad for so many years but away from me not really guiding me or teaching me ways so so I know she might see this so she has said it like I've been almost like your mother trying to teach you how to correct how to do this how to do that and I needed that in my life what and I really needed that and for me to like for me to now like even humble myself even more to say like she's right yeah what like she's right and as I listen to her more and as I do more of what she desires and what she wants then I'm able to even love more everything that I do yeah so it's it's it's that Mir that vehicle God is using to make even still refined areas in your life and like breaking that like showing health and breaking that in you and in your life so that like the Next Generation yeah is and they've got healthy happy mom dad restored your whole life man and it's just it's beautiful the way watch the way the Lord does that man it's interesting how our wives can pick things up in us and just call it out and Ashley always does it with such humility and Grace when she does but like when I miss the mark man she's often the first time first one to see something even if I don't see it MH she's got that sense dude about people that like I will tell her she's wrong at times until I realized that she was 100% right yeah and there's just this beauty and being able to submit to one another I'm catching up to that yeah I'm not going to say it's easy dude not there are times and it pops up and I'm like bro you're wrong and she's like okay and then the Lord ends up revealing the thing later on and I'm like I should have just listened in the first place and so on man discovering God's calling together right you guys are I know you're sorting through some of that you've been in the ministry you're figuring out next steps but and how do you guys pray through that how do y'all make decisions together about the big things of course like she says you're more driven to like or you feel like you she says you feel something and you go ahead and do it m and she's more of a like all right let's let's take a minute let's let's talk about it let's pray about it let's see what God how God leads us to do and a lot of the times we just have to speak things out speak things out and say look I feel this from the Lord let's let's pray about it and let's see what he communicates with you and let's see what he reveals to me because a lot of the times the truth of the matter is that a lot of the times we may feel a certain way but God will probably first reveal it to her before he lets me know yeah and just like recently we were going through a hardship and and all praise to God through it I was going through hard and I was getting to ask God like what is it and at the end of the day I like stopped completely and all that it was coming out of me was like thank you God and what I need yeah and what I need and the thing was what while I was going through that after we go through the hardship my wife comes to me and she says I already knew M the outcome of what you were going through yeah I just didn't want to tell you because you needed to go through that yeah so and when she started to reveal that to me when she started to speak that to me I started to understand like there is things that I may be going through that she already know and has the answer for yeah and that I know that she knows that if I start to drift out of it she's going to then use what she knows to pull me back and that's so full circle as it comes right back to that being humble enough yeah hey what do you see that I don't yeah what I'm saying and that takes humility cuz we want to be right like we want to know what I'm saying and like yeah man I hate to cut this conversation short but we're running toward the end but man it's been a good brief conversation we'll have to do this again we can sit down and talk at L cuz I feel like whenever I've never done any two three hours podcast they're normal but I feel like we could do one oh yeah for sure but for those watching man if you head to the SVTC shed the valley Teen Challenge YouTube channel Rico is going to be speaking at our freedom night service tonight so the replay will be there by the time this podcast goes live and thank you for taking the time and talking a little bit and for those watching please take a moment subscribe to the channel and again the relationships and Recovery course that Ashley and I are putting together is coming out soon I will drop the link the pre-order is already available so you can click that link in the comments and go ahead and order that it's coming out May 13th I don't want to date the podcast but that's about a month from where we're at now so thank you for watching yeah God bless have a great day