Welcome to the God's Goodness podcast, where our mission is to encourage as well as highlight
God's goodness and modern-day miracles.
We are your hosts, Josh and Shelly Hankins.
Today we have with us the famous pastor, Rick.
He was mentioned in four of the first 17 episodes.
He's been making an impact for the kingdom for decades, people in our previous episodes.
Some knew him before he was a pastor, and he's just so meaningful in so many people's
lives.
We are blessed to have him here with us today.
He's taking a break out of his super busy schedule to be with us, and we would like to
have him open us with an opening prayer.
Holy Spirit, without you none of this is possible.
We know that you know every heart, and that you will cause those who need to hear this
to listen.
And we believe that the words that go forth, which are your words, scriptures that will
be used, will hit the mark, and that a fire would ignite in every heart that people's
lives would be changed all over the world for your honor and for your glory, and that
we would hear feedback of it, God, to encourage us in Jesus' name.
Amen.
Thank you.
Thank you for being with us.
We appreciate it.
So where would you like to start?
Well, I'd like to start with, this morning when I woke up, a word came to me.
God meant it for good.
Of course, that's from Joseph's account with his brothers, remember that?
And so I made a devotion out of it for a new book, and I'm calling it the tapestries of
our lives.
The scripture, Genesis 50, verse 20 says, but as for you, this is Joseph speaking to
his brothers, you meant evil against me, but God meant it for good in order to bring it
about as it is this day to save many people alive.
So I awakened this morning with these words in my thoughts, God meant it for good.
One of the meanings of the Hebrew word for meant, M-E-N-T, is to weave, to plait, or
interpenetrate, and because God is greater than anything bad that comes against us, he
is able to creatively weave it together to make an even stronger, better, more unified,
positive outcome.
Even when we fail, God is gracious, and as we look to him, he can make good out of it.
John 1-9, if we confess our sins, he's faithful and just to forgive us of our sins and to
cleanse us from all unrighteousness.
Ropes are made of many individual strands of fibers, yet all weaved were braided together.
They create a bond that is strong and able to withstand great pressure.
Jeremiah 29, 11-14 says, I know the thoughts and plans I have for you, says the Lord.
Their plans for good, not for evil.
Always to bring you to an expected end.
When you seek me and search for me with all your heart, I will be found of you, and I
will turn away your captivity.
So when something adverse happens in life, let's say, God, I look to you to make this
all come out for good.
Be glorified quickly.
Now why don't you take a moment and think about how God has gifted you with testimonies
of victory through all you've experienced in life.
Remember, whatever others do to oppose us or God in us, God himself will make it come
out good for us if we pray and believe.
And I close with this prophetic word that God gave me.
As a matter of fact, when I was writing this, I thought, oh, I remember a word God gave
me in a red light years ago.
And I thought, now, where is that copy of that that I can read it?
That would be good for here.
And I opened this book here and I'm reading and there it is.
I love how God works.
So this is what it says, the Lord's plans and purposes and details are intricately woven
in every fiber of our being and lives.
Look at the threads of evidence in your life.
He is powerfully weaving a story of glory.
Each thread closely intertwined to provide strength and moral fiber all to unveil him
and his love and compassion.
Isn't that neat?
It is.
You can see that if you look back in your life.
For sure.
It reminds me of Johnny Miller's episode when you don't look at one chapter.
You look at your story isn't over yet.
If you're not dead, God's not done with you yet.
Right.
And he doesn't get you so far, only to have gotten you so far.
There's always more that he has for you.
There's always more he wants from you to accomplish for the kingdom of his glory.
There isn't a finite end, Resist.
Well done, good and faithful servant.
You're 20 years old.
That's all I got for you.
And then he just leaves you on your own.
Right.
There's never a finish or a completion to the work that he has laid out for us.
I really appreciate the looking back because you can get so close to Jesus, but he'll keep
always being out of reach because we wouldn't need him if we could meet him.
Right.
And the only way to really measure our walk at a certain point, especially the older we
get in our walk.
We get wiser, we get more aware of our sin.
We get more aware of the things that aren't okay with God.
Right.
And the only way to measure where we are is by looking about how far we've come.
And I'm always amazed at how far I've come.
I mean, the person I was and the person I am are not recognizable to each other.
And in any way, not at all, not even in looks, I don't think I would be able to recognize
myself if I saw me 20 years ago.
And it's an incredible transformation that God has performed through obedience, through
a faithful walking with him.
And I, for one, am very, very glad that I chose him.
I'm very glad he chose me first so that I could lean in and choose him.
And I'm curious, Pastor Rick, did you have Jesus in your heart like your entire life
or you raised in a church or did you pick him up through adversity?
Did you like have something happen to you?
Like, man, I got to, I got to, I need a better way.
It was through adversity, but I was raised.
My mother was Catholic.
My father was Lutheran.
They never went to church, but they sent us to church.
And we walked well over a mile to church as little kids in the East Liberty portion of
Pittsburgh.
And for some reason, I know God's hand was always on me.
I was real religious.
I always wore a little crucifix on my belt loop.
I was ultra-Catholic.
The more I learned, the more I did in all of the Catholic traditions.
And from the time I was in fifth grade till the time I was 21, when I gave my life to
the Lord, I actually prayed three entire rosaries.
I don't know if you know what that is.
It's 60 some 63 or 64 prayers, repetitious prayers.
Okay.
Three of those every day.
I went through my little black prayer book cover to cover every day.
I had a pile like this of prayers to saints and angels, prayed them, always never passed
to church without stopping to make a visit, went to Catholic school, went to mass and
communion daily as much as I could.
So there was all that interest in God, but we can be real religious and not really know
God.
And then what comes to me is how when I was about, oh, maybe four or five years old, it
was New Year's Eve and my father wasn't home, but my mother let us stay up.
So back in that day, we would open the windows and we would bang pots to make noise when the
year turned over.
Okay.
I thought you were going to say on a normal day, I'm like, wait.
No, no, no, no, no.
Just just dance.
Okay.
On a normal New Year's Eve.
Okay.
So although we did play with pots when we were kids, but anyways, so my mom opened this window
and we were about to bang our pots and a big cross appeared in the sky.
It was red and we never did bang the pots.
I mean, we got this feeling of overwhelming presence of God.
So when things like that happen, then you kind of check on your behavior.
I mean, I was just a little kid, but I was conscious of right and wrong.
And so you try to be better, but you know, you keep failing.
So as my story goes on, when I was 19, I was drafted in the army.
That would be Vietnam era?
Yeah.
Vietnam era.
Yeah.
1969.
And I went through my basic training and I was told that was the toughest part.
And so, oh, there's just so many things that happen, but I'm going to leave out details
that aren't really important.
But even though you can see it had to be God's hand and at all.
So to make a real long story short, I spent a year, my first year in the service and then
I was working in the mail room and an officer came in and said, oh, Cardell, that's a good
assignment.
I said, what is, and he said, oh, didn't anybody tell you?
You're on a one man, levy or list to go to Vietnam.
Well, I felt that like the blood rushed from my feet all the way up to my head and it felt
like my head was going to pop off.
It was a spirit of fear that came into me and I walked around like a zombie.
I couldn't think right or anything.
And one day a co-soldier, a friend said, you know, something's wrong.
You need to talk to Captain.
And I said, even though I worked for him, I couldn't, how do you do it?
So when the captain was away for lunch, this guy took me into Captain's office and sat
behind his desk and said, no, just pretend I'm the captain and tell me what's going
on.
And so I did and it really helped.
So when the guy came back from lunch, I did the procedure, you know, went in and talked
to him and they said, we were going to call you in here today.
What's wrong with you?
And so I told him when I got the word about going to Vietnam, I said, I can't think
or anything.
He said, well, do you think you would go AWOL?
And I said, I'd never think of doing that.
And he said, well, would you consider going to mental hygiene?
And I said, yeah.
And so I went and talked to a man for about an hour.
And then he said, okay, I'll make you an appointment with a doctor for this week.
And I thought, a week.
You know, I only get so many days leave before going to Vietnam.
And so I go back to my barracks.
I had my orders to go and I pulled out my Bible, which a non-believer gave me before
going into the service.
Actually God again, you know, weaving.
And I did read it and I said, God, you know, I'm so upset that I can't find the words
to talk to you.
If you're for real, I'm just going to hold this Bible between my hands.
I don't recommend people do this, you know, but God knows where we are.
I was a non-believer and I'm going to let it fall open wherever it falls open of you
for real.
Please speak to me through that.
And it opened to the book of Job.
And I think we all know Job's story.
And I read the whole thing.
And I said, God, what do you say to me?
Just have patience.
And this is all going to work out.
I said, I'm down here.
Here's my orders in black and white.
You're way out there somewhere and there's nothing you can do about it.
I don't believe in you anymore.
I wasn't really a believer anyways.
I mean, I believe with my head, but not with my heart.
You knew him, but you didn't know him.
Right.
I knew him in the mental ascent kind of way, but not in the pure faith, personal relationship
with Jesus Christ, which is necessary.
And so with that, the next day I cleared the post and I went home on my leave, visited
people and, oh, I don't think I told you I was an alcoholic.
Did I?
No, you did not mention that.
Okay.
Yeah.
When I was 19 years old, as religious as I was, I tell people I was a good Roman Catholic
alcoholic because I did all of the religious things, but I drank hard liquor every day.
And all right, now back to where I was.
I visited people and then it was the day before I was supposed to go to California to go to
Vietnam.
Let me back up a little sentence or two.
So I had this leave.
It was about a month.
I was a Christian, but all that time I isolated myself from family and everybody.
I hated life.
I hated everybody and everything because I felt so helpless.
That's where the devil wants us to go.
Exactly.
I isolated.
And so I shut myself up in my room.
I lived with my family, siblings and so on, you know, and didn't eat with them or anything.
But I just remember terrible things I wrote all over my bedroom walls and stuff like
that, you know, about how life isn't fair and so on.
But then it was that night that day was graduation from my one brother from high school.
And so there were parties, you know.
And I found myself in front of the bathroom mirror and I saw myself divided into two.
And one side was saying, hey, there's nothing left of this life after life.
You don't have to go through this Vietnam thing and stuff like that.
This is what you do.
You go down to the drugstore by a big bottle of Aspirin, 50 bear aspirin.
And so then you come home and you go to sleep.
It's painless.
So I did that.
I went down.
The other side was saying to me, no, very gently, don't do that.
That's wrong.
So I gave in.
I went down, got the aspirin, stood before that mirror, took them all.
Then nothing seemed to be happening, the grace of God.
And I went out drinking with my brother.
I remember this is funny.
One lady at the party says, oh, such a headache.
Do you have an aspirin?
I said, no, I just took a whole bottle.
Everybody just laughed about it.
She didn't.
It's funny because, you know, aspirin thins the blood and alcohol thins the blood.
You know, you're making gestures, looking up and holding your hand.
I don't think people really understand the magnitude of how dead you should be that
with the drinking and the aspirin, a whole bottle that we should not be having this conversation.
Right?
You shouldn't be here for this conversation.
So I don't think our listeners really understand the gravity of that situation, that that's
not a good place to be that.
And you were functioning.
I was.
You were able to have a conversation and make jokes.
Uh-huh.
That should not have been either.
Uh-huh.
So after that, I went home.
Everybody else had retired.
There was a girl in the town.
She's a couple, two, three years older than me.
She hung around with us.
She was like family.
So she was like always at our house, you know?
She didn't live there, but she was always there.
And we would talk.
We were good friends.
And so we were sitting in the dining room.
And all of a sudden I saw total blackness and fire.
And I said, God, God, please don't let me die.
I knew I was going to hell.
And then all of a sudden I was back in the dining room.
She said, what are you talking about?
And I told her what I'd done.
She said, well, go stick your finger down your throat.
Try to get as much of this up as you can.
Go take a cold bath.
And then we'll go walking.
This girl, she was a little thing.
She kept me up all night.
We walked.
We went down to the river and waded and went to the reservoir, walked around the reservoir.
And I just said, I can't do it anymore.
You know, I just start to fall down.
She said, no, no, come on.
And so then we went to her house.
She gave me some toast and tea and then took me home while I'm laying on the couch.
And my father comes down.
He's got up late for work.
He's rushing around.
And he says, aren't you supposed to report to California?
I said, yeah.
He said, well, you better get going because you don't want to be marked a wall.
I just ignored him.
I was sick.
Okay.
And then my mother came down and you know how mothers sense things.
They know they're kids and a 19-year-old kid.
But she said, oh my God, what's wrong with you?
So I told them what I did.
And she said to my dad, come on.
We got to take him to the hospital and get his stomach pumped.
And my dad, who, he was the town drunk.
Okay.
You know, you're a dad.
You know, but you came to know Jesus.
That's good.
And he got delivered.
So there was no respect in everything for him like I should have had.
And he says, I've had it with these kids.
They take everything into their own hands, you know, let them die.
And he knew I wasn't going to die.
If I hadn't died yet, I wasn't going to die.
You know, he had some wisdom, worldly wisdom.
So my mom calls the Red Cross and all this and they say, well, take him to a veterans
hospital.
So he went and I was interviewed by three different doctors and each one said, oh, well,
you don't want to talk to me.
You want to talk to Dr. So-and-so.
And then the last doctor that I wanted to talk to wasn't there.
So now I'm really frustrated.
And I said, let's get out of here.
I'm feeling better.
So we go home.
What's that the next day after you took the pills?
Yeah.
It was the next day because I had walked all night, you know, and stuff like that.
You know, the girl kept me up all night.
Did you know that girl before?
Oh, yeah.
She was a part of our family.
She was always at our house.
Always.
We're all pound around together, you know.
So then my mother, she took me down to a local doctor and my body was so swelled up that
I couldn't put shoes on.
So here I was walking down the street without any shoes, you know, but to the doctor and
I don't know all the, you know, medical things and stuff like that.
But I do remember the doctor said, well, your body seems to take in the complete opposite
reaction to this than it should have.
I'm going to give you a saltwater injection and you should be okay to catch a later plane.
So I go home from there and I thought, I'm not doing this.
I can't go and kill people.
I can't.
And so I threw some stuff in a paper bag and went out the door and my mother says, if you're
going a wall, don't ever bother coming back to this house.
And so I left, hitched a ride to Keystone State Park, stayed up there, lived in the woods,
raccoon ate all my food.
And but I, it was summertime.
Praise God.
So I just bummed around and you know, people shared, they're doing cookouts and stuff.
Hey, you want something to eat?
You just befriend people and so on.
But I was always looking over my shoulder because, you know, there's, I thought they're
seeking me, you know, they're, they're going to find me and put me in jail and so on.
Well, then I was using the shower facilities for the campers up there and the man in charge
says, Hey, look, you're not paying the camp here.
If I see you up here using these facilities again, I'm going to call the police.
So I made arrangements with some friends from my area that were going to Canada and they
agreed to take me to Canada.
So I was going to defect to Canada.
When I got to my hometown, they had car problems and they had to cancel the trip.
So what was I going to do?
There was a lady in our town who she had a daughter that was several years younger than
me and, uh, but they were good friends and this lady always had time to listen.
Her name was Joanne Patterson and I called her and explained my situation.
She said, well, you can come here and sleep.
Okay.
So I went and one night after dinner, she said, I have to go out and she told me before she
left that she being a parent knew that my parents would be concerned.
So to put their mind at ease, she said that, uh, I called them and let them know you're
here and you're safe.
And I really think you should contact them, talk to them.
And I thought I can't do that.
So then she goes out that evening.
She comes back.
She had talked to my priest and her, my priest, my parents, they tried to work something out
for me to help me.
But I still couldn't face them.
One day when nobody was home, Oh, I gotta tell you this, because this is real important.
This lady, she had had two daughters.
One had cystic fibrosis.
And when she was, I don't know, maybe 13 or something, she died right after she died.
The husband left the scene and left the mother and the other daughter and he ended up becoming
a Christian.
He ended up becoming a good Christian, by the way.
I mean, God's weaving it all together and everybody's lies, right?
And so she said, she was just in the state of mind that she couldn't think and she wandered
into a clergyman's office and he told her, Joe, and you're not meant to handle all this.
He said, take, take your hands like this, saying, this is your hand.
This is God's hand.
Take all your troubles.
Imagine them, put them in God's hands and lift them to him.
And she said that helped to snap her out of it.
So I went through these motions and I felt lighter.
So then one day my dad came knocking at the door when nobody was home and told me that
he and the priest, I had talked to some people and they agreed that if I would go with them
and turn myself in, they would call the Red Cross, the Red Cross would verify that I had
attempted suicide and they would require that I would be put into a hospital.
So that's the way it was, I was supposed to be taken to a hospital.
But as soon as my dad and the priest left the MP station, they handcuffed me, took me
down the basement garage and took me to the old Allegheny County jail, which was nothing
like the new jail.
It was like a dungeon.
It was bad.
So I went there.
The first night I was there, I felt so despicable.
I crawled up in a corner like a little kid and I had my face in my hands and I just cried.
I said, God, I don't know how you can forgive me.
I've hurt you.
I've hurt so many people.
If only I could start over again, I'd live my life different.
And as God is my witness, the walls disappeared and God took me out into eternity.
And I saw Jesus.
You gotta remember, Jesus is eternal.
God's in eternity.
He could take us somewhere in the past.
He could take us somewhere in the future.
Could take us somewhere in the present.
And so I saw Jesus like I see you, but I saw him when he was in agony on the cross.
And I heard the voice of God, the Father, say, this is my son who died for you.
And I felt a wonderful love and peace and forgiveness like I'd never experienced before
in my life as religious as I was.
Then as this is happening, I remembered how God calls things to your mind.
Finally I remembered in first grade, one of our very first catechism questions, why did
God make you?
God made me to know him, to love him, to serve him in this world and to be happy with him
in the next.
And I said, God, I don't know you, do I?
I want to know you.
And then I remembered that in seventh grade, an old Roman Catholic nun was trying to help
us to understand how short life is compared to eternity.
And she says, children, just imagine that the earth is a big iron planet suspended in
the universe.
Every 10,000 years, a little dove flies past.
His wing just brushes that earth.
She said, you know, eternity is longer than it would take for that earth to disappear from
the brush of that dove's wing.
And in this situation, I said, God, I want to be with you for eternity.
And all I said was, Jesus, please, fill me with yourself and never let me lose this peace.
I'll live for you all the days of my life and I'll tell everybody I meet that if they're
not living for you, they're not living.
Well, instantly, I knew my slate was clean.
Instantly I knew I was alive to God like I'd never been before.
And instantly I knew that when I die, I'm going to heaven.
Nobody explained that to me or anything.
It was the knowing.
And I had said to the Lord, Lord, I know the drinking's wrong, but I can't stop.
Please help me.
And He instantly delivered me from the alcohol to, thank God.
So after a week in the old Allegheny County Jail, I was taken, handcuffed with another
prisoner or two.
I hadn't met them until we were leaving and taken by MPs up to Fort Meade, Maryland, to
be put into a special processing battalion where people are just waiting to get out of
the service.
They didn't care what kind of a discharge they got.
And can you imagine, and God is mindful of everything that we experience, but can you
imagine being handcuffed, making a road trip, having to stop at different rest stops and
that and being handcuffed.
And Jesus is Lord.
I'll tell you, He gets us through everything.
So here I am in this special processing battalion.
It was these guys, they just wanted to get out of the service.
And if they could do something to help them get out quicker, they would.
We pulled details, I called garbage and stuff while we were there.
I remember this one night, there was a knife fight at the bottom of my bed.
But here I am.
I'm in a bubble of peace.
It's like this peace of God that passes on understanding since I met Jesus.
It's unexplainable.
Yeah.
It's only when you know it that you understand it.
When you know, you know.
Yeah.
Okay.
So my turn finally came to appear before the commanding officer to read off what they
call an article 15.
And you know about that?
Oh, I do.
Yes.
I spent some time in the Navy in the Army.
Okay.
But for those of us who don't know, it's a legal document that has your punishment on
it.
So your crime and your punishment.
I know the DD 214 is very important, but I don't know about this article 15.
There's a few different articles and article 15 is probably one of the worst ones.
Well here I was standing in the Class A uniform.
He's about to read off my punishment.
But all of a sudden his telephone rang and he answered it.
He says, yes sir.
He's standing right here.
So I remember I literally swallowed hard, you know, and thought, I know I've done wrong.
I know there's consequences, but I don't want to get a bad discharge.
Please give me the grace to get through whatever I have to get through here.
And so the man hangs up the phone and says, do you know Colonel Monsieur?
I said, no sir.
And he says, well he wants to see you.
And he ripped up this legal document and threw it away.
So he sends me up to another building.
I got in to see the Colonel and he'd looked me in the eye and said, you know, I don't
know you, but something inside me tells me I'm to hear your story and not give you any
punishment.
And that's the way it happened.
And so he said, have you gone to mental hygiene since you've been here?
And I said, yeah.
So he called up there and they never made a report.
So he had a friend that worked there and he made me an appointment.
I went and talked to this man.
So the report comes back.
Well the doctor explained to me, he said, well, by talking to you all through your life,
you never let anything upset you.
He would stuff it.
Okay.
He just put it down in there.
A lot of people do that.
Yeah.
It's not healthy.
You got to talk about it.
And when this whole Vietnam thing happened, it was a mass release of mental tension.
That's all.
So don't let things build up, people.
Don't let things build up.
You know, nobody listening knows.
But when you first arrived, I compared you to the apostle Paul, to the guest that was
just before you and saying, you know, most people will say, hey, I wish I could live
a life like Paul.
And I said, well, this is the guy that is living his life like Paul in this day and age.
And now you're telling me that you were in prison and the prison walls came down and
the guard just let you out.
And I'm thinking, man, you really are like Paul.
Oh.
I know not everybody has an experience with Jesus like you had.
And it is clearly something he needed you to have to break you out of whatever mental
prison you were in as well as the physical prison.
But it has led you down a path of such devotion to him that the Holy Spirit is evident when
you speak to you.
The Holy Spirit is evident when you look at you.
The Holy Spirit is evident in the things that you do.
The books.
The books have you written now?
Six.
Six books, literally glorifying God and testimonies thereof.
You are clearly someone that God has chosen at an early age because he is eternal and
he is past, present and future so that when he first formed the world, he knew that he
was going to have you in it, right?
And he knew at that moment that you would be having this podcast with us.
And I am so very happy that you experienced the horrible things in your life that caused
you to have your heart leap out to him for anything to hold on to and that he responded
with love.
I am so grateful that you are here today.
I am so grateful for your story.
I am so grateful that you are who you are.
You are truly, a lot of people, they will say that like, you know, Jesus lived this life
as a moral, right?
He is God in the flesh to prove that we could do it.
But nobody can do it like Jesus did it, right?
Right.
And so I think that is always a bad example to people because it turns them off.
I mean, I cannot do that, right?
Jesus did it but he was God but he was a person but he was God.
And then we have you who had the life that you had, who believed that they were sanctimonious
and glorified because you knew what those words meant and you would pray.
But you didn't know what you were doing, right?
And then you had an experience with Jesus that transformed your life in such a way that
you have never gone back from what I've heard of people that knew you from that era till
now, no one has ever said a single word, this contradictory to who you are now, not one.
Praise God.
And I have never met you before I started coming to this church.
I didn't know your story, you know your history.
And the more I know, the more I'm like, aha, right?
And it's, that's evident.
There's a few people here that I've met that the Holy Spirit is just evident in them, just
evident.
There's a few people that aren't as obvious as you, that when you get to talk to them,
you're like, yep, there it is, right?
But with you, it's literally shining, kind of like Moses' face when he came off the
mountain, right?
That he had to wear a veil because his presence near God, the holiness of God wore off in
him so much that he was reflecting at still days later.
And so I am very grateful for your story.
I hope that it encourages people that it is possible to live a life for Christ in this
era, that you don't have to reflect on Paul, you don't have to try to live your life to
an unattainable standard.
But there is a way through obedience, through giving your heart solely and holy to Jesus
that a lot of us, I think, fail with because we don't want to get rid of something.
You know, it's a hard part for us to say, oh, God, I'll give you my life.
And he says, how about this?
Well, well, hold on a minute.
You know, that's not really hurting anybody.
And that's not the point.
The point is, if God calls you to give it up, you should give it up.
And you're living a life of proof that living in his glory, living in his grace, living in
his mercy produces such fruit that people see it, that are blessed by it, that your books
are full of testimonies from people that have experienced Christ.
And I just really thank you for your obedience to the Father.
I thank you so much for your walk with Jesus.
I thank you so much that you are an ambassador for Christ in such a way that you understand
the awesome magnitude of being a representation of God Almighty.
And you are that guy, right?
You hear Pastor Luke talk about, hey, that's him.
That's him.
That's the guy, right?
That's what that means.
That's you.
You're him.
You're the guy that is proof that you can walk a holy life.
You're the guy that proof that you can walk a godly life, that you can be an obedience
to him, that when people say, hey, you know, I try for the self control, it's just so hard,
but there is a way, right?
How often did you struggle with self control?
You know, before you were in a relationship, before you were profoundly in a relationship
with him, there was no self control.
You did what Rick wanted to do, and they weren't the smartest decisions.
And none of us make the smartest decisions, no matter how smart we are.
And I really love the life that you live for him, and I love the encouragement that your
life brings without you saying anything, just that your life is bringing, is encouraging
daughters.
This is true for all of us, whether we know it or not, you know, we all have an impact.
So I end up working for the colonel.
And he told me that I could finish my time out in the service, and he talked to people
in the Department of the Army, and I would never again be put on order still combat zone.
So then after working a while under him, I was asked if I wanted to go TDY, which is
temporary duty, and you don't have to live on base, and you get extra pay.
And I said, oh yeah.
So where to, to the Pentagon to work for the deputy chief of staff of personnel.
So I was all excited about that, and came home that weekend to Oakmont from Maryland
and told everybody, well, I had been such a liar during that whole episode.
They didn't know that they could believe me.
So here I go, I go back to, well, it was the following Monday.
I was waiting in the outer office of the colonel.
I had my duffel backpack.
I had my orders in my hand, and the phone in the outer office rang.
And it was the Pentagon.
And they said, hey, tell that guy we have to cancel the orders because there's not the
money and the budget to pay the extra TDY pay, temporary duty pay.
And I said in my heart, God, how could you do this to me?
How could you build this all up?
And then like how the rug pulled out from under me at the last minute.
And God spoke to me and said, see, if you would have let me have my way with those orders
to Vietnam, I could have changed them in the very last minute.
Isn't that amazing?
And then we must trust God.
I ended up getting a promotion, getting an ARCOM medal, Arm Accommodation Medal, you
know, for being a good soldier, stuff like that.
So when I went to clear, well, they asked me also during this time, is there any place
you want to go?
I said, I'd like to go back to Fort Knox, Kentucky.
So I went and they sent me on job interviews and nobody wanted me because I had been AWOL.
So I end up and a black whack is in charge of this office.
And I had my orders and she said, would you like to work here?
And I said, yes, ma'am.
She said, well, report Thursday or whatever.
And I said, well, I mean, you didn't even look at my records.
You don't know my past.
She said, well, it doesn't matter what your past is.
She said, today's a new day, a new beginning.
She was the nicest lady.
She was a Jehovah Witness lady.
And there was a Christian lady.
And we're still in touch today, the Christian family, and it was Veda Fryer.
They were farm people and they would invite me to church and stuff like that.
Well, they lived about an hour away.
But that's where I learned all the old hymns.
They had an old farmhouse, piano in there, the kids all played instruments and I learned
the hymns.
They'd keep me under their wing, Southern Baptist.
And that really, really helped me along.
And that's another thing.
When we give our lives to Jesus, we need to get into a good church.
We need to seek out people who are like-minded as us and get all of God that you can.
Go to prayer meetings, different services.
So after the army, then what?
Oh, that's good.
After the army.
Because you didn't just become Pastor Rick overnight.
Oh, no.
No, this is interesting.
After the army, I came home and I collected a nice sum of unemployment for a year.
But I began meeting people right away who knew Jesus like I knew Jesus.
And there were prayer meetings.
I believe I went to a prayer meeting or a Bible study every day or night for that year.
There was such revival in the area.
This was during the charismatic renewal, if you know what that is.
Okay, started at Duquesne University.
And it was wonderful.
So then I got a job as a short order cook at a nice restaurant bar that was up by a golf
course up where the rich people lived in our town.
But I would witness and witness and witness.
There were these two waitresses there, Maryam and Josie.
And I was bold in my witness and they would smoke and they blow the smoke in.
They joked and stuff like that.
They didn't want to hear it.
Four years after I had left there, now I lived out in this area in the phone rank.
And I didn't have caller ID or anything.
I don't even think they had it then.
The Lord says, that's Maryam Cicela.
So I answered the phone and this voice says, Rick Cardell, you'll never guess who this
is.
I said, Maryam Cicela.
She said, how'd you know?
I said, well, God told me.
And she said, I want to thank you.
And Josie wants to thank you for witnessing to us because we've accepted the Lord and
we're spirit filled.
And they were, she was actually in a friend of mine's church, Pastor Ray Patterson.
And they spring Christian center, Tirendum.
So she invited me.
She lived in a place called Verona.
And it was about an hour away from where I live here.
She was a Greek lady and she loved to cook and she would cook up a bunch of food.
I think was maybe once a month or a couple of times a month.
And you know, I talked to her pastor and got his approval and everything.
She had me over to do a Obama study.
So she'd feed all these people and then we share the things of God.
Pray, oh, they were good meetings.
I'd take a bunch of people with me.
No, too.
And all God like-minded people.
Great memories.
And so one day they won a prayer for her brother and her sister-in-law who were buying in a
process of buying an old church in Claesville, PA.
And they said, yeah, the main reason is we want to get these guys saved.
And we'll have you out and you can do services out there.
Okay.
So we did.
We prayed.
They did get the place.
And then just different seasons in life.
I wasn't doing the meetings at Mariams anymore and, you know, out of touch.
And 12 years past.
No contact with them about it.
And we had a young girl in the church.
She sang in a choir and she came from a real dysfunctional family.
And one day we heard that she was put into a home.
The home was called Freedis.
It was a little wooden place out in like the deep woods of Claesville.
And so I went out to visit her.
It was so dark and dingy in there.
And the people were so drugged up.
There was only maybe a dozen people, but they were like zombies.
And I said, Hey, when's the last time you had church here and the lady who worked there
says we can't get a pastor to come way out here.
I said, well, let's have church now.
So that started having church services there once a month.
And oh boy, when I think of the things I did, the chances I took, I used to take a van from
here and bring them to all the way to the place.
And bring them to special things that we had here.
Oh my goodness.
You never knew what these people were going to do.
So anyways, they were happy times.
But people got saved.
People got delivered.
People got filled with holy ghost.
People got healed.
And then one day I would take a guitarist and his wife and she played the violin and they
did nursing homes with me.
So we did that for two years.
One day we went there and the place was all boarded up and closed down.
So I said to my helpers, we're not wasting this trip out to Clay'sville.
We're going to find that veterans home.
And so we found it.
I said, as we go in the door, just start playing the guitar, you know, and we'll sing.
So we went in and we're singing.
And who was there working but Maryam, she said, praise God, you couldn't have come at
a better day.
She said, these guys are also, there was such a spirit of heaviness and depression.
She says, I told them, don't even talk to me today unless I talk to you.
Well, a lot of them were, you know, they were schizophrenic and stuff like that, you know,
all on medication.
But we went there and we did meetings there for many, many, many years.
People got saved, workers got saved, people got through with the Holy Ghost, people got
healed, a lady from the church here, older lady, Laura Denellen's mother, she would come
out and she'd bring a little keyboard and she'd play and lead us in songs.
And then one day somebody put a piano outside and Fran saw it.
She checked it out.
Somehow we got the church man, we went and we got that piano up in that van, took it
out the glazed house.
But all these different things, it's so amazing.
Maryam's one grandson got filled with the Holy Ghost out there.
It's tremendous outreach.
And then one, maybe last thing, one day we went out and we just started the service
and the guy says, I'm going to go outside and I said, he wanted to smoke.
I said, I know it's a nice day.
Why don't we all go outside and we'll have the service outside.
So we did and the Lord prompted me to tell the people sing as loud as you can.
So we did.
Little did I know that the old dilapidated house next to this place, you know, on the
other side, the property was also a nursing home.
So the next month when we went and one of the ladies at the veterans home says, last
month when you were here and you went outside, the lady heard you singing.
She brought the people to the window and she said, do you think they would come here?
So we did both those meetings on that day for many, many, many years until God closed
the door.
Well, the veterans house eventually burned down, you know, but different seasons for
different things.
But isn't life exciting with Jesus?
It's quite the adventure when you follow his prompting.
I can also say I don't have any stories of adolescents that come to mind that are so
profound or awesome or things that I share, but every single story that I have that's
worth sharing has Jesus involved.
Exactly.
Every single one.
I can't say, oh, when I was a kid, I did this, how great this was and how great that
was.
Nothing comes to mind.
But I could tell you the stories of healing that I've seen, the stories of miracles or
stories of encouragement, the stories of him moving in profound ways.
Like this, you got to listen to this.
This is really cool.
Modern day miracles.
Yeah.
God's wanting them to happen all the time.
And if we're where we should be with God, we'll recognize him.
You see them everywhere.
Even when something bad happens, we can look to God, okay, how are you going to turn this
for good?
Because I'm praising you.
I'm thanking you.
And this couldn't have got by you, Lord God.
You're going to weave it and make something good out of it for your glory.
And then we get these glory stories that we tell and we encourage other people with them.
Those are my favorite.
It's one of the reasons why I started this.
I had heard so many stories of encouragement.
I'm like, people need to hear these because they're amazing and we're just here to bring
them to the light, you know, be an encouragement.
I'm so glad we got to know you today and you were able to share all of that.
And wow, it's just amazing how God's working all of it together for a good.
So do we have time to lead the people in a prayer to give the holidays to Jesus and get
baptized in the Holy Ghost too?
Absolutely.
Amen.
Now, if you're here in this broadcast and you really want an exciting life, you're set
up with the bad things in your life.
Why don't you look to Jesus and hook up with him?
He loves you so much.
He gave every single thing, every drop of his blood to show his love for you.
And if you would just believe in your heart and confess with your mouth that he is the
Savior, he's your Savior.
He will come in and it will change you just like you did me and everyone else who's asked
them to come in.
And then you need to be filled with the Holy Spirit.
And that's as easy as asking Jesus into your heart.
When you ask Jesus into your heart, you actually get the Holy Spirit in you.
We all need to yield to him and ask him to come upon us and then just like on the day
of Pentecost, you allow the Holy Spirit to fill you.
And then there's something that you must do and that is you must use your mouth and your
voice and release sounds, utterances.
The Bible says that they were all filled with the Holy Ghost and they began to speak in
other tongues as the Spirit gave the motherance.
So I encourage you to do that today.
Hallelujah.
In Jesus' name.
Amen.
Thank you.
If this episode has been a blessing to you, we ask that you pass it along so it can be
an encouragement to others.
And if you'd like to come alongside us, we have a fundraising campaign that helps us
pay you for the audio expenses.
And if you look up goodgiftsandgo.com and then look up God's goodness podcast, you
can give there and we would greatly appreciate the help.
And with that, we'll talk to you next time.