He Faced the System and Found Jesus: Rob’s Testimony

Intro: brief overview and teaser testimony

As we jump into this, maybe just have you share a brief overview of your journey or your recovery journey while you're in the recovery story. Obviously I set the stage and said that I know you do have a past. You have a history of using drugs present and on your story about cookies. If you want to hear that you've got to go check the testimony out.

That is a teaser, but man really specifically. One of the things that is a huge focus is right—Jesus-centered recovery, right? We all three believe in that; we believe that Jesus is the answer, Jesus is the only true path to freedom. Real lasting freedom—spiritual freedom—not just getting off of drugs.

Jesus-centered recovery: faith, disciplines, and daily practices

Rob, let me just start out with a question for you, man. How has your faith shaped your approach to overcoming addiction? What role has your faith really played in your recovery and then how you do life? Now when it comes to, yeah, your faith—for me that's everything.

I didn't, after I got out of prison, I went through a program similar to Teen Challenge that y'all know and I built disciplines—or they helped me build disciplines—of staying in the Word. As soon as I get up every morning, starting out my day with God, constantly being in communion and relationship within. My faith is what has kept to me; Jesus delivered me and wanted to counter, but it's my faith, my relationship with him and my time I spend in the Word and with him that's kept to me for over 13 years now.

So it's absolutely my rock. Like I've never went to a meeting in 13 years—AA or Celebrate Recovery. I'm not against all that stuff; it's just for me it's Jesus. Full-on, one-on-one relationship, intimate time with him—that's kept me this.

Something that you said, Rob, that really stuck out was your discipline. Because when we create systems we develop new habits, and so you needed a system put in place for you because you had bad systems and that created bad habits. It's so true, man, that speaks volumes. Even in my personal life today, like when it comes to me wanting to work out, nobody wants to wake up at five o'clock in the morning to hit some weights, right?

My wife and I have encouraged each other, we put in new systems into place to achieve our goals. And so this relationship that we have with Jesus isn't about achieving a goal per se, but it's about creating a system and developing a relationship which will branch off into communities with others that will hold us accountable to the systems in which we place. Discipline, firedude—that's so good. That's really good.

And in the beginning I didn't like it. I'll be honest, when I first got to the Teen Challenge, nobody wanted to have this, but I knew that, like you said, my ways and my disciplines did not work. I knew they always landed me in jail or in a prison or back in a rehab or whatever, and so I finally gave up my plans and decided that I needed to learn a new discipline and learn a new system. I just submitted to it.

When I left the house a year later I never quit, it's now a part of who I am. Yeah, that's powerful. So you would say that Rob was speaking about those systems and really developing that spiritual growth in your life and that becoming a part of who you are day in and day out.

Practical faith habits and the analogy of marriage to Christ

So what does that look like, man, on a practical level, right? How do you maintain your faith? How do you keep your relationship and your passion with Jesus like on fire to the point where it holds you? You said earlier you opened up and you said that it's Jesus for me, right? And so practically speaking for maybe the new Christian or somebody that might come across that still they're trying to figure this faith thing out after addiction—what does that look like practically speaking for you? What is your faith? How does that play out in your day-to-day life?

First and foremost, my wife knows—I say this all the time—I have a wedding ring on that I wear all the time, but my wife knows that I'm literally married to Christ first. He is my first love and I know that sounds weird for guys that we're the bride of Christ, but unless he's that first passionate love I'm not the husband I need to be, the dad I need to be. I'm not sober, I'm not anything. So for me it's that commitment; just like a marriage, like I committed to my wife and I mean it.

I don't cheat on her. I don't run around on her, you know what I mean? And so I'm committed to him first, and whether I feel like it or not I'm committed; whether circumstances look like it or not, I'm committed. And so my day and it's not a burden—I want to be because I'm fully in love with him and know that he's fully in love with me. 1 John 4:19, "We love because he first loved us." Yeah, that's good—that's the key for me.

I was just sharing and preaching the other Sunday; I remember he took me back to remembering that look that I had in prison like I just got a glimpse of him and got a glimpse of his eyes. In that moment everything went away and I met him and I was completely changed and I've never forgotten that look. There's times I need to remind myself of it and I have to think about it and it wrecks me during worship or something like that.

The way that he pursues us and comes after us—if we turn that in and catch his gaze to where we're gazing back and that becomes our focus in life—then the world doesn't so easily pull us away. But it has to be that inward commitment to like, I'm married to this thing. You know Paul said "I have been crucified with Christ" in Galatians 2:20—it is no longer I who live but Christ who lives in me. It has to be a wanting desire to do that, not a forceful "okay I got to get rid of everything," but "I'm fully in love with him," and that's what keeps me loving everybody else.

Developing commitment: being teachable and trusting leadership at Teen Challenge

You touched on something, man—you touched on a lot right there. You can really unpack this thing and I want to stay on track. But you talked about commitment. For people that are listening, Rob, they're stepping out of their addiction or they're stepping out of a program and they've encountered Christ. Now would it be fair to say that you didn't have that level of commitment right away? Like how did you develop that over time?

That's a good question. I had no idea what commitment meant. I was married for 10 years and I didn't really cheat on my wife or anything like that, but it definitely was not a genuine loyal committing thing where I love like Christ loves the church and I never went to church in my life. So I didn't understand God's love and I didn't really understand what commitment meant. So no, it wasn't like bam I got it.

But one thing I did do was I remember looking at the pastor in that program that ran the program, Pastor Wayne. I remember the first day I went there he took us to his house and it was like Easter time, so we had a big Easter Sunday and everybody was there. I remember seeing all his family and his grandkids and there was like 60, 70 people in his house and everybody was happy and joyful and I was like, I want that.

So whatever it takes to get there I'm gonna do it. Even though I didn't understand commitment and I didn't understand what this walk with Christ means, I threw out everything I wanted to do and I was gonna learn and discipline myself. That's when I just told the pastor whatever he asked me to do I'm gonna do it. I don't care—I'm in it.

I said something silly—if he asked me to stand in the closet upside down on a gallon of peanut butter I'm gonna do that because he's figured something out that I don't have. So whatever you tell me to do I'm gonna listen. I think it's just being teachable to learn that from people who are already walking that out.

Was there ever a time, Rob, you struggled like receiving the love of Christ? You mentioned just now that you saw what the other people had—did that make it easier for you? Because I know some people, and we chatted about this a few weeks ago, about forgiveness and dealing with shame of our past decisions and not really grasping the love of God for us and not feeling worthy of it because we made a lot of mistakes in our past. Was that ever something you struggled with—really acknowledging God's grace? Did you deal with shame during this process of working out your salvation with fear and trembling if you will?

Absolutely. That's always one of the hardest things for all of us, right? We can forgive other people easier than we can let go of the things we did. But it's one thing that my pastor always told me—he just kept pointing me to the Word. He explained that in 2 Corinthians it talks about "his weapons are mighty to pull him down the strongholds of anything that exalts itself above the knowledge of God," and that's what he would explain to me.

You have to know that this Word is absolute truth and everything else is not. So you have to pull down the things you believed and get rid of that and replace it with the Word. I would just get in there—this is where you got to transform your mind, renew your mind, not be conformed to the world but transformed by the Word.

Cancelling the record, renewing the mind, and learning to believe Scripture

I would go to Colossians—Colossians 2:13, I think—and it talks about how he cancelled out every legal violation we had on our record and the old arrest warrant that stood to indict us. He erased it, all our sins, all our stains, so he deleted it and it can never be retrieved. Everything we once were was placed into the cross and they were permanently, as a public display, cancellation.

I would read that and think, okay, I've got to believe that. If I have faith in him, I'm going to believe 2 Corinthians 5:17 that old things pass away and all things become new, that I'm really born again. It took time, but whenever those thoughts would come up I would go to those verses and that's what I would reprogram my mind to know and believe.

You're an individual that God basically ordained in your life, right? He placed this person strategically; this was all planned with God the Alpha and the Omega. Amen. He knew that this man would be able to reach you through his love and compassion towards you. Just like you mentioned in 1 John 4:19, "We love because he first loved us." God's love through this individual caused you to be able to receive.

You said, "I'm going to trust the process." I think for many individuals when it comes to addiction they're unable to trust the process because they want instant gratification. They want instant results, they want instant transformation. But God is dealing with us on his time, and so we trust as Matthew tells us when it says "my yoke is easy my burden is light."

So we have to learn to be like the younger ox and take the yoke around our neck and follow the lead of the individual that's leading us. That's so hard because in addiction we don't trust—you know, we don't trust ourselves, we don't trust others. If you pull that back a little bit, how did you learn to trust this man that you didn't know? Right, like how did you just trust God but now you're trusting man too?

Trusting others: finding supportive relationships and spotting authentic leadership

That's a big step of faith in and of itself. So you know what I mean, and for you to be able to walk down this journey and have commitment to him and commitment to God at the same time after coming out of prison and having wardens and whoever in the cells like "need some cookies, eating cookies," come on. It's crazy. But I think about this and it's so important that we touch on this.

When we surrender, ultimately, if you could just touch it—well, I had to come with grips. It's just like I said, what I told myself was, okay, if all of us in this situation—people going through this would be honest like the choices they made, the decisions they made, the people that they trusted—landed them where they were, landed me in prison. So it's to take that moment with this man and say when I got there I just prayed to God and I said, God, I trust you.

You've placed me here because I asked for a faith-based program. I actually pushed my parole back six more months to get into a faith-based program. I wouldn't get out unless I was going somewhere. You would have to know the whole story: I should have went to Charleston, West Virginia—I was planning on getting out of there and then that guy got drastically sick and they closed the program down. I had to wait a couple more months and then the guy from Levels came, so it was definitely a God-ordained right place for me to go.

I knew the Lord brought me closer to my kids. Charleston was five hours for my kids and this place was an hour. I remember he was very blunt, direct, and in-your-face—kind of got in my face. I needed that because I wouldn't manipulate anything other than that. There was nothing you could get around him, and he would be right here in your face and up in your grill as soon as you broke some kind of rule or something.

He had a form of understanding of the Word and family and everything, and I just said I'm just gonna trust it because my decision making is horrible. I trusted all of this before and it had gotten me nowhere. I didn't really have anything else to lose—that's where I was at. I was coming out of prison, all my family left me, nobody wanted anything to do with me; I'm completely nowhere and this guy doesn't even know me and he picked me up from prison, he's giving me a place to live and he's willing to pour into me. So I'm gonna trust that.

Let me lead that into the next question: what advice would you give to somebody based off your experience? You had this gentleman that poured into your life; you trusted him. What advice would you give someone trying to build some supportive relationships like that? You were blessed, right? I don't want to call you lucky—God ordered your path and put the right person in your path. Some people it's difficult; they don't know who to trust. They don't have the benefit of a structured program that they've been sent to, so they don't know there are trustworthy people around.

I had that relationship for a while and then I didn't have it anymore, so then I had to do that. I can only tell you what I really started watching for because there's a whole lot of Christians out there that really don't know how to love people. I'm just being honest. They can quote a bunch of scripture and preach really good and give motivational speeches, but when it comes to loving somebody that's a mess, it's few and far between the people that genuinely want to just love people.

I started looking not just for the spiritual leader and what he can preach or what he can do, but I started watching for what his disciples look like—what his spiritual sons and daughters look like. When I started seeing that you see what you reproduce. Watch the leadership in the congregation, watch the whole focus of where everybody's going. I'm not saying every church has to be an outreach church, but there should be some kind of outreach to the community—loving the homeless and doing some kind of outreach, not just inward in the church.

For an addict and somebody coming out they need that type of environment where people are going to come alongside them and help them. So I would say, people coming out of prison, they can read people very well anyway—you're not gonna fool most of these guys into some fake Christianity "I got it all together" thing. I would just say look for the ones that have people around them that are doing it and they're building up sons and daughters, not just preaching really good if that makes sense.

Multiple mentors, being a good follower, and the importance of teachability

I've actually heard a pastor say this: he stepped away from a church and went to another church and the first thing he looked at was growth. I think it was David Platt that actually said this—his model was looking at growth and rather than looking at growth he scaled everything back and looked at, okay, let me look at the pastor's kids, let me look at the church members—where are they in their faith? Yeah, that's a lot.

I know for myself personally when I was in my addiction I had the spirit of discernment even before I was saying it. I could only smell a fraud—you can see that. When I was in Teen Challenge that was my issue. I read the Bible and then I saw the people and I was like this isn't what scripture is declaring. I had a really big issue with even opening up to people that professed to be of the faith. Come to find out six months into my program, staff members are smoking crack and I'm like, yo, what's going on here? You guys supposed to be leading me and where's the walking? I was like, my mom told me throughout the whole process keep your eyes focused on Jesus. Stop looking at them.

Yeah, keep your eyes on Jesus. When we put hope in man we become discouraged, but when we put hope in God he will give us the strength to take from man what he desires us to take and then move on. I think often we spend too much time and energy on the negative of an individual but we never see the person for how they are shaping you. Often God will put people in your life to shape your character for where he's taking you next. It might not be the way we would expect it to be.

We have this idea that we're going to find one mentor in our lives—the one Elijah who is going to be the Elijah to our lives. The reality is that people who are actively growth-minded have multiple mentors. I have a friend that I know has got their finances squared away and I'm talking to them about my money. I have friends that are really good at outreach and evangelism like you Rob Reynolds—I know you're out on the streets hitting it—so I'm going to call you for advice in that area. I have friends over here doing other things and so sometimes we put our expectation for one man to be perfect and give us everything we need.

That's the beauty of the body—we're all different parts and we all come together. When we learn a hand over here we learn how to move like this hand, then we come over here for learning what our foot needs to do. There's that idea of going to different places but also putting ourselves around people that have integrity. Paul said "follow me as I follow Christ." I want a leader that's confident enough to say that to me—don't just point to Jesus; be confident in your faith enough to say "follow me as I follow Christ," and in order to say that you have to have a life worth following.

As former addicts, we're the people that are able to sniff that out. I'm not blind; I'm still on alert. I'm watching stuff, I'm seeing things that people don't see. I'm used to being manipulated. I've run recovery programs for years so I know when somebody's trying to pull a wool over my eyes. I may never let them know that I know, but I'm certainly aware of it and I'll pull back at times. I want people in my life that I know can look at me and say, "Follow me as I follow Christ."

There's a book I read called In Search of Timothy—really good book. We talk about good leaders, but I don't know, the Lord just wants me to say this: it's important to be a good follower. Look at Jesus's life—he couldn't have asked for a better leader, right? Out of everybody he ministered to there were only 120 people that showed up at the upper room. Now that is not bad leadership—it's bad fellowship, you know what I mean?

My friend Jeremy down in Texas, who has a church, says "look for people that are FAT people"—that's the acronym: faithful, available, teachable. If we're going to look for that leader make sure that we are also giving that person and once we get some trust give that person permission to really call us on our junk. Don't co-sign our feelings; follow them rightly like he's saying. If somebody's willing to say "follow me as I follow Christ," then really follow and listen to their advice. Lots of times we don't want to do that—we don't want to be teachable, we don't want to open up in the areas that they might hit on and then we'll dismiss people because they're in our junk. We need the people in our junk.

Judas Smith preached a few weeks ago and said the Bible talks about we don't have many teachers—we have a lot of teachers but we don't have a lot of fathers. He said, could it be we don't have a lot of fathers because we don't have a lot of sons? In the same vein, we don't have a lot of men and women who are willing to submit underneath of a spiritual father and be teachable. At times there comes a point where we've got to be willing to remain teachable in every season of our life no matter how far we get.

You guys are echoing Romans 13 right because if we can't submit to man how do we expect to submit to God? That's God's order and so we have to understand his order. But as former addicts, submitting to authority isn't our sweet spot. There's a lot of mistrust of authority and a lot of that has placed off of the stuff that we did.

Authority, trauma, renewing the mind, and practical spiritual warfare

Can we go in that vein a little bit? Let's talk about that because that's a really good point you brought up. I got a great—about the struggle with authority. So what do you guys think? I just had this talk at Jail Sunday and I had this talk with a few of the guys. You have to throw off that mentality. If you hold on to the cops and the officers and everybody's the bad guys and they're out for you, it's just a victim mentality.

If you don't throw that off you'll never really advance in your relationship with the Lord because you're going to look at every authority figure like that. That's part of where you have to transform your mind. You have to realize that mentality is a criminal mindset that you need to get rid of because most cops and most people with a job are just doing their job. For me, and probably for Justin, we put ourselves in those situations for them to actually be there. Now are there ones that act poorly? Yes, but ultimately the authority—we wouldn't have had a problem with authority if we weren't breaking the law.

From the beginning that's one of the first things we got to really work on. How I worked on it was I would go back after I finished the program, graduated, and I started working on going back to Martinsburg where I was from. I would purposely go to the jail or go find the police officers if I saw one out. I would stop and get out of my car—someone probably thought I was crazy at first because they arrested me several times—but I would go over and thank them.

If it wasn't for the ones that arrested me I would have never found Teen Challenge. I would share my story with them and every one of them appreciated it. They were glad to hear the success stories afterwards. I would tell them I respect you and I honor what you do; it takes a lot to risk your life to do that for little pay. I'm sorry that I was the way I was. Make amends everywhere I go, even different states—every cop I run into I say hi so that I can break that mindset open. It's a good way to start.

I had a car full of students one time back at Teen Challenge; I was a few years in the program, still relatively young, and we got pulled over. The cop came up and the first thing he said was "I smell marijuana." I'm a pastor and drug rehab director; there's no marijuana in this car. He wanted to search the car and it caused me—at this point I'm just having fun with the students—so go ahead, officer, we'd love to have you search the car. I got these guys, three or four of them fresh in the program, and I let the police officer search the car and do the whole thing. They were freaking out.

Before we pulled off I handed the officer one of our Teen Challenge cards at the time and said, "I run a drug rehab program. All these guys are former addicts getting their lives back together. If we can ever be of any assistance to you, give them a call." The look on his face was priceless because number one, I could have told him not to search the car or I could have said no, but I just wanted to have fun with the students because they're freaking out. That carried over.

We carry some of that authority struggle into our authority with other people within the church and sometimes that toxicity in our wrong mindsets carries over. Have you struggled with that, Rob? I know it's even tough as a Black man sometimes. There's ways in which you can be treated in your job or workplace and it adds to that. I struggled with this for a long time because people would have this label—you're this individual—and then on top of that I had a drug, robbery past. I've somewhat created it, but I was also born into society and culture where this was just the norm for people and it was unfortunate for me.

At the same time I've learned to accept—and this is going full circle about following—that I've learned to look at other individuals and how they were able to perceive others through a lens and light as God saw them, not as they saw them. Sometimes it's about looking beyond the surface, as Peter would say, "love covers a multitude." It's looking beyond the surface and seeing the heart—what's the potential. I have people in my life now that would draw out the gifting and potential like Moses was drawn out of the water.

For me, learning how to submit, learning how to surrender the negative thoughts and the stories I created in my own mind took allowing God to heal some of my inner wounds. Often it's not the authority or the people—it's the wounds and the familiar spirits and trauma that cause us to have flashbacks. This leads people into repetitive addiction. I discovered after getting out of the program that when I would get angry or frustrated I would turn to pornography and masturbation, but I couldn't connect the two.

I couldn't connect why I was feeling this way—why somebody in authority or a relationship would get me all out of sorts and rather than process it I'd resort to something. God began to deal with my inner wounds and so sometimes we don't want to acknowledge those things, but it takes the community, submitting under somebody else, and having somebody say the hard truth to you. If we don't process that right then we'll run to something because of the way we feel about that. I did the same thing—after being free from drugs and alcohol, a woman walked away in the last 30 days and it pressed me. I thought we were ready to get married and she walked away; on the outside I looked fine, but on the inside I was trying to process all of that and I ran to pornography and other women for months. That was another issue I learned.

Trauma comes up over and over—it shows we have inner wounds we haven't dealt with so we turn to addiction-centered things to try to satisfy that hurt. If we're not careful about healing those wounds and allowing the mind to be transformed, that may not be a relapse with a substance, but we relapse with something else. We fall back into some sort of sin in order to deal with that pain. Transforming the mind part is so critical.

Is there anything you guys have done to help work on that—to retrain your brain and heal the trauma first and then renew the mind? Paul talks about not being conformed to the patterns of this world but being transformed by the renewing of your mind. What does that process look like for you, Robert, in transforming your mind and really getting your mind to where you're starting to think differently and react differently to stressful situations?

I said earlier, 2 Corinthians only talks about pulling down strongholds. That's the first thing. Addiction—we talk about triggers, reaction, things we have to know and identify. I like to think of it as: what's your carrot? What carrot does the enemy dangle in front of you? Is it porn, drugs, whatever it is that starts that process? You better figure it out because the enemy is gonna keep nailing it and throwing it in front of you until you can figure out how to transform your mind to what the Word is.

That's the key for me and everybody used to say to me that I spiritualize everything. It's only because I know how to transform my mind. Sometimes even my wife is like, "I don't need to hear the right thing right now to stay the husband," but as a husband I want to point you to the Word. I know I need to get better on the other side too, but it's the only thing. Jesus in the wilderness—his only response was the Word.

If we don't learn how to address the carrot or address our situation and find what in the Word goes against it and speaks truth, then we're not going to pull down what we used to think and put in the truth. Then the enemy will keep knocking and knocking. Transforming your mind is not just scripture memorization—even though that's good—it's not preaching a good sermon. It's literally doing the work; being doers of the Word, not just hearers.

You have to find it from an intimate relationship with him. If porn is your carrot you have to say, "God, the enemy keeps coming at me with this—where in your Word can I battle this? Where do I need to go?" Find the scripture that speaks to your struggle and get there. It is different for everybody—whatever scripture or thing that hits you to deal with that. You mentioned earlier, Robert, looking yourself to him—that's twofold. I think Matthew 11 where he says "Come to me all who are weary and heavy laden and I will give you rest"—there's two types of rest.

There's rest that comes when you give him your burdens and lay them down, and there's rest when you learn from him which gives rest for your soul—your mind and emotions. How do you control your mind when your emotions are yoking to him? Learn from the Word and figure out how to use the Word as your spiritual warfare—it's your weapon. Jesus repeated the Word with "It is written."

When I went to get my kids back my pastor said, "Listen, you're gonna have to stand on the Word of God." Proverbs 3:5-6 was my life: trust in the Lord with all your heart and lean not on your own understanding; acknowledge him and he will direct your path. He said stand on the Word. I was going to a court date where everybody was against me—every card was stacked. I wrote scriptures on pieces of paper and I stuck them in the bottom of my shoes and I literally stood on the Word of God and said, I'm not gonna fight these battles because the Lord told me don't fight.

She was an addict too and she was—don't have, but I never brought that up. She defamed my character; God said don't do that, trust me. I stood on the Word of God and I went to court and I ended up with visitation, my kids' lawyer fired her, and it went my way. I learned early on that whatever you have to do to really do the Word, to receive the Word and put it into practice in your life—not just learn it up here as head knowledge—you have to put it into action.

We have to learn how to act it out—especially men, we learn better with hands-on stuff. You can read a book on how to put an engine together and not be able to do it, but show me two or three times and I can do it. We have to learn how to put the Word into action in order to overcome—that helps transform the mind.

Surrender, journaling, adoption, and testimony of transformation

I like to add to this: for me, just recently the Lord kept repeating the word "surrender." Even in everything you're saying it's an act of surrender. You look at Jesus in the garden—he surrendered. You look at Paul in Philippians 3—he surrendered everything he knew and gravitated toward God because all that knowledge he had was nothing compared to the surpassing power of knowing Christ. For me I've really been journaling and writing down the thoughts and lies I've been holding onto inwardly and releasing them outwardly.

It's a form of prayer but yet journaling and I'm allowing myself to see the power in surrendering these things and giving them to God. I write, "God, this is a true struggle for me right now and I need you to come in." It's a burden, there's challenge, I'm stretched, perplexed in many ways, but as I release it there's a level of freedom. I want people listening to understand this: when you give up what you want control of and give it to God that's when you get your breakthrough.

Don't get your breakthrough by holding onto your pain—you get your breakthrough by releasing your pain. Jesus in Gethsemane was in complete agony and he released his pain, saying "Father, nevertheless not my will but yours be done." There's so much that happened in that moment. Transformation is application, but application can never happen unless you're like Paul—because in order to get addition you need subtraction. God subtracts some things so he can add others.

I've seen so much breakthrough in my life recently, Rob. Just hearing your story, man—your story has been a big act of surrender. What an amazing testimony to know that hope is alive and you're rebuilding your life—you’re an evangelist now, a father, a husband. If somebody listening right now says, "All that's just Rob, that's not for me, that's not possible," what would you tell them?

It's absolutely possible. He did it for me; he can do it for everybody. Everybody listening or anybody not listening—like I was sitting in a prison with nobody at all that wanted me. Not one person left in my life. I didn't even really want them. I went to meet Jesus in a food line—not even wholeheartedly; I was just done with my life. I was finally at that point of being done and didn't know what to do or how to fix it.

There's no way, 13 years later, understanding and transforming my mind—I've adopted two kids. I have all kinds of felonies and misdemeanors; that's almost impossible, but the word "born again" I don't think people really grab it. I promise you I've adopted two kids—that's a choice, not a birth thing—you choose to do that and the spirit of adoption for me is that God chose me and that makes me proud. He chooses everyone; he wishes none to perish, so nobody's exempt and nobody's too far gone. There's nobody he doesn't want to save; he is pursuing everyone as a child and he's looking for one that'll look back at him for a moment and realize you're his.

That's all it took for me in prison—that one look. I felt wanted and loved. I pursued it for 13 years. There's no way that he wouldn't do that for everybody out there. If you could really believe that, no matter how bad you are right now or how addicted, if in one moment you would just believe—like I did in prison—that he's real, believe in him, put your trust in him, and fully believe that you belong to a different family, that all your life gets erased and you get a whole new born-again person to learn how to transform your mind—it's amazing. There's not one person out there he wouldn't do it for.

You none of us are special. You had me shed a tear but I had to fight it and I couldn't fight it. You talk about good action, man—it's just we're walking through that now. We first brought this little girl home; she had all these health issues and it was just a battle to figure that out. We're taking all of that on and we love her and God's been so faithful, but I was struggling with it. I was walking around my yard one day praying and the Lord said, "I adopted you with all your issues."

That's when I made the decision that if this opportunity comes up I'm signing the papers—no questions asked. Because in our worst that's what he chose to call out to us, and I think we get so—this deliverance process is a process of discipleship. We grow; there's a process. We're children before the Father and he's helping us mature. We're growing from milk to meat and working the issues out.

Salvation is instantaneous but the sanctification process takes time. We want instant gratification and we want everything to be fixed now, but we've talked about trust, walking with God, working our salvation out in fear and trembling, and entrusting the process. That's the difference—being set apart for his purpose; the hardest stone becomes soft and is molded into his image. We have to be like children and trust the process and know the Father has the best for us.

Okay, has he fully adopted her yet? Not yet—we're about two months away from that. The moment that the papers are signed, she has the same exact rights as your other kids—the same exact rights. We have to break the mindset too; we have four rights in the kingdom. Just like Jesus, when you're adopted you get full rights. If you really understood what adoption and righteousness mean, you could battle the guilt and shame.

Closing, contact information, and final encouragement

Men and fellows, I don't know where to go from here. I appreciate Rob—Rob Reynolds—he got me the keys; I'm gonna go inside. Rob, how can people connect with you? Which Rob—what Rob? Rob Reynolds? How can people connect with you? I'd like to connect with you. Where do you live at now?

You say this guy's in California. I need to come down there and hit the streets—I'd have a blast. It's beautiful here in sunny Oceanside. On Facebook it's just Rob Reynolds now. I don't do Freedom House anymore so I got rid of that thing on my name. Anybody can get on here; if you want my phone number you can put my phone number on there—I don't mind. I'm going out there; anybody struggling or want to help one-on-one, gardens are gladly.

It's three or four six five zero two eight five two—you gladly get a hold of me and I'll connect with you. If there's any possible way I can talk and help anybody understand some of this I think what you hit on with adoption is key to understand. Until you really understand what righteousness and adoption really means, it's hard to battle that guilt and shame. But I gladly will in any way possible.

Rob, I appreciate that man. Rob basically lives as a missionary—he is all in, all faith, all trust and I admire that. Since I met you we randomly connected—somebody connected us, I don't remember who. Somebody connected Dale or Don, and we've connected man and you've been genuine—you are who you are and I really appreciate that out of you and your heart for people. It shines through no matter where they're at or what they're dealing with in life.

Man keep up the good fight of faith and thank you for jumping in on the show tonight and just encouraging us. Thanks Rob. Before we wrap up—no man, yeah just thank you, dude. Thank you to all those listening and those that continue to support us. We want to reach many people—this isn't just for you. Share the gospel, share the good news, share this with a family member or friend, let them listen and remind them that they're loved and that God wants to adopt them into his kingdom.

We thank you for all your support. Share—just will add the links below. Do that thing. Awesome. We all have a good night. You.