Here we are, live on the road.
I’ve got a good man with me, and he’s got a good story.
I think the story gives glory and honor to God, so I’d like to share the story.
My name’s Justin.
What’s your name, sir?
Trace.
Trace.
That’s a phenomenal name.
I wonder how it makes people think and feel.
The first time I heard the word trace, of course, was when I was a child, and I learned how to do trace-ing, and that was always fun.
Trace over the lines.
What does trace mean to you?
SPEAKER 2
It means an awesome person.
SPEAKER 1
It means an awesome person!
And you are that awesome person. Alright, so you were telling us a little bit about your history. And its’ not really your history. It’s more what God did to get your attention. Do you feel like God kinda had some strategy in how He got your attention?
SPEAKER 2
Yes, I do.
SPEAKER 1
And so let’s back it up a little bit.
Let’s start right in the middle.
We could just draw this movie.
So you’re out there chewing bubble gum and drinking a Pepsi.
Let’s start right in the middle and then we’ll flesh out the story, right?
That’ll be confusing.
I mean, that’ll be fun.
So once upon a day, I was, where were you?
SPEAKER 2
I was standing behind Walgreens, a little bit lost, didn’t know what I was going to do with myself, but I was getting ready to make the decision to come to the Better Roads Home.
And then the guy that’s in charge, Dave came walking by. He’s seen me. He’s out soul winning. And when he saw me behind Walgreens, I stopped. And I really thought that it’s not just a coincidence that me and Dave ran into each other that day. I was making the decision to move into the Better Roads Home.
SPEAKER 2
Wow, so no coincidence.
I’m not good at much, but I’m really good at interrupting people, right?
You just kind of go with the flow.
So three things there.
Number one, no coincidence.
Can you unpack that a little bit, the no coincidence part?
SPEAKER 1
Well, I figured that it wasn’t a coincidence that I landed there with Dave.
I had thought deep-down that I believed God wanted me to go to the Better Roads Home, and that was the day I made the decision.
SPEAKER 2
Very nice.
So we’ve got to define this guy, Dave, because nobody knows who he is, but we’re going to tell him who Dave is.
I’m going to describe him first, if that’s okay, and you can fill in all the gaps that I missed.
Because everybody, when you meet somebody, you see them from a unique, different perspective.
So Dave is a fairly consistent, animated, personable, communicative, nice guy, just a swell fella, but he’s had a rough patch.
He grew up …
He went through it, had some addiction in his early life, and he, through the power of God and the blood of the Lamb and the power of Scripture, he overcame that lifestyle and now he’s the … is he the director?
He’s the director of a men’s program, which this defines the second unknown, which is, what is the Better Roads Recovery Ministry?
What were you deciding to enroll in?
Is this, how would you describe the ministry first, and then we’ll go back and define Brother Dave.
SPEAKER 2
I define Dave as a very helpful guy and I didn’t know anything about him until I met him.
I mean, I don’t have much to say.
I just know he’s a good guy.
SPEAKER 1
He was out soul winning.
Can you tell us what is winning of souls?
This is an activity he was participating in and you just happened to be one of the people he talked to that day.
But here’s a guy out on the street.
He’s looking behind Walgreens.
He sees the bubble gum chewer.
He walks up there and what does he say?
SPEAKER 2
He asked me if I still planned on joining the Better Roads Home. And I told him, “Yeah.” I was just waiting for my day to go out, and then I was coming over there. Running into him, I really believe that God put us both there at the same point for a reason.
SPEAKER 1
That’s phenomenal.
So … witnessing of the gospel is trying to compel people to process and evaluate what the gospel could mean to them if they accept it.
We call it “soul winning” based upon a Bible verse that says “he that winneth souls is wise.” And we do not win them to ourselves.
We win people to Christ by introducing them to the Christ of the gospel, and then they get to make the free will choice on their own.
So here’s a fellow out doing an admirable thing basically spreading the truth of the good news of the gospel through Jesus and he happens upon Trace.
Asks him, are you still pondering or processing your decision to enter the Better Roads Recovery Ministry?
So I’ll define the ministry a little better.
It’s a minimum six-month commitment.
It’s in-house.
It’s a group program with maybe, what do we got, 30, 40 guys in there, 30-ish?
About 25.
25-ish right now, yeah.
So it ranges, and these fellas come from all walks of life, come from all around America.
And they’re just looking for what?
SPEAKER 2
Looking for a way.
Looking for faith in God.
SPEAKER 1
Trying to break free.
Establish new patterns.
New habits, right?
Trying to break something and get on a new road.
Have you found the new road?
SPEAKER 2
Yes.
SPEAKER 1
Can you tell us a little bit about this new road?
SPEAKER 2
Well, I know I like it better than what I was doing before this.
You know, every day I do wake up and I do thank God for another day.
And all the people I’ve met have been …
Tremendously helpful.
SPEAKER 1
Wow, that’s phenomenal.
So we’re on the road here with Trace just enjoying life, and I’d like to ask Trace about his testimony, and he said well help me understand what a testimony is because I get that question a lot because people ask me, well how do they say it they say what’s your testimony of what you learned today and …
SPEAKER 2
What I’ve learned today, what I’ve learned in the program I’m in, or basically it seems like something different.
It’s a little broad.
SPEAKER 1
Yeah, it’s a little bit open-ended, so I’d like to provide some clarity.
It’s easy to substitute the word testimony with just the words “your story”.
Like, what’s your story or what’s happening?
But, I’m driving so I can’t really open the Bible.
However, we can open it inside our head.
The word testimony specifically when it comes to a person’s salvation testimony is the historical event that led up to and includes the moment when they realized they needed a Savior specifically.
So I’ll give parts of my testimony and I’ll pause and then you resonate.
So one way to tell a story is to allow the other person to participate.
Would you agree with that?
Yeah.
It’s super fun and a little bit awkward.
Yeah.
Like I’m spontaneous and you’re probably not.
SPEAKER 2
Sure.
SPEAKER 1
And it makes you giggle and laugh because you’re like, man, this guy’s really just unplanned and free-versing.
And anyway, it’s, well, I appreciate other people’s diversity.
Like I like people that have a different personality than mine because I don’t want to stare in the mirror all day.
Sure.
Yeah.
Alrighty.
So a testimony, my testimony started way back in the day.
I was five years old.
I had just turned five, my birthday is in September, and I trusted Christ in a November.
When I was five, in the year 1981, but I grew up, my dad was a pastor at the time, and so when your dad’s a pastor, you hear a lot of spiritual stuff, right?
And my grandpa was like super involved in church.
He was a deacon.
He was a Gideon.
A Gideon is people that hand out New Testaments and they give away Bibles.
And my grandpa was just a vivacious witness for the Lord.
That means he talked about God a lot.
He’s the kind of guy that would highlight and read his Bible and he would journal and write notes and he would think about it and really meditate on it and kind of walk through the curriculum on his own.
He’d take long walks in nature with God.
I knew that my dad understood God better than I did. And I knew that my grandpa understood God and tried to walk with God and enjoyed God. And I didn’t really understand all of it, but I was five years old. So I wasn’t really concerned about it. So that’s the basic introduction.
The wake -up call …
A testimony is a specific, miracle-moment when I became aware of my need, and I made a decision.
And most people can’t pinch-to-zoom to go into the details of their testimony enough, maybe because they either didn’t experience it, or they don’t think about it enough, or they don’t share it enough.
So it’s a really healthy habit to learn to find out what are the key components of a person’s testimony.
You kind of following so far?
We’re going straight here for another minute?
Taking Halstead?
Okay.
Alright, so do you want to respond to any of that so far?
SPEAKER 2
About my testimony?
SPEAKER 1
Well, I mean, I’m just defining that testimony essentially has to do with where I came from, what my upbringing is, what brought me to the point of salvation, and then what transpired when I received salvation.
SPEAKER 1
Basically, when I realized I couldn’t do this all on my own is … Are we going north or south?
North.
South, south, south, south.
SPEAKER 2
Oh, we’ll jump over there then.
Okay.
So you realized that life is not awesome as a solo journey.
SPEAKER 2
Right.
Well, I was going one direction and I realized everybody in my family was trying to help me.
And when I realized how arrogant I was,
I started to realize that everything was easier when I asked for help and when I stopped being so arrogant and I was willing to accept my mistakes.
SPEAKER 2
Absolutely.
Yeah.
I love it.
I love it.
I can’t say it any better than that.
Absolutely.
There’s no adjustments or corrections to the minutes, Your Honor.
Let it stand as read.
“I was so arrogant.”
Who can raise their hand?
Who else can agree?
“I was so arrogant.”
That’s a good word.
Man, it just makes me want to think about it.
Alright, so the second part of my testimony is I have to become aware of my need.
When I was five years old, it was Thanksgiving time.
My grandpa was telling stories and there was a bunch of us.
There was me, my two brothers at the time, I had about three cousins.
We’re all piled into the red room.
The red room was … red.
The walls were a red velvet roses, like you could touch the roses and feel the velvet.
The bed spread, what color was it?
It was red.
That’s right.
On the dresser in this room is old school.
I mean, we’re back in the eighties, right?
So the furniture has got to be from the seventies.
There was a mark where a candle had been lit and melted into the top of the dresser.
And that color of that candle, it was red.
And the melting of the wax created a red ring.
Yeah, very true.
And you know what color the drapery was on the windows?
It was red.
It was the red room.
It had red shag carpet.
And here’s my grandpa at the end of the bed and the lights are turned down a little bit and he’s telling the story and my grandpa loved nature stories.
Do you like nature stories, like documentaries about nature?
Sure.
So he’s telling us the story about a bear.
Now when he says a bear; I’m five.
My imagination is still fully intact.
It’s animated.
It’s enthusiastic.
We didn’t even have a whole lot of cartoons growing up, so my brain was going overdrive, right?
And this bear went fishing.
You know where bears go fishing?
SPEAKER 2
The water.
SPEAKER 1
But it’s a rough rolling water.
There’s high boulders.
They’re at the water’s edge.
And you know what the bears go fishing for in the river?
Fish.
Well, what kind of fish?
SPEAKER 1
The jumping fish, the salmon fish, the ones that are going up the stream and trying to jump.
When the salmon would jump up out of the water, then the fish would swing at it with this big bear claw and smack the fish all the way across the river over to the little baby cubs.
That are waiting on the shore. And the baby cubs would be so happy, and they eat up the fish. Right?
Mama bear is out there doing her job. Basically, out there being miss-baseball-smacker. She would would swing her big, baseball-bat/mitt-hand and smack that fish across to the shore. And I was loving it!
So then along came Mama Eagle.
She’s gotta feed her babies too.
She’s up in the sky, and she’d got these big, bright eyes. And she’s zoopin’ around and she sees these salmon coming up out of the stream.
She wha-kuum, whips out her claws. And then she …
folds back her wings and then she dives at like 30, 40, 50 miles an hour zhew, straight down at the ground.
And then she flings out her massive talons and digs into the flesh of these fresh salmon and swoops them up into the sky.
And do you know what happened?
No.
Mama started thinking, I got to feed my babies.
And what if we run out of salmon?
Now, of course, there was plenty of salmon.
It wasn’t even a problem.
But, you know, these are animals.
They can hardly think.
And all they think about is self-preservation and fear.
That’s it.
Do you know that when people behave like animals, all we think about is self-preservation and fear?
I do not want to be an animal.
SPEAKER 2
True.
SPEAKER 1
So, Mama Bear started plotting.
She plotted a plot, deep in her heart.
And she looked for a boulder that was big enough that she could hide behind. And there was only one that was big enough where she could kind of tuck up next to it and kinda pretend that she was a big boulder too. She was going to time it just right …
She was gonna, and here came Mama Eagle down like a bomber, like a B1 bomber.
And here came Mama Bear and she swung out from behind the boulder with the massive claw and she hit, instead of hitting a fish this time, she hit Mama Eagle.
And Mama Eagle floated away on the white-capped water and she was dead.
And what happened in my heart at that moment?
Now so far, it’s just a story, right?
Mama Bear kills Mama Eagle, no big deal, but I’m five years old.
And if I go back and evaluate what happened to my, now this doesn’t even pertain too much to the gospel, but there was something going on in my heart that made me think of the gospel and it exploded my heart.
A little bit of dynamite went boom in my heart.
At that moment, I realized, number one, I was gonna die.
Exactly like that mama eagle, I felt death.
Now when you’re five years old, you do not think about death very often.
But number one, death became very real.
I think that was the Holy Spirit opening my eyes to our mortality and that the time was ticking and soon, when I died, number one, I was going to die.
Number two, I was going to face God.
I was going to come face to face with my Creator, my Maker.
And number three, I was not ready.
And by that I mean, I evaluated my current behavior, …
For some reason, my little brain, with God’s help and the Holy Ghost convicting me, I felt guilty like I’d never felt guilty before.
I felt bad.
I felt like I was a violent person and I’d never really associated violence with myself.
But earlier that day, I had been angry at my brother.
I could not get over the anger.
I did not like how I felt when I was angry.
He did not really deserve the level of anger that I had expressed to him.
I felt like I had un-fixable sin; that God was not going to smile. God was not going to let me just walk right into Heaven in my current condition. And I could not fix it.
So all this goes through my tiny head at once.
I’m basically becoming aware of my mortality, becoming aware of my sinfulness, becoming aware of the fact that I need a Savior, and I knew that there was a Savior, but I could not make that connection happen.
So what do I do when I’m five years old?
I become intellectually overwhelmed, I become emotionally distraught, and I burst forth in sobs of tears that could not stop, to the point where my grandpa had to pause the story, all my cousins are looking at me, my brothers are looking at me, and here I am, the oldest of the kids, barely turned five, and I’m messing up their story time. And grandpa says, “Justin, what, how can we help you?”
And I say,
“I’m not ready to die.
I don’t want to meet God like this.”
And Grandpa says, “Let’s go in the other room.”
So he graciously takes me down the hall to the right, big quilt, large bed, opens up the big, large print King James Bible, flops it on the big queen size bed and we kneel down at the foot of the bed and we look at the Bible and I could read, which was crazy to be that young.
And he walked me through the Romans road plan of salvation, including the fact that I’m a sinner.
I already knew that.
I deserve hell.
I already knew that.
Jesus paid for it.
I already knew that.
Number four, I needed to trust Christ and I was so ready to do that.
And I did.
Now, that’s a miracle-moment of recognizing my need and embracing the solution.
And everybody comes to their moment of meeting Christ.
And I think it’s very important to be able to tell that story and expound how I felt, how I was thinking, what transpired, what led up to it, what happened since then. But we can’t leave out the main moment.
And the main moment is the Holy Spirit convicted me of my need.
So if I were to summarize my testimony, it would say: “God got a hold of my heart and I knew I needed salvation in a drastic way. And my grandpa led to to Scripture, and Scripture led me to the LORD.”
SPEAKER 2
I don’t know what I’m supposed to say.
I heard your testimony.
I don’t know what you’re asking me.
SPEAKER 1
I’m not really good at passing the microphone.
That’s kind of the definition of what people are saying when they’re saying, “What is your testimony?”
They want to know when you had a come to Jesus moment.
SPEAKER 2
Yeah, my testimony was recently just realizing I couldn’t do all this on my own.
My family had been trying to help me and I was just arrogant and never understood that I was being helped.
And that’s kind of where I’m at.
SPEAKER 1
There you go.
That’s awesome.
All right.
Well, thanks folks for listening in and we hope that your testimony means enough to you to be able to communicate it, organize it, meditate on it, plan it, open it up, rehearse it, tell somebody, and make sure you have all the key-core elements necessary in your testimony.
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