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Hello everyone, thank you again for joining me on an episode of the Dorsey Ross Show.
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Today we have a special guest with us.
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His name is Jason Krail.
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He is a husband, a father convicted.
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Felon.
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Jason has been in active pastoral ministry for over a decade now and has been married to his wife for 10 years.
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They have three boys Maxwell, paxton and Miles.
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Pastor Jay has a master's degree from Liberty University and has spoken at numerous blessings, and for government officials, while doing chaplaincy work for large corporations.
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He has received many different awards for his contributions for the community and leadership awards for his dedications to serving Jesus in the margins.
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Pastor Jay's introduction to Jesus comes in an unorthodoxy way, on the run from authorities and living as a homeless hearing addict in the addict in Kensington, philadelphia.
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The Holy Spirit entered his life and was forever changed.
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Pastor Jason, thank you so much for coming on the show today.
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Thank you for having me Looking forward to it.
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Absolutely.
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Let me, as I always start off with I always start off with a icebreaker question what is your most embarrassing?
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memory One of the biggest ones is when I was a young kid and I was at the pool.
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I have two older brothers and, being the youngest, I was picked on quite often and one time I jumped off the high dive.
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I did a perfect dive.
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You should have saw it.
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It was like Olympic medal award winning dive at least in my mind it was and I went down but my swim trunk stayed at the top and I went all the way down to a 15 foot pool and my brothers jumped in and grabbed the swim trunks and ran away with them.
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So I had to sit in the pool for a half hour while other people were looking at me laughing because I was naked in this pool it was a community pool, there were so many people around.
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I was embarrassed.
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I didn't live that down for a few years, but it still sticks with me to this day, which basically the reminder is to tie your swim trunks really tight there you go.
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Before telling your story about your past, let's talk about your present for a moment.
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And you know right now, like I said in your bio, you've been a pastor for the last you know 10 years past, for the last you know 10 years.
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And I'm sure a lot of people, regardless of you, know their past and what people go through.
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They probably think to themselves right now where they are.
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Because of where they are at the moment, they're probably saying I'm not going to be able to do anything that I want to do in the future because of my past, because of my criminal record, because of my addictions, because of this, because of that, how did you decide?
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Obviously it was Jesus and you know your conversion story, your facing moment.
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Obviously it was Jesus and your confidence through your faith in the moment.
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But what made you finally decide, hey, I want to take that step of faith, get my degree and become a pastor.
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Yeah, I would say for those that are stuck right now and feeling like the odds seem insurmountable.
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I've been there too.
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I remember sitting in a prison cell.
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I was like $50,000 in debt owed to the state.
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I was sitting in this prison cell.
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I had no family by my side, everything.
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And I had Jesus at this point because, correct, you're right, With Jesus behind you.
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No obstacle in front of you can stop you.
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That's a fact.
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But there is going to be some requirement on your part.
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Everybody wants the results without putting in the work.
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That's what I've come to find, as long as you're working hard to get to where you need to be and you actually have a plan.
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So there's a saying that goes plan your work and work your plan.
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So that's what I did.
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They say how do you eat an elephant, One bite at a time?
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How do you get ahead in life?
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One day at a time, so every day.
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Head in life one day at a time, so every day.
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And it's still the same processes that I used from that time that I was sitting in the prison cell, that my odds seem insurmountable, until it is right now where it's like okay, I owe 50,000 or whatever the money was how do I pay that off?
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$1 at a time.
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Everything is just like these little baby steps and then, if you calculate them and quantify them all up over the course of 15 years or whatever, you look back and you see that, as long as you have those actionable items that you can execute on and be obedient to the process, obedient to God, for sure that you're going to be able to get to your destination.
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That's just been my experience throughout my entire life and in my entire ministry.
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Like you know, people always say God will move mountains, but you've got to bring a shovel.
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There is going to be a requirement on your part, but don't think too far ahead.
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That's my suggestion, rather, to anybody who is stuck thinking that I'm a felon or all these other things.
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Don't get stuck on what happened in the past.
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Don't project too far in the future.
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Live in the moment, stay in the day and take it one day at a time.
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See, I think, Dorsey, even as a pastor for a decade now, people are always coming to me with some revolutionary type of advice.
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Right, Like pastor, how do I get through these things?
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And it's simple, right?
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The basic spirituality is what I try to live my life by.
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And if you do that in your own walk with God and I call it the common walk with God.
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See, God had this amazing, miraculous experience with me and we'll get to that later, but really it's that common walk with God day by day.
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Right that it was going to actually get you to the goal line.
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Same thing as spirituality, but the same thing in anything you want to complete in life.
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You got to take it one day at a time, one step at a time, and you'll get there.
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Yeah, and even the Bible.
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You know they talk about worry about today.
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Think about today, don't worry about tomorrow.
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Amen.
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It says what does worrying do?
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What's it going to add to you?
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It steals really.
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You know, anytime I project or reflect, I get sick.
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If I stay in the moment and live in today, I've never had it so good.
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Amen.
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What's been one of your biggest challenges in your life, pre-christ BC, before Christ I would say heroin addiction, any addiction, right, because I was an alcoholic, I was a heroin addict.
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I popped pills like you wouldn't believe, like Tic Tac.
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So I would say before Christ it was absolutely addiction.
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And people don't realize addiction is addiction, no matter how you slice it.
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Right.
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There's people in the churches that might be like, oh well, this guy's suffering from heroin but they're gambling on their money away or they're not healthy and spiritually healthy because they have a shopping addiction.
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Addiction is addiction, no matter how you slice it.
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Being in the field of addiction and working in addiction, substance use disorder and mental health, we see it shooting up at an all-time high right now.
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Really, what you'll see is people are moving away from the main solution, which is it's a spiritual disease number one and you need a spiritual solution, which is G.
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That's really the ultimate resolution to the problem.
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But they're moving away from that because, just like anything, it's mental.
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So you have a mental obsession of physical dependency.
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Once you start doing it and it could be betting, it could be buying clothes, heroin, and then the spiritual malady, that spiritual disease.
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So I do believe that it's a three-stage disease, no doubt about it.
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So that would be my biggest one prior to Jesus right, because he is the answer.
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And then after Jesus, my biggest hurdle, my biggest hurdle now after Jesus, is myself.
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You know what I mean.
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So it's my own thinking and my thought process, and that's something that I think everybody could.
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Quite frankly, selfishness and self-centeredness is the core, root problem of everybody, even since the garden, you'll see, it was selfishness and pride that got in the way of man.
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Well, nothing is new under the sun.
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The same rules and problems exist for me in my own life, and selfishness and self-centeredness could take form in a different type of way for everybody, where it's like you know, I worked so hard to get where I'm at and I feel like I should be further.
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Well, this is exactly where God wants me to be.
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So it all comes back to the original thought of if I stay in the moment and live in the day and remember all the gifts that God has given me, I will never forget the giver.
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See, that's the problem.
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A lot of people think like they should.
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When, anytime I say like I deserve or I need, I'm in headed for dangerous ground.
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But as long as I just say I am perfectly fine, I am exactly where I need to be, I am loved by God.
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As long as I say those, I am statements just like Jesus did.
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I am a sinner saved by God.
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As long as I say those, I am statements.
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Just like Jesus did, I am a sinner saved by grace.
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I'm able to handle the things and my mindset more appropriately because I know that God has a plan for me and it isn't my job to speed that plan up.
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It's my job to follow that plan one day at a time.
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And then why do you think heroin and drugs, even to this day, over all the years that we've known they're addictive, we've known they're illegal, we've known all these things and what they can do to our bodies, why do you think there's still such a big addiction to those drugs?
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It's like a big addiction, you know, to those drugs.
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Yeah, I mean, well, it's fine, it's.
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I think it's like a person dies every I forget what it was minute or something in America from heroin, like it's.
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Something like astronomical is too hard to quantify and it's quite depressing.
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But I mean, you know and I'll get to the point of helping others which I see people liberated on a daily basis by Jesus from that.
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So that's what keeps me going.
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But I would actually say it's because you look at the culture that we're in, right, I mean our culture in America here resembles God, but little anymore.
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And of course there's always been, you know, even opiate addiction.
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Back in the Wild West days, when somebody got the tooth pool, they drink some or smoke some opium or they would drink whatever.
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Days when somebody got the tooth pulled, they'd drink some or smoke some opium or they would drink whatever.
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So there's always been addiction and I think there always will be, because it comes down to a lack of a spiritual connection.
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Like when you try to find answers to the problems internally and outside of what God wants for your life, you're always going to be left hurt because we always try to find the easier, softer way and that isn't what God wants for you.
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Sometimes God is calling us to something greater, and sometimes that's going to come through a pain.
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It's going to come through a process, it's going to come through a refinement.
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God is putting us through the furnace at times to refine us, to make us better, but I've only found one way to overcome that and that is through the blood of Jesus Christ.
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For sure for me, but to people that are out there right now.
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You look at the cultural climate, the politics that are going on.
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You look at all the people that are riding in the streets in America right now.
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You look at the border right, not to get too crazy on that, but that's where all the heroin is actually coming from right now.
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It's just coming through.
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So, profit motive you look at the profit motive, right, and it all comes down to a spiritual disease.
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We don't have the answer to our solution outside, so we try to find it somewhere else, in a bag, in a box, in a roulette wheel or whatever the case may be.
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But all we're doing is actually kind of giving us a sense of temporary relief.
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See, I've had that times, right, dorsey?
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I tried every way.
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See, this is not new to me.
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Trauma number one is probably the greatest offender right.
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Resentment and trauma at all kind of stems from this disease that we are hurt by from an early childhood, the systemic patterns that happened in our upbringing, our cultural climate that we live in, all these things and ultimately it leads to a lack of connection from God.
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But trauma and then resentment, those two things, coupled with fear, coupled with mental health issues, coupled with the three stages of alcoholism and addiction, are the driving force on why you see young kids passing at a greater rate in society.
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And then also, not to get too on a tangent, because this is very important to me, because I grew up without a father.
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My dad was in my life early on, but he was a heroin addict, alcohol, coke addict, everything under the sun, and I followed in his footsteps as fatherless homes in America.
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If you look at the numbers of fatherless homes in America, you'll see that, like 75% of people that are in men's prisons and women's prisons in America and who have addiction issues, by the way, come from fatherless homes.
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So we have to do better, even as Christians I'm speaking to myself right now we got to do better at stepping up and fighting against this culture that wants to make you depressed.
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They want to give you pills to make you feel better.
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They want to give you this.
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They want to give you pills to make you feel better.
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They want to give you this.
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They want to do that.
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But really, ultimately, christians, we need to stand up and be louder than the culture that we live in, because that's what Christ has commanded us to, because where there is hope, there is freedom, where there is Jesus, there is salvation.
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Where there is Jesus, there is freedom and salvation and peace in the stream of life.
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You know, we hear about that a lot, where you know the parent is, you know a heroin addict or you know an alcoholic or an abuser, and then the son or the daughter.
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You know if it's the mother, it's the daughter, if it's the father, it's the son, and it will like it's the daughter, if it's the father, it's the son, and it would trickle down, in fact, to that.
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Why do you think that is?
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Why do you think that it was when your father was in a hearing addict?
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Then you became one?
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Was it because you saw your father doing it, or was it something else?
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Well, there's a ton of research on this that tells you that it is actually hereditary.
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Addiction issues do pass along the family timeline, so sometimes it might skip a generation.
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There's all the scientific proof and facts that go about it.
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But the chemical makeup?
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The fact remains that the alcoholic and addict brain is different than somebody else's.
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It's true.
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We've seen it before.
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They've seen it in rats.
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They've done so many different tests.
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So sometimes it'll skip generation.
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But a hundred percent.
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If somebody in your family is an alcoholic or an addict that are suffering from substance use disorder, chances are somebody in the immediate line is going to be affected by it too.
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So really the only thing you can actually do is draw awareness to that issue.
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But then it also goes back through the familial tree, which is like now, and praise God, it's all through his grace and mercy in my life that I was able to break that chain, and now that I have three children on my own, chances are they might have the components that make up an alcoholic or an addict.
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So what do I do?
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I raise my children.
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Well, I show them how to be servant leaders.
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I show them how to be healthy individuals, even amongst this terrible culture that we're in right now and I feel like it's going to get better because God is at work in American society, regardless of what we see.
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But it's up to me, as a father, to mold these children, to teach these children the ways of the Lord.
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That way they will never depart from it.
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That's what the Bible says.
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So that's what I do with my children to say, hey, I am an alcoholic and an addict, but, more importantly, I'm a Christian, I'm a follower of Jesus.
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But you got to be careful with those kind of things.
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Right, I don't rule with an iron fist.
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I mean, I correct them and I'm all about obedience and all those things too, but they're going to make decisions someday when I'm not around.
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So I need to help them formulate that plan now, that way, when they're around, those temptations, they're going to remember that.
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Oh wait, dad, right, he told us about this.
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Maybe I should call him and tell him to get me out of here, or whatever.
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That's the plan, dorsey.
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But so I do think that it does pass along the family tree.
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There's been so much history and scientific proof that shows that.
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But it's up to the people within that system to break that family curse, and God is all about breaking chains and he's all about setting generations different, and he's a fan of the underdog.
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That's been my experience.
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Amen.
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Going back to your working in the church and yourself as a pastor, what do you think the church can do better in helping or accepting those with addictions?
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Yeah, I would say, see, see the church, right, they kind of fall short in that regard where they don't know.
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So if somebody comes to them, like somebody who's a church member comes to them and they're like I'm suffering from alcoholism, a pastor might feel like, oh gosh, what do I do?
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Well, it's simple For me.
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If somebody's coming into that, for me it's a little easier, obviously because I have the historic background from it.
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But I always tell pastors that they should actually get in touch with people who understand the disease of addiction, right.
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So they have that in the Rolodex.
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See, I know, as a pastor who has done a lot of pastoral counseling over a decade, that I don't have all the answers.
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Yeah, I could throw scripture at it for sure, because ultimately it's going to be God that changes that person.
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But at the end of the day it's like all right, we'll go read whatever, whatever scripture, whatever, whatever.
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That doesn't necessarily, that's not going to really just change.
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Scripture does change you, but they're going to need support, they're going to need guidance, and this goes for not just addiction but anywhere else where it's like eating disorders.
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I don't have eating disorders, but I know a bunch of people who has had relief in that.
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So I think a pastor needs to do a good job of networking around his peers and colleagues in different churches to realize I don't have all the answers, but at least I know the people that do.
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And I think that's really where the community comes into play, because a pastor might say, hey, you need to stop drinking.
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But to an alcoholic that's going to take a divine act of God.
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That's like telling a fish to breathe air.
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It's hard right.
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So I'm telling you, for me it's always pointing them in the right direction.
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The people who are professionals when it comes to the disease of addiction and alcoholism.
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100% pray for them.
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Obviously, that goes without saying.
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Pray for them, Encourage their walk, hold them accountable, but also put them in touch with the people who really understand the disease of addiction and alcoholism why do you think that we've seen, especially when it comes to the youth, that we've seen a decline in the attendance of youth and young adults attending?
00:19:04.172 --> 00:19:04.835
That's a great question.
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These kids today, their attention span is worse than mine and I'm telling you, I'm undiagnosed ADHD.
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There's no doubt about it.
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It's like a gift and a curse for me, but these kids' attention span, they're good for 30-second TikTok clips now, dorsey, right?
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So how do I actually engage the community and these teens right now?
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Because, let's face it, you see kids, even when it comes to addiction and alcoholism and even addiction for gaming you see that now, the gaming addiction.
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So it's terrible, right, because these kids lack guidance, right?
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Instead of them playing with their iPads and their iPhones or whatever they have, they need to be active, and in the community too.
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But also churches.
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I think they need to do a better job of integrating the youth groups into the main church, right, it's always like, oh, we got church on Sunday and a youth group this day, right.
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So it's always been like this thing to the side at least in my experience, that's what it's been where it's like, oh, but the youth ministry meets downstairs or whatever, and that's fine.
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But we need to have the people that are in the main church the elders, the people who have been walking with Christ for a long time actually involved in these kids' lives.
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Parents?
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Obviously number one.
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It starts at home.
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It's always going to start at home.
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So you need to actually be in your child's life.
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You need to be watching what they're, what they're taking into their spiritual diet.
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You know what I mean?
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I always say that Watch what goes into your spiritual diet, watch what goes into your kids.
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If you think that they're just surfing TikTok, you know they shouldn't be.
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My kids don't get those kinds of things right, because Because I don't need them to be, because if I'm not influencing them, the world is and I don't need them.
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I don't need them to.
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So I think that's the biggest thing that we see with especially the youth groups and the kids today is that their attention spans are so low because of technology.