Culture & Christianity: The Allen Jackson Podcast

Allen Jackson: Welcome to Culture & Christianity. I have been saying for weeks that God is moving in the earth, and the question that comes back to me more than any other since I've started saying that is, "Well, tell me what you see." The implication is, "We're not sure we see that," or "Help us understand why you would frame it that way."

In this session, I'm going to share with you some excerpts from podcasts you've already heard. These are friends of mine, people I'm doing life with, who have God stories. There is no other way to explain it without the supernatural involvement of God; the outcomes in the lives of the people we're going to listen to would have been dramatically different. God didn't deliver them from challenges or keep them from problems, and it didn't mean they didn't face some significant things.

But God intervened in remarkable ways. One of the ways to understand God moving in the earth is we're going to raise our awareness of those places where there are outcomes that God really deserves acknowledgment for. I know that's true in my day-to-day activities; there are outcomes in the things that I'm involved with that I can't explain without God's involvement.

I pray that you're engaged in activities where you're inviting God into the midst of lives, families, and circumstances—not living foolishly, recklessly, or casually, but living intentionally with faith. If we will do that and lead with our faith, I am quite confident you will see God move in your life.

It's Christmas time. We are celebrating Mary and Joseph, the birth in Bethlehem, and the whole set of circumstances that I'm sure you're more than a little familiar with. None of those invitations were easy. They were all highly disruptive, filled with anxiety, and the outcomes were beyond the control of the people who were participating. Yet from our vantage point, we celebrate it as God moving in the earth.

He's still moving in the earth if we're willing to accept His invitations, the disruptions that often come with those, and the uncertainty that comes from trusting God. I have friends who say, "Well, it's not uncertain; I have faith." I appreciate your boldness, but I think if it's a true God invitation, you understand the vulnerability—that until God shows up, the outcomes are simply inexplicable. I think it's a good way to live, but it's not always the simplest way.

I hope you enjoy the podcast. More than that, I want to wish you a very Merry Christmas. It is an honor to have this time with you on a regular basis, and to be a small part of what God is doing in the earth. Together, I believe we can make a difference in our churches, our communities, our homes, our nation, and even beyond that. I pray your Christmas is merry, that you enjoy the people you're able to spend it with, and we will pick up the thread of this messaging of God moving in the earth in January. I trust I will have a pocketful of God stories to share with you then. God bless you and Merry Christmas.

I'll let you step in. I got the phone call to come to the hospital because he was misbehaving.

Rick: Severely.

Allen Jackson: But maybe you tell us why you went, and then we'll walk our way through this story.

Rick: I was actually going for a colonoscopy. It had been 10 years. I know him well enough that he'd like to drive you to the hospital.

Allen Jackson: Absolutely.

Rick: I get there and, unknowingly to me, I wasn't feeling good already that morning. With the prep and all that, you kind of expect that. They get me there and I'm discussing things with the nurse, and I actually coded right there on the gurney while talking with her. When she looked around, I was in full cardiac arrest.

I guess at that point, everybody that was at the facility wound up responding to me. The local firemen responded. They did CPR for 36 minutes. They shocked me something like 15 times because I just kept going down. One of the things that obviously came up after I got back on my feet was: why didn't they give up?

That's just an amazing thing. I went back and touched base with each one to say why, because to me, it would have been easy to give up. To further the story, they wound up putting a balloon pump in my heart. They got me over to the hospital and flew me to Vanderbilt. By now, I'm in a full coma. They put me on a vent and induced a coma for four days, dropping my temperature by 10 degrees. I think they told the family to be prepared that I'm not going to make it, and it probably looked like a one percent chance. If I did live, there was no telling what I would be.

Allen Jackson: We went over to the emergency room and we were met by the attending physician that day. They carry you to that consultation room that nobody really wants to go to. He said, "We're going to do everything that we can, I can assure you, but this is severe and you need to be prepared." From there, we hit our knees and prayed for a miracle. And we did. Somewhere in that part, I got there, so a little bit of this I saw.

They did pray. Then the doctor came out when they got you ready to transport. I was there for that meeting and he wasn't particularly hopeful. He said, "We're going to move, but you've been gone too long." They'd lowered your body temperature. We asked if we could see you before they took you to transport you. You've had better days. You're not a pretty man on your best day.

Rick: Well, thank you.

Allen Jackson: But on that day, you looked about as bad as he describes you.

Rick: Absolutely.

Allen Jackson: Ricky's wife and I would go out in the hallway to ask the really tough questions. When we finally determined or got clarity that he's going to live, then it was a question of how bad it was going to be. They went from a severely damaged heart—we're thinking heart transplant, life-altering, life-changing—to him having a stent put in and going home.

I remember asking the doctor, "What can we expect from his activity level? If it's that severe, from what I had understood, what's next?" Part of the miracle was that he said, "You're not hearing me. He's going to be what he was before." I asked, "Without any transplant? Without any open-heart surgery?" He said, "Yeah. We've done test after test. His heart is strong. It's damaged, but the part of the heart that is damaged will overcome that part, get stronger, and there's a chance that other part of his heart will get stronger as well. We're not facing any of that stuff."

I said, "I don't understand. How did we go from being that severe to being able to..." You've got to understand, he's a hard worker, he's physically active. He said, "All you can say is it's a blessing. What you've received is a blessing."

Rick: I'll say this, too. The day before the event, I was putting up a fence on the farm because I farm on the side and always have. This day now, I'm still putting up those same fences. I do everything that I was doing. God gave me two miracles. He let me live, but He gave me my life back. That is such a critical piece—that I have my full life.

Allen Jackson: You don't have to look far to see that our economy is in real turmoil. Our nation is $37 trillion in debt. Inflation rates have made it hard to buy and sell a house, or even a car. We're all feeling it. When you go to the grocery store and you spend that extra dollar or two on every item, that gets personal in a hurry.

The most important thing we can do during uncertain times is to invest ourselves in knowing God better. Read His word and pray. That's the only place we're really going to find the stability we need for the disruption that I'm pretty certain is ahead of us. Beyond that, it's just plain wise to make the best decisions possible in our daily lives with our investments.

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Because of my dad's hard work, he had been very successful business-wise. He unfortunately died at 61 years of age from a brain aneurysm, but he was still working 12 and 14-hour days. I never saw the man sick. That's why it was such a shock when he passed away. I never saw any of that coming. If you can imagine, all of a sudden, at 33 years of age, being thrown into a situation where you're starting to let people go and shut down companies.

It was a tough time for me. For about three and a half years, I was dissolving companies and sending people on their way. In the meantime, I was trying to keep my mom alive. After that time period, I just started thinking, "What about me? What's in it for me?" That's what started me down the wrong road to becoming casual with my faith. I never walked away from God. I prayed a lot whenever I was living a life that I shouldn't have been living.

Gradually, it's important who you hang around with because it's very easy if you hang around with the wrong crowd for things that you really, in the beginning, thought you didn't want to be a part of to start being not that big of a deal. Dirty jokes here, a little of this there, and the next thing you know, you're in the bars, you're drinking, and you're doing different things. It just led me down a path that I really shouldn't have gone down.

Guest (Male): I know you and some buddies got into working out and lifting a lot of weights.

Guest (Male): I did that for a period of time for all the wrong reasons. It was all about vanity. That was in 2005. I worked out for two and a half years and was in the gym six days a week. I would tell you it was for my health, as I was in my mid-40s, but it was really about vanity for me. About two and a half years into that, we came off a dive trip. I had a charity golf tournament on a Monday after we got in on Saturday. After that event, I was just not feeling well, so I came home early.

About two hours after I went to bed, I had an extreme pain in my right side. To make a long story short, I was diagnosed with kidney cancer. Two weeks later, they removed the kidney. Thank God I went five years without having to go through chemo or any of that kind of stuff. Right after the surgery, about 3:00 in the morning, I woke up and I had this still, small voice. It said, "How's it working out for you?"

I cried. I said, "Not very well." The Holy Spirit said, "You start to take care of your spiritual strength. Don't worry about your physical strength. I'll take care of your physical health. You take care of your spiritual health." That was the real turn that started turning me back to the Lord. I'm a stubborn man, and I didn't turn as quick as I should have. It still took me a few years to really fully come back.

But that's about the time that God brought us here because the first time or second time I heard you preach, you said something that changed my life in a lot of respects. I was on my way back to really making a commitment to serve the Lord, and you said, "It's not about your kingdom; it's about His kingdom." I needed to hear that because my whole life it was about my kingdom and what I could do to get on God's good side to grow my kingdom.

Allen Jackson: Tell us a little bit about what you did with your Bible.

Guest (Male): Right after you told me it wasn't about me and was about His kingdom, we turned to January of 2014. You said, "We're going to do something as a congregation. We're going to invite you to read your Bibles, and we're going to read our Bibles in a year from Genesis to Revelation."

One of the things that I can share with you as you read the word of God is that some things will start to change in your life. One of the things that will change is you'll start to see how holy God is and how unholy you are. It'll bring you to a place of repentance. If we want something bad enough, we will figure out a way to make it come true. We just got to somehow, some way, collate an ideal in our mind that it's important to read the word of God. As I said, I don't want to live my life in bondage; I want to live my life free.

Allen Jackson: One of the mentors in my life said something to me when I was young: "God will be no man's debtor." I'm sure I didn't understand it at the time, but I have come to understand that whatever we give to the Lord, He gives back to us in a most remarkable way—whether it's time, excellence, attention, or resources. I think your story highlights that. You chose to make a priority out of the Lord in a different way. You had a faith; it was real and legitimate, and it affected your family. But you changed the nature of how you responded to Him, and He met you in a remarkable way.

Guest (Male): He continues to do so. Thank you for sharing that with us.

Brad: I have to acknowledge first that I was an alcoholic. I started drinking down in Mississippi when I was a teenager with all my friends, like teenagers do. We got signed when I was 20 years old. I stepped on a tour bus when I was 20 years old and started touring the world. That's just a lot to hand to a 20-year-old. We done okay. There was no catastrophe in my life that pushed me to drink so much; it was just kind of the lifestyle—whether it just be nerves going on stage or just not being able to sleep on the bus.

The lifestyle just led me further and further down a road before I realized that I was drinking pretty heavily. Things in my life did start to suffer from it substantially. There became a point in my life that I could point to that bottle for almost 95% of the problems as the source. My mom had prayed for me to quit, and my brothers and sisters had prayed for me to quit.

Finally, I was in Japan one day. We were playing a show for the troops, and I was just kind of having a rough night. I could feel myself slipping away; it wasn't me anymore. I could also feel that this wasn't going to last a lot longer. I tried to call a friend, but I couldn't get anyone on the phone. I FaceTimed Mr. Charlie. He and his wife were sitting there on the couch, and I was sitting there just sobbing and telling him how unhappy I was in my life.

He was a great counselor to me before this time; he always had great advice to tell me. He said, "Son, if you love your wife and you love God like you say you do, you need to come home and you need to go to rehab. There's a good place in North Nashville called Cumberland Heights. You need to come on back home and see about getting in there." I said, "Well, I'll do that."

I'd like to say that I got off the phone and called my wife and said, "Baby, I'm going to go to rehab." I called her and said, "Well, I'm going to rehab. I guess that makes you happy." I was working the steps and all those things. I honestly forgot what step it was, but there was a man that came in there to hear you talk and hear you pour your heart out. He asked me, "Brad, do you love God?" I said, "Yes sir, I love God." He said, "Then why are you serving yourself? You're not serving God with this; you're serving yourself."

It hit me hard. He said, "Do you love your wife?" I said, "Yes sir, of course I love my wife." He said, "Then why are you trying to kill her husband?" It hit me between the eyes. That's been nine years ago on the 19th of this month. Those nine years have been the best years of my life. We started coming to church here about five years ago. Your sermons have helped me tremendously. They've encouraged me to lead with my faith and to not be a comfortable Christian that sits on a pew and goes out and lives how they want.

Allen Jackson: You've not only made a change; you've made a public declaration of faith. I've listened to several of the statements you've made on stage talking about Jesus and your faith. You've been more straightforward with your concert audience than a lot of pastors I know. Thank you for that; that's not an accident.

Brad: I am so thankful to have the chance to say that. I know that I have a very short window before people start shutting down. People aren't at a rock show to be preached at, but I want to share that with them. I know that He put me in this position to do exactly that. You really encouraged me to do that with your sermons. When you said, "Whatever arena of life that you work in, take it there," you encouraged me to do that. And you didn't do it because you were perfect or you'd never made a mistake; you did it in spite of that. We all do it in spite of that.

That was the biggest hurdle for me—realizing that I'd never be worthy to carry that message. I was like, "I'm not really worthy to get up there and say that." But He doesn't call the prepared; He prepares the called. We're bragging on the one who made us worthy. We're not telling our story. We're not there because we're smart, bright, or talented. The Lord has blessed us.

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For a long time now, we take a tour in the summer to Israel. We stopped at a place that was selling things made out of olive wood, nativity sets, and such. You took out of that place some little olive wood crosses to bring home. We have one of those with us. It's just a little pocket cross; the edges are smooth, so it's easy to carry. There's a story that goes with one of those crosses.

It might be best to call them Woman A, Woman B, and Woman C because the cross was passed down and passed down. Woman A I taught with. I knew her husband, and I found out that he was having some heart problems. The first couple of doctors that saw him couldn't find anything wrong with him and couldn't get to the problem. When I saw her a few days later, just on a spur of the moment because I had some in my backpack, I said, "You need this," and I gave her the cross.

Some people, when you give them the cross, go, "Oh, thanks," and they look at it. Other people look at it like you gave them a check for a million dollars. She was one of those. She was so gracious. I said, "I want you two to pray over this thing and ask for direction and guidance from the Holy Spirit and see how it works out."

I see her about two weeks later and she runs over and says, "I can't believe it. I never leave home without this cross. Everything is good. They found out what the problem is, and he's got the medication he needs. It's good."

Then I find out that about a year later, there's another woman that teaches there at school—we'll call her Woman B. Woman A gave Woman B the cross. She said that she'd only ever say "hi" in the hallway, but she never really had a conversation. She said, "Look, I think you need this," and gave her the cross. Woman B looked at it like, "What am I going to do with this?" She said, "Hold it, pray about it, and the Holy Spirit's going to help you."

I didn't know the half of it at the time she gave the cross. The next thing she hears a few months later is that Woman B is expecting her first child, which the doctor at that point said, "You're not going to have any." Then in a second examination, they said, "You're going to have twins, and I don't know how we're going to deliver them just yet because you can't have them naturally." But she does—two healthy boys.

Woman B has a friend, Woman C, who's having the same problems. Woman B gives Woman C the cross and says, "This meant the world to me. I'm giving it to you. It's not magical, but it'll call attention to you walking through Christ with the Holy Spirit. Pray about this, and He'll give you the direction you need." They finally get the permission they need to adopt, and then the wife finds out that she's expecting a child. Miracles upon miracles.

Now, the husband of Woman B called to give the good news that they're having their first child. He said, "That's great news. I'm happy for you." He said, "My daughter's not doing too good. They said she's got stage four brain cancer. They're trying to do treatments on it. She's lost all of her hair, but it's not going very well. So the chances are she's not going to make it." The husband of Woman B said, "I'm going to send you this cross; it's meant a lot to us. Give it to your daughter. Have her pray over it, have the whole family pray over it, and ask for guidance and direction for what the Lord has in store for you."

The next time she goes for what would be her last chemo, the doctor was telling them, "We'll do it, but we haven't seen any results yet." Before they even get started on chemo, they do whatever testing they do and he said, "I've seen this on occasion. This is a miracle. You have no evidence of cancer." So now she's cancer-free. That's miracle after miracle.

God knows how to work out things that we don't. If somebody's listening and there's despair, a diagnosis you don't like, or a future that seems bleak, God can change that.

Now, what makes my story a little bit different—and I think about this now as I hear other people's testimony—is June 4, 2019, the day we lost him. My life wasn't falling apart. I wasn't in some kind of terrible addiction or searching for some kind of deeper meaning of life. Life was actually good. I was happy. My wife and I were very happy. It was idyllic, really.

The Lord spoke to me something about that. That day, I felt in my spirit: "Enjoy this moment because it won't last forever." Right in that moment, right after I had that thought, the next thought was, "It's quiet. Where's River?" which is what you think when you have a three-year-old. I have a three-year-old now at home, and I could understand that sentiment. I just thought, "He's never quiet."

It was quiet, and I looked back over my shoulder. Right there behind me, in our locked, gated pool, was his little body face down in that pool. I knew that when I flipped him over, he was going to be coughing, crying, scared, and choking. But he wasn't; he was lifeless, cold, and silent. His eyes were open and his skin was blue. It was beyond horrifying. My daughter was there with me; she's 13 now and we'll forever have that bond together. I told her to go get your mama in the house. I didn't have my phone on me, so Amber came out and called 911, and we started together taking turns doing CPR. But that was the beginning of a chain of events that would forever change my life and the course of it in a very dramatic way.

Allen Jackson: God is moving in the earth, and at Allen Jackson Ministries, we're doing everything we can to strengthen the church, our nation, and wherever God opens the door. We don't intend to maintain the status quo or to gather in our churches for polite Bible studies. We're going to engage our culture with biblical truth and give you the tools to do so. We want our children and grandchildren to inherit a church that's vibrant and vital.

To do that, we've got to make an investment. Will you give generously to what we're doing at Allen Jackson Ministries? Your partnership will make 2026 the most fruitful year we've ever known. At Allen Jackson Ministries, we're committed to strengthening the church and sharing the truth of God's word. When you support this ministry with a gift of $75 or more, we'll send you the Lead with Faith ESV Journaling Bible. Your generosity will help us equip more people with the biblical truth and encouragement they need for the year ahead. Give today at allenjackson.com.

Guest (Male): When the EMTs arrived, they were able to get his heartbeat back. So I thought, "We dodged a bullet. It's going to be a long journey for him to get healthy again, but he's alive." After 72 hours or so in the hospital, we realized that he was not going to make it. Although his heart was beating and his organs were working, his brain was gone. It was too long without oxygen. They came in and told us he's not going to make it.

About six months after we lost Riv—although there were times Amber and I went to therapy and the kids went to therapy, and there were times when it felt good and I felt like I had made some progress—one night it all came crumbling down for me. All of this chaos can't find order. My brain is trying to make sense of it, and it would attack me in the middle of a conversation with someone. The slideshow would hit. In the middle of the night, it would hit. In the middle of the stage, in the middle of a song, it would hit me.

This night in Boise, I thought I knew the answer to how to bring order to all of the chaos and everything that was falling apart. I knew where the peace was, and that was going to be in a 9mm Glock that I kept in the drawer of the back of my bus for protection. I grabbed the gun and I put it up to my face. I thought a thought that my brain didn't generate. It's easier to say it that way than saying I heard a voice, but I heard a voice. The voice said this, very comforting: "This is the way to peace. This is the way to rest. Just squeeze."

If you don't believe evil has a voice, you're naive. Because if all of us tell the truth, we've heard the voice of evil. I have. The reason we call it evil is it doesn't play fair. It comes at the most vulnerable moments in our lives when we stand at those forks in the road, and it comes to give us permission for something that will bring destruction. In that moment, I realized in layers that I'm not alone. There is an enemy here; something is here with me and has been watching me and is now talking to me. I have no defense against it. I am backed into a corner, surrounded and outnumbered.

This overwhelming thought of this enemy started crushing me. As kind of a knee-jerk reaction, I just yelled out right there in the bus the only thing I knew from all the old liturgy of my mama: "Jesus, please save me! Jesus, save me!" And let me say, I don't even know if I meant that. I don't know if I meant it, but that voice, that enemy's voice, stopped.

Just as importantly, I stopped having that panic attack enough to drop that gun. That next morning, I woke up and tried to really unpack what happened. The overwhelming thought of what happened was that I have underestimated the enemy, and way more than that, I've underestimated who Jesus is. Who is He? He speaks to this enemy in the back of the tour bus and stops it. Suddenly, my fear of this enemy becomes nothing, and now I look to Him and go, "Who is this that stops even the voice in my head?"

Fear Him rather. That's when my obsession turned to Him, and that's where the true healing was. The true healing for the disciples, just like me, wasn't when the storm stopped; it was when they saw the one who could stop the storm. That's how you would answer why six more months of agony was necessary. You lost your son; now why go through all this? So I could look to Him, the one who could stop even a voice in my head. And if you don't know where to begin, I like the prayer, "Jesus, help me. Please, Jesus, open my eyes. I don't know what this means. I can't understand this Bible thing. I don't even know if it's meant to be read, but Lord, will You open my eyes to Your truth?" That's a good way to start.

Allen Jackson: Hey, thanks for joining me today. Before you go, please like the podcast and leave a comment so more people can hear about this topic too. If you haven't yet, be sure to subscribe to Allen Jackson Ministries' YouTube channel and follow the Culture & Christianity podcast on Spotify, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcast. Together, let's learn how to lead with our faith and change our culture. I'll see you next time.