Gripped by Eating disorders until I met Jesus face-to-face

In this profoundly moving episode of the Jesus Studio podcast, we delve into the extraordinary life of Joe Gisbey. Discover how Joe, grappling with bulimia, anorexia, and chronic depression, found himself at death's door. Joe's story is not just a tale of personal struggles but a testament to the transformative power of faith. Raised in a loving Christian family, he witnessed the miraculous healing of his mother from terminal cancer, yet his journey took a dark turn during his teenage years, leading him down a path of self-destruction.

But in his darkest hour, a desperate cry out to Jesus for help was answered in a way that reshaped his entire existence. Experience the moment where Joe's plea to Jesus led to a miraculous encounter, freeing him from the chains of his afflictions and setting him on a path of incredible adventures and life-changing experiences. From the depths of despair to traveling the world and impacting lives, Joe's story is a beacon of hope, showcasing the boundless grace and love of Jesus.

This episode is more than just a story; it's an invitation to witness the miraculous, to see hope reborn, and to believe in the transformative power of faith. Whether you're seeking inspiration, battling your own demons, or simply looking for a story of incredible change, Joe's journey from despair to destiny will resonate deeply. Tune in and be part of this awe-inspiring testament to the power of Jesus' love.

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Transcript

Transcript

00:00:00 Speaker 1

You're listening to the Jesus Studio podcast.

00:00:05 Speaker 2

And then that began my battle with.

00:00:08 Speaker 2

With bulimia and anorexia.

00:00:12 Speaker 2

The psychiatrist said look, if you carry on the way that you're going, you, you could be dead within a week.

00:00:20 Speaker 2

I just put my head in my hands and I said Jesus help me. And he said to me that if you'll give me your life.

00:00:28 Speaker 2

I'll take you on an adventure.

00:00:29 Speaker 2

That will leave you.

00:00:30 Speaker 2

Breathless cause the hairs on the back of your neck to stand up on end and leave you wondering how on Earth you could live. The kind of life I called you to live.

00:00:50 Speaker 3

Hello and welcome to the Jesus Studio podcast I'm Jem.

00:00:54 Speaker 4

And I'm ash.

00:00:55 Speaker 3

And tonight we were so excited because we have our friend Joe and he came to our house a few months ago and told us his story and we were just like, wow, everyone needs to hear this amazing testimony. We just can't wait to share it with you guys. It's incredible. And yeah.

00:01:14 Speaker 3

James, you want to introduce yourself?

00:01:16 Speaker 2

Hey everyone, I'm Joe gisby. I am married to an amazing, beautiful Colombian wife. Her name's Carolina. We have got four incredible kids. Luca Eliana, Zion, and Seth. And I'm just really excited and honoured to be with you on Jesus Studio. Really, really pleased to be able to.

00:01:36 Speaker 2

Share with you a little bit of of what Jesus has done in my life. Really. You know, it really is all about him. And if it wasn't for him, I wouldn't be here.

00:01:45 Speaker 2

Today, so super excited to be able to share a little bit about that with you.

00:01:50 Speaker 3

Amazing. So if you could just start from the beginning and we'll let you tell your story.

00:01:56 Speaker 2

Sure. Well, thank you. So I had the amazing privilege of growing up in a family that loved God. That was a a very integral part of local church here in on the South.

00:02:13 Speaker 2

Just where? Where I grew up and my parents were part of the leadership of a church called Aaron Community Church, which I actually now have the privilege of being part of the leadership team and.

00:02:28 Speaker 2

It was amazing. It was an amazing childhood seeing God at work in incredible ways, really blessed to grow up in a church that had a strong focus on.

00:02:41 Speaker 2

On provision for for children and a desire to really introduce kids to a God who was real, not just to tradition, not just to to what often people think of when they think of church, I think there was a real focus on making it real for us and.

00:03:01 Speaker 2

And consequently it meant that there there were quite a quite a few things that came out of our church that ended up going national and and even international that were specifically family and children focused. So there were.

00:03:14 Speaker 2

A A lot of of ministries that would would have a real focus on on children experiencing the presence of God. And so I remember from a very young age seeing people healed, seeing God move in all kinds of amazing ways.

00:03:33 Speaker 2

From a very young age, experiencing God for myself, it wasn't just something that was my my parents religion. It was something that was very real for me.

00:03:43 Speaker 2

So that was absolutely amazing.

00:03:46 Speaker 2

Music was always a very important part of our of our church culture, so grew up with really great kind of influences in the area of music in, in our church at the beginning of the the 90s. So this is showing my age a little bit. Now at the beginning of the 90s, just as I was entering into my tea.

00:04:07 Speaker 2

There was what I can only really describe as a move of the Holy Spirit that just impacted the the Church across across the world and in the Western world. It ended up being dubbed the kind of the Toronto blessing because there were lots of hubs all over the world where.

00:04:26 Speaker 2

Where this was really kind of breaking out and in the western English speaking world, one of those hubs happened to be in Toronto, in Canada, there was a church there that that would meet.

00:04:39 Speaker 2

And it was a vineyard church with a network of churches and all kinds of incredible phenomena began to break out in this church. So, you know, people would either begin to just weep uncontrollably or laugh uncontrollably or or or kind of fall into trances and all kinds of like.

00:04:59 Speaker 2

Crazy things that were going on and that started to happen in our church. It wasn't that we hadn't seen things like that growing up, but at this point it was like it went into over.

00:05:08 Speaker 2

Drive and suddenly there were just all kinds of wild things going on and our church meetings ended up just just being prolonged. And, you know, there could be anything up to six hours long sometimes. So as a kid, you would think that we would think ohh the the last place I want to be is church but couldn't be further from the truth.

00:05:30 Speaker 2

At that point, we were so excited to be at church because you just gotta thought, I have no idea what's gonna happen next.

00:05:36 Speaker 2

And I'll never forget one meeting where there was this. There was this, there was this chap who was very like a military background, very straight laced, very serious guy. And he went up the front and he just started freestyle rapping. It was absolutely incredible. And and it wasn't cringeworthy at all. We were like.

00:05:56 Speaker 2

Ohh my goodness, this is amazing and it was just like the wildest.

00:06:01 Speaker 2

Some absolutely fascinating time and and then I should probably back up as well because one of the things that I had a real impact on my childhood within, within, within church and within my like my relationship with God.

00:06:17 Speaker 2

Was when I was six years old, when my younger sister was born, my mum was diagnosed with terminal breast cancer.

00:06:25 Speaker 2

And obviously I was too young to really know exactly what was going on, but there are some episodes from that time that had an an incredible impact on my life. And one of those was walking into my my parents bedroom and my dad was.

00:06:45 Speaker 2

Playing on his guitar, my dad was a was a worship leader at the time and he was playing his guitar, but he just had tears streaming down his face. And I remember in my my little 6 year old.

00:06:58 Speaker 2

Way going up to him.

00:07:00 Speaker 2

And just saying dad from what?

00:07:01 Speaker 2

Brown and he put his guitar down and I remember him sitting me on the bed next to him and I'd never forget his words. It's in fact I feel like like as if it was yesterday. Hearing him say it, he he looked at me and he said we we may have to learn to live without your mum.

00:07:18 Speaker 2

And unknown to me at the time, the doctors had essentially said that there wasn't anything more that they could do for her.

00:07:28 Speaker 2

And that they had, they basically given her between 6 to 18 months to live.

00:07:34 Speaker 2

And obviously, like I say, my dad didn't explain all of that to us, but we saw my mum go through chemotherapy, radiotherapy.

00:07:45 Speaker 2

She she lost all of her hair and obviously lost a lot of weight during that time.

00:07:51 Speaker 2

And the the only way to really describe my mum's attitude to it all was that she just would not accept the the diagnosis that the doctors gave. She began to take the promises in.

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In the Bible, in God's word.

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To heart, I guess for the first time she lived her whole life as a as a Christian, but but she suddenly found herself in the middle of a battle where she was having to fight for her life and she would take these promises. And and I, and as a six year old I didn't even realise that they were necessarily promises. So I remember times where my brother.

00:08:31 Speaker 2

And I, you know, we might be watching cartoons in the lab.

00:08:34 Speaker 2

Room and we'd hear my mum in the kitchen and we'd suddenly hear her voice booming, saying I will not die but live and declare what the Lord has done for me, which is a which is a promise from the Psalms. We'd hear her say things like by Jesus stripes. I am healed and there were all kinds of wild.

00:08:54 Speaker 2

Things that went on during that time, I remember one time a guy knocking on the on the on the front door of our house.

00:09:01 Speaker 2

And my mum going to the door and opening it, I opening the the door and we we were just in it kind of in the background and hearing this guy just just point at her and with absolute hatred say you are going to die and then just turned around and and walked off. And my mum obviously a little bit stunned in the moment.

00:09:22 Speaker 2

And was taken aback. And then and.

00:09:25 Speaker 2

Then suddenly she.

00:09:26 Speaker 2

Into quote Scripture, and you've been saying.

00:09:28 Speaker 2

No, I'm not gonna die. And God's got a purpose. God's got a plan. He's got a promise for my life.

00:09:34 Speaker 2

And the only thing I can say is that six months came and six months went and they couldn't find a trace of cancer in my mum's body. God totally healed her because we believe that the scriptures say that Jesus has the name above every name that has been named.

00:09:53 Speaker 2

Absolutely everything that has been named on Earth. Cancer is a name and we believe that the name of Jesus is greater than that. And so that was an incredible, incredible moment for me growing up and it really built in.

00:10:09 Speaker 2

To my life, the life of my of my siblings, this deep love for the word of God and the and the power that's in God's word, that it's not an archaic book that should be left on a shelf covering dust. But there it is. Like it says it is alive and active and sharper than any.

00:10:30 Speaker 2

Any two edged sword and.

00:10:32 Speaker 2

But it it's not, it wasn't written just to people before it was. It's written to us. It is essentially a love letter from God to us. And when you really begin to dive into it, you, you you see that in an incredible way. And so that had a really big impact on my life and.

00:10:52 Speaker 2

And on our family.

00:10:55 Speaker 2

Needless to say, we.

00:10:57 Speaker 2

As we came into as I came into that time with in my teens, having experienced all of that, having seen God move in incredible ways as teenagers do I, I began to question things and I began to look in other.

00:11:17 Speaker 2

In in other places and in the midst of all of all of that that was going on, there was a a split in the church that I grew up in.

00:11:27 Speaker 2

And anybody that's ever been through anything like that with the church will know that it it it's incredibly, incredibly hard. You see friendship groups split apart. You see in my case, something that was such a bedrock in my life, something that built so much of kind of my my security.

00:11:48 Speaker 2

And I guess in many ways that like, you know, all of my friends were part of this church, and all of the extended families were all kind of part of this church and.

00:11:56 Speaker 2

When that happened, it started to make me really question. Things started to make me really question whether or not I I wanted to carry on in that direction.

00:12:07 Speaker 2

You know, it's like when you're in your teens as well, you, you're you're starting to kind of feel all of these different things and you're starting to experiment with different ideas. And I think that the enemy, like takes that as an opportunity to to bring in deception and.

00:12:24 Speaker 2

I've always loved music and I was a real muser at the time. I was massively into the whole kind of punk, grunge, indie scene, and with that there was a lot of experimentation with drug use and probably the the the band that I loved the most at right.

00:12:44 Speaker 2

That particular episode in my life was Nirvana and some of the listeners will remember that in 93, which is exactly the same time period that I'm talking about. The lead singer, Kurt Cobain of Nirvana, he tragically took his life.

00:13:02 Speaker 2

Having kind of lost a long battle with heroin addiction and and I remember hearing about that at, of all places, at a Christian event called Spring Harvest, which some people will have will have will have heard of. I was at the youth meeting there and somebody went to the front and and said that they had just seen on the news there's there's.

00:13:21 Speaker 2

This tragic, this tragic news and.

00:13:24 Speaker 2

He was a real.

00:13:25 Speaker 2

Or kind of idle in my life at the time I wanted to be just like him, so anything crazy that Kurt Cobain was doing, I wanted to do if he dyed his hair a crazy colour, I wanted to dye my hair that crazy colour and. And so I remember at that point, almost like a little.

00:13:45 Speaker 2

Seed dropping into my thinking that that's how I'm gonna go as well.

00:13:51 Speaker 2

And UM.

00:13:53 Speaker 2

That began.

00:13:57 Speaker 2

What I can only really describe as a downward spiral of self destruction that went on for the next three years. Really. The next three years of my life.

00:14:10 Speaker 2

I began to really throw myself into that. That whole world of that, that music scene, some of my best friends at schools. Parents were dealers, so we had access to stuff, began to drink a lot during that time.

00:14:30 Speaker 2

And I also.

00:14:32 Speaker 2

I I I wanted to lose weight at the time I was, I was slightly overweight as a young teenager and I threw myself into kind of exercise and dieting. I've always been anybody who knows me will know this about my character. I've always been very much an all or nothing kind of person. So when I throw myself into something, I.

00:14:54 Speaker 2

Go right in. Full steam ahead.

00:14:57 Speaker 2

And so I I started to diet really strictly and I joined a gym and I was like losing weight. And at first it was great, you know, people kind of would compliment me and say, oh, that's brilliant. Well done. You know what, what you're doing, but they didn't really understand what was going on in the background.

00:15:17 Speaker 2

And how I was becoming more and more obsessive with with what I allowed myself to eat and with what I forced to my my body to go through. So I remember at one point.

00:15:32 Speaker 2

I was going to the gym and then I'd go for like a I'd swim a mile, and then I'd ride my bike for like an hour. And so obviously the weight was just dropping off.

00:15:44 Speaker 2

And I got to the point where I literally wasn't eating anything. I don't think I really understood psychologically what was happening at the time. I think I was just pushing myself further and further.

00:15:58 Speaker 2

At that point, I think my parents and my siblings started to wonder a bit and they would say that they would ask me, you know, if I'd eaten lunch or if I'd I'd come back from a friend's house and I'd tell, yeah, I ate over there and I'd I'd basically try and.

00:16:12 Speaker 2

Hide it that way, but obviously at that age you can only go for a certain amount of time.

00:16:20 Speaker 2

They'll essentially say what you've got to eat and also your body begins to crave all of the things that you've been denying yourself. And so I remember getting to some point where.

00:16:32 Speaker 2

I found myself going to the fridge and just eating things that I I guess I denied myself for months on end and then that began my battle with.

00:16:45 Speaker 2

With bulimia and anorexia, so I would yoyo between these periods of time of hardly eating anything at all and then eating and feeling so devastated by the fact that I'd eaten these things that I would force myself to throw up and.

00:17:04 Speaker 2

It all kind of became part of this package, I guess of of self destruction and of wanting to somehow kind of hurt myself and.

00:17:18 Speaker 2

And within all of that, I became chronically depressed, which is a natural side effect, obviously, of not of, of not eating, but also just because I realised how far I was, I was I was getting away from the person who I had been before.

00:17:35 Speaker 2

And I think anybody who knew me as a kid growing up knew that I was very outgoing. I was very extrovert. I was very cheeky and full of life and I was just becoming more and more.

00:17:50 Speaker 2

Morose more and more of a recluse. During that time I began to lose most of my friends because they didn't really know how to deal with with what was with what was going on.

00:18:03 Speaker 2

And and and so that just began this this period of beginning to really battle with manic depression and all of the health issues that went with what I was doing to my doing to my body.

00:18:17 Speaker 2

I I think that I was trying to look for fulfilment in lots of different places because.

00:18:24 Speaker 2

I I opened up this huge void that originally God had filled in my life and and now I was so far away from that I turned my back on church. I really got to the point where I didn't want anything to do with that, but I had an awareness of spirituality and I had an awareness of the reality that there was something more.

00:18:47 Speaker 2

And so that kind of threw me into this pursuit of wanting to.

00:18:51 Speaker 2

Find out and experiment in those things. Ironically, I remember reading a Christian novel that talked about it. It it talked about spirit guides and it talked about meditation and in in this novel it was talk. It was basically the dangers of all of that.

00:19:12 Speaker 2

It's a really famous it's a really famous novel called this present darkness, and I remember reading it as a teenager, but instead of it having the effect of scaring me away from wanting to experiment with any of those things, it actually caused me to want.

00:19:26 Speaker 2

And so I remember starting to think, well, I'll try meditating. I'll try bit of eastern spirituality. And I started kind of like playing around with some of that, that stuff as well, which of course, all of those things just were messing with my head and with my, with my heart, in all kinds of.

00:19:46 Speaker 2

Terrible ways, threw myself into my studies. I remember thinking maybe that will give me some fulfilment if I do really well in my obviously it was GCSE time at that at that point. If I really, really study hard so.

00:20:00 Speaker 2

Really threw myself into all of that and I remember getting to the end of my GCSE's and knowing that I had done really well but still feeling completely empty. Obviously during that time my parents were fighting for my life. They were they were desperate.

00:20:19 Speaker 2

For me, my siblings as well. You know, they they were constantly trying to pull.

00:20:26 Speaker 2

Me back from the precipice.

00:20:27 Speaker 2

All the time like trying to get me to, to see sense, the church as well were really praying for me. All of this was going on in the background.

00:20:36 Speaker 2

It got to the point where I was forced is the wrong word, strongly encouraged to have to see psychiatrists every week.

00:20:49 Speaker 2

At that point, they weren't hospitalising children because they were seeing their children. Teenagers were just going downhill more if they hospitalised them.

00:20:57 Speaker 2

And so instead of being hospitalised, they came up with a compromise where essentially I had to go to the Maudsley Psychiatric Hospital in London every week, bless them. My parents, like, had to drive. We had to drive there every week and I would be weighed when we went there and then together with the family.

00:21:19 Speaker 2

They would. The the psychiatrist would interview us, and there'd be a panel behind like a A1 way mirror and just watching in. And I remember I still remember the very first appointment where we sat down together and the psychiatrist said, look, if you.

00:21:38 Speaker 2

Carry on the way that you're going. You you could be dead within a week.

00:21:43 Speaker 2

And I remember just thinking good.

00:21:47 Speaker 2

Good. I I don't. I I don't wanna live anymore. I got so my mind was so warped at that point and I was just so far kind of gone into all of this. I just. I the only thing that was holding me back was the fact that I knew I was breaking my, my family's heart.

00:22:08 Speaker 2

And and so every week we would go. And I remember thinking, all I need to do is trick them. I just need to trick them into letting me go home and let me just get on with things as I wanna get on with them. And so I I do crazy things which sound ludicrous now, but I would do things like hide.

00:22:29 Speaker 2

Rocks in my clothing or things like that for when? When they would? When? When they would weigh me and I'd make up all kinds of different stories to try and make out how how much better I was. And this went on for a long a long time.

00:22:45 Speaker 2

Eventually I think they.

00:22:49 Speaker 2

They they it. It wasn't like they they were kind of like peaks and troughs where there were moments where things were a bit better and it got to the point where they where they allowed me to go home. But then I just plummeted back down again and and and there was just this cycle of just kind of returning back to to these problems.

00:23:08 Speaker 2

In the middle of all of that.

00:23:11 Speaker 2

There was an event that was happening at our church called Cutting Edge. Cutting Edge was an event for young people and the youth band in Cutting Edge would eventually become the the group Delirious, who went on to impact the Christian music scene around the world in an incredible way.

00:23:30 Speaker 2

At that. At that point, it was our youth group and it was, you know, it was growing and it was amazing. But as I say, I didn't really want anything to do with church. Remember my brother dragging me along to to one of the cutting edge meetings. And I remember walking in.

00:23:47 Speaker 2

Unknown to me, the team were up in the we we met in a in a in a large sports hall of the the the school at the time and there was a gallery with windows up at the top and the the team were all up there praying and they.

00:24:06 Speaker 2

Apparently that they they told me afterwards that when I walked in some of them they said, look, we're we're not gonna let, we're not gonna let jokers be die. We're not gonna. And they began to pray for me and then some of the people in the team.

00:24:21 Speaker 2

Kind of staged a bit of an intervention and said to my brother and I that they want that they they wanted us to to go over every week and to pray and so.

00:24:32 Speaker 2

My brother would.

00:24:33 Speaker 2

Drag me along to that very reluctantly at 1st, and so I'd be dragged along to that. And that all happened.

00:24:42 Speaker 2

Kind of all around the same time as me finishing my GCSE's and this is it is important because it kind of dovetails into what happened next.

00:24:52 Speaker 2

So I was at this point where I didn't want to live. I had on a number of occasions tried to take my life, and then I guess because I knew that death wasn't the end, something would always kind of pull me back. So, you know, I'd take it was in the days when you could buy, like, whole tubs of paracetamol and like I.

00:25:12 Speaker 2

Like down a tub of paracetamol and then.

00:25:15 Speaker 2

I suddenly have this real fear of what happens after after death, and then I force myself to to to to throw it up. Sorry, I know this is all a bit gross but but but that was the reality of what was going on and I just finished my GCSE's and I I knew that I had done well.

00:25:34 Speaker 2

I knew that I was going to get really, really good result.

00:25:38 Speaker 2

But I just felt so, completely and utterly empty.

00:25:45 Speaker 2

And I remember walking back to my house and just thinking.

00:25:50 Speaker 2

I just do not. I just don't want to live anymore. I just can't do this anymore. And.

00:25:56 Speaker 2

I remember thinking, I know that's not the end.

00:26:00 Speaker 2

I remember in my warped state of mind thinking that it would be some kind of escape, and that I'd rather be, you know, I'd rather be in what, whatever death was than in what I was living in that moment. And I remember thinking, you know, I need to settle accounts with God somehow.

00:26:19 Speaker 2

I I don't even know who God is anymore. I don't even know how to do that because I was so far away from it. And I remember just.

00:26:28 Speaker 2

Saying God, if you're there, you need to do something because.

00:26:35 Speaker 2

I don't wanna live anymore and I've shown what a complete mess I can. I've made out of my life, I I, and if there's anything, if there's anything at all that you can do with my life, I will gladly give it to you.

00:26:50 Speaker 2

And even now.

00:26:53 Speaker 2

Years, years later, I still find it really difficult to describe what happened, except to say that something much, much bigger than me came into the room in that moment and I fell on my face and I had what I can only really describe as an out of body experience, first of all.

00:27:13 Speaker 2

It was like as if I was in a pit and every time I tried to climb out of the pit I would just slide back down again and slide back down again.

00:27:20 Speaker 2

Until the absolute desperation I just put my head in my hands and I said Jesus help me and I don't really even know why I called out to Jesus because like I say, at that point I was like.

00:27:34 Speaker 2

Anything but really kind of looking to God or Christianity. Obviously that was my. That was my story growing up. And so I guess I guess in that moment it was just kind of that came that is what came back into the front into the front of my.

00:27:48 Speaker 2

Thinking, but when I cried out and when I cried out to Jesus.

00:27:54 Speaker 2

It was like a hand reached into that pit and grabbed a hold of me and yanked me out of it. And it wasn't. It wasn't like it was a pleasant experience. It felt like a violent experience in some ways. But then as soon as I was out of that, it was like I I I was standing before God.

00:28:14 Speaker 2

And standing before Jesus, I knew that I knew that I knew that it was Jesus.

00:28:18 Speaker 2

I looking into his eyes burnt like fire. It was like they could see right to the very, very depths of me and knew everything that I had done. Everything that I was doing, everything that I would ever do and loved me anyway. And it was like as I as I stood before.

00:28:39 Speaker 2

Jesus, the only way I can describe what it felt like was to say.

00:28:43 Speaker 2

Say that it was like waves of liquid love that were just radiating out of him and just hitting me. And as they did, it was like they were washing literally, like washing through me and washing away all of the junk, all of the rubbish, all of the stuff that I believed about myself.

00:29:06 Speaker 2

I just stood there and and he said to me that if you'll give me your.

00:29:10 Speaker 2

Life. I'll take you on an adventure that will leave you breathless cause the hairs on the back of your neck to stand up on end and leave you wondering how on Earth you could live. The kind of life I called you to live. Those were the words and I've never forgot those words and those are.

00:29:25 Speaker 2

The words that I always tell people.

00:29:26 Speaker 2

That, that, that Jesus said to me. And I just remember through tears, just saying I'm in. I'm in.

00:29:33 Speaker 2

And and I came out of that experience.

00:29:38 Speaker 2

Completely changed I I can't even really tell you how I knew that I was changed. I just knew that life was never gonna be the same again. And I phoned my. I phoned my grandfather, who at the time was he was a Baptist reverend. And I said you've got to come over. You've got to come over.

00:29:57 Speaker 2

Of my parents were.

00:29:58 Speaker 2

Work. He came over to the house and he sat with me and I told him what had happened.

00:30:03 Speaker 2

And he's crying. I'm crying.

00:30:06 Speaker 2

He prays for me, he said to me. You need to write down a declaration of of of what's happened. I wrote down this declaration of, like giving my life to God, and I signed it my.

00:30:17 Speaker 2

Mum still has to serve.

00:30:18 Speaker 2

I'm well. I'm sure she's got it.

00:30:19 Speaker 2

In her Bible somewhere, I think. But it was an absolutely incredible, incredible moment and straight away I had no desire.

00:30:28 Speaker 2

To to get off my head with any kind of substances or anything like that. I had absolutely no desire for any cigarettes or anything like that, and very, very quickly my, my, the way that I saw myself because one of the things that people battle with if they have eating disorders is they they have a warped.

00:30:48 Speaker 2

A a a warped view of themselves when they look in the mirror, they'll see something that's completely different to what? To what the reality is. So you could be a an emaciated skeleton and you look in the mirror and still think that you're that you're fat and.

00:31:02 Speaker 2

An overweight and so.

00:31:06 Speaker 2

My the the the way that I was seeing myself like instantly it it just began to unravel and it just began to to, to kind of clarify. And I had this insatiable hunger for the word of God. And so this was in May of 1996, at the end of May 1997 between that May.

00:31:26 Speaker 2

And that Christ.

00:31:28 Speaker 2

I threw myself into the Bible and I read the whole Bible seven times and I read the New Testament a further 10 times. And I'm not saying this in any way to, you know, like, wow, isn't that great? You read the Bible like I'm. I'm saying it because I just like I was so hungry. I was so hungry to know what God said.

00:31:48 Speaker 2

About things. What God thinks about things I wanted to know the heart of God. And then alongside all of that, I was having incredible prophetic encounters where I was experiencing the presence of God and experiencing.

00:32:03 Speaker 2

Heaven in all kinds of different ways. Breaking out in my life, and obviously that began to spill out in other ways. I remember going to pick up my GCSE results and my teachers saying you're you're like glowing. You're what on Earth has happened to you and so.

00:32:23 Speaker 2

They told them exactly what happened to me and they like, and they're in tears and it was just an amazing time, obviously for the church and for everybody who had been praying for me and fighting for my my life. It was just an absolutely amazing time and.

00:32:41 Speaker 2

And that really, you know, began an incredible adventure that I'm still on now. God has been true to his word in so many amazing ways. You know, the the doctors and the psychiatrist. They said to me when when I when I was being seen by them that I had so badly damaged my.

00:33:01 Speaker 2

Myself physically, but I would never be able to function properly.

00:33:04 Speaker 2

They they basically said, you know, never be able to have children. They'd never.

00:33:10 Speaker 2

It's all quite it's all quite.

00:33:12 Speaker 2

Glib. They didn't really give me much hope. I remember them saying that you're never. You're never gonna be free from this. All week, all we'll ever really be able to do is give you tools to be able to.

00:33:25 Speaker 2

Manage it coping mechanisms.

00:33:28 Speaker 2

But I am really pleased to tell you today that who the son sets free is free. Indeed, you know when Jesus steps into your life, he is able to do what what is impossible with man. It's not. It is not impossible with God and he's turned everything around. Like I say, I'm married today to the most amazing woman. I've got four. Incredible.

00:33:47 Speaker 2

Children got to heal my body completely. I've travelled to close to 50 different nations around the world and seen God move in absolutely amazing, miraculous ways and.

00:34:02 Speaker 2

It all began in that moment, saying yes, it all began in that moment, saying saying yes to Jesus and he he turned everything around. And so so today I mean to to cut a Long story short, today I I have the amazing privilege of serving on the leadership team of that same church.

00:34:22 Speaker 2

Together with, with, with, with Becca and with, you know, people who knew me at that point and saw me go through all of that, that that terrible, terrible time.

00:34:35 Speaker 2

And I also have the incredible privilege of leading a mission organisation called links that works into at the moment we're working to approximately 45 countries around the world with the vision to connect people, confront poverty, create potential, we work in the five areas of faith, health, education, business and justice.

00:34:56 Speaker 2

And I've seen God just do incredible things around the world and.

00:35:01 Speaker 2

Yeah, it all it it. It all began in that moment.

00:35:04 Speaker 3

That's so cool. Amazing. So bye. You go first.

00:35:05 Speaker 4

Really cool. I've got a question immediately. Do you want a gryphon?

00:35:09 Speaker 4

I was going to say you said you umm that God uh sent you on an adventure and that would send the the hairs on your head.

00:35:17 Speaker 2

The hairs on the back of my neck. Yeah. Stand up on him.

00:35:17 Speaker 4

Back, back, back your neck. So what's one thing we gotta know how well you might? Have you experienced any of those things yet, or is it? He's in the future. You got any any interesting stories for us?

00:35:24 Speaker 2

Ohh my goodness. Ohh my goodness, so many so many interesting stories.

00:35:33 Speaker 2

So so one of the one of the definitely the hairs on the back of the neck standing up stories that I've got to share was when I was in Colombia working with youth with the mission. So when I finished my A levels, I really felt called out to to mission work. My dad was working.

00:35:54 Speaker 2

In that field at that at that time. And I happened to travel with him to a number of places, but one of them being Colombia. And when I was there, I really felt God saying this where you need to be. And I ended up working with a with an organisation rescuing St Child.

00:36:08 Speaker 2

Children out of a a slum called El Cartucho, which doesn't exist anymore. But at that time it was considered one of the most dangerous places on Earth. Cartouche literally means bullet in Spanish. So.

00:36:26 Speaker 2

Bullet cartridge. And so we were working into this place and we had the the the organisation had a school for street children and a nursery. We were working with the families we were providing.

00:36:42 Speaker 2

Education, healthcare, lots of different things, but obviously one of the essential parts of that was to go into the slums to pick up the children. And when we went to pick up one of the one of the girls in particular, we were in a rush that day. And usually we were going to the different homes. At least two of us.

00:37:02 Speaker 2

Two or three of us, but because we were in such a rush, I ended up going by myself.

00:37:06 Speaker 2

Into one of the homes, and if you can imagine the the slum is it, it became a slum. But originally it was part of the colonial Spanish part of the city. So the the houses are kind of like terraced houses. You go into the house and there be a courtyard and then around the courtyard would be lots of rooms.

00:37:25 Speaker 2

But as the area just became more and more deprived over the years became used much more for drugs and for mafia means and things like that. Those those those houses became more and more dilapidated.

00:37:39 Speaker 2

So this particular house would go you go into it and all of those rooms would essentially be like DOS houses and they'll be there. There could be up to 14 people sleeping in one of those rooms. And I went in to pick up one of the girls, her.

00:37:50 Speaker 2

Name was her name was Margarita and as I went in there was a guy standing in front of me and he just had wild.

00:37:59 Speaker 2

Eyes. His hair was matted. He was absolutely filthy, and he looked at me and he said, what are you doing here? We kill people like you.

00:38:09 Speaker 2

Obviously in Spanish and.

00:38:13 Speaker 2

And and there was a real dislike of people from the US because of American foreign policy in the country at the time. But but generally, Colombians, and even even now, a lot of them are anglophiles they absolutely love. They absolutely love.

00:38:28 Speaker 2

The British and so.

00:38:29 Speaker 2

So I just so I said to him, I'm not, I'm not American.

00:38:33 Speaker 2

I'm I'm I'm English thinking that that would be enough and that, you know, he'd give me a hug and he'd be like, hey, David Beckham, Manchester United we we love the English but that's not what happened. He just looked at me and he said I don't care. We kill people like you.

00:38:49 Speaker 2

And I turned around to see that that my exit out the doorway was being blocked by three other people that were just standing there looking on. And I I was the most scared I've ever been in my life. And I remember just looking down at the floor and saying Jesus, help me.

00:39:08 Speaker 2

Jesus, help me.

00:39:10 Speaker 2

And it's really again this is another one of those like our really hard to describe what happened next. But the next thing I knew, I was over 100 feet away next to the mini bus that we used to pick up the children outside. And I don't know. And I can't tell you to this day whether or not.

00:39:30 Speaker 2

God closed my eyes to what was happening in their eyes to what was happening, or whether some Angel just came in and swooped in and like, picked me up like one of those machines in an arcade and just kind of, like, scooped me up and then dropped me down where where the minibus was. I have no idea. To this day, all I know is I was.

00:39:48 Speaker 2

It I was staring death in the face. I forgot to mention this guy. He had a machete and a gun. A staring death in the face. Just a small. Yeah. It's just a small detail there. And. And then the next moment I was outside and and and. And the other thing that was crazy about the situation is that there was a a child.

00:40:08 Speaker 2

Who had been hit by a by a car and and he had he clearly broken his arm.

00:40:14 Speaker 2

But because of that, there was so much commotion around the minibus and we were and and the others who were there were helping this child and then putting him into the minibus. We were gonna take him to a hospital. But there was so much commotion around there that even if these guys had wanted to do anything, they they couldn't because it was just too much going on. And I remember looking back and it was so.

00:40:34 Speaker 2

It was like it was like I was in a bit of a haze at the time, and I remember looking back and seeing them stumble out of the house, which as I say, was about 100 foot away. That was absolutely crazy. That wasn't the only thing that happened in that in that slum, though. I remember another time us going in.

00:40:54 Speaker 2

And the the, the, the bus that we usually use to go in, which obviously had the logo of the ministry all on on, on the side of it had broken down. And so because it had broken down, we ended up going in another vehicle to go and pick up the children that day. And as we went into the slum, it was, it was like.

00:41:14 Speaker 2

Eerily quiet.

00:41:15 Speaker 2

And we thought, what on Earth is going on here? There was a guy that we affectionately termed Fidel because he looked like Fidel Castro and he would stand at like one of the crossroads in there. And he would like. And I never understood what he was doing, but he would often do like these kind of, like, these weird kind of like traffic signals and and and he.

00:41:35 Speaker 2

He he clearly was a guy, lived on the streets. But I'll never forget when I met with him and started talking with him and found out that he had been a he'd been a professor. He spoke 8 languages and he'd just faced tragedy and he'd ended up. He'd ended up in this in this community.

00:41:51 Speaker 2

He but he wasn't there and he's he was usually always at this crossroads and he wasn't. He wasn't there. And as we went in.

00:42:00 Speaker 2

The hair on the back of my neck just stood up on end and we looked at each other and we just all began to start praying. We knew something was wrong.

00:42:11 Speaker 2

Then, suddenly, Fidel ran out and started shouting.

00:42:16 Speaker 2

Servano stono servano.

00:42:18 Speaker 2

It's the brothers. It's the brothers. Which is what? What they called us.

00:42:21 Speaker 2

In there to which we began to realise that we had snipers on us. We had these people that were about to open fire on the bus and you know, it was a very real, real risk. I remember when we were there, a Red Cross bus going in and the eight, the eight medical professionals there.

00:42:40 Speaker 2

All being murdered and everything within the within their their ambulance they took in everything being stolen. So this kind of thing did happen.

00:42:49 Speaker 2

Not, but we would we, I guess we kind of just got a little bit blase about the fact that we were being looked after when we were in there, obviously by God, but also by the mafia that were that were running the area because they so respected what we were doing with the children. So as soon as they realised that it was us, they were about to open fire. But as soon as they realised it was us, they.

00:43:11 Speaker 2

They they put down their weapons.

00:43:12 Speaker 2

So they're just like crazy things like that. That happened all the time.

00:43:17 Speaker 4

Yeah. That's amazing, isn't it?

00:43:19 Speaker 4

What was your question?

00:43:20 Speaker 3

You said you went back to the school and the teachers reaction to like your miraculous, like, turn around. Did you ever go back to your doctor's and did they?

00:43:28 Speaker 2

Yeah. Well, our local doctors, they, they, they were amazed as well. I forgot to mention, I mean, so at my worst at that at that point when I really cried out to God, I dropped down to four stone, 7 lbs. So it was really that would be like 28 kilos for anybody that might be listening on that on that.

00:43:28 Speaker 3

What? What was their reaction?

00:43:49 Speaker 2

System so.

00:43:50 Speaker 2

Really, really, really unwell again. They they the the doctors were. I think they were. They were shocked by it all really. As I started to put on weight, obviously you don't start to put on weight immediately but they could instantly see the difference in my in.

00:44:06 Speaker 3

My health. Yeah, true. Yeah. And just for them to say there's nothing we can do.

00:44:11 Speaker 3

I mean, it's just incredible, isn't it? Like, God, there's always a way. Absolutely.

00:44:13 Speaker 2

Yeah, absolutely.

00:44:16 Speaker 3

That's amazing. Any more questions?

00:44:21 Speaker 4

OK. Yeah, I do have one more question. And that's just I really wanted you to share a bit more about what you're doing now, Joe.

00:44:27 Speaker 4

And and give us a bit more detail about links and and.

00:44:31 Speaker 2

Ohh yeah definitely so. So a little bit about links. Links were started in the 80s by amazing couple Norman and Grace Barnes really came out of the new church movement with a real focus of wanting to see the church engage with the needs around the world and the whole area.

00:44:31 Speaker 4

And everything involved with.

00:44:51 Speaker 2

Of of mission, because during that time there was a real strong focus on.

00:44:55 Speaker 2

On what is commonly known as kind of Kingdom of God, theology and the fact that the church isn't about just preparing people for life after death, it's about the fact that actually the movement of Jesus is about bringing heaven to earth in the here and now, which which is absolutely 100% true, but it ended up being quite kind of localised.

00:45:15 Speaker 2

That in the whole new church movement, and I think Norman and Grace had a real vision to see that break out and impact the whole world.

00:45:24 Speaker 2

And so from very humble beginnings, I think they first they first went out in in the late 70s and the early 80s to Ghana in West Africa to today where we've worked into more than 80 different countries around the world. It really began with a vision of wanting to, as the name suggests.

00:45:44 Speaker 2

Link people together, link churches, businesses, organisations, schools, individuals with amazing things that are going on around the world in, in the in the majority world. So in like poorer nations around the.

00:45:58 Speaker 2

Well, so our vision has always been to connect people, to confront poverty, to create potential. And as I say, we're doing that now in lots of different places. But we over the years, we found that they're kind of specific areas that have become our niche and that they kind of form.

00:46:18 Speaker 2

The columns of what we do and and I think I mentioned at the beginning, those are.

00:46:23 Speaker 2

Faith, health, business, education and social justice. Within those those five columns, there's lots of different kind of things that we do. There's like a whole portfolio in all of those. So like for instance, in the faith area, we'll do everything from helping people. We'll plant churches to discipleship.

00:46:43 Speaker 2

Training, leadership development, strategic direction for their networks moving forward all all over the world.

00:46:54 Speaker 2

On one end of the scale, right up to maybe just going and speaking in a conference somewhere, you know, so, so it can be anything from, right, right across that scale in the area of business for instance, we work on one end of the scale helping individuals set up micro businesses. And we've seen 10s of thousands of families come out of poverty and stay out of poverty.

00:47:15 Speaker 2

By receiving training alone to to to set up a a small business.

00:47:21 Speaker 2

And I'll give you a really quick example. In Uganda, we helped the lady set up a business. This was way, way back when we first started out and and she sold charcoal. So she going to rural area, buy charcoal, take it into the city, sell it for a profit, began to prosper, began to do really well. And then suddenly they had lots of other people setting up shop.

00:47:43 Speaker 2

Right alongside selling charcoal and so suddenly, her market was flooded. Wasn't making the same profit that she was making before.

00:47:52 Speaker 2

And so, you know, at that point, she could have, she could have come back and said there's no point. Why am I? Why am I even bothering trying? And, you know, nobody would have judged her for doing that. But what she actually did was come back and say, can I take out a larger loan? So we do 3 cycles of loans basically through through our partners around the world. And with that larger loan, she said what I wanna do is I'm gonna go into the rural area, and I'm gonna.

00:48:14 Speaker 2

Buy up a large amount of charcoal.

00:48:16 Speaker 2

And then I'm gonna sell it to the other charcoal sellers in the city. And so she essentially went into kind of wholesale.

00:48:22 Speaker 2

This, which was amazing again, sometimes she was able to prosper, feed, clothe their children, put them for education. Brilliant. So we loved seeing that kind of entrepreneurial spirit rise up within within her. But that's not the end of the story. I mean, even if it was, that'd be it would. It'd be great. But today she doesn't buy and sell charcoal anymore.

00:48:42 Speaker 2

Who buys and sells property now in Utah?

00:48:44 Speaker 2

And that, but it all began with that. With that, that seed back then. So we love seeing that and we've seen micro businesses start up in, in Asia, the Middle East, Africa, Latin America and it's a really important part of the work that we do. Then on the other end of the scale within that the, the, the.

00:49:04 Speaker 2

Business remit of what we do, we help organisations set up income generating projects which will help cover their core costs and also tap into their core objectives. So, for instance, one of the obviously for for reasons.

00:49:20 Speaker 2

Of of confidentiality, one of our partners who work rescuing girls out of the sex trade.

00:49:28 Speaker 2

They were finding that if they couldn't provide them with other work, it was very difficult to stop them from being pulled back into that. And so we helped them set up a a business we we helped them set up a lychee and a light sheep farm, first of all, and then a tilapia fish farm. And that provided a huge amount of their core.

00:49:48 Speaker 2

Costs for them, but it also provided them with an opportunity to provide work for the girls that they were rescuing. So we're always looking for those kind of those kind of projects.

00:50:00 Speaker 2

In the era of everything that we do is very much about empowerment. We're not interested in doing things that will create a dependency on the West. We believe that the Bible very clearly says that that God gives the power to get wealth, that he may establish his covenant in the earth. It says in the Book of Deuteronomy and we wanna see that.

00:50:20 Speaker 2

That those capabilities that are God-given that are within people brought to the surface.

00:50:25 Speaker 2

So everything that we do is is with the view of empowering people to be able to realise their the destiny that they've got. So there's always an element of training and cascading the work out to A to a wider audience. So for instance in the healthcare.

00:50:42 Speaker 2

Area of our work. We will train up healthcare volunteers. We have a programme that we call the SHINE programme. It stands for sanitation, hygiene, immunisation, nutrition and empowerment. Over a period of time, we'll train up those volunteers in that syllabus for want of a better for of a better word.

00:51:01 Speaker 2

But obviously the fundamental part of that is the last part that trains them to be trainers and what that does is it it creates within the scheme itself the the means to multiply it out. And so we've seen, we've seen through our training that go into villages all over Africa into.

00:51:21 Speaker 2

Slums in India into tribal communities in the Amazon and it just keeps on growing and growing because of the way that the way that it's.

00:51:31 Speaker 2

Obviously, justice is a huge element of mission work. It really mission and justice are two sides of the same coin because.

00:51:41 Speaker 2

Often, often there there are corrupt systems that allow poverty to be there in the 1st place, that if they if those things are never challenged, all we ever really do is provide kind of short term.

00:51:53 Speaker 2

Short term solutions, we're we, we we just spent our whole time putting out fires basically. So you probably heard people talk about that, that, that prover there's a Chinese proverb that says if you give a man a fish, you feed him for a day, if you teach him to fish, you feed him for life, which sounds nice, looks good on a bumper sticker on a fridge magnet or something.

00:52:13 Speaker 2

It's not the whole story, it's it's insufficient, because if all they do is.

00:52:18 Speaker 2

If all I do is teach somebody how to fish, but I don't provide them with the resources to fish or ensure that they're healthy enough to fish or or or or make sure that they know how to fish, all I've done is create a frustrated Fisher person because at least before ignorance was blessed, now they now they got all of this stuff but they but but, but they they don't have the ability to actually.

00:52:41 Speaker 2

Outwork it. So let's say that I metaphorically do make sure that they're healthy through healthcare training, make sure that they know what they're doing through education. Make sure that they.

00:52:51 Speaker 2

Have the means to do it through a micro enterprise initiative or whatever, but then when they go to try and fish, they find that somebody's built a huge wall around the lake or or the water source has been polluted again, all the they're they're just gonna be equally frustrated. And So what we found is often we have to advocate.

00:53:12 Speaker 2

On behalf of people, we have to ensure that people know the pitfalls to make sure that they are aware of things like people trafficking.

00:53:23 Speaker 2

And so that's that's become a major part of the work that we do as well. So keeps us out of mischief, keeps us very busy. We really love working in partnership with people. We have a a real passion to see the church engage the business world, engage.

00:53:43 Speaker 2

With these things in a meaningful way, we don't believe that it really.

00:53:49 Speaker 2

Scratches where people are itching. If all they they are able to do is give a check to a charity tick, a box, pat themselves on the back and feel good about themselves for a little bit, I I think that people want to be part of the change. I think people want an opportunity to be able to roll their sleeves up, get their hands dirty, be able to see it, smell it, feel it.

00:54:11 Speaker 2

Know that that that they're a part of it, because what is often not talked about.

00:54:17 Speaker 2

Within International Development, within even within Christian mission is the fact that we're all battling poverty. Poverty isn't the lack of material goods. Poverty is a breakdown of, of, of wholeness. It's a breakdown of it's a breakdown of what, what the scriptures referred to as Shalom.

00:54:37 Speaker 2

This idea of everything working in in harmony as it was always supposed to work, and so where sometimes.

00:54:46 Speaker 2

Some of our friends around the world might be materially poor. We have to admit, often in the wealthy West. We are sociologically like drowning in poverty. We've never known loneliness like we know not right now. There's never been as much. There's never been as much fear and anxiety as there is right now.

00:55:07 Speaker 2

And so one of the things that I really love seeing when we when we make these connections and when we take teams out and when businesses connect with what we do or churches connect with what we do, we find that people will more often than not say I've received so much more than I can.

00:55:21 Speaker 2

Have ever given in this situation and what they are trying to express is that where they are battling their poverty, they are they're receiving from those communities or from those situations that they're stepping out into and what we find is that as we all come together and as we all roll our sleeves up and as we all kind of jump in this together.

00:55:42 Speaker 2

We're all healed. We're all.

00:55:45 Speaker 2

We we all have that change, which is absolutely beautiful thing to see and there's something that we're really, really passionate about in links. So if people are interested and want to find out more, you know, please do check out our socials. We'll make sure that the that the handles are are, are, are in the notes with this. But check out our website WWW dot.

00:56:06 Speaker 2

Links dot charity and please do contact us. Please do chat with us. We would love. We would love to start a conversation with you.

00:56:14 Speaker 3

I just got a real sense, as you were talking, just we just asked you to finish.

00:56:20 Speaker 3

And prayer. But for people that can relate to your story but also just got a real sense of, like any mums, especially cause my mum. But just parents that are praying for their children to come home. I just got, like, a real heartfelt, just like, Oh my gosh, the the, you know, there's some people listening to this and they're just.

00:56:32 Speaker 2

Yeah, definitely.

00:56:42 Speaker 3

Longing for their child to come home in such and such a massive way like you did, you know, to be completely, radically changed and just come home to the Lord. So if you could pray for people Muslim, for for that and anything else.

00:56:43 Speaker 2

Yeah, absolutely.

00:56:56 Speaker 4

No, that's it, I think.

00:56:57 Speaker 2

It's great. Do you know, as you were saying, that I really felt like I kept thinking about there. There's a story in the book of Acts that talks about, obviously it's talks about the early church. And as that began to move out and there's a story about Peter, who was obviously one of Jesus's followers being thrown into prison, and he's in a prison.

00:57:17 Speaker 2

And it talks about his situation.

00:57:20 Speaker 2

And but then there's this little scripture that says. But the church prayed, and the story goes that they're all in a prayer meeting. And as they're in a prayer meeting.

00:57:31 Speaker 2

An Angel from God causes the prison doors to kind of fling open and Peter is like he thinks it's a dream. It's like kind of like he doesn't think it's really happening, but he begins to follow the Angel and he ends up out of the prison. And then when he's outside of the prison, he's suddenly, like, hang on a minute. This is actually happening. This isn't a dream.

00:57:51 Speaker 2

And then he ends up going to that prayer meeting and and knocking on the door.

00:57:55 Speaker 2

And and I I I feel like I would just wanna say to anybody listening whatever the situation, no matter how impossible it looked, because obviously in that particular situation, what was gonna happen was Peter was gonna be killed in the morning and. And so it looked like there was absolutely nothing they were going to be able to do about it, but they prayed.

00:58:16 Speaker 2

But the church prayed, and as the as they pray.

00:58:19 Speaker 2

Said God did what as they did. What only they could do. God did what only he could do. And so, as you say, I would just say to anybody who is.

00:58:29 Speaker 2

Either you know facing your own battle and thinking how on Earth am I going to see my way out of this? How?

00:58:36 Speaker 2

Am I ever?

00:58:36 Speaker 2

Gonna be free from this addiction, no matter what that might be. Whatever form that takes.

00:58:42 Speaker 2

Any feeling of will things ever change? I would just encourage you. Pray call out to Jesus, you know he he is able to step into the darkest of situations and bring light the most hopeless of things and bring hope. And if you are fighting on behalf of somebody who can't.

00:59:02 Speaker 2

Do it in their own.

00:59:03 Speaker 2

Strength don't give up. Keep on praying. You, you never you. You don't know. You might be right on the verge of that breakthrough. You might be right at that point. Don't give up. Keep on going. I am so, so grateful that the people in my life didn't give up because they had every reason to. I didn't give them any hope.

00:59:23 Speaker 2

That they had every reason to think that it was never gonna change, but they kept on going and they kept on believing and they kept on fighting for me. When I can fight for myself.

00:59:33 Speaker 2

So, so keep going. Stand strong. God's God's with you. There is nothing that is impossible for him. He's able to turn it around.

00:59:45 Speaker 3

Amazing. Amen. Yes.

00:59:46 Speaker 2

And pray please, Lord God, I just want to thank you so much for everybody that is listening. Lord, I don't think that there are any accidents. And if people are tuned into this, it's because you've you've destined for that to happen. And Lord, I believe that that that your words says that there's there's power.

01:00:06 Speaker 2

When we hear people's stories that people's stories actually.

01:00:10 Speaker 2

Prophecy and declare to us what is possible in our own lives. I believe God, that the same God that was able to reach into that pit and to pull me out is able to reach into absolutely any situation anybody. Lord that is listening to this right now, whatever they might be going through, whatever they might be facing.

01:00:31 Speaker 2

In this moment.

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And Lord, we believe that you're bigger, believe that you are still the saviour. You're still the healer. You're still the Redeemer. Your word says that, Jesus, you're the same yesterday, today and forever. And I believe that the same Jesus that healed and gave sight to the blind and the open deaf ears and that caused the lame.

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To walk, that's set people free is the same Jesus that is with us right now and that you're able to do.

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Do that in our day and in our generation. And so God, I just pray right now for prison doors to open for chains, to, to, to fall away more for addictions to be broken. I pray, Lord God, for anybody that is struggling with their mental health, with chronic depression, with thoughts of suicide.

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With eating disorders, Lord all of those things, I just pray right now. Jesus, that you would come and that you would break those those lies and that decent.

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I believe that there is power in your blood and and Jesus. You, you bleed from your forehead. We read about that in, in, in your word when you were in the garden before your crucifixion, you bled from your forehead. And I believe, Lord God, that you that that speaks of us, the fact that we can be free. We can be free in our minds. We can be free and in.

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In those things that try and keep us bounded that try and keep us down, and so God, I just declare right now your freedom. I declare right now your deliverance.

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Would anything that we're so grateful for medical science? We're so grateful for psychologists. We're so grateful for the help that those that those things can bring. But we know that that their ability is limited and Lord, where they run out, we believe, Lord, that you.

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Still have all.

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Kinds of amazing ways to to to still move and so God, I just pray for anybody.

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Right now, who feels like they're in an impossible situation or that they are at the end of themselves? God, I pray that as they cry out to you that you would step in and that you would bring your freedom. And I thank you in advance that.

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Hope for all the stories we're going to hear. Thank you in advance for, for, for all of the people all that are listening in on this. And God would you move now in Jesus name? Amen.

01:02:49 Speaker 1

Thanks for listening to the Jesus Studio podcast.

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The testimonials and stories shared reflect the personal experiences and unique journeys of our guests.

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