Pastor Samuel Rodriguez, it is great to have you on Charisma News to talk about your new book,
Your Mess, God's Miracle, but really we're in a mess right now in the United States and our world
today and we need God's Miracle. So I think this is a very important book. I love the byline of the
book. The process is temporary. The promise is permanent. What does that mean? Let's unpack that
a little bit and just again, welcome. John, thank you for having me. John chapter 9,
this very unorthodox, facilitative process where Jesus engages in arguably one of the most
controversial sort of methodologies as it pertains to fulfilling or exercising, exhibiting,
manifesting a miracle. He spits on the ground. Who does that? He spits on the ground and he makes
a ball of mud with his saliva and he places it on a man who was born blind. What does that speak to
you and I in 2023? He made a mess. I mean, literally the Bible says he spread it. He spread the mud
and God made a mess. How about that? Isn't that pretty like antithetical to our theological
continuum of linear sequential anal retentive A to Z perfect pristine modus operandi. He made a mess.
God made a mess. He did and out of the mess came what? A miracle. Right now, we're living in a messy
time politically, culturally, socially, economically, morally. We're living in a messy time. Hence,
I wrote this book compelled by the beautiful message of the God that we serve has the power
to make a miracle out of every single mess. Not just the messes that he may facilitate
for the purpose of teaching us a lesson, but even self-inflicted messes, cultural messes,
spiritual messes. Let's talk to our current landscape. Do you think, John, it's a coincidence
we have this NFL football player who has a heart attack in the middle of a football game
where everyone is watching, right? The number one most watched sporting event in America is football.
And not everyone, but many Americans were watching. He literally dies of a heart attack
live on television and people pray. Now, I mean, the players pray, the nation prays and the next
day on ESPN, a broadcaster interrupts the broadcast live to pray. So prayer, then we have Asbury,
this revival in Kentucky in a Methodist school. And then we have the Jesus Revolution movement.
Do you think it's a coincidence all of this is happening at the same time? And now we're
hearing reports in over 60 college campuses, Christian and non-Christian, of just God moving
mightily via the conduit of his spirit. Dear John, dear Charisma, God is up to something.
God is making a miracle out of a mess. We are about to see financial, physical, emotional,
relational, geographical, generational, even national. We're about to see America's mess
become God's miracle. And that's what triggered me, prompted me to write the book. It's coming
out now, but the timing of it could not have been perfectly calculated.
Yeah. And that's definitely God working because there's a lot of work that goes into publishing
a book. There's a lot of editing and rewriting and all this process. And so I love the fact that
you and so many other people like the Jesus Revolution movie, all of these things are
culminating at the same time. I feel like God was stirring in certain people's hearts months and
months ago, or even years ago, that this is the appointed time for a permanent promise to take
place. And so we're just seeing the fulfillment of what God has spoken to you months ago or even a
year ago, whatever that might have been, whenever God first said, Pastor Samuel, take your pen,
write this down. So as you're seeing these things happening in our world today, let's talk about
the Asbury revival and what we need to do to respond to things like that as they're coming out.
I call this the synergy, the coming together of all these elements simultaneously can't be
coincidence. From a mathematical probability standpoint, God is in it. But I call it this,
John, a prophetic crescendo, a prophetic crescendo. It is all the instruments coming together
in this great musical ensemble where they all crescendo. There's an apex, all of it coming
together at the very same time. There is a verse in Joshua, very powerful, and I love it. It's
Joshua chapter one, verse two, and here's the wording in the NLT. The time has come. The time
has come. Galatians chapter six, verse nine, do not grow weary of doing what is right. At the
appointed time, when God says the time has come, he will unleash a harvest of blessings for those
that have not given up. I love Isaiah, Isaiah 60 22, at the right time, I, the Lord, will make
it happen. The apostle Paul says the time has come for salvation. This is the time. This is the time.
And you can argue, you know, the pushback that I get on this, the pushback I get is, you know,
you're talking about revival and awakening and Asbury and the power of God and making room for
the glory. Hey, Sam, we're living in the last days. You're wasting your time. Things are going to get
darker. More people are not going to get saved. You know, things are going to get bleak. It's the
last day, Sam. I'm fully cognizant of the exhaustive list that the apostle Paul wrote to Timothy in
Second Timothy chapter three. Likewise, the gospel of Matthew chapter 24. I've read the list.
In the last days, people become lovers of themselves. We call that narcissism in the last days.
Men and women will leave their natural desires. We call that the entire state of California.
So it is what it is, right? I'm aware of that, but there's a last day promise, John, they cannot be
denied. It's beautiful. It's Joe 228 and acts to 17. It's repeated. What is that last day promise?
Amen. What is that last day promise? He said in the last days, not I might, not I may,
not I hope to, not I'm inclined to. He never even said if the following five conditions are met.
He said, I will definitively pour out my spirit upon all flesh.
This is that my friend, we are seeing an outpouring of the Holy Spirit. Asbury was beautiful,
continues to be beautiful in its derivative manifestations now, but it triggered something
in churches across America. Remember how Pugh and Gallup and even Lifeway and God bless them all.
They're all beautiful people, but they were doubling down on 30% of Christians left the
church since COVID and are not coming back. Not in the past few weeks, my friend. We're hearing
reports all around the country that churches are literally increasing, not only back to pre-COVID
numbers, some of them are exceeding pre-COVID numbers. Who does that? God has the final word.
God has the final word. One more thing here, John, you know how every and not every, but Pugh and
Gallup, I referenced those two polls because they were so critical, how they talked about how
Generation Z was the most anti-Christian. By anti-Christian, I mean they had great anti-Christian
angst with our Judeo-Christian value system, did not identify as Christians. The least Christian
identified generation in American history is Generation Z. And we heard all these surveys
come out during COVID and all of a sudden God says, repeat that survey again, please just do
it again. Generation Z is the most anti-Christian generation. Let me go to Kentucky, 18 to 21 year
olds. Let me hit, let me talk to Generation Z and all of a sudden guess which generation is most
impacted by this fresh awakening in the move of God, Generation Z. I love that. God will make
a miracle out of every single mess. Even a generational mess can be God's generational
miracle. I believe it will be. It's emerging as God's generational miracle. Amen, amen. I truly
believe that and it's wonderful to see all these reports of different universities seeing
whether they are, whether we use the term revival or whatever. I mean if people are going to go
with a fine tooth comb and try to say, well this isn't a revival because this happened or
this isn't happening the way that we think it should be right now. No, the students are saying
if that happened in Asbury, it can happen here. I'm sorry, that's a match striking the, you know,
striking tinder and that is saying if it happened there, let's do it here. And God goes where his
people are hungry and he says if you draw near to me, I will draw near to you. And so that's just
an example that hey it happened in Asbury, why can't it happen here? And then you see students
and other people and churches and people saying all over the place, revival is happening here,
revival is happening here. We need to stop saying, well I'm not sure if it's a real revival or not.
Praise the Lord, people are seeking revival. Go John, preach. I'm your echo chamber right here.
I didn't mean to preach. No, no, no, no, I'm your echo chamber. Completely agree. Why, how in the
world can we be, how can we be critical? We should be embracing this. How anyone can be critical,
it's just, it's just nonsensical to me. It makes absolutely no sense whatsoever. It's intellectually,
spiritually and prophetically incoherent for you to be critical. You should be embracing,
thankful, grateful for God saying here it is. And stop focusing on the minutiae, whether or not
they're speaking in tongues or not. Well stop, get over it man. People are repenting. There's
worship. People are praying in the spirit. They may not be doing that on a microphone.
Come on. I mean, just God is moving mightily and it's beautiful. It's beautiful. We've seen so much
mess in the past few years. We have the mess of moral relativism. We have the mess of deconstructionism.
We have the mess of fluidity. Everything is fluid. We have the mess of identity, moratorium and
ambiguity. We have the mess of false definitions. We have so many messes and all of a sudden God says,
I'm going to make a miracle out of this mess. You know what I love about this biblical passage
that Jesus literally placed his DNA, literally. That's not figuratively speaking or metaphorically.
He literally took Jesus DNA, his saliva. That's his DNA. He combined his DNA with the mud. Why
did he just combine that with dirt? Because God made man out of dirt. Jesus connected his DNA to
the original design. He went to the blueprint to the original plan. He said, basically in my original
plan, you weren't born blind. In my original plan, your family is not bound to multi-generational
addiction. In my original plan, pornography doesn't have you bound. In my original plan,
diabetes, sickness and illness do not define you. In my original plan, you are blessed,
highly favored. You are the head and not the tail. You are the righteousness of God. You are created
in my image to house my spirit in my original plan. So God is activating his original plan.
I wrote this book giving you through biblical orthodoxy, the biblical outline of what it looks
to reactivate God's original plan for you and your family, your children and your children's
children. Because when you're born again, you're born again. You reactivate, you re-engage,
you sign on to God's original plan for you and your family. And that plan will come to pass.
Amen. Amen. You know, Pastor Samuel, one of the things that, speaking about messes right now,
and I think the movie, The Jesus Revolution has really highlighted this, is that back in the 70s,
you had hippies who were the quintessential mess to the traditional church at that point.
And you had somebody like Pastor Chuck Smith washing their feet and serving them and making
a way for these messes, what the world would see as messes, to be able to come into the church,
to come into a saving knowledge of Jesus Christ where their lives can really be changed.
Now we are 50 years later and we are ready to receive, or rather we need to be ready to
receive the next batch of messes that God's bringing into the church. And you know, if they
aren't received the way that we should be receiving them, there could be another loss and we don't want
that to happen. As a pastor yourself and as a preacher, as an author, what must the church do
in order to receive these messes and to help them find Jesus in their mess? We have to make room.
We literally have to make room. It's the story of the Shunammite woman who made room for the
prophet Elisha. She literally made a room. Subsequently, she stands before an open door
in that very room where the prophet says, by this time next year, you're going to have in your hands
what you've been praying for and hoping for. You have to make room. We have to make room for that
messy generation, for messy generations, for messy marriages and homes and individuals
to come into our churches. Our churches cannot become an echo chamber of mutual affirmation.
Our churches cannot become the quintessential place where all we do is in a very redundant,
reiterative way, affirm the spiritually impaired. This is not that. Our church is the most
transformative. You need to see your church pastor and leader as the most transformative entity
in that city, in that space. It is that clarion call that drives us. It is that clarion call that
motivates us. I hope and pray that every single pastor will make room. Make room for the Holy
Spirit. Make room for broken lives. Without ever watering down the gospel, it doesn't mean that you
start preaching a watered down version of the gospel of Jesus Christ. No. You know what I
loved about the Jesus movie? That Chuck Smith never stopped preaching the gospel of Christ.
He kept on preaching the gospel. It was biblical orthodoxy, but he made room for those that didn't
look like him, smell like them. Make room for the other. We can do this. It's completely doable.
I live in California. I live in a cocoa puff state. I mean, I pastor in California and our church,
by the grace of God, we're seeing just a great harvest, a great growth, but it's primarily
millennial and Generation Z. We make room every single service. God show up, show us your glory,
and he does. Yeah, I love it. Make room. Make room. Make room for the Holy Spirit and make room for
the Holy Spirit serving as a magnet for broken lives. Yeah. As we make room, just like the
Shunammite woman, you start to see that God really does show up. I love that story that she made this
room for the prophet. He wasn't there all the time, but there was room for him when he was there.
If he's going to be in that town, he's going to live there and be with them because they've made
room for him. Whether there's a Motel 6 down the street or a Hilton Hotel, whatever it is,
he's going to go live with the person who is making a room for him. And that's what the
Holy Spirit is doing. He's not going to go stay at a hotel somewhere else. He's going to stay with
the people who are making room for him. Every person, every life, every home and every church.
So we're in 2023 right now. We've got the far left, the far right. We've got up, we've got down.
We've got people that don't know whether they're male or female. It seems like there's nothing but
a mess. Where are you seeing hope of the gospel? Where are you seeing hope? Give me some stories,
personal stories even, of how God has taken a situation in your life, taken a mess, and turned
it into a miracle. The book I wrote, You're a Mess God's Miracle, is basically a biopic. It's a
biopic. I have seen it's an autobiography to a great degree. I have seen on multiple occasions
Sam Rodriguez's mess become God's miracle. Either a mess that was placed on me or a self-inflicted
mess because of immaturity and just nonsense. I saw God's miracle come out of just the mess
from my daughter almost dying of COVID, through my engagement with multiple political administrations.
Just a number of things in my life growing up in Bethlehem, Pennsylvania, my early years of ministry
where I knew I had a God-given gift, but the influence was emerging. But I didn't have the
I didn't have the majority, the bandwidth to manage the gift in my early years. And all of that I
write about in the book. And I've seen it on multiple occasions. I'm seeing messes become
miracles everywhere I look, everywhere I speak. It really is something transformative, measurable,
tangible, palpable. I'm seeing it in communities across America. Some supernatural occurrences
taking place that are pretty amazing. It just happened last week. I was speaking in Terraholt,
Indiana at a conference called The Outpouring. 150 pastors, over a thousand people in that
conference, but in the outskirts of Indiana, like 45 minutes from Indianapolis actually.
And I was there in the middle of the sermon. God gave me a word, a specific word about
a day gone of sickness collapsing in the middle of the message. And a pastor that was visiting
yelled out when we went to the book table, yelled out in the lobby that prompted security to just
say, hey, what's going on here? And he said, read this text. His brother was diagnosed with a tumor
in his spine. And by coincidence, nah, the very same moment we declared a day gone of sickness,
driven by the Holy Spirit, collapsed, they got the MRI results of the one that came in on Friday
when I spoke. The doctor's report was, can't explain it, the tumor has completely disappeared.
And it came in the same moment we declared the day gone of sickness. And that sort of thing,
it just, we're seeing signs and wonders, legitimate, measurable, verifiable, scientifically
validated signs and wonders, healings and miracles, seeing God making miracles out of messes.
This is that time. It really is that time. And you and I both referenced, it's all about making room.
One final note here, John, on this John chapter 9 narrative. Jesus places his DNA, mixes it with
the original blueprint. You know what Jesus did subsequently, which to me is intriguing,
and it's counterintuitive to what we think he would have done. You would assume Jesus would say,
now let me wash you since I made this mess, let me wash him. He didn't. You know what he said?
He said, now that I've placed this on you, my job is done, sunshine, go wash yourself.
There's something you got to do. It really pushes back on entitlement. It pushes back on this
perpetual victimization mentality. It pushes back on A to Z, God has to do it all. He already did
it on the cross, John 19 30, Hebrews 7 22. So now it's up to you to take the next step. Go wash
yourself. There are things you got to have to do by yourself. You're going to have to learn to pray
when no one else is praying for you. Pray for yourself. You're going to have to learn to
prophesy and speak a word over yourself. If you're saying, I'm waiting for God to give me a word.
Well, why don't you give yourself a word? Ready? I'll teach you how to do it. Dear me, I say a 50
for 17, no weapon formed against me shall prosper. There it is. That's a word. It's a word of God.
Can't miss. So learn to speak over yourself, to pray over yourself, to pick yourself up,
learn to do these things because you already have everything you need. Jesus already deposited in
you and upon you everything you need to open up your eyes, to see what you have never seen before.
I love that. He was born blind. Jesus was not restoring his sight. He was not restoring something
he lost like Lazarus or the woman of the issue of blood or the other blind man in the gospel of Mark.
He gave this man what he never had before. Stop asking God to restore your past. Stop asking God
to renovate your past when what he wants to really do is release your future. Open your eyes to what
you have never seen before. Amen. Amen. You need to connect with Jesus's DNA.
So that you can get back to his original design. Yes. You can be released for your future.
Don't settle for what you lost. Settle for the original design of what God has for your future
and fall in line with that. That's what I'm taking away from our conversation here, Pastor Samuel.
And I don't want to miss this opportunity to have you to ask you to just release a word and prayer
over the viewers here, over the listeners, and that they would be touched. That they would really
see that their mess can be God's miracle. Heavenly Father, we are about to see what we have
never seen before. That's not prophetic spaghetti on the wall. That's your promise from 1 Corinthians
2, 9, Jeremiah chapter 33. You said that if we call upon you, you will show us what we've never seen
before. 1 Corinthians 2, 9, my eye has yet to see, my ear has yet to hear, my mind has yet to imagine
the wonderful things you have in store for me and for each and every one of us because we love you.
We are about to see what we've never seen before in our families, our homes, our marriages, our
ministries, our callings, our children, our children's children, in our health, our finances,
in our generation. We are about to see the glory of the risen Christ like we've never seen before.
In the name of Jesus, we unleash this word, we come in agreement with your word, your will, and your way
and believe for every single person who interacts with this right now that their mess right now will
become your miracle. Family messes, mental messes, emotional messes, physical messes will become God's
miracle. We believe it. We come in agreement. We decree and declare it by the authority of God's
word driven by the Holy Spirit in the mighty, sovereign, powerful, triumphant, victorious name
of Jesus. Every single mess at the sound of my voice becomes God's miracle in the name of Jesus.
Amen. Amen. Your mess, God's miracle, the process is temporary. The promise is permanent. What a
promise that is. And Pastor Samuel, how can people get ahold of this book? How can they get ahold of
you? Please give us a website or whatever. John, so cool. Listen, your mess, God's miracle. And
what's cool about this book, English and Spanish, everyone needs a Hispanic friend. We all need a
Latino friend. It makes life a lot more exciting, exciting and a lot more vociferous and a little
bit more passionate. And the food, the food. So everyone, here it is. Your mess, God's miracle
and Milagros en el Desorden. That's the Spanish version. And I have a study guide, by the way,
first book that I write with a study guide. So you could purchase all three on different platforms,
as you well know, Amazon, Walmart, Target, Books A Million, you name it, all available. Get it today.
And our website is pastorsam.com, pastorsam.com. And yeah, go to my Instagram page, my Facebook
page, my YouTube channel, subscribe. You can watch us, of course, on TBN and Daystar Roku,
on Fox News constantly. And yeah, together, the mess becomes a miracle. And we'll do one thing
together in His name. We will change the world. Amen. Amen. We will change the world. Pastor Samuel,
thank you so much for being here on Charisma News. Thank you for having me.