Restored Spirit
We want to focus on Jesus solely, and how to turn one's life around. Our variable topics are Christian-based, but concentrating on struggles such as substance abuse and mental struggles.
Restored Spirit
Untitled Episode
Jeff Sanders and Jason McEvans, co-hosts of Restored Spirit
Now you can just start those. We can edit the sound On three. You guys ready Yep Speeches. Whatever you got going on Yep One. I can edit it too. We ain't got to start on one, two, three, just whenever you get them. Yeah, I'll start out, okay, and this one's going right here already. I feel like this mic's in my way and let's make sure it's on video, not.
Speaker 2:Can you see that enough?
Speaker 1:Yeah, and you don't have to read off of it. We're good. Welcome to our first podcast episode of Restored Spirit. We're bringing this podcast to you from our home church, Fellowship Full Gospel, in Decatur, Arkansas. In our first episode, we'd like to introduce ourselves. We'd like to give you our purpose for this podcast and we'd like to give you our testimonies of our Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ, and what he's done for us and how he's rescued our souls. My name is Jeff Sanders and this is my brother in Christ, Jason McEvans.
Speaker 2:Morning. This is Jason McEvans Morning. This is Jason McEvans. I want to give the purpose and the reason behind this podcast. The ultimate purpose of this is to be able to point people to Jesus. All we're trying to do is build his kingdom. We're purpose-driven, kingdom-driven, oh it's still going.
Speaker 1:Oh, it is. Okay, yeah let's just start over. We can just let it run.
Speaker 1:I can edit it I saw that no it's trying to download an update and it says it can't download. Okay, yeah, so we probably need to not look at this. I wonder if I can put it in front of us a little bit. All right, you ready to start over again? Yeah, all right, and so we probably don't need to say good morning or good evening, because it may not be morning or evening wherever those people are. Okay, all right, I'm going to start over again. Welcome to our first episode of Restored Spirit. We're bringing this podcast to you from our home church, fellowship Full Gospel in Decatur, arkansas.
Speaker 2:All right here we go.
Speaker 1:Welcome to our first episode of Restored Spirit. We're bringing you this podcast from our home church, fellowship Full Gospel, out of Decatur, arkansas, for our first episode. We'd like to give you our purpose for this podcast. We'd like to give you our testimonies of what our Lord and Savior, jesus Christ, has done for us and how he has rescued our souls. We'd like to introduce ourselves, and my name is Jeff Sanders, and this is my brother in Christ, jason McEvans.
Speaker 2:Yeah, this is Jason, coming to you from Decatur. I wanted to say the reason that we're doing this podcast is to point people to the Lord, jesus Christ, to be able to present Christian challenges and facing adversity in a Christian walk and being a man living for God and ultimately just pointing people to the Lord, building a kingdom, kingdom-minded, being purpose-driven. I'll go into my testimony a little bit. I have a history in substance abuse. I've been to prison.
Speaker 2:Five years ago the Lord come into my life, filled me with the Holy Ghost and just changed everything. Since then we've been on this path and on this track to working for the Lord and every aspect that we do. He's been so good to us in all the things that he's done for us and through this podcast we will go in deep dives into this stuff, a lot deeper than we will today. We just wanted to introduce ourselves, but he took me from prison to prosperity and I'm just thankful to him. He's good to us and all I've got is a story to tell and that's all I can do is present myself and hopefully somebody will get something from it and be able to change their life and point their lives in the direction of Jesus Christ, I'm going to swing it back over to Jeff and let him give his testimony, and it's good to have you.
Speaker 1:So for me, I was born into a—not to blame my parents for anything, but I was born into a broken home and I was adopted by my grandparents and and as I grew older, I went back to live with my mother a single mother and, and my mother you know she was an alcoholic and uh, and lots of things that that I grew up with. You know, I got to witness lots of drug addiction, lots of alcohol, lots of, uh, you know, mental abuse more than anything, and then what I consider that I consider that a generational curse. You know so many people these days that get raised into these situations, where, where, where, we inherit these generational curses and that's and that's one thing that I inherited. And as I grew up into a to a, you know a teen and a young man, you know that's a lot of of how I carried myself, that was the character that I lived off of, and so I went into life. And a young man, you know that's a lot of how I carried myself, that was the character that I lived off of, and so I went into life and a lot of drinking, more than anything, a lot of drinking, a lot of drinking and driving, and I had car accidents, and I had a really bad car accident in 1995.
Speaker 1:And there were three of us in the vehicle, and all three of us should have died in the vehicle, and somehow we were miraculously saved. We all had injuries but we survived, we didn't die. And all through my life I wondered you know, why did God pull me from that wreckage? And this is only the one time that God has intervened in my life and saved me. But God pulled me from the wreckage of that vehicle, pulled all three of us out of there, and so from that point on I knew that there was a purpose in my life, there was a reason for him to pull us through all that, and so that wasn't all. So I learned a little bit of a lesson and I kept on going down that path, because us as human beings, you know, we're bound to step in the way of what God's trying to do, and that's what I did.
Speaker 1:I stepped in the way my whole entire life and, and it took me all the way until I was uh, till I was in my mid-30s, and and I found myself at a point to where, before I would go to work in the mornings, I would go to my refrigerator and I would open the refrigerator and I would count how many beers were in the refrigerator and I would know exactly how many beer I had to have when I got home from work to get me through the night. I knew how many beer I had to have to keep me from getting behind the wheel and driving to the store and buying more alcohol. And it got to a point to where it was so bad, to that point that I would drink and I would go to bed and lots of times I would pray, I would pray to God and I would lay in bed and cry and I would pray to God. I'd pray for a woman that went to church and a woman that could help me find my way back to the Lord, because somehow deep inside I knew that that was the key to my salvation was for me to get back into church. And so, within a couple weeks of me doing all these prayings and stuff, a guy that I worked with came to me and he set me up on a blind date, and the blind date that I went on ended up being my wife, wendy, and we got married and we prayed for a child and we were blessed with a child and we had our son Dylan, and so God answered all those prayers for me right there. I mean he answered everything and then so during that time, in that 17 years since I've been married to her and I've been in church, I've been dedicated to the Lord and you know it's not an easy path. It's not something that you just snap your fingers and you don't just jump into God like that. I mean, he'll save you and he'll pull you through everything. But you know we have to do our own work to get us there too, you know, and so I believe that you know.
Speaker 1:Recently, just about six months ago, I was in Atlanta and I was driving through Atlanta, I was stuck in traffic and I still had so much on my mind, so much weighing on me, you know, where I felt like there was something keeping me. There was just something keeping me from accepting Jesus and understanding the whole purpose of salvation. As I sat in that car, I was stuck in traffic, like I said, and I was praying, and something just came over me, you know, and just tears welled up in my eyes and I just fell apart, right there in the car, right in front of anybody who wanted to see me and I cried, and as soon as I got home the next Sunday at church, I testified to my church and I told them what happened and I gave a big testimony and I told my pastor that I wanted to be baptized. And so ever since that point six months ago, I've just been pouring myself into the Lord as much as I can and just praying that he'll just continue to move in my life, because now I know the purpose of my life, I know why he pulled me through those wreckages, I know why he rescued me from the drugs, from the alcohol, from the physical and mental abuse that I grew up with, and so one thing that we want to do with this podcast is there's so many people that deal with those same issues, the people that deal with the mental struggles and the abuse, and people that have the generational curses that they may not understand.
Speaker 1:And we just want to be a testimony for those people. Because because there's there's 12-step programs and and there's programs to help people get sober and to overcome these things. But if we don't accept jesus into our life, if we don't induce jesus into our life, he's, he's the one that's going to totally bring us through and bring us to the other side, and so our goal here is is to to help people find their Lord and Savior, and through their Lord and Savior they will see what we found and then they can be saved as well.
Speaker 2:Yeah, and you know, I know we're doing our testimonies here, but I've got a couple questions I want to ask about your history, my history, and what your opinion is. You know, I, I too, have a similar story with my wife and and made a deal with the lord before the day before I met my wife and I was on drugs and drinking and all that and I met my wife. It's almost 11 years now and man, I just I look at how crucial and how important those helpmates are and you know the bible talks about it. It in Genesis about God didn't see it fit to be man should spend life alone, that he gave him a helpmate, you know, and and that you know I was able to experience, uh, I was raised in church and I was able to experience a, uh, true love. I, I was exposed to that true love that Jesus gives us through my wife. I saw it through my wife in such an amazing way. It just blows my mind to think back on it, you know, and how important do you think that that is the women on our lives? I don't think that I could function quite to the caliber that I do without that, that silent partner sitting in the back of my head and living in the back of my life doing these things that you know, uh, our pastor Randy, he always talks about, uh, our wives and how important they are and how they're normally always right.
Speaker 2:Yeah, you know, in in a struggle as a man, we we get into a place to where we think that we're the we're the head honcho and everything goes through us and we got to call the shots. But in reality, the women are a lot smarter when it comes to certain things. You know, and they were praying when we weren't. They were praying when we weren't. They were praying when we was on drugs and out there drinking and doing crazy stuff. You know they were holding the backbone behind the spiritual, uh life that we had, our future and our destiny. And so my question is how important do you think the women are in our lives and how, how, how do you think that our desk, our, our past does not dictate our destiny? And that, while I am ashamed of my actions, I don't regret my actions, because it was necessary for me to go through those things to be to the place that I'm at today?
Speaker 1:Yeah, well, I think you know our women. I think of them as I mean you could think of how Beauty and the Beast, for instance, you know, and Beauty and the Beast in a way that David if you think of David before he was King David how he would soothe King Saul with his music. You know he would play his harp for King Saul and that would bring a comfort to King Saul, and I look at that in a similar way. You know, just like music soothes the savage beast, you know our women are the one that brings peace. You know they're the ones.
Speaker 1:I mean, of course, you see, women that has a lot of anger. We're blessed with good, with good, christian, godly women, you know, and and with their, with their ability to stand beside us, you know they're, they're helping us, they're helping keeping us calm and keeping that wild beast. Because I know that one thing with men is, so many men are cursed with anger and and pride, and and I myself have had lots of anger issues and frustrations and and things that I didn't want to let go of, and that's one thing like for for my wife, she's helped me overcome a lot of that stuff and she's put up with a lot of me and and through watching her help guide me. You know, just watching her patience with me through my anger issues. It's taught me to be patient with her, and so I. That that's how I see our women coming through with that point.
Speaker 2:Yeah, and you know, I think back on that stuff too and I think you can probably agree, you know, when you, when you mentioned that you know they stuck beside us, I would have left Jason, I wouldn't have stayed with Jason and my wife should have left, but she never did. And she always says she saw something in me. I don't know what that was I I cause I wasn't producing the image of Jesus at that time, you know but maybe she did see that, because I believe the Lord was knitted through the very architect of my entire life. I'm wholeheartedly believe that. So maybe she did see that she saw something in me to stick, to stick around, because she should have left. Yeah, I mean.
Speaker 2:I was out there, I was running around doing some crazy stuff. So you know, I, I and I think you could probably agree. You know they should have left, but they didn't.
Speaker 1:Well, you know, the we talk about this in some of our, some of our men's meetings and our our breaking chains ministry that we have here through our church. And you know, we talk about the past, the past that God leads us down, you know. And Jesus said in Matthew you know, narrow is the gate and straight is the way. But you know, if it wasn't for all these curves that we have in our life, if it wasn't for these hardships that we go through, there's no way that we would have testimonies. And God allowed us to go through, there's no way that we would have testimonies. And and God allowed us to go through all those things in our life to build us up, to make us stronger, to to give us the ability as broken men, to give us the ability to show others. Look what, look what God pulled me through. And if it wasn't for all of those, those roads that we've been down, we we couldn't be sitting here right now right doing this podcast.
Speaker 1:You know, and we couldn't be honest with these, with the people that we're talking to. You know, and and and then believe us, you know if we're, if we're just trying to make money off of something, because that's not what we're doing, we're we're money is not an option at all.
Speaker 2:We're here because we want to lead people back to jesus, so yeah, and I, you know, I, I was listening to a preaching this morning before we come in here and did this, and um, there's a pastor saying that he hated na and aa, and and I, I tend to agree, uh, with the reasoning behind that is that they, that they say hi, hi, I'm an alcoholic or I'm a drug addict and that's a, that's an identity that I used to be. That's not an identity that we carry anymore.
Speaker 2:That's not something that we stick, that doesn't stick with us. We're. We're new, we're made new through Jesus Christ, and that's that's our goal here is, we want to point people to the Lord, and I pray to the Lord that somebody can learn from my mistakes. Let me be the Guinea pig and you guys watch my life and listen to my life and learn from my mistakes. Let me be the guinea pig and you guys watch my life and listen to my life and learn from my mistakes, because I promise you, out of anybody that I know, jason's going to make the mistake and I want you guys to learn from my mistakes, so you don't have to make the same ones.
Speaker 1:Yeah, learn how to give your control over to Jesus and let Jesus lead your life.
Speaker 2:Right, I've learned a lot through I do. I go to Bible study every Wednesday morning, uh, with a bunch of guys that I, that I uh do work with. Uh, they're builders and contractors I do business with and um, it's been so crucial and so important because I carried that identity. You know I always blame oh, there's my anger issues or my pride issues it's because I used to do drugs and I've ruined my mind, and that's not true at all. I hear from these guys at this men's Bible study that I do, that they're going through the same problems and the same hurts and the same hangups that I go through with my wife and the arguments and the same kind of things. And I learned that I go through with my wife and the arguments and the same kind of things and I learned that I'm just human. I don't carry that identity anymore.
Speaker 2:And it built confidence in me of my walk with the Lord in just the last few weeks, of how important it is that we recognize our identity is only found in Jesus Christ. There's no other option.
Speaker 1:And by surrendering to Jesus. That's what we're doing, is we're giving that surrendering to Jesus. That's that's what we're doing, is we're we're giving that stuff back to him, the stuff that the stuff we learned from you know we always going to need it, but that that's our surrender to Jesus. You know he takes that stuff away, you know. And so you know, when, whenever I I prayed, I knelt down at the altar and I prayed, you know, for God to take that alcohol, you know the want away from me, the urge away from me, because I, you know, I would have like, especially, you know, after work, or Friday comes, you know, and weekend comes, our football games come on, something like that.
Speaker 1:That would, that would, that would make me want to drink. You know I would. I would still have that that urge, you know. And then I just prayed, I prayed to God, you know, through Jesus, you know, that take that urge away from me so that I don't have to fight that battle anymore. And he took it away from me. And so now I mean I don't like to be around people that drink or do drugs and I mean I choose not to. I don't like to see people act that way, you know, and it bothers me to see that I don't like to be around people that are super angry, to see that I don't like to be around people that are super angry, and so, but yeah, we just have to surrender it all to Jesus and and just give him the keys, let him drive the car for a while.
Speaker 2:Amen. Well, we've got another ministry starting here in about 30 minutes. We've got a car show this morning, so we're going to have to wrap this up. We're running out of time. I want to close this out in prayer. If you're good, we'll clear it and close it out in prayer.
Speaker 2:Lord, we love you, we thank you for the opportunity to be able to get on here and just talk about you, talk about how good you are, talk about the things you've done for us to try to bless somebody else, to be able to reach somebody that couldn't be reached. Maybe they needed to hear our stories to be able to be reached and to touch their hearts. Lord, I just pray that you intervene and reach down and touch those people, anybody that needs you, anybody that's searching for something. I pray that you are the answer and be that answer for them. I pray that you use us here we are, use us, decrease us to increase you in our lives. Lord, I love you, I praise you and I thank you In Jesus' name amen.
Speaker 1:Thank you, look forward to the future episodes with you brother. Yes, all with you brother. Yes, all right, that was good. See you guys next time. All right, that's good, that's pretty good. Yeah, I feel I feel like I'm about to take off running. So that was 18 minutes. Yeah, now, if I can get this thing to get out of my way so I can cut this off. Okay.
